How To Explode into 2026

Ready to stop coasting into December and start launching into January with real momentum? We sit down with Mark Hummel of Inspector Empire Builder to unpack how home inspectors can design a life-first vision and then build the business to match it. No secrets, no gimmicks—just the practical shift from technician thinking to CEO thinking and a system that turns goals into weekly action.

We dive into the 1-3-5 framework—one, three, and five-year vision—so your annual targets tie to something bigger than revenue. Mark explains why clarity beats hustle, how to future pace with your “future self,” and what it takes to move from feast-or-famine to steady, predictable work. Whether you run solo or lead a growing team, you’ll hear how to stabilize your calendar, batch your report writing, use canned comments without losing quality, and choose a personal operating system that fits your brain—process maps for detail lovers or time blocks for energy-driven operators.

The heart of this conversation is simple: your calendar should reflect your vision. We cover quarterly strategy reviews, monthly activity audits, and a 30-minute weekly reset that keeps you on track, plus the habits that fuel consistency—sleep, focused inputs, and purposeful learning instead of endless firefighting. If you’ve ever felt trapped by your business, this is your playbook for taking back control, creating time freedom, and punching past the bag to hit 2026 with energy and direction.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a fellow inspector, and leave a quick review. Tell us: what do you NOT want your 2026 to look like? Your answer could be the clarity you’ve been missing.

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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 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 0:41 What IEB Is And Isn’t
• 2:35 Defining Impact And Ripple Effects
• 4:44 No Secrets: Coaching Misconceptions
• 6:33 Exploding Into 2026: Start With Vision
• 9:58 Tie Goals To Something Bigger
• 13:40 Life Vision Before Business Vision
• 17:13 Technician Thinking Vs CEO Thinking
• 21:04 Solopreneur Stability Over Feast Or Famine
• 24:25 Clarify What You Want And Don’t Want
• 28:16 Privilege, Responsibility, And Skill Building
• 32:09 Enjoying Work By Improving Systems
• 35:07 Time Blocks Vs Process Mapping
• 37:45 Self Awareness As Your Operating System

Transcript

Ian Robertson  
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. Today on we have a special guest. We have Mark Hummel from IEB, how are you, Mark?

Mark Hummel  
I am doing so good. Ian, it has been way too long that we've been talking about getting on this podcast together, and we're finally doing it. 

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. I mean, well, you're a busy guy, but, you know, we chatted online. We saw each other at the InterNACHI TPREIA convention in Texas, whatever it's called. And then we finally made it happen. And I'm really glad to have you on. So Mark, just real quick, can you give everybody the lowdown, who you are and who IEB is? Just in case somebody doesn't know. 

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, I'd be honored to tell everybody a little bit about myself and even more about IEB. So me, I am a high performance business coach, and what I really believe in is helping people level up so that they can level up their business and actually use all the things that we teach and the education that we bring to the home inspection industry. And so it's a very you first kind of thing that I'm always focused on. And then what I am passionate about is building impact companies, so coaching businesses, and we have several of them. Inspector Empire Builder happens to be the one that everybody in this space knows me for, because we have a very refined niche for helping home inspection business owners grow, scale, or refine their business. That's what we do at IEB, whether it's one-on-one coaching or masterminding or coming to a conference or class. We're all about the business building side of the industry, rather than the technical side of the industry.

Ian Robertson  
That's awesome. And if you don't mind me asking, what is an impact company? Is it a company that makes an impact?

Mark Hummel  
That's a great question, and it deserves a definition for sure. So what I think is a really powerful thing for me to be focused on with my time is ripple effects. And so rather than impacting one person or one business, I want to create impact that helps them impact people. And so that's kind of our philosophy at IEB. When I say I want to create a company that creates impact, then that's what we're doing, right? We're not just telling people how to get more revenue and more business, more profit, more time, freedom. We want to help people do that for others in their community, in their family, with their teams, etc. And so if there's not a ripple effect attached to it, then it's not an impact company creating impact.

Ian Robertson  
Nice. I like that. And before the podcast, I was telling you I like your values and IEB's values that I've seen so far. Sometimes when you work with a quote unquote coaching company, it almost has a pejorative connotation, kind of like, oh, man, there's all this proprietary stuff you sign, an NDA that you can't, you know, help other people the way that they helped you, but you're saying the opposite. You're like, I want to make an impact on you, so that you can make an impact on others, spread the goodness.

Mark Hummel  
100% man. You can ask anything you want on this podcast. We will give all our secrets away. There's no secrets in IEB, and that's probably a misconception with coaching anyway. If you're following somebody who is claiming to have the the one thing that nobody else has, well, that's just not true, right? And in IEB, we know that we could hand everybody the absolutely perfect business building checklist, and then they won't go do anything with it. And so we've got to help them level up as a person with great personal operating systems so that they can then go level up their business. Has to be both, man.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and I love how you said that, because we've said that basic thing on this podcast before. There are no secrets. Everything that I've done to build three inspection companies myself, I talk about on this podcast, there are multi-inspector firms that have been on, guys who have built inspection empires, and they just lay it all out there. The difference is the person taking it. It's all a tool. The hammer in the hands of one man versus another, completely different outcomes between the two people. So leveling them up as a business builder, yeah, I like that cool. Well, that ties in very well with our theme today. This time of year, I think I get about a million emails a day it feels like of, hey, I'm getting ready for 2026, and here's some things that I'm doing, and we're changing people's websites or I don't coach, but I do help inspectors that I know, and I'm like, hey, why don't you try this or that? But our theme is how to explode into 2026. So Mark, I mean, how do we do that? Come on, just lay it out, Mark.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, the first step is to understand that when we work on vision or when we work on your mission for the year, different things like that, it can feel really vague for a lot of people, in fact, so much so that we just kind of start ignoring that work and go straight to what we should be doing. But the reality is that most people get in trouble in their business because they over emphasize doing things and under emphasize thinking about doing things. I'm not saying that people should stop everything and just stare at the wall and think and daydream all the time. What I'm saying is we've got to slow down long enough to develop our targets and to plan backwards and create a strategy. And so when I think about exploding into 2026, what I think about, what I visualize is somebody is wrapping up their year strong for 2025 and they're using that as a launch pad into their momentum for 2026 instead of what we see a lot of during the holiday season, and the wrap up of the year, people sort of just kind of creeping up to the finish line, kind of low energy, you know, it's the holidays. Slow everything down. And then before you know it, January is nearly over, before we light that fire again. We don't want to see that, right? We want to carry momentum forward in a big way. So step one, we have to slow down long enough to set those targets and to get really clear with what those targets are. And pro tip, if you will. I say this a lot in my coaching, every goal must be tied to something bigger than the goal, right? So, for example, if I want to get 100 inspections, there's got to be a reason to get those 100 inspections. And you might say something like money or, you know, the time freedom that it might afford. And 100 inspections is just a number I'm making up, but it has to be tied to something bigger. This is where we say, if you want to have an amazing 2026 you're going to need to have an amazing 2029 planned out, you're going to need to need to have an amazing 2031 somewhere on your target, on your radar. And really what I'm saying is a one, three, and five year version of your vision.

Ian Robertson  
So I wrote down a couple of points already from you, some actionable items that I'm going to take home, level up as a person. I really think just going back to that point, that's important, because we can't level up our business. We can't move forward unless we level up ourselves the way we think, the way we go about things. We can't just say, I'm going to add more inspections and stay stagnant as a business owner, as a person, but I like how you said every goal should be tied to something bigger. It almost comes down to overshooting. So you know those punching bag machines at an arcade? I was actually at one recently, and I was with all these young guys. Several of them, or a couple of them, were quite large guys, you know, 240 pounds muscular, and they got a lower score than I did. And I, you know, text my wife to brag. I'm like, haha, the young guys... 

Mark Hummel  
As you should.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, but it had nothing to do with strength, because one of the young guys, he went to go punch it. And I'm like, don't punch the bag. Punch, you know, four or five inches past the bag. He's like, what? I'm like, yeah, just punch the bag. Put your weight into it. Strength comes from your legs. Not that I know a lot about punching, but he did, and boom, he beat my score. It's not a matter of how powerful we are as a business owner, but sometimes it's about technique. We want 100 inspections. There has to be something bigger behind it that we're punching at, and the 100 inspections come out of the result of that. I like that way of thinking that helps us level up as a person.

Mark Hummel  
I couldn't agree more. Man, that's such a great analogy, that might show up in a talk someday. I'll give you credit for it. I promise, the punching bag analogy.

Ian Robertson  
Just give me a little bit of credit for it, that's all, and I just pulled that out of my ear at the moment. But what do you mean by, if you want to get a 2026 goal, a 2029 goal, how's that punching past the bag, so to speak?

Mark Hummel  
Yeah. And just to be clear, the reason I said 2029 is because we're talking about one year, 2026, three years, 2029, and five years, 2031, right? So it could just as easily be year 123, or it could be month six, month 12, month 18. But the idea is that you have three layers deep of your vision, and that way you're orienting yourself a direction, right? There's a trend line, if you will. And so you're going to tie everything to something bigger. Now what I recommend, very specifically, because of the coaching and what I've learned working with people, is that the ultimate way to tie everything to something bigger is to work on your life vision before you craft a business vision, because your business is, by definition, a problem, right? So when we get into business, it's to solve problems for people, and then problems are caused for us, and we're constantly just solving problems. But there's a really great line. I forget who said it, but it's some famous coach. You can't solve problems at the level of the problem. You've got to get above them. And so if business is your problem, you got to have something above that too. And so we would say, think about what you want your life to look like five years from today, right? Get really vivid with it and make it emotionally compelling. Meaning it moves you in some way. Same thing with your three year vision, same thing with your one year, you know, what do you want to be proud of a year from now? Who do you want in your life? How much work do you want to be doing versus not doing? And you can get really, really clear on this stuff. And that work has to happen in order for you to have a reason to excel in business. So it's one thing to say I want to grow by 20% in my business by the end of next year. It's another thing to say I want to have a life where I am out of the field running a team three years from now, and so my business needs to grow by 20% next year.

Ian Robertson  
So basically, you create the goal and you shape your business to fit the goal, instead of letting your business lead where you go.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, that's a really concise, good way to put it. We never want the business to be telling us where to go. That is what we call technician level thinking, right? And you've built several inspection businesses. So you know what this feels like. You kind of get tossed around a little bit in the beginning stages, and you're just going wherever the work needs you. But it's not until you get off the hamster wheel and you start directing things in your life that it feels way different. And we call this being the CEO of your life, right? You are the one who's deciding where to spend your energy and your time, and you're refusing to be taken off point from that. Way easier said than done, admittedly, but that's the work for a lot of people.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, I really like that way of thinking, and this may be extremely reductive of what you're trying to say, but it's also why we tell people, schedule office time. And there was an inspector that called me the other day and out in the field, Ian, I need this, I need that. And he didn't have a fully formed thought, let alone a plan. And I know the guy really well, and I'm just like, listen, man, if you can't explain what you want, I'm not going to be able to explain it for you. He is one that I've told him, you need to schedule a Friday afternoon at the very least, and just office day-it, like, sit back and go, what do I want? What am I doing? And he's like, yeah, I know, because he's running the hamster wheel, as you mentioned, and it's not giving him a good life. And where he says he wants his life to be, his business has led him in the opposite direction. He wanted more time with his family, he wanted more money and more freedom, and instead, his business has pulled him in the opposite direction. Because, like, what did you call it, technician level thinking?

Mark Hummel  
Technician level thinking, yeah. It's one of the biggest pivots we help people with when they first come into coaching. Running their business like a technician sounds like, you know, everybody do business with me because I'm the best technician in town. Well, business level thinking, or CEO level thinking, is everybody do business with me because we have an amazing vision, an amazing team, an amazing brand, right? And that's you outside of it, creating that, rather than in it, being the technician. So yeah, I think your friend and his story is all too common, people who are really, really busy. I mean, success is a curse sometimes, where you can get so busy that you then can't slow down long enough to think about your next five moves, and that will keep people stuck right where they are for an entire career. We actually see that all the time. People 20, 25 years into doing home inspections, and they're not sure how to do anything else, not sure how to even grow from where they are, let alone get time freedom. Yeah.

Ian Robertson  
And I mean, some people, I know some inspectors are like, we don't want to grow. It's like, okay, but if that's your goal, how do you keep things going, you know? Where do you still want to see yourself? What if you get hurt? You know, what if, in five years, you're like, I'd like to cut my work in half? Did you plan for that? Whether we're a single inspector working for a company, even, or a business owner wanting to grow, I think that's important, what you're saying, step back and I hate saying the word daydream, but sit back and say, okay, what do I want? And then really, collectively, narrow it down, like, oh, I'd love this and that. Okay, well, those aren't realistic. You know, I'm not gonna own my own island. And as we narrow it down, it's like, you know what? In my 50s, I'd like to be the guy that does a couple inspections a week, and maybe has two guys that I just watch the rest of the time. I'd like to be able to, you know, go on a month long vacation each year.

Mark Hummel  
I want to respond to something you just said real quick, the solo guys out there. Something that I think is confusing when people are looking at Inspector Empire Builder, is our name can imply that all we do is help people create empires, like giant companies or something. But the reality is, is that your version of an empire may look completely different than somebody else's version of an empire. And all we mean by that is a stable life that's going in the direction that you want. And so you just triggered this thought for me, which I think is really important to just give some life to. If you are a solopreneur and you want to stay solo and you want to just kind of nail that business stage, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with not nailing that business stage, right? So even though you stay solo, and that's the lifestyle you want, you can still make it more efficient. You can still have time freedom, and a lot of that boils down to things like personal financial responsibility, making sure that you have good retention systems in place. You're not constantly chasing the same agents all the time. And so the word is stability. And I think a lot of people are fighting hard for stability, but they're not sure how to actually create it.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, it's basically getting out of the feast or famine state of mind. It's, oh, I have work. So now I'm working six days a week. Now I don't have any work, and now I'm chasing work, and then we get work again. And that's an uncomfortable way to live. It really is not fun. A better way to live is have the right amount of work for most of the year and enjoy it when it's a little slow sometimes, and if it's a little bit busy, don't get too busy. Let's stabilize it. What I wanted to ask you, though, is, besides what we already mentioned, let's say, for instance, you start coaching me. Ian comes on, and I'm just like, hey, Mark, I'm doing 500 inspections a year, and I'm just killing myself. And you're like, okay, Ian, let's take this on. What are the biggest things that I'm getting in my own way with that you would address first, besides what we've already mentioned?

Mark Hummel  
It's a great starting point for me to fully understand the answer, we'd have to know what you want, right? So if you want to do 500 inspections a year, and you're happy with that, but maybe your desire is to have a little more financial freedom, or time freedom, or something like that, then we could attack it by looking at how you use your time and your time and your money and your resources, because 500 inspections a year for solo guys, that's moving man, and so oftentimes that's too much, and you're gonna lead yourself right into burnout and hating what you do and really having to roll it back at some point, because you can't keep that pace, especially, and this is a big deal, especially if you're not efficient with your home inspection process or your report writing process, and you're the guy who's doing two inspections a day, and it's taken you 16 hours a day to do it, right? And so the starting point for me would be to say, Ian, let's nail down what you want, what you want most, not what you want right now, and then we can go from there. Those are two very different answers. What I want right now, oftentimes is like a break or more money or something like that, but what I want most is usually something different. It's a higher goal.

Ian Robertson  
Do you find that some inspectors just kind of don't know what they want? They're like, I don't know, I'm just, that's why I'm coming to you. 

Mark Hummel  
Almost every time. 

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, so exploding into 2026, how could we help our listeners here figure out what they want? See for me, it was always, I'm not agoraphobic. I like people. I'm good with people, but it's kind of like somebody not liking being in the sun being the best golfer, you know. It's like, I can tolerate it, but, you know, I need my quiet space afterwards. So my whole thing was, I didn't want to be doing two inspections a day, then marketing to agents in the evening and coming home wiped. Like, how do you help a guy like that? You know, Ian from 20 years ago, figure out what he actually wants.

Mark Hummel  
We're going to craft it. We're going to build it. The truth is, is that most of us have a glimpse of what we want, or glimpses of what we want inside our mind, but we're very kind to ourselves. What I mean by that is, if people could see a thought bubble above our mind when we're walking around, and they could see all of our thoughts, what they would see is this crazy, chaotic, jumbled up mess of incomplete sentences and thoughts going nowhere and all running into each other, but we just walk around like we're clear, headed and articulate and have it all figured out. And so the first step in understanding what you want is to get all of that stuff out of your head and onto paper. And so the exercise, and people can do this right now on their own, the exercise is to simply write at the top of a page, what do I want? And just start writing. And if that doesn't feel clear, the writing process is meant to help you complete your thought and to get somewhere for a starting point. We're not trying to figure it all out in a day, but get to a starting point. So if that is really hard for people, we say, do the opposite. What do I not want? And that's usually an easier question to answer. I don't want to be working 16 hours a day. I don't want to be in crawl spaces and addicts for the rest of my life, or I don't want to hire a team. Whatever it is that you get clear on, clarity is what you're trying to get.

Ian Robertson  
So I actually wrote that down, a question to ask ourselves, I'm going to steal that from you, Mark. I'll give you credit for it. What do I not want? Because the reason I'm asking that question is because a lot of inspectors will, and again, I don't do coaching, inspectors will call me and ask, but I don't do it. But if I know a guy, they'll be like, Ian, can you help me? I have a hard time helping them find what they want. A lot more guys, they know what they want because they don't understand what they want that well, like a lot of guys will say, I want a multi-inspector firm, but then they get two inspectors, they're like, that's a lot of stress. That's a lot of this, that's a lot of that. It's a lot of sitting behind a desk comparatively. And I'm like, yeah, but that's what you said you wanted. But what I do not want is a better question to ask them. I'm going to use that with guys on an individual basis. I think that's really good. Negates all the stuff we don't want and only leaves what we do. There was a guy that said one time, ask people what makes you happy? So guys will be like, oh, well, it's a spending time out on the boat. It's like, okay, so that's time. It's family, okay, well, that's easy. Family is family. You know, I enjoy traveling. Okay, well, that's money and time. So now what they really want is tied up in the things that make them feel happy.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, that's a really good point. And these are all what we would say are just starting points. You know, what are the things that make you happy is a great question. One thing I guess it's a thought I've kind of come to as a coach after years and years of doing this, is that chasing your dreams is a first world privilege. It's a first world privilege, right? You look in other places in the world, and nobody's chasing their dreams. They're surviving, and they're doing their best to try to make things better for the generation coming up under them. And so we get this amazing privilege to figure out what we want in our life, and then go take action to start making it come true. How crazy is that in society, in the big picture, that we have that ability and that privilege, and what a waste man, when we don't stop and get the clarity to actually do something with that, this blows my mind. I wish that everybody would just hear that message, that you have an amazing privilege. You have an amazing opportunity, and I would say, even a responsibility, to be as clear as you can be about what you want to do in life, not just for yourself, but to impact other people as well. And then go do that. But I'll add to it and say, we can get ourselves stuck in business and just in life in general by saying things like or believing things like only do what makes you happy. And I wouldn't have said this in my early days as a coach, but I believe it now, people can get stuck in this thought that, man, I'm not happy doing the inspections. I'm not happy writing the reports or whatever your work is. I'm not happy doing this work, but I'm happy going and doing all this other stuff that's not work. And so then you hear something like, only do what makes you happy and it makes you hate work. Okay, so if I could just expand one more level here, I'd say, the highest performing people in the world, like on average, high performers, as we would call them, what they do is they develop the skill set and they develop the goals, habits, behaviors that they need to end up enjoying the work. So for example, anybody who's out there doing inspections and they feel a little burned out and crispy and they're not sure what to do next, well, chances are they need to develop skills that will allow them to not hate the work so much, meaning, it doesn't take you as long to do it. It doesn't seem like you're reinventing the wheel all the time because you have no systems. It doesn't seem like it's pain every single time you have to go talk to an agent, because you've gotten so good at it, right? And so when we look at somebody who's really wanting to level up their life, 2026 as an example, the real powerful position to be in is understanding the responsibility and the privilege that you have to grow yourself into the person who can accomplish the thing you want to do. So if you really want to do what makes you happy, you have to develop skills. You've got to be growing yourself, and you've got to be turning into somebody that's not the same year over year.

Ian Robertson  
So that's a fantastic thought. This is all very existential, and I love it because we don't do enough of this as an industry. We're like, okay, well, what are my KPIs? And you know, how can I get more visitors to my website? Instead of saying, okay, let's step back, let's stop bobbing for apples for a moment and take a look around the room, I want to go back to how you get those skills that you talked about. Are you saying that basically you get good at something and you stop hating it, or you develop this skill to still do it, I don't know. Maybe I don't know what I'm asking because I've developed a personal skill to basically turn my brain off, the emotional part of my brain, to do things that I hate. It doesn't mean I ever learned to like to do them, but I mean septic inspections, I don't enjoy staring into a big pool of somebody else's poop and saying, okay, this is what we're looking at and poking it. You know, that's what we do. All right, I don't necessarily enjoy pouring over, you know, schema markups for three hours straight, but I can turn my brain off and make it happen. Are you saying that, or are you saying another skill? Because I'd like to know, because that's something that I could use.

Mark Hummel  
All things tied to something bigger than the goal. And so in the two examples you just said, if we're focusing on those two things being the work that we have to do for our life, and we don't enjoy it, then we're going to end up hating what we do. But if we view those things through the lens of, I'm doing these things so that I can eventually do this or so that I can eventually whatever you're trying to accomplish, then that's a good starting point for you. But kind of just pulling it up a little bit from that example to becoming the person who can do the things you want to do. Here's a tangible thing I would say. There's a lot of people who say that they want to grow a business or have a stable business, or maybe even just have financial freedom in their solo inspection company, but when you look at their routines and the way that they conduct themselves day over day, you would see the exact opposite desires. If you would just take a look at somebody's life, what you would see is that they don't care about how much they sleep. They don't care about what they're putting into their body. They don't care about the things they consume, meaning information that alter the way they think or that tell them how to feel, social media, news, stuff like that. And so when I mean become the person, I mean take control of those things. Really high performing people generate energy. They don't just mask tiredness, right? And so, as an example, I would say, if you want to perform at a high level, get six to eight hours of sleep, you know, somewhere in that range, depending on who you are, rather than drinking six cups of coffee, because you like to sleep four or five hours a night and do reports all night, right? And so that's one example. But the other thing too is learning. If you're not learning and purposefully directing the direction of your growth, then experience will be your teacher. You've probably heard the phrase experience is the best teacher. People have said that for years. 

Ian Robertson  
It's just the most available one.

Mark Hummel  
Right, yeah, and so it's actually something that's said a lot in business coaching or personal development I should say is that experience is the best teacher. And I mean that I don't think that could be any less true. I think you could certainly learn things from experience, but you only learn what you're willing to take away. We see this as a very tangible example, if all you do is put out fires in your business, then what are you learning? You're learning to put out fires. And so then what do you do? You light fires because it makes you feel really good to go do what you're good at, put out fires. But if you want to be a really great business owner, really great entrepreneur, you've got to learn to be one, and that means you've got to slow down long enough to read a book. Talk to somebody. Get some coaching. You don't have to pay for it necessarily, but talk to people who have been there and are going where you want to go. I might be on a little bit of a soapbox at this point, but it's just so common to hear people say things that they want, but then when you look at their life, their actions tell you that they want the exact opposite of it.

Ian Robertson  
No, and I don't think it's a soapbox. I think it's just higher level thinking than we're used to talking about. I have this friend, he would always joke about getting jacked, but then I watched him eating a donut sandwich one time, like it was an egg bacon and cheese between two donuts, and he was very overweight and never exercised. And I'm like, you can say you want to be jacked, but you're not doing the things to show that you actually do want to be jacked. And then I had that one friend who just quietly in the background, thinks to himself, I'm gonna get jacked. And you don't see him for a year. And then you see him, and you're like, whoa, okay, what happened, man? And he just did the little changes over time, changes in his mentality and things like that. And it's the same thing, building our body is like building a business. I use that analogy a lot. You gotta put the work into it, and you can't just stop, because once you stop, then it recedes. You just need to keep pushing forward on it and learn to enjoy it, becomes part of your life. 

Mark Hummel  
I love that you just said you can't stop. So going back to the vision and becoming the person. One of the books I love, it's called Outliers. I forget who wrote it, but it's called Outliers. 

Ian Robertson  
I love that book. That's a great book. Yeah, I forget who wrote it.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, I love it too, because it paints the picture that the people who do the best with their craft are the people who develop the skill of doing it even when it's no longer exciting. And so to that, we would say, if you want to know what makes you happy and you want to have a great life, choose something that you will consistently do well, right? And so if home inspections aren't your thing, that you're going to do consistently well, you might want to take a hard look at you're doing, and take a hard look at your life, but if running a business is something you're willing to commit to doing consistently well, you're going to move mountains, but you got to commit.

Mark Hummel  
Malcolm Gladwell. That's who it is. 

Mark Hummel  
It's back behind me somewhere. That sounds right. 

Ian Robertson  
I forget who said this expression, but give me a lever and I will move the world. It's an old physics thing, because technically, with the right leverage and the right fulcrum, you can technically move any amount of mass, and it's usually through small, incremental changes, like who talked about it, Bruce Lee. He's like, you don't need to be the strongest guy in the room, because it's basically all physics, how you move and all that. How we move our business is small, incremental things done with great consistency over time. So that's a great book, Outliers. I think everybody should read that one.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah. I completely agree. Another one you made me think of, since we're talking books, is, Be Your Future Self Now. That's a really good one. And again, I don't remember who wrote it. It's a blue book behind me. If somebody's watching this.

Ian Robertson  
I like how you have your books color coded behind you.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, that's my wife. I asked her to come in and help me make it look better. That's what she did. It looks awesome.

Ian Robertson  
It does look cool, but, um, what was the name of that book again? Just so the listeners hear it.

Mark Hummel  
It's Be Your Future Self Now. And so it's a really cool concept where they talk about your mentor, your best mentor, being your future self. And so if you could sit down and have a conversation with yourself from the future, and your future self is looking back talking to you, going, man, here's all the things we encountered, here's what we did, here's where we failed, here's where we did really well. Here's what we've learned. And it's actually, if you're not used to this kind of work, it can sound a little weird, but when you read the book, it actually makes it very practical, where you're basically just doing what we call in coaching, future pacing. So you're putting yourself into the future, going, all right, I'm three years from today. What am I proud of? What have I accomplished? And then somebody asks you, well, how did you do those things? What was difficult about it, what was really, really exciting about it? And then when you do this exercise, it actually uncovers nearly exactly what you want to do in the next three years. And so our theme for this episode is exploding into 2026 and so in coaching, I do this a lot with people, which is to start with, all right, Ian, we're one year from today, and you have worked your butt off all year long, what did you accomplish? We just kind of run through this exercise.

Ian Robertson  
A heart condition and IBS.

Mark Hummel  
Understood, yeah, something to be proud of, I guess. There you go.

Ian Robertson  
Sorry. Couldn't resist. No, but okay, so would you like me to answer that? I guess for me, it would be spend more time with my family. So I'd be in my future self saying, this is what I did to spend time with my family. This is why I'm enjoying it. This is what you did to get there. Here's some mistakes that you avoid. It's almost like metacognition, right?

Mark Hummel  
Yep, that's exactly right. And so you're really kind of painting that picture. And then the next natural question is going to going to be, Ian, thank you for sharing all that. What has to be true right now for you to be proud of those things? It's like, well, man, I better start clearing my calendar to spend more time with my family. I better get more efficient at time blocking and writing reports or whatever it is that's holding me up. And so when you get clear about what you want to be proud of, it basically creates a roadmap for you.

Ian Robertson  
And we're kind of circling around the actual phrase of process mapping, because you keep bringing that up being inefficient. Basically, inefficiency often comes down to doing the same thing, but never the same way twice. So, you know, we write a custom comment for the same defect that we found 10 times this week, and if we found it 10 times this week, have a canned comment, and then we can reuse it. You know, today we wrote our report on my iPad. Tomorrow, it's on my phone. Tonight, it's on my computer. I uploaded them a different way, doing the same thing, but in a different way each time. One of my favorite things is process mapping. Do you think that's a valuable thing, or is there a different way to look at it? 

Mark Hummel  
It can be really valuable if you're the type of person that likes to think in a linear fashion. And so for people who love details, yep, this is a really great exercise. For people who are more like me, I'm more of a go wherever the energy is kind of guy. And so what I need is time blocks. I need boundaries to keep myself focused. And so, for example, in the report writing scenario here, I might say that this 90 minute block of time is for writing reports, and I'm going to write all my reports in this 90 minute block of time. Not that I'm suggesting anybody do that. I'm just saying, you know, save up your reports for later in the day. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, if you batch your time for people like me, that's really effective. And so for other people, it might be more linear, where it's, I'm just going to take this step and then this step, and then this step and then this step all day long. So really, that's me saying it depends on the person, which is oftentimes why coaching is helpful, because you can custom the customize the plan to the person, so that they can maximize their effectiveness, rather than just trying to get everybody to follow one strategy.

Ian Robertson  
I really like that thought because I'm big about process mapping, but that's how my brain works. And that's not maybe how your brain works, so you do time blocks instead. I like that way of thinking, adapting it for the person, because none of us work the same, and it doesn't mean one way is better than the other by any means. I mean, you're a successful guy and you use time blocks. Are there any other kind of methods besides those two that you guys typically encourage, or is it really just seeing what the person fits best with them?

Mark Hummel  
Well, I'm a complete human behavior nerd myself, so I've studied this quite a bit, and there's so much more to study, but at the end of the day, I would give you and anybody listening, give you just this thought to really try to spend some time with, your level of self-awareness is going to determine your future. And so what you know about yourself and what you're learning about yourself over time, gives you choices, right? I like this about myself, so I'm going to lean into that. I don't like this about myself, I'm going to do something with that. And so when you have choices, the very definition of choice that I love is freedom. We want to be free. That's what we're all chasing in some level, right, is the freedom to do what we want, with who we want, when we want. That starts with being really, really self-aware and understanding who you are. From there, then you can put together really great operating systems for keeping yourself pointed toward your targets in momentum and energetic while you're doing it. And I'll actually throw that out. So if somebody wants to take, I teach this, people pay a lot of money for it, so I'm going to just throw it out for everybody. This is a personal operating system that we teach in IEB. And it's going to sound easy to talk through, but it actually is a lot of work to get really clear on this stuff. So we start with a, what we call a 1-3-5, so that's your one, three and five year version of your vision, basically answering the question, what do I want in my life at these benchmarks? What I want my life to look like in five years, what I want my life to look like in three years, and then one year. We do this at a life vision level, so that we have a reason to excel in business, right? My business needs to do this so that my life looks like this when we get to the one year mark, this is where it gets really fun as a coach, I think, other people might not think it's fun, but we break your one year strategic plan. So all the goals that you have, both in business and out of business, into your annualized goals, your quarterly strategy assessments. So every 90 days, is my strategy working? And then whatever the answer is, you work on that. And then monthly is your activity assessments. Am I doing the things I said I would do in order to accomplish my quarterly goals? A lot of times, the answer is no, you got to get your butt in gear and get your activity up. And so even if all you did was the 1-3-5, the quarterly strategy assessment, and the monthly activity checks, you're going to have an incredible system to keep you in momentum in your business. But where it gets really powerful and even more easy, I suppose, is when you have a weekly and a daily rhythm as well. And so one of the biggest missed opportunities for people growing a business is having a weekly appointment with themselves 30 minutes or less to review their goals for the year. Just simply review them. We're not reading a book, and then optimize your week for time. Optimize for time, not money. Optimize it for time. If you can do that, then you're going to clear your roadblocks throughout the week, and you're going to keep yourself focused on your bigger goals, which is really, really powerful. And then when we get to the daily level, that's your daily routines, like your morning routine, how you conduct yourself throughout the day, evening routines, all really important stuff. So all together, 1-3-5, year vision broken down into an annual strategic plan with quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily checkpoints.

Ian Robertson  
I got to say, I love this content, Mark, you're a very knowledgeable guy. You can tell I threw you some curve balls, which I don't usually try to do with guests, but you just seem very knowledgeable, so I appreciate it. A couple of my main points that I personally wrote down is slow down to set up targets. Every goal should be tied to something bigger. So punching through that bag, solopreneurs need to nail the business stage too. Ask ourselves, what do I not want so that we can figure out what we do want. And then, besides all the other amazing stuff, what you just ended on the one, three, and five year plans, I don't think enough of us have actually looked what we want to do in those stages. And I like the metacognition thing that you were talking about, where we talk to our future self and say, okay, this is where we were. We're happy at one year. This is what we did, Mark, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. You're a busy guy. You know, seven, eight o'clock at night, you're still coaching people and, you know, getting some time in your day to be on the podcast. Can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Thank you. 

Mark Hummel  
Absolutely, man. I feel honored to come rub shoulders with you for an afternoon, and hopefully we can do it again sometime. This was really great. 

Ian Robertson  
Whenever you want to be on, you're always welcome. We could even do a podcast on human nature, because I also enjoy that, mostly because I didn't understand it, and I had to learn. So I read up on it a lot for many, many years. So I'd love to talk to you about that. We can nerd out on a podcast. 

Mark Hummel  
I'm in 100%.

Ian Robertson  
Cool. Thank you very much, and thanks IEB, for letting you be on too. Appreciate you guys.

Mark Hummel  
Thanks, man.

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.