We’ve got an idea of the kind of business we’d like to build. We’d like to produce a certain type of product for a certain type of client. We’d like to be able to work for a specific customer: one that appreciates the work that we do, the inspection that we perform, the art that we create. If that’s the …

What would we be doing differently if we were inspecting this house for a friend? How much more in-depth would we be while doing our inspection? What would we be doing that we don’t normally do for our “other” clients? How would we write our report differently? How much more descriptive and helpful would we be with our verbiage? And, …

Getting married. Buying a house. Quitting a job. Starting a business. There are lots of difficult choices we need to make as we travel along through life. It’s hard to know if we’re making the right decision. It’s even harder to know if we’re getting the timing right, so we put off doing anything. Making tough decisions is, well, tough. …

It can be difficult, especially when we start out, to say no to business. We’ve got to remember that the best clients, and the ones that will be best for us going forward, are the ones who’s values line up with ours; who are on the same page with us; who are looking to get similar results from their home …

We’re blessed to live in such an amazing time. Things are changing so fast, every day, all around us. The technology that we used just 10 years ago is almost antique. (Listen to music on compact discs anymore?) If we’ve got a 5-year old phone, we’re considered (by our kids) to be a dinosaur. So, if things are changing so …

We’ve all been there. Maybe we’re just starting out and don’t yet know what the hell we’re doing. Maybe we’ve got lots of experience, but we’re stumped by this one crazy thing we’ve never seen before (and hopefully never see again). We’ve all, at one time or another, needed a helping hand. So, how come most of us don’t want …

I recently inspected one of the largest properties that I’d ever done in one day (27,000 square feet). Nine straight hours in one location. Thankfully, it was a vacant commercial property and, after a brief discussion of concerns and expectations, the agents and buyers left me alone to do my work. But how do we stay focused when we’re in …

It’s great to come up with new ideas. But what are we supposed to do when we’ve got too many ideas? So many things on our mind that we can’t get any of them done. Shiny object syndrome, it’s often called. We’re faced with a challenge. Are we in possession of such a great business mind that we need to …

Crushing someone’s dreams. The deal killer. Being the bad guy. It’s one of the worst things about being a professional home inspector. No matter how good we are at our job, how creative we are at writing reports, or how empathetically we deliver our findings, eventually we’re going to be right there in the middle of things when someone cancels …

Working with new agents can be a challenging proposition for a home inspector. On the one hand, it seems like we’re having to do some of their job for them, walking them through the home inspection process and instructing them on what they should be doing next for our mutual client. Doing some of their work without any of their …