PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. Today on we have the Swede himself. David, how are you?

David Nyman
Doing great, Ian, and thanks for wearing a matching shirt like I asked you to.

Ian R
Oh, are we wearing matching shirts? Nice.

David Nyman
It has some kind of green tone, right?

Ian R
Yeah, this will be our new ITB uniform. Or me and you could just dress the same for the fun of it. You know, like when twins go out and they, you know, like the Doublemint twins.

David Nyman
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You have to shave your head first.

Ian R
Yeah, see, things are getting weird already. So, and I’d have to grow like nine more inches. You got almost a foot on me. So we’re going to talk today about relationships, not awkward ones like me and you have, but we’re going to talk about relationships, because we’ve heard that before, this is a relationship business. And I’ve always thought that was really diminutive of what relationship building is all about. And I’ve even had other inspectors asked me they’re like, what do you mean by relationship business? It’s just really diminutive. That’s like saying, the law business is just about laws. It’s like, okay, what laws? How do you use them? What aspects can you utilize in one way versus another? So we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about this a little bit today. And I picked you for this podcast, David, on purpose. I don’t know if you know that.

David Nyman
No. I thought you were just desperate.

Ian R
No, no, not desperate. I wanted you specifically for this because me and you are polar opposites when it comes to this. There are two types of relationships. And we’re going to, we’re going to really drill down into this because from a marketing standpoint, I love psychology. I’ve mentioned that in other podcasts, because the more you understand psychology, and why we do things, the better we can market, it’s like understanding, you know dog training, understanding your dog, the better you understand why they do things, the better you can train them, the better we can market by understanding ourselves and others. So there’s two types of relationships that we actually use in business. There’s, and there’s multiple subtypes, which we might touch on a little bit. But we’re gonna go just down the route of two things. So you have a relationship up at the top of the chart. And it’s split into two different roads, parasocial relationships and social relationships, which for the sake of this podcast, we’re actually going to call intersocial relationships, just a little bit of fine tuning there to kind of differentiate a little bit. Both of these relationships are very important. But we oftentimes get them very much confused. So here’s my point. I am very good at parasocial relationships. Intersocial relationships, I’m not so great at. I’m super awkward at a party, man. And I’m just gonna stand off in the corner, be like, okay, I’m gonna weirdly dance, stare at this picture and this plant, I’ll play with the leaves on the plant. You are probably just the opposite. You’re very good at intersocial relationships. And you’ve told me before that you feel awkward with the parasocial type of relationships. Is that a fair assessment?

David Nyman
I mean, you could say that, even though I do have a hard time at parties. It depends. It depends actually, I gotta be, like, specify that. So if it’s a party with people I know, it works out pretty well for me. But if I have a large group of people that I don’t know most of them, I like to, you know, kind of gravitate towards the ones I know better and, and talk to them. I’m not good at getting to know new people I guess that way.

Ian R
Okay. I disagree with that, because I think you have a very wide circle of friends. And you get along with people. And you are most looked at picture on Google business. And I’ve mentioned this before.

David Nyman
Well, people like to look at me.

Ian R
Yeah, of course.

David Nyman
Who can blame them.

Ian R
Come on. But no, it’s people like you, our people who use our app, everybody he would support. Oh, David was awesome. Just this morning, I was talking to a user, and he’s just like, oh, my goodness, David is awesome, because you’re good at those intersocial relationships. But the reason being that we’re talking about this is because we need to understand both of these relationship types, and how they apply to our home inspection business. Because both of them are critical. But invariably, a home inspector will do one, and not enough of the other or any of the other. And I’ve always seen a golf go lopsided. I’m gonna tell you the tale of two inspectors. One was an inspector who, this guy I know, both of them I know. But he was a very good intersocial marketer. He built relationships by, intersocial is, interacting with other people and building a two way relationship. This is oftentimes the one that we think of the most. He would go to all these events, he would meet people, greet people, they would instantly like him. And he was really great at those relationships, but he could not get his business to a million dollars. And that was his goal. He always talked about that, I gotta get my business to a million dollars, which that’s a whole different podcast. I didn’t agree with it. Getting your business to a number but not make, but making less is weird to me. But he didn’t. He couldn’t get there because he was only doing one side of the relationship building, the intersocial. He had an almost no social media presence. And he had a single web page for his website and half the time his website wasn’t working. So he was missing a key component. Then I know guys who do a parasocial relationship. Now a parasocial relationship, which we’ve talked about on this podcast before is a one sided relationship. So we, David and I right now are building a parasocial relationship with you as our listener. If you’re driving in your truck, heading to an inspection, whatever, listening to our podcast, we’re building a parasocial relationship. We’re not interacting. But it builds a relationship because you guys get a view into who we are, how we think. It’s the same reason that people love celebrities, but they’ve never actually met them. So there was another inspector that I, that I know, he was having a hard time. And this was actually a stumbling point for me in my business years ago, because he did everything parasocial. He did all these videos and people loved and liked it and things like that. But if you ever heard the expression, this is the fallacy of a parasocial relationship. Never meet your heroes. Why do you think they say that, David?

David Nyman
Well, for one thing, they’re gonna disappoint you every single time.

Ian R
Yup.

David Nyman
You build this perfect persona up in your head, especially. I mean, it’s very easy with actors, artists, because they show their best side, they have a team of both makeup artists, they might not even be posting this, well, most likely aren’t posting their social media themselves. It’s someone doing it for them. So you get this persona. Like, I mean, I could drop a name here, but too many people will probably hate me for it. She’s a very good businesswoman. She’s very famous and very popular. But that’s not the real person that you’re, you’re just seeing something that was created.

Ian R
Yeah. And so what happens is, we are on a very personal level meeting people. So if we have only parasocial marketing, like we’re really great on our social media, really great on our website, really great with everything, even parasocially, when people call us we can still have a parasocial relationship. We’ll get into the weeds of that. When they meet us, we’re setting ourselves up for agents and clients almost having a level of disappointment. Not because we’re a bad inspector or anything, but it’s like, man, you posted this video, you’re finding all these defects. When we walk through their house, we’re like, hey, things look pretty good. And they’re like, where’s the where’s all the cool stuff that you usually find in your videos or things like that. So both of those things are not good or bad in of themselves. But they have to cross over for a successful business. So I thought we could go through a little bit of how to build a parasocial relationship with people, but also build intersocial relationships so that we can, we can properly market our business. Now, I actually wrote down I have it in front of me, I don’t write many things when we do a podcast, I usually like to do my research and get my thoughts together. But when we’re looking at parasocial versus intersocial relationships, we want to have a heavier focus on one type of relationship with another depending on who we’re dealing with. A parasocial relationship is what the kind of relationship we want to try to keep a heavy weight on with our clients, with an intersocial relationship with everyone else. So as we think about that, there’s a couple of reasons why I’ve gone the other way, sometimes the intersocial relationship with my clients and the parasocial with like agents as an example. When I have intersocial with my clients, they’re calling me all hours of the day. Every time they hire a contractor, they’re asking me questions, who should I hire this or that, which I’m happy to do, but they feel a level of accessibility with me. But that doesn’t mean I want to take away all that intersocial relationship. I want to have some, but it needs to be heavy on the parasocial. Ian did our inspection, and they have this image of me. And they appreciate that. Agents on the other hand, I’d like to keep at arm’s length because I’m just weird. I’m like, oh, man, they’re gonna ask me to go out and have dinner with them and other agents, and I’m gonna have to sit there and talk, and I just want to go home and watch Star Trek. But agents want more of an intersocial relationship. And even the attorneys we work with, mortgage companies, whoever we’re marketing to, that brings us the client. We still want to have parasocial, we want to have a little bit of distance. but we also want to make sure that agents and people, those type of referral sources have more of an intersocial relationship with us. So I know I keep interjecting these terms back and forth. But I kind of wanted to get into the weeds of this a little bit. So David, help me, help us with building good intersocial relationships. What, what are your thoughts on that? How can we do that?

David Nyman
Yeah, so I gotta tell you all my trade secrets.

Ian R
I know, I want every last one of them.

David Nyman
It’s funny, though, because as you’re talking about this, I was thinking a bit about, you know, I’ve done other support too, not just for our app, I’ve done support for other businesses and things. And it does become a problem with intersocial relationships, because you, so you want to give good support, people like you, you know, you help them out with their issues. But the same thing has been, you know, preached everywhere you do this, like, try to direct them to always go through the official channels, because all of them try to go to you personally. And there’s a couple of issues with that. One, you could get burnt out, you know, you’re trying to help everyone that wants, you’re trying to be good to everyone. But also, the quality of service they get is actually lessened because now, if you are gone one day, and the email sits in your inbox, even though there’s other people available to help them, they’re not getting the help they need. So yeah, it’s something that you have to be careful with. Because you do, you do want to be nice, approachable, you want to be helpful, and that kind of builds that trust in you. But at the same time, you want to make sure that they know that you’re not the only person running this business. And as a home inspector, you know, that might be, mean that you do have your support team, you might have a call center that you’re using, you might have, you know, other inspectors on the team. So kind of making sure that that relationship gets widened out and not just you but it’s a, it’s a family affair. I don’t know if that kind of brought us off topic a bit.

Ian R
It did. But that’s okay. It’s a good point to remember, especially as for those of us who are single inspectors. That’s when I always found it the hardest to keep the intersocial and the parasocial relationships separate. When I hired a call center, that’s when I realized that I was intersocial too much with my clients. Because once they had to call a call center, 90% of those calls never made it to me. It was a simple question that the call center could answer or they’re like, oh, okay, nevermind, I don’t want to bother him. And then it, it creates a level of distance. But we still want to be approachable. There’s a, there’s a buddy of mine. Everybody comes to him with his problems. And he was actually ironically going to somebody else saying, everybody comes to me with their problems. And he goes, the problem is you’re not approachable. He’s like, what do you mean, I’m approachable. He goes, no, you’re not approachable. You’re inviting. There’s a big difference. We want to be approachable with our clients, but not so inviting that they feel that they have access to us. I’ve had home inspectors talk about clients coming to their home, client came and knocked on their door, and is like, hey, I had some questions. We really got the balance of parasocial with intersocial way off there.

David Nyman
Hey, you inspected my home. Now I want to inspect yours.

Ian R
Yeah, exactly, I wanna show you how it feels. But I guess because it gets complicated, and it gets fuzzy. If I had to summarize how I work it is agents get my cell, clients get the business line. The difference is if an agent or somebody saying, calling me, hey, Ian, we’ve built an intersocial relationship. I’ve referred 100 clients to you in the past few years here, I’m only going to call you when you know, something’s happening. And we’re working together to take care of this client. Oh, okay. They have my cell number for that. That’s an intersocial relationship with a bit of parasocial. But now my client, who’s used me once, has random questions about the report three months later, on page 37, subsection B, it’s like they don’t get my cell. So building those intersocial relationships are oftentimes what we focus on. So let’s talk about relationship building there. If we’re, especially if we’re just starting off, or if we’re like, oh, man, I wish I could get more business. We tend to focus on parasocial too much. And then sometimes we focus on intersocial too much. The guys who focus on parasocial too much. I had a inspector who called me about a month ago. And if he listens, I don’t know, there’s actually more than one person talks about this with me, because I have this conversation a lot. But I just remember this one guy who’s like, I want to build my business. I’m like, cool. Let’s talk about relationship building. Let’s talk about what we’re doing parasocially, intersocially. And he goes, okay. I posted on my Facebook page last month. Nobody looked at it. I’m like okay, how many offices do you, did you visit? I don’t go to offices anymore, I went to some, and there was nobody there. I’m like. So first of all, he’s just trying things once and not going anywhere. So then he started doing more social media marketing. Because let’s be honest, it’s easy to throw up a video once a week and say, hey, everybody, here’s a TPR valve. Look at this little lever. If you lift on it, hot water comes out this pipe. That didn’t really build a parasocial relationship with me anyways, we’ll talk about that in a minute. But he was skipping what was actually hard, which are the inner social relationships. We all love to, I mean, listen, you’re gonna have guys like Preston Kincaid, or AJ, or others who are just like killing it out there on social media, but those guys are not doing that on their own. They’re building, they’re building both types of relationships. But for the average guy like us, I mean, are we going to become internet famous? No. So we need to have the intersocial relationships. And that comes from meeting and greeting, shaking hands, and kissing babies.

David Nyman
Yeah. Not too many babies tho.

Ian R
No, and ask permission first

David Nyman
Because then you become a politician.

Ian R
Yeah, that gets weird if you start kissing babies and running away, they’re like, ahh.

David Nyman
Not even my baby. Just a client in my office, but yeah, I mean, I think part of the problem, I think, is that people don’t listen enough to each other.

Ian R
Oh yeah.

David Nyman
And that’s a big part of the whole intersocial relationship. Everybody wants to say what they have to think. But they don’t want to listen to what someone else has to say. And the thing is, it’s not just about letting them talk for a long period of time. Because if you don’t pay attention to what they say, they’re going to know it. It doesn’t take long before they like, he doesn’t care at all what I say, he just gives me a little time slot to talk, and then he takes over. So that is something that is the basis of building a relationship there.

Ian R
What did you say?

David Nyman
You know what, I’m done. I’m turning my camera off right now.

Ian R
No, I’m just teasing you.

David Nyman
I can’t do that quickly.

Ian R
I’m just teasing you. But you hit the nail on the head, we worry too much about what we’re going to say when really, people just want to be heard. So I had a difficult client recently. And so I called them. And they just went off, up one side of me, down the other. And I listened. And I would repeat back sections of what they said. And I would try to empathize with them. I know that how that feels. I’ve had an experience like that. But I’m not saying I understand you completely with how you feel. But I think I’m getting it. And you know, at the end of it, it wasn’t resolved. It wasn’t really an issue. It just wasn’t resolved. But they love me because you just let them listen. And there was a relative of mine who used to say, if you get people talking about themselves and expressing themselves, you’ve just made a friend, people will tell me, oh, man, I had the best conversation with Ian. And I’m like, I didn’t say anything. I was just, you know, it was a very one sided conversation. But that is that is key. I really think you hit it on the head there, David, is that, listen.

David Nyman
And it’s hard too because, oh…

Ian R
See, you weren’t listening.

David Nyman
So sometimes, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it’s easy to get into the rut of okay, what am I going to say next? Especially like, if it’s not a natural setting, like you mentioned that a real estate agent, you might be a bit nervous. So you’re thinking, okay, what am I gonna say next, and focusing too much on what you’re gonna say next is making you tune out what they are saying right now. So what you’re saying next is not gonna make any sense in the conversation.

Ian R
Yeah, and that’s exactly it. We should just let it happen naturally. And if we’re awkward, embrace the awkwardness. Do you know how many other awkward agents that I’ve met, that I still work with them? And I’ve even had people say stuff along those lines, kind of like, I’m glad I met somebody like me. You know, it’s like, sometimes half the people sitting around with us are worried about what they’re gonna say next. And so it’s just embrace the awkwardness. So a lot of this comes down to going outside of our comfort zone. Parasocial is, on the surface anyways, easier. That’s what people think. And that’s why we get, we get out there, and we sit in our underwear at our desk and start sending out emails, sending out mass text messages, sending out social media, videos, and posts, and you know, friending people and all this other stuff. Because let’s be honest, that takes very little emotional effort.

David Nyman
Just for the record, I do have pants on.

Ian R
That’s good. Yeah, no comment on my end. No, just kidding. But there was a, there was a successful inspector that I was just talking to. He says he is emotionally drained at the end of the day. But, he goes, I tell you what, it builds a great business. So it’s kind of like shoveling a ditch. If you shovel harder, you’re gonna get the better ditch, you’re gonna get farther than everybody else. Are you gonna be a little more tired at the end of the day? Yeah. So let’s dig. Here’s some quick recommendations. Some of them you’ve probably thought of if you’re listening, and some of them you’ve probably not thought of, and some of them you’ve probably thought of, but really didn’t want to do. The staples are going to be open houses and offices, it’s, I don’t care if the agents are not there. That’s the biggest excuse that I hear. Agents are there. They’re there eventually. I can name dozens of companies that I’ve helped build, and helped guys build rather, recently, over the past year or two, that office visits, one of their primary ways of marketing, open houses, office visits. Another thing is go to all of these events, are they going to charge you to go into your local MLS event? Yes. You know where you should be? Right there. With your uniform on, nicely dressed, clean, clean cut, you know, or beard trimmed if you have one, hair done, you know cleaned up, not right after an inspection.

David Nyman
If you have it.

Ian R
If you have it, if you have the hair, do up your hair. We should be at those. Do we need to booth every time? No. But can you grab a cocktail, or non alcoholic cocktail, whatever you prefer, and start mingling, awkwardly stand there. Whatever it is. Go out to lunch with agents. We’ve talked about that before. Here’s something that you might not have thought about before. When was the last time that we as a home inspection company put on a small event? So could we do a like a taco boat ride? You rent a boat. Those boats with people on it, they’re like eight, $900 Depending on what part of the country you’re in. I mean, if in Southern California, if it’s anything like the real estate market, it’s $10 million? I don’t know. You know, you get one of those Booze Cruise things, but you just do tacos instead.

David Nyman
You know, when you said taco boat ride, image that came into my head was a hard shelled taco riding on the river.

Ian R
That sounds amazing. Just hope it’s not soft shelled.

David Nyman
It won’t be, it gets soggy.

Ian R
Even on a smaller scale, can we do an office dinner? Contact a broker. I used to do these and I’d cold call. And I remember one time I did an educational event and they’re like, we don’t want any food. I’m like I’m bringing food. They’re like no, no, no, no, it’s okay. Everybody will get their own lunch. I’m like, cool, then I’ll just get it for them. Did I spend an extra 200, 300 bucks? Heck yeah. Do agents from that event still refer us 11, 12 years later? Yes. So it’s immeasurable. So let’s say we don’t have the money. Let’s say we’re just starting out, we’re like, Ian I got $10 here that my wife lent me to go and start my inspection business. You know what’s super cheap? Coffee. Can we go and get a cup of coffee with agents? Can we go and even just invite an office out and say, hey, I’m going to be at the Daily Grind or whatever coffee place is near us, and can you, you guys want to stop by, and I’ll buy you all a cup of coffee. Whatever it takes, building those relationships is important. Once we’re there, I mean, it really just comes down to like you said listening, right? And we can sit there awkwardly, somebody gets their free cup of coffee and walks out. Okay, but we built a relationship. So what are some other other ways that you think it’s important to build the intersocial relationship, we’re getting to the parasocial part.

David Nyman
Yeah. Another thing to think about too, is that it’s not all business. Because that is definitely going to cut it down to a different relationship. If all you talk about is business with them, they’re gonna be like, well, that’s pretty boring. I want to talk about something more interesting. So it might be tricky. Finding out, you know, things that interest them thru conversation, of course. You know, it could be that we have similar interests, but if not, you know, just showing interest in their interest could actually be a starting point. Just to get conversations going and laughing together is always a good, good relationship builder. So, find something funny to talk about.

Ian R
Yeah, and we have to make sure that we keep our humor on par with theirs. If we’re taking out a group of 75 year old brokers, and we’re cracking dirty jokes, they’re probably not going to appreciate that. You know, if it’s a bunch of young women and you know, we’re kind of joking and looking a little creepy. We’re a guy you know, that’s probably not gonna go over well, I would definitely be cautious about that. But find some humor but where, where I think you really hit the nail on the head is common ground. Any salesman will tell you to find common ground. What they don’t tell you is, was it Socrates who said this, know thyself? Was that Socrates or Plato? I don’t know, but know thyself. Well, I don’t know. Captain Kirk, know thyself. Write down a list of all of our interests. If we have a short list, maybe become more interesting. I don’t know. But like anything, like sci fi, okay, cool. I’m into sci fi. Here’s the five, my five favorite shows. Do you like golf? I hate golf, by the way, oh, my goodness, I could never get into golf. Skiing. Anything, write down anything that we like to do, and get really granular with it. And the reason I tell you to do that is I see so many missed opportunities. Because now we’re talking to a guy, an agent or an attorney or a mortgage broker, whoever, that we want them to refer us work. But we have no common ground. They have no vested interest in us. But now we find out. Oh, you like to water ski. I love to water ski. My brother has a boat on Lake George. He does? My brother has a boat on this lake. And I have a boat on the other lake. All of a sudden, you’re now part of his email group about boats and jet skiing. Or my favorite is fantasy football. I was terrible at it. I would always just pick the funny names for my team. Do you know how many agents do fantasy football in my area? If you could get on some of those fantasy football teams, or even look, can you, can you, do they belong to the same league and say oh man, Joe Agent, he’s on my, he’s in the fantasy football league here. Maybe I’ll visit the office or send them a Facebook. You know, not creepily like you’re stalking. Hey, I just saw you on a fantasy football league. I didn’t know you were on there. Oh, yeah. Now all of a sudden you’re on his team in more ways than one. Whatever we’re interested in, don’t assume that the agents are in a different world, that they don’t like to smoke meat, and they don’t like to play soccer or crochet, crochet. Did I ever tell you the time that I was at a Super Bowl party. My wife and I were just married. And there was a lady sitting there. And I’m like, I knew her really well, I’m like what you’re doing. She goes, I’m knitting and the other one goes, I’m crocheting. I’m like, how do you do that? They’re like, here, let me show you. And I knitted a scarf during the Super Bowl for these two ladies, it was amazing.

David Nyman
Crochet. You did pick the simplest possible thing to make.

Ian R
It’s just a straight line. But you know, we actually laugh about that to this day, almost 20 years later. Common ground never leaves people’s minds. They connected a spot in their brain to you from something that they already know, in not just a hypothetical like a, you know, highfalutin, like mental sense, in a literal sense. There’s now a connection between you and something they love. That builds relationships.

David Nyman
And now they love you.

Ian R
And now they love you. So I’m gonna give this tip again, fantasy football. Check that out. Agents around my area, they love it. They get, matter of fact, groups of agents will get together and do fantasy football. See if that’ll work for you. Plus, it’s kind of fun. Let’s talk parasocial relationships. So when we talk parasocial relationships, we’re talking a lot of social media. What are some mistakes that you see guys make with their parasocial relationships, David?

David Nyman
I mean, one, pretty obvious. It’s not interesting. I mean, here’s the thing. Like, if you have a home inspection business, okay, of course, you’re expected to, you know, show defects that you found there, which can be interesting. But if that’s all you’re posting, like you get old pretty quick. I know for a fact, you know, you wouldn’t follow an account that just basically shows your 20th busted pipe in the basement in a row. Like, yeah, I’ve seen it before. I need something, you know, more interesting. And the next one is taking yourself too seriously.

Ian R
Oh, yeah. That’s a big one.

David Nyman
I think that’s the most interesting home inspector social media accounts I’ve seen, that’s the ones that are just doing ridiculous things. Which, same there. It could get old if you do too much of the same. But a little bit of silliness just, it elevates your social media quite a bit.

Ian R
Yeah. I think you hit on a couple of really great points there. One of the things that I notice is that not understanding what message we’re presenting, I call it talking at and not with your audience. So there’s lots of reasons to post to social media. So for instance, we post to social media, because we deliver what people expect which is you know, a post about home maintenance or real estate or you know, the home inspection process, people expect to see that. And it’s actually important for SEO as a side point, which we won’t get into. But Google looks at what you’re posting on in particular, Facebook, Google My Business, and a couple of others. So you need those kinds of posts. We’re not telling anybody to stop doing those. We do those. I do them for my own companies. You need those. But if that’s all you have, that’s, that’s not going to get a great response. We’re not just posting just for the Google algorithm. So talking at our users is, here’s what you need to do to get your house ready for a home inspection. Here’s why you should hire us. Here’s what you need to do. Here is what I found on an inspection. Here’s what I do. There’s a separation there. Parasocial creates a connection. We need to turn “you and I” into “we”. There’s a couple of ways we can do that. So the first one is the simplest, just use the term “we”. Like weeeee, no, just kidding.

David Nyman
That’s when you fall off the roof. Good post right there.

Ian R
That’s a great soundbite. That’s an old sales trick. And I learned that from a salesman, oh, man, this guy was awesome. One thing I do have to caveat everything with this is we have to be genuine. You can’t build parasocial or intersocial relationships without being a genuine human being. This guy was a natural salesman and just a great human being, like you just wanted to be around him. He said, I never, he never claimed to be a salesman. But he knew every trick in the book, but he’s just like, I don’t care about tricks. I care about being a genuine human. But he would talk about how, if you just change the word from you or I to we, it would actually conjoin people emotionally. So when we’re talking in our videos, a simple trick is to say, what are we looking at here today? Instead of saying, what are you looking at? Let me explain. Now we’re talking at our audience. But that also works with intersocial relationships. just interject the word we. In almost every conversation, and when I do, even when I do large presentations or small presentations, I work very, very hard, it slips out sometimes, but I work very, very hard never to say you or I. Always we. Because now you and the people you’re talking with are in the same boat together. And I’ll tell you what, it’s measurable, large corporations use it, it’s a basic trick. But it’s not really a trick because it does the same thing to you. It conjoins you to people you’re talking with. Now, now you’re working with them. So that’s trick number one. I think what you said about being boring is very true. I would say 90, 95% of the home inspection social media posts I see out there are a big snooze fest. And listen, it still builds a parasocial relationship. A lot of guys, it’s better than nothing. And a lot of guys are like, oh, I put five videos out. Nobody looked at it, only got 15 views. That’s not the point. I didn’t go meet my wife and drop my three best lines on her and say, she wasn’t interested. I kept working that room, man. So just because…

David Nyman
I need to hear those lines.

Ian R
Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven? If anybody actually knows my wife listening to this, they know that didn’t work. If anything, that put me behind the starting line. But where was I going with this? Oh, so don’t think that just because you put a few videos out there, put a few posts out there, and didn’t get a good reaction. Keep going. You’ll have bad months, bad years. And then it’ll jump up again and drop down, that’s social media. But listen, when I go to your website, and check out your social media, and I can see you, and I can see you talking even if you’re not doing it perfectly, or it’s boring, that still builds a parasocial relationship with me, with you. So what we’re talking about is refining that.

David Nyman
Yeah.

Ian R
Telling a story is more important than showing something cool. And what we’re interested in is almost invariably not what anybody else is interested in. I’ve actually had, seen videos where a home inspector shooting a video, totally boring, but then you start reading the comments and others are like, did you see the dog in the background? You know, and they’re just like, enthralled with this dog with a rotisserie chicken in the background. Meanwhile the home inspector’s like, here’s an electric panel on the exterior of a house without proper protection. And this is just the dog going at a rotisserie. Yeah, tell a story. What do people want to hear? What? What is interesting to your client? That’s what I would always use as a gauge. Like as I’m walking through, and the clients are like, this is so interesting. I’m like, what? It’s a generator panel. Yeah. But hey, okay, let’s do the video about the generator panel.

David Nyman
Yeah, it’s, it’s really about too, knowing your audience. So I think, I think that’s a common mistake for home inspectors that, looking at their social media, like, oh, I want to sound you know, like, I really know my stuff. I want to sound technical. I want to have like, all these facts and details. But other home inspectors are not who you want to be interested in your social media.

Ian R
Exactly.

David Nyman
And, and it’s funny too, you know, as we worked with social media, too, for a while, we had a period of time, when, when, when we were doing a lot more funny, and entertaining posts, which some, some home inspectors love them. But we did get a lot of pushback, you know, from home inspectors. They feel like, you know, it needs to be, it needs to be all about home inspections. It can’t be anything that’s, you know, even though it’s slightly home inspection related, it’s not, you know, what I’m looking for. And, you know, the posts that get people more involved, that’s the ones that you want to want to shoot for.

Ian R
Yeah, I remember, we used to do things like, even like polls, or like funny real estate stories, they’re like, that’s real estate, that’s not home inspection related. Don’t put that on my Facebook page. And we’ve, we find a happy medium. But if we let the home inspectors choose what we post, it would be highly technical, extremely detailed, long posts that nobody would read. I think I told you this actually this morning, I actually had to, or did it tell somebody else yesterday? Anyways, I had to actually reduce what a home inspector was getting, for his website hits and his social media. And I told him ahead of time, I’m like, because he wanted things more technical and heavily detailed. And I said, okay, if we do this, you’re going to get less results. He literally said I’d rather have less results and have this. And I mean, I’m paraphrasing a very long conversation, a week’s worth of trying to convince him, and he has less hits on his website. Almost no people reading his message, his message on social media. And it’s super dry. And it wasn’t like I was posting like, hey, here’s some crazy whacked out stuff. It’s just, nobody wants to read about hydrostatic pressure. And, you know, the temper of clay tiles. It’s just not what people want to hear. Now is it great that we know that? Cool. But we want to tell a story. Like okay, folks, here we’re at an inspection, I’m not going to get into all this stuff about hydrostatic pressure. But look at the belly on this wall. Bowed in foundation wall. Okay, now that that’s cool, you know, make it even better. We don’t have to do this. If we’re a serious kind of guy. That’s fine. But if we’re really funny kind of guy, and we can get away with it. And we have a kind of a gut, put our belly up against that belly. You know?

David Nyman
Who wears it better?

Ian R
Yeah, who wears it better? Oh my goodness, that would be an amazing post, but also tell a story. And when we say tell a story. I remember Preston Kincaid said that one of his posts online, he goes tell the story. All of a sudden, I see all these home inspectors posting them sitting down telling a story. I’m like, that’s not what he meant. Like, we missed the point.

David Nyman
But it’s funny, isn’t it?

Ian R
So what we’re trying to say is get people involved. What was the circumstance? How did this end up? Show a video clip of this and that, you know, make it interesting. And if we’re not interesting guys, were like, I don’t know how to make it interesting. Just try hard to not make it boring. Which means using the “we”. Don’t get overly technically detailed, even if it’s something about something very technical. Like if we walk up and when I’m on a show something about a boiler, okay, guys, this is a wet boiler with a firebox that that actually sits in the water towards the bottom and there’s a crack in the firebox. Get over that. Just say, listen, I could get into all day about a wet unit and the fire boxes, but take a look at this now, and then tell what happened in your inspection. That’s way more interesting than going over the technical reasons as to why this boiler was shooting fire out of the firebox into the basement, you know.

David Nyman
I mean a video with fire shooting out would be pretty impressive too.

Ian R
That would be the cool part, but oftentimes we’re not showing the cool part. I always like you know, some of the most viral videos are the silent videos. Like a home inspector just sitting there when there’s a weird sound happening. Like, you have a weird animal in the attic. So you’re just sitting in the attic, not saying anything in here. Have you ever heard a skunk scream, they scream like crazy. They sound like little girls screaming. Anyway, side point. Sitting in the attic, guy just sitting there with his eyes wide and all he hears is screams, you know? Or like, is there a mannequin up in the attic? Okay, creepy mannequin staring at me in the attic. You know, that tells a small story. We’re not talking about writing a novel. And keep our text to a minimum, couple of sentences. If you say, if you have to say this is a long post at the beginning of your post, nobody’s read it, just except for another home inspector.

David Nyman
That’s all they, all they read. This is a long post. Okay, moving on.

Ian R
That’s all they read. This is a long post…scroll. But these are two avenues. And we didn’t really get into, like there’s several different types of parasocial relationships. And intersocial relationships have a lot of intricacies to them, too. But we should know the difference between the two. And we should have both worked into our, into our marketing campaign. And I say marketing campaign. It is part of our marketing campaign. When we say marketing campaign, I’m not just talking business cards, brochures and mailers. I’m still not a big fan of mailers personally, unless our 11th month inspection mailers. But we’re talking, what’s your what’s my schedule for parasocial this week, I have 30 minutes scheduled each day to build a parasocial relationship. That’s making a video or two, posting it online, and working the room that way. I have three hours a week on Tuesdays and four hours on Friday for intersocial relationships. And then plan it out. What are you going to do? Are you’re going to go visit some real estate offices? Are you going to invite somebody out out to dinner or an office or something? Again, if we’re low on funds, visiting open houses, all it costs is gas. Fantasy football league, listen, go look on your fantasy football leagues, or see if there’s any agents online that like football, on any of these groups in your local area, I can guarantee you about half of them are going to be in a fantasy football league. And like you said, don’t talk about work. Stop talking about work. Stop talking about how awesome an inspection we are. Talk about fantasy football. And then they’re like oh, David, you’re a home inspector. Cool. One of the guys on my league wants, needs a home inspection. We’ll call you next week. So, I don’t know, do you have anything else to add, David?

David Nyman
I would actually need that help from our editing team though. We need to know how many times throughout the years you have said hydrostatic pressure on this show.

Ian R
That is like the coolest phrase though. It’s like…

David Nyman
I figured you thought that.

Ian R
It’s like my favorite thing to say because it’s just like the most interesting sounding word you can say that doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s just, wet dirt weighs more. Why do, why do we have a word for it? And it just sounds cool.

David Nyman
It’s for you.

Ian R
It is for me.

David Nyman
That word was made for you.

Ian R
Somebody sent me a message, and I can’t remember who it was, maybe one of our previous guests like George Karampoulis or something. I can’t remember who but they said, anecdotally, you say hydrostatic pressure too much. Making fun of my use, overuse of the word anecdotally. I’ve gotten better. We have gotten better. See.

David Nyman
I’ve never had a problem.

Ian R
But I’m including you in my parasocial relationship

David Nyman
It’s not working, not working.

Ian R
All right, well, I hope this helps, have a game plan. And remember these things, we talked about ROI. There’s another buzzword that doesn’t really mean a whole lot in these circumstances. Stop measuring return on investment by how many inspections you got from meeting people and talking with them. Build relationships, both parasocial and intersocial, and people will love you just as much as they love David.

David Nyman
Nah, that’s a stretch.

Ian R
Well, maybe not as much. Thank you, everybody. And we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks, David.

David Nyman
Thank you, Ian.

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.