PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today we have on, he’s become a regular guest, Mike Ortiz. How are you, Mike?

Mike Ortiz
Good man, how you doing?

Ian R
Hey, not bad. Today we’re gonna talk about how to start hiring other inspectors, and Mike and I were talking before the show. This is something that probably gets asked in the Facebook groups and the NACHI forums and all over the place about a million times. Hey, guys, how do I start hiring home inspectors. That’s kind of like somebody writing on there, hey guys, how do I become a home inspector? It’s like, hey, do you have all day? We can, we can start at the beginning and go from there. But Mike, you made me think of an old saying that says a wise man learns from his mistakes, and an even wiser man learns from other people’s mistakes. So you said you learned the hard way how to hire.

Mike Ortiz
Yeah, I had the opportunity of both of learning from my own and everyone else’s mistakes that I’ve been able to observe. Because when you’re too afraid to ask a question on one of these groups, you just look at other people ask that question. And you just look at the comments, because you’re like, that’s a stupid question to ask. And you don’t want to ask it and someone else does it. And then you’re like, Oh, great. But I wanted to be able to provide kind of like a step by step. At what point should you hire, how to start that, red flags and green flags, and then how to maintain, those are the really, what anybody’s really looking for, we can plainly kind of label it.

Ian R
Yeah. And we’ve, we’ve been following you, you’ve been a regular guest on the show now for a couple, two, three years here, or whatever. And we’ve been following you since you became a very successful solo inspector to becoming a multi inspector firm. And now you’re experienced at hiring inspectors, and you’ve gone into the commercial realm. And you, you really crank out the home inspections, and you do quality work. So I’m really looking forward to this discussion. But I also think it’s a nice follow up, because we just did a segment as I was telling you about about how to become a successful solo inspector. But at times, you know, if that’s not our goal, we want to, we want to start hiring. So this is how we get into it. So you said you wanted to do it step by step. So what’s the first step there, Mike?

Mike Ortiz
Well, the first step is I think, well, sometimes it’s hard to play catch up with, you want to hire someone versus could you sustain someone to hire the mentality changes, because really quickly, I learned that once I hired someone, I only wanted to be able to provide them work and keep them busy. When you’re a solo inspector, you take a lot of pride in your company, your logo, every little bit of your business, you take pride in because you’re the representative inspector. But once you bring someone in, then it becomes pride in it, you take take yourself out, you have to kind of fire yourself from that role of being the sole inspector, and then open yourself up to being a manager, which is not something that comes automatically. So the first step is, if you’re going to, if you’re ready to hire an inspector, everybody has said a bunch of different things that I’ve seen over the years, about how you know, when you’re ready, is it when you’re doing like 40 inspections a month and you’re saying no to people? Or is it when you have a formula and you know, you can implement it for marketing to get more work, if you wanted it. If you find yourself turning down a lot of work, like a lot has to be, you know, maybe three or four inspections a week that you just can’t get to, for whatever reason and that’s consistent and even consistent during let’s say, the winter time too when it’s generally slower because the summer is when it picks up. I would say that’s a good time to evaluate if you’re ready to hire. And I wouldn’t say jump right into it. I mean, I would say, so I jumped right into it. I wouldn’t do that. First, the two people I would hire first once you realize whether or not you’re going to hire someone is someone that knows HR and an accountant for sure 100%, account/tax person that does taxes as well bookkeeping and accounting because you need to not only have things and these are things that you actually need, you need your EIN, your federal EIN, you need your, your payroll setup, if you’re going to be hiring someone, have a software that does that, like Gusto is what I’m using. You need to have the EDD sends you out for your like your workers comp and then all these things set up and then let your liability insurance know that you’re adding an inspector, all of those things have to be set up. HR sets up all the paperwork, your company handbook, all those things need to be set up before you bring someone in because you’re just bringing on liability to you. So before you even begin interviewing people that needs to happen. I don’t know what your experience has been with that. Of course. Yeah.

Ian R
No, that’s, I totally agree, and it sounds like a lot, but it’s really not. I find personally, that’s what I did. I hired an accountant. He’s still our accountant. He’s actually been on the show, he works on the national and even an international level. Tom Kubiak, great, fantastic accountant. But he’s always said the same thing. You know, have everything all set, have the home built before you invite somebody into it, so to speak. He’s always said the best structure that he sees, is an LLC, that files as an S corp. And then for inspectors, especially because of labor laws, a lot of times we’d like to keep guys at arm’s length with a because it’s easier to pay him as a 1099 contractor. But really, he said you should be paying them. And if you want pay them minimum wage, and you’ll understand why in a second, pay them minimum wage, take out their taxes, and then do the commission split after that. Because otherwise you’re gonna get hammered with eventually Department of Labor, depending on what state you’re in, can be worse than IRS, he says. So you have to be very careful, that that’s what he recommends. But I also like how you said turning away work. And consistently I’ve had guys come to me, I had a guy come to me not long ago. He’s like, hey, I’m looking to hire, and actually made me think of doing this podcast. When you have messaged me about this subject. And he’s like, hey, I’m turning down work. I’m like, okay, for how long? Oh man, months now. I’m like how much? Turns out he was turning away two, three inspections a month for like, the months of September, October and November, and then it died. And I’m like, that’s not enough. Then I also want to his pricing, charging $300 an inspection, I’m like, that’s really hard to keep somebody motivated for that little bit of money if you’re going to be doing a split with them. I mean, if your overhead’s $125 an inspection, we’ve done that math on the show before, and you’re splitting them 50/50, you’re making $25? Or how’s that happening? And then they’re only making 150, what kind of guy you’re gonna get. So I always say, before you hire, keep raising your prices until you become one of the most expensive guys in the market, or at least on the higher end, and then you can afford to hire really good guys and do really good splits. Do you agree with that, or no?

Mike Ortiz
Yeah, I mean, I agree. So with the commission split, I really do agree that when you have experienced inspectors, they have already a level of understanding of how much they are worth, if you’re bringing one that you’re training and growing yourself, you can do a W2 and do an hourly wage that’s high, you know, you can do in the 30s, 40s. And then include things like mileage, and like bonuses. And you know, like, for me, if they ever upsell like a pool inspection or a sewer line inspection or something like that, then they get a piece of that if the pool inspections 125, 149 bucks, they can get a $30 cut. If they bring in an inspection, they get a percentage of that inspection that they brought in, like a realtor reaches out to them directly or they somehow managed to bring in inspection. I don’t, here’s my, the difference with me is that I’ve seen companies do this in the past. You know, when you’re dealing with, when you’re dealing with people leaving companies, like the big companies that have been laying off a lot of people, I had a call the other day from someone that said, you know, they did a, all the licensing, all the certifications, they went to a local home inspection school, and then he went on two ride alongs, and then they never contacted him back. And you know, you pay for that inspection school and they just kind of leave you in the dust. What happens is that people leave these companies because they’re not well compensated, right? A lot of us started on our own because we wanted more money for our families. It’s not greed, it’s, people should be comfortable with saying I just want to make more money, what do I need to do that. So when you’re thinking about hiring someone, you really have to do the numbers in your head on how much you charge, you know, and then versus how much you’re going to pay them because there’s an overhead obviously, and with workers comp, and I want to add things on later which things, apps or like QuickBooks and Gusto, they give you the opportunity to add things like 401K or some medical, you know like medical insurance, things like that. I want to, you want to grow as a company to take yourself seriously. And in order to do that it starts at what you’re going to decide on because in California we can’t 1099 according to if my guy I’m scheduling, I’m taking the payment, I’m providing the tools and the uniform, then he’s my employee. So I can’t even decide on 1099 anymore. It has to be W2. And so when that, when that comes into play, I take all that overhead and it’s just, but at the same time, I know you said 25 bucks isn’t a lot of money to make. That’s if you have that $300 price point, if you have more you’re thinking all this work that because I’m, I wouldn’t be able to do those inspections that they are out there doing because I’m doing my own inspections. I’m doing the commercial inspections and the large estates and stuff like that. And those inspections are the inspections that I will have to say, I can’t do it. Let’s push it to next week or Mike can you do it for us on Tuesday? I can’t. Alright, we’ll find someone else. Those are the ones that I would have lost, that’s money lost. So I rather have it go to someone, and then me manage it. I know I trained them. And I get to keep some of that income that I would have normally lost. But yeah, I totally agree that, you know, having everything set up like it’s supposed to beforehand prep was something I did not do whatsoever. And I had to follow up on a lot of it on the back end. And the one thing you don’t want to get behind on, like you said, is payroll taxes, things like that, that, they can come after you for that very easily.

Ian R
Yeah. So that’s fantastic advice. So if we’re listening, and we’re thinking, man, I need to hire, I will be honest, better than half the guys that I talked to that call me for advice, am I ready to hire, I tell them they’re not. Because they haven’t given a lot of forethought to that. Hiring somebody, keeping them on, keeping your reputation, it’s time, effort, and you have to have things put together. It’s not as easy as, let me just go get out and get an inspector, and he’ll just start inspecting, and things will be fine. So point number one, know when to hire is what I wrote down. Is that, so what’s the second step there, Mike?

Mike Ortiz
The second step is coming up with what, okay, the fantasy of what you think the inspectors you’re going to hire are going to be versus the reality. All right, I think I’ve heard this, I don’t know where I’ve heard this before. But if you can just get a guy that’s 70% as good as you, then that’s basically the real reality of what you’re gonna get, you’re not going to get, I need everyone listening, you’re never gonna get someone that does it, with the same passion or dedication that you do. Okay, because it’s, to them, it’s a job, it’s not their company, they’re not going to come in with automatic loyalty, they’re going to act how they’re treated. So if you come in with an ego, and say, I’m in charge of you, I’m your boss, you need to do this, this and that, you’re not, you’re gonna have high turnover you’re gonna have, if I don’t like working when people, when I feel like someone’s telling me what to do, I can’t imagine someone working for me. Like, now, obviously, you don’t have to be their best friend, you’re never going to be a friend. But that mutual respect has to be there. Now, when I say fantasy, I mean, if you think that people are just going to come flocking to you and accept whatever, you know, whatever, hourly rate or commission split that you give out, and you know, it’s not going to happen that way. And then you have to put that on top of the fear that you all, that we all internally have, is this guy just coming in to get the experience to branch out on their own. Because that’s how I started, I didn’t start, well, I started because I realized that I wanted to be, I wanted to own a business, I wanted to do it on my own. But I didn’t go into it planning on doing that, circumstances made it to where it was a better option for me and my family to go out on my own to make more money. Now, but there are people who come out and you know, their plan is to get the experience so they can go out on their own. And yes, that’s something that you cannot, I mean, unless they flat out tell you that’s their plan, you can’t foresee. So the best thing you can do is when you hire one guy, you have to have that in mind. So you try to make that guy as busy as possible so that you can hire another one, because you’re going to have eventual turnover at some point. It’s going to happen because circumstances in life do. So I would say the second point would be really get an idea of what is it exactly that you need. Do you need someone to do the condos and townhouses and normal, you know, under 2500 square foot houses that you just can’t get to so you can focus on the bigger properties or even the commercial side of your inspection company? Or did you want someone to do equal work to you? Or did, are you trying to get someone that, a lot of the great inspectors I know are older, they’re wanting someone that they can just manage because they can’t hop up on a roof as quick or get into an attic as easily or crawl under a house without really feeling it afterwards. And that’s because they’ve worked hard all their life and they got to a certain point and you know, their body can’t really take it so they hire someone on that they’re hoping can manage that. And usually it’s a younger guy that can go out and doesn’t mind hopping on the roof or going into an attic or under a house, and you pay them well and they’ll stick around and they’ll be as loyal as they can. I think that automatically you shouldn’t be trying to undercut hourly wages or trying to find a way to keep more money for yourself. You’re gonna have to pay for that person to give the quality that you want them to give. I think on during the holidays, I know that I’ve seen it before, everybody sees the TikToks, when a company, a company says hey man, why are you leaving? And they’re like, well I just want money. They’re paying me more over here. He’s like, yeah, but we got a great culture. I mean, we give you, we know we, we get you a pizza party on your birthday or we buy you this and that, like a bottle of your favorite beer or something, right? And then the guy’s like, I just want money. Like that’s all I want. And I applied that. Anytime my guys do anything good, whether it’s get a great review, whether it’s get, they sell an ancillary service, or the year end bonus, I’m just like, all I’m going to give you is cash, cash money, because that is, you’re here, you’re here to benefit by getting paid. And I’m here because you’re helping me make more money, there’s no other, you know, it’s hard to separate that. That’s why it’s really difficult to get past the reality of, hey, I’m going to find a perfect inspector who’s going to pay whatever I say he’s going to take. And then he’s going to work for me until I don’t need him anymore. It’s tough.

Ian R
Yeah, and the job market is such out there that people are getting paid a lot more than they used to, even though inflation is up. So, I mean, that’s a complex conversation. But, you know, I know a guy that was like, Oh, I was paying, I was offering a guy, I think it was like, $18 an hour to work in a mechanic shop, he’s like, that’s great pay. I’m like, when you were a kid, man, I’m like, that’s not. I mean, there’s, you can go work at a lot of places that are a lot easier to work with, besides doing mechanic work for $18 an hour. So we need to put our head in reality. I did. I did write down a couple things as you were, as you were talking about having realistic expectations. And that’s really important. If we, if we want to have a great guy, we have to pay him a great wage. If you’re going to pay a low wage, you’re gonna get a low wage guy, that’s just simple math. But if in our travels, we find that amazing guy that does care as much as we do, or does work as hard as we do. Grab him, pay him whatever it takes, even if you break even on him, maybe not. And then he’ll run the rest of the company for you.

Mike Ortiz
Oh, yeah.

Ian R
If you can, if you can ever find that guy. And to be honest with you, they do come up once in a while. The problem is we miss it. People say well, it wasn’t the right time. A good friend of mine said, if you find the right person, don’t wait for the position, and then find the person, when you find the person, create the position. And that’s always worked out well. And you’re gonna kiss a lot of frogs. That’s the other thing I wrote down. An old inspector told me that one time, he’s like, when you hire, you’re gonna kiss a lot of frogs. I’m like, never understood that until I met other guys. And I’m like, oh, yeah, this is, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Mike Ortiz
You know, sometimes it’s honestly, anybody could be a home inspector, honestly, it’s, it’s not that I need just the home inspector, you need, you need someone that can represent you and your company in the way that you would like, and they don’t need to be passionate, but they need to be interested enough to do their job well. So you don’t need you know, you’re not you don’t want someone who’s just looking for a job. You want someone who’s looking to be a home inspector because they’re genuine genuinely interested in that. And you can tell a lot about a person and how well they’re interested. I guess this leads into point three, is the onboarding process. Now, it has a lot of moving parts.

Ian R
Can I, I don’t mean to interrupt. But before, before we get into point three, the onboarding process. How, how do you find your inspectors? I get asked that a lot.

Mike Ortiz
I think maybe point three should be finding the guy. Yeah. So yeah, this is how my brain works. So with, I guess, point three would be a better way to put, looking for. So there’s a couple of ways you can do it. All right, if you’ve been an inspector for a while, you know a lot of inspectors, especially you know your competitors very well. I don’t care what anybody says we’re all watching each other. You know, we’re all looking at each other meaning you hear the old adage that we’re, you’re supposed to wear your blinders on like a racehorse and run your race. That is not it in the inspection industry. You know, every one of your competitors, you’ve read their reviews, you’ve looked at their websites, you’ve judged them, you’ve, you’ve been jealous, there’s little things that happen. And you’re like, man, I gotta, that’s a good thing. That’s what competition is. That’s how you make yourself better. You don’t like one part of your website, but you like one part of theirs. So just figure out how to make yours better. But when it comes to finding someone that you want to work with you, you’re obviously not going to go to an inspector who was trying to make it on their own and can’t, because once you teach them all the things that you’re doing right, then there’s that, there’s that chance that they’ll just go out and apply to their own business. So that’s not maybe a route that you want to take. Another route is if you’re looking on InterNACHI, it has a fresh list of everyone who’s actively certified in your area by area. And you can look up and make some phone calls if you’d like. But the only thing with that is that you’re the one reaching out to them. So you don’t know if there’s the drive, the need, or of them even looking for work, they might have done it on the off chance that you know they that they wanted to be an inspector, you don’t know what they’re interested in. So the way I did it, and this is just me, is I just created a profile on Indeed. And I made, I made the job on Indeed, and I put the requirements in there, the InterNACHI certification, and I put what the job was about and the mileage and the area that we cover and things like that and what exactly it is I’m looking for. And I put it down as part time because I had that fear of not being able to keep them busy. So I put it down as a part time with the possibility of being a full time job, which now it is for them. But at the time you have that fear, like what if I can only give them one month’s work, and that’s it, I gotta let them go, you know, that sucks. But I’m putting it out there as an application. And then people obviously, it started flooding it, a lot of unqualified people, you can adjust it to say I can’t, I can only take this application if you meet these qualifications. And that’s, those are the ones I got. And then after getting a couple of phone calls and a couple of resumes, I fell on a few that I was, I did a follow up on. And then over the phone, you talk to them you say, you know, you ask questions, you know, you say, what is it that you’re interested in? What have you done up until now, I had a guy who did insurance inspections for like Mercury AAA where they go out and they just take pictures of the roof to see if it’s still in good condition, stuff like that, ten minute inspections. But turned out, amazing person, because the interest was, you know, when you start talking about their interests, and what they’ve been doing up till now, and you can talk about a little bit about their life, there’s some questions obviously, you can’t ask, I would refrain from asking anything about their own personal cultures, any identity issues, anything like that, but you can tell if you get along with someone right away. And then after that, you can set up a meet, you meet them in person. Now in California, if you’re going to do any kind of training, ride alongs and stuff like that, you have to pay, getting into the onboarding process after you’ve found someone, it’s a whole other you know, process that goes through. But I just want to see what you thought about how to find the guys.

Ian R
No, and that’s, I think that’s the real information that guys want. A lot of times we think, oh, well, I’ll just find a buddy. I’ll find another inspector, I think is what most people go through, like they’re look through a list of inspectors, hey, you want to work for me? Two things, when you hire somebody who’s struggling in their business, I would say, just made up number 80% of the time, they’re going to be somebody that maybe wasn’t a great inspector, and maybe that’s why they struggled. Or maybe they just, you know, weren’t trying that hard or weren’t that interested. But there’s a lot of reasons why, sometimes you can find a guy that’s just an amazing inspector, and just not really keen on business and marketing. It’s like, okay, cool. But those are, those are the rarer finds. You know, a sneaky thing that I’ve seen some guys do, I say sneaky, like in a good way, is they actually become instructors. Like they’ll go to the local home inspection schools, and be like, hey, you know, if you give me, what does a school will give you, 100 to $500, depending and to teach one part of a course or something. And people are like, oh, that’s, that’s lame. It’s like, yeah, but you go and you teach a new home inspector how to inspect. And you notice that one guy in the class or like, this guy knows how to talk to people, this guy seems to understand the information. Now you have a rapport with him. And that’s how real estate agents do it a lot. They’ll teach courses at school. And that’s how they recruit. So this home inspector kind of took it from, took it from a playbook of agents, but he gets a lot of good inspectors that way. Gets them from the beginning.

Mike Ortiz
That’s a good way of looking at it as well. Yeah, I see that.

Ian R
Yeah, but I agree with you about the existing inspectors. That’s always been a little sketchy. I’ve, a lot of my clients have gone that route. And they said, the vast majority of the time they kind of regretted it. Once in a while they find a guy that’s just like, I love inspecting houses. I hate business. Let me work for you, you’re like cool. But that’s a little bit rarer.

Mike Ortiz
They don’t want to deal with all the paperwork and everything, I get that 100%.

Ian R
Indeed is a great website, if guys want to use that. What are your thoughts on Facebook resumes? I find that those are a lot of spam.

Mike Ortiz
I did put out like, you know how every, InterNACHI has local chapters and things like that. So I did put out a feeler you know, like a Facebook post, hey, we’re hiring, give me a call, shoot me your resume. This is what we’re looking for. I find that a lot of that was just, you know, people would send me messages. And you can tell a lot by the, how the way, how someone approaches you and how they speak to you, how they were raised. Some people come in as like, hey, I hear you’re hiring. And that’s the only thing they say in the email. And I think to yourself, you know, like, if you’re looking for a job, like if I was looking for a job, it’d be you know, hello, my name is, you know, introduce yourself, you know, all these things. So you’re thinking automatically this is not someone who, you know, who might represent me as well as you know, and it’s not in a discriminatory way. It’s more of like, you know, I want to make sure that you’re able to deal with the kind of customer, not the kind of customers but customers in general. And if that’s the way you’re talking or that’s the way you’re speaking already off the bat, it’s a red flag and a few things can be red flags. One of them is just you know, making sure that you know, they carry themselves in a professional manner. You know, that’s why ride alongs, they’re such a good thing, because not only does it give you a chance to see how, how interested they are in the inspection process, but how they interact with customers. So that’s a big one, you know, letting, for me, inspecting a house, honestly, it becomes easy over time. Okay. But it’s the working with people and dealing with customers that really sets businesses apart as far as you know, how many reviews we get, how much return business we get, because every time we get a good review, it’s like, yeah, they put down that we’re thorough, but they put down like, oh, Mike was such a pleasure to work with, Jesus was such a great, you know, fast, you know, like, thoroughness. And he talked, answered all our questions, basically, versus someone who just goes out there and inspects and says, hey, I’ll send you the report later today, my boss wants, you know, you know, this and that. So I think it’s important that if you’re hiring someone, it’s not just take the resume, see the qualifications, because I’ve seen some really qualified guys, but the personality is not there. And the personality has to sync up. So I’ll see a guy who is like, oh, I’ve been doing construction for 15 years, I can get this, I got this cert, that cert, that cert, this cert, it’s great, he’s like, yeah, so when can I come out? When can we start doing this? I’m like, if you’re already talking like that, we’re not going to sync up. Because that’s not the kind of relationship I already want you to think that you can have with me off the bat. And that’s unfortunate. But that happens. And you have to really weed those out. Don’t let anybody bully you into hiring them.

Ian R
Yeah. And I like how you put that, don’t let them bully you into hiring them. From somebody who has hired people in the past, that’s kind of what it feels like, hey, man, if you really want this done, just just get it done. And it’s like, well, this is weird. This took a turn. You know, it’s funny. I’ve always said, and I’ve had home inspectors get upset at me when I say this, I’ve been a home inspector for almost 20 years, I can teach anybody about a house. I can’t teach everybody how to be human. And that’s, that’s really what it comes down to is I think what you’re saying, I mean, qualifications to inspect the house. Yeah, you can study really hard, you can understand it. And yeah, there’s gonna be different skill levels. Like there’s some guys that they walk into a house. And it’s like, I saw all of this in a vision last night, it seems like it’s like, wow, you’re an amazing inspector. But you’re like a car with a great engine and no tires, if you can’t convey that to people, because that’s half of our job is people, we bridge the gap between the technical and human beings. So if we understand the technical and can’t give it out, we’re useless.

Mike Ortiz
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you think about your interactions when you take your car to the shop. And you can tell the difference between a mechanic who cares and the mechanic who doesn’t, right? It’s like the guy who’s been doing it forever has that attitude of, you know, look, you need us more than we need you. What do you want, this is all broken, this is going to cost that, then you got the guy who’s like, you know what, let me help you out, this is what’s going on. Because of this, maybe if you do this differently, like you want that guy that because that, I come back to the guy on the right, the other guy’s bitter, and I get that for whatever reason. But you can tell that from people even in beginning discussions, and they might be able to fool you in the beginning. So it’s really important to just keep an eye on those character traits and the personality and their interactions with customers. And even you, you know, there are little tests that you can do to make sure that you, you know, give them a, give them a problem, give them some conflict in the job and and see how they handle that, how they problem solve. You know, because if they’re patient, if they’re patient, this job, you have to be extremely patient. You have angry sellers, you have buyers that want you, every time you take a picture something, can you tell me what you just did or what you looked at, or, or when you’re done with the inspection and you’re going through the summary and you’re walking around. And now it’s like, okay, you’ve, you got maybe a couple of chipped tiles in the bathroom, can you go show me, and the bathroom’s like, on the east side of the house up three flights of stairs, and you gotta go show them, like, you go, there they are. And they’re like, okay, thanks. What’s the next thing? I’m like, oh, you don’t, almost you don’t want to talk about it. You know, I get happy when I say you got a couple of broken tiles on the roof. Because I know they can’t be like, can you go show me? I’m like, oh no I can’t.

Ian R
You’re giving all of us PTSD here.

Mike Ortiz
I feel my heart rate went up…

Ian R
It’s usually the father in law.

Mike Ortiz
Yeah, the father in law. And then you know, it’s, it’s one of those things, but here’s the thing, we know how to handle it now. You know what I mean? And if you have someone who can, who has a lot of patience, that’s a one thing, key thing to look for is patience with people. And you can’t, like you said, you can’t teach that. That is taught through childhood. That is taught through you know, how you were raised, you know, so it’s definitely something that’s important to look out for. If their patience wears thin, then that’s, that’s a big red flag. But beyond that, finding the guy is just the first step because you could find a really great personality, but they just can’t get it together on the training and that leads into the onboarding process and the ride alongs.

Ian R
Okay, cool. So say we did find a guy, and we want to, we are thinking about hiring. Tell me about your onboarding process.

Mike Ortiz
So the onboarding process is pretty simple. The HR guy kind of handles it, basically you send in, you have to send in the okay, so for us, it’s like you send in the employment contract, you get all their personal information for payroll, everything, the social, that’s stuff for taxes, have them fill out their their account on Gusto, or whatever payroll service you use. And then you get them the expectations for employment, and what you’re offering and the position you’re offering and the title and the hourly rate or commission split. And then you go into NDA about, you know, what you call it intellectual property, the way you write your narratives. Yeah, the way you write your narratives, the way that you do your marketing and sales and social media, client information, things like that, these are all things that you worked very hard for that you shouldn’t have to lose, just because you forgot to fill out a piece of paper, and you make sure they understand is like, hey, look, I want to make this work. I want this to be awesome, here is this form. This is just to, you know, prevent any issues or miscommunication about the way I conduct my business and stuff like that, it’s just to protect us. And I hope you understand and they sign it, that’s great, if they don’t, then that’s a big red flag right there too. And then after that, that’s just the paperwork stuff, that can be handled in days, you know, sometimes less than a week after that, it’s okay, I just jump right into it. Okay, I have an inspection on Monday, I have two inspections on Monday. I’m going to be taking you with me to all my ride alongs, five days a week, two inspections a day, you’re going to be meeting me at these properties. And we’re going to be doing the two hours, three hours each inspection and all that. I did pay minimum, well no, above minimum wage while they’re doing the ride alongs. So that’s something that my HR person was like, if they’re doing anything, even training with you, you should pay them. And I know that I get a lot, I’ve seen a lot of flack where some inspector’s like, they should pay me to train them. I’m like, if you do it that way, then you really just, you know, yeah, I get it, you’re just educating them, and they can do it on their own. But for me, it’s like, if I want them to work for me, I want them to know that I want to take care of them, you know, and they’re leaving a job to come do this and take this time away, I want to make sure they at least have some money because the ride alongs, I would say on average 50 to 70 ride alongs before they’re ready to, before you can gauge whether or not they’re ready to do a couple of mock inspections, maybe on their own house, on your house, or if a realtor can let you use a listing house. And then after that, send them to the small ones, which are condos, townhouses, and anything under 1500 square feet, that’s, you know, not more than 20 years old. And then you start doing that with agents that maybe you don’t use often and things like that. But the important part is the ride alongs, which just ride alongs alone could be a whole podcast, like 100%, the way you do it, how they can learn, what’s the best way to, there’s no best way to teach someone anything, once they’ve gotten their InterNACHI certification. InterNACHI by itself is obviously a great educational tool. But most people that I’ve run into are hands on and visual learners like myself, you could tell me all day about CSST but until I see it, I won’t be able to identify it immediately. You know what I mean, and the, you know, the types of plumbing, how things feel when you’re testing, you know what to look for, sounds, sounds a big part of our job, you know what I mean? So it’s one of those things where you tell them what you’re doing, and at first it’s going to suck because it’s going to prolong your inspections, it’s gonna prolong your inspections. And it’s hard to talk about things you find wrong while the buyers are following you around, and you’re trying to train this guy. So it’s like one of those juggling acts where you got to say, once the buyer walks away, hey, so you see this, this chimney has a severe crack right there, you put the pen right through there, we’re gonna put it in red, and I’ll figure it out, we’ll talk about it at the end. But this is something to look for. And I see this often, there’s a gap between the flashing and the chimney and the roof. Very common. Nobody ever cuts the brick because they don’t want to, things like that. And then they’re like, okay, and it’s really it comes down to how they take it in. So if you’re telling them the same thing over and over again, this is copper, this is galvanized, every time you go inspection, oh, this is a galvanized pipe. This is a copper pipe. And then after, let’s say 15, 20 inspections, you say? Well, you say hey, can you tell me what, what kind of plumbing it is at the main, I don’t know, if you can’t tell threaded, you know, galvanized versus copper, then there’s something technical you really have to work on. That’s where you can kind of weed out someone who may not know, or be able to retain that kind of, it’s really important information. Or someone who’s not vested like they may, yeah, they may just not be listening and be like, I don’t know, whatever. You know, you mentioned your HR department or your HR guy. A lot of times we may hear that and you know, oh, accountant and HR. And it feels like a big corporation. But that’s actually a pretty easy service. For instance, I use Square Up for payroll, and they offer HR services, so I can just go click, and they have an HR department. Yeah. Is that how you get your HR person? Well I did at first. But there’s a guy local that, yeah, I just tell them I’m onboarding someone, and then they send me all the paperwork and they charge me you know, for whatever the thing is. You always have to pay something, so, I’m like, yeah, but it’s not some big company. It’s just the guy who does HR. And he does it like freelance, you know.

Ian R
So we don’t, if you’re listening, and we don’t need to make this big and complicated, but having an HR person is shared liability, and they’re going to specialize in that field. So they’re going to take care of their stuff. Make sure that’s all set. And it’s easy to find these HR companies now, easy to have an accountant, we should have an accountant anyways, because they pay for themselves. I mean, my accountant will find things no matter how, how much I have it all regulated, tuned to the dime, he’ll be like, oh, by the way, I found something here that saves you more than you would have paid me for the next four years. I’m like, dang, how does he do that? You know, it’s just like, I’m glad I have you. You know, that’s that’s obviously hyperbole. But..

Mike Ortiz
Yeah, the big, I think the big one that you guys will learn is, did you talk about business during that lunch? I was like, oh, yeah I did. All right, let’s, let’s write it off. You know, because it’s one of those things. It’s like, it’s stuff that you don’t, if you don’t, if you’re not confident in your ability to do something like HR or your own accounting, because you could technically do your own HR, if you don’t have full confidence that you can do it. Like it’s something you’ve done before, or you have a specialty in, hire someone to do it. It’ll save you so much time and effort and stress to hire someone to do it professionally. Because then not only do you you, like you said you have this shared liability. But with anything else, it’s like, right now, sometimes it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. Like right now, I’m doing the flooring in my house. But I’m doing it myself, because that is expensive to get installed. I hate doing it. But I’m not paying, you know what I mean, so it’s, but with HR, I can’t do that myself, accounting, there’s no way in hell I have enough time to account for every dime I spend. So you hire someone to do that. And it’s important to keep track of all the hours that you’re, you know, have a good tracking app, mileage is important. Breaks are important, you know, make sure you check all the employment stuff that your HR guy knows, because you don’t know, but they see it every day. And you can be doing, you can have violations all day, and you don’t even think of violation when it comes to breaks, when it comes to hours, when it comes to overtime, when it comes to you know, having proper communication with your employees, things like that.

Ian R
Yeah. And that’s key. So let’s say though, we’re, hypothetically, a genius with an IQ off the scale. And we used to be an HR person for a major corporation for 30 years. And were an HR genius who turned into a home inspector. Even then it’s like, if you’re going out there making $200 an hour on a home inspection or a commercial inspection making $800 an hour, do you really want to save $400 and spend eight hours doing your HR stuff?

Mike Ortiz
No.

Ian R
Like, just, I remember an engineer one time when I was still contracting, he goes, I have to pay you $50 an hour at the time. And he’s like, I make 75. He goes, why would I remove this wallpaper and this doorframe when I can pay you to do it. And even if you took the same amount of time, I’d save money, but you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it faster and better than me. And I remember that they stuck with me. I’m like that makes sense. That’s just logic. So whatever it cost, they can do it faster, better, awesomer. Just let them do it. Yeah, hire it out. So we’re running low on time, but we have so far, know when to hire, have realistic expectations, the third one, finding the right inspectors, and you gave us some great info on that one. And then onboarding. Is there a fifth step?

Mike Ortiz
Incentives.

Ian R
Incentives.

Mike Ortiz
Yeah, it’s all well and good to get someone start working for you. But if you can tell when someone’s being cheap, like in within yourself, if an employee, and I’ve heard this before, feels like they’re working for someone who doesn’t like to spend who doesn’t give, you know, who doesn’t appreciate them or, or reward them or things like that. That’s how you get these, these people leaving, not going on their own, but just leaving in general. Think about everyone that you know, that comes home, what do they mainly complain about when it comes to work? It’s like, it’s just the people that they work for, the horrible management. If you’re over here, and you’re you know, you can’t get them, you can’t get the payroll setup properly, or their HR stuff messed up or their schedule gets messed up and it seems unorganized, then they’ll catch on to that and they won’t feel like it’s a serious job. They’ll get frustrated, and they’ll complain about you. And there is no way to maintain that kind of relationship and get someone who’s going to be loyal. So really what it comes down to is having, not only having those guys that know what they’re doing to handle your payroll and your and your taxes and your HR and everything else. But also within yourself make make the scheduling easy. Make the incentives clear. That’s the big one. Making the incentives clear. My incentives are very clear. You upsell, you get paid. You bring someone in on inspection, you get paid. You get a bunch of reviews, you get paid for each review, like you, you do all these extra things, and I will pay you because every review brings it, it brings a lot to the table, on our reputation and customers returning. Every upsell that you do, it gets, puts our reputation out there, it’s very easy to correlate incentives with productivity with loyalty, you know, and then just think about the fact that when it gets busy, they’re gonna get burnt out too. So really make sure that they take time for themselves as well, even if it costs you an inspection or two, it’ll cost you less than having a guy who’s burnt out and just quits up one day for no reason and you didn’t figure out why is because they haven’t taken any time for themselves. And beyond that, I think clear communication and then owning up to it. Look, I’ve seen this before, and I will never, I have guys that I’ve trained. And in that year that they were working for me, I think maybe two or three times something was missed, right? Like a drippy hose bib or like there was a broken tile on a roof, right? And what I did was, when you have a situation, you come into conflict like that, instead of saying, you shouldn’t have missed that. This is someone you, if this is someone you trained, then it’s on you. What you do is you go you say look, hey, so this is what happened, client called, there was a broken roof tile, we missed it. It happens every once in a while. Now you’ll never miss it again. Because look, I’m gonna go out there, I’m gonna pay a roofer to go fix that, it’s gonna cost me 100, 200 bucks, whatever, whatever roofer charges, I’m gonna pay that myself and let them know, look, this is not going to cost you anything. I’m not going to punish you. I’m not doing anything, I just want you to know so it doesn’t happen again. Never, I never have to worry about them missing that specific thing again, because for them, it’s like, damn, Mike’s out there paying his own money to go fix something I missed. And he’s still taking care of me. Because what is the alternative? Being angry at them? And saying, man, how could you miss that? You know what, just don’t worry about going coming in this week, I’ll figure out these inspections. I get that it’s frustrating sometimes, but you might want to lean towards a little forgiveness because it helps with that loyalty and that incentive, and then they feel like they owe you, you know, they feel like they owe you because you’re looking out for them even when they make mistakes, and that you should try to think of what you want.

Ian R
I’m trying to think of who said it, I think it was Lee Iacocca or maybe somebody else, but there was this company that this employee made a mistake. And it was a legitimate mistake. And it cost them like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they kept them on. And they asked why didn’t you just fire the guy. And they said, because we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to train him. This mistake will now never happen again. And they’re like, it wasn’t, it wasn’t negligence. It wasn’t like I just didn’t go up or do this or that. So yeah, that’s an extreme example of what you’re saying. This is fantastic information. So one, know when to hire. Two, realistic expectations. Three, finding the right inspectors. Four, onboarding with ride alongs and things like that. And number five, incentives, which comes down to I think, being a leader and not just a boss, I think that’s what you’re trying to say, right?

Mike Ortiz
Exactly. Just it’s cliche, but it’s not really a culture, creating a culture, it’s more of like giving them an environment of which that where they can thrive. And by giving them the freedom and the trust to do so. These are human beings, these are adults that we have chosen to hire and, and we now in a way helps, help them provide for their own families. The worst thing we could do is not show them the respect that they deserve as human beings in general. And we have to take full responsibility for everything that they do while they represent our company, because we are managing them, and they’re going to make mistakes. And the thing, the best thing you can do is try to mitigate a lot of those mistakes by uh, one thing, I will say that helps a lot. Oh, I can’t believe I forgot this part. As far as incentives go. There’s also another incentive to prevent a, preventative maintenance is what I call it. Every week, I try to do it every day. But every week, when I see something that I don’t normally see in an inspection or something that doesn’t come by often, I’ll take a picture of it, and I’ll send it to my guys. I’ll be like, hey, look, I would have missed this if I just walked past it. But there this, this gas line is going right into the concrete without any kind of sleeve. And it’s hard to tell because it’s painted gray. But if you get this magnet, which I give them all, and touch it, if it’s attaching, that means that it’s going straight to that concrete without a sleeve, easy to miss. Call it out if you guys see it, it’s like a little educational reminder. Because people can become complacent. If for 30 houses you don’t see this issue. You might miss the 31st house that has it because you won’t be looking for it because you don’t see. So it’s important to keep everybody on tabs of what they’re seeing, so that you know you’re like, hey look, the rules change for GFCI’s on kitchen islands. Just to let you know, when you do new construction inspections, we keep an eye out for this. Stuff like that. Continuing education is a huge liability. It lowers liability, because there’s less of a chance they’ll miss things that they probably won’t even thinking of, you just have to think that way. And it’s just a quick text message, just like you send your wife or your friends, a quick photo and a text. You can even speak into the phone or something, it doesn’t matter. Just say, hey, you know, send this to my inspectors. I see right here that there’s no sediment trap on this heater. You know, they have, I haven’t seen any on their reports. So maybe they haven’t seen it in a minute. So it looks like blah, blah, stuff like that. It helps lower your, you know, limit your liability.

Ian R
Fantastic. I think we have our next podcast. We’ll have to talk about ride alongs next time, but..

Mike Ortiz
Yeah, I know, right?

Ian R
Mike, as always, I’m very impressed with what you’ve done with your company and how well you run things. And thank you very much for taking your wisdom and letting us learn from that today. So thank you so much, Mike.

Mike Ortiz
Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

Ian R
You have a great one.

Mike Ortiz
You too.

Beon DeNood
On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you can catch our future episodes as well. And if you have any feedback, please send us an email at [email protected]. Also, don’t forget to check out our brand new app for home inspectors, scheduling and report writing all in one easy to use app. Check it out now at Inspectortoolbelt.com.

Ian R
The views and opinions of this podcast and its guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

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].

If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.

*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.