The Human Element

Feeling the grind without the gains? We sat down with Mark from Inspector Empire Builder to unpack why so many home inspection pros hit invisible ceilings—and how to break through them with identity, focus, and smarter systems. We challenge the idea that “experience is the best teacher” and offer a more durable path: growth by insight. By getting crystal clear on four anchors—who you are, what you’re doing, how you’ll do it, and who you serve—you can make braver choices, like raising prices, upgrading reports, and building a machine that doesn’t rely on your daily heroics.

We dig into the difference between a technician mindset and a builder mindset, and why most small teams oscillate between one and four inspectors without escaping chaos. Mark shares how personal growth drives business growth, not the other way around, and why outdated systems and comfort zones quietly drain profit. The conversation hits on practical shifts: adopting a modern CRM, creating standard operating procedures, reading in clusters outside the industry, and choosing rooms where you’re not the smartest person. We explore pricing courage, the math behind working less while earning more, and redefining success around net profit, consistency, and family time.

You’ll leave with a simple growth plan: run a self-inventory, pick one to three focus areas for the year, study deeply, and don’t grow alone. Masterminds, conferences, and peer circles accelerate insight and keep you accountable when the old ceiling calls you back. If you’re ready to move from firefighting to long-term leverage—and design a business that supports a meaningful life—this conversation brings clarity, courage, and next steps you can act on today.

If this helped, subscribe, share it with a fellow inspector, and leave a review to tell us what ceiling you’re ready to break next.

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

Transcript

Ian R  
Mark Hummel, welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Glad to have you on again.

Mark Hummel  
Dude, I'm so pumped, like I was just telling you right before we hit record, it is an honor to be back on the show with you and just to be able to share a little bit about what's on my mind, and hopefully we'll have a fun conversation that'll help some people. So thank you, man.

Ian R  
Yeah, and I was telling you before the show, I like to have a good mix of subjects. Sometimes it's going to be, you know, like I mentioned, we'll have a podcast on, should you do solar inspections and how do you write a narrative? And then other times we're going to have things like, you were talking about before the show, growth ceilings, or this podcast is called The Human Element, because I found out we had a root interest that we both have, which is the study of human nature. For me, I'm a bit of a maladroit So growing up, you know, I had to study human nature just to understand people. And it turned into, you know, good marketing, understanding of human nature and stuff like that. But it's a subject I really enjoy. I feel like you're way better at it, and neither of us have any agenda or idea what the other person is going to say today. But there's a lot of good application, whether we're a home inspection business owner, whether we're a regular home inspector walking into a house meeting people, that works for a company, getting into the industry, getting out of the industry, whatever it happens to be, there's a lot of gold nuggets in here. But please remind everybody who you are and who you work with.

Mark Hummel  
Okay, I will. Thank you for that, by the way, because I never remember to introduce myself, and so my name is Mark, in case we haven't met, I am the CEO of Inspector Empire Builder. We also have Pest Empire Builder for anybody in the pest industry, but we're a business coaching mastermind group, and we love to teach and to coach people using proven systems and processes in all three divisions of a well-oiled machine as an inspection company. Those three divisions are service, operations, and growth. So I spend most of my time talking to people who are probably listening to this podcast about how to grow their inspection business, about how to build high performing teams, and a lot about what we're going to get into today, the human element and the ceilings of achievement that people oftentimes reach as entrepreneurs.

Ian R  
Awesome. Thank you for that. And very concisely said, so it gives us a nice little nugget of information to run off of. So I really want to get into that subject. First of all, the human element and growth ceilings. What is a growth ceiling? I imagine I understand what you mean by it, but please explain it, because I probably don't.

Mark Hummel  
By the way, you're probably better at this than I am. Just to throw that out there, not that I want to compare notes here, but I feel like most of what I'm doing here is just sharing with people what I'm currently learning. So I decided a long time ago that one of my favorite things to do was to learn things, but to not let it rest on my shoulders. As quickly as I can, find a way to share it with other people. And so that's all I'm here to do, is just talk about what I've been learning, and in the human element side of things, these growth ceilings, the way I would define that is, it's that thing you get to when you start feeling a diminishing return on your efforts. For example, if you're running a business and you're thinking to yourself, I don't know what's next. Everything I'm doing, it feels like hard work. It feels like the right things, but what I'm doing is not taking us to a new level. That's a pretty easy tangible one, personal development ceiling or personal growth ceiling in your business. But this can apply in all areas of your life as well—in your family, friends, faith, financials, whatever it is that you want to show up in a powerful way in, we typically get to a ceiling of achievement, if you will, or a ceiling of growth, not because we're bad people or because we're dumb or because we're incapable of getting past those ceilings, but because we can simply just only go so far from within ourself. And so I think that's the best test to see if you're at a ceiling, is to ask yourself, am I relying on my own thoughts or my own experience to get me further than I am right now? If you are, you're probably already at a ceiling.

Ian R  
So that is very similar to what I was thinking you were going to tell us. And I think there's a lot of reasons why people hit growth ceilings. I know, for me personally, there's a lot of different reasons, but I was actually just reading a book, and I forget what the title of the book is, and that's probably not a good thing, but the book was talking about how we hit plateaus in life, oftentimes, because either our background, we think we don't deserve more, or we've achieved more than our goals. So maybe we could have had a goal of 10 points, but we only had a goal of five points, so when we hit six points, we're satisfied with that, and we've gone past it. And there's lots of different psychological reasons, like comparative, depends on who the group is that we're with, if we're with people that are at a certain level, and we surpass them, maybe academically or fiscally or whatever. Now we've hit our plateau, we've had our ceiling. Whereas if you associate with a different group, it's a much higher ceiling. And we tend to push, you know, it's kind of like that old saying you are who you hang out with. Are those kind of related or am I spinning here?

Mark Hummel  
I think you're spot on. Yeah. And we could, we could pile on a lot more reasons that people get to ceilings, but I think those are two really common ones, so fear and fraud syndrome, right? Like you're not sure that you're the person who can do the things that you want to do, and so you kind of just go back to the other main one, which is comfort. So whatever last felt comfortable, you're going to go back to that level of performance, or that stage of business, or that relationship status that you might be in, or whatever that is, that health level, maybe it's hard to be consistent going to the gym, and so I'll just go back to whatever felt good, which was maybe not going at all. I talked to a lot of people about their health, and it's a great analogy for everything else, that when you start really focusing on your health, we'll get to achievement ceilings, not with how much weight we can lift or how fast we can run, or how much weight we can lose, but it's the other things, like, can I do hard things consistently for a long time? That's the ceiling that most people need to get through in their business. Even, can I just stick to a few important things for a really long time consistently well? If I can't do that, I'm probably going to get stuck at the same ceilings over and over again, because I won't be consistent enough to work my way through them. But those two are huge, man. So fraud syndrome, fear, and then the comfort or the contentment that comes with, well, I'm not average, maybe I'm a little better than average, and that puts me elevated above other people. And so why work harder from there?

Ian R  
Yeah, and a lot of those are extremely performative and external, like it relies very much heavily on people's external perception of us, which is a hard way to live, to be honest with you, like the imposter syndrome, you know, it's just like, oh man, I'm not good enough. I'm an imposter. I don't know enough. And again, that's very much external. Like, will people see me as an imposter? Will they kind of pick me apart and I won't be able to recover from that? You know, it becomes very performative. But what I see the downside of hitting those growth ceilings and business being is not keeping up with things. And there was a guy that I was working with, and I'll try not to give any information if he's listening, actually I know he's listening to the podcast. How are you? Won't mention your name. 

Mark Hummel  
What's up, man? 

Ian R  
What's going on? But he was going to buy an inspection company, and I've seen this about 1000 times. Inspection company, 20 years oldish, you know, been around for decades. But when you go to get into the nuts and bolts of buying it, he hasn't upgraded any of his systems, grown his business, or done anything in 15 of those 20 years. So five to 10 years into the business, they're growing, growing, growing, and then they hit a ceiling. They don't update how they do things with, like, you know, modern reports. They don't change how they do stuff. They don't update their website, you know. And it's like, this website's from 1995 and their software is a Word document with no pictures in it. And it's like, can you just limp along that way? Yeah, but you hit your comfort zone pretty quickly, and then the market tears you apart, because the market moves faster than we do at those times.

Mark Hummel  
Such a good analogy, man, a real life case study that you just threw out there. I have this phrase that I started saying. I feel like I came up with it, but I might have heard it somewhere. 

Ian R  
We'll attribute it to you. Mark.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, I can't remember anymore if I just made it up, or if I heard it somewhere, and that's probably a lot of what I say anyway. But the phrase is, your business growth is always a product of your personal growth, and it doesn't work the other way around, right? Your business will never go further than your own development. And just staying on the subject of ceilings. We see this a lot with people who are solo operators, or they have small teams. As a solo they can't quite get to full capacity and stay there without having this giant ebbs and flows in business and to your friend, to the case study there, it's because they're not really upgrading their business. They're just managing what's already happening. And they'll rinse and repeat this and do this for 20 years. Very, very common in our industry. But you can build an incredibly impactful, fruitful and profitable life as a solo operator if you upgrade and maximize your business at that level. Then at the team phase, when people start hiring inspectors, what I observe is that most of the companies who end up hiring inspectors are gonna oscillate between one to four inspectors their entire career. They're gonna hire one, hire two, maybe get to three, then they're gonna go back down, and they're gonna hire and they're gonna go back down. And a lot of guys that I have found, women, guys, I mean both, but a lot of people who are running businesses, they just don't rise above the level of leadership needed to just get somebody in the door, because it's one thing to hire another technician, because you're a technician, and you know what it's like to be a technician, it's a whole other thing to say, okay, I'm going to build a machine that will bring inspections to a team, and then eventually I'm not going to be part of that inspection team. That's a whole different way of thinking. And you have to really level up your skills and who you are and what you're doing in business to be able to manage that consistently well for a long time.

Ian R  
You know, that's a really great point. We often spiral as a technician, because a technician running a business is much different than a business person working as a technician, and they're two different skill sets, really. We often don't see it that way, because we're often doing both. But it's kind of like, you know, I was great with finishes when I was on my construction company in my early 20s, fantastic. I would say, one of the best in the area. But I was mediocre, on a good day, mediocre carpenter. But I thought I was a good carpenter because I did it, and I didn't really have anything to compare it to. So just because we do it day in and day out doesn't mean we're good at it. And usually we fall off when it comes to the business side of things. And you said something there about personal growth being tied to business, and not the other way around. I think that's important, because I've met people whose businesses have failed but their personal growth was not tied to their business, and that things just always seem to work out for them businesswise. It's funny, they're like, oh yeah, the.com boom tore down my entire industry, but that's okay, I built up in a new industry six months later, and I'm like, who does that? You know, who does that as somebody with a lot of personal growth? When your entire persona is your business, you know, one little thing completely shakes, you know, they talk about Id, ego, and super ego. Ego is who we are in between, you know, our basic human nature and our higher thinking. You know, when our business collapses and who we are falls apart, you start to see the person start to fall apart, instead of the other way around. When we're firmly grounded in who we are, who we are stays put no matter what happens in our industry. And there's a lot going on in our industry to shake things up. So what are some personal growth things? I say that very diminutively, I'm sorry, what are some ways that we could grow personally, that you think, to make sure that our business grows along with who we are? What are some things that you think are important?

Mark Hummel  
I'm going to start, if it's okay, I'll start at kind of a high level, and then we can drill down into some technique, if that's okay. So you nailed it when you said you got to know who you are. Those people who go from business to business to business, and they just seem to have success in everything they do, even if their business is failing in certain areas, they have this joy or this peace even about them sometimes. Those people, in my view, are people who are living from identity, rather than getting their identity from what they're doing, right? I am a home inspector, and if home inspections goes away, I'm nobody. There's a lot of people out there living like that. I lived like that in a previous career as well, and I went through my own little identity crisis as I shifted careers, but it's way different. There's four things that I'll throw out there. And if anybody's listening and they want to write this down, write this down, because these are really good to spend some time on. And if you've followed me for any length of time, you've probably heard me talk about these. But the four things is, you got to know who you are. You got to know what you're doing. You got to know how you're going to do it. And then you got to know who you're going to do it for. So it's, who are you? What are you doing? How are you doing it? Who are you doing it for? If you can answer those questions, then you're already head and shoulders above most people who are operating in a business, and you're going to have more resolve, you're going to be able to tackle challenges, you're going to be able to point yourself toward a growth path that makes more sense for who you are, rather than just the work that you're doing. And your business will benefit from it. It truly will. We see it every day. Yeah. And so that's the work, and people oftentimes are surprised when they come into Inspector Empire Builder, that part of what we start with is, okay, let's set the business aside for a second, and let's have a life vision, rather than a business vision, so that we have a reason to excel in business, right? And so all of that's the work. It's identity, life vision, life alignment and that's kind of how we roll. And then from there, getting down into like the techniques of personal growth. Well, that's a little more custom to the person, but there are some universal truths. And the first one I would throw out is that experience is the best teacher. One of my least favorite quotes, least favorite. I used to say it all the time as a young coach, right? Because as a young coach, you just say all the buzz stuff. But as I've had more time coaching people, what I've come to realize is that experience is a good teacher, but if it is your only teacher, it's going to direct you in ways that are not all that meaningful. And this is a really commonly cited example. If you are running a business and everything feels like it's a fire, and you're getting really good at putting out fires, your experience is teaching you to be a firefighter, so that you're going to go start fires, so that you have work to do. And so your experience can truly direct you away from what's most important if you're allowing it to be the only thing teaching you. And so we don't want to do that. We want to grow because of things we've chosen to grow, not just by experience. I call that growth by insight, rather than growth by pain. And so then it's simple things that are easy to do for a short period of time, but difficult to do consistently well for a long period of time, like choose a growth path, read not one book, but read five or six books on one topic. Or get into a group where you are no longer the smartest person in the room, and that way you're not only inspired, but every once in a while you feel pretty small in the room that you're in. That's a good thing. And I could go on and on with the list of techniques, but the first one, the most important one, is that, if it's all coming from you, you're already at a ceiling. You might not even know it yet. You have to get outside of yourself.

Ian R  
You know, I 100% agree with all your points there. The experience is the best teacher. I've always said that's kind of like getting punched, to know that it hurts. It's like you could have figured that out other ways besides getting punched, like there's better ways to learn. It is a teacher, like you said, but not the best one. And also, look outside your business. Someone else on this show said something along those lines. They said, if you're comparing your business to your business, you're never going to grow. You always have to look outside, not only your business, but your own industry. And I always try to take that advice, because we like to say, okay, my home inspection business is like no other industry. And that is true. We're very unique. We have a unique you know, service based industry kind of feel to us, but also, elements of the real estate industry, our buyer types are very different, like our clients are going to be, usually under pressure, stressed out with a two week contingency, everything's going to be very, very different and very unique. It's why a lot of companies come into our industry and then end up leaving. But then at the end of the day, it's also really not that unique. You can take principles from other industries and very easily apply it to ours, like CRMs. 20 years ago, people didn't really use those. Now it's just like, everybody has a CRM it's like, of course, take that principle from every industry. Look outside and say, okay, this works, keeping in touch with your clients. Of course, that works, you know. But there's a lot of other principles. We should never stop and compare our industry to our industry, or our company with our company. Step outside, and if you have a book recommendation, we always love book recommendations. A matter of fact, someone gave me some the other day that I haven't read. But what book would you recommend to people for that purpose?

Mark Hummel  
Okay, help me refine that. So what's the purpose, so that I have a better idea of what book to recommend, because I'm currently reading a bunch of books, and I could just start throwing a bunch out.

Ian R  
Yeah, so that's a very eloquent way of saying I said a bunch of things and didn't fully ask a question. So, basically, personal growth books that would help us in our business. Here's three that are on my list that I have not read yet, so I don't know if they're good. The Go-Giver, Turning Pro, and Mastery. 

Mark Hummel  
Interesting. I haven't read any of those. I've heard about The Go-Giver a million times. People talk about that one a lot. I haven't heard of the other two.

Ian R  
So The Go-Giver, I am told, is a lot about...the person who gave me this book actually said, it's what we do. Everything I've ever done, I've put on the podcast, anything, you know, guests have been on the podcast like yourself, and just say, okay, here's free information that helps you. It's The Go-Giver, because you know that people that will use it will actually appreciate it, and then it'll come back to you in a good way, and it always has. It's not a pay-it-forward kind of book. It actually has a real business mentality behind it. I don't know about Turning Pro or Mastery. He explained those, but I didn't hear them. But those are three that are on my list. And I also like to pick out books for personal growth that are not necessarily related to our industry. Like, right now I'm reading the fifth edition of Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics. It's like 700/800 pages of economic information. Never any of my interests. So I'm just like, all right, I'm going to force myself to be interested in a new subject, because I like learning new subjects. And so now I'm learning about economics in general.

Mark Hummel  
I love that. I'm a managerial economics nerd, and so I don't read a lot of stuff like that, or haven't, at least recently, but I love to dive into all of those things, and I pull a lot of content for talks from things like that. For example, I did a talk a couple years ago, called Living Life at the Margins. And in managerial economics, when you're talking about unit production, there is quite literally a formula to figure out, if you sell a thing, to figure out what is the exact number of things you can sell to maximize profit before it starts to actually decrease profit. And so you could sell 100 and then at 101 you actually are harmed because you sold that last one. And life is the same way, right? Like, what are all the things you can do that would maximize your humanity, who you are, what you're doing, how you're doing it, who you're doing it for. But we don't want to be so overloaded that that one extra thing just burns us out and tanks us. So, yeah, I pull a lot of insight out of stuff like that myself.

Ian R  
You know, it's funny you mentioned that. That's the reason they got rid of the Ford Ranger. That formula, which still bugs me. I'm like, I love the Ford Ranger. Why would they get rid of it? But that was part of that formula, side note anyways. But what books are you reading right now for your personal growth that helps you in your business?

Mark Hummel  
So me, personally, my whole team is reading, we do a book study, which by the way, if you've got a team, study books together, it's one of the best ways to level up your entire team and not have to be the only one leveling up and then trying to regurgitate everything to your team. And it has been one of the absolute best moves for us, is to read books together. So currently we're reading Procrastinate on Purpose, and we're only a few chapters into it, and so far, we're loving it because it's so counter time management culture. And the big premise of the book is that there's no such thing as time management. There is self-management, and then there are a whole list of different things you can do to manage yourself as we make emotional decisions throughout the day, to do whatever we're going to do, as opposed to this idea that you can somehow manage time, or get more time, or better utilize time. It's way more effective to think about better utilizing yourself in the given time that you have. And so it's been a really interesting book so far. Before that, though, and I would recommend this to anybody who is building a life by being in business. And by the way, if you decide to do anything with these people, let me know, because I can hook you up with a link and I'm partnered with them at this point, because I love them so much. This book is called Wealthy and Well-Known, and it is all about personal branding, and the idea that if you're going to build something meaningful, you have to build a personal brand as well, and not like you have to monetize it, you know, and be an influencer, and all the stuff that people might think when you hear personal brand, but more from the perspective of who are you going to serve to maximize the impact you have on the world. And when we start thinking through that lens as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, even as a team, then we instantly start to make different decisions in our business. For one, we stop thinking only about today, and we start thinking about things further out than today. Well, what am I going to do right now that will have a long term impact on my community or on the people that I serve or even on my team or on myself? Who is that version of me that does that? And what is the avatar that I love to serve and help? From a business perspective, all of that applies, right? And so what does my business brand look like? Who does it serve? How does it maximize the impact it has, not just the dollars it makes. So I fell in love with that book, and then I ended up hiring them to be my coach to help me get better at that stuff.

Ian R  
Nice. And it is funny, because I remember one guy saying on one of the inspection forums, don't go to any coaching company because it's a lot of hoopla and feel good. And he's like, you need good marketing, and you need to get more inspections. And I'm like, that's a really diminutive way of looking at it, because most of the successful home inspectors have a higher idea of things than that. So I'm thinking of all the multi-inspector firms that our company works with, that we've had on the show, when I talk with them, before and after the show, and even during the episodes, there's a lot of that involved. There's a lot of self-leveling of up that happens that we often skip. So you talked about, you know, working out and our health and stuff like that. You know, a lot of times people go into the gym and they're like, you just need to lift heavy and eat food. And I'm like, well, okay, you also have your joints to think about, your protein intake, your hormone balance, recovery, depending on your age. You know, there's a lot of fundamental things that we miss. And then people wonder, or they'll say, oh, well, my genetics, they won't let me get in shape. It's like, well, or you didn't level up, you just went and started lifting heavy. We go into business with that mentality. You just need to work hard and get more inspections. You hit a ceiling really, really hard when you do that, when you don't self-level up. Some of the largest inspection companies in the country, and maybe we don't want to be the largest inspection company in the country, I know I don't, and that's my personal goal. But do we want to have five inspectors or 10 inspectors or not have to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day? We're going to need to do some self-leveling up and stop and read a couple books, you know, hire a coach, someone to get us out of the realm of our own head. You know, there's an inspector that we work with, and every year he'll contact us, Ian, he'll always say he did somewhere between 500/600 inspections a year by himself. I need to hire a guy. And I always had the same conversation with him, okay, how much are you charging? Well, you can't hire a guy if you're charging that. Well, if I raise my prices, I lose inspections. I'm like, that sounds like a good thing. Make more, work less, you know, and the same conversation, and then it's been, like, eight years, and it's the same thing every year. I'm like, dude, you got to level up at some point. You got to just get out of your own head here.

Mark Hummel  
So that's a great example of a ceiling that somebody has chosen. And I don't know this person, of course, so I'm just speaking generally. But, man, I want people to make as much money as they can for as little work as possible. And so there is definitely something to be said for increasing your prices and even losing a little bit of business because of it. One of the best things ever. I guess this is a side note to what you were saying, but one of the best things ever right now, in January, well, it's February now, but in January, I was hearing this from a lot of IEB members, and I know there are people who are not IEB members as well who experienced this. We're celebrating with you, by the way. They said something like, I did fewer inspections last year because the market was down, but I'm 20% up in revenue, and it's like, bingo, that's what we want. Yeah, yeah. So when people really internalize the who they are model, then decisions like that are a little bit easier, because I know what this is like, and I hear it so often from people, I can't raise my prices because, and then insert whatever fear based reason for doing that, and they're legitimate. I'm not saying they're not legitimate reasons, but at some point you got to have a little courage, lean into who you are and the product that you have in your market, and charge what you're worth. And so in case that's helpful for anybody to hear, if you feel like you're not charging what you're worth, the first thing is not to just raise your prices, but to really nail down what you're worth and believe it, and then go raise your prices.

Ian R  
Yeah, and I think that's probably the most common ceiling that I hear personally, and I always do the math for them. I'm like, would you expect to lose 10% of your work if you raised your price X amount of dollars? They're like, oh man, that'd be horrible. I'm like, okay, so let's call that worst case scenario. If you raised your prices this much, and you lost 10%, you're actually going to make more money and work less. And when you show them the math, they're always like, oh, that sounds logical. And then, you know, 90% of people don't go and do it. For some, it's that external validation, because whenever a guy comes and tells me vanity numbers versus real numbers, I always know where his head's at. When they email me and they say, Ian, I do 600 inspections a year. I'm like, that's what gives him meaning. That's what makes him feel good about himself, that people want him that much that he does 600 inspections a year. Now, listen, there's guys out there saying, well, I like to tell people just because...okay, fine, but if we dig down deep into who we are, doesn't that give us a little validation? I know sometimes it does for me, you know, oh, this many people work for me. This many people hired us for their inspections. Yeah, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. But when that becomes who we are, raising prices and people not hiring us, becomes the worst thing possible. And that usually means we're, the term is, we have little density to us. We're more inflated and have less density, which I think that's funny. We want to be more dense. You know, I have no problem with that mark. 

Mark Hummel  
That's funny. Being dense.

Ian R  
Yeah, we want to be more dense. When we're inflated, it's easy to pop us. If we lose 100 inspections out of those 600 because of a market shift or a new competitor in the market. That hurts. Guys will call me. They'll be like, Ian, I lost 100, I don't know what to do. My life is falling apart. And I'm like, okay, that's not who you are. You're a dad, you're a brother, you're a son. You have meaning besides that, let's talk about the logistical issue of, you know, losing a number of inspections a year. We have to be able to let go of that and be comfortable with who we are and accept who we are without that performative aspect of, I perform X amount of inspections. Now guys who tell me their numbers, I love it when they do that. Ian, I did 400 inspections last year, and I netted, not grossed, I netted $250,000 and made every little league game of my kids.

Mark Hummel  
Yeah, I know, right. Yes, that's what I want to hear, too, man.

Ian R  
Oh man, I love that. They're like, I haven't worked a weekend all year, except for one emergency. I'm just like, you're just emailing me to tell me how your life is. And I love that. Thank you.

Mark Hummel  
That's amazing. Yeah, that's my favorite thing ever is when people say, yeah, business is going like this. And here's what I was able to do outside of business because of it.

Ian R  
That's glorious stuff. So this is a good conversation, even for ones who are working for an inspection company. If you had to distill down what you'd want a business owner to do with this information, a home inspection company owner, solopreneur, or somebody working for a company, a home inspection company. What would you distill it down to?

Mark Hummel  
I love the question. And this works for anybody. It doesn't matter your position, your title or anything in between. What I would say first is, you have to have the courage to really do a self-evaluation. Because the truth is, is self-awareness is the foundation from which everything grows. We cannot grow if we're not first aware of the need to grow right, or at least the need to choose to grow. And so to do a bit of a self-evaluation, you might write down the areas in your life where you're currently showing up. So are you a business owner or a leader? Are you a husband, a wife? Are you into health and so you exercise, whatever it is, and in your faith, like the whole list, every area where you show up. And don't overthink it, don't, you know, feel like this has to be a four hour event. This can just be something that's meant to get some thoughts out of your head and give you a starting point. So just jot down the areas where you spend time and you show up and you want to show up well, and then do an honest assessment. Ask yourself, how am I showing up in these areas? Now, oftentimes it's easy to quantify it with a number, so maybe it's a one to 10. How am I doing in this area with zero being I'm not showing up at all, 10 being I'm exceeding any of my wildest expectations here. And as you go through that, you just become a little bit more aware of your self-inventory, and then this is where you can get really practical, and then you turn it into a growth plan. And I don't mean we're gonna start to completely shift who we are, because the reality is that the best way to grow is to change one thing at a time, to lean into maybe one or two things at a time. And so what I would recommend, what I do recommend to a lot of people is do that self-inventory, be honest with yourself, and don't beat yourself up, don't judge it. Just be honest with yourself, and then you've got to choose a path to grow in. For me personally, what that looks like, is I allow myself three topics for an entire year, which means I'm only going to study three topics for an entire year, and that way I go deep into those things, and I have really big growth in a few areas of my life. So whether it's more consistency with something, whether it's reading and studying and pouring myself into something to get better at it, that's what works for me is to get really narrow with what I'm studying, what I'm learning, to serve something that I want to do in my life. And other people can start with something similar, where maybe it's read a book about this subject, where you want to do better in your life. Hello, I had to read a book about how to raise a teenage daughter recently because I wanted to do better at that. And so it can literally be any part of your life, right? But don't stop there. And so once you've chosen a path and you say, okay, I'll listen to a podcast, or I'll read a book, or I'll go talk to somebody about it, the next step is going to be to make sure that you're never doing it alone. So find somebody else who's interested in the thing that you're interested in. It's pretty easy with business. You can jump into a coaching program, find a free mentor, or whatever. Just don't do it alone, right? But for every area of your life, having some people around you who can influence you in a positive way with the thing that you're doing is a complete game changer, and it is incredible to me in 2026 how many of us are living so isolated while being surrounded by people at the same time, you know. And if you're feeling isolated, if you're listening right now, and you feel isolated, you feel like you're alone, I want you to know two things. One, is you don't have to be. And two, every day that you are, you're choosing that. And so this takes some real courage and some real work to get outside of yourself and go find people who are like minded, find people who might be just as passionate about the thing that you're passionate about as you are. It's difficult, especially as adults, to find people sometimes, but you can't be alone.

Ian R  
And especially because this is a home inspection podcast, I can guarantee you you're going to find people to hang out with. You know, no matter who we are, what our personality is like, you're gonna find somebody. Yeah, get out there. Get motivated. And I do like that. Find people who are like minded and people who are even not like minded to associate with.

Mark Hummel  
I'll throw out a personal example if it's okay.

Ian R  
Yeah. 

Mark Hummel  
So I'm not running a home inspection business. I'm running a coaching business, right? And so for me, last year, I started feeling the need to sort of level up my own skills as an entrepreneur, running a coaching business, several coaching businesses, it's really not common to come across people who have hundreds and hundreds of clients in the coaching space. And so I was finding myself feeling a little isolated, a little lonely in the industry that I live in, and most of the people who come my direction want to do things like, you know, I'll do your marketing for you, or I'll help you level up as a coach. But I'm asking questions like, well, how do we go from 300 clients to 1000 clients? And those are not the same scale questions, right? Like, I don't need somebody to post my stuff on social media. I need to look at somebody who's way further ahead than me. And so I got this opportunity last year to go to this mastermind group in Dallas. I drove up there for a couple days, and it was for people like me who are running coaching businesses. And just in those two days, I learned so much. I brought back a notebook full of notes. I changed a few things immediately. We leveled up our coaching program, we deepened our coaching offering. We've taken action on everything I can think to take action of that I learned, and I have some new friends who do what I do. But I'll tell you what, it wasn't easy to get up there. I was super busy. I had a lot going on. I had to pay to go up there because you know, I couldn't sleep in my car. It was like 20 degrees outside, and had to get a hotel, and all the things, I know, that's an objection for people sometimes. I can't travel. It's expensive. And so I had all the same barriers, and it would have been really easy, especially the week leading up to it, to say, ah, I'm not going to this thing. I'm too busy. But my entire trajectory for all of my businesses have changed because I went to that two day thing, just to be around people who are like me doing what I was doing. It really does change your life.

Ian R  
Nicely enough in the home inspection industry there's enough of that going around. There's conventions and groups, and I think IEB either just had or is having one down somewhere, and they're just all over. So ASHI's having one in Pennsylvania. I was gonna go to that because I don't live very far, maybe five hours. But who wants to go to Pennsylvania in February? 

Mark Hummel  
ASHI.

Ian R  
Yeah, ASHI does. But either way, if you want to go, it's not gonna be cold inside the building, I'm sure. 

Mark Hummel  
There you go. 

Ian R  
Mark, listen. This is great, high level stuff that we need to hear. We don't talk about it enough as an industry. We don't talk about it enough as business owners, and your expertise as a coach running IEB, working with home inspection company owners of every size and shape, invaluable information. So thank you for being on, and thank you for being you, and we're hoping to have you on again sometime in the future here.

Mark Hummel  
Dude, keep me in your corner. I'm honored to come on. And this is just so fun. Honestly, I think we have so much in common in the stuff that we love that we should just do this for fun, even if nobody listens.

Ian R  
We'll do a whole new podcast. Call it the Mark Ian podcast. 

Mark Hummel  
Love it. I love it.

Ian R  
Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark Hummel  
Yes, sir.

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.