Self-inflicted wounds. I recently wrote a post about this very topic. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realized that there was still much to be said about a problem that many of us, no matter our industry, suffer from. Regardless of where we inspect or how long we’ve been at it, the more we think about …
Our Own Worst Critic
One of the key ingredients to running a successful business is having a marketable product, something ready for public consumption. It’s impossible to have business success without one. To have the best shot at running a productive business, our product must meet a few basic requirements: it must be something that is not only profitable enough for the business to …
Layered Defense
I was listening to the Tim Ferris Show podcast this morning and his guest was Matt Pottinger, a military expert and previous U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor. They were discussing the potential threat that China may pose to the U.S. and the world. In part of the interview, he was speaking about China’s aggression toward Taiwan and its desire to annex …
Split Personalities
Being a home inspector is a difficult calling. We’re hired to provide important information to our home buying clients, while at the same time providing cover to our own backside, in an attempt to guard against misplaced anger and frivolous lawsuits. It’s almost like we’re two different people, each of whom have their own ideas and agenda. On the one …
Self-Inflicted Wounds
As a practicing, professional home inspector since 2000, I like to think I’m somewhat qualified to make the following statement: we’ve ruined the current version of the home inspection industry. We find ourselves in the unfortunate position of being too cursory, too undervalued, too cutthroat, and too subservient to our overlords, to put a name on some of our most …
No More Gatekeepers
If it seems like there are more home inspectors out there than ever before, it’s because there are. Like almost every other industry we can think of, the competition for clients is more ferocious than ever, and it’s not going to get easier any time soon. It used to be that there were only a handful of dominant inspectors, and …
Two Different People
Being a home inspector is a difficult calling. We’re hired to provide important information to our home buying clients, while at the same time providing cover to our own backside, in an attempt to guard against misplaced anger and frivolous lawsuits. It’s almost like we’re two different people, each of whom have their own ideas and agenda. On the one …
Closing the Deal
There are literally tens of thousands of home inspectors out there. Maybe not all of them reside in our own backyard (although, sometimes it feels like they do), but there’s enough competition milling about to make it hard for us to be seen. And the reality of this situation is that if we’re not being seen, we’re not being called; …
Home Inspection Intelligence Quotient
One of the biggest problems facing the home inspection industry, same as most other industries, is that we put too much faith in the belief that our problems can be solved by intelligence alone. It may simply be a function of the smarter ones among us who are enamored with sitting around and thinking up ways for us to get …
Riding a Wave of Your Own Creation
Can you imagine what the home inspection industry was like in 1999? Everything was right there for the taking. You could register just about any home inspection-related website URL that you wanted. Whatever company name you could think of was there for the taking. Saw a territory that you wanted to work in? All you had to do was start …