Continuing Education - The Ultimate Marketing Engine

Forget cold calls and cookie trays—authority is the best marketing, and the fastest way to earn it is by teaching. We sit down with solo inspector Carrie Cheek of Rosie Home Inspections to unpack how building state‑approved continuing education turns a room full of agents into a trusted referral network. From her early, expensive experiments with lunch and learns to consistently packed CE classes, Carrie shares the exact steps she used to stand out, connect with top producers, and boost revenue without chasing leads.

We walk through how to choose winning topics—like outdated systems, report interpretation, and environmental hazards—and structure them with photo‑rich slides, memorable stories, and hands‑on exercises. You’ll hear how decoding serial numbers, explaining design life by system, and showing real defects make agents more confident during showings and negotiations. That clarity keeps buyers calm, reduces inspection‑day drama, and prevents deals from dying over predictable findings.

Carrie also reveals the hidden growth lever: education that sells ancillary services without the hard sell. When agents understand mold, radon, lead, and asbestos risks, they advocate for full testing upfront, raising revenue per inspection and improving client outcomes. We cover practical barriers and how to overcome them—getting course approval, using Canva to build engaging decks, capturing agent questions to refine content, and leveraging association email lists to fill classes and nurture relationships over time.

If you’re a solo inspector looking to scale trust, differentiate your brand, and create steady demand—even in the slow season—this playbook shows how to turn knowledge into compounding marketing. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs a spark, and leave a review telling us the first CE topic you’d teach.

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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 Back And Topic Setup
• 1:48 Carrie’s Background And Solo Model
• 3:15 Lunch And Learns: Costly And Ineffective
• 7:59 Discovering CE As Marketing
• 12:19 Building A State‑Approved Course
• 16:42 Storytelling, Photos, And Engagement
• 20:40 Aligning Inspectors And Agents
• 23:32 Packaging Ancillary Services Through Education
• 27:20 Best‑Selling Class Topics That Work
• 33:25 Setting Expectations To Save Deals
• 38:02 Street Cred And Expert Positioning
• 42:42 Barriers To Entry And How To Start

Transcript

Ian Robertson  
Kari Cheek. Welcome back to the podcast. 

Kari Cheek  
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Ian Robertson  
I think I'm more excited. I was telling you before we started recording that, you know, I love it when previous guests reach out and they have ideas, and your idea, I'm already excited about because it's something that I feel very strongly about, and I'm super excited that you do the same thing, and you're willing to share it with others. But for those of you don't remember you from the last episode that we had you on, could you just remind everybody who you are?

Kari Cheek  
Oh sure. Well, my name is Kari Cheek. I am the owner and sole inspector of my single inspector firm, Rosie Home Inspections. I'm based in central Kentucky, and I guess this is year 11 for me as an inspector. And another thing to know is just in addition to home inspections, I do radon testing and mold testing and wood destroying insect inspections, that will be relevant as I start talking about my topic here.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and we had you on before, and you shared some great information with us, and you've done really well for yourself. And one of the most common themes we've seen in the inspection industry is how to be successful as a solo inspector. A lot of us don't want to have a big team or a big company. We got into it because we like crawl spaces. We like finding things and writing the reports. You know, we just love our industry in it. And I think you're a good example of how to be successful as a solo inspector and to just love your job. So thank you for being on again. So the subject, marketing in general, but we're going to focus on why continuing education is some of the best marketing a home inspector can do. Can you tell me the basic concept of what we're talking about?

Kari Cheek  
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me give you a little bit of background. So I know that a lot of people are familiar with lunch and learns. And maybe you've heard about that in your market, and if you're, you know, trying to get started, sometimes that's suggested by other inspectors of hey, try and do lunch and learns. The idea being that you make an appointment with a specific brokerage in your area that you want to work with, you're going to go in. Usually you'd be given, like, an hour long time to give some kind of a presentation or talk about yourself or your company or home inspections or whatever, but you buy lunch and you bring it in, and it can be kind of expensive, and I did that. When I went through college and got my bachelor's degree, my thought was to be a high school English teacher, and that obviously didn't end up panning out, and it just wasn't for me in the end. But I do really enjoy teaching, so I thought when I heard that for lunch and learns, what a great idea. You know, I'm going to try that. And so probably, I don't know six, seven years ago, I started really trying to kind of hustle that, and went to several brokerages and different agents I worked with. I've used them as an in, if they already liked me, to talk to their education person, whatever, office administrator. And what I found when I did lunch and learns was hardly anybody came, and they're expensive, so it's like, you'd be shelling out $300, $350 to buy lunch for 30 people. Because, you know, that's what they tell you, like, here's what you should plan for. And then at most, I would have like four people, and I had a couple where I had like two people, and usually too the people that are going to sit and have lunch, they have never done a deal before, which is, that's not horrible. I know that they could have promise, but think about how many agents drop out after they realize how hard it is to even get to their first deal. So you're not going to interact with high performing real estate agents. And so it was really disappointing to me, and it was really expensive. And so I guess it's been just over three years ago, and I'm a affiliate member of my local Real Estate Association, and I was talking to the education person, the education director at my local Real Estate Association, and she just mentioned, hey, if you ever want to teach a class, I could help you get started with that. I think you're really well spoken. I think you're really passionate about what you do. We're always looking for good education opportunities for our members, because I think in my local Real Estate Association in central Kentucky, it's called Bluegrass Realtors, they have always somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 real estate members at any given time, and then affiliate members like me and other home inspectors and you know, people that do pressure washing, and whoever you can buy in to become an affiliate member. And actually, for us here in this area, that's the only way we can get E-key access, or for doing like sentry lock boxes and things. So I found early on in my inspection career, I had to be an affiliate member of them, because I have to have access to those boxes or I'm not going to get any referrals. Realtors don't want to open lock boxes for you. So anyways, that was something that, if they have 4000 members and they have to keep up with continuing education credits per the state of Kentucky's mandate, they want to keep some fresh material in it, if possible. They want some new blood. A lot of these classes, they have the same people that teach the same content year after year after year. And I know for home inspectors, we have the same thing a lot of times, if you have continuing education things you have to do for your state requirements, you probably end up taking the same classes over and over and over and over in a lot of cases. So really, it's a benefit for those real estate associations are looking for teachers. And I thought, well, that sounds hard, like, what do I have to do? And I think that the barrier to entry for these is you develop a class. It's not like somebody gives you content to teach and you just run with it. So they're three hour continuing education classes, which that's really intimidating. I had never taught any home inspection topics that were more than an hour, which is what I had developed for my lunch and learns. So I was really lucky, and had the benefit of kind of having that education director. She was on my side. She was sort of pushing me to do it, and she really wanted whatever I had to offer to so that she could offer it to her members. And so she helped me figuring out the paperwork. And, you know, this is kind of how everything is put into motion. You have to make a presentation, you have to make handouts. When you fill out what your course is going to be about, you have to say what percentage of it is going to be visual, what percentage is audio, all those sorts of things. So you're creating this lesson plan for a three hour class, and then it was submitted to the state, and they have to approve it, and then I have to be approved as a state teacher. So it sounds like a lot, and it is a lot to get rolling, but honestly, once I did that first class and started making it, I was like, this is actually really fun. Like, this could be the start of something big, and that was before I even got into the classroom just developing it like, kind of think of all the times that you have geeked out on a home inspection, you found some really, like, interesting finding, and you go home and you tell your spouse, or you tell your friends, or you try to tell it at a party, and everybody's like, okay, great. Like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Ian Robertson  
Well, we have the worst stories.

Kari Cheek  
We do. We have the worst stories, and we can geek out with each other, but then we always try to one up each other, of course. But in a class, I found that actually, those are the best things. If you have kind of good anecdote stories from specific inspections, you pair it together with your photos from that inspection. You kind of give it a context. Realtors love it, and in continuing education classes, it's really cool, because you might have brand new agents or ones that have been in it for, like, a year. It's continuing ed, so they have their license already. You're also going to get really seasoned agents that have been in the market for 30 years. And you're going to have ones that sell $100,000 houses. You're going to have ones that sell $2 million farms. You have them all in the same room, and all of what you teach is stuff that you already care about and are interested in and have photos to demonstrate. So like you have all of the key ingredients already to make a really kick butt class, and it benefits everybody. It benefits the association. You end up becoming an expert on those topics in the eyes of the audience, and you can really guide them, like I know I was telling you before the podcast started, like one thing I think is really cool about this method of teaching continuing ed is often, as home inspectors, we get so frustrated because we feel like we speak a different language from real estate agents, and I actually introduced my classes with that. I say, look, one reason I started developing classes is because, you know, we have home inspectors and real estate agents. We have the same clients. We're working towards the same goals. We want to get our clients into good living situations. We want to do the best by them, but because we speak different languages, sometimes we are at odds with each other. We feel like we're battling somehow. And if we could learn to communicate with each other between inspectors and realtors, what a better experience for the client. What a better experience for us as professionals. And so in classes, you can really like, I don't mean to make this sound like they're dogs or something, but you can train your agents. You can you can train them on the things that you feel are communication barriers when you do your inspections or your summaries and your reports. You can train them on, like, one of the topics that I teach on is environmental hazards in real estate transactions, long, obnoxious kind of name there, but I teach essentially on mold, radon, lead and asbestos hazards that come up during real estate transactions. And that class is one where I feel like I'm almost, because I'm able to educate on those specific topics, and because I offer radon testing and mold testing as ancillary services, I am able to train sales people for me for selling those services along with home inspections. So I offer, like an ultimate home inspection package, where you can buy all of my services instead of just my home inspection. And the agents who attend that environmental class and understand better radon hazards and mold hazards in the other and dealing with those things in transactions, they're more likely to become serious about, you know, making sure that their clients get those instead of just a general home inspection, that by the time the client is booking an inspection with me, I'm not telling them about radon and mold. They're just telling me, hey, I want your full package. So that's been really, really beneficial as far as increasing my revenue per inspection without me really having to do anything after the class, because the agents do it for me.

Ian Robertson  
And there's a couple of things that I want to just go back on that you talked about in there. So I teach inspection courses, if anybody listens to the podcast, it was one of the first things that I did when I became an inspector, because I'm like, why is nobody doing this? There's not enough inspectors to teach continuing education courses. And as you mentioned, some points that I gleaned from what you said. One, agents have to get continuing education courses, and if you go to almost any state, any area, they are the worst, annoying courses, even if they can do it online, I did live courses, and they would attend my courses because they have to sit there in front of a computer with timed slides, typically. Like, you have to look at this slide for exactly one minute and 32 seconds. So they're like, if I have to sit in front of a computer for three hours exactly, anyways, I can't just skim through it, might as well have a live person. They're always looking for something better. Two, it's a captive real estate audience of multiple different types of agents, and you never really have those opportunities. For me, it helped build my businesses. And also, too, they have the same content. You said this, the same content and the same people teaching. They're always looking for something different. So if everything is, you know, ethics and real estate, you know, ethical seller contracts, and all that stuff gets old, and if they're on a three year rotation, they finally see one about what to do about mold in your basement. It's like, oh, you know what? Let's do that one. I haven't seen that one in the past nine years I've been an agent. So those are good tips. Let me ask you though, Kari, you mentioned some specific subjects, what have been your most popular subjects? Because I think that's what home inspectors always ask when I tell them, hey, go out and start teaching CE courses, 99.9% of home inspectors don't listen to me. And the few that do, they're like, well, what do I teach? So what are your best subjects that you like for agents?

Kari Cheek  
Well, yeah, and what I would say too, I'll tell you what mine are. I have three right now that are approved with the state of Kentucky. I teach all of them twice a year. So I teach six times a year at the local association I was talking about, and what I've developed is things that I love. And so, like, you know, I'll tell you mine, but just know that whatever you're searching for, like, if you want to get started, what do you know the most about? What are you passionate about because it's not really about the topic exactly. It's about your passion for it and how expert you seem on it, I think. So specifically in mine, every time I teach a class, I'm sort of taking in, like, especially, Ian, I'm with you. Live audiences are my thing. I'm actually, I'm teaching a class today, and it's going to be on Zoom, and it's the first time I've ever taught a non in-person class. And it's just because my Real Estate Association, they're under renovation right now, and their room isn't available where I usually teach.

Ian Robertson  
It feels weird on Zoom.

Kari Cheek  
Yeah, I'm not super pumped about it, like I'll see how it goes. But the live thing, you can gage the energy in the room. I think it's pretty easy to see what's working and what's not working. So every time I teach a class afterwards, like the evening after, or the day after, I'll go back to my PowerPoint presentation and my slides and be like, okay, well, this part was too long and it wasn't as beneficial as what I was thinking when I made it. And this was a part that I need to expand a little because I was getting asked more questions than I had information about. So I'm always tweaking, but my most popular thing, I think, has been, now it's called, how to keep a home inspection from killing the deal. And it was called outdated systems and materials. Not a very sexy title, so I've changed the name, but it has a lot of the same content. And the focus of that one is setting buyer expectations during the showing process, like educating agents in being able to look at the materials and systems in the house, and understanding like, hey, if this house is built before 1975 we might be dealing with cast iron. We might be dealing with galvanized, you know, we get into, like, pre-60s. We might be dealing with ungrounded outlets, even, like, I deal a lot with material design life and go through, like the popular types of shingles that are installed in this area. You know, this is what we typically expect to get, like, 20 years out of this asphalt shingle. But setting buyer expectations that roofs are vulnerable, even if it's disclosed as being like a seven year old roof. Here's a specific example of one where the disclosure says seven years, I'm finding missing shingle tabs because the weather was so harsh, even like HVAC systems of just know how short the design lives are. Educating them a little bit on a heat pump has a 10 to 15 year design life. Might run longer, but it's unpredictable. So if you have somebody that's already buying at the top of their budget, even if the system is working at the time of the inspection, make sure that they know going in these things are costly when they have to be replaced. It's normal to replace them at the 10 and 15 year mark. I even do like an exercise with the agents in the presentation of how to look at the serial number and the data plate on an AC condenser and go to The Building Intelligence Center and look up the age so they can then become an expert and sort of wow their client by showing that they can look up date ranges. And then, kind of know, well, if it's eight years, you know, you don't know how long it's going to last, but do know that it might be over halfway through its life. So it's a lot of that kind of thing. I also talk about how good pre-listing inspections are when you're trying to keep a home inspection from killing the deal, like if you did an inspection ahead of time, there's not so many surprises. So I have a few different aspects, but that one has always been really well received, because, like agents, you see them taking notes in those classes. They asked for the slide deck afterwards, because I do include, like, a lot of pictures on things that they recognize, but they don't know what they are. Like if they're looking at the actual material of this asphalt shingle, just glancing up, I mean, sometimes you can see the shingles that are starting to curl. So I'll just give little tips on little things to look for and tell them, you don't have to be the expert. You're not the home inspector. But the whole idea is, if you can help set client expectations that no house is perfect, you have these material design lives. There's likely going to be these items that come up based on the age of a house you're going into. If you set the expectations before the contract is signed for the purchase price, it's less likely to freak out the client when the home inspector is, if they're not bringing it up for the first time, it's less likely to kill their deal. You know, even if you're giving new information, but a lot of times, like clients I work with that have agents that have been in my classes, they'll go, oh yeah, Terry told me that that was probably going to come up. So it is good for everybody. I think it's good for the buyer to know before the inspection, and it makes the real estate agent look really good and knowledgeable to their clients, so everybody wins.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and I like how you mentioned teacher passion, and just hearing you talk about those subjects, you can tell how passionate you are about it. And that's easily translated to our listeners. And it's true when I teach courses agents will start to ask questions, because I never really thought about it before that, before I started teaching that they don't really get a chance to ask because when you're on an inspection, usually their buyers, their clients, are asking questions and they're supporting and saying, okay, we'll negotiate on this. They might wonder, why did the last five inspectors make a big deal about a Federal Pacific panel. I don't get it. Nobody's ever really explained it. I just know that we negotiate on it. Now it gives them a chance to say, listen, I have a list of questions. I'd have plenty of agents come in with lists of questions, ask for the slides, everything afterwards. For me, my passion was one of my best courses. I taught a course on defects, just general defects, and meth labs and radon and all this stuff. My favorite one, though, was report interpretation. We don't always think about when a real estate agent's busy, if they do 15 inspections, they're probably going to get 15 completely different looking reports with different styles, different narratives, different ratings, some without ratings, some just a completely narrative report. And like, what do I do? And that was always my most popular course. People would request it. Some people take it two or three times just to go back and refresh themselves. They're like, okay, this is what a narrative report is. This is what we look for when the inspector uses this language, when they call out this, this is usually what they mean. Here's some common mistakes, and in my state, here's the requirements. And interestingly, home inspectors started taking my course because one or two of them got caught not meeting New York State requirements by agents that were in my course. And then, instead of getting mad, they were really cool. They came and they took my course. And they're like, I feel like I should take this because the state slapped my hand. But for the agents, specifically, do you find that it builds for lack of better term, street cred?

Kari Cheek  
Oh, like for them and for me. Because for me, I'm the expert now, like, think about when I was just trying to, like, get started as a home inspector, and it's like, you know, you're going into real estate offices, you're dropping off gifts and cards and, like, all those little things that you have to do to get your name out there, and then it's like, okay, well, a month goes by, maybe you get one inspection, or maybe two months goes by and you get one inspection, and when you do the one inspection, you make sure it's really good and solid, the inspection and the report, and then that one buyer's agent sees the quality of your work, and then maybe you get to be on their referral list. And it's such a slow, slogging process. With this, you are able you have three hours. Well, if you're designing a course, it's only two hours and 40 minutes, because you have to give 10 minute breaks at the top of the hour, but you're in front of these agents for two hours and 40 minutes, and you are able to show the quality of your work without having to do an inspection for them. You're even showing them photos from your inspections. You're describing scenarios. Like, one reason that I like being an inspector is because I like puzzles and I like the simple cause and effect of buildings. It's not rocket science. There's a pretty simple physics to it all. And so it's really fun to be able to show in photos. I'll even include videos in my presentations of like, here's what I was seeing on the outside of the house with drainage issues. And so here's what I saw when I crawled into the crawl space. And it's like things that you're getting in front of. Like, I've never had less than 12 agents in my class, and I've had as many as 54, I think was my highest one. My average is around like 20 to 25 realtors in any given class. And so you're in front of that many people, and you're basically giving your end of inspection summary on steroids. And so they're able to see how knowledgeable you are, the way that you communicate, and you're even able to show them examples of things that they may have seen come up on home inspections, but they don't have the emotionalness to it, because it's not a house that now they're thinking, how am I gonna like, go back and write a repair request for this? They don't have any dogs in this fight, they can just kind of enjoy these crazy pictures and scenarios. And that's one way too. You're building the relationship, even though it's a room full of people, you're building relationships. And I really encourage interaction of the room, and I do get a lot of engagement and people that share stories, I don't let them go on too long, but like, give feedback. It's a give and take. And I learn a lot too about what are they dealing with, you know, and can kind of adjust the next thing I teach on accordingly, of like, what matters to them, what are the obstacles that they face? I think that I really at the end of a three hour class, I'm an expert. I'm in their phone, and we have a relationship. So I'll just get text messages from agents I don't even have in my phone yet, who are like, hey, I took your class. I remember you said something about how I could look up the date on, you know, a heat pump, but I can't remember what it was. It's like, they don't retain all the information, but they retain how much you knew about it, so they'll call you, they'll text you, you're on their list, you're the expert. And your friends, they can just shoot you a text, and it's not some formal thing. And then at the same time, they're an expert in their field, because now they know more about the home inspection process and typical home problems more than the average agent who didn't take your class. So it does, it makes them look really good. And think about how good you feel after you do a home inspection. And there's major electrical concerns, and the client asks you, do you have any recommendations for a good electrician. And if you say, well, no, I don't really, sorry, good luck with the problem. That doesn't feel very good. But if you can say, oh yeah, I have three great ones that I've worked with. Personally, I have clients that have had a good experience with them. Here's the three electricians, that feels really good to be able to provide solid contacts after and I think it's the same thing for real estate agents. They need good contacts, and I think it makes them look good, and it makes them feel really good to be able to when it's time for the home inspection, or if they're doing environmental testing, or whatever your services are, that you're the name on their list that they trust with their clients. They know it's going to be a good experience. They know that you have integrity and passion for what you do, so they look really good to have you on their contact list. So they become an expert, too. That's why I think that these types of classes, they elevate all of us. They elevate, I think, not just you as the inspector teaching, but even the other inspectors around you. You're able to kind of advocate for the problems you know that your peers have, and educate agents on you know, things like, inspectors are not allowed to light pilot lights on a fireplace. Like, it comes up a lot that you have a client who's like, oh, did the fireplace work? And the inspector goes, oh, well, I evaluated it, but I couldn't test it. You know, the gas is off, or the pilots not lit, you know, I'm not allowed to light pilots. And it's like, oh, like, well, maybe I should have found somebody who could do their job, like that's sort of the feeling they get. Or you can't. I couldn't turn this breaker on that was off. I can't turn the water on, you know, under the sink, where it's off, something like that. You can educate agents on the limitations. One of my classes is even, walking a mile in the inspector's boots, a deep dive into home inspections. And I teach on kind of going through the InterNACHI standards of practice, specific examples of kind of interpreting, what are the rules of the game? What are the limitations, so that it's like, instead of us being at odds with realtors, of them going, well, why didn't you do this? And it's like accusatory. Instead, they're the ones who are fighting for you. They're telling the client, well, they can't do that, you know. So I think it's helpful even for other inspectors, because you're teaching a better understanding of home inspections in general.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and just to kind of tie into what you just said about the street cred part of things. My favorite thing was, I was very young when I started, I was in my early 20s, and I looked like I was 12. I look my age now, I think, but when I would go in, people would kind of like argue with me, like, what do you know? So when I started teaching, I started to hear off to the side, an agent going, well, he doesn't know. And then I would hear the other agent go, actually, he teaches the course on this. Oh, he does. Yeah, you should probably take it. And like, I remember a radon issue came up, and I set it up exactly how it was supposed be done. And some other home inspector came in and argued, and the seller came in and argued, and then the agent, she told me about this later, just handed them my course pamphlet at the time and said he teaches how to test for radon. And they're like, oh, yeah. And his course has to be approved by New York State, and they reviewed all his material, and they're like, oh, well, I guess that goes out the window. Even just a cutting down of problems like you mentioned, you know, they can't turn on the pilot light. When they're educating for you, that's extremely helpful. That helps our business a lot. But even the marketing side, so if, let's say you have somebody in your class, and you know, you have a couple agents in there that sell five houses a year, but every once in a while, the agent that sells 100 houses a year is going to pop into a class once in a while and say, let's see what all my agents have been talking about. Have you ever had something like that happen or?

Kari Cheek  
Oh yeah, I've even had, it's so flattering and cool. That's the other part of this. It makes you feel good. Like it's a really, we talked about this. We both have fun teaching the classes when we do it, but it does make you feel good to know that they're making some kind of difference and impact. And I have had that exact thing happen, of like, after the first year I was teaching classes, and I think I started out with one class, and I taught it, I think, three times that year over the course of the year, and the second year I was teaching and started to add some more content, I would have, like, there'd be a row of agents that I recognized, but hadn't worked with that would be from, there's this popular agency. And they'd go, oh, our broker told us that we needed to come to this class, like the whole group was from the same brokerage, that we all needed to come to this class and pay attention. And then at the end of the class, they're like, you know, they're taking notes. At the end of the class, they're like, hey, can we take a selfie? Because they're putting it on their social media. That was the biggest one, where it was a line of people from the same place. But even bigger than that, Ian, this is kind of a fun thing that, like, I think that there's more doors opening of there'll be agents that come to classes, and then I'll have, like, a brokerage that will reach out and ask me, when's the next class? We're going to send our people. Or the biggest extreme now is I'm actually scheduled, I think it's next April or May, that I've been hired by a different Real Estate Association that's, it's still in Kentucky, but it's like two and a half hours from me, and they have hired me to come and teach two classes back to back at their association for the day. And so that's like, I mean, it's happening once, but it's like, well, there's like, income I wasn't thinking about. When I teach classes at my local association, I actually don't get paid. And you could tell me that that's crazy or whatever, but if that is my only marketing, I mean, aside from having and maintaining my website, the only marketing that I do is these classes, and plus, I'll buy, like, some little giveaways that I can give out in the classes. So my customer acquisition cost is, like, $5 or something. It pays for itself. But then I hadn't thought about the opportunity of, if I'm going to teach somewhere where I can't, you know, use the referrals if it's so far away, I'm not working two and a half hours from me. So I just said, hey, like, yeah, I'll come out and teach two classes for 1000 bucks. And she's like, okay, that's a great deal. So, I don't know if that will become a thing where I'll do that more, but just doing it one time makes me feel good. And that association two and a half hours away, that had a couple of agents who work so far around the state that they're part of both associations, they went and told their education director, like, hey, you've got to get her. These are amazing classes. Like, I'll never be the same after taking it. You need to get her in here. So it makes you feel really good to know that you're doing something that is having an impact. You're not just talking to a wall, you know, and hoping for the best.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and, you know, it's funny you say you don't get paid. And we were talking before the show. I get paid for my classes, which was always a benefit for me. It wasn't like a million bucks. For a three hour or four hour course, I forget how long, their half day courses, they give me, like, 300 bucks and $500 or something like that for a full day course. But I didn't care, because I wasn't there for the money. They actually insisted on it, and they're like, all right, well, here you go. Doesn't matter. But I hear so many guys say, oh, well, I spent all this time and I had a class and there were only 15 people there, and I only made $300. I could have made more than that on a home inspection. And I'm just like, you just missed the whole point of it. You're going to go home, sit there, try, you could try to market for a whole day in any other way, and not make as much roadway as you can with teaching CE courses. And it's cumulative. Complain to me after you've taught 10 courses, and now half the market looks to you, including home inspectors and agents, and they're blowing up your phone. Hey, we just had a house. Can you help me with this type of roofing? Or, hey, do you ever think about teaching a course on commercial inspections? I'd like to know about that. You can't put monetary value on that. If I were starting out today, that would probably be 90% of my marketing right now, but I can tell you that 99% of home inspectors would never do it because it's intimidating.

Kari Cheek  
It is. That's the thing. That is the high barrier to entry, because it is intimidating and it's not easy to put together a three hour class. But here's what I'll say is, reach out, find whoever the educational directors are around you. You can even, I did this, I asked ChatGPT, who are all the educational directors of real estate associations in the state of Kentucky, and it spits out the phone numbers, email addresses, and names of the 13 education directors, you know, like that has even gotten easier. But the thing is, because home inspectors are such geeks for what we do, you have the content, and I'll tell you what, when I was looking at a blank presentation and I use Canva. I'll convert it to PowerPoint later, but Canva, I think, is such a good way to make a presentation that's photo based. And honestly, think of the inspections where you had the most fun because they were the most terrible or you had the strangest problems. Start there and go back. When I was first starting, think of that inspection that you still remember, because it was like, so bizarre. Find the date you did it. I store all of my photos in Google Photos so I can type in the date and find all my reference pictures really easily. And just start, like copying it over onto slides on a Canva presentation. And once you start, I mean, to teach a three hour class, you need probably at least 100 slides. Some of mine are like 150 or something, because it is a lot of photos to look at. Just start pulling those over, even if you don't have in mind quite what your concept is yet, and I think that your brain juices will start flowing, and you'll find that it's actually really fun. Like I started to geek out over my presentations, because I get to talk about this bizarre inspection that no one else in my life cares to listen to my stupid story. And I'll even find video clips, like, I have a little section in my walking a mile in the inspector's boots where I'm going through InterNACHI standards. And when I talk about plumbing, I'll go through the standard and then within that section I'll show, here's things that commonly come up on inspections, and so one of the things I talk about is TPR valves. And listen, who has ever been through a home inspection process where the home inspector made some big deal about a temperature pressure relief, you know? Okay, you get the show of hands. I say, well, here's the reason. Like this matters, and I'll show like, what it is, and you know, how it should be set up, and what I often find. But I found, like, I don't know if you remember MythBusters. It was awesome. I had remembered this old MythBusters clip of, they wanted to know, could you launch a water heater out of a building by covering up that TPR. Like if it didn't have a way to release, what could it do? Could it become a bomb? And MythBusters, you can find that clip on YouTube. So I found a two minute clip from MythBusters of them moving and launching that thing out of this little homemade building. It goes through the roof. Like, yes, it's a bomb. And I incorporate those sorts of things into presentations too. So it's funny. We're bonding while this is happening. You know, we now have something to laugh about together. I listen to your podcast all the time, Ian, and I think that a lot of when you have people on who are sharing like the secrets of their success, everybody says it's a relationship building game. To do high volume inspections and to stay busy, you have to be making relationships with agents in your market. That's how most of us do it, and this is the way to do it. What other way is there where you can form a relationship, you know my name, you know my kids' names by the end of this, and to 15 people at once, that we're interacting. I know your hobbies after. We go back and forth. People ask questions on breaks. You have shared laughs now, from whatever your presentation was, if you are looking to form the quick start of a relationship that you can build on later, this is the way to do it. And I know we're getting close to the end here, but the biggest benefit, I don't know if it's the biggest, but okay, one of them is, and every association may not be like this, but in my area, when I teach these classes at this association, and I mentioned they have about 4000 realtor members at any given time, they give me the email contact list for their entire member base, and anytime I want a new one, I'll usually refresh it annually. I reach out and I say, hey, Janice, would you mind to send me the list of names and emails again for the current people, because they're always dropping out and adding new and whatever. I have every single one of those people's email addresses and names and brokerages and all their info. So I'll do little monthly newsletters. I don't like to overload because I don't believe in that, but I'll do short little newsletters where I try to include little fun tips and things like that and share when my next class is happening in the registration link. So if you can advertise your own classes, you get more people into the next one, even people that don't and have never used you yet, now you're a local authority. They know my logo, even if they don't know my name, a lot of people call me Rosie, because my inspection company is Rosie Home Inspections based on Rosie the Riveter. People call me Rosie more than they call me Kari and to me, and they'll go, oh, sorry, I know that's not your name, but like, no, that's the most flattering thing you could do, I go by either name. And to me, it's like the most flattering thing of my marketing works, and you remember my company, is you call me Rosie. So being able to do email blasts to an entire member base of 4000 agents that are in my service area is probably the most invaluable part of the whole thing.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, I mean, I think we could probably have three podcasts on the benefits of teaching CE courses to agents. And no matter how many times I mentioned it, it never goes away as being probably top three marketing for any inspection company and the one that most people don't do. But while you were talking about MythBusters, and I do remember that episode, and I also remember the Farmers Insurance commercial where a water heater blew through the roof, and I looked it up, and that was an actual, real incident that they covered. But here's a course idea—home inspection myth busting. So you take all the misconceptions about stuff that home inspectors say, and then you bust myths like, I can't think of any at the moment, but you know how some people walk in with misconceptions. Home inspectors are code enforcers. Whoa. Okay, there's myth number one, and here's why we bust it, and here's our state SOP, here's InterNACHI SOP, and we talk about it from there. You know, stuff like that would be cool. So feel free to steal it. I don't know if it's good or not, but steal it.

Kari Cheek  
All right, that might be my next one. That sounds good.

Ian Robertson  
But listen, Kari, this is a very important subject, especially as we're going into the winter season here for the US and Canada. It's our slow season. If anybody is thinking about it, this is the time of year to look at Kari's example. Work up a small course, one three hour course, two, three hour courses, whatever, and start selling the courses. Go to the associations, go to the state. There's real estate schools who in particular who I market to in my state. Start teaching because as Kari mentioned, there are more benefits than we can count. But listen, Kari, you're busy. You're actually teaching a course today. 

Kari Cheek  
Yep.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. So I appreciate you taking time even before your course to tell us how you teach courses, because it's proprietary and awesome information, how else would we get it unless great people like you share that. So thank you very much for being generous with your time, information and your marketing secrets. Thank you. 

Kari Cheek  
Well, sure, thanks for letting me talk about it. I appreciate it.

Ian Robertson  
Anytime. Always welcome on the show. We love having you.

Kari Cheek  
Well, thanks, Ian, it was good being here.

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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