Ian R: Welcome back to the program or I should say take two because I forgot to push the record on our first session. Welcome back to the inspector toolbelt talk. We have with us today, Aaron from America’s call center. So, Aaron, you told me that I wasted our first introductory comments like a golf swing, the first swing is just practice but here we go again. So, Aaron, tell us what you do over there in America’s call center.

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, first, Ian, Thanks for having me on the podcast. I’m an avid listener and I always appreciate everything you do for the inspection industry and kind of the learning moments that I get to take away. My current title is GM for America’s call center. So recently, Paul, who was the owner for the longest period of time, moved into kind of a back position, if you will, I’m not allowed to say retirement, he’ll come through the screening can grab me that I kind of tried to my best case, fill his shoes and take ACC, to that next adventure that next journey. So, everything from snap support technology, finances, budgeting, and patching drywall did some of that this morning, you name it, it’s under this hat.

Ian R: So patching drywall is in your job description?

Aaron Ziomek: Not officially, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoy the housework kind of stuff anyway. So, it’s probably more stress relief for me than work.

Ian R: You know, I’m glad to hear you say that because, you know, I get teased sometimes because the people call me a workaholic, I feel good after doing something I’m like, if I’m tired, I want to go make something or fix something. Like I fix a toilet or something. I’m like, man, it’s a great feeling.

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, you see the accomplishment? The team makes fun of me here. I’m a big one guy. So, I have OCD with the grass at the house. So, they were always giving me a hard time because I know it two or three times a week. Sometimes they make memes of me cutting it with scissors, which just hasn’t been proven true yet. It might be out there on the internet.

Ian R: Well, we might have to have another conversation after this to figure out if that’s true or not. You know, I really am glad you’re on the show today. So, for everyone out there listening, the reason we have Aaron on is for a couple of things. First of all, we had a really great conversation, talking about actually the subject after we had Paul on from America’s call center. Aaron, you come from a background that’s outside of the home inspection industry. Then you get brought into the home inspection industry because you’re the GM for the call center just for home inspectors. So, you have a unique perspective and that’s very important. We as home inspectors and we as an industry sometimes think this is the way that we do things but you have an outside perspective of saying, Why do you guys do things like that? You know, maybe we could change it this way or that way. So, tell us a little bit about your background and what you bring to the table in the home inspection industry because I thought it was a fantastic combo.

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, so I spent the better part of the last 11 years before joining ACC, with a telecommunications company that did both wireless and wireline, the big red checkmark, if you will. You know, coming out of school, getting that first job, and then just progressing. progressing through all of the roles that I was able to take from sales to operations to strategy, I had a lot of good leaders, and a lot of leaders I learned, you know, what I didn’t want to do. So, I think that gave me a really good foundation of just who I become long term and what interested me and where I felt I, you know, found the energy for work from it, a lot of that was, I was naturally curious, still to this day, kind of talked about it earlier, jokingly but I always like to stay busy, I always in watching to learn how things work, and always tinkering and taking things apart. So, coming into this industry, and, you know, learning as much as I could about the current ACC team and how they view inspectors, their customers, the inspection industry, I wanted to keep an open mind because there’s a lot of obviously, things are done certain ways because they make sense. Not to be ignorant of any of those things, but try to understand them and take them apart and get to the root cause of why things are done the way they are. One of the things I found was there are a lot of misconceptions, I would say from an outside consumer of how things actually work when you really get, you know, in the weeds of our particular industry. It gave me a lot of humbling moments to understand like oh, so as a consumer, I call an inspector, I get a report. I review it and then I have a conversation with you know, the sellers of the house. All those layers behind that there are pretty surprising for me, but it excited me because I thought there are probably some things here that make a lot of sense and I’m excited to learn the whys and how, while we’re at this point for this process or this approach, but then also, the question you kind of mentioned is, could we do it better? What’s the different way that we could approach that? How can we make the lives of the inspector, the homebuyer, and the agents easier by looking at it in a different way? One of the skills, I think I own quite a bit in my own career was trying to take myself out of my four walls, or remove those horse blinders and just observe and ask questions, be curious, to a fault. Then once you’ve earned the right to essentially understand why things are the way they are, then you’ve earned the right to then provide suggestions or make recommendations to how things might be improved or simplified, or, Hey, don’t even touch it. It works. It doesn’t need to change and we’re good to go.

Ian R: So, I think that is the most valuable part of your perspective, too, because if multi-billion-dollar companies that hire outside consulting firms that know nothing about what they do, but they know how things work, and they take it apart. So, you would assume a multibillion-dollar company would know how things do and how things go and how to do them in the best way possible but they don’t always that’s why they hire somebody, they pay someone for that outside perspective, looking in. Well, why do you guys do it that way? Okay, that makes sense but what about this other aspect that you think about this, I’m guilty of it, too. I’m a home inspector, that gets stuck in his ways very easily. This is the way it works and this is how it goes. You know, 13 years later, I’ll be like, oh, man, I still do it the same way it did 13 years ago, and that that’s probably not right, because the world doesn’t last that long in any kind of mode. So, we need to change and adapt. But one of the things that you talked a lot about in our last conversation is a phrase that we often use in the marketing industry, customer journey. What’s our customer journey? Aaron?

Aaron Ziomek: I think that if I was to distill it down to an emotion, it’s how you feel after everything’s said and done. Right? So how do you start with whatever process, whether that’s your home buying process, or you’re going even more macro and looking at your inspector choice process? Then once you’ve made that choice, how does the actual interaction? Or how does that product or service actually work out for you? Then when it’s all said and done, are you satisfied with it, and you feel like, you’ve been fulfilled with your choice, right, as a consumer, and buyer, take any product, you’re, in most instances making a choice, it’s your one control of the path you’re going to take. So that’s your journey, your setting, whichever band, you’re going to go left, right, or center. Sometimes it’s a, you know, choppy River, sometimes it’s smooth, and sometimes it dries up. But that journey from making a choice of how you want to move forward, the experience of that choice, and then being able to reflect back on it is it’s not just an important human journey but from a consumer’s standpoint, a very important thing to keep in the mind as we’re trying to provide a good customer journey, how can we make that decision process easier? How can we make sure that we smooth out those rough waters or make sure that the rubber band doesn’t drive off? Then how can we make sure that when they get to the other side of wherever they’re going, they can look back and feel good about the decision that they made? You could call it the customer journey, you can call customer experience, you can call it just doing good business being a good human. I mean, there are a lot of terms that happen. The journey itself is that emotional process that someone goes through with any decision that they make and so in our industry, you know, it’s finding the right inspector and having a good scheduling experience and being educated. Then that inspector does what they do best, providing an amazing house inspection. Then, you know, providing that report. The person buying the home feels like, Man, I got supported, I had a great journey. In the beginning. I got the product or the process or the service that I liked. Then that’s how you kind of make that journey matter for our customers.

Ian R: Yeah, and I think that’s a great description, of how you feel when you’ve gone through the entire process. I think a lot of us are home inspectors, and I’ve been guilty of this too, we think very linearly. When it comes to the process. You need a home inspection. You schedule with me, I get paid. That’s not a customer journey. That’s just a very small section of it. So, when I talk with other home inspectors, they say, well, especially on this podcast, we talk about customer experience, how do they feel when they look at your website? How do they feel when they see reviews? How do they feel when they talk to you? Was it easy to schedule with you? A lot of times we’ll get hung up on little things. Well, I don’t need to do that little tweak here a little too. there, but all those little tweaks are one more little wave that they don’t have to write down that river that you mentioned. So, tell me what you think a modern customer journey would look like. Like, if we went back to the 90s, I think it would be someone searching on Yahoo or Alta Vista. Whoever is at the top of the page. He’s asked Jeeves, yeah, somebody paid somebody using an electronic waiter to Google things for you. So, you kind of pick off the top person there don’t really review a look at you just call and or user, your agent would recommend, and it was a very linear journey years ago, what does a modern customer journey look like in the home inspection industry?

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think, at the current moment, there are so many avenues. The first one always, I always placed very high kind of on the pedestal is the word of mouth, right? How, as a business owner, or an employee providing a service, it’s how you make people feel that will determine if they share those feelings with others. That is very powerful, it can’t be bought, most of the time, for sure, there are probably a couple of instances it could be. That great customer journey, where at the end, you almost want to be the marketer for that person that you know, who provided the service for you. I think that’s one of the strongest ones that I think even in today’s digital world, that still carries a lot of weight, that word of mouth that, hey, use my person, they were there for me when things were rough, or they just went above and beyond or they understood or circumstance that carries a lot of weight, then then you have those digital avenues. Whether that’s, you know, paid search, showing up higher on Google search algorithms or, you know, making sure you’re managing your, your brand, and your image on your website under review sites. You know, social media, we could even be a part of that and join the groups that matter, right, if I’m a new homeowner, and I’m going to move into a new neighborhood that’s maybe in a different state, what are the Facebook groups I joined, or my spouse joins off the bat to try to understand it’s probably around schools, it’s probably around, you know, services features that I might need within that move. So how am I representing myself within those areas too so I think the personal reference still carries the most weight for me personally, like, I’ll always put that higher up than, you know, 105-star reviews because there’s a human behind that, that I have a connection to. But I still think reviews are important. I think in 2022, everyone’s kind of got that same review methodology, especially if you think of Amazon, right? Four stars or above last six months in the country like you have this filter set to get rid of some of the noise that we all see in reviews, and ACCs probably within that Gambit, as well. Really get the good ones that give you a good idea of what you can expect on that, that customer journey and then help you make that decision. What I’m really excited about, and I know you and I kind of went down a rabbit hole is what does the future look like? Like? What does that customer decision customer journey look like? In five years, perhaps even three years? You know, more and more things are becoming augmented reality based so I can buy furniture, but before I buy it, I can put it in my living room and see how it looks right? If you’ve got an Amazon or IKEA website, you can do that today. Then yeah, VR, which is I put on goggles and I wherever it is, I’m at playing golf, flying a fighter jet, you know, playing with lightsabers to a musical being. Then you extrapolate that to the inspection industry, it seems so far-fetched but the reality is, it’s probably coming. So how do you engage with customers that want to review a home inspection and virtual reality? How do you set yourself up for that I’m really excited for what that could become for our industry, as well as many hundreds of other industries, A because I’m a big self-proclaimed geek but B I think in a digital world, that helps bring back some of that human interactive element of as close as you can bring in person without being in person. So imagine being an inspector and you have a VR tour of what your inspection might look like. I can watch that in VR and see how you’re very meticulous. You’re educating me through certain aspects of your process and your home inspection services and why they’re important. Does that give you more credibility with potential customers than 25-star reviews on Google? And so I think we will start to see a shift over these next few years of a little bit of migration to more digital interaction than just digital data. question of, you know, text or word reviews?

Ian R: Yeah, and I don’t disagree with you one bit, because I remember, the early 2000s I was one of the few inspectors in my area that had a website, like all that it’s not, it’s just basically a business card that’s never gonna catch. You know that whole internet thing is gonna go away. Now you don’t exist. If you have a website, you know, you need to have these considered basics now. So, you think about things like the metaverse, and if you don’t know what the metaverse is, and you’re listening to this, look it up because it’s actually people are starting to get worried that’s gonna turn how we do things upside down. There are people right now working in virtual offices together? Because they can we actually considered it for our company for certain aspects. We could do a whiteboard in a room and sit there virtually, with the entire team. You also have things like, remember, do you know what Matterport is? Have you seen the report? Yeah, so matter Matterport, I remember when they came out, people like that stupid, just show people a picture. Now, you see that all over the place. I know, home inspectors using that. So that you can virtually go through a house and see the defects that they found. Some are using it on high-end homes as basically the report three to 10 years, there’s going to be a lot of shifts in what we call the customer journey. So, I agree with you.

Aaron Ziomek: That’s the bad report. It’s a pretty big unit today, right? I mean, just like cell phones, imagine if in three years, and it’s a factor, a maybe there’s not as much cost associated with that machine, but they’re just going around with their whatever their phone is at the time, or maybe there’s an accessory to it. It just opens up so much more potential to engage with actual current customers or, you know, validate why you’re the best choice for potential customers and show up where they’re at. You know, that’s another important thing. I have a lot of respect for understanding why aren’t, you know, for our inspection, customers learning as much as I can of why they do the things they do and how they’re marketing structured, and even with internally here at the ACC teams, asking them, Hey, why do so and so. Have their scheduling process this way? What’s the thought behind it? How do we either leverage that to help them further or help others from a collective knowledge standpoint that were given away trade secrets are anything but just understanding? Hey, the successful people, what are they doing? What are they doing differently? What are they doing that’s the same? Then how do we help the broader industry to understand that you know, there’s always going to be fear and change, but you can leverage change to energize you and push boundaries, whether you’ve been in the business for 4050 years, or you’re just getting into the business, there’s always an opportunity to, to observe other people do things and not be afraid to try.

Ian R: Yeah, and that’s the thing is being willing to try. So just to get a little bit granular on the customer journey. Now. We’ve talked about this before on the show, even online scheduling. Now, about a third of our inspections come from online scheduling, either somebody found us and scheduled online agents will use our online scheduling ACC, they go and they verify it call everybody and they get it all buttoned up, which is amazing. Then two-thirds of people still call, but they have this really roundabout way of getting to us they get a business card from an agent and they check with a family member, then they again, this is part of the journey, then they’ll look us up online and they’ll read our reviews, they’ll visit our website, typically about two or three times before we actually convert that lead. So, it’s very much not a linear process anymore when we’re talking about the customer journey. So, we need to have things in place to be able to rise to meet what the market expects. So even just going back to online scheduling, we live in an era where I don’t go to the pizza place down the road because I can’t order online. So, I go to the other pizza place because I can on my phone, just go click, click, and I have the pizza I want and I show up and it’s there.  I was thinking about that. You’re gonna lose those clients. If you don’t have online scheduling, you don’t have a direct phone number, you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose clients, they can’t call you because they want to ask a few questions beforehand, or you don’t answer your phone. You know, people will expect a quick answer. Now, when I call a business and I have to wait and leave a message. It’s kind of a weird sensation to me. You know, I like somebody to be able to answer the phone right away. Respond right then it’s weird expectations we have as a society. How do we so how do we rise to meet the expectations of a client on their journey? We can get caught trying to fit people into our mold of business. Like maybe we’re not going to talk about the future, but we might at some point. have you back on to talk about the metaverse and how we adapt the metaverse? Meet in person with your ACC agent but how might we rise to meet them right now? So don’t get caught behind.

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, I want, I give a good story and contacts that I think will help answer that internally here at ACC. I’ll be a little transparent. You know, our bread and butter are supporting inspectors so that they don’t miss calls, they can book leads. That scheduling experience is a good experience, it’s a good start to that customer journey. We’re able to upsell and we upsell them. It’s not hard selling necessarily all the time it’s educating, hey, this is what Radon is. I don’t know what Radon is. You know, typically go watch a couple of YouTube videos, but we have you on the phone. We’re, we can tell you what it is and why it’s important. We can ask the right questions to you. Are you going to finish your basement? Do you have kids? So that whole process, then you have the internet? Right, and you have this initial fear of online schedulers is going to take ACC opportunity away from those phone conversations, right, which is our bread and butter for that scheduling and booking solution. So, your initial thought might be defensive on schedule. What I think we did really well here and frankly, I can’t take credit for this is Kim and Danny and Paul and the whole ACC crew here, Paul, even they embrace that. This is the new normal. To your point, you have to show up there, you have to have that online scheduler. How can ACC instead of being on the defensive, look at that glass half full of it and say how do we support it? How do we make it better? How do we embrace it for our inspectors, validate that it is a useful tool, and maybe add that cherry on top of correcting mistakes or you know, making a more personal touch than just an online form that you submit because again, that human element is very important, especially with a home purchase? I didn’t want to submit a form for my online scheduling but if someone calls me and they’re like, “Hey, we’re just so happy to be doing business with you XYZ, and here’s what you’re gonna get, here’s what to expect.” That just heightens that ability, right? So, you got to hold it a pizza parlor because they have the online ordering and then when you get there, your name spelled out and pepperoni on the pizza itself, because they remember you as a loyal customer. Like it’s that extra energy. I think ACC has done a really good job. We’ve got a lot of ideas and a lot of growth to continue to do but I think it’s embracing what is possible as things that maybe appear daunting start to face it right. So, if I don’t know what AR VR is, and how the heck I’m going to enable that for my inspection business that’s been open for 40 years, and I’ve been successful. It’s because I do the things I do very well. Instead of saying, I’m not going to do it, I’m going to push it away because I don’t understand it, I would just encourage folks to be curious, ask questions, and surround themselves with people that maybe can help you or you know, are the point-counterpoint to your thought process. That may trigger things in your mind or experience to be more open to trying new things for getting the right support to, you know, set up, you know, 3d scans of a home or home inspection or using a new process or a new app, you know, as a homeowner, and enabling that so that, you know, you could see all the issues with that were caught on that inspection report and have that forever and build a maintenance plan around it, whatever it might be, I just think you got to embrace change, change is always there. The more you can embrace it and find ways that it energizes you versus being defensive against it, I think you probably lose a little stress. I mean, I know that’s how I am when I coached myself to it but then you learn a lot more and you open a lot more doors. Some of those doors might be you know, failures but it’s okay to fail because that’s where the best learning moments come from anyways, so again, I think what Wayne Gretzky Miss 100% of the shots you don’t take and if you throw a Michael Scott quote on there for those that watch the office, it’s the same thing. So I think in the future, it’s whatever level you are in any business, whether it’s inspection business, or you know anything else, it’s always looking for what’s changing, trying to understand it from a positive point of view, embracing it as much as you can and if you can’t surround yourself with people that can help you and I think that’s probably the keys to getting over some of those initial fears and really changing how you approach your business being stood up and your customer’s values.

Ian R: I tell you what, anyone who anchors their message you know, Michael Scott quote is okay in my book, so my favorite Michael Scott quote is “Fool me once, strike one fool me twice, strike three. I think you brought out a really great point in the fact that we have to embrace change. The world five years ago is very different than the world now. The World 10 years ago, is very different. It’s in like five-year increments. I’ll have inspectors still call me Hey, Ian, I need to get on this whole social media thing. I think it’s really taking off on like it was taking off 20 years ago, you know, or, you know, I’m, I’m really thinking about getting a dedicated phone number for my business. It’s like, you know if we’re caught 20 years behind, we’re, we’re always going to be missing out. So, we need to look at what people expect now. I think that’s hard for us as home inspectors, especially if we were successful at what we did. Like, for instance, in my case, I had a hard time switching to America’s call center because I’ve always answered my phones. I had a hard time switching to online scheduling because now I didn’t get to talk to the client and see who they were first and this and that. All of that kind of melts away when you say, Okay, where’s the market? What do they expect? Then we embrace change. So, people expect, I’m working with a home inspector right now been a home inspector for going on 19 years, he does not have one review online, not one. He’s like, I just never wanted them. I never had any profiles, anything. Then he wanted to know why he wasn’t getting any business because he was missing a critical part of the customer journey. I don’t hire anybody without looking at their reviews, good or bad. Most people don’t, they’ll at least look as part of that journey. So, what are some other small things that you think small or big, that home inspector may be missing out on? When it comes to the customer journey? What are some aspects, some steps on that staircase that we might want to add, so to speak?

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think if I speak from the heart, it’s, you know, we’re all humans. You kind of mentioned it earlier, I wrote it down, it’s like, products get paid, provide service, right? It’s very mechanical. If you view your business that way, and you operate that way. I think inspectors and this is not to say that they don’t do it. The more you can show who you are, and why you do the things you do matters to people. So, you can do that in many ways. You can volunteer, you can show up on social media, you can enhance your website, and you can participate in podcasts. Or you could just really have a good team around you that is able to connect with your, you know, your, your bubble, so to speak of, of your territory. So, I think making sure that you never stop showing who you are, like, Who’s the person behind the brand, who’s the person behind the product, because product matters, that the person behind the product matters more, but it’s not front and center. So, people don’t always quantify it that way. I think that’s very important. I also think you had mentioned it, like the online scheduler kind of being reserved on, you know, maybe setting that up, or letting ACC handle your calls. You know, that’s one of our challenges, if you will, is earning that trust and earning the right but prospective customers, or even our current or current customers maintaining that right to say, we’re not perfect, we are human, we love to show that we’re human because that’s what differentiates us. We’re not perfect, we are going to make mistakes, but we care as much as you care. We want to, you know, we only do well, when you do well. Showing those feelings through for ACC really helps us kind of overcome that. For a lot of prospective customers, when you know this is their baby, this is their business, their phone or website, just handing it over to this group of people that may have never met in person is that’s challenging as high on both sides of that equation for people. If you can show each other who you are as a human, I think that makes it easier to have that trust to face those changes, to push yourself to the uncomfortable zones, and try new things. So again, it goes back to embracing change. Don’t be afraid to fail to try things and never stop exploring new ways. I think you know, I don’t know if it’s a statement or a quote, whatever you might call it is you know Tiger Woods is one of the greatest golfers ever but Tiger Woods is still having a coach and all times he was always getting coached, always being told what to do better what to practice on. I think really successful business people that I’ve been exposed to Paul Zak being one of those is maintaining that mentality at all times when things are good when things are bad. Things are as expected and when things are unexpected. Always, always be willing to change and learn and coach yourself, and don’t be afraid to show the human behind the brand. I think that’s important. It’s awesome to have a really fancy website really smooth online scheduler, and a really good social media presence, representing your inspection company or ACC but also showing the people behind what that brand represents, which I think is equally as important. Especially in today’s world, we’re, you know, we’re on a recorded zoom call, so to speak right now, it matters. It matters to consumers, it matters to your competitors and your peers and your partners within the industry because at the end of the day, we’re all humans trying to figure this, this game out. I think if you can attach to that, and make sure that that’s almost front and center more than the brand itself, that helps you connect with more people. You know, naturally, I feel you have a better shot of growing your business through that type of approach than any other.

Ian R: You know, and there’s a lot of science behind what you’re saying too, about transparency, that’s where a lot of corporations are working hard to be transparent. For better or for worse, we know Elon Musk we know who Jeff Bezos is. We know who all these owners and people who run these big companies are. They try to make themselves more known than in years past. I mean, you had your Henry Ford’s and things like that but these big corporations are like, Okay, we need to be a little bit more transparent, who’s behind the curtain, so to speak. The science behind that is that even just putting your face on your website has shown to increase leads, people actually calling you conversions by up to 50%, by just having your face on there. So having a good brand is important, but the person behind the brand, and I think social media is a great option for that. We may not feel comfortable with it as home inspectors, you know, doing the roof selfies and you know, doing a little video, but you know, we feel like a 13-year-old girl, you know, doing a selfie in an attic, but people like that, they want to see you, they want to know who you are unless you look like a serial killer, you know, maybe take a selfie once in a while and throw it out there. Put it on your website. Get a professional photographer. I think that for me, that’s one of the hardest things because we build websites as part of what we do, in addition to our app. It’s the hardest thing to pry a picture out of the cold dead hands of people who want a great website. I’ll send a sample website and pictures of all the guys on an inspector and they’re like, I want one that looks like this. I’m like, Cool, send me a picture. They’re like, Nah, don’t do that.

Aaron Ziomek: You know, it’s, and I don’t mean to be hypocritical, because I got to work through getting ACC’s website data and that was my big thing. As I said, you know, I want to show the people behind the brand. We’re not there yet. Thankfully, we have a really good customer that gave us a good referral for someone that could help me design it. So I didn’t have to keep going to Reddit and YouTube to learn WordPress code beyond my common knowledge to do it. So again, you know, thankful for an ACC customer, recognizing this and saying, Hey, I think this be a great idea for you, here’s how I can help. The other side of it was, we just had a call earlier this week, with one of our customers ahead, we had a few items that they wanted to talk through whether you know, maybe some of them were mistakes, we’re still going through it other than for opportunities or new ways to approach it. Then a few of them were like clarifying moments between the team. When I was taking that there was always that pressure like I felt I’d let someone down. I think everyone at ACC has that feeling anytime it’s not a great perfect call. There’s feedback given the natural tendency is, you know, we do something or we’re defensive, well, that’s not really the case. What makes it easier for me, as the GM, especially here with our customers is the customers on the other end, were human beings. They laid out all of their feedback and suggestions and input around their team and around ACC in such a way that I was more energized of okay, how do I simplify this? How do I make it better, so that it’s easier to prevent that or correct this, or clarify? Certain, you know, pieces of information or flow of information. So, again, you know, making sure that you’re showing the human element and everything you do because the inspection report matters 100% and you dedicate a tremendous amount of time, work-life sacrifice, probably to a fault to get your business and your reputation to a point that you’re happy with and confident with. I think that’s an inspector mentality. Frankly, we’re blessed to have an industry that thinks that way, versus like a minimal viable product, and just gets the fastest widget out the door. There’s a lot of care that goes into this industry for really what the service that the inspectors provide at the end of the day is which is awesome To your point showing the human behind that and you said, like taking a selfie on the roof, like a 13-year-old, I’d probably guilty of that. You scroll back to my old Instagram feeds at the beginning. Now, it’s just pictures of my daughter, doing all sorts of cool things. Even just showing your passions, you know, like, if I’m an inspector and I like fly fishing, people will resonate. If you say, hey, taking a break from business today to do something that I love fly fishing with my grandkids or fly fishing with my son or my daughter. That’s another thing that I feel like, a lot of people quantify social media. You can have that on your website like, who am I? What am I about? What motivates me? Why am I going to be a great person to do your home inspection? You actually see that in home sales today, people are delivering PowerPoint presentations, and why do you need to choose me out of the 15 other offers on this house? They basically write a story of who they are and why they deserve to have their offer accepted. So, I think you could do that in all walks of life. Even within the inspection industry, as an inspector, showing the human showing who you are, why you do the things you do, and what motivates you beyond just the brand and being on-site. You know, I got it I love there are a few inspectors that do the Tik Toks of crazy things. I just, I show my wife like how, how does that happen? Like, it’s just wild things that you see out there but that’s another form of engagement. Again, I couldn’t find a mixture of that, depending on who you are. Right, as a person that suits your profile, so to speak.

Ian R: So, I think that was a fantastic analogy that you use there that makes us more human, to the people that hire us. That’s what corporations are dealing with right now because we as a generation are going old school, we want that human interaction, we want to see the human behind what’s going on. Corporations are dealing with hatred of big business, we don’t want to look like a franchise, and we don’t want to look like a corporation. We want to, you know, be on Tiktok fly fishing, and people can relate to us. It’s pretty interesting, because an inspector recently wanted to put something on his website, and he’s like, Oh, I don’t know, I want to put something on my website about how I, you know, I care about and I adopt animals and things like that. So, I got a shouldn’t go on there. I’m like, why not? You don’t want to build a whole page out of it but at the same time, you want to put it on there. I’m a human being. Here’s something that I believe in and human, humafies I don’t think you can say that Kenya humafies. That’s kind of strategic, yeah but, um, it’s important. We want to be relatable. That’s what makes us relatable is putting a little bit of ourselves out there. It’s interesting. You mentioned Tik Tok. We mentioned that on one of our podcasts about five marketing ideas. Tik Tok is completely underused but it was the most visited website, even over Google’s most visited website a couple of months ago. I think it was May. So why wouldn’t we want to Tik Tok on there and you think people wouldn’t want to see it but they do? They want to see the mummified squirrel in the attic, they want to see when you turn on the sink, and all of a sudden water starts coming out of the ceiling above you and nobody has any idea why. You know, they want to see stuff like that.

Aaron Ziomek: yeah, I actually just saw one where they put a skeleton, like a fake skeleton on the kitchen island before they put the top on. They wrote like that time capsule note, like, you know, whoever the inspector contractor is, in 50 years when they remodel this kitchen, it’s gonna get a surprise. So that was a funny one. You know, one thing I’m not ignorant to the fact in that maybe it’s not Tik Tok, you know, some people have opinions on tick tock and just social media in general, like you’re, you’re exchanging data for a feeling or a service or an involvement with a community. Maybe that isn’t, you know, you have as an inspector, your, your choice on how you want to represent yourself or, you know, you just go out to eat, it’s not my client base, that’s fine. There are still so many ways that you can gain that that human element through, you know, how you show up in the community to do volunteer time. Do you help others around you that can be advocates for you, you know, and even on your website, controlling your own social media, doing a blog post, you know, every once in a while and finding an easy way to just get your thoughts out there and create content that’s important to you, that shares who you are, why you do what you do. Again, there still is a tremendous amount of value in just pure business execution to I’m not, I don’t think neither of us is diminishing, that it’s not all you know, be a human and everything works out. You’ve got to grind it out. You’ve got to be smart. You’ve got to be able to take punches. You’ve got to be able to stand back up. Sometimes you have to fight back and make sure that you’re, you know, pushing yourself. You’re what you want your goals to be, you’re pushing towards those at all times. Those are definitely those process execution. It doesn’t have to be just that you can have these other elements. When you put those together, and you really are focused on doing both of them, that’s where you see consistent results in any business, not just inspectors, but any business that provides a service to another human being. That’s how you win in the long run, it may not always work now, you know, challenging market conditions, you may say a law, you may see a dip. If you stay consistent, you know, where you want to be in what you’ve got to do to get there and you don’t lose who yourself who you are in the moment because I see that a lot too, where something happens, you know, and it’s an appointment time, and someone changes direction totally, instead of just sticking to what they know they are and what they know they want to be. That’s something I think now I’ve seen more of it, and try to help I personally, I tried to help and say, “Hey, stick to your guns, you can only control what you can control. That’s yourself, what you choose to do with every hour of your day, and what those hours give you back. Once you’ve used.

Ian R: Yeah, and you also bring out a good point about taking criticism. I think that’s something that we often miss as business owners. The My first reaction when somebody has a complaint is to be like, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you know, take get a little defensive. It’s taken me a long time. I’ve gotten better at it, saying, okay, they may have said I didn’t like XYZ wasn’t really about XYZ. What part did it actually irk them at? Was it, you know, ABC, and it led up to XYZ. I often tell my daughter, you know, when people are irritated at you, it’s usually not the thing that they say they’re irritated at you about is whatever built up to it. So, it’s a good post-mortem when somebody has a complaint, thank them, first of all, because the worst thing you can do to a restaurant is just never go back again. Instead of telling them, “Hey, I’ve been here twice, and your glasses were dirty.” Oh, my goodness, are you serious? I’m going to talk to the dishwasher, and make sure that’s better. You just made them more money than they’ll ever realize. So, if somebody takes the time to tell us, hey, you could improve on this aspect of your business, whether they say it really mean or not. That’s where we improve but ultimately, I think a lot of what this comes down to is, that there’s a lot more of the customer journey that’s going to change here soon.

Aaron Ziomek: Absolutely.

Yeah. As you mentioned, there’s the metaverse coming. There’s AR and there’s VR and there are all sorts of things that are going to make our heads spin over time. If we’re just now catching up with what five years ago, was cutting edge, we’re missing out, we’re gonna be behind the ball so far that it’s going to be harder and harder to catch up. So, if we can embrace change, like you said, embrace people saying, Hey, I wish I could schedule online. Oh, man, maybe I should consider scheduling online. somebody complains about you know, your report was, you know, it was kind of hard to read. It was just given to me handwritten, or he did it in a Word document. Okay, maybe I can look at the software that does a nice electronic report that meets and rises to the customer, what customers expect in the customer journey. Now, that’s important for us to evaluate because like you said, there’s lots of stuff coming down the road that is going to change how we do business.

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Again, being curious, I think now more than ever, is, is very, very helpful in any business wanting to learn what’s possible, and, you know, being ahead of the curve doesn’t hurt, right, I think it’s safe to say everyone sends text messages, early adopters, you had mentioned to it as like who tax no tax, you know, I remember back in the day, you have that T nine keyboard and it was like shortcode everything. Now I can send you know, my daughter’s great grandmother a video of her playing in the pool or you know, kicking the soccer ball and it’s just, that everything will continue to evolve and embrace that. Looking for new ways to utilize it within your framework but not losing who you are, is critical to that evolution, because who you are made you to this point today, right? It’s going to carry you through the next and you can define that any way you want. Just make sure that’s always at the core of why you do the things you do. Don’t be afraid to try other things and be open-minded as much as you’re comfortable with and that’s different for everybody. Everyone’s from different walks of life and different points in their life and different experiences but I think, you know, embracing it is always good. You mentioned the criticism, and you’re spot on. I think you and I are very much alike. I hate failing So I think I take criticism hard on myself, and I’ve had to coach myself still to this day is understanding the why and the how we got here. Removing perceptions are the things that I always try to, you know, block out as I’m taking that feedback, whether it’s from a customer, my wife, a neighbor, you know, a friend anyone is, you know, any feedback is always good, even if it’s wrong, it’s good feedback, because you’re able to digest it and notice, you know, know that that’s not correct, or something’s off about it. So that’s the other side is, you know, always seek that feed when you don’t get any, that’s when you have worry. I know for us at ACC, we love we I asked for it a newsletter if you’ve got something if you got an idea for doing something, or not doing something that you know, now I keep trying to beat that drum, because any sort of feedback is always good feedback, especially from your customers.

Ian R: Yeah, like how you brought out even feedback that’s wrong is valuable. Why did they have that perception? Like you just went through and tore this house apart? Why were you doing it? Okay. Let me look back and see where that perception came from. You know, I didn’t mean to tear it apart, I mean, to present accurate information, you know, it might, you might get to the bottom of it and be like, Okay, this guy just doesn’t like that. I found a roof issue, you know, but ultimately, post-mortem, going through complaints, very valuable. Aaron, I love to have any on I think you’re a fellow nerd of mine and I appreciate that. Anytime we can do Michael Scott quotes and work it into a discussion with home inspections. I think it’s a good podcast. Yeah, fantastic information, we’d love to have you on again in the future. Because the customer journey is always changing. I think you bring a lot of valuable thought processes into our industry and I really think it’s a nice refreshing addition to the home inspection industry in general. So, thank you for being on.

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, I appreciate you having me and it’s, it’s been a very, for my journey. It’s been humbling. There’s a lot behind this industry that I think the general consumer takes for granted and I think a lot of people in this industry should, you know, hold their head high and understand that what they do is not, can’t be replicated easily at any degree, and have a lot of pride and I’m still learning as many ideas as I have and what ifs, can we do this. I also have a lot of learning still to do, of why things are the way they are and how we evolve, and how I can personally help that journey. Obviously, the great folks here at ACC can also help with that journey too, because we’ve got a lot of great, a lot of great experience here as well over the years, just from our business standpoint. So very happy to be on and love nerding out with you. Maybe one day here we’ll do an AR VR. We’ll figure how out how to podcast and VR.

Ian R: Meet you in the metaverse reality.

Aaron Ziomek: Yeah, the metaverse podcast. I got dibs on the first one.

Ian R: Okay, sounds good. Well, we’ll get you on for the first one. Any other ideas that you come up with as you continue your journey into the industry? Let us know we’d love to hear them.

Aaron Ziomek: Absolutely. Thanks again.

Ian R: Thank you talk soon.

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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