Home Inspector Training | Time and Risk Management for Scheduling Inspections

Time management is the ability to use your time productively and efficiently. You could also think of it as the art of having time to do everything that you need, without feeling stressed about it.

Risk Management: (in business) the forecasting and evaluation of financial risks together with the identification of procedures to avoid or minimize their impact.

Are you tired of chasing your clients to sign inspection agreements and or make payments?

Are you tired of waiting on client confirmations? 

This podcast episode will talk about how to avoid these common issues when scheduling home inspections to make better use of your time and minimize your risk.

John Laforme shares his home inspection experience as a business owner with you to help you better mange your time by using inspection software and payment apps etc.

Are you still accepting paper checks from clients? If you are then you are leaving a big door open for potential problems. John also shares the times he received intentional bad checks from clients. This is why John no longer accepts checks period!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXzxEH5J8y5EW1lZ3LtDB0A

John Laforme
CREIA Certified Inspector
Home Inspection Authority LLC

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home? Don't panic. Just listen to the rest of this podcast welcome to Home Inspection authority inspection authority podcast with me, John laforme. Are you a homebuyer, a realtor, or maybe a home inspector? If you are, then this podcast is definitely for you. So let's get right into some straight talk about home inspections. Alright, welcome back, everybody. Today I want to talk about time management and risk management. The reason for that is I've been noticing on a lot of, you know, forums and stuff like that, and groups on Facebook that some inspectors out there are having a hard time, you know, with your contracts and customers and getting paid and, and, and so forth. So, you know, I've been doing this for a while. So I got a good system in place, which I want to share with all you other home inspectors. So when it comes to time management, you know, what's your time worth, you got to really ask yourself that. So if you're just starting a home inspection company, you're going to have some free time, it's not going to be that busy right away, unless you're just very, very lucky. So, you know, dealing with one customer at a time, it's going to seem somewhat simple. But as you start really getting into it, and getting more and more business, your time is now limited to how much time you have for phone calls. For emails, don't forget, you're going to be inspecting houses, you're going to be out in the field, you're going to be spending hours at a time, if you're new, you're going to be spending multiple hours trying to get through your first 30 or 40 or 50 inspections, and try to get coordinated, doing your inspections and your report writing because that there is the biggest learning curve you're going to come across. So the reason why I'm talking about time management is it's really smart to consider an automated system for managing your time and get that started early in your business. Or if you're already in business, and you're pulling your hair out of your head, because it's so stressful, dealing with everything and everybody and doing all the administrative work yourself myself, I do mostly everything myself. So I'm only talking because I have the experience of doing all these things myself. So, you know, my time, to me is important, my value of my time is important. And because you know, I don't want to spend getting up at 7am in the morning, and then all the way up through a midnight working on home inspection reports and dealing with customers. That's no way to live. So it's things I like to do, I like to go work out, I like to spend time with my wife, I like to I like to do all kinds of things, you know, recreational stuff. So time, to me is very important. And I do value it. So I want to share that with everybody to give you a guide on something you may consider doing or something hey, you know what it sounds like? Great idea, John, thanks. I think I'll go with that idea. But I'm just going to throw some some ideas at you. And you can then just turn it determine if they're going to work for you or not. So I'm also going to talk about risk management. And when I talk when I say risk management, I mean, you know, in conjunction with scheduling, and that's kind of a funny subject to me, because it just it's just absolutely ridiculous. When it comes to getting phone calls from people who are not serious about hiring you, they just waste your time they ask a million questions. Or you have people just calling in to get price quotes, maybe your competitors you know, tying up your, your phone when other people are trying to call you to actually schedule stuff. So these are kind of little things that I don't really care to deal with and over the years, kind of learned how to weed those issues out weed out the not so serious phone calls. And just try to you know, figure figure them out really fast so you don't waste much time on them. And so what I do is when I get a phone call, someone wants a quote. I always ask for an address. Sorry, I cannot give you a quote without an ad. address. And a lot of times people just trying to get a number out of you throwing it. Hey, how much you charge for 1500 square foot house? What's the address? I don't just throw out a number like that. I don't. I want to see the house. I want to see if it has a adu attached. Or maybe it looks like the garage is remodeled. And now it's an adu. And they're not telling you. So this is a few different reasons why I like to ask for the address. And I typically will not give a quote without looking it up and looking at it online first. That's the great thing about the internet. You can just type it in your phone real quick. I use the Redfin app. I don't know if anyone uses that. But Redfin is pretty accurate. I use it just about every day. Sometimes I can't find something on there, but I'll have to go to Zillow. But typically I find things on Redfin pretty quick. So anyway, that's what I like to do to get things started. And then once I can see that they're actually talking about a house that's actually for sale, then I'll take them more seriously. Okay, great. So, okay, I'm looking at the house, does it have this, ask some other questions? And then, you know, then I can, you know, comfortably give them a quote, what I would charge to do that inspection. So, if you're getting phone calls from people, and they just want a square footage price, be careful with that, you know, I don't I don't see a reason to answer that question without all the facts. So I like to get all the facts together first, and then and then make and then give up my quote. That way, they can also look at the property for other things, you know, oh, by the way, it has a swimming pool. Did you want that inspected? Oh, by the way, we do sewer camera inspections, would you like that done as well. Because you know, the, the the address they give you may be for a condo, so you're not going to offer a sewer inspection, or a swimming pool inspection for a condo. So it's another reason to do it. Because a lot of times people call and they don't even know a lot about the property they're talking about, which to me is kind of amazing. But that those things do happen. So what those are those? That's so basically what I just said is how do I manage my phone calls? How do I, you know, weed out the not so serious people? So if someone says they don't have an address, I tell them, You know what, no problem, why don't you just get your stuff together, get your address together, get the rest of the information, and then call me back. And then we can have a discussion. And I can give you a quote. And then we can talk about availability, and so forth. So that's how I typically deal with that. And so now, let's talk a little bit about more time management, mixed with risk management. Now what I mean by risk management is if you get the same person, this has happened to me before with realtors. Typically, it's been a few realtors that typically I've had this problem with. And I've had to just stop doing business with them. Because all they did was waste my time. I've lost money over this multiple times. And I'm like, Look, what are you? What are you doing? Why aren't you? You know, why aren't you confirming these inspections, you called me for these inspections, like three days ago, you gave me all the clients information. And at the last minute, you're telling me they found somebody else? What? What is that about? That's so why why are you calling me as the realtor to schedule if you're not in charge of scheduling, you just taken opportunities out of my hands from other customers. And that is just bullshit that I flat out told them that too. That's the word I used bullshit. So nobody should have to deal with that. And if that happens to you with one person, like more than once, that there is probably going to happen again. As because that person is putting the cart in front of the horse every time they have a house, a possible open escrow. So that's nonsense. It's, it kind of makes me think they're looking at as home inspectors as you know, they'll be there when we need him. Don't worry about you know, shitting on him or something like that. So that that's how I that's how I take it like you're disrespecting me. You're disrespecting my, my service. And I don't appreciate it whatsoever. So I let them know how I feel about it. And I said, Look, don't call me anymore. I don't need this. You want to have a solid confirmation. By all means call me and we'll we'll get it done. So that's how I have to deal with some people and it's the truth. And if you want to be the home inspector who just continuously takes that abuse and keeps losing money. Go right ahead. I just really don't see any need for it. You're a person, you know, you should be respected, your time should be respected. And I'm sure you're going to be very upset that day that happens to you. And when you get canceled for the stupidest reason, and then you've just told to other people, you can't do a job for them on that same date and time. So the the important thing I want to point out here is when someone calls us, we are reserving a date and a time for them, which means we're reserving us to be at their property at a certain date and time. So that means you can't be somewhere else at the same time. And that's the part I think some of these customers do not understand. Oh, what why do I have to sign your inspection agreement? Now? Why do I have to pay you now because you're reserving my time. If you want me to show up, I require payment in advance, and also all my inspection paperwork, in advance in my contracts, I may be doing three different inspections that day, I might do the house, I might do the sewer line, I might do the pool, that's three separate agreements, they all have to be signed and paid for. That's it. That's just my policy. And it's been years of working in the industry that's come to that. And that's why I'm talking today about time management and risk management. Oh, by the way, if anybody wants a coffee mug or a t shirt, let me know. I, I do giveaways once in a while. Okay, so you know, back to risk management, just to make it clear, if I'm haven't made it clear already. It's about knowing when you're getting a bullshit call. It happens a lot, a lot of people call just oh, hey, how much for this? They don't ask anything else. And it's like, yeah, what's the address, oh, I don't have it, click, you know, just just move on. As a business owner, you have to make these decisions. And you have to, you have to stick to your policies. As soon as you start making exceptions for this person making exceptions for that person, you're going to go down a rabbit hole. And it's just just not, it's just not a good idea. So when people call me to schedule, I made it very clear over the phone, or whether it's some people reach out to me through the through email, but I always call them I don't want to do a text communication back and forth, there's just too much information to give out. So I prefer just having initial discussion to see what the client really wants and what they're after. So with that being said, I like to be upfront about you know, the cost, I like to let them know what I'm going to inspect. I try to give as much information as possible in that initial phone call. So we're all on the same page. A lot of times, buyers and relatives get the wires crossed, they think I'm going to do one thing, and I show up and I do another. So it's just not a great idea. Okay, let's talk about creating an in house scheduling policy. So if you're a home inspector, like me, who owns your own business, it is work for yourself, and there's no other. There's no other inspectors, and you're the only one here working, you need to create a policy for scheduling. And this can also go for multi inspection firms too. But I'm sure there's enough people around to manage all these things, when you have a multi inspection firms, typically, you know, call center or something like that going on, but I don't have that. So I'm, I'm the call center. I'm the Inspector, I collect, I collect the payment, I do all that to collect the and even listen to the nonsense phone calls too. So I'm a one man band. And that's the way I prefer it. Now. So over the years of trial and error, well, let's handle customers this way, or let's handle customers this way. You know, you just kind of got you got to weigh it, you got to weigh the odds on what the best approach is for you. So I've created an in house scheduling policy regarding the inspection agreements and payments. I make that very clear on the initial phone call with my customers. The email they receive after they've called to say here's the address, here's my name. Here's my email address. Here's my phone number. Once they've given me all their information, I then create a scheduling email and inside the scheduling Email, it says this. Hello, client. Thank you for choosing home inspection at 30. For your property inspection at the subject address, the inspection is tentatively scheduled for a certain date and time. Then in red below that it says, Please read as further action by you, the client is required to confirm the inspection. I don't know how to write that any clearer than that. Except for using 50 font on my my, my letters, but so after that, it says inspection contract must be read and accepted and payment in full is due. Upon receiving this email to confirm the inspection date and time you requested. Please click on the link below. And the email on my emails, it's a blue box. And follow the simple instructions for reading and accepting the inspection contracts. Then I go on to say And in the body is no printing of contracts required. If you did not accept contracts and make payment today it is emailed to you the tentative keyword tentative inspection may be cancelled, resulting in you losing the date and time you requested. Please do not ignore this email and its instructions. Thank you. key word here is tentative. When they first call and they give all the information, that doesn't mean it's confirmed. My policy is they have to read and sign the agreements, which is all done through electronic signature. It's very simple, you can do it on your phone, you can do it on your computer, it doesn't matter what kind of device you have. It's so simple, it takes two minutes to do it. So and there's also a credit card payment link as well. So that's what I send out as the very first email. And a lot of times, I will have issues with the customers ignoring my email. Oh, by the way, this also generates a text message too. So not only do they get emailed, they get a text message, which tells them to check their email. And I still have people flat out ignore the email, don't read anything. They don't respond. And so what do you do? How should I deal with that? Should I get upset over it that they're ignoring my instructions? Or do I call them again? I call them every hour on the hour to get them to follow the instructions and confirm the inspection. What do I do? That's something I had to decide on. And so let's go back to time management now. Okay, so what do I do next? I've already gotten the initial phone call from the client. I got all their information. I emailed them the inspection agreements and payment link for them to confirm and lock in that date and time they want. They've also received a text message as well. And I get no response. So what should I do now? Do I call them every hour on the hour? Do I just ignore it and say, Oh, they'll do it later? What do you do? You have to make a decision here. And the decision is well, okay, so they're not responding. So if I have the time, I will send them a text saying Hello, have you received my email? I'm still waiting on your confirmation. And they'll typically respond to the text. And they'll say, oh, yeah, I'll get to it later today. I'm in a meeting. I'm really busy today. And I really don't care how busy you are. I'm just as busy or if not, I'm busier than you. So it doesn't matter to me how busy somebody is. Like I said, you can access all this information right from your phone. So if you can't stop for two seconds, open it up. You know, you can read through the contracts pretty quick. They're not that long. It's like a one page two page contract and the Korea standards of practice attached to it so it's really not a lot of information there. And then the payment link is very simple. People oftentimes have a hard time with the payment like what you don't understand. However, I always mentioned well if you trying to buy a new pair of shoes, you'd probably find that payment link very, very useful. So once again, how do you? How do you determine the serious buyers, from the non serious buyers, clients, I should say, serious clients from the nonserious clients. So this is one way of weeding out someone who's not serious about moving forward. So they may be calling you prematurely means they haven't got the acceptance on the house yet, but they're telling you they have. And that's why they will not committed to the agreement, because my agreement does have a cancellation fee in it. So they may choose not to do it for that reason. And they string you along. So then, you know, half the day goes by and I still get no response. And if I have the time to look, or if I get home early, I'll take a look and see if they responded yet. Nothing. But my software, which is Spectre software, which is a very good software, lets me know, when the email I sent is opened. So a lot of times I catch them lion, I Oh, I never got your email, well, then who opened it? So that's a really good reason right there to have a good scheduling software for your business. So once again, it's about what do you do next, the column and yell at him he a column and say, Hey, I'm canceling on you. What do you do? It's a really fine line to walk because you don't want to lose the business. You're in business, right? You're in business to get customers and have a business. So you don't want to be just demanding things. But you gotta have, you gotta have a limit to how long you hold off on these things. So for example, if this customer here refuses, or just ignores my instructions, until the next day, and another call comes in for that time slot, guess what, they just lost their spot. And then I text them and go, Oh, by the way, I just had this Rs are tentative appointment has been cancelled, because you ignored the instructions to confirm and then bam, all of a suddenly they're trying to get that payment in there. They're trying to sign those agreements. Sorry, too late, you have to reschedule someone else already took your spot. That's the position they put me in for not responding. So this is how I run my business on a day to day basis. And it's still kind of it can be a little problematic doing this. But overall, it keeps things straight, keeps people in line. And it keeps people from wasting my time, which I find valuable. You know, some months, I get so busy, I don't have time to chase people. I just don't, I don't have the time to keep, oh, hey, can you get that contract signed. And all Yeah, I'll do it in a couple minutes. And they just never do it. So you can let people string you along. Or you can you know, cut that string sooner than later. So that's the purpose of today's episode is just to kind of share my experience with you. So if you haven't encountered this yet, and it comes up, you may have a clearer understanding how to deal with it. So So I really encourage you, you business owners to set a scheduling policy for you and everyone else that works with you to follow. That keeps it's going to help you weed out the not serious clients and allow you to stop losing money from actually letting these people waste your time. When they're when they have no intention of confirming with you. Another reason for sending the inspection agreements days ahead of time, if possible. If someone schedules you for the following day, well, it's only one day ahead of time, but it's always best to get the agreements to them in that manner. That way they have time to read them. They don't feel rushed. And if they have any questions about what your service is going to be, they can call you and discuss it, which I think is great. So that's good for everybody. Full disclosure on my end, I get questions regarding you know what I'm going to look at, I can clarify that more. And everyone's everyone's pretty good about everything. And then we just take it from there and move forward. So getting your inspection agreement signed before you even drive to the job. To me is a no brainer. You just have to do this and getting paid At the same time they sign your agreement is another no brainer. And here's why I think that way. Let's say for example, the client gets the inspection agreement, signs it, and then ignores the payment link. And I'm just like, I don't really care, I'll let I'll let that pass today. So you know, I keep the scheduled inspection, I go to the job, which, which requires me to drive. So I'm in California, so just about everywhere I go, it takes an hour, 45 minutes to an hour, in most cases. So there's one hour of my time that I get to the house. And, you know, I like to think I have pretty thorough inspections, I like to think that's why people hire me. So if it's an average house, 1500 2000 square feet, I'm going to be there two and a half hours minimum on the general home inspection. And if they also asked me to do the sewer line that could take another, you know, 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the house. And that swimming pool, well, that's another probably 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the pool condition, and the type of pool. So if you add that up, that comes to one hour drive time, two and a half hours for the inspection, it's three and a half hours, and possibly, possibly another half hour for the sewer, and another half hour for the pool. So it'd be what, four and a half hours of my time, then driving back. That's five and a half hours. So I go down there, I do all that stuff. I spend all that time on that job. And then the client asked me at the end to give him a summary. I've given the summary. And I'm like, Oh, by the way, can you take the time to make the payment now? Oh, yeah, you know, I left my credit card at home, can Can I just do that later? Okay. Okay, fine, we're gonna do, you know, can't exactly shake them up and down and make their wallet fall out of their pocket and give you their credit card. So, okay. You want to go on the seems like a good person, they're buying house, I'm sure they'll do the right thing and get me paid. So, later on that day comes and goes. Next thing you know, it's nighttime, and I still get no payment. And that's a little alarming to me. So I text the customer. Did you have a second to get your credit card make that payment? Oh, yeah, I'll get right on that. Nothing, no payment. That day has gone now now meant to the following day. I text him again, nothing. Now I'm calling them going what's going on? Why you making the payment. And I've had customers make me chase him to three days. In the meantime, the reports done or I chose not to even touch the report until I got paid depends on the situation and my and how busy I was. So these are things that can happen. So basically, that's my fault. Because I left the door wide open for problems by allowing this person to skate on pay me in advance. So worst case scenario, they don't pay me at all. And I never send the inspection agreements. So I wasted five and a half hours of my time working my ass off. And I didn't get paid. And I wasn't able to go to another job and do that job because I was there. So that was my fault. I'm at fault for that for allowing that to happen. I should not have let them skate on not pay me in advance. This is why I think it's crucial for you to be paid before you show up. Because you are going to work two and a half to five and a half hours depending on how many inspections you're doing over that in that property. So that's my advice to everybody get paid before you go. And if your reason for not getting paid before you go is because you don't have a merchant account or a Venmo account or Zell or something like that. And you need to get out of the Stone Age and get on it and get yourself a simpler today's tight payment system. There's so many of them out there. There's no excuse you can do pay pal. Like I said Zell, you can do you know there's there's a whole bunch of them I can Can't think of right now. But there's a lot of different opportunities out there. And if you have a good software, you'll be able to have all that accessibility as well. So don't leave the door wide open for problems, which is what I'm trying to make my point as here. We, as business owners have to, you know, keep all those doors closed, so we can minimize our problems. So we can focus on the craft, and the craft is inspecting the houses. So I personally like to have all the paperwork payment done way before the inspection even starts. So when I show up, I just go right to work. I don't want to have to go through paperwork with somebody or collect payments. I'm trying to get their job done, I want to focus on that only. I don't have to want to have to worry about being paid. I don't want to I want to be I want to have a smile on my face when I'm there and not like oh, man, I gotta chase this guy. This guy's just shady. You know, just something about him, I could tell. And I'm sure y'all get these impressions of people when you meet him, like, Oh, this guy seems really shady, or this lady seems really shady. Maybe they're saying that about us? Who knows. But anyway, it's just close as many doors as you can to avoid these bigger problems. It's, it's, it's priceless to me to just stay on top of the stuff. And it makes life so much more simpler. Now, there's also if you have the right software, and your software is locked until payment is made, that those work together, well, then that's a really big bonus too. So if you want, you can be the grown up in the rooms, so to speak, you can go do the job. Even though the client hasn't paid, you can build a report, you can send it, but they can open it until they pay for it. That's great. But don't forget, you're still gambling? What if, what if they were freaked out about the house during the inspection. And they're like, Oh, I'm just not going to pay this inspector. Fuck him, you know, I'm just not even going to pay him. So guess what, you just got screwed out of some more money. And now you're negative. And you just wasted several hours of your day, doing a really good job for somebody who doesn't appreciate you whatsoever. So that's the that's why you want to just, you know, keep those problems from happening. Like I said, close all the doors, as many doors as possible to eliminate minimize risk. And that is part of risks. So trying to weed out. Just ridiculous customers. And then also, making sure you get your contracts in place and your payment, before you even go to the job is the best advice I can give anybody. It will serve you well. And it's just a really smart business policy for everybody to have that. So I know some of you out there are still accepting checks. Why? I have no idea. I stopped accepting checks probably three years ago. Here's the reason why true story. I was ripped off the first time by an elderly woman when I say elderly I mean, she's probably in the late 60s looking at buying a very big expensive house in a very expensive area. And I was referred to her by a realtor that I know. So basically, I was asked to come out and do it. And the lady said, Oh, she just write write me a check on the spot. I'm like, Okay, now I didn't have any reason to believe this would be an issue because she was referred to me by a realtor that I know very well. So that took a lot of the risk in my in my mind away from the deal because she was referred by somebody I knew. So that was just a decision I made and I went with it. And this house was enormous. It was a big house had a lot of problems. I was there for at least for four to five hours. Guess what, she wrote me a bad check. It was a fraudulent check from a bogus bank account. And it was it was intentional. So what she did was intentional. She didn't. She didn't just forget to apply funds to her account that she wrote the check on. She had a bogus account with no money in it. And it was just it was intended to be fraud. So I don't know what her ultimate intention was. Was she gonna just wiggle her way into getting into the house and then squat there? I don't know. But anyways, I could not get any more information on her. I filed the file a bad check report with police department, blah, blah, blah. Do you have you ever done that before? That is like a total waste of your time. Once again, time management, what do you do at your time? So by accepting checks, you are putting yourself at risk of having to deal with that. I just don't recommend it. I mean, there's just no real need for it anymore. And then when the when somebody gives you an excuse, like, oh, you know, can you take a check, I'm like, Nope, I don't take checks, oh, we can't use our credit cards. Because we're buying a house, sorry. We can't figure out how to use the Zell, if they make up an excuse for every option there is to get you paid, they are not planning on paying you. Let's be super clear on that. That is a red flag right there. And that's when you gotta go, You know what, I'm just not going to take this inspection, you have to make that decision. And sometimes may, you may get it wrong. But at the same time, it may have just saved you from wasting a day where you can be doing something more productive, maybe another job, we actually going to get paid, and so forth. So, risk management, time management, you really got to balance these two things, to keep things moving forward. You don't want to have to chase somebody over a bad check. It's a waste of time, and the chance that the chance of you collecting on that is this big, zero. It's really hard to catch people, if you don't have all their information, you need their actual home address, which we don't typically get as home inspectors we don't typically collect where they're living now. Like I said, this woman was all about fraud. So that was the first batch check I got and that totaled out to about I think it was $950. That was a really big house. So like 950 bucks. I lost on that. Plus the whole day. I was I was there for half a day. So here's the second and last time, I got a bounced check story. And this really happened. So I get called for a house in Sherman Oaks. And look it up online. I was in contact with a realtor. So everything seemed legit. The guy that was buying it an elderly man. And I'm going to say he was in the same age group as the last lady that screwed me over. So I show up and do this inspection. And I was there for a long time I brought I brought in a sewer inspector with me at the time, I wasn't doing those myself. So I brought a sewer camera inspector in there as well. He spent quite a bit of time on there. There was other inspectors there, termite inspectors and so forth. So long story short. At the end of the inspection, Guy hands me hands me a check. And, you know, you don't suspect this from an elderly person. You just don't. That's that's what got me both times. Elderly people pulling scams. So this guy hands me a check. I asked him for his ID says he didn't have it on him. Thing ding ding. I should I should have went Ah, right then and there. So I just took the check. I didn't give him his report yet. Anyway. So I was like, Well, I'm not gonna give him the report. I'll get right to the bank. See if there's any funds in this account. So I did. There was no funds in the account, period. So I call them back right away. Hey, look, here's a credit card link any payment now? Okay, can you do Zell, can you kind of pay through the Sure. Here's my cell information. So I email him right away. Here's here's my cell link. Here's my phone number. I'd take care of it. Nothing. Days go by and nothing like fuck, got screwed again. Then learn the first time but I learned a second time. That won't be a third. So this guy was a handful. He was he was actually there with a woman by the way. And they appeared to be a couple of me. And I don't know something. Something made me just take pictures of them when I was doing my pictures of inside the house. So I happened to grab a couple photos when I was doing wide shots of the live room because they're both sitting there. So I got a good picture of him and his and his friend there. And it came in handy later. So I had gone the police department eventually about A week or so later, I got a police department file, you know, fraudulent check, report another one. And I give him his name that I think is his name. And then time goes by. And then I'm in college. I'm trying to call the realtor who was actually posing as Israel. It's her. And then he went on, tell me, he goes, Oh, yeah, you know, this guy was kind of weird. I'm like, Well, why is that? Why do you say that? He said, Well, every time we asked him to fund escrow, he kept giving us excuses. So he never actually funded escrow. So he never funded escrow. Yet, the realtor still allowed us into the house to do the inspections. I'm pretty sure that's backwards. Most of the time, escrows, open when has been exchanged, then you do your inspections. That's typically how it works. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong on that one. And so that was kind of weird. So then I reached out to the listing agent, and told him what happened. And then, about a week later, I got a call from a woman who says, I think we have something in common. I'm like, What's that? And she goes, Well, do you know a certain Gentleman by this name? I'm not gonna say his name. So I don't want to come after me. Because he is a scam artist. So I gave her the name. And she was like, Yep, he is actually right now. squatting in one of my houses that I have as a rental property. I'm like, shut up. What are the odds of that happening? So she gave me the address. This is where he is. This is what he drives. And she goes, Just last week, they came by and repossessed his Porsche. So I'm like, Ah, interesting. So this guy's just career scam artist. And we all found that out later on. So this lady was taking him to court for not paying rent. He's been squatting in her house for six months. He's not paying her a dime. I'm like, Well, I felt really bad for it. Because that's that was a really nice house. It was expensive area. So I'm sure she was coming out of pocket probably 5000 A month because of this asshole, you know. So anyway, on the police department, now I have more information to give to the cops, the cops went up doing a search on this guy. He's got a bunch of different aliases, he was just a piece of shit this guy. And so I don't know what happened to this day. At one point, I thought they were going to arrest them. But you know, it's, it's really easy for these guys to skate away on these issues, if they do it a certain way. Because they've been doing it so long. They know how the law works. And that's how they get away with this stuff. So I never got my money back. And I think that on that job I he wrote me a check for 870 $875. And so I get screwed on that. So I still have not seen nothing. I haven't heard nothing. Maybe I should look into this again. Because now I'm talking about it. Now I'm thinking about it. That was a few years, a few years back least like three and a half years ago. So anyway, that's why you don't take checks, because you're just leaving the door wide open for problems. And dealing with small claims court is a annoying process. It's difficult, you got to do the paperwork exactly right. If you don't, you lose your case. There's all kinds of reasons you don't want to mess with that. So I highly recommend you don't take checks. Use any one of so many of those just banking apps, just use them. That's, that's, that's it. Tell your customer sorry, that's all we use. We can't take payment any other way. That's it. You just have to stick to that. If you stick to that you're going to lessen issues, you're going to lessen problematic days at work. And when you get really really busy. Like say if you're new inspector right now. And everything seems manageable, even though you may be taking checks right now or not. When you get slammed and you start really building your business and you're doing two, sometimes three inspections a day, you're not gonna have any time for this anytime for chasing people for money. I hate chasing people for money. Now, one of the reasons I get into this business was to be paid on the spot and not chase money. So that was one of the highlights of doing this as a career. So take advantage of that. be paid before you go. I know I'm always gonna show up and if I didn't show up, I'd refund their money. It's easy. Have them lock it in, have them pay you sign your inspection agreements. and move on to the next job. Because when you get to the job, all you should worry about is inspecting the house, not the paperwork, not the payment, it's going to keep you focused on what you need to do. And then you can just go home and write the report. It's that easy. So next time somebody asks you, if you take a check, here's your response. Or sorry, we don't take checks here. Ever get in line at Lake route Ralph's the grocery store in someone's right to check in front of you, come on, really, what the fuck, get rid of the checks, man is a little piece of plastic, it's about that big. Stick it in the slot and you're done. Some of you may want to, may actually bring a, you know, credit card swiper to work, you may get paid before you start the job. That's cool. If you don't have a way to get paid before you go to the job, at least have that. So right when you get there, please pay here and I can get started. If that's what you got. That's how you deal with it. So I'm just saying don't do any work without being paid. Ideally, get paid before you leave the house. If you can't, if you have a Swiper get paid before you start that way there. You're going to have a smile on your face the whole time you're working, you got paid, I can do what you're paid to do and focus on only that. Okay, so here's a story that just happened on Wednesday, by the way, today's Friday. Wednesday, I got a call. I'm at the gym, on the treadmill. And the phone rings and I'm like, Shit, I just want to work out please leave me alone. So I answer it. It's customer. And she says hello, hello. Hello. And okay. And I kind of work on how can I help you? You do the home inspection? Yeah, I do the home inspection. Okay. How much do you charge? Well, how big is the house? Do you have the address? of the house is 1400 square feet. I said Oh, yeah. Is it what year is a built on? 1950s? Okay, so I'm running on the treadmill. So I don't have the ability to pull up the address. So it is and she said it was a small house? Like I think she said 13 1400 square feet. And I gave her a quote. And I said, Yeah, for 75. For the for the property. And does that include the garage? Like yeah, includes the garage to roofing the foundation, electrical, plumbing, heating and cooling. Yeah, I'm gonna be there for two and a half hours, at least. Okay, can you do it for 300? No, I cannot do for 300 No, no, no, no discount, no discount, I'm like, wow. And she was really serious about that discount. I hear it in a voice. So I'm like, No, ma'am. My minimal fee for any sized property. A single family home is that is 475. Okay, so when are you available? And then before you can even answer that she says, You can't do for 400. I might. No, I can't. We talked a little further. And then she asked me another question. And then right after that, she says, maybe you can do 450 I hung up. I just hung up on her. Like, you got to be kidding me. Wow, she asked me four times for a discount. And I'm just like, wow, I don't I don't want to deal with this woman. If they here's why. Let me explain that. So when someone's calling you, and their only focus is how much they're paying you. They're not asking if you're qualified, are you insured, or whatever. And then if you don't do it for the price they want and then they eventually give in to your price that you demand. Then chances are no matter what you do for them, they're not going to be happy with you. They're gonna think you shortchange them, because you charge them what you charge them. So that's another thing that really happens. So keep that in mind. When you're giving your price I don't, I don't discount home inspections, I discount additional services. So if you hire me for the home inspection, and then you asked me to do the sewer line, yeah, you're gonna save money on that I saved money on the pool inspection, or indoor air quality. Whatever you whatever it is you want to do an as an add on, but I don't discount the home inspection itself. That's where most of the work is. So I don't know why anybody would just give out discounts you because somebody asked you, I don't I don't follow that logic. I just don't. But that's me. You may be like, oh, you know, she seemed nice. I gave her some money off. That's fine. Just do it for free then if you want to save if you want to make people happy to sell Yeah, we offer free Home Inspection Services. I'm just kidding. Don't do that. But that's the logic behind that. I mean, I don't see a reason to give a discount. Just because they asked. I don't get it. So this woman like I said, I actually said, I can't help you by and I hung up. Get back to my workout. I was on the treadmill at the time. And and then, and the phone rings again soon after. And I didn't answer except it was going to be here again. So I waited till I was finished working out and I had some voicemails she left a voice message. Oh, I don't know what happened. But you know, what did you okay? 475 is okay, when can you do the job? So I'm like, okay, she's finally come to her senses. Maybe. So, I thought about it, you know, calm down a little bit, a little irritated with her, after all the continued asking about the damn discounts. And so a way to try to clear mind and I said, I said soon as I can do would be Friday. Okay, okay. Okay. Then she says to me, are you the one who did the inspection for this address? So she spits out this address? And like, yeah, I just did that house like a week and a half ago. And it was a real shithole. This place is a mess. Had mold and everything, mold all kinds of defects on this house. And so I'm like, oh, so she goes, Well, I want you to do the same thing on this house was like, What the hell does she mean by that? So I think what she meant was, she wanted me to just make a bad report. I said, Well, that's not how this works, you know, the house dictates the report. So. So that's how she was, that's why she was so like, so persistent, and trying to hire me, because she wanted the same person who did the previous house with that report. So that kind of maybe, maybe think, Okay, well, you know, who knows, maybe she's realtor, maybe it'll get maybe she was impressed at the report. I don't know if she was impressed with the report, or just wanted me to give her a problematic report, like her house was. So I couldn't quite tell what that was yet. So. So I agreed to do the job on Friday, which is today. Yesterday was Thursday. The day we spoke was Wednesday. I made it super clear to her look, you have to I'm gonna send you an email right now. Please open it right away, sign and accept and make payment. And she goes on now I'll just pay you on Friday. I said, No, you won't. You'll be paying me today or the will there will be no appointment. Okay, no problem. So like I said, I sent the email, she opened it almost immediately, it just ignored it. flat out ignore it. So I could, I knew right away this, this wasn't gonna happen. So later on that night, which is Wednesday night, I get it noticed she responds to the email. Oh, I will call you in the morning to make payment. Email had the payment link in it with the inspection agreement? She did neither. She didn't just ignored both of them. So I woke up in a good mood on Thursday. And I sent her a text hey, look, you want to do this or not? You're supposed to confirm everything yesterday. You didn't. So how do you want to handle this? Well, you know, okay, I'll take care of it. I said, Look, I need this done within the hour. I'm getting a lot of calls right now. So I'm gonna take the next caller, for tomorrow. If if you're not going to confirm, I'm not going to, you know, lose money over this. And then I'm going to give you that within the hour, so I gave her an hour. And once again, our came in went no response. So this is that tough decision you got to make on Hmm, do I risk losing the job? Or do I just hang on, hang on a cliff hoping that this lady is going to pull through and actually pay and be serious about hiring me? And you know, then we can just move on. So I made a decision just to cancel it. I let her know. I said hey, look no longer available for you? And her response was, Oh, can you come back another day? I'm like, nope. And she says why not? I was done with her at that point I had to be she she was just a knucklehead. I don't know what her problem was. So I just blocked her phone number from calling me back, deleted the tentative, scheduled inspection. That's it. So today off, and I'm making this podcast. So that's where we're at. So I hope I covered enough here regarding your time management and your risk management, running your home inspection business. You really have to make those tough decisions as a business owner, and you're not always going to please people. So you will ruffle some feathers along the way. But at the end of the day, you know, you're not in business as a charity, I hope hope you're in this to make a living, support your family, support yourself, and everything else. So keep on inspecting out there, everybody. Keep your head up. It's the holiday season. So enjoy the holidays. And I'm sure I'll have a few more episodes before the end of the year. So I'm done with this one for now. I also want to mention, you can go to my YouTube channel, which is home inspection of 40 on YouTube. And you can see some videos about all kinds of stuff. Home Inspection defects. I got some educational videos for home inspectors, tools, tool videos, showing kind of tools I use some some of the jobs and all kinds of other information. So check it out. You get over there and watch some videos, please give me some subscribes. Some likes appreciate it. And if you're liking the podcast, please leave a review you can go to Apple podcasts or to the show itself home inspection authority inspection authority reviews and to get any questions when email me directly just John at home inspection authority calm looking for a T shirt or a coffee mug? I mean now I can hook you up