LEARN MORE ABOUT INTERNACHI’S FOUNDER – NICK GROMICKO HIMSELF!
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Ian R: Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt. We have on again, Nick Gromicko himself. How are you, Nick?
Nick Gromicko: Well, thank you.
Ian R: Some guys had some questions about you personally, and some projects that you have going on like IREP and things like that. So first, I wanted to ask you, you keep mentioning that you have all this steel at your house. Why do you have all that steel? What is it for?
Nick Gromicko: If you’ve ever bought a backhoe? The first backhoe, you know, every project around the house looks like it could be done with a backhoe at that point, the Christmas lights by climbing in a backhoe and if someone lifts you up, and you don’t use a ladder anymore, you use your backhoe. You can hammer and now with their front bucket, you’ll do it. So because I have a steel company, you know, I just everything is steel to me. Plus I like steel for the same great segue again, for the same reason I’m different than young people today. People today are you know, or on Instagram. Live in a superficial plastic, fake world. Or as I love Ross steel, I mean, I built this set of stairs in my house that goes nowhere, because I like a little deck glass deck but everybody comes in there catches that steel, it’s raw steel, it’s just polished and blue, that bluish gray and dark gray. Sometimes it’s my house that just touches it all over. Just again, because human beings aren’t used to seeing steel anymore. So my fireplace is 25 feet high, instead of made out of masonry, or brick or stone or something like everybody does. I made it out of steel, looks like a big boiler. And you know, there’s just fingerprints on all the time people just come and just touch the steel and the fire. Two things that are really, really real, take you back to reality on what’s more real than fire and steel, nothing. It’s attractive to the world because we’re now in, the virtual Instagram, Bitcoin world, where nothing is everything. Well, I like it, because I can hammer it. This is my answer. So I built my house with a lot of steel.
Ian R: That’s interesting. I actually had a question. This wasn’t one that a home inspector had. I was just curious, how many tractors do you have?
Nick Gromicko: Okay. Lots, more than I could count.
Ian R: Okay, that was just a weird personal question.
Nick Gromicko: Some are used and some are just collectibles, and some are parts, and some are yard art, and some are gonna be restored one day. So, I mean, they all have different purposes. You know, I have two pieces of the yard out in my yard art, I would say in my yard that you know, with the flag in it, they look really nice. Well painted next to my cornfield, because I like how they look. Twins, so they’re the same tractor, you know, interesting. So, and then some are used, and then some are big ones that I use on the farm and stuff.
Ian R: Yeah. I just was curious, because it seems like every time I turned around, there’s a post on Facebook, where you have another tractor and I remember one time he said I don’t collect them. They just follow me home.
Nick Gromicko: Follow me how if I see a tractor, I gotta attack to show him as pretty much guaranteed I’m bringing one home. First of all tractor, I can read that piece of it’s a tool, deductible, the repairs are very deductible. I can actually use it to do things, you know. So if I were to collect, you know, something silly baseball cards or something? I mean, what am I gonna do with those pictures of other men’s faces? I got to be kidding. I’m not doing that. A tractor I can use.
Ian R: That makes sense. So I tell you what, we have some questions that home inspectors asked that have to do with our industry. This one home inspector posted if a vendor purposely tried hurting an international inspector’s company and caused financial damage to the inspector member. Would Nick do anything about it?
Nick Gromicko: I’d probably kill him
Ian R: Oh, yeah. Okay. Get a guy named Leo and Vinnie to send them out there
Nick Gromicko: Nah, I’ll do it myself
Ian R: With your tractor.
Nick Gromicko: Yeah, run him over. I mean, that’s just like, you know, he’s probably has something specific he’s trying to say, but I don’t know what it is.
Ian R: Yeah, I don’t know.
Nick Gromicko: So, you know, it’s hard to answer a question like that but generally, vendors have to really treat InterNACHI members well, because, you know, we’re so dominant in this business. You know, one word for me can make or break a vendor, and the message board is really good at that because the inspectors go on to our message board and they say this company is good. Here’s why this company did me right and here’s what he did. Or this company did me wrong, and the vendor jumps in and makes it right immediately, you know, or this product needs help. It doesn’t work. The vendor says, Yes, it does, you’re just not using a button, or I see your point, we’re going to have that fixed. So it’s very useful. The InterNACHI message board because it helps vendors, apps vendors, improve their products,s and helps vendors improve their service because you have all this feedback from InterNACHI members. Then you know, I sort of throw a lot of weight around to get the discounts to do discounts. So generally, inspectors in our industry have it better than any other industry because all the vendors make sure they do right by InterNACHI members out of a little bit out of fear, I guess? I don’t know.
Ian R: Yeah. I could see that. I’ve seen you several times, stepped in when vendors were not treating a home inspector, right. It turned pretty quick. You know, so
Nick Gromicko: Oh, so nobody refuses my call in this industry. Same as legislators. I mean, any legislator working on inspection legislation, they’ll take my call. I make a call to a legislator, they get on the phone. Where’s that size now that my size where vendors and lawmakers do what we ask?
Ian R: So I guess the answer to the particular inspector’s question, and I mean, we don’t know what’s going on, or you know why they’re asking that but if a vendor legitimately hurts inspectors, basically, they can count on the home inspection community, on the forum, stepping up and saying, Hey, you’re powerful. At the very least, if it got out of hand, it becomes a phone call from Nick. Is that reasonable?
Nick Gromicko: Yeah, the form is really powerful, very useful to us, as an industry.
Ian R: I’m still interested, we talked about this in our last interview, but a lot of guys asked about it. What’s the timeframe for IREP and can we have more information?
Nick Gromicko: We’ll need a whole show on it.
Ian R: Oh, yeah, let’s do it
Nick Gromicko: This thing’s gonna blow up. So you know, I once said that you know, the only difference, the only reason we have to go to real estate agents is that they get to our shared client just before us. So I’m just trying to flip that around and trying to get to the client first, with inspectors having the client before the real estate agent gets to them. I think I can do that. In a very creative way.
Ian R: Can you expand on that creative way?
Nick Gromicko: Yeah. It’s your whole show. There’s a lot of real estate agents are gonna listen to that show, because there’s a lot of brokers that are, I’m willing to jump on board, once we launched this thing. I think I have 80,000. Now, agents to allow, I mean, they work for brokers that are gonna come over and that’ll give us some, you know, the second position to NAR. I mean, maybe I should send the guy out to kill me. I don’t know.
Ian R: So well, I don’t know NAR that well. So I’m just kind of doing some quick math in my head. So in my area, we’re pretty heavily saturated with real estate agents. There are about 4000 agents in my area for a small area. So I’m thinking. So your time’s up by 20? So you have 20 relatively medium-sized markets covered by those agents. That’s just the start.
Nick Gromicko: That’s why I’m doing anything. That’s them. I’m calling me. You have to realize there are 2 million real estate agents in this country. A million of them are members of NAR and only half the real estate agents are doing 5 million deals. So there’s just not that much money and being a real estate agent. Or make any money at all.
Ian R: No, yeah. I’ve often said home inspectors make more money than real estate agents.
Nick Gromicko: Yeah, we’re delivering chocolates to them. No. We’re gonna stop that silly.
Ian R: Tell me some logistics because I know we’ll do a whole episode on it. We’ll blast it out to every real estate agent in the country.
Nick Gromicko: Podcasts business, let me help you with your company. Okay.
Ian R: Okay.
Nick Gromicko: So you always want to leave them wanting.
Ian R: See, I’m wanting. Okay. All right. So now we will have to do a whole other episode because now I’m wanting.
Nick Gromicko: How about more. The stuff’s coming in faster than I can keep up with it. So we’ll have more.
Ian R: That’s beautiful. Do you at the very least, can you give us a rough timeframe on IREP?
Nick Gromicko: No, but I’ll give you the trademarked we just found the trademark tagline.
Ian R: Okay. Cool.
Nick Gromicko: And will that help you?
Ian R: That will help me feel better?
Nick Gromicko: Okay, IREP around the world and in your neighborhood.
Ian R: Oh, I like it.
Nick Gromicko: That’s our tagline around the world and in your neighborhood.
Ian R: Nice. I like that one. All right.
Nick Gromicko: National field, but also local. what else have we got on our list today?
Ian R: All right. So this one was kind of an oddly specific one, but it comes up a lot. So here’s what the inspector wrote in, how does Nick feel about the inspector signing the forms that builders have them sign? I’ve seen them before, too, like, a home inspector can’t test anything can open and close windows, yadda, yadda, yadda. I know you’ve dealt with these big builders before on this, but have you ever had anything that inspector can use as a tool to throw back at some of these builders?
Nick Gromicko: Just sign it and do it anyway? Will they going to sue you for opening a window, then I don’t bother you to sign the document and do your best job for your client anyway.
Ian R: Okay. That’s what I would do. We wouldn’t go any farther than that.
Nick Gromicko: No, the guy who probably drafted that document 15 years ago, for that builder is probably not even around and nobody in the building manager doesn’t care. The site managers and nobody’s gonna care. Sure, looking at windows and things like that, right? So all you have to do if you’re, if you have a building manager, or site manager coming along with an honest inspection, put him at ease. Say, well, this is just a fantastic house, a very nice house, and then go run, start opening the windows, he’s not going to bother you.
Ian R: Okay. Oh, that’s a good point. I’ve often just, we were usually so busy that I just would pass up on new construction houses because I didn’t want to deal with that. To be perfectly frank. I never thought of just doing it because that would sound weird in a courtroom, wouldn’t it? Judge says what are you suing this guy for? He opened a window, and he turned on the heating unit.
Nick Gromicko: I mean really testing either, you know, their definition of testing and inspectors definition is somewhat different. They don’t want you doing environmental testing on the shore, they don’t want you to scrape in a wall and send them into a lab and stuff like that, or it’s gonna cause some legal problem. Right, but opening a window and closing and it’s not testing the wind. So you know, I wouldn’t worry about these things if they don’t test anything. Okay, I would test them anyway.
Ian R: A couple more that kind of came through later on. One is, so we’ve had some big things we have IREP coming up. One of the last big things was InterNACHI being an accredited school. We had Nachi buyback guarantee all these things over the years. Do you have any other big things besides IREP, obviously, coming out in InterNACHI’s future?
Nick Gromicko: I just started, um, that serious, I want to just be done. You think you think you don’t have to be in a building accredited university, or the buyback program or all the stuff that are not she’s done is amazing. I’ve only begun. I literally feel like I have an inventory in my mind of things I want to launch. I have to pull them down off the shelf, package them up and get them out there through InterNACHI. As fast as I’m packaging them, putting them out, and getting them out to members, the warehouse on the backside of my brain is growing, I keep coming up with more and more great ideas that I want to launch. You know, before I die, I wish I could live to be 200 to get them all done. InterNACHI, I’m just starting with InterNACHI. That’s what my honest answer is.
Ian R: Okay. So do you have any specific things that are in the warehouse that you could share with us?
Nick Gromicko: Well, the big one, which we’re all frantically busting our butts on is trying to get this degree.
Ian R: Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. The associates.
Nick Gromicko: I think that changes everything. It doesn’t harm any member. So I’m not going to ever say oh, no, you know, you’ve changed my whole market because now you know, after a degree, well, all the course, the deal we cut with the US Department of Education, all the courses that you’ve taken in InterNACHI or will take or are taking our count towards the degree, anything. So, you know, we have 24 hours of CEF to take every year at InterNACHI. All that is already compiled towards your degree. Most members don’t realize that they’re almost there almost under degree.
Ian R: Oh, that’s cool. I was wondering about ended associate’s degree, right?
Nick Gromicko: No matter how far back it is, this is a great thing. I’m trying to get us on par with you know, architects and engineers. It’s not an easy task, you know, but if we want to raise prices, we’re gonna have to get up to that level. As opposed to just you know, where we came from, you know, an unaccredited, uncertified guy who took on accredited courses walking around with a clipboard. That’s sort of what the memory of what home inspectors are to a lot of people.
Ian R: So I actually have a hypothetical for your Nick, because we’ve often talked about, and you talked, talked about earlier about being a high school dropout. So have you taken InterNACHI’s courses and if so, does that mean you’ll have a call was degree after that?
Nick Gromicko: No, I haven’t. There’s only one, I’ve thought through because it’s the hardest course ever. It’s that to submit construction design, and then now it’s a bear.
Ian R: I don’t know if I’ve done that one. I have to take a look.
Nick Gromicko: Then I have to take a couple for mold for Florida, a mold assessors license in Florida, although I don’t use it. So I take that CE just to keep that license. Now InterNACHI produces courses at a very high rate they have, we have hundreds of courses now. I couldn’t take them all any more than I could read all the message board posts that go up, there are 2.6 million message board posts now. I didn’t read all those either, you know, it’s hard to keep up, you know.
Ian R: Is there anything else I was really waiting for that associate’s degree one because that’s a beautiful point? That’s a beautiful thing that’s gonna happen. Are any other cool things happening in InterNACHI? In the works that is anything specific?
Nick Gromicko: A lot. I mean, they’re just, you know, they’re always working on. It’s like a 34-lane bridge or something, you know, you’re always working on some painting, some, some are open, some are being rehabbed. So, you know, while cars are going across this bridge. So, you know, it’s an odd thing running InterNACHI. It keeps more and more lines keeping added. So it keeps getting bigger and better. I would say over time. I don’t know. I mean, there are just so many things, I don’t know where to begin. Yeah. I mean, just look at what we’ve done so far. If you go to our benefits page and scroll down, I mean, just scroll and scroll and scroll, and all of those links are improving. So we improved the certification page yesterday didn’t get announced. So that now what it does is when it when you find that inspector, it actually seeks out your logo for the consumer. So when it brings up the page that you know about an inspector in your neighborhood, it already has the member’s logo on there along with their information.
Ian R: Oh, cool.
Nick Gromicko: Yeah, that was one of the things we’re doing. So we’re gathering all the logos from all our members and being able to add them in. We’re doing a lot with multi-inspector firms this year. So we’re getting a lot of tools for, you know, for a multi-inspector firm, a guy who has, you know, five inspectors or 50 inspectors, to be able to manage it like a real company.
Ian R: Can you give an example?
Nick Gromicko: A lot of back-end tools and stuff like that, well, I can keep track of what their members are doing. They can keep track of what their education they’re taking, you know, what quizzes they’re failing. So maybe they need some help and stuff like that, how to, so that when a consumer contacts them, they can direct the calls to where they want. You don’t want your employee, maybe answering the phone, right? He’s a great inspector, but he doesn’t look at scheduling and you certainly don’t want people calling him direct for an inspection, you want it to go through your system. So we have that available to the owner to modify to adjust where the traffic goes, and where from a marketing standpoint, what we’re each of those members could provide some marketing benefit to the company. Without creating a situation where they entice themselves to go into business against you. Right? Yeah, you get all of the marketing benefits of having an employee, an extra employee, without any of that marketing benefit. Helping the employed helps only the company. So a lot of back-end stuff for on the dashboard for a multi-inspector firm owner, to deal with him quite a bit of it as listed in his in scale up the new book. So that’s certifiedmasterinspector.org/scale. That’s a free book for multi-inspector firms, you know, tells you how to systemize and grow your inspection company basically. We’re just getting a lot of tools for that because we definitely see consolidation in our industry, you know, more and more companies are a couple of guys or two or three inspectors or maybe an office manager and four inspectors. That seems to be becoming very normal now.
Ian R: More so than in years past.
Nick Gromicko: More so than in years past. I think that’s a good thing, you know?
Ian R: Yeah. Well, Nick, I gotta say, you’ve covered the gambit from business advice to how to manage your money and all the way down to the nitty-gritty of home inspectors, signing agreements with builders, and things like that. I appreciate you being on and I’m going to take you up on that IREP episode because now I’m dying to hear more about it.
Nick Gromicko: Come on here because I didn’t read these questions. I was hoping they’re gonna ask all kinds of personal questions. I was like, I wonder what they’re gonna ask.
Ian R: Well, I can ask more personal questions.
Nick Gromicko: Yes, when I was dating on match.com, you know, between wives there was a line that I used on match.com That got me date after date after date, which was that I wrote that I was six foot out. You know, you have to say how tall you are six foot out, but then in the text, I would say, I’m actually only, you know, five foot 11 and a half but you know, I rounded up and learned in school to round up. So, you know, let’s visit a realism got, to be honest, to begin with, you know, and then I would write, don’t ask me to calculate the volume of a truncated cone. At one line about me not being really six foot and not being able to calculate the volume of a truncated cone. I mean, all sorts of data for some reason with women, in fact, that Chris Brown, and I were looking at it, like, wow, this thing really works, you know, We had built real matcher years before, which became, you know, these dating sites, he and I, his school project, when he was in college, as he and I built real matcher. A domain name, which is a dating site, okay. I wrote this thing on my profile about my heights, you know, and then when I would go out with them, with the lady to dinner, you know, and she would talk about this, you know, I mean, I’m actually being six foot, I’m only 511. I can’t calculate the volume of a truncated cone, I would proceed to show her how to calculate the volume of a truncated count because math actually is something I’m good at. That would give us something to talk about because it’s a very odd thing to date. When you sit down in front of a table, you’re facing them, they’re facing you, and you don’t know each other, and it’s just awkward.
Ian R: So the obvious thing to do is to calculate the volume of a truncated cone.
Nick Gromicko: That broke the ice. Then also they knew you’re on is because he liked you that you confessed that you’re really not six foot so but it worked. Give me a lot of dates, but maybe too many went on a lot of first dates and very few second dates.
Ian R: Well, you met Lena, and you got her to marry you.
Nick Gromicko: I got engaged in eight hours.
Ian R: Oh, wow. Okay. Can you describe how that happened?
Nick Gromicko: So she was running an HVAC, commercial HVAC company in Canada. She was already a Canadian permanent resident. She’s from Ukraine. She speaks six languages, and English wasn’t her best. So she was trying to land these bids. So she looked me up on the internet and saw that I was an inspection business was asking me the son to send these bids so that I could fix them up the, you know, the funny English in it. He’s trying to sell his commercial HVAC systems, which he was very good at. She was a project manager. So that’s how I got to know her. But we’re only claiming kidding by email and I’ve never seen her face. I’ve never seen her before. Finally, she says, Hey, I have to go to a bed in California and I’m stopping by in Denver and I’m stuck there for like, I don’t know how long, like a day or something. Like to layover half a day or something. So near the airport, you just come and you stay at my house for a day. We book it and to stay, you always wanted to see boaters. So she said okay, I’ll stay there for a few days. I said I have a bedroom, spare a locket lock on the inside. Oh, nobody bothers you. Go ahead. Well, I picked it up at the airport. I thought we were going to talk business, HVAC, but no that didn’t happen at all. So eight hours later, we were engaged. Calling her mom on the phone saying I’m getting married. That’s just I never met her. I never saw her face. Never heard her voice and eight hours later, we were engaged.
Ian R: I have to say that is a bit of a crazy story.
Nick Gromicko: I just have two kids and one on the way.
Ian R: See it. Oh, you have one on the way.
Nick Gromicko: One of the ways and then this week I discovered I get two more kids because I took in a Ukrainian mom that I never met and her two kids they were just refugees.
Ian R: Oh, that’s nice.
Nick Gromicko: We’re gonna put on let them stay in our house. I have an enormous house I’ve ruined I’ve never been in. And that does really not sound like I’m making that up. It’s really a fact I avoid going into those rooms. So they continue to honestly say that rooms in my house that I’ve never been in. When we were constructing them in the basement, I’m putting an apartment in the basement. I said I’m not going to go in those two rooms so that I can say that someday. I said that on your show. Rooms in my house I’ve never been in but anyway, they’re gonna go in there. Two little kids. A mom from Ukraine.
Ian R: That’s beautiful. They need they need that.
Nick Gromicko: So much when you’re 60 or I think everybody from 24 up to 60 male stuck in Ukraine.
Ian R: I have friends over there and they leave without their husbands and sons and fathers. Yeah.
Nick Gromicko: Like if you leave if you have three kids or if you’re somehow to save the site, or to take care of older people, but they don’t fall under any of those conditions. So she’s literally just homeless. So she moves on Saturday. I’ve only met her once. The kids seem nice. And now we’re a big farm. So it’s like kiddie land here. So like a sandbox and swing sets and tractors? Of course, they don’t have a lot of fun while they’re here. They should be here a year. So looks like more kids will be in my house for a year.
Ian R: Well, that’s nice. I mean, maybe there are they around the same ages as your kids.
Nick Gromicko: A little older, but that’s what they do. Six and 12. Oh, yeah. Mine are almost four, almost two, and one on the way,
Ian R: Man, I didn’t know you had one on the way. Congratulations on the Ukrainian family staying with you.
Nick Gromicko: You’re making them, you know what I mean?
Ian R: All right, so you’re gonna have a new baby and you had two little ones.
Nick Gromicko: Two toddlers, a six-year-old and a 12-year-old.
Ian R: You’re busy fella.
Nick Gromicko: I thought of getting a big School bus or something to go get pizza. By the time we put everybody in because I’m not gonna fit in just the regular vehicle anymore.
Ian R: So how do you speak any Russian or Ukrainian yet? No.
Nick Gromicko: My wife has four degrees two international business degrees, a marketing degree and an MBA from America speaks six languages and writes and reads six languages, speaks a seventh, Arabic. So she speaks seven languages, has four degrees, and has an MBA. I barely speak English and have no high school diploma. So we’re completely opposite in that area.
Ian R: Well, you guys seem to do well together.
Nick Gromicko: Yeah, she’s, she has her businesses are much more fun than mine.
Ian R: Well beautiful butt you told us about.
Nick Gromicko: Yeah beautifulbutt.com was a great, great business, you know, high markup. We do a lot of Bikini shops and boutiques in Florida and California. I love that business, of course.
Ian R: Did I tell you that I use some of the beautiful but on my knees. Now I have a Heine? Sorry, there’s a dad joke to kind of ruin that moment.
Nick Gromicko: It’s just a fun business. Yeah.
Ian R: What are other businesses? Does she still do the HVAC thing?
Nick Gromicko: No, she does an immigration service. So she helps immigrants figure out how to do the paperwork. In Canada, mostly because she knows Canadian stuff a lot. Those are two main businesses. Then I have probably 15 different companies and all sorts of stuff.
Ian R: So what are your other companies then? Because we know about the construction one, we know about the farm, we know about obviously InterNACHI.
Nick Gromicko: The steel company, the bridge company, and then I have quite a few marketing companies. So yeah, I ended up with Inspectormedia didn’t really want it but my son died. The second mother’s son passed away. He gave that to me. So he had another company GoVelop, which I shut down. I did not want to do it at all. I’m keeping spectrum media going. It’s kind of a fun business. I like to clients, which are natural numbers. All the clients are InterNACHI members, which I like.
Ian R: We actually had them on the show a couple of weeks ago, they did a nice job.
Nick Gromicko: That’s good. Dan and Mikayla. Yeah, yeah. So I’ve never met them personally just assume because they live in different states. So we got to we got the company back and running and doing all kinds of fun things now. New stuff. Yeah. Then I have a check. I checked my marketing which only has four large, really large law firms that we work for. So we do the marketing for four major law firms and then one of them just bought 40% of the company. They were my client and they went 40% for 15 million.
Ian R: So 40% of your of Checkmate Marketing?
Nick Gromicko: Checkmate marketing and I didn’t have to give up control of the company. So in other words, I didn’t sell 51% I still control the company and they wanted it. They wanted to make sure that they have a lot of say in it and that it never goes away. I guess I make a lot of money in marketing. That was a nice sale.
Ian R: Oh wow
Nick Gromicko: I bought, you know I have three homes on my street and I am from down the street from what I bought another one for Rob Klaus, who just yesterday was his first day he became CCPIA’s director of education he used to run the BrickKicker franchise and he left there. He came on board. But one of his requirements coming from Illinois was that I had to find some housing in Colorado, which is hard. So I just bought him my house I’m rehabbing and I have another three weeks of rehabbing to get it done because he wants to move in with him, his wife, and we’re gonna move in in July. So he’s one of my employees. So I had to give him a house to sell to get them to come here. I have some, you know, residential homes. I’ve just bought a bit of building in Greeley. I put up a little site for Greelyoffice.com and people laugh at me like, I buy a piece of property then the next day, I put up a website, but that website worked. I already have like, I had a lot of people want to rent it. It’s a little too sweet, very gorgeous office space and then somebody wanted to buy it. One of the tenants said that they’d buy it, I said, Well, you know, I gotta kick a field goal here I bought it for just under 400,000 I said I’m going to be 450 I want to kick a field goal and I’ll sell it to you so they’re an offer supposed to come through today. You know, throughout life home inspectors if they really want to make money one of the things they should think about doing is always what I always tell us why you always see me you know conventions, with a stack of $100 bills right? Why is he carrying it around? It’s just that I don’t care if it’s a convention, I carry it everywhere. Then people said why do you care that much money around you know, in $100 bills at a convention. It had nothing to do with the convention that’s just I always have five $10,000 on me I should probably say this out loud. To buy something. I can’t, I’m not good at selling something high but I’m really good at buying something although I see something you know, it looks like a good price you know, and I’m about or whatever. I’ll try to lowball and offer them and I’ll pull out the cash and usually if you hand reach out to someone with a handful of cash to buy something they are going to reach out and grab that cash I have bought a lot of stuff in my lifetime or put down payments on a lot of stuff in my lifetime but acting quickly. The property I bought and Greely that just explained that office building I bought that sight unseen it was you know it’s an end cap units and had windows all the way around I knew where it was a great location. You know I literally called an hour and a half after it went up on LoopNet and bought it then I ran up at night like at two am with a flashlight to look at the building and make sure I’m okay with buying this building. I’m already wiring money and that I mean. At two AM, I meet two kids that are up there. You know, two high school kids and across the whole baseball complex across the park high school down the street, and I’m asking them, okay, so what’s wrong with this neighborhood? Tell me how great the neighborhood I said, what about this parking lot is huge. It’s got like 1000 parking spaces. Like, this thing’s full. All-day long from the baseball. There is four big baseball field complex. I’m right across the street from it. I’m like, Okay, thanks, guys. What are you guys doing out here tonight? We’re drinking beer.
Ian R: That’s what teenagers do.
Nick Gromicko: Pick up check back in the pickup truck. So I came on like 3 am. In the morning, I did the deal. You should always be like you need to do it on the small stuff, too, you know, garage sales or whatever. One of my members. He was just a really good GM mechanic, it’s a funny story. Just an excellent General Motors motor mechanic and he saw a suburban or something for sale. He says, Hey, take me up there. I’m gonna go buy that. So bourbon. So we drove up there email talking. The guy says it doesn’t run. Okay, in the ad, so we got to go to the house and the guy lets us look at the car. My buddy went, he goes, Well, you know, I can’t start the car. I mean, I can’t start the car out. I don’t want to start the car because then you know, my negotiating power is gone. He goes, but he looks at somehow looks inside the motor. I don’t know anything about cars. So don’t ask me what he did. He goes, Okay, I’m gonna go off from you know, it’s like, I forget what it was like, cheap was like 4500. I’m gonna go off from 3500 So I’m back up to the house and said, you know, yeah, the suburban well, he doesn’t run classes now and nobody can figure out what’s wrong with it. He goes, I’ll give you 3500 for it, I guess was okay the title. So they did the deal, right? He comes down and goes okay, we go on to dinner? I’m like what do you mean we’re going to dinner? We’ll go to dinner after this. Do you know? Me you so if you want me to leave you here? He goes, Yeah. So how are you going to get home you wouldn’t suburban it doesn’t run everybody says it doesn’t run. I think I can get it running because I said I better wait here for a second. He sticks his head on the road. Gets back in the car to start to write up. So you should just go around doing this but he did it. He used my system, which is you hold out a pile of money. Yeah. $100 bills, some people will take it. So it’s hard to sell high but it’s easy to buy low. Every InterNACHI member, every inspector should always have that frame of mind, as I do in my mind, which is I am a hunter. I don’t actually hunt for animals, but I’m a hunter of deals. I wake up in the morning, you know, my eyes are open, my ears are open. I asked questions, about everything I see, and the people know what to tell me about stuff. I’m always looking for a deal. You know, and then you work your capital that way. Just like the building I gave you some examples. It’s in Greeley that I just bought. It was 50 grand. That’s, you know, I get the 50 Grand up, right? That’s an SX, capital. When I sell it 400,000 is back in play. So let’s go do it again. You know.
Ian R: I’ll tell you what, I should pal around with you one time as you go around buying stuff and I’ll watch you do it. Then see if I can.
Nick Gromicko: My wife doesn’t like getting rid of these antiques. I am getting rid of them but I’m getting rid of a lot more than we bought them. So I sell them off. If you ever watch the internet use a message board. We auction a lot of cozy coats for kids. Yeah. So I’m always throwing like some cheap silver antique map or some antique wrenches or stamps or something. That’s collectibles, and then that raises money for Cozy Coats for Kids, my charity.
Ian R: Nice. It’s a good charity I liked that, we’ve donated too.
Nick Gromicko: Yeah, the guys usually pay for more than I bought it for. So you know, we always get the whole thing to the kids and the charity is really a great charity. I could do that. When when I retire. I’ll work on that more.
Ian R: Well, it’s you have a big heart Nick yeah. You give to the Cozy Coats for Kids.
Nick Gromicko: I like kids. I wish I had 20 Kids, I swear to God, that’s the only mistake I made in life.
Ian R: You’re on, you’re on track for it. You’re having another one.
Nick Gromicko: It may not work all the time but when I want it apparently works. Maybe I’ll still have those 20 kids before I drop dead from rigor mortis, or whatever all people get.
Ian R: Well, on that note,
Nick Gromicko: It was a fun show. Thank you.
Ian R: This was awesome. Thank you again, Nick. Everybody listening in. Stay tuned. We’re gonna have an IREP episode. We’ll blast it out and we’ll get every agent out there to listen to it. Thank you much, Nick.
Nick Gromicko: Thank you. It was fun. Bye.
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