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Inspector Toolbelt Talk
A weekly home inspection podcast hosted by the founders of Inspector Toolbelt - the premier home inspection software. Get tips, insights, strategies, and more from our hosts and guests to help give your home inspection business a boost. Ian and Beon are property inspection and tech industry veterans with over 20 years of experience each. Sometimes they even stay on point :)
Inspector Toolbelt Talk
How Home Inspectors Add Lucrative Verticals
Want a playbook for turning slow seasons into growth? We sit down with Tony from Villa Property Inspections to map out practical ways inspectors expand beyond a standard SOP without losing credibility or crossing ethical lines. From balcony inspection mandates in California to ADA accessibility assessments and commercial proposal tactics, Tony breaks down how the right credentials open doors—and how to present them so clients stop haggling and start booking.
We dig into why maintaining a contractor’s license or earning ICC certifications can change your posture in any room, especially with engineers and commercial brokers. You’ll hear how a formal proposal—cover, scope, methodology, resume, qualifications, and then price—can “topple the fraction” of buyer expectations and borrow trust from respected organizations. We also tackle the fear of liability head-on, outlining how insurance, clear scope, and rigorous documentation keep risk in check while you expand into mold, balcony, or specialty inspections.
For inspectors squeezed by stagnant pricing, we outline a path to higher margins and better exit value: recurring maintenance plans. Think filters, gutters, caulking, dryer vents, vegetation trimming—simple tasks that create ARR and MRR while staying clear of transaction conflicts. Add in regional services like wildfire home hardening backed by NFPA-aligned training, and you’ve got a diversified, resilient business that wins in any cycle. If you’re ready to build beyond the SOP, stack value, and turn credibility into contracts, this conversation shows you where to start and how to scale.
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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.
Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. We have on a repeat guest. Tony from Villa Property Inspections out in sunny California. How are you, Tony?
Tony Escamilla
Great. Ian, nice to be back. How are you doing?
Ian Robertson
I'm doing fantastic, in a new office. I just moved all my stuff into a new office. But I hear you have had an exciting week already. Kind of the standard of the home inspection industry.
Tony Escamilla
It is. There's always fires to put out. One of my guys was doing a balcony inspection yesterday and put his foot right through the floor of the balcony floor, and it then fell over, and so he got hurt. Luckily, nothing serious, but there's always some kind of fire to put out and it's typically on a Monday.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, typically. And you know, it's more important that he's okay, but it sounds like he was doing a good thorough balcony inspection.
Tony Escamilla
That's taking it to a new level.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, exactly. How many holes did you put in balconies today? But Tony, I'm really glad to have you on because one of the things I like about you is you think outside the box. A lot of us like to say we think outside the box, even I like to say that about myself. But in reality, when somebody actually thinks outside the box. We stand back and go, oh, I never even thought of that. That's what I like about you. You take the box, you expand the box, you move the box, and you think outside the box. So I like that. But today we're going to be talking about basically adding different verticals onto our business, or expanding into them, or widening our own vertical. Vertical being the business that we work in. So tell me what you mean by that, what that means to you, and what are some things maybe that you have done.
Tony Escamilla
You know, I hear and I've done, other inspectors talking about doing different services, particularly when things slow down. You know, we're coming into a slower season right now, and everybody's talking about, I had a zoom call earlier today with some other inspectors, and everybody's talking about this time of year, what can we do to keep our guys busy, and what can we expand to? What kind of services can we offer? And one particular conversation was about a completely different venture that is somewhat related to the inspection industry and somewhat not. And so that's where some of the ideas that I had mentioned to you came from, is looking for those opportunities. And I think we spoke about it in the last time I was here as well, looking for those opportunities and seizing them and being prepared for these opportunities that may come. And so I'm sure we'll touch on that right now.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and one of the things that you talked about was, well, in your state, you have a contractor's license. In New York, we don't, unless you're in New York City, which I'm not, and many other states don't have contracting licensing, but you mentioned having some certifications or licensing in there if it's available. Why has that worked out well for you?
Tony Escamilla
You know, I've been lucky in that, you know, I've been a contractor for 25 years now. Right around the same time I got into home inspection 27 years ago but I haven't been in construction in many years, but I maintain my contractor's license, one for credibility. A lot of clients, particularly in the commercial industry, they like seeing that you're licensed contractor, and two, it opens up doors that normally would not open for you unless you had a contractor's license. And for example, here in California, law passed a couple years ago that similar to Florida, that all balconies and apartment buildings and condominiums have to be inspected, and so last year was probably a record setting year for us because of balcony inspections, which really, really boosted our revenue. At the end of last year, they extended the deadline to get your balconies inspected. And so right around October last year, the numbers dropped because everybody said, well, I could just wait till next year. So everybody waited till next year. So last year, we thought, you know, this is a unicorn year. There's no way we're going to do this again. And sure enough this year, we're looking to not only meet those numbers, but actually exceed those numbers, based on the additional revenue that we have from balcony inspections. That and commercial inspections. But balcony inspections, we were able to take advantage of solely because we have a contractor license, and this is where I had a little bit of advantage over fellow home inspectors, is that I had the contractor's license, I was able to seize the opportunity. And it was preparation, meaning opportunity, which I know we talked about before.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and basically, better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it when it comes to additional certifications and qualifications. And as we talked about having a contractor's license, or even touching on the point about being a contractor, I could physically feel all the home inspectors in the industry cringe, or at least a certain set of them, because for many years, for decades, we've always said it has to be completely separate and has to be objective. It does have to be separate and objective. But every SOP that I know of, every state SOP, InerNACHI SOP, ACHI SOP, none of them include things that aren't tied necessarily to a home inspection. So for instance, you mentioned contracting. I know a lot of inspectors out there have contracting businesses, and they do anything not associated with a real estate transaction. So for instance, in New York State, you're not allowed to work on a home within, I think it's 30 days close of escrow or something like that, I have to go back and look at the exact wording, but it said close of escrow. So if there's never escrow, ie no transaction, there's no law that prohibits you from working on the home. And that's what contractors do. They do walk through inspections and then they do work. I know home inspectors that are doing that in an ethical way. But also, there's things like wood destroying insect. Pest control has nothing to do with any standards of practice of any home inspection anywhere that I know of. Mold, completely separate. I know home inspectors that will do a home inspection, then they'll do the mold assessment and/or remediation, depending on the process of their municipality, and they're doing a fantastic business that way.
Tony Escamilla
Absolutely. I know a lot of inspectors who have diversified by opening up termite pest control companies out here. Now California is a little bit different in that we can't do wood destroying inspections the way you can in other states. Out here, it has to be a licensed pest control company. And so a lot of the home inspectors also own termite companies out here, so they're able to do that that work as well, and that's a great way to diversify. Now having a contractor's license, I think, personally, just from experience that it behooves home inspectors to have a contractor's license, regardless of whether they're in a licensed state for home inspection or not, because, like I said, it opens up opportunities that you normally wouldn't have, like doing balcony inspections. Another example here in California, another law that passed is that if you have an ADU, i.e. a converted garage, and it's not permitted, the law says that the state or your local city is required to approve your permit to legalize that ADU, assuming you pass a certain checklist of things that need to be done, and that is established by having your property inspected by a licensed contractor. Because we have the infrastructure and we have the inspectors already in place, it is yet one more opportunity meeting, you know, our licensing and our preparation and so, yeah, there are many verticals that you can go for. And I just think that, you know, we spoke about it the last time that I was on, the corridor principle. If you're moving down this corridor, you're going to have all these doors opening on either side of you that you can't see unless you're moving forward. And these opportunities will not open up unless you're actually moving forward, unless you're prepared, I should say, and some of them won't open, some of them will. Some of them you'll open them, and you're not going to want to go in.
Ian Robertson
So let me ask you, Tony, you mentioned several times having a contractor's license, and I think that's a great benchmark for having additional qualifications ready and available, so when the opportunity comes up, you can take advantage of it. But specifically talking about contractor's license, what qualifications could maybe a home inspector get in a state that doesn't have a contractor's license, like here in New York, you slap a sticker on your truck and go out with a hammer, and you can call yourself a contractor.
Tony Escamilla
Yeah. If anything, I think I would recommend ICC. ICC helped a lot, because ICC will give you the credibility of doing pre-drywall inspections and new construction inspections, and that opens up the doors, and though the doors, it's fairly open in most states already, it also gives you that credibility, gives you the edge over some other inspectors when you can say, hey, look, I'm an ICC residential building inspector, not just a home inspector.
Ian Robertson
I think that's a fantastic point you just made, because even though we love to say, in our industry, we don't inspect for code, codes always changing. Your house was built 10 years ago, so it's not going to be modern building code. Knowing the code, just in of itself, gives us credibility. But you walk into a room with a couple of contractors and an engineer, and they're just like, you're just a home inspector, and you're like, well, actually, my ICC certified. Let me mention these three code violations, and then talk to you at your level about what you're talking about. You instantly kind of own the room, don't you?
Tony Escamilla
Absolutely, and it goes a long way to, like I said, setting your credibility and getting repeat customers. If you have clients that deal with new construction, or realtors that deal with new construction, or even in commercial work, if you get a real commercial broker, not a resimercial, once you get their respect, you are on speed dial for them, and we've been lucky to do that here with a couple of commercial brokers, and they'll call and ask for an inspection on an apartment building, for example, not once do they even ask, how much is this going to cost? It's because we already established that credibility with them.
Ian Robertson
Man, that's a fantastic point. So when we walked into this podcast, I was wondering, I'm like, okay, well, a lot of states don't have licensing for contractors, but what kind of qualifications? But that especially is good for multiple verticals, when you can kind of stand in the room and say, I have the right qualifications, not, quote unquote, just the home inspector qualifications. And just a quick example. And I tell this story a lot. I just told it yesterday, one of the inspectors that I work with, when we first started doing septic system inspections, we learned all the regulations, state SOPs and SOP with all these organizations, whenever an engineer, I say, whenever an engineer, it's happened a couple of times, they're like, oh, you can't do that. Or an agent's like, you can't do that. Or somebody's like, you can't do that. An agent even brought it all the way to the state. "They can't do this." Here's our paperwork, here's this paperwork, here's that paperwork, here's our qualifications, and here's our process, to the point where the state even came back, and I've told this story before, they said, no, they're in their right, and they ping the engineer, and they're like, this is going in your file. You're working outside of your jurisdiction. Leave these guys alone. So just knowing it, but let alone having the qualification, here's the piece of paper that says, I'm ICC certified. I know the codes. I know what's going on. Here's the problem.
Tony Escamilla
Yeah, and I've had several opportunities where people will call me specifically because they know that I'm ICC certified and a general contractor. In particular, I remember one that was having trouble with their contractor during a renovation of their house, and so contractor walked off site, they're trying to go after their bond, it turned into a legal issue, and so they wanted somebody who had the qualifications to go in and do the inspection so that they can move their case forward. I ended up not taking it because I didn't want to get involved in legal battle. But my point is that that opportunity wouldn't have come to me unless I had those things. And so, like I said, I think that it behooves home inspectors to seek some of these additional certifications, or to get a contractor's license, on top of the home inspector's license, because it lends to the credibility number one, and it opens doors that that you normally wouldn't have open.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and a lot of times we start to worry about liability, like, okay, say we become ICC certified, and then we're inspecting a home, and we're working under a different SOP, and then people are like, your website says your ICC certified. I'm going to sue you. I don't know how many times on this, yeah, you just chuckled, because I don't know how many times I've said on this podcast, stop worrying so much about liability. I've been doing this for 20 years. I forget how long you've been doing it, Tony. I've never gone to court. I've had a couple of people grumpy, and then it just goes away. And we've done, I don't know how many 1000s of inspections. It's not that high liability, comparatively.
Tony Escamilla
It's not, you know, when I first posted something on Facebook about two years ago about doing balcony inspections, I got a slew of people saying, oh, my God, I would never do that. The liability is too high. Why would you want to do that? And, you know, two years later, never had an issue at all. And I know it's gonna drop off a little bit, but never had an issue at all. I checked with the insurance company. The insurance company, they're like, yeah, go to town on it. It's no different than a balcony inspection you would do for a home inspection. And so, you know, sometimes it's getting out of your own way and letting the fear of liability or failure or whatever it may be, dictate what your actions are going to be. And just, you know, sometimes the best education comes from failure, and you know, try it, if it didn't work, it didn't work. But I don't worry too much about liability. I always check with the insurance company first, and if they say it's okay, let's do it.
Ian Robertson
Yep, same thing when we got into mold inspections, when New York state came out with laws for that, I remember people walking out of the class, home inspectors, "that's too much liability." I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, it's less liability than the rest of your inspection, and if there's mold, there's still going to be mold whether or not you have the qualifications, but if you get the qualifications, then you're going to know better what to do. I'm like, I don't see the problem with it personally, but I like how you also mentioned commercial inspections, and I still feel like this is the golden age of commercial inspections. It's not a saturated market yet, and it's transitioning away from all the engineers and stuff like that to commercial inspection companies. So I still think it's the golden age. They're going to want more than a CCPIA certification. And I hate saying that, because I love CCPIA. I think everyone should join it. I don't get any money from it, and, in fact, I might even get a little flack from them. I have no idea. But realistically, I just think it's the best organization, practically. But on paper, you're gonna have engineers saying, okay, we need a guy to go out and inspect this 30,000 square foot warehouse. They're going to look for some oomph in your credentials. They're gonna want something, and they're also gonna want to talk the talk, like you can't say, well, you know, this heating unit is bigger than in a house. If you say that, you've lost all credibility. You're gonna need to say, okay, well, here's the BTU, here's the...You need to be able to talk about it at their level. What other kind of certifications and qualifications besides a contractor's license or ICC certified, do you think are valuable for inspectors right now?
Tony Escamilla
As far as commercial goes, it's not so much the certifications. Obviously, if you have an ICC certification, you have a general contractor's license, it's going to go a long way. If you ask a lot of commercial real estate brokers what ICC is, they probably wouldn't be able to tell you honestly. There are organizations like BOCA, which I can't remember what it stands for at the moment, but these are like the building engineers that maintain these large skyscrapers and large projects, and that's one certification. Of course like I said, ICC helps. Having a contractor's license for me as far as commercial work goes, that's probably had the biggest impact. Even though I haven't done construction work in 10 years, I still keep up to date with codes and everything else in the industry. You have to be educated. You can have a license, but if you don't know squat, it's going to be really quick before somebody realizes that. The way that it helps me, these qualifications...because you can have these qualifications, but if you don't present them properly, they're not going to mean squat. So the way I do it for large commercial property quotes that we give is we do a very formal proposal. And this is what real commercial brokers are looking for. They have a standard of what they're looking for. And my close rate is 80, 90% on these when I send out a formal proposal, and on that proposal is a form cover sheet, it is the scope of our standards of what we do, how we do it, and then I follow that with my resume on the next page. And this is where I take advantage of this, because my resume is, you know, I put all of these qualifications there, and then I'll put, okay, this is how much it's going to cost, and then below that will be, these are the additional services that we offer. And nine out of 10 times when it gets approved, they'll come back and say, yeah, we're approving it. And we also want this, this, this and that. And one of our biggest add ons right now for commercial is accessibility assessments. Anybody who's buying a commercial property wants to know if there are any issues that might lead to a lawsuit, and so can you do an ADA assessment? And so a certification, CCPIA, I love CCPIA. The more you certifications you have, the better. But one of the ones that they offer is accessibility, it's a certification. So if you can offer that, it literally doesn't take more than about 30, 40 minutes on to what you're doing, and you're charging the equivalent of a whole other home inspection for doing that.
Ian Robertson
So you mentioned a couple of gold nuggets in there that I want to talk about, just from a marketing standpoint. A year or two ago, we had Ben Gromicko on, and he talked about marketing fractions and borrowing respect. So you do both of those with your proposal, so not to diverge into a different subject but anybody who does commercial proposals should go back, rewind this, and listen to what Tony just said. He did two things that are very important for a commercial proposal. So toppling the fraction is, customer expectation is the bottom of the fraction, so there's two numbers, top number, bottom number. So let's say that's 100. CCPIA, qualifications might get you 10. Then you get another five for having a website. Then you get another five for being this or being that. What you're trying to do is to get to not 100 but the highest number possible over their expectations, so that the top number is bigger and it topples the fraction. So what Tony did with his proposal, and I love how you just said that, because you know how many guys ask me how to do a proper proposal? I'm gonna just take that little sound bite and just play it for them, give them all that stuff, and then give them all your qualifications, then the price underneath there, so they have to look past this giant list of your qualifications, or your team's qualifications and all this other stuff. So that's toppling the fraction. By the time they get there, they're like, all right, all right, I get it. But you also borrowed respect. So the more organizations you belong to, the higher the likelihood that they're going to recognize at least one or more of them. So I'm more likely to buy a box of cereal if it says cinnamon flakes by Kellogg's because I'm like, oh, I like other Kellogg cereal, so I'm going to try this. So they borrowed the respect of their brand to sell a new cereal. That's why you often see Kellogg's, to make sure that you know, hey, this is from us. So if I respect CCPIA, or if I respect ICC or any of those organizations that you mentioned, and you're a member, you automatically have a measure of respect for me borrowed from that organization, even though I don't know you. So that, in of itself, is one of the best reasons why you should do everything that you're saying here, Tony, have a contractor's license, if that's available in your area, be ICC certified, get all these other additional certifications, topple that fraction, borrow respect. And what did you say your close rate was?
Tony Escamilla
It's going to be 80, 90% on commercial proposals when we issue an actual formal proposal. Now, on the smaller projects, the mom and pop, you know, small, little strip mall, they don't want to see a 10 page proposal, or a six page proposal, or whatever it is. They want to see a one page, send email and it says, okay, here's what we do, here's our qualifications, here's the additional services, and it's a one sheet email, and that works well. On the larger projects, there's a certain expectation from a professional commercial broker of what they're used to seeing, and if you meet that, then it improves the possibility of them saying yes.
Ian Robertson
So taking this back to, we're a home inspection podcast, and a lot of us home inspectors are like, I don't see how any of that's going to help me win a job in home inspection. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think it will help or not?
Tony Escamilla
Absolutely, yeah, the more qualifications, and it's a little bit of work, and I get it, to get some of these different things and get a contractor's license, but it does, in my experience anyways, it has helped me tremendously over the years, even for home inspection. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a realtor talking to their client and they say, this is Tony. He's a home inspector and he's a general contractor. And so it has helped tremendously, like I said, and it also opens the door for other verticals, which is where we started the conversation of, you know, when home inspections slow down, and they always do, our economy right now is fluctuating, and we're hoping that things are going to bounce back in the next few months—I love your podcast about that, by the way—but in the meantime, you know, people have gotten creative with termite companies, with septic repairs, I heard that one recently as well, and in a whole variety of different things. And in my book, I put a full blown blueprint on how to start a service business for residential properties, which borders kind of on having a contractor's license, but not really. It's more of a maintenance thing, which is easily achieved if you're a home inspector. You know, I've heard of guys who hang Christmas lights. So that's a big business apparently, I have to look into that. But yeah, I think the key point is to (a) get out of your own way, (b) think outside the box, look for those opportunities, talk to other home inspectors, but more importantly is be prepared. Like you said, it's better to be prepared and not have that opportunity than have this golden opportunity come by and you're not prepared.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and I think fear is what stops us from doing a lot of those things. I don't want to get my pest certification because what if somebody's going to expect more out of me in the inspection...all this other stuff. Typically it's going to be fear. But you know what's interesting too is the home inspection pricing over the past few years has stagnated again. It went up. So I watched the numbers. I'm not going to say the numbers, because I don't have them right in front of me, but it stayed around the same for like, a decade. And then, like, seven years ago, I started to see them go up for the first time, and I got excited. I'm like, yay. And now, over the past three or so years, they've stagnated, and in some markets gone down. They didn't really go up that far, we have literally, with inflation, never made less money as an industry, per inspection, per hour, per bit of effort, and we're doing more and making less. So there's got to be ways for us to expand, to charge more, because we do hit a ceiling. I'm always talking about charging more and delivering more, but eventually we hit a ceiling. No one's going to pay $2,000 for a really awesome home inspection when they can get a decent home inspection for 500. So we're going to hit ceilings unless we're in an uber rich area, but when it comes to that, we have to be able to be willing to go outside our comfort zone. So maybe we came from a construction background. We got into the inspection industry because we didn't want to do that stuff anymore. So it feels like a reversion when maybe, you know, after our state SOP says you can't do that work on a house for 30 days. Well, okay, it doesn't say anything about gutter cleaning. But a guy gave me a quote on one of the properties I own, and, you know, little ranch house, not much in the way of gutters, 400 bucks for two hours. I'm like, okay, when you count home inspectors, the work they do before, after, and all this other stuff, he's making more than most home inspectors. You know, it's like less overhead, less stress. He just cleans up the gutters and he's gone in two hours.
Tony Escamilla
Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a quick synopsis of the business plan that I was talking about of home maintenance. The business model is a recurring billing where you go out to a property and to a house. Now, mind you, you've already done the home inspection. This is the little gray area of whether you can or you can't. You've done the home inspection. You're done. There's no reason why a year from now, you can't reach out to these people who just bought a home, and particularly young professionals who don't have the time to maintain their house, and say, hey, for X amount of dollars, we will come out to your house and do this package of maintenance items—cleaning the gutters, touching up paint, caulking around your doors, your windows, trimming a tree branch away from your roof, replacing your HVAC filters, cleaning out your dryer duct work. There's a whole list of things that you can do. None of these require licensing, and none of them is a conflict with doing a home inspection. And the beauty of that business model, it's a recurring thing, that once you sign them up, they're going to be billed every three months, or every six months, or whatever it is. And you can get a college kid to go out there and knock these things out in an hour. And you know, it's one of those things that I have not actually done yet, but I have the written plan. Like I said, it's in my book, I have the written plan for it, which at some point I know I'm going to, you know, the company is still growing, and I'm putting all my eggs in the inspection industry right now, whether it be commercial or residential, but at some point I know I'm going to execute that plan.
Ian Robertson
Well, it's a successful business plan because I've seen other inspection companies do that same thing. So we think about it. Let's say we're the average home inspector, and we do 200 inspections a year. That's 200 leads a year. How many maintenance companies would kill to have 200 new homeowners to market to, to say, hey, would you like your gutters cleaned, your leaves raked, and all that stuff. And you mentioned something specific, ARR and MRR, annual recurring revenue and monthly recurring revenue. We often don't think about our exit strategy. When we go to sell our home inspection companies, they are not worth as much as we think. I've seen guys sell their very large inspection companies for a decent amount of money. But to be honest with you, I've seen, there was a guy I know, he sold his inspection company and it was big, for a million dollars. Okay, cool. So he got 700,000 after taxes. That was less than he made in a year. So even the big ones, you don't really have much of a sellable product. And in fact, what happens is, another guy I know, he sold his inspection company for $5,000. All they wanted was the domain name and the reviews. He had five guys, decent size company, but couldn't sell it for anything, because they're like, once you're gone, there's nothing. Annual recurring revenue makes it three to 8x what you make per year. So if you sign up, let's say 50 of those people a year, and it's $1,000 a year. That's $50,000 a year. You do that for five years, and hypothetically, you're going to have $250,000 of annual recurring revenue, ARR. When you go to sell your company, you sell those contracts along with it. So not only does your inspection company become more valuable because now it is also the lead generator, but you own your own marketing company. You get paid to market for your maintenance company, and then you get to sell that for, let's say, 5x. So now you make $1.5 million on your $250,000 a year business. Those are very modest numbers.
Tony Escamilla
Absolutely.
Ian Robertson
That's where you're going to be able to exit properly.
Tony Escamilla
And even if you exit the home inspection business, you know, because somebody once asked me, when are you going to retire? I said, the day before the funeral. This is because the business model is so simple and it's recurring income. There's no reason why you can't have somebody manage a business in quote unquote retirement or semi-retirement, and have recurring income coming in during your retirement, and you can have somebody managing that business. It's not home inspection business. You can retire from the home inspection business. Or, like you said, you package it all up, and it makes your home inspection business that much more attractive when you're exiting.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, that's one of the reasons why so many software companies, not us, want everybody's data. That's why they're out there trying to get as much data as possible. Because you know what they do with that data is okay, we have the data from 15,000 home inspectors. We're going to sell them everything. We're going to sell the leads to people who sell furniture, moving companies, maintenance companies, contractors. Oh, that report said that there was a roofing issue. Guess what? You have three quotes from roofers. They're doing that. If we want to own our own industry, we need to make sure that we do it within the bounds of the law, so our specific state or province, check with an attorney. But very likely we're going to find that, unless we're working on the roof, which we shouldn't do, likely cleaning leaves and, you know, power washing house has nothing to do with the home inspection, but it's stuff that people need.
Tony Escamilla
Yeah, and we own those leads. And you mentioned, okay, we have the leads from the people that we did the inspections for, but we also have leads of all of the realtors who can continue recommending you for, for example, the maintenance business that I just mentioned, they can continue recommending you. So, I mean, it is very scalable and I think my point is that there's a lot of different angles which we can use our qualifications. But the more qualifications that we have, i.e, ICC, CCPIA, having a general contractor's license, the more of these that we have, the more of these opportunities that are available to us. And so, like I said, this time of the year, pretty much all home inspectors are saying, hey, what can I do to keep my guys busy during the slow season? And you know, it's like I said, it's, in my opinion anyways, it's a matter of just getting out of your own way. It's that fear that we just talked about and and being prepared.
Ian Robertson
And I think basically the point that you're getting at is, when it's slow, it shouldn't be slow. When it's slow, you should be hitting that computer, hitting the classrooms, and getting every qualification and every bit of knowledge that you can get, and consider things that we might not have considered before. So is there a class going on about blower door testing? I hate blower door testing. I still think it's one of the most annoying things that you can get into, and doesn't pay enough. But hey, do you have, you know, a week off now and there's a class going on? Doesn't hurt to have it, because even if you never use it, be like, I understand how this works. Then when you're doing the final test, you know, the final inspection, on a phase inspection, before they do the blower door test. My municipalities, they do it for CFO. Now you can say, oh, hang on, I caught this and caught that. Then that agent says, oh, well, you know, Tony and Ian they, they catch those kind of things before everything goes down. So you don't get caught by the town. You know, that stuff just snowballs into opportunity. But we never have it if we don't get it.
Tony Escamilla
Absolutely. Here's another one here in California. It's actually probably the western half of the United States. I did some research on this. The western half and Florida of the United States is in a high fire zone, and particularly in California, it was like, you saw the fires that sadly happened at the beginning of the year here. And so there's another opportunity there that doesn't require a lot of effort, but having that sort of, that NFPA certification, for example, which is not hard to get, open the door to doing home hardening inspections or fire. You tell most people, you know, we offer a home hardening inspection, and they're like, what is that? So we're kind of rebranding that into a fire prevention inspection, particularly when it comes to wildfires and how to, you know, prevent your house from burning down, if there's houses burning down, you know, even a mile away from you. And so again, another opportunity, if you're in slow season, you know, what can I offer that's, you know, it didn't cost me anything to get an NFPA certification, and now we have a different service that we can offer.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I remember you mentioning that last time, and actually somebody else brought it up on a different podcast after you had brought it up. It's a service that in that part of the country, or even in Canada, Canada has a lot of wildfires. It might be something that we want to really sit down and say, okay, this is a service that people are either going to think about or should be thinking about, how do I get into it, and how do I do a good job at it? But listen Tony one more time, because we're running out of time here. But what's the name of your book again, so that the whole audience knows?
Tony Escamilla
Beyond Inspections.
Ian Robertson
Beyond Inspections.
Tony Escamilla
A Guide to Growing Your Home Inspection Business. Yeah, you know, luckily, it's done well. It was released at the beginning of the year. And you know, it's just 27 years of just the ups and downs of a home inspector. And you know, I like to think I learned something along the way. You know, they say, you know, the first time it's a mistake, the second time, it's a choice, so I try not to make the same mistake along the way.
Ian Robertson
Well, thank you very much for sharing your mistakes and your successes with us. I say this a lot at the end of a podcast, but to have people like you on the podcast that share all of their mistakes and successes and where the industry is headed and where we can expand our business, I mean, that's information you can't buy. That's information that is given to people that are willing to share their wisdom like you. So thank you, Tony, for sharing your wisdom with us today and helping us to look at things a little bit differently, especially as we go into the slow season.
Tony Escamilla
Well, thank you, Ian, it's always a pleasure.
Ian Robertson
We'll have you on again, but Beyond Inspections, Tony, thank you so much, and we'll have you back on soon.
Tony Escamilla
Take care.
Ian Robertson
Bye.
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.
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