Empire State of Mind
Empire State of Mind
Redefining Success with Home Inspection Mogul Ian Mayer
Every journey begins with a single step, but for Ian Mayer, that step launched an empire. As we sit down with the founder of I Am Home Inspections, he shares the rollercoaster ride of emotions and events that turned a layoff into a thriving Los Angeles business. From the early days of financial instability to the epiphanies that spurred growth and the support from the IEB community, Ian's tale is one of gritty determination and the pursuit of a balanced, fulfilling life.
The world stood still during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet amidst the chaos, Ian's business found a way to not only survive but prosper. The story takes us through the unanticipated demand for home inspections, the revival of his team, and the strategic social media pivot that kept the company’s heartbeat strong when many others flatlined. It's a narrative that weaves the resilience of the human spirit with the innovative power of community and technology, providing valuable insights for anyone navigating their own business challenges.
Beyond the boardroom, Ian delves into the profound personal growth that arose from his entrepreneurial journey, particularly in the realms of family and education. His commitment to educating his clients on the complexities of homes and the transformative decision to prioritize life's experiences over work resonate deeply. Join us for an episode that not only spotlights the success of I Am Home Inspections but also the human side of the hustle – where passion, mentorship, and family life converge to create a legacy far beyond the foundations of a house.
Contact IEB -
- web: www.iebcoaching.com
- email: support@iebcoaching
- social: @iebcoaching
Contact Matt -
- email: matt@dciabq.com
- IG: @the.matthew.williams
Welcome to the Empire State of Mind. On this episode we have Ian Mayer from Los Angeles, california, and we're talking about how to use social media to grow your inspection company.
Speaker 2: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 1:Yo, yo yo. Welcome to the show. Today we have on our show a phenomenal guest, someone I've known now for a few years, someone who's been crushing it in the home inspection industry game. It's my friend, ian Mayer from I Am Home Inspections out of Los Angeles, california. Ian, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:I'm great, I'm glad you're finally here.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you're finally here too, man. We've met each other a few times. We've talked in some hallways and seen each other online on Zoom classes. You have an interesting story on how your inspection company was running one way and there was an epiphany moment. You're like you know what? I'm going to make a change. An IEB played a part in that and a role in that. I'm curious. I know you were a one-man shop for a while before you decided I'm going to grow and do something different. Tell me about that. How long were you a one-man shop? Five?
Speaker 3:years. Okay, I've been laid off from a position I hated, wanted to change, take control of my life, and I had been laid off from a job that I didn't even like. I'm sitting there going. I got two kids, a wife mortgage, and I was just like you know what? I'm going to go into my business for myself. I'd rather eat bologna and live on the side of the river in a van than work for anyone else again, because I cannot get laid off again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I started the home inspection business, and I'd been interested in it for years, because I worked in wholesale mortgage before that, so I've been in the real estate world for about 20. Okay, and so the home inspection business was in the back of my head for a long time, but you know, what happened is I was going to do it, and then, in a it wasn't quite a six month period, maybe, but of course, for a year, though, the economy started to crash after 2008. My mom passed away and my wife got pregnant with her first child, and so I just I can't start my own business.
Speaker 1:And that's a lot of change really fast.
Speaker 3:So I put everything I thought about home inspections on the side and went and went to a bunch of other things and several years went by. We had a second kid, you know, and the economy didn't get any better. So I was working this other little job and then that company was going to lay me off and I'm like I cannot get laid off again.
Speaker 3:Again oh man, I cannot go work for someone else who's going to lay me off again. And my wife was like you've been wanting to do this home inspection thing for a while, do it. So I did it. So I started it from scratch, okay, and my goal was just to feed the family, pay the mortgage, put food on the table. That was it.
Speaker 3:That was my goal and we did it for five years. And then one day I was in a crawl space and I'm crawling out of the crawl space and I get right before the exit and I don't know why I just stopped there and it was late December. Now my oldest son's birthday is four days after Christmas and I'm just kind of panicking because I'm like I, he, we don't really have any money for Christmas or for a birthday present At least we bought Christmas presents and I pulled up my phone and I'm looking at my eyes and my eyes and this is the only. I had the best year ever as a solo instructor. And I pull up on my bank account and it's full of zeros. Wow, I have no money. And I'm like my kid's birthday is in like a week and I have no money. Yet I just had my best year ever.
Speaker 3:Wow, this, this, this is not adding up and I knew something was wrong and something had to change. Yeah, a very fortunate that the only thing he wanted was a new puppy, which we could get from the pound really cheap. And we're like okay, we can pay the adoption fees, we can scrounge that money. You know the color and the food and everything we can figure out later. Wow, and then. So it was January at that point and I'm like every so I would go do inspections during the day and go home at night and I would just research things like what am I going to do? I don't want to leave the inspection world because I love it. Right, it's the first job I've ever had where I really felt at home.
Speaker 1:But you're working hard. You're making money, but you're not keeping it Like it's not. It's just basically paying the mortgage and food and you're paying your basics. You're spinning your wheels.
Speaker 3:And then everything's going back into marketing just to keep that going. Wow, and I had met Greg like maybe six months prior.
Speaker 1:Greg Bryan.
Speaker 3:Greg Bryan Okay.
Speaker 1:But he's like one of the owners of IAB, the guy who started it, yeah.
Speaker 3:And he'd met it and he was trying to explain IAB, but he couldn't explain it to me. He just told me well, it has these different levels and there's this business thing and I'm like, okay, you're just some sort of micro ripoff because you're both from Texas.
Speaker 1:Have you ever told him that before? Oh yeah, no, he knows.
Speaker 3:We've talked about this Like he did the worst sales job ever of trying to sell me an IAB. So I was like I blew him off. I was like just some snake oil salesman. So anyway, so it's January and I'm like panicking, like what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I cannot continue just being one man shop, but I don't want to give up the inspection business because I love it. Yeah, and I stumbled upon a video from Greg Bryan and I'm like all right, I'm going to watch it and it was so compelling and he mentioned explain IAB better at that point. So I looked at like how much membership was and was like going to be like 347, 349, whatever it was at the time For a month.
Speaker 1:For a month.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there was exactly $500 my bank account that day and I'm just like, do I really want to spend almost everything in my bank account to join an organization I know nothing about other than this one video? But I'm just like it's hell mary time, like I'm a big football fan, so I'm just like it's fourth quarter. Two seconds left, john Montana's throwing the ball Please, jerry Rice, catch it, or this whole thing's over. And I joined IAB and you know the first couple of months were a little weird, because I'm like you people are all really strange but there are some cultish vibes.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to lie, I'm a huge fan of value, but there's some moments you're like, okay, that's a little weird, you know because you're talking about all these things and I'm just like I don't understand.
Speaker 3:And then this email came across about something called RISDM, which is how to hire people and train people. And I'm like I've never hired anybody in my life, I've never been a manager of anyone in my life, I've never had employees, I've never had anyone under me. Wow, and at this point, like it had been 11 years since I've been on a long airplane trip, I have never been away from my life, I've never been away from my kids. But this thing just said I need to get to Houston to take this class. Yeah, so I just went to my wife, said I'm buying a plane ticket to Houston and I'm going to go take this class, and she's like okay, that's what you need to do, so I'm sitting down in my business because obviously I can't do interactions with them in Houston. Flew to Houston to the class, met Derek for the first time and just, my life completely changed at that point.
Speaker 1:Wow. And so what was it that changed? It just catching a vision for a bigger life, or what?
Speaker 3:Jerk said one of the things and he said everybody's been through something. Either you had a bad childhood if you didn't have a bad childhood, you had something crappy happy in your teen years or somehow you survived through your teen years. Something happened to you in your 20s and all your decisions are based on Something that crappy happened to you in your childhood at some point in your life and I was like.
Speaker 3:No, we've all done through something, yeah, and like I just like my whole world just went. Oh, I Thought it was just me who had a bad childhood, and all these bad things are always just happened to me, and maybe some kid on the news that you know you never heard about, but it just completely changed my life. They're like, oh, I'm in a room full of people who all had stuff Happened to them that was negative, that's affected their wife, and like it's okay, we can move on, and it just changed everything for me. And so, yeah, then a couple months later I hired my first inspector. I was talking to just people around town and letting people know I was looking and, uh-huh, this guy knew. He said, hey, you, this guy applied for my position at my company, but I don't have this, I don't have any room for him. Maybe he'll be good for you. It's why I hired him.
Speaker 3:And then that was like six months and then Random, ad and Matt sitting next to me, applied and I met Matt. Oh, my god, I love this guy. So then we came to and then covered came and we laid everybody off and then then we had like five, six weeks of no business. Oh, wow, and then all of a sudden it was. You know. The government changed her position. It was states an essential.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh this yeah, and I remember was the second week of June and all of a sudden our phone went from not ringing at all to Ringing off the hook. Yes, we need inspectors now. My inspector mood. My inspector Retired my inspector. Yep won't leave the house. We need inspectors now. So I'm like calling everybody back come back, please, please. Calling the other guy Please come back to work. Put out more ads. Next thing I knew we were a four-person company. Wow, and it's kept growing.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, and so it's kind of a perfect storm of events. Right Like you hit your frustration point, you connected yourself to the IEB community and you got some some I don't know like some visions of Inspiration, some clarity. And then the COVID factor hit and I think everybody in home services Whether you're an electrician or an HVAC or anything like the COVID factor hit and, and I think it impacted Every one of those businesses in a way you know you rode that wave.
Speaker 3:I gotta give a lot of credit to IEB because you know, at the time we did one phone call a Month and then there was an extra phone call somewhere else, like so there's only like two phone calls a month At the time was with an IEB right. Yeah, and then when COVID first hit, they just announced we're going to three calls a week.
Speaker 3:Yeah just to have someone to talk to, and I would log on to every call just to have someone to talk to, just to know that Any other different people having different experiences. Some people were like all right, we're gonna buy foggers and disinfecting some people. Oh right, we shut down.
Speaker 2:Some people like it's not even in my area.
Speaker 3:But just to have that sense of connection that you weren't alone, yeah, that was really really powerful, mm-hmm. And the fact that they went from two calls a month to three a week without increasing any fees to any members, just that mental like you had this connection to people and yeah, except for six weeks, we really didn't do anything. Yeah, I mean, I was doing like inspections, like on the slide, because we weren't supposed to leave the house right, and then all of a sudden, you know, the government changed their mind. We're an essential service. And then the phone was ringing off the hook and you know.
Speaker 3:But that time, you know, I had enough connections with enough people. We really got a shout to Blake Williams and rival mind, who really, you know, gave me a lot of good advice, yeah, and so I knew what to do at that point. Yeah, well, that was a wild season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that was a wild season. That COVID season was so crazy. Um, yeah, that was. That was. That was pretty wild seeing that.
Speaker 1:And I think all of us had a moment of shutdown and during the middle of that, like I don't know about you, man, but I had panic. I was like, wait, my whole business just got turned off like a light switch. Like I still got a, my mortgage, still come and do like every my bills are seconded by groceries, like as of the buy, everything like, but the income got shut off like a light switch. That was like a scary moment for for every business owner and um, yeah, and then that that roller coaster of like oh no, what's gonna happen?
Speaker 1:And the light and the light switch into phone ringing off the hook and like you couldn't get to everything coming to you man, that's like that's pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy, man. So you had like a lot of growth, um, and one of the things that you had told me earlier is that social media was something that you had used quite a bit and in growing during that season, um, tell a little more about that. That like, what are you doing on social media back then? What do you do on social media now, um, because I think you were kind of innovative in that space and maybe you still are innovative in that space.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't, we can still myself innovate. So back um, when I first met my wife and we were just, you know, stupid, crazy 20 year old kids running around in night clubs, drinking way too much, going out way too much, avoiding you know the problems of Coming from dysfunctional families Uh-huh, um, all our friends were tech ads and they would all later go on to become, you know it, people video game designers, web designers, uh-huh, all these really. So I was just leaching off of their Knowledge, like hey, have you heard of this thing called facebook? What the hell's a facebook? I don't know what's a myspace, but they all knew about this stuff. So I just kind of learned it from them, huh, so I just assumed everyone my age group Knew what this stuff was right.
Speaker 3:And then, when I got into the realtor real estate world and I started going to real estate events and real estate networking events, I was just like nobody knows this stuff. And real estate agents started looking to me that like I was some sort of social media guru and I'm like I only know a fraction of what my friends know, yeah, but compared to all these other people. So I started teaching social media classes, uh, through the board of realtors. Wow, and they have this thing. Like you can't teach, they can't, you cannot touch the class two years in a row, but they would have me back every year. I did like five, six years in a row, oh, wow, plus another class to the chamber of commerce and I just became known as the social media guy, and that's what we did to grow the business, and my wife is really good at social media and so we just, you know, we're posting on facebook, we're posting on instagram almost daily.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, and people just it was kind of funny because, like you know, back when you're first starting, you do like one house a week, right, and you go to two houses a week. I would just take so many photos and then, every photo every day, I'd have a new photo. That's the same house you did a few days ago, but, and everyone thought it would be a new house, right, no, it's just a different aspect of the same house. Like here's the outlet that broken, all right over here. Here's the little light that broke or whatever. Yeah, here's the little defect from the water heater. And everyone's like, oh, it's a new house, you're doing so many houses a day. I'm like, yeah, you just keep thinking that yep.
Speaker 3:And it just continued to grow and grow and obviously during covid, you couldn't do any networking, so that's all we had was just posting, posting, posting every day. Uh, five, six days a week. Now we're up to seven, and now we post new, new times a day. And then I was telling you earlier, like you, at the end of 2022, I started thinking I think we've taken so many as far as we can. Hmm, or no, it was in the 2021. I think we take it as far as we can. We're gonna try something different for 2022. And then just, we never got the same results right. So for 2023. I'm like no, we're just going to double down on social media. We're going to actually start posting more content.
Speaker 1:How's that working?
Speaker 3:We're. You know, the LA market is like 30 Average in about 33 percent down.
Speaker 1:So 40 percent now for volume of houses, and all that right volume houses, but where business is only down like 10, 11 percent so it's working pretty good and our revenue has actually gone up.
Speaker 3:Oh heck, yeah, that's awesome and it's all just social media. We don't have a marketing person. I Do a lot of networking, uh-huh, but it's all backed up on social media and it's everything is social media based.
Speaker 1:That's incredible us. That's just what works, and I Don't know, to me it's like it's not that hard. Do you pay ads on social media? It's just the organic content you're pushing out.
Speaker 3:It's just just posting two, three times a day Consistently every day, every day.
Speaker 1:who meant it? Did you do that yourself or do you have somebody doing that?
Speaker 3:My wife manages it now. Okay, I, she taught me how to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I did it and then I got so busy and like Can you help me, and then she just took it over. Okay, cool. And then, yeah, we have. But we have a little bit of help A couple hours here and there from people, but mostly just my wife and I doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you're in your poster, but like kind of somewhat educational.
Speaker 3:It's everything from you know thinking wielders for the inspection this day, crazy things the guys send us from the field, huh. And of the week Compilations of what happened over the week. And then this year I've been doing a lot more video content. I love Gary V.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he's just like post videos, post videos. I'm doing a lot more videos, uh-huh. Some days are more ad-based, some days it's me talking about something going on and also trying to sort of bring some of the things that weren't in IEB to the real world, to the people who don't hear it. Yeah, you know, motivational stuff.
Speaker 1:That's a wide variety of content.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:That's like a lot of variety. That's really incredible. Yeah, like a formula for you, it's just kind of like just kind of doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wish it were formula based. Now it's just, but you know, learning things. Like you know, first it was very Facebook heavy and then it became very Instagram heavy, yeah, and then, of course, the two companies are now owned by the same company, right? You know, I'm just saying the top of things. You know like, we got into Google plus for a while and then Google plus kind of faded off, yep.
Speaker 1:Do you guys do tick talk or anything like that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I started to take off account a couple years ago and I didn't really push it very hard until Maybe six months ago I started pushing it hard. Okay, so that's not a big driver yet, but every once in a while, like one video will just kind of take off and you're like why did that video is? Why is that video doing so much better than the rest? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But you know, it's just consistently just putting stuff out there.
Speaker 1:Because you don't know what's gonna hit. You never know what's gonna hit right, so you have the variety and consistency. That's really cool.
Speaker 3:I teach classes. I always teach. Don't worry about what any one post does. If you start sitting there obsessing over how many likes one post, you drive yourself crazy. You want the content of the week, the month, well, it's a. Or I say, like we don't have snow in LA, but you know what happens if it's not like falls in LA, it just melts. No one notices what happens if it's not as a bunch, well then people start to notice what happens. If it's those for several days, well then you got a snowstorm. And that's kind of how social media is. If you post every day, I mean if you post once in a while, no one's gonna notice, right. But if you post every day, month, week after week, month after month, year after year, eventually You've got so many posts that you can't be ignored. Wow, and so it's. It's a very you know it's a long game thing.
Speaker 3:You can't just post and expect the phone to ring. But if you post a lot, people start to notice yeah, and I've even been stopped on the street. They're like you're that dude who posts, that's cool with, and you know, we got into Putting our logo on. The post says watermarks, kind of before. Now it's easy to do, everybody does it, but we were wanting to do that early on. And people stop and feel like you're the guy who posts the logo on the garage door All over your house. I'm like yeah, how do you know?
Speaker 2:that's so funny, you on.
Speaker 3:Instagram like okay, can you hire me for homeless reaction please?
Speaker 1:Dude, that's awesome. I love that. That's a really cool story. People like recognizing you and going oh, you're the homeless vector guy on Instagram in your area, that is. That's really cool. Because LA is a big place, man Like, oh, it's huge. It's huge right. So for people to you know like you're in a small town, maybe one thing, but in a big city like that, for people to recognize you like that, that's really cool. I mean, you're really making a difference there.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean to be fair. We only concentrate on a portion of the city.
Speaker 1:Oh, of course you have to. You can't just cover the whole entire Market, right? Yeah, you have a county or two. How many counties do you guys to go for?
Speaker 3:Well, basically, just well I mean. La County's huge. We don't even do all of LA County Okay, but I live in the corner of LA and Ventura County so you do mostly LA County, a little bit of Ventura County.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay. So how do you divide? That is like by zip code, or what do you put the line, or how do you draw the line?
Speaker 3:Traffic patterns. Okay, which freeways have the most traffic versus less traffic. That's how we do it, we do. We don't do circles, we know, do mileage, we go by traffic patterns. Well, you kind of have to there, yeah. And then, as we've grown, you know, we've tried to spread people. I mean, obviously, we can't who were people live wherever they live, if they're cool, and we hire them. But it's been fortunate to work out that Now we have someone in Palmdale, we have people in Santa Crete, we have people in, you know, san Fernando Valley, where I live, we have someone in Canary Hill Valley and then we have one guy down in San Monica right now.
Speaker 1:So I see, so they're spread out and they're spread out, you just batch from their house and that way they have less drive time, yeah, so that's, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah, so some social media is going pretty good on that, and you've said this now a few times like, like, I feel like you have a passion for like teaching people, like Educating or like it, I don't know. You've said that a few times in this conversation now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I really got in. When I first became a home inspector, I finally found my true passion, my true calling. Yeah, and then, as I've gone through the IEB process of years and you know, really refining what it is that I like about things, I realized it's not so much the home inspecting, it's the educating people about the home. Yeah, there's this one story I like to tell a fairly new inspector working with an agent who I thought was really knowledgeable. I said there's a leak by the water meter and he walked over to the electrical panel and said where's the leak at? And I went oh, wow, that's when I started to realize nobody knows anything about houses. They don't, yeah. And then I caught a lot about it. Well, how many parts have I lived in where I didn't know where anything was? How many houses? I mean when we were walking out when I was a kid, like I don't know where things were, how they worked, so why would anybody else?
Speaker 3:So I really got into educating people about the houses. So like we don't just inspect a house and give you a list of here's all the problems. We inspect a house and we give you a list of where everything is and what it does, wow, and then all the problems too. And you know, then when I hired Matt, he was a substitute school teacher Before he came to work for me, so he's really an education. So we really just took the education side and I've kind of realized over the course of years, working through the IEB classes and coming to these events, like that's really where my heart is in education. We just educate people via the home inspection.
Speaker 1:That's. That's pretty cool, and so do the realtors seem to appreciate that. The buyers seem to appreciate that.
Speaker 3:The ones we work with. Yes, and we definitely. Between Google and Yelp, we have way more reviews than anybody else in our area, okay, and so I'm kind of warning like we need to expand on that more. That's one of my Long-term projects is, I want to stop being seen as just those guys who crawl into the house and kill your deal as like no, we're a resource, right, because we can explain things. And you know I'm a big Ruben Salisman fan, so I like to blog. I cannot blog as often as he does, but I try to blog and after you know, nine years doing this, I've got a lot of bloggers, a lot of education content yeah and so we put links to that into a report.
Speaker 3:You know you want to read more about it. You know builders like what is this thing in your report? Because it's supposed to be, are you sure? All right, let me go write a blog about it. I'll link the report with a link in the report so you can read more about it. If you really don't believe my comment, right, and that's just become part of the education piece.
Speaker 1:That's super cool that you do that. You write the blog, you have blogs and then you link it back through. So then, yeah, they want to learn a whole lot more. They can't and a lot of people, some people don't know what to do.
Speaker 3:I think that's really cool. Things like the Cisco panels, like, oh yeah, much misinformation about the panels, and you know we always get these questions like why did you put that in the report but the city didn't say it was okay, or oh, or you know, oh yeah, that big recall, well, there's actually not, there's so much Greer, and so finally, okay, so we put the thing about this group panels and we having a nice narrative that explains with the, the basics of it is yeah, but if you want to read the whole thing, there's a link and goes to bar to go, and it explains the long version.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that's really cool. So your poor can say concise, but for those who want to dive deeper, they can't.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm and I think water. Here I'm something of water heaters too, because people was like why did you call that on our water heater? Well, it's, it's in the codebook, right, but we don't ever see it on houses, yeah, I know, because no one ever does it, but it's still In the codebook supposed to run, just because nobody does it. So you know, we call it out and there's the link if you want to read more about it. Also, because it got tired of you know just agents like Calling about it, like, oh, then I gotta look up that code again. They got email to like no, if I just put them blog article, I know where to go and you just couldn't paste it right out of that one article. We're just go read the water crew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there it is. Click the link to read the article, right, you can have a whole massive. That's really brilliant. I love that idea. That's really cool to be able to do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, you know people ask how did you do that? I want to go once. It's been a process over years and years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And so because your passion is education and then right that that allows you or feed you or in I don't know, like I imagine your passion starts to really light up on writing blog articles and and creating content that helps educate People on homes and how it works. I mean, if you have that passion for education, it probably doesn't feel like it's hard work, right, it's you enjoy it.
Speaker 3:I know I do. It's the first career I ever had where I just like, like every, I look back at. Well, I mean going back To why I got no respect as I was looking at my resume one day and was half the companies on my resume around business Wow, like you couldn't call that company, get a reference for me, for me, because they don't exist anymore. And then I also realized how many job jumping I had done throughout my 20s and 30s.
Speaker 3:I've never worked at a place more than two, three years, and now I've been in home inspections for nine and a half years, coming up on ten, and I still feel like I'm a beginner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's so much to learn, so much to know in the industry. It's wild, especially on houses, and they keep coming out new stuff and you know there's new technology and new, new things and yeah and yeah, I keep it up with it all as kind of wild yeah yeah, it's constantly evolving.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, when I started nobody did sure scopes and then hard, then they started to become a thing, but very few people wanted them. Now almost everybody wants one and right guys, we're carrying sewer scope cameras now.
Speaker 3:Yep, that wasn't even a thing when I started. Oh, wow, yeah. But that's something I became passionate about because when I bought my house, no one explained to me what a sewer was. Yeah, I kept wondering why. Mine kept backing up. And then we finally found Before everybody had cameras finally found the one plumber in LA who had a camera and he's like, running me down our line like yeah, you've got all these roots and you need to like. Like we had a major problem that we didn't know about because our realtor didn't say get a source scope. I don't think he knew what a sewer scope was. I don't know if there's anyone to do it at the time.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, cuz sewer scopes used to be like twenty, thirty thousand dollars, you know, and they had like a like a tube television looking screen and a VHS like recorder on it. You know like it wasn't practical to actually bring out that equipment and record a video line through your sewer. It was so cumbersome and difficult. Now, now it's all digital and it's nice to have like nice packages and you can get a camera. You can get a camera, you know, for a few thousand dollars, not like a twenty thousand dollars, and then you can create a video that's actually like high resolution and functional. And that old stuff was so, the technology was so like bad. It was hard to, yeah, even decipher what was happening on those cameras. And now it's like it's affordable for an affordable, it's affordable for an company to own one and maintain it and, and you know, for the good product and and it saves a buyer a ton of money. Man, those things are like almost crucial that have, and then it's not too expensive to have it done.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I said it's almost drama with my own sewer system at my house. Mm-hmm finally had my line replaced, but so how may? I'm very passionate about it. So all my guys carry sewer scopes now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do that too. All my guys carry sewer scopes on their trucks and, and, yeah, so everybody on my team is their licensed home inspector and then they're a licensed termite inspector and then they also do I'm sewer scoping as well. So all three of those things are like that's a very common. Now it's my company that have the home termite and the sewer. Like almost every house does that trifecta, and then on top of that there's the other stuff if they want it. But but that's kind of the basic now it's not just the home inspection.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we do pools or big, will something go? Funny, pools are big.
Speaker 3:Oh, I bet they are yeah you either have it or don't, but I'm very passionate about pool inspections and I that's one of the things that pride myself on we do better pool inspections than your typical home inspector. Wow, because I've really studied it from having one, because my group in San Francisco Nobody had pools because it was cold, and so I was like one of my goals in life was to have a house of the pool, and I got a house of the pool and then you know the nightmare of oh my god, all this equipment, rakes it's a lot of maintenance, so I got really into it.
Speaker 3:And then I would just go to a Pool supply shop or the pool contractor by their stuff. I would hang out there and talk about the pool contractors and learn from them, because pool Courses they have really not that. And then there's a pool guru around town when I start like following around and so I learned a lot about pools as we have a very extensive template. And then you know, just talk to my guys.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, yeah, having the pool. Extra answer layers like that. Yeah, imagine Southern California pools are pretty popular, yeah, you know, yeah, whereas like other parts of the country, not as much. You know, like Arizona, I bet, phoenix, like every house has a pool. It's so stinking hot there, you know, yeah, like in Santa Fe, new Mexico, which is northern New Mexico, it's too cold. Very few pools. So, or Denver imagine Denver doesn't have a lot of pools and, yeah, but you live in pool central man, you better be doing pools. Yeah, I love it. I love it. That's awesome, man. So, so, yeah, so you started building your company. You started, like, from the crawl space and realizing like, okay, the best year ever, not making any money, go to IEB, start to grow. What kind of impact did that have on your family at home?
Speaker 3:that was huge because, to get Well, we might as well just make it personal. Because here we are, like I never met my own father, my biological father's never been a part of my life, so I was raised by a single mom, with various men in our lives, so like we never really did vacations unless it was to go see family. Uh-huh, and granted, my grandfather lived in some cool places, so when she, my grandfather Was a very nice vacation, but we never did anything else. And so when my wife and I met and we were dating and doing things, like we went to places that I had never been, like Grand Canyon, yeah, camping things that just so you know.
Speaker 3:When we had kids, I was like, okay, I'm gonna be the opposite of my parents, uh-huh. And then when. I had that crawl space moment. I kind of went Holy moly, I've turned into my parents because I don't take my we, we can't leave the state. You know, I mean fortunately live in LA, so going to senior you're going to Lake Lansing World. Oh yeah, like that, like we can do that. But like I realized, my youngest son was nine.
Speaker 3:No, he wasn't nine yet, just 10 years ago. He's 14. So he's four. Whatever I realized, my my new kid, has never been more than two and a half hours from home. Oh, wow. And my oldest kid hadn't been in more than two hours away from home since he's a baby. And I was like, oh my god, I'm denying my kids Because I can't be away from the business, because if I'm not inspecting, we're not making money, and if I'm not inspecting, we're not making money, we're not paying the mortgage right.
Speaker 3:So I was this epiphany of like oh my god, I'm like trapping my kids into this life they didn't ask for and not getting any life experiences because dad can't be way.
Speaker 1:Wow, so like you own a business, but really that business owned you. Yes, yeah, and that impact on your family and your kids.
Speaker 3:So the next year came around. It was my kid's birthday, again four days after Christmas. You know it's tough when it's four days after Christmas. You just have this big Christmas present. You're like what do you want for your birthday? And he finally just said I don't want a thing, I want an experience. Okay, so what experience do you want? He's like I want to go to Yellowstone. I was like when I was your age, I wanted to go to Yellowstone so badly and my mom never took me. And I'm just like realizing, oh my God, I've become my mom. Wow, who's never taken my kid to Yellowstone?
Speaker 3:And my wife is like we're figuring out and I'm like okay, I don't know how we're gonna do this, but at that point we had two full-time inspectors and we had two guys in training. So my wife took the kids, drove ahead of me. I stayed LA, inspected Salt Lake City. They picked me up from the airport, went to Yellowstone for a week. They dropped me back off in Salt Lake City, I flew home, went back to inspecting, running the company. Then they got back home a couple of days later and that was our first experience. It was the first vacation I'd ever had at that point. So I'd been in business at that point in six, seven years.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, I'd never taken a week off. First time my kids had ever left the state of California. Yeah, and we got to experience Yellowstone for the first time. And then how cool was that? Oh, it was awesome. And then, since then, we went back the second time. We had more inspectors and this time we left together. We didn't do the weird fly thing and we took two weeks. Oh, very cool, did not touch my phone for two weeks. Here's the crazy part I went to IBU night.
Speaker 1:Yup.
Speaker 3:Flew home, got in the car, drove to Yellowstone for two weeks, came home. So I was gone for three weeks out of four weeks of the month and we had our best month ever. Oh my gosh, that's crazy, and I was just like and nobody called me and I got home thinking, okay, I'm gonna have all these fires to put out. I got home, there's nothing going on. Like everybody was like nobody even missed me and I was like okay, that's an awesome feeling, man.
Speaker 3:And then so yeah, it's been. The impact on my family is, you know. And then, outside of the big trip, we take a lot of smaller trips. We do a lot of small camping trips.
Speaker 1:So, as a dad, you're more present for your kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean sometimes I work way too much and sometimes we go periods. I just work six days a week, sun up to sun down. I probably work harder on the company now that I'm not in the field than I was when in the field.
Speaker 1:Yeah, different kind of work.
Speaker 3:But when we have the time, it's like we can take three, two, three, four days and not worry about losing business, not worrying about what's going to happen if I'm gone. So, like you know, one time we're just like, what's the design on? It's a day to get there driving. Yeah, we'll spend two, three days there and another day to drive home, and you know no one's going to miss me. You know, we have an normal camping spot that we love to go to every year, and this year we couldn't go because the road washed out in the storm and they didn't fix the road yet.
Speaker 3:So to go to a new camping place that was further away, and we did, and it was, you know, and it was on a lake we'd never been to, and we ended a boat, which we'd never done before. And we just have all these experiences that we've never done before. And you know, now we're planning bigger trips and more extensive trips. Yeah, and you know, my kids are teenagers now. So to me it's just all about like giving them everything that I didn't give them earlier in their life because I didn't have the means to do so.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 3:And you know some ways it's kind of making up like I'm sorry, I didn't take them on vacation, you were nine, but now that you're meeting on your teens, we're going places.
Speaker 1:I love it. Yeah, but you're creating those memories and that's so cool.
Speaker 3:And you know, and I'm trying not to fall in the trap of, you know, my mom, let's always go to the same place and I, inadvertently, will do that Right.
Speaker 3:Well, that's because the pattern you grew up with and the pattern you used to you know, the last time we left Yellowstone and they started talking about the next trip, I'm like no, we're not coming back, our next trip is somewhere else. Yeah, because we're not going to fall in the trap of let's always go to Yellowstone, even though it's awesome and it's one of my favorite places on earth, let's do some other things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's cool, and so we do, and so, yeah, I feel like my kids have a real life, now that you know I was not able to give them a merry-go-round, that's really cool. So everything revolves around just trying to be a good parent? Yeah, and the business is, you know, secondary yeah. But the business funds.
Speaker 1:being a good parent, it does right Well. And then you have a bunch of employees that are also able to be good parents because they have a good job and they're able to provide for their family.
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually, none of the inspectors have kids, but the client care does. Okay, here's the funny story. I have not told you this one before. So my very first employee was client care. We were going on camping, and it used to be. We would go camping for two, three days and I would just be a stress case because I knew my voicemail was blowing up. Yeah, there was no phone reception there, and so when we would come off the mountain as my phone would start to connect back to the service, oh man.
Speaker 3:We would just go through all the voicemails and call everybody back and see what inspections I could salvage out of those voicemails. Yeah, well, at this point we were getting so busy that it was like there's no way to do it. So my neighbor had just been laid off. I was like I will give you a hundred bucks to babysit my phone for four days or three days, whatever it was. I literally gave her my phone, I didn't even show her eyes and I'm just like just here's a piece of paper at 9 am, 2 pm, just get their address yeah, phone number, email address and we'll figure it out when I get back. And I figured she'd be feeling free for jobs. I got back, my schedule was full.
Speaker 3:She put me out for the entire week. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Every slot.
Speaker 3:I'm like I've never been this busy and I was just like so you just got laid off. She's like, yeah, and you know it's really strong, stressful, because she has a child with very special needs, so she can't be away from her child. She's like I really would love to work at home position, but and I can only work from nine to two and I can't work any other hours other than that and that's all I can do and I can't find a job that will fit these restrictions. And I'm just like you're hired, yeah, and she's still with me to this day. Really that's cool and yeah, because and her life is chaotic. So basically working for me is like her vacation in the middle of the day, so she can be at home with her kids, pick them up from school, take them, drop them off, works nine to two and she's the most pleasant person on the phone and just she keeps the schedule full that's amazing, that was the first.
Speaker 3:That was my first employee and that's what they say in IEB. Everyone goes a you're a marketing person first or an inspector first, and Greg always says operations. Yep and Dude. You're crazy, Don't know why. Why would you hire operations first? It makes no sense. But you know what I followed the process I did. Greg said I hired operations first and he was right. Yeah, first hire is operations you get on, they start to answer.
Speaker 3:Even though it was only 92 and it to, I had to go back to answering the phone myself and if she took a day off, well, because you know work Monday through Friday at the time, so like Saturdays would cry that she would not answer.
Speaker 3:I have to answer the phone myself. Yeah, and then we went. We got so busy. We hired another mom who so the first client care coordinator and she would cross street from us and her kids and my kids went to the same school. The second one we hired, who's still with me to this day as well her nephew went to the same school. Oh, wow, so it's all this, just it's mom's thing through all moms, yeah, and then, yeah, every client care accordingly we have as a stay at home mom.
Speaker 1:That's cool, I think, one of the things I've noticed with IEB. I have heard you kind of say this a few times but like hey, what do I do next? And they're like this is what you do next. You've taught you already named. Drop a few people with in IEB who have said like well, this is what you should do next. And you just said alright and just did it. That man and you have found success with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, a lot of people come to me. I mean like dude, you're like. You know the kind of joke is I'm like the poster child of IEB because I'd String doesn't one man shop. And then I built this business and moved on to a newer level and you know, I had six inspectors, one out five. But and people like, how'd you do that? How did you grow in such a short amount of time? I'm like I don't know, I just do what Greg and jerk told me to do and with like and Rob told me to do, and yeah, everybody else and I be who just dealt me along the way, and I don't know, I just follow the program, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't have any secret sauce, and me either, I just I say that all the time. I'm like I just like, I just run the play, like, hey, what do we do next? You know, and all these guys who are two, three, four, ten, 500 steps in front of me, like in their businesses, they've all gone through the same growth patterns and problems that you and I have faced. Our companies are about the same size but, like along the way, this path, that's like what are you now? And? And they're just like well, I would do this, this and this. And you're like okay, I just do what they tell me to do and all of a sudden, it's sure enough, I'm finding some success in that.
Speaker 3:You know, for the longest time it would just be like I get up in the morning and, you know, take a shower and be like, what would Blake do if we had a freaky Friday moment and suddenly in my body and I was in his like, what would you, yeah, if Robin Wayne Were to move to LA? What would you if harmony brown bought the house next to me and said I'm done with Texas, I'm coming to California? What would she do? Wow, and that's Kind of been my mindset, is I? The joke would be I was gonna get a tattoo that said what would Blake do? I never did, but that's funny.
Speaker 3:That was just kind of my thought of like, well, okay, they're more successful than I am, but there's still people, so what did they do that I'm not doing? And I was just, and if I got stuck I would just sit there and dwell on it like, well, what would break doing this point? What would Robin Wayne do in this point? What would harmony Brown do in this point? What would this person or that person do? And then, you know, I also got a shout out to Heidi Anderson in Ohio Come, basically my best friend in IEB.
Speaker 3:He messaged me randomly one day and then we started just talking on Facebook, mentioned for every day for like years. Oh, wow, we didn't even meet. Huh, we didn't meet in person until like years later. And people be like, so tell me about I don't know, I've never actually met him. It's like, isn't your best friend? Like we talk every day, but we've never actually met. I mean, now we have Right, but you know each other very well. But and we would just bounce ideas off of each other, what if we did this? What if we tried that? Have you tried that about this? We would just bounce ideas off each other and you know, then we'd implement them and see what would work and report back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's kind of. I think that's one of the biggest values inside of IEB is that you're in the room or in the conversations with people and those conversations end up leading to personal growth and business growth and, and you know, like that's what I love about these events even is like, so there, yeah, that's fantastic content from the stage, yeah, there's fantastic zoom calls that happen. But, but, like this week, like we've only been here a couple days but I've had so many fantastic Conversations with people in the hallways. I've had a few aha moments for myself of stuff I'm battling with that. I'm like, oh man, somebody says, well, have you thought about this? And all of a sudden it's like man, that was brilliant. I think that's one of the things about joining this community is that you end up making friends who are on the same page as you go in the same direction of the same mentality, same mindset, and and those friendships and those relationships really Turn into personal and business growth.
Speaker 3:I mean it's good because we're spread out all over the country. Yeah it's not like.
Speaker 1:I'm Well yeah, you and I, I'm in New Mexico, you're in California Like we can share business ideas and I can be so open and free with you because I know you're not in my market, you're not gonna come compete against me. But, honestly, like my number one competitor in my market actually has joined IEB and her and I have built a pretty decent relationship Wilbur inspections and so we still collaborate and brainstorm and even though we're our number one and number two people in the State, and so I love the that attitude of IEB and how it's like let's just collaborate together and let's elevate the industry together.
Speaker 3:I still remember the first time I met Blake in person. We were in With IEB, used to do events at this hotel, and there was a little breakfast bar and I'm like getting there getting my sausage and eggs in the morning, and there's Blake. I'm like, oh, you're like. He's like you're always helping me online. He's like, yeah, I'm hoping to help you. Like, but don't you have a really big company's a gap? Don't you have something better to do than help me all day? He's like, yeah, I don't mind, right. And I'm just like, holy moly, I mean now he's super busy, but but then I'm like you've got 20, 30 employees and yet you're answering my little questions, my little one employee. But he would just answer all my questions and you know and and rob them, one kind of do the same thing.
Speaker 1:And Then you know, and those guys are running like the biggest companies in the industry, like that. They're both probably top five in the whole industry massive organizations, and yet they'll take the time to answer and help little guys like you and me along the way. I love that. That's one of the best things, one of my favorite things about IEB.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I mean, and then like running into other people who are on the same size and okay, which just bounce ideas off each other, and I have you know what's the people I talk to almost every day and Facebook manager, I've listed people I will call once a month and what's people I call every two to three months. And you know, unless people I always make sure I talk to when I'm here.
Speaker 3:Yeah people and all like, if I get in a certain situation, I Know this is the person to call. Yep, and maybe I don't call them all the time, but I know, like, for this situation I call this person, for that situation, call that person. Yeah, I've got people all over the country and everyone take my calls and and it's great, and people like, what do you think about this person?
Speaker 3:Oh, I call that person when I have this problem because I know that person is well versed in that problem and so, yeah, people you know in Texas and Florida and All over the place that you know, like I've got the number on speed dial and maybe I don't talk to them all the time, but I know I can in a situation and I know they'll take my calls and, you know, help me through it.
Speaker 1:So that's awesome. Yeah, I be is a fantastic community.
Speaker 3:I really I don't know what I weren't fired. Yeah, I don't know what I'd be doing right.
Speaker 1:It helped me radically. Like it helped me so quick, like it helped me radically. Man, you know I love having you on the show here. I think it's been a really fantastic episode. Your thoughts on social media and education and and like seeing your passion for your kids and your family is is always super encouraging. I bet there's people listening that are gonna be curious on, like, how I want to get a hold of you, asking me more questions, getting contact with you. What do you think the best way is for someone to get a hold of you or contact you?
Speaker 3:You know email the office email. You know don't check my own email anymore, but they'll reward it to me. Yeah, I am just a letter. I letter M at. I am home instructions calm. Okay and the office numbers 818-298-3405. Okay, that's the best way. Of course, I'm on Facebook and you can always find me there.
Speaker 1:That's incredible, man. Well, thank you so much for being on show on the show. I've really enjoyed this and I can't wait to talk To you again next time. All right, thank you, man.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to Empire State of Mind. For the home inspection industry and beyond, our passion is to elevate the home inspection industry with mindset, strategy and tools. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review for more. Follow on Instagram at IEB coaching and don't forget to hit the website at wwwiebcoachingcom. Learn about IEB at no cost and have all your questions answered on our open call once a month on the third week of the month. We hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on the Empire State of Mind.
