Your Sump Pump Doesn’t Care About Your New Year’s Resolutions

Goals don’t fail because they’re too big. They fail because they’re too far away from what we do today. We break that gap by turning outcomes into weekly inputs, then show how the same approach keeps your home dry, safe, and far cheaper to own. Think lead indicators over lagging results: the emails sent, the classes scheduled with enough notice, the social posts published, the quick sump pump test before a thaw. When a winter week swings from subzero to sixty, those simple moves decide whether you sleep well or mop at midnight.

We unpack how to design a short, repeatable checklist that compounds over time. On the business side, that means tracking actions you control and ignoring perfection. On the homeowner side, it means walking the perimeter after storms, reconnecting downspout extensions, cleaning gutters, and confirming the discharge keeps water away from the foundation. We explain why houses don’t have warning lights like cars do, which is why maintenance inspections every couple of years can save you from surprise leaks, hidden attic damage, or creeping moisture you can’t see from the living room.

You’ll hear practical stories about flooded basements that out-cost any inspection fee, the true price of ignoring septic pumping schedules, and how a simple honey-do list turns an inspection report into a calm, step-by-step plan. We also touch on skill building for new homeowners: start with basic caulking, filters, and safe visual checks, then grow from there. Safety first, routine always, panic never.

If you’re in Ohio, we recommend scheduling a maintenance inspection and pairing it with a radon test every two years to keep tabs on changing conditions. Prefer a simple starting point? Build a one-page weekly checklist and commit to it for six weeks. Want more like this? Follow the show, share it with a friend who owns a home, and leave a quick review telling us the one maintenance habit you’re starting this week.

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Transcript

From Resolutions To Weekly Actions

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hey everybody, it is Jim and Laura, and what is it? This is February twelfth when we're recording this. So some people a lot of people do. They they want to have a great year. Like 2026. Let's have a great, fantastic year. It really doesn't matter if you're a real estate, you know, real estate agent, you do home inspections, you're a plumber, Dr. Lawyer, Indian Chief. It really does not matter. Homeowner. Homeowner. Yeah, homeowner especially. You need to plan ahead. And a lot of people make resolutions. This I don't have the exact stats, but it's something like 90% of people who make resolutions have failed by the third week in January. Easily, yes. Well, you don't want that. You don't want to be that 90% that fails to achieve their goals. So when you're setting goals for yourself, or you you know you want to want to achieve, you need to look at what you are doing every week, if not every day, to achieve those goals. So that's what I want to talk about today. Is things you can do to plan ahead, to be successful, to not neglect things, which will relate back to houses. Don't neglect those things. So here's what I do. I have this it's called 90. It's kind of off uh oh, I can't even say. Yeah, EOS. Based on that, but I have certain things that I want to get done every single week because I know if I get these things done, and if I get them done, that's my indicator of what you know that I'm getting close to my goal that is down the road. So if I look, say what we did in January. We had a pretty decent month in January. If I look at that now, okay, good. I got those my lag indicators. This is the ones I got uh is uh the numbers I got after the fact, after the results are in. Lead indicators are what are you what what are your numbers of what you're doing that's gonna give you the results down the road. And between those two, the leading indicators are more important because they're gonna show what you're doing down the road that's gonna help you get your goals. The lag, like look at the past month, is just whether or not you got there or not. Right. Or the things you were doing made it. It's a made that occur. So it is so it's like really like playing ahead, not not slacking to last minute getting things done. Like some of the things I do, I send email out every single week. I got this check, there's a checklist here for myself. Do so many social media posts just to stay on top and and you know, make comments, make sure to stay in touch with what's going on with the real estate market. Number of classes, presentations, podcasts, meetings, events, doing a certain number of those every single week. And Lord, you got something similar also that you do for yourself. Like what are those, what what are those?

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Are there pretty much the same thing? The writing articles, working on the website, so very similar.

Weather Swings And Water Risks

Sump Pumps, Gutters, And Outreach

SPEAKER_02 3:27

So with regards to a house, like right now, was it like 60 degrees yesterday? Which is insane because it was like negative two a few days before that, then it jumps up to 60. So a lot of that snow has melted. And I, if you're a real estate agent, make sure you subscribe to our email that we send out. It gives you information on classes that we're teaching, and also gives you marketing tips like the one I had the other day was hey, snow's going to melt all of a sudden. You need to check your sump pumps, make their sure those are working, double check your downspouts because all that ice that we had recently, that stuff can pull those downspout extensions off or damage your gutters, and you want to get those connected to redirect the water away.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Or prevent them from pulling off in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Yes. And I said that a couple days ago in that email, and even told the agents, hey, use this information to touch base with your past clients, showing that you care. But yesterday, I'm I I was seeing posts where people, hey, does anybody know a person that can replace well replace my my sump pump because I got a tennis house and it's flooding. You you know this is gonna happen. It happens every spring. Why did you not think ahead to take care of stuff?

Ad Read: Ohio Home Inspections

Why Home Maintenance Must Be Planned

SPEAKER_00 4:54

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SPEAKER_02 5:19

Just like lesson, when we teach CE classes, we can't go, hey, let's do a CE class today. No, the state requires a week. Three weeks notice. It's three weeks notice now for all the classes. Used to be like one or two classes we could do fairly quickly.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

It's all of them now.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

It's all of them now. So we have to plan ahead and take care of our schedule, make sure it fits. But you gotta plan ahead, which takes me to houses. If you own a house, you need to plan ahead for your maintenance. Like look at your car. Your car has more moving parts than your house does.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

More or less.

Houses Don’t Have Warning Lights

SPEAKER_02 6:00

I think a house does have more.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

I think a house has more.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

But you and but you exp uh yeah, I got all confused. But yeah, how a house has more moving parts, total parts more than a car does by far. But you regularly do maintenance on your car.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

You got a code that pops up or your your oil hit like the percentage pops up and you're you know, you're at 60% oil.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

You don't have that with the house.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

You know, like every whatever the mileage is 5,000, 8,000 miles, you have to get your oil changed and you get your filter changed. You gotta get your air filter changed as well about the same time. You know, at least check it out, see how dirty it is. You'll get that error code that pops up, like, hey, check engine light and all these codes. You know what? Your house doesn't have that. You do not have an error code for your house. Well, the your error code is like, look, I got water storming down my my roof into my living room. That's your warning light, but that's that's a little bit too late for that. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's if you don't take care of your car, never change the oil, you're gonna blow your engine.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yes.

Hire A Pro For Maintenance Inspections

Turning Findings Into A Honey-Do List

SPEAKER_02 7:15

And you well, it's not gonna get blown just sitting there in the driveway. It's gonna get blown while you're driving down the highway somewhere away from the house. Then it's an urgent situation for yourself. Your house does not have warning lights. You need to have maintenance inspections done on it. And if you don't have the time or the knowledge to get up on the roof in the attic, under the crawl space, and know exactly what you're looking for. Like you don't have the moisture meter, you don't have the thermal imaging, you should contact a home inspection company. And if you're in Ohio, I recommend you contact Habitation Investigation. We've won uh Consumer's Choice Award last two years in a row. We've won Best of the Midwest three times. We have a very good reputation. So contact us if you can, if you live in the area, and have us come do a maintenance inspection on your house. It's basically a whole house inspection, except for the list. You're not, you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

It's not a request to remedy. You're the one that's it's it's like a honeydew list at this point.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Yeah, explain your honeydew list.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

So my my honeydew list is what I tell um people that are buying a house. You you have the things that you can not live with, and those are the ones that you put through for your request to remedy. Everything else becomes a honeydew list where you guys work on getting through that list. So, like grading, downspouts, gutters, simple things like that to just start jumping in are things that you need to do to keep up on. Because if you don't have your gutters and your downspouts and your grading all the way from the house, you're gonna be flooding in the basement at this time of year instead of having a nice dry basement.

Drainage Failures And Costly Floods

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Yeah, and the flooded basement can cost lots and lots of money, especially if it's a finished basement or you flood it floods and damages your furnace, your water heater, and what about that one time uh we had a neighbor when we were living in our old house, and their basement flooded six inches from the electric panel. Yeah, that's how high that water got.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

That's how high it got.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

The same house had terrible grating, no gutters. Yeah, they had gutters, but they're useless because they're totally filled with debris and little trees growing out of them, the downspouts, if water ever made it down the downspouts, stop six inches away from the foundation. None of those maintenance things are expensive to do, but what has saved her from having to contact the fire department to come pump out her basement and keep the because I'm sure that wasn't cheap.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

They didn't just do that for free.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

I that I don't know. I'm I can see the first time they go, all right, it's an emergency situation, that's what we're here for. But what happens every couple years? No. You've got a problem. That's it. That's your house. You need to take care of the situation. So, but it's so much uh more cost-effective to do maintenance on your house and your car instead of letting it get wrecked, and then you then you gotta pay for a overall how much is a new engine? A couple thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Yeah, I was gonna say, well, not just a couple thousand for that, then you've got the installation fee on that. If you would have just, you know, put in a quarter two of oil, that's what, five, ten bucks, as opposed to a couple grand.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Correct, yeah, a lot better to do it that way.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

And if you want to take that and extrapolate that to a house, let's say you've got a roof leak that you maybe don't know about, but we come in, we do a maintenance inspection, and we're up in the attic and we see, okay, there's a problem up here.

Preventive Costs Vs Big Repairs

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yep. Well, same thing in the septic system. You're supposed to get that septic thing pumped out every three to five years from around there. I've heard many stories of people who have never pumped them out. Ever. Ever. And they're lucky nothing happened. But that if that leash field is wrecked, you're you're that's another like ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars. Depending on what system your account is going to require you to put in to fix that. It's so much easier to maintain what you have versus trying to fix it, completely correct it.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Well, our our leech field would not be cheap to redo at all because I think we have uh at one of the newer varieties, it's like a chamber type, yeah. And I so I I don't think that would even remotely be cheap to do. So maintenance is much better than coming back and paying a couple thousand again to put it back in.

Septic Systems And Scheduled Care

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Yeah, it was not the most expensive type, and where we live is rural where we're at right now, so it wasn't crazy expensive, but there are no inexpensive septic systems. But the analogy works for whatever system you're looking at in a house, in a car, you have to maintain it and to know to know what you need to fix, it all comes to being aware. So, and then being aware comes back to your marketing if you're for if you're a business, comes your marketing or maintenance for your house. Here's things I need to do my house. Did I change my air filter? You can have a little checklist somewhere. My pilots and surgeons, they all have checklists for what they do. Yes, every that's a checklist.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

And they have to go through that each time.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Yes. There's nothing wrong with having checklists. I got one of every activity I'm gonna do, uh, the goals I want to do every single week. And I or you can track back like last six weeks, they're all they're all achieved. You can see the average of everything that I've done. There's a few times it's not not up there. Like the week of new uh Christmas and New Year's Day.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Those are always a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

I'm not gonna worry too much meeting all my goals because no because it's it's the holiday season.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

But I will on average, I will, I will meet that goal easily. Well, I think it's can you think anything else, Laura?

SPEAKER_01 13:25

No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Okay, so make a list for yourself goals, but have your for your goals for your business or whatever you want to do, have it like task-oriented now to achieve the results you want down the road. Like if the result is I want a nicely maintained house, but you need to make your list now of things you're gonna take care of the house. You're gonna keep an eye on moisture, you're gonna change the air filter, you're gonna have a home inspection company do a maintenance inspection so you know better detail what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Well, and if you do those don't know what you're doing, if this is the first house you've had, an inspection helps you learn about things, and then there are some things that practice is just gonna give you. You know that you need to caulk around the sink, you know that you need to caulk around the bathtub. It's not gonna look good the first couple times you do it, and that's fine as long as it works, yeah, and you just get better as you practice and learn.

Checklists That Keep You On Track

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Our old house had plaster and lath walls first. Couple times Laura did work on that, it was not the best. But toward the end, you got really nice. It got pretty pretty good. Your walls got super nice and smooth working with that plaster, and that's a skill that a lot of drywallers do not know how to do. Finishers, they do not know how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Oh, I've I think holes and it looked cool.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yeah, Laura has the skills, but also if you're a homeowner, maybe on your your is your list is a have a maintenance inspection done every two years, which kind of coincides with getting your radon test right on level test every two years, is what the EP is it.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Whether you have a system or not.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Correct, correct. So I think that's about it on this one. Make a list of you know things you need to do for your future results and goals. Thanks, bye bye.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Bye.