I was listening to a podcast this morning, the Tim Ferris show, and his guess was a military expert who was talking about the potential threat that China may pose to the US and the world. In part of the interview, he was speaking about China’s aggression toward and desire to annex Taiwan. He talked extensively about the way in which …
Closing the Deal
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; …
Peace of Mind
Small talk is a part of each of our lives. It’s defined by Wikipedia as ”polite conversation about unimportant things.” On most days, we all engage in some form of small talk, whether in public or in our jobs, and most of us have our go-to questions at the ready, just in case some small talk breaks out. One of …
Is There a Market for Quality?
Give the people what they want. George Jessel Obviously, as a small business owner, we must follow the advice of George Jessel, and give the people what they want. If we’re trying to sell something that no one wants, there’s an oversized chance that we we’ll quickly find ourselves out of business! Unfortunately, too many businesses point to this quote …
Plan Accordingly
It’s tough to grow a business. If we’re good at what we do, sooner or later, we’re going to be overwhelmed. We’ll be faced with more work than we can handle. Not only will we be doing the actual inspections, the thing we do for a living, but we’ll also be be dealing with all the other tasks that come …
Walking the Line
Being a professional home inspector is not an easy gig. We find ourselves in the unenviable position of trying to appease different parties (the buyers, sellers, listing and selling agents), each with their own different, and often conflicting, motivations. This information should be top of mind when we are performing inspections and writing reports. Our reports matter, and not just …
Handling Sticky Situations
An inspector reach out regarding an interaction that he had with a builder after inspecting a new construction home. The water heater was located in the attic, and it was a tankless unit. From what I understand, there was no overflow drain pan below the water heater and the builder was challenging the inspector for including this fact in his …
Unlimited Possible Experiences
As we navigate the events of our daily lives, the number of possible experiences that we can have are almost unlimited. This same rule applies when we perform a home inspection: there are an almost unlimited number of possible things that we could find when analyzing a home’s systems and components. Just as it’s hard to prepare ourselves for an …
Providing Information
Information is the lifeblood of every creature. Most of the time, the more information we have, the better off we are. As an inspector, as a home buyer, as a human being in general, the more we know about a situation, the more successful we’ll be. We’re better prepared to face the experiences of the day when we know what’s …
Employer or Employee; Which One am I?
As children, we were taught that once we started working, we had our choice of either a blue or white-collar job. For as long as we can remember, that was the norm. You went to school and got a white-collar job, or you skipped school and started working right away at a blue-collar job. We could be a worker, or …