PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Hey Jay, welcome back to the show.

Jay Wynn
Hey, Ian, how you doing tonight?

Ian Robertson
Hey, not bad, you know, you have become the envy of so many of our guests, because they come on and they’re like, so you’re telling me I could be drinking while we do this? We had another guy, Rob. He’s like next time I want to be drinking on the show. I’m like, started something.

Jay Wynn
All right, I’m okay with that. Yeah, well, here’s the thing, too. I never I didn’t think this would be very interesting. But I’ve actually had a couple of the other inspectors in the area that listen to it go. We love that section. It’s like you guys are just telling stories and talking. And I’m like, I just.. they’re like no, no keep doing it. Keep doing it. I’m like, really? So I don’t know. Somebody must be enjoying it. I know I do.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no, I enjoy the segment. A lot of people do. And it’s, I probably get the most comments about that, like, people are starting to remember what drinks we like. So I’m not going to discourage anybody from saying, Hey, here’s a here’s a bottle of Lagavulin or some bullet bourbon, but it’s funny. I’ll get I’ll get messages from random inspectors, sometimes guys that I haven’t even met. And they’re like, I hear you like the whiskey. Yes.

Jay Wynn
Excuse me. Nice to know that who are you? Yeah.

Ian Robertson
Thank you and who is this? But to get the segment going drinking with Jay, what are you drinking tonight, Jay?

Jay Wynn
I’m going back to my standard. It’s been a long week. So I’m going to Glendronach scotch. I’ve talked about it before. Okay. I really really like it. It’s got that nice. A little bit of that Scotch flavor. Not a lot the smoke, but it’s got a nice sweet finish. And I figured tonight was a good night for it.

Ian Robertson
I have never pronounced that brand properly. How do you say it?

Jay Wynn
Well when I was in Scotland a year ago..Glendronach.

Ian Robertson
Glendronach.

Jay Wynn
Yeah that’s okay.

Ian Robertson
I don’t know. I feel like you go to the doctor. Hey, Doc I have a Glendronach right here. Can you fix it my glendronach? I went a little outside my realm. I am usually straight, whatever I’m drinking completely neat. No ice, no additives. I’m not a big mixed drinker guy like the purity of whatever you’re drinking. I went outside the scope of that I have a Manhattan, which sounds girly at first, but you’re actually just mixing alcohol with different alcohol and it’s made with Black Label Jameson. And the reason I mix it is I love I love Irish whiskies. I just came back from the UK and all that but the Irish whiskies lack a little oomph for me. I like I like scotch, there’s some peat and some manliness to it as Irish whiskies are very smooth. So I put a little something in so if you don’t know how to make a Manhattan, it just pour a couple dashes of bitters. I like the black walnut bitters, personally. Then I pour a little bit of sweet vermouth in, which is just basically fancy mixed wine. And then you pour a whole bunch of whiskey in and enjoy.

Jay Wynn
There you go.

Ian Robertson
Good stuff.

Jay Wynn
Well, there’s nothing wrong with mixing it up a little bit.

Ian Robertson
But I hear you have a you have had an interesting week. So you were telling me about a some inspections you had today where you’re answering lots of questions.

Jay Wynn
Well no, it’s before we signed on. It’s just How was your week and it was like, I’m exhausted. And it’s like, I swear, between my morning and my afternoon inspection today, I probably answered more questions today than I do on a solid month. So I mean, that’s what we’re there to do. We’re there to get people as comfortable as they can with the house. We’re there to field as many questions as possible, you know, decipher what the house needs, what’s going on, help them identify their needs. But it was an intense day, and I am worn out from it. So it was fun. And at the end of the day, both clients really had a good time. And they enjoyed their inspections. And importantly, they signed their check with a smile handed to me and saying that think that they got every dollar worth. So that’s a good feeling right there too.

Ian Robertson
That’s a beautiful thing.

Jay Wynn
But yeah, it is and it was then they were healthy inspections, we had a lot of ancillaries on both of them. I know we’ve talked about ancillaries before, but they’re huge numbers this year are down, we’re not doing the number of inspections that we are but we’ve almost generated the same amount of revenue because our ancillaries are up.

Ian Robertson
Boom and that’s exactly it. You built up before the downturn so that you could work less and make more that’s that’s exactly what you want to do. So and then also you mill wood and you’ve had some interesting situations. Can you tell us?

Jay Wynn
Alright, so yeah, I fired up the sawmill yesterday and I was just running through a log that came off my property back here and here and then the saw blade just dives up I mean it goes right up. So I had it’s not good so I shut the mill down wedge the board back cut it cut the board back with a chainsaw and there’s a great big chunk of metal in there. So I oh boy, what could that be? So I go get a small chainsaw I get my cut the section out and I keep hitting metal and metal and metal and metal finally I hit to clean sections of log. I have no idea what this giant chunk of metal is, but I gotta find out. So I go get a chisel and I start chipping away at the wood and break It turns out it was a horseshoe that somebody had set in the tree at some point. And this was this is about four feet up from the base. So it was not, like, thrown on the ground and grew into this was this was up high, where they hit the log. And this piece of steel has been grown in that tree for probably 80, 90 years. And I happen to find it with the sawmill. So I’ve got a really, really cool heirloom that came from the tree on my property and our horseshoe that God only knows how old it is. It’s gotta be at least 80 years old.

Ian Robertson
So I don’t know if anybody else listening if you think this is as cool, cool. As I do. Jay sent me a picture. Me and my wife both went, that is the coolest thing ever that was well worth losing that blade on your sawmill because this picture this horseshoe, like I was saying before, do you before the show, some kid hanging it up, oh, I found a horseshoe and he hangs up, hangs it up on a sapling. And then almost 100 years go by, and it grew into the middle of and it was in the middle of that tree like it was buried.

Jay Wynn
It was in the middle of it.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, it wasn’t like there was a piece hanging out.

Jay Wynn
No, it’s at an angle to the grain like somebody did exactly that, like, put it in the crotch of a tree and just kind of held down and then the tree just just grew around it and took it in. And there was no indication of it.

Ian Robertson
That’s so cool.

Jay Wynn
It was pretty wild. So maybe I’ll post it on social media or something. Let everybody see it that way, send you a picture if they want to see what it looks like, but it was wild.

Ian Robertson
Well, and a lot of us here in the home inspection community we were from the trades or we like we like doing things like milling our own wood. So stories like that are just cool. It really is neat to look at.

Jay Wynn
Well, you gotta be you gotta have something to relax and to get away from some of this stuff. And that’s part of what I do. So I love doing it. It’s so awesome. I know guys hit stuff in wood all the time and you hear stories about it, but I don’t know anybody that’s hit a horseshoe.

Ian Robertson
You got to have a hobby. But I really want to kind of talk about the subject that you brought up today. I’ve noticed and I said in years past, I remember when the great recession happened. And I said it then too. But I said I think you said it very eloquently. We as inspectors forget the slow season when we’re busy. And we forget the busy season when we’re slow. So let me think I can get this straight and correct me if I’m wrong. So basically, you’re saying we’re hitting the spring market after a big low. And guys are starting to pick up. So maybe not like 2020 numbers, but things are starting to pick up. We’re feeling good. So guys start to drop their marketing, stop, drop visiting offices, stopped doing a lot of things that brought them work back, that bought them market share. And then it’s going to hit us again, probably late fall early winter. And we’re going to feel it maybe even harder than we felt the last winter. Is that what you’re saying? Basically?

Jay Wynn
Yeah, I think I think we tend to get very focused on the moment. And when there’s no work, we get stressed that well, what are we going to do we have no work and then we have slammin’ work, we forget the stresses we were feeling when we weren’t working or why we were stressed. I think we tend to get very nearsighted sometimes, but I honestly think is maybe human nature. I saw it a lot with the trades. And I think because a lot of inspectors come from like a trades background to with us, it seems like it’s real boom or bust. But a lot of guys don’t seem to get the lessons, they don’t seem to realize that. If you don’t change certain behaviors, you’re always going to have the same thing. And I’m going to be honest with you, I’d love to be optimistic about 2023. But I just don’t think we’re out of the uncertainty and I don’t think we’re there yet. And I have a feeling we might have a second wave where things slow down and I got a feeling the second wave is going to put more guys under than the first. I just have a gut feeling about it..

Ian Robertson
So let’s unbox that because I think there’s three good points in there. The first one being you said guys basically don’t learn learn the lessons that they learned or they forget the lessons that they learned, or they forget some key things. I’d like to know what you think those lessons are that we should learn now that the market is picking up a little bit. In most markets, it’s still pretty dead in some. But also too you had brought out about 2023 Not being great for the rest of the year. I’d like to get your outlook on 2023. And then more importantly, 2024. And there’s a couple other points in there. But let’s start out with that. What do you think the lessons learned are that home inspectors forget so quickly? What do they need to remember, now that things are picking up?

Jay Wynn
I think we forget that there’s a cyclical business, even in the best of times that we are going to have a busy season and we’re going to have a slow season and we’re still going to have business expenses, even when we’re slow. I think a lot of guys get booked in they get going through things and I think a lot of people forget the financial end of things. So when things slow down, your you know insurance is still going to be due, your general liability, your marketing your advertising. And I think guys forget that things are going things are going busy. It’s easy to overspend and think it’s always going to be like this. And then when it dries up, guys have forgotten to put money in the bank. They’ve forgotten to set things aside. They forgotten to reduce their debt. And I think that’s what bites guys. They really do. I was talking to my uncle Brian about this, my uncle Brian, he’s a he makes his living selling stuff. He always has buying and selling, buying and selling, buying and selling. And he made a comment to me that was interesting because we were talking about the trades and construction. He says, I have a friend of mine, that his whole business model is selling heavy equipment to contractors. And I go, Well, that’s good. But how many? How much can you do? He goes, Jay, he says he has the sweetest racket in the world. He says when things get busy in the spring, they’ll come and they’ll lay down cash. And they’ll buy the equipment, he says, but as soon as things slow down in the winter, they sell it back to him at a deeply discounted rate, because they need the money. So he just buys it back at a super discounted rate marks it up knowing full well that the same guys are gonna walk in and his office in 8, 10, and not even 8, 10 months, but 8, 10 weeks, buy the equipment back again at a premium. He literally has made his made his whole business model based on this. And he says the guy’s never learn. During the summertime, yeah, there’ll be eating T bones and drinking Guinness. But in the winter, it’s hot dogs and Budweiser, he says and they just don’t figure it out. So you know, here we got some something that these guys can be saving themselves 1000s and 1000s of dollars. But every year because they get stuck in the cycle that they’ve been through before. They don’t change their behavior. And it’s like with us, we are cyclical industry, and I don’t care. Everybody wants boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, but it’s never always going to be a boom, we’re going to have some periods, we’re going to have lulls, we’re going to have times when there’s no inventory, and nothing is moving. And we just don’t have a lot of work. If we’re not financially disciplined, and we don’t have save money set aside to cover our business expenses, those times are going to hurt. And I think a lot of guys coming out of this, we felt the pinch. I think everybody felt the pinch. But I think the guys that didn’t go, Hey, I didn’t like not having money to pay my you know, insurance. I didn’t like having to dial back on my marketing. I didn’t like this. If you don’t remember that you think everything’s fine. Now, you’re not going to put the money aside for when it comes again. And it’s coming again, I believe.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I think you answered the first question really well, and you’ve been in business long enough to know this. And you have a lot of sense about you when it comes to that. I do see that same quality in myself when I was first starting out. Because I remember, I remember my first great year inspecting it was that it was T bone steaks and good wine, you know? And then my first bust year, I’m like, Oh, crud, what happened? Am I terrible? And it wasn’t even a bust year. It was just not that as good. Not that great. What am I terrible? What do I do? You know, if we’re living at the edge of what we make, any little thing is going to take us down. So I see some guys. There was this one guy in the area, I’m like, man, what are you doing? And he’s like, oh, you know, I’m staying busy wasn’t that busy. But he bought a new truck, he got some fancy new equipment, some of which he never used because it was for ancillaries that nobody wanted instead of testing the market, buying some introductory equipment. And went out bought the best stuff, never used it, sold it as a discount, kind of like your like your story there with your uncle Brian, and they’re just living in the moment, we don’t want to live in the moment because that’s not what’s going to make us do really well. But home inspections, we also home inspectors, we have a high failure rate. And nobody really talks about this whole lot. So me and you both teach home inspectors. And we are associated with a couple of different schools. And whatever reasons we want to give for the failure rate, the average home inspection company has an 80% chance of failure. 80% of home inspectors go out of business before they before they ever reached their first license renewal in most states, which is two years. Out of that 20% almost, it’s almost I forget the exact number, but it’s almost 80% of those don’t make it to the five year mark. So and then you think about that on top of it. So that’s two out of 100 inspectors, if I’m doing my math right actually make it and then how many of those are actually active? Some of them just hang on to their license? And do you know 20, 30 a year on the side? So let’s take them out of the equation. There’s a 99, 99 out of 100 home inspectors hypothetically, that won’t make it. That’s yeah. No. Okay, so actually, I did my math wrong. I know there’s some math wiz listening. So what’s that? 12, 12 inspectors, right? 80 plus eight, right. underbite minus 88. This is not a podcast for math. Let’s just put it that way, folks. But let’s but either way, yeah, it’s a high failure rate. It’s a very high failure. And I think a lot of it has to do with not being prepared for the business side of things. We spend so much time I am so prepared because I’m certified to do this. I’m so prepared, because I understand the electric panel better than everyone else. Do we have six months of operating costs in the bank? And I hate saying that because You know, money devalues if a sitting in the bank put it in a high interest rate account. You know, you can go to a place like Marcus or Betterment and get 4.5% interest rate? Do we have six months worth of operating costs, are our operating costs low enough to fit that budget? Or are we spending money left and right? Paying people and for things that we don’t need? What are we paying ourselves? What are we putting back into the business? If we don’t prepare for those things We’re going to be part of that 80% In the first two years. Yeah, no. And I 100% agree with you. Part of the problem I was reading in, I think it was Fortune Magazine. But it could have been Better Business. But they were talking about how so many people refinance during the pandemic with such low interest rates. They have absolutely no motivation to move. Yeah, because there’s nothing for them to buy, first of all, but the primary thing is, why would you sell when you have 2.9, or 3.1% interest rate, that’s free money that’s lower the the inflation rate right now is like 4.9%, the last time I checked about a week ago. So you’re literally paying off your loan for less money, your money’s devalued. So you’re giving the bank, the bank’s taking a cut on it. Why would you go and start paying a higher interest rate. It’s nutty.

Jay Wynn
Yeah, we will. It’s funny what you said about the truck. Because I see that a lot when guys start making money and things are real fat. They want to, let’s face it, they want to enjoy life, they want to have fun, they want to buy what they want. And I don’t blame anybody for that I really don’t. If you if the boating is how you did, you know you love it, that’s great, then get a boat, have a fun time. Love it, enjoy it. But if you already have a boat, like and things are getting busy, do you really need to sell it and buy a bigger boat right now. And that’s the kind of thing if you’ve got a good truck that’s working, is it really in your best interest to give yourself an even heavier payment right now. And saddle yourself maybe even more debt, maybe even more potential. So that’s kind of what I’m thinking about is I think a lot of guys, when things pick up, they start looking at making those changes. And I don’t think this is the right time for it. I just don’t think there’s enough inventory in the market. I don’t think the things with the interest rates and the uncertainty with with the government right now are helping anything. And I just don’t think when things settle down a little bit People are going to be moving around as much, I just don’t think there’s going to be that many houses being sold, which means it doesn’t matter how good you are. If there’s no transactions, or like you’ve said before, there’s no fish in the pond, you can fish all day, and you’ll never get a bite. So I think we have another wave of that coming up. I just don’t see people being comfortable with the economy. I don’t see people being very confident about things. There’s no inventory. And I just don’t see people moving for a while. There’ll always be some.. But the majority won’t be I don’t think. So that makes no sense. Right? Especially if you’re in a decent place, and you’re pretty comfortable and things are pretty stable. And you’ve got, you’ve got your budget figured out, you’ve got to, now unless the house of your dreams comes on the market and or something happens such as a job transfer or divorce or something that forces you to move. But I think a lot of people aren’t going to opt out the situation they’re in. I think a lot of people are very comfortable where they are right now. At least the ones that have homes. I mean, there’s a lot of people renting that I’ve talked to, they’re just so frustrated that they’re chomping at the bit to quit renting. But I think if you’re a homeowner right now, and you have one residence, you don’t have a second one to go to, I don’t see people moving around a whole lot, which means there’s just not gonna be a lot of inventory to inspect.

Ian Robertson
And that, and that’s the problem. And when the inventory is low, there’s more buyers than there are houses, and they start doing things like cutting out the inspection to try to make their offer seem more appealing. I’m starting to see more houses come on the market. But it’s literally like half or less than what it was pre pandemic numbers. If you looked at the number of houses put on the market this year, compared to what they were pre pandemic, pre pandemic, people would have made fun of you. It would never go that low inventory can’t go that low. And it was already considered low pre pandemic, like people were already complaining about the inventory. I think people got used to the posts, Great Recession inventory. There was always houses for sale, you drive down a road, pick a house and there you go. I think people get used to that because it was a good five, six years post post Great Recession, where there was just enough inventory all the time. But now that now there’s not, builders aren’t keeping up either. They’re really not unfortunately, I don’t know if it’s the interest rates or something else but builders are not keeping up increasing the inventory at the rate that people are hoping.

Jay Wynn
Well, we’ve also and just to comment on that, because this is something that’s bothered me for a long time as people have not encouraged the trades for approximately 20 years. So, you know, and I’m gonna say, young man, because it was a lot of young men going into it. But I’ve met a couple of women that were tradesmen as well. So for 20 years, we’ve had people to say, why would you want to work with your hands, go do engineering, go be a lawyer, be a doctor, and it’s been discouraged, and people have been talked away from it. Now we’re feeling the effects of that, because we cannot find skilled people that will work. It’s, you know, when I talk to an agent, we find a problem. The first question they ask me is, do you know anybody that can help us fix this? And the answer that is, no, because we’ve discouraged people from working with their hands for so long, that we have this large generation gap now. And we’re feeling the results of it. You say the builders can’t build it fast enough, it’s because their crews are aging out, the guys that are still doing are in 50, 60. So there’s some guys that are turning 70, and they’re still swinging a hammer, you just can’t do that. And you can’t put the same pressure on a seventy year old man that you can on an 18 year old guy, you’re not going to the same output. I don’t care. So that we’re having a result of that. So some of it’s the labor shortage. And I say skilled labor because there’s a lot more to it than just swinging a hammer. No, and there’s a lot more to it than that. People think anybody can do it. Well, the fact is not anybody can do it, it takes a certain discipline to work with your hands, it takes a certain amount of coordination, it takes a certain mindset and a lot of endurance. You know, if you have a house opened up and you got a storm coming in, you got to have the discipline to stay there and get soaked because you know, you got to cover this thing and, or it’s going to ruin what you just built. And there’s there’s people that just they don’t have that discipline, even if they have the other skill set. And we’re losing that. So now as part of the consequence of that. We need houses built well, we got nobody that can build them.

Ian Robertson
And I think you brought out a good point, too, but I think you’re underplaying the level of skill it takes. People say, anybody can do this when they talk about, I remember when I was in construction, I remember one guy told me, I could do your job, you can’t do mine. He was a business major. And I’m like, Now, I..now, I own multiple businesses. So maybe I can do your job. But that wasn’t the point. He told me, anybody can do your job. And I remember thinking, Okay, if anybody could do my job, why did you vet, you know, like, 10 contractors, and then hire me. And then people complain about the quality of buildings now all they just don’t build them like they used to. I’m like, Yeah, but you’re contributing to that by society saying anybody can do this. This is a dummy job. Holding the dumb end of a hammer, it’s like, it takes a lot of skill to be a good craftsman. When was the last time you saw a great house. And you could tell that that guy just knew what he was doing that takes a lifetime to learn, you can’t learn that in a four year degree that takes a lifetime to learn, okay, this size nail is not going to work in this particular setting, have to have this exact tool. Here’s the code that goes with this particular item. And this is what needs to get done. That’s a skill, it comes easy to you, you’re a skilled tradesman. So it’s easy for sometimes a skilled tradesmen to say, it’s not that hard. It’s kind of like downplaying something, because it’s easy for you. But you give any one of our clients, you know, those doctors and attorneys and all that stuff, by and large, give them a hammer and say, let’s seep you set these doorframes.

Jay Wynn
But I’ve also done it forever. And I love doing it. And that’s the other thing too. I love building. I love buildings, as part of why being a home inspector is so much fun. It’s like it is it really is is like I wake up in the morning. And when I got a full days of inspections, I’ll actually wake up early, and I’m excited, I’ll pull up on my computer, I’ll look at the listings again, I’ll get everything back in my mind, I’ll check the agents and I get excited that I get to go to work, because it’s just such a cool thing to be doing. You know, so I really love it. And that’s true. Maybe I do downplay it a little bit. But the point is, is that we as a society have been discouraging that. And now this is one of the consequences. You need houses, but you don’t have anybody that can build them. And the people that are doing it are maybe not skilled or not oriented to attention to detail. And so that’s why we have new construction with walls that are rotting out five years later because nobody could bother to flash the windows in Right. Or put the you know, the tie back wrap on right it’s just detail things and as inspectors we’re seeing it people go oh well new construction is so great. And then you look at a building four or five years old and the rot you can find in places and the damage done. It’s just not..

Ian Robertson
I think there’s a lot of merit to what you’re saying. So the bank down the road for me I had to go get something notarized the other day and they said due to lack of staff, we will be closed from it was like 11 to one like huh, went to the post office. They’re closed two hours in the middle of the day. And they only have one lady running the running the post office down the road for me, this is odd, odd enough, but I stopped at Wendy’s. I make fun of McDonald’s on this podcast a lot. But I stopped at a Wendy’s. And they were closed. And it was just we don’t have enough staff, they had a little sign, don’t have enough staff. There’s missing staff everywhere. And now people want houses built. And I think I really do agree with you. You have builders that don’t have enough staff to it’s not like everybody from Wendy’s, the post office and the bank said we’re in construction. No they’re having the same problems, too. They can’t keep up. That makes a lot of sense. And I don’t have data to support it. But just anecdotally, that just makes a lot of sense. And contractors are hard to come by. I tried to hire a contractor put in a sidewalk, to be honest with you. At some point, I just didn’t care how much it cost, because I went through 10, 15 contractors, and none of them would even just show up just too busy. I had a guy mowing my mom’s lawn, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t even come he’s just like, Yeah, I’m too busy this year, and we’re dropping you apparently this is the time if we want to go back into contract and go back into contracting because there’s no contractors out there.

Jay Wynn
Oh I’ve thought about it. In fact, I’ve thought about if things keep slowing down, and I ever needed a side job, I can go back and do odd jobs and repairs, but I really don’t want to, I really like what I’m doing. But that was actually I was thinking about that because it you know, since our industry is cyclical. And if we have a slow season and you can’t stand it, or financially, you can’t stand it, maybe it’s time to develop a second source of income, a second source of income stream, you know, something that will float you through the slow times. And I think a lot of guys should be thinking about that, too. If your debt load is so high, that you can’t make enough when we’re busy and save it and get you through it. Maybe you need to start developing other income streams, whatever that might be. But that’s another thought. And that’s what I mean that the slow times can tell you a real lot about yourself and how you’re living. And if you read the feedback, you can start getting some ideas on how to make it easier. And I just think we tend to forget this. That’s why lessons learned. Are we learning from what we got? And I’m not saying this because I have this mastered. I’m saying this because this is something I do every few months as I sit down, and I look at okay, where did I do good? Where did I screw up? Where do I need to improve? What was causing me stress over these last few months? Can I reduce it? So this is just an exercise I do every few months for myself? And in particular, the question that I ask is what’s causing me stress? And how can I reduce it? Yeah, so you know, if you have a hard time paying your credit cards off, and you That’s every time that bill comes in, you get that sick feeling in your stomach, maybe that’s your life telling you, you ought to be handling this while you’re busy, don’t buy the new truck, pay off your debt, you know, just stuff like that. It may not be glorious, may not be fun. But I think the guys that have that discipline, and are focused like that are going to go and do well in the upcoming year. And I think the guys that forget the lessons of the last six months, or get lulled into a false sense of security are going to have another hard winter. And that’s just my feeling with things.

Ian Robertson
The big takeaway from what you’re saying so far for me is live like it’s always the slow season. So if our baseline is our baseline is $5. And the busy season, we get $11. Woohoo, great, but live like we’re on a $5 budget. You want to splurge a little, okay, go to $6. But now when things drop to $1, you have things banked up, you can weather the storm, other guys go out of business, and you’re not living a steak and potato life on a burger and fry budget, as a friend of mine would say, but there was there was a guy one time who hired us for some marketing work. This is an extreme example, but he called me one day and he’s like, Can you can you float me a month for you know, somebody’s sick and this and that and like, is somebody sick? I floated them. You know, I don’t want to throw this out there like I float people but you know, something was going on his family. I don’t know if he was feeding me a line or anything and it was a small marketing package or whatever. But come to find out he went to Jamaica, and then he couldn’t pay his bill the next month. Oh man, can you float me? I’m like, listen, dude, you’re going to Jamaica. You can’t, you can’t pay for your website marketing fee. I couldn’t pay my I couldn’t pay my software fees last month either. And I couldn’t pay for, you know, trying to borrow money from my parents for gas and I’m like, I felt like saying to him, I have a suggestion for you. Don’t go to Jamaica. We all need a vacation. Can you go to Maine? Can you take a weekend camping trip instead of going to Jamaica? You know, it’s a mentality steak and potato lifestyle on a burger and fry budget

Jay Wynn
Yeah it is a mentality. And I just I’m throwing it out there because your podcast is gaining traction guys are listening in, which I think is a real good thing. Because it’s getting guys..

Ian Robertson
I like to hear that.

Jay Wynn
Well, it’s outside the box, we’re not just inspectors, there’s a lot more to it. And so I’m just throwing this out there, just some observations and some thoughts, if you can benefit from them great. If you, you’ll start asking some questions go, well, maybe I can do this, this and this, and it helps somebody, and it helps them get through, and they can ride out the next wave. Awesome. Because the other side of this is I also I think 2024 is going to be better, I think things are going to settle down to some degree, things are going to start loosening up. And I think just the number of inspectors that fall out of the game is going to create huge opportunity for the guys that stay in it. But the scary part of that is, if we lose a lot of good guys, or a lot of real high quality inspectors and they drop out of the game, then we’re back working with people that aren’t qualified to be doing home inspections, and that hurts our industry. That means these new guys that come in with no experience that have had their license for six months, they burst on this scene and think they’re gonna go gangbusters. And that’s never a good thing for our industry, I think. And not saying anything against the guys with six months. But if you got a guy, 20 years, and he knows what’s going on, who you really want looking at this property, somebody that just got licensed up and really doesn’t know anything, or the veteran. And I’m afraid of that happening when things pick back up.

Ian Robertson
Well, I do, I do have a slightly different opinion, because I’ve seen some guys pop on the market with six months experience and do better than the guy with 20 years, not to toot my own horn. But when I when I popped on the market, even looking back at how bad I was, when I first started, there are some guys out there that had been on the market for 20, 30 years that I still feel like I think I improved things a little bit, that without the risk of sounding arrogant, but I’m just defending the maybe you know, a little but the guys new, but I see exactly what you’re saying we’re going to lose good quality inspectors to maybe somebody that just doesn’t know what they’re doing. And there’s a double edged sword to that, because just because they’re a great inspector doesn’t mean they’re a great businessman. So we’re going to lose good inspectors just because they don’t understand business. There’s some inspectors out there that are just stinking amazing, but they have no idea how to weather a storm, financial storm, you know, market storm, whatever. And they just have a hard time getting through it. And they don’t know how to balance a checkbook, so to speak. So we’re gonna lose a lot of good inspectors that way. Then on the other side, you can have a guy who’s really good at business, you know, doesn’t know a doorknob from a dormer.

Jay Wynn
Yeah. So I’m gonna throw something out there to everybody that’s listening, because you’re being actually pretty humble about this. You may have jumped in and done real well, with six and eight months, but you also understood your role. You knew what you were there to do. You’d run businesses before. So you had a head for the business. And where you were weak, you were humble enough to call in help and ask questions. So you were like, everything that an inspector should be young or old or whatever.

Ian Robertson
Aww, thank you.

Jay Wynn
I remember that. And I just remember that because there would be phone calls. And you would call the guys around you and say, I’ve never seen this before. You’d explain is it what is this, this and this mean? I think it might mean this, what’s your take on it? So you were willing to reach out to people that knew more than you, you didn’t walk in there and go I’m the greatest thing ever. Just listen to me, you tapped into all your resources, and you had a good head for business. So guys like you are not the ones I’m worried about. It’s the guys that think home inspection is going to be easy, and they’re gonna ride the gravy train. And all they got to do is take this class, those are the kind of guys that bother me when they jump into the market.

Ian Robertson
There it is. And there’s the qualifier, yeah,

Jay Wynn
Because they give us all a black eye. You know, I’ll have agents that I’ve worked with, and I’ll go on an inspection and they go, Jay, I told the client to go with you, they went with this other guy. And sometimes it’s a 10 minute decompression of these stories of what this guy was doing, or I’ll get reports, this is the other thing I know a lot of agents agents will send me inspection reports and they’ll go Have you ever seen an inspector do this, this, this, look at this and look at this. And I got to look at these reports and go, this is awful. They didn’t write defects, they didn’t document it correctly, they damage the building sometimes. And some, you know, I’ve seen some guys screw some stuff up. And these are all supposedly licensed inspectors. Those are the guys that worry me. Not guys, like we’ve talked about with training, you know, and then a key to that there’ll be guys that come on and say I don’t know what I’m doing. Will you help me? Absolutely. You better believe it. But it’s the other guys I’m afraid that are going to saturate the market when things get busy. And that’s what I’m worried about.

Ian Robertson
And it is cyclical. There’s always going to be different levels of home inspectors coming on the market I think about in 2020 when the market blew up and home inspectors were coming on the market and then doing you know their first month out do 20, 30 inspections and I’m like dude, I didn’t do 20, 30 inspections my first year, you know, and then then they’re like, Oh yeah, I have 500 inspections, those days are over. And a lot of those guys are sadly gone. Because I remember during the Great Recession, I keep going back. I’m an old man telling stories, back in my day…

Jay Wynn
Big recession. 2008?

Ian Robertson
Back, way back in 2006 to 2008, the storm of 2007. But I remember a broker after, after all the fallout, me and him had weathered the storm, and we were sitting there. And I’m like, How do you do it? I’m like, I don’t know how I did it. I basically just sucked it up, took the punches, and did everything I could. I’ve talked about it on this podcast. And he goes, I wasn’t working at McDonald’s. Look at him funny. He’s like, a lot of guys that came on the market. But he’s talking about brokers and agents, and there was his work everywhere. He goes, You come on and eat out all of a sudden, you’d have 10 listings your first month. And for an agent, that’s, that’s ridiculous. And he’s like, they were just taking orders at McDonald’s, I want a Big Mac, there you go. And you get your money. When the time came that they had to work for those same listings for those same sales. They disappeared. And he’s like, and now I have, you know, all the listings I want, because half the agents are gone. That’s kind of the same principles, what happens to home inspectors when the thing when things are hot, bunch of new home inspectors come on. And let’s be frank, the fly by night, guys that are there for a short period. And when it’s hot, and then leave when it gets hard. Unfortunately, you know, that stinks. When that happens. But there’s so much work, nobody notices. When things get hard, they leave. And then when things turn up again, they come back, that’s part of how the market happens, unfortunately, when things are easy, like there were in 2020, mid 2020, through 2021. Yeah, easy work. Now things are hard, you have to work twice as hard for half the work.

Jay Wynn
That’s true. Um, no. It’s just it’s an observation. And I just, it’s hard to watch under qualified individuals, step up to what we do, especially when so much is riding on the line for their clients. And I really think about that as as, as an inspector, these people are basically trusting your expertise, your honesty and your integrity, to protect them with one of the biggest purchases of their life. And especially, you know, you talking about the younger generation, this is a huge deal for them what they have to come up with now to buy a house for down payments for financing, just to get a foot in the door, this is a big deal for them. And they really need the best people possible, watching out for their interests, because unfortunately, they know less and less as the years progress, which makes what we do, I think even more important. So that’s why I really liked the idea of having experienced people teaching the younger guys coming in that want to know how to do it right. And understand, it’s like the last thing we talked about was training, and passing the torch and educating that’s why I’m such a big proponent of it. Because I really think that our job is just going to get more and more important. As the as the next few years progress. You know, I was talking with one young man that we know, we both know, looks like he’s going to be getting married. And he was excited to find an apartment for $1,100 a month.

Ian Robertson
That’s incredibly low.

Jay Wynn
Yeah. But I mean, back in my day, it was 400 bucks. Yeah, to have an apartment, a nice apartment. And I’m looking I’m like, that’s almost three times what our first mortgage was without the taxes and stuff. And he goes, Jay, he says, to get into a house right now, I’d have to come up with a $60,000 downpayment, he says, and I don’t have it. So you know, that’s what I mean is that in order just to get into the game now to buy a house to be stable, to have what we consider normal family life, these younger people have to put a lot more in, and they’re counting on us to protect them. So I take that serious, and that’s why I associate with professionals that take me take that serious too. And that’s why honestly that’s the biggest reason that the fly by nighters really bothered me, is they’re just not looking out for the clients.

Ian Robertson
You know, if I had to personify the purity of the home inspection industry it’d be you, buddy. That’s because I know that that’s exactly what you believe you are the quintessential home inspector. And that’s, that’s a beautiful thing and you live by what you do. If anybody wants help or training you give it to them. You want guys to succeed that want to work for it and you don’t put up with you don’t put up with crap from guys that don’t want to actually do the right thing. So that’s that’s a beautiful thing. And that’s why we have you on the show. And I think that’s why we’re such good friends among many different reasons. But I agree with you about the whole lessons learned thing though. We need to stop living in the slow season like a slow season and the busy season like as the busy season. We need to find some sort of middle ground more towards a slower season. And then until we can actually bank up at least six months of business operations. Now, that’s going to be a lot harder for guys who own bigger businesses, if you have 50 inspectors six months of business operations is a lot. But you know, for the average solo operator, or two or three guys, can we look at this as how much it costs? What do we need to scale back on to get six months of operating costs?

Jay Wynn
I think that’s a good point is it and here’s the thing I would add, even if you’re a small scale, or a single operator, I would include a wage in there. I would include six months where you could theoretically pay yourself something every week, even if it was a reduced wage, you know, so it’s not just what’s my overhead for my errors and omissions or my insurance or my marketing, it’s, and what do I need to do making so that so that my family eats, and I’m not stressed out of my mind. And I would include that in there too. Just something to throw out there for everybody to think about. But we have to pay ourselves, we have to pay ourselves when we’re busy. We have to pay ourselves when we’re slow. And I’m sorry, profit’s not a four letter word, folks, we work very hard. And we have the right to enjoy the benefits of that. And just when things slow up, we should keep that in mind too. We still need to pay ourselves even when things get slow.

Ian Robertson
Very true. We’re in business for ourselves. That does not mean we are a charity, we work hard, we get paid well, when we do a good job. So big takeaways. live within our means a little under so that we can put some away, make sure that we have I think it’s Dave Ramsey’s, or Dave Ramsey, or somebody else who said have six months of living expenses. So personally have that. But right now, if you’re having a slight uptick, be excited, be happy. Save the steak for later, though, because I agree with Jay, I think the rest of 2023 is going to be a little choppy. 2024 will be better, but it’s not going to be gangbusters. And it’s also an election year. So you never know what’s going to happen. The market reacts to whatever election drama happens to be happening. And it usually happened building up to the election not after. But enjoy the slightly busier season. Take some money, put it aside. Listen to Jay, he’s been around a long time and he’s weathered some storms. But Jay, I’m almost out of Manhattan here. I don’t know how you’re doing on yours. But I think it’s I think it’s time to say goodnight to everyone, oh, your, you have your last sip. So perfect timing.

Jay Wynn
Refill time. And just keep something in mind. For everybody listening, this is just a couple guys throwing ideas around and, and having a little bit of fun with things that you get to kind of be a fly on the wall for the conversation, you know, take what you can from it, have a little bit of fun, but do the best you can too you know, I just want good people to do well and succeed. I think that’s your aim with this too.

Ian Robertson
100%.

Jay Wynn
I mean, that’s what I gleaned is that it’s a lot of this information is just, you know, some people would say why are you giving this away? Because good people should hear this so that they can do better.

Ian Robertson
And my whole thing is you give a hammer to 1000 people, not all 1000 people are going to build something out of it. You know. So the people who really deserve this information, they’ll do something with it. So keep listening in. This tends to be one of our looser segments because we are enjoying whiskey and talking around a campfire basically. But..

Jay Wynn
Yeah, this isn’t scripted either. This is just back and forth too you know, we don’t sit down okay. This is just two guys talking, which is kind of why I enjoy doing it.

Ian Robertson
Two old cranky home inspectors.

Jay Wynn
Two cranky home inspectors. Yeah, I mean, my goal I don’t care what you say is to be either Statler and Waldorf from the old muppet show.

Ian Robertson
That should be everyone’s goal.

Jay Wynn
Should be..stroll the stage so and if you know who Statler and Waldorf are you’re awesome.

Ian Robertson
All right, so that’s a great note to end on. Thank you, Jay for being on. Appreciate it.

Jay Wynn
Have a good night, Ian.

Ian Robertson
You too.

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

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*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.