There are literally tens of thousands of home inspectors out there. Maybe not all of them reside in our own backyard (although, sometimes it feels like they do), but there’s enough competition milling about to make it hard for us to be seen. And the reality of this situation is that if we’re not being seen, we’re not being called; …
Home Inspection Intelligence Quotient
One of the biggest problems facing the home inspection industry, same as most other industries, is that we put too much faith in the belief that our problems can be solved by intelligence alone. It may simply be a function of the smarter ones among us who are enamored with sitting around and thinking up ways for us to get …
Riding a Wave of Your Own Creation
Can you imagine what the home inspection industry was like in 1999? Everything was right there for the taking. You could register just about any home inspection-related website URL that you wanted. Whatever company name you could think of was there for the taking. Saw a territory that you wanted to work in? All you had to do was start …
Unpredictable, Disorderly, and Illogical
Running your own business is not for the faint of heart. It seems like every day there’s some new thing to figure out, some irate person that needs calming, and some spontaneous fire that needs quelling. All too often, it seems like we’re going it alone, left to our own devices as it were; standing alone on the shore trying …
My Own Boss
We all like to think that we’re our own boss, but in reality, we all have many different bosses the drive our schedule every day. We may have children that dictate when we’re able to use our vehicle to go somewhere. We might have spouses that dictate what we do with our evenings and weekends. But regardless of those built-in …
Aluminum vs. Copper
Most people don’t think much about the electrical wiring hidden inside their walls, that is, until something goes wrong. It’s in our best interest, as professional home inspectors, to make sure that our clients know what type of wiring is present inside the walls of their home and to educate them regarding the pros and cons of the different types …
Understanding Flow
Electricity is a fundamental force of nature and we utilize it to power our modern world. It lights up our homes, drives our technology, and facilitates countless aspects of our daily lives. Yet, despite its ubiquitous presence, the underlying mechanisms of the flow of electricity remains a mystery to many. Let’s see if we can’t demystify these concepts and shed …
Growing, Anyone?
People stay where they grow.Seth Godin I heard this quote from marketing guru Seth Godin while listening to a podcast as I was driving home from an inspection the other day. During the conversation, the host was asking Seth his opinion on the current situation in employment, where it seems almost impossible to keep an employee around. While trouble keeping …
Only We
Being in the home inspection business for all these years has been challenging to say the least, but it’s taught me (at least) one thing: that we home inspectors are a generally unflappable bunch. After all, we repeatedly endure fire from all sides, a condition that would quickly wilt much more delicate flowers. Long working hours, demanding clients and agents …
Three-Phase Power
As home inspectors, we don’t often come across three-phase power systems while inspecting residential structures. However, as we move into the commercial inspection side of the business (and on rare occasions in a residential home), we will come across three-phase electrical power systems. Having a basic understanding of how these systems work can go a long way towards making our …