HAVE YOU BEEN WANTING TO GET INTO COMMERCIAL INSPECTIONS? THEN THIS IS YOUR CHANCE! LISTEN IN TO DILLON AS HE EXPLAINS HOW!
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. And in this episode, we’re getting commercial. We have on with us, Dillon Winiecki. How are you, Dillon?
Dillon Winiecki
Doing well, Ian, how are you, man?
Ian Robertson
Doing fantastic. Thank you. So I just want to introduce you, we are going to talk about commercial inspections today, which in my opinion, is the next frontier for the home inspection industry, something that we’ve been tapping into, but not nearly as much as I think we could. And you’re a great example of somebody who’s jumped in both feet and really done well. You own Arizona commercial property inspections, in addition to your home inspection company and a mold inspection company. But tell us a little bit about about yourself, Dillon, and how you got into the inspection industry maybe and how you got into the commercial inspection industry in particular?
Dillon Winiecki
Absolutely. Yes. So I was born and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. And you know, my dad was a fireman, my, my grandpa was a fireman. And so I thought, you know, I should be a fireman. So I was working in the trades a little bit after college, I decided to go become a fireman. And that’s what I did in 2012. And after a couple of years, I realized, man, we have some time off. And I don’t like sitting around, you know, I was working a lot of overtime and which can be really hard on your family, you lose some sleep, you lose some time. And so I said, well, you know, I’ll look into home inspections and knew another home, a firefighter that was also a home inspector. So I kind of got some advice from him and got going and 2018, got licensed here in Arizona, it’s a licensing required state. So got going and I mean, it got so busy, so fast. And then also being a firefighter, kind of things happened quickly, I had to start hiring people, which probably before I really was ready or really even wanted to but I did and you know, it was great. So started hiring some great inspectors, I was blessed to just have some amazing people come to my team and started kind of building this multi inspector firm without even really planning it. I like to say putting the plane together as I fly it kind of thing. But then, you know, in 2021, I decided I was like, you know what? I had a realtor come to me and say, Hey, would you inspect the hotel? And I’m like, sure, why not? Let’s let’s look at it, and like I said, I had some good people on my team. So I asked one of my guys, so I knew I had come from another company. He had done some commercial in the past. And he said, yeah, this is how I would propose it. This is what we should charge. You know, this is how we’ll do it. So we took a team, and we did 180 room hotel, and we did it in eight hours and made $8,000. And it was like well that’s a no brainer. Let’s get into this. And so I started looking into the industry a little more. And I also started a school, a home inspection school, I realized there was only really one in person home inspection school here locally, after COVID. A lot of them went online and things like that. So I thought, well, I could compete, compete there. And I think it would be good for the industry to have another in-person class. And so we started learning how to get licensed through the Arizona board of private post secondary education, and there was a lot to it. But we got that figured out. We provide parallel inspections, and which is kind of like ride alongs we have to do 30 here for the license. So um, and then yeah, just been running that. And then kind of getting more involved in educational side of things I got involved with InterNACHI and then CCPIA. And that kind of led to me being a presenter at the this last year’s InterNACHI convention in Atlantic City. So they had me present on safety for commercial property inspectors and kind of goes hand in hand with being a firefighter. So yeah, it’s just, it’s been great. We’re getting after it here. So..
Ian Robertson
That’s awesome. And speaking of CCPIA, in case anybody doesn’t know what that is. That’s the, pretty much the organization you want to join, to start off with if you want to become a commercial inspector, but you’re going to be hosting them at your school. Correct? And if you could name your school after you answer that question, just so everybody knows what the name of the school is.
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, yeah, we’ll be hosting them at Inspection Career Training Academy, which is like set a Phoenix based, Phoenix, Arizona based inspection school. We focus on helping students with pre licensing for home inspection, but we’re also going to get into thermography. We’re going to have sewer scope inspection classes. And then, like I said, we have some commercial classes coming up as well. So we can talk more about that as well.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s fantastic. So I’d really like to break into the subject because you obviously know enough about it, that InterNACHI trusts you and CCPIA trust you and you’ve been doing commercial inspections for years now and you’ve done well for yourself. So, for all of us home inspectors out there, I actually just talked to a guy, and he kind of did a commercial inspection, he’s like, this is awesome. I want to do this. And his question was, how do you break into the industry? But before we get into that, we don’t always have to just do one to realize that it’s an awesome industry to be a part of, in your opinion, what are the advantages of commercial inspections? And why should every inspector really consider doing them?
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, I mean, the biggest one that everybody, it’s kind of right out in the open is money. I mean, it’s a lot more money, it can be a lot more money, depending on how you want to do things and how you want to set yourself up. But I mean, for me, personally, I mean, the first year we started doing it, it raised my income about $60,000 year one, and then year two is $85,000.
Ian Robertson
Nice.
Dillon Winiecki
And then, you know, we actually, year to date today, this is what is it the 16th, I mean, it’s, you know, early January, and we’ve almost made $40,000 this year, because we performed a single commercial property inspection, and we charged $32,000 for it.
Ian Robertson
Wow.
Dillon Winiecki
So I mean, if that’s not enticing enough, I mean, how about some other things, you know, you have reoccurring money, which is hard to do in the inspection industry. But in commercial, you can get contracts where people say, hey, I want you to come to my building, or my apartment complex or my hotel once a year. And you know, you’re going to be my company once a year to come through and you’re going to do a condition evaluation, you might even do some, some cost evaluation of maintenance needs and things like that, which is a whole other avenue in the inspection industry or commercial inspection industry. And so recurring money, I mean, that’s, you know, big money’s nice, but recurring, money’s even better, being able to plan ahead for that. You know, you break up the monotony, you know, a lot of home inspectors just doing home inspection after a home inspection, maybe two a day, five days a week, and it’s like, I’m seeing the same stuff, especially Arizona, we have a lot of track homes, you know, it could just you’re seeing the same stuff. So it breaks up the monotony, kind of gives you something new to look at something exciting, you can grow professionally, you know, you start taking classes and you start expanding your knowledge. And that’s what we found to be really motivating. And then last, I think, you know, what I’ve personally found is that, honestly, the clientele and the agents you deal with, I mean, it’s just a lot easier. This is a business transaction for them, and although you would think, wow, they’re buying a $10 million property, you know, you’d think there’d be more emotion involved. But there’s really not, I mean, you deal with the first time homebuyer and the agent that’s been showing them homes for four months. And it’s like there’s a lot of emotion involved. But these commercial properties, it’s a business transaction, these people are experienced, they just want to know the condition of the property.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I’m glad you brought that last point out, because that was always my favorite point. You show up to a commercial property, and you don’t have, they’re not like hanging over your shoulder typically anyways, and like scrutinizing what about this doorknob? I looked this up on the internet. And what about this? They’re usually, I mean, half the time, they’re not even there for me anyways. And then the other half of the time they’re there, but you know, they’re dealing with things and they check in maybe, but yeah, it’s a much less stressful, condensed situation. It’s very, very on a professional level. But talking about the money aspect alone, sometimes we get a little bit afraid of big money. Like, oh, my goodness, I have a 32,000 job. $32,000 job, rather. And I’m like, I mean, if you come from the construction industry, I mean, that’s like, okay, whatever. I mean, that’s, that’s a normal size job. So in the inspection industry, we shouldn’t really get nervous about numbers like that. And we should be making, in my opinion, if we’re making $1,000 a day as a home inspector, we should be making at least triple, double is, is okay, but you should make at least triple that, you should feel, you should feel guilty at the end of the week. I hate saying it that way. Yeah.
Ian R
No,
Dillon Winiecki
No, I like it. I like I think that’s a great way to look at it. I mean, and like I said, the recurring money ability, or the ability to get into these different contracts or just people that, we even have a client that hires us to go out monthly, to go to these different properties. We take 10 photos, and we would come home. And that’s all they want. And I mean, it’s, but they found us because we’re a commercial property inspection company.
Ian Robertson
And that also makes if you ever want to retire, too, that makes your business very sellable. It’s hard to sell a home inspection company, I watched a five inspector company get sold for like five grand. It was basically the value of their website because there’s no, there’s no recurring income. Nobody wants to buy it. It’s not like you have a dentist with 20,000 clients, and they know that they’re going to keep at least 87% of them. But now you sell a company that says hey, we have 50 contracts out there. Here’s our average income based on just that. And here’s our projected income based on what would come in, that makes you a very sellable target. And you could sell your company to even like property maintenance companies and things like that, that would love to have the inspections plus the maintenance, or even just another commercial inspector.
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. It’s why I’ve kind of expanded to a lot of these other avenues of like the school, and commercial and other ancillaries. Because I feel like, I’ve listened to your podcast for a lot of years. And it’s, it’s been one of my motivation to, you know, get into these other facets that maybe you can, again, become more sellable one day, and, you know, we all look forward to a retirement one day, right.
So,
Ian Robertson
That’s fantastic. So going back to the question that the one guy asked me, it was just a couple of weeks ago, and he’s, he asked, how do I break into it? Like, what do I do? You kind of fell into it, when I when I was doing it, I don’t do it much anymore. When I was doing it, I kind of fell into it too, somebody asked me to inspect a commercial building, then it turned into another one, and it just happened. But if you want to do it purposefully, how would you recommend a guy quote unquote, break into the industry?
Dillon Winiecki
It’s very simple. As far as the very first thing you do is you get on the CCPIA website. And again, that’s the Certified Commercial Property Inspection Association. I, again, because I stumbled into it, and realized that holy cow, I just inspected a 180 room hotel, and I charged this person $8,000, I better have some standards to go by, you know, I’ll be honest, I kind of put the cart before the horse. And so what I realized was, if you’re, if you don’t have a standard you’re inspecting to, then you’re opening yourself up to a ton of liability, right? You know, we have standards that we have to abide by here in Arizona, they have adopted the ASHI standards, or maybe you use the NACHI standards in other parts of the country. It doesn’t matter, you have standards to where when somebody calls and says, hey, you didn’t find this, or you didn’t inspect that. And you said, well, that’s beyond our scope, that’s beyond our standard. And if you’re not doing that on a commercial building, where they’re spending millions of dollars, you got to think they probably have lawyers, right and probably can afford them. Now, I don’t say that to scare you, I say it actually to make you more comfortable. Because if you’re inspecting to a standard, and you have insurance, there’s really nothing to worry about, in my opinion. So you know, obviously do your job and be good at it and take all the education and training and experience you can get. But at the end of the day, if you if you stick within the standard, you’re okay. So the CCPIA you know, provides that, it’s free to, it’s not free to become a member. But once you become a member, it’s free, you have access to the standards, and you can set your templates up, your report writing software up, to make sure you’re abiding by those standards, and you’re not missing anything. They’re very, very similar to a home inspection. There are some different commercial, you know, specifics that are important to know and memorize and make sure you’re reporting. But yeah, I’d say that that would be the very first thing. And then also on CCPIA, they have a ton of classes, they have online classes they have in person classes, like I’ve said, they have one coming up in Fort Lauderdale here soon. There’s a cost to cure, which is we can talk more about which is basically after we inspect and we say hey, this roof needs replacement, well how much does it cost to replace that roof. And, you know, unlike a home inspection, where we’re not going to really get into that, the commercial industry actually kind of expects that, you know, and so that’s a class that they’re offering in February 8 and ninth and at the House of Horrors. And then we’re, we have one coming up at the end of January as well here locally in Phoenix. So it can be introduction to commercial property inspection. So this is where you kind of, again, you’re breaking into it, you’re getting your feet wet, you’re understanding that, wow, there’s, this is something I can do as long as I have these standards and guidelines to stick to and I can start growing my experience on my education through CCPIA.
Ian Robertson
Fantastic points, I wrote down a couple things as you were talking there. I like the point about having standards. In the home inspection industry, everything is kind of the same. Like if you look at the standards from one state to the next InterNACHI versus the state or whatever, they’re all pretty much the same. So it’s relatively universal, but we can do the same thing with a commercial inspection. Every commercial building is different, but then you can still hold it up to the same standards and that acts as a protection and also gives us the base to go off of, but I also like how you talked about taking classes because what we may see as a standard may not be what the industry actually expects. So, you know, the cost to cure, I think was a perfect example of that. A lot of commercial clients do expect that and when you you’re gonna do a cost to cure at that level, you really want to know what you’re doing. So is this, is this roof TPO or EPDM? You know, is it built up? And if so, what about this? What about that? What about deck replacement? There’s a lot to think about when you’re doing a cost to cure on a commercial building, do you do cost to cures?
Dillon Winiecki
We’re just getting into, we’ve done a little bit as far as when somebody said, hey, how much does this roof cost to replace, we’ll get into it. And we’ll go use some resources online to figure out what those you know, estimated cost per square foot is and, you know, again, we’ll use some verbiage in that report that says this is you know, a range and it’s plus or minus 20%. And so these are some things you’re going to learn if you get into that cost to cure class. And more and more information is coming out from CCPIA on it, but yeah, me personally, I’ve been impressed at how many inspection proposals and bids we’ve won and inspections we’ve been able to perform, without actually offering that service. So as far as one thing I’m adding to my business, is, I’m going to that class on the eighth and ninth, and I’m going to be a student at it. And, you know, Lance Kaufman, out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, he’s teaching it and he’s been doing it for a long time and done really well with it. So he’s gonna give us some great advice on how to really break that down and bring it into our companies.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, Lance is a great guy. I was actually just messaging him not long ago about commercial inspections, too. That’s awesome. We’d love to follow up on the cost to cure thing, too, because any aspect of the commercial industry, we really want to make sure that our listeners hear, because this is a fantastic opportunity. A friend of mine used to work for a very large engineering firm in my area. And that was his entire job. And it is unbelievable, what they were charged to do cost to cures. And he just had software, and he was an old contractor. And he just kind of knew the numbers and how to work things. And like, wow, he loved it, he thought it was like the best, best job. That’s all he did, the best job in the world, cost to cures.
Dillon Winiecki
I think it’s fair to mention that, you know, this is something that the commercial real estate industry has done for a long time, they’ve hired engineering firms to go out and do inspections. It’s called a property condition assessment, a PCA, they use the ASTM standards, and it’s, it’s not that much different than a CCPIA inspection. They’re just, they do have the added cost to cure within it. That’s why it’s called an assessment. And so I remember when I first got into this, I was at a commercial real estate get together. And, you know, I was wearing my hat and my uniform. And I sit down across from this gentleman, and he said, so tell me, tell me, what’s the difference between, like, what an engineering firm does on a property inspection and what you do? And I didn’t have a great answer, to be honest, because I didn’t really know. Turns out, he was an engineer. And so he taught me, you know, it was actually pretty cool. So I got, that was probably why I was there. I was meant to be there to learn what an actual engineer does, and how they use the ASTM standards and the PCA to perform, you know, a similar inspection as us. But they’re charging way more for it. And they’re doing cross evaluation. So yeah, that’s something again, this commercial, and CCPIA does a great job at this, it has a whole different language from just home inspections, a lot of it’s very similar. And it’s it’s pretty common sense once you hear it, okay, that makes sense, cost to cure, cost to fix a problem that you found on your end and reported in your report. But it is a different language, we don’t usually use much cost to cure language in home inspections. So…
Ian Robertson
Yeah, it’s true. But it is interesting that you mentioned engineers, and I mentioned the engineers doing cost to cures because even the home inspection industry used to kind of belong to the engineering field, it belonged to contractors and engineers before it was called a quote unquote, home inspection. You know, back in the 80s and early 90s. I remember surveyors used to do them, we call them as builts. They would use it, just the exterior, the engineers would do just structure. It was kind of kind of syncopated, it really wasn’t really put together until they said, okay, here’s a home inspection. And engineers didn’t mind us kind of taking over their industry. And we’re kind of doing the same thing with the commercial industry. Why hire an engineering firm unless there’s a problem. And they’re usually fine with it. They’re like, I really don’t want to deal with a real estate transaction or going back yearly. I’m an engineer. So it it’s wide open for us. So that leaves another question, though, like, who do you market to? And how do you market because I imagine it’s not a lot like a home inspection, walk into real estate offices, box of chocolates, and, you know, dropping your business cards, open houses, it’s a whole different world. So how do you market?
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, so me personally, you know, a couple years ago when I started this, like I said, I got on CCPIA’s website, and I said, alright, where do I start? I realized there was two other inspectors, you can go on there a little find an inspector map and you can type in your area code and find out you know, who’s around you. And there was two in the whole state of Arizona. So I started there and became a member. And I don’t know if you know this, but CCPIA will actually send you leads. I know, InterNACHI does, too, I think I’ve gotten a few InterNACHI leads over over the years, but the CCPIA I get, I’ll get three to four leads a month.
Ian R
Oh, wow.
Dillon Winiecki
It’s significant. Now, you’re not going to close all these leads, you’re gonna write a proposal, and you’re gonna, and all of this information is available on how to do proposals, they have templates and everything else, you’re gonna write a proposal, and it’s going to be customized to that property. And you’re going to, you know, try to win it right, do the best you can to make it a fair price and make it worth your time and everything else. And you might win it, you might not, but we’ve got a significant amount of leads from them. In fact, that $32,000 job I did two weeks ago, was a CCPIA lead. I mean, I didn’t pay any money other than my, you know, my membership fee for that. So that’s a no brainer to get started. Again, me personally, I haven’t done a lot of marketing, because with having a multi inspector firm and a school and doing commercial, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to do a lot of extra commercial. So it was like, hey, let’s just take what comes our way, we started a professional website, has some great SEO verbiage on it and things like that, which is important. We have social media platforms. And as you can see, right here, I have, it’s its own separate entity as far as how it appears to people. Now that’s something to think about. If you, there’s a couple of ways you can do it, you can start a whole other LLC, have it be for commercial base, or you can do a DBA. In my state, we’re allowed to do DBAs, or Doing Business As, basically I’m operating under my parent home inspection company, but I’m marketing as a whole other company. And so I have a website, I have a uniform, I have logos, I have all this stuff that is just says commercial, you know, it doesn’t say anything about home on it. And you know, that’s been helpful for us as well, that’s, that’s something you should make a distinguishment about early on, you know how you want to do that. I personally, I like a little mixture of both. As far as, I’m sorry, I like the DBA. Because I only have to do one set of taxes and only have to have one insurance policies, insurance policy. So I mean that you do save a little money there. Now, if you’re going to, you’re going to do well with this, you’re going to make enough money to earn those, you know, probably aren’t a big deal. So, you know, just some things to think about there. But I don’t know if that answers your question.
Ian Robertson
No, no, it very much does. And I’m glad you brought up the part about having a separate company, because a lot of times, I feel like some of us throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. Like oh, I have a commercial page on my website, ABC home inspections, and has a little picture of a house as part of our logo. And it’s like, commercial buyers that are going to pay you anywhere from two to $200,000 to do an inspection, they’re going to want to see you as a commercial building inspector, you’re going to want a separate logo that doesn’t look like a home inspection logo, you’re gonna want a separate uniform, separate website, separate social media, everything that you just said, statistically speaking, our clients that separate those do extremely well, we have clients all over the country. And if you just look at all over the US and Canada, actually, if you just look at the numbers of the guys that get commercial leads from their home inspection website, versus what they close on their commercial only websites for commercial inspections, it’s a no brainer, it is a lot more work. Like you’re maintaining two brands, you’re maintaining two sets of uniforms. But ultimately, it works. I personally do the DBA thing, mostly for insurance. So I have a big commercial coverage that will cover us for commercial and home inspections, splitting that, especially if you have a crew, I mean, your, your insurance can go way through the roof, you have to work a couple of months just to pay off your insurance, I found the LLC with a DBA, it does put you at a little bit of extra risk. So if you get sued for that $80,000 warehouse that you inspected, or that you get paid $80,000 for, that’s going to affect your home inspection business. So you can do two LLCs or DBA, whichever, but I totally agree with you. Separating the businesses is important, me as a commercial buyer, I’m going to want a commercial company. I’m not going to want a home inspector that does it on the side.
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, yeah. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t be good at what you do as a home inspector who also performs commercial I mean, you can still be you know, there’s guys that are probably great at it, but it’s how you’re portraying your, your company and your brand and it’s building a brand just like you would want to do with your home inspection company. You want to do that for commercial. So yeah, the the SEO is really important. I know you’ve had some great podcasts and some mentions on stuff like that. And then social media I listened to one the other day of yours about the YouTube shorts. So that’s, you know, I think having a YouTube channel could be huge for commercial as well, all this stuff, like you said, I mean, this is still a newer thing. So as far as like, getting involved with, you know, big commercial brokerages and things like that, I mean, that can be similar to how we do that from a home inspection standpoint. But, you know, the direct to consumer, it’s different. We’re not talking about homeowners, we’re talking about people buying large properties or maintaining them over long periods of time. And so how do we get in front of them, and you know, I’m still learning myself, I’m still trying some different things. But there’s a lot of opportunity out there. So I think social media, it never hurts to be, to have your, build your brand and have your brand on social media, for sure.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and let’s be clear about the social media, if you’re gonna have social media for your commercial business, it’s not going to be the same kind of posts as you do for your home inspection, you can be a little bit goofy and fun, you know, do a little dance on the roof, whatever, for your home inspection company, people like that, commercial, different world, they’re going to want to see a high level of professionalism, you’re going to do more videos about like, okay, look at this edging of this EPDM Roofing, see how I can put my finger on here, that’s usually an indication that the adhesion is being lost here. They’re gonna want to see more things like that, because we’re not entertaining a crowd of people buying a house for the first time. We’re appealing to business professionals and say, okay, these guys are out there, they’re active, and they’re not usually going to follow us, they’re usually just going to check on us. Okay, are they active? Who are they? And the nice thing is, when you mentioned SEO, I don’t want to say SEO is easy for commercial inspections, but it’s way easier than for home inspections. Because there’s so little competition compared to a home inspector. In my market there’s, I don’t know how many hundreds of home inspectors, five, 600. Out of those maybe a half a dozen commercial inspectors. So a lot easier to compete with SEO at that level. Let me ask you, do you have any success with visiting commercial real estate offices, or talking with engineering firms or things like that?
Dillon Winiecki
I do have an engineering firm I work with, they are specific. It’s actually the one that I was talking about that I sat down across from the guy. So he’s actually an industrial hygienist. And so he has, he’s a very specific type of building engineer. And so if there’s a need for an entire property condition inspection, we’re the best people for that. And we can get the report out quicker. And these are all things we discussed together that he was like, wow, I could actually refer you some business because it sounds like you can do things pretty proficiently and efficiently. And, and, you know, maybe faster and better than I can in certain ways. And then you just bring me out when you have some big, large, you know, issue with moisture or mold or asbestos, which is a huge deal in the commercial industry, right? There’s a building, there’s a building downtown Phoenix here. It was, it was purchased and fully remodeled. But well basically gutted first because it was built when asbestos fireproofing was common. And so before they could remodel and start doing everything, making everything look nice. They had to totally come in and abate all the asbestos for 26 floors in this high rise. I mean, it was like the biggest asbestos abatement job that’s ever happened, probably, you know what I mean, though, you know, that’s something I’m going to turn on to that guy, onto that engineer, right, where, you know, yeah, absolutely. I would say connecting with some of those people is a good idea. Now, as far as commercial brokerages, that’s something we’re still working on, we’ve gone to a couple commercial meetups, where they do a meeting will provide education, we’ll do a presentation on things that we were doing or certain type of properties that we want to specialize in. Let’s say you’re like, hey, I really liked doing hospitality. And I feel like I have a good team of people that can do hospitality, we have a good routine, we have a good report for it. You go in and say hey, we specialize in hospitality inspections, and then you get into hotels and resorts and things like that. Just just an idea.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I’ve found that visiting commercial real estate offices are a little bit different too, I’m going to use the term hoity toity, or you know, it’s like lots of clean blue steel and glass. You gotta walk in knowing your stuff, you know, wear a button up shirt with your logo on it kind of situation. And not your blue jeans kind of kind of mood. In my opinion. I do find that a lot of my a lot of my commercial inspection work actually used to come from architects and engineers in the area that found us like you were talking about. One architectural firm used to deal with all historic buildings, and we’d get a mix of historic homes and just historic buildings all the time from them. And because they’re like, oh, cool, you know, what we what we’re looking for, you know, we will know your reports. And we would just get calls. And that’s how we got fed a lot of work. There’s an engineering firm that we work with for our app, actually. And they talk about that all the time. They’re like, we’re engineers and architects, we don’t want to go out in the field and try to figure out, you know, take pictures and get data, we leave data collection to you, and they’re willing to pay us a premium for it. Like, they don’t, they don’t skimp. They’re like, just do a good job. We have a, we have an $800,000 bid with this company. If I pay you $20,000, to go take pictures and give me a report over the course of three days. I’m okay with that. Just do it right. So there’s definitely an advantage, in my opinion of going the engineer and architect route, while still working with the commercial agents. So I agree with you there. Do you find that there’s less commercial agents than residential agents, though, too, just like commercial inspectors and residential?
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, I do. I think, you know, you could kind of compare it to maybe similarly, I’d like to hear what you think about this, but maybe similar to the luxury industry, luxury home industry, is that these big buildings, you know, they’re not bought and sold as often, you know, there’s not as many available. And so, you know, you might have a commercial real estate agent, she’s working with this client for years before they actually decide on a property. And again, there’s a business involved usually too, they’re not just buying it to live in it, they’re buying it to be and they have to develop a business plan. And, you know, all these different evaluations, the due diligence is totally different and a lot of times, there’s a 90 day due diligence period. And so yeah, I do, I think there’s less of them. I think it can be a lucrative industry for the real estate professionals. But I think it’s a lot of work before you actually start gaining some ground and selling some properties and that type of thing.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, it’s definitely a different level of real estate, a friend of mine that I actually do some volunteer work with, he taught a course one time on cap rates the commercial real estate agents use, and just doing the math for cap rates made my head spin, I’m like, I’d rather, I’d rather do positive flow calculations in an attic all day, rather than try to do anything about a cap rate again. But these guys are working at a high level, and he makes a fantastic living. But when you walk into the room with him, you have to know your stuff, and you have to be ready, we can’t have a little side job going on, and showing up in you know, street clothes and saying, hey, man, I’d love to do a commercial inspection for you. You have to be ready, you have to be out there and you have to be polished.
Dillon Winiecki
You have to know that language, like you said, it’s, it really is there’s a different language and a cap rate or a triple net lease. It’s like, well, what are these things? And if you don’t, if you don’t start reading these articles and taking some training and get involved, you’re not going to learn it. And you’re not going to be comfortable going out to those, like you said those offices.
Ian Robertson
Exactly. So I think to go along with what you just said, There’s something to be said about even just taking some real estate courses, just on the side, they don’t have to be big, you can just Udemy or something will probably have a course that you could take, just so you can learn the lingo. And you can speak their speak, that would probably help quite a bit. What about subcontractors, do you use a lot of subcontractors or do you keep everything in house?
Dillon Winiecki
I figure there’s, there’s pretty much three ways you can do this. So you can you can get an inspection done about three ways. You can do the Gromicko way, which is you just subcontract the whole thing, and I never really got that quite figured out. Basically what it is, is you would say, you know, I’m gonna get a roofer, I may get an HVAC professional, I might get an engineer to look at the structure, maybe even a parking lot specialist, people don’t realize how important the parking lot is for a commercial inspection, it is a very..
Ian R
Or expensive.
Dillon Winiecki
Very expensive, people care a lot about that. It’s the first thing people see when they approach, you know, the, the building. So, you know, yeah, maybe sub out all these people, what I kind of stumbled with was, you know, it’s hard to get those people out there on the same day. And it’s, it almost can become more work than just going hey, I’m gonna take my team and go do it. So there’s one way, you can just subcontract the whole thing. The other thing is, you can do is, just you don’t subcontract anything, you do it all yourself, and now you’re taking on all the liability or looking at systems that maybe you’re not that familiar with. So I like somewhere right in the middle. And in my opinion, I think it is important to bring out some specialists in certain areas. You know, like I said that that building industrial hygienist, maybe for environmental stuff, you know, this is a nice thing to know. So if you’re doing the IAC2 mold inspections, great job right, awesome class, it’s a good certification to have. It says in there that is for residential homes only. So if you’re using, if you’re using that on commercial properties, you’re kind of going beyond the scope actually against what the scope says CCPIA does have a mold and air quality class that you can take. So I would, I would do that instead. But again, you just, there might be some things you want to subcontract. So another one that we have is like fire suppression. Okay. So fire suppression, or maybe there’s an engineering thing that the people already know about a big cracked beam. And they saw it when they walked in. And they said, hey, can can you guys take a look at that? Yeah, sure, I’ll bring out an engineer, you know, and we have people that can do that. So you start to get this kind of group of subcontractors that you trust and know. And you can use them and bring them in. Now, over time, you might even start to learn from them, I want to be on that property when they’re there. And I want to start learning from them. And then over, after a while, you’re like, hey, I can look at fire suppression, you know, I’m not going to test the annunciator panel. And I’m not going to, you know, flow, you know, stuff through the standpipe. But I can do a condition inspection and see if things are leaking and rusted and appear to be, when was the last time they were serviced. And you can take a picture of the data plates and the tags and everything. I mean, that’s very doable. And you just have in your agreement that that’s the scope that you’re performing. That’s a good little tangent to talk about is having everything you were going to do in your agreement outlined and what, what scope you’re going to perform.
Ian Robertson
Those are fantastic points. And I’m kind of along the same lines as you, I’m a little bit in the middle. I’ll do the bulk of the inspection, but then I’ll bring in some specialists. The one thing I do find, and I know Nick listens, but sorry Nick, but I do find the sub contracting route does create some problems, because not everybody is going to be as diligent as you want them to. I remember one time we were doing this big commercial building, ironically, for engineers, they put an engineering firm in there. And I go downstairs to check on this biggest heating unit I’ve ever seen in my life. And it was it was ginormous. And I go down and the heating guy’s leaving. And I’m like, was everything okay? He’s like, yeah it was okay. I’m like, can you tell me anything about it? Yeah, looks good to me and and he leaves. And I’m like, so I ended up having to, like, go through and reinspect it myself, just to make sure, I found some things to take note of. If you’re not really on top of those guys all the time, you’re not always going to get great information. So it’s a lot to watch, having them all there at once. I found staggering them, even over the course of a couple of days is usually the best thing. But the most I’ve ever learned about commercial roofing was, and I’m not trying to brag or sound, whatever. But I know a fair amount about commercial roofing. I went up on this roof with this guy that has done it his whole life. And I go, can I ask you a question? Like, how about this here? I’ve not seen anything like this in particular before. And he spent the better part of two hours blowing my mind. And I’m like, it’s like my eyes were finally open. I’m like, how, how did I not know some of this? And it, it was magical. Oh, I still remember things he taught me. In just one afternoon, there’s a lot to be said about learning from other people that that’s their specialty. All he does is that roof day in, day out. So there’s a lot of benefit to that.
Dillon Winiecki
I agree. And like I said, you can learn a ton from them. And then again, you may get comfortable enough to where you’re like, okay, I know what they would look for as a specialist. Now I’m leveled up, and my report writing and everything else is that much easier. I know what I’m looking for, my clients getting a ton of value, but I’m not having to bring in all these other people. And then something to consider too is a code of ethics, right? I mean, really, what they say is we were not supposed to be doing this as a CCPIA thing, by the way. So when I say “they” what I’m saying is, we’re really not supposed to be doing any work to a property within one year after our inspection, just like the home inspection industry. And so really, you’re supposed to get a contract, with that subcontractor signing saying that they won’t pursue that. Well, I don’t know about you guys. But in Arizona, in the middle of the summer, if I get an HVAC contractor to come inspect 30 units on a roof, he’s gonna want to be at first in line to repair all the stuff he just found. And, you know, recommendations he’s making. And he’s going to have to understand that he’s not going to be able to do that. And he’s going to have a year where that building owner or or, you know, new owner can come in and say, Well, we’re gonna go find somebody else, because you can’t do the work for us. So, you know…
Ian Robertson
It is something to think about, and all this information is very helpful. And we’re actually going to have somebody that you know, on the show in several weeks from now, Rob Klaus, who’s the Director of Education for CCPIA. And he’s actually coming to your school too, correct?
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, absolutely.
Ian Robertson
Sounds like your school is the place to be. So if we want, if we’re around Arizona, and we want to learn some commercial inspection stuff, get a hold of Dillon, and get in on some of those classes because this really is the next big thing and I’ll tell you, it is fun. Just from my personal perspective, it’s fun. You’re there with other inspectors and other people and you had the big building to look at, you see different things, it is a lot of fun. It’s not as big and as scary as we would think it is. One quick question, though, before we kind of conclude our discussion here. What about service area? One of the things that I hear guys say is they don’t want to travel very far. And I mean, there’s gonna be a big difference between a guy in rural Montana versus somebody in Phoenix, Arizona, you know, big difference, but do you travel like out of state? Or do you have a wider area than you would for your service area for your home inspection business?
Dillon Winiecki
Yeah, I think defining the service area is super important, one because of SEO and all the stuff we’ve talked about already before, but then also like branding and everything. I mean, I’m Arizona Commercial Property Inspection. So people know, that’s kind of where I go. Now, I will go anywhere in Arizona to answer your question, I will go further. Because again, I’m getting paid more. And people usually understand that there’s going to be some built in cost involved with that, you know, so like I said, the big one we just did a couple of weeks ago was a four hour drive. We were there with four inspectors for five days. I mean, we needed a hotel and lodging and all that stuff. So there is more to that, we’re willing to because again, just the fees are higher. And again, we want to, we wanted to get more experience. And we knew that not everything is happening right here in Phoenix. And honestly, Arizona has a lot of rural areas that may not have professional people, you know, maybe there, there are people buying buildings that want to try to do it on their own. So they’re trying to just find roofers or HVAC people. Well, they’re hard to find. Whereas we can just travel over there with one or two or three or four of us and perform a really professional inspection and a really, you know, professional report, and that there’s a lot of value in that. So, and we charge for it, you know? So yeah, I would say defining your service area. And I think you’re right that you know, it does, it makes a difference what type of city and area you live in. So something to consider for sure. The CCPIA, having that finding inspector link is pretty helpful. Like I said, when I first went on there a couple years ago, it was one in Flagstaff and one in Tucson, there wasn’t even one in the Phoenix area. Now there’s about 15, 16, which still, for 800 home inspectors in Arizona, you got 15 of them are on CCPIA. So I mean, it’s kind of like, you know, you’re not competing with as many people for sure.
Ian Robertson
I tell you what, Dillon, you sharing your knowledge like this today is extremely appreciated, because this is your business and you share how you do things with the entire inspection community. So thank you very much for that. And if somebody did want to take one of the classes at your school, what’s your website address? Fantastic. Thank you so much, Dillon, we appreciate you being on. And hopefully we’ll have you on again because I could have talked about this for hours. We have a lot to talk about. But thank you so much.
Dillon Winiecki
It’s www.azicta.com. So Inspection Career Training Academy. And like I said, they can get a hold of us there, my phone number’s on there as well. And like I said, we’re going to have a ton of commercial stuff coming up, we’re pretty excited. Look out for the what we’re calling a field day. CCPIA is calling it a field day, they’ve done a couple up in the boulder area. But we’re going to start trying to expand that where basically you can come and do a ride along on an actual commercial property inspection with software that you might be familiar with and actual inspectors and that have been doing it so it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty exciting. Thanks again, Ian.
Ian R
Bye.
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