PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Welcome back to another episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. I’m your host, Ian. And today we have on Kevin Maxwell from Maxwell Inspection Services. How are you?

Kevin Maxwell
No good. How are you?

Ian Robertson
I’m doing fantastic. I’m really super glad that you’re on the show. On one of our previous episodes, I was teasing Nick Gromicko. I’m like, I keep trying to get Kevin on my show. But he’s too busy. And now, here you are. Yeah, I’m super happy. So Kevin, I want everybody to know who you are. If you could tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re located, you know, the name of, well, we already said the name of your inspection company. But anything you want us to know about you.

Kevin Maxwell
I made it. I made it. Sure. So my name is Kevin Maxwell. I’m the owner of Maxwell Home Inspection Services. I’m out of Albany, New York. So basically, kind of Capitol Region area of Albany. Most people don’t know where Albany is, but it’s basically kind of like the Capitol, you know what I mean, kind of more of the center. So I’m from here. And then at the same time, too, I’m a former building inspector/slash code official for the city of Albany. I did that for a number of years, I got kind of bored of doing that. And I wanted to basically start, you know, travel a little bit more. So, you know, I started to do home inspections kind of on the side, because my boss was doing it. And, you know, I thought it was too much liability at first. And then my boss was like, it’s not that bad. Just, you know, come try it. I did, like one or two home inspections, I loved it. And then after about like, six months of kind of like marketing, I basically left my full time job and became a home inspector.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, that’s about the time that I met you. So for everybody listening, Kevin and I are in the same market. And I remember when he was a code official, and I’m like, dude, what you doing, man? Get on that home inspection train. So here he is, and you’ve done fantastic for yourself. Well, I’ve watched you start off from you know, okay. Here’s what a home inspection is to, hey, I’m running my part of the market now. This is, this is going well, yeah.

Kevin Maxwell
Thanks.

Ian Robertson
Yep. And you had a new baby about three months ago?

Kevin Maxwell
I did. I did. Yep. His name’s Zion.

Ian Robertson
Zion. That is awesome. So you have two kids. You have a nice little family going on there, successful business. And you actually own some other businesses, too, don’t you?

Kevin Maxwell
Yeah, I do. So I have about four other different businesses. So what I noticed early on was, home inspections is good. But I wanted to kind of branch out and do some of the different ventures. So I have a mold business. It’s called Albany Mold, or I don’t know if I should be saying all the names, but I have a mold business, I have an asbestos business. And I also have a chimney business. So a couple of different other different ventures, I’m kind of working on some other different things right now in the lab, just because I feel like you know, diversification is a very big thing, even within the real estate market, you want to be diversified. And you don’t want to just kind of like stay just in the home inspection realm, you want to be able to offer everything. And there’s some other different tips there that we’ll probably jump into as well. Yeah, and feel free to name all of your businesses. And we’ll put links to all of them in the transcript of this podcast. So everybody can learn about you. But I thought that was fantastic. Because not enough of us get out of what’s, what we call a vertical. So our vertical is a home inspection industry. But I’ve always said it’s, it sounds like a weird term, but it’s a, it’s a dead stop industry. You do the inspection, and it’s done. There’s no revenue after that, yeah, nothing. But now you do a chimney service, I imagine you can do that, you know, yearly, you know, mold business, that’s revenue that comes after the inspection. Just everything can kind of build off of what you’re already doing. So you’re expanding your vertical. Yeah, I think doing that. But I also think the other side of it, too, is, is doing things outside of the real estate transaction. So a lot of times with my mold business, we’ll do mold assessments, or air testing, or swab samples, basically, you know, outside of the real estate transaction. So let’s just say, you know, if somebody says, you know, they, like a homeowner, has mold, a mold issue in their house. Basically, when they’re looking us up, we’re not popping up as basically, you know, our members over was another business that specifically does that, you know what I mean? So basically, what we’re doing is we’re kind of like, where, because Maxwell Home Inspections is known for inspections. But my mold business is just known for mold. You know what I mean? So we’re still getting business from the other different subcategories of the business. But we’re doing it in a way where if a homeowner is sick, and they can’t breathe, they want to do air testing, then they might reach out, you know what I mean? So there’s a lot different ways that you could do that, too. The biggest thing about it is I think a lot of people are scared of, is doing like, the work behind it. So like the SEO, or doing also like, creating another website, you know what I mean? So that’s a big thing that, that we’re not afraid to do. So it’s myself. And so my main business Maxwell Home Inspections is through myself. 100%. And then I have my other businesses, as basically partnerships, through basically my partner, Adam Clark, he actually is a home inspector too, Shield Guard Home Inspections, you know what I mean? So it’s easy, it’s easier for us to basically create these other different sub businesses, and then you know, market it, he’s really good with SEO. So he’s pushing the SEO, and then we’re still sucking in more business. You know what I mean from those other businesses. So that’s, that’s kind like, a little bit of, you know, sun there, too. Sure. So that’s a business bottle after my own heart. That’s exactly kind of what I did just in a different direct, couple of different directions than you did. And I love how you talk about websites and SEO, because obviously, that’s a subject close to my heart. Yeah. But man, I really want to, I really want to unwrap this onion and see how many layers we have going on here. Because this is great information for us. Because right now, we have some good news on the horizon. We did a podcast a couple of weeks ago, the markets starting to turn, probably towards the spring.

Ian Robertson
But maybe towards the end of the year, it’s not going to be so great. And we’re still in a downturn market. You have made a success of a home inspection business and other verticals in a downturn market, where other home inspection companies are going out of business. And in our own market. Again, we’re in the same market. I can, I can name quite a few inspection companies that are now just gone.

Kevin Maxwell
Yeah. And of course.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, but you’ve thrived. So I really want to get into that. Maybe, so maybe we can take this onion one layer at a time.

Kevin Maxwell
Sure, sure, yeah. So why did you start to market so hard? Like, let a lot home inspectors try to ease into it. They’re like, let me do this one, or that, that thing and try this. When you first got into the market, and especially now with the market downturn, you pushed like crazy hard, and there’s like, tons of avenues that you’re doing. I think for me, I have seen a lot of other inspectors within my industry. So basically, like, you know, there’s another inspection company, you know, basically, you know, he just sold his business, you know, so he sold his business, but like, that was somebody who actually, like, there’s a couple of different people who I looked up to within the industry, like, you know, yourself, and you know, some of the people around here locally, and I tried to kind of see, okay, what are they doing, right? Because some inspectors, they have seven different licenses, but at the same time, they’re not getting on with business, right? Some inspection companies, they’re really good at marketing, kind of like, you know, their business, but they only just do home inspections. So for me, my thought was, okay, how can I market my business? Right? And which I did, and I started getting a lot of inspections. And I remember before I told you, at one point in time, sometimes I would do four a day, and, which is crazy, I don’t do that anymore. But like, I had a driver, you know what I mean? So I had a driver, I was doing reports in the backseat, I did that. And for me, I got to a point where I said to myself, hey, you know, after a while, it wasn’t sustainable. And for me, it was more in the sense of the fact of me scaling up. And then how do I scale up and maintain quality, but also have another way to attract business coming in. So I think for me, the first thing I did was, I wanted to be a very well known name. So I did that. So I marketed heavy on, you know, social media, marketed heavy on Google, I marketed heavy everywhere. After I became well known, then for me, what I did was, I started, you know, doing a lot of inspections, burning myself out. And I started hiring people, you know, so I became a multi-inspector firm pretty early. I’m six years in now. I became a multi-inspector firm, basically, three years in, you know, so I did that. And then as I scaled up, what I wanted to do was, so last year, basically kind of the height of, you know, COVID, I suppose, you know, two years ago, but last year, around that time, I had five employees. So I had three inspectors and two techs. So basically, three of my inspectors, and that’s including myself, you know, they basically would be doing inspections, right? They’d be doing inspections, as well as like mold and things like that. But then my techs, they would be doing like chimney inspections, chimney cleanings, septics, at the same time too, like, pool inspections, you know, all those different things. I stepped back pretty heavy, so I can kind of really build everything out, you know, what I mean? So I was doing all the research, all the different trainings, looking for the tools, you know, looking for the right classes, you know, looking to make sure the legal was intact, you know what I mean? So I basically started doing that, you know, which I scaled up, and then like, and let me, feel free if you want to stop me. But yeah, so I built everything out. And, you know, sometimes we would do 20 inspections a week, maybe even 25. And the crazy part about it was I seen the revenue jump up a lot higher, because we might do a septic for $500. You know what I mean? And then, you know, at that point, we were so busy. And then I think I would say probably when last year hit, obviously the market contracted pretty heavy. At that time, you know, we had to make some cuts. So I kind of like, you know, leveled things off a little bit. But I basically still kept the main crew. And I think a big thing for me was also my back end as well, you know, so I have a direct operations that’s in-house, and I even have, like, you know, a booking specialist that’s in-house too. So that kind of helped. But I think the biggest thing was, is that like, you know, we’ve always had other different satellite businesses, you know what I mean, to be able to kind of still, you know, get business from other different areas too, you know what I mean? So, I think that was a big thing for us as well. So, a lot of different things, a big mouthful. So feel free if you want to, you know, break that down a little bit.

Ian Robertson
No, I’m loving it. No, so I really like a couple of things that you said in there in particular. So septic inspections, I’ve always pushed those, I remember we were some of the first companies that did septic inspections, you know, in our area, so I remember the septic guys getting all mad at us and saying, oh, this is stupid and all sudden they’re like, oh, hey, this is good. But yeah, 500 bucks. And it’s not that long of an inspection and everybody leaves you alone when you’re staring at a hole full of poop. So you get some alone time, and you do your inspection, and you get paid well. But a couple of key things that you put in there. First of all, you expanded your services. That, that I think is key. If we don’t offer more ancillary services, we will never make more money. And I always made my money on, you call them technicians, I would still call them inspectors. We had some guys, all they do is radon, all they do is septic. All they do is pool, or they might do a combination of the two. It was also good because it would keep one person from leaving our company knowing how we do everything. Of course, of course. Yeah. But the other thing is you scaled up. I think that’s the problem that a lot of us have as home inspectors, is scaling our business. Were you nervous when you hired your first inspector?

Kevin Maxwell
Um, not really. So I’ve always had, it sounds a little crazy. But I’ve always had a Director of Operations, like it was just a little bit different, though. So like, I had somebody that basically kind of like helped me from the onset. And as I grew, I paid her more, you know what I mean? So I was able to kind of find somebody who kind of came on early to where I could pay her, like, a minimal amount of money. And then as things grew, I paid her more. So she was, helped me with my books, helping me with like, you know, the HR side of things. So, you know, for like workers comp, and things like that, too. You know what I mean? So I had the back in there, I think that’s the other side of it, too. So, you know, for me, I always thought of this as a business, right? So a lot of inspectors don’t think of themselves as a business owner. I’m a business owner first, and then I’m an inspector, that’s why I’m able to create new businesses, you know, what I mean? Where like, you know, being able to even like, having a business where I clean gutters or something like that, right? Like, for me, I see the opportunity, then I create a business around it, you know what I mean? So I think that’s the difference, is that like, a lot of inspectors, they’re just inspecting the house, they get the check, they leave. That’s it, they’re not really thinking about, okay, how do I scale? How do I hire? How do I fire? So I have SOPs for everything, you know what I mean? So I created that on the back end, too. So even though like this year, we kind of scaled back a little bit. When the market jumps open, if I want to scale up, I already have all the procedures, all the manuals already, to be able to do that. You know what I mean? Nice. And did you create all of those SOPs and manuals exactly yourself? Or did you have a basis that you worked off of? Yeah, so I got some stuff from like, InterNACHI, you know, a lot of good stuff there, too. So I pulled some stuff there, we kind of tweaked things based on kind of the need, you know what I mean. And then like, even for like payroll, and different ways we pay our contractors or subcontractors, we use Gusto You know what I mean, so everything’s like direct deposit, you know what I mean? So I’ve tried to really streamline the back end of it, while still being the face of it, too. And then not being afraid to also go in different areas. So like, I’m actually like, I’m licensed for not only mold, but I’m licensed for mold remediation. I don’t do both or don’t do two, but I wanted to get the license for more knowledge, you know, and then we also have, like, you know, the asbestos inspector license. I’m looking into getting the lead license. So for me, I’m continuing to invest more money into continuing education, but also continuing to market hard too. I think a lot of people, what they do is, they’ll invest a lot of money into continuing education, but nobody knows them. Like when I went to home inspection school, there were like, 30 guys there, right? For me, and now there’s only two left that’s in business. So because for me, the biggest thing about it is, is that you can know everything about a house, but if you don’t know how to market yourself, then it doesn’t really matter. Yeah, to talk to that point. A lot of guys are like, hey, you know, they should know that I’m awesome. I’m like, listen, if you are that awesome, you’re doing a disservice to them by not marketing yourself.

Ian Robertson
Because if you’re that good, you should be able to advertise yourself so that they get the good inspector and not just some Joe Schmo. So that’s awesome. So I remember the first time I hired an inspector, I think I sat nervously in a corner just watching my phone. The first time they went off on their own. You didn’t have any of that feeling? You were just like, hey, I’m good with this.

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly. Yeah, most guys I hired were licensed aleady. To be honest, you know what I mean, so I’ve met most of my guys from past inspections. So like, to be honest with you, like, three of my inspectors that I’ve hired, they were licensed. There’s only one per…well here’s the weird thing, right? The weird thing is anybody, actually no, all four, all four were licensed already. The weird thing is anybody who like wasn’t licensed before I put him through the training myself, 100 inspections, a lot of them kind of washed out. But a lot of guys that I’ve hired before, they already had their license already, like one guy, you know, he worked with me for about two years, and I inspected his house. And he liked me so much that he got his own license and called me after to say, hey, I’m licensed now, you know, can I work for you? So I feel like a lot of my like, kind of like pull has been just being a good guy and doing good inspections. And then you know, I’m not afraid to train somebody either. You know what I mean, so we already have the protocols on training and stuff like that as well. And if I’m training somebody, it’s going to be about like three to six months for that turnaround time to really make sure that they know not only how to do the report, but how to speak, because that’s a big thing. You know, if you don’t know how to talk to people, and you can’t communicate, then it’s not really going to work. You know what I mean?

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Kevin Maxwell
Especially when you set the bar, and you’re the like, you know, everyone like, knows me, like, they know, Kevin, they know that. I’m gonna do a good job with this inspection. But they have somebody else, like, shows up. And he doesn’t know how to communicate his findings. Then they are like, why, why, where’s Kevin? You know what I mean? So the bar is high already, because I’m on a different level than most inspectors that I feel like. So I feel like I have to make sure that I’m really putting through that training to communicate, you know, effectively.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And that’s a true statement. That’s why, unfortunately, some guys who talk really well, or know how to communicate and market, but don’t necessarily know about a house can still do really well, unfortunately. We don’t, we don’t want to be an oven, that, that is the best oven on the market, but there’s no bread coming out.

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly, exactly.

Ian Robertson
We have to produce something, we need to be able to communicate that information. So that’s awesome. So for anybody that’s listening, it sounds like you got your inspectors in kind of a new unique way, people, past client, and people who were already licensed, that you met through some different means. I did like how you mentioned that a lot of guys would wash out. And I think that’s the problem that a lot of inspectors were trying to scale up run into, is that you have to kiss a few frogs before you find a prince.

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly.

Ian Robertson
I’ve had lots of guys wash out. I had a guy wash out, he didn’t even show for the first inspection. Oh, yeah. “I don’t know. That seemed kind of hard. It’s kind of far away.” I’m like, dude, it’s 25 minutes away. Yeah. What are you doing? So you’re gonna have a lot of that. And then when you find those gems, you’re like, oh, yeah, this is it.

Kevin Maxwell
I think also, too, you can’t be afraid to pay people. Right. So yeah, you know, I have a different scale. You know, what I mean? Like, you know, at one point I was paying one of my guys like $39 an hour, you know what I mean? So I pay my guys hourly, you know, and some people will say, oh, well, splits are better. This is better, da da da. Like, for me, like, you know, I have, I do things a little differently. So I do like an hourly rate. So one of my guys gets paid like, you know, $34 an hour, while paying for gas to go to inspection. At the same time too, you know, he’s cross trained to do like chimneys and septics and sewers and all these different things, right? So then he’ll get paid like two hours if he does this, two hours if he does that. So he can walk away in one week, if we’re, if we’re, you know, jumping, making two grand in a week, or 2500, or even three grand, you know what I mean? So for me, it makes sense like that. And then, you know, as we’re continuing to scale, you know, I want to grow with my guys, too. So if I have a different, you know, business that maybe I’m starting or something like that, and he’s proficient in it, I’m like, hey, we sit down, and we see if we can try to like, create an ownership piece into it as well, you know what I mean, so I can keep, kind of keep him invested in the business, you know what I mean, as we’re growing, you know.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, that, that works out as a business model really well, because now, their success is your success and your success is theirs. So if they push the business forward, and you push the business, as long as it’s the right partner, it can work out really, really well. So let’s, let’s talk about, so that’s, that’s great, we took back that part of the onion. That’s how you scaled up. I want to talk about your marketing since the market downturn and what you did. But before that, I want to talk a little bit more about other verticals, or expanding a vertical. So I, we’ve had a lot of guys on this podcast that have expanded into other verticals. For instance, Dave Klima owns a radon mitigation company. And he also owns a pest company. I think those are two common verticals for inspectors to get into. I’m always about recurring revenue. That’s, that’s really important. Radon mitigation, it’s a dead stop industry, you install it, and it’s done. You might go back 10 or 15 years later to replace place a fan. Okay. Whereas pest control, though, you can…

Kevin Maxwell
Contract.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. Have you ever, have you, have you thought about things like pest control or?

Kevin Maxwell
Yeah, we thought about pest control, we actually started a pest business for a little bit, but like, you know, the issue is, is that like, it’s a little hard to break into that field, just because you do have to work under somebody for like, a certain amount of time as an apprentice. So we kind of stopped there. But you know, we’re looking at some new things now. So like, you know, we’re looking into like window washing, house washing services, roof cleaning services. So we’re looking into that, we’re kind of in a lab right now, kind of creating those different things. And the good part about it is, is that, you know, when you’re a home inspector, like you already have the clients information, for the most part, you know, what I mean? And a lot of times people after the inspection or even during the inspection, you’ll mention, hey, you should get your, your, you know, carpets cleaned, or your windows cleaned, or your roof clean, you have a lot of moss here. And a lot of times like, you know, you can even opt them in or like, you know, they can opt themselves in rather to that service, you know what I mean? So after the inspection, you know, after whatever the timeframe is, you know, to be able to do the service, you can reach back out to them. And that’s what we’re looking into. So I know like ADT adds something where basically 45 days after the inspection, you know, that’s when they assume you’re going to close, then they’ll reach out to you, you know what I mean? So we’re kind of setting the framework up, so 45 days after the inspection, call them, hey, you know, you guys think before, you know, we did inspection on the house, and we see there was a lot of moss in the roof. Are you interested in maybe us cleaning your roof or cleaning your windows or power washing. So we’re looking at those different services now and kind of building those different things out, because we already have, you know, a relationship with the client, so it makes sense to kind of build it out. And I think for, what that does is, I think the main reason why also that I’ve been in business, and I’m thriving, to be honest, is because, like, you know, we built out all of our services already. So even on the inspection now, we’re not just doing home inspections, we have, I think I did like one like last week where we did the home inspection, we did the septic, we did the chimney, you know what I mean? We’re doing all these different services. So I think for me when I look at it, it’s like this, and maybe not the best term, but you want to basically pick everything to the bone, you know what I mean? So you’re providing the value, yes, because I still think it’s value, because again, they would have to still call the chimney guy, and a lot chimney guys, no offense, but they might try to flag, they might try to flag the chimney, because they don’t get paid to tell you the chimney looks good. I always tell people that, I said, they don’t get paid to tell you, the chimney is good, or the pool is good, they get paid more often than not to basically flag it and then write an estimate. So for us, we’re still providing an independent and non-biased assessment. So for me, I think we can do weightless home inspections. But if we’re doing a home inspection and septic or radon. And if we’re doing a mold, then we’re doing six services on one house or five services on one house. And then, you know what I mean, the revenue is still up. Like we didn’t even, we didn’t take that much up, we didn’t have that big of a decrease. You know what I mean, basically from like, the years prior. Yeah, we obviously, we spent money with marketing and different things like that, and you know, different avenues, but like the numbers were to some extent around the same. You know what I mean, as far as for like gross profits from the banner year, you know what I mean? But we scaled up. And now every time when you know, my admin, or my staff is trained for when they answer that phone, they pull up the house on Zillow, and they’re looking, okay, has a chimney, boom, has this, boom. So they’re going down the whole list, and they have all the scripts that I personally write myself to know what to say.

Ian Robertson
So there’s a lot of onion in that, in that peel. So scripts, awesome. I love that. I’m all about the script. And I love the little diagrams, if they say this, then you do this. And it’s not that hard. Just write it down. Process mapping is what it’s called. But also just to gripe about chimney guys. I always had problems with chimney guys. I had this one guy, came in during the home inspection. He didn’t know I was there, and I could overhear him failing the chimney because it didn’t meet, at the time, it was like 2018 building code. So that municipality didn’t enforce that code, first of all, and it was, it was an 80 year old house. Yeah. So I actually popped out, and I tried to take him to the side. And I’m like, hey, you know, you know, that’s an eighty year old chimney here, you’re going to..He goes, “it needs to be torn down, it doesn’t meet…”

Kevin Maxwell
He’s trying to compete.

Ian Robertson
He’s trying to get paid. They got another chimney guy come in, and he’s like, no, this has been here for 80 years. This is how they built them. You don’t tear down a chimney and rebuild it every time there’s an update to the code. So it’s, that’s a whole different ballgame.

Kevin Maxwell
But I also think some inspectors too, they’re scared to do new services, you know, so like, somebody in my market, we’re like, you know, I’ll tell the different inspectors, and then they’ll go, oh, how you doing? Well, I’m doing pretty good, you know? And then they’re like, oh, well, like you know, I’m I’m not doing septics, I’m not doing chimney, I’m not doing this, I’m not doing that. But it was good for me. Because, like I had one the other day where the guy calls me, he had an inspector that he already had picked out, it was great. But it had a septic, the guy couldn’t do septic. So he called us instead, we did the home inspection and the septic, you know, knocked it out of the park, and it was good. So I just think for what we’re doing, is we’re trying to continue to gain more market share by providing more services, and also providing good timeframes and good reports. You know what I mean? So kind of keeping the main thing, the main thing is inspection, but also still doing everything else within reason.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And so, there may be some listeners right now thinking, that sounds to hustle culturey, you know, so here’s the fact of the matter. There’s mornings where we walk away with $1,200 for the inspection. Of course, it’s like, okay, you have to do three inspections that day to do what we did in the morning, we go have a leisurely lunch and then hit our next one for $1,200. Exactly. It’s like, what..did I provide less value? You’re rushing through the day trying to catch up, making less money, and I’m spending my time doing a great inspection and getting the fee that I, that we need to make. I’m like, what, what, it’s not a hustle culture, it’s a matter of value. It’s, it’s giving people what they need and what they deserve and the time that they need.

Kevin Maxwell
Well, what we do too is like, I don’t, if I’m doing like the home inspection, or my guys are doing a home inspection, we don’t do all together you know, for the most part, you know. So if I’m doing the inspection, I’ll do the inspection, and then my guy will do the septic or my guy will do the sewer scope. My guy will do the chimney. You know, I found that works out better as we get busier. It actually works better from a time perspective, especially because if he’s running late to do the septic, that’s okay because they don’t really care because we’re doing an inspection, or if he’s running late to do the chimney, it doesn’t really matter, because he’s oh, if they say, oh, like, where’s your chimney guy? Oh, he’s coming. You know what I mean, so now we’re still doing the inspection. So it’s a different time lapse there. So we can actually be that much better with our service. And he does, he does a chimney report, he does the septic report, I do the home inspection report. So then basically now, we can kind of put everything in together, you know, in that group there, then we can do one report, you know, so, you know, it’s a lot. But I think like, for me, like, you got to just try different things and see what works for you, you know what I mean, but that works for us. And, you know, it allows us to do that much more volume, and not basically, you know, kill ourselves by doing the, you know, five different services by myself, you know what I mean?

Ian Robertson
And that’s smart. That’s why you have technicians. One thing I wanted to touch on, if you’re listening, and you’re thinking offering services after an inspection, might be against SOP, actually, in New York State, I encourage you to look this up, as of this podcast, and it has been like this for for many years now, you can actually work on a home after close of escrow. So you can, you can actually, so we’re not talking about this, but you could if you wanted to replace the roof, replace the heating unit, refinish their floors, and you know, whatever work you want to do on the house after close of escrow. Before that, big no, no. So after the close of the house in New York State, it’s legal, but we’re not talking about that. We’re not talking about things that have to do with the home inspection. Mold is outside of the home inspection, level two chimney inspection, outside of a home inspection, according to our SOP. I love the roof washing idea. And I’ve actually seen that before. I won’t say his name here. But there’s a home inspector in our market that him and another inspector started a roof washing business, a soft roof washing business, started it, used their data to basically drive the business and then sold it to their guy that was running the business because he had recurring revenue. Because we live in an area where, you know, you go up to like..

Kevin Maxwell
A lot of trees.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. But you go up to like Saratoga. There’s millions and millions of dollars homes up there.

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly.

Ian Robertson
You know, they come there for two weeks, and they want the roof cleaned every year. You know, it’s like, okay, here we go, recurring revenue, and they sold it for a mint. So..

Kevin Maxwell
Of course, of course.

Ian Robertson
Window washing, same kind of thing. So if I were buying a home, it’s not illegal. It’s not unethical, after close of escrow, somebody says, hey, you know, if you’d like, if you enjoyed our inspection, would you like us to clean your windows and wash your roof? Cool. Oh, yeah, thanks. Why not? You know?

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And I was gonna say, on the marketing topic, another thing too, is, I take away all my secrets. But what I will say is, don’t be afraid to expand your service area, you know, a lot of people are afraid of that, you know, we market that we’ll go two hours out, right? Do we typically go two hours out? No, but, you know, depending on the situation and the service, you know, and if it fits our schedule, we’ll do it, you know, because depending on where you’re going, you know, you can, there’s higher ticket houses and higher in different areas. And some people don’t do this, this is another thing that we’ve done as a business model. You know, if the house is over a certain price point, we’re going to charge more, you know what I mean, for the house, you know, it’s more liability. We’re gonna spend more time there, gonna bring maybe multiple guys. We did a house in Lake George, it was 2.6 million. I had my whole team there. You know what I mean, we charge, we charge almost like, it was like, $3,000 to $4,000 I think we charged. You know, I think, I think it was about $3,500 we charged for the inspection. You know what I mean, and that sounds crazy from an inspection standpoint. But again, like the clients had no problem paying for that inspection. Honestly, I showed up with like, four guys there. You know what I mean, including me. And all my guys are hourly. So yeah, that took a little bit of the profit. But I had the big margin there. You know what I mean? So we’re not afraid to do houses that are a million dollars, two millions dollars. You know what I mean. Obviously want to make sure your insurance policy does cover that. But at the same time, though, you know, we’re charging more, you know what I mean? Like, I don’t walk in a house that’s a million dollars for less than $1,000 to be honest, you know what I mean, if not, maybe less than 15. You know what I mean? So that’s just my model, what I do, and some people don’t agree to that. But that’s what I do, and maybe it doesn’t work for everybody. But that’s helped us a lot too, you know, from a price point standpoint.

Ian Robertson
So I think a lot of guys are afraid of having a higher price point. And I’ve done the same thing, I remember, I won’t say which corporation is, there’s a president of one of the major real estate corporations in the U.S. and Canada. And he had a home over near Albany in a place called Loudonville. And he was like, never there. Like we inspected it, and it was empty. I’m like, I’m like, are you not here? Or he’s like, no, no, we just, we come here like every couple of years, like, oh, it’s like his 20th house, I don’t know, but it was several million dollars. And you know what?We had, I think there was three of us. But I was looking at the, I was looking at the water heater. And it was a really fancy water heater. I’m like this water heater, just this one, they had two of them, cost more than my vehicle. I had to look it up. And we’re like, man, you gotta charge for that, you know.

Kevin Maxwell
Of course, of course.

Ian Robertson
You gotta charge for that kind of stuff. So that’s very important. And I want to hear though, because you wanted to talk about marketing a little bit too here.

Kevin Maxwell
So, so, yeah.

Ian Robertson
What are some marketing things that you’ve done, and not telling us your secrets, but some things that you have done that might help guys get through the last leg of this down market?

Kevin Maxwell
I think social media is a big thing, right? You know, social media is huge. You can’t be afraid to post on social media, I post four times a day. And I have multiple different pages that I’m on, you don’t I mean, like different profiles. So I have like a main page, another page, a business page, this page. So I’m consistent. I never miss any day. So I post every single day on social media. And I even have, you know, basically, a social media person help me, but like, I don’t post generic stuff, I post funny stuff, I post good stuff, post good content, stuff that may even be a little risky. But I get crazy engagement from agents. So like, I think the thing about it, some people just post articles, they just post whatever, I post things that’s engaging, things that’s funny, things that’s inspection related, things that’s not inspection related. So I think for me, like, that’s something that I’m not afraid to do. At the same time too, on the marketing side, I’m not afraid to, you know, either I’m going to events, or I’m sending my guys to different events. So I’m regularly pulling up different events that are happening in the area. And I’m not gonna lie, I’m not a big event person, like I’m high energy. But I’m a lot, I’m a more intimate circle type of guy. So I’m a one-on-one type of guy, getting coffee, or maybe like, you know, getting breakfast with somebody, speaking at an office, but I’m not really good for real estate events. But one of my guys is, so I send him there. And we still do get that traction, you know what I mean? But I think for what it’s worth, you can’t be afraid to spend money when it comes to marketing. But again, I don’t do, I’m not really heavy on Google marketing anymore. I just think it’s overpriced these days for ad spend.

Ian Robertson
The PPC stuff, yeah, the pay per click.

Kevin Maxwell
Yeah, yeah. For PPC. I don’t, I don’t do much of that. I spend most of money on more like, word of mouth/like, relationship building marketing. And that’s how we’ve been successful. And I have like, in my system, I mark what agent’s VIP, what agents kind of like, I don’t want to say, regular, but I have different agents marked on my system. So I make sure that like, they’re getting very good treatment, depending on, you know, how much revenue they’re bringing us, you know, again, we’re going to continue to give good treatment to everybody. But like, again, maybe we might not make it out last second for maybe an agent who’s going to use this maybe one time, but if he is using us 10 times, then we’re gonna, you know, put a lot of effort into that agent too. But I just think that home inspectors can’t be afraid to market on social media, and market consistently, you know, somebody will just post once every couple of days, or, hey, you need an inspection? I don’t ask for inspections on social media, I post things that are engaging, that are funny, and you know, I might jump in their inboxes, hey, how you doing, when maybe they have some contract. But like, I’m not like, for me, I feel like you’re going to attract more bees with honey, than you are going to attract them with the other stuff. So the honey to me is funny stuff that’s engaging. And as you laugh at my posts, you’re gonna want to come back more and engage with me more, and you know, you want to visit with people who you know, like, and trust. You’re gonna know me, like me, and trust me from social media, you know what I mean? And then you need an inspection. Oh, yeah, there’s that funny guy.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, it’s, it’s a marketing principle that has been around for thousands of years, you’re going to refer people that you like.

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly.

Ian Robertson
So there you go. So what platforms do you find most effective for yourself? Which social media?

Kevin Maxwell
I would say, I would say Facebook, to be honest. Like, I think like, you know, Facebook’s big, Instagram is big, too. You know, you get a lot of people to look at your stories and things like that, like on like, you know, social media. But for some reason agents really gravitate to Facebook, I’m on everything, like LinkedIn, too. We post every platform just because like, I might get three likes for a post on LinkedIn, ten likes for something on Instagram, and I might get 100 likes on Facebook. But again, I want to basically continue to have that spiral going. And you know, I’m doing it consistently, you know what I mean? So while other inspectors are busy, and then I pay attention to that, if I don’t do it, again, like I said, like, I curate the content, but I have somebody that’s doing it every day, so we’re not going to miss, and I’m doing videos now too. You know, while I’m just sitting in the car, I’m in the car waiting before an inspection. I just have a random topic in my head. Hey, you should definitely think about the beginning of sewer scope inspection. Here’s the, here’s the reason why. 60 seconds. You know what I mean? So, I just think that’s the biggest thing, is that like, especially with this market, kind of taking a dip, it is gonna pull back, I watch your videos too or you’re, listen to your podcasts, but at the same time for me, like I feel like whether it’s busy, whether it’s slow, I want to market no matter how busy I am, no matter how slow I am.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I actually just watched one of your videos this morning. I think it was on sewer scopes. Calm Car Talk videos or whatever they are. Basically you’re just in your vehicle with a phone, and it doesn’t take that long to do.

Kevin Maxwell
Quick.

Ian Robertson
And especially with the amount of time we spend in a vehicle. You know, a lot of times it can be done, hey, you showed up early, you did the outside of the house, and you’re waiting for the agent to show up to let you in, do a quick video, you know, say hey, what about when it’s cold outside? What happens if there’s snow on the roof?

Kevin Maxwell
Well, and you’d be surprised. Yeah, even like, for like the reels, you can post on Facebook, they have reels, too. We did a reel of my inspector, Scott. He was doing a septic. It got like 6,000 views. Yeah. You know, on a reel. You know what I mean, I don’t know who’s, who exactly was seeing it. But at the same time, there’s visibility there, visibility in the stories, you know what I mean? So I just think that, you know, instead of complaining, because a lot of inspectors, you know, in my market at times, they complain it’s too slow, or, you know, like, they just say crazy stuff, just because they’re just justifying the fact that maybe they’re not a good business. You know, that’s why, I’m not gonna lie. I don’t really do a lot of like, connecting with other inspectors in our market, just because a lot of them can be Debbie downers, I’ll say I’m doing septic, oh, there’s too much liability in septics, or there’s this or the third? Okay, that’s fine, then you don’t have to do it. Send me the subjects then, send me the chimneys, send me everything, you know.

Ian Robertson
You know, I’ve always heard, again, we’re in the same market. So I’ve heard the same things about, going back to the septic thing. There’s too much liability in septic systems. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Kevin Maxwell
I haven’t got one complaint yet.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, first of all, it doesn’t happen very often, a complaint if ever. But like, I inspected a house, and it was a $70,000 roof defect. It’s like, okay, so that’s just the roof of this particular house. Yeah. How bad of a mistake are you gonna make on the septic system that is going to cost 70 grand?

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly. That’s true.

Ian Robertson
There’s way less liability. So at the worst, complete brand new system, you just completely boobed the whole thing up. You didn’t find anything, they replaced the whole thing. And it’s 30 grand for a raised bed system. That’s still less than most roofs in our area.

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly. I just think a lot of people they use things as excuses to not do things. Yeah. So they’ll say liability. But again, that’s what insurance is for. You know what I mean. I mean, not saying you want to charge the insurance. You know, I’ve only been sued one time, and it was for a roof and I won.

Ian Robertson
So I’ve never, I’ve been in business for almost 20 years, I’ve never been sued. So we’d like to talk about the boogeyman under the bed. When you finally check under the bed. You’re kind of like, oh, all right. But still, when we lay in bed at night, there’s the boogeyman, you know, in our dresser. So boogeyman is always going to be a liability.

Kevin Maxwell
Of course.

Ian Robertson
It’s a matter of, like you said, be qualified, get all the training, practice, go have an SOP, do the whole kitten caboodle, become awesome at it. And if you are awesome and doing your job, the likelihood of you missing something is very low.

Kevin Maxwell
Exactly.

Ian Robertson
And it’s like, okay, it’s a septic system. We’re looking at a, let’s dumb this down a little bit, it’s a hole with poop in it.

Kevin Maxwell
Yeah.

Ian Robertson
Is the poop going out to the yard properly? Well the poop shouldn’t go out to the yard, but you know what I mean?

Kevin Maxwell
I know what you mean, I know what you mean.

Ian Robertson
It’s a matter of getting outside of our own heads. So let me, let me ask you, though, what are your plans for this coming year for marketing? What, what’s going to be your biggest strategy besides social media?

Kevin Maxwell
Sure, um, besides social media, I think just trying to be more in front of agents, right. So you know, we’re trying to go to more open houses this year. And basically, like, make that more of, not just like a thing that you do every now and then. But making that a regimen, you know what I mean? So we have basically somebody who’s set to, you know, visit offices, and basically go to open houses, you know what I mean, and doing that, so it’s basically, every Saturday, every Sunday, we’re doing that, you know, I mean, we’re getting those connections, we’re building those relationships, and then going to more events. So I think basically, kind of like blending the two, blending social media with also blending the in-person connection. That’s really the goal for us. And you know, I think we’re off to a good start, you know, where we, honest, we’ve already been in about three events, we’re going to another three events, we’ve gone to a dozen open houses. So I just think just more boots on the ground approach. And not being afraid to do that and not being afraid to allocate, spend to that.

Ian Robertson
And you know, it’s funny, we’re actually releasing a podcast, a short one, on how to properly visit open houses. I’ve always hated that. I even state in the podcast, I hated them. But they’re effective. Marketing has not changed in our industry much in the past 40 years. It’s, it’s basically the same. So visit offices, open houses, events, the one thing that’s different is social media. And they are interconnected. They really are. They need to be part of the environment that you create. But I tell you what, Kevin, you have created quite the environment for you and your clients and the agents that refer you. Your stiff competition, man, I like it. Good job.

Kevin Maxwell
Yeah, I appreciate it, man. And like I said, I love the podcast, and I learned a lot from you guys.

Ian Robertson
Well, we’ve all learned a lot from you today, here too. If anything, my big takeaway from our discussion is, don’t be scared, be qualified, and do it. And that’s exactly, that’s like, it sounds like that’s like half of your marketing plan. And it’s working for you.

Kevin Maxwell
That’s it. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
Great job. Thank you so much for being on the show, Kevin. We’ll talk soon.

Kevin Maxwell
Cool, alright buddy.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].

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