We were lucky to catch up with Brenda recently and have shared our conversation below.

Brenda, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

When we started Inspector Tony Home Inspections, Tony was the only employee and I was helping him in the evenings and weekends with reports, marketing, and networking. The first person I recruited was Tony’s son. He had the right personality and was willing to learn. The second inspector was referred to us by an agent. We trained both inspectors for a 9 month span, nervous about letting them go on their own and wanting to make sure they were as trained as they could possibly be. My two middle sons have been exposed to our business since inception, with one of them helping me build our first website. They both wanted to work in our business.
We learned that a 9 month training is too long, that there are always things that we encounter that we have never seen before, and that technology is our best friend. We can record a video of an issue and share it to the group for instant assistance.
Building partners with other professionals is detrimental to our business. We have a list of roofers, an electrician, HVAC and a plumber we can contact for assistance in those times that we are just stumped. Ensuring we acquire the correct information for our customers is extremely vital for our business and reputation.
We hold our employees accountable by having continuing education and lunch and learn with other professionals to be able to learn and ask questions.
For our employees, we wanted to ensure that they are not worried or stressed out when business is slow, so we started them out as salaried employees, while ensuring they have a work/life balance.
If we were to start our hiring process again, we would still make sure everyone is on salary, but make sure that the training process is condensed.

Brenda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

When I purchased my first home in 2010 as a single mother, nothing was explained to me. As a first time homeowner, I was completely lost and when I met Tony, I realized how much I didn’t know about homeownership.
When we decided to start our company, we vowed to make sure we educate our clients and to be there for them for any future questions.
We are proud of all of the friends that we have made from doing inspections – even going on vacation with some of them!
We all truly care about what we do and our customers can feel the authenticity and, though we are not perfect, we stand behind everything we do.
We are proud of our accomplishments, from the thousands of inspections that we have done, to the impact we make in our community. Our company has continuously given back to our community and founded a fundraiser that has raised over $ 400,000 for a local non-profit.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Covid through everyone for a loop. We had to learn to communicate with our customers in a way that they understood that we wanted to keep everyone safe, including ourselves.
We were unsure if our business would sink or if we would succeed due to the unpredictability of life.
We were able to shift more of our focus to social media as marketing, instead of in person networking to make our potential customers aware that we were ready to help them with this important life decision.
That year, we did almost 1,000 inspections and we were able to keep our team safe.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Our business is very niche. Those that need a home inspection are usually working with a Realtor. At the beginning of our business, we decided to go out into the community and meet as many people as we could. We did dozens of events, opening a booth and giving out swag and candy. We spoke to the community, introduced ourselves, and met tons of amazing people.
This gave us a step up in social media. We continuously have the most referrals on social media from friends and previous customers because people know our little company.
It was a risk to target the community and not just the Realtors, but the community has always supported us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.inspectortony.com
• Instagram: inspectortonyhomeinspections
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inspectorTonyUtah