Ian Robertson
Hey there, Beon, welcome back to the show.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, thank you. I heard you and David on the show last week, and I’m pretty excited to be on this week. So..

Ian Robertson
Oh, the inspection news podcast.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, it was. I mean, it was good. It was good listening. You know, besides all the cringe worthy Star Wars jokes, but other than that, it was pretty good.

Ian Robertson
When he mixed up his nerd culture. I almost lost it on him. I’m sorry. That’s unacceptable to me. You cannot mix up your nerd culture. It was a great podcast. But you know, a lot of guys have asked for you to be back on the show. Because they like having you on for some weird reason. I have no idea why.

Beon DeNood
Yes. But anyways, here, here I am. Give the people what they want.

Ian Robertson
You know, I thought about another name for a podcast, if you could do like a podcast, just yourself. And if you could call it “Beon the Show”, get it..

Beon DeNood
Beon the Show.

Ian Robertson
Be On the Show, and then Beon the Show.

Beon DeNood
Funny, all these years of having a first name as Beon and I’ve never heard anybody do a play on words like that before.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, never, right.

Beon DeNood
It’s amazing.

Ian Robertson
It’s never happened.

Beon DeNood
It was actually I guess one of the like, cards my parents got when I was born, it had the whole thing was just a play on my name. Beon everything. So I guess it’s as old as me, you could say,

Ian Robertson
My name is Ian. So I had to go through life without people ever being able to pronounce my name unless they were British. Now it’s more common, but I was little and people were like, I-N, they’re like, your name doesn’t have an E in it. Like, yeah, no. Okay.

Beon DeNood
I didn’t know that. There were many different ways to pronounce Ian. So like, the other day somebody was talking about hurricane Ian “EON”.. And I’m like, we had an already we had one of those a hurricane E-ON and I’m looking, I was like, oh, like Ian. Gotcha.

Ian Robertson
Ian Miller. Like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Yeah. E-ON Miller. Yeah.

Beon DeNood
It’s good stuff.

Ian Robertson
So we both have very teaseworthy names. I suppose.

Beon DeNood
We won’t start talking about peeing Ian again, so..

Ian Robertson
Yeah, peeing Ian. We’ll stay off of that subject. Boy, everything comes full circle on this podcast doesn’t?

Beon DeNood
It does, man. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
So you know, I thought we have Beon on, so we can’t just talk about any subject, we have to talk about big picture stuff, because Beon’s the big show here. So I want to talk about where in the world our industry is going. So you listen to last week’s podcast with inspection news, or a couple of weeks ago, rather, with inspection news, we see what’s going on with Porch, we see what’s going on with American Family. And actually, I have no way to confirm this. So I’m not gonna say it. But there’s some changes going on there from what I hear. And we’ll see how that ends up. And we see all these big companies kind of jumping into our field. Matter of fact, just the other day Beon, we had a venture capital company, one of I don’t know how many at this point, want to sit down with us and talk about, Hey, how can we get into this field with you?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, it’s actually it’s funny, I didn’t even tell you, you get the emails too. But just this past week was probably a new record, I got three reaching out wanting to talk to us about venture capital and getting into the space. So yeah, everybody’s looking, they seeing the potential in our market segments.

Ian Robertson
And when we say venture capital, these are like real venture capital companies that we look up, and a lot of them we actually recognize just from, oh, wow, that’s a big company they’ve invested in XYZ that we use every day. And it’s like, you know, multi billion dollar companies wanting to get into our field of 20 to 30,000 home inspectors..that’s nutty. But there’s a big impact on what our day to day looks like. And a lot of us don’t think about that. I’ve asked others before. Do you think this has an impact on your day to day? The answer always invariably is no, until I start asking other questions. What happened years ago? Okay, what’s different now? What happened in between, and then they put the dots together, like, Oh, you’re right, that did change how I do business. Before we didn’t think about who had our data, we did an inspection we did a report, I always say to guys, remember when we used to just to inspect, all we did was inspect. That’s what we did. Now, it’s like, you have to be half a programmer to understand what they’re doing with your data, how all that works, who’s getting into the field, they affect how we inspect, oftentimes, what we inspect and what we charge, even the inspection schools, that’s kind of the next big field that’s being looked at by these larger companies. They’re looking at acquiring and or partnering with inspection schools, so that they can affect all the new guys coming on the market. It’s really insane. You know, if we’re in a pool of 100 inspectors, 30 of them are newer guys that got taught by you know, big money corporations that affects what people expect in your market that affects how we inspect. So I get all sorts of worked up with this Beon because it’s, it’s a wild change. It really is. Yeah,

Beon DeNood
Yeah it absolutely is. Now, just to understand, because I don’t even know, because obviously a lot of the focus of these companies and when we look at at Porch, you look at Amfam, we’re gonna get even what Inspectify is doing, right..Their, their moneymakers, their revenue generators are on the backend on the tail end of the transaction with a home inspector. So we’ve got a lead, they had their home inspected, we have some insight into the condition of the home, we can offer things like insurance, warranties, whatever else it whatever it is that they got on the list, they can make money after the fact. Right? So my question real quick, and maybe it’s just I don’t know, if everybody listening understands I don’t, for a realtor, a real estate agent, they can’t offer those services to their client. Right? Does that represent a conflict of interest for them? Or how does that work exactly, do you know?

Ian Robertson
So they actually can.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian Robertson
And here’s why. When I first got into the industry, I’m like, why are all these big companies going after agents because that was a trope for the past, however, many decades agents, they’re in contact with all the buyers, all the sellers, that’s who we want to get this where we’re gonna get our data. But I remember thinking, you know, one of my first years in business, I think I was like two and a half years, and I hit 318 inspections. I’m like, nice. And I remember an agent saying, You’re never gonna make it. And I looked, and she had sold eight homes that last year. And I’m like, that’s kind of a moderate week for me. I’m like, I touched 318 clients, I didn’t touch them, you know what I mean? Like, sounds weird.

Beon DeNood
We gotcha.

Ian Robertson
Okay, you got me, and they only had contact with eight. And I’m like, Why do they have, you know, companies that send out reps, and they would like, hey, offer this warranty, or do this to your clients, take them out to lunch, and I’m like, I feel like I have more contact. The other part of that is, we have first contact in a lot of ways for that aspect of the field. So for the data, the agents typically don’t start trying to sell you on the warranties and all the homeowners insurance and concierge service, they actually offer those there’s programs that agents have out there for them. One of the reasons we never offered any warranties in the past, among many reasons, was the agents in our area actually got upset when we even talked about it. They’re like, that’s the stuff we offer. We won’t recommend you if you do that. We had multiple offices that loved us for years. And they’re like we make money off of that don’t do that. It’s not so much now, because a lot of home inspectors offer it, but we give the data out if we’re doing that, if that’s our thing. So if you’re with Porch and you give data to Porch, Porch starts calling pretty quickly after that, whereas the agent usually doesn’t hand that stuff out. Until after the deal is closed. So Porch is able to get in there well before the agent does. Okay, now maybe agents have or will be changing that process so that you kind of get more of that upfront. But it’s genius on the level of how can corporate America take over a small industry and make a bunch of money and have access to data first from that aspect is genius. From our standpoint, I think everybody listening knows how I feel. I’m going off again. So it does that kinda answer your question. Yeah,

Beon DeNood
No, it’s just a question. Yeah. Cuz I was just trying to understand, like, why is the focus on the home inspection industry and not like, you know, realtors, like, you know, marketing and capitalizing on realtors. But the answer to that basically, from your answer I got is there are so many more Realtors than home inspectors, it’s much bigger, it’s more segmented. So trying to like It’s like trying to hug a water balloon, herding cats, you know, you’re not going to be able to get all of that as unified as the home inspection market, I guess that would would that be an accurate synopsis?

Ian Robertson
Yeah that’s, that’s part of it. Okay. So in my area, there are, you know, three, 400 home inspectors. But there are almost depending on the time of the year or who’s active, four to 6000 agents. So to touch all of the client’s data in an area, would you rather go after you know, 5000 agents or go after few hundred Home Inspectors and each home inspector is worth multiple agents.

Beon DeNood
Right.

Ian Robertson
Slowest home inspector in your market that does 10 inspections a year still does more than the average agent. Right? So you have a home inspector does 300 I mean, that’s where three offices worth of agents.

Beon DeNood
Right right. Yeah. And then there’s the richer data set right so I mean, an agent can take pretty pictures they can say how many you know rooms and everything of what kind of this and that the basic details in a listing but a home inspectors data I mean, that’s that’s much richer, much more information about the home itself.

Ian Robertson
That’s an incredible point. We provide more data on the details of the home things like what they want appliances, pictures of data plates, any issues with the home, oh insurance companies would love to know the condition of your roof when you bought the house when you do an insurance claim three years later when the tree falls on it. All of that stuff the eight agent doesn’t have. So all the agent has is address, listing photos, which are available online anyways. And basically everything they have is already in the MLS are available online. Home Inspector has proprietary data information about the house. So yeah, that’s a fantastic point.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, we understand from past episodes, and anybody that kept up on this conversation so far that, you know, make no mistake, there’s money to be made off of the date has home inspectors generate, there’s lots of valuable information. And that’s obviously why so many are coming into the space. One of the reasons now, I don’t know I’m not sure if you have a clear direction here with us, because if I’m sending us off on a tangent, then so be it. But with because last week, or it was it was two weeks ago, when you did the inspection news thing with David, you guys brought up Inspectify. And that was an interesting business model. Because especially if we looking at standardizing pricing on their platform, to me, I don’t know just thinking about it from a home inspectors point of view, I can understand that there’ll be some advantages to maybe having a like, I guess they’ve partnered with an MLS in South Carolina. So let’s, let’s say you are your home inspector in South Carolina at times it kind of slow, and you just want some regular business and somebody like Inspectify can provide that for you. That’s great, perfect. But as soon as you’re standardizing the price of something, you move it to being a commodity by default. And so now people aren’t looking like oh, well, which home inspection is, is the cheapest? Or who’s the better home inspector? Because as far as I understand this limited contact between the home inspector and the client, I think, right? And their model, I could be wrong.

Ian Robertson
In the Inspectify model. Yes. typically limited contact.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, so I mean, you’re a commodity you somebody comes in and does a job and off you go for you get your money and off you go. Now that does simplify the business model for home inspectors in a big way, you know, to worry less about marketing. But then what is going to differentiate you from the next and who makes the decision who makes the decision as far as how much business you get, and you’re a commodity your basically like, the guy down the road sells that for so much. And he sells it for so much so that the price isn’t an issue. It’s like what am I getting for it. And if it’s at a fixed price, I also want to worry about the quality of the actual inspection. And not to say that any home inspector would ever willingly do a bad job. But just think about it. If you have to do so many inspections to make ends meet, you’re not gonna get to love every client that you’re on. So you just as as a necessity, you’re going to have to move a lot quicker to be able to get through stuff. So I’m just kind of throwing a lot stuff at the screen here to see what sticks. But those were just a few things that came came to mind as I was thinking about that that business model and how it would affect home inspectors.

Ian Robertson
And David brought out the Walmart model. And I brought out the McDonald’s model and I pick on McDonald’s a lot. Have you ever seen the documentary Supersize Me It was called Yeah, many many years ago. Yeah. So there you go. That’s the started my whole rant on McDonald’s. But anyways, great documentary. Loose science but interesting to watch.

Beon DeNood
So if anybody’s wondering you probably all know about Supersize Me. But basically this guy would go to McDonald’s. How long was it a year?

Ian Robertson
Oh, yeah, it was something like that.

Beon DeNood
He had to go to McDonald’s. And basically just all he had to eat was McDonald’s for a year. And if any, if they offered to supersize it, he had to accept right and finish the meal. Yeah, okay.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, it was nuts. But anyways, I digress. But one of the reasons I picked up McDonald’s a lot, because their corporate way of going about things is very similar to what’s happening in our industry. So think about the products that they buy. Let’s just talk about hamburger. Years ago, McDonald’s had to start buying hamburger in bulk of a certain quality and also certain consistency and everything. So they found suppliers and the suppliers said, yeah, we’ll go ahead and do this. And McDonald’s started to pay a fair price. So I see Inspectify basically doing that personally go in, let’s pay them what we consider a fair price. But this is what happened with McDonald’s, McDonald’s said now we’re the biggest meat purchaser, one of the biggest meat purchasers in the country, this is what we will pay for the same quality meat. And I only found out about this because a few years back, basically these meat farmers said we cannot produce quality meat that meets U.S. standards with the prices that McDonald’s is willing to pay us. So then McDonald’s would just go to the next meat dealer, they’d find other ways to cut corners, and the quality of the meat kept going down and down and down until you had these weird little rubber patties that we have now. So that’s basically what it came down to was they controlled the prices after that. So I kind of see the same or similar thing happening eventually with Inspectify. Is it a fair price they’re paying in California and that’s where they’re doing right now is just California. And also it appears that they started from what I can tell anyways, their own home inspection company in Texas but California is where they’re starting standardized pricing. Once that spreads that standardizes a lot of our pricing as I talked about last time. But also what happens when they’re like, okay they have 2000 inspectors, they say on their website, what happens when they have 15,000 or even 10,000. That’s half the active market. 10,000 inspectors, and they say, this is what we will pay for an inspection. Just like McDonald’s says, This is what we will pay for meat, eventually, they’re just going to have to go and find the inspector that will accept it at that price. That’s what appraisers do now. Appraisers just have to accept the price that the management companies pick. And I keep bringing that up. Because this is exactly what happened to appraisers, tell me you’ve met a happy appraiser. Because I have not yet, I actually teach them. I’ve taught hundreds, if not 1000s of appraisers in my classes. And they all say the same things. I gotta get into home inspections, because of the management companies. It really does worry me, Beon. That, that bothers me.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, it’s a really complex issue to try and break down. You know, it’s funny, David brought up Walmart and I just read recently done some reading and learn about Sam Walton, you know, the guy who started Walmart, and he actually, when Walmart started it was, you know, one of the brands that was sort of the the pride of America, you know, Walmart was, was a good brand, because they started off with with a good reason, their reason for starting businesses, they wanted to be able to get products at a fair price to everyone in the country. And that’s what he started doing. That’s why he had Walmart’s showing up everywhere. So his intentions were good. He as a person even he was really awesome. He was known for coming in on Saturdays, because these employees came in on Saturdays, you know, and he would often work the checkout lines with people knew everybody’s names, that kind of guy, you know, so Walmart had a really good reputation. And it was a loved brand, even the towns and cities and whatever wanted Walmart in that community, because it was good, it brought employment, it brought, you know, helped feed families, all that kind of stuff. But after Sam Walton disappeared, everybody knows what happened. Walmart became obsessed with one thing only, and that was price, price became king, and they lost all their other values that their founder had established. And that story, I guess, I see playing out in the home inspection industry, if all of these big companies kind of have their way and just do whatever they feel is best for them, who ends up benefiting, who ends up losing at the end of the day. So obviously, home inspectors stand to lose quite a bit if the industry is controlled by larger corporations. But I think the biggest question I want to want to have answered is the why, what is the motivation? Who benefits for this? From this who, what is the homeowner getting out of this? Do they get better service, so somebody’s reason, okay, you’ll get better, more accurate insurance appraisals or insurance premium, because we know the condition of your home, or you’ll have access to more product in one spot, it’s convenient, you can just you know, we’ll provide you with this and this and this and this. But at the end of the day, especially with fixed pricing, what is the quality of the inspection eventually going to be like you were just describing the meat model with McDonald’s, how’s that going to be good for the consumer, you got stuff missed on on your inspection, just because you’re poor inspector is just trying his best to get through and get out, you know, so it can change the industry in a massive way. And I feel it’s a thing that we need to be talking about and asking these questions and making smart decisions. Because otherwise if we just concentrating on price, and we just concentrating on on a commodity market, we start having commodity market thinking like competing, how am I going to be better than the next guy? Oh, he’s charging so much. I have to charge that much. If that’s the only way that we’re thinking we’re eventually just going to kind of follow the industry into into a bad place. And I think we at least need to start the conversation. I don’t think we have the answers. And we don’t know all the end the questions even to be asking at this point. But we need to start the conversation on this.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and I think we have started the conversation many times, I’m just still worried about, you know, people get a stain on their ceiling. And they say that stain hasn’t changed in years. My uncle always taught me draw a pencil circle around it, like draw an outline of that stain. And then you’ll notice that the stain will go past the outline if it’s continuous. But people are still convinced, No, it hasn’t changed. Because it happens so slowly. We’re becoming more and more comfortable with the stain on the ceiling, so to speak, in our industry. It’s getting bigger, but we talk about it less. remember years ago when ISN got bought by Porch, and everybody freaked out and were all upset and there was the only thing we talked about now we’re all like meh, okay, yeah, but that’s the problem. You know, we’re feeding the lion that wants to devour us, we throw him a thumb and all sudden they throw him our foot and he’s devouring us and then we just kind of get used to it. Yeah. So there is no benefit to the consumer. In my opinion, the consumer is going to get a lesser inspection, the consumer gets a more corporate inspection. And then think about this. I inspect your house, you have private data and you have an insurance claim and the insurance company has to pay out great. Now what happens? Hypothetically I do an inspection on your house and I work for a big corporate company that takes the report, generates it, spits it out. And, you know, next time you have a claim, they’re like, well, the Inspector said off the cuff in his report, you might have one to five years in, in your roof. So now we’re gonna give you nothing, because it was at four years and, you know, try and fight that, you know, stupid stuff like that. That’s just one example of things that I can see being bad for the consumer, but it’s also bad for us. So I’m in the middle. There’s guys right now saying I’m retiring, good time to get out. New guys coming in, saying, I can’t see the difference. It’s always been like this, I’ve only been in it for a year, six months, or this is just crazy talk. I’m just trying to get started. Then there’s guys like, me who’s in the middle. It’s like, I’m I’m a ways off from retiring. And I still remember when it was, you know, the greatest, it still is the greatest industry, I love home inspections, coolest job that you could ever have, doing cool things, finding cool things, taking pictures of cool things. And most of the time meeting cool people, great industry, but that’s slowly getting bled away by corporate so let’s let’s get real with like the venture capital company. So Inspector Toolbelt, we own software. So basically, we have these venture capital companies that constantly I had one the other day Beon. I said, No, thank you. Then they sent me another email, I said, please stop contacting us. And they just won’t stop. They’re like just a conversation, please, just a conversation. And we’ve even had a couple say, you know, there’s not many home inspection software companies out there that are independently owned, and in a position that you guys are in, and I’m like, You guys are like wolves. It’s just like, it’s not, it’s non stop, there’s multibillion dollar companies that are banging down the door, to get to the home inspector through us, we’re independently owned, we have no venture capital, me and you are 50/50 owners. So let’s make that clear. But they like our model. And the one guy I told, I’m like you like our model, because it’s Ian and Beon. And a team of really cool people that do awesome stuff for our users, and we have a happy user base, you inject venture capital in here and bring your corporate America, it’s not the same, it’s not going to be the same, it’s going to be a different mentality. The only thing we can do is take back our industry. And I keep saying that, that’s our mantra, take back our industry. And it’s not that hard. Use an independently owned software company, like us. Don’t give up data to people who don’t deserve it, make money, if you want to use your data, use it. But don’t just throw it out to corporate America, we have ways that we’ll eventually talk about when it’s released, that home inspectors can make more money off of their inspections doing it ethically, if they choose. And that’s the whole point, putting it in the hands of the Home Inspector, I don’t want anything to do with that. Cool, don’t. Okay, I’d love to do that. Okay, cool. Don’t, you’re in charge of your own data. Once you do that, they have nothing to take from you. They can’t buy another software company to access you. Because that’s what they do. Like, oh, I don’t care. I do my inspections the way I do. Okay, great. But they’re buying the software that you use, so they can access you. They have access to you when you use their software. So there are things we can do. Yeah, there’s been a lot of industries where they’ve been able to pull themselves out of the mouth of the lion and put things back where they should be.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s a, it’s a big, bold message. And you know, what thinking of folks who are on software platforms that where they own don’t own their data, where their data is going into some of these big software companies. And I think, you know, one home inspector described it the other day is like, well, it’s like, kind of like being on crack, you know, you just, it just, it just doesn’t know what to do, you know, it feels kind of stuck. And I think that’s how it can be many times is you’ve been on a software platform for so many years, or they have so many features that you are dependent on, and to switch over even to look, it is like so overwhelming, you hear some good things, some bad things. And I think you know, especially if you’re a larger outfit, and you do a high volume, it’s very intimidating to get a new phone, you know, let alone switch your inspection software. So that can be a hurdle. I think the message that I really want folks to hear from us is we are a young, very agile company when it comes to our software. Our main interest is no interest other than serving the inspector, we want to empower you guys with the best tools. We’re not the biggest. We don’t even have probably all the features that you know some of the bigger guys have. But every single month, we are adding new features and we are going to get to that point of critical mass. I think the invitation from me as lead developer for a product like Inspector Toolbelt is if if you are like you know what I’m fed up with So I want to do something, start the conversation with us. What do you need? What what do you need from us? How can we help you, whether it’s imports, whether it’s onboarding, whether it’s a feature that’s missing, or whatever it is, because it’s more, it’s, it’s about more than just us wanting to get more users, we need to build something that is going to be able to, to improve the future of this industry. Because if, if we kind of just all take our hands off the wheel, and like, well, I’m good, it’s gonna be too much work or whatever. Before we know it, you know, it’s like, McDonald’s, let’s use the McDonald’s illustration again. Like anybody who reads the nutritional information on a Big Mac. I mean, it’s insane, right? You’d look at all that stuff you putting into your body, but but we do it, you know, we will go on will sometimes have a Big Mac, I don’t know how many times people have Big Macs. But you know, so you like, no, it’s bad for you. But it’s okay. It’s easy, it’s cheap, I’m gonna do it, it tastes good. But until that time, you go to your doctor, and they’re like, oh, man, you know, your cholesterol is really up, we really got to take care of this, or worse, you know, so I think this is one of those problems, where we got to start talking about some of the boring stuff, it’s gonna feel like we reading nutritional information, sometimes, but but really, you got to think about the future here, and make the decision. So you know, maybe we the burger joint next door and our sauces doesn’t taste exactly like the Big Macs. But let’s, let’s talk, you know, let’s have a conversation and see what we need to be doing. So that we can we can create that funnel, and be able to be a way of of activating that movement in the market.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And I tend to get really passionate when we’re talking about this stuff. And but I think the word that comes to mind the most with what you said, is collaboration, collaboration with you, as the inspector, interact with us, what do you want? What do you need? What do you think would bring back our industry a bit more, we’re collaborating with another software company coming up here, doing a partnership, we actually wanted to make sure that we gave them the best possible from us because they’re independently owned. And that’s big to us. We want to work with who’s independently owned, who who’s out there that has the same mentality that we do, that we’re by inspectors for inspectors, that’s always been our motto. I’m an inspector, and you know, me, I’m from the beginning, this has just been what we do, how do we make everything work for the inspector? We can’t make it work when it’s just about, you know, okay, what big corporation owns the software? And it’s interesting, we don’t integrate with any software from any of the big corporations. So we’ve actually been asked many times, even by those corporations, hey, let’s integrate, we’re like, No, thank you. Well, we’ll pass on that. Because we want to know, where does your data go to? What happens to it when it’s done. And if we don’t know, it’s just not happening. So those integrations aren’t going to happen, because we want we want the home inspector to have control, that’s ultimate, that’s the only way our industry’s going to win is if the home inspector has control. And I’m not, I’m talking about the home inspector, that’s a one man show, all the way up to companies that are 50 to 100 Inspectors. It’s your it’s your data, it’s your client, it’s your business that you built, you need to have 100% control of that.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think for us, it’s it’s been a few years, we’ve been working at this project that started as a literally on a napkin in a diner, you know, so when it comes to building a business and something brick for brick, we totally understand just how much work and effort that takes all the work and effort. Ian understands even from from building his inspection companies, the ton amount of work that you put into building your businesses, and we want to help you to protect that value, and raise that value. And a software platform with the with the right connections with the right integrations can do that. We we believe that that is possible. But we need you guys to help us out. So especially maybe, Ian, I can make an appeal to anybody who’s multi inspector. And maybe that’s one of the drawbacks that you’ve seen in our software as you feel like oh, I want more multi inspector functionality. We are now currently working on the next generation of our multi inspector features. We want to make it rich. We want to give you guys what you need. So if you are interested, we would love to engage with some of you to be able to get some insight into how you want stuff like that to work. And we’ll continue to do these, these briefs with users and interested users as we build our software because we don’t want to build you something that’s going to benefit anybody else. We want to build this for you and keep a sight of the bigger landscape of course as well and in what we’re doing with other partnerships, but yeah, I don’t know, we’ve never had an episode like this. I hope that you’re finding it inspiring, this message It’s bigger than just us. It’s it’s bigger than any individual inspection company. And I’m hoping that it resonates. If it does resonate with you please let us know, even if it’s just to give a shout out, because we’d like to see sort of what the general feedback is in the inspection community.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And you know, a lot of this can maybe even come off a little heavy handed or know a little bit intense, but I feel intensely about it. The Home Inspection industry is close to my heart, you know, almost 20 years in the industry, it better be close to my heart. But I don’t want to hold on to the old way of doing things. I want to hold on to our industry and evolve our industry. But we can’t do that if we allow the lion to consume us one bit at a time. So that being said, going back to our original question, where is our industry headed? I don’t, I’ll let you comment on in this Beon, but the way I see it is, we are at a crossroad, we’re at a very fine point, it could go to the left or to the right, it really the even just the next however many years is going to determine which direction it goes in. And it’s a scary road, if we go the wrong direction that we were talking about before. Lowered inspection fees, standardized inspection fees, management companies, what happens if this management company or this corporation that owns your software goes out of business or goes under, files chapter 11, and sells off our software to somebody else? What happens with there’s so many what ifs. The other direction, that’s a great one that leads to profitability, our clients getting way better inspections, because we’re going to retain guys that are worth their weight in gold. When it comes to the inspection industry. They’re going to be like, Yes, I’m going to charge what I’m worth, people are still going to have options. Do I want to go to Target? Or do I want to go to Walmart? Would I rather go and get this expensive pair of shoes or get the cheap ones? Yeah, those options are now still open for the clients and they get what they pay for now, it leaves that option open for really good inspectors to still charge what they’re worth, instead of having to just get through inspections with standardized fees, which is the only way the other direction is going to lead to. Yeah, I think you summarized it well. You know, maybe like you said, feels like we’re up on a soapbox a little bit. But I don’t know if you’ve ever had us, I don’t think you’ve probably ever seen Ian and me agree so much in an episode. I know, it’s actually kind of make me a little nervous there, Beon, find something to disagree with me about.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, well, that’s why I’m encouraging feedback, you know, because and I think you can tell we’re both passionate about this topic. So we’re trying to tame it down as well. But this is a big deal to the industry. And we want to try and put some, you know, weight behind the cause, and, and do our bit as well. So hopefully, the message resonates with you. If it does, again, let us know. But yeah, I think the the last thing to bear in mind from from my point of view as a thought is, this is not something that we’re going to wake up tomorrow and it’s all going to be happened, it’s it’s going to be a slow process. That’s gonna take a while. So if you’re looking around like, well, it looks pretty good to me. It’s just something to be aware of now is the time to start organizing ourselves so that we don’t have to just go to McDonald’s, you know that we have some other healthier options. And I think that’s what we’re trying to build here. So maybe yeah, that’s, that’s where I want to leave it from my point of view, I’ll get off my box now.

Ian Robertson
The only problem with a soapbox is it gets slippery up there. So we got to we tried to be careful and like Beon says, we toned things down, but we get very passionate about this. But I do think we do need to do an episode, Beon, now about nutrition for home inspectors. Because when we’re out in the field, I’ll be honest with you, there’s a few more chicken nuggets that happen than I’d like to admit, you know, when there’s very few options. Really hard to carry a salad around, you know.

Beon DeNood
Yep, ya know, for sure. I’ve had my fair share of Stewart’s hot dogs up in upstate New York.

Ian Robertson
Oh my goodness. If anybody’s from the Northeast, Stewart’s I don’t even know how to describe it. Like if you if you die in New York, you will Respawn at the nearest Stewart’s it’s, there’s just like, Stewart’s everywhere. That’s a video game.

Beon DeNood
Hotdogs with the meat sauce. It’s good stuff.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And that’s a video game reference, by the way, but they’re everywhere you go from one store to the next. I love it, though. I like Stewarts.

Beon DeNood
But sometimes you don’t do anything different because maybe you don’t know anything different. Like, what do I do to eat healthy? How do I do something easy and quick? What are my other options? There are healthier options. We want to put them out there and help you to make them second nature to know what they’re all about.

Ian Robertson
You mean healthier options for software?

Beon DeNood
Yes.

Ian Robertson
Okay, I thought we were still talking about hotdogs.

Beon DeNood
There’s a lot of crossover here.

Ian Robertson
All right. I think that’s a great segue out.

Beon DeNood
That’s awesome. Thanks, Ian.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, great discussion. Thank you very much for being on.

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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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.