Since I operate a school that trains students to become home inspectors, I often get the chance to talk with people who are considering making a career change. Most of them are excited for the opportunities that the inspection industry provides, but as with any life-changing decision, they’re often filled with apprehension. They typically come armed with a long list …
(What) Was I Thinking?
We’ve already gotten through (what we thought was) the hard part: we’ve made the leap into the home inspection business. Whether we’re in a state that has certain requirements for licensing, or we’ve simply struck out on our own and learned what we think we need to know, we are sure we’re past the really rough part. We’re firmly in …
What Did We Expect?
We all go into business with certain expectations. We imagine that we’ll make a lot of money. We expect to work with the best people in our industry. We anticipate that we’ll have scores of frenzied clients, posting to social media, raving about how great we are. And we’re certain that the number of problems that we’ll encounter will be …
Simple and Hard
We all have a job to do, and with that comes the requirement that we assign a value to what it is we do. How much is what we do worth to us, and how much is it worth to those we serve? Is there a price that we can assign to our services that our clients would be willing …
Obstacle Course
Sooner or later, it happens to all of us. The best of us, the worst of us, and every one of us in between. It’s unavoidable. It’s inevitable. It’s unescapable. It’s coming for us, and there’s really nothing we can do about it. Eventually, we’ll all hit the wall in our jobs. No matter how hard we work, no matter …
Streamlining Your Business
Customer acquisition. It’s a phrase that most of us had never even heard of, much less thought of, before we became business owners. Now, whether we call it that or not, it’s something that we can’t get out of our mind. Trying to figure out how to get more people to hire us ranks right up there with food and …
Leadership
Being a professional home inspector is an interesting job. We get paid to go into a stranger’s home, walk around testing stuff, opening things, and generally checking to make sure that all the different items in a house are functioning like they should. We do our investigating, we report our findings, and we’re on our way, out the door, heading …
Peace of Mind
Small talk is a part of everyone’s’ 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 the most …
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 …
Thanks (Giving)
As we bring Thanksgiving week to a close, and I’m finally finishing off (most of) our leftovers, it seems like the perfect time to reflect on some of the things that I’m most thankful for in my home inspection career. All too often, in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, trying our best to keep our businesses on …