Growing Pains

Growing a home inspection company is supposed to feel like progress, but sometimes it feels like you are sprinting just to stay upright. We sit down again with Mike Ortiz, one of our favorite returning guests, to unpack the real “growing pains” behind scaling from a solo inspector to a seven-inspector, multi-county operation in California. The wins are real: more services, stronger reviews, better tools, and bigger opportunities like solar inspections. The pressure is real too: payroll every week, higher liability exposure, higher E&O insurance costs, more mileage, more moving parts, and far less room to slow down without losing momentum.

We dig into the trap of relying too heavily on real estate agent referrals and why availability can make or break loyalty. Mike shares practical strategies for diversifying home inspection leads with direct-to-consumer marketing, Google Local Service Ads, Google Ads, commercial work, four-point insurance inspections, mold inspections, new construction inspections, and solar inspection add-ons. If you have ever felt the “slinky effect” after pulling back on advertising, you will recognize the pattern instantly, along with the math of how saying “no” today can cost you next month.

We also get specific about how AI fits into a modern inspection business. Mike is adamant that AI cannot replace skilled inspection work, but it can absolutely help you write clearer reports, structure recommendations, plan your day, audit marketing spend, and even analyze your inspection data to hire in the right cities and reduce drive time. We close with the human side: the constant low-grade panic of leadership, the importance of strong systems like online scheduling and confirmation calls, and why paying people well beats “pizza party” culture every time.

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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 to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. And we have back on one of my favorite guests and a buddy of mine, Mike Ortiz. How are you, Mike?

Mike Ortiz 
Good man, doing really good.

Ian Robertson 
That's really awesome. I'm really glad to have you back on. Today's podcast is entitled Growing Pains, which you came up with a title. I had something way worse, but I think it's a good podcast, because anybody who's listened to our podcast has seen Mike grow as a business person, from single inspector to his first year to his fifth year, multi-inspector firm, you know, residential, commercial taking over multiple counties. Mike's been on a journey. And so, Mike, where are you now? So where's your business at?

Mike Ortiz 
Right now we have seven active inspectors right now with some backups, you know, that we subcontract with for overflow. And we do everything, you know, all my guys do mold, sewer. We're actually implementing that solar, you know, the previous podcast that you did about solar inspections, we're implementing that. I talked to one of my good friends out here, BPI Inspections. We had a long conversation about how to implement it, what he's charging, you know, stuff like that, and how I could put it in, because some people ask for it. California is big on solar, so for us, it's a big market to get into, which is great, but yeah, seven, eight, I'm hiring still. Not where I thought I was going to be, I thought I would keep it small, but once you find a flow, if you slow down, it just hurts you more. Honestly, I've tried that. I've tried backing off, slowing down, but it just ends up hurting you a lot more. It's hard to keep a pace versus momentum, and it's hard to keep up. But I learned a lot of hard lessons hiring, you know, and stuff like that. But right now, we're in a really good spot. The guys are happy because I'm constantly checking on how happy they are. I try to do everything the opposite of what I was initially shown when I started out in the industry, and just really pays well to take care of people. That's pretty much what it is. I rather hurt every week when I send the payroll out than not knowing if people are happy or not wanting to leave or whatever.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah, that's awesome. And, you know, we'll get into some of those particulars of growing pains. But I do want to give another shout out to Corey. I gave him a shout out on that podcast. I'm glad you guys are friends too, because Corey is a good guy.

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, yeah, he's close by.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah. I'm also glad that you're doing solar inspections, because, you know, we don't put stuff on the podcast just for the sake of putting stuff on the podcast. Matter of fact, those solar inspections, they had been on our list since last year sometime in February.

Mike Ortiz 
I know we talked about it once, right, in a podcast about me finding a way to to bring that in, but I just didn't have the bandwidth to do it. I'm glad somebody else did.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah, well, we like to vet things. And then we had multiple inspectors say, Yes, this is good. We like the service. This is how it works. Because, you know, even though we don't endorse a service, we like to vet it, at the very least, to a certain extent. Is everybody gonna have a great experience with every company that we have on here? No, but we're not advertising their service either, but we wanted to make sure that it was legit before we did it. So I'm really glad you're doing that. But even before the podcast, we were talking briefly about growing pains, and, you know, working ourselves to death. And somebody said it the other day, and it's a true statement. I've heard it my whole working career. If you're not growing, you're dying.

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, that's what it feels like.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah. You know you can never just say, well, this is the spot we want to be, because you're either going forward or backwards, which is a weird feeling. So you end up not growing to a certain height. You end up just growing until you don't, and then you start shrinking. It's a weird feeling. Have you seen that yourself?

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, so I know some people can understand this feeling. I feel like, the more money you bring in, the more you're putting out. You know, I had a phone call yesterday. I never haggle about anything whatsoever. But I had an interesting phone call the other day with my insurance, our primary insurance for liability, and E&O and all that stuff. And they call me and say, Ii's time for your renewal. I said, okay, great. And we did the whole application. I was like, why is it like, $1,000 a month? You know? They're like, well, you know, you went from making a certain amount to like, why does it go based off the amount? I'm like, I've never had one single claim my entire five years with you, and I caught myself. I'm like, I understand. I don't mind paying more. But you know, at some point you're like, you have to control. You know, when you're bringing in a lot more money, you don't realize how much more inspections you're having to do, whether it's just you or your guys, and then that increases your risk. And you don't understand how much more it costs for me, because I have to consider things like mileage, believe it or not, sewer cameras break, drones crash. You know, all kinds of things happen, and it ends up costing you more no matter how well intended you are when you get your guys these tools and everything like that, and you're dealing with time off, and you offer things like flexibility, but then everybody decides to take the entire weekend off at the same time. You have to try to manage that. You know, you're caught. You catch yourself out working on Saturdays and Sundays more. So a lot of it is just time management, organization, but the big thing is, every time I've tried to slow down, every time I've tried to, let's say, lower the budget for the advertising or not post as much on social media, it sometimes creates this like slinky effect, where it slows down too much, and then you're playing catch up. If you have momentum, the only thing you can really do is find a way to get those inspections in. You know, that's the only way to do it, because once you hit your cap, and the agents start reaching out for you, and you start saying no more often, then you lose those agents, those referrals, and if you're not as available, you start seeing that affect you. And then the guys that you do have, or even if it's just it's just yourself, end up not being as busy as you want them to be, which is, that's the biggest stressor, is making sure everybody's doing two a day, keeping their schedule full.

Ian Robertson 
You know. And that's a catch 22 math wise. So let's say the average agent brings you, you know, 10 inspections a month, 10 agents, and you tell half of them no one month because you're busy, and you lose half those agents. That means the next month, you have half the inspections, and now you have to build them back up again. Do you find that's emotionally draining?

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, it is. And here's the other thing that most people never account for, is that being a real estate agent is not typically a long lasting career. It's sales. The ones that make a career out of it become brokers, and those are the ones that are in it for 20, 30 years. That's a very small percentage. I think you guys discussed the numbers in past about how many agents actually are retained, and so those 10 agents, on top of you saying no, you're lucky if maybe in six months, maybe seven of those agents are still actively working hard, you know, they're actively closing listings, or they haven't just gone back to their old job or a new job, or doing something else, notary, or whatever else. You know, you're banking on those agents having a great amount of success. And let's be honest, we've met a lot of real estate agents, and not all of them are great agents. You know, it's true, not every inspector is great either. You know, we've met other inspectors. So it just comes down to, you're banking on their success, your business relies on their success, and on top of that, your availability, and to be a real estate agent, most of the time, from what I've seen in my specific situation, there's a little bit of ego. So once you're not available to them, once you're not at their beck and call, and they feel like you're not working for them, because that's what they think. They feel like you're their guy, or whatever it is, and you want them to feel that way, obviously. But at the same time, once you're not available, they are quick to be...they're not loyal. They're not going to be. No matter how well they talk to you, they're really good at that. They're not going to be loyal. So for a lot of new inspectors out there, we feel like you got that great relationship with the new agent. They said, I'm gonna do 25 sales this year, that's my goal. Just in your head, say they're only going to give me two inspections this year. That way you have that drive to get the next one and the next one, next one, because right now we're split between direct to consumer and still having our agent referrals, currently.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah, and I guess there's a really important lesson into what you just said there, you always have to overshoot your marketing and the number of leads you have. It's a great example for new guys starting off in the business, because I see guys say, if I could get to 200 inspections a year, I always tell them, I'm like, then shoot for 300, and the numbers that you're saying are an illustration of why that's important. We used the illustration when we had Mark Hummel on of punching through the punching bag. If you want to punch the punching bag, you punch five inches past it. Otherwise you're not going to hit hard enough.

Mike Ortiz 
Aim high. Miss high, basically. I was in the army, so that was a big one for us. You just aim for the high center mass. You're going to hit either there or the center mass. That's pretty much what it is. And I think the biggest thing with working with real estate agents, because for me, real estate agents are a big bulk of our work. But when you're talking about aiming higher than the mark, that also means diversifying where your leads come from. You know, putting all your eggs in the real estate agent referral basket, I feel like has always been a mistake that I regret not learning fast enough because there's Google ads, and I despise Yelp so much.

Ian Robertson 
I do too. It's a dirty word.

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, it is. I will never push for that, and it's not in a slanderous way. With my specific situation, I feel like Yelp is not conducive to having a successful inspection company, but I understand.

Ian Robertson 
I will concur. I am not slandering them. In my personal opinion, I have found that they are icky and gross and I do not like them, in my own personal opinion.

Mike Ortiz 
Correct. Yeah, this is in no way an endorsement to not use Yelp. You know what, we've been talking to attorneys way too much, that's funny, but I would say it goes like this, okay, you have real estate agents, which are great. You have direct to consumer, which I don't know if we talked about enough, but it's very difficult, depending on where you are, direct to consumer means straight to the buyer, right? And you're like, how is that? How do you know when someone's gonna buy? It just comes down to where you plan. And I use Full View Marketing now, and it's really just about how you show up, where you show up, how often you show up, and then that takes time, and that includes the Google Local Service ads and Google ads in general. Okay, so commercial, four point inspections for insurance, in California all insurance companies are leaving, so they're trying to find an excuse. So unfortunately, we've been very busy with those, unfortunate for the clients that they have to get those and then, you know, mold is a big one. It's a huge one. Everybody's worried about that. And now solar, and then new construction is a big one here for us, because in the area that we are there's a lot of land, a lot of new construction, affordability crisis near the coast, so everybody's coming out east of California. So they're building them by the minute. I don't live in a major city, so for me, I see a lot of that. And so those are all the different ways that we're not putting our eggs in the proverbial basket. If you just focus on one, and again, I have in the past, focused on one, and it screws me over every single time.

Ian Robertson 
And I think your words there, focused on one—a lot of guys that I'll talk to just turn out to be like, oh yeah, I've diversified marketing. I have a Google account, I have a website, but then you look at their actual marketing, and 95% of it is referral marketing, you know, agent referral marketing, and I try to get that through to them. I'm like, that 90 year old agent that gives you 20 inspections a year that represents 10% of your income, could die, could retire. This other one could just go out of business or move away. I'm like, in the span of a couple of weeks, your whole business could fall apart. I've seen it before. You need to get your numbers so that it's a little bit more even. So focusing on one thing too much. And oftentimes we're like, but that's the thing that works. And if you've ever gone for insurance, for anything, for any kind of business insurance, one of the first questions on any form is any part of your business tied to one client or greater than 5% or one mode of income or whatever. So in other words, for Full View, when we get our insurance, they're like, does any client represent 5% or more of your business, or does any one funnel represent 5% or more of your business? And I always thought that was weird, but it makes sense, because 5% of your business being wiped out is a big deal, so focusing on it. And I mean, what do you think about AI?

Mike Ortiz 
Okay, not to romanticize it, but I love AI for multiple reasons. I do see the danger in it, just in personal, in general, I do feel like sometimes people rely on it a lot. I use AI for a lot of different things. Mainly, I've been finding myself using it to help my son with his freaking science homework and his math homework. But, you know, just so I can be a better person that can explain it to him. But for me, I use it every single day. It can come down to how to answer an email properly, how to deal with conflict with inspectors and agents and clients. And I just think of it as a collective piece of advice from multiple different points just put into one spot. But as far as inspections go, I like it. Here's the thing, I am 100% sure I'm refuting any kind of full replacement for a home inspector, because there is a lot of skill involved. If I could call it anything, I would call it skill. You can walk into a house and let's say you do have an AI bot phone that somebody can buy an app and inspect their own house. That's great. First of all, you'd have to find a company willing to take on the liability of having homeowners open and close windows open electrical panels, you know, test outlets, without getting sued for somebody doing it wrong, right? Because they're not qualified, they're not experienced. That's one thing. The liability alone. Nobody's gonna create that app. Otherwise they'll have to really disclaim it and people won't see the usefulness of it. The other reason would be, is that, I smell, I can feel when something's off.

Ian Robertson 
Did you just tell us that you smell?

Mike Ortiz 
I can smell, yeah. You know when you pop your head in an attic..

Ian Robertson 
I know what you mean, I'm just teasing.

Mike Ortiz 
I know, I know, I might have said it, I smell, and that's fine. We can keep that as a TikTok. My thing is, is that I pop my head to an attic, and I just know I'm gonna find some droppings, right? And I don't have to see them. I just smell it. I know it. So I'm gonna look for them, and I'll find them. I just know that, I can see the air leaks before I even test for them on the ductwork, you know, things like that. And I feel like that is, it's why mechanics are not worried about AI having people diagnose their cars. And basically, ours is diagnosing issues in a house. And, you know, keeping up with all that, you're just never gonna, you might get people that are really cheap and say that's good enough for me, but they're going to learn their lessons the hard way, unfortunately. So I think AI is great. I think the best use of it is report writing in all honesty. Not take a picture and say, AI, tell me what's wrong here. You should know what's wrong there, but to be able to articulate it in a way that protects you and the buyer, and the report. Because you'll see a situation where, the other day we had a, there's the spray foam insulation, the way it's installed, the color that it is, tells you what kind it is, and the depth it's supposed to be at, and the kind of ventilation you're supposed to have. There was a very specific situation that happened yesterday at an inspection. And instead of just saying, this is just a substandard installation, you know, sometimes you get that little bit of energy, I was like, no, I want to show that I know what I'm talking about. Plus, there's not that many issues I found at this house anyway, so I rather just make this really specific. And I said all of that into the AI, because writing that out as a comment on the report didn't look professional, you know. So I put it together and I had it, you know, bullet point exactly what I thought was going on and what my recommendation was. And that helps a lot. But as far as everything else I see, because I see all the advertisements, the AI writing software, and AI this, and AI that, and I just feel like giving too much, I don't like having to go out of my app to put it into chat and then go back into it, copy and paste. And that's the only thing that my gripe is. But when it's built in. I feel like it's useful. It's just that it's flooded right now. I know you talked about it too, that the AI market is flooded with inspection software, writing software.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah, and I mean, we have AI built into Inspector Toolbelt right in the app, so you press a little button and it'll start writing stuff for you. But I agree, it's an important tool that we should be using. And I think it bridge is an important gap. A lot of us are great inspectors, but not great with the pen, so to speak, the proverbial pen. You know, some of the some of the best mechanics that I've ever met in my life could barely talk, but I would trust them with my car any day over some of the more articulate ones. Same thing with home inspections, some of the best inspectors that I've ever met, matter of fact, in my area, one of the best inspectors I know. He admits, he goes, I'm just not good with words. And you know, it's like having a perfect car and great engine, great gas mileage, and the wheels are floppy. You know, it makes it hard. But do you think too that AI is important for your business growth, for marketing at this point, or no?

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, so the way that I use AI myself, this is a classic day for me. What I do is I religiously check my Google Ads performance, whether it's the Local Service Ads and the AdWords, right, and I have different campaigns that I have running, and I have the Local Service Ads, and I check how many leads we're getting, what my weekly budget is. Because the weekly budget, I always feel like your advertising should be 10% of what your expected gross would be. That's what I've been living by. And I feel like it works for us. So our monthly advertising budget is around like $28,000 for us to be able to bring in the amount of work I need in order to keep enough inspectors out there busy and some people say that's a lot. I'm like, you have to understand, the average inspection lead on Google Local Service Ads is anywhere between $50 to $60 in my area, and I calculate that. So then what I do is I make sure that the person answering the phone can close those deals. So in order for all of that to not just be thoughts that go in while I'm driving and all that, I put all those thoughts into a note into my chat, and I say, help me structure this so that I can, give me some tasks for today, so I can make sure that I'm on top of this, and it tells you, okay, you need to check in with who's answering your phone calls and listen in on some of the calls and see if you have any tweaks that you can make. It's like, hey, maybe instead of asking them, you know, hey, can you give me the address or the square footage and they don't have it all right away, you can just offer them, hey, I'll look it up for you. Let me find out what's going on. Or another thing was, we were getting the square footage without looking up the address, and we were missing out on upselling pool inspections, because there's a pool there. We priced based on square footage. And then the client shows up to the inspection, and then the inspector is like, oh, there's a pool. Did you want to add that on? They're like, wait, it's not included? We avoid that kind of chaos. We're like, yeah, it's 140 bucks. And they're like, oh, well, you know, I didn't know that. And then, you know, they feel like we try to cheat them or something. So I think it helps organize all the things that you want to implement into one spot, and then helps me by creating tasks for me, and then I check those off throughout the day. Because you know as far as I know, when we're doing one thing, we're already thinking about three other things that we have to do, and we're procrastinating and all that. I think it helps organize those thoughts. And then what I do, I like putting raw data into it. I like putting our sales data, our areas of coverage, what I did, depending on what you use. But if you have a way of downloading all of your inspections, at least just like the address of the home, the city and county and things like that, even the square footage or type of house or type of inspection, and you put it into Chat as a file, a CSV file, and tell it, hey, can you tell me where the majority of the inspections that we're doing are? That's how I hired the last two inspectors I hired because what I did was, okay, we're doing a majority of our inspections in these specific counties and city, so I hired two guys there, and it's been great. Because not only do I have to pay less mileage because they're not driving as far to reach our other customers, they're closer to home. It keeps them happier, and then I keep more of the profit margin for myself, because we're able to price it better. We're able to not have to pay as much. And I'm going based off the raw data, which, on my own, I'm not going to go look and count how many we had in the city of LA and the city of Riverside. I rather input that, and it tells me where I'm doing the worst, like, you had five inspections last month in this city, and I'm like, wait, I like that. I want us to be in that city. And so I go and I check my campaigns, and I push keywords for that city so that we can pop out more. That's the way it can help you. Nice.

Ian Robertson 
That's some really granular and actionable advice there. Anybody who's listening should take note of how Mike is using that. One thing I will say is Google Ads, setting up your own, is not for the faint of heart, and it changes constantly, like, what you do one day, six months later, Google's like, oh yeah, we do that completely different. Now that screen doesn't even exist anymore, and it's a bidding process. So unless you're going to dedicate the time that Mike does, just give it to a professional, but if you do your own ads, definitely do everything that Mike just said right there.

Mike Ortiz 
What I will say about Google AdWords, because I just recently, on my own, started managing my own Google AdWords, and again, like you said, when you don't know how to do something, you find a professional to do it for you. And that is true. That's 100% true, but in my specific situation, I did an audit of my own Google Ads, and I found that a lot of it was very broad and far reaching, and it was the way it was being managed was in areas that, I put it into Chat again, and I said, okay, here is the report and analytics I got from my Google, here's the report analytics I got from the marketing company I'm paying to do it. Here's how much I pay them. Can you explain to me what was being done and why it looks like there's a lot of traffic, but the lead quality is lacking. And it explained to me, it's like, what they did with your budget is not conducive to you actually bringing in quality leads. And I use Chat 100% to help me, not to tell me what to do, but to help me. I already know what I wanted to do, where I wanted to cover, and it would help me by telling me how to set up the campaign, so that works. And then I have to tweak them every day. Every single day, I tweak them for about five minutes to remove negative keywords and all that, which Chat walks me through as well, because I'm not an expert at all, but I spent 1000s of dollars that I could have saved on wasted budget and inadequate support from that specific marketing setup that I had. So I left that setup and I took care of it on my own. I won't say that everybody should do their own advertising, but I will say that you when you start, it's not going to happen in the first month or three months. Wait six months. Wait maybe longer, nine months, and at that point, put all that information, that raw data, the advertising reports that you get from whoever you're paying for your advertising, and the actual numbers from your Google Ads account, which you should have access to, put that into chat and have it run the numbers and tell it what's happening, what's going on. I think in this age, the chat, it's a way to stay well informed about what's going on within your business.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah. And as I mentioned to a lot of my clients, Google Ads is, depending on what you're doing, is so advanced I don't even really do my own anymore. So, you're a little bit more of a rare home inspector type that can.

Mike Ortiz 
I don't know if I could keep it up, but for now, it's what I'm doing.

Ian Robertson 
Definitely fantastic advice for those that can do that kind of level of work. So that doesn't sound like a growing pain for you, and I asked you this before the podcast started. I asked you a specific question, because I care about you as a human being. How are you doing as a human being? And it's a question I ask a lot of high performers like yourself that I work with and around. Do you find that question kind of makes you stop and have to think a little bit?

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, it's a good question. I'm in a constant state of panic. It's not so much that I'm a day away from the company falling apart. It's really just a lot when you're managing. Okay, so the biggest thing I did once I got busy enough was hire someone to answer our phone calls. That was such a huge step for us. And now that that's happening, and they're already overwhelmed, too, so I have to figure something else out. Another thing was the ability that people schedule themselves online, you know, that's brought in, you know, six figure numbers for us. So people just, not even calling, just scheduling their own inspections, and that's a big deal for us. So I took a lot of weight off of my shoulder, not having to answer widget, you know, chats on the website of, hey, can we quote me? Can we set this up? I think that it just comes down to, now that I have inspectors that depend on me, and I'm not worried about keeping them busy, what I'm worried about is stalling, right? And stalling happens when you have a lot of when, for example, right now we're filling up already up until Sunday, and I just know that we're going to get calls that want Sunday-Saturday, Friday, and I'm already dreading like, hey. And the good thing is that I'm really good friends with a lot of inspectors in my area. And I say, hey, I'll say, can you take one in Victorville for me? Because I can't get to it. You know, do you have spot this day and that day? And I just hate doing that, not because I think that they're gonna steal my business. I just hate that I just lost that 500 bucks or whatever it is, and I don't think of it as making 500 bucks anymore. It just comes out. It's okay, like, pay 150 for the inspector, plus gas mileage, taxes, all that stuff. So my way of looking at our numbers again, because of AI, is very different. But my biggest thing right now at this point is long term growth requires you to continuously hire only because people are people. They're going to leave, they're going to find new opportunities. They're going to mess up. You know, at some point, you just got to make sure you find people that are competent. I have such respect for people that have the patience to train and nurture an inspector. I did that with my very first inspector, and he's amazing, but I just don't have the bandwidth to do it now, and I've been hiring very experienced inspectors that have either moved into the state for and they worked for another company, or they worked for another company that kind of went underwater or whatever. And I think because I had bad situations where I made a lot of mistakes, like, let's say last year, for example, bad hires, you know, people that just weren't a great fit, put me in a bad situation multiple times. And you know, it just comes down to multitasking, even though I'm not great at it, there's a lot of fires to always be putting out. But if you ignore them, it gets worse. I know it hurts at first, but it's easier. Like that thing that's bugging you, that inspection issue, that someone saying that you missed something and they want you to come take a look at it. I know it seems easier to just refund them or some people even want just fight it. Sometimes it's easier just to go to these people, they want to be heard, and then find out that it was just like something no one could have caught unless you were specifically looking for or it just happened. And, you know, I've been known to pay $100 to one of my plumber buddies to tighten up a drain or, you know, whatever it is, and the person feels like we did a lot. And you know, nobody's infallible. You know, we make a lot of mistakes. But I think the biggest thing right now is that, my biggest fear is that if I don't hire at a steady rate, then I'm going to lose more and more work as time goes on. I mean, when I started this company at the end of 2021, so January, 2022, I think I did 12 inspections my first month by myself, right? I was terrified. But for me, it was a lot of money, you know, from not making any money to that. And now, you know, now the point that we're at is, you know, I'm keeping seven full time inspectors busy, and then I go here and there, and it's not a brag, it's terrifying constantly, because if I don't keep hiring and bringing people on, then I know it's going to stagnate, and the growth is gonna shrink, and I can't afford to do that. I have plans now, that I didn't think it was gonna happen this way, but I have plans now.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah, your growth has been pretty meteoric, meteoric, like a meteor, not mediocre.

Mike Ortiz 
Meteors crash.

Ian Robertson 
Four years basically, you've gone from you to seven inspectors. So the growing pains when you do something like that are real. Mine wasn't as meteoric, but I still remember having a lot of the same growing pains, learning that you never grow to the point that you want, accepting that growth is eternal, or you die, that's a hard pill to swallow. We like to say it. We like to say we accept it, but when we stop to really think about it, it's a hard pill to swallow, especially when you're at, let's say you have seven inspectors, and you're like, okay, I'm comfortable. This is manageable. It's like you said, you're going to lose some inspectors to it through attrition. Market is going to go up or down, and once you start losing that upward momentum, now they're like, oh, Mike has four inspectors. And you might have been like, I did that on purpose. I just wanted to be more profitable. But then that goes to the market, and that sends waves through, you know, stuff like that happens. So it's an unfortunate cycle of always growing, but you have to accept it.

Mike Ortiz 
It is. And I think that I've seen companies that have 20, 30 inspectors or whatever, but their margins are razor thin. You have to make sure that, you know, just because the numbers are not, it's a lot of different numbers to look at. Right now we're sitting comfortable. We're always sitting comfortably between, you know, between 50 to 60% profit margins after all costs, which is always great.

Ian Robertson 
That's good.

Mike Ortiz 
You know, that's only because we're in a high end area, and it levels out because we have some counties where it's not as affluent as others. And so the pricing does change based on the county sometimes, even a little bit by 20 bucks or so, just because we know the clients there, we know they're going to just either kick us to the curb or we have to just match what's going on right now. That's the one area that I've always been the least concerned about, is pricing. Not that it's not important. It's just that, after a certain amount of inspectors, pricing is important. If it was just me by myself, then I would be really, really tied to how important my pricing is, because I want to keep as much as possible. But now, with seven inspectors and more coming on, it comes down to profit margins, the numbers, you know, how many inspections we have coming in, what does it cost us per inspection, how much of that are we keeping? Because I went from 12 my first month ever inspecting, to 12 a day now. And it just comes down to, you know, how much of that money can we keep? Because people cancel, people get refunds for sewer scopes because they couldn't access the cleanout. It just comes down to being able to produce, and it's not really quantity over quality. All my guys take as long as they want to do the inspection, they finish it 99% on the spot, tweak it at home, and then send it same day, right? So I'm not sacrificing anything. But I have to understand it is a business, and so in order for it to run smoothly, you have to really look at the numbers. You can't just ignore them. There is cost to everything we do, even though people like to think that home inspectors don't have a lot of overhead. We do, in general, have a good amount of overhead, especially if you have guys on your team. I W2'd everybody, because we can't 1099 here in California anymore, and it's a lot more costly than 1099 too. So on top of W2, I have to be attractive. I have to pay the mileage. I pay bonuses for every ancillary service they do. So if they do a pool, sewer, whatever else, they get an extra $25, $30 bonus for every single one they do. And then they get medical, and then for retirement, you know, whatever else they need, because I want them happy. You know, the biggest thing that stood out for us this year is that, in four short years, you know, we're approaching the amount of reviews companies around us that have been here for 25, 30 years have, you know, we're getting close to that 1000 review mark, and we're getting close to passing that. If the trend continues, we'll pass that this year. And that's really good, because that helps us stand out. You know, it's four years to get 1000 reviews. It's not easy, but it's the volume. It really is the volume. And people are happy with the inspectors that I choose. I choose them a lot because of their personality.

Ian Robertson 
And that's an important key, too. When people talk about hiring, everybody looks good on paper until you meet them. Personality is important, but that's also a skill, being able to recognize that. One thing you said, here's an important growing pain that I think we should probably emphasize, scheduling online. So many home inspectors and inspection companies push against it. I was talking to a multi-inspector firm. They have 11 inspectors, and they don't do any online scheduling. A matter of fact, if you just have a weird little contact form, which all the statistics show that contact forms, the vast majority of people don't fill them out, because nobody ever responds to them. I know I don't. I'm like, you guys are losing work, and they're like, well, you know, what about this? And what if somebody schedules at a time, and I couldn't control it with this or that, and single inspectors and just your statement that you're getting six figures from online scheduling, most people aren't going to get six figures from online scheduling, but even if it's a couple inspections a month. Okay, is it worth the once in a while somebody schedules, and you're like, hey, listen, I'm four hours away in my territory that day. Got to reschedule you. Oh, okay, and that's it, you know, it's not a big deal. And it's a great growing pain to have, because it's very profitable once you get past it.

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, as long as you manage it before you set up your online scheduling, you have to get the pricing calculators down, and then you have to get the schedules and availability down. And that's the only reason it works for us. We can set our inspectors how far they can go from their house, every inspection we schedule, we put down how long it takes to do the inspection. And with all those things in mind, that's how people are scheduled. And then, even then, once they submit, we still have to confirm it, you know? Because sometimes they'll schedule it and it'll say, just wait for confirmation, because they'll add something like mold, and then the guy going doesn't do mold, you know? So that's one thing that we have to tweak. It's either that or I just train everybody in mold, because it's a big market for us, mold inspections here. But it took me a while to set up the online scheduling, and I just think about all the money I lost by not having set up because I did have that contact form. And I don't fill out contact forms on anything. If I can't call and find out right away, then I'll go to the next one that will have a way to get a quote right away. You know, if I can fill out a form, like, when we got our dog insurance, I did it all online, on Lemonade, and it was just all set up, all online, all done. I got the quote. I paid for it. Everything is up. That's it, and it starts. I want people to feel like that about scheduling an inspection, you know? And then I think the biggest thing is just setting that up. And I will say recently, the biggest thing for us right now is we no longer accept checks.

Ian Robertson 
Oh, really, whoa. Okay, that's a big one. Can I ask why? Too many bounced?

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, we ran into more than a dozen situations where people were just giving us bad checks, and we had to hunt them down for payments and things like that. So you have to offer a free payment form other than credit card and then Zelle is a big one for us. So I think 75% of the people that work with us pay through Zelle, surprisingly. And then the rest with card, because we pass on that 3.9% fee to that invoice. So people will say, I'm not gonna pay an extra 25 bucks. I'll just send them Zelle, because everybody has Zelle. And then cash for cash inspections, that's easy. But check, for the longest time we took it, and I get it, in some areas, some people don't like it. The older generation, they want to pay with a check. And we're like, we can help you figure out how to pay with Zelle, or you can pay with card. But that was such a great choice, because the inspectors I have running around, they have to keep track of these checks. They have to hold them on till they can get them to the bank or to me. And sometimes, the check will bounce, and then we have to deal with that whole situation. So in this way, we kind of eliminated that issue. And that's just specific to us. I'm not saying that's what anybody should do. I'm just saying.

Ian Robertson 
That's kind of interesting. You know, I never understood checks. When you think about it objectively, some older person said checks are the most secure way to pay. I don't like doing credit card. I'm like, really? It's a little piece of paper with your signature on it, has your bank account number and the routing number, everything that you need to transfer money out of your account, you're handing to random people. It's identity theft fodder.

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, that's all it is. So it's interesting, yeah, but I would say that another thing too is, you know, I cannot stress this enough. So right now, we have someone that calls and confirms every inspection the day before, because now that we're at volume, there's people, oh, I forgot, or I didn't let the tenants know, or, you know, all these things, and then we're like, well, you know, it's a lot of wasted time. So we call every single inspection, because we send out the emails and texts, but now people are just ignoring them sometimes. So now we have someone physically call, just like the dentist office calls and says, hey, we just want to make sure you're coming in tomorrow. That's what we got to do, and that saves a lot of time and money. It does. It saves a lot of money for us, because we find out the people that forgot to let us know. Some people are afraid. I heard one inspector tell me, like, I don't want to call because what if they're like, oh yeah, we want to counsel or want to reschedule. And now I lost it for tomorrow. He's like, I'd rather show up and then they forget, and I still find a way to get the money out of them and do the inspection. And I'm like, well, I mean, I don't really know what response to that would be, but I would rather know beforehand, you know what I mean. It seems more like pressure, you know, I'm here already. Might as well have me inspect rather than check and see if everything's still good to go for the next day.

Ian Robertson 
Yeah, that's kind of an odd mode in my opinion. But listen Mike, we're running out of time, like I've said on other podcasts, me and you could go all day.

Mike Ortiz 
I know it's a lot.

Ian Robertson 
I know there's a lot. But listen growing pains, thank you for sharing those with us, because it helps people. It's something that we don't like to talk about as an industry and as business owners, so sometimes hearing other people talking about it, the perpetual, always have to be growing, the stress of having multiple things to look at, your AdWords one second, your budget another, and your inspectors right after that. You know that stuff wears on us, so thank you for sharing your growing pains with us.

Mike Ortiz 
Yeah, and I still have a lot that I'm struggling with right now and ideas that I'm having, you know, I have to implement them. There's a lot of them, but I'm still struggling now managing the business. It's an imposter syndrome. It's what you've talked about many times. It's the, I can't believe I'm the one that has to keep everybody here alive and fed and the house paid for and then all the employees taken care of. And I feel like I'm working for them, because I'm panicked and they're over here just enjoying their lives, other than inspecting which is great, because I love that. I told them, whenever I hire someone, there's no pressure for you to sell for me, there's no pressure for you to do anything other than your job, that's it, and that's the draw. You know, I'll take care of your inspections. When I started, it was very much like, hey, we need you to bring in as much work as possible for the company and this and that. And I told the guys, hey, I'm not gonna go and say, we're a family and pizza party it all to death. I'm gonna pay you, and when you do good, I'm gonna pay you more, and when you do even better, I'm gonna keep paying you money, money, money, money, money, because that's what you need from me, and I need you to do inspections. But you guys are really awesome. Just keep it up. That's the easiest way to put it.

Ian Robertson 
Well, you're a great example to look up to, whether we're one inspector or 10 inspectors. So Mike, as always, you're one of my favorite guests. So thank you for taking your time and being on in your busy schedule.

Mike Ortiz 
Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

Ian Robertson 
Thank you.

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