Ian R
Welcome to the show, AJ. Good to have you on.
Austin Jenkins
Thank you.
Ian R
So, I feel privileged. I know you’re gonna say, aww, shucks, or something like that. But we have on here with us today on Inspector Toolbelt Talk, the world’s most famous home inspector, Austin Jenkins, how are you?
Austin Jenkins
I’m doing well, Ian, how you doing?
Ian R
Good, thanks. Austin, I think I’m gonna call you AJ, but you said call you whatever you want so I’m gonna call you, AJ. But tell us a little bit about yourself for the one or two home inspectors that live under a rock and don’t know who you are.
Austin Jenkins
Okay. So, for those of you that don’t know who I am, my name is Austin Jenkins, I own a home inspection company in northeast Tennessee. I go by the online persona, Inspector AJ. It’s one of those that kicked off in 2019. And now when people see me out or inspect their home, they’re like, hey, you’re AJ. I’m like, that’s, that’s me. So it’s. So it’s funny. The AJ was actually, we’ll get into that later. But it was actually not part of anything. I just went by my initials. And then one thing led to another, fast forward almost five years, and here we are.
Ian R
Well, I gotta say, you have done well for yourself. You’re making it sound like it was on accident. But nothing like that happens on accident. It comes from opportunity and skill. And then people view it as an accident. You, you saw an opportunity and you took it and ran with it.
Austin Jenkins
Right. Yeah.
Ian R
If you don’t mind me asking, how long you’ve been in the inspection industry?
Austin Jenkins
I first got licensed in 2018.
Ian R
Okay, I would like to put that in perspective too. Six years is not, not a crazy long amount of time, to be internationally recognized. I say internationally, I imagine US and Canada, you know, even Australia and other places like South Africa that have home inspection. So that’s fantastic. You’ve done really well for yourself. So today we’re going to talk about something that I think everybody and their brother in the home inspection industry has probably asked you about and that’s social media success.
Austin Jenkins
Every time, man, every time.
Ian R
We did, we did a podcast not long ago about the different types of relationship marketing that we do in our industry, and understanding the difference between a parasocial relationship marketing and a social relationship marketing. I think you probably do really well on both. But you’re most well known for the parasocial, having that one sided relationship with your audience and being a presenter. How did you, for lack of a better term, fall into that? Discover that, wow, I’m Inspector AJ, look, let’s do this. Oh wow.
Austin Jenkins
So you kind of hit the nail on the head earlier with opportunity, right? So my original TikTok username used to be Aviator AJ, because I hold commercial pilot’s certificate and I was actually making aviation videos to begin with. That didn’t take off, pun intended. And then my buddy was like, why don’t you do home inspections? And I was like, well, you know, I don’t know of anybody that would want to see a home inspector on TikTok. Fast forward about a month later, I had rebranded the channel Inspector AJ, and I was on a roof one day, and it was terrible. And at the time, I had maybe 70 or 80 followers, and I posted a video, right, just highlighting the bad things on the roof. And I did it apparently in such a way that it captured every single possible algorithm at the exact possible time, all the planets aligned perfectly. And it just took off. I got in the house about an hour later, and the agent for the buyer called, good friend of mine, and she goes, have you seen your TikTok? And I was like, the one I just posted? And she was like, yeah, well, I pulled up TikTok, and I had my notifications going crazy. And I was like, what is this and I, I hit the Account button. And I had already surpassed about 2 million views. My follower counts was it 6000, I would refresh 10 minutes later, it’d be at 7000, then 8000, 9000, then 10,000. And it just kept going up and up and up and up and up. And I thought I’m going to take this and run with it as fast as I can.
Ian R
So there is the opportunity. And I know you said the planets align. But your videos are not just a matter of, I posted a video about why you shouldn’t rake this type of shingle. You know, you you engage with your audience. So there was opportunity and there was also skill involved. But you also have to be engaging to keep that level of, of following and engagement up long term. So did you find that you started posting every day after that? And like how did you run with it basically, is what I’m asking.
Austin Jenkins
So I would try to, try to post at least two videos a day. And then I would I would kind of tweak from there. You know what worked, you know, on Tuesday at you know, 2:48pm or Wednesday 2:48pm. And I would notice on my analytics that if I posted an hour before my audience is the most active, that’s when I get the better engagement. The videos that I post if they go over 60 seconds, my views just drop. If I stay less than 60 seconds, I’m hitting a quarter million per video consistently, right? So I had to, most of the videos you’ve seen me make will be between 57 and 59 seconds max, simply for the fact that that’s what captures the audience’s attention. And a couple years ago, you know, people would, people are not afraid to hate on social media. That’s just number one. The one thing that I had going for me a while back is I would always clap back at the haters, right? If someone commented something, I wouldn’t be afraid to call you out publicly for hundreds of 1000s of people at the time to, you know, to take a peek at but since growing even more, and obviously getting sponsored by InterNACHI, and all, you know, all these other companies that offer sponsorships and products and just to mention their name, I kind of leaned a little bit back from that, but that’s what got me, you know, pushed up toward what I would feel is, I wouldn’t say notoriety. But that’s kind of what I was known for was not being afraid to talk to someone. And the one thing that I wanted to do from the beginning was go preach to the people, not to other home inspectors, not to realtors. And that’s one thing that I talked about the last InterNACHI convention was stop making social media videos for inspectors, stop making them for realtors, start making them for the future buyers, right. So like social media platforms, like TikTok, if you look at the current ages, of the most Tiktok users, you’re going to see those analytics fall between 17 and 24 years of age, the second highest is 25 to 34. And you got to think your future business is watching your videos on TikTok. Now, statistically, they’re not going to be on Facebook, they’re not really going to be on Instagram, TikTok is where your future clients are living right now. So that’s where I was wanting to push all of that content to, and really build the huge following that I’ve got on there, and then just kind of market it how it is now.
Ian R
I was really hoping you were gonna give us some really solid actionable items. And you’ve already done that. I’m going to just review just three of them real quick that you bought out there. Make the videos for the people. I think that’s a fantastic point. Because too many times with our website, we make it for other inspectors, we show it to other inspectors, and they love our website, because it’s laden down with content instead of what does a consumer want. Same thing with our logo, will the other inspectors like it? Yeah, but what about the consumer, same thing with our social media, make it for what people want, engage with them and not make it a, you know, I always watched these agents try to be social media famous. And they’re like, hey, we’re going to tell you, this is what you do with the, with the market now. And listen, instead of giving people something real and actionable, it’s like they’re just reading off of realtor.com. So the other thing was under a minute, that’s perfect. I like how you said, even refined down to 57 to 59 seconds, I believe you said.
Austin Jenkins
Statistically, if you look at the analytics, that’s, that’s where the majority of my videos fall. And that’s where I pick the most people from, right. Now, it, it does change a little bit like if you have a banger of a video, that’s like a minute and 20 seconds, it has to perform solidly, once I figured out how the Tiktok algorithm worked, I could figure out how to manipulate my videos, because obviously, the longer the video is, the more money you’re going to make from it. I mean, I still make really good for being less than a minute long. But that’s simply for the fact of my following, right? You know, for the everyday person, you may need to make longer videos to have a good monetization revenue stream coming in. But if you can keep your videos less than one minute and post it right at the time of day when your audience is most active, then you’re going to have significant, significant increase in followership and productivity as far as producing the videos itself. There is another hook that I always talk about people as well. Whenever you watch me, there’s one thing that I never do, and that’s introduce myself, right. So whenever, you know, I’ve got my phone, I’m like, hey guys, Inspector AJ, with Quality Home Inspect. No, at that point, I’m scrolling on. And it’s the same thing for realtors too. If I’m watching, if I’m scrolling through, and they’re like, hey, this is Joe Smith with, you know, ABC brokerage, I’m scrolling on, you know, I can get that information later, hook me in the first three seconds or you’re gonna lose me, right. And that’s one thing that I, that I preach to a lot of people about, if you’re wanting to engage an audience, you have to be able to manipulate the algorithm, right? So if I make a video, it’s going to go to a few people, depending on how that few, those few people operate that video, is going to determine if it goes to more people, and then how they operate and more people and more people. And if you can hook someone in the first three to five seconds, they’re going to want to watch the rest of the video and therefore increases video performance and against more and more people. The one thing that I see with inspectors that they do in my opinion wrong, is they say hey guys, this is you know, Austin Jenkins with Quality.. I’m scrolling. I’m scrolling, you know, that right there, you’ve wasted about four to five seconds. If you can say, you know, something along the lines of, absolutely terrible new construction home, let me show you why. Alright, there’s two seconds. And I’ve already got an audience on that video, right. And the first five seconds are the most crucial to any video that you want to get out to your audience before you lose their attention, right? Because short form video content is the number one thing trending right now, like you and I were talking about before the podcast got started is, not a lot of people have time to sit down and watch an hour long webinar or an hour long podcast simply for the fact that we’re busy. We’re either in traffic, and when I get home, at the end of the day, I want to decompress. The last thing I want to do is listen to a home inspection podcast at 6:30pm with two kids and a wife, you know if I can track something in the middle of the day, awesome.
Ian R
Yeah, I think that comes down to knowing your audience. So let’s even talk about our podcasts here with statistics. So, you know, if we get 500 or 1000 views on a video of a podcast on YouTube, there are some people that they do that, hey, for our audience that’s watching me sit here with AJ on YouTube. Cool. That’s what you’d like to do. But we’ll have 1000s upon 1000s of downloads of our podcast on audio channels, so Spotify and Apple podcasts and all of them. And we were just talking about during the show, we tried to keep our podcasts right about the 40 minute mark, you know, anywhere from 25 to 45 to 47 minutes, but 40 minutes is really the the benchmark, because we’ll actually see our, it’s the sweet spot because we’ll actually watch our audience almost completely drop off after 40 some odd minutes. Because think about it. I mean, the average drive time, that’s probably about what it’s going to be. And, you know, after 40 minutes, you kind of forget what everybody’s talking about, like, where did we start with this podcast? I forgot what I did 40 minutes ago. Yeah, exactly. I forgot where, we’re only 12 minutes in, I already forgot what we’re doing on this podcast, AJ. No, I’m just kidding. But yeah. It’s all about the metrics. And I think, even like you said, no intro, just get right into it. That’s what people want. Your intro is going to be the hook. So why are we watching this video? So that’s good. I do have to ask this question, because I follow this relatively closely. But the destruction of TikTok? Because it sounds like TikTok has been something that you have focused in on, and everybody talks about TikTok not being there anymore. What are your thoughts on that?
Austin Jenkins
It’s not gonna go away.
Ian R
No.
Austin Jenkins
No, there’s, it’s too profitable. It’s too popular. And it has too much of a footprint, right. So whether or not the action is taken from the bill that was signed, regarding a divestiture, it’s going to be around, right, worst case scenario, VPN sales are going to soar through the roof. You know, one specific instance, whenever The Office lost their license to be on Netflix, or Netflix didn’t have The Office license anymore, they had to get back to Peacock, you know, that’s when I subscribe to Nord VPN, you know, sponsorship, hey. And I would change my location to be from North America to England, and I can still watch The Office daily on my TV. So changing your physical location is hard, but changing your virtual locations’s easy, right? So if it’s banned in the United States, I can just hop on, you know, I can turn my VPN on here on my laptop and make it look like I’m in Canada and still have access to TikTok. So assuming that 60 to 70% of the users would even do that. You know, I’m not too worried about it. But I think that if they truly banned it, there would be such an uprising between the current voter base and every single user on the platform itself, that I personally believe the app isn’t going anywhere.
Ian R
Yeah, I kind of have a split thought on that. One kind of sides with what you’re saying. I think personally, I think a lot of moves are to just push people out of it. So they want to say if we were going to try to ban this, and I think they were hoping that people would start dropping it in either developing or finding other platforms to move to. So I think that’s where, I think a lot of it was just puffing of their chest to see if they could break it by just puffing their chest.
Austin Jenkins
Right.
Ian R
So at the same time, I do think there are some powerful people that do want it gone. But there’s no other platform that’s the same for the same demographic, you know what I mean? Yeah, they’re not gonna go to Instagram. Facebook, still the most second most widely used social media platform in the world. But everybody is 55 and up.
Austin Jenkins
Yep. Yeah. And that’s what I was saying. Your, your future clients are coming from TikTok, you know. Instagram, you know, I’m still I still post on there, you know, so monetized on all three of those platforms, but TikTok I, that’s the majority of my social media business, you know, and whenever I do an inspection, people don’t say, hey, I found you on Facebook, or, hey, I found you on Instagram. They’re gonna say, hey, I found you on TikTok. So truthfully, you know, regardless of any political affiliation, whether who wants to ban it and who wants to keep it around, there are so many politicians on the app itself. They state that it’s for national security. But again, TikTok doesn’t have access to anything Gmail doesn’t already have access to. Just want to put it there.
Ian R
Yeah, there’s a lot of merit to that. We’ll continue to watch the situation. But I think there’s a lot of merit to what what you’re saying. Let me ask you, if you were to switch today, like the US government just said, okay, guys, we’re flicking the switch on TikTok. Where would you run to?
Austin Jenkins
If I had to abandon TikTok, I would go strictly Instagram.
Ian R
Yeah, I always had an aversion to Instagram because it is a little bit more difficult to reach the audience in the way that you want. Yep. And the UX, the user experience is not the same. Yep. So they have changed interestingly enough, over the past year or so, it’s become more TikTok-esque.
Austin Jenkins
Yep. Especially. And a lot of people asked me, you know, are you on YouTube? I do have a YouTube channel. I am monetized on that. But the content which I shoot, right, so whenever I record a TikTok, I’m in the vertical position on my phone, right where is in YouTube, whenever you change it like this, and you really can’t upload anything to TikTok that way. And if you take a TikTok video that’s like this, and you try to convert it over, the resolution’s terrible, it looks bad. So I can record Facebook reels, Instagram reels and TikTok videos in one portrait, portrait mode. Whereas landscape, I would have to completely redo everything to get it to format to YouTube, and then try to bring it on over. So to me, it’s more about, if I can’t record it in two minutes, I don’t want to record it at all. I think.
Ian R
You know, I will say YouTube does have some advantages in that they are changing the algorithm to be more TikTok-esque as well. Yes. Especially with their YouTube shorts. So I gotta say, I get more caught up in You.. because I’m an older guy. I’m 42, I don’t know how old you are, AJ.
Austin Jenkins
I’m 30s.. I’m on you’re, I’m on your heels.
Ian R
What are you again?
Austin Jenkins
36.
Ian R
36. Okay, well, you’re not, you’re not that much younger than me. But I love like, scrolling through the YouTube shorts, on anything from home inspection stuff to a lot of smoking of meats. And yeah, nothing like, nothing like smoking a good brisket, right?
Austin Jenkins
I never truly, until I turned like 34, 35, I never truly understood the appreciation for smoking meats. Like it’s.
Ian R
Yeah.
Austin Jenkins
I didn’t use a Blackstone until about a year and a half ago.
Ian R
Oh, good God, man.
Austin Jenkins
I was so, I was so far behind that curve. And then I was on Academy’s website. And they were like, you know, pick up today for 449. And I looked at my wife and I was like, I’m gonna go buy a Blackstone. And she was like, hey, we can have you know, Philly cheese steaks for dinner. And it has changed my life.
Ian R
Once you’ve done your own smash burgers, you don’t go back.
Austin Jenkins
You don’t. You don’t man. Like, yeah, I’ve got like, if you go out on my back patio, you know, I’ve got like, the whole seasoning racks and all of my tools and kitchen out there. You know, I’ll clean all my tools out there. And it’s, it’s a game changer.
Ian R
So, I gotta, I gotta say this, though. You’re very successful at social media because of the same reason that you have an entire setup with seasoning racks and everything around your Blackstone grill. You’re organized and methodical about it.
Austin Jenkins
Yeah.
Ian R
So if we’re struggling with our social media, what are some ways that we can get organized and methodical about it, in your opinion, so that our Blackstone griddle, so to speak, is all set up for social media?
Austin Jenkins
Sure. So you know, it’s one of those things that you could apply to everyday life, right? So not a lot of people know this. But I’m a big chess player. I played, I play probably 15 games of chess a day. Yeah, it’s kind of a hobby of mine that I’ve done for the longest time. So one thing I like to do is how I like to think ahead, right? So for my aviator, aviation friends out there, you know, you have to think ahead of the airplane, right, whenever you’re on the ramp, and you’re getting ready to take off, you know, go ahead and have your, your departure frequency keyed in so that when tower unit says contact departure, all you have to do is hit one button. And that way you don’t have to fumble changing frequencies on your climb out, just in case you hit weather turbulence or any obstacles. So what I wanted to do is, I had a goal, right, I wanted to hit a million followers. And if you don’t, if you have a dream without a plan, it’s just a wish, right? So you have to figure out, here’s where I am today, here’s where I want to be tomorrow. I looked at my analytics and I was gaining about 1400 followers a day. So I can numerically I can divide that out between, you know, a million to where I am, and have a numerical range to say, hey, I’m going to hit that in one year and four months. I wanted to speed it up a little bit faster, right. I wanted to, I wanted brands to see AJ, I wanted to get sponsorships and deals and I want to you know, I wanted to do what everybody wants to do on social media is make money, you know, make money hand over fist, you know, kind of like Mr. Beast, you know, make it rain. So I thought if I, if I could get to 1 million, what can I do in between because I don’t want to just hit a million followers, I want to have everything in between, right? So one of my other goals was the verification process. Another one was the trademarking of the Inspector AJ name. And I had these goals, right. So I put, I started applying for verification through TikTok, got denied, every single week, and I kept looking at it said, you know, you have to be well known or significant individual. So I started reaching out to CNN, Fox News, LADbible, pretty much anybody that would want to interview, to get my name out there, right. So I would interview with LADbible and Yahoo Finance. And we would, you know, put the Inspector AJ name out there. And then I partnered with, etc, for inspector education. And then one day, I was installing a new fence around my house, and I got an email from TikTok that said, your verification application has been approved, and I just sat down. And at that point, I was at around 1.3 million followers. And it just, you know, I thought, I’ve hit that goal, right? I’ve hit everything in that, that window, what was next? Right, so now, my next goal was 2 million followers. And then I wanted to get two more brand sponsorships. And I wanted to, and at that point, I was like, I was like, man, that’s, that’s a whole lot of me. Right? And then I was like, that’s a whole lot of “I” statements, how do I change that me and I, to we, and you know, once I got out of that mindset, it because ultimately, I just wanted to help people, I wanted to connect people with the buying process to the inspection process, right. So that was ultimately the next change that I wanted to make, right? So I stopped caring about what I wanted to do in that timeframe. And I started to make it hey, I want to be able to help 30 people a month find an inspector, I want to help 30 people apply for a VA loan. I want to help 30 people figure out what Radon is, I want to help 30 inspectors transition to Inspect Toolbelt, right? I want to help a certain number of people within a certain timeframe. And whenever I change to that mindset, it’s almost like it’s methodical and autonomous right now.
Ian R
You know, there’s something very important to unpack in what you just said there, too, is that a lot of times we focus on the content and reaction. And it’s like having a conversation with someone. If we focus on what we’re saying next. We’re not focused on the person and there’s a disengagement in the conversation. And the other person can tell. You are genuine. Well, I think that’s what people actually connect to. So when I watch your videos, I sense genuineness. There was a salesman that I used to know he said, you can smell bullcrap a mile away. That’s Dwight Schrute, by the way. Yeah.
Austin Jenkins
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m a huge fan of The Office.
Ian R
Yeah, Office reference, when he’s teaching Ryan. So being genuine and wanting to help people. So you, we’ve had Preston Kincaid on the show, and I know you guys know each other.
Austin Jenkins
He’s a good friend of mine.
Ian R
Yeah, and you guys do Best Inspector List together. His thing is always I want to help people. He’s even told me before, like, I don’t want to make any money on that. Let’s just, let’s just help somebody. And I’m like, that’s cool. Like, that’s, people can feel that. So if we’re really just thinking about the next thing to say in a conversation with our audience in that parasocial relationship, they’re going to feel that. Now, being genuine like you and Preston, that’s going to engage people with you.
Austin Jenkins
There’s a, so there’s a book that I read a while back from Simon Sinek. It’s called, it’s called Start With Why, right? So if you can answer five why’s, then you can undercover a root cause, right? So if somebody, okay, so one of my favorite things is when someone will message me out of the hundreds of messages that I get a day and they’re like, hey, my inspector missed this. What can I do? I’m like, okay, why do you think they missed that? And then they’ll put well, I didn’t see it on the report. And I’m like, okay, why didn’t you see it on the report? Did you read the full report? And then I’ll start to narrow down, you know, five why’s, and usually by the time you get to the fifth one, they’re like, oh, it was on the report. And I just didn’t see it. Or, you know, it was here. I thought that it was there. Here’s why. And it’s just there is so much to uncover. It’s kind of like an onion, right? So if you peel back one why at a time, you’ll uncover a root cause and a lot of times whenever you’re dealing with your own clients, and they’re upset with you because they feel as though you either miscommunicated, didn’t report on, misled them. Just find out five why’s and most often times the resolution will come before you even get to the fifth one. Right? And that’s one thing that Preston and I like to do is just we have if you haven’t noticed already, I love to talk to people, like I will literally talk to some stranger. I’ll talk to a, I’ll talk to my wall. All right. And it’s just, if you can connect with one, you can connect with many. Right. And that’s the one thing that that I like to do on social media is I’ll respond to comments with videos, because I want the people that follow me to know that I appreciate them to take my time to be able to do that. Because truly without the people that follow me, I wouldn’t have a following at all. And that’s just to me one way that I can give back to them.
Ian R
Yeah. So in another, like personal venture that I do, I’ll post TikToks, once in a blue moon. And I noticed when I post the TikTok about what I want to talk about, it doesn’t actually go anywhere. Because all I’m doing is engaging with myself, I found out. When I talk with other people, like you were just talking about, you know, you just want to talk with people, you want to engage with them. There’s something you can’t replicate there. So now when we’re thinking, what are they interested in, asking those why’s, those why questions aren’t telling people check your report. It’s a longer road to get to saying just check your report. But that shows interest in another person, being willing to take the longer road to meet them where they are. That, that shows genuine interest that you, that you can’t mimic. Do you find that there are some subjects that do better than others, though? Because, let’s be honest, a lot of us, most of us aren’t going to get to millions of subscribers like you. I’m pretty sure you have more subscribers on TikTok than, than the President does, of the US, don’t you? I’m pretty sure.
Austin Jenkins
I think, yeah I do.
Ian R
Yeah. But, so most of us are just not looking to be instafamous. We’re not looking to be Facebook famous, or whatever platform we’re on. I think most of us are just looking to be recognized in our market and to bring in some more work and trust into our business.
Austin Jenkins
Yeah, one thing. So on that note, one thing that I like so much about social media is it doesn’t feel like a job. It feels like a hobby that pays well that I get to engage with people. And I’ve had this, I promised something to myself a long time ago, the moment that it starts to feel like a job, I’m gonna quit it. Because I’ve quit dozens of jobs in my life. And the number one cause with them is that I didn’t like it, it felt too much like a job. With inspecting, it’s more of a relationship, right? You know, me and you with that home, you know, you fall in love with it in a 20, in a 20 minute showing, I bring you back to reality within three hours, right? And then, you know, I want you to be able to take everything that I compile and report and in that, you know, is it within your risk appetite, right, that’s ultimately my goal is to give you the risk analysis, and then you make a determination, you know, if you want to avoid the risk, or if you want to accept the risk. And that’s the one thing that I think, because inspecting is not a job, it’s a career. It’s a passion, right? It’s a relationship because it’s with some buyers, it’s the most intimate relationship they’ll ever financially have with with a structure and you are the one person that can either make that go good or make that go bad. And when you engage with an audience on social media, it’s the exact same thing, right? Whenever you get in touch with the things that that trigger us emotionally, right, so finances, relationships, shocking events, all of that is relatable, whether you own a home, whether you rent a home, whether you rent an apartment, whether you live with your mom or dad and thinking about buying a house down the future. Everything about that is relatable to the individual psyche itself, right. So you don’t have to necessarily be on the buying path. I talked to people all the time that watch my videos, because they live in an apartment, and their toilets are loose, or, you know, they have an air admittance valve in their, in their kitchen sink that’s not functioning and now the kitchen sinks drain slowly, well, it’s a $6 fix if you go get your own at Home Depot. You know, it’s there’s so much that, that people have a story out there, you know, some some people just need to listen, you know, oftentimes that you absorb more when you don’t say anything.
Ian R
I think you, I think you answered our question in the very eloquent way about about subject matter. The things that relate to human beings. If you if you don’t mind me asking, though, when it comes to choosing your subject matter, because in a house, you’re doing an inspection, there’s literally 1000s of things that you can choose from, do you typically try to choose the most shocking thing, or the most entertaining thing? Because it seems like you’d seem to do a mix of that. And we have guys that do. They’re like, oh, it’s only educational. Then other guys are like it’s only entertaining. And I’ve always said, find that, find a mix between the two. And it seems like you’ve found the perfect combo. So out of the 1000s of things in a home that you can entertain and educate, what makes you hone in on one thing over another?
Austin Jenkins
So, one thing I’ve noticed is a lot of inspectors have their own niches, right. So my friend Cy Porter, he does a lot of warranty inspections in Arizona. That’s, that’s his, that’s his baby. That’s his thing, right? Rarely will he do an inspection on like, you know, a typical, you know, 25, 30 year old home his, he has focused on new construction warranties that are just terrible, right? So that’s that’s what he’s known for. Preston, where he lives in New York, he focuses on a lot of older homes. So depending on what the inspector wants is kind of what they focus on. I feel as though my audience is a little bit of like all of it, right. So you have the shocking things, the expensive things, the cheap things that could be expensive in the long run. And I’m actually working on something pretty cool right now, for the techies. I think I actually talked to you about this previously, in regards of Inspector Toolbelt, to integrate with the Apple Vision Pro, because I would like to inspect the house with the Apple Vision Pro so that way, I’m like, you know, doing everything in a VR environment. Yeah, to see how it would compare up, if it would speed up, if it’s slowed down or, or if I would just look like an idiot doing it the entire time. I think what I want to focus on is just the everyday individual, right? I get so many messages from people saying, man, because of you, you know, I went to work and I shook my toilet. Turns out it was loose, told my boss, they called to fix that. I’ve had people say that, you know, because of something I’ve seen with an HVAC system, they are able to say that, you know, the condensation shutoff switch is no longer functional, it’s a cheap fix, you know, get it, being able to hear these other people’s success stories kind of hones in where I need to focus making videos. And then when that seems to have run its course, I’ll shift back to something entertaining, reaction videos. I mean, it’s, it’s, I hate to say it, but it’s like a living, breathing, you know, organism that I have to manipulate myself to figure out where the audience is, right? So I need to figure out what’s next. Right? So a lot of videos that I’m seeing right now, are people afraid of like a housing crash? Well, I mean, it’s almost impossible to predict. But I mean, there are things that you can do in your own home to like, protect yourself now so you don’t have 1000s and 1000s of dollars of expenses in the future. Right. So just in case there is an economic crash, we can we can hone in, hone in on on the issues now. And protect yourself financially.
Ian R
So I think that really rolls back to your point of thinking ahead of the plane. You’re thinking, I think too much we look behind the plane when it comes to choosing your social media content. Like AJ did this video, I’m going to do a video just like it. And then we’re like, why isn’t it taking off like AJ’s video? And the reason is, but it comes down to, are we thinking ahead of the plane? Or are we looking behind where the plane are already was? That’s not going to get us anywhere? So I like, I like your thought, that’s what that’s what’s on people’s minds. They’re thinking, will there, will there be an economic crash? Will housing prices ever come down? All sorts of things that are related to the real estate market and our finances. And that’s thinking ahead of the plane. But there’s other aspects of it too. But do you ever find that some videos that you post, you have no idea why but they just completely flop. If comparatively, your flop would be my Internet success, like that would be my glory day, your bad day would be better than my best.
Austin Jenkins
So I have a ton of videos saved in my drafts. Man, the one video that, that I had the most viral, I didn’t think I was gonna get 100,000 views on, and I posted it at 10am on a Saturday at an inspection. I had, I had held on to this video for about a month and a half. And so I was really excited to post it because it was the first time I had ever really did a new construction inspection with like 30 issues in one video. And man, I posted it. And before I left that inspection at like 11:30 It was like 3 million views. And I kind of sat back and I was like, oh, what am I done? Well, turns out, the buyers actually saw the video and they loved it because the builder went back and fixed like 90% of those problems. And, you know, they were like, hey, man, you know, we’re so thankful to have been part of your success to let that video do so well on a thing as of today is almost 51 million views.
Ian R
Oh geez.
Austin Jenkins
And whichm which, which is insane. Like, it’s, it almost desensitizes me when I talk about video views, right? So if your average viewer or your average individual posts a video and they get 1000 views, they may be ecstatic. If I post a video and I don’t have 1000 views within two minutes, I’m deleting it. And it’s so weird for me to say that but it’s just that’s how I gauge the performance of it where I’ve been doing it so long at this point, but the video viewership has desensitized me for, for just that.
Ian R
So that’s actually an interesting point. When it comes to a video that is underperforming, and you can recognize that very quickly. And I guess that leads me back to the question I was asking before, do you find yourself deleting it?
Austin Jenkins
Yup.
Ian R
Okay, well, you’d rather have a video deleted than to have an underperforming video on your profile.
Austin Jenkins
Yes, simply for the fact that a lot of the times either the video that I want to go out there is either educational or important. The ones that I have posted and they kind of flopped are usually, and the ones that I’ve left up, or the ones that either I’ve done topics on in the past, or I just feel as though I’ll be doing another one in the future. Right. So if I, if I post a video, and it does just poorly, I’ll delete it, you know, it’s saved in my phone. So I’ll, you know, I can go back and re-upload it at a certain point. And I’ve done that, right. So I’ll, I’ll upload a video at 1pm on a Friday. And it’ll only get 14,000 views in eight hours. And I can delete that video, post it again Saturday at 9am. And it’ll get 140,000 by dinner, I mean, it’s just such a random, just mix. And that’s kind of how I gauge things. If I don’t have you know, 15,000 views within three, at least three hours, then that video is going to be reposted at some other point, simply for the fact that I have been gauging this so long, I kind of know the sweet spot of where I am. And then I can take action, whether either it be leaving it or posting the video elsewhere or duplicating the video because I’ve done that before. If if the message is important, I want to get it out, I will actually duplicate that video again. So I have done that.
Ian R
Nice. And so I’m kind of like taking notes here from you, as you’re speaking from the technical side of things, as we talked about before, make sure the video’s focused on the actual consumer, the end consumer, 50 some odd seconds, keep it under a minute. Make sure we time it out, and experiment with good times. But in the reality of things, you kind of remind me of a documentary I was watching on Yogi Berra. Yogi Berra, they would say, well, how do you use actually, statistically, the second greatest baseball player that ever lived, but he never got the credit for it. But when asked like, how are you hitting these balls that others are missing? And he’s like, I don’t know, I just reach out there and I get it. So you remind me of Yogi Berra, that he was very, he could tell you exactly what he’s doing. But a lot of it came down to listen, I just feel it, I can give you all the all the ways that I’m moving my hips and my arms, I’m standing there, and you tell the guy drop, drop your shoulder two inches, drop, you know, raise your elbow a half an inch, but at the end of the day he’s like, when that ball comes to you, you need to feel it. And that’s what I’m getting from you. Be genuine, feel the situation, if we’re engaged with it, likely our audience will be engaged with it too. Do I have a good feel on that or am I way off?
Austin Jenkins
And I was actually going to equate that back to aviation, right. So there’s, there’s this term called ground effect. And ground effect is the moment that the plane is airborne just above a runway, right. So like, if you have the runway right here, and you have the aircraft, right, the wheels are on the ground, the moment that it’s airborne, you enter what’s called ground effect. And ground effect is just the lift from under the wings pushing kind of like a cloud. And there’s no way to describe it, other than being able to feel it. And ground effect is one of those that you can get in and build up speed. And then you know, do a hard climb out if need be or whenever you’re coming into land. You know, like when you’re you’re flying on a commercial airline, right, and you’re coming in on the runway, and you feel, like you can look out the window, and you feel the runway coming up really fast. And then all of a sudden, it just kind of stops. And then a second later you touch the ground. Have you ever noticed that before? Like you can see the runway come and then it’ll slow and then you hit down, well it depends on if you fly, you know, like Ryanair, because they come in like Navy aircraft. But anyway, that’s, that’s exactly what’s happening with those larger aircraft too, right. So the runway comes up, and then you just feel it, and then, then you touchdown, it’s just such an impossible way to describe something until you can actually feel it. And then once you feel it, it’s second nature. So I fully agree with Yogi Berra.
Ian R
So I guess that’s what I really want to impress from you to the audience here is that we can go over statistics and these are really good suggestions and really actionable items. But until you start going out swinging at balls, or start taking off an aircraft, you can’t learn how to fly by just reading books. You’ll know the mechanics but you won’t know the feel.
Austin Jenkins
It’s the hardest thing you’ll never be able to describe.
Ian R
Yeah. So, go out there and start posting everyone. Follow AJ, if you don’t already follow AJ, he’s the most famous home inspector out there for a reason. Oh, come on. But follow him. Watch what he does. And AJ, I gotta say, I’m, I’ve always been impressed by people like you who are extremely good at what they do. And then share their information with others. You don’t take it and say listen, this is mine. I gotta hold my trade secrets. You freely share it with others. And that goes back to your genuineness. So thank you very much for that.
Austin Jenkins
Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s not, it’s not success unless you can share it. Otherwise, it’s just being selfish.
Ian R
Yeah.
Austin Jenkins
It’s kind of what I’ve picked up on for the longest time.
Ian R
And I’m already talking with our development team about the Apple VR Pro there, and we’ll see if we can get that. That would make an awesome social media video.
Austin Jenkins
I would love that so much. I would love to do that. To just be able to have like, you know, the software pulled up on one screen and then being able to do the inspection on like, the same screen while having it, you know, out in everything in front of you. I think that would just be so cool.
Ian R
Yeah. Let’s, let’s see what we can do about that. So everybody, stay tuned, we’ll see what we can do. And AJ, so great having you on man, thank you for sharing.
Austin Jenkins
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a blast. You know, thank you guys for putting out such a great software. I’m excited to, to pretty much you know, just promote the crap out of it. You know, just going to be just a great relationship. And I’m excited for it.
Ian R
We are too. Thank you so much.
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.