A Thousand Little Things Build an Inspection Business

Looking for the “one big thing” that fills your calendar? We make the case that there isn’t one—and that’s good news. Real growth for home inspectors comes from a thousand small moments: the first second someone sees your face online, the way you answer the phone, a crisp driveway speech, a clean pair of boots, and a follow-up text that arrives before anyone needs to ask.

We break down how first impressions form in a blink and why trust lands before your qualifications do. Then we map a simple professionalism stack you can use right away: appearance that signals care, communication that feels clear and human, a predictable inspection process that calms agents and buyers, and follow-through that proves you’re dependable after the report is sent. Along the way, we share practical tactics—responding to reviews (especially the tough ones), writing a real voicemail greeting, keeping texts readable, avoiding distracting Bluetooth gear on site, and preparing spare clothes and clean interior shoes.

Brand touchpoints matter long before you step onto a porch, so we also dive into website basics, professional headshots, and social content that stays helpful and non-divisive. Cultural awareness becomes a quiet superpower: remove shoes when appropriate, learn simple greetings, and show respect that spreads through communities. We close with the most powerful habit of all—controlling your reaction under pressure—so you stay calm, curious, and kind when stakes feel high.

If you’re ready to replace gimmicks with reliable systems, this conversation will help you build trust faster, boost referrals, and steady your pipeline. Subscribe, share this episode with a colleague who needs a lift, and leave a review with the one small habit you’ll start today.

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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 Robertson  
Welcome back, everybody. Today, I want to talk about something that's important to me as not only a home inspector but a business owner, because I often see the question asked on Facebook forums, Reddit, and everywhere, home inspectors, especially new ones or ones who have been having a rough year, they'll ask the question, what's the big thing that you guys are doing to get you work? And it's not that I dislike the question. I dislike the thinking behind it. 

The thinking behind it is that our business as home inspectors is made up of a few big things. In reality, professionalism, running a business, is 1000 small things. I want to say that again, professionalism and building a business is 1000 small things. So I've always, if you listen to this podcast in any length, you'll hear me talk about the tuck-in-your-shirt principle, and that's basically what I am referring to. So just consider this. A lot of times we think, okay, I have a logo, and I'll hear people say, I have a logo. I have a website. I am good at my job. I'm a great inspector. Okay, cool, but think about the science of it. So according to the Association for Psychological Science, series of experiments were conducted by Princeton psychologists, and they found that people form impressions extremely fast, much faster than we assume. So they found that judgments can be formed in a 10th of a second, just from a face. That's even before you said, I'm your inspector. Holy cow, we have less than a 10th of a second. So, let's completely blow that out of the water and times it by 10. We have one second at its best for people to make their overall impression of us. So when I say that business is made of 1000 small things, I am not joking. We notice so much in that 10th of a second. We notice, do they look kempt or unkempt? Do they look trustworthy or not? Are their eyes looking at me or are they kind of evasive? It's our subconscious picking up on things. So how can we make sure that we apply the tuck-in-your-shirt principle and take care of those 1000 small things instead of worrying about, what's that one big thing, guys, that get you work? Let's break it down a little bit. 

First of all, trust is built before your technical skill is even visible. Every home inspector that I've ever met hates to hear this. There's a new inspector, great guy, and he actually listened to me, and things are looking great for him, and I'm super happy, but he was leading with, 'other home inspectors don't have the qualifications I do. I have this background and that background, and I have this knowledge and that certification.' Cool, and that matters on a website. We've talked about that. That matters on your business card, but people have made a judgment about you before they ever get to that, whether it's in person, on your website, your business card, whatever it happens to be, they've already made their judgment about you according to the science of things. So before we get to our qualifications, we need to make sure that we give a good impression. 

If we're new, this part's hard, but reviews are the obvious one. But a lot of times, I see guys will have like, 300/400 reviews, and they don't respond to them. According to Bright Local, which is an online marketing business to help marketing firms help market for other people and individuals, but their research spans multiple countries and decades, and they found that consumers increasingly expect business owners to respond to reviews as part of good customer service. Another survey found that 54% of consumers trust online reviews first. So get reviews, but when we have them, respond to them, and be professional, especially to the bad reviews. I have gotten more work from responding well to a bad review than to any of our good reviews, so be professional with that. 

And then third, attire and polish changes how people judge ethics and credibility. Did you know that good looking people statistically are more trusted? Crazy, right? A person's looks has nothing to do with their credibility or their ethics, but science shows that first impression, they're more trusted. So listen, I'm not saying going out there and getting good looking. Let's be honest about ourselves here. I know I am, but do the best you can with what you got. You know, do we have a beard? Cool, trim it up. Do we have a couple extra pounds on us? Okay, who doesn't after a certain age. Well, I mean, some people don't, but, you know, wear some flattering clothes, you know, wear darker colors, you know, things like that. But let's get into what I call the professionalism stack. 

So first of all—appearance. So here's literally the tuck-in-the-shirt principle, where it comes from. Shirt-tucked clean Polo has always been my favorite. Now, listen, I know you Florida guys automatically just had a heart attack and pulled off to the side of the road to breathe a little bit. I get it, not everybody's gonna literally tuck in their shirt, but I'll tell you, it does help, and not everybody's gonna want a polo shirt. But listen, you can get the nice polos and they look more professional. There's a podcast I did about, I don't know, three, four years ago on attire, and some studies that were done about it, whatever it happens to be, take what we have now and increase his professional look, regardless of our particular comfort. Do we like to wear a particular set of jeans that maybe are a little bit baggier and not as nice looking, but they're comfortable? Try for a week, sacrifice them, wear some nicer looking work pants or something like that. Check our boots. Are the treads all worn down? Are they dirty? Do we spill oil on them in the garage but wear them anyways, because they're comfortable. We're going to review these real quick, but there's some specific points that I want to get into. 

The second layer—communication. Answer our phones with structure. Or here's the thing, answer our phones at all. Do you know how many home inspectors I call, that they'll call and leave us a message, and I'll call them back from a completely different number, and they don't answer, and then I don't get a call back from them for hours or sometimes a day. Okay, I understand we're all busy, but if we can't answer the phone, get someone to answer it for us. We've talked about that too. But do you know how many home inspectors, statistically speaking, we did a podcast, I think with Kristine, who works with us here, about how many home inspectors have a message going, yeah, "leave a message," or just, "the person you have reached is not available," beep, okay. Or when they finally do we answer the phone, yep, okay. You know, have a little bit of ump. I'm just talking about, not making it perfect, but making it better than what we have already. If we text with our business, which we should, my team calls it pulling an Ian, I'm the worst with text messages. I do talk-to-text and I'm always in a hurry, and I'll check it over, and I always have my AI correction turned on, and it's always a mess. Do not follow my example on that, but I do try to improve. So try to improve in that kind of stuff. Use proper punctuation, even though it's texting. I know that sounds weird, and especially if you're a home inspector in your early 20s and you're like, punctuation in a text message, yeah, going that extra mile. It's one of those 1000 things that adds up over time.

The third layer—smoothness in our process. I can't say this enough, well, I'll say it with an example. One time I remember I won over an agent, and she told me, you know why you won me over? Because I have too many inspectors that come and they don't have a driveway speech. They just start inspecting, and I never know where they're going next. Sometimes they're on the roof, sometimes they're in the basement, sometimes they're in the attic, sometimes they're in a bathroom, then they're back in the attic. She goes, you show up, and I know exactly where you're going next. I know when I have a minute to pull my clients aside while you're doing something, I can practically say your driveway speech for the beginning and the end. That level of predictability is comforting to people. If we could not write a list of things of how we're going to inspect and what we're going to do next, we have a problem with that. Some inspectors will even write down a list of what they're doing, hand it to the person, say, here's a little pamphlet—make it on Canva, Vista Print or whatever—here's what we're going to inspect, and here's the general order of things that we do. We're going to do the exterior of the house. We're going to walk to the left first, back to the driveway, bend to the right, back to the driveway. We're going to go to the roof next, and we're going to go inside. We're going to turn on water. We're going to go into the basement, make sure everything's draining properly, check the, you know, etc. If we could hand somebody a pamphlet like that, holy cow. They're like, oh my goodness. And then have a little disclaimer at the bottom say, you know, we may deviate from this, you know, depending on what we find. You're gonna have some pretty stinking happy clients and agents. Everyone's gonna love you for that. And guess who, when their friend needs another inspection, is gonna hand that pamphlet to them and say, hey, make sure your home inspector does this, or just hire that guy. 

So, you want to know some little things that we can do, that I have personally noticed that we as an industry are sometimes lacking in? Here's a list that I wrote down. First of all, no offense to anybody, but our breath. That's right, I went there. Our breath is not always the best. Let's be honest. We're typically dehydrated. We're mouth breathing in a crawl space. You know, we have a dirty job, so our breath matters. So I always keep in my truck, always have, for years, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and mouthwash. I'd only use a toothbrush and toothpaste if, you know, I had like, you know, a really rough day. But typically, right before my inspection, I'm getting the mouthwash. And for some reason, the ones that have fluoride in it make your breath not smell good after a time. I asked my dentist about it. She explained it, I don't know. But try to get the ones that are specifically meant for fresh breath. At least start off the inspection smelling like a rose. Also, what we eat in between inspections or our morning inspection, we show up and we had onions on our cream cheese bagel, and, you know, jalapenos on it. Fantastic. That tastes fantastic, but it makes our breath smell like death. Micro interactions, 1000 small things. 

The fourth one is follow through. How many of us end our professionalism at the end of the inspection? Let's be frank, a lot of us do. So follow through, text them later that day, either manually or through our system, like Inspector Toolbelt, if you use it and just say, hey, thank you for hiring us. Just to let you know our reports are usually out this evening, or if we sent it already, I hope you enjoyed your same-day online report. Let us know if you have any questions. That level of professionalism, those small, micro interactions, hit harder than anybody could ever give an answer to the question, what's the big thing that you guys are doing to get work? It's 1000 little things. 

I mentioned it already, but our clothes. Nobody likes to admit that they don't look professional. And I've had people literally call me when I say this on the podcast and say, Ian, I agree with everything that you say, but in my area, nobody tucks in their shirt. I'm like, cool, be the first guy, you know, or at least have a logo on your shirt. I had a guy send me a picture of himself to put on the website, and he literally had sauce on his shirt from lunch. And I sent it back, and he changed his shirt and it had bleach marks on it. And I eventually had to ask the guy, I'm like, do you not have a good shirt to wear? Buy some good shirts. Keep them clean. Keep our pants clean. Don't let the bottom edges of our pants get all frayed, and then wear those on inspections. Make sure that they fit properly. If we're a bit heavy, make sure that we wear a belt. And I've talked about that guy a few years ago that inspected my neighbor's house. And you know what's interesting is, hopefully I'll never know who this is, if you're listening, but I just found out some agents have been really complaining about him, and you know why? Because of his lack of professionalism, those small, micro interactions add up. Did he do a fantastic inspection? Doesn't matter, because now the first impression that people get of him within that 1/10 of a second is not good, and especially if everybody's not talking well about him. 

Third, bring a change of clothes. Do you know how many times I have changed in a McDonald's bathroom? More times than I can count, and not just McDonald's, it's just wherever. Bring a change of clothes. I always counted on having not five full sets of clothes for the week, I count on 10, because five days a week, sometimes, yeah, you have a clean inspection. All right, cool. No, crawl space, basement was clean, new construction, whatever. But half the time I'm like, I just, I'm covered. You know, I gotta change. I bring three or four hats with me. And yes, you should be a walking billboard. And no, don't message me saying, Ian, I don't want to be a walking billboard. If you're going to be a business owner, wear a hat with a logo on it. Wear a shirt with a logo on it. Have your business card on your tool belt with your tools, so that if anybody shows up, boom, business card. Those little micro interactions. I won an agent, by the way, side point, by being able to produce a business card faster than the other real estate agent on site. So the buyer's agent went to reach in his pocket and couldn't find one, and before his hand even hit his pocket, I was handing the seller's agent my card. She goes, I like you. And guess who started referring me. Micro interactions. 

Our website and social media, that shows up to the inspection way before we do. And the problem is the leads that we lose from a junky website and from terrible social media or worse, no social media is, I don't know if that's worse, probably just as bad. But either way, the leads that we lose from that, we'll just never know. We'll just sit there and wonder, boy, the phone seems quiet, or I only had two inspections this week instead of five. The problem is we don't know that we're losing those leads. Our website, compare it to everybody in the area. And listen, we all like to look for confirmation bias. If you don't know what confirmation bias is, it's we believe something, so we look for something else to confirm what we already believe, because that's our brain's easiest way of conserving the neuron connections that are already there. Don't look for confirmation bias by going to everybody else's website and saying, it looks just as good as mine. Find the best websites in your area, or get your marriage mate or kids, or if they're older, or somebody else besides a home inspector, and say, find the best home inspection websites in the area. Okay, cool. How does ours compare? Do we need a new website? Put a picture of ourselves on the website? And if we're like, well I can't or this and that, ask yourself, why? Up to a 50% higher conversion rate for a website that has just a face on it, let alone our face. Do we look like a serial killer, or do we look like we should be on my 600 pound life, and we're not gonna fit in the attic? If not, then we should have a picture of ourself on our website. But again, think back to that guy. You know how many pictures I've gotten from our clients to put on a website and for either Full View Home Inspector Marketing or Inspector Toolbelt, and they send us the worst photo. I'm like, you're not a bad looking guy or lady, but you know, this is a weird wedding photo after you've been dancing all night and has nothing to do with a home inspection. Or this is you at the beach with your family, with your hair blowing in the wind. Or you do look like a serial killer in this one because it's too close up. Get a professional photo, get some honest opinions. And same thing with social media. You have political views, or you have ideas about the economy, whatever. Keep that to your private page, private social media, that no one else can access except people that you know. You want to be bread and butter home inspector on your social media that people can find. You do not want to be divisive, because if somebody has a different view of the world than you do, you can still inspect their home, and they can still pay you. Don't alienate clients.

Bluetooth. I don't know. Why we walk around the house inspecting with a Bluetooth, that immediately gives people the wrong impression of you. You say, well, I just keep it in there, just in case. First of all, I don't know. It gives the impression that you're not paying attention and also looks weird, and it's just not the right thing to do. Let me just put it that way. I'm not going to get into all the reasons why, but we should not have earphones in, you know, on the phone talking, giving our client the impression that we're not giving them their full attention. And a lot of this is just my opinion, and a lot of it I have heard from others. So there's one home inspector that I know and 1000 agents that I know that know him, and they all make fun of him for having his earpiece in while he inspects. And he'll answer a phone call. He'll be like, hang on, put his finger up, hang on. And then he'll answer the phone call while he's working with his client. To me, that's just not good business. It doesn't give a good impression. If we don't get a phone call all morning and we're on the inspection with our earpiece in, we still give the impression that we're not giving them our full attention. 1000 small things make professionalism. 

Shoes, wear booties, bring an extra pair of shoes, whatever that involves. Understanding other cultures. What other cultures do we have in the area? Are there a lot of people from a particular country, particular set of beliefs, whatever it happens to be, bend to their culture. There's an old saying, be all things to all people, if they are of a culture where taking off your shoes is important. I've said this on the podcast before, do you know how many clients I've won because the community said, oh man, this American guy, he took off his shoes. And I would always take off my shoes. I would leave it outside. I'd give a little bow, and out of my bag, I would bring my second pair of shoes, and I would flip them over, and I would show them to them. And I would respectfully ask, I say, it is our policy to wear shoes, but I would like to ask you permission to wear these clean interior shoes into your home. Oh, my goodness, they would flip out happy. And then their whole community, I would end up inspecting for. There was a group of people from Asia. I mean once in a while, though, from 15 years ago, they'll still call for inspections. Learn the cultures around, those small little interactions, or even learn a greeting. Oh, man, that's my favorite. So, I mean, I speak Russian, not very well anymore. And I used to speak Spanish, but I forgotten most of that, and so I would pick up a lot of clients that way, but I'd pick up a lot of clients from other cultures too, because I'd just be like, I'd learn to say, hello, thank you, and my name is. And just a little bit of effort for sellers, buyers, agents. Man, if I were in a foreign country and somebody learned a bit of English just to make me feel more comfortable. Heck yeah, I'd be referring them. 

Our voicemail. I already mentioned this. I want to mention it again. Number one, professional voicemail. Number two, professional voicemail. Number three, guess what it is, professional voicemail. Please, for the love of all that is good, if you can't answer your phone, have something like, hey, your call is very important. Or, you know, welcome to ABC home inspections, your call is very important to us. We're either in, on, or underneath the house right now, so please leave a message and I promise you I'll get back to you as soon as possible, something professional instead of just a standard beep. Is it our personal line? Cool. Our friends and family should know that we're a home inspector and that they're going to get a professional voicemail. 

How we communicate. Look people in the eyes. Most cultures, we're going to look people in the eyes, do not be dodgy. As soon as somebody pulls up to the inspection, as soon as anybody walks in, unless there's like this weird, crazy crowd of people, stop what we're doing. Make a note of where we were, what we were doing, and go and introduce yourself. Shake their hand, bow to them, depending on your culture, whatever it happens to be, stop what we're doing. Acknowledge everybody in the room. There's actually a psychologist who used Matthew McConaughey. This is a weird reference, but he showed how Matthew McConaughey endeared himself to audiences. When he walked in, he didn't just say hello to the host of a show, like most actors did. He'd walk in, say hello to the show, and weirdly enough, he'd go and shake the hand of the camera man and wave to the audience, and there'd be a little kid, and he'd wave hi, and he'd be like, hey, I'm Matthew, and everybody loved him. He had one of the highest ratings for a long time of likable actors, and he would point to the fact that Matthew McConaughey acknowledged everybody in the room, everywhere he went. Micro interactions is one of the 1000 things. 

Our vehicle—take 10 minutes tonight and go and clean our vehicle. And we might say, well, who's looking in there? You know what? When people pull up and they walk past your vehicle and they look in and they see old food cartons on the floor or our tools strewn around, yeah, that's gonna hurt that 1/10 second impression. So go clean our vehicle. Make it a practice. I used to go through and clean my vehicle midday. And I would always clean them midday, because sometimes at the end of the day, if I was going to skip anything, I was going to skip that one because I was either beat or had an extra long report, whatever it happened to be. But most of the day, I would tidy up halfway through the day, run it through the car wash. And I remember Nick Gromicko saying he'd wash his car every day. I don't do that, but at least a couple, two, three times a week. Make sure we do that so that when people walk by, they're like, oh, somebody's tidy. 

This last thing, I really want to emphasize, how we respond to things. How we respond to things is usually based on our own emotion and not the reality of a situation. We have to realize that about ourselves as human beings. It's kind of like when somebody sends us a text message, we're usually going to infer our own emotions on that text message. Somebody sends us a pretty benign text message, hey, can you explain page 23 of your report? And if we're stressed and we're anxious, we read that as an assault on us, like it's in there. I mentioned this. You shouldn't be questioning me. That's not a great way to react. When people call, even if they're in a bad mood, if we react calmly and try to figure out where they're coming from. We had an issue recently with a lady, and turned out she was just grasping at straws. We did a great job, and turned out she wasn't angry, but our inspector that took the call, he's the best at this, but he's like, okay, explain the situation. I feel really bad that you're going through that. You know, what other advice have you gotten? Did you look through our report? Let me look through the report and get back to you. How we react to things is one of the biggest, small things that we can do. When too many people show up on site, how do we respond? When the seller stays and is in our face, how do we respond? Is it calm? Is it kind? Do we need to grey rock a few people sometimes? Use these things judiciously, because how we respond, no matter if they had a good impression of us or not, if we respond poorly, that's going to kill the whole thing. 

So remember that sound bite, professionalism and our business is made up of 1000 small things, and I only mentioned a couple dozen here, there's 900 some odd more, so to speak. But hopefully this helps a little bit. Sorry if you got offended if I talked about our breath too much, but hopefully some of this helps, and we'll see you next time on our next episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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