PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson: It’s really great to have you on the show, Barry.

Barry Cohen: Thanks. I appreciate it.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, we’ve known each other a long time now. About how long has it been?

Barry Cohen: It’s definitely probably five, six years. I know. You know, I came to you for my inspection website. 

Ian Robertson: Yeah. 

Barry Cohen: That’s how I first got to you with full view marketing. 

Ian Robertson: Yeah. 

Barry Cohen: So that’s, uh, you know, you take care of our stuff there. 

Ian Robertson: Yeah. And it was nice, because we’re actually in the same state so we can kind of talk and complain about some of the same home inspection laws in our state.

Barry Cohen: Yeah. And good thing is you’re upstate I’m downstate. So no competition whatsoever.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, no competition. Don’t come on my turf, man. It’ll be like, The Sharks and the Jets.

Barry Cohen: That’s okay. I have enough competition down on Long Island. So it’s pretty crowded down there.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, you do have a very competitive market. And I’m surprised at the number of home inspectors that come on the market in Long Island in general.

Barry Cohen: Yeah, it is. It’s quite different than where you are upstate. Upstate is all spread out and stuff for the most part. And you know, Long Island is very dense. And that’s, you know, we’re talking about the amount of inspectors down there. And, you know, the population is, you know, very heavy down there. So there’s certainly room for a lot of inspectors. But I have been finding over the years, more and more inspectors are starting out down on the island.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, and people may not know this about New York, but we just recently went, they changed the laws so that you can get your home inspection license completely via webinars. You don’t have to step foot in a classroom, the only thing you still have to do is do your 40 hours of field time, 

Barry Cohen: Right, the field base turning, Sure. 

Ian Robertson: Now, I remember years ago when they first did that, I thought it was funny. I was watching this one class of students go out there and how long has it been licensing around like 15 years?

Barry Cohen: Probably about that? Cuz I got my license back in 08, I think. Yeah, 08, 09. It was definitely a couple years before then.

Ian Robertson: Yeah. But I remember watching this one class, and they’re all just kind of walking around the house,  this one guy started grilling. And they’re just like, goofing around. I’m like, Yeah, that’s gonna help them in their career. You know, 

Barry Cohen: If you check grills, I guess. 

Ian Robertson: Yeah. Well, it’s gotten a lot better since then. I think New York State’s tightened up and home inspectors, you know, we want to be prepared for a new inspector coming into the market. So I think the schools are like, Oh, okay. Yeah, let’s make sure we give them some good training.

Barry Cohen: Yeah, I know, when I went, it was all, you know, in class. But I know, I guess last year, the year before with COVID, they started doing the online CDs. So that was very helpful, because my license was expiring last year. And I really needed to get those in there. There was nothing live so certainly helped.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, I’m a New York State Home Inspector instructor too. And we did all webinars. At first, it was a little awkward. But eventually, everybody liked it. Because you know what, if you’re in a classroom, you’re taking breaks, there’s distractions, you would do it in the school or you do it in a hotel room, if you’re doing a satellite, not a you know, like a conference room in a hotel. And the webinars actually kind of easy, somebody has a question. I can pull up New York State law or go pull something up off of nachi.org and say, oh, yeah, 

Barry Cohen: Let’s get your answer there. 

Ian Robertson: There’s the answer, you know, show them pictures. Oh, hey, I did an inspection the other day. Here’s a good example of a slate roof issue. And I could just pull up the picture off my computer. 

Barry Cohen: Yeah, certainly helpful. 

Ian Robertson: Yeah, it really is. So we do want to get to know you a little bit. We’re gonna we’re here to talk about Homeinspectology, which I remember when it came out, Homeinspectology, I’m like, What is this? And they didn’t know what to do. I’m like, Huh, that’s interesting, because a lot of people have tried it. But then all of a sudden, I’m doing searches for different things in the industry, and you keep popping up. 

Barry Cohen: That’s good. 

Ian Robertson: Yeah, you’re doing really well with that. And I keep seeing other information and people referring back to your website. So I’m like, Oh, well, that’s interesting. So we’ll get into that in a minute. But tell us about you. Barry. Are you from Long Island originally?

Barry Cohen: Yep. So born and raised in Long Island, had a diverse background I was in Wall Street for the first 10 years, you know, after college and then got into, left that and went into sales and was in pharmaceutical sales for a long time and then wanted to get out of the, you know, the corporate America and I started doing home inspections, part-time, my brother and I, we were looking for something sort of, like, you know, something to do post-corporate life.

Ian Robertson:  And what year was that?

Barry Cohen: It was about 2007 2008 started getting licensed, and I did it, I got licensed that night, over about a year or so a year and a half, taking the classes and then the live training. And then, you know, I think about 2014 or so 2015 went into home inspection full time, got tired of, you know, corporate America and just you know, wanted to do something for myself and I you know, really enjoy doing the home inspection and really put myself into it. Full time, my brother and I

Ian Robertson: Gotcha. And I asked which year because you had said that before that you got licensed I didn’t know if before licensing you were doing inspections part-time. 

Barry Cohen: Nope.

Ian Robertson: So you came in right at the cusp of something new for New York State.

Barry Cohen: Yeah, yeah. And came in during the recession too, right? If you remember with the real estate, which was kind of good, because real estate was slower than and it was kind of good way to just break myself into doing home inspections. Not being swamped by it or anything, not that any new inspectors really swamped when they’re first getting started anyway. But it gave me a good runway to segment into home inspection and out of corporate America and really built up the business,

Ian Robertson: you know, and that’s really great that you’re mentioning that sometimes I talked to new guys, I talked to a new guy just the other day, he and I only did five inspections all of January. Like when did you start? He goes last October. I’m like, that’s amazing. You we hear all these meteoric rises to success? Oh, in my first year, I did 500 inspections. Now I have 10 inspectors, and we do you know, 10,000 inspections a year. Come on. I mean,

Barry Cohen: that’s typically not the norm. And I see that also a lot in the Facebook groups, a new inspector, or somebody will say I just started recently, you know, business is slow. How do I get my first inspection? The truth of the matter is, it’s difficult, I think one of the biggest problems is getting your inspection license is the easy part, getting the business is that we really have to stop going to work. Because you know, every market has a fair amount of competition and home inspectors that have been doing it for a while. And these new folks think that they have their license and 123 their phone’s gonna start ringing from either real estate agents, or maybe, you know, they think they’re get found on Google, or maybe they do a Yelp or some of these other type of ad services. And, you know, unfortunately, it just doesn’t happen that way. And, you know, the marketing part of the business is one of the hardest businesses and it doesn’t it, you really have to keep working on that over and over. You know, you can build relationships with the realtors, and you know, you have one bad experience with them, or the next person comes in, you never hear from them again, for whatever reason.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, and I’m glad we’re kind of talking about this, we should have an entire podcast on that the non-meteoric rise to success, because really, it comes down to, it’s like swimming. The guy, the guy who is able to swim is the guy who just keeps paddling. And eventually, you get it. You know, a lot of people jump in the pool is like, Okay, this is it, I’m gonna be in the Olympics. That’s not how it works. For most of us, there are guys. Hey, I had some sort of rare in, jumped in the market, and everything was amazing. Typically, that’s not, that wasn’t my experience, either.

Barry Cohen: It’s not normal. I mean, I do hear those stories. And I think it’s great. But it’s not the norm. And I think that’s what most inspectors or new inspectors need to realize is that they shouldn’t expect it. And like you said, if you did, you know, five inspections for the month of January, that is great. I think our first year in business we did 30. Yeah. you know, you kind of wonder, is this really going to work? So, you just have to keep at it. And I think what I’ve seen is, I think a lot of inspectors that I did my training with back in 2008 2009. Probably are no longer in business. I think, at that time I fired call. A lot of the folks in my class were contractors, because like I said it was during the housing recession, and they were looking for work. And they figured that they’d be able to get a home inspector license and just be able to go out there and supplement their income. And I don’t think it happens.

Ian Robertson: Yeah. And I guess those are good things for inspectors to keep in mind, especially if we’re new. I even think 30 For your first year is pretty good, especially in a heavy, heavy market like that. Yeah, absolutely. So that’s actually a good segue. Because I think you’re a good example of why Homeinspectology is a good resource for home inspectors, because you’re not just the guy that said, Hey, I showed up for six months inspected. I wrote an e book, and here’s all the stuff that you need. And you’re also not the guy that said, hey, my wife, my cousin, and my sister and my uncle are all real estate agents. And I did 800 inspections my first year. I think you’re the classic. I came from the trenches. I dug this hole on my own. And here I am. You know, I think you’re a good example of somebody that knows the resources we need. 

Barry Cohen: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And that’s really how  HomeInspectology came about. I was thinking about it for quite some while that there really isn’t a centralized resource location of where an inspector, whether new or seasoned, can go and find like everything that the home inspector would want to build their business or to continue their business. So it was on paper for a long time, and then, you know, COVID hit and it was relatively slow. And I kind of took out the piece of paper and I dusted it off and like if this doesn’t happen now, then it’s probably never going to. You know, quite honestly, I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t really something like this out there. I think there have been some attempts. But the one thing that I wanted is because I’m a home inspector don’t have a business selling to the inspection industry, I wanted to produce a unbiased resource site. And when I say unbiased meaning that, you know, I’ll put up any vendor for the home inspection business, unlike if if you know, if I was a somebody in the industry, I would maybe not want to put somebody up if it’s competition. So I don’t have a dog in the fight here for business. It basically is a nonprofit, because there’s no profit to the site. We’re just trying to create something where home inspectors can go and really find what they’re looking for easy. Sure you can Google websites, you can Google, you know, home inspection, marketing, but you get so many results that you don’t know where to go. And it’s quite honestly overwhelming. So the thought process was to just build a website, put it into sections where an inspector can go and really look and see who most of the website builders are. What’s the marketing material that you need? Who are those inspection software companies? In one really easy to look site?

Ian Robertson: Yeah. And that’s what I appreciate about you. I remember when I was talking about this with you before I said, you know, how do you make a profit on this? What’s going on? And you said, No, I don’t I do it as a resource. And that kind of blew my mind, because there’s a lot of research that you put into all of this. Yeah,

Barry Cohen: Yeah, it definitely, it took a lot of time to collect all the resource and put the site together. And it’s constant, I’m constantly updating it. As you know, there’s, you know, a lot of new vendors coming into the business all the time, more, more so in the last like, probably a year or two than I’ve ever seen. So it definitely takes time, and you know, I have to find time to manage it. And like I said, I want to really keep producing this to really help everybody out.

Ian Robertson: And I like how you actually tackle the questions that we have. And that’s why I come back to you’re a good resource. Because if just the average guy who hasn’t been through the trenches, like you, or somebody who’s looking at it from outside the industry, they’re gonna say, Oh, well, somebody types this a lot into Google. So I’ll just write a page about that. And then they’re really not going to know, I think one of your most popular articles is about moisture meters.

Barry Cohen: Yep, absolutely. It really blows my mind. Like, every week I look. And I see that’s one of the most downloaded or clicked-on resources.

Ian Robertson: But you know, what I like about that article you wrote is it came from a home inspector? Right? I think that’s beside the whole ladder question. That’s the most asked question. 

Barry Cohen: Absolutely. and flashlights, the flashlight blog is coming soon?

Ian Robertson: Well, I was gonna ask you, when are you gonna do one on ladders? Yeah.

Barry Cohen: So you know, the interesting is I go through all of the Facebook groups, and I really tried to collect the responses from other home inspectors. So like the moisture meter article, that’s really not my opinions. I’m going through all these different groups. And I’m more or less collecting and collating what the most responses are. And then putting that on a list of what home inspectors can look at and decide what works best for them.

Ian Robertson: And to put that kind of in perspective of what Barry just said, I remember when I had to look for my first moisture meter. I spent days, there were no home inspector forums at that point. I think the Nachi forum was out there, but I don’t know if I knew about it or not. And I spent days researching which moisture meter asking people I knew I bought the wrong moisture meter, then I bought a second wrong moisture meter to be able to go to and again,  HomeInspectology.com, look it up. Great resource, so you kind of understand what we’re talking about. But to be able to go there and say, Oh, here’s a list of moisture meters that other inspectors already use. That would have saved me countless days, and however much money I spent on moisture meters.

Barry Cohen: Yeah. And it’s not, the title of that article is not the best moisture meter, it’s the most recommended. So there’s a difference, right?

Ian Robertson: Yeah. you’re not trying to sell moisture meters, you’re just saying, hey here’s what home inspectors recommend the most.

Barry Cohen: That’s right, your peers, right. This is what they’re using the most.

Ian Robertson: And it’s great, too, because while Facebook forums are great, I think people are a little bit scared sometimes to ask a question. Absolutely. And searching for the answer is not always as easy as just hitting that little search icon at the top of the group. You have to go through a lot of data. And this consolidates it.

Barry Cohen: Yep. We try to. I’m constantly, you know, kind of posting into a lot of the most common posts out the website. You know, if it’s somebody asking about the software, I’m gonna put the link to the  HomeInspectology software there and let people do their research right there.

Ian Robertson: Yeah. And we’re actually listed on your webpage too. 

Barry Cohen: You are, 

Ian Robertson: which is nice. It’s good to go on other websites and see your logo there.

Barry Cohen: You’re one of your one of the new additions.

Ian Robertson: Thank you. So there’s always a lot of change in the industry, when it comes to what vendors are out there. So I’ve been a home inspector and a vendor in the industry now for Many, many years. And I see people come and go every day. How do you keep up on that?

Barry Cohen: It’s challenging. I mean, one of the one of the ways is by paying attention to the Facebook reposts. But I’m constantly, you know, Googling home inspector website builder or home inspection insurance, and just trying to make sure that there’s nobody new popping up. And, you know, they do pop up. And you know, they may have been there for a little while, before I get to them. I also, you know, ask if anybody knows a vendor that is not on here, let me know, put them up there.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, I actually see you on a lot of the Facebook groups too. And you’ll, you’ll pop in there. Hey, I noticed you’re new. Do you want to be listed here? Yep.

Barry Cohen: Yeah. You know, like I want to give everybody a fair shot. You know, it’s not close to anybody.

Ian Robertson: And so that leads me to a couple other questions. What’s the future of  HomeInspectology?

Barry Cohen: Great question. I don’t really know yet. If you know where it’s gonna go. You know, right now just keeping it as a main resource for home inspectors, I’m not sure the direction it can take or will take, but I just want to keep it as an open resource for the folks out there.

Ian Robertson: And that’s an awesome prospect, the keeping an open resource for everyone out there. Most people that I’ve seen, try this disappeared after like six months.

Barry Cohen:  Yeah. 

Ian Robertson: Because it’s a great idea. But it takes a lot of work. So how many years has it been?

Barry Cohen: It’s like two years? little over two years? I think. Yeah. So I don’t know, I don’t know if down the road, you know, somehow, maybe monetize it just to get bigger presence. You know, what I want to do is just make as many home inspectors aware of it as possible. You know, one of my goals is to get out to the, you know, the live meetings and conferences that are out there, and just have a display so the masses can really become familiar with it.

Ian Robertson: Well, and this is a great forum here to tell people about it. One of the reasons we had you on is, hey, you’re very common with  HomeInspectology, you’re not going to get on here and try to sell a product.

Barry Cohen: Right! 

Ian Robertson: You’re going to get on here and say okay, what’s going to help home inspectors?

Barry Cohen: Yep, that’s right. So there’s that. Like I said, there’s no dog in the fight here.

Ian Robertson: Great. And so you said there was going to be an article coming out about flashlights,

Barry Cohen: Right, that’s something that I’ve been working on for a while. And as you can imagine, everybody has their own opinion about what flashlight is the best. So just try to collect that information and figure out how to best put that into a post or an article, or maybe even a section. You know, we do have a tool section. But I think having a standalone article, sort of like the moisture meter would probably be the best.

Ian Robertson: But it’s important to point out if you’re on their website,  HomeInspectology.com, you want to hit the blog tab up at the top of the page, because that’s going to lead to some of the blog articles that we’re talking about here. And then you have obviously, the main sections here, for instance, you have a state licensing requirement. I thought that was interesting that you have that on there. Because you’re from New York. So you know, New York’s requirements, that must have taken a lot of work to get everything that people needed.

Barry Cohen: Yeah, 50 states here, right. So obviously, it did take a long time to go through every state and really dig into, you know, the government website to figure out what is required for a home inspector. So that’s something also that if you’re a new inspector, or thinking about becoming an inspector, this is a great place to go, you know, to quickly find out what’s needed in your state in order to get licensed or even to, you know, to get continuing education credits.

Ian Robertson: So that’s a good resource, because that’s a question that gets asked a lot on the forums. How do I get licensed in my state? That’s just one link. Just send out that link. And that answers the question.

Barry Cohen: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a, you know, hopefully, people will find it as a really quick way to find what they’re looking for.

Ian Robertson: So I’m, I’m seriously impressed with the level of intricacy you have in there. The level of research and the accuracy of the links to everywhere that it has to go. I’m a web developer. So I know the level of work that goes into that. It’s not just a matter of oh, here’s a website and a click, you have to look, is this the right one?, you have to read all the material. I’m interested, how many hours do you estimate that you spent reading the material just for that one page?

Barry Cohen: Oh, goodness, that took time. I mean, I don’t know how many hours but just searching through so I did all the heavy legwork for everybody else who really wants this information. It probably took a couple days to go through it.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, that’s a lot, actually a couple of days that’s impressive.

Barry Cohen: Maybe even more than the other section that took a lot too was, we have the section there for training. Right. So obviously, there’s a few big training companies that do national training, but a lot of people want their specific state who does training in a specific state. And I think, you know, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, you have individual States. So that took even more time than the state licensing to go through each individual state and really find who are the trainers. And this is by no means complete. I’m sure there’s a lot of other companies that couldn’t find or just haven’t made it up onto the site yet.

Ian Robertson: That’s actually very impressive. I’m looking at that now you have a list of each state and you have a drop-down for each state of schools that you know of that are in this state teaching. 

Barry Cohen: Right.

Ian Robertson: That’s awesome. Because as much as schools may be fantastic, they may not have a great online presence. There’s a school out in western part of New York that I found out about and I couldn’t even find them anywhere. They didn’t have a website then they did but it was kind of like this weird one listed on the back page or something. And I’m like, Man, this could be a great school but people don’t know they’re their

Barry Cohen: True and I’ll throw this out to the audience if you’re a school instructor and you’re not on here you know, shoot us an email you know, [email protected] and we’ll certainly put you up

Ian Robertson: So, that leads me to if you are a vendor trolling our podcast Welcome to inspector toolbelt talk and also you can feel free to email Barry and He’ll put you right on the website what’s the best email there Barry.

Barry Cohen: [email protected]

Ian Robertson: [email protected] so there you go for everybody who’s trolling our podcast from the other vendor worlds.

Barry Cohen: You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram as well.  @HomeInspectology.

Ian Robertson: Awesome. So I will say I’m going to put in my plug for the Fenix flashlight. Pretty much every Fenix flashlight that I’ve ever owned, I’ve loved.

Barry Cohen: Let me make a note of that. Hold on.

Ian Robertson: I will say the only problem is the heads of them get really hot because they are bright flashlights, most of the experience. And also I’d love to see a ladder blog post. That’d be fantastic.

Barry Cohen: Well, I got my work cut out for me then.

Ian Robertson: Yeah, get to work. Barry. I need this info out there. Now.

Barry Cohen: What’s the best ladder? There we go. If that question is not asked once a day on some blog on some group? I don’t know.

Ian Robertson: Yeah. This this will be the permanent answer to it. 

Barry Cohen: Yeah, I hope so. 

Ian Robertson: But anything else you’d like to share about  HomeInspectology with us?

Barry Cohen: No, I think we covered a great deal about it. Just you know, continuing to add different resources to it. If anybody has anything that they want to be covered on it, you know, feel free to reach out. We’re here for everybody. We’re here for the inspector.

Ian Robertson: Awesome. That’s what I love about you. Barry, thank you for very much for being on the show. Again, it’s  HomeInspectology.com you can email Barry with any suggestions or anything that we talked about here. But Barry, awesome Avenue. Thanks for being here!

Barry Cohen: Thanks for having me on, Ian. Appreciate it. 

Ian Robertson: Alright, talk soon. 

Barry Cohen: Bye.