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 …
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 …
Are You a Slacker?
The English language is considered by many cultures as one of the most difficult for an outsider to learn, as words and phrases often have many different meanings. The topic of today’s post, the word “slack”, is one of those words that can have a few different meanings. Most of us immediately imagine something negative when we hear the word …
Swimming Upstream
Starting out in the world of small business is difficult. When we’re just beginning our home inspection journey, it seems like the list of things to do is overwhelming. New business owners, especially ones that are trying to run a business for the first time, are faced with a seemingly endless number of options. Quite often, there are so many …
To Re-inspect or Not to Re-inspect
Being a home inspector is usually pretty straightforward. Someone calls us, we do their home inspection, and get paid. One, two, three; nothing much unusual in that process. But, sometimes, we’re asked to do things that are outside our normal routine. It’s in situations like these, when we’re asked to step outside our comfort zone, where we’ve got to be …
Peddle Power
Being a home inspector is a fairly unique job. We’re not like typical businesspeople. We don’t have a retail store where our clients meet us. We don’t have things on the shelf that we’ve got to store and manage. We don’t have vendors where we buy our inventory. Most of us don’t really have a lot of products for our …
Growing Pains
It’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem: deciding when (and if) we should grow our business. Hopefully it’s an issue that each of us will have to confront sometime in our future. Having to face this question means that we’ve been successful in our industry, but that doesn’t make the choice any easier. It’s still something …