Empire State of Mind
Empire State of Mind
Scaling Your Home Inspection Business With Carl Mayer And Kyle Jensen
In this episode of the Empire State of Mind podcast, host Matt Williams engages with Kyle Jensen and Carl Mayer, two home inspectors navigating the challenges of scaling their businesses. They discuss the importance of accountability, the decision to hire, and the significance of soft skills in the hiring process. The conversation also touches on the dynamics of involving family in the business and personal journeys from corporate America to entrepreneurship in the home inspection industry. In this engaging conversation, Matthew Williams shares his journey into the home inspection industry, discussing her experiences, challenges, and strategies for success. The dialogue explores the importance of networking, the significance of mindset and personal growth, and the lessons learned about work-life balance. The speakers emphasize the value of creating a strong company culture and the need for consistent effort in business development. They also reflect on the importance of prioritizing relationships and maintaining a healthy work-life balance while navigating the complexities of entrepreneurship.
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We believe the purpose of owning a business is funding your perfect life. Welcome to the next generation of growth and opportunity in the inspection industry. 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 Williams.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Empire State of Mind. On today's podcast, we're hanging out with Kyle and Carl and we're talking about how to get started from one inspector, scaling up to multiple inspectors and what this looks like. I'm so glad that you're here today on the show, guys welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad that you guys were able to make it in. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us, man. We're super excited man. This is fun.
Speaker 4:Dream come true. I've listened to so many and I'm actually on it. What? Yes, and so we're in.
Speaker 2:Tampa, florida, right now at an IEB event, and so we were hanging out talking.
Speaker 1:At the event. We thought man, this is a great topic.
Speaker 2:We should talk about this, and so, anyhow, carl let's start with you, man. Where are you from? Where do you?
Speaker 3:live. Yeah, so we're located. We're probably one of the smaller markets in the IEB community amongst people, manhattan, kansas, very small rural town. We've got about 100,000 people in our market and I've been doing inspections the end of this year will be the close of year number three and we've been just pushing forward. You know, basically taking all the principles taught at IEB and kind of running the playbook per se. That's really kind of how IEB lays it out and that's kind of our approach is just run the play. You know everyone else has done this successfully, kind of mirror them and that's kind of our approach to business.
Speaker 2:So that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome, Kyle and how about you, man?
Speaker 4:Where are you from? I'm in Madison, wisconsin, so serving all the South Central Wisconsin market is what I like to say. But yeah, just me finishing up my second year, I got my first inspector up and excited to talk about it and share what we've learned here. That's pretty cool man.
Speaker 2:So how big of a market is the Madison market.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so roughly the area I serve would be about a million. So Madison itself is smaller, but the larger area I try to serve is about a million people.
Speaker 2:That's a good size market there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so in Kansas you're in a little bit of a smaller market A little bit yeah, that's been kind of the call to struggle.
Speaker 3:It's a challenge, right. So when I started the inspection business I kind of had the approach of you know I could just do home inspections all day. You know it would be a nice little gig to do. If I could, you know, do two a day, that'd be great. And then fast forward. Almost three years later we're doing we'll probably do 375 inspections this year. Closing that up and with that, I'm starting to see I've got about 20 market share already and it's like it's kind of hard to gather more than that. So the small markets kind of start to become a challenge. When in the beginning, when I had the approach of just have a job for myself, iab's kind of shaped me into building a business right, and now I'm starting to recognize market limitations.
Speaker 3:Maybe it's time to branch, maybe start doing sister companies something to help me grow, because I'm in such a such a small market per se.
Speaker 2:I don't have a million people like this guy over here kind of draw from to draw from the well, yeah, well, so I'm in Albuquerque, new Mexico, and my market's about a million as well, is it really? Yeah, and so what's interesting is I'm not sure about your geography, but I know. So in Albuquerque there's this city, and then the next place you want to go, you have to drive through the desert for like six hours. Oh, like six hours. You know, like maybe go to Phoenix. That's like almost an eight hour drive, you know to get to Phoenix. Or, if you want to go North, that you're up in Colorado. Maybe Colorado Springs is the next major city that you could expand into. And then you know there's Santa Fe, but it's too small of a, it's a real small market there. And then same thing with like so, anyhow, we're such an Island where we're at, that it's like geographically it's challenging to try to expand. So where you're at, you actually have a decent enough city there. Is there other neighboring cities nearby that you could get to?
Speaker 4:So it's Milwaukee would be the next step. And part of the decision is we're going to keep working really hard to grow in Madison and then, once we hit kind of the goal that we have, which is four inspectors, it's really a decision point of are we happy here or do you want to keep growing? And that's something just to plug IEB a little bit, that's the good thing about it, because otherwise you just think grow, grow, grow.
Speaker 4:But at a certain point you have to look at yourself and be like what do I want out of the journey?
Speaker 2:And just to grow for the sake of growing, doesn't?
Speaker 4:always make sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is your business doing for you what you want it to do for you?
Speaker 1:And sometimes you have to get honest and look in the mirror, Like you're saying well, hold on a minute.
Speaker 2:Am I happy here? Sometimes it's like, well, am I just growing? Because everybody else says, just grow yeah absolutely.
Speaker 4:And if you're working all the time, you're not spending time with family and having a balanced life. Are you really doing it right, Right?
Speaker 2:Probably not. Probably not, Carl. How about you In your market? Is there a neighboring market you could expand to, or is it my place, where it's like an island in the middle of?
Speaker 3:nowhere. Well, so we've got some options. We've got Kansas City. Metro is about two hours from us, okay, so it's doable. If I did decide I wanted to tackle something bigger, grow a bigger business, it wouldn't be too far of a move to get over there. I'm also kind of trying to figure out have I squeezed the blood out of the turnip here, gotten every drop out that I can in my current market, before I look on going somewhere else? That's kind of where I'm starting to try to figure that out, gauge that out right now.
Speaker 3:You know, about three years ago I never thought I'd be even considering that type of problem already kind of honestly so soon. But here, we are. That's kind of where we're at, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so that's an interesting market.
Speaker 1:So you have some market expansion available down the road a little bit, but yeah, but still, a two-hour drive is a two-hour drive, yeah that certainly makes it a challenge to get out there.
Speaker 4:It'll be more of like a commitment, right? Exactly, you can't, just you can't, flippantly just yeah, you can't do it halfway. Yeah, you're not just going like, oh, I guess we'll go this way today. Yeah, it's a little more intentional, right?
Speaker 2:So now both you are in the same position. We were just talking about this. How? Yeah, these are both in a position where you're looking to add your first inspectors to the team. Starts you, kyle, what like?
Speaker 4:so you have you already added him, or yeah, he's on. He's finishing up his second. Excuse me, he has two weeks until he's on his own, so I'm just wrapping up. We it was a three, three months trading process, which has been great. A lot of learning training process, which has been great. A lot of learning Training for me too, honestly, but it's been good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes teaching stuff forces you to learn it better, right?
Speaker 4:Well, that and just being a boss with no direction. So I worked in corporate America for a little bit. So I'm used to having a little bit of a hierarchy above me and then I'm a rebel. I want to rebel, so I go, I'm going to do everything on my own and now I'm the structure. So just learning how to be a decent boss is kind of part of the journey too. Yeah, I bet it is In corporate.
Speaker 2:America. They tell you the structure and you're like this structure sucks.
Speaker 1:I don't want to do this anymore. I'm going to take my ball and go home.
Speaker 4:Exactly. I'm making SOPs and they're telling you the rules. I hate them.
Speaker 2:So now, you're the guy that oh man you know, of course you think.
Speaker 4:You know, isn't that a funny dynamic? It is, but it's natural and, like you know, looking back when I started in corporate structure and system and now, from where I'm at now, I can look back and I can understand all the leadership and all the things they were saying were just rolling my eyes.
Speaker 1:It all makes a lot more sense now.
Speaker 4:So I guess that comes with age, a little bit of wisdom right yeah.
Speaker 2:So when you were working in the corporate America, were you ever in charge of? Other employees, I was, yeah, okay, so you've managed employees before in a corporate environment, but not in your own business. Yet Is this your first employee ever of your own?
Speaker 4:Yeah, essentially my wife and I work together in the business, so I try to view it like we're teammates in there. So he would be the first real one Got it. But yeah, the real difference is just the lack of vision. I feel like. So in corporate America it's a lot tougher, I think, on all those different levels to get that vision shared to the whole company.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you have so much more control and influence over the culture of your business and, like sometimes in corporate America, the culture can feel a little stale. Yeah, sometimes the culture can feel a little flat, whereas in your own company you can breathe life into it For sure.
Speaker 3:Give it like a lot more energy, yeah, yeah and so. So, carl, I know you're in the wall, so I'm trying to get prepared. I'm growing out of intentionality, not pain per se, that's kind of the idea, easing him into it. He's turned out to be a fine inspector. He's going to be really good moving forward. That will help me kind of take pressure off of myself so I can go back out and do those growth calls, cold calls, things like that, Right To start gaining more market share, bring more work in the door, things like that. So that's kind of where I'm at in that process, moving a little slower than Kyle is on the hiring part.
Speaker 1:But we're in the same pod together I might say that.
Speaker 3:So every week we're bouncing ideas back and forth with each other, things like that.
Speaker 2:That's something that's really cool about what IEB does, and people don't talk about it as often as I think they maybe could or should.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that we do is we have these pods where you get people that are in similar size, companies facing similar challenges in front of them, and you get them like in a in like a small group that meets every week or two weeks, depending which pod you're in. And then all of a sudden you're bouncing ideas off each other and helping each other out, and then, and like you guys are in the same pod you guys are facing some of the same struggles.
Speaker 4:You're in the same phase of business growth and life. So we have Vincent too. Vincent, south Carolina, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3:North Carolina. I mix them up.
Speaker 2:He's in your pod as well, it's great.
Speaker 4:We're all at very similar stages of business and life. We have weekly meetings that are very I would say they're pretty intense. We hold each other accountable.
Speaker 2:That's been a huge driver, because you don't always have motivation.
Speaker 4:This will give you that discipline, to keep thinking about the things you're supposed to be doing. The pod has been a huge key to the success, for sure yeah that's incredible yeah, yeah, yeah 100.
Speaker 3:It's all about kind of accountability, right? I think we all at some point we're working a job where we we kind of said it earlier in one of the sessions it's hard to be an accountable somebody else, right? So you quit, you go start your own thing. You're like holy cow. I gotta be accountable to myself now right and it's hard to do right.
Speaker 3:It's like you walk out and all of a sudden, nobody's there to tell you what to do. That's where these pods come in. When you spend an hour session in the group, mastermind calls and then you can branch off with three or four guys and dissect what we talked about, talk about how it applies to where we're at, and then hold each other accountable with goals. Every week comes up and we've got to tell each other if we did the goals we said we were or not.
Speaker 3:And then we get on to each other in a good, productive way.
Speaker 4:And Carl did a good job when we started. We have a master spreadsheet so we log all of our goals, we're tracking if we're hitting them or not, and we do a lot with the. We've been intentional because we were bad at it with the one sheet too.
Speaker 1:So it's not just business.
Speaker 4:We try to be a little more holistic about it too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we bring in life because, like we said, we're all in the same kind of life phase, so it's not all about business. Sometimes we're helping each other deal through life problems as well, things like that. Right, it's more of a business friendship than it is just, you know, trying to grow our businesses together. We lean on each other, for I mean it's life, you know, even though we don't live next to each other, it's funny.
Speaker 4:Like one of the goals and the one she's like friends and family. We're all like I need more friends but it really turns out. Our plot is our friend group a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good though that is good and it's I love that you got to, got to have friends that are, that are in the like in the fight with you.
Speaker 2:You know and they understand the struggles and some of my best friends are all business owners in my, in my city and, uh, it's just a different mentality and half a really different mentality. Yeah, you're thinking about life differently. You're thinking about how you're approaching everything in life differently, when you and so you know, whereas if the person who's working nine to five for somebody else, you know they have a different mentality as well.
Speaker 4:There's nothing wrong with it, it's just a different. It's just a different, different structure, different folks, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's just different structure.
Speaker 2:There's nothing right, nothing wrong with either approach, but, yeah, being able to be around that. And so I have a couple of business owner friends now that I hang out with on a regular basis and uh, and we help each other out and so, and now we do business together.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome, which is kind of fun too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we all my friends and I live in the same market. So like we we all like we do business, we send business back and forth. We have these ideas that come up and like we'll try out these different things together and it's fun to have like like-minded people 100% reviving, as we can say.
Speaker 3:I really believe that's right yeah I believe, that saying where you're the average of the five people you have.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 3:I 100% believe that and it's 100% true, right? You know, if you surround yourself with like we've been talking about like-minded people, people moving in the same direction, willing to take risks, willing to struggle right and struggle with you, that's where you find. I think personal and business growth is found kind of in that type of mindset.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, even my wife like I, you know. I asked her a lot of questions and one was like you know, what do you think I he's doing for me? And one of its like motivation, because it's easy when you're solo inspector. Yeah, it's just you and the like it's you against the world, it feels like. So it's nice to have other people that are with you makes it, makes it feel a little less lonely at least, and like we're all in it together for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Cause it can't especially as a single operator, you can feel real lonely. I don't know how I did it before.
Speaker 4:Honestly, Like you know, cause I joined IEB a couple of years ago, or not even um and before that yeah, yeah, and I hear you on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was solo when I was doing the solo thing, by myself too. The same way, it was just, you know, get up and work and and I was like man, I felt like on an island, and then when. I found IUB. I was like oh, I found my tribe, I found people here we are yeah, and it's like yeah, to find that connection, which is good.
Speaker 2:and and then, when you're even you're facing these struggles like, or challenges, are you looking at new opportunities and, like you guys are, you are hiring first people right now, and it's like I'm just curious For you guys. I'll start with you, carl. So when you were looking to potentially hire what? Are some of the deciding factors for you to go like. Is this the next step I want to take? Is this the next step I want to take or not?
Speaker 3:For sure I want to take or not. Well, so for me it's one of those things where, knowing that I'll be inspecting houses, crawling through attics, crawl spaces, all that stuff for the next 10 years, is not sound. It doesn't sound appealing to me, right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Since I've started a business and learned about business.
Speaker 3:That's what I find fun is growing a business, acting as a business owner, not just a solopreneur. So that was kind of the first thing. I kind of decided long-term I've got to have somebody doing kind of the day-to-day work so I can cast a bigger vision, push, grow things right, and so I'm not missing the forest because I'm in the midst of the trees per se, right. That's kind of that was the first thing. And then I started thinking about who I wanted to bring in to my culture, even though I'm a one-man guy. Ieb really talks a lot about culture and it actually starts to make you think about it. So I take the mindset of I can teach anybody to inspect a house. Can I get along with them every day?
Speaker 4:That's kind of the thing Find people that are fun.
Speaker 3:If you don't enjoy coming to work, you don't enjoy the people you work with you're going to hate it at the end of the day. So finding people that I can, you know, hang out with, who are honest, motivated people that I can lead in a good way, I can teach him the technical aspects of home inspections right.
Speaker 3:So my youngest brother he's kind of bits that bill. He doesn't have, I'd say, the construction knowledge like I have Ever since I was 18, I've always done some sort of construction, but he's a very he thinks two steps ahead of me most of the time. You know he's very good at um learning, being a sponge asking questions right. So that's kind of the people I look for and he kind of fit that bill and so that's kind of why I've started pregnant him kind of into the into the business.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of my perspective on.
Speaker 3:It is how I started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so, kyle, how about you? What was like the deciding factors of like? I think I want to maybe go beyond just solo.
Speaker 4:You know that's a that's a hard question. I was pretty happy doing it on my own and then eventually I just kind of wanted more. So from that, you know, it just seems inevitable. The most fun part about it is the business stuff.
Speaker 1:Like I, if you take look at my AccuMax.
Speaker 2:I'm not a home inspector.
Speaker 4:I'm the last guy you want out in the field.
Speaker 2:What is it? How do you rank in on that?
Speaker 4:I'm a growth guy. I'm a sales guy. That's how I'm built. That's what I love. I love going into offices. I love meeting agents. That's really where I feel myself being pulled towards. I like the inspection part. It's fine, but I'd rather do the stuff I'm really good at. So to do that, I want to bring other people in to help. You know help them achieve what they want in life, while I can get what I want, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense, so yeah, so you're more salesy than you are than you are an inspector guy.
Speaker 4:I do good inspections, don't get me wrong. For any agent listening out there, I get a lot of good reviews. I do a good job, if you call that, but I'm not built for it. I would not hire me to be a home inspector.
Speaker 2:Just because I wouldn't last. That's not what I like about inspections, so I can relate to that too. I'm definitely more like the sales guy, wired like the sales guy versus the inspector. I can get it done but you know, give me after a couple of years of just doing it by myself, I think I would have like I would have gotten like burned out because I was like not functioning in my natural state. And so I wouldn't have made it past the test of time either you know, and I knew that from the beginning and I get bored too.
Speaker 4:I think yeah, carl, we were talking earlier. I get bored, like if you're going to be a home instructor for 20 years, like I need more, so like part of the fun of growing is like these are new challenges I've never had before and it's just I have to learn and grow. And like you're helping somebody else learn and grow, it's been really you know talk to me in six months, but so far it's been really fun and just an experience?
Speaker 4:yeah, but um, what the kind of from a number perspective was watching our capacity. I could slowly start seeing it trail up yeah and then um, you know, the rule of thumb is like 80 capacity. Start thinking about. It is what I hear, at least yep, yep, and I started, but it took a lot longer to find somebody than, like you, really hope it would take.
Speaker 2:So you know, yeah, you think I'm going to put an ad out on Indeed and then, like I'll have the perfect candidate the perfect candidate, I'll have, like two applicants. It'll be easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's hard, it's very hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually my first inspector too, because now I've grown to a multi-inspector thing. But like how important it was, because if I hire this, the next guy I hire is going to naturally look to this guy to be the leader For sure, right, because the third hire is going to look to the first hire and be like well, he's been here the longest, he's obviously got seniority.
Speaker 4:So do you? How was your first hire? Like, do you make mistakes in that first one at all? Like, how many tries did? It take, you it took me three tries to get the guy. See, that's a great question yeah, so.
Speaker 2:So I've. Actually I've owned several businesses that have had employees over time, so I've made a lot of mistakes in in hiring over the years. I've made a lot of mistakes in hiring over the years. But so for this one I was like I knew how critical it was and so I took the time to sit down and go, okay, like, what does this person need to have? Who do they need to be? What's the culture of the company? Like I went through the MVCC part of IAB to really frame out, okay, who, what is this inspection company that I have and defining it all. So then I knew, okay, this is the kind of person that I want. And so I actually interviewed in person 45 people before they found the guy that I knew was the right guy.
Speaker 4:That's the right way to do it Right. I mean yeah, because part of the RSTMM, mmm you know I forget how many M's there are is you need to be selecting somebody.
Speaker 1:So if you're just interviewing one person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to be selecting, yeah, so 45 is plenty to find somebody awesome, yeah and so. But I knew what I wanted and I had some, I had some parameters around it, and so when? So when I found the right guy, I was like, oh, this is the right guy.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is going to be a good fit you know and um, and so his name is Danny um and and Danny Ortworth, and Danny's my lead inspector right now.
Speaker 4:He was my first hire and you know how important it is.
Speaker 1:It's so important and you don't know really what you're looking for you know what I?
Speaker 4:mean Right, right, it's like going on your first date You're like what am I supposed to do? With my hands Right, Absolutely yeah, what do you do with this? What?
Speaker 1:are you doing here.
Speaker 2:How does this work? Yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:So it was.
Speaker 2:It was good. I feel very blessed to have found Danny, and what's funny is just talk about Danny for a minute, right, so like. So he actually was a missionary overseas and so this is what has been interesting. He was a Christian missionary over in Cambodia and so, and what he did, he was working there and it's a missionary organization, but then he eventually was overseeing all these other other people that were part of that missions group out there and then they started sending short-term missionaries from the US that would come over and spend a month there, so at a time or however long, so he was actually managing that process so that people would come in and he would manage helping them.
Speaker 2:So he was very organizational, he could delegate, he understood he would manage helping them. So he was very organizational, he could delegate. He had understood how to manage all that. But, being in foreign countries, he understood that the human side of how do you be like all things to all people, how do you flex yourself to understand, like, if somebody is really chatty, then I need to be chatty with them.
Speaker 1:If they're not chatty not chatty?
Speaker 2:How do you read the room and then adjust yourself quickly to go oh, this person needs extra technical details or this person needs less technical details. Yeah, right, like you have an engineer that's going to buy a house and he wants to dive into deep, deep, deep details of how a furnace works or a water heater works. Well, you better be ready. You know, can you got to bring, you got to bring the heat with that guy. But if you start doing that with the guy who's like, does it work or not?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that guy's like oh my God, just stop talking, I want to leave. It's not a sticking point, but it's just something that comes with reps, I feel like, is being able to read the person and be able to constantly be gauging their level of interest while you're trying to perform it's like your debrief or however you do it. It's funny you mention it because that's something we're talking about now in training is like how do you read the person?
Speaker 3:You've got to be able to read the room, Kind of going back to like what do you look for in a hire? That's kind of those. To me, that's the more important things, just like call them soft skills or whatever Be able to read people, communicate, things like that. You can teach anybody to inspect a house, right, come on.
Speaker 2:That's so true. It's very true, it's very true.
Speaker 3:But teaching somebody to interact with an agent right. Speak deficiencies to people that aren't going to just freak them out, right? Being able to do that read the room per se is way more important, I think, in looking to hire somebody than whether they've been a carpenter for 20 years and they know the ins and outs of framing. It's like, okay, that's cool, but if they don't like you then they're probably not going to refer you again, type of thing. Absolutely. That's kind of what we look for, I think, in hiring.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's like those old grumpy inspectors, right they?
Speaker 1:know a ton I love to text them when I have a question.
Speaker 4:They're not always busy A lot of time it is those soft skills, and they do matter, they really matter.
Speaker 2:It's funny. My first hire was that missionary right and it went so well. My second hire was another missionary. That's awesome. I was like, I like this another guy I hired was someone who's a relative of a realtor and I was like I don't know, I don't know, but I took him out on interviews and I ended up hiring that guy too.
Speaker 2:So then my fourth hire was another missionary they don't know how they found him but these guys, they show up and it's like man, they care about people they have compassion, they have empathy, but they also understand that we need to get to a certain place.
Speaker 4:It's a wild mix of it.
Speaker 2:And so then the fourth guy I hired or one, two, three, the fifth guy I hired, his whole family was also. They weren't missionaries per se, but they were in Christian ministry. So it was just unbelievable these people and I'm a faith-based guy, but that isn't a criteria for me.
Speaker 1:on, hiring, but I just found every time any guy that had a missionary or they just had this heart or this thing inside of them. They're there to serve other people.
Speaker 2:And I want to serve other people. That motivator that is in there, regardless of what faith you're in. Most faiths have that I'm here to serve others. You don't have to have a faith of any sort to have that, but that I'm here to serve other people attitude Like that goes so far.
Speaker 4:Yeah, home inspection is high stress sometimes, especially when they don't know what they're looking at. A lot of the buyers, especially God, love them, but the younger generation, they don't know how to turn a wrench. So I think you really have to cookie cutter it, so having that service to be able to really help them make the right decision. Yeah, that's so true. It's so true, it's funny.
Speaker 2:I can tell you a house that was a one-owner, that was built in the mid-'70s, that was built in the mid-70s. You know that generation was a DIY. Everything, yeah for sure. Codebook.
Speaker 4:What codebook? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you see. Romex just stapled to the drywall of the garage and you're just like what the heck and?
Speaker 2:they just somehow jerry-rigged everything together to kind of make the house work and you're like there's so many things wrong with this house, but they at least tried, yeah, to kind of make the housework and you're like there's so many things wrong with this house, but you know they at least tried. Yeah, yeah, it's true. And then, like now, the younger generation, they just won't even try.
Speaker 4:They're just like I'm probably going to kill myself or hurt someone, yeah, so I was like let's just hire a professional Right and I try to empower them.
Speaker 1:Like YouTube, University is a. I used to joke they're going to teach brain surgery on.
Speaker 4:YouTube Well, actually they already do that's about as much laugh as I usually get. So you can learn all this stuff online if you want. It's part of the joy of homeownership, too, is learning.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I call it the joy of homeownership.
Speaker 2:That's good. I think it's interesting Hiring the people and getting the first people and that first guy you hire is pretty important. So because everybody's after that's going to automatically think, oh, they've been here longer. So the seniority, seniority wise, they're going to look to them for sure. Yeah, and so finding someone for me, like with Danny, it was like he understood culture. He understood what it takes to hold it, to maintain it, to build it and bring him into alignment, like everything about this guy, I was like this is perfect.
Speaker 2:And he'd been a missionary and so he wasn't making much money. You know, you don't make much money doing that kind of work, right, you're kind of living on some donations and stuff. So he came back to the States and he started another like career field that wasn't going to pay much, it was like a anyhow. So like I could like he's making three times what he's ever made, you know, because home inspectors can make some good money for good, but you're doing right, and so these guys are all making you know he makes.
Speaker 2:He makes some solid six-figure money working for me, and and like so now he's making a great living providing for his family very well
Speaker 2:in alignment with what he wants to be doing serving people, absolutely serving people and helping people and and now we're building this team and this team is up growing really well. So I had to work myself out of the field, transition myself out of the field, and now I've been out of the field for now a couple of years. Our next step in the business is actually getting Danny out of the field.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, which is kind of an interesting step of going from me solo doing it all myself to slowly building. So you guys are at that stage where you're all by yourself. You're like, okay, what's the next step?
Speaker 4:Now it's going to hire this first guy and hiring that first guy is super critical but, like both of you guys are thinking about it the right way. And then both of us are bringing our wives into some degree too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, that's cool too, I love that.
Speaker 3:Yep, we can touch on that, if you want.
Speaker 2:No, I think. Hey, carl, how's it looking for you with, like bringing your wife into the?
Speaker 3:business. So it kind of started with the idea of just you know when you're a one-man shop you're doing you know three, four hundred inspections a year. You know you're just running 100 miles an hour. You get home, think plug to Spectora. I'll just make a Spectora plug. You know their reporting system makes it a lot easier, you know, to finish the inspection be done and not have to think about it. Right, I can't imagine going home having to write reports till midnight. But I did find myself getting home at five spending two hours scheduling you know inspections, uh, replying to emails, texts we're just talking about all the unread texts we have.
Speaker 3:I'm sure every inspector listening probably knows exactly what we're talking about. But so the idea was to bring her and kind of on the backside to you know do the scheduling, you know do the replying to agents, things like that, to take that load off so I can focus on doing the inspection part.
Speaker 3:That's kind of how it started and we're we're working kind of through what that's going to look like longer term Right, but we're in the beginning stages of that. It was really just kind of take a load off of me as a one man shop, so that was kind of the goal there.
Speaker 2:So your wife's helping on the back end of scheduling and operations side of things.
Speaker 3:She'll run our social media, make posts.
Speaker 4:She'll do Really good job too. I will say.
Speaker 3:If I get a new agent, she'll do the handwritten thank yous. That's cool, things like that that I no longer have to think about or was was good at, because I'd forget, you know things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Brent. A lot of people do the things that you aren't good at. A lot of other people who are excellent do those things right, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:so she's helping you on operations. Yes, exactly, Kyle. How about you? How's your wife involved now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, same thing, so we just doing a podcast.
Speaker 4:So with that yeah, she's coming in from operations. She's a physical therapist and we wanted our daughter to have mom around, so she decided to not go back to work and started doing the operations side. So phones, emails, scheduling, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been awesome.
Speaker 4:I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because I mean there's daycare and stuff you can do but um, I mean we I don't know if you guys went to daycare recently we interviewed a handful of
Speaker 2:people and we're just like. I don't know if this is for us. I'd rather have my wife looking after our daughter yeah, I think, like if that's you know what I think that's important, like I know I made that decision when I was having kids that my wife would then stay with the kids. So she had to step down from her job and did that, but that was the right decision for our family. But if that's the decision you want to do. I think it's pretty cool that your wife can be involved in the business.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's been a blessing. We worked really hard for it and we're thankful for it. The business is going good, but this is a night of you, rightfully so.
Speaker 1:It does go well, and it was good with IEB too.
Speaker 4:We had that conversation. What does your role look like?
Speaker 1:Where do?
Speaker 4:we fit together, then she doesn't work for me. We work together. It was something we wanted to establish very early too.
Speaker 2:That's a really good way to do it, too, is get your roles established. Yeah, how's this gonna work? You guys, who's the boss, who owns it, who doesn't, who's like? Or you guys are co-owners, okay, yeah, then all right, it's like, well then, if we're both co-owners, then it's a different relationship. It's a different relationship, okay, it's all right. Then then what you know is there is one person, the leader, over the other one, and so I think one thing with IEB how they teach us to have the company divided into divisions.
Speaker 2:It's like you have field services division, and then you have an operations, and then you have a growth division, and so, yeah, if your wife is, doing the operations and you're doing field services. She's not going to tell you how to inspect the house better, so maybe don't tell her how to inspect the house better so maybe yeah, don't tell her how to like schedule the clients better, right?
Speaker 3:I actually, uh, one of the IAB members husband and wife dynamic I actually, when we kind of sat through and thought of the idea to bring my wife in um, I talked to them and that was the advice that they gave was if you clearly define the roles, um, you don't have to micromanage. You say this is the role that this person plays and you just give it to them and they can run with it. And it makes the dynamic so much easier if you just get clear, lay out the goals of the role and then let them run with it. So that saves a lot of tension per se if you do that in a correct way.
Speaker 4:That pre-existing relationship kind of makes it more difficult too, because it's not as straightforward as a new employee coming in and you teach them Like my wife has heard me answer the phone at least 2,000 times right Right right. There's the good of it and the bad, too, of just trying to isolate your personal relationship from that, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, and then you know. Then now date night changes too.
Speaker 4:Well, date night needs to be blocked out for sure. Right, you need to have it. You got to have date night. Dedicate time to it, although if you do talk about work, I think it can be right off. I make that joke, I make that joke a lot.
Speaker 3:I do make that joke a lot. We don't always do it per se, call it a write-off, but that joke's always made.
Speaker 4:I don't feel nearly as creative because I say the same joke too we're all equally lame.
Speaker 2:Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure, but it is hard to kind of not talk about work. Everyone that probably does the husband-wife dynamic will probably say the same thing it becomes part of life per se and it's hard to not talk about it. But if the environment business is going good, the environment is good. It's not a terrible thing to talk about either.
Speaker 2:There's no tension involved If you think about if your wife had a job before, outside of your business before, and you go out on date night, what would you talk about? That aspect does come up, but it would be like you know, the wife's talking about Susie in the office and you could be like yeah, we don't like Susie.
Speaker 1:I mean, you don't even know Susie. You know you never met her, but I like that word.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, and so now it's like you know, now, when your wife is like I don't know, that inspector we have is having a hard time.
Speaker 4:Hey, that's me. What we found really helpful is we were texting each other all the time and then so I'd get like a text it's from my wife. I'm like, oh no, like what's worked, what has to work. So we switched to Connect Team message from connect team, knowing it's about work, and then our personal texts are just personal.
Speaker 4:So I don't know that's a great system it was so it helped so much because there would be a sense of dread. Sometimes I get a photo, and sometimes it's a screenshot of a conversation and I'm like, oh no, like what is? We have a callback, what's going on?
Speaker 2:and it's just a picture of my daughter like this is something that's not aligned, like we need to separate. Well, I like how you that, though, where you separated work into different platforms yeah, so I know what's why. And then even text message you're like excited to look at it, yeah.
Speaker 4:And then when I get home, she's like do you have time for a work conversation? Which is awesome because, like, we just really want to keep, we don't want it to mesh.
Speaker 2:That, yeah, that's really, that's really fantastic. That's us and then, and so then, both you guys, how long you guys been in business now?
Speaker 3:yeah, so I've uh, uh, the end of this year will be year number three, okay, so, yeah, about three years, um, and uh, gosh, it seems like a long time ago. It really hasn't been. But, man, we've come a long way. I kind of I don't know if you want us to talk about what got us started.
Speaker 2:How about that? What got you started, man? What made you decide to go do this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I kind of start from the beginning. In my early 20s I was a pipeline welder. I did that and traveled all over the country doing pipeline jobs, things like that, and kind of started to realize my ultimate goal was to start a family one day. I'm a Christian man myself and the family dynamic to me is the most important thing. So I kind of started to recognize being on the road all the time being gone is not a good dynamic for family life.
Speaker 3:So I phased out of the pipeline world, got into buying real estate rentalsals and bought a couple houses stripped into the studs, rebuilt them, things like that. And through that process my sister being a real estate agent, she was the one that approached me and said you know, you'd make a really good home inspector and never gave it much thought, but I did and looked into it. I said this does kind of fit my skills, kind of what I know how to do. So I basically decided to start a home inspection business and realized I have never started a business, don't know anything about it. So I kind of started to recognize I need some guidance right.
Speaker 3:The home inspection business. It is not a new concept. There's no secrets. There's so many people that have done it so I kind of realized why don't I get involved with a group of people who have done it that I can ask? I can just kind of walk in their footsteps, you know, if they've already paved the way with the systems and processes, I could just follow that right. So I found out about IEB, I think through another podcast, and kind of looked into it and then realized man this is what I'm looking for, just kind of step by step.
Speaker 3:If you're willing to do the work and do the steps, the results come. So that was kind of my mindset, kind of how I got to where I'm at now.
Speaker 4:You did pretty well pipeline welding too, right.
Speaker 3:I mean, it took good care of you I remember you saying, yeah, it's a good, it's an excellent living, especially for a young man.
Speaker 1:But if he wants, yeah, a gypsy, that's what we call him.
Speaker 3:You're a gypsy, to a point, you know, but it's not a stable doesn't.
Speaker 2:it doesn't build a stable life. So that's kind of why Is it so much travel involved? Is that why yeah?
Speaker 3:exactly, Okay, yeah, but uh, so yeah, that's kind of my story, kind of where we're at and at the end of this year we should do. You know we'll close around 375 inspections done.
Speaker 4:I'm always calling Carl.
Speaker 3:I'm never quite there.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at in my stage of business right now.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. And, kyle, what got you started in home inspections?
Speaker 4:I was working in corporate America. I got a degree in economics I was trying to do like the playbook, you know, do well in life got a degree in logistics and then I was a deposit product manager for a credit union.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:Love numbers, love Excel. I'm not a cubicle person, so I wish I had an AccuMax done on me before.
Speaker 1:I went to school because I know, it would be a good fit yeah.
Speaker 4:But I was researching investment right and home inspections came up. You know, I listened to podcasts, I think it was on Baker Pockets.
Speaker 1:My uncle's a home inspector.
Speaker 4:So I went out, had dinner with him, I talked to him about it. He kind of told me the ups and downs. I followed him a couple times and then I said I'm going to do this. And then you know, here we are. This would be my second company. We moved. We moved to St Louis. Okay, I sold that business for not much, uh, single man. You know right, business not not worth a ton. And then we moved back up to Madison two years ago, almost two years, and we rebuilt. We're bigger now than the one I was doing for three years.
Speaker 2:So okay, yeah, yeah, I mean, that makes sense, like you know, cause you had that experience before. So then you moved Madison two years ago and started that company.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we got married and we're like why are we in St Louis? Like we have great friends down there we still visit, but it's um there's we don't have family, All of our family's in, like Chicagoland area.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, I wanted to hop the border.
Speaker 4:I don't want to live in Illinois, so we went to Wisconsin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not Illinois.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the taxes are terrible.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:And I don't know if you want kind of I can kind of tell I know there's probably people listening to this podcast like me who is looking kind of a one-man solo guy Just looking for insight and kind of what do I do to get this thing rolling down the court?
Speaker 2:I don't know if maybe we can touch on that. Yeah, that's great that. I don't know if maybe we can touch on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great subject. Yeah, so one thing that I did IEB teaches it. I think every inspector listening hates the idea of cold calling people.
Speaker 2:I think every human on earth hates that, except for Carl. The idea of cold calling is yeah, he jokes about that.
Speaker 3:When I started my business, I said two things. As long as I don't have to do an office presentation or call random people, I'll be fine, Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so here we are three years later, I've probably cold called 250 realtors and done you know a handful of office presentations, but that's really kind of what got me started and IEB taught a basically a fundamental system of you do these processes through cold calling with these goals in mind. You know you'll get traction in the market. So that's basically that's what I did. I got a list of realtors you know under the table from my sister, right, you know she'll get in trouble if I say that, but no, We'll take her to that post.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, Edit that out. Yeah, edit that out right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, edit that out. Yeah, no, you're good. Anyway, Um, and I just started going through that. I hit the phones, you know every. I made a goal every Wednesday, after our um IEB meeting and our pod meeting, I'd spend an hour and I'd go through, I'd call 20 or 30 realtors, you know, book maybe five or six coffee meetings. Um, you know, and that was just kind of my routine from the beginning and then did that for a couple months and then I kind of started realizing like hey, I'm actually starting to get busy, you know, and started phasing out of the cold calling.
Speaker 3:I'm out of that phase, thankfully, right, yeah, but that's really what got me off the ground going. So if anyone's out there kind of thinking or trying to decide, wondering how you're going to get off the ground, If you're willing to do the hard things, the things that you don't want to do, you'll kind of find out. It's for a short period of time. If you just do it, do it well, do it consistently for a short period of time, you'll realize you can walk through that phase fairly quickly and then start worrying. Instead of worrying about how am I going to do all these, do inspections, it's how am I going to do all of these inspections that are now coming in your problems change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they just change yeah exactly, but that's kind of how I got it.
Speaker 4:I remember you were like I remember we started the pod when you were just in that phase and every week you're like I called you. Know 20 ages this week I'd call you know this many ages, so he really put the legwork in and grew really fast, and I think it had a lot to do with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and just having, like you know, not not having to do that shooting from the hip, like like I said, and iebs, you know what they teach on their five by fives. It's really just you know. I've heard you mention kind of the you know the playbook thing, right, I mean, you know, I think you're the first guy that that said that. But I kind of thought like, wow, that's exactly what they do. It's just you know. Here here's the proven game plan where there's 250 businesses in here that have done the game plan and gotten the results.
Speaker 3:It's like you think you're smarter than 250 different companies that are crushing it right now, exactly so you're not, you know, I'm just going to do what's taught right and start doing the steps, running the plays and next thing you know, you score a touchdown and that's that's literally how it works. That was kind of my mindset I started approaching it.
Speaker 2:That's how I approached it. My company was already going. I already had a couple of inspectors when I learned about IEB. But I had my own set of struggles in that moment and I was like I can't get past this moment. And so, with IEB, they said. I hung out with some people, looked at what they were doing and they were like, well, if you do this, this and this, this, this and this, and I thought, well, shoot, like what I'm doing ain't working.
Speaker 2:Like what I'm doing. I'm stuck here, and so then it's like here's guys that they're winning. It's like well.
Speaker 1:I want to win, like them, so.
Speaker 2:I'm going to learn plays like they're running. I did like copy and paste.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I'm just not going to pretend that I'm smarter. It's the collective knowledge of the group.
Speaker 2:It is, yeah, it's a mastermind, it's the group, it's the all these guys all trying to do the same thing and you end up with really great solutions, you know one thing great is when I joined IAB, being kind of a one-man shop, I felt like a little guy right.
Speaker 3:I felt like I couldn't talk to anybody. You know, everyone probably has the same version of the story Sitting on the Zoom. Then you know you start engaging and all of a sudden you kind of find out like people that got four or five guys working for you are asking start asking me questions Like how did you do that? How did you do this and I'm just like I'm not qualified to tell you. But in reality it is a collective group, but you are. Exactly.
Speaker 3:Everyone shares something that the other person doesn't necessarily have or thought of from a certain angle, right. So that's what's been great, like we said, collaborative. Everyone's so willing to share everything yeah whether you're a one-man shop or you've got 10 people working for you, you know no one, no one. The the vibe isn't I'm better than everyone else because I've got a big business right. That's not the culture here. No, not at all yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:It's like whether you're a single man operator or you're in 10 different cities, it's like people are learning from each other all the time.
Speaker 4:I had one of the best conversations this morning with Greg Bryan just about MVPC, and what an opportunity you just share so much so I'm very blessed Right.
Speaker 2:He's got a massive operation Right and he'll talk to anybody.
Speaker 1:He'll talk to anybody For sure, like he'll talk to anybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he'll talk to anybody, for sure, and it's. It isn't about the size of your company, you know, and that's something that I love about this environment and I think every mastermind group out there. It should be like that in theory you know, there's no egos, here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's no egos and it's like oh you, you only have two inspectors working for you, yeah yeah, it's like yeah, because you started with 20 exactly. You know, we all started in one place.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Like I think that's something that's pretty cool about this group here. Yeah for sure, 100% yeah. And so how about you, man? What did you? How did you get started Like what should? So Carl's right here doing like he's doing the five-by-fives. What was your strategy to get business jumping?
Speaker 4:I threw everything I could at the wall and saw it stick. Open houses. I call them thrive kits. It's not a survival kit, it's a thrive kit, you're trying to kill it. We like doing those A lot of. It, too, was doing presentation. It's all the basic stuff.
Speaker 4:I feel like you ask most home inspectors what should I be doing to grow the business? Most will have a general idea, but a lot of people just don't follow through on it. That's it. So like doing the phone calls, going to the open houses, doing all the legwork, writing the thank yous it's the details like that that really matter, yep.
Speaker 2:So I don't really have a secret formula.
Speaker 4:I just am consistent.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's really consistency is pretty key yeah like I mean I hated doing phone calls, so like I tried doing that, um I uh, you know, my guys laughed at me when I was doing it too, you know, because that's already hard.
Speaker 1:They're laughing at you, you know, and yeah, so I'm not trying to do the cold call thing and so.
Speaker 2:But for me, whatever reason, I just I had a hard time clicking with it but but the open house thing, like I did that when I was first starting up, like I just I went to as many open houses as I could find. I just introduced myself and I wasn't even sophisticated enough to bring a Thrive Kit or a Thrive.
Speaker 1:Kit. I just walked in the door like, oh, I do home inspections.
Speaker 4:So it just felt like an idiot walking in there, not sure what I was doing. But what's crazy is I've gone to hundreds of those, and do you know how many times I've ever seen anything from anybody else? Yeah, maybe once or twice, like other people just aren't out there hustling, and that's what it comes down to. That is what it comes down to. So I started doing that.
Speaker 2:Well, that helped me get some business you know out of just doing some of that. But then the office presentations like that helped a really big office one time.
Speaker 1:They're fun and I went in and I crushed it. Yeah, I think they're fun. Yeah, but I also have a background.
Speaker 2:People listen to the podcast, know this. I have a background. I was a preacher for a while.
Speaker 1:So so, stand in front of a crowd I can make them laugh and cry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I mean. Bring out an organ and an offering plate people and presenting it so for me that was like my, that was my sweet spot, to just present that way. Yeah, you know, and so for me it's like that was. That was the part that really I knocked out the park some people struggle in print and doing like public present presentations, so maybe the phone calls or whatever else. But yeah, like like you said, you just throw everything at the wall.
Speaker 4:See what's this, see what sticks, and just do it, and do it do it until it doesn't work consistently right, that's kind of the main thing.
Speaker 3:That's the word. If you you can do, you can do a mediocre job at anything you do, but if you do it consistent, consistent, consistent, you'll get more results than yeah waiting to do something because you want to perfect it right. You know a couple things that mark hummels told me. You know he's got. He quoted this to me as successful people do, yeah, consistently, what other people do occasionally.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know what I mean, and it's like and a lot of things.
Speaker 3:He told me too is just go out there and fail fast. You know like go out there and fail two or three times before, and then, you'll figure out what's going to work Right. Don't just sit back and wait until your phone call system's perfect or your office presentation has all the right. You know things in the PowerPoint. It's like just go do it Right, get that human interaction with people. That's what they really remember.
Speaker 3:They're not going to remember what you talked about in the PowerPoint or whatever you're doing. They're going to remember you who showed up as a person made it might've made them laugh, just looked like a professional Right and then you know at the end said hey, by the way, I do home inspections, Right, right, and they're going to remember that versus all the swag and the things that you worried about, they don't even care, I think.
Speaker 4:I think you hit the nail and fail fast too, like you're going to fail and like get you do it and like you just need to learn and go to the next one.
Speaker 2:Yeah and accept this, except you are going to fail.
Speaker 3:How many times has Elon Musk blown up one of his rockets before you know what I mean before he landed one. Yeah, this thing is something you have to. It's part of have to, it's part of the process. Yeah, it is part of the process.
Speaker 4:Perfectionism is not. You know, that's something I struggle with is perfectionism. You just have to remind yourself like that's not the game we're playing.
Speaker 2:No man. Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.
Speaker 1:Killer of all progress. Yeah, you can't have perfect and progress at the same time, I suppose Well said, Absolutely. Man, this has been kind of cool I know.
Speaker 2:You said you're having your first child.
Speaker 4:Is that right? No, we actually just yeah. We had our second six months ago. Carl actually Got our first one on the way. Your first one's coming, okay, and your second right yeah.
Speaker 2:So you guys are in the same stage of life of, like young children, yeah, and you're in the same stage of life.
Speaker 1:in the business of like same time it's unbelievable how you guys, it's all parallel?
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly, but it's been. It's been very helpful because we we deal with the same struggles, you know, per se, but we've got different perspectives on how to solve that problem, right. So that's what's, that's what's great about it. Same thing with Vincent, the other guy in our, our, our pod. He's kind of same stage, trying to grow it, you know, hiring his first people and that's I can't stress enough just joining a small like church, right, joining a small group to get plugged into a church. It's kind of the same thing with a pod. You know it's easy to sit, sit in the backseat of the IAB conference here at Mastermind or on Zoom calls and just listen.
Speaker 3:But when you get engaged with a few people, you can get down to the meat and potatoes of what you're learning, what you're trying to do, accountability, things like that that's. That's where the growth happens, right it's like.
Speaker 4:It's like what you put in you get out, right, yeah, you can, you can come in an hour, call and just log out and be done. But um, yeah, I mean, I remember you guys hold me accountable there's days.
Speaker 3:There's days where all I show up to the pod meeting and I don't feel like doing nothing.
Speaker 2:You know, know what I mean, but they're amped up and energized and they're like you know.
Speaker 3:Hold me to the fire. On accountability, and sometimes they need that. You know what I mean. We're not always going to be running on, even if it's just like set a goal for this week, like pick.
Speaker 4:You need to pick something. It doesn't matter what it is, but you have to do something. Yeah, we find that helpful. Like it sounds so stupid. Print out your goals and hang them next to the computer, just for the week, and then it's always just in front of you, you know? Yeah, you know. Like mark mark says, he has one sheets in the shower.
Speaker 2:I think he said right, mark homel yeah, yeah so it's like, just if it's in front of you, you're gonna do it.
Speaker 4:It's just like little tips and tricks like that help a lot too yeah, I actually use um.
Speaker 2:I've been using dry erase markers on my bathroom mirror oh yeah, so yeah, so so like yeah, so, like right now, I have one thing that I've been working on.
Speaker 2:One of us is happiness is an inside job, you know that's on my mirror right now, because that's something I've been focusing on is is in the past I have struggled with happiness because I it was like elusive to me, because I was like thinking that if I, that could be right or this could be right, if that could be right or this could be right, yeah, something else, external, was like my happiness was conditional upon external circumstances. And it's like no happiness is an inside job, you know. And then the other one, underneath that, my mirror right now, says optimism is my superpower.
Speaker 3:Because I am, like I'm, an optimistic person all the time you have to be, to be an entrepreneur, you have to be, you have to be right, and so, like I write, stuff on my.
Speaker 2:I have other things written up there too, but I have stuff written on my. I take dry erase and put it in the mirror so that I can wipe it off and write something else if I want to.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, but yeah, so, like you say, you got to put it somewhere you're going to see it.
Speaker 2:You got to see it If it's your one sheet or your goal or whatever else it's going to be. So I have things. It's like big visionary type stuff.
Speaker 4:It's funny, you say happiness is inside. How do you phrase it? Happiness is an inside job. So with that, it's like I hit my goals for this year. And you would think last year if I said, hey, if you hit your goals, how happy would you be. I'd be ecstatic every day and ultimately I'm a little bit happier. Life has gotten better, but I'm already thinking what's right? Life has gotten better, but, like I'm already thinking right, what's next? What's?
Speaker 4:the next goal. So it's true, like it's a, happiness is the way right. I always like that kind of saying there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and it's kind of like your attitude's a choice, yeah it is you get to kind? Of choose how you're going to view the world, and you your attitude. You choose your thoughts.
Speaker 4:You know like don't tell me that I'm in a bad mood, though, I know right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my kids are tired of hearing me say it, so I got teenagers, you know so, so their attitude and I got two teenage daughters right 14 16, 14, 16, right. So teenage daughters, you know that are notoriously known to have um mood shifts throughout the day.
Speaker 2:You know and uh and so like it's funny because I'll be like I'll just say like happiness is a choice, or attitudes of choice is what I tell them. Like attitudes of choice, I'm like shut up, dad. And then the other one I would say is um, you know, the elevator one.
Speaker 1:If you heard me talk like life, is like an elevator.
Speaker 2:You know your friends are like an elevator. They're going to take you up or take you down, but they're not gonna leave you the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, and so, and then they can.
Speaker 2:And then I was telling them too, like if they're, you know, if you're, if you're going upward, if you're going down, it's like well, who's pushing the buttons on your elevator, you know? And so I like that, yeah, and so I use it all the time with my kids and so, um, I hope my where like they're going through a hard situation and maybe a friend situation or somebody in the life, and they're like struggling stuff, and I'm just like I was like yeah, I was like so, so who's who's?
Speaker 1:uh, who's pushing your buttons? Who's pushing the buttons on your?
Speaker 2:elevator and she's, like you know, a lot of times like yeah, yeah, you're right it's like I I mean all I just gotta say is like like so is this like an elevator? And they'd be like I'd say the word elevator or something like that, and they don't they're just like yeah, yeah, I get it, you know, but um, but sometimes I just know like I hope that haunts them forever but it's just like having those mind models, yeah, like just having those little mind models to function through.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a big key of like the whole game, I feel like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's, you know, I don't know All those things. Those things are good. Yeah, yeah, it's good. I love being a dad, though. I love, like, raising kids. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 4:I didn't expect. Like it's the I can't. I can't even put it into words.
Speaker 1:That excited, I hear I hear people say that all the time. You can't explain, you don't have a concept, there's no words, right? Yeah, I'm about to cry just talking about it.
Speaker 4:It's just a whole new world and you know you guys are very blessed and very happy for both of you. Yeah, and there's this.
Speaker 2:But when the baby comes out like the first, like it was the same way. I was like. I was like, conceptually, like I know there's a kid coming. Yeah, you know. And then?
Speaker 1:and I'm like looking at at my wife's belly growing.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh, there's something in there, you know, and, and so like I conceptually I know what's happening, like scientifically and medically, and like I'm gonna have a baby, yeah you know and all the other stuff.
Speaker 2:But then the the day that that my firstborn came out, like you know, she was born, and like I remember, in the hospital and it was like a door of my heart. I have a room I did not know existed, like it, just like a door opened up, and I was like what is this? Like it was a section inside of me that I don't know. It's like a hidden door opens up and there's a whole nother piece of your heart that opens up and there's not enough words to describe it Like there's not. And so you have a kid and you're like holy cow. It just changed me fundamentally as a human and I didn't expect that. What?
Speaker 4:I remember, a couple months ago, my daughter's on the ground she's playing. I'm looking at my wife sitting next to her. I say that's our baby, like, and it's just even that. I don't know, it seems so rudimentary, but even it's just. There's a love in you that a hundred percent gets on lock. Yeah, that 100% gets on lock. Yeah, you have no idea, no idea.
Speaker 2:Right, and so then, like I don't know about y'all but one of the things that I've now learned in life is like, listen, I am the best father that I could possibly be. Like I am. Like I'm giving 100% of myself to my kids, right, but guess what, I'm not perfect, yeah. So like, right, I know I'm doing the best that I can and I still trip and fall. It actually dynamically changed my relationship with my parents, because I looked at things from my past in a whole different light, because because now it's like, oh, my parents were literally doing the best that they could. Did they? Did they? Maybe not, they weren't perfect? Yeah, of course not. They're humans, you know. And so that's like, as you shoot, I'm doing the best I can and I've screwed up some stuff, and it's not because I don't love them or care about them, it's just because yeah, guess what, you're human. Yeah, guess what Surprise.
Speaker 4:I'm human right. How do you find that balance between? So where's the line? How do you find that line? Because the line exists between work and family. So how, some point, you'll have you have to make a decision right. Like either you go for an easy example you either go do the home inspection or you go have dinner, right. So like, how do you?
Speaker 2:where's that? How did?
Speaker 4:you get around that? How do I like, like at the home, like the home life balance?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess that's what I'm looking at. Yeah, what's your model for that? Wow, so okay. So here's where it gets real, all right. Here's where it gets real.
Speaker 1:Can we go there? We're going to get real Go on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's where it gets real. I've been a workaholic almost my entire life, I feel that and I was married for 21 years almost 22 years but my marriage failed and we're no longer married, and there were multiple factors that led into that thing. But I can tell you one consistent factor that I brought to the table that I needed to change and didn't change was exactly what you're talking about. I was a workaholic and I did not find that balance and by the time I found that balance, I had already done enough damage in my marriage that actually the marriage failed. And so I can look back at it now and see and obviously there was a hundred factors involved leading up to that place.
Speaker 4:But, I didn't find that balance and I struggled with that On the other side of it. Now, what advice would you have for people at the beginning of their family journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and what's funny is so, yeah, so I'll give you this advice, right, like, my motivations for what I did were all correct. Like I, I loved everything and I thought, if I are doing these things, I'm providing for my family and I think every man this is maybe predominantly more of a male role than a female, but with the male role, like we want to provide and protect our families, that's something that's intrinsic in most men, especially in a traditional family style environment. So I thought I am providing for my family and I'm doing the things that I should be doing and my motivation internally was the right motivation but X. But what was actually happening? In hindsight, I see like I was motivated by the right things, but taking the wrong actions and I wasn't right, I wasn't investing into that relationship.
Speaker 2:So there's a couple of things that that I would, that I would, that I saw, that I that I see now, and one of them is is making sure that your spouse is a priority in your life and and for for the female side, the traditional side, and this would be the case in in my, in my marriage as well, when we had kids.
Speaker 2:You know, for me I prioritize work to provide for the family. My, my ex-wife she actually provided, prioritized the kids over everything else, and so, although on paper we would have said our spouses are up in this level of priority, our actions our spouses were way down here, got it Because, you know, for her there was other things that were coming in line and I felt I was lower on the priority list. Well, I did the same thing. So no condemnation or judgment, just awareness that this is what happened, right, and so now, so now my work is more important, and then I would come home and take care of the kids as well. So now, so my work and my kids became moments of time. So my actions communicated that my work and my kids were more important than my wife and then my wife's actions were communicating that the kids and her friends and other activities she had going more important than me.
Speaker 2:And that doesn't, and then that ultimately led us to a place where we were deprioritizing our relationship and our relationship fell apart. And it took years to get there, Many, many years of this pattern. But by the time we saw the pattern we were already divorced, Like we'd had like a decompression, like uh, I don't know what you call it Continuous decompression.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like we autopsied the marriage after we were divorced at one point in time, you know, and we. It was funny we sat at a bar and like, oh, you and your ex-wife. Yeah, yeah, we actually it sounds really healthy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we actually sat down at a bar and we're like where'd we go wrong?
Speaker 2:And it's like man, I don't know. So by the time, by that time, we're divorced. So yeah, it actually. That part was actually kind of interesting so and we're friends like best friends anymore, of course, but but like we are friends, we get along and and we communicate on a regular basis. We're raising kids together. Still, we don't hate each other, you know. In a way we do love each other in the sense of like we want the best for each other. So it's nothing toxic there, but we are able to sit down afterwards and go where'd we go wrong?
Speaker 2:And it's funny. I feel like after we were divorced we were able to actually see it clear and hear each other and in a more authentic place, and we were able to see what wrong. So I've actually changed my entire life around. I learned from all that mistake and I'm like I'm not gonna get my work-life balance out of work again. I'll never do that again.
Speaker 2:It's something easy to do, it's so easy to do, especially kids, then you have a business and you have all these other things going, it's really easy to get your life out of whack. So just you know, I don't know, just as a guy a couple steps in front of you like pay attention to your spouse, invest in that relationship. Your relationship with your spouse is more important than your business. It just is, and I wish I had had a better clarity back then. I didn't, so it fell apart. Guess what? It's okay. You know we're. I did, so it fell apart.
Speaker 4:Guess what? It's okay. You know you gave that mind. Monsters talk. I don't know if you remember I came up to you after and I was like thank you, cause I was like I didn't think I was sacrificing enough and you're telling me I'm already sacrificing too much and that that drastically changed how I kind of dealt with the family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, life at home.
Speaker 4:Yeah, business and everything will work out. That's not the answer. Yeah, more money does not solve the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more money does not solve the problem. It doesn't matter how many zeros are in your bank account, it doesn't matter how many employees you have, it doesn't matter how many inspections you're doing. It doesn't have any of that kind of stuff. That that will not. That just doesn't you think it will. It's as a like yeah, well, I can buy whatever I want to buy, you know, but you know yeah, it's like well shoot kind of mess up.
Speaker 2:The one thing I was should have been paying attention to you know, and so yeah, and so it's. Uh, yeah, so anyhow, like I don't know, like, so you ask about how to get a balance.
Speaker 4:Well, I screwed that balance up so well, I can tell you what not to do. Yeah, give some good insight on the other side, though, and I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So pay attention to your spouse and make sure you guys are on the same page with that kind of stuff, for sure. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's good stuff right there.
Speaker 2:We got deep. We got deep, that's right, we got deep. Oh man, this is awkward. Three dudes and their feelings.
Speaker 1:I'm going to need a beer. How?
Speaker 3:about that game. Yeah, I don't know how much time we got left, but if you want to kind of shift or something, we can talk about another subject or something. I don't know what the clock is. We're good, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm up for chatting about it.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about something else, man.
Speaker 2:It's funny that we're all part of IEB. We're here at an IEB event and we've kind of been touching how, like IAB systems and what they provide, that structure that brings, that brings to us. It really helps us to be able to build our companies in a way, and and they actually talk a lot about there's a lot of spouses that work together here. Yeah, and I think that's one thing that they also provide is is a lot of structure and like guidance and advice on how to like work together in a marriage, work together in that relationship while you're building a company, and then then also the copy and paste nature of what they do here as far as building everything out, structuring your company with systems and
Speaker 2:processes the different categories you have a service department you have field services, and then you have an operations and you have growth.
Speaker 4:And then even the. Mvvc like in that home, which is mission vision, vision, values, values and culture right. Yeah, like when you start, you're like why am I doing this? You know, at least that's what I thought. Right, and now I wish. I spent so much more time on it and it's something you're gonna have to revisit um, but it's good it's healthy.
Speaker 2:It is healthy and the MVVC mission, vision, values, culture. That really starts to come in play when you have multiple inspectors. Yeah, and so now, like, so we have our MVVC written out in our hiring process, we use it in our hiring process. We use it every week. We have a weekly meeting and I used to run that meeting, but now Danny runs that meeting for me. But that meeting meeting I would run, and every week we'd pick out one of them. Yeah, like we have a mission, we have a mission statement. And I would, I was, it would be up in the on the dry erase board and I would take and I would wipe out different words on it and we would all say it together nice, like this is our mission, yeah, and so we would get to the blank and then, like they would all know it, so we would, we would just blank out different words every week.
Speaker 2:We just read the mission statement. I just blank it out differently every time.
Speaker 4:It's so helpful, though, to know, oh yeah, because then you know who to bring in. You're like, hey, this is where we're going. This is just going to be a good fit If you don't have those figured out it's a little bit tougher.
Speaker 2:I think yeah. And then our values and culture, we and so every week I would just pick one and talk about it you know, and like one of, ours is be a thermos, be a thermostat, not a thermometer. So a thermos, a thermometer reads the temperature in the room. The thermostat knows the temperature and changes it. And so we are. We don't just because it's easy to be like, well, that sucked, yeah and be like oh that, just that was terrible, whereas that's what a thermometer does.
Speaker 2:a thermostat goes in. Oh, this isn't right, but I'm going to change it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we control the atmosphere and the temperature. And so it's like how do we thermostat in every moment? I like that. How are we going to thermostat at the inspection? How do we thermostat with the realtor, with the buyer, with the seller, with pick a value or a culture piece and and then like one of them is work, life balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's like all right. How do we? How do we?
Speaker 2:work on making sure our work life balance is correct and, and so we talk about that and then being able to embody that too. When we're clear about what it is, you can embody it and then you can be part of it. I noticed one of my guys was coming back late and from from the inspections. Yeah, on a regular basis. Right, I get it every once in a while. You have something here and you're out a little bit later, but you know it was like pretty consistent.
Speaker 1:I would see him come back to the office like 6, 6, 30 at night instead of like 4, 4, 30, you know, 5 like like everybody else and so I was like, so I just reached out text me.
Speaker 2:Hey, man, I've just noticed you've been out working at late. Just want to make sure. Just want to make sure you're doing okay. I really value work-life balance. We really value work-life balance here. I want to make sure you're not working too much. Are you doing okay? And that guy, he's like holy cow, he was blown away.
Speaker 2:That the owner would notice that he was working extra and not be like, and my concern really is genuinely is are you okay? Like, is your you know what I mean Like I want your wife and kids to love that you work here, and if you're working out late like this, they're not going to love that you work here, and if you're working late like this, you're going to be burning out. Like what's going on with you, you know, and so that's my genuine thing.
Speaker 2:So I, so I, I, I reached out to the guy and the guy reaches back and he's like he's blown away that I would even notice and care and reach out. And then he tells me he's like actually no, he says it's funny. For the last five days, my last inspection has been right next to my house or near my house, and he's like so, rather than fighting traffic by there, hang out, eat dinner, do these things, and then I would come drop the van off.
Speaker 2:And I was like oh wow, I was like, he was like. He was like yeah, he's like. You know, he was like I hope that's okay, I was like yeah, absolutely man.
Speaker 3:I just want to make sure that you're okay.
Speaker 2:You know, if that's how you choose, you want to manage your day, that's fine with me. But yeah, but it was funny, my one of my employees, Rudy, he was like he tells me one day he's maybe a year ago.
Speaker 4:He's like. He's like hey boss, I'm like yeah.
Speaker 2:He's like, uh, he's like I'm concerned about your work life balance and I was like, oh yeah, and he's like yeah, and he's like he's like uh you, he's like you, you're doing too much, and he's like you're working too much and I'm concerned about your work-life balance.
Speaker 3:he's like you, you call me on, I would call you on it and I was like that's what you want, right? Yeah, yeah, well, you've set a culture in your business that obviously your employees feel like they can have that conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, bought into, well, yeah, and I'm like and like I'm like I've ever walking out of there being like feeling like a winner, because I was like that was awesome, like there's this value that I've like really tried to put into the company. They're like holding me accountable to it too, and and I felt like that was such a big win and now my work-life balance was out of whack, so it was like it was kind of cool to like have somebody else just care, because most times people don't care.
Speaker 1:But even just having it written down, then it makes it like cognizant right, because if you're just you know reviewing them every, every meeting and stuff like like helps it keep top of mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and it's like sure, we're talking about the. Basically we're talking about each one of those values about four times a year, right, because you know there's 10 of them and you might have a week off here and they're going to talk about one, but yeah, so every quarter we're hitting one of those values, right?
Speaker 2:Every week we're hitting the mission statement statement is right, and so getting that MVBC done on the front end, like it, like you're saying, like you're sitting there going like is this really worth it? What am I really doing here? Right yeah and so, but then once you start to grow and you start to get bigger, then you have more team members, keeps everybody lined up on your mission and vision of what you're doing, and then culturally it turns into a much easier question of like what would Matt do you know?
Speaker 1:and like what's the right decision to make?
Speaker 2:well, so now when I delegate, yeah, delegate authority and responsibility, because authority and responsibility need to go together. You can't do one without the other If you're going to give someone the responsibility, you need to give them the authority to fix it as well, and so now I have people that, and so I'll let you in on a secret.
Speaker 1:This is a super top secret. You can't tell anybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So um you, you know the sporo site mold guy, right, yeah, so, um, we use them a lot. I mean, we say a lot of mold business, love those guys.
Speaker 2:And so jim's up there and, like you saw, on the stage there's a big old banner that's printed, has a whole quote and with me on it, my quote up there and everything else like that yeah so cassandra's my environmental tech, and so so jim reached out to cassandra hey, listen, we have this, this, this, and didn't even get a quote from Matt on like, and she's like oh, yeah, I'll reach out to him and see what we can figure out, you know. And so, anyhow, um, I guess. So what happened was she was like yeah, I know Matt's busy, so she, like, she's kind of wrote down like rough framework of what she thought the quote should kind of include. She sent it to Jim and said here's a quote. And then they took my picture from somewhere. There's that picture. They found my photo, they put that quote and they put that whole thing together and put that up on the stage.
Speaker 1:And it's actually my employee's mom that wrote it.
Speaker 4:That's right, that's right. Isn't that amazing. You agree with it? Oh, absolutely so. Cassandra told me she's like hope this is okay, and I was like. I was like, yeah, what'd you?
Speaker 1:she's like she wrote the whole she's trying to.
Speaker 2:This is what I did and I just laughed. I laughed so hard and I read it.
Speaker 1:I was like dude this is perfect.
Speaker 2:This is like. This is basically what I would have said anyway, like better, with better grammar, you know, and so, because her mom's like in english, yeah, so like. So the whole thing comes together and like but to be able to empower people, and that all comes back to that mvbc, because we have our mission and our vision and our values and and all that stuff all lined up in such a way that, like, everybody understands like who we are and what we're doing. And so she wrote, she wrote that whole thing and I read it and I was like that's hilarious, that's exactly no, I could have.
Speaker 1:I could have changed it like they'd already sent it off, but I could have said hold, hold on hold, on, hold on, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:But she's like is this? Okay, I already did this and I was like I laughed, I was like this is perfect.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, the other thing is like if you have those figured out when you get to a fork in the road. You have a hard decision to make.
Speaker 3:You have something to look back to just delegating right unless other people make decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you want to delegate yourself out of the day-to-day right.
Speaker 3:Having a strong, you know they don't have to ask matt what would we do, because matt's goal is to have everyone do what the mvbc states right and, like I said, so you can phase yourself out.
Speaker 3:Your other guy, uh, your first man inspector yeah, you know you can phase him out of that because everyone else could just bounce off of the mission vision. You know statement Don't have to ask you guys questions. You know it's less phone calls, it's less, you know, talking back and forth when you just have that set document. Everything we do moving forward is based on these guardrails, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it creates more alignment within the group and within the inspectors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anyhow this has been a really great conversation. We've been all over the place, you've been funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We got serious. We got all this stuff in here. Man, it's been really great so.
Speaker 1:I'll just start with you, carl, carl, someone's got a hold of you.
Speaker 2:Like they have questions.
Speaker 3:Maybe they're in your area or maybe they're like you know. Get ahold of you. Yeah, I just want to say anyone's always welcome. I'm always. I'm the guy that loves to pay it forward because I've been helped along the way, so don't hesitate to reach out. I'll just throw my phone number out there 785-405-0130. You can reach me, shoot me a text, give me a call. You can hit me up on my email, carl at safeguardinspectionsnet, and I'll just throw out my Instagram If you want to check us out. It would be safeguardinspections, underscore MHK. It stands for Manhattan, kansas for short, and you can hit me up on Instagram. Those are probably the three best ways to find me so happy to answer any questions that anybody might have. That's awesome, man Kyle. How about you?
Speaker 4:man. Yeah, the best way. Phone number is 608-609-0369. You can follow us on Instagram at homestartinspections, and then our website is homestartpro, and then my email is kyle at homestartpro. Shoot me a text, though. It would be the easiest way to get a hold of me yeah, that's awesome guys.
Speaker 2:Man Well, thank you so much for being on the show this. Yeah, it was awesome man. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, cool guys, We'll see you later.
Speaker 1:Thanks, 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 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.
