PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R – Welcome, everybody back to inspector toolbelt talk. We have a special guest today we have Nick Gromicko of InterNACHI. Hey, Nick, how are you?

Nick Gromicko – Real well, thanks for having me on.

Ian R – Oh, man, it’s our pleasure.

Nick Gromicko – I don’t do many interviews. I don’t go on stage. If you’ve ever seen me in these big events or something, I go on stage for two minutes at most.

Ian R – Well, we feel privileged.

Nick Gromicko – I don’t do any podcasts but you did a nice podcast with my brother. So he said I should come on, that I’m safe here.

Ian R – Okay, you’re in a safe space, Nick.

Nick Gromicko – “You’re gonna bore everybody.”

Ian R – Oh, no, you said you wanted hard-hitting questions.

Nick Gromicko – You can hit as hard as you want. Personal or business.

Ian R – Well, we do feel privileged to have you on because I did a quick search. I’m like, I’ve never heard Nick on a podcast before.

Nick Gromicko – No, I don’t do any interviews. Really, for two reasons. One, I felt like I have the personality of a cinderblock. So I’m not that interesting. Second of all, you know, I let some foul language fly every now and then. I don’t think anybody really wants to hear a boring person swear. I just don’t do interviews so I let my brother do it. My brother much better face for InterNACHI than I am.

Ian R – Well, I did learn some interesting stuff about you from Ben and our interview, before and after, when we were just chatting. If you listened to the podcast last week, you got your introduction to the home inspection industry from a guy on a Harley that was looking at your job site?

Nick Gromicko – Oh, yeah. My brother and I were building houses. He was a bank inspector, so that’s why I thought that I was gonna do that. Try to become an inspector but you know, we didn’t have a trade association back then. This is Oh, my goodness, this is, you know, what is it? 19, the late 1980s. That’s what led to InterNACHI being one of the few industries that didn’t have a trade association at the time. So we built that.

Ian R – Yeah, that’s awesome. Some other things that I learned about you, you got a radon business. If I remember right, I remember a story you told that you actually had a pool business too like you installed pools for people. Is that correct?

Nick Gromicko – I was when I was a kid. I was wealthy at a young age. I started a company called the pool people. Basically, what I did was back in those days, Kmart used to sell you a whole aboveground pool, with a filter and everything for $139. This is one is really back in the day, and I was still in high school. So I, you know, I bought one and I put one up for myself. As a kid, it’s like, I must have been 16. I lived in the Orions home plan. So there were, you know, 1500 other homes, with families and kids. So once I put mine up, the neighbor wanted one, and then after that another neighbor, So I started putting them in for $500. I mean, put the stand down and install them and plug them in. It’s a great business because people would jump in a pool and shake your hand and they were happy at the end of the day. I hired my teachers to help me install them. Just making crazy money. You know, and then I bought a new car with cash. There was a, there was a really nice car for sale. It was the owner of the dealer’s car, he left in the showroom, and I tried to go buy it. I was only 17 at the time and the salesman said, well, you know, kid, you can’t afford this card. First of all, and the owner’s car, he just leaves it in the showroom just because it’s really nice. I pulled out a pile of $100 bills and he said hold on, he got on the phone, and kid you buy yourself a car. I was doing pretty well and my mom and dad were both teachers and we were eating dinner. We never really discussed money, everything, and my mom asked me well how much did you make this year? I told them, I didn’t know how much money they made and I knew by the looks on their face that I turned out I made more than both of them combined. After I saw the expression on their faces while I was eating dinner. I mean that was it. I quit high school.

Ian R – What grade did you quit high school in Nick?

Nick Gromicko – In 12. So I knew that business was for me.

Ian R – We were kind of binding on that a little bit before the program.

Nick Gromicko – I beat you. Yeah. You dropped out of ninth grade, right?

Ian R – Yeah, it didn’t make it. Well, I made a partway through the ninth grade but afterward, I’m like, Man, this is lame. Who needs this?

Nick Gromicko – My 12th grade but you pass me up then you went and got a GED.

Ian R – Oh, well, that’s true. When I was 21. I went back and got my GED.

Nick Gromicko -I’m still a high school dropout.

Ian R – You gotta go back and get it now. So that’ll be our next podcast, how’d your GED go.

Nick Gromicko – Learn to read and all that stuff. 26 letters all jumbled up for each word. I’m just gonna do that.

Ian R – Yeah, who needs that?

Nick Gromicko – No, I’m not gonna learn to read. Okay, well enough to pass a GED anyway, I’m okay. You know,

Ian R – Then you have a wife who speaks five languages or four or something like that.

Nick Gromicko – She speaks 6. Russian, Ukrainian German, Spanish there’s English of course. Um, She speaks some Arabic and Italian. So she has a seven-year linguistics degree. She has two business international business degrees, and she has an MBA from the US. So we’re a bit opposite in that way.

Ian R – It works, though, and then you guys own the Beautiful Butt company.

Nick Gromicko – Yeah, she owns a cosmetic company, which I help her run. So, you know, a mask for your face. She has one for acne on the back end of your… She sells them in bikini boutiques in Florida and California. When a woman is trying on a bikini looking in the mirror, she’s not actually looking at the bikini, she’s looking at her back end, to see how it looks in the bikini. So it’s basically an acne cosmetic product for your bottom. You know, beauty starts at the bottom. I’ll say 14 other companies, in everything from, you know, a cosmetic company, to a bridge company to construction, to all the organizations I run to. So, I’ve got a lot of things. It’s fun.

Ian R – Yeah, I think we’re gonna skip the rest of the podcast and talk more about the Beautiful Butt thing because that sounds like an interesting content

Nick Gromicko – When we were building a house of horrors too in Florida, she and I moved down there to build that. You know, we’d go to the beach a lot, and she likes to go to the bikini shops, she’s certainly out the body for it. I noticed they’re all just looking at these mirrors. I said, Well, we have to get into some product that could be sold in the bikini boutique shops, and we came up with that and it was a hit, you know,

Ian R – You are if anything multifaceted Nick

Nick Gromicko – I’m just bored, you know, ADD maybe I don’t know. I focus on things to get things done. Whereas our CEO Chris Morell truly has to ADD just jumps from one thing to the other but has trouble crossing the finish line. I’m usually the guy has to, I’m usually the running back into, you know, on a fourth-down has to get in there and get the ball into the endzone for him.

Ian R – I didn’t realize this before the program. You were talking about Chris Morell. Did you meet him when he was 15? Yeah, he’s only 39 and the CEO of InterNACHI. Right.

Nick Gromicko – Right. He’s maybe 40. Right now. I think he’s been working for us since he was 15. You know, he was webmaster 16. He was head of IT by 18. He was CEO by age 30. Wow. We were one time negotiating a big deal a with a big fortune 100 company. He was in negotiating it with me and the members of the opposition, I guess you could call them they asked him more. You know, last Chris Morell, they were pretty impressed with him. He’s a pretty impressive guy. They asked him Well, what did you do before you worked at InterNACHI? He said, well, nothing. What do you mean, I’ve been working there since I was 15. delivering papers, I guess, I don’t know. He only worked in one place. That’s actually a big advantage to us. We work really well together. We’re very different. I’m fat, he’s skinny. He’s tall. He’s very liberal and I’m a little bit right-wing. So we get along really well, though we’ve never had a fight. Anytime we have a disagreement, we argue for a while trying to break it down into a math problem. Then if the math problem doesn’t result in us both agreeing on which it should, on what to do. Then whatever he says goes, the CEO, I’m not another CEO, he’s he elaborates InterNACHI. Once all the human resources, all the employees and all. They both have dual jobs. So my brother has a COO and he’s head of education for the university. Then Chris is head of the IT department. So a massive website, 280,000 pages long.

Ian R – That’s ginormous,

Nick Gromicko – Right now. Yeah. 35 million unique visitors a year. So it’s one of the largest, most interactive websites in the world. I think our message board now has 2.6 million posts on it. All that education. It’s all tied up, you know, interactive with and working with everything else that InterNACHI is doing. We’ve sort of become a conglomerate since then. So he has a lot on his plate at being head of it. Then he’s our CEO, Chris. Then between Ben and Chris, the two of them got it going on really, you know, like, they want a good ship. I would say, I just tried to stay out of the way.

Ian R – Well, I have to say, what is it 31,000 Approximately home inspectors in North America. The vast majority of them, like 95% or more of home inspectors are InterNACHI members.

Nick Gromicko – Hold on. I’m gonna tell you what, right now just for fun. That’s a good thing you brought that up.

Ian R
Let’s take a look.

Nick Gromicko – We publish it in live time at nachi.org/nachi-stats. So there are 30,039 InterNACHI members as of right this sec, and that’s in live time. Again, the site is amazing, you know, from that page on nachi.org/nachi-stats, there’s that map there. If you put your cursor on it, you can actually zoom down onto North America closer and closer and closer and zoom right in onto the ground to see where all our members are. Most people don’t know that that is a zoomable map, if that’s a word or not. It’s pretty cool. It’s all done in live time. Just an example of how, you know, advanced our website is that that we built,

Ian R – yeah, and we’ll put a link to that in the transcription of this podcast, so everybody can find it and use a zoomable map. I would definitely say that those numbers indicate that you guys are not an authority, you’re the authority in the home inspection community.

Nick Gromicko – Well, you know, I’m putting reporting, you can always trick somebody into joining InterNACHI for a year, you get me in front of them, you know, a good salesman in front of somebody, I can trap them into joining InterNACHI and suck them into it for a year. What I can’t do is I can’t get them to renew after they understand what InterNACHI is, and the benefits it has for them. That’s where we really shine. Yeah, I think we have the highest renewal rate of any trade association in all of human history in any industry. I mean, there are only 11 inspectors, who quit InterNACHI and still stayed in the inspection business. Wow. That’s it. Sorry. So basically, I mean, unless you die, sell or quit the business or whatever, you know, which is, which happens all the time. You’re gonna stay with InterNACHI throughout your career. It is that good.

Ian R – Resistance is futile. Yep.

Nick Gromicko – It is futile Resistance is futile.

Ian R – So are you also a Star Trek fan then, Nick?

Nick Gromicko – No. I just like when we were young, starting out, you know, a lot of people predicted our demise quickly. I said, No, we’re gonna get the bulk of the industry. I predicted we would have half of it like NAR National Association Realtors has about half of all real estate agents predicted we would have half of all home inspectors. It turns out I was wrong. We have basically all of them. So there is no, I don’t find any resistance anymore. I mean, people join us because they really benefit from it. We make the money. You know, they might not like me. There are a lot of people who don’t like me, and it’s okay but when you help a man feed his family. There’s always a part of him that likes you and puts up with the rest of the year. So I think that’s what’s going on.

Ian R – Well, I like you, so that’ll work. That’ll work for this podcast. Anyways,

Nick Gromicko – You’re doing good work for the industry too, by the way, you know, you get a lot of compliments that we kind of hears your name, it’s always, you know, associated with a compliment.

Ian R – Oh, thanks. I didn’t realize people talked about me. That’s good to know.

Nick Gromicko – You can’t say that about me but I can say that about you.

Ian R -I can totally say that about you but thank you anyway, Nick. I think that’s a good lead-in for our subject here because what a lot of people are asking is what does the internet plan to do about the takeover of our industry? I guess that kind of comes down to when international took over, you guys took over with the intent of helping inspectors. I’ve benefited from it. I guess the takeover front of our industry is a perception that our industry has of itself. Porche bought quite a bit of industry vendors, which now have their hands in different parts of our industry. AMFAM owns HomeGauge, and some other things have been happening. Is that a perception or a reality? Do you think Nick?

Nick Gromicko – No it’s a reality, I mean I thought at first question was about InterNACHI taking over everything. I was actually trying to see what we’re into, you know, all the stuff we’re into. I mean, that’s a problem with me answering the question, right. So, you know, I’m throwing stones from the glasshouse, I suppose, you know what I mean,

Ian R – But I mean, I guess it kind of comes down to, you know, I’m the head of my household, so to speak, and I take care of my family. Some other person tries to come in, take the house, take the money, and not necessarily take care of the family. I think that’s the worry of our industry.

Nick Gromicko – I’m not understanding the question. Are you asking about InterNACHI? I mean, is this a criticism of InterNACHI?

Ian R – Oh, no, no, no, it’s a compliment of InterNACHI and a question about other people moving in and trying to take over the home inspection industry, like big corporations and things like that.

Nick Gromicko – I see. Well, I’ve popped up a page of some of the stuff we’re into, so I should probably just disclose a few things before I answer your question. You know InterNACHI is now a conglomerate, right? It’s a global conglomerate. We took over SPREI, we took over NAHI. TPREIA was a friendly takeover in Texas, the largest Texas Association. We own the Contractors Association. I just formed IRAP, which I’m gonna go up against NAR this year.

Ian R – That looks awesome. By the way.

Nick Gromicko – We own a lead. So we are the largest book in E&O insurance. We own CCPIA which is the Commercial Association. ICT, which is indoor air, and Cozy Coats for Kids, which is basically solely supported by the inspection industry. We have the “We’ll buy it home back guarantee” and Inspector Outlet as you know is in our domain and Inspector Media. Unfortunately, my son who owned it passed away and willed it to me.

Ian R – I’m very sorry about that.

Nick Gromicko – Print division, print materials on Galahad which most people don’t know, but it’s a software development company that just works on inspection problems and fast sites for us. It’s one of Ben’s companies does develop as ours, that’s a company that we Nachi TV is our you know, we’ve had that since before YouTube. We have overseen it with a member marketing department, we have the scholarships, we have the books we publish, I think we published 40 inspection textbooks and I wrote a couple of business books or a few of those and we covertly, secretly have interests in a lot of the companies, in our industry, a lot of vendors, we don’t have any. We don’t own you. We’d love to, if you ever wanted to sell, give us a call and we will buy a part of you. We like to own or have investments in the vendors in our industry. The inspector museum I set up we have that we have MICB, which is you know, certified master inspector, I’m probably forgetting a lot of it. You know, it’s hard for me to answer a question about, you know, taking over an industry when I think, you know, it’s mostly a criticism that, you know, that’s valid of this international conglomerate, right? I mean, I’m just trying to do my best I think. So I don’t really look at it as like porch taking over, or AMFAM taking over and me trying to play defense against them. It’s not like that’s not how I see the chessboard. I look at it as a race, right. So I’m trying to gather or build, buy or take over as much of the industry as I can for our inspectors and I have a long, close to 30-year history of helping inspectors not anything else. So I think the inspectors trust me to do that. I’m kind of in a race with these large corporations who are also trying to, you know, gobble this up, so to speak, I will say that without a doubt, I’m winning that race. So I mean, I have way more assets in the industry than they do and they’re not buying them for inspectors. You know, AMFAM doesn’t buy a software company that sells software and Porche doesn’t buy a call center to book inspections. I mean, these are, you know, they have, you know, disclosed and, admittedly, you know, other motives and they’re trying to help their corporations. And that’s their job, right? I mean, I think Matt’s Porche’s, he’s running a public company so he has a fiduciary duty, a legal duty to his stockholders. It’s not doing so well right now but he has a there’s a legal duty to make them money right. Yeah. So he has to do what’s best for them, he’s not here to help us unless it also helps them. I mean, it sounds fair but there’s no shame in that right there not me, AMFAM, and Porch. I think there’s a private equity firm but Carson Dunlop somebody bought AHIT. They’re all just getting gobbled upright. America’s call center’s over Porch now, Contact’s over the porch. I think Nathan Thornberry’s over Porch

Ian R – Yeah, exactly

Nick Gromicko – So I mean, you know, grabbing some of our industry vendors there’s no doubt but I don’t criticize them for not being me. They’re being what they should do. They have their own stockholders, some things that they have to help by law.

Ian R – That’s and that’s kind of, I guess what I was trying to say, but maybe not very clearly as InterNACHI when you guys take over, so to speak. Part of the industry is to help like NAHI, or when you have IAC too, or when you have CCPIA. That’s to help inspectors, that’s

Nick Gromicko – Very helpful. Everything is very helpful.

Ian R – We as home inspectors are your stockholders that you’re helping, and we appreciate it, but they have a different agenda.

Nick Gromicko – They have a different agenda, right? You know, and in my for-profit companies, you know, my sole goal and my forte if I can put myself in their shoes, so to speak. My sole goal and my for-profit companies are, you know, a big company construction company, just to make me money. I can understand, and we should understand that that’s what you know, they’re not evil, they’re just doing what they’re supposed to be doing. You know, I’m in a different situation, because InterNACHI is a, you know, a nonprofit tax-exempt or which I spend my entire life, I’m helping home inspectors. So when a home inspector gives me, you know, $499, in a way, if you look at, a lot of people say they give it to me, they don’t they give it to InterNachi of course, but you know, when I go to sleep at night, and I’m on my pillow, you know, I don’t want to ever feel like, you know, some guy who, you know, worked hard for that $499, you know, and entrusted me with it, because that’s basically what they’re doing when they paid her dues, right, they trusted me and the InterNACHI staff to produce more for them than the $499 they sent us. I always want to make sure that I’m really proud that I gave them back way more than $499. Then I can go to sleep, you know, because I would never want to be in a situation like, Well, you take like mad at ports, you know, where, where people are, you know, are investing in his company, their stockholders. You know, it would be hard for me to sleep because, you know, I’m not I’m not I’m not convinced 100% that I could get them a return on their investment. With InterNACHI I am 100% convinced that I have, you know, over the years, year after year, you know, I have 34 employees of InterNACHI. They wake up tomorrow, they wake up the next day, and they work eight hours, I’m trying to help InterNACHI members, and Friday, they’ll do that. Then they come back Monday and do it again. I mean, I’m definitely convinced that we are when you entrust us with your former $99 that we provide a great return for you. So that’s my goal. It’s, not one of these other big corporations does.

Ian R – Gotcha.

Nick Gromicko – Nothing wrong with what they’re doing.

Ian R – From a business standpoint, that’s their goal.

Nick Gromicko – Don’t get me wrong, it sucks for us but it’s not because they’re evil or doing anything wrong. Everybody serves somebody in this world and they just don’t serve us. Right.

Ian R – So I guess that’s the illustration I use the that the problem is sometimes we as home inspectors feel like coal miners. So coal miners, when they first started digging for coal, either the small little companies, they did dig for coal, everybody would kind of make out a living. They dig out that valuable material for us to coal is consumer data. That’s what everybody wants from us, we have access to consumer data that they can use to make a profit. So now we owe money to the company store, we feel like we dig out this valuable data and somebody else gets it. I guess that’s a lot of us feel like coal miners as home inspectors are the perception that we have, that these big companies as we think about ISN, have their fingers stolen a large portion of our industry. Next, inspect, Call centers and at least a couple of different software companies. There’s a large portion of our industry that large corporations can now to one extent or another, smaller or largely determine the course of how our industry goes.

Nick Gromicko – So why are you upset about that? Is it A that they are taking our client’s personal data and using it? Or is it B that we’re coal miners that aren’t getting paid for it?

Ian R – I think I’m trying to speak for the community and the home inspection community. That’s probably a dangerous thing for me to do. But I think it’s a little bit of both that home inspectors feel some inspectors are like, I don’t want anybody to have my data. Me personally. I’m like, Man, everybody has my data. Google has my data. I can’t walk past a Google phone without Google learning my whereabouts and facial recognition, and voice recognition. There’s all that stuff happening to me, that part doesn’t bother me because there’s so much data out there but the fact that bothers me personally, is yeah, we’re coal miners, not making money off the coal. We’re just getting paid our wage we dig out that information. We mark it, we work hard, and we get our clients something. To be perfectly frank, our fees are too low as well. Home inspectors, give us a small fee. Now this larger organization is making money off of what we worked hard to get. They also kind of tended to determine a little bit and the perception is the path of our industry. Like even the whole data thing wasn’t really talked about 10 years ago when Porch bought in, it got talked about quite a bit more. So it has kind of changed our industry just a little bit. What are your thoughts on that?

Nick Gromicko – Well I mean, we give up that data freely. So like we are we trade it for stuff, right? We trade our data for services that ISN provides. So who’s really releasing the data? I mean, it’s inspectors. Inspectors, sell or trade their customers’ data all day long. So I mean, if that’s the issue, then, you know, we have to point to ourselves, not to somebody who’s willing to offer us something in return for that data. Once they have it, and they’ve given us something in return for it, it’s theirs. Then we probably shouldn’t complain about how they use it, either, right? I mean, Chris Morell once said something pretty good, which is that you know, I was complaining that Facebook, deleted some of my stuff or something, he goes, you know, he doesn’t go on Facebook. He doesn’t have a Facebook account. He said that Facebook doesn’t have any power that we don’t give them. I mean, they can’t take away your, they can’t block your poster once you made it the post and gave it to him and put it on their platform. So it’s the same thing I think with data. We give it away to these, these companies are traded, or sell it. So that’s, that’s really us, we should be complaining about, you know,

Ian R – Gotcha. That does make it make sense. Because a lot of these are opt-in programs, like, hey, we’ll pay for your InterNACHI buyback or we’ll pay for your dues here or something and you allow us to contact your clients afterward.

Nick Gromicko – You might want to look at who, you know, I wouldn’t give the data to everybody so maybe you should be you know, should think about where who you’re trading it to, or selling it to right. So take InterNACHI for example, you know, with the amount of traffic we get one thing you won’t find on the InterNACHI website is even a banner ad right? We’ve never sold any advertising or the internet you can go to a message board there are no pop-up ads, there are no banner ads, there’s nothing we never took $1 in advertising even though we’re offered millions of dollars, milked it for how much.

Ian R – I remember home advisor years ago offered you guys money to advertise right?

Nick Gromicko – It was an insane amount they brought their VP in for two days. It would have ended up being 190 million over 10 years.

Ian R – Oh my goodness

Nick Gromicko – you know, it was more than our entire conglomerate was bringing in gross at the time and you know when it was done it’s very tempting right so but at the end we said no because I think we always were home inspectors had we treat time inspectors like God almost you know, they just anything they want, let’s get it for them and don’t do anything to harm them treat them almost like gods then we also have to turn down all that advertising money.

Ian R – Well, I do respect that

Nick Gromicko – Do the same thing. They have to think about who they’re giving their or their money to, you know, they give it to him or not you they’re safe, not gonna harm them. They come to internet use website and they see us talking about a vendor or a product or service again, they can be pretty assured that we’re speaking from the heart and not because someone is offering us 1000s Or hundreds of 1000s or millions of dollars in advertising fees. I’ve never taken a penny even always deals like cut for members and we can you know, inspectors inspect for a living so they’re gonna find that out anyway. You know, I’ve never taken a penny on any of these deals you know I don’t get any money off Ford you know I’m gonna give them any money I thought was Corning has done great deals with all these four but it all goes to the InterNACHI members and I think they know that by now so they trust me but maybe they should think about who else they trust. I’m okay with porch and I’m very much okay with Helmich and AMFAM, they are mutual companies I find them to be very honorable and dealing with them. So I don’t feel that you know, I feel that threatened by American Family Insurance and Porch I know what they are, you know, so again, it doesn’t frighten me too much. I know what they’re trying to do. They’re not trying to become InterNACHI and all. They’re not trying to harm inspectors or our industry, they’re trying to make money.

Ian R – Right. So I guess if I could sum up in my own mind, what internet she plans on doing about quote, unquote, the perceived takeover of our industry is a race is to win that race to beat out all these other corporations.

Nick Gromicko – I’m already winning and I’m over and over and over, I mean, I’ve everything that my members want or need. There are still vendors that are providing you, for example, that are finding great services suddenly to go in with into those spaces, you know, the best stuff out of the best reporting software on Earth. Then actually, we won’t release it, because right now, we have enough software vendors out there, they’re doing a good job, they’re doing a good job and support, and I don’t need to release software or take on, you know, more, more support staff, you know, because it’d be very popular for a number of reasons. One, it’s great, two it’s InterNACHI. So we have all the inspectors anyway, and three, it would, you know, it will come with that four-letter F word that I liked so much, FREE. So it would be it would immediately be number one, but I’m not going to do that, you know, there are some things on that need to do because the industry is doing an okay job. So certainly if all of our software vendors got bought up, and became garbage, right, actors were saying we just don’t have reporting software. Yes, I would go into it that happened with insurance, by the way. So no insurance, you know, because you know, we didn’t have it in our industry. We were I’m the only insurance company in the industry, where you’re the only one everybody else is just a schlepping another underwriters product. I’m the underwriter, so if you were to get sued right now and you had InterNACHI’s insurance and you wanted to talk to the underwriter while you can’t form any other the insurance companies there in New York somewhere when a three-piece suit, and they’ll sell, you know, just, you know, they’ll just settle for your deductible and call it a day. Well, that doesn’t happen, that’s why I had to go into the insurance business because we didn’t have insurance at an actual insurance company. We just had insurance sells people and companies that sold other people’s products and we’re beholden to those underwriters. You don’t have that anymore, you can just call me on the phone, I found the numbers published. If you have a problem, I’m not going to I’m not going to settle I’m going to fight for you. As you know, I’m pretty good at winning in court. I just won another seven-year war with a patent troll trying to stop us from using infrared cameras.

Ian R – Yeah, I’ve been following that. That was interesting.

Nick Gromicko – It was scary because I lost you know, the first one. The first time, you know, they sued me and I lost. I lost them in the court in Mississippi. I lost 600 Some $1,000 judgment, you know. In Mississippi, the way it works is if you want to pill that $600,000 judgment, you have to put up 1.25% of the entire judgment. I’m giving it to the court. So InterNACHI went to go get a bond and it’s like 2020 25% You know, you lose the bond. Even if you win, right, you know, the bond is gone. $1,000 is gone. So I just put up the whole $784,000 appealed, went back in and I won, I won unanimous win. So that was like got all my money back then. My lawyers just recently got all my interest back 20 some $1,000 on the money that sat in there for a couple of years. Wow. So I like to fight so I’m gonna fight for you because, you know, insurance is a terrible thing. Let’s say somebody sue’s you over a purple kitchen or some nonsense bullcrap lawsuit, right? Well, if you’re in a state that requires, you know, insurance, which a lot of states are, and you get a couple of those, they share that battery. They tell every other insurance company that you had claims, and even though those claims had no merit, they still blemish, your claim history, right? You get a couple of them and your rates go up on your premiums, or you can’t buy insurance at all, you’re out of business. Either you can’t afford it, or you can’t get it, you’re out of business because the law makes you buy E&O insurance, the law makes you go to a private company, right and purchase their product. So it was really important that we started our own error and omissions insurance company so that inspectors who get unlucky, like a great inspector, all the sons I have been sued for, you know, 20 years, all of a sudden he gets two lawsuits and one week we had that, you know, both of them had no merit as ridiculous losses, had just settled both of those. He would look like every other insurance company like a bozo that shouldn’t be, that they shouldn’t pick up and he may have lost his career. So, I mean, I went into the in, you know, insurance business because we had to that we didn’t have a company in the industry, but we have software companies. So I think they’re doing okay, so I’m staying out of it.

Ian R – So I find that very interesting, it’s going to keep us as software companies on our toes, say, hey, if we don’t, we don’t keep up the level, Nick is going to release the world’s greatest Home Inspection Software.

Nick Gromicko – It’s not so bad. I mean, I think it’s very good that there’s competition. It’s very good that people who are providing a product, I mean, InterNACHI provides a zillion products and services, that the people for providing it are, you know, are trying to do the very best they can relative to other competitors, they want to be number one, everybody should be trying to be number one and whoever loses, inspectors, win.

Ian R – That’s actually a good point.

Nick Gromicko – If InterNACHI loses on something, that’s fine. I mean, we’ve already lost the software race in the sense that I’m not even gonna go into it. I’m just so pleased that the competitors are doing such a good job, you know, you’re doing such a great job. I got it. I don’t see any reason to ever, you know, there’s no need for me to go in there. It doesn’t help the inspectors at all. I like to, you know, fill holes, I don’t there’s no hole in the software business. I mean, now, if they all get gobbled up, and you get some private, you know, hedge fund comes in and buys you and every other software company, and then maybe I have to come in, but I don’t need to do that right now.

Ian R – So Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned that because there are two other aspects of the inspection industry that I personally anyways, worry about. So we were actually approached by a venture capital firm. Yeah. So they came to us and the gentleman that we talked to, they were doing exploratory measures or saying, more like it really isn’t our thing. You know, they, they institute a board, give you all this money. Actually, one of the companies they invested in, they’re an international company, but they invested in another inspection software, just down the road from me, in my state, but they do a different type of inspection industry, but that’s what they specialize in. They knew a lot about our industry, they’ve been talking to vendors because of the things they were asking and the points they knew. So that got me, that got me thinking I’m like, okay, so venture capital firm invests in a company, you typically won’t really work, won’t really know about that. But now you have a software company that’s being dictated by a board to say, hey, we need this we need to grow. It doesn’t matter what the user says it’s going to be user churn, we need to look at the bottom line that affects the inspection industry, it’s really kind of hard to be able to measure things like capital or venture capital firms.

Nick Gromicko – Yeah, um, so luckily, we have enough software vendors that aren’t under any outside influence at this point. Right. Yeah. I mean, you

Ian R – Nope, no outside influence.

Nick Gromicko – Thor is still hanging in there. Dominic, I mean, there’s a lot of software out there. I mean, I think homegauge really, in a way is still doing well, because they don’t have any nefarious purposes that I can see.

Ian R – I’m not saying that every venture capital company is going to be or hedge fund is going to be evil. But it’s a different perspective. You know,

Nick Gromicko – Right. Remember, home inspectors can, I mean, a lot of them can almost make their own software, sometimes we have to talk about it doing it, right. They think that they can take a word document and until they start writing reports and the reports, take them three hours to generate then maybe I should get some software, right.

Ian R – It’s not as easy as it sounds

Nick Gromicko – Not as easy as it sounds, it looks easy. Just like forming a trade association. I mean, I’m gonna trade associations, hey, we’ll just you know, we’ll send everybody a due. We’ll compete right up there with InterNACHI it’s not as easy now making it look easy is one thing, but actually being easy. It’s not so hard. I mean, look at your software, your software is known for cutting down the time it takes to generate a report. Yeah, I’d say the number one at that right. To the point where like you’re studying like how few clicks it takes to get something done. Can I remove a click? Can I shorten the distance between the finger I have to push here and the vineyard trying to get it down so that an inspector can really say when over a career could probably save a year of their life? Right? I mean, because if you add it up I mean, it’s like, it’s a tremendous amount of time. It’s better spent generating reports. I think you’re going to do I mean, your biggest problem now is that inspectors are you know, old dogs that don’t Wanna learn new tricks? If they’re already using software that they’re comfortable with? They don’t want to take out to two days of their life to learn your software. You have to keep reminding them that they’re trading two days for two years. Yeah. Right. Over a career, you could spend two years writing software. I mean, that’s a lot of time. I mean, human beings don’t live that long.

Ian R – I appreciate you saying that, because we’re, you know, everybody likes to say, hey, we’re the fastest, we’re actually the fastest measurably, we can actually measure by how many taps on your phone, and we have the least amount of taps on your phone of any software out there. We can, we can physically measure how much less time it takes you.

Nick Gromicko – So the inspectors don’t actually, it’s odd, you know, because it’s their time, they don’t actually calculate their time at all in their business. So they think that if they’re spending, you know, three hours generating an inspection report, that because they did it themselves, it didn’t cost them anything. This is just, you know, because we’re, we have so many inspectors and inspection business, instead of businessmen who happen to be in the inspection business, they can’t sometimes see the value of saving time. It’s an odd thing. Right? So I’m for you. You have a great product. So I think you’ll do well.

Ian R – I appreciate that.

Nick Gromicko – I’m not gonna start figuring out how many clicks I can reduced or a software advise. It’s not my thing, you know,

Ian R – I’ll send you an infographic because you actually gave us a suggestion to make an infographic. So we’ll make one for you to show the number of clicks.

Nick Gromicko – I mean, you should probably have some data to back it up too. So it’s not just like blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Probably, you know, could probably calculate it for you know, Spectras, doing 250 inspections a year or whatever, you know, and you’re saving them 40 minutes, add it all up over a 10 year career and see what that comes out to be um, you know. When I said a year, it’s probably, I haven’t done the math, but it’s certainly months of time. Oh, yeah.

Ian R – Yeah, we have the data and are just presenting it in an infographic. So that’s a fantastic idea that we’re actually going to do. I do have another question, though, about our industry. Remember, years ago, Nick when the management companies kind of took over the appraisal industry? Yeah, yeah. Do you think that could happen with company, and I’m not saying they’re bad. I’m not saying anybody’s bad actually out of any of this. Like companies like inspectors, and there’s a couple of smaller companies out there that are doing something similar? Do you think that is paving the way for management companies to do the same thing to inspectors?

Nick Gromicko – No, it’s just because it’s too localized. So one of the reasons I can’t do I can do a home inspection here, but I can’t do one, even 50 miles away. Not just because of the distance, it’s because of, I can’t get the marketing going in that area. Right. Real estate agents, buyers and everything where you live matters. It’s hard to nationalize stuff like that. It’s very difficult. Some people try right. They’ve been out for years. I mean, think about Angie’s List. I mean, the ones who tried to do contract and porch. Um, what’s that other big company? I can’t remember. They’re down a road from me, Golden, Colorado,

Ian R – The home advisor. Their Angie Anyways, now, so

Nick Gromicko – Service magic or something? I mean, that’s there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of effort being put into trying to commoditize you know, take over, contracting, or repairs, right, small repairs and things like that. It’s no one’s been able to succeed at doing it. It’s very difficult. First of all, you know, well, if you ask my dad, he’s in his 80s, right? He got if you were to have a leak, in your sink underneath your kitchen, okay? Who are you gonna call? He’s not gonna say home advisor or porch or Angie’s List or something, he just gonna say I’m gonna call a plumber. I know a plumber, right. Even if he doesn’t know, a plumber, he’s going to look for a plumber. So that is so powerful that it’s very difficult, to intercept that work. If it’s hard to intercept that when your sink is leaking hard for at least companies coming in here and intercept that and send their own people out. It’s really hard to do with inspections. Because, you know, people are going to call a home inspector and they’re gonna look for a local one. I mean, this was why I’m against 800 numbers. Oh, yeah. I

Ian R – Oh, yeah. I don’t like 800 numbers.

Nick Gromicko – I want the exchange that shows people I’m here, you know. You know, in my inspection business, when I ran it successfully for five and a half years, I probably spent more time and effort marketing to my existing 10 clients, than any other inspection company, every inspection I did, I made sure they had our notebook on faces on it, you know, customized material, I would ask it every inspection. You know, I’m glad you’re happy with the inspection. Do you know anybody who’s buying a house that might need me? Well, my daughter’s thinking about buying one in six months. So you’ll take this, take that, you know, I’ll send you some more stuff about a co-worker or anything like that. If you can get, you know, an additional inspection out of every, on average out of every client that you’ve done an inspection for. That’s only one. That’s one recommendation, right? Basically, if you can do that every year, and sometimes you’ll get 10 out of somebody right? If you get one I read when you’ve doubled your inspection business in one year, or if you know that, you know that story about the king. Yeah, by year two, you’ve quadrupled it. Just by simply getting all your simply deputizing all of your former clients, and to being a mouthpiece for you and to recommend you. To do that, you know, to make them all salesman, the salesman needs products, and those products are likely printed products. So people like to say, wow, you know, prints Dad, I’m doing everything digitally. You know, I would produce printed products, you know, we produce a lot of books, we sell millions of them because books go on shelves in America tried to get an American to throw a book in the garbage it almost. Yeah, it’s possible their hand won’t do it. Right. So I think it’s really important in our industry to keep working on our existing client base and working hard.

Ian R – Yeah. So I think my takeaway from what you just said there is we need to make sure that we are taking over our local market, because I think about Yeah, well, so as a good example, my parents need their lawn mowed regularly. Finding somebody to mow a lawn is near impossible nowadays. My brother and I called every landscaper that we could possibly find every kid down the street, and everybody we knew, I ended up having to go to an app. That is called plows and Mo’s and I had to order one online. So my market forced me to get an intermediary.

Nick Gromicko – We don’t want to do that. We want to hold on to our markets, right. I did an inspection one time for a couple. Yeah, a couple of days later, I saw him in a grocery store, you know. I was coming one way down the aisle, and they were coming out. I just did an inspection a couple of days ago. They had this funny expression on our faces. They’re looking at me real weird. Like, I’m like, what’s going on? Do you know? He came up to me and said, We know you from somewhere. We just can’t think about where we know you from. I said, I just did your inspection two days ago. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I realized right then if my clients can’t remember me, two days later, it’s really my duty to get the books and printed marketing material on brochures and everything and pound them with stuff so that it sticks to their bookshelf. So that a year from now, when they want to recommend me. They can say, you know, I can’t remember his name. So I’m in a grocery store a couple of days later, after he ruined my inspection, did a good inspection. I have this book, it’s on my shelf. Let me go home and get it for you and give it to you. So and always be asking your clients if they need more material to pass out for you. There’s nothing like getting printed material from somebody you know and the recommendation. You know, you have to hold on to our market so that big companies don’t come in and take it. If we keep buying from McDonald’s, that’s all going to happen.

Ian R – Yeah, and I’m not a huge fan of McDonald’s. I do like coffee though.

Nick Gromicko – I try not to eat, you know, big franchises for a reason, but has nothing to do with the quality of food to just have that we’re that’s how we’re gonna have. Yeah, we’re just gonna thank God, it’s Friday. It’s everywhere. And that’ll be yet. We’ll be done McDonald’s, Burger King, thank God, thank God, it’s Friday, whatever, TGIF and that’s it. You don’t want that. So those independent restauranteurs are just something like our independent home inspectors, we should make sure that we’re holding on to our client base in two hands.

Ian R – I kind of agree with that because I don’t think companies like inspected by management companies are going to come in and take over industry because I’ve never seen a more competitive business than home inspections for every agent, every person, every website, there’s 50 others in any any given market that are fighting tooth and nail to get that business.

Nick Gromicko – Let’s talk to that point, then it sounds like maybe we as home inspectors aren’t holding on to our local market very well. Then maybe Inspectify and companies like that, because they are going to come in with automatic weapons. They can work, they have a bigger budget, they can work harder. They have teams of people.

Nick Gromicko – It’s I have to disagree. Okay. So um I think there’s a lot of inspectors don’t get me wrong. If you dropped me in a parachute, let’s say, you blindfolded me and put me put me in a plane and gave me a parachute, and flew me somewhere, and dropped me out of a parachute, and I’d pull the cord and I landed in that town. In 30 days, I’ll have all the business I want. I’ll just take everything away, and you could have 1000 inspectors in that time 994 of them are not gonna make it. I’m gonna take all their work from them. A few of them, I’m gonna take half their work. And then I’m gonna, I’m gonna have all the work I want. Inside 30 days, maybe as quick as three weeks. So, programs and systems, our system as all my marketing, I don’t do any relationship marketing I never did. I certainly didn’t get 30,000 inspectors by running around like a fool with a bowl of chocolates, and putting them at every home inspector office, and shaking hands and smiling and trying to get home inspectors to join InterNACHI because they like me. You know, I have no idea who the president of McDonald’s is. Or if he’s a nice personality or not, I just don’t believe in relationship marketing. That has served me well relationship marketing works. That’s the problem, but it kept me so far with it. Eventually, you have to go to systemize marketing. That’s what I’m what InterNACHI is really good at doing for inspectors. That allows you to the sky’s the limit, once you start Systemising your marketing in the same way that everything else in your life is somewhat systemized. You can do really, really well and no one can stop you no competitor out there, there could be 1000 competitors, it doesn’t matter. It’s like having an automatic weapon. Everybody’s fighting tooth and nail. them come with their teeth and their nails and they’re just gonna get slaughtered. I just can’t compete with that. So let’s,

Nick Gromicko – They don’t have a bigger budget. I mean, they have a bigger budget overall, but not per market. Right? I mean, not per market. I mean, you and your little town or wherever you are in a piece of your your action. I mean, there’s you know, nobody has spent a lot of money to have that presence. Everywhere, it would be just billions an unfathomable amount of money to do it. So you can hold you know, look at your market, share, draw your hands and say, This is what I want. I’m gonna take all of this market right now. You know, and you can. I just don’t find that I find there’s a lot of inspectors, I just don’t find the competition to be fierce.

Ian R – You’re not in the same market as Kevin Maxwell, though. I love that guy. I’m trying to get him on the show.

Nick Gromicko – Are you in the same market? Oh, yeah.

Ian R – I remember when he started. Hey, Kevin, I know you’re listening.

Nick Gromicko – On top of that, he’s a nice personality. You know.

Ian R – He’s a good guy. I love Kevin.

Nick Gromicko – So he has the relationship marketing going for him. That’s not to say it doesn’t work. It just, you know, you can’t rely on it solely forever. Yeah, so. I’ve noticed a lot of inspectors that go in, but there’s a lot of inspectors that go out. I mean, if you watched InterNACHI stats, I mean, there’s like 1000s that go into this business and 1000s of go out with a lot of them go out of business before they go in? Yeah, they don’t even order they really get the business cards order. They’re out of it. You know, they said, so the House of Horrors, probably this razor, or online courses probably dissuade more more inspectors from going into business than anybody because, you know, they join InterNACHI they, you know, they struggle through the first two or three courses and they’re like, Oh, well, I have to know a lot about a lot and they leave, they’re gone. We you know, we can see it on on our computer screen people going into business, you know, and then just fading real quickly, when they realize how much they have to do and how much they have to know. That’s not a competitor that I’m worried about or someone who’s just pedaling around or someone that doesn’t do any marketing has no business sense won’t read any of my books. I mean, that guy’s gonna get crushed. Sure, he’ll steal a deal now on that, right. He has some realtor who was married to assist or something like that, or they can get a job now and then but they’re not going to be they’re not going to be much of a problem. Look, there’s a lot of people know how to cook, right? Cook great spaghetti and meatballs or whatever you want to do, but there aren’t that many great Italian restaurants, it’s different. There’s a difference between having a skill set and running a business in that industry. That’s one of the problems. That is what our industry is guilty of. It’s full of home inspectors, not businessmen who are in the inspection business. So that’s bad for our industry but it’s also good for the businessmen who are serious, because they, you know, their competition is just so weak.

Ian R – So, that leads me to just one last question that I have for you. So I remember years ago, and it’s not all about data and everything about the quote, unquote, takeover of our industry. Going back to the data point, and going back to porch years ago, when Porch first bought ISN, you bought shares in Portsmouth and you eventually gave it to the CMI board? Is that what happened?

Nick Gromicko – So they were given to me.

Ian R – They were given to you. Do you still have them? Or?

Nick Gromicko -I think that’s probably good. Probably good move. I mean, you know, I mean, nobody just gives you something out of the blue, I think, you know, Porch was trying to, you know, make sure that I didn’t come out against them too hard. Maybe they thought that would help. I don’t know. I mean, as you can tell from this interview, and anything else I’ve posted, I mean, I don’t pull any punches with anybody telling you. I feel like, I mean, makes no difference to me but I always just immediately, you know, get rid of any conflict of interest I have. I don’t take advertising. I mean, there’s people have offered to pay just for me to wear a hat for a year. I mean, it would have probably, like they’ve offered me a ton of money to buy a small house just to wear a hat every everywhere I go within the industry. That’s right, but as you can see, I don’t have any, no advertising. So I tried to get rid of a conflict of interest and try not to get myself into any of them. It’s very tempting, you know, and it’s always opportunity, and everybody keeps offering it. I mean, everybody offers InterNACHI millions of dollars. Yeah, there’s so many ways we could have monetized this thing. It’s ridiculous. And we haven’t yet. You know, I guess you all should start worrying if you see a banner ad go up on it and you can say, well, they finally sold out or they started to you not I mean, started down that road, but it won’t be in my lifetime.

Ian R – Nice. And I I believe you 100% on that. I’ve been part of InterNACHI for many years. And I totally believe you on that. You’ve talked before too, about even using the political system, if anything really got bad. You said the legislation is what you brought up.

Nick Gromicko – You know, I’ve been able to change all the legislation I wanted. The way I wanted it almost everywhere. So It’s not that I’m a really great lobbyist as a lobbyist, lobbying isn’t very hard. It’s not very difficult. I mean, you make your case to the right people and that’s it. I mean, maybe it’s also easier now that InterNACHI is the only trade association left in the industry. I mean, nobody really writes legislation anymore, unless they call me. I mean, there’s no legislators out there, you know, creating some crazy legislation that doesn’t call me first. If they do, I call them and they call me right back. I mean, so internationally, so, so dominant, that, you know, we have this a big advantage now that there’s only one trade association left that we have a unified voice and a lot of the percentage of the industry in one place. So we don’t have to worry about that. I don’t think anymore. I mean, every now and then we get some crazy, but I’m able to fix it, as you can see on a message board. So what do you guys want, I go back, and I get the legislators to fix it. So thanks a lot of time, but it’s not that bad. A couple of areas I’ve had to sue. So I sued the governor of Kentucky, I believe recently, two years ago, for trying to make inspectors buy an I think it was a million-dollar insurance policy to do a radon test. So I sued the governor’s offer and after that bill, they reversed it. You know, I called first and asked him to change it and they didn’t change it. So what do you want me to do? You know, I can’t have kind inspectors going out and trying to buy a million-dollar policy just to do one lousy $150 radon test can’t be done. You know, the argument was it was gonna hurt the consumer because you’re not gonna get anybody to do these radon tests. Radon kills people. So I mean, I had a great argument and I had a great lawyer and so we won. I think I’ve sued probably three sitting governors now. Well, over our bad legislation, one all of them. I mean, most of the time the lawsuit doesn’t have to even be filed. Last couple of weeks we got against builders I didn’t I didn’t even fathom I just generated the lawsuit. Our lawyers sent them the lawsuit and said we’re gonna file this. I got what I want it real quick. Right? So and well I really battled that I really had a long time was EBCHI still hanging in there? I think you know they’re coming along. ASHI, of course, loves to spend all its member’s money suing me they’ve lost. I think it’s now run nine times in a row. So I’ll beat him again recently. It was just nice. I mean, it’s like, you know, Floyd Mayweather, I guess, you know. There aren’t many of them left. You know, I mean, I don’t think there are any ashy members left, there’s a few, but not many. So I think the industry is much better than it was 10 years ago, I mean, actually still had a couple 1000 members 10 years ago, on what they’re down to now, but I’ve never even seen, I’ll never even run into any of them. So now we’re all just unified under one family, I guess you could call it, it’s much easier in terms of legislation to get things done because, you know, we have one voice, and when I can’t get it done, you know, a little threat helps. You know, and a little politics sometimes helps remind, remind the governor that you know, people aren’t going to get laid on tests if you do this, and they’re gonna die of lung cancer. You don’t want that. So, you know, lobbying is just a lot of convincing the right people to see your way. I’ve been pretty successful because I haven’t spent any money on it. I mean, I don’t think I spent, I don’t think I’ve given out $10,000 in donations in my lifetime. You know, got all this legislation to go our way. Just based on a strong argument.

Ian R – Yeah. So I guess that’s pretty reassuring to me, as a home inspector to know. Okay, listen, if things get too far if we really do become coal miners, that at the very least you can even handle it at that level.

Nick Gromicko – If I had to pass legislation that prohibits inspectors from releasing data, which would kill everybody who’s getting that right, you’re hurting pretty bad. I mean, I probably could get it done. We’re definitely in a although we’re in an anti regulation sort of mode right now because you know, central planning and regulation stuff that just doesn’t work. Everybody knows that now. We’re still in a privacy era where privacy matters. I think as more and more people lose their privacy, it’s easier and easier for me to make an argument that we need some legislation to protect consumer privacy. Furthermore, politicians love it right. So politicians love to pass legislation that helps the consumer and doesn’t cost the state any money so sure, you know, building a bridge is one thing that politicians can get behind but that still cost them a lot of money but passing legislation saying that a consumer’s personal data and information about themselves in their house and their children Everything can’t pass through and inspector to someone else. Everything they see and all the information they gather has to be and remain private within that home inspector’s domain. Just probably legislation I could pass pretty easily if I had to. I don’t feel we’re at that point yet. I don’t see that these companies like Amsterdam or porch or anything or doing anything terribly wrong.

Ian R – It’s opt-in at the moment. I don’t think it’s terribly wrong. Personally anyways, how should I say this? I feel like they shouldn’t have their fingers as much as they do in our industry. But what they’re doing is not wrong. I do I don’t like how some of the HomeGauges stuff has happened recently. Really? Personally? Yeah, I don’t I don’t like the whole. Hey, do you want insurance as you’re trying to download your report?

Nick Gromicko – Let me ask you a question. Yeah. What about that? Let’s say I’m a consumer I get the inspection report. You know, I’m gonna have to buy insurance for this house. I have to buy insurance for it. What is so wrong with one of the largest insurance companies and honorable insurance companies I might add, as far as I can tell anthem and my experience with them. I do a lot of a lot with them. They’re a very honorable company. What is so terrible about them asking your client would you like a quote on home insurance and property insurance now that you bought a home? What is so horrible about that? Offering someone, something they very well need. At this moment, you’re offering the right product at the right time, from someone who can provide that product at the right time, and potentially, at a discount. Why wouldn’t you want that?

Ian R – So I guess it comes down to for me, as a business person, I picture myself buying a McDonald’s and um, I own a McDonald’s franchise, the owner of that building, instead of selling antacid, after you finish your Big Mac, you’re going to need an acid. So yeah, that’s something that consumers going to need. He stands off to the side. Before you can pull up to the window, hey, do you want this fantastic before you buy this from the guy who’s renting the building, so then they’re forced to buy something from or offered something from them, I want to sell antacid at my window. I want to have that income. So from my perspective, I’d like to be able to say, I want to offer that and I want to regulate how I offer that. I get what they’re doing. I’m not saying it’s horribly wrong. What I’m saying is, I don’t make that much off the cheeseburger that I sold. Antacid has a higher profit margin. Let’s say that, that homeowners insurance has a higher profit margin than the data that we have, I read a statistic one time it’s worth like $18.32. You know what? So so as a hammer.

Nick Gromicko – Actually listen to Warren Buffett and stuff. I think he owns Geico. So like, there’s it’s awesome that those policies are like their payouts are 101%. So you’ve been to a casino, right? Where it says the payout on the gamble. Okay, well, in most states, they require you to say, say what the payout is on a slot machine or something has to be a certain amount, right? Yes, like for every dollar taken, they have the payout, 80 cents, or something, and 90 cents, right? On a side note, you know, there are some casinos that are like 95% 98%. You know, it’s just amazing, you know, but in the insurance business, sometimes it’s 101%. Like they’re so not good at pricing insurance, still, for homes, that they often just lose money for a while, you know, or if they’re trying to buy a market, they certainly lose money, right? So I’m not sure there’s a lot of like this big, these big piles of money that they’re making by offering insurance. But we have to know that when an insurance company buys, reporting software company we’re gonna get this right.

Ian R – I’m not saying that what they did was wrong, or unexpected. In reality, though, but I go back to that our data is worth $18.20 some odd cents, if I remember, right, I have to look back, it’s under $20. But now that’s kind of like saying, a hammer costs $18. But now, there’s only one hammer producer in the entire country. So instead of getting what we should for the hammer, because you need that to build the house, and everybody comes as your hammer is only worth $18.20. Yeah, but I’m the only one who makes them. Home inspectors, we’re the only ones who make this data. You get it, you get a good brokerage. Let’s say they do 200 deals that year. Oh, my goodness, we can get so much data for them. I mean, for some home inspection companies, that’s just a semi-good month. You know, it’s like, we produce way more data than any real estate agent in the country.

Nick Gromicko – good deals with like the alarm system companies.

Ian R – So interestingly enough, Nathan or whatever, at least once, or I have, I have not. But I do think there is a way that we could bring the money to the inspector instead of these other companies. So

Nick Gromicko – I mean, they were people were getting inspectors are getting paid about 15 bucks for that lead. Yeah, that’s not enough. Right. Turns out that’s the most profitable thing out of everything. You know, Porch hanging your TV, those leads aren’t worth really the worst $100. But the alarm system companies, are worth a lot. The worst, the most. So I was wondering why an alarm company didn’t just come in and buy one of these software companies?

Ian R – Yeah. It’s a good question and gives more money to the inspector. So they’re not digging cove they get a couple of bucks from the company store. I’ll tell you why we’re actually working on something to make the data more profitable for the inspector, and not for a big corporation. I think I think that’s really the key.

Nick Gromicko – Yeah, and then people who are already trading their data, their customer’s data for products or services, certainly can’t complain about what you’re doing. Right. So if they can make more money at it.

Ian R – Yeah. I think that’s it. Taken care troll. So kicking the guy out of my takeout line at McDonald’s selling antacid, before they come to the window and saying, Nope, I’m taking that acid and I’m selling it at my own window. I’m going to make a profit off of that.

Nick Gromicko – And they will get a software that works a lot faster.

Ian R – Yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah, hit the nail on the head.

Nick Gromicko – I mean, in the end, it’s all about, you know, because everybody else asked me about marketing and stuff like that. In the end, you definitely have to have a great product, you have a great product. So I think you have an advantage, you know what I mean? In the end, if your products really good, it’s just so much easier. It’s almost impossible. Without it, you could market to the cows come home. I know a lot of people could criticize InterNACHI. Early on, it’s just, you know, just a marketing machine, tricking inspectors, and to give you the money and all that stuff but you know, in the end, we ended up with great products and services for inspectors. If you do the same, I think you’ll win as well, with your software. I liked this idea. Whatever you got coming up, though, maybe, you know, I could, I could probably predict what it’s going to be where, you know, people who wish to purchase the data bid against it. bid for it.

Ian R – Maybe we could talk a little bit about that. That’s actually interesting, I think you’d love that idea.

Nick Gromicko – Basically, you’re gathering data. You know, it’s all in the same way that, you know, you remember how you have to bid on I think it’s, you know, for contractor leads and this and that stuff like that. I mean, putting things up for bid makes sense because you get to allow market forces to decide what the price is. Then you know, you’re getting a fair price, right?

Ian R – Yeah. There’s an element.

Nick Gromicko – Everybody’s getting the right thing. Everyone, the free market is completely free. Right? The seller is getting the maximum they can get, and the buyer is getting what they’re willing to pay for it. Nobody’s getting tricked?

Ian R – Yeah, that’s not the whole kit and caboodle of it. There’s an element of that in there. It’s definitely going to be pretty useful.

Nick Gromicko – Inspector, they could probably, you know, put some ads on the back of the reports, and nobody’s going to complain. Yeah, that’s sort of a, I guess, mini version of using, you know, using the products and services that are out there in this world that your client might need, right. On the back of it, you pick a lawnmower, a landscaper ad, right? I mean, that might be a great place to put it. I mean, I recently bought a rental and you know, my doors are full of all kinds of cleaning companies and landscaping companies. They’re just stuffing, you know, things on my door to try to get me to window cleaners and everything, right? So you could see that there is it makes sense, right? If people are willing to put those at the door of that house after I bought it, it must be because some people call them and some call them because they need them, if I called one of them. So I called the window cleaner. I’m not going up to storage, washing my windows. So you know, that might be a sort of something that could be done by your software company that really would provide some second stream of income for inspectors and they could use it.

Ian R – Yeah. However, our little secret plan here is going to pan out. That’s really what it comes down to a home inspection is a dead-end product. We provide it and that’s it. It’s not like we go in and we say okay, now every year, I mean, it will be great, but that’s a really hard product to sell annual maintenance inspections. So when we do a home inspection, that’s it. We tried to get a referral. That’s it. How do we get residual income from that one inspection? How do we make another $350.06 months later?

Nick Gromicko – Homeowners insurance as a residual product? Right? They just keep renewing. The Harmon insurance policy and almost never.

Ian R – Yep. Companies like porch do really well with their close rates on selling homeowners insurance. Yeah, they have a very high close rate but now you sold that data to them you sold that hammer we’re the only one that can make that hammer to them. They built a million-dollar house. Why aren’t we charging more for the hammer over? Yeah, yeah. So the data, it’s important to our business and it’s the way that we can make residual income but I think we should save that for another podcast. I mean, this has been a fantastic podcast.

Nick Gromicko – We’re gonna get opposition within it. You’re gonna get opposition. I don’t have a software to sell it, you’re gonna get opposition within the industry.

Ian R – Oh, yeah, totally. I want to do like what you do. I want to do what’s best for home inspectors. You know, if we’re making 80 grand a year and killing ourselves running a business, not charging enough for a home inspection. I mean, it’s a good living, but It’s not, it’s not going to push you forward in a business. How can I make that easier for all inspectors to have a business on top of it?

Nick Gromicko – There are two sad things about our industry. I mean, the first is that home, people only buy homes once every, whatever, 7-10 years or whatever, you know. It’s not like, when I do a contracting job, you know, it’s not even a month later calling me for the next thing they want to be done. Yeah. That’s not true in home inspections. The other sad thing is that with no extra brain training, education, wisdom, you know, street-savvy or anything, real estate agents get to our shared client just ahead of us. So it’s just surely dumb luck, that some real estate agent, that our guys are carrying bowls of dark chocolate, I would put our office to try to smile and for them or whatever, trying to kiss their butt to try to get some work out of them. That it’s not that agent has done anything brilliant. All that agent did was like got to our shared client, just a split second before we did. So they get to recommend us. If we could just get to the client, a split second before the real estate agents, then we’re going to be in a lot of dark chocolate, is that the real estate agents are gonna come to us for those leads.

Ian R – Is that the eye rep idea? Yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m really looking forward to seeing how that turns out for Nick. When I first saw that I’m excited. I’m like, oh, man, because NAR, you know, it’s kind of like, okay, well, that’s a different podcast.

Nick Gromicko – Anyway, I was a member for years, you know, so yeah, we’ll see what happens, you know what I mean, but I think that second, you know, the problem that we have in our industry has to be solved. It’s not our fault that someone just got to our client just ahead of us. Now we have to go around and market to those real estate agents, because they knew who they know who is about to get an inspection, just before we do. That’s just terribly terrible, bad luck, that our industry is like that. Yeah. We have to fix that. If we fix that, and reverse that. Everything changes for us.

Ian R – See, and going back to our opening discussion. That’s why I like InterNACHI, quote, unquote, taken over the industry, because that’s what it does. For us. It does good things you guys have asked in mind, where are your shareholders that you’re helping.

Nick Gromicko – You know, trying. My brother does a lot of it. I mean, I think getting that US Department of Education, accreditation the same as Harvard and Yale have, in fact, we have the same as Harvard, Yale doesn’t even have the same accreditation we do from the federal government, because they only have regional. So if y’all taught a law class in Texas, it would not be a college course. They don’t they only have regional in New England. So we actually have, you know, a higher accreditation than Yale. I think although that’s, you know, someone’s for sale, that’s pretty good. I mean, it’s, you know. I think there’s a lot of opportunities that are going to come, I think we’re going to be able to push our industry up, right up smack with the level of architects and engineers with that. If we can get this degree thing done, and we end up with actual college degrees and inspections, that would probably have to go back and change all the licensing, I would say, even because right now states are sort of telling you what you have to do to become a licensed home inspector. Well, once there’s a degree in, it’ll become like lawyers, right? You have to get a degree in law, and then you have to pass the bar, it’ll be much better in every state. Then we can sort of, you know, international sort of good because it’s accepted almost everywhere. But it would be pretty neat. If there we got to a point where a degreed home inspector can operate throughout the country because of that degree.

Ian R – We wouldn’t have to worry about moving.

Nick Gromicko – That would put us way past a licensed real estate agent who got their license in two weeks.

Ian R – Right. No, totally.

Nick Gromicko – If we do that and get us up with the engineers and architects. We also reverse the pecking order between us and real estate just by getting to those clients ahead of them. We’re all gonna get rich. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be a great profession.

Ian R – That’s going to be awesome. Well, Nick, I’m looking forward to iRAP. I’m looking forward to everything that you have going on. I gotta say, this has been one of my favorite episodes. Having both you and Ben on has been fantastic. Thank you for breaking your no podcast rule and hanging out with us. We love having both of you and I don’t do interviews. So well, one. Well, we feel privileged. Thank you again for being on for helping us understand what InterNACHI plans to do about the quote-unquote, takeover of our industry. We look forward to seeing what happens.

Nick Gromicko – Thank you very much for having me on.

Ian R – Thank you.

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].

If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.