Empire State of Mind
Empire State of Mind
The Art of Report Writing in Home Inspection with Dylan Chalk
In this conversation, Matt Williams and Dylan Chalk explore the world of home inspection, the intricacies of report writing, and the development of software to enhance the inspection process. Dylan shares his journey from aspiring writer to successful home inspector and author, discussing the importance of clear communication in reports and the challenges of writing a book. They delve into the evolution of report writing software and how it can improve profitability for inspectors. The discussion highlights the need for real estate agents to understand home inspections better and the value of continuous improvement in business practices. In this conversation, Matt Williams and Dylan Chalk discuss the importance of expertise in home inspections, the role of technology in improving efficiency, and the nuances of navigating different housing markets. They explore innovative reporting techniques, the significance of customization in inspection software, and the integration of CRM systems. The discussion emphasizes the balance between linear and non-linear workflows in inspections and the future of home inspection software, highlighting the competitive advantages that come with effective tools.
Key Takeaways:
- The journey from aspiring writer to home inspection success.
- How customized software is revolutionizing inspection processes.
- The importance of clear, concise communication in reports.
- Innovative reporting techniques and CRM system integration.
- Balancing workflows for improved inspection outcomes.
- The future of home inspection software and its impact on profitability.
Contact IEB -
- web: www.iebcoaching.com
- email: support@iebcoaching
- social: @iebcoaching
Contact Matt -
- email: matt@dciabq.com
- IG: @the.matthew.williams
On today's episode we're talking about home inspection, writing a book and developing your own report.
Speaker 2:Writing software this is the Empire State of Mind. Empire State of Mind Helping build companies with faster growth, higher profits and more time freedom. Finally, a podcast for the home inspection industry and beyond. This is the Empire State of Mind and this is your host, matt.
Speaker 1:Williams. Well, welcome to the show. I am so glad you guys tuned in today. Today we have a fantastic guest. I'm really excited Mr Dylan Chalk is on the line. Dylan, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:Matt, how are you doing? Thanks for having me. Things are great.
Speaker 1:That's awesome man. I'm really glad to have you on the show and I just recently had the privilege of getting to know you just a little bit and I'm really excited that you're here. I hear you're in Seattle Washington, is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah, I live on a little island outside of Seattle.
Speaker 1:And so I've been up there before because I was born in Portland, oregon, that island. How do you? Is there a bridge out there? How do you get there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's a bridge off the backside which brings you out to the peninsula and kind of more rural area, and then you can take a ferry and it goes right to downtown Seattle.
Speaker 1:So I think I've been on that ferry before. You can pull your whole car on that thing, right?
Speaker 3:You can. Yeah, I think it holds like 250 cars or something, and yeah, it's actually a fun thing to do. If you're in Seattle, just hop on the ferry and you can go off to a little island.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's incredible. So you've been in home inspection for a little while. When did you get started in home inspection?
Speaker 3:I've been inspecting since around 2002 and 2003,. You know, right around that time.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah. What got you into home inspecting and what'd you do before that?
Speaker 3:Oddball, I, I, uh, I, as I was mentioned to you, I I've always, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. And uh, you know, once you spend several years of your life trying to be a writer, you start realizing that a life of abject poverty is probably not in your own self-interest. And uh, and I had, you know, I paid my way through college doing construction and stuff. So I was building houses and working for builders and stuff and trying to write. And a friend of mine bought a house and he was like man, you should, I had this home inspection. It was the coolest thing and the inspector walked me through the house and taught me all this stuff and wrote this report and I was like, wow, what a cool. You know, I didn't even know it existed, and so that was kind of my first introduction to it.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. So I wonder, are your narratives like, like, very artistic, or how does that work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, that's actually really, really good. You know, I mean, Mark Twain has a famous quote that I wanted to write a long letter, but I didn't have time, so or I wanted to write a short letter, but I didn't have time, so I wrote a long one instead.
Speaker 1:That's so true, it is harder to be short and concise and accurate than it is like be longer. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Isn't it? There's a whole art to that, you know. So it's funny, I think, when people think, oh, you're a writer and your narratives must be long and I definitely have some long narratives but to me, the shorter you can make it the better, as long as it's got the information that you want in there and it's it's. It's really difficult. I mean, none of very few inspectors get into home inspection because they want to be a writer.
Speaker 3:And what a weird thing. You know, with the way technology has changed, I feel like I'm probably one of the best paid writers in the whole country, you know, I mean there's a handful like one percent that you heard of that. You know have these like uh bestsellers on the new york times bestseller list, but that's, you know, those are the oddballs, like most writers cannot make a living writing anymore. It's it's sort of right and AI is writing for us and all the rest of it. So how, how interesting I get to make a living as a writer. And yeah, I think, at the end of the day, home inspectors are writers, we don't. I teach several different report writing classes and one of them is, you know, giving tips of like, how novel writers work, and there's a lot of tips and tricks to writing and communication that you know I think can really help elevate the quality of reports and help people actually read the reports that we deliver, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh, and so many times like they don't read the report and I mean you can blame them honestly, like it's not like it's just to sit down on the couch and read this report, like it's technical jargon A lot of times. It's sometimes hard to read and and it can be a lot of overwhelming data and information. I, I, you know, I, yeah, they should be reading this report, but I mean I can see why here's 30, 40, 50 pages of technical data on your home that you're buying and most people are like just cut to the chase.
Speaker 3:I think one of the most off-putting things I've found with a lot of reports is there's so much boilerplate that doesn't pertain to the house in the beginning that you instantly get convinced that you're not even able to put time reading about the house that you're buying.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I actually work hard to try to convince people that my objective on the back know, my objective on the backend is to take pictures and click on things. That's all I want to do because I can't type. My soccer coach pulled me out of my typing class in high school and said I should be running laps rather than typing. So I'm a terrible writer.
Speaker 3:So I want a report that looks as though I spent all night writing it. But I don't want to have to actually write anything. And but on the on the front end of the client, I want them to feel like I wrote a report just for their house. That it's. You know that it doesn't sound and feel like boilerplate. So I've developed all kinds of little tricks to sort of make the report look as though I wrote it just for them, you know.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. I like that because, yeah, they they all do kind of have some boilerplate jargon and, and, and really like every report I've ever read, including my own, um, has boilerplate through it, you know, and it's like and, depending how you structure your report, but like for me, like, well, I'll structure it like the kitchen as a separate section, well, that that kitchen section has boilerplate information in it, um, and, and you have to have some stuff in there, right, you have to have some protections.
Speaker 3:That's right. You have to have a certain amount of boilerplate, and I actually, you know, most of my reports are pre-written, in the sense that I'm I'm using pre-made comments and so forth, but I I still think you can. We've developed a lot of tricks and techniques for making it appear as though it's more custom, you know, so that you can use text replacement or you can use photo captions or things that let you be granularly specific within a general comment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really cool. I like that a lot, and so you've been an author. How many books have you written?
Speaker 3:I've only written one book. I tried to write a couple and you know writing a book's hard. The hardest thing about writing a book is you actually have to figure out a single thing that a book is about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh man. I can imagine like having just the mission creep of it, just constantly the scope just expanding and expanding right.
Speaker 3:That's right and you'd appreciate it. I mean, from a business standpoint, it's a bit like having a successful business. If your business is really on point, you have this kind of like mission statement that guides everything, right, yep. And if your business is like struggling, you're often like all over the place trying to do too many things not focused, scope creep, all kinds of things. So a book is a great sort of analogy for life really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but if you can, you know so, when I wrote the Confident House Hunter, which I wrote in 2016, I had a lot of moments that people my clients, particularly first time homebuyers would be like God, you know, you taught me all this stuff during this home inspection and this was so great and you know, I wish I'd known these things before I started looking for a house.
Speaker 3:Yeah and right. And you realize like, yeah, you know, because people come in and all they see is like stainless steel appliances or granite countertops, and so my working title for the book was the Bones Beneath the Bling. But you know, I wanted people to be able to look at a building and I think we've all experienced times when we've showed up for a home inspection and you're kind of like, why am I out here? You could have gotten out in front of this. This is not a good fit for you and the agent probably should have done a better job at identifying, because to me, it's matchmaking, one of the things I've come to. One of my sayings is every house is a great house for the right person at the right price.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, that's so true.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's real property, right, there's value there, so you know, at the right price someone will buy it Right and so. But you know it's matchmaking and so the book has actually been quite successful for real estate agents. I mean, when they get their license, they don't have to. There's no nothing in licensing that teaches them to look at a building.
Speaker 1:You know Right, yeah, I've learned that. Yeah, they know the legal side of the transaction. They know that what documents need to be in place and they understand, like, what escrow is, and they understand, like, the legal transaction side, but, yeah, they don't know the construction side.
Speaker 3:They don't and they rely on the home inspector. And we've all probably been there where you get a new agent, and I always like it when they want to trail getting started. He came up to me once and he goes I'm so sorry, you're here, right as I drove up and I was like, wow, what do you mean? Tell me more. And he's like I was on vacation and they booked this inspection. And now that I'm here, I see this and I realize it's a terrible fit. And I was like, well, I'm here, let's go look around. And you know, sure enough, we we collectively sort of killed the deal within like an hour, you know. And yeah, but what a good agent. You know, he knew how to run interference, he knew how to get out in front of the home inspection and look at a building competently enough to be like, yeah, this is worth writing an offer on, you know, for the client. And so that was the idea was giving real estate brokers a tool for kind of getting out in front of the home inspection.
Speaker 1:And so the book is called the Confident House Hunter. Yep, is that right, and is it on Amazon?
Speaker 3:It is yeah, okay, yeah, I have a podcast on everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, so you can get on Amazon. Is there any other place to buy it, or is that just the best place to go?
Speaker 3:It's at some bookstores, but Amazon, you know, like everything, is the place, the place to buy every consumable product in the world. Now, Pretty much, yeah, yeah, I would encourage you. If you have a local bookstore, ask them to order it and buy it from them.
Speaker 1:I was. I love supporting local bookstores. Yeah, yeah, that's that's. That's that's really cool. I love that you've got that book out and it sounds like it'd be really helpful to realtors and maybe home buyers and, well, to a lot of people. So that's, that's a lot of home inspectors appreciate it.
Speaker 3:There's some good stuff, particularly if you're a newer home inspector. There's some great tips of how to look at a building. I do think you know. If you think back on home inspection training, I, I, I feel like we do a lot of training of trees and very little training on the forest.
Speaker 3:Say more about that Electric panels, it's heat exchangers, I don't know, it's trees, and yet the client doesn't really care about the trees. They need the big picture, the forest. How does this home compare to other homes that I could afford to buy? Well, how does this home compare to other homes that I could afford to buy? You know, and there's.
Speaker 3:I think it takes decades to, arguably, to learn the housing stock in your community and become competent at sort of making those forest comparisons, and yet that's sort of the art of what we do, I feel like, is being able to synthesize all the trees and explain this sort of ecosystem that they're buying. You know, and so I. There's quite a few tips around that sort of thing. So I think about you know how to sort houses by age and sort houses by the type of person that owned them. Right, you know, in your community if I said 1976, can you start populating a list of what kind of problems you're going to find? What are the advantages of that house, what are the disadvantages? What will the roofline look like? You know, uh, you know. What will the yard look like. You know what kind of windows will it have, that, what kind of wiring will it have? Right, you just you know, you're like the terminator with all those little things in the back of your head.
Speaker 1:That's so true as an inspector, yeah, you automatically just start populating everything in. I actually teach a class in my real estate, in my market here with realtors, and it's called Decade of Defects, and I go decade by decade and like what the construction type was like, what are the things to watch out for, and you know, and I have a whole infographic wrapped around it and it's just a whole and I bring show and tell it and, and it's just a whole and I bring show and tell. So I bring in aluminum wiring and copper wiring and I have like, um, you know, uh, I have pex piping, copper piping. I have, um, uh, some polybutylene, because that was common in our area at a time. Um, kitech was also popular products around here.
Speaker 1:And so I bring in some of the good and the bad products and we talk about and they can like, they can show and tell and they can pass it around and, um, I have a piece of asbestos that I have. That's in there. You know and and um, and so I always, you know I'm like, well, this is asbestos, and like you can see the eyes go oh, my God, he's touching asbestos. You know and and um, and, and it's like, yeah, it's like you know, the most reliable way is the taste test. If it tastes like asbestos, you know, and they were like. You know I make it funny and we joke around with stuff and but like being able to break it down like that, decade by decade, and decade is that's you're right.
Speaker 3:Every inspector knows it's a. It's an invaluable tool.
Speaker 1:I mean you should be able to fill out half the inspection before you show up just when you get the address, you know, yeah, well, after a while you can do that. That's what our guys do, like they, they pull up the house ahead of time the night before or the morning of, and they know where they're going and and. But I can tell you, like, if we're in this neighborhood or that neighborhood, here's what we're looking for. Like, in this neighborhood, we know and like, and, because we've been doing this for a while and we've got a bunch of guys doing it, yeah, we're able to almost predict, almost pre-write some of the report, knowing, hey, keep an eye out for this, keep an eye out for that. It was built in this year, watch out for this and that. Yeah, and it's. I think a lot of realtors don't even know that, because they don't need to know that to sell the house.
Speaker 3:But I think it does help them if they can learn those things. Yeah, it helps them get out in front of the inspection so that they can not waste time on inspections that aren't right for the client. I mean, you know they're playing the matchmaker and if they don't have that knowledge they're have one hand tied behind their back. They're just not as good a matchmaker as somebody that has that knowledge. So yeah, you're right, and it's totally a matchmaker.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 3:It's like a service or something. My class was a brief history of residential construction and I walked through, like you know, 140 years of construction. You know.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, that's, that is really cool. It's a, it's a really good thing. So along the way, as a writer, you you saw and that there was a gap in the way report writing software was going, and along the way, you actually just basically wrote your own report writing software. Tell me about this. How did this come about?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the genesis of my software company was I hated having to market to real estate agents. I ended up loving it because I ended up teaching classes and I love that. That's super fun. But before that you go in and give a pitch and you have to.
Speaker 3:I don't know, it was a hard thing. It's hard to sell yourself to real estate agents, and so my epiphany was that if I wrote a better report than everybody else, it would keep me out of trouble, it would help me do a better home inspection and it would be my best marketing tool. And so I've been doing inspections for 20, I don't know 21 years or something. I've never paid for any marketing. I just wrote reports and the reports, you know, get me work. People see them and they're like you know, and I have a bunch of the agents like you should use this person, like no, I want the guy that wrote that report that I saw. I want to get that guy out there Right. Report that I saw, I want to get that guy out there Right. My goal is that the reports quality is just my only marketing and you know that's worked for me.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. When did so, when did you start down that path?
Speaker 3:Pretty early on. I mean, you know, if you started 20 years ago, everyone out there that's done it that long or longer. You're sort of very beginning of digital cameras. You know one of my early mentors used to staple polaroids to things. You know well, I mean it's. This is a whole different world when you go back that far, because we're pre-computers. There's no mobile apps, there's no streaming videos. I mean it's very primitive. So it wasn't a stretch to kind of write a better report back then, right, I mean, you know it was very. You know there were like carbonless copies and things were still being used quite a bit you know wow so you know my first.
Speaker 3:I've seen some of those reports.
Speaker 1:I mean, I I haven't been in it that long and um, but uh, I started my company five years ago. But but yeah, I've seen some of those older ones where, like it is like it's like a check box, it's's like a carbonless paper. You're like checking yes, no, yes, no. And so yeah, I guess it makes sense, like if you're out there taking pictures you'd have to have like a film camera or a Polaroid camera.
Speaker 3:And then what you use. I mean, when I started, most inspectors didn't include photography with an inspection report because there was not a convenient way to do it. Really, I mean it was yeah, that's logistically very difficult yeah, imagine if I were working in the city and I had to like take pictures, develop them, like get them to you, like I mean it's just not even remotely possible really.
Speaker 1:I mean, some guys did manage to do it, but it was very difficult and well, the polaroid would work, but that's expensive, and so, like like now, like nowadays, you can put 50, 60, 100 photos, and if you but, but you're not going to take a hundred Polaroids.
Speaker 3:That's right, yeah, and I think, statistically, that the business, you know, I really think report writing has come so far. It's a lot harder to prove negligence with a home inspector today. I mean, we can take so many pictures and cover ourselves so well and so yeah. But I mean the genesis of it was just wanting to out-compete my competition with a better report. And then, um, uh, it was about five or six years ago that my partner and I started really taking scribeware more seriously and wanting to kind of be like yeah, we're going to build like the state-of-the-art uh system for writing reports so what's your company called your software company?
Speaker 3:uh scribeware scribewire okay what's the website?
Speaker 1:what's that? Scribeware, scribeware.
Speaker 3:How do you spell it and what's the?
Speaker 1:website.
Speaker 3:S-C-R-I-B-E, scribe and then W-A-R-E like software, so Scribeware and our website's Scribewarecom.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's awesome. So that's your software and you went from the beginning as an author and somebody who wants to write it better and have a better looking report.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And so for me, scribeware our mission statement with Scribeware is trying to sort of give home inspectors a more powerful tool and bend the profitability curve. And what I mean by that is if you can use a tool to write reports where every single day you can make a little tweak and make your reports a little bit higher quality, build things into your template that make you a little bit better inspector on site and perform your inspection a little bit faster, and if every day you can make just the tiniest little tweak and make a little bit of progress, then all of a sudden a few years goes by and if you can get your quality up, you can start charging more. I probably charge at least 30% more than most of the people that work where I live, you know, and probably more than a hundred percent than some companies and you know. So you can, you can charge more for a better product.
Speaker 3:To me, one of the biggest drains on profitability would be complaints. You know, I, I, I personally just couldn't live with complaints. They like hurt me too bad. Yeah, and that's my own psychosis, but I, I couldn't deal with it. So I I started trying to write reports and having a business model that could eliminate complaints, because I just I didn't want to have, I didn't, I just couldn't live with that. So that was sort of how I started building that, that business model for my inspection business and um. And then now with the mobile app and all these other features, I've got so much intelligence built into my software that my profitability is going through the roof. I can deliver super high quality inspections quickly. But you can't just download a software and tap on some things and do that. It takes staying power, but you know about running a business right. Like all good business, operations require constant adjustment.
Speaker 1:Constant. Yeah, there's always a little tweaks here, little tweaks there. And then even the guys in the field, they're out in the field doing the inspections. Little tweaks here, little tweaks there. And and I mean our team is always trying a little better. I love that idea of just a little bit better every day. That's right If every day you can get a tiny bit better then.
Speaker 3:Every day you're improving your company right, your company. You are a more valuable person. I mean, I have some days that I make you know $300 an hour inspecting or something, and I sort of feel bad. But part of that's like well, I've just I've worked so hard to build so much knowledge into a system that's so fast that I'm it makes you more valuable right, yeah, but they're not paying for your time.
Speaker 1:That's the thing with a good inspector. You're not paying for their time, you're paying for their expertise. You're paying for their skillset, for their knowledge and for their experience. And when you have an inspector that can go out and do an inspection in a shorter time frame and produce a report really fast and really high quality, if you're looking at the time per hour, it's like, well, you're looking at it wrong. You're looking for the expertise and the knowledge. You might find somebody for a cheaper rate per hour, but that's not really what you want in a home inspection. You want to get the best quality that you can. I mean, people are making very expensive purchases six figure, seven figure, maybe even eight figure decisions based on the information that we're bringing them when you're making a decision that's that big.
Speaker 3:You want to have the most accurate information possible. That's right. Couldn't agree with you more. Very well said.
Speaker 3:And that's my software. You know when I can build these things and to have it all on my telephone. You know, all this knowledge, it's like wow. This tool is like helping me remember to go find things, and it by doing I.
Speaker 3:I in my early days I was not a fan of onsite reports and I still my own business models.
Speaker 3:I like to finish it back in the office, but I must say, by getting 70 to 90% of it done on site, the tool helps me remember to find things and it even helps me make connections between things that oh, wow, that water heater's going into this chimney, and remember, on the roof, you know, I didn't see the chimney there, right? You know you start to find and those are some of the hardest things to find when you're remembering things that happened earlier and trying to remember back of what you saw on the roof or what you saw on the north side of the building or whatever. And so, anyway, I've become a huge advocate of the mobile app and at least doing 50 to 90% of it on site, and a lot of this is a business model thing. I know a lot of people crank them out on site. You can publish on site and that's great. It's always hard when we talk nationally with home inspection because the housing stock is so different.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you were in Las Vegas, you could probably fill out half your report before you show up with certain communities, right, they're all built at the same time, the same materials. It occurred to me that if I inspected in Vegas, I'd keep templates of different subdivisions. You know where they're all like, pre-filled out, and stuff you know oh absolutely.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm in Albuquerque, new Mexico, and so there is the same way in Albuquerque. There's certain areas that are built all at the same time, but we don't really have a lot of crawl spaces or basements where we're at, and in certain areas of town we do, but there's certain areas that there's no crawl space, no basement, it's slab on grade and then on top of that, the southwest style, it's a flat roof, so there's no attic. So there are times where there's no attic, there's no crawl space, and you can show up on that house and and you can knock that thing out crazy fast because you don't have to crawl around an attic or a crawl space, whereas there's another house down the road that does have an attic and a crawl space, or you know and, and then it takes a lot more time. But but yeah, I, I know what you mean about certain neighborhoods and certain communities, how you just look at it and go yeah, no, I'm not getting into here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's funny on the forums because people get very righteous about onsite reports and stuff and it really, I think, depends more than anything where you live. I mean, I do houses that I've. I think my record is 17 sub panels. It's like, well, you know you're not doing that on site. No, no, you're not I mean, you know, it's just a complicated building, like you know, that's like all day on site and the next day finishing a report. I mean uh so you know it just depends, depends building.
Speaker 3:But you know simple buildings. You should be able to crank them out, right?
Speaker 1:Our simple buildings. We pop them out, sometimes on site, but definitely by the end of the day. But, like in my market you know, we have houses like our growth didn't really take off in our city until about 1940. Maybe 1940s is when we really started to grow. So we don't see houses that are older than 1940, like very rare. There's a few but not many, Whereas you go back East, you go to like Massachusetts, you see some 17 or 1800s houses or whatever, still standing back there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You got those old ones standing there and and we don't have that here. And so if you go to a house that's built in the eight, mid 1800s, um know you're walking into something that has been remodeled many, many, many times, and so you don't know what you're walking into Like. You don't know what kind of heating or cooling systems or electrical, and when the house was built there was no electrical and so everything's been retrofitted into these older houses. I can't imagine getting one of those done on site. Maybe it's possible, but you go to the old house, man I and our big houses. You get 10,000, 15,000 square foot houses. Yeah, you're going to have to take some time to really sit and process everything.
Speaker 3:And you're right, matt, the ones that have been renovated are risky to try to have the same workflow for, because those are the ones that I wake up at three in the morning. I'm like, oh, I understand this thing. That I didn't understand. I mean it, you know, you. You, if you sleep on it, you'll learn stuff. So I, I try. I mean, I definitely have my pricing is square foot based and where I am there's a lot of waterfront buildings that have had 19 different additions and remodels and renovations and those are just really hard buildings, that just hard to inspect. Nothing's normal, everything's sort of improvised and you have to make a lot of judgment calls. That just slow you down, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, so onsite reporting, I think it. I think there's a lot of context to whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like you're saying, like different markets, different areas, different neighborhoods. You know if I'm doing a three to 2000 square foot house in a track home community? Yeah, I can. And it's 20 years old or less? Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1:You can onsite that thing, cause it's right. Right, but, but you use something a little more complicated and it's not going to, it's not going to be onsite and it's not going to be on site. Yep, yeah and so. But the ability to be able to get there, get your report 70, 80, 90% done on site by all your photos already in the right places or narratives already like preloaded, and to be able to click on your thing and have it done the right way, and then at later you sit back and just go through it all and make sure that everything is lining up the right way, the way you want it to, and redoing your phrasing on some things you know, I agree Like having a really powerful software that can do that for you on site makes you faster. It also makes you more accurate, in my opinion.
Speaker 3:It does. I totally agree. I think, especially if you're willing to clean it up when you get back, the combo of those two things creates more accuracy than if you just do. If you take pictures or whatever and go home and do it all at home, I guarantee you you'll be like I wish I took a picture of this or whatever. I mean the act of filling out the report makes you do a better job, and if you set your template up right, it's triggering a lot of things to be like oh, I need a picture of that. I forgot to go do that.
Speaker 3:And one of the things that I like to teach about workflow too is I try to always have a very linear workflow, obviously, but I've tried to build in moments where I break that linear workflow up very intentionally, I'm like OK, I'm going to stop here and I'm going to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. And usually it's when I'm doing the HVAC system. Right, you know, but some systems are broken up all over the house system. Right, you know, but some systems are broken up all over the house. You can't inspect them in a linear way. You need to like stop your linear inspection and go run around all over the place and I found that to be incredibly helpful.
Speaker 3:It kind of like makes you look at the building differently because you've broken up your linear process and now you're just sort of running around and you start like seeing these things that you missed during your linear walkthrough. You know, yeah, Anyway, it's a little trick that I've found that really helps me a lot, and HVAC is perfect because it's all over the house. If you want to get infrared pictures of like hot stuff coming out the ducts or whatever, you're going to end up running around a lot and I'm always amazed, like even when I've done my linear thing, I'm like, Ooh, I found this thing and I found that thing. Yeah, Having that different approach, you know.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That was a conversation I had earlier today within our office was the same thing. It's like oh, so what's the balance between the linear and the running around side of it? Cause if you just do running around you're going to miss stuff. But if and so, linear does increase speed and accuracy. But yeah, you're right, like sometimes to get out of the trees and into the forest, you know, to back up a little bit. Sometimes you have to do a little bit of a run around.
Speaker 3:That's right. I really try to break up my linear process at least once outside and once inside, where I just and I've had people be like what do you? You know you just wandering around, but it's like it just you look, you see things differently when you kind of break up that linear process. So I think it definitely helps me find more stuff and I like your comment, it's a bit more looking at the forest and not the trees. You know it's like you're looking up close and then you zoom back bigger picture, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you have to look at it from different angles in order to do a really quality job.
Speaker 3:One of the features we pioneered in Scribeware. We call photo captions to bullets. But you can author parent comments and the parent comment, for example, might be localized siding repairs are needed, you know, hire somebody to fix it. And then what I do is I go around and when I find siding defects I just take a picture and I use voice to text to caption what I see. You know, wood decay at the south-facing windowsill. The flashings on the west side of the building aren't sloped to drain, you know just. And I find with voice to text I can be granularly specific of exactly what I'm seeing. And what's cool is then, when I'm done, the parent comment acts as a sort of photo bucket. It holds all your pictures for you and when you're done you can hit a button in Scribeware and we make a bulleted list of all of your photo captions within that general parent comment.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:So your parent comment could say like hey, you know you need someone to fix the sighting. Examples of observations that I noted during inspection include you know, I'm very careful to say like this isn't all that's wrong with your sighting, but here are some specific things I found why I think you know you should get somebody out to fix your siding. And then you know, I could have two bullet points or I could have 50. It sort of doesn't really matter, right? You just, and and what's nice is we, you create a workflow where your workflows take pictures and caption it. And so that's how I like to handle all the weird stuff. You know, because to me, with report writing, you know, 50 to 70% of a report is probably like going to pre-made comments will work, yeah, and then 50% of it is going to be weird stuff. You know, like specific weird things that like if you had that comment written, it would, your library would be so big you wouldn't be able to find it. You know.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and that that's something I think every one of us fights too in the inspection world is is that, as I like we, we find defects and we start making, like template or, like you know, defect templates inside of the software. Then pretty soon you have so many of them You're like wait, this is too much. You have to go back through and weed them out, merge them together, combine them, delete them. Whatever you got to do to keep your software clean, otherwise it'll build up.
Speaker 3:We actually have people building some new templates. We got one guy coming over and I think he's built a template that only has like 70 comments in it. Wow, part of it is that we support something called Gunny Sacks, where you can have hidden lists of defects all within one comment. Okay, so his 70 comments might represent 500 comments. In other words, you could click on things and add specific stuff within that comment.
Speaker 3:But it's so clean and what's fast about it on a mobile app is now, all of a sudden, you don't have all these different places to put pictures. Each comment becomes a kind of bucket to hold your pictures, a kind of bucket to hold your picture. So it creates an incredibly fast workflow on mobile, while also letting you be granularly specific in a way, that kind of you can transform the pre-written comment with voice to text. You know, which is great, and, like I said, I'm a terrible typer. So, like my goal is to make a report that I want to convince you I stayed up all night writing a report, but I don't want to have to type anything because I'm terrible typing.
Speaker 1:I love. I love how technology is in a place where you can voice to text it and then your software is to have like an AI thing inside of it. How does it do that?
Speaker 3:Turning to bullet points, so I use Google's version of a keyboard with my phone, so I set that as the default keyboard. I find the voice to text is more accurate than the one. I'm a Samsung person, I so I don't your mileage may vary, but I've heard this from other people. But the Google, I think their keyboard is a G board. I think you have to pay for it it's like $4 or something but I set that as my default keyboard and then you know, you just hit the little microphone and talk away. Another little tip is I will often work in airplane mode. This has nothing to do with scribeware, but in airplane mode the voice to text has none of that lagging of initializing, so it's instantaneous, like it's as fast as you can speak. So I actually work in airplane mode quite a bit on site on my mobile app, specifically because the Gboard, google's keyboard, is so fast and so accurate that I can just crank out my voice to text quickly.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting. Plus, you don't have anybody interrupting your work. Well, that's part of it.
Speaker 3:The one risk of photo captions with voice to text is if the client is with you, it can be more difficult, and what we've done to solve that problem in Scribeware is we support a separate photo captions library. That's all keyword based. So you, if you're on the roof, you could start typing in plumbing. You know PLUMB and it'll start searching through photo captions of the plumbing. Vents are torn, the plumbing vents have been chewed through.
Speaker 1:Oh nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I can use a combination of voice to text or pre-made photo captions to kind of tag my pictures with stuff.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. That combination of voice to text or pre-made photo captions to kind of tag my pictures with stuff. That's fantastic. That's that's really fantastic. So, um, yeah, I think this the software sounds just as fascinating that you've, like, you've written this entire software and it's that helps speed up your workflow. Um, does it integrate with CRMs?
Speaker 2:well, like, people who use like an.
Speaker 1:ISN, or do you guys have CRM features?
Speaker 3:in it.
Speaker 1:How does that work?
Speaker 3:I love that question. So we've made a strategic business decision to not try to build our own scheduling, primarily because it's expensive and complicated. It also doesn't really interest me personally, and so we integrate with CRMs that can do all that. So we integrate with ISN, nextinspect and Keystone. I use Keystone, which is kind of newer on the block, and I love it. It's a great tool. But they're all really good. They're very good and they're all fantastic at what they do Take payments and get your contract signed and calculate your mileage for you and tell you which agents you're working with the most, and it's really powerful stuff. And we do little bits of that. But we're really trying to stay focused on report writing. We kind of feel like bending the curve to profitability is in the report writing, you know, yeah, and so that's what we're trying to focus on, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think CRM stuff is important. You know, especially on a customer interface. You know booking the inspection and getting the reminder emails or text messages, and you know contracts and payment like that. That should be smooth and simple for the, for the end user. But there are people out there, like you said, multiple companies that specialize in just that process, that do a phenomenal job, and so if you can take somebody already is like, why reinvent the wheel If it's already you have multiple options that are fantastic. So then you basically are focusing on the report writing software and uh, and I think there's pros and cons to having that as two separate companies, like one of the pros is is like if you want to change your CRM, you don't have to change your report writing software, where if it's all integrated, as some other companies have, it all in one, you know if one piece isn't working the way you want, well, now you're stuck with like kind of both pieces it makes it a little more complicated.
Speaker 3:Your business could be more trapped with an all in one and you know, I would argue the all in one is a little bit like the coat that you can wear it on the red side of the blue side, but it's not as good a coat. I mean it's hard to do everything really well. I mean I look at how much time and effort and knowledge we've built into our product and we're really trying to just do report writing well and that alone is insanely hard. I can't even imagine trying to do like a CRM on top of all that. Right, and it's impressive. People have done that. But anyway, our business model is to try to stay focused on report writing. We're also a little bit different. A lot of the newer systems are web-based apps. We're actually a cloud-based database, which gives us quite a bit more heavy lifting. You can add what does that mean?
Speaker 1:Like a web-based versus cloud-based? I don't. I'm not smart enough to understand that.
Speaker 3:I don't. I'm not a coder so I don't totally get it. But a web-based app is Okay. I think it's a different code base that they're written on Okay. And the database you know the database is.
Speaker 3:We've got a lot of customization that you can do so within the app, for example, with modifiers like if you have repair items or major concerns or improvements. We let each company choose as many of those as they want and you can have different names for them and different colors for them, and you can have different modifiers per template. You know, so if you had a sewer inspection template, you could use different sets of modifiers than your home inspection template. Wow, that's just one example inside the app. But then on top of that we support custom css and javascript, so that's you can layer code on top of the code and you can start building a whole new looks and fonts and colors, and so it's sort of insanely customizable and that's we would really like to support the idea that the rugged individualist is. Another reason that it was a big thing that attracted me to home inspection was like we can all be different.
Speaker 1:We are and yeah, absolutely, I love that.
Speaker 3:I love that, like if we made a national law that we all do use the same form. I don't think I would have ever decided to be a home inspector right, like that's that I can be me and do it my way. You know, and I want to support that with everybody. I think you know we want ideally. Every scriber's report looks different, you know, and they can make it their way, you know, that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know like Texas has like a standardized structure on their thing, but there's a little bit of freedom within that, but there's some tighter structure on that.
Speaker 3:Texas is more difficult. You have to use that Trek form, but they actually let you do more stuff with the HTML version. I think you can do a little bit more with you. Just have to serve up that, that official track pdf, and we yep that we've got track template built out.
Speaker 1:Well, that's like um, you know, termite inspections, you know there's the, the termite form that you have to have, um and uh and, and we yeah and so and we have kind of two things here's the pdf of the official termite form and then here's our report that has the more like the more information that wouldn't be included on that form, and so we kind of have a little bit of a balance there as well. But I can see that like having a nationalized standard. I don't know if I would like that either. I think that's one thing. The report is what does help set people apart and and people like our report or your report, or the way you communicate, the way we communicate. I think if you standardized it too much it would take away the personality. I think it would take away some of the joy.
Speaker 3:I think it would ruin the industry personally, but I think that it's great that consumers have choices and inspectors have choices, and I love the freedom that we can all kind of be who we are. You can do them on site, you can finish them back in the office. Whatever you know right, do what you like. Remember the digital underground, I'm probably hating myself.
Speaker 1:So so most software that I've looked at nowadays is software as a service. Is that how you guys operate as well? Is it like a monthly software as a service model, or is it like a buy the software once?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're a subscription-based software. Uh, we do support uh sort of pay per report. Uh, for you know, we try to help students. We want people who are newer, that can't afford a big monthly subscription, to have a powerful tool to write reports. Um, uh, but then you know, most, most scribers are on a monthly or annual subscription plan and it's really the only way you can do cloud-based stuff. We're storing all of the data. We're backing up. You know we do really well with subscribers.
Speaker 1:You have monthly expenses, so you charge monthly. It seems like that makes sense, and I'm you know I don't want to get into the pricing now because we don't know when this will air or somebody will listen to it. But pricing is that on your website or do you got to reach out for a account?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we've got pricing on our website and we try to be really competitive to what everybody. You know there's pricing's all fairly similar within report software. I mean there's definitely less expensive ones that don't have as much ability to do things and more expensive ones that do more stuff, but by and large, you know, we're kind of same price as all of them for the most part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've noticed that the pricing is in a similar window, especially on the top tier products. When you're looking at a premium product such as ScribeWare, that product's a premium product, so it's going to be in that same kind of price band, I imagine, as the rest of them are. And, as an inspector, you get what you pay for and that report is very important. It needs to look good, be good, function well. A really well-dialed-in software will help you go faster and more accurate, which makes you more money.
Speaker 3:Matt, I really think the whole like it is your profitability. You know that whole like if I'm making $300 an hour it's not because people think I'm a pretty face, it's because I can go out and gather good data and put it into a great report quickly. You know, and the software gives us it is almost an unfair competitive advantage if you really work on it and you dial it in. You know, create that competitive advantage and you know that's what we want for our scribers is that they have an unfair competitive advantage.
Speaker 1:They can go out gather better data, put it into a better report and do it more quickly. That's fantastic An unfair competitive advantage. Sign me up. I want that all day long.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the goal right, I mean, and I wish that we could just deliver it on a platter. Unfortunately, it takes some staying power. You got to be willing to tweak it and you know, you know, be you know, and it's fun. I meet with some scribers and the light bulb goes off and I see them seeing all these things they can do and it's like, yeah, that they get it. You know that's the profitability is there, the business model is there, the liability protection's there, it's all like, this is our business. We can get it all dialed in here, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, Dylan. It's been fantastic getting to know you and having you on the show. I'm really glad you were able to make some time and be here today. If somebody has more questions, like I'm, I'm sure that happens. What's the best way for someone to get ahold of you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Our website is scribewarecom and you can always shoot me an email, Dylan D-Y-L-A-N at getscribewarecom that's my email address. So, yeah, I'd be happy to chat with anybody, and thanks so much for having me, Matt. Great conversation, fun chatting, home inspection.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you so much. I'll see you pretty soon. Actually, we're going to meet at a conference.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we'll see you, then See you there, all right, bye.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to Empire State of Mind. For the home inspection industry and beyond, our passion is to elevate the home inspection industry with mindset, strategy and tools. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review. For more, follow on Instagram at IEB Coaching and don't forget to hit the website at wwwiebcoachingcom. Learn about IEB at no cost and have all your questions answered on our open call once a month on the third week of the month. We hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on the Empire State of Mind.
