PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson:
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk, everyone. Today we’re going to talk about a requested subject from one of our listeners. I always love these. We get a lot of recommendations, and, you know, I’ll kind of ask some questions back and forth whenever somebody gives a suggestion, but this one really intrigued me. So basically, this listener sent in a request to talk about inspecting by our own rules, and what he meant by that was we allow so much of other people to dictate what we do and how we do it. The pace, the process, the afterthoughts—everything sometimes gets dictated by other people other than us.

It’s like that old expression: We work 80 hours a week so that we don’t have to work 40 hours a week for somebody else. The whole reason we became a business owner—I mean, for some of us, it was necessity. For me, when I started out, it was providing for my family. But the reality is, there are very few advantages sometimes to running our own business. If we’re running our own inspection company, there are very few benefits to that. We work a lot. We’re stressed. Everything falls on our shoulders, right? So one of the few benefits is running our business by our rules. And then even if we’re not the business owner, maybe we’re just an inspector within a business, we feel it too. We’re like, why is this agent telling me how to go about things, or why is the client dictating my cadence here? So what did he mean by this? Well, there were basically three points that we talked about between each other: schedule, price, and how to write the report/customer service. So we’ll break that actually into four points because that’s really what it is.

First of all, schedule. I have never been in an industry where so many times we were expected to work on Saturdays and Sundays and late into the evenings. We still, to this day, have people try to call us at 9:00, 10:00 at night, and the next day when we call them back, they’ll be like, “No one answered the phone.” I’m like, “It’s 9:30 at night. You want us to answer the phone at 9:30 at night?” And to be honest, they do. The problem is, you know, a guy like me, I’m going to say, “No, we’re not answering the phone at 9:30,” and we’re going to take control back of that situation. We’re going to say, “Our schedule is 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.,” or whatever, and they’ll be like, “Oh, okay, that’s fine,” for the most part. I see a lot of guys, especially new guys, because, you know, we want to get ourselves out there, be like, “Oh, so everybody expects me to answer at 9:30.” So then they’re answering their phone at 9:30 p.m. Now they have allowed the market to make the rules for them. Now they are on call until 9:30 at night. So that has a compounding effect. It has a compounding effect with agents. “Oh, Ian answered the phone at 9:30,” and so now the next client that they have, they go, “Oh yeah, Ian answers the phone late. He’s great.” So now we have this rash of clients calling us at all hours of the night. That’s not great for family time or for our own mental health, to be perfectly frank. And if you do that that late, cool. All communication’s that way.

Agents would text me constantly, and they’re just like, “I need this appointment tomorrow.” And I had to train them to say, “Listen, I can’t, from a text message and a vague address, pull up a whole inspection order and get this to happen.” I’m like, “Give me full information.” And eventually I would train them, most of the time, to give an email, but even a text message: Here’s all the information that I need. All right, cool. But we allow the market to dictate what we do.

I’m buying a cow from a butcher—like a whole cow; we do every year or two—and even he stopped me and my cadence. So I showed up with an expectation. I’m like, “Oh, it’s a butcher. He’s just out in his barn butchering cows, and I should be able to call and pick up.” I called him, made me wait, called back, was very polite, very professional, but made it very clear I need to fill out a form online. And then, as I thought about it, I’m like, “Oh, that’s pretty reasonable.” And then he’s like, “You know, it’ll be this time period and that time period, and these are the hours.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.” He took me and put me back where I needed to be in his cadence. So now I’m following his lead. That makes his business very manageable. That makes his business more enjoyable and more profitable. And did I mind? Not at all. I, in fact, took note of it. Afterwards, I’m like, “Oh wow, that was cool.” If somebody really wants our service, they’re going to fit into our way of doing things. The agents will. The problem is, we have this mentality of desperation. People can smell desperation. If we’re just always trying to fill up the schedule, bending over backwards, taking partial text messages, driving around, shoving a sandwich in our face, talking on the phone, trying to wheel and deal, that’s not going to lead to a very happy or satisfying life. But we’re also bending to everybody else’s way of doing things. Not efficient whatsoever.

So, in my opinion, one of the best things I ever did as an inspection company owner was set hard limits on my schedule—when I will and will not work. And for about 15 years, maybe 13, I’d have to go back and do the math, we won’t work weekends. And we had other inspectors tell us, “Oh, you’re going to go out of business. You’re going to lose so much money.” I mean, it’s almost 15 years later, and we’re still here, and we’re still doing great, having, you know, year over year our best years. Sometimes taking control back makes everybody feel good. Like, “Oh, what do they have that the last guy was basically begging us at 9:30 at night, taking our text messages, and this guy’s like, ‘No, if you want us, it’s these days and these hours.’ What do they have that the other guy doesn’t?” It’s a weird mentality that I found out about on accident. Take control of our schedules.

The next one is price. This one is, man, if I had a dime for every time we’ve mentioned it on a podcast, we’d have 800 dimes. I don’t know. It’s an important thing. We let the market dictate our price, and it happens so much the same way. I had a guy—we were talking about price. He goes, “Ian, I’m going to raise our prices.” He raised his prices, and he calls me back six months later. “Ian, I brought our prices back down. I had too many complaints.” I’m like, “How many complaints?” “Too many.” I pushed and I pushed. I’m like, “How many?” He’s like, “Well, this one agent said this, this, and this, and this.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s one. How many more?” And he’s like, “I guess that was it.” I’m like, “Okay.” So he had it for like three months out of those six months that we had not talked, and he goes, “Yeah, like three months.” And I’m like, “How many inspections did you do?” “About the same amount.” I’m like, “Okay, so you did the same amount of inspections and made more money.” “Yes.” And he knew exactly where I was going with this. I’m like, “And one person complained, and you dropped your pricing back down.” And he goes, “Okay, I see what you’re getting at.” We are very reactionary to a small, loud demographic of people in our market—the people who are looking for a deal, agents who don’t like our price raises. Every time I’ve raised prices, I’ve had somebody complain. Matter of fact, actually, I take that back. I had nobody complain this last time. But we’re looking for what we call confirmation bias. We think the market’s going to react badly when we raise our prices. So there’s our desperation feeling inside. And so then when one person or even two or three people complain, we’re like, “There it is. I knew it. I knew it was not going to be right.” We’re looking for confirmation bias of our own fears. Don’t let the market dictate what we charge. We charge ridiculous money, but we give great value. So, price.

Our third one is how we write our report. I had to check with somebody, but it was five times this year already we’ve had an attorney and/or an agent contact us, asking us to change how we write our reports for this one specific client. You know what’s interesting about all five of those situations? Number one, I can guarantee that the vast majority of our competition would have just changed their reports. To me, it was kind of unethical, but I can guarantee it because I’ve seen so many guys do it. “Oh well, they just wanted the wording changed to say this instead.” It’s like, all right, that feels icky. But number two, we didn’t need to change the reports. The agents and attorneys were able to figure it out. They were just looking for an easy win because they didn’t want to do their job. Long story short, we let people dictate how we write our reports too much. We want to write our reports so that they are valuable to our clients. But when somebody says, like in my market, there’s $1 value on a defect before you can negotiate. So, hey, you know, $2,000 is the dollar value of a defect. In your report, you say this could equal $2,000 or more. Can you write $5,000 or more? You do that for that attorney and that agent, and guess what you’re going to be doing with every report eventually going forward. You’re going to start writing a custom amount in every report, and you’re not going to be able to keep track of it. Every time somebody calls with a question, you’re going to be like, “How much did I write in that report?” And then people are like, “Why are you writing different amounts in different reports? You did one way for this client. You know, I recommended you. My cousin recommended you, and he had a different dollar amount.” And all of a sudden, there’s all these problems. And we like to act like, “Where did this all come from? I can’t control it. You know, everything’s going crazy.” We can, by making our own rules, setting our own standards, letting people know this is the standard we write at. Now, if everybody starts telling us this is not the right standard, okay, cool. Make an adjustment. But if we’re doing customization for every person… Henry Ford would never have come out with Ford Motors if he had customized every Model T for every person that wanted something different. He was able to produce an amazing machine, very efficient, high-quality vehicles, because he’s like, “This is what you’re getting each time.” Now, don’t take my illustration—there’s always going to be that one guy that emails me or messages me on something or leaves a comment on YouTube or in Spotify, saying, “Oh no, you should customize for every house.” Yes, you should. Three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Yes, you need to inspect three bedrooms and three bathrooms. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the way we word our reports, the way we write up defects and things like that.

The last point falls into there a little bit, but it’s customer service. We too often let our market determine how we do customer service. A good example, I think, is when there’s a problem, so a missed defect. Our client writes us and says, “I would like X amount of dollars,” or, “I would like all my money back because I found a defect.” I mean, I can’t tell you how many guys—their first knee-jerk reaction is, “Oh man, I got to give this guy’s money back.” I’m like, “Why?” “Because he said so.” I don’t go into any business and say I get my money back because X, Y, Z. Now, if there was a problem, like you put your foot through a ceiling in an attic—listen, it happens. All right, everybody, I’m paying for the ceiling repair. Because somebody found a defect in their house after the inspection does not mean they get their money back. Now, sometimes that’s the cheapest, easiest, most mentally refreshing way to get rid of the situation. Cool. If that’s the reason, cool. But why are we so afraid of our clients? We have so many protections as home inspectors. “Well, they could leave a bad review.” Okay, let them. But the reality is, “Well, this window was busted.” All right, but there was a china cabinet in front of it and a bush on the outside. I couldn’t get to it. Wrote it in the report. “Well, there was termite damage, or there were termites present.” Okay, you didn’t opt for the termite inspection. You explicitly asked not for it. Like Joe Ferry, the home inspector attorney, says, the vast majority of home inspection claims are non-meritorious. They have no merit to them whatsoever. And I can tell you, after 20 years in this industry, almost like 99.9% of the time, it’s something absolutely ridiculous we couldn’t have seen. Why are we giving them their money back for that? Sometimes, yeah, there have been people with a non-meritorious claim that we’ve given their money back, just because we’re like, “You know what? $500 condo inspection. I’m not dealing with that person. I’m not driving out there. I’m not talking with them on the phone while they yell at me about whoever is doing what. Give them their money back. Have them sign the release.” But for the most part, it’s just like, “You kind of don’t get your money back, dude. We did our job. We let you know the limitations. I’m not afraid of you.”

Why are we so afraid of our market? I guess that’s what it comes down to. We as business owners have the right to make our own rules. We want to have a successful business, but to be honest with you, I have been successful in business. One of the big reasons, in my opinion, is I set the pace and the cadence and what we do. If you want this product that you want so much from us, that you’ve heard so much about, you have to follow our routine—even how we go about our inspection. So, like, man, every time I inspect the house the same way every time, I literally can have it written down on a piece of paper and hand it to you at the beginning of the inspection—which, by the way, is a great marketing material if you ever want to do it—and then people will be like, “Before we do this, I want to show you something in the basement and then something up in a bedroom.” Do you know how many times I’ve had to fight with people on site? I say fight, you know, just be calmly like, “I’m going to be doing this order of things,” and then even stop and say, “If you want this level of service from me, the inspection that you’ve heard so much about, follow my process.” Invariably, by the time we got to their points, they’re just like, “I get it now. I see why we did it that way. My questions are already answered, and everything makes sense.” Because if you follow the right process, it works.

So, make our own rules, find what works, and don’t be afraid of our market. Whether we’re a home inspection company owner or whether we’re working for an inspection company, we get to control our situations. That’s the advantage that we have. So when we show up at an inspection, when we’re working with a client or a complaint or schedule or price or any of those things, remember, this is our business. We work 80 hours a week so we don’t have to work 40 for someone else. So don’t make 1,000 little mini bosses throughout the year out of our clients and agents. So there’s your podcast for the week. Thank you for listening in, and we’ll look forward to hearing from you in your comments and seeing everybody next time on Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

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.

PODCAST SUMMARY/BLOG

Home inspection work can feel like freedom until the market starts setting your hours, your pace, and even your confidence. A common trap for home inspectors and inspection company owners is letting real estate agents and anxious clients dictate everything, from late-night calls to last-minute scheduling. The result is stress, fragmented days, and a business that looks busy but feels out of control. A healthier model is simple: run the inspection business by your rules, not by desperation. When you set clear expectations and communicate them calmly, many clients actually respect the professionalism and fall into your cadence, which improves both customer experience and quality.

Scheduling boundaries are often the first and most powerful change. If you answer the phone at 9:30 PM once, you train the market that you are always available, and that expectation compounds as agents recommend you. Setting business hours, protecting weekends, and requiring complete job details before confirming an appointment are not rude, they are operational standards. This also supports inspector mental health and reduces mistakes caused by rushing, multitasking, and constant context switching. A practical approach is to define how booking works, what information is required, and when you respond. Clients who truly value a thorough home inspection will usually adapt, and the ones who won’t are often the ones who create the most friction later.

Pricing strategy is another place inspectors surrender control. Many home inspection pricing decisions are driven by fear of pushback, yet the loudest objections typically come from bargain hunters, not ideal customers. Raising prices and holding the line can feel risky, but it often reveals that demand is more stable than you think. One complaint is not market data, it is noise. Value-based pricing works when your service actually delivers: consistent process, clear reporting, strong communication, and professional standards. If you react by discounting every time someone complains, you teach your market that your price is negotiable and your confidence is shaky. A better move is to set your fee structure intentionally, explain the value, and let your schedule and results prove the point.

Consistency matters most in inspection report writing and customer service. When agents or attorneys pressure you to change wording or insert specific dollar amounts just to make negotiations easier, you risk ethics, clarity, and long-term consistency. Customizing language for individual stakeholders can create a messy trail that is hard to defend later when someone compares reports. The same principle applies to complaints and refund demands. Not every missed-defect claim has merit, and many disputes hinge on limitations that were outside the scope or visibility of the inspection. A strong customer service policy means listening, documenting, and responding professionally, without automatically handing money back out of fear of a bad review. The core takeaway for home inspectors is straightforward: standardize your process, communicate it upfront, and stop making “mini bosses” out of every client and agent you meet.