The Commercial Mindset

Commercial inspections aren’t a bigger version of home inspections—they’re a different ocean. We sit down with Lance Kaufman of Focus Building Inspections to unpack what separates a true commercial practice from an ancillary add-on, and why the winners think like advisors, not technicians. From decoding ASTM requests to shaping proposals around lender and owner needs, Lance lays out a practical path for scoping, pricing, and delivering work that holds up in real transactions.

We dig into the mindset shift that changes everything: stop quoting by square footage and start with outcomes. Who will read the report? What decisions will it inform? Is this a PCA with opinions of cost, a triple net lease inspection, or a focused MEP review? You’ll hear how to funnel RFPs through a structured intake, run a scoping call that clarifies deliverables and exclusions, and price the sales effort plus the field work. Lance explains why the sales cycle is longer and cyclical—tied to budgets and board approvals—and how that can be a strength when you build pipeline discipline.

The most valuable tactic in the episode is deceptively simple: inspect like you’ll write six reports from the same data. Capture inventories, model numbers, roof sections, photos for environmental screening, and maintenance evidence so you can quickly produce cost tables, lender summaries, or lease-focused outputs without a second site visit. That foresight turns one inspection into a suite of deliverables and positions you as the go-to for owners, schools, and funds who prize clarity over flash.

If you’re moving beyond residential or ready to professionalize a commercial offering, this conversation is your field guide. Learn how to avoid buzzword traps, protect yourself from scope creep, and build a brand that speaks the language of PCAs, capital plans, and stakeholder decisions. Subscribe, share with a colleague who’s eyeing the commercial space, and leave a review with the one question you’ll add to your next proposal call.

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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  
Lance Coffman, I know I said this before we started the podcast, but you're one of my favorite guests. Thank you for being on again.

Lance Coffman  
Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's nice to be welcomed and wanted.

Ian Robertson  
And Kristine, she edits the transcripts for the podcast. And she said, you're easy to listen to, and you are, with your microphone, and you're like, I'm Lance Coffman, and I'm listening.

Lance Coffman  
I mean, I might moonlight as a late night radio DJ. I mean, you know, I'm okay with doing that, spinning the soft, the soft country hits of the 70s and 80s or something, you know, whatever, we could do it.

Ian Robertson  
80s and 90s, and I'll listen. There you go.

Lance Coffman  
Okay, okay, well, I'll figure out who my audience is, make it work.

Ian Robertson  
But I do mean it. I really appreciate having you on, and you're our resident commercial inspection expert, and you said something about this episode, and I wrote it down, and we're going to basically talk about commercial inspections are an industry and not an ancillary service. 

Lance Coffman  
That's right. 

Ian Robertson  
And I thought that was an important concept for us to understand. So give me your thoughts on that. Well, first of all, for those who haven't listened to the other two episodes that you've been in, first of all, why? Go back and listen. And then, second of all, just remind everybody who you are and why we have you on for commercial inspections.

Lance Coffman  
Sure, I'm Lance Coffman. I'm the owner of Focus Building Inspections. I've had the pleasure of doing commercial inspections now, I think, fully since 2018. I owned a home inspection company. We sold that last year, and I am just fully devoted and focused, no pun intended, on my company, Focus. And yeah, I mean, I've been able to be in and out of the industry now for quite a while, and being able to teach and educate has been such a blessing. And I've got to meet some awesome, stellar people along the way, like yourself. And so yeah, that's me. I I'm still baffled why you want me on the show, but at the same time, you know, here we are. I just think I got an early start on it, and I'm just now seeing people really come around to the side of the table that I'm sitting on, that I have been sitting on for years. And so it's really interesting when we have conversation and, you know, trying to understand where people are coming from and their actual level of knowledge when it comes to commercial real estate inspections. And it's been really fun. It's been challenging, but it's been really fun.

Ian Robertson  
Well, there's several reasons we have you on, but one of the big ones is in 2018, so that's eight years as of the recording of this podcast. There's very few commercial inspection companies and owners that are that long in the industry, to be perfectly frank. Commercial inspections have been around for a while, but just never in the way that they are now. The last podcast we had you on was, The Golden Age of Commercial Inspections, because in some ways it really, really is. It's a beautiful industry. Search volume online has never been higher. They've never looked at our industry more than they have right now, like commercial buyers and commercial people looking at things, because it was always property managers and engineers. Now they're like, oh, there's a whole separate inspection industry. So you've been through that entire change and your perspective is unique and valuable.

Lance Coffman  
Okay, good, and, yeah, I think my goal in all my education is to open up people's understanding that it is not such a small pond that I think some people are led to believe it is. It's more like an ocean, and so you just have to figure out where you belong in that ocean. And that's I think the conversation, and I'm always happy to have that conversation when we're able to do it.

Ian Robertson  
Nice. Well, then let's get right on that subject then. Why did you say that the commercial inspection industry is more of an industry than an ancillary? Why do you feel that you need to even say that?

Lance Coffman  
Yeah, so, I mean, there are an abundance, I mean, you've got amazing organizations like CCPIA or there are some kind of third party organizations that teach through ASTM or environmental into these different entities. And so there are things in place for people to be successful, there's training. There's an understanding of what it really takes to get out and do the inspection itself. But the greater business aspect of understanding your clients, the conversation, everything that happens in and out of, say, a due diligence period, or someone is going through a capital campaign or a planning moment, what I'm finding is that people are trying to use a commercial business or inspection as an ancillary service to what they're already doing as a resi inspector. And I mean a lot of obviously, you and I come from a residential background, and so a lot of the people that are around us are residential inspectors. We really fill such a small section of the greater commercial world where what we're trying to do as a building inspector, and so that's been one of the biggest things that I've had to overcome in educating and teaching people, is removing them from that mindset of like, oh, this is just an extra thing you can drop on your website, or this is just a little thing you can do on the side. And you can, and you can be successful somewhat at it. But the people who really dedicate the time to it and understand it and educate themselves and grow and put themselves in uncomfortable situations, they really thrive in this space. And it's a different headspace. Residential headspace is not the commercial headspace. It's a different conversation altogether, and so it's really hard to meld the two. And I see people trying to do that, and they're just not finding success with it.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and I think headspace is the right term, because what we try to do is to say, okay, well, here's home inspections, and we connect it in our brain. You have to completely sever that connection—two separate industries. And I mean, not long ago, this guy, he's like, hey, I'm getting into commercial inspections. I'm like, cool. So he's just like, hey, can you build his website? So we started building a website, and like, what services do you offer? And he goes, all of them. I'm like, what do you mean all of them? And he goes, just any of them. Let them know that I can do anything. And I'm like, okay, so how about triple net lease inspections? And he goes, what's that? And I'm like, okay, so that's just one example. Can you can you do the ASTM form? He goes, I've never heard of that. I'm like, okay, so let's step back for a moment. It's not just a big home, the lenders, the buyers, the people who own the properties, completely different industry. And just because we have a separate website, which is the very basics, and just because we have a separate company name, doesn't mean we have a separate headspace for it. So I think that was really, really good, how you said that.

Lance Coffman  
Into what you just said, too. I think what has happened, and I have seen it, and, you know, I understand that imitation is one of the highest forms of flattery, as they say. But as we have worked on our own website and we have put information out, and the things that are on my website are actually things that we do, I noticed once I started teaching or becoming more prominent in this space of ours, people started emulating and copying things, and that's fine, but I realized as, like you said, they were putting things on their website, and they had no idea what it actually was. And I still have people to this day that I'll talk to them, and they're like, yeah, we've been doing PCAs for a decade. And I'm like, oh, cool. Well, what do you use when you create, you know your opinion of cost, or what do you use when your surveys are done and all that? They're like, well, we don't do those. And I was like, then you actually aren't doing a PCA at all. Like, those are the basic concepts of it. And so I think people are rushing into it, and they're not taking the time to really understand what the industry is. And I mean, I think it's a big enough, I keep using the metaphor ocean, I think it's a big enough ocean for us all to be out here on it, because there's so many different things you can do in the commercial space. But I think people are coming in without taking the time to really understand what it is they're saying, and I'm afraid people are going to start getting themselves in some serious situations. If you don't want to be behind, you know, a large banking institute who reached out to you and actually wanted a PCA and a survey, and you got paid a lot of money to do it, and your deliverables were not what they asked for, and then you're in a situation where you don't know what to deliver, and you never knew what to deliver in the first place, just because you heard the buzz words.

Ian Robertson  
And to talk about that point a little bit, I often talk about clients and inspections and stuff as like going fishing. So when we're a home inspector, we have a regular fishing pole. We go out, we can catch a fish. We can reel in a trout. You know, we use flies. When you go deep sea fishing for the big stuff, you have to have a bigger pole. You have to have it anchored to the boat. You have to have special gloves for grabbing the line, the whole nine yards. If you don't have that, you're going to find yourself in a dangerous situation. So there's a lot of fish out there. It's a great ocean. It is still, in my opinion, the best industry to get into, but we can't walk in with this tiny little fishing pole and try to catch the big fish. Who I do respect is, like, I have a client right now, anytime an inspection comes up, and he gets a request. He's like, okay, what is this? And to be honest with you, no matter how long I've been in the inspection industry, I still see commercial requests. And I'm like, what the heck is that? I've never heard of that. And it's like an internal banking document or something specific to Connecticut or whatever. And so he gets in, and he digs in, he goes, okay, if I get this bid, can I accomplish it? Can I get the certifications? And more importantly than certification, the knowledge to get it done properly, because the certification doesn't mean we're qualified for it always. And then he's like, okay, so if I don't win this one, how can I win the next one and be prepared next time. Now that I respect, and that will get him in the field as a respectable commercial inspector, but otherwise, most of us are, unfortunately, whether we want to admit it or not, going out there with, you know, a rubber worm from our Walmart tackle box and trying to catch a spear fish.

Lance Coffman  
Yeah. Well, I've used the analogy several times...I always use an analogy of a hamburger, right? And what ends up happening is your client, they all want a hamburger. They just want their hamburger made a different way, right? Or they want it to look a different way. So once you realize the basics of, okay, this is what they want, and then you start stripping it back and understanding, can I actually provide the things that they want, you'll find that a lot of that stuff is very similar in nature. They just use different words for it. And I think that's one of the most confusing things, is understanding the vernacular. And you don't know until you're put in the situation to have to learn it. And that's how I learned over the years, is someone would reach out to me, and I would be on a phone call, typing something into Google at the exact same time, thinking is this actually something I know how to conversate about? And can I do it? You know, there's a lot of learning that has to be done in that regard, but if you're willing to learn, and then if you just have a knack for learning, and if you're kind of a glutton for punishment, like me, and you want to keep going down the rabbit hole of learning things, then you'll be surprised with how much it makes sense, and it's much easier to understand than you thought it would be. But you have to make the step forward in learning it.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and we want to differentiate between what maybe somebody's goal is. A lot of guys want to do just three, four commercial inspections. And you know what? It adds a lot more to the bottom line than a home inspection does. So okay, cool. If you really want to get into it and be like, this is my full time job. I have a team. This is what we do. We're in three states. It's a different level. And talking to your point about the language that's used, it is funny how, like, we use a language as home inspectors. And sometimes our clients will call us for like, what in the world does that mean? And we'll even say, oh, it means this or this or that. We have to translate what we're saying. But big corporations and stuff, they're not going to translate. They're just going to send you the request that they always send everyone. But we have ChatGPT. Is it inaccurate, like 40% of the time? Yeah, but at least get us close say, hey, translate this for me. What are they asking for? And then start having asking questions. I'm like, I looked it up and this is what I saw, and just try to figure it out and then verify with them. I've always found if somebody sent me a request, an example is we need an inspection up to ASTM standards. Cool, reply back, and this was actually a real experience with an inspector just not long ago. He is probably listening, and hey. An email back say, do you need a commercial building inspection to ASTM standards? Or do you need a full ASTM inspection with the ASTM form? Very different pricing and very different how you go about it.

Lance Coffman  
Absolutely. It very much is, and I think that's the thing where, like you said earlier, we were talking about, where people are trying to emulate other individuals. What I have found, and this might get me in hot water, and I don't want to be too salacious with it, but I'm a home inspector too. I come from that world, so I feel like I can speak on it. What ended up happening, I don't know how or where it happened along the way, but with inspectors, they started rushing to try to be like everyone in their industry. So everyone had the same offerings, everyone kind of has the same price. And I realized that when I asked people questions, what actually differentiates you between somebody else in your industry, a lot of people immediately are trying to talk about accolades, or they're trying to talk about this or that, and I'm like, but you really haven't told me what separates you. Why does someone choose you? And home inspections became a very saturated market, especially after we saw in covid. It just blew up, with most markets, not just home inspections, but real estate in general, or roofing or whatever. And you really had to figure out, well, I was busy once, but now I'm really in competition with a lot of other individuals and companies, what makes you different? And so what was useful in home inspection when you looked at your competition locally and said, oh, well, they have sewer cameras, so we're going to go figure out how to do a sewer camera. And oh, we have to do same day reporting. So we need a good template or good report writer. You know, we need to do this or this. And oh, they have their prices online, so let's figure out how to put as on there. But let's get them $20 cheaper or more expensive, and make a same boutique. You know, everyone had the same thoughts, and you can't do that with commercial. You can't look at my website or go to your website and go, oh, well, if he's doing triple net leases, then I'm going to do a triple net lease. And I'm like, if you've never actually understood what that means, then you're just really putting your foot in your mouth big time. And I have done that. I have put stuff on my website in the past thinking I knew what it was, and then when it was time to actually step up and swing the bat, I realized I'm going to strike out every single time, because I didn't actually do the research and due diligence it took to put this out. I was not prepared, because I was trying to be something that I wasn't at that time. So I really want to put a cautionary tale out there. And it is important for you to actually sit down and go, can I actually do this inspection? Can I actually have this company? Can I do this? I had the opportunity to do some some commercial education for IEB lately. And you know, one of the students on one of our last calls, one of the inspectors, he said, I'm hearing you, because our last conversation was about, do you actually have to be licensed? What are the different certifications? All this stuff, and there's a lot. And he's like, after listening to you, I'm not sure that I'm actually qualified or I'm going to be good at this. And I said, well, that's up for you to determine, but you've got to do the research and you've got to figure it out. And I'm a little bit less hand holding over on the commercial side too when I do education. It's like, here's what you need to know. It's up to you to go do the research and figure it out. All right, I can't do that for you. I'm not going to build your website for you. Not going to do the sales and marketing for you. I'm not going to tell you how to do this and this and this to the finite degree. You have to go and put some skin in the game. And you may find that it's not for you, and at that point, it's a smart business decision to stop and go do something else, just like anything else. I did the same thing. I tried to do ancillary services and home inspections, and I realized this was not for me, right? We're losing money, and this was not a good opportunity for us. So I need to not do it and focus on something else, maybe the Chick-fil-A model, right? Do something once, really, really well and repeat it. Same could be done for commercial, but I don't want to come off harsh. I don't want to come off as like, leave. You should be leaving. I want everyone to come into it the same way. I want there to be an opportunity to do commercial inspections, because now with groups like CCPIA. CCPIA wasn't around when I first started, they were, but I was in their very first, I think, their very first or second class that they taught. And of course, you know, Rob's done a fantastic job, and it has changed over the years to something stellar. And so there's resources now that weren't available to us, say, a decade ago, and so I don't know. I think the entry is a lot easier now, but, yeah, I think people have got to, I don't know, they've got to prepare, and they've got to really want it, because it will, I've realized it'll chew you up.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and this isn't to discourage anybody from getting into commercial. Like Lance just said, both of us want you to get into it, and it is still the golden age of commercial inspections. It is the time when the whole industry is finally looking to commercial inspectors and saying, this is their place. Don't give that to an engineer. Don't give that to a property manager. But I think the important thing that Lance, you said there, was skin in the game. The thing with a home inspection company, and this may make some squirm, and I might get some feedback on it. You can put minimal effort into a home inspection company and still get juice out of that squeeze. I've seen guys not have a logo. One of my competitors didn't have a website, and then he finally put one up, and he does 150 inspections a year, and he just shakes hands and kisses babies and writes a terrible report, to be perfectly frank, if he's listening, I'm sorry, write a better report, dude, but it is what it is. So you can throw that spaghetti at the wall and still make a living in home inspections. You can throw the spaghetti at the wall in commercial inspections and make a better living, but that's all it will ever be. So if you are the guy that you're like, listen, I'm cool with one or two here or there. I got a pizza place for 900 bucks. And last year I got a, you know, a $1,200 five-plex or something, you know, and we're cool with that awesome. Keep that one page on your home inspection website and then treat it like an ancillary. But in reality, it's a bigger thing. And I'll tell you, you said when you first started out. I'll tell you about my first commercial inspection, and this embarrasses the tar out of me. So it was for an engineering group, and they bought this big building, and it was a restaurant on the bottom, so it was a mixed use property, and they wanted what I think they ended up calling and I've never heard people use the term before. I'm not saying it right, but a for-use inspection. They wanted me to inspect if it was ready for what they wanted to use it for. And I did not understand that. And going back and looking at their emails and their requests, if I had stopped and understood it, I would have understood. Fortunately, they were really cool. I gave them a regular commercial inspection, and the one guy goes, is there MC cable? Or is this all Romex? And I'm like, I think I'm ahead. I'm like, oh, crud, was that important to you? And it really was, you know, if these were going to be apartments, sure, Romex is fine, but they weren't using them for apartments. So Romex was not fine. I'm like, oh man, and he goes, don't worry, that's fine. You reported on it. We'll just figure that out. They were really cool about it, but it was probably one of my most embarrassing inspections I've ever had. From that point on, though, every commercial request I had, I had a contractor there to either train me or do it, and I'd pay them really well, and I'd research the whole property. I would probably make less than minimum wage on every inspection I did after that, because I would spend days ahead of time knowing everything that they could possibly want. It paid off eventually, but you kind of need to have that kind of dedication, like you said, you need to dig in and go down that rabbit hole.

Lance Coffman  
Well, and the thing, you know to piggyback that, the thing that I have been seeing inspectors doing is they are trying to provide, I think, a false sense of success without really understanding what it is they're offering. So I see a lot of guys and girls online, and you know, someone asked that age old question on Facebook, which I mean, Facebook groups are good for what they can be. But also sometimes it's like throwing chum to the lake. And you know what I mean.

Ian Robertson  
It's entertaining to watch.

Lance Coffman  
It can be, yeah, you sit in the dark shadows. You're like, no, no, don't ask that question. Get out of there. That's why, sometimes I'll respond, I'm like, hey, good question. I'm going to jump into your DMs and you ask me that question, and I will give you a good answer, kind of situation. But what's happening is, people are over-inflating their value when they don't actually offer that type of value. So someone's like, I have this type of property. How much would you charge for it? And then someone's like, well, that's a 20 grand job all day long. And I'm like, you're not giving 20 grand worth of value to your client. There's no way around that, right? You probably actually have $1,800 worth of value to give that client. And that's about where you should fall with that inspection. And so what's happened, and this wasn't taught to people, you know, this didn't come out of a certain camp of thought. So it always kind of boggles my mind when I see that, and they're like, well, now that I do commercial, I'm better, so therefore I'm just going to have these, you know, erroneous charges and all these things that make me awesome, or, like, we've been talking about, put all these things in my website, and these things that I do in accolades, and you don't really have that type of value. And so not yet anyway. So I think along that and what you just said, those are some of the biggest issues that I'm seeing inspectors face right now.

Ian Robertson  
And you know, even that question, how much would you charge, automatically tells me you do not understand commercial inspections, because they're looking for square footage or any...but my first question is, what are they asking for? 

Lance Coffman  
That's the only question to ask. 

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, you just sent me a listing for a warehouse. Are you doing structure and roof? Are you doing everything? Are you doing a PCA? Are you doing a triple net lease? What do they want? And then they'll, you know, when you hop in a DM and you're just like, so what are they asking for? It's always, I don't know, just a commercial building inspection. 

Lance Coffman  
This is all they sent me. And I'm like, okay, how did they send it to you? Was it through Facebook, a text, did they write it on a napkin and slide it to you at the diner, like, how did you get the information?

Ian Robertson  
And there's no and there's no per square I mean, yeah, you can use it as a basis, but there's no, I charge this much per square footage on a commercial building. That's a starting point in certain ways. But it's like, do you charge the same square footage-wise for a 400 square foot restaurant as you do 100,000 square foot warehouse? No, they're different in complexity, what they need, the whole nine yards.

Lance Coffman  
That's right, it is true. Well, and some of that stuff is is not taught, necessarily. And some of it is but then some of it is learned, but if you don't know how much you need to make an hour, and you don't understand the scope of a project, and you can't have an actual conversation with your client before you put a proposal together, when they send an RFP over, then you've already lost that battle. 10 out of 10 times. And I see people doing that again and again and again. I'm not quite sure why. So as we educate further, we try to figure that out and help people fully understand the process and how to communicate effectively. Because you're right, it's always the same thing. Well, this is what I got. I'm like, but what do they want? And I think that's the thing, with home inspections, we're so used to an SOP, that it's the same thing, cut and dry every single time, rinse, repeat. I know when I show up, I'm doing the exact same inspection when my state requires it, and then also, if I'm through NACHI or someone else, it's the same SOP. So that's what I'm going to follow. And there's SOPs, like CCPIA and ASTM is not really an SOP, if you will. It's more of a reporting output. But, I mean, it's, you know, there's still something to follow. But you can't do that in commercial. It is not as static and so you really have to ask them the question, what do you want? What do you need? And you have to realize that you literally can offer them anything you want to. It can be whatever their hearts desire, because they're the one writing the paycheck. And that's what commercial is. It's not as cut and dry. 

Ian Robertson  
What I see is a lot of guys getting into commercial that are afraid to ask questions because they're afraid of losing the lead, like in a home inspection, you don't call back three times and say, hey, before I give you the quote on your home inspection, can you answer these questions? Well, now I have more questions. You just lost that lead. You know, you just want to seal it, go to the inspection and finish it. With commercial they expect questions most of the time and even appreciate it. They'll be like, oh, thank you for asking that. You're the only one who asked about what exactly we're looking for, or how deep we're going into the AC units. And you know, there's 47 of them on the roof, so yes, we would like XYZ done. You know, that kind of thing. They expect it and they want it. It takes a little bit more effort to close that deal, which also needs to be rolled into our pricing. 

Lance Coffman  
Right.

Ian Robertson  
If you're spending four hours closing this deal, you need to kind of roll that into your pricing, and you need to be not afraid to charge what you're worth.

Lance Coffman  
That's right. Yeah, you got to know what you're worth. And then once you can then you're right, you have to be able to charge for it. And there's no singular way that a commercial inspection happens. So, I mean, we've been talking about that, they might call you in a sense of urgency and want you to send a proposal, and then once you submit it, it's crickets until they're ready to move forward. And that could be a day, could be a month. I've had people I've sent proposals out to. They never followed up. I canceled them out in my system, and then two months later, they reach back out and they're like, we're ready to start now. Like, ready to start what? Then you got to go back and look at your CRM like, oh yeah, I forgot. We sent them a proposal a long time ago.

Ian Robertson  
And it's also a little bit more cyclical, like, you know, most companies will do their budgets in the early winter or late, late 2025 and then finish up their budgets in early 2026 and then they do their projects and their inspections all the way through the summer, and then they're redoing it again in fall or winter. So it's a little bit more tight when it comes to that, when it comes to the cycle. So you know, they might ask for an estimate to do their budget, and you give it in October, and you might not hear from them until February, and then they schedule you for May. That's how they go.

Lance Coffman  
It's all about business. It's all business planning, and as small business owners, we should realize that already, so we should already have a leg up being a business owner. But if you can't understand how they operate as a business...that's why it's so different. You know, if a school reaches out to me and they're in a bond issue and they need an inspection, they have a different thought process, a different need, a different way that they're going to run their budget than the lady who's buying the daycare or Walmart who's buying another shopping center next to them, right? So you have to understand and be able to insert yourself into your client's mind. And there's only two ways to do that, in my opinion. It's do the research and figure out what type of client this is, and figure out, how do those type of people run businesses. And the second is simply ask. I don't think you make an idiot of yourself asking questions. Now, if they call for a particular thing, and you have it listed on your website and you can't answer that question, and then you start asking questions trying to clarify it. You may have made yourself a little silly. That's on you, but, I mean, it's never going to hurt to ask questions. What do you need it for? How are you using it? Are you going to be allocating budget things for this? Are you going to keep the building the same? Are you going to change it? You know, whatever. There's a litany of questions one can come up with, and you should be asking that every single time. The process literally should be, they asked for, they call it RFP, so they request for a proposal. That's what they use in government terms. But I hear it more often. They need a proposal, right? I tell everyone to funnel them back to your website for that, right? So I have a proposal request on my website. That's how I determine if they're going to be a client of mine. If you call me in a fire and you need a price for something, and you won't take the time to fill that out, or at least sit with me while I fill it out with you, then I'm probably not going to qualify you as a lead, because you're just looking for prices, and they will go find the home inspector who does commercial and charges 500 instead of two grand, and that's who they'll go with, and you'll lose that every time. So fill out a proposal, once you get it, then call them back and ask questions. Thanks for the information. Let's go through this together. Let's talk about this. Let me understand this project and how we're going to do this. And then you put a proposal together, and then you follow up accordingly, and then schedule, do it, and move on. And this is what I started teaching. And this is a nugget, and I'm dropping it out here now, is that when you do your initial inspection in the field, you should do that inspection as if you were collecting data to write six different types of reports or more. So don't just go out and do a very singular, small inspection, even if it means you just got to take pictures of something, and just keep your pictures for that. At any given point, the add-ons and the things that you can do after the fact in commercial. It's not a sewer camera, right? It's not a termite. It's if I went out there and initially they didn't want a cost report, because maybe they didn't do a PCA, they just had an inspection. I already had the data to give them that. What an upsell it is when they get the report and they go, this is not what we expected. You're like, well, here's some other things I can provide for you. How about we do a cost report? I've had people all the time reach back out afterwards and say we should have got an environmental. Do you know who you can recommend? Well, actually, I gathered the data for an ESA 1 already. So if you'd like, I'll send you over an invoice, and we'll start working on that report right now, right? So, I mean, it's easy add-on stuff, but it took me a while to figure that out, right? That wasn't just something that someone taught me, and I started doing it. But I don't know where I was going with that. I was trying to give people some more insight on opening your mind to something different. You can't think like a technician. You have to think like a business owner. And that's been my hardest thing to overcome. I'm a technician at heart. My wife is the business manager, entrepreneur type person when it comes to our company. So having to learn that has been a difficult thing for me over the years. I just like talking to people, so it wasn't hard to ask questions. Some people are great technicians, and they are just not good at having conversations. And I'm like, this is going to be difficult for you in some regard. It's not going to be easy.

Ian Robertson  
And you know, where you were going with it was awesomeness, because I think we got about a half a dozen great sound bites just out of that one section, your two points. But that's genius about the going into an inspection like you're doing five other inspections on top of it, because that's the difference between doing it as an ancillary service and doing it as your profession. Like we as home inspectors when we walk in...if you hired a contractor, they're just coming in looking at one thing. When you hire a home inspector, we're like, oh, yeah, underneath that window is probably gonna be wood rot because of XYZ. Commercial inspector, different mindset, different way of thinking. And you say, okay, they're going to want the environmental. You know, they're a hotel in this municipality and their garage for their truck has a drain, the lender is going to require a drain in the floor, and the lender is going to require an environmental. So let me just gather the info, and then you have it for them. I mean, they're never going to hire anybody else after that. That's a different level of professionalism.

Lance Coffman  
And you're already there. You're already collecting the same data. So, yeah, it's hard for you to pull your sewer camera out of your truck and go run it and do the whole process, take the video, upload it, and then hope that they want to buy it from you, right? Like, that's not something people are doing, but when you're doing the exact same thing already, knowing that that data can go to so many different final places and outputs without you having to really do extra work, necessarily, that's just good business. That's just thinking like a business owner, rather than just as a technician. Maybe that's the conversation, how to not be a technician and how to be more of a business, you know, advisor, and think, because you have to put yourself in their shoes. Every client's different. Five schools can call me, and they all want something different, and it's a different board meeting every single time. I've experienced that. So it's hard to say, oh, well, I know how to maybe do this thing, so feel comfortable stepping into it, but you should still realize that there's going to still be a learning curve when somebody else comes in wanting the very same thing. So everyone's different.

Ian Robertson  
I also think, I mean, we could have a bunch of different titles for this, but a willingness to grow and a willingness to grow in the commercial inspection field, because who this podcast is for are those of us just throwing it out there. Maybe we have another website and the company name and all that stuff, but we're not putting the effort into it, and we're just seeing what happens. That's not going to get us anywhere. Who this isn't for are those who created another entity, have a whole other business and all that stuff, same thing, but they get into it. And there's a guy in my area, a buddy of mine. Every time I talk to him, he's like, I got another commercial inspection. I researched it. I got this, this and this ready. I made sure I looked up all of this information on their standards. I asked them, and I got confirmation. I'm like, dude, that's why you're doing three, four, or five of these a month. I'm like, that's why you got that $15,000 hotel, you know, five hours away, because you're putting the effort in to make it its own industry, to respect it for what it is, a profession of all its own.

Lance Coffman  
So what do you see? Let me ask you this question, because you predominantly, I mean, work with home inspectors on their websites and designs, and they're, you know, working on the reporting. So do you see the conversation shifting now to commercial even more so. Do you feel like people really understand that the conversation is even shifting at all? Because that's one thing too, because I've talked to people and they're like, I didn't know we were talking about commercial now. And then some that are aware of it, and they're trying to figure it out, and then some like myself, who just went full into it. So what do you see on your end? Because I know you kind of do yearly updates and figuring out, this is what we see on the horizon, like I listened to yours last month. And so you know, what do you think that you were seeing from your camp?

Ian Robertson  
So commercial inspections is very much on the rise, and it is what everybody's talking about like people will call me, and it's a lot of, boy, this is weird. I'm getting interviewed now. This is odd feeling, but it's definitely a lot of...

Lance Coffman  
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt with Lance Coffman. Our guest today is Ian.

Ian Robertson  
Thanks for having me on, Lance. Great to be here.

Lance Coffman  
Absolutely. Yeah. I'm so glad you could be here. Next question is what do you see happening with commercial?

Ian Robertson  
But in all seriousness, everybody's talking about it, because you know what ends up happening is, I have a client, and I won't mention who it is, but he threw up just a website, no SEO, and he instantly started getting calls and requests for commercial inspections. Just throwing a website up. He's like, Ian, I haven't even gotten business cards yet. I'm like, cool. And he picked up a few here and there. He botched, you know, his first like dozen proposals, you know, but then he kind of figured out now, he picks up one or two a month, and he's happy with that. It adds an extra 60 grand to his bottom line, probably every year, judging by what he's told me, cool. Just a $50 a month website. Have fun. So when guys start seeing that, that's where it kind of, I think it's treated as an ancillary, like, let me throw something up and see what happens. It doesn't work like that in every area, though. Some areas you have to put some effort in, but still, you get less traffic, less leads, less people in commercial, but when you do land them, it makes up for 50 leads that you got in the home inspection industry. But I see a lot of people just tossing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that it sticks. And I do think that most inspectors that I talk to, probably heard us earlier in the podcast, say, listen, if you're the guy that wants to do three or four commercial inspections a month, then keep doing what you're doing. And I think that's actually probably a good, better than half the inspectors I talked to. They're like, yeah, I'd like to have my home inspection company, and then my commercial inspection company make me some big bucks on the side and go for it that way. Very, very few are like, Ian, this is all I want to do. And I'm really putting in the time, I can name like, maybe a dozen guys off the top of my head that are really working hard at it. And I hate saying that, but some think they're working hard at it. But splashing in the pool a lot doesn't always mean you're swimming.

Lance Coffman  
That's right. And I think I'm seeing more people like you said, too, where they're really trying to put full maximum effort into it, like this is going to be what I create. But what ends up happening is, and I'm now on the other side of owning a home inspection company, right? So I liked the personal aspect of being a home inspector. You know, doing inspections was fun, but I don't ever see myself wanting to go back. I can't imagine. And the thing about commercial is, if for some reason Focus Building is no longer in the future, then I still am able to take a skill set that I've developed out of it and go somewhere else and do it, right? I always joke. I'm like, if I ever retire one day, I want to be the guy that runs like three really large, you know, properties, and everybody leaves me alone, because I know how everything operates, and that's I just ride my side-by-side between buildings. 

Ian Robertson  
That sounds awesome.

Lance Coffman  
That sounds like a dream job, you know what I mean. But I realized in commercial there are opportunities to grow out of it into other industries based on the knowledge you gather. And I don't know how you can do that necessarily in residential right now. So if someone has poured their heart and soul into residential and it turns off next year, what do you do next, right? I mean, what is kind of your next step? I mean, we're no spring chickens, right? Like we're getting older. And so as we figure out, how am I gonna...yeah, I shaved my face to look younger. If it grows out it's gray and weird, and I look real old and sick. No, I mean, it's one of those things where, not to get super sappy on the call now, but I think as I get older, and I think of my family, how I'm going to take care of my wife, and how I'm going to take care of my children. And, you know, am I being a good steward of the things I have? And how am I planning for 20 years down the road, right? Like I'm not going to retire today, but one day I'm going to hang it up. So it's like, am I doing now? Can I do that for 20 more years? And I think in today's thing that, I think people who are really coming into commercial are starting to reframe and think about is, and again, this is not to tell people they shouldn't be a home inspector, because if you enjoy it, you should be a home inspector. By all means you can make a great living out of it. People are, we did. But it's one of those things where I think we're starting to think more about, where do I put my time? Where do my efforts go? Because I don't know about you, but doing three home inspections a day, trying to crank out same day reports, five days a week, that's exhausting work. I live in Oklahoma. There's crawl spaces. There's all sorts of goofy stuff down here. It's like, you know, commercial, I don't get into crawl space. I don't get on a roof unless there's an access point. I don't sit in a ladder up on it, right. It's just a different speed. And I think we're going to see more people come to commercial because they're having a different thought process about business altogether. Because I know some people who came over to commercial with the distinct reason of, I'm going to use it as a launch platform to go into a completely different industry. So it's kind of like my exit plan, if you will. And that's not what I'm doing, but I mean, it's there, and it's possible. So I don't know. That's why I was interested to see what you thought and where people were coming about in it, because I hear it from different places. But you know, if somebody comes to you and they want a website designed for commercial, right, it's like, what do you normally do to get them kind of started on that process? What are the questions you're asking them, before we run out of time?

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, anybody who's ever called me or my company for a website, I usually handle the onboarding calls personally, because I like to help people more than just charge them for building a website or selling software. So like, I'll talk to them. I'll be like, so what have you done so far? You know, do you have a separate entity for this? What kind of insurance do you...I'll just, you know, not like grilling them, just general conversation. And I've told some people, I'm like, come back to me in six months, you know, go do X, Y and Z, and come back to me in six months. And I would say about half of them do, and they'd be like, I did those things. The other half, you know, they'd be like, I got distracted. Life got in the way. Because I really, I really want people to be successful. If you just throw a website up, is there a chance that you're like that guy that we threw a website up with absolutely no SEO because he didn't want any and pick up a couple a month? Yeah, sure. But for the most part, I want you to really be successful. I don't want you to get caught in a bad situation with this big corporation now coming after you because you didn't provide them what they needed and requested, and you signed up for. And even guys will contact me and say, hey, Ian, what do you think of this property? Can you look over my proposal? Stuff like that. I try to do everything I can to help them, but I do find that once you start asking questions, guys will start to weed themselves, guys and girls. I always say guys, I mean men and women, but they tend to weed themselves out. They're like, oh, I didn't think of that. I just thought it was like a big home inspection. I'm like, cool. Well, go back and think about it. Think about how you would approach it. You know, get your business stuff in place. Go get these eight certifications and understand those eight processes, you know. And that's like, you know, 16 hours of courses, do it in three months. Let me know what you think after that. And you know, then three months later, they'll be coming back for a home inspection website instead, you know. But there are a lot of great guys out there. They're like, you know what? I'm gonna earn my stripes. I'm gonna bleed for it, and I'm gonna learn it. And those are the guys that I love to work with, because I think they make great commercial inspectors that way. Kind of like you ,Lance, you bled and you earned it.

Lance Coffman  
Yeah. I mean, I'm still learning it, and I think that's the thing too. I will never learn it all, but I agree with you, if there's anything to end on, I agree that there is a market and a space for us, a gray space, because on one side, you've got these large due diligence national engineering type firms who are doing these large capital projects, and then you have, on the other end, sorry, guys and girls, you've got home inspectors who are moon lining as commercial. So in the middle there, there really is a big space for people to grow an actual company and be successful at it. So I'm excited to see what that looks like, this year more than any, because even listening to your update and hearing others' updates, our economy is not the thing that is worth, you know, dumping things into if you don't think it's going to be profitable. And I think we're going to start seeing, over the next couple of years, a lot of people exiting a lot of different industries and doing something different that they jumped into five, six years ago. So I'm very interested to see where we go and what it ends up with.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, there's going to be a lot going on in the next three years in particular, in my opinion. But Lance, we could go all day. 

Lance Coffman  
Yeah, it's all good. 

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. I wish we could talk a little bit more, because I love picking your brain. And thank you so much for being on and sharing your insight, and a couple of really great gold nuggets here that are great parts of this podcast. So we appreciate it.

Lance Coffman  
Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much. 

Ian Robertson  
Have a good one. Thanks. 

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.