“PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS”? HOW ABOUT “PLAY TO YOUR WEAKNESSES” INSTEAD. SEE WHY IN THIS WEEK’S EPISODE!
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CHAPTER MARKERS
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Embracing and Improving Weaknesses
7:09
Improving Weaknesses Through Mindful Practices
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. Today, I have a podcast that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and it’s one of my favorite mantras. I don’t know if I’m using the right word for that, it’s one of my favorite sayings that I try to live by, and it’s basically the opposite of play to your strengths. It’s play to your weaknesses. I say this because so much in life is playing to our strengths. If we are a good batter, we tend to be a batter. If we tend to be really good with our hands, we take a job where we work with our hands. It’s a good way to go about life as a general rule of thumb. But ultimately, in my life experience, playing to my weaknesses has been an advantage.
Ian Robertson
And I’ll open up, I said these weaknesses on podcasts before, start with something broader. My weakness when I was younger was always people. And you may not believe that about me,but you know, I was not a very extroverted younger man, and you know, some of the interpersonal stuff of marketing kind of escaped me. Butyou know, what I was really good at was digital marketing, and so I played to my strength, but what I realized is I couldn’t do just one thing. That’s how you become a one trick pony. You play to your strength too much, and you don’t have any other tricks in your bags when the market shifts one way or the other. So early on, I found my weakest points, and I worked on them. Wherever you’re working on something, it’s going to be a bit painful. You know, you’re working out a muscle, and you know, no pain, no gain, you’re going to have to hurt that muscle, so to speak, to get it to grow and to get stronger.When we have weaknesses, it’s going to hurt a little bit to train them.
Ian Robertson
But one of the biggest things that I find when home inspectors call me is that they are completely ignoring their weaknesses, and we all have them. I’ll give you an example. I don’t do coaching, and I really am flattered. I have people all the time just calling and asking, hey, can you make an exception? Can you coach us? And it’s just, we don’t, I don’t do coaching, but privately, I like to help inspectors still, and one of the things that I always find is being consistent in 99% of people I talk to is just that, yeah, I’m really good with people, you know, technology that escapes me, so I find what works for me and they stick with it. That’s how you get the guy that’s really good at shaking hands and kissing babies, but when he hands in the report, it’s an old word document, people have a hard time with it. Or that’s how you get the guy that’s really good at digital marketing and getting everything organized. He has his whole business organized, and he just, it just completely escapes him why agents and clients don’t refer him more. If we ignore our weaknesses, that’s what ends up happening, we have a chasm in the middle of our, of our business.
Ian Robertson
Even down to a smaller scale, if we want to apply this to our inspections themselves. When I first started out, I’ve said this before, my weakness was electrical, and it’s just not anything that I grew up doing a lot of so could I pop in a breaker? Could I wire an outlet? Sure. But there were situations where I’m like, oh my goodness, this isintimidating. So I’m not the perfect example. But what I did was I went and I took every electrical course I could find, sometimes twice, and I forced myself, and it was painful to see how stupid I was about electrical. But I didn’t want to just get better at electrical. I wanted electrical to be, not even a remote weakness anymore. So I worked that muscle, so to speak, until I got to the point where I taught courses on electrical, basic electrical theory, electrical application, how to inspect it, how to write up defects, what would be the cure, allthat stuff, and looking back on it, that was, that was so advantageous for me, it became one of my strongest suits on an inspection.
Ian Robertson
So let’s talk about this for just a moment. How can we play to our weaknesses and not necessarily always to our strengths? So first of all, we need to rethink our weaknesses as, just like any other muscle in our body, rethink it as not something that intimidates us, but as something that we can make stronger. You know when, when you’re working out, the greatest gains, so to speak, are going to be on the muscles that have never been worked before. If you’ve never done a squat, you’re going to see the greatest gains by just squatting. So it’s the same thing with our weaknesses. One of the most beautiful things about our weaknesses is, no matter, whatever we put in, we’re going to automatically start seeing improvements. It’s going to hurt, but we’re going to see improvements. So start rethinking our weaknesses, instead of being something that we ignore or work around, instead we make it something that we focus on. So grab a piece of paper and do this for me after this podcast, do this for yourself rather. Go through and ask our wife, our friends, our whoeverand say, what would you say are my biggest weaknesses in business? Get through all the fluff of, oh, you’re awesome. Everybody has weaknesses, yada yada yada. Get through all that fluff, and then getat least three to five. And I say three to five because if they can’t name three to five, they’re probably, they probably haven’t noticed anything, aren’t looking close enough, or they’re being too nice. But three to five things that are our weaknesses. Identify them in ourselves. Is it something in marketing? Is it something about how wego about our inspections? Do we take five hours on our inspection reports? Do we tend to not embrace new technology? And we have to be pretty honest with ourselves here too, like I’ve met lots of guys that said, oh, I embrace new technology. Oh, okay, are you using a drone? No, no, we don’t use drones. I would never use a drone. Okay. What software do you use? I don’t use any software. I use it on carbon paper. Are we really embracing new technology? So it takes a lot of honest self-evaluation to know what our weaknesses are, andhopefully we have a friend that’s honest enough to tell us that. If you want brutal honesty, go to one of the Facebook groups, tell them what you do and how you do it, and then ask them what your weaknesses are, and you’re totally going to get some pretty honest answers. Just brace yourself before you do that, if you choose to do that. So that’s the first thing, rethink our weaknesses, focus on them, instead of ignoring them, and then view them as opportunities for growth.
Ian Robertson
Then third, we need to identify how we approach our weaknesses. Soyou know, sometimes when we have a medical condition, we view it as something that hinders us. When we have a weakness in our business or as a home inspector, we view it as something that hinders us. Don’t approach our weaknesses like that. Approach them objectively. So they call it metacognition. If you want to look it up, it’skind of an interesting study, but it’s basically removing ourselves from a situation in ourselves and saying, am I viewing this right? Howwould anybody else view this? What’s an objective opinion on it? Then, after we’ve done that, change how we view it. So a couple of examples here. Richard Branson, I don’t know if you know this, but he’s dyslexic, and he’s struggled with the traditional schooling. But instead of letting it hold him back, he didn’t view it as a weakness. He embraced learning and then turned that lack of formal educationinto a skill, and then he went back and relearned, but in a different way. So he says it’s been integral to his Virgin brand.
Ian Robertson
On a different level, think of Nick Gromicko. I mean, it’s Nick Gromicko. He’s the founder of InterNACHI, he’s a high school dropout. I think he dropped out one grade after I did. I didn’t make it past the ninth grade, but that’s an example of, okay, do we let the weakness continue to be a weakness? No, we step back and said, oh, okay, there’s something here that I’m missing. Go back, strengthen that muscle. So here’s a couple of techniques for embracing our weakness, taking it and saying, here is what I have, here is my weakness, and then turning it into something good.
Ian Robertson
First of all, seek mentorship and coaching. Ironically, just after I tell you guys I don’t do coaching, seek it. You’ll find that people who really want you to succeed will objectively look at you and tell you brutally honestly what you need to do. If you’re listening to this podcast and you’ve had that phone call with me, I’ve done it hundreds of times, somebody called and said, I need help, and I am brutally honest, because I want you to succeed. So seek coaching in one form or another. Find a local home inspector is my favorite thing. We’ve had Jay Wynn on this podcast a million times, super close friend. I mean, he’s a chosen brother basically more than a friend. And you know what he loves to do, is to coach. There’s guys out there like him. Find guys like like him to say, okay, what am I doing wrong? Why am I going about this inspection but the agent or the client doesn’t refer me, you know? Why can’t I just, why can’t I just figure out the heating unit, I’ve taken every course, and I just can’t figure it out. Guys like that will tell you, so seek mentorship or coaching, because I can guarantee you, those that coach have been coached, that’s why they, we step back and we’re like, man, they’re awesome because they’ve been coached and people have helped them through those things.
Ian Robertson
Second thing is practice with intention. Now that sounds like a buzz phrase. I hate phrases like that, because it doesn’t give you anything actionable, but this really is actionable. Set small, achievable goals and track your progress. So practice with intention. So a good example of that is say our our weakness in business is maybe mine. Like I had a hard time going to mixers and meeting and greeting and shaking hands and kissing babies, wasn’t my thing. So make small goals. So we’re going to make a small goal of I’m going to do an office meeting, and then I’m going to do that in January, do at least one. February, I want to do at least two. March, I want to do two office meetings and a lunch with an agent, and then let that build up.Don’t stop at okay, well, I do two a month now I’m good. Remember, we want to work that muscle so that that weakness becomes a strength, not just less weak. So practice with intention. Go in and write down small wins. Okay, this first time, just showing up. That’s my win. Next time I want to make at least one person follow up with me, or I follow up with them, write down each goal so that by the end of the year, we have a list of goals that we’ve met and make the goals small and achievable. And I say achievable because we can’t write down, have 50 referring agents by the end of the year. We can’t make them refer us, but we can build that muscle up that weakness, so that becomes a strength, and then eventually they will refer us. So practice with intention. Don’t just do the things actually work at it same thing as if you know, maybe HVAC is our weakness. On a home inspection, don’t just take courses and say, well, I took 50 courses. Practice with intention. Take the course. Now we learned about boilers. Okay, I’m gonna go to my buddy’s house. He has a boiler. I’m gonna practice this. Okay. I think I figured it out. I have an HVAC friend. I’m going to just show it to him. What do you think? Be honest, what did I miss? Then go back and take another course that’spracticing with intention. Using that exercise illustration, if we go intothe gym 10 times a week and we don’t eat right, and we’re using 10 pound weights, just being in the gym will not make our muscles strong. Just doing the thing is not going to make us less weak in that area. So practice with intention.
Ian Robertson
And third, celebrate small wins. You know, it’s amazing how simple my brain is. I have always, for as long as I can remember, made lists of things that I need to do every day. I have a list. And I have different lists for different, you know, silos of what company I’m working with and which aspect I’m working with. And I always do theeasy things first, and then I have, like, a little celebration in my head. I’m like, sweet. I got that done. I got to check it off. And I have software too that’ll make it it’ll, like, jiggle, like I met it, I met the goal,and the little goal will jiggle and then kind of pop away, and I’m like, yay, it jiggled. And so that’s how simple my mind is, and I love it. It’s alittle celebration. However we celebrate small victories, small wins. It helps us to mark progress. We’re very likely not going to recede backpast that small win that we celebrated, because we celebrated it andour mind pushed us forward. So if we’re celebrating, I took an agent out to lunch. Maybe it was super awkward. We made it so weird, they’re never going to refer us. We spilled soda on them. We got ketchup in our mustache, and that we didn’t realize it, and it just sat there the whole time. Whatever. Celebrate the win, we brought an agent out to lunch that might refer us. Celebrate the win that, you know, what? The father-in-law in the inspection was not nice to us the whole time, but he shook our hand at the end and he said, thanks. That was an okay job. Cool. That’s what we were shooting for. Okay, now we want to get to blow the father-in-law out of the water with our next inspection. So celebrate the small wins.
Ian Robertson
Remember that this has a ripple effect. When you work on weaknesses, the effects often ripple out. So improving one area like time management, maybe we have a problem with time management. So maybe we go on an inspection, and we’re taking way longer than anybody else in our market. We’re five hours on a on a 1500 square foot house on a slab, you know, and we’re wondering why. So now we say, okay, well, the agent mentioned to me that I go up to the attic, and then I go back into the kitchen, then I go into the basement, then I go back up to the attic. My goal is to visit one area once, and only go back to that area if I find something or during my final walk through to make sure everything’s okay, or I want to combine things. So if I’m doing a well flow test, maybe I can run the well flow test in the tub and measure it that way. So that wayI’m testing the drainage and I’m testing the septic system in the well flow, whatever it happens to be, if we work up a little bit of a system, that’s going to ripple into other things. So it might enhance our reliability. So if we get better at managing our time on inspections, do we find that maybe we’re the inspector that’s always rolling in hotinto an inspection? You know, 10 minutes late, nothing crazy, but we’re late, and we kind of show up all frazzled, and it takes us a whileto calm down. If we work on time management on our inspection, things like that tend to fall into line with it, because it changes how we think. Both our work life and personal relationships will be affected. So embracing our weaknesses not only builds character within ourselves, changes who we are in a better way, but often leads to unexpected strengths. One of the things that I find is my strength is I’m really good in taking large concepts and making them into a system. That didn’t come naturally. I found out about that by doing time management. I’m like, okay, how do I manage my time better, to be efficient and to do better in everything? And then I found out, oh, hey, I’m pretty good at taking a large concept, and turning it into something that I can map out. You’re going to find some pretty awesome strengths by overtaking those those weaknesses.
Ian Robertson
So listen, our weaknesses are uncomfortable. They really are and we’re never, ever, ever, ever, and however long we try get rid of our weaknesses. Take it one step at a time, find our biggest ones, improve, strengthen that muscle, and as we do, we’ll find that playing to our weaknesses instead of our strengths, is going to be one of the biggest business advantages that we’ve ever made, and one of the best advantages to even just being a better home inspector. So thanks for listening in, and we’ll see you next time on the show.
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.
