No Home Inspection license required? How great inspectors still win in unregulated states

0:00 Matt, today we are talking with a man who needs no introduction whatsoever. They know him just by his looks and his wonderful personality. And we're talking all about inspecting in an unregulated inspection state. You ready to do this, man? Yeah, I we might as well give him an introduction anyway. I mean, like I know he doesn't need an introduction, but I mean, like, you know, I think the reason why we're wearing we got to give an explanation as to why we have these things on our head anyway. I just look, you know, I was sweating leading up to this interview. That's really what it was. Okay. So we'll roll the intro and we'll bring them on. Here we go.

0:41 Brent Fletcher, welcome back brother. We're doing good, Matt, you froze there. What were you saying? Well, I I was going to say I was just going to say like, don't know if I supposed to wear this over my ears or my ears supposed to be sticking out. Like, I don't know. How is it supposed to be? This is this is more Brent. I got more Brent going on. And then this is this is what Brad had going on. I was just trying to figure it out anyway. All right. You know what? Forget it. It's not my thing, Brent. It's your thing. It's your thing, Brent. It's your thing. I'm a yeah, there can only there can only be one, you know. can only be one. Hey, so I got before we get started, like this is kind of cool for me. You guys probably see this stuff all the time, but I all day.

1:24 didn't have an inspection day because I had to had to schedule it off because I had to go do some filming today on a video that I should. Hopefully I got a lot of editing. Mike, I've got the craziest week ahead of me and I don't know how I'm to get all this stuff done, but hopefully I can find time to edit this video and get it out Sunday. If not, it's going to be the next week. But I was filming at a house, a passive house. that's about 20 minutes from my house. Um, which that's not very common, right? And what's even more uncommon, especially here, it was on a basement. Okay. So, well, it's being built. So it is at the, what they've done, they pour the STEM wall. It's like, it's like a, uh five foot more like a glorified crawl space.

2:05 Okay. But, uh, but, definitely, you know, more than a crawl space and then just the construction of it is wild because it's going to be passive house. And so they had poured the STEM wall. They had. gravel a gravel bed and they were putting a product called Sika R max on the bottom, which is like an insulated uh subfloor uh insulation. It's made to be under the slab and and so they're putting that down and then over that they put uh a pretty awesome vapor barrier material called Stego pango, which is a 15 mil. Yeah, yes, they go bango. They get they get some coolant. Anyway, yeah, it's a a 15 mil vapor barrier. So it's really thick stuff, right?

2:47 And supposedly it prevents, I personally have never seen termites eat through any vapor barrier, but apparently from what I understand, it can happen, but they can't eat through this stuff for whatever reason. I don't know, but this stuff being 15 mil, like if you've ever seen, like, so right now they changed the code to six mils is the new standard, right? But hardly anybody's building to that standard. I'm sorry, they changed the code to 10 mil. uh The standard before that was six mil and that's usually what everyone at this point has still adopted and what they're building to and so six mil like It's like a trash bag. I mean you could tear it really easily This 15 mil stuff like they were wrapping it over and putting it over the stem wall where the anchor bolts were you couldn't push it through that you couldn't push the Anchor bolts through the head to cut a hole to put it through this nice thick stuff lays down really cool And then they're getting ready to pour concrete over that probably next week.

3:43 And so got to see that film, do a lot of filming on some of the really cool products they're going to do to air seal that, that passive house and everything like from like foundation levels. I'll be going over there a few times, but it was pretty cool for me. Cause like I say, I can count on one hand, the amount of basements I've actually been in. And yeah, it was, and that's just me being like visiting other places of the country. Like, cause I mean, I think in Texas I've only been in one. And so like, you know, it, I think there's probably not that many in Texas as a whole. It's either bedrock or water table or just the expensive things we build up. We build slab on grade mostly and go up and we have a lot of attics here.

4:23 This house is going down and that's where their storage and stuff is going to be. And so very different construction site than what I was used to seeing. So look forward to that video coming out on my YouTube channel and the build show network. So that'll be on both of those. Is this being done through the build show? it is, mean, a lot of my YouTube long format YouTube videos are, are being republished over on the build show website. And so, it's not, I mean, yes and no, it's complicated. Okay. But we're getting through it. find you. But dude, that's awesome. I mean, a lot of cool stuff going on there. Brent, you've had a lot of cool stuff going on too because you have migrated to an office, That is right.

5:07 So I do have a shop for the home inspection company and we have all of our cars and tools and everything out there. But I actually have an office now, which is for kind of the social media aspect and a way for me just to get away from everything and focus on some back of the house stuff. Nice, that's good man, that's good. So is there anything that you're gonna be doing with the Office space content wise or is it just a nice little write off? So that's kind of the whole point of getting it is I would like to get more into the YouTube long form content. We have some ideas that we're actually working on that tomorrow. Me and one of my workers or one of my employees were going to be sitting at the table and drawing up a bunch of sketch ideas. But yeah, trying to get more educational content, long form content. And, you know, with all the don't do that videos, one of most common comments I see is, uh can you explain what's going on?

5:54 So maybe I'll take a little dive into that and explain a little bit more on those videos that we do. That's pretty cool. Like I've oftentimes thought like how cool it would be to have a space like a studio or something. I don't know if you've got this kind of space in your office, but like where I could do maybe demos or something. I mean, like I'm not talking about like building, you know, uh, eight foot walls, 16 inch on center. there, but I mean, like if I could build mockups, uh, even if I built them off site and brought them in and showed them in a more controlled environment or just where I had a whiteboard. or something where I could show or something, you know, where I could uh or put a green screen up, just a actual studio where I could, you know, film some of this stuff in a more professional. I have enough room to put a green screen up.

6:34 I do have a corner with two chairs and a chessboard so if I have a guest out we can talk in front of that. Just kind of different areas of the office to set up for different filming styles. Dude, that's gotta be awesome, man. Good work. Definitely. some pictures of the building. It's like a historic building in downtown, right? Yeah, it's the Avery building in downtown Fort Collins. believe if I'm not mistaken, it was built in the 1870s. it's yeah, one of the staples is one of the first buildings to come up down here. And it's right in the core of the main downtown intersection. So I got a question for you. So besides like the content creation aspect of having an office, like I would venture to say that most home inspection companies, regardless of size, don't have one. Um, and so I want to, I want to know, like from your perspective, uh, what is it like having an office?

7:21 What was the reason why you decided that? Uh, and like, what, what do you think the benefits are of having an actual office? Yeah, absolutely. yeah, you're right. For the most part, I didn't have any office or a shop for the first four years I was in business. Everything was just out of my house. That was easy. Once I started hiring employees, I had to get a shop. I had to have headquarters that keep all the radons, a hub, know, just where someone can grab all their tools, keep all the cars parked. uh As that was taken off, um I really just needed a space where I can clear my head and focus on the other aspect of my business now that we know social media aspect. So that's when I got, I wasn't originally planning on getting one, but this office space kind of fell into my lap at a really good price.

8:06 So I was like, I gotta take it. I can't pass it up. So here we are. So yeah, I'm be working on a lot of that content in here. I know, man. I think that's super cool. we've got two of the biggest, most well-known catchphrases in home inspection content on the show right now between it's not supposed to do that and don't do that. And I think I should just start doing do that, you know, and just be the opposite of all of you guys. Just point to the good stuff, do that. should do that. You should I should do that. Well, we don't have Brent on the show today just to talk about social media. That's the easiest thing to get into because we are talking about something very interesting today because a lot of home inspectors, we all operate, you know, all three states that I've inspected in. uh All of them are regulated states, Florida, very heavy, heavily regulated.

8:50 Virginia was very quick to get on board with state regulations once that started becoming a thing in Tennessee is as well. But Brent, you are in a state that is completely unregulated. So uh first of all, What is that even like how how do you even get set up with working in that state? Is there any sort of oversight whatsoever? Or is it? uh You know kind of a pirate's land for homeless vectors Yeah there is some regulation. So don't think there's not. So as for the home inspections itself, that is unregulated within our state. So pretty much anybody can grab a pen and paper, write some things down and say they're a home inspector. There are different aspects of a home inspection company that are regulated though. Like Radon, we have to go through the NRPP, the NRSB and all that, the AARST to make sure we're all regulated.

9:36 whose phone is ringing? You gotta get it. You gotta take it. Take the call. you want me to? I don't know what's about to happen. Hold on. All right. Drink of the day is sponsored by you know, conveniently enough inspection fuel. Go ahead and register it is ready to we're ready to rock. Registration is live you can get the early bird special this year it is going to be September 28 to the 30th in Louisville, Kentucky. But you know, and since we've got Inspector Fletch on the show and he was at the last inspection field with us. ah Yeah, dude, so much fun. So guys, go ahead and sign up. But drink of the day, what are we sippin' on? Brent, take it away. So this is actually my favorite cocktail.

10:18 This is called a Naked and Famous. This is a mezcal based drink with a little bit of yellow, sartreuse, Aperol and lime juice. Shake it, pour it over ice if you wish. Little bit of lime twist. It's delicious. But to be the... Yeah. his garnish going on. set up in my office. I don't have all the stages set up. I got the bar set up. you were going to have a seltzer. I would have put money on like a Topo Chico Black Cherry or something. don't carry any seltzers in my office because they'll go away too fast. So I only carry cocktails. I have to make every one I'm going to Yeah, see, but to be the Fletch signature cocktail, I feel like it just needed its own little do rag tied around it, you know?

11:00 Yeah. There you go. There you go. No, as a as a new cocktail. That's cool. water, man. I mean, I can tell you it's not coffee, but it's water. It's water. It actually is water. I'm not going to lie, though. Like, this is right here in case we get dirty. Like, it's right here. Like, I'm ready to go if things happen. If this cup is empty by the end of this show. You got a refill. to hit that because I don't have any water close by. of water a day then you can you did your duties. hydrate before you imbibinate. you go. Seltzer.

11:40 There you go. I'm, I am picking it up for Fletch here. I got the Seltzer. That's a non-alcoholic this time. Yeah. Because we get I would not have guessed Brent would have had a non-alcoholic seltzer. I was going for like the real deal. white claw, am I allowed to say those on here? I don't know. why not? There's no laws when you're drinking. Yeah. Anyway, so back to regulated versus unregulated. So there are indeed some regulations around what you can and can't do and how things get done in the state of Colorado, but it is an unlicensed state. I guess that's the differentiator. think that's that's I think we should like talk about that for one second. Like what does it mean to be unregulated?

12:20 That means like in Texas, for example, and the states that that Brad was talking about earlier, uh we have to go through a licensing process. We cannot be a home inspector legally without going through a process that the state gives us not only in terms of training, but testing. And then licensing in Texas, I know we even had to do like a background check, fingerprints and all that stuff. So the whole bunch of stuff that we have to go through depending on state can vary a little bit, but we can't do an inspection unless we are licensed. And what the difference is in an unregulated state such as Colorado, I know that Joey was on last week. If you guys didn't see that episode, we had a great episode with Joey McPeak out of Idaho in the Boise area.

13:01 He was talking about whether or not... uh Clients should attend clients and realtors never they should attend the inspection. It was quite entertaining. Joey's a great guy. Go check out that episode. But Idaho, I know Utah is also not regulated. I know there's others, but there's more regulated and licensed states than unregulated states. But where you're at and Brent, you're out of Fort Collins, Colorado, but all of Colorado, there's no license licensing requirements. So I think technically if I had this right, You can just get a DBA and you're a home inspector. You can. you can. You can just go out there and do whatever. But there are some drawbacks or there are some catches to that.

13:43 For all the new builds that we have out here in Colorado is very big on all the new builds. None of the builders will let you on site unless you are certified through either NACHI or ASHI or the equivalent of. Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask. you know, when it comes to, is there anything that, you know, people look for? Like if a client or a realtor was going to hire you and obviously, you know, the builders, can't believe that they even have that regulation. They won't even let you on site, I guess. But yeah, so they're looking for some type of association. Does the general public know that? Is that like common knowledge? I think people are pretty surprised when I tell them that. We always have people that will call us asking about our services and prices.

14:25 They say they're going to check around a couple other places. And that's one of things I always tell them is like, absolutely, check who knows who's going work best with you. But make sure you ask them, are they certified? Because in Colorado, you do not need a certification to do home inspections. But that's not necessarily going to protect you as the buyer. Yeah, but is there any trepidation amongst buyers when they find out about that? Or again, they're willing to look up and see if you're not you certified or ah how did what gives them peace of mind? start. They don't even know how it even works or how to even see if a home inspector is certified. So I give them, you know, some information, some websites they can go do their own research on. But yeah, as it goes, most people have no idea if they don't know where to look and yeah, it's pretty surprising to them.

15:08 So are there, mean, that you know of, are there people out there uncertified, just kind of willy nilly inspecting stuff? Is that actually happening? a lot of times I'll get the you know, they'll already have an inspection done like a pre listing inspection and all that I will always look at the home inspectors name and it's a 50-50 shot if I can find them on ASHI and Natchi Right, if you get like a 20 page report and I can't find this person to save my life Wow. I had a realtor send me a report one time to review because it had some real funky stuff in there that was written up. I can't remember what it was now, but it was some real head scratching stuff that was in the report. was like, man, why is this guy saying this?

15:48 This is in Texas. And we have a standard of practice that we have to operate under. And this stuff was way outside of it. And I was like, what is going on? Mm-hmm. guy up and his license expired like two years. There's a current report. And so I was like, Hey, uh, just so that, you know, that, you know, this report you sent me is from an unlicensed home inspector. And so who knows what his story was, but that brings me to my next question really, because like in Texas, you know, not only are we licensed, but there is a governing body. Right. And so we, we, look to the Texas real estate commission track. for our standard of practice, which is basically a minimum standard at which we operate. Of course, we can exceed it, and most of us that have pride in our work do.

16:30 Where do you stand with any type of standard? Like, what keeps you, you know? personally for my company is anyone that works for me needs to be a CPI minimum. So I go off the InterNACHI standard of practice. And yeah, that's my own policy. That also helps me be insured and whatnot. Cause that's kind of a question. If you're not, you don't, if you don't have any certification, can you get a home inspector insurance? I'm not positive on that. Okay, so you don't know if insurance companies would even insure a non, is it even necessary? Right? So, yeah. So you're basically operating under international standard of practice then everybody has to be CPI. But the bigger question I've got there, too, is without a licensing board kind of observing what's going on or regulating everything within the state, what keeps other inspectors accountable?

17:20 You're keeping yourself accountable and your guys accountable. But how about other inspectors? Is it reviews reputation? How does it work? great question. Where are you going to put that? then, I always, you know, that's another thing when people call me and they want to do their shopping around, because I absolutely recommend it. The three things I always, you know, tell them they should make sure they ask is are you certified? If you're certified through who? Do you check their Google reviews, see where those stand at it, and then ask them what all services are included within their inspection? And once you kind of get that, hopefully that will help people fill it out a little bit. But yeah, it's pretty, it's the Wild West out here. people can kind of what they want. So does the lack of licensing um like change things in terms of like pricing like is it kind of like a race to the bottom is are those people that will just bottom feeders?

18:13 all over the place. I was looking at a website actually earlier this week from a home inspector that I could not find a certification anywhere. And I think he was doing up to 3000 square foot for like 325. Peace. this dude could be going in there and just like taking a couple of pictures saying he was there, getting your $325 and then that's it. Well, like, so if there is. entered on his website. I was taking it to practice so you can kind of get an idea what his inspections include. So. That makes it easier than a little bit it would seem to differentiate yourself in terms of justifying your price, but it also might require buyers to actually spend a little bit of time looking to see what they get for their.

18:55 and most people are looking at the price. That's their first stop. How much does it cost? know, it's because, you know, there are a dime a dozen home inspectors and that's how a lot of people see it, which definitely is not true in Colorado with being an unlicensed state. So I mean, then you really got to justify and try to sell your services as something that stands out amongst all of these bottom feeders. Yeah, and you know, when I first got started, there was a lot of that. How do you differentiate yourself talking about all your service? Now five years in a reputation has been built and it kind of stands on its own. But when you first get started, you really got to go out there and promote all those things that you're doing. Combustible gas detection. I know that's not even in the NACHI standard practice. I offer on all my inspections, infrared detection straight across the line.

19:39 Right, right, right. So without like a governing body, like there would be in like a regulated state, um know, home inspectors, I think it's no secret that we carry a lot of liability, right? Like when we do these inspections, we're reliable for things that we miss. And this can turn around on us in terms of lawsuit or responsibility. How does that work in a non-regulated state? Can anybody actually hold you accountable or? or liable for anything? I how does that work? I mean, I know you still, at least I think you'd probably be in your best interest to carry insurance. And I suppose somebody, anybody can sue you for whatever they want, but without a governing body, like how does that actually work?

20:20 Absolutely. even with the, like I said, the builders, they do require that you're certified. uh Most builders require one to $2 million worth of coverage and you need to provide that each inspection you do. And there are also a lot of agents that I've worked with that will also ask to show the proof of insurance. And I just have it labeled right in my car, license and insurance. Let's have it right on there. But yeah, you can definitely still get in trouble. It doesn't matter if there's not a standard out here. If you go into home and you miss something major and you're out there promoting yourself, I mean, I work on the natural standard practice. So I don't know if somebody doesn't have any standard practice or working under what would happen. But yeah, you definitely have to cross your eyes and dot your T's. Well, I mean, like I said, I guess anybody can sue you for whatever they want and whether or not they win.

21:05 That's kind of. That's not really the point. That doesn't matter until they do. But I mean, you know, so they can sue you. It's just there are guidelines here. like, you know, so I feel like it ups the ante in terms of liability because it's very plainly laid out what you what you're responsible for as a home inspector. Whenever you have a state regulated standard of practice that you got to follow, you don't follow that. and somebody sues you like they're going to win, you know, like that's it. Whereas I think there might be some gray area in a state that was unregulated. So where you stand in terms of OK, we said Joey on last week and Joey was like he's been pushing for regulation in Idaho.

21:56 He. Now he sets himself apart according to Joey. was a, are you, oh yeah, you're familiar with him. We were, we were on that panel together. Yes. um So Joey, he says, you know, the, the inspector reports that he sees from other inspectors up in the area, there's just no comparison to his at all. Like they're just really, really bad. There's a lot of inspectors out there that just not doing a good job. He sets himself apart that way. And apparently he has the business to be able to support. his way of doing business, which is again, to not even have clients attend at all. Um, yeah. And, and I mean, like, if you have the business to support whatever, you know, whatever crazy stuff you want to do, like go for it, you know, um, but you do have to have that, um, couple of inspectors out here that don't allow clients on their Really?

22:46 Yeah. I mean, like if you, if you've got the client base and you can, you can do it, that's great. If not, then I think it might hurt you. But, Joey, he feels like, guess I don't know what it, cause it seems, I don't know how I would feel if I was in an unregulated state. Like he seems to be pushing for regulation. Like here in Texas, like GCs don't have to have any licenses at all. Right. So you can build a house all day long. There's nothing stopping you from being a general contractor. They need no credibility. They don't have to take any tests. They don't have to apply to anything for the state. Meanwhile, home inspectors have all this stuff that they got to do, right? And the GCs that I know out there don't really want regulation because that's just going to be more red tape for them.

23:28 So I was kind of surprised to hear that Joe was pushing for, how do you feel about that? So let's put it this way. When I first started doing home inspections, there was no regulation over radon. So when I started doing it, I can just charge the $175, $200 to do a radon with an inspection, and then everything is good, great, grand, send it out. And then about two years ago, they made a state mandated that you had to be regulated, you had to get certified, which is great because now there is a standard that we have to go off of. I'm not going to downplay that at all. But now it cost me $2,000 to the state a year to run it. So I'm not going say it's a money grab, but there comes to a point where if you start making a license, now we got to pay the state X amount of dollars to make sure that we can still do the job that we're already doing, which ultimately is just going to put prices up.

24:14 like that makes sense, right? I get that. But do you think like the licensing? What's that? Well, I was just saying, like, do you think I totally see like, okay, now I have to pay money to the state that I didn't have to pay before that cost me money. But do you think that the licensing might draw a line in the sand between people that were not worth the value and the people that are and therefore you would make that money? ways. mean, yeah, there would definitely be a handful of people that are not going to put in the effort to get the license, and they're going to kind of pull back a little bit. But I think at the same time, if you make a regulation that you have to put up, then everybody in the grandma's going to go out and pay the $1,000, get the regulation, and flood the market.

24:57 So is it that they would flood the market or would having some sort of a price point in place help to price out uh kind of the riff-raff in a sense that aren't willing to? a good question. you made everyone, would there be more of a standard of pricing? mean, would you see that? I you guys are in licensed state. Is there any standard of pricing with you guys or is it kind of all across the board? It's in Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida. uh Pricing seems to be fairly consistent as far as rate on test from one to the next. ah I think the pricing is probably consistent, but I mean, that's just you can you still have the ability to price it however you want, right? Yeah.

25:37 But it's if you price it, it's one of those things where it's such a low price point of entry for a service. You know, we're talking a couple hundred bucks total, you 200 or $300. If you price yourself too high, they're just going to find somebody else. Right. So it's just in terms of rate on though, just like pure pricing period. mean, because if you had that right. So you in Colorado, the states kind of control the rate on thing. But let's just say overall home inspection pricing like, you know, that's not anything like the regulations in states that require licensing don't have anything to do with the pricing. Yeah, and I do agree there should be some standard that the whole state goes across, because I want to see to make sure the buyers and the clients are getting protected and they're actually getting what their money's paid for, because someone comes on and they can do half a report if they're not being regulated over anything.

26:28 And someone might not know the difference, just by the amount of people that call me, not realizing you don't even have to be licensed to work in this state. Well, that's kind of the bigger thing. You mentioned protecting home buyers, making sure that they get their value. A lot of the regulation, especially going back to state of Virginia, Virginia is a buyer beware state. So they give the buyer a right, in a sense, to have a home inspection prior to purchase. Like if they want to have it inspected, it can't be denied by the seller. Now, even in Massachusetts, they're essentially making it a requirement that a house get inspected beforehand. ah But again, those rules are really to protect the buyer. So in an unregulated state or an unlicensed state, what are some things that buyers can do to protect themselves and what are questions that they should be asking to make sure that their behinds are covered when they're purchasing a house?

27:21 You know, so I covered a little bit of that just a minute ago. What they should be asking if they're searching for home inspector, we know price is always a factor. You can always ask that. But ask if they do carry in sort of certification. Are they ashy? Are they nachy? Are they one of the other certification programs? What services do they offer? And how quickly can they tell you? know, roof electrical HVAC plumbing foundation. Those are my five majors and I got about 200 items on the cover throughout the inspection including infrared detection and combustible gas detection and no extra charge. Can they randle that off right away? Make sure that they know what they're talking about when you're looking for a good solid home inspector and do not skip the Google reviews. Those are huge out in this state, especially when you're unregulated.

28:04 My flow is off because I used to answer my phones all the time. Let me tell you, like I had it down. I mean, I was like, when people call me, like I can close the deal so fast. I mean, like they're not getting off phone calling somebody else. Like it just wasn't happening, right? I don't handle that anymore. in to Attic are crawl space with a pen and paper when I first got started. And you can get that phone call in under five minutes. You can get the job booked and going. I get that call I'm on a roof and I there's my flow man. It's going right and I have videos that I put out on this because I was trying to help train people, you know for years and it was I think these were out there on the subscription thing where you had to pay Instagram.

28:47 I need to redo them and put them out on uh YouTube and stuff because I think it's still very relevant like but I think like especially a newer inspector man when you get that call I people ask me all the time like What do need to ask inspectors? And I'm like, ask them what they do. And if they can tell you what they do with confidence without hitting speed bumps and hesitation and stuff like that, they probably pretty dang good at their job. else and they can already just ramble it off because they said it so many times. Yeah, yeah. And I do it. I do it every day. Like, what do you want to know? I got it all right here. Yeah, no, I love that. I actually miss it. Yeah, you're right. got admin now answering all the phones. I don't remember the last time I took a phone call.

29:27 But yeah, I know exactly what you mean on that. Oh man, I loved it too. was fun. To get that phone call and then to get off the phone and know you already had their stuff, you were going to get them booked on a job, it was fun, exhilarating. Go ahead. speaking of phones and being on the phone as you two are, it's less about answering phones for you guys and more about talking to the camera that's on the front of it. ah But do you feel like being in an unlicensed state social media has helped to give you more credibility with buyers? You know, I think that would go for any state, whether it was licensed or not. Being someone, you know, you're letting someone into your home that you don't know to help you make one the biggest financial decisions of your life.

30:12 uh Feeling like you know a person, be able to see them, this or how they act, you know, you're not just going off a picture now, you're going off of a personality. So, you know, rather you get to a large scale social media content creator, or if you're just making local content off of, you know, Instagram so your local market can see you. Bringing your personality in there, I think, is a great way for people to trust you, period. oh Now, and again, it does make sense for both, because again, Matt's in a licensed state, you're in an unlicensed state, and you both got huge follow-ins from this. So that's passive. is going to be, we're going to have talk to our editing department on this one. But I think that we should definitely have a counter for how many times we say some form of the word regulated or regulation on this show.

31:02 I think at this point it'd probably be up to like 26. yeah, yeah, let's at least get a few more in there. I don't know if the ones I just said. Oh man. Yeah, we should have talked about that before we started. I didn't know. I didn't know I was going to go there. doing it for SEO, man. Yeah. I got a question about a uh video that you put out recently, Brent. So you had one that came out just the other day, and it was about starting to work when you lacked the confidence. And in it, you explained that you had competence. And you kind of leaned on your training until the experience kind of caught up with you.

31:49 So I thought that was really really good and really inspiring because I can definitely remember being in that in that same place. So like for like a new regular for a new inspector say in an unregulated state there mark the counter there's one more you know I'm throwing myself off just saying regulate at this point but how do you how do you balance that like do you have any advice for anybody how to like kind of deal with that between not being confident and like trusting their training to getting to that confident um level. When you do your first inspection, you don't have your flow down. mean, you just kind of look up online, see what people do, ask a couple questions, you know, outside, inside, top to bottom.

32:32 When you're going to your first inspection, definitely you're only going to get out of your education, which you put into it. So make sure you know exactly everything that you studied. But I would say I relied a lot on my experience from other industries, if you will. So I worked for a inspection, or excuse me, a moving company forever. So I already understood the stresses that goes with moving. So I was like, all right, well, can lease. I know I have that covered. So when I deal with a buyer, I know they're going to be stressed. I already know kind of where that's coming from. I did a lot of construction background, so I knew I had a little bit of an outline there. So when we put all those together, that's what made me feel competent. I knew kind of the situation I was walking through, the vibe I was walking into, and my education.

33:18 allowed me to know what I was looking at. had terminology, I knew the outline of it and a bunch of YouTube videos too for the night before the inspection. What are they gonna do? uh really good advice, man. Like lean on what you do know. Like, yeah. once you do that, that's cross it off. Done. We can move on now. We already know we can handle this. And now we can just focus on the kind of areas of questions. And one thing that I even teach all my new guys that are coming on. And one thing that I relied on very heavily and I still use to this day is a simple, you know, I don't know, but I will have an answer for you by the end of the day. I'm going to take photos. I would take documentation. I'm going to take it home. And that one part kind of helps my competence move into confidence.

34:02 because I knew I least I could never let someone leave them hanging and I could formulate an answer for them in time. Well, we shouldn't be expected to know everything all the time, right? And not everybody does. No one's going to. And so to be able to kind of admit that confidently, ah but then have the confidence that you will find the answer later is huge. I think that's great advice. I agree. And I think it would be a great topic to speak on at Inspection Fuel, uh, 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky, because I actually know the guy who's planning the agenda for all of the business courses, the business and marketing courses, because that's, that's me.

34:42 So yeah. Yeah. Do you want to speak all that? That'd be awesome, man. All right. I will. I do. Competence into confidence. There you go. again? The dates? September 28th to the 30th. Yeah, that's all right. We'll go. talk about it off air for sure. Yeah. Yeah. We'll shoot you an email. It's fine. Your people talk to my people. Uh, but, uh, no, I think that's great. And I think that I love that, like lean into what you know, I feel like it's always been in the back of my head, but I'm not sure that I really like, like thought about it in those terms, but it's like, it doesn't matter what you come from, right? If, if, if you come from customer service, well, then you know that.

35:26 You know that. So you don't have to worry about the customer service going into it. Cross that off, go on to the next. Yep. Yeah. They start working. Yeah. Use what you know, uh, and shine in those areas and then start kind of, you know, picking up the pieces and the other ones to get better at them. That's great, man. Good stuff. ask y'all though, do you guys remember your very first home inspection? Because I do, I will never forget it. I do, I very much do. I remember, can't count the number of times I went upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, downstairs. Like, just like not knowing where I was supposed to be at any point in time. Like, so I checked the sink and run down and see if it's leaking in the basement. Where do I go? Dude, if I could get it back, I would do so much better.

36:07 And you know what? That was a friend of mine that I did that for. And I'm going to see him Thursday. I see him pretty regularly. I'm going see him Thursday. So we're still friends, so I must have done OK. But man, I mean, like, I'm telling you right now, like, those first inspections, like, I still feel bad about it. Like, I wish I could get them back. I mean, like, no one had, I feel so thankful for the people that hired me in the beginning. Because I had, mean, look, I think when you compare it to even some inspections that I see people put out today, I probably did a very good job. But like compared to what I do now and what I intend to do, like there are nowhere near what I wanted to be.

36:48 Like I don't feel like anyone had any business hire me. I'm very thankful that they did. It has to be right. Like there has to be this crazy. Probably. I did not, I did not. And it served as a teachable moment. I actually told the story multiple times and it's always at the same point of the home inspection and you'll see why. So I immediately got thrown in the deep end. uh that your phone, Roger? Yeah. wasn't mine. what that was. I don't know. So I immediately got thrown in the deep end. This was a remodeled like hundred year old house, a little bit of a, it wasn't a full on Queen Anne Victorian, but it was old, ah fully renovated new kitchen, new appliances.

37:34 Right? What's that? just terrible to be thrown into a house that old that complicated right off the bat. one. Well, you had to do ride alongs in Virginia, you know, it wasn't my first time on a property, but this was my first time solo. And so to have to tackle this. And yeah, again, I'm trying to remember workflow, like, you know, did I get everything started up first? And the reason I always tell this story is because when I go in the kitchen, I always when I start the oven, I check it twice, I open it, look in close it. Open it again, look in one more time just to be sure, close it. And when the buyer has been standing there, because we've talked about this, I bring the buyer around with me.

38:15 ah They're like, so why did you look twice? I said, well, because my very, first home inspection, I learned the importance of why you should. ah I started everything up in the kitchen. I was like, OK, I'm doing great. I've got kitchen appliances running. I've got lights on in the house. We're ready to rock and roll. I'm ready to start taking notes. And the agent suddenly goes, should the oven be smoking? And I went, oh, it's a brand new oven. It shouldn't be smoking. It's probably that new oven smell that's just cooking off. Let me double. Holy crap. I had forgotten to take the manual out of the oven with the plastic and the cardboard.

39:00 And this thing was on freaking fire. uh you something though that that I don't I don't fully blame you for that. mean could you have prevented it? Yes, but that means some idiot put that in there and didn't even check it that makes me angry. been so many times that I've saw that since, where it was a brand new oven or brand new dishwasher and all the interior packaging wasn't removed. this was, but it was in thousands of homes, the only time I caught something on fire in the oven. It took me one inspection to learn that. oh has happened me. it's not even being a new inspector. It was about two or three weeks ago. I was upstairs doing a remodel in this old house. And I turn the sink on and an agent calls me.

39:41 So I take the phone call and we're going over some stuff. And then after talking to him, I turn around and the whole floor is flooded. It turned out they didn't ever connected the water line to the sink by turning the hot and cold on the same time. And it was the cold line. So the hot was coming out. but the coal was just spraying underneath the sink and then the flooding the whole thing. So I got to spend about 45 minutes soaking everything up and having a lot of phone calls. But the end of the day. Yeah, I have totally been there and that's brutal. That is brutal. Yeah. Yeah. Mini towels. Sham Wiles. I got a whole bunch of them, Yeah, totally. I've been in some really gnarly situations like that, got the ovens.

40:23 I got a whole file on my phone of stuff in ovens because I found so much stuff in ovens, like whether it's like people's stuff or like random food or, you know, the manual and stuff like that. The manual always irritates me. I never posted that video. But, but I do have a file of all that stuff that I was going to make a video on one day. I just reminded people to open the oven before they turned it on. Because I mean, I do, find it all the time, but it irritates me because it's like, I wouldn't even put in a light bulb without turning it on and make sure it worked. Right? Like there's just no way I could just install something and then walk away and go, it's cool. Like, but when they leave all this, I'll tell you what happened to me one time, similar to the whole oven situation.

41:04 There's a new construction house, go to it. I turned one of the first things I do is turn on the dishwasher because it takes a while to run, right? And I like to get it all the way through to the end of its cycle so I can take a thermal picture of the drying element. Get that make sure that we show in the report that it was working. And so I try to do that first thing, right? So I turn it on, start doing the inspection of the house, come back like, I don't know, an hour or two later. And something smelled a little funky, like, like, I don't know, something smelly had been burning. Like, what is going on? Because I just I'd open up the thing, close the soap door and turn it on. Well, it wasn't the manual and stuff, but you they had like a rack for like silverware and stuff.

41:45 It was under the rack that you, uh everything inside this dishwasher is the same color, right? It's all gray, all the same color gray. And I never pulled that out and look at it, especially on a new construction. I might get a little bit close. closer on like an old house to see if that stuff's deteriorated or rusted. But I mean, this is a new house, right? I didn't pull the rack out. I just closed the soap door, turned it on and we're good to go. Man, that thing was sitting right on top of the element and it just melted that plastic. and em so then like I let them know, I was like, hey, like this was not installed right. Like I don't want to be responsible for this. Like I turned it on. You couldn't even see that thing in the bottom. Like I would have had to pull the rack out to see it.

42:28 They turned around and tried to build me for it. And I got the manager on the phone. was like, listen, bro, like somebody should have put that thing where it goes. It goes in the door. It was mounted underneath the dishwasher. And furthermore, no one ever tested the dishwasher. It would have happened to them. And they didn't, they ultimately didn't. It was both not supposed to do that and it wouldn't have done that if they just don't do that, you know? Yeah, there you go. But we don't want to give a whole bunch of fodder to certain inspectors out there that try to find fault with everybody else in their field. These are all mistakes that we all make. That's exactly right. Yep. Now that's huge. So speaking of that, you've hired a bunch of guys. We've actually got to talk with one of your inspectors on the show before, ah That was an awesome interview.

43:15 back at. As a no, that's a different Bree. Sorry. My main admin is named Bree. You're talking about Brianna Beans. I worked for her. There was a there was a couple of one summer I think she fell off a ladder or something she got hurt. And she just had a booked out calendar and she called me and she was like, Brett, can you help out? I was like, absolutely. So I was already double booked. So I get you know, do I eight to five. And then I would go do hers five to nine to try to knock all those out. But yeah, it was a great time. had a lot of fun doing it. Yeah, no, she was awesome. Go back and watch that episode if you guys haven't. Fantastic model for doing home inspections with recurring revenue out of it too.

43:59 Really cool. She also has some great content on social media too. I watch her stuff from time to time. She does a good job putting herself together. doing a great job at that. Yeah, totally killing it, man. Absolutely. Well, what's next for you guys out there, man? And when it I guess to kind of wrap up the since we have one more our word that we have to say regulation, Just go ahead and let it flow man. The counter's going. m Yeah, yeah. Did you finish sipping on it? No, I'm still in the water. I'm in the water. I'm nursing the water. no, but to wrap it up, mean, if you were to require uh licensing or regulation in Colorado, I mean, would you want to see some sort of like an apprenticeship program out there? That's something that's been discussed in Virginia.

44:41 ah So with my company is what I can base it off of. I have a pretty strict training program for me. You will do 50 inspections with me before you are allowed to go out on your own minimum and you cannot start doing any ride alongs until you're a CPI certified. So that is your first step and then yeah, 50 inspections with me and I have a whole training where you're the first 10, you're just following me around seeing what I'm doing. The next 10, you're opening up the app and starting to go through it. And by the end, I'm following you around the last 10. I'm watching everything you're doing. And I do think that would be pretty important out here if they could do something like that. I'm on the fence about the whole regulation thing because it's just a lot more money that it's gonna cost to do these inspections.

45:22 I don't think I would be wanting it to happen either. I can see, cause cause roofing, uh, Travis Jones, another guy that's been on the show and was with us at inspection fuel, on the live show. Um, you know, he's put, he would like to see licensing for roofers because man, roofing in Texas is definitely the wild west. And I mean, they shoot those nails like they're shooting pistols. Let me tell you, it's, I can't believe that. a mess. and so, uh, so yeah, I think that there is an element of like separate the best from the rest with, with licensing. Um, but I, I don't know, maybe it's the outlaw in me, but I feel like I would, if I was in a state that didn't require it, that's how I would want it.

46:13 Yeah, I'm happy where it's at right now. But yeah, I'll set the standards. Get on the board, man. Meet the leader. just consult Brent Fletcher. Okay. That is it. Well, dude, this has been awesome, man. Fletch. It's always good having you on the show. Love all the content you're putting out there. You're one of the good guys in this industry, man. I thought you were in. I thought you and Sean were going to be doing a podcast. We were working on it for a minute. Honestly, I am just so freaking busy and I know I probably let him down on that, but I just, give, I'm also got my two kids. I got two toddlers. I'm running a business. I got social media. I like to say yes to everything, but when it gets to it, I just, yeah, there's, I had to come to a point where I had to pull myself away from a few things, even the networking group that I ran out here for three years.

47:00 had a thousand members. It was very big for real estate. oh and I had to pass it off to someone else. And that was the same time I had to tell Sean, sorry, I just got too much on my plate. my company is just freaking exploding right now. Yep. I totally get it. And you know, I get the question all the time. I'm sure you do. Like, how do you do it all? You know, and I don't even know how to answer it, to be quite honest with you. It's not exactly easy. just, there's a saying, how do you uh eat a whale? One bite at a time? Just keep going. Yeah. Yeah. and everything gets quiet, I like start writing down what I could be doing next.

47:41 There you go. That's going good. I know that probably everybody watching already knows who you are and probably already follows you. But for those insane few that don't, where can they find you, man? You can find me. So Facebook's gonna be the one different that's at Fletcher's home inspections.com. But if you go to Instagram, Tick Tock or YouTube, that's going to be inspector under scroll Fletch. Well, dude, you're an inspiration to us all, okay? Seriously. Don't, yeah. We love having you on and we'll see you next time right here on, You Got It. a good day.