Stress. Just reading the word can cause us to tense up. Stress is something that we all must deal with, and most of us would agree that it seems like modern life is getting more stressful every day. Whoever you talk to, it seems as though they would love to return to “days gone by,” as most people believe that …
Incomplete Information
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Helen Keller It is great to be alive, but this life is not all love and roses. Being a human does come with its own difficulties. How we decide to deal with those difficulties, the …
Guidelines
Guidelines. They exist to help us know what to do in public, in our relationships, as well as in our business. If you’re a professional home inspector, like me, those guidelines will typically include your standards of practice. They may be directives coming down from your state or local government or may be established by the home inspection organization that …
The Best Plan
As I often talk about the role that ethics plays in running a successful home inspection business, as expected, I tend to get pushback from some inspectors. One thing that’s often said is that it’s very easy for me to say that I place ethics and relationships over money, because I’ve been an inspector for so long that I don’t …
A Multi-Pronged Defense
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’ll quickly find ourselves out of business! Unfortunately, too many businesses point to this quote as …
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 have to deal 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 …