Inspection Reports - Mastering Efficiency and Effectiveness

Get ready to bolster your inspection report writing skills with this enlightening episode featuring seasoned expert, Mike Crow! With a treasure trove of wisdom gained from teaching, reviewing thousands of reports, and collaborating with attorneys and national home inspectors - Mike Crow will guide you to the path of excellence in report writing. What's more, you will gain a thorough understanding of how to efficiently carry out inspections, the right format for your reports, and the best way to follow-up after inspections.

Ever wondered how you could produce consistent, accurate reports faster? In the era of online ordering, speed is king. Tune in as we delve into means to simplify report writing without sacrificing accuracy. Mike Crow enlightens us on the art of building an efficient inspection routine, the importance of capturing all notes and images during the inspection, and completing the report on-site. You will also gain insights into the controversial debate on tense usage in inspection reports and the key role photos and videos play in safeguarding against potential liability.

Communication is the backbone of a successful home inspection. Listen to Mike Crow's take on the 'magic words' that can make your report shine or sink, and learn the art of effective and simple communication. Let's explore the power of keeping your reports simple and effective. Don't miss out on this chance to revolutionize your report-writing skills and practice with Mike Crow's seasoned insights!

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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.

Transcript

Ian Robertson
Welcome back everyone to another exciting episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today we have on a repeat guest, because I’m just excited to have him on again, just in general, Mike Crow. How are you, Mike?

Mike Crow
I’m doing great. I’m excited to be here. I just got back from a conference. And I have to tell you, I heard no less than, I don’t know, a dozen people tell us how much they enjoyed our podcast. And several people specifically said, hey, the podcast that you and Ian did was great. So I’m kind of excited to be back and maybe see if we can help people again.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, you know, it’s actually one of our most listened to podcasts, because I think you did a really good job of giving us very specific things to do. You didn’t give us a broad idea of things you said specifically, here’s three things you can do. And then here’s the big idea of it. So a lot of guys really liked the practical value of what you did. If you’re listening, and you don’t know what we’re referring to, go back. Oh man. It’s probably been, I don’t know how long ago, like maybe six to 12 months ago, somewhere in there.

Mike Crow
Yeah.

Ian Robertson
And its title has Mike Crow’s name in the title. But it’s about how to visit real estate offices and market yourself. And it was really, really valuable information. My big takeaway from that episode was walk into an office with a marketing anchor, and you’ll know what we’re talking about if you listen in on that. But today, we’re going to be talking about something that’s very close to my heart that I was telling you earlier, which is improving our report writing. And this is actually well requested with our listeners. And I actually teach a couple of courses on this. And there’s a lot of different opinions and things like that. But I’ve been looking over the points that you want to share. And I’m super excited. First, though, you just came back from a conference. And I want to mention that you actually have a conference coming up in February, a three day conference, right?

Mike Crow
Yeah, we do. So for 16 plus years, we used to do a conference, we called it 3 days of Secrets Revealed. And I was the founder for what became known as Mastermind Inspector Community, I turned all that over to the members for a while, I don’t know about three years ago, 2020, somewhere in there, 2020, 2019, 2020. And then I needed to help my wife take care of her parents, and we they weren’t doing well, they both passed away in 2021. And so now, we are going and we’ve had so many requests. So we’re going to start our show back up in February. So they can go out to let’s see, I’ve got it written right here, they can go out to coachblueprint.com/mission. Like, you know, so the theme is going to be Blues Brothers, you know, I’m on a mission from God. All right. And we’re gonna have a lot of fun with that. And the truth is that the whole thing is like my ministry, this is this is where I just give back so that the industry hopefully can, you know, have some of the information that’s helped us grow. Not one, but two multimillion dollar companies and, and helped over 100 plus people build million dollar companies. And if they want to see a single man operation, you know, we have guys that have been doing 300 plus 1000 per year as a single man operation, because they learn not only what we talked about on that first podcast, but what we’re talking about today, and what we’ll talk about after that, you know, in fact, one of the things that we I like to break things down to is before, during and after, and I’m sure you’ve heard that because you’re you’re well versed in the world of business, I don’t think most people think of it that way. So that first podcast is kind of like a before. All right. What do you do before you get? What do you do to get inspections? You know, what do you do before that and everything. And now we’re going to be talking about kind of what do you do during the inspection, especially with the report format and everything. And then at some point, what you and I can talk about is maybe six months from now, okay? Or in February, they’ll catch a part of it. You know, what do you do after the inspection? Because I don’t think enough people really put follow up the right kind of follow up in place, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah, I’m excited to see it all come to fruition. So that’s coachblueprint.com/mission. Yep. So learn about that. And I gotta say, I said it on the show a couple of weeks ago. We have amazing people like you that have spent decades learning, hitting roadblocks, spending time, money, and sleepless nights learning things, and then you give it to us, you share it with us. That just blows my mind. You know, it’s, this is stuff we should really, really take note of. So okay, yeah. Before, now let’s talk about during. Right, here we go.

Ian Robertson
Report writing. That’s a big one. And I have reviewed 1000s of reports. And when I was teaching the report course, I taught with a couple of attorneys, and I had a couple national home inspectors I collaborated on, and it’s amazing the wide variation of reports out there. It’s hard to find two reports that kind of, oh, yeah, we do it the same way. It’s even two inspectors on the same team can kind of have two different styles.

Mike Crow
Well, and we work very hard. We have like 20 inspectors and so we work very hard, trying to make sure all of our all of our inspectors are doing pretty much the exact same report and even that’s a challenge. And we meet with those inspectors every week on training, okay? And every week, one of the things we ask them is alright, so what? Name one macro key, which we’ll talk about a little bit later name one macro key, you know, every inspector sitting around the table has to name one, because we’re trying to make sure they’re all saying exactly the same thing. And here’s the other thing is, reports..so here’s what’s gonna happen, you’re gonna get a couple of people going, well, I like my report, because blah, blah, blah, great, you know, I have found, I don’t talk about people’s individual reports very much, because it’s like calling their girlfriend ugly. And then they marry her.

Ian Robertson
That’s a, that’s a good analogy.

Mike Crow
I never make anybody happy. And I tell people, I said, you know, after you’ve done 10,000 inspections, you come talk to me about your report, and there aren’t very many, you know, and I’ve done over 10,000 inspections, and, and my company has done over 100,000 inspections. There’s, there’s very few people, you know, that have done that many. And so we were speaking from like, yeah, like you said, decades, 38 plus years of experience of reports, and we do 5000 plus every single year now.

Ian Robertson
Oh, wow. That’s amazing. So you’re definitely an authority on this. So I’d like to dig into some of the practical points, because I’m sure there’s some guys that have been asking for this subject for a long time that are chomping at the bit to hear it. So let’s talk about probably one of the biggest questions, on site versus later.

Mike Crow
Oh, my gosh. All right. So let’s go back in time to, should we some eerie music like doo doo, doo doo doo. Okay.

Ian Robertson
Oh, we can add that.

Mike Crow
Let’s go back in time, you’ll work on that you can put some fun music in there. And let’s say it’s 1988. Right. And most home inspectors were doing paper reports. In fact, some of them were just writing notes on a yellow pad and then ripping it off and handing it to people. That’s where..

Ian Robertson
Carbon paper.

Mike Crow
Oh, well, carbon paper came later. I’m just telling ya. Okay.

Ian Robertson
Okay. Well..

Mike Crow
I’m talking about way back. Okay. And then eventually, yeah, we started doing our reports. And we started doing carbon paper. So, you know, I would go through and by the way, one of the greatest inventions at the time, are you ready for this? Carbonless paper, okay. I remember you have to take in the report apart and pulling the carbon paper out, you know.

Ian Robertson
Slow down, Mike, slow down Mike, it’s overloading my brain.

Mike Crow
Oh I know. I know. But here’s, here’s what happened. Alright, so if you were doing handwritten reports back then in the 80s, when were people getting their report? Yeah, immediately, right. Oh, we’re talking about everything. Oh, okay. Even the yellow sheet of paper, right? Rip it off. Oh, there’s the legal pad piece of paper. And it had all the notes on it, that they needed everything. So when we first started in business in 1985, we were like the first company to start producing, especially the only multi inspector firm out there producing computerized reports on site, what made us different than everybody else. And what we had to compete with that that point was the guys doing the handwriting reports, doing the notes on the yellow pads or whatever, and giving people the information right then in there, I devised my computerized report system so that it would be simple, it’d be easy, and that I could finish it up on site and give it to them right then and there. Now, jump 30 years ahead, all right. Every inspector is coming out of school, every inspector that’s working on their report format, they’re afraid, they’re scared, they’re nervous, whatever you want to call it, to give the report to somebody right then and there. They want to go home, they want to research it, they want to look this up, they want to look that up, they know it’s going to take them an hour plus to do the report and some people two, three hours to do the report. Right? And then ship it to him that night or the next day. That has become an industry standard. Now, now let’s put us into, hey, you go you, you want to order something on Amazon, right? And, boy, it talks about being in a whole new age, right? You want to order something on Amazon, and it goes, hey, we could ship it to you today. And you’ll have it by today. Okay, or we could ship it to you tomorrow or three days. Which one do you want? Who doesn’t want it today? And if they said, Hey, we deliver it within the hour? Which one do you want, an hour or sometime today? And here’s one of those secrets that I teach people I call it S and A. Okay, speed and accuracy. Any company that produces with speed and accuracy, literally will rule the marketplace. It’s why McDonald’s is so successful. Do they have the best burgers? No, what they have is speed and for the most part accuracy, okay. Do they get every order right? Of course not. Okay. Just like saying every inspector never misses anything, right? Just, it’s not going to happen. So when we do our reports, we try to make sure that we’re doing it so that we’re we’re able to give it to him with our company right there at the end of the inspection. And and people go well, I can’t do that. It takes me three hours to produce the report. Well, then you need to one, figure out how to make your report simpler, right? Or make it so that you can do it faster. And it’s like anything, you you work at it and you measure it, and it’s going to improve. Okay, so but you guys have a report, right? How soon can your report be delivered? If people wanted to, could they deliver your report on site?

Ian Robertson
So we actually have quite a few users that do on site reporting, because if you use the correct software, you’ll be able to take a picture, make a note, take a video, make a note, take a picture, by the time you’re done, people worry well, I don’t want to spend that much time on site, I’d rather spend 20 minutes extra on site making sure I get all my pictures in the section they already need to be in, add all my notes in that section. And now it’s done. And I, we have a lot of users that use Inspector Toolbelt that do on site reporting, I will admit.

Mike Crow
I am so thrilled to hear that.

Ian Robertson
I will admit, though, that I am one of those guys that likes to take it home, but for a different reason than you mentioned, my reports, unless there’s a lot of very complex issues. I find I have to stop if there’s complex issues and like, okay, let me make a note. And then I’ll go back and figure out how to write down all these crazy things. But for the most part, 99% of the time, my report is done on site. But the reason I wait is I learned a valuable thing about perceived value, that people will tend to think, wow, I’ll schedule my report to go out at midnight. So I’ll go home, do a quick grammar check for 5, 10 minutes, and be like, okay, maybe that picture isn’t so great. And then I’ll schedule it to go out, like midnight or something. They’re like, wow, he’s up late working on my report. So there’s a measure of perceived value that I, that I work off of, but also a lot of my competitors do extremely well doing just what you said, saying, here’s the report right now, and I’ve had agents asked me they’re like, okay, can I just have this now? If you have the information, why am I waiting? So I definitely see your point.

Mike Crow
So here’s the other thing is, you can actually charge more the faster you deliver the report, think about that, right? If they took your blood test, right, they took a blood test at the doctor’s office, and you know, it’s gonna go in, and you’ll get the blood tests back the next day, or maybe three days. And but if they said, or we could take it over here to the lab, and we can have it done, and you can have your report in an hour. But it costs $50 more. You know, depending on what I’m in there for, I’m going hell yeah. You know, here’s, here’s 50, let me have this information now. Right. And so, I like the whole perceived value, because I know a lot of people do that. And it does help, you know, make it look like you spend more time on it or make it more valuable by the fact that you’ve worked on it longer, harder and everything. But the world is really into, hey, I’ll pay extra to get it quicker. And so, so perceived value, right? If they’re willing to pay more for it to get it faster. For me, all right. Now, granted, and here’s the other thing is, I know people that have built multimillion dollar companies, and they do not deliver it on site. They just simply don’t, they they do it that night, and they deliver it next morning, one of them, by the way, takes it to the offices the next morning, okay, or they send it to the office, by even priority delivery or whatever. And so that way, it walks them into every single office that they do an inspection for the next morning, right? And, and boy talk about being having a reason to be in the offices and different things. So that has worked really well for them. And they’ve built a multimillion dollar inspection company off that. I just.. Alright, so I want things when I as soon as I can get it.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no. And I definitely see the value of your point. And that may be too where the industry is going as a whole. I’m just one of those guys, maybe that’s a little slow to it, because it’s the same reason why we should have online scheduling and all this other stuff. We live in the era of DoorDash and Amazon next day shipping. So Amazon actually canceled my areas next day shipping for a while because the distribution center wasn’t up and running. I about had a heart attack and I’m like, wow, talk about first world problems I have to wait two days for my bag of coconut shavings instead of getting it now you know.

Mike Crow
All right. So what state do you live in?

Ian Robertson
I live in upstate New York.

Mike Crow
Upstate New York. Do you ever go to Disney World?

Ian Robertson
Oh, yeah, several times.

Mike Crow
Right. So I go I’m a huge Disney fan and I’m a huge Universal fan. So guess what happens if I go there? Right. If I want to ride resistance or whatever it is the latest greatest ride right? The lines two hours long, but I can pay this and move straight to the head of the line. Alright, so Tron is their latest, greatest right? Okay. And I rode it recently while I was down there. It’s a great ride, by the way. It’s a great ride. And but I could spend $25 And I don’t have to wait in that line. So you know, but that’s that’s the way the world is coming to in that. Now, I think our industry, I think our industry is is moving away from delivering it on site. And it has been for the last 20 years. Because people coming out of school and people getting new in the business and everything and they don’t if they do it that night, then they might be able to squeeze another inspection in that day or whatever their reasoning is on that process and everything. But what I know is that people are willing to pay more, the quicker they can get. And I think you could offer that, not you, but necessarily, but I think anybody could offer it, hey, we could deliver the report on site, there is a $25 call it whatever you want, you know, speed of speed of delivery on the report. You know, Universal Studios literally charges more for their Express Pass than they do for the ticket into the park now. Okay, it’s mind boggling, the ticket into the park’s like, I don’t know, $125, and their Express passes, like 200 plus dollars, and so and people are buying it. And so, yeah, so onsite, really works really well, it doesn’t, but you don’t have to do it. But it is something that can make you completely different in the marketplace.

Ian Robertson
That’s interesting, and USPs are becoming hard to find nowadays. So I think that’s a good example of a USP that might help us stand out.

Mike Crow
Good, and USP, my wife would always say, you got to tell people what the letter stands for. Yeah. So unique selling points, you know, and what makes our company better, different than everybody else. I’m gonna move the camera over here slightly. So I’m looking at you. There we go. There we go. Alright, that way, I’m not having to look off to the side and looks like I’m not looking at you.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no problem. Yeah, no, you look great. All right. So moving on to a couple of other points, because a lot of that comes down to basically your routine and the report format and the photos, I’m going to put those into one group, what advice do you have for us as inspectors for those items?

Mike Crow
Well, the reason one of the reasons I go into the whole routine thing is that one of the reasons people don’t do it on site is because they take so long to do the inspection, right? I just came back from InterNACHI’s conference, I think they call it pro inspectors and was great conference, by the way. And one of the things I did years ago with Ben Gromicko was we went inspected the kitchen in his house. So the average inspector, especially new guys, take anywhere from 20 minutes around 20 minutes to do the kitchen inspection. Well it takes me five or seven minutes to do it. And he was going well, how’s that possible? So we went and videoed it, you can go out on internachi.com I guess and probably find the video. But we just videoed it because I do everything at once. Okay, I don’t wait for the sink to fill, I don’t wait for the oven to heat up. I don’t wait for the microwave to finish. You know, it’s all happening at once in that process. So that’s our kitchen routine. Now take that routine and build it around your whole inspection. So it still takes us about an hour per 1000 square feet to do the inspection which we have found a very reasonable timeframe. And the older the home, sometimes it takes longer. The newer the home, sometimes it takes less and but the routine is important. And so one of the reasons that people don’t do the inspection report on site is because they make one huge mistake, they try to do all of the inspection, and then they try to do all of the report. Now, that’s the most efficient way to do it. But the problem is, is that most people’s brains cannot survive in limbo for more than 20 minutes. Okay, the average person can’t. And so if you do the whole inspection, and then you sit down to do the whole report at about 20 minutes into the report, they’re going, so how much longer you’re gonna be here, you know, oh, you’re gonna be another 20 minutes, well, I gotta go pick up the kids, I gotta go do this, I gotta go do this. So one of the reasons the routine is so important when I talk about doing your report and doing the inspection and everything is that you want to first you want to arrive 30 minutes early, 30 minutes, not 15, not an hour, 30 minutes, that’s the sweet spot. I am all about sweet spots, by the way. And after you’ve done 10,000 inspections, you start figuring out some sweet spots. And when you’ve got 100,000 inspections in your company, you start figuring out them even better when you start training other people and setting that up. So in 30 minutes, we take a look at the roof the foundation, we get our paperwork ready if you do other stuff like termite inspections, we get that started and done, all of all of that at once. Okay, and so it works out really well and then we put some information in the report, then we go do the kitchen, usually hopefully the buyer’s there by then, then we go do the kitchen and we put a few notes in the report. Then we go do the master bathroom and master bedroom and by the way on the way there we turn the temperature and set the temperature for the heating and air conditioning and set that right and then and then we come back and we put some notes in the report right and then we go do the other bathrooms, the other bedrooms, and the living room and check the AC or heat with depending on what time of year it is. Then we go put a few notes in the report and then we go and check you know like the garage and the attic and and maybe do what I like to call seconds. You know there’s some things you do during the inspection you go back and check a second time like your dishwasher. Your oven is still probably running, go check the water meter, you turned on the shower earlier, go check the shower outside again. So you go do these, what I call seconds, and then you put a few notes in the report. And after this, you tell folks, you know, I’m almost done with the inspection. And I’m going to need maybe five or 10 minutes, and I’m gonna finish up the report. And I’m gonna go over the report with you. And so the reason I can do the report on site is not because I do the whole inspection, do the whole report, and then I go over it with them is because I do the whole inspection in between different segments, I put notes into the report, and they don’t feel, they don’t feel how long it takes to do the report. And that’s why the routine is so important. But you, you’ve got to have a place where you start, where you finish. And you’ve got to know at which points that you put notes into your report. And so that people don’t think, they don’t even think that you’re spending 30, 45 minutes, or an hour on the report if that’s what it takes. Does that makes sense?

Ian Robertson
That makes total sense. And I’ve often told when I’ve taught courses on report writing the same thing, that if you take all of those, people like to say, and if you do this, that’s fine, that that’s your thing, I like to take all of my pictures, and I’d like to do all my stuff. And then I go write my report separate from the inspection. I’ve always found that to be problematic, because what if you hit a spot and report you’re like, did I test the outlets in that room?

Mike Crow
Right.

Ian Robertson
Oh, no, which one of the rooms had the bootleg neutrals. And all of a sudden, we’re forgetting and especially if you’ve done three, two, three inspections that day, than you sit down to write a report. I know personally, that’s all starting to, you know, get all mushed around in my head. So I’m the same way I have the same routine. And I train my agents and my clients and I even say in my driveway speech, I have a routine, I want to do a great inspection for you, if you have questions, write them down, and ask them when we get to that section. And if I haven’t answered it at the end of the inspection, ask them then, but try to keep me in my routine. And actually, people always appreciated it. And I would I’m not gonna describe my whole routine. But in between each section, I would say hang on, let me write a few notes down. And I guess there’s also the importance of canned comments.

Mike Crow
Oh, yeah. Well, we’re going to talk about that here in a little bit canned, or, or macros, or whatever you want to call them. But yeah, forehead speed up everything. And, you know, I use, I used to do an asterisk in front of them. Now keep in mind, I was doing computerized reports before Microsoft Word. Okay. Before there was any computerized reports. So I had this software and this software and had to combine the two to create those macro notes. And so used to be an asterix and then two or three letters, and then you know, three letters most of the time, and then it would put it into the report. And now with Microsoft Word, we use AutoCorrect. And we create those, but you have all this setup in your system, right? So they don’t even have to do that. Right?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, so we have what are called quick comments. So you can write a full comment if you need to on site. And we have an option where you can save that comment to your library or to that template. But we have like, I recommend people say put five or 10 quick comments, like if you’re in your bathroom, electrical, you’re gonna say GFCI was not functional at time of inspection probably 100 times a week. So you know, just put that those kinds of comments in there. And then we have a comment library where you can have, let’s say you have 10,000 comments, or 400 comments, you can just quick start typing them. And it’ll bring up all the comments, you have one word you write, or you type in GFCI, it’ll bring up every comment that you have this as GFCI, if you want to narrow it down, add a second word.

Mike Crow
Inside of.. I have used in the past, because we had to create our own software, our own software, not our own software, our own report format. And so we use Microsoft Word. So we use, like AutoCorrect. And so now we type in first, just like GFCIs, we type in Z, which says okay, this is a macro key, and then we type in E, which goes electrical, and then we can type in Mg. And basically, that means missing GFCI. So when I’m taking a note, all I got to do is write down four letters, I don’t even have to, and if I want to say, you know, if it’s for the whole house, then you know, I say that or if it’s for, you know, outside or whatever, then I can just write outside next to it, and do that as well. But with the new software systems like you have, you type in whatever, and it brings up all the GFCI notes, and they click on that, and they put it up. So as long as they have, I would highly I would recommend that if they’re going to use those quick comments like that, or macro keys or canned notes that they give those an easy way fast way for them to mark it on their notes when they’re going through the inspection report, that speeds up the whole inspection as well. And, and, and if they’re typing the report up as they go, boy, that makes it even easier and faster.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and I tell you, more complicated issues have become a lot quicker to write. We have an AI integration.

Mike Crow
Wow!

Ian Robertson
So you can actually say so I actually tested it out I have a hydronic heating unit. And I wanted to tell it that the firebox was cracked and needs to be evaluated by an HVAC contractor. So I wrote whitebox hydronic unit crack. It wrote 99% of a beautiful comment. And I just went in and it said it didn’t call the fire box, it just said white box. So I changed it to fire box. And now I had a, I looked it over, I’m like, oh my goodness, this is perfect. So complicated issues become a lot easier to write when we step out of maybe our comfort zone. We don’t we don’t want to just shove stuff out there that we punched into AI, we want to look it over. But..

Mike Crow
For sure.

Ian Robertson
Sometimes I would agonize for like 20, 30 minutes of okay, how can I explain this issue? Ask AI to explain it, and it can get you some of the way there.

Mike Crow
That’s why I love macros so much. Now imagine it’s not just you, but you have six inspectors, and you want them all basically to say the same thing, right. And so by having by having a macro and or canned, all you have to do is say, hey, we’re putting this macro in place. And every inspector you have says it almost identical to the same thing. And it’s the the macros has probably been the number one biggest thing that’s allowed me to be able to run a multi inspector firm and create a certain amount of consistency across the board with our report.

Ian Robertson
Anybody who has a multi inspector firm, I agree with you, you should have your macros/canned comments down super tight, you do not want all of your guys saying things slightly differently, because that’ll get you in hot water. I do want to go off the script here a little bit. I want to ask you actually, what are your thoughts on writing your report in past tense or present tense?

Mike Crow
Oh my goodness gracious. I almost always write it I think in present tense. It’s something that I fixed a while ago. I don’t even think about it now. Okay. But so here’s the statement is, so it’s got to be present tense, cocking repair is recommended for the shower enclosure, due to you know, missing grout, I guess that’s present tense, right? So I read it in present tense, because that’s what I’m seeing. That’s what I see when I’m there. Okay. So think about that. I’m writing it because I’m standing there looking at it. So I’m writing in present tense. I guess those guys that have this problem, are sitting at home writing the report that night, you know, because now they’re not there. Otherwise. So that seems to them like past tense. But this is what I saw. This is what I’m seeing. And so here’s, here’s the situation. And so I do present tense, I get that they want to do it past tense. I don’t really think it makes that big a difference. But this is, but think about what we say all the time. Right? This is what I saw at the time of inspection. That’s present tense, you know? And if you write a past tense that changes the whole perspective, I guess a little bit, it’s the same. I don’t think it makes a big difference, honestly.

Ian Robertson
You know, it’s a hotly contested point. And I could never get any of the attorneys to agree on it when, I write in past tense, but I can never get any of the attorneys to agree on it. So I based it off of an article that InterNACHI had years ago. And there was a court case, where I’ve often said, you have to write your report to the lowest denominator, unfortunately, you have to you have to assume that somebody in the room reading your report, cannot think of themselves out of a paper bag if you put them to it. So a lady actually took an inspector to court. It may have been even an engineer or something. But there was a report on something it says your heating unit is in good working order. So the court case went on and on and on. And her thing was it says it is in good working order. And the inspector is like, well, it was, and the whole attorneys defense was, yeah, but that can be construed as a guarantee by someone who’s not intelligent enough to understand.

Mike Crow
So one of the things I do I guess, to offset that is, is that the heating and air conditioning unit is performing function as intended at this time. Yeah, perfect. So I don’t know if that’s past tense or present tense. At the time I guess it’s present, right?

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And I’m not saying any way is right, because you’ve done so many inspections, 5000 a year. And you’re working. And that’s working for you. That says a lot to me. So I was just kind of curious, because I have that debate a lot with home inspectors. So that’s interesting.

Mike Crow
Well, and I think, like you said, look, one of the reasons I have the macros, one of the reasons I teach the macros to my inspectors so much is to tell them, we have done 100,000 inspections. Do you want to write it yourself and risk getting it wrong? Or would you like to write it the way I’ve written it that I know that if I have to I can defend it in court for you. Okay, which one do you want to do? I think I’ll write it your way. Okay.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, there’s something to be said about not trying to fix something that is not only not broke, but has been proven successful for a 100,000 times.

Mike Crow
You know, I’ve been to court twice, three times. Most of the time, it never gets to court. And I’ve won every time and I’ve won every time. You know, that’s cool. But I will tell you that one of the cool things that’s happening out there is there are some insurance companies out there, and one of the things that I suggested years ago that they are doing now is they all have on staff attorneys, right, that are helping, help them. So do I get in trouble if I mention any particular insurance companies? Because I don’t want to, I don’t want to cross a line here.

Ian Robertson
No, go for it. Yeah, no, go for it. As long as you’re saying good things. Yeah, we love it.

Mike Crow
So there’s Isaac, who I love, who runs OREP.

Ian Robertson
He’s been on the show twice. Yeah. He’s been on the show twice.

Mike Crow
Was he on your show? I think that’s good. I love Isaac, he puts out that great magazine, home inspector magazine and everything.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, we are contributors to that magazine.

Mike Crow
Yeah, I’m a regular contributor as well. And I love Isaac, I just sat and had a whole conversation with him about what I thought his one of the next great articles would be on inspections as well. But he now has an attorney on staff to take care of all of those things, right. And then and then and then of course, there’s a InterNACHI has their their insurance as well, I think it’s EliteMGA and they’ve got Joe Denneler as the attorney on staff, right. And while I was at the conference, I said hi to Joe, we just had somebody go crazy on us last week, and Joe looked at I went, No, no, I got this handled. God, I love that. Okay. And Isaac said that his guys can do exactly the same thing. So I was very impressed with both of them. And but you do you have to write your report, knowing it might show up in court. But it’s even better if you write your report knowing that, then you write your report helping make sure it doesn’t show up in you know, in court, either.

Ian Robertson
Very true. So I’m going to throw something out there that I still hear inspectors say, and in this day and age, I started about 20 years ago. And guys would always say never put pictures in your report. I still.. In this day and age. I’m like, we’re putting videos and drone photos in and I still have guys saying, I don’t want to put a photo in there. That’s liability. I’m like, well….

Mike Crow
That’s like saying I want to still do a handwritten report. Okay, I’m sorry. That’s how, that’s how bad that idea is. You know.

Ian Robertson
I would never hire an inspector that didn’t give me photos.

Mike Crow
Exactly, and by the way, I made that mistake early on. Oh, photos. Oh, no, that’s bad. Oh, no, that does this. Oh, that says things I don’t expect to say, in different things. And I lost a good 10% of business one year because I had a competitor add those. And then the other guy didn’t. And I will tell you the next step is kind of what so your software allows you to put video in right?

Ian Robertson
Oh, yeah. Video. Yeah.

Mike Crow
So I just came back. And there was a real estate agent was going really, why are you guys not using video right now? And I’m sitting coming back because I don’t use a lot of video a little bit, maybe, but I don’t really use a lot. And he was going, I love video, especially when there’s water running from somewhere. And you know, you can see it dripping. I know you can’t see that in a picture a lot of times. And he actually said one of the things that he really liked, that I don’t do at all is a video summary.

Ian Robertson
Oh.

Mike Crow
So, and he said, he said yes, your buyers are there and maybe you go over it with them. He said, but I would love a video summary. He said, So imagine you’re pumped on Zoom, and or whatever it is. But zoom pumped on Zoom, and you did your your report with the buyers, but if zoomed records it and then you send me that recording and said, boom, done.

Ian Robertson
Mike, I think you just gave me the most glorious point on a podcast, as of late. That is beautiful. Anybody who’s listening, just rewind and listen to that, especially for ITB users. Have a little card at the end of your report that says video report summary. Put in a little short video saying here’s what I found, please read the entire report. But the two major issues here was the Northwest foundation corner and the rear deck. And as you examine those pictures, you can even walk and show them real quick. And here’s those issues. And thank you very much for choosing ABC home inspections. Holy cow, I love that. Wow. I wish I had thought of that before. That’s, that’s awesome.

Mike Crow
Well, and you know, but it’s one of the reasons I attend every conference and I go listen, and they had a great speaker at the InterNACHI conference and it was an agent. And you know, most agents, I get a little tired of hearing them because they they want to throw us under the bridge. This guy was saying, Hey, here’s what I need as an agent to make sure I can help my buyers appreciate your report. And so he did a great job with that.

Ian Robertson
That’s awesome, man. I get excited sometimes on the podcast and that one’s like, I’ve never thought of that I love I love this stuff. Okay, cool. So photos and videos, put lots of those in it really dresses up a report. I like to have general photos and then I have three sets of photos. I have general photos where I’ll show the outside of the house. I’m very careful not to put people’s personal items in photos, be extremely careful, you will end up in court because you took a picture of some guy’s..

Mike Crow
Of their jewelry on their desk. Oh my gosh. Right. Yeah, don’t do that.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, don’t do that. But um, I would have those photos, general photos, then I would have defect photos. And then I would have CYA photos. Those I keep personal in my device, and then they go on Dropbox.

Mike Crow
But you don’t put them on the report.

Ian Robertson
No, no, like I have one years ago, there was a little tiny fridge in the basement. And they even said, they said oh, man, my client has like six grand worth of wine in there. There’s like, I don’t know, half a dozen bottles. I’m like, that’s an expensive wine. So as I leave the house, I take pictures and video as I leave the house all the way into my vehicle. And I turn the video off as I start to drive down the road. And people made fun of me for that. But it saved me a bunch of times. But this one in particular, they said, you turned off the fridge, you unplugged it. You owe us six grand. So I actually just said, I had a picture of the fridge on as I walked out the door. And there were still people in the room. And I said, Here you go. The sellers that were trying to sue me, ended up recommending me to their employees. And they said, This guy knows his stuff. Yeah, he put us to shame. And I’m like, wow, okay.

Mike Crow
Can I, I’m probably going to hurt somebody’s feelings here. I’m good at that by the way.

Ian Robertson
Do it. See what happens.

Mike Crow
Can we talk a little bit more about photos real quick?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, please.

Mike Crow
So the average inspector puts 30, 40, 50 photos in their report. Okay, I use on average, 12 to 18. Okay. Okay. And again, it kind of goes to speed and accuracy, right? How much, how much time does it take to put photos in the report, and Jonathan, my son, who runs our inspection company here, he’s our general manager, he was sitting next to an agent at one point, and inspector was up there and goes, I take over 100 photos of every inspector, and the agent leaned over and he goes, what the hell am I going to do with 100 photos? You know? Jonathan goes, I don’t know, man, there’s no way we’re taking 100 photos in the report. Now, if you want to take 100, like you say, cya and store them so that people can’t say, you know, whatever. I’m perfectly fine with that. I think it’s helped us twice out of the last 10 years. And then maybe that’s worth it. I don’t know. But so the simpler you can keep it the better for basically everybody involved.

Ian Robertson
I will say this, I am one of the guys, that takes a lot of photos because I’m OCD. But I will say that keeping the report simple, yeah, is something that’s very important. And that we have forgotten as an industry. Because some of the reports that I have reviewed, my eyes roll in the back of my head, and guys will tell me, oh, people love how long and complex my reports are. And I’m like, yes, because when I go to my appraiser, and he hands me 100 page report, and I don’t know how much my house is worth, again, will hurt some people’s feelings. But I’m like, if you want to have all that detail, that’s fine. Make the meat of the report simple, because that’s what we do one of our guests on our podcast one time we bridge a gap between technical and human.

Mike Crow
Right.

Ian Robertson
I’m not an appraiser. I don’t know all the details of where they’re getting their data and stuff. I’ve had some say, here’s the big long thing in a PDF. But here’s the one page thing of here’s my comps, here’s how much I think your house is worth. Awesome. But sometimes their reports get over the top. And I have not been able to figure out what the defects were on some reports. I’m a professional inspector, if you and I can’t figure it out, how is our client going to know? Okay, this is what I need to do next. And I guess that kind of comes down to one of your other points of summary pages.

Mike Crow
Oh, I was so glad you were hitting that because I was just sitting here going, You know how some inspectors said, oh, I don’t put photos in because blah, blah, blah. The other one that was a huge debate for probably 20 years in the industry. I don’t think it is as much anymore.

Ian Robertson
No, I think most people do it.

Mike Crow
Yeah, most people do it now, the summary page, right? Oh, I don’t want to do a summary because they won’t read the rest of the report. Oh, I don’t want to do a summary because if I put it in the report, but I don’t put it in the summary then, you know, and all of those are just excuses, honestly. But even even if you do a 60 page report, which heaven help you if you do, then you deserve every painstaking moment it takes you to produce that puppy, okay.

Ian Robertson
Oh, you don’t want to know how long mine are.

Mike Crow
But your buyer, you can’t put them through that painstaking time factor, okay, you need to be able to go, Hey, here’s your supporting document, hey, here’s two pages, at best, you know, on the summary of this, and then even then you want to make sure the biggest thing I learned on summary is you want to break it down per category, plumbing, and electrical and all of this, and we used to do a summary and it was just like one long list and the agents came to us and went Mike, you know, I have to go through and hunt out and heaven help me if I miss something, you know, to give to the plumber. Couldn’t you just break it down that way? And once we started doing that, I mean that changed everything for everybody. And our page, our summary is probably a page and a half at most 90% the time, you know, I used to say one page, and my son said, please stop saying that. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
You know, it’s funny too, with the summaries, that for a lot of people for the agents is the entire report, as the agents put it to me, we don’t care about the rest. And they’re like, we’re not trying to be a jerk. But they said, your whole report is the summary. So one thing I see people leave out of the summary are the photos, our app actually has an option where you can leave the photos out the summary, because so many people ask, and I’m like, why? Because agents have said, what, I don’t want to have to look at the summary and go, What does he mean by hydrostatic pressure on a foundation wall and then go rifling through the report and look for a crack. Just tell me what it is, show me a picture.

Mike Crow
Well, and we kind of do that slightly different, and this is one of those areas where I do it the way I want to just because it’s easier for me on the report, and there’s very few things I do that way. But I will put that note in, and then I will put see photo. And all of my photos are summarized all together at the back of the report as well. Okay. That way, they don’t have to go hunting through the report to find it. I can even say see photo number 10 or whatever. Okay, and they they flip over and all the photos, six to a page are all right there, and they go number 10. Oh, okay. And then I put a little statement under that as well, you know, so that they know, that’s what, they know then two are connected.

Ian Robertson
But then they’re not rifling through the whole report for that.

Mike Crow
Right. They’re not having to rifle through the whole report.

Ian Robertson
And that’s the point it’s like, all right, he’s got 100 page report.

Mike Crow
So you’re absolutely correct. The summary is so important.

Ian Robertson
It’s the whole report, if we view it as that and realize this is the whole report, how easy is it? Because that’s what it is to the agent, how easy it is for them and my client to get to that. And then to disseminate the information? Do we have 18 paragraphs of CYA information to talk about a crack in the foundation? Can we just state the problem, what they do next? And what could happen if they don’t fix it? And then leave all that other CYA information in the report because it does just as much good for us there, as it does in the summary.

Mike Crow
Well, and I think I love this whole video summary idea, which is one of the things that I think it’s the next step for all of us. And by the way, vast majority of inspectors aren’t going to do it. But imagine you get to listen to it or hear it. And they say, do you really want to try to go through the whole report? No, you only want to go through the summary with the video summary. I mean, that kind of makes sense, right? But you know, you go through and go, okay, here are the top things that you need to know, on the structure of the home, say the foundation and the roof. And, okay, here are the top things you need to know about electrical, and you could break it down even that direction, I think it’s gonna, it’s going to be a great thing.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I’m, I’m gonna institute it. I love that idea. And it kind of puts into question if we can actually summarize the house, because I think sometimes that’s a, that’s a problem. Like, if we start to make a video, and it turns into a four or five, six, seven minute video to give them the main points, maybe we don’t know how to give the information concisely. So we can step back and say, can I say, hey, here’s a deck, here’s a bunch of issues. Here’s a couple of examples, please see the report. But here’s a section of the foundation that I was talking about. Can we do that in 30 seconds? Now, I mean, obviously, there’s gonna be some horror houses where it’s like, how easily can I say tear this thing down and run to the hills?

Mike Crow
We call those the houses from hell, you know, and, and when you’ve done 10,000 inspections, I’ve seen more than my fair share of pieces of junk. And so yeah, it’s a, it’s an interesting thing. The one thing I want to do is make sure is that if my inspectors start doing video summaries is that they’re still saying what we taught them to write, you know, otherwise, they’re gonna say, and by the way, I don’t think the foundation is a real big problem. That’s not what the note says. That’s not what the note says, you know, but you know, what people say we say all the time, we just wrote up a house and have this problem, this problem, this problem, and, and then the, and the buyer is saying, Oh, well, the inspector told me no less than eight times, that was no big deal. That’s not what the note says. And he goes, Well, that’s not what your inspector said, you know, so we still have to be careful, we’ll have to train inspectors how to do that part, and make sure that they stay congruent.

Ian Robertson
And that’s a very good warning. And I appreciate that a lot, because I think a lot of us are a little bit looser with our words than we are in writing. But we’re actually getting close to our time here, Mike, I wanted to go over something that in the information that you sent me, you just simply wrote magic words. What do you mean?

Mike Crow
Oh my gosh. Well, you know, there’s bad magic words and good magic words, right? Okay. So there’s a lot of words out there that were taught at one point, and they were taught by people with good feelings and everything. But again, this real estate agent was talking and I and all of this is built off of things out there for instance, and inspectors are taught to use the word appears, right? Agents literally hate the word appears. Okay. And so, what I did was to go back to good magic words, I rephrase that to there is there are indications of evident by, I just said appears. But I set it in such a fashion that I that I put factual material behind it right, there are indications of water penetration into the garage conversion evident by, you know, water stains on the carpet tack strip along the, you know, the the front wall, whatever. All right. And everybody goes, Okay, that makes sense. But if you said there’s, it appears that there’s water penetration, it’s almost like CYA and agents hate CYA language. They hate it. And so getting rid of that word. The other word that I don’t know, do you know Alan Carson, great guy. He’s been in the industry as long as I have.

Ian Robertson
Only in passing, not not intimately, no.

Mike Crow
I think he’s still alive. I’m just joking. But anyway.

Ian Robertson
He’s listening.

Mike Crow
He’s head of a multi inspection firm up out of Toronto, great guy, created a lot of the stuff that our industry still uses today in most and I was listening to him speak one time and he went, agents hate the word monitor. There are indications of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, recommend you monitor this, okay? And he’s going and the agent is going, how do I do that in four days between the time of your report and the time of and so he said, it creates this big type of different situations. And so stay away from the word monitor. Now, I’m gonna get real personal, and I got people all over this that are gonna hate this, you’re gonna get all kinds of negative comments.

Ian Robertson
Okay.

Mike Crow
I don’t believe in using north, south, east, and west in a report. Okay.

Ian Robertson
You know, actually, I think you have most inspectors agree with you, because we, in our in our inspection app, a lot of inspectors said, We don’t like to use that, because nobody’s walking around with a compass. Can’t you say, because we have location tags. So we actually added a bunch of location tags of saying front, back, upstairs, downstairs.

Mike Crow
That’s brilliant. That’s exactly and so. And I have people all the time go, uh, well, I tell them the house faces east. Well, you better be damn right if you, if it doesn’t, if it faces northeast, you’re in trouble, buddy. I’m just telling you. So. Yeah, so we try to teach our guys front of house, rear of house, bedroom side of house, garage, side of house, whatever we have to do. First bedroom, you know, middle bedroom, second bedroom, rear bedroom, rear corner bedroom, whatever we have to do, you know, to try to help make sure some of that. So those are some of the like, I call them the bad magic words out there. And let me kind of scoot down here to some of the what I consider the good magic words. So I started teaching my inspectors years ago to add certain little words in there to make things go smoother. My, my favorite word is help, okay, recommend that this be cocked or this be changed to help prevent water penetration. Because sometimes you do all that it’s still going to leak. Okay. And, and just because it’s built wrong, and you can’t see it. But when we put the word help in there, that that is an amazing thing. One of the things I’ve learned as an inspector, you said the shower leaks, where’s the where’s the leak coming from, right? Well, most inspectors don’t want to answer that question. I try to teach them to answer the question with percentages. Well, you know, due to the amount of water that we’re seeing here, I think there’s probably a 20% chance that it’s coming from caulking and grouting. There’s a 70% chance that it’s coming from, you know, the fact that the shower pan mainly. Now understand, I can’t tell you where there’s a shower pan there or not. But there’s a 70% chance that it’s coming from the leaking shower pan, or maybe no shower pan, there’s a 5% chance it’s coming from the plumbing inside the wall. And so when you turn the shower on, and so maybe there’s a leak inside the wall, and there’s a 5% chance by the way, if you’ve been adding things up, I’m liking 105%. Now, if there’s a 5% chance it’s coming from somewhere completely different than the shower. I hate it when you got a bathtub here right and the shower here. And you right up the shower’s leaking. I’ve done that, by the way twice. All right. Oh, there are indications the shower’s leaking, evident by such and such. And they test the shower and they test the shower and they test the shower. And it’s not leaking, and it’s coming from the tub. Okay. And so you got to be very careful, but percentages work really great. Another word I love and this took me years to figure out was the word mainly, okay. There’s poor drainage, mainly along the rear of the house. Now we added that word mainly because we told them there was poor drainage along the rear of the house. And they had some structural engineer come out and go Well, yeah, but there’s some drainage on the side of the house and there’s drainage on the front corner of the house and you should have them paid because they didn’t tell you about all the bad drainage. And we went oh you kidding me? And that that $3,000 mistake made me go let’s put the word mainly in here. And so that is like one of my favorite words of all time. These are magic words that keep these this is what I call my $10,000 words. These are things that will save you $10,000 at some point and might help you if you have to go to a courtroom. And they go, Well, you didn’t tell him Mr. Crow about the poor drainage on the front, did you? You didn’t tell about the poor drainage on the side. I said, no, sir, I told him that the main problem was along the rear of the house. Okay. And I said, the poor drainage mainly here, I didn’t say there wasn’t others. I’m just telling you, this was the one I was really concerned about. Okay. And then of course, we talked about front of house, rear of house, we talked about indications of blank evident by blank, I can write anything, I can write everything up using that phrase. Now, I tell our guys, I don’t really want to see that in a report more than three times. But I can write anything up with that. And here’s one of the things that I love that the agent also said at the meeting, and they said, use the word recommend. And he said don’t use the word something else. And I don’t remember what it was. But he said a recommendation is so much easier. Oh, he was actually talking about refer, you know, giving a referral to someone, he said I recommend somebody instead of I refer somebody, a referral. Negligent referral cases are bad. That gets you in trouble. Here’s, here’s one that will save people 10,000 plus dollars. And by the way, at the beginning of this, you’re going to tell them they want to make sure they hear this part about the magic words at the end, because this is worth every dollar they’ve spent this year on education. Okay, and so the shower has some caulk and grout that needs to be fixed and everything right? Well the shower guy is going to tell him Oh, you need to pull all that out and we need to redo all that I can tell you there’s going to be water stains inside and all this other stuff right? And so I created this phrase, recommend that caulk and grout for the shower enclosure to help prevent you see how these started stacking to help prevent water penetration and and then what we say underlying conditions are not visible at this time, unable to determine underlying condition. Okay. And boy, I mean that has just saved me on shower after shower after shower, where somebody wants to build rebuild the whole shower just because I told him it needed some caulking repair. Right? And so there’s that the other one big one that I love is that you go do a shower inspection. And then you go into the master bedroom closet right and you pull up a little bit and I want to be very careful here you pull up a little bit I had one guy go oh yeah, I pulled the carpet all the way back. Oh my god, no. Okay, I pull the carpet back a little bit. And I tell and I can tell that the there’s been leaks from the shower in the past right? And so I run the shower and I test the shower, maybe even I you set it up to the shower fills up two or three inches and there are no leaks whatsoever right? And so I go okay, there’s no problem and I just walk away right, no, you put that on the report and I learned this and this is worth gold right here. There is a past indication of a water leak from the main master bath shower evident by a water stain carpet tack strips in the master bedroom closet. However, there were no indications of leaks at this time. So that past indications up that’s really where I came up with the whole indications of evident by was because after you have to go out to a house 3, 4, 5, 6 times and explain to a person and a person and another person and another person that yes the shower probably did leak at some point but it doesn’t leak now. Oh by the way notice the bottom three parts of your shower here have been redone because the tiles are slightly different color and but they have the carpet replaced and the carpet guy goes in, he pulls the carpet and he goes oh, our carpet, the warranty will not apply to you because your shower leaks. He doesn’t know if the shower leaks, all he sees are the past indications. So by putting that in there, that has saved us more than we can possibly say. Last one here real quick, try to say things at a sixth grade reader level. Okay? Most people read including myself for fun at a sixth grade reading level because it’s easy. It’s fast and you know big words. Well they mess up my mind. What can I tell you, I tell people that English is my first language. You know, spelling is like a second language, grammar is like a third language, and vocabulary is like a fourth language to me. Okay, but I but I have found out this is true with everybody. So when you want to say things like the frieze board, first off, you know that you know what the first thing they’re going to tell us and when they say frieze board on a report is.

Ian Robertson
They’re gonna wonder what board is frozen?

Mike Crow
Well, yes, and or they’re gonna tell you, you know, you spelt that wrong. Okay? Because it’s spelled i e in that kind of frieze board, and they’re gonna go and then they’re gonna say, by the way, can you tell me what a frieze board is? Right? But if we say, you know, wood trim, everybody gets that. All right, everybody gets that? If you say capillary tube, great, okay. Nobody knows what a capillary tube is. And by the way, anybody listening if you don’t know what a capillary tube is, yeah, go study that. It’s a fun thing. All right. And most people don’t even know what part of the what piece of equipment that goes on nowadays, all right, but if you say the evaporative coil, or if you say the condenser coil, I guarantee you that 90% of homeowners have no idea which is which. So if you say the outside AC unit, if you say the inside AC unit, boom, they get it. So by keeping our report at a sixth grade reader level, you know, I used to read my head some of the notes and I would go, do you understand what this means? And they would go, can you tell me what that means? I go, Okay, let me rewrite that. Okay. And of course, I was teaching them, but I was also learning. Keep it simple. Okay, I like to say kiss, keep it super simple. I hate the word stupid. So keep it super simple. You know, we’ve had a lot of fun here.

Ian Robertson
I honestly could talk for hours about this, I love this.

Mike Crow
This is normally a two hour topic for me, just so you know.

Ian Robertson
So actually want to touch on that we have to close out the show. But you actually offered that if anybody wants this information, you have an entire slideshow about it. You can get it at membercare@coachblueprint.com. Email membercare@coachblueprint.com. And I think you want on the subject line, just put Report Blueprint and ask for this show.

Mike Crow
Yeah, they’ll put Report Blueprint in the subject line, I’ll be glad to see it. And I’m almost sure I’ve got five of them. But I’ll be glad to give them a you know, a audio of me teaching this class from start to finish. And honestly, we covered a lot of all the information here today. But they’ll get some stories and a little bit more colorful language probably on some of the how, how these things came to be and different things. Also, you and I should do a, we should do a podcast at some point on the what I call my 17 point introduction. Because we talked a little bit about the routine and everything. But having the right introduction at the beginning of the inspection.

Ian Robertson
The driveway speech. That’s the best.

Mike Crow
Oh yeah, you know, your curb speech, whatever you want to call it. We call this an open loop. Alright, so there you go. In the near future, you’ll get to hear me and Ian talk about…

Ian Robertson
Driveway speech is the most important part of any inspection in my opinion. So I love that. Let’s get that on the books. And let’s talk about that. Yeah.

Mike Crow
It really is. We’ll have fun. We’ll have fun with that. And so there’s a there’s a lot of great things. And here’s the thing that I’ve learned today is one, you offered an inspection report. And it’s got built into it, the macros and all that good stuff.

Ian Robertson
Yep, our software is totally built, it’s built to inspect like I inspect, basically. So and I found out that a lot of guys like to inspect like that. And we have, we have a bit of a following. It’s nice. We’re doing well.

Mike Crow
Well that’s good. And here’s the thing is your report can be delivered on site if you want it to, right?

Ian Robertson
Oh, yeah, we have lots of guys that do it.

Mike Crow
You got a lot of guys doing that. And so you’ve got the macros, you’ve got the ability to put video in, which is the next coming wave inside of inspection reports. And of course, photos and, and you’ve got the summary pages. So your report basically sounds like it’s got all of the pieces, and I don’t I don’t study anybody’s inspection reports anymore, because we had fun for a little while. I said, send me your inspection report and plan on me making it so you hate me. Okay. Because like I said, you know, I’m sorry, but this is ugly, you know, this is bad. Oh, this is terrible. And why would you do this? And, you know, and by the way, one of the mistakes people used to make was they would break their notes down by, by bedrooms or by rooms. And I go, please don’t do that. Okay. Break it down by systems. It’s the only good way to really do your report, you know, does it require a plumber great, then put it all together. And then people will tell me, oh, it’s not by rooms. And I go, well, the kitchen seems like it’s a room to me, you know, and they go, Well, you know what I mean? Oh, now, you know, call it by systems, call it appliances, call it water, call it plumbing, whatever. And stick there. Ian, I will tell you, this has been a lot of fun. I I enjoy having these kinds of conversations with people. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the fact you’re going to get this information out there and probably save somebody from being sued, probably helped somebody, you know, really get through their inspection reports faster. And by the way, I never wanted to do this whole report blueprint thing. And I said, I teach marketing. And my daughter, she said, Does Walt Disney consider the maintenance, keeping the parks clean as maintenance or does he consider it marketing?

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Mike Crow
And I went, okay, so your report is marketing. Your report is marketing. And I think we covered a lot of that today. So cool.

Ian Robertson
Mike, always awesome to have you on, decades of experience. And as you mentioned, I hope I hope this podcast helps people out. And I’m on board. So thank you very much for being on.

Mike Crow
Hey, I’m looking forward to it. And I, I hope that a lot of folks find us and come and see you and I at my next conference and in February and of course they can go to coachblueprint.com/mission and find out more about that. And I look forward to you and I may be being able to help some people there as well.

Ian Robertson
That sounds like fun. Thanks, Mike. All right. Thank you.

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.