Ian R: Welcome back to the Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today we have a special edition. I’m gonna call this a new series called drinking with Jay. I think we should have like a champagne bottle cork opening right about now. You know, drinking with Jay, how are you, Jay?

Jay Wynn: I’m alright. How are you doing tonight, Ian?

Ian R: Good. Thanks. So we are actually drinking during this podcast, which is probably completely unprofessional but, you know, I thought this would be good because Jay Wynn is a home inspector and a friend of mine for many, many years, and we’ve always come up with our best ideas when we’re sitting around with a glass of scotch or some homemade brew or something else going on. So I figured this would be appropriate.

Jay Wynn: Yeah, come up with some pretty bad ones too, though. Oh, well, yeah. They all haven’t been gems.

Ian R: Yeah. This podcast is actually a gem and we got this idea, we were drinking some homemade wine around a campfire and we said, hey, this would be a great subject. Before we get into our subject, what do you drink, and Jay?

Jay Wynn: Actually, I am drinking a Scotch that I found when we went over to Scotland, we went to the town of Peebles and the family rented a house out there. So I went to the main town there and I walked into the liquor store and I asked the guy for scotch, I wanted something nice that I could drink down by the river. He goes, You American. I said, Yep. Do you like bourbon? Yep. He handed me this scotch. He said this one is for you. It’s called Glendronach. It’s about a seven-year-old scotch. It’s moderately priced and he was right. It’s just a delicious Scotch that I really, really enjoy. So that’s what I got on deck tonight. A Glendronach. How about you?

Ian R: Glendronach. Okay, well, I have what’s called the accidental cask. So one of our previous guests, a mutual friend of ours, Thomas Kubiak. He gave me a bottle of this. So only Tom, you have to know Tom, he invested in a cask of scotch, like, Okay, I didn’t know that was the thing. So he has a bottle. So they give it to you cask strength. So if anybody doesn’t know what that is, it’s about 120 Proof depending on how old it is a little bit more a little bit less. It’s the alcohol content that is ideal for aging. It hasn’t been watered down yet to get bring it down to a palatable level. So this is the first time I think in my life, I’ve actually added water to scotch. I usually drink it straight. Just totally neat. This time, I’m like, oh, yeah, a burn. So I add a little bit, but it’s delightful. I like it.

Jay Wynn: Yeah. catering They’ll get you if you’re not careful.

Ian R: Oh, yeah. Well, maybe the podcasts will get a lot more interesting.

Jay Wynn: We have an hour for this.

Ian R: Yeah. So we’ll see how that goes. Tell us about yourself. Jay, tell us a little bit about your background, your home inspection, business, that kind of stuff.

Jay Wynn: Well, I’m not a real fan of talking about me. I kind of take some of it for granted but it does play into being a home inspector pretty well because I grew up in the trades grew up around the trades always been building always been doing stuff. I guess even from a really young age, I’ve always been attracted to it. You know, I would hang out with my grandparents hanging out with my grandfathers in particular always doing some building something fixing. When everybody else is going fishing, or you know, going, doing whatever I was down on the shop with them, so kinda took to it early. My father was a union floor installer. So when I was very young, I started practicing with him and worked summers with him all the way up through High School. Then in 11th grade, instead of staying in school, I went to the vocational program that was offered over in Saratoga, Warner and took their construction and building trades program. I really, really loved it. So right out of high school, I just started in the trades, I started fixing buildings. I got into in particular renovations and remodeling, which anybody in the trades knows a whole lot different than going in and building a nice new house from scratch. You get to go into real places, and you get to work on old things, and you get to see a lot of unique problems. So I did that for quite a while. Then about eight years ago, for different reasons. I decided to make a career shift and I had a friend that encouraged me to get into home inspections. So I finally listened to him and started doing that about eight years ago, took about two years to build it up the first year was spent working and building the home inspection business but honestly about a year and a half into it, I was pretty much a full-time home inspector. Then within two years, it was me because I’d set a five-year goal, but I actually hit my five-year mark in two years. So two years into it. We quit construction, quit all renovation and remodeling, and just been doing home inspections. 100% Since I’ve looked back,

Ian R: that’s awesome. I can remember doing one of the first jobs that I ever did with you. Many many years ago you were putting up some paneling in some kid’s room. And I was and I think I was refinishing some cabinets up in the kitchen. And like I can hang out with this guy because you’re like the complete opposite inspecting style. like we have a very similar style. Like if you look at our reports, they follow the same pattern. We call out the same things. And the same way. It’s, it’s kind of funny. But when I walk into the room, I’m like, Hey, everybody, what’s going on? Let’s talk, you know, welcome to your home inspection. You walk into the room, and everybody’s like, did he steal my lunch money when we were kids?

Jay Wynn: person to say that I’m afraid but yeah, I tend to get very focused on the building, which is what, therefore, is good. I try to make that clear when I go on, like, Hey, don’t take it personally. I just really get into inspecting. So I get real quiet. Don’t be alarmed, which is a good thing, you know?

Ian R: It’s funny people, people like that, like when people talk about you. Oh, he’s so nice. I’m like, really? You didn’t wonder, does he? Is he carrying a gun? Or is he gonna attack you? Like, no, yeah. That’s what we liked about him.

Jay Wynn: It’s almost like, yeah, he’s a pirate, but he’s our pirate. So we’re good with it. Yeah, exactly. It’s been good. It’s been good for me. I enjoyed it. I really liked it. That’s the thing, I really get a kick out of what I do. So I don’t dread going to work. I like home inspecting. I like being in buildings. I like construction. I like seeing different things. So whether it’s new construction, the stuff they’re doing now with the techniques, and then different materials being put into play, or it’s 150 or 200-year-old building. I mean, there’s just always something neat to see. So I really, really liked that and honestly, I do enjoy the people for the most part. You know, we tend to focus on like the 10% that really annoys us but 90% of the people are really good people. They’re decent fun, but you can turn in an inspection and do a really stressful nerve-racking experience. Or you can all have a little bit of fun with it. I think over the years, I’ve kind of learned to lighten up and have a little bit of fun with it so yeah.

Ian R: You know, it’s funny, you mentioned that because that’s actually a nice lead into our subject because we do focus on the I say one percentage, one out of 100. There’s an old home inspector in our area, Larry McGann, and he’s retired now, but I remember him years ago saying, one out of 100 clients are just complete turds. That’s the one you focus on. So then you think the other 99 or two, and it’s not really true. Cutting down on that one out of 100 that pops in is very important. So that’s why we talked about this podcast theme of firing clients and blacklisting agents. I love the title of that because it’s just so aggressive. I can hear the hearts stop of home inspectors as they’re driving in their trucks. Listen to this podcast right now. First of all, I don’t think we fire enough clients but second of all, I think I might have been the first home inspector or area to start blacklisting agents. I don’t know, because I remember I started doing it. Everybody was like freaking out there. Like you blacklisted them. I’m like, Yeah, I don’t need that. I don’t need that stuff going on, man, you know, brings too much trouble. Do you find that in our industry, maybe sometimes we don’t fire agents and clients enough?

Jay Wynn: I really do. I’m the fact of the matter is, and this is something that I learned even in construction. There were days when we had no work, you know, things were dry, things were tight, and you would take any job that came along. Then you realize that the person you were working for wasn’t worth leaving your home to be with, they were just absolutely obnoxious. At some point, you hit the wall where you’re like, I just should have stayed in bed. That would have been a better use of my time. I wouldn’t be sick to my stomach right now. I wouldn’t have this individual nagging me and on my back pointlessly, by the way, we’re not talking about legitimate conversations. We’re not talking about legitimate complaints or the things that come up. We’re talking about the type of person that we’ve all run into, before we look at the person you go, how can you be this miserable chronically and still breathe air? You know, just seriously, it’s like, there are some people out there that are just absolutely miserable human beings. I think once we don’t? Well, it’s like, oh, I’m

Ian R: I’m just laughing because the Scotch is kicking in, I think.

Jay Wynn: No, actually, not. I’ve had a wee sip. I was thinking about I was thinking of an individual, in particular, that was then when I was doing construction and just made me live.

Ian R: Was it me Jay?

Jay Wynn: No, but you just realize that there are some people that are not worth working with. Then the trick is to start identifying them. Figure out what their tells are. Because most of the time if you stop and you dissect the situation, you can go, oh, yeah, there was a sign. Here was another site. Here was another site and you start putting it together. Then you can start kind of predicting when somebody’s going to be very difficult. There are some indicators I found, you know, we’ll talk about that. A little bit, but it’s funny, Larry said one of the 100, because actually, I have found the exact same thing. Yeah, I will track people that call back, whether it’s a major complaint or a minor complaint, and you know what it is about one and 100. Then maybe once a year, one of those will turn into a serious issue that I’ve got to address. So Larry was pretty spot on. If we do 123 400 inspections a year, that’s a lot of headaches. So if you can get rid of those people, you can cut out a lot of the stress that we experience.

Ian R: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, you mentioned how, basically, those are the people, you don’t want to get out of bed and be around but there’s also a financial consequence. I remember years ago, I did an inspection. The agent, just something didn’t sit right with me. So you know, $500, for the inspection, went on home, this is like maybe 1314 years ago, and it turned into days, weeks, even a couple few months of just craziness. Ian and we need you to comment on this email from FHA, we needed to come to you to comment on this and do this and then re-explaining things. It was just, it was insane. So I calculated the hours, I made less than minimum wage on that, that inspection with all the hours and time I put into it, not to mention, to be honest with you, I can’t let things go, I care about what I do. So it’s hard for me to let things go. If you care about what you do, that’s going to rattle around in your brain a little bit and it bothers you. So I also lost work because of that, because now I’m spending two hours on the phone with this agent who’s becoming a problem, instead of spending two hours in a real estate office or spending two hours on an inspection. So yeah, there’s a cost factor.

Jay Wynn: There is, your emotional health takes a toll. I think that’s kind of one of the interesting paradoxes of what we do to be a good inspector, you have to care about what you do. Yeah, you have to put something of your soul and your heart into it but then if you are emotionally attached, when you have conflict, when you have difficulties when you have complaining people, it takes a part of you too. The guys that just emotionally divorced from it, frankly, burnout lose their edge, and they’re not very good inspectors. On the other hand, people invest so much emotionally into it, that those guys burn out bad too. So you kind of got to walk along with it. I think that’s why finding these people and identifying them is so important. I don’t know about you, but my patience is limited. It’s like a resource. I only have so many hours in the day, I only have so much patience. I only have so much mental energy I can devote to something. So if I can find somebody that’s not going to needlessly sap that and make them disappear before I ever have to deal with them. That’s money saved. That’s time saved. That’s heartache, saved and to me, that’s a win. I don’t think anybody expresses it that way. I think we’re so focused on building our business and getting agents and referring agents as we work so hard to get a referral from an agent, that we have this idea that every one of those is solid gold, but the fact is, some of them just aren’t worth working with.

Ian R: Yeah, you know, it’s kind of, it’s kind of funny. Who do we want to be at McDonald’s? Or do we want to be the fancy restaurant where you have to call ahead? And so there’s a restaurant down the road for me. I called it one day, and I said, Hey, I’d like to make reservations for Friday, it was like Monday or Tuesday. They said, which Friday? I’m like, Oh, this can’t be good. I had to make reservations three weeks out for this place. I mean, it was fantastic. You know, it’s not something you go to on a Thursday night, you know, it’s a special occasion kind of place, but fantastic. I had to give them all this information. If I missed my reservation, I, you know, I’d lose my ability to make another reservation for like a year or two. Like it was insane but I did it. Now if I so they’re picky about who they serve, and rightfully so they’re boutique, debit. Now, McDonald’s, I just go up there and that’s why you see these videos online of people throwing shakes back at the poor worker making minimum wage, because they just take every client, so we get the proverbial milkshake thrown in our face when we take every client.

Jay Wynn: Yeah, and I agree with that. It’s like, there are guys out there where they want to compete on price basically follow the McDonald’s, or you could say the Walmart business model but that means you have to deal with everyone, and all the complaints and all the wine, I honestly would rather charge twice as much and do half the inspections. You think about it if you have one in 100. That’s a problem. You do 100 inspections to make your wage, why don’t you charge double, you know, do 50 inspections and then maybe every two years you have to deal with something like this or however, your period is I’m not saying do 50 In a year but you get the point. Let’s charge more Let’s weed out the people we don’t want to work with and let’s spend our time and energy where it does good with people that care and respect what we do. I think that another reason that people don’t fire agents is they don’t necessarily appreciate the value of what we’re doing as inspectors.

Ian R: You know, talking on that point of why inspectors don’t blacklist agents. Agents are the quote-unquote, gateway to the home inspector. You and I both know that there are a lot of agents out there. We are, how do I put this? We are more pivotal in the real estate industry than we give ourselves credit for it, I’ll give an example. So I blacklisted an agent years ago, it was not pretty, like calling on the phone screaming at me after inspections, whether she was the buyer’s or seller’s agent, I really don’t know what was going on. It was around the same time I blacklisted this other guy who was just causing trouble too and just making all sorts of difficulties. What ended up happening when I blacklisted them, particularly this one agent, she called back to apologize because what was happening was, you know, you do, let’s say, your home inspector, you do 500 inspections a year, that agent likely only does 10. Or let’s say they’re a high-producing agent, they do 100 You’re doing way more inspections, and they’re selling deals. So now if you’re the premier agent in the area, you’re not going to compete with the Premier Home Inspector. So what was happening was, that clients were saying, Hey, I called in to do my inspection and he said his company won’t do business with you. Now, they lost referrals, they lost their edge that started hurting their business, she apologized. You know, it wasn’t like this whole Hey, just start working with my clients again. She’s like, you know what? I was in the wrong. I got this weird power trip, blah, blah, blah. Can you lift the blacklist? Sure. The other guy, just ended up losing business, he wouldn’t do a thing. You know, it didn’t bother me. Because it didn’t affect my workload. We have more power in the industry than we give ourselves credit for as home inspectors.

Jay Wynn: Yeah, and I think that’s probably true. I think it takes some time to build to that point. I think a lot of young guys get in the habit of working with everybody I say young and just I mean, starting out in the business, young, wet behind the years, not established but you reach a certain point where yeah, you start realizing what you bring to the table and what you’re actually contributing to the transaction and what you are contributing to, to your clients. You know, when you walk into a house, they’re absolutely in love with and they are blown away and they’re just so excited to be there. You’re like, Okay, I appreciate your enthusiasm but your foundation walls blowing out, there are powderpost beetles that have been through the main beams in this place, you’ve got a major mold issue in the attic, and this lovely bay window has been leaking for 10 years. You just disclosed or found 3040 $50,000 with the problems, maybe for a fee of what 500 bucks, now, we are saving people money, we’re keeping them from investing, you’re making the biggest purchase of their life and putting it in a money pit. I mean, we bring a lot to the table. To do that we have to be incredibly well trained. Now, I kind of took for granted when I started this exactly what a home inspector had to know and how good we had to be. After a couple of years of doing this, I thought wow, not only is this a hard job, it’s a needed job. You know, maybe I’m putting us on the back but I just I’ve seen guys and do it. I’ve seen guys that can’t. There are actually very few guys that I think are good inspectors. So I don’t think we fully appreciate sometimes what we’re contributing to the real estate transaction and what we’re giving to our clients as far as service. That’s important and then once you get your reputation as being the guy that sees things, the guy that takes care of his people, the guy that has your back, then yeah, once that reputation gets out there and people want to work with you. If you say I won’t work with this agent, for whatever reason, I found them unprofessional, I found this or even if you say I prefer not to work with this agent, because of stuff that’s happened in the past, at some point that agents gonna go, wow, this is hurting.

Ian R: I think the big thing, I think you kind of brought me back to reality a little bit there. You know, it’s easy for me and you to say that, hey, we’re blacklisting this agent, because we’re established businesses. So when it comes down to it, though, even the new guy should consider blacklisting agents, because there’s a good way to start off your business and a bad way to start off your business. A bad way to start off your business is working with agents that don’t have the same values as you do. I see it all the time. It’s interesting. When we look at our referring agents, I look at the agents that refer me and they think like me, and I don’t care if this house fails, I want to make sure that they’re in a good house. Those are the type of agents that refer me then I see some other inspectors that you know, we’re not gonna name names, obviously, but I’m like a little bit sleazy, maybe not doing as well as they could. And then I see the same agents with that same thought process of just getting the deal done. They’re the ones who refer that home inspector, we’re going to find our niche. The reality of it is simple math. Say your goal is to do 1000 inspections, you just want to be a crazy busy single-man operator, the average agent is going to refer about 10 inspections per year. That’s about how many we get on average from our agents. So you need 100 agents. In our market here in upstate New York, there are over 4000 agents, I don’t need 3900 of those agents to like me, they can hate me, I only need 100 of them to like me to have 1000 inspections. You’re going to be a crazy busy inspector, you should be a multi-inspector at that point if you’re shooting for that. So that’s even less. If you want 200 inspections a year, you need 20 referring agents. That’s not hard to get. It doesn’t matter if some agents don’t like you. The turnover rate for a real estate agent is a lot higher than the turnover rate for a home inspector. So that agent you see now might not be here next year.

Jay Wynn: You know you hit a nice point that says it’s okay. If some agents don’t like you, I would take that a step further and say it’s really good if some agents don’t like you. Yeah. When we talk about blacklisting, there’s one caution that I’d say whether you’re a veteran, or you know, you’re just starting out, I would say, make sure you take your ego out of it. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean, don’t sit there and say, well, this person got on my face, but I’m just gonna sit there, I’m but I’m never doing business with them. You know, sometimes, as home inspectors, we get legitimate feedback from real estate agents, and we should take it and we should listen to it. I’m not talking about constructive criticism, I’m not talking about observations, I’m not talking about things that they say that could help us improve what we do. To be honest with you, some of the best feedback I ever got was from agents that said, you know, what, you might have been right, but your manner of delivery was way off, and you scare these people, or you didn’t write that up strong enough and my attorneys having a hard time, right. It was legitimate stuff. You know, sensitive about things, you’re just leaving with your ego, that’s going to hurt but if you take legitimate criticism and feedback, I think you’re gonna take years off your learning curve and be a better inspector. If you have certain agents that don’t like you, that probably means you’re doing your job. I was thinking about one, we did this marketing campaign, we were offering a new service, and we decided that we would send out an email to our top 100 agents, top 100 referring agents offering a discount for a new service that we were rolling out just to kind of let them know we were doing it, get things going. Put it on their recommend to-do list. Well, we sent this to one in particular and I got the nastiest, meanest email I’ve ever gotten from somebody. It was loaded with profanities. How dare you contact me you blankety-blank, you are a blank, blank, I hate you use as you cost me. This was in his email, he said, you cost me over $50,000 on a house, and there was nothing wrong with it. So you are this everybody that I talked to says you’re this, we all hate, you take me off this list. I looked at that email, and I go, Wow, he’s really upset. So I pulled up the inspection report, and it was this, Oh, this guy and come to find out. It was a flip. It was a flip and the flipper owned the house. He was also the listing agent and he had tried every trick in the book to cover over major, major, major problems. We caught them. We audit and we call them out. My report said very specifically what we found to the point where he couldn’t refute it. So in that case, if he hates my guts, and all of the people he does business with hate my guts, and they think I’m the worst person in the world. I think that’s a win. I don’t want anything to do with them and a business standpoint. I want those people to shake when they see me come in as the inspector because they know they’re not gonna get away with it.

Ian R: Yeah, I think that’s very well said, especially the part you mentioned about not leading with your ego because that can happen. Sometimes we get a little sensitive, I’m just going to blacklist this person blacklisted. Maybe they’re trying to help. That’s how we grow is, hey, you know what they said? We call this out and somebody looked at it afterwards an engineer and he said we were wrong. I like to know about that stuff. Okay, how was it? How was I wrong? Tell me about that. That’s how we learn. When we’re talking about blacklisting agents. I’ve been blacklisted too. I have entire offices in the area that have completely blacklisted us. We won’t work with them. They’re too thorough. I’m like, is that what you and those were their words? Is that what you tell their clients? Like, hey, we can’t recommend Ian or his company there because they’re too thorough. If I were a buyer, I’m like, hang on a second. So you’re gonna recommend somebody that’s less thorough? What kind of service are you providing, but either way, never put a dent, even when I was first starting out, never put a dent in my business. I just moved on to the next set of agents. Let’s get into the nuts and bolts, Jay, because what are some things we can do when we blacklist an agent to do it professionally? To make sure we’re not leading with our ego, and still not alienating the rest of the market? I think that’s what guys actually worry about the most, you know, small community real estate and everybody talks, you know, et cetera, et cetera. How can we do it professionally?

Jay Wynn: So I apply what I kind of think of as the baseball rule, and three strikes and you’re out. So that means I’ll give agents chances. I’m looking for a few things. I’m not looking for some, one of the things I’m looking for is, how do they deal with issues as they’re presented? We find major concerns, what do they do with it? Do they contact quality contractors to take care of their people? Or do they get some pocket man that’s going to do anything they say, or wanted us to move a deal through? So who do they contact? How do they take care of their people? That’s one of the things I’m looking for. I just say that because I’ve been on inspections where it was obvious problems, and you know, trying to take care of my clients, and the agent has a contractor in his back pocket or a septic guy in his back pocket, that will pass anything because he knows he has no liability but wants to keep getting referrals from his agent. So the feedback is inevitably Well, my guy said you were wrong. So I looked for guys like that. When I say that three strikes and you’re out rule, I don’t mean mistakes. I don’t mean issues that come up. I don’t mean confusion. I mean, in my mind, those are actually chances to shine. Mistakes happen, problems come up, miscommunications happen, and how you deal with them, demonstrates your character. If I catch somebody being deliberately sleazy, or unethical, that will be a different story. Generally speaking, I try to give people a lot of leeways, and a lot of space before I say, I’m not working with me anymore.

Ian R: Yeah, I think you’re a little bit more lenient than me. I don’t give them three strikes, I usually go, I usually go by the level of what they’re doing, like. So I remember one. I think I called you right after this one because I couldn’t believe what was going on. We like to tell each other stories after something crazy happens. So I’m up on this roof and I’m looking and I say, hey, there’s no kick-out flashing here. This is a problem. As I’m up there, the agent walks up and says, Get off of that roof, the seller says you can’t be on that roof. She’s in the front yard. This is like a neighborhood. I won’t go on, say a party. It’s like a little neighborhood get-together and all the people are watching. She’s yelling at me from the ground. So I got down and she kind of threw a fit through the whole inspection going on and on about how I shouldn’t have been on the roof, walking on the roof, damages it, yada yada, yada. So I knew these buildings, and I knew what was happening. So I said, Hang on, let me just a little attic access in the garage. Let me go take a look. I go, Hmm, interesting. She goes, You can’t tell me this place is a Mac. Then she stopped right there as I just shine my light up. There was just wood rot all running down the side of this wall. Easy like six, seven Kay’s worth the damage because there’s interior damage and everything. She just literally walked out. So she did create other issues later on. Like she was getting upset at the level of work that the contractor wanted to do. I shouldn’t have been on the roof anyway, even though I found the defect. You know, her, it was one strike, and I let it go but I did it very respectfully. I think that’s the key. I didn’t get upset. I didn’t tell her she was getting blacklisted. It helps that I have a call center because I use America’s call center. We’ve had them on the show here. I just said if anybody calls with this agent who’s either the listing agent or the buyer’s agent, just kindly pass on that inspection. So when people call it Don’t say, I don’t work with her, this and that. She’s a terrible person. I don’t even tell them the story. Nobody can connect the story to her except her. She’s listening. She’s listening to this show. Why are you listening to an inspector podcast? Just really respectful. No Name bashing. Just move on with life. Yeah. So when people call now it’s just like, oh, I’m sorry. We can’t do that inspection. You know, have a great day. Okay, thank you. That’s it. Once in a blue moon, somebody will push the issue and they’ll email me. Why won’t you do our inspection? What about this? What about that you did an inspection for my father-in-law. I’m like, Okay, well, and I still stay respectful. We won’t work with that particular agent. That’s as far as I’ve ever said it. We won’t work with that particular agent but I’m sure you’re in good hands with another home inspector. That’s it.

Jay Wynn: Yeah, that’s that’s a good approach and I think that some of the new inspectors or even older inspectors fear that they’re going to alienate the real estate community. The fact is, I don’t think any of us blacklist an agent lightly. We don’t do it frequently. You know, and this is the thing, we’re talking about it, but I can think of maybe five agents off the top of my head that I don’t want to work with. At this point, after eight years, I couldn’t even tell you, I’ve probably worked with 1500, maybe 2000, different agents, even the listing side or the buyer side. So it is a very, very small number. It’s not something done lightly.

Ian R: It has to be done. It does have to be. I think that’s the point. If you didn’t blacklist those five agents, you would be in a world of just unhappiness. So now you’ve taken that from one out of 100, to maybe one out of 200. You can kind of live life a little easier. Yeah.

Jay Wynn: And that’s huge. The other thing, too, is that there are certain agents that generate a tremendous amount of emails and clients, just fuzz a few years ago, I learned about something called the 8020 rule or the 2080 rule, you try to figure out what 20% of whatever you’re doing produces 80% of the results, or in converse, you figure out if you can figure out what 80% of your stress is coming from what 20%, you let it go. I found that there were some agents that were causing most of my negative emails, most of my complaints, most callbacks to clients most difficulty with contractors, and I was able to narrow it down to just a couple of agents. So I was looking at the business they weren’t giving me versus the headaches they were generating. It just wasn’t worth it. So that was another standard tool was that I probably cut my complaints down 90% by letting go of two agents in particular. I was just tracking the numbers and seeing, you know, when a complaint comes in, who was the client? Okay, what was the inspection like? Who was the buying agent? Who was the listing agent, and when you start seeing that pattern develop, too, you can start identifying that there are certain people that they’re just generating headaches, and it’s just not worth it at some point?

Ian R: Yeah, and just going back to the point you made before, too, it’s just like any other industry, there’s always going to be an annoying person, and a great person standing in the same room in the same industry. You just want to hang out with a great person, if you can get rid of the people that are causing most of the headache. Perfect, that’s great, then you just solved a huge problem in your life. Yeah, we’re not saying that every agent is bad. Matter of fact, most agents we work with in our area are fantastic. I love the agents we work with, you know, some of them I’ve known for many, many years. They’ve helped me out in situations I help them out, and they take good care of their clients but we got to get rid of some of the bad eggs. Yeah. Going back to the point that I talked about before, agents who are kind of a little sleazy, also tend to refer the sleazy home inspector to they also tend to attract the clients that are problems, problem agents tend to attract problem clients. So let’s talk about clients for a little bit. Sure. So blacklisting an agent is the big one. That’s the hardest thing to do. Yep. At the same time, firing a client is not done enough, either. I find that I don’t know about you, but I find a lot of guys are like, well, there was no evidence, or I didn’t have enough evidence to fire them. There was nothing really crazy going on but the opportunity really hadn’t presented itself yet. Why do you think we should before the evidence presents itself? In other words, if there’s a big problem after an inspection, should we consider firing clients, even if we’re slow,

Jay Wynn: Even if we’re slow because again, it comes down to, they’re just not worth the time and investment are certainly not worth the money, but it’s not worth the emotional investment. There are people that will latch on to you and just drain you. I don’t know but things keep getting crazier. I like going home, I like you know, being able to rest. If you love what you do, as we talked about earlier, when people do that, it takes something from you, it takes a bit of your piece away, it takes a bit of your sanity away, and you’re never going to get rid of them all. You’re always going to find one or two that slip through. I also found that they typically show some signs and some indications that they are going to be a problem. I have a file on my computer marked potential problem clients. I do, I work with something that’s particularly difficult. I will take a PDF copy of that inspection report, shoot it right over the quick description of what they were like, the mannerisms that I noticed different little things, and then I wait and see if it develops. Fortunately, in the last few years, I’ve been able to catch them prior but previously, I wasn’t able to spot them. I would, sure enough, pull it up. Oh yeah. On-site. They did this. They said this, they acted like this. They were a problem later. So you start to identify some of the markers at a time. Or you can if you look close enough.

Ian R: Yeah, and I think we need to delineate when we actually fire a client. So there’s firing a client when they first contact us, I think that’s the easy one. They start asking, do you have E&O insurance? Can I get a copy of that? How much are you insured for? There are some red flags. That’s when you refer them to your competition. They go back to Google and find somebody else. You know, those are some pretty clear ones or if we’re answering our own phones, and I think our, you know, my call center there America’s call center, I think they do a good job of screening out some of the more difficult people for the most part. The hardest part of firing a client is either just before or on the inspection. Yeah, I think that’s where it’s hard and I never did that enough. So I had a client, many, many years ago, probably, probably another 13 years ago. They said, We want all these tests on our water system that are well, underwater purity system, and everything tested, I had never even heard of, we’d have to special order them out of state, it was going to be several $100 Just in lab results. They kept asking questions and questions and questions and being really difficult about it. Like not just saying, hey, we want to be healthy. Can you help us explain this just being very difficult about it? That should have been my first sign, and I didn’t fire them. So I spent hours on these days, actually. Then they’re like, Oh, we just moved on to a different house. So they hired me. The agent, as I pulled up said, you should have fired these people. I’m like, jeez. He was right because actually after that inspection, he let them go. They caused nothing but problems. 10-year-old roof in beautiful condition. They tried to sue me afterwards because they said the roof was bad. never went anywhere. They’re just trying to see if they could just make trouble and get some free money out of it. They made all sorts of other troubles call me up, yelling at me. You know, silly things, nothing ever actually wrong but it was just weeks and weeks of that and stress. You know, it just wasn’t worth it. What I should have done is after the agent told me that stopped the inspection and said, Listen, whatever it takes, we’ll get you a new Inspector, I don’t think I’m the right guy for you. I’ve done that. Have you done that? Jay, have you ever stopped an inspection and let a client go?

Jay Wynn: I have recently actually a little bit different situation, the people weren’t being disagreeable per se but I got there and it was a for sale by owner. When I got there, the woman said you know, she has full permission, everything’s good, we’re good for the inspection, and went up and knocked on the door. The seller didn’t realize we were doing an inspection that day, because she’d never been informed and come to find out the buyer hadn’t bothered to communicate to her that we were coming. So she hadn’t cleaned the house. She was nervous, she was embarrassed. Then while I’m talking with the seller, I found that they didn’t even in fact have a signed contract. So there were no real estate professionals, and they decided not to use any agents. At this point, they wanted me to do a home inspection with no signed real estate contract. Then the lady I was working for who was actually a very nice lady kept saying. Well, what I need you to do is give me estimates for what it’s going to take to get the house the way I like. I say well, you know, I don’t actually offer estimates, because I’m not going to be the person doing the work. Well, she said it again during the course of the conversation. Then I’m looking at the house, I can see that the seller, she says, I told her everything that was wrong with it. I said, Oh, so you mean like the front porch is collapsing? Well no, about the chimney that’s failing? Well, well, no. So the seller wasn’t fully upfront with disclosing things. The buyer didn’t really want a home inspection, she wanted estimates to fix the entire house, and she didn’t have a signed contract. So there was no agreement there that bound anybody to anything. The service I was going to offer was not what she was looking for. So I ended up looking at her and I said, You know what, ma’am I appreciate you wanting me to take a look at this but I’m really not the person that you want. You want an estimator to come out and look at this house for you, somebody that will actually do the work. So when they can put numbers to it, I realized this is disappointing, but I don’t think you’re going to be happy with me taking your money because I am not going to give you what you’re looking for. You need to go this route. Now I lost an inspection appointment, I could have been out and I could have made, you know, whatever, another inspection, but I also dropped just a huge headache. I know it was made because of all the different scenarios or the different factors that led up to it that I could see. I could just see it coming. So I just respectfully and politely said, You need somebody else. I shook her hand. I said I wish you the best of luck. I got my car and I drove away.

Ian R: You know and sometimes they’re not always as clear-cut as these two situations you and I just brought out but I remember you one-time saying trust your gut because your guts usually your subconscious picking up on things that you’re not paying attention to and it’s true. I had one where I fired the client because it was not a safe house. It was not safe structurally. The people there were not safe to be with it was in a bad part of town. So I said they weren’t a problem client, but I’m like, Listen, I don’t think I’m the right guy for you. This is what I see and I don’t think I can do the inspection today. I’ve never I’ve fired lots of clients over the years. I’ve never had a problem with a client firing me. Never had a bad review or anything because you never want to walk in there with ego and aggression. Already on defense, address it. Pull yourself out of it, because you haven’t done any work yet. And say, okay, something’s not right here. Let me pull myself out of this and say, What will make them happy and get them on their feet? So getting them on their feet is okay, I’m letting you know this now. You don’t have to pay me or I’ll return the fee and we’ll get you a home inspector that’s maybe more comfortable with this situation. Yeah. So trust your gut. I like that expression because I remember you telling me a story. You pulled up to an inspection one time and turned out it wasn’t a really good situation. I don’t remember all the details. Then afterwards, you’re like, Man, I feel good. Leaving that. It turned out it was a little bit of the worst situation. The guy out there was drinking. Do you remember the situation now?

Jay Wynn: Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. I arrived at an inspection a little bit early. It was out near the Massachusetts border area. I don’t typically cover a whole lot. It was up in one of the hill towns. I got there early and introduced myself. Hi, I’m Jay, I’m down here for the home inspection. Thank you for getting us in. He immediately started getting aggressive and confrontational. So I said, Okay, well, I understand that it’s, you know, intrusive and invasive but here’s what I’m here to do. Then he starts, well, you’re not going in here. You’re not doing this. I’ll be and he starts swearing. His body language starts getting exaggerated and he starts waving his hand and flailing his arms and like reaching over and picking up a piece of pipe that he had laying there. He’s, you know, he’s getting increasingly aggressive and hostile and I hadn’t even started the inspection yet. So I’m reading his body language. I’m like this, this is something that’s wrong here. So I said, You know what? I say, Let’s just wait for the agent, the client gets here. Then we’ll, we’ll go through and we’ll, we’ll do the inspection. I was walking around the side of the house and his son and grandson were present. I just made a comment. I said, Well, this is I’m sorry, to agitate you. I’m sorry that the gentleman’s side is getting upset. This was a big dude, I was talking to you know, I’m, I’m 592 100 pounds. I’m not very physically intimidating. This guy was like, six, five, and probably 240, maybe, maybe 250 and just a big old country boy. The fact that the old man was getting agitated. He turned he looked like a school kid. He’s like, Oh, well, well, I did. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want him. I don’t I can’t control him. I can’t. He started getting real agitated and scared that the old man was upset and I just kept looking at things and reading the body language of the situation is not good. buyer’s agent showed up and I says sellers here he’s agitated. I’m not going to do this inspection today. There are just all sorts of red flags here. We’re not doing it. He kind of said, well, you know, we need to suppress it. No, we’re not doing this. So I shut it down, got my car started to drive away, I figured out a courtesy, I would call the listing agent and explain to the next inspector that comes there, that the seller really shouldn’t be present and the listing agent made me aware that that particular individual had some emotional issues that maybe he hadn’t been regulating. So it, Yeah, and so he said, You know, I think he’s off his medication and this and that he’s not a bad guy but which is all the more reason not to push the situation. So the red flags were there. By all rights, we could have said, we’re doing the inspection, you agreed to it, you signed the contract, but my gut was going, something’s wrong here. After the fact, I found out that we did actually have an emotionally troubled individual. You know, if I stayed there and started doing the inspection and found some, God only knows what his reaction would have been. So we shut it down. One time, it was just it wasn’t the buyer. It was I’m not doing this because my gut says we’re done.

Ian R: You know, I think that illustrates too there’s more than one reason that we have to, quote-unquote, fire a client. Sometimes it’s not the client themselves. Sometimes it is I’ve fired clients because you know what? They are not the type of people I want to work with. I had one who wanted me to make up defects. I’m like, this isn’t going to work. He’s like, Yeah, no, it’s not. I’m like, I’m gonna go, he’s like, Okay, I’ll find someone else. You just leave but then there’s also the situation around it. Do you really want to be at that house? So both the stories we just told had nothing really to do with the client? Not everything has to do with the situation. So sometimes we have to fire a client because of the situation or the home that they’re buying. Yeah. got to let them go. So there is a chance where you could get a bad review or something like that but at the end of the day, I have never felt bad about letting a client go. If I’ve ever got that inclination, I’ve always felt good afterwards, I felt relief.

Jay Wynn: That actually happened to me. A client called, and he asked for an inspection that was way outside my normal coverage area. When I explained that to him, he says, what you know, given your reviews, and your everybody says, you’re excellent, I really want you to look at it and it’s everything it’s going, I want you to do the house, the pest inspection, radon, water sample, well, flow, septic, basically everything we could offer. So I said, Well if you weren’t doing all of these inspections, I’ll make an exception. I’ll come down to the area. So it’s no, it’s pretty straightforward. I actually had this both on the phone and in email communication, if you’re doing all these inspections, I’ll come to the area. I figured I’ll lose money because I’m gonna lose the afternoon inspection but it’s a nice trip and why not? Right? Yeah, well, about maybe four days before the inspection, he contacts me and says, Oh, I got great news, the seller is going to replace the entire stick. So you can take that off. I don’t need a good flow now. We’re gonna drop the radon. So you just come down and do the home inspection. So that’s not what we agreed. You know, I made it very clear what my position was and why we do this. So I contacted him. I say I understand if they’re not doing it fine but our agreement was contingent on me doing all of these inspections and offering these services. So frankly, it’s not worth my time to travel down there, just for the home inspection. Well, he blew up, and he was a keyboard Commando. So he decided that he was going to try to run my reviews down and badmouth me, and he went on every platform he could do. He just started, I can’t believe this man left in the lurch like this, and just over and over and over again. So he actually did write me a bunch of bad reviews. My attitude was, that I’d rather him write bad reviews about a service I did not perform than have to deal with this guy nagging and complaining that I missed a spider web in the attic for the next three years because that’s the kind of he was, okay. The nice thing about Google and a lot of these reviews are you can do a little background check a lot of times on who’s writing the review, and he actually had a pattern of, I don’t know whether you’d call it cyberbullying or not, but his pattern was to go into a business, demand something outrageous, and then get online and run them to the ground until they gave him what he wanted. So it was pretty easy to figure out who he was and what he was doing. So I’ll take that bad review every day all day long because it’s just those are the kinds of people I absolutely do not want to do business with.

Ian R: You know, I remember you telling me about that one and I looked him up. He had never given a good review to anyone. You’re like, Hey, can you check out this guy and I look, he had done nothing but leave bad reviews all over the internet for everyone. So cyberbullying. I remember looking, it was like, one place he was mad at the tacos that he got. I’m like, How angry of a person are you that you’re just this upset about tacos? I’m like, it’s a little taco shack in the middle of nowhere. I’m like, How bad could it have been that you’re getting? Like, it wasn’t a pleasant review. So, you trusted your gut, and you let the client go, fortunately, wasn’t at the inspection. So I will say before the inspection is always easier if you can nip it in the bud. Right when they first contact, perfect. Halfway through the inspection. That’s a little harder at the inspection. That’s always the hardest.

Jay Wynn: Yeah. So and some of the things that I’ve learned to identify prior to the inspection. You actually talked about one, if they asked you to write major defects before you even looked at the house. That’s a red flag. Like, when I first started doing this, it was probably my 10th, maybe 12 inspections. I had a woman who was so excited to use me she wanted to look at his house. It was beautiful but then in an email, she says, and when we’re there in your report, you’re going to fail the roof because I want a slider to look at it. You are going to call out the electrical panel because I want an electrician in there. You are going to call out an engineer because I want the whole structure evaluated. I’m sitting there going whoa, no, no, no, no, no, we’re not doing this.

Ian R: Red flag after red flag.

Jay Wynn: Red flag after red flag. So I sent a very polite Well, I thought it was a polite email. Maybe it was a tad aggressive but I just said ma’am because I don’t know if you’re you’re aware of this, but what you’re asking me to do is unethical and frankly, I believe illegal. So I’m not going to do this inspection. I’m sorry. You’ll have to find somebody else. She blew up my computer. She sent me a bunch of nasty emails trying to say that’s not what I was asking. You’re misinterpreting it. You This, but I had the email, I had it in words. So I called her up and I figured I’ll talk with her. Just see what’s going on, I will talk with her come to find out, she actually had a bad inspection in the past, and she blamed her home inspector for missing what she says was 10s of 1000s of dollars worth of defects. She didn’t want the same thing to happen. She was very sorry that I took it this way but what I was hearing was the last guy worked me over, I hate him. I hate all inspectors, and you’re going to pay for what he did to me. That’s what I kept hearing as she was talking. Yeah. again, at the end of it, I just said politely, that she was going to be looking to do business with somebody else. We just weren’t a good fit. So sometimes you just got to say no, and look for those red flags. That’s a huge one if they ask you to do something unethical or illegal. There may be guys out there that do it but it’s not me.

Ian R: Yeah. So as always, there may be somebody, you may be listening to the show right now and think I don’t have problems like that I take every client, I take every agent and they never have problems. Good for you. That’s awesome. We’re not saying that you should go out there and start firing agents and firing clients but if you do enough volume over the years, it’s something that you should really consider adding to your repertoire. Yeah, I remember a home inspector recently telling me I never have problems. I love everybody. I’m like, Hang on a second. Didn’t this person just send their attorney after you? Oh, yeah. Well, that was just one letter out of 100. I’m like, okay, then what about this person? Well, yeah, but that was like two years ago. I’m like, Okay, well, hang on. So you don’t love everybody. Not everybody was a great client. Sometimes we have to let people go. Always be polite, always be respectful but we got talking about this again, over scotch and a campfire. One of the best things we’ve ever done business-wise is, number one, blacklist a couple of agents that aren’t worth it and number two, let a few clients go. No matter how slow we might be, and why guys are slow right now. It’s, it’s for your own health for your own business, be the fancy restaurant that rejected me. Not McDonald’s will just take every client and get a milkshake thrown in your face.

Jay Wynn: Well, I mean, but this kind of ties into a lot of stuff that we’ve talked about over campfires and a lot of it ties into how you want to run your business. How do you build to the point where you can be selective, what do you want from your home inspection business. So it really dovetails into a lot of other things, too. I agree a lot of guys should be ready and willing to let people go much sooner than they do. This is the other thing, too that you’ve certainly heard the adage, well, the customer’s always right but I don’t have customers and I have clients. The difference being is I am a highly qualified professional, and they are coming to me from my experience, for my advice, my observations and for what I will document, I am the one that’s going to run that show. If it sounds arrogant, I do apologize for that but that’s the fact. I don’t go to my doctor and tell him what procedures he’s going to do what medications he’s going to give me, I don’t go to a lawyer and tell him what laws he’s going to write for me or how he’s going to fill things out. These are professionals that I rely on and it’s the same thing when I’m doing their inspection. I’m a qualified professional, and it’s going to be this way and that’s why. So that’s why in my mind, I don’t have customers, I have clients. I like working with people who understand that they get excellent service, I take care of them, I watch out for them, I’ll watch out for them for years after the fact, and I take care of my agents who are really trying to do right by everybody. At the end of the day, that’s where I kind of take my base position. So if I meet somebody that thinks they’re going to be running the show, or bullying me or having me do what I’m told, that’s not a good fit. I think other inspectors really, I would like to see other inspectors develop that attitude. I think it will improve our industry a whole lot.

Ian R: Yeah. I think that’s a great illustration. We don’t go and tell our doctor, well, hopefully, we don’t tell our doctor what to do. We don’t start yelling at them and leaving the bad reviews when we think they gave us you know, a bad physical or whatever. It’s a profession. We’re not We’re not McDonald’s. So you know, I’m actually running a little bit low on Scotch Jay, but I tell you what, this has been a fun podcast and agrees with us or not. Jay’s done really well in business. I think I’ve done halfway decent in business too. Sometimes, in our opinion anyway, let a few agents go let a few clients go. Sit back, have a glass of scotch with Jay and enjoy your evening. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes drinking with Jay. Thanks a lot, Jay. Appreciate you being on.

Jay Wynn: Thanks for having me.

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 info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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