5 Books Every Inspector Should Read

Ever wonder what separates a struggling inspector from a thriving business owner? Spoiler: it's rarely about technical knowledge.

We've identified a consistent pattern—where most professionals fall short isn't in understanding building systems, but in mastering the crucial soft skills that drive business success. In this candid conversation, I reveal the five books that transformed my approach to home inspection and business ownership, and continue to serve as my go-to resources during morning routines and office days.

From Robert Greene's "Laws of Human Nature," which has saved me countless headaches by teaching me to observe client behavior objectively, to Sun Tzu's surprisingly relevant "Art of War" with its business strategy gems like "let your competitor make the opening," these recommendations address the skills gap that technical training never covers. I share how Dale Carnegie's classic people skills manual dramatically improved my inspection delivery, why Jacob Goldstein's financial literacy primer should be required reading for every business owner, and how Robert Cialdini's psychology insights have helped me communicate more effectively with anxious clients.

These aren't trendy self-help titles—they're practical, skill-building resources that have directly contributed to better client experiences, smoother inspections, and ultimately, a more profitable business. Whether you're a seasoned inspector or just starting out, implementing these principles could be the difference between merely surviving and truly thriving in this competitive industry. What morning routine or "office day" practice has most improved your inspection business?

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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.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Inspector Toolbelt Talk
• 1:35 The Value of Soft Skills
• 3:20 Laws of Human Nature by Greene
• 5:42 Sun Tzu's Art of War
• 9:08 How to Win Friends and Influence
• 10:38 Money: True Story of Made-Up Thing
• 13:33 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
• 16:31 Episode Closing and App Promotion

Transcript

Ian Robertson  
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. Today, we're going to talk about a subject that has been heavily requested in a couple of different forms. Some have just asked for a list of books that I read as a business owner and as an individual inspector. And then I've also been asked many times, what should I do on my quote, unquote, office day? So especially throughout this season, you've probably heard some of our guests mention it. You've heard me mention it. I've had some ask me when you, I've talked about it before, I like to get up early in the morning, and I like to prepare my mind and organize my day and regain focus and all that other jargon that people like to use, whatever. But I like to get up early and do that stuff, and it helps me as a business owner and as a human being. But out of request for those, it really comes down to some books that I'd like to recommend, and each of these have an important aspect to both us that are home inspection business owners to the actual inspector. Now I'm going to skip all the code books and really good electrical reference guides and things like that. Listen, if you want to read those books, cool, I do. I'm a huge dork. I love that kind of stuff. But this is more about, what do we do on the office day? What do we do when I get up early in the morning before I go out on inspection, things like that. These things are very important, because oftentimes we're missing out on some very important skill sets that we could be honing. 

For instance, imagine if we were a mechanic, and we got all of our mechanic ability and skills through 20 years of working on cars ourselves. Great, awesome. But you know what would make us a better mechanic, is if before we started each day, we read a book about our trade, we read a book about mechanical engineering, we read a book about how cars work together in integral parts and things like that, when we would go to work, we'd probably be a lot better mechanic, and we will probably get paid more, have a better job, all that other good stuff. So fine tuning our skills is important, and the skills that are often lacking in our industry are soft skills. I know 1000s of inspectors, and I have helped hundreds, if not 1000s of inspectors, personally. Where we always lack is almost never in the technical knowledge. There's always going to be a home inspector that lacks in his roofing knowledge or lacks in his electrical knowledge and yada yada yada. But across the board, where we lack is how to work with a client, how to deal with a difficult circumstance, how to see those things coming and avoid them to begin with. And the list goes on. We talk about a lot on this podcast. So we're going to talk about some things that help us become a better business owner, but more importantly, a better inspector in the long run and in the short run. 

So here's my number one favorite book that I think every inspector should read, because it is changed how I do business and has made it infinitely better. It is called The Laws of Human Nature, by Robert Greene. So it's uncomfortable to read at parts, because some of it is a little bit irking, because we all know somebody like each chapter of the book, but it goes over the fact that we need to step back, and instead of being upset about situations, upset about people, upset about this person doing something nefarious, and everybody turning a blind eye or whatever is happening, and helps us to step back and say, Okay, what societal or psychological profile does this person fit? And it'll use many different examples, and some of them are highly, highly attuned to owning or running a business, like one of the last chapters, I believe, I think it's the third to last chapter talks about John Rockefeller and Standard Oil, one of my favorite subjects. That guy was an enigma upon an enigma, and became the world's first billionaire. And hypothetically, with inflation, he could quite possibly be the richest person who ever lived in modern times. And he just started out as some bookkeeper, crazy story, but it talks about the psychological effects and the societal effects on things. More importantly, it'll help us to understand people better and observe them objectively which that has helped so much in business and on an inspection or whatever. You can step back and start to look at people in a more objective way. Say, okay, they're freaking out. And all of a sudden we realize, oh, I'm not taking any personal offense to this. I'm watching it like I'm watching a nature documentary and responding in the best way possible. It's pretty impressive. So, The Laws of Human Nature, by Robert Greene. Want to be a better inspector by dealing better with people and situations and even avoiding—this has helped me avoid so many bad situations—even avoiding bad situations, working better with other inspectors, with your employees, with your employer, just as yourself as a single man show? This is a great book. I keep it on my phone as a reference guide. 

Second one is my second favorite book. And interestingly enough, I always quoted this book all the time without realizing it, until someone else recommended, just read the whole thing. It's Sun Tzu's The Art of War. We're actually going to have a podcast on it. I tell you what, when you view every situation in life, not as quote, unquote war, but basically some sort of interaction, these principles apply. This book is hundreds and hundreds of years old. There's a reason why some militaries have it as required reading. And even in the US, while it's not quote, unquote, required reading, it's what they call expected reading, like, you got to read this, dude. So The Art of War is basically small passages, and it's a quick read. So the first book I gave you, The Laws of Human Nature, by Robert Greene, spend some time on that one. That one's going to take you a while to read. Not that it's a huge book, but it's something you want to spend some time on. The Art of War, if you read through it, the original copy, not the extrapolated and they have expanded copies, get the original copy in modern language, that is, because it's written in Japanese, of course. But it's just one verse, and then the next verse and the next verse, and then sometimes I'll read the versions where they'll connect points. So for instance, one of my favorite principles from Sun Tzu's Art of War is you don't make the opening your enemy does. And I'm paraphrasing. So in other words, when there's someone on the market that they're like, they're just dominating, we oftentimes say, well, I need a more aggressive campaign, or I need to somehow get their clients, or I need to somehow figure out what they're doing. It has helped me to not waste a ton of effort doing that, because all you're doing is wasting troops, so to speak, energy, resources, all that stuff, attacking a fortified city. Because invariably, our quote, unquote enemy competitor, they shouldn't, we shouldn't view them as an enemy, this is just an analogy, they will create the opening for us. They're going to leave the gate open on accident. They're going to not repair a section of their wall. They're not going to see an invading army coming from the other side, whatever it happens to be. The analogy goes on, our enemy is going to make the opening for us.

I tell you what, I saved so much time and money and had so much success doing that. When I first started as an inspection company owner, I was young, and I didn't know, I was trying my best, attacking the market. When I learned very shortly after starting, okay, let's step back. Let's let everybody else make the opening for me. And then I watch. And then a second principle from Sun Tzu's Art of War would come in. Attack when there's an opening, retreat when it closes. Again paraphrasing. So whenever there was an opening, like an inspector all of a sudden doesn't offer a service and I do, oh, man, I would just market the tar out of that service. And all sudden, they would start offering this service, maybe even just a few weeks later, and then I would roll my campaign back. So they would create the opening for me, I would take advantage of the opening, and then I wouldn't keep pushing that one angle. I would just pull back and then be happy that I took, you know, maybe 12 of their 80 agents, or maybe even just five or three. It didn't matter, because I was piecemealing it little by little, and I would have multiple competitors that I would do stuff like that with. So Sun Tzu's Art of War, that's something that, take a few verses each day. Read them, see how they apply. Listen, talk to chatGPT and say, what are some principles that I could connect today in my business from Sun Tzu's Art of War, however you want to do it, read it from cover to cover at least once. It is really a fantastic, and I know lots of business people that use Sun Tzu's Art of War as a basis for business. It might as well be called Sun Tzu's Art of Business. It's really fantastic. 

The third book that I like to recommend is an oldie but goodie. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong in the comments. But I believe the How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, I believe that was written in the 70s? It is required reading for many companies with their salesmen. I don't know any successful salesman that hasn't read it, or at least is able to reference it. I mean, one of the best salesmen that I know, he was on season one of our podcast years ago. His name's Scott, he blows most salesmen out of the water, high level, like I love talking to the guy. I learned stuff from him every time. He references this book all the time, and he'll go back and read it regularly. They're basic principles, but they work. There's a reason that this book is 30 years old, no, 50. I'm sorry, 50 years old or more. I have no idea. I have to go back and look. But it's decades old, and people still use it as a reference guide because it works. It's really amazing how much this book works. So sales or on a home inspection. I use those principles on a home inspection all the time. If you read that book and don't glean something from it, you're probably not doing something right. The most intelligent people in the world that I that I have ever met in my life use and reference that book, not just for business, not just for sales, but for life in general, and make a success of it. 

The fourth book, and this is going to be, it sounds like an odd one at first, but it's called Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein. I mentioned this book because a money book should be part of our repertoire. I have known so many people that have made so much stupid money being good at, not business, but a business. For instance, a roofer. The guy imagined himself this great businessman, because he was good at a business, not business in general. When his roofing business changed, he lost everything. And I'm like, dude, you were making over a mill a year. What's going on? It's just gone. You know why? He didn't understand money? When I meet people who have been working their whole lives and they don't have a dime to their name at 62, okay? Life hits us. We have families. I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about people that you know had extra money, but it just piddled away, or people who put money in a bank account. I hate that. You're literally losing money when you put money in a bank account, even a high interest bank account, like something like Marcus or Betterment, you're going to get, I think it's like three point something percent. So you're just going to basically keep up with inflation. Little things like that changed how I do business and how I go about the fiscal part of my life, but so few of us have a basic understanding of money. I know I didn't. Fortunately, one of my best friends in the world is an accountant, and my brother is a CPA, and over the years, they drilled it into my thick, dumb head of what this means of, you know, don't pay that off. Make sure you do this instead. Now pay that off and then do this, and eventually I'm like, oh, man. So I went back and I started to get a basic understanding of money, and one of the basis of that is understanding fiat currency and how it's pretend. So it helps us to understand where to put things. And I'm not talking about, well, I don't have hundreds of 1000s of dollars sitting around. I don't care if you have $20 sitting around or 20 million sitting around. There's important things that can really give us an edge in life, money wise, and also in business, especially if we're a business owner, is this important. Understanding money, the basics of it. I really wished I had taken a year of accounting, a year of fiscal, some sort of education, so I understood this younger. Start with that book. It's a starter book, so it's not going to change your life, but it is a starter book. Read it all the way through, and then go back and start learning everything you can about money. Do the math. If we are 20 years old and we put away the amount of, you know, a few lattes a week and compounded interest over the years, yada yada yada. It blows my mind every time I see it. So that book, Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. Great introduction, quick read, super quick read. And we don't need to be a financial genius. I know I'm not one. 

So the last book I'd like to recommend, I have recommended it on this podcast before. It is really a critical book. If you were to take any two books just to make business a little smoother, just to make our inspections go a little bit better, I would read the first book, The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene, but this book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. I'm going to repeat that, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and I always pronounce the author's name wrong, but it's Robert Cialdini. Whatever his name is, writes a fantastic book. This helps us to deal with people in life, make better business decisions, help us to raise our prices, to elevate our business, just helps us to have a better service. If we're a business owner, our inspectors should read this book, because it just makes them way better at making people happy. It's just a fantastic book. 

So if you want to know what I wake up early and do besides research and reading all sorts of crazy stuff, I'm just wild that way. I'm not a normal person. I'm not fun. But if you want to know what I do in the mornings and what some do on their quote, unquote office days, I hate saying that word self-improvement, because it has a pejorative connotation. Kind of sounds like we're going to be some guy that says entrepreneur in their biography, you know, standing outside of our friend's Maserati with a suit on or our shirt unbuttoned halfway down our chest. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about honing skills. So if we like to read or don't like to read, I personally do not like to read. I do like to learn, though, and I gobble it up. Turn on an eBook. Listen to it. Don't do other stuff. Focus on the information. Learn. When you hit a book that you're like, this is really good. Don't listen all the way through. Stop at the points where, like, that's a good point, and practice that one skill. Then go on to the next skill. The more we do that, the better we're going to get without even realizing it, and we'll find ourselves quoting those books and honing those skills. And I know for me, like 2, 3, 4, years down the road, I'll be like, oh, this major part of my business I got from something that I learned from that book, and I honed a skill. 

So take some time, read a book. These are the five that I would recommend. Thank you very much, and we'll look forward to talking to you again on Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

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.