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Growth By Insight: Mastering the Human Element as Inspectors
by Kendra Budd, Editor
Home inspectors often make their business the central facet of their personality. While it’s important to have passion for your business, too much of it can cause your business model to plateau instead of grow.
On the Inspector Toolbelt podcast, host Ian Robertson and his guest, Inspector Empire Builder (IEB) CEO Mark Hummel, sat down in their episode “The Human Element” to discuss how easily inspectors can hit growth ceilings and fall victim to a stagnating business rather than a growing one.
Hummel and Robertson explore how inspectors can grow their business by focusing on personal growth, altering their mindset, and concentrating on self-evaluation rather than obsessing over finances, marketing, and the number of home inspections they do. Here’s what they considered.
Hitting a Growth Ceiling
Continually building your knowledge is critical to growing your business, and Hummel believes sharing that knowledge only helps everyone. “One of my favorite things to do is learn things but not to let it rest on my shoulders. As quickly as [I] can, I find a way to share it with other people,” Hummel opens the episode. One thing he has learned is when to recognize when you’ve hit a “growth ceiling” in your business.
A growth ceiling refers to the phenomenon of when you have grown your business to a point where your business has stagnated—i.e., you believe you’ve maxed out your success. “… you start feeling that diminishing return on your efforts. For example, if you’re running a business, and you’re thinking to yourself ‘I don’t know what’s next …’, then you’ve probably hit your ceiling,” Hummel elaborates.
However, inspectors don’t just hit a growth ceiling out of nowhere—in fact, there can be multiple traps leading to this consequence. Robertson chimes in, citing that inspectors often fall into the con of complacency. As an example, “Maybe we hit a goal of 10 points, but we only had a goal of five points. When we hit six points, we’re satisfied … that we’ve gone past it,” Robertson says. Many inspectors will hit or surpass their goal and simply not have the desire to keep growing.
This lack of desire is often attributed to the feeling of satisfaction gained from comfort. “Whatever last felt comfortable you’re going to go back to that level of performance,” Hummel says. Instead of striving for comfort, he goes on to express that inspectors should start looking at it from a perspective of health, because when you work out regularly you are always striving to get better through the practice of consistency. “Can I do hard things consistently for a long time? That’s the ceiling that most people need to get through in their business. ‘Can I just stick to a few important things for a really long time consistently well?’ If I can’t do that, then I’ll probably get stuck at the same ceilings over and over again, because I won’t be consistent enough to work my way through them,” Hummel enlightens. Despite starting off strong, it’s easy for home inspectors to get stuck when stagnation begins to feel easy.
On the other hand, there is the trap of imposter syndrome. According to WebMD, “Imposter syndrome is when you doubt your own skills and successes. You feel you’re not as talented or worthy as others believe…” and that people will discover you are a fraud, even if you’re not. Inspectors fall victim to this phenomenon often because Hummel believes these inspectors don’t have a strong sense of personal growth. “Your business growth is always a product of your personal growth, and it can never be the other way around, right? Your business growth will never go further than your own development,” Hummel says. So, if you suffer from imposter syndrome, that belief will easily fall into the aspects of your business.
So, when inspectors end up hitting a growth ceiling, what should they do next? Many may assume it’s to dive into their business with full force and focus, but Hummel argues that it’s actually the opposite.
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Techniques for Personal Growth
According to Hummel, inspectors often assume that to grow their business they need to put all of their attention and focus into it. However, Hummel considers that inspectors who have a strong life away from their business, are the ones who end up most successful.
Specifically, he talks about how he’s known inspectors who go from business to business and only keep growing their success. “They have this joy … or even this peace about them sometimes. Those people in my view are people living from identity rather than getting their identity from what they’re doing,” Hummel says. While in other cases, Hummel sees home inspectors who make their business the center of their world, who believe that if they don’t do any inspections, that they will no longer have a sense of identity. “There’s a lot of people out there living like that. I was living like that in other careers where I went through my own identity crisis until I shifted careers.” Hummel shares. This is why it is important for home inspectors to focus on their personal growth alongside their business growth.
Robertson also reveals the importance of personal growth, and how it can be beneficial to home inspectors. “I’ve met people whose personal growth isn’t tied to their business, but things always end up working out for them. People have been like ‘The dot.com boom just tore apart my entire industry, but that’s okay because I built up a whole new industry six months later,'” Robertson says—stating that could only be possible for those with a lot of personal growth to bounce back from something like that.
So, how do inspectors evaluate their personal growth? Well, Hummel shares that for inspectors to grow personally they need to answer the four following questions about themselves:
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- Who are you?
- What are you doing?
- How are you going to do it?
- Who are you doing it for?
If you can answer those prompts with ease, then according to Hummel, you’re already ahead of most people who are operating in a business. “… you’re going to be able to point yourself toward a growth path that makes sense to who you are, rather than just the work you’re doing,” says Hummel.
In fact, Hummel implements the same practices into his team at IEB—making sure that his company members have a strong life vision, because it will only strongly impact the business. “All of that’s the work—identity, life vision, life alignment, that’s sort of how we roll,” he states.
However, personal growth doesn’t just happen overnight. There are actionable steps inspectors need to take, other than just answering a list of questions. Personal growth varies person to person and will often require trial and error. However, Hummel believes that there are two universal truths inspectors can implement into their practice. The first is to not solely rely on their experience when looking for growing techniques. “Experience is a good teacher, but if it is the only teacher, it is going to direct you in ways that are not all that meaningful,” Hummel cautions. A common example he likes to use is that if you’re an inspector who’s always putting out fires, then your experience is teaching you to be a firefighter. “So now you are starting fires, so that you have work to do,” he explains.
The second universal truth is that simple things that are easy to do for a short period of time but difficult to do consistently well over a long period of time will help you reach your goals. Meaning inspectors should push themselves by finding specific ways to grow and putting intense focus into it. An example Hummel uses is, “Read five or six books instead of one on a certain topic. Or get into a group where someone is smarter than you to inspire and humble you.”
Something that could make this process easier for home inspectors is by changing their mindset, as many home inspectors operate with a technician mindset. However, inspectors should be striving toward a builder mindset instead.
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The Builder Mindset
According to Robertson, “We often spiral as a technician running a business…” because working as a businessperson is drastically different than working as a technician. People with a technician mindset often have an analytical approach to problem solving, and value mastering technical skills to work in the business. Many with this mindset believe if they do the same thing every day and follow specific guidelines, their business will have a greater success rate. “Just [because] we do it day in and day out doesn’t mean we’re good at it,” Robertson argues. Inspectors can often lose the business side of things with this approach.
Inspectors who operate their business through a builder mindset often see more success than those with a technician mindset, Hummel tells listeners. This is because those with builder mindsets are more focused on who their business serves, rather than focusing solely on profit. According to Hummel, inspectors should ask themselves, “So what does my business brand look like? Who does it serve? How does it maximize the impact it has—not just the dollars it makes?”
Robertson states that he sees many multi-inspector business leaders have the technician mindset and uses their resistance to using business coaching as an example. He says many multi-inspector owners are against the idea because they believe as long as you have a good website and good marketing, you’re golden.
However, Robertson pushes back saying, “That’s a really diminutive way to look at it, because most of the successful home inspectors have a higher idea of things than that.”
He uses a working-out analogy to clearly define his reasoning, citing how when you first start you can’t solely focus on heavy lifting and eating right—that you may have to take into consideration other factors like your joints, age, recovery period, etc. “We go into business with that same mentality. ‘You just need to work hard to get inspections.’ You hit a ceiling really hard when you do that, when you don’t self-level-up,” Robertson elaborates.
When money is at the forefront of an inspector’s mind, it becomes harder to level up your business. When the technician mindset is taking the driver’s seat, then fear-based reasoning does too, which often leads to inspectors not changing their prices or hiring additional help. “If you feel like you’re not charging what you’re worth, the first thing isn’t to raise your prices, [it’s] to really nail down what you’re worth and believe it…” Hummel explains. The fear is that inspectors will lose work by raising prices or hiring more inspectors. However, Hummel has found in practice that the benefits outweigh the risks.
“I was hearing from IEB members, they said ‘I’m doing less inspections than last year, but I’m 20 percent up in revenue.’ Bingo! That’s what we want,” Hummel says. The builder mindset model in inspections is simple: raise prices, lose business, make more money, work less. So why does this work? Because these inspectors not only have the builder mindset, and are willing to take risks, but because their business isn’t their central personality trait.
It all comes back to personal growth. Inspectors with a builder mindset are able to grow personally outside of their business. A story Hummel shares is that an inspector he knows raised his prices and was getting less business, but it worked out for the better. “He said, ‘I did 400 inspections, but I made every one of my kid’s little league games,'” Hummel tells listeners. This was due to the inspector not only developing a builder mindset, but also self-evaluating how he wanted to show up in his personal life. Hummel urges inspectors to focus on what they might gain, instead of what they could lose when reviewing their business goals, because personal growth only grows your business with it.
Finally, Hummel believes to run a successful home inspection business through building personal growth, is to have the courage to give yourself a self-evaluation.
Self-Evaluation and Growth Plans
According to Hummel, if you are lacking in self-awareness, then your business is bound to suffer for it. “The truth is, self-awareness is the foundation from which everything grows. We cannot grow if we are first not aware of the need to grow. Or at least the need to choose to grow,” Hummel elaborates. The best way for inspectors to gain insight into where to grow is through self-evaluation.
A self-evaluation is simply sitting down and writing down the areas of your life you are showing up in, then rating how you’re showing up on a scale of one to 10. “Don’t overthink it. This can take 10 minutes,” Hummel teaches. Once you have compiled your list, your next step is to turn that self-evaluation into a growth plan.
Hummel emphasizes that when compiling your growth plan, don’t shift your entire personality overnight but rather change one thing at a time. Hummel leads by example, sharing his own growth plan. “Choose a path to grow in. I allow myself three topics for an entire year,” he says. This allows Hummel to learn as much as possible about three subjects, rather than sporadically gathering information throughout the year. This makes it easier for the information to stick and to become an expert on it. However, he also cautions that that is what works for him. Some people may need to start smaller, such as reading a book on one topic you’re interested in to assist in your growth plan.
Once you have started your growth plan, Hummel explains that the most important piece is to stay consistent. A great way to keep up with your growth plan is to have someone do it alongside you. “Having some people around you who can influence you in a positive way in a thing that you’re doing, it’s a complete game changer,” Hummel expresses. Robertson agrees, saying that especially in a post-pandemic world that community is more important now than ever in growing yourself. “Every day that you’re alone, you are choosing that,” Robertson shares.
Once your growth plan is in place, you will see your business start to succeed more and more, as well as your personal life—so long as you stick to it.
Final Thoughts
Growth ceilings can seemingly come out of nowhere, but through self-growth they are easy to break out of. Hummel and Robertson make it clear, if you feel like you have stagnated in your business then it is time to self-level up, change your mindset, and reevaluate your priorities—including outside of your business.
Most importantly, inspectors must want to grow, otherwise you’ll only keep hitting those growth ceilings. “We want to grow [in] things we have chosen to grow [in]. I call that growth by insight rather than growth by pain,” Hummel opines.
Even if you are an inspector who believes they haven’t hit a ceiling, it couldn’t hurt to self-evaluate and create a growth plan anyway. You might be surprised at what you discover.
To listen to the full episode, go here: https://inspectortoolbelt.com/the-human-element/
About the Author
Kendra Budd is the Editor of Working RE Magazine and Marketing Coordinator for OREP Insurance. She graduated with a BA in Theatre and English from Western Washington University, and with an MFA in Creative Writing from Full Sail University. She is currently based in Seattle, WA.
Published by OREP Insurance Services, LLC. Calif. License #0K99465