Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk IT crowd. So I’m excited today. We have a couple of guests here from a company called Premier Inspector Group, and we’ll learn why I had to read that instead of just saying it off the top of my head in just a moment. But really excited, we’re going to talk about business growth, which is the perfect podcast subject for a January. We’re all thinking about it. How do we go about the whole rest of the year and get things going? But let’s talk to Tom White and Joe Worthy. Hey guys, how are you?
Joe Worthy
How’s it going? Pretty good.
Tom White
Hey, doing very well. Happy to be here with you, bro. Oh yeah,
Ian Robertson
I’m super stoked to have you guys on. We’ve been emailing back and forth a little bit. You guys reached out to me and just had some fantastic ideas. And I saw on the board behind Tom, as we were talking, small is viable market, and I just knew what we the three of us were just gonna have a great time and come out with some really good actionable items for our listeners. But tell me a little bit about you guys. What’s your arrangement here, your business, and why is your company name actually even changed?
Tom White
Yeah, so I’ll kick it off and start out, and then, you know, Joe will put in his piece as well. So, we both initially started off as solo inspectors. I got into the business about three years ago after, you know, time in the military, working as a defense contractor after, you know, being in the Army and I just, I got tired of making a living constantly deployed. You know, I did like, 19 deployments working with AFSOC, Air Force Special Operations, and it was a rat race, so I just punched a bunch of numbers. It took me years, but eventually I honed in on already having a love for real estate anyway, and just decided to go for it. I didn’t make a backup plan. I didn’t do anything like that. I had no aspirations to work for anybody, and then I came home back in May, I think of ’21 or ’22 I can’t remember now, and started a company called Precision Property Inspections. It was slow, as most people understand, if they’ve ever started out as an inspector, either working with someone, or definitely they know if they started their own business and then went to a networking event and met Joe, and then I’ll let Joe kick in on his side of things.
Joe Worthy
Yeah. So we met at this networking event. It was a networking event for realtors, which they never show up. So it was just us. And I thought actually, Tom was a roofing company, and I was looking for a roofing company to put into my portfolio for vendors. And I was like, hey, are you roofing company? He’s like, no, I do home inspection stuff. I’m like, oh, all right. So we kind of, we talked a little bit about it, and, you know, he let me know he’s starting out. So I was like, well, if you need any help, just let me know. So about two weeks later, he reached out, said, hey, I need a little bit of help. I need to get started. So now. So I was like, okay, well, we’ll help you out. So I was going to just, you know, whatever I had for overflow, we just kind of kicked him some stuff. I was very friendly in the market. Everybody’s got business. There’s always enough to go around. And then probably about a month later, after that, I got diagnosed with cancer, and Tom happened to be there at the right time. He just true military fashion, grabbed the helm, took over, and just ran the business while I was down for six months. And from that point on, we just partnered, and it’s worked. We ran it as two companies, and then last year, it was so, it got so convoluted and difficult for not only us, but for our clients. We were like, we just got to merge this. So we merged it into one company, and Tom came up with the name of Premier Inspector Group, and that’s what stuck. And we’ve, we’ve been running ever since.
Ian Robertson
So I just want to pause right there, because that’s, that’s a beautiful thing that we’ve talked about in this podcast for years. You went to a network event to meet agents, but you met an inspector. One of the things we should do for inspection growth, or company growth this year, is network with other home inspectors. I personally have found a lot of success meeting and knowing and helping other inspectors. There’s been times where I’m like, hey guys, my truck broke down. I have a flat tire on the highway, and I’m not getting there. Two, three guys would be like, we got you covered, Ian. And they don’t even ask, what are you gonna pay me? I’ve had times where guys are like, no, no, I was just gonna do it. I’m like, No, here you go, man. That, that’s a beautiful thing, and that has obviously helped the two of you.
Joe Worthy
Yeah, it was, I didn’t know what I was going to do. But again, you know, my wife and I always say that things happen for a reason, and Tom’s business come showing up that day. It happened for a reason. It’s worked out great since. He like, you know, he was saying earlier, you know, he does, he does more of the innovation, innovation side, I’m the operation side, it works, it works great. Yeah, it all worked out.
Ian Robertson
There’s actually a business mantra. There’s a book out there. I forget the name of the book off the top of my head, but it talks about that some of the best businesses have that kind of dynamic in it, an operations guy and an innovation guy, because it’s two completely different skill sets. You can be a little bit of both, but to find somebody that’s equally both is like a jack of all trades, but master of none kind of situation. So that’s a good dynamic. So I understand you guys want to take over the world. I think somehow, is that, is that what I heard or?
Joe Worthy
That’s Tom’s goal. He wants to take over the world. My goal is to change the industry.
Ian Robertson
Oh, okay, and boots on the moon kind of thing. No?
Tom White
We’ll get there eventually. Yeah, we got to get colonized out there first.
Joe Worthy
I mean, if they’re gonna put a house up there. I’ll inspect it.
Tom White
Sure.
Ian Robertson
So I love that you guys have that kind of ambition. And it’s not, obviously, I’m being facetious, but you guys have some some pretty solid goals of business growth, this year in particular it seems like. Can you tell me a little bit about what you are planning on to achieve those goals, or maybe even what those goals are?
Tom White
You want me to start with the idea side?
Joe Worthy
Yeah. You go and do that.
Tom White
Yeah. So, um, this is definitely a carryover from last year. Okay, so last year we were really focusing on, on scaling out. This year is a lot more dialed into getting more efficient and intentional with our time as business owners, we definitely get inundated constantly with a lot of, a lot of tasks. However, on my side of things, I put a lot of focus on intentional marketing. And that’s not just, you know, paying for ads or putting your ad in a magazine, or, you know, stuff like that. When I say marketing, I mean physically being out meeting people, and that’s, I didn’t realize this until earlier during our retreat, because all of our staff, we took a Working Genius assessment, and that actually gives you an idea of where your, your two working geniuses are, where your two working competencies are, and where your two working frustrations are. And you know, one of the things that we, we’ve figured out through all of our, our people, is everyone has a couple areas that they’re they’re strongest. But you know, and I know that you’ve seen this before. There are a lot of people that talk about burnout, and the root cause of burnout is having to constantly work in a working area of frustration. You know, I am not a CFO. I’m not a finance guy, and if I have to sit here all day looking at spreadsheets, updating Excel, doing QuickBooks, I’m going to burn out so fast, I’m going to want nothing to do with this industry. So I’m more, I fall more into like the galvanizing type and the innovation type person. So where I function best is by actually being out and making the connections, building the relationships. Ultimately, the building the relationships is really key. People want to work with others that they know, like, and trust, and if we always use the saying, especially for business, if they don’t know you, they can’t flow you, right? So it’s our job as business owners to get out and actually not just show people we’re Premier Inspector Group, but shake their hand and say, Hi, I’m Tom I’m the owner of Precision Inspection Group. I would love to be able to offer some insight as to how we’re different and how we can best help you. And then, not only that, whether it’s a trade, a realtor, another inspector, or even just another business owner. When you build those relationships, their network kind of becomes an extension of your network, and vice versa. So I’ve, we’ve gotten referrals from mechanics. We’ve gotten referrals from roofers, from teachers, from city officials just by building out an extension of your network. And again, it’s not just going directly to the person that you know is going to routinely pick up the phone and call you, but all it takes is that, that one mayor, that one city commissioner, that, oh, you know what? My nephew’s wife, she works in the real estate industry. Let me connect you with them. Like, of course, we’d love that we, you know, we’re always available to try to grow in that way. And if there’s something we can do to help them that that’s really what we’re here to do. It. Business exists to solve problems. So if you’re, if you’re short sighted enough as a business owner to be doing this, because you’re only following the dollar and chasing the buck, you’re really selling yourself short. You probably won’t last in the industry very long. You really need to structure your business around solving problems.
Ian Robertson
If I could just take a moment there, because there were some really good gold nuggets in there before we switch over to Joe. I liked how you used the term intentional marketing. I like that. It’s the difference between taking a fishing pole to where the fish are and casting in one lure, rather than going out in the middle of nowhere and casting a net and seeing what you end up with, you also worked in something that, there’s a couple different types of this. If you look it up, I’m sure you know it. But if any of our listeners do, look up fractional marketing, this is a type of fractional marketing where you are not going after the big fish, but you’d rather get 20 little fish to equal that big fish. So expanding your network that way is something that we often neglect. So if I were to take a couple of actionable items just from what you said, even just right there somewhat at the beginning of our podcast here, is build relationships, market fractionally. Don’t go just after the big fish, ie the agents, go and get some smaller fish and expand our network that way. And what’s a working genius test? I don’t know what that is. I’m not a genius, so I don’t know.
Tom White
Yeah, Joe, I’ll let you..
Joe Worthy
So Working Genius was developed by Patrick Lencioni, one of my favorite business coaches. He’s written a lot of books. Well, it started out with five dysfunctions. He moved into the six working geniuses, and basically what it does is it’s an assessment and tells you what you really are passionate about and what really irritates you, as Tom said, Tom and I are not finance guys. We have somebody that does our finances. She is great at it, and she loves it. She geeks out on those numbers. If you put a number in front of Tom and I and we have to figure something from it, we’re walking away. We’re done. So she gives us the information we need, tells us where we’re at financially, and we make decisions based on that, but we’re not out there looking at it, because that would be our frustration, and it will burn out. So that’s what the Working Genius does. And when you you look at it, what it does is it combines Tom’s geniuses with my geniuses, with our finance person’s geniuses, and then our team after that. And that way we all know how to work together and to put people in the right place. If you put me in the position of being the innovator. I can do it. It’s a competency. It’s not what I enjoy doing. So you want to have, you want to have Tom doing that because that is his genius. He is good at it. Operationally, that’s, that’s where I excel. I create plans, I execute plans. I ensure that the plans are moving forward. I’m not a completer. That was one of my frustrations, but we have somebody that will do that completion, and that would be our office administrator. She is phenomenal when it comes to completing the task. So we just put people. It’s allowed us to put people into their proper place, which has helped drive our company forward and has actually really set us apart from a lot of the majority of the inspection companies here in the state.
Ian Robertson
That’s interesting, because I know a, I know a company, it’s a software company, not one of our competitors or anything, just they do something completely separate. But they actually have their employees take personality tests, Myers Briggs and some other stuff to see okay, well, let’s see where you’re gonna fit best, you know, or are you going to be a fit? And I thought that was at first. I’m like, that’s a weird thing to do, but I’m like, you know what? You end up getting people that work well together and put them in a spot where they succeed. Sometimes failure comes down to the person just being in a spot where they were built to fail, like you, Tom, you mentioned you’re not going to be the operations guy, and Joe, you’re not going to be the innovator. I’m with you guys. I don’t like looking at certain types of math. I love looking at the numbers of business. But I’m like, oh, these are conceptual and projectatory or projectatory a word? I’m always making up words, but, yeah, we’ll make it. It’s a word. Now it’s on a podcast. It’s a word. But you put me down with like, math for my taxes, I literally will sometimes just sit there and stare at the paper and go, I hate this so much. This is the worst thing.
Tom White
I had to sit down today and do a to do list, and it sat in my email for over a week because I didn’t want to open it, because it literally was titled Your To Do List from our CFO, and I’m just like, I do not like, I don’t want to look at it. It’s like, going to the doctor, you know, I would rather not know what’s in there when I open it than to actually go through and check off everything. If I could give that to do list to someone else, I would.
Joe Worthy
It’s been these, these things right here that have actually been able to drive us operation, which is what’s going to drive our operations. This year, when we last, last two years, we went not broad. We like to try and keep everything go shut, go narrow, go deep. But we went pretty broad in a few things, but this year, Tom’s focusing a lot on the marketing. We’re actually tying it back to the foundation, which is our marketing. That’s what has driven our business. That’s what has got us to the point that we’re at. And so trying to expand out in all these other little areas, we want to dial it back in and go back towards what the foundation was, and it goes up, and I see it up on Tom’s board right now, the smallest viable market, and that’s what we’re back at too. I got that, we actually picked that up from Seth Godin.
Ian Robertson
Tell me how the smallest viable market, well, maybe you could explain to our listeners what that means and how that is helping you with your with your growth.
Joe Worthy
Absolutely.
Tom White
Yeah, go ahead, Joe.
Joe Worthy
So the smallest viable market is the market that is actually going to really drive your business. As you just said earlier, you can go out and open and just cast out a wide net and hope that you grab something. But if you find a smallest viable market that’s the market that you associate with, they become your tribe. The premise behind it is people like us do things like this, and if you can find your market that does that, that smallest viable market, if you can cater yourself to them, make them feel important, because they are, they drive you. They’re going to find other people that do the same thing, and they’re going to offer up those referrals. They’re going to be your best sales approach. They’re going to find the market for you, instead of walking out there and going to these giant conferences with 400 real estate agents and tossing out cards up out into the wild and hoping somebody calls you, you’re actually targeted, and saying, I do a great job for you. If you know somebody that’s like you that wants business like what we do, refer us out, and that’s how you grow it. Unknown to us,that’s what we had been doing for the last three and a half years. And it wasn’t until I read This Is Marketing by Seth Godin, I realized that that’s what we’ve been doing, and we’ve got to get back to that. And so that’s the focus this year, the smallest viable market.
Ian Robertson
That’s a beautiful strategy. So basically, it’s the difference between doing a conference with 200 people and taking one agent out to lunch. Would you say?
Joe Worthy
Yeah. You know the agents right now. I mean, in brokerage, they, and every inspector listening to this will totally relate, broker just look at us like piggy banks. Can you sponsor this breakfast? Can you sponsor this lunch? We’ll give you five minutes to talk. You’re going to talk to a group of 20 agents. They’re probably not going to call you. But if you go out to lunch and you find an agent thatyou’ve met along the way and you hit it off. That’s your tribe. That’s your small, viable market. They are going to promote you.
Ian Robertson
Okay, that’s pretty fantastic. I think that’s a really actionable item for our listeners to make that a goal. Did you have something, Tom, before I continue with my ramble?
Tom White
Yeah. So, so one of the again, I’m a, I’m a big analogies person. So the way that I translate that, and I’ll give you a good example for it too, that everyone can relate to, is, I call it there are riches in the niches. So do you have the the real estate agent that says, anywhere in the metro area, I’m the agent for you. I go, I go north, I go south, east, west. You know, 150 miles, it doesn’t matter. And there are inspectors that do that too. Versu,s do you see the agents that are like, I only work on the north side, or I’m an east side only. They’ve grown a very, very tight market. You can even look at some of these subdivisions, especially in like, age restricted areas, like there are agents that, that just kill it in these little micro areas, because they put all their focus in one spot. We we kind of look at, look at it a lot that way as well. Rather than being the inspection team that will go everywhere, we put our focus on the agents in our immediate area, like really close, 15, maybe 20 miles at best. And we’ve got a lot of different pockets throughout Phoenix. You know, Phoenix is huge. It’s like the fifth largest city in the country. It sometimes, it can take you two hours just to get from one side to the next just in drive time, not including traffic. But it really doesn’t matter if, if you really put your focus on go deep, not wide, with your approach to where you’re building these relationships, you will get much more squeeze out of the proverbial lemon, versus trying to capture all the lemons.
Joe Worthy
There’s 70,000 lemons in this state.
Ian Robertson
I knew I was gonna enjoy this. I wrote that down for me and my own companies, go deep, not wide. And, you know, we tend to go wide when things are a little bit slow. But instead of going wider, maybe go a little bit deeper instead.
Tom White
Sure. And I tell everybody, especially as business owners, you know, it’s a little different if you’re an inspector working for another, another team, unless they give you the tools that you need to really market. But as a business owner, your first job really is marketing and getting your name out there. Because, again, if all you’re doing is, you know, following the Facebook groups, making a couple posts and just sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, again, if they don’t know you, how do you expect to get get business? So there, and there are a lot of different things you can do there, you know, Facebook always has different groups, you know, and we can take a whole different dive if you really wanted to on the social media side, because I could go on for hours on that. But, you know, Eventbrite, that’s a really good app, because there’s always, there are always events going on, sometimes their business, sometimes they’re personal, sometimes they’re, you know, bands, or, you know, stuff like that. You can, BNI BNI can be pretty useful for other people. That’s Business Networking International, for those that haven’t heard of it. And then there are plenty of BNI offshoots that kind of do something similar, where they may only limit, like, you know, one to three people from your industry in their networking group, but those are good ways to connect with other industry professionals. And, you know, it really, it really does just boil down to marketing. How much time are you spending to really put your name, image, and likeness out there for people to want to do business with, as opposed to, I just want to look at houses. To be fair, looking at the house is probably the easiest part of our job.
Ian Robertson
You know, I’ve I’ve often said, and I’ve said it on this podcast, I can teach almost anybody to inspect a house. You can’t teach anybody to be a people person, talk, run a business, eat their lunch on the road, and, you know, make a phone call and explain an issue. You can’t teach a person to be a person, but you can teach them how a water heater works, you know.
Tom White
You know, Andy Frisella, he’s made this comment quite a bit, also that the only way to get better at public speaking is by public speaking. So one of the things when he was real early in sales with his supplement company, he would force himself to go to the grocery store and start up a conversation with a stranger every time he went, just to try to get more extroverted because he was naturally an introvert. I think the majority of us, probably to the largest degree, are introverts. I’ve said it many times, if I could make money not talking or meeting with anybody, I would, I would sign up for that immediately. But if your business is your baby, like nobody is going to be more invested in the success of it than you are. So how bad do you want it, you know? And if growing those, those people skills or something that you want to do, you have to force yourself to do it.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. And I like how you use that analogy that basically you need to get in there and just do it. But the analogy I was thinking of is like swimming. I see a lot of guys splashing in the pool and saying, why is that guy getting to the other side faster than me? We’re both in the pool. We’re both working just as hard, but one guy is splashing and the other guy is very deliberately making specific movements. You guys are very much the ones who are making very deliberate movements. So I wrote down several things that you guys have been talking about here. I like how you guys have a fairly exact plan. It sounds like. Do you keep a schedule of your marketing efforts? Like, here’s what I’m doing each day.
Joe Worthy
Our calendar is packed with it. That’s well, if we didn’t do that, we would just be all over the place, everything, everything is driven off of that calendar.
Ian Robertson
That’s perfect.
Tom White
Yeah, so we actually are to the point now where we have to actually dedicate days for working on the business, not in the business. Um, again, because if it didn’t happen, you know, and it’s, it’s no fault to real estate agents at all. They’re just doing their job. But if there’s an availability and they see it on the website, they’re going to take it, you know. So especially as owners, and being that we are multi-inspector firm, we have a little bit more flexibility on it to where if we know, like, you know, let’s just say Wednesdays are the day that we work on the business, not in the business, it just takes us off the schedule, and those guys get that work.
Ian Robertson
Those are two fantastic points. A lot of guys talk about how they don’t like the slow season. They’re like, I’m just sitting around. I’m like, the fact that you just said that, I’m like, you should have a calendar of things. You guys are taking time away from actual inspections to work on the business. And when we’re slow, in the slow season, we’re given the gift of time to work on the business. We should have a calendar of events. Who are we taking out the lunch? Who are we giving a warm handshake to? Who are we meeting here? What event are we going to? That’s really where progress is made by very deliberate and actionable movements in our business.
Tom White
You know, here’s another great example for that. So our revenue from last year to this year doubled, and this was the slowest market since 1995. The least number of homes were sold nationally since ’95. I actually prefer a slower market, because that’s how you capture market share.
Ian Robertson
Exactly.
Tom White
When everybody’s busy pumping out houses and houses, you’re just you’re so busy, you know, I got to go hire guys. I got to get more people. And then when things slow down, you’re like, sorry, man, I got to let you go, you know, I would, I largely prefer the down market, you know, quote unquote, in order to grow the business, that’s really where you grow.
Ian Robertson
Slam dunk. We talked about that on a podcast almost two years ago now, and we use the illustration of when there’s a, when there’s, farming is good, all the farms are booming. Then when there’s a drought, they all go out of business. Farmland is cheap. You buy it, and you might sit on it for a couple of years, but once the once the rain comes back, you’re sitting on a larger, the largest share of the of the farming community right there. That, you guys are taking great advantage of a nationally slow market. That’s great.
Joe Worthy
I think that one of the, you know, talking to several home inspectors out here, it’s such a solopreneur industry. So many people just want to be a solo guy, but they hit a threshold where they don’t go any further. They become, they’re the technician. That’s all they’re doing. They’re out there. They’re inspecting. They want to get bigger, but they can’t, because they don’t know how. And I think one of the biggest reasons why is because they don’t work on the business. Tom and I made the decision early last year that we have to take a day and we have to work on the business. So it took a little bit, but Tom now, Tom and I both now have an admin day. Wednesdays are our admin day. We do not go out and do inspections unless it’s something where we absolutely have to, but we make it up by giving ourselves another admin day. Today is my admin day, because tomorrow I’ll end up with a inspection. But we have to have one admin day per week. We have to work on those businesses. If you don’t do that, you will not grow your business. You can’t, it’s not possible. And I think that a lot of inspectors either ignore that, forget that, or don’t know that.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it is probably one of the most neglected parts of what we do as a business, is especially when we’re busy, like, I think Tom or Joe you mentioned before, when we’re busy, we’re just, we’re just cranking stuff out. We’re like, okay, life is good. We don’t think about, all right. But I’m working myself like a dog. If, in two years this continues, am I going to be able to keep up this pace? Or what if the market goes down a little bit? Or what if that agent that refers us 20 inspections every year goes out of business, and now we’re, we’re down 20 inspections a year, and our numbers are going off. And that happens five times. There’s a lot of what ifs, and admin day forces us to. And I’ll admit, you guys are better than me. I don’t, I don’t know if I’ve ever done an admin day, so I’m preaching something that I am terrible at, but I love the idea of it. Because, you know, when I’ve actually brought my businesses to the next level, is during the slow times when I have a forced admin day, I’m like, okay, I have, I have me, and my other guys were just standing around. Let’s figure something out. What do we do? How do we market? And then we figure out something new. We’re like, oh, oh, well, that worked. I wish I had done admin days like you guys do.
Joe Worthy
Real quick. So we sat down, when I originally started the business. I sat down and I started from the very back, back side of it. What’s my exit? Where do I want to be at the end of this? Have a time frame. I know what I want to do, and I just reverse engineered it. And part of that comes from having that work on the business. If you don’t work on your business, you can’t have an exit strategy, because you don’t know what your exit strategy is going to be. You can’t plan it. So, you know, do you just want to work until you’re 75 and hope for the best? You want to sell your business at the end of it? You going to turn it over to your children? What are you going to do with your business, you know. So you have to have that time to plan. And if you do come up with that plan, now, you got to have time to work on it. And you need that. You need that time. You need that day. You got to plan it, even if it’s a admin day a month, whatever it might be, you have to have that time so you can work on that plan.
Ian Robertson
Let me, let me ask you, Joe, because that was an interesting thing you said, you, you figured out where you wanted to be, and then reversed engineered it. Can you talk to that just a little bit? Because I don’t think, I don’t think most of us, I know, I didn’t think about it. I think about it now. But when I started my home inspection companies, I didn’t think about where did I want to be. I always said, let’s see where this goes.
Joe Worthy
That’s what most people do. So when, I spent nine and a half years in the military, I have been an EMT. I was a human resources director for 17 years. I have managed home improvement stores. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I finally moved back out here to Arizona, I decided I’m going to go to work for myself, because I can always do something better than somebody else. And I always, it was always a frustration of mine. My whole goal was to go to Disney. I wanted to go to Disney every year, and that’s why I set up my business. I was like, that’s my goal for my business, retire and go to Disney every year. But as I did that, I was like, there has to be an end time. I don’t want to work until I’m 90 years old. I want to work until I’m x years old. In order to do that, I need to do this plan up to that point. I need to grow my business to a certain size. What do I want to do with my business at the end of that? And originally it was, I’m going to turn it over to my sons, neither one of them really wanted to be part of the business. Okay, we’ll take that part out. And then as I, as I kept working towards, you know, that plan, it became, well, I’ll take on a business partner at some point in my business career, and what I’ll do is I’ll make sure that it either turns over them, or we’ll sell the company off. We’ll grow it to a point where we can sell it. At this point, right now, I’m a lot older than Tom. It would be that when I’m done, I sell out my half to Tom and turn the business over to him. He takes over. I created that plan. If you don’t have an exit plan, then you gotta, then you you just plan to work forever. We work hard for what we do. You work hard for what you’ve got. Tom’s working hard for his business. There should be something at the end of that. Nobody built a business just to go, all right, I’m done and just walk away. There’s got to be some sort of payout at the end. Otherwise, what were you doing?
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and Tom, did you when you started your business, did you think about the end result? Or, like, Joe, or were you like me and said, let’s see where this goes?
Tom White
Um, yeah. So what I mean, when I started out, I, you know, it was mostly, at least initially, I just didn’t want to keep deploying anymore, you know. I wanted to try to, you know, have more family time, you know. I’ve got two little boys, you know, unfortunately, you know, doing the deployed life usually ends in divorce, which mine did, you know, we’re still friends. I still see my kids, you know. So it’s, it’s not all bad there, but that, that was my goal initially. As things started rolling and I really started to get a feel for how, how the market was responding to what we were able to do and offer them. I’m like, I think we have something special here, you know, we, we’ve done inspections for people from, you know, California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, all over. And it the the same thing kept repeating, like, are you guys a franchise? Because I’ve, I’ve bought 12 houses in my life, and I’ve never had an inspection like this before. You guys are very good. And that just kept repeating and repeating. I’m like, maybe we should think about, you know, franchising this thing out, you know, maybe we should think about opening up another, you know, spot in, in the state, or maybe out of state, or, you know, it just it got to the point where I was like, you know, I sat down. I’m like, I think that we can really build something here that is, you know, the most recognizable name in our industry, you know, within the city, within the state, within the region, within the country, you know. And as long as we, as long as we continue to invest in the right human capital, I’m a, I really think that this is something that can, can be big, because we’ve been very fortunate with the guys that we brought in. They’re, they’ve all been new. We have not brought in a single seasoned inspector that already knows agents, that already has a workload. Everyone that we brought in has been brand new. We’ve trained them. They’ve come out of, you know, they pass the NHIE and do all their Arizona state requirements, and we build them from the ground up, and the market has responded to where it’s like, it doesn’t matter if they get Joe or Tom or Clay or Keith or, you know, Jimmy or Jack, every single one of your guys does everything the exact same way. That’s, that’s just been repeated again and again. And you know, the feedback I’ve gotten from agents when I was a solo guy was that they really don’t like working with multi-inspector firms, because, you know, Gary comes out this week, but then next week, you know, they call and they get Mike, and they’re like two completely different inspectors, the way that they, the way they communicate to their clients, the way their call outs are, the number of call outs there are, the type. And it really leaves a sour taste in their mouth to where they really don’t ever feel like they’ve got their guy.
Joe Worthy
So part of that strategy is we’re trying to build the company in the form of a franchise, not that we want to go out and franchise. That’s not the plan, though it could happen. We want to build it like a franchise, because everything is very methodical, everything’s very well thought out. So we have, we’ve created this structure where if Tom does go out, they’re gonna get the same inspection as if I did it. If I go out, it’s gonna be the same inspection that one of our other inspectors would have done. It’s the same way every single time, consistent. It’s very trusting. The agents can trust what they’re going to get from us. They can trust, you know, what they get out of the inspection, the services afterwards, the follow up, if they have questions, they know that they’re going to be able to get an answer from us. Because it’s not always about the inspection. It’s, hey, you called out the roofs bad. What do we do here? Like, we just picked up mold and air quality, agents out here never requested that, but because we started offering it, our clients are like, yeah, I’ll pay for that. Let’s do it. The agents like, okay, you found mold. Now what do I do? Because they don’t know, but they call us, they trust us. They know we’re going to give it to them. So we’re building it like a franchise for consistency, much like McDonald’s. No, not that we’re McDonald’s, but you know, it’s consistent. Every single time, it’s done the same way, you go to one store, it’s gonna be the same as the other one. And it’s paying off dividends.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. And I know what you mean by the McDonald’s comment. It’s not that, it’s process mapping.
Joe Worthy
Right.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. And that’s something that I’ve always been very big on. You should be able to write down everything that you do and have the next person do it to at least 90 to 95% of what you’ve done. Now, there is a measure of skill you know, you can process map a baseball game and Derek Jeter is always going to beat out the other guy, but at the end of the day, you should be able to put any of the Yankees out on the field and have a decent game. So it’s the same thing with us. We very, very, very few of us and a lot of multi-inspector firms, whether we’re two inspectors or 200 inspectors, very few of us actually process map. And if we actually did, we would find that we get more consistency. Which people want. We love consistency in general. I want to go to a restaurant that I go to up here in New York in Arizona and have basically the same meal. Is it going to be slightly different, sure, but I want it to be basically the same and feel good about that. So interesting. So I actually wrote down a few things from you guys, because I have tons of nuggets here, from gold nuggets here, from your conversation so far, intentional marketing, I like that, and mixing it in with fractional marketing, getting our network wider by multiple different means instead of casting a wide net always, I’m going to take the Working Genius test, guys. I’m going to, I’m going to see how that that works out, and I’m gonna find that I’m working but not a genius, I think is gonna be my results. But we’ll see.
Tom White
Let us know what you find out about yourself.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I will, I’ll let you know. Go deep and not wide, get into those niches. That’s where, that’s where money is made. And that actually is corporate America motto too. They know that money is made in niches. You know, hard to break into, you know, fashion as a whole, but now you break into bedazzling elbows, I don’t know something.
Joe Worthy
Rip in your jeans.
Ian Robertson
The more niche you get. Yeah, exactly, and understanding where we want to be in process mapping to that point. So, man, these are some great points from you guys. I wish we could talk forever. We’re hitting the end of our time here, but I can’t thank you guys enough for being on. I would love to have you on again, because it sounds like we could have like 30 more conversations about a lot of different things, but you guys are heading in the right direction, and just really appreciative that you share some of your wisdom here with with us.
Tom White
For sure, and it’s great. And any of you guys, if you ever, if you ever have questions, you can follow us on Instagram at inspectwithpremier, shoot us a DM, you know, let us know what you think, if you have any feedback, or even, you know, even if you just work in the industry and have questions, we’d love to help.
Joe Worthy
Tom and I love to mentor. We love to offer help in any way. So we’re always open to questions. Nothing’s a secret. It’s an open book with us. We’ll help out in any way.
Ian Robertson
That’s incredible, and that’s why guys like you succeed. You help others, and you work hard in your own industry. So thank you, Joe Tom, you have a great one, and hopefully we’ll have you on again here soon. Appreciate it.
Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].
If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.
*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.