Bringing The Dream Back To Your Business

Hi, this is Mike Crow, and I run home inspection business.

In fact, I've run a couple of home inspection businesses.

You know, true joy for me, though, has been helping literally

thousands of home inspectors build really solid home inspection business as well.

We can help a single man operation be able to do over three hundred

thousand dollars a year,

maybe all the way up

to 400 thousand dollars a year as a single inspector operation.

Even better for me is the 80 plus companies that we have helped

be able to build million dollar home inspection businesses.

I would like to help you be able to do the same thing.

Hey everybody, this is Mike Crow, and I am so excited today.

It's always nice to finish

something you started, you know, and we have been working through the book,

The E Myth and if you go to buy it, it's going to be called The E Myth Revisited.

This is the one I originally worked out of that literally changed my business.

And we are going through the very last part of the book on this.

And so it's actually called The epilogue. It's not even a chapter.

No, it's called the epilogue bringing the dream back to American business.

And, you know, the funny thing was this. I was looking at this.

I also realized I had made a series of notes here

in the back of the book of things that I wanted to try to get done.

Now, they're not to Intel.

They're pretty broad.

But I think maybe this will help you understand how to take some

of the information that we've been working with out of the book

and put it into your business as well.

And the truth is, I've done all of these

and so much more since I read the book way, way, way back.

OK, so in the epilog, bringing the dream back to the American business,

one of the things that says right up front

here is that this book is not simply a prescription for success.

It's more of a call to arms.

But even then, it's not a call to arms to do battle.

OK, it's a call to learning.

And that's what this book was for me.

I had studied a lot of books and learned from a lot of books,

but this book was so straightforward and so organized that it helped me

understand how to structure my business.

So what I learned I could put into the business

in the form of different systems in top of all that, he says.

So it really is talking about how to feel, think, act differently

and more productively, more humanely even than our existing skills

and and our current understanding allow. And

I'm still not perfect that this sometimes people tell me I'm too harsh,

I'm too cold, I'm too direct, and then I'm never satisfied.

And I'm sure to some degree, all of that's correct.

You know, one of my greatest lines from Star Trek, not Star Trek Star Wars

at one point is, you know, Han Solo was talking to the person who got the

Falcon from and I'm sure you know, in the name of that.

And he said, I've heard a lot about you.

And the guy looks up at it and goes, and it's all true.

All right. So to some degree, that's my whole philosophy, is

when people say, man, I've heard a lot about you.

It's all true, buddy.

OK, so one of the things it talks about

is that, you know, boundaries that once kind of served us,

whether they were geographically, politically, socially, emotionally, OK,

if you put all this into place , a lot of those go away.

And I've seen all of these go away in one form or another for people.

Geographically, boundaries have gone away.

Politically, boundaries have gone away.

Socially, boundaries have really gone away.

And emotionally boundaries have gone away.

When you understand what we're doing here.

And so the rules are constantly, constantly changing.

And you know what?

People cannot live without boundaries, though.

They need some kind of boundaries and they need some kind of structure.

They need some kind of rules.

And what I'm really saying is they need a system. OK.

So it's so difficult for us to do anything about our business.

How in the world are we going to do anything about the world?

So if it's hard to do stuff in our business,

how are we going to do anything with the world?

And I will tell you,

that was a barrier that was set for me, and I've been able to overcome that.

In fact, one of the things I tell people

all the time is be successful and be around those that are successful.

And the more money we make, the more people we can help.

And all of that really has helped me be able to change the world a little bit.

Am I changing the whole world? Of course not.

It is very, very, very few people that have changed the whole world.

All right. However, I have changed my corner of it

and I have changed this industry and the way a lot of people think with it.

Here's one of the problems

that comes with that, though, because the world's not the problem.

You and I are the problem. All right.

The world's not in chaos.

A lot of times people say it

is, by the way, but it's honestly, it's people that are in chaos.

And honestly, we are in chaos.

I was in chaos when I needed this book, when I discovered this book,

when I had this book presented to me.

And maybe you are, maybe you're not.

And it's OK if you are and it's OK if you're not.

In fact, it's great if you're not.

Either way, you can take this information and move forward.

And the world's apparent chaos is truly

only a reflection of the inner chaos from people.

In that way, if the world reflects a lack of good sense

is because each one of us reflects that.

And if the world acts, if it doesn't know what it's doing,

is because each one of us acts that way.

And if the world is violent and greedy and heartless and inhumane

and often just plain stupid, maybe it's because you and I are that way.

I'd like to say maybe it was because I was that way.

My world is a lot better at this point.

So the world is going to be changed and the world is always

changing our world, the world we live in.

We can change that now.

We can change it with the way we live our lives.

And it helps in a lot of different ways here.

And if you think about this whole process, you do that either

with your business or with your job or whatever it is.

And that, you know,

that's exactly what we're trying to make sure that we talk about here.

A small business is a place that responds

instantly to any action we take.

I don't know if it response instantly, but I think it does.

If we market, we get business.

If we don't market, we don't get business.

A business is a place

where we can practice implementing ideas in a way that changes lives.

A place where we can begin to test all of the assumptions.

That we have about ourselves.

It's a place where questions are at least as important as the answers.

In fact, one of the things that coaches have taught me over the years is,

Mike, you're saying you want answers, but you may be asking the wrong question.

And so the questions and a lot of cases are more important than the answers,

because you've got to try to get that right as well.

So it's a place where generalizations can give way to specifics.

Your business, your business is a place that demands your attention.

It's a place where rules must be followed in order preserved.

It's a place where, you know,

you can see things be practical and not necessarily idealistic now.

I'm very idealistic.

But in my business, on a

day to day basis, I am very, very practical.

In fact, once a week I sit down and go over the numbers with our general manager,

and sometimes I sit down with the inspector managers and I go over numbers

and I go over numbers on our vehicles and I go over numbers on our phone calls.

I go over numbers all the time.

So in business, I'm very practical.

Past that, though, just running this business, I'm very idealistic.

And I think the two can be one as long as you get the other. Right.

You cannot be idealistic, though, and be successful at it.

If you can't be practical and get the numbers right.

So it's kind of an important thing.

There be a place where idealism must be present for the practical to serve it.

That's his next sentence here, which is exactly what I'm saying.

You know, your business is a place where idealism must be present.

But you need the practical to make sure that it's serving it.

It's a place where the world is reduced to manageable size.

Your business brings the world down to a manageable size.

Inside of all that, small enough to be responsive, but big enough to test

everything we have and a true practice.

All that's what our business is.

It's a true practice hall.

There are businesses really our own little world.

It's our our world where we get to test things

and do things and see the results in it quickly.

He goes on to say here that we can't change our lives

by starting out there by like starting outside our business.

We have to change it inside our business.

We can only change our lives and create a world of our own.

If we first understand how such a world is constructed,

how it works and the rules of the game.

That's what we've been talking about here.

This whole book is the rules of the game.

And so if you think about things, we're talking about creating a business

development program. We're talking about the franchise prototype.

My business is a franchise prototype.

Now, I'm not selling franchises, but my business is built in such a way

that anybody could step in and take a look at the manuals,

take a look at the numbers and start reproducing what I'm doing.

And you need to make sure that your business is set up that way.

So, one, if you ever decide you want to sell it, you can.

And two, you can start hiring other people to do parts of the business.

So you don't have to go into that.

So take a look at it from this points of view, innovation,

quantification and orchestration.

You know, they become the practice that brings us and our opponents,

whoever they might be,

to the discovery of our limits, our weaknesses and our strengths.

All right. So innovation, quantification and orchestration

provide the belief system for our business.

Let we say that again.

Innovation, quantification and orchestration.

Provide the belief system for our business.

The philosophical bedrock of our interaction with the world.

And, you know, they become our source for learning and creating

and expanding beyond our own self-imposed limits.

I had self-imposed limits by the time I got to high school.

And by the way, it is young children.

We don't really have very many self-imposed limits,

but we learn to have self imposing limits.

Now, what you need to learn is to get rid of those self-imposed limits

and start creating something bigger than yourself, even inside of that.

And so it's all about kind of having an idea for action.

So when you hear something, you know, you'll forget it when you see something.

You'll remember it when you start doing something.

You actually start to understand it.

And by the way, this is part of what I teach people

when they're training people, right?

Yeah. You want to tell them and you want them to see it.

But when they start doing it, that's when they really start understanding why

it needs to be done that way.

You know, one of my best commercials I think I ever saw.

I don't remember.

And it may have been several versions of this at the airport,

but the guy that's loading the luggage on and off,

he just walking through the airport and looking at the people,

the people that have luggage out there that's going to be on that plane.

And then at some point, I think it's the pilot

that's walking through and he's just looking at the people.

And these are the people, you know, that he's

going to be flying from point A to point B. All right.

And then you see somebody else and a ladies walking through

and she's like the lady that is the one that takes the phone calls

and talks to people and helps them get their flight straight and everything.

And she realizes that these people out here is why she does what she does.

And sometimes I think we forget about that.

In fact, one of the the funniest things that I hear people say so often is,

you know, this would be a great business if it weren't for the people,

you know. So, you know,

you could probably be a great parent if it weren't for the kids, you know.

But that's just the way the world works.

So you want to try to make sure, though, that not only that, you understand

why you're doing it,

you want to be able to teach other people to understand why it's done that way.

All right. Here's what he's going to say.

He says, I ask you not to think about,

you know, a lot of the little pieces in a way, OK?

Or the big overall thing, even in the way it's time to act, because until you do

until you actually take action, you're not going to really understand it.

I have all the time I have people tell me that's too complicated.

And then they do it.

They go, oh, I wasn't as complicated as I think.

But, you know, I also had people tell me sometimes,

Mike, it's too simple, but that's too simple.

And yet they do it and they go, wow, look at what happened when I did that.

So sometimes that's when you do it,

when you actually put it into action, you begin to understand how easy it is.

I remember when I was a young young man and I had a friend and he had a big sister

and she was in high school and she had a book of like calculus.

And I looked at that book and went there, and there's no way

I'm ever going to understand that.

And then when I got older and I got into learning

algebra and learning calculus, and I went, wow, that's that.

Look, it's just formulas.

And it was a lot less complicated because I grew up and because I learned

what I needed to do from here to there to be able to get there.

It's kind of fun because my youngest daughter now teaches honors, calculus

and pre AP calculus, I think they call it, and all that good stuff .

So you need to act OK.

And as soon as you act, you'll begin to understand.

And when you do, then there will be nothing left to think about.

You'll be on your way.

Once you start acting,

you won't be thinking about why things don't work or this or that.

You'll actually be thinking of what you need to get done.

And then there's a lot of creative thought in there.

And this is at the point where you start

really beginning to innovate things and really move things forward.

I had so much fun going through this book with you,

and I do want to give credit to my my Aivi guy

and there that's making this possible and getting this all out there for you.

Just what an incredible guy.

And I want to tell him thank you for bearing with me,

because some days I'm coming in and going, OK, let's do one. All right.

You know, and sometimes I'm going,

oh, I'm sorry, I can't show up today for whatever reason.

Sometimes it had to do with the fact

that we had some deaths in the family this year.

Sometimes it had to do with other people having emergencies or business

needing me somewhere.

So I want to say I want to say thank you to him.

The other thing that he pointed out to me

is that we have just recently set up a new website.

You can go out to home inspector marketing secrets dot com, home

inspector marketing secrets, dot com slash formulas, slash

formulas, efo r m u l s home inspector marketing secrets, dot com slash formulas.

And out there, you're going to see

some of the systems that I built and some of the formulas that I built

to help Singleman operations be able to become what I call Ironmen.

And the formulas, the same formulas that I help

teach people, that I built a million dollar home inspection businesses.

And keep in mind.

And if you're a home inspector, you know this.

But for other people, a million dollars doesn't sound like a big business

until you realize in the home inspection business to do anywhere from 100 to 150

thousand is considered really good every year.

And yet I've helped over 100 companies be able to get to the point

where they're running million dollar companies.

Our company is running well, well over two million,

and they're getting ready to hit three million.

And hopefully the next time

we get a chance to say hi, I can tell you that we're at that point, I don't know.

So here are some of the systems that I went back and I made notes.

So I said, hey, I want to set up inspections more systematically.

I want to start with a lower level of skill with the person

that I need to be a home inspector so I can teach them the system.

Even if we have an inspector that comes in that's already licensed

and already been out there two years.

I generally have a lot that I need to teach them.

And it's very common.

In fact, I don't I can't think of a time that it hasn't happened

when I was doing it.

Within two weeks, they go I've learned more in two weeks with you

as a home inspector than I learned the whole two years

that I was out there in the field on my own, which doesn't surprise me.

The reason that is, of course, is because we put the systems in place

and we systematically created the business the way we want.

Now, this is where it starts getting fun.

Start making a set of tapes.

Is that Ajmi? A little bit.

So audios or videos. OK.

So you could start teaching people what you're doing and how you're doing it.

One of the reasons we're successful is because the way our systems

give our customers and clients

the same consistent treatment each and every time we work for them .

Let me say this again. I want to make sure that you hear it.

One of the reasons my company is so successful,

one of the reasons the companies that I help become Ironmen,

300 to 400 thousand dollars a year, maybe more, or companies

become other million dollar companies, is because of the systems,

because of the way the systems give our customers and our clients

the same consistent treatment each and every time we work for them.

And then I started making a list of some of the the audios and videos

I wanted to make.

So we have a system on answering the phone.

And I wanted to learn how to quantify that. And we've done that.

I wanted to make a routine of an inspection.

You know, I say this now.

What I want you to understand is when I started the home inspection,

there wasn't a routine.

Now everybody says, oh, yeah, our routine is blah, blah, blah.

OK, well, I wish that had been there when I started.

It is now, of course, in our business. And here's the other thing is our.

Is different than 95 percent of all home inspection companies out there.

When I start teaching, people are routine and why we do it, they go, Huh?

Let me give that a try.

And it changes the whole perspective for your client and your customer

so that they get a more consistent treatment each and every time.

And then we also built a system for marketing marketing online now.

But back then, it was marketing at real estate offices.

We set up a system for our office procedures.

I remember one time I came in with my oldest daughter

and we said, hey, when the paperwork comes in from the inspectors,

what procedure, what system does that paperwork go through?

And we eventually sat down and created exactly the way

we want the paperwork to be put together by the inspectors.

Now, there's actually less paperwork now than there used to be

because a lot of it's digital now, but we still have it set up exactly

the way with where the check is put on there or the credit card

number is put on there. This piece and this part up here.

So it can be signed so we can make copies and then put that on top of everything.

Make sure the check goes into the bank. Make sure the credit card.

So we took it step by step, by step by step.

And then once it went there, it went into the stack

and then it went through like four or five or six different steps.

And then it was eventually filed into the file cabinets.

OK, so one of our systems was setting up office procedures.

And then the last one I have written here,

and it's written in a different color ink.

So it makes me think I, I added it in later.

But, you know, how does an inspector maintain his image

when he's out there in the field?

How does an inspector maintain his image when he's out there in the field?

One of the things that we've tried to teach inspectors is what I call the W,

where they understand,

hey, here's where you start, here's overwhelm, here's competency.

Here is complacency, and here's where significance lies for you as an inspector.

But it's not just understanding that.

It's the different steps and systems in place in each of those

all the way from start to finish in that, you know, we have a 17 point

I think it's actually an

18 point introduction now that we do at the beginning of every inspection.

And we're always working on improving that and trying to help teach people to that.

So that is been an exciting adventure.

Now, here's the cool thing is I wrote a book years ago.

I don't even know how long ago.

Let's see. Back in. Wow. I don't know. It's been a long time.

I wrote this book.

The cool thing is that

the information in this book is still working today for people.

So I took a lot of the systems that I created for the home inspection business.

And I put it into this book called Home Inspector Marketing Secrets

How to Double Your Home Inspection Business in 12 Months Guaranteed.

We have seen people do that over and over and over again.

I got a text from one of the latest

private coaching clients that I have, and he's in Southern California.

And keep in mind, we just went through a pandemic. Right.

But he literally has doubled his business.

He's grown his business to a whole new level

and grew it by six figures plus all because

of what he learned from this book and different parts as well.

So I'm going to start going through this book piece by piece by piece

and trying to explain each part of this to you.

Home inspector marketing

secrets, how to double your business in 12 months guaranteed.

And I'm going to talk about, you know, the how plus why.

I'm going to talk about what do you want me

to talk about, systems for your business? I'm going to talk about refundability.

I'm going to talk about what you need to do

to make your business different from everybody else and why that's important.

We're going to talk about business cards, handling the phones, handling

your cell phone, even voicemail, making yourself referable.

There's three things that I'm going to talk about here.

There's more than three things, but three must that

you do to make yourself referable.

And then I want to talk about how do you handle a while?

And you know what or magic words that has gotten me more referrals

than you probably ever seen before.

And I'm going to talk about that

and then we're going to talk about the importance of the word asking

and how you do that and OK, and then finding yourself a guide.

I'm going to give you a right now moneymaking strategy.

And then the book is just full of success stories.

And people that I've worked with over the year,

I'm probably not going to mention a lot of them.

Many of them have sold their business.

And now I have retired and gone on to do amazing and wonderful things.

So that will be what we start with next time.

And I do want to tell you. Thank you.

If you made it all the way through this with me,

the Emet revisited or the email, I want to congratulate you on that.

You'd be surprised how many

people start something and they don't finish it.

If that's happening to you, it's a good chance

you don't have somebody walking side by side with you

that has actually already achieved what you're trying to achieve.

You're getting ready to do something you've never done before.

I don't know about you, but when I drive somewhere

for the first time, it seems like it takes forever.

But when I'm driving home, it seems much quicker.

Well, it's because we're familiar with it,

the same thing is for me on the inspection business.

And and the people here with me, my son, who is the general manager,

and our three inspector managers and the coaches that I trained inside

my coaching program and everything, you know, they all had to do that as well.

It's kind of like going to the top of Mount Everest.

If you've never been,

would you want to go all by yourself and figure it out all by yourself?

And if you do well,

that's not a very healthy thing to do, and it's a very deadly thing to do.

Almost everybody has taken a guide to show them the way

because it's so much easier, so much easier when you have somebody

that's already been there and done that and maybe has done it several times.

So, you know, I built my first company and it was over a million dollars,

and I sold it for over a million dollars, which was pretty cool.

And then I left that company and went to work and started coaching people.

And then I decided I needed another franchise prototype or a prototype company

so I could teach it to other people so that they could see it.

So we built I bought Texan's back then.

Then I started transforming it into our prototype.

So it's here for you to be able to see and learn from as well.

And if you'd like to come ride with us, we'll let me know that

if you'd like for me to help you

and stand side by side with you as you're going through this process,

then I would be I'd be honored to be able to help you with that.

Well, this is micro.

And as I love to tell you, be successful and be around those that are successful,

because the more money you make, the more people you can help.