F.U.T.U.R.E

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

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

You 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 $300,000 a year.

Maybe all the way up to $400,000 a year as a single inspector.

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.

the future depends on what you do now.

You want to have fast revenue growth.

These six things are important.

This is what future stands for.

F U T U R E.

Future fast revenue growth.

. It all starts with fast revenue growth.

If you don't have money coming in, nothing else happens.

So when people tell me I don't need money, I don't need more inspections.

You know what I like to tell people is that my dad once said, and we heard

this from a speaker and I don't like the saying, but it makes a point.

You can lie to your employees.

Sometimes you can lie to your vendors sometimes, but don't lie to yourself.

Now the truth is me and dad.

Hate line.

But don't lie to yourself.

Don't tell yourself I don't need more inspections.

Can you imagine, go ahead and look in the mirror and say that

to yourself with a straight face.

I don't need more inspections.

How long do you think it'll be before you don't have enough inspections?

If that's the crap you're feeding your brain, we all need to make sure

we're taking care of the inspections.

And then with that comes you surfing market share.

It took us two hours to come up with the word user.

We went through every dictionary, looking at everything.

And when I saw usurp, I went, that is it.

I am taking market share from anybody and everybody.

And unless you have 30% market share in your area, and by the way, if you

do, then we need to expand your area.

But unless you have 30% in your area, you got market share to.

Okay.

And I have, I have no hard feelings towards my competition.

None whatsoever.

Sometimes people say, man, you are mean, I am not.

I'm willing to give them a job any day of the week.

Absolutely.

So you start market share.

You should be measuring your market share.

I loved watching.

Texinspec go from 1% to 2%, to 3%, to 5%.

We are now at 7% of market share.

I want 20 minimum.

Okay.

Now tackle and mitigate risk.

And I'm going to tell you a secret.

My dad taught me a couple of these six items and I learned them and I went

to college and got a marketing degree and I learned a couple more of them.

And then I heard this guy speak and I realized, there's six.

He says there are six things you have to do to grow a stable, successful business.

One of the ones I missed was tackling and mitigating risk.

I had an inspector come into town, start doing color photos.

I had agents literally go, Hey, look, he's doing color photos.

And it goes, yeah, but we don't want to do those because, and

then I made every stupid excuse.

We all know now color photos is like, if you're not doing them, like, oh my gosh.

Okay.

But he was the first one to do them.

And, but I ignored him.

I ignored the risk.

And before I knew it, he had six inspectors.

Okay.

And by the way, when I went and spoke, 15 years ago, he was sitting

on the front row, And then he went back and kicked my butt some more.

Okay.

You've got to tackle and mitigate risks.

You've got to see it coming.

You've got to be able to step aside, dad.

And I used to say, there's a silver bullet in full swing

and it's headed our direction.

Okay.

Did you get that here?

Let me try again.

There's a silver bullet coming my direction.

Okay.

Anybody ever watched rockery files used to watch a lot of Rockford files

to Hogan's heroes, Rockford files.

I think they have something in common.

I'm not sure, but at one point the doctor is fixing him.

He goes, man, two inches to the left and you'd be dead.

And he said two inches to the right.

They would have missed me completely.

You got to tackle them mitigate risk.

Then you've got to upgrade talent yearly.

One of my best friends runs a a hundred million dollar company.

I love this guy.

We talk, we share, we.

And he said 10 years ago, he said to the company, he was growing.

I will not be the CEO.

You need 10 years from now,

but I am going to become the CEO.

You need 10 years from now.

I was not the person that needed to be able to do what this community

is doing today 15 years ago.

But every day I work on becoming the leader.

This community needs to be able to make sure we help people

help themselves and others.

And by the way, my coaches guide me sometimes on that.

If at some point you need to stop being an inspector and start running the.

So it's kind of a tough thing, but you've got to update your talent yearly.

Then you need to make sure you have rewarding profitable growth.

Now I'm going to tell you this was number six.

This was, this was the second one that I did not really focus on.

I'm not money oriented.

I've never been money oriented.

I've been people oriented, but I think mark, Victor Hansen said it.

The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them.

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

That was my version of that.

And I've lived by that my entire life.

Now I will tell you that every now and then you need a lot

of money to move something.

Some leverage.

And then the last one, and this is one I kind of knew, and I've been

learning over the years, you have to engineer culture and stay on purpose.

You have to engineer culture and stay on purpose.

You engineer culture, by some of the signage you have

hanging in your, your office.

We visited Jerry's office and it was so motivational.

We went back after we visit his office.

I said, I'm not going to ask you.

What's one thing you learned.

I want to ask you.

What's one thing you read on his walls that inspired you.

There were so many, nobody did a repeat.

What do you keep in front of you to inspire you?

My office has all kinds of things hanging there to inspire me.

Some of them are pictures.

My dad gave me this cool little thing of a guy in business that

has all these foul drawers open and everything I have that framed.

One of my people framed it for me and hanging on my wall.

So I see it every day.

When you come to Texas inspect, you're going to see one whole wall of stuff

that I stored from start to finish.

In fact, I think I have it here with me.

I think I have our very first Christmas card that we sent out, which was

hand drawn by my dad, but we saved it because that's part of our culture.

And one of the things that you want to do is understand where your past was,

so that you can move on to your future.

So those are kind of important things.

Now, I want to introduce you to a new word that Jonathan introduced

me to Jonathan, how do you say this?

Say Kojo say Kojo.

Now here's the thing is Jonathan decided he wanted to learn how to speak Japanese.

So pretty cool thing.

So he started listening to this pod, listening and teaching him and he

taught me this word, Cinco, Joe.

We went to Walt Disney world and there were Japanese people in line.

I said, I just want to find out, do you know what the word say?

Kojo means?

And they looked at me like, never heard that.

Okay.

Japanese people in line got this word that I heard from somebody that's studying.

Japanese said Kojo, never heard of that.

Never heard of that.

Got this word that somebody taught me, say, Kojo, you ever heard of that?

Never heard of that.

Jonathan.

You just embarrassed my son.

Okay.

Say Kojo.

Does it exist?

Does it?

The guy I thought he was pulling.

So we went back and listened to the podcast.

It does exist.

Say Kojo.

Now if I went to somebody, all right, so there's some young people in here.

Zack, if I said that is fly, do you know what I mean?

Stand up, tell everybody that is fly means.

That is awesome.

How many people did not know that?

Can I see a show of hands?

Some of you just don't want to admit it.

I get it.

It's okay.

I want you to know, we hired a young lady at the office the other day, and

we were filming me and my dad that scene with the shoes and all that.

And she went by and went.

You are fly.

And I went, thank you so much because I have younger kids

that taught me what that meant.

But if I were to go ask a hundred people, do you know what if I were to say you are.

Nobody would know what it means by the way, during my dad

years, I don't know what it was.

Okay.

But it went from groovy to cool to you are the bomb.

Okay.

That is fly.

Okay.

And by the way, there's others out there that I'm not even going to try

to embarrass myself by messing up, say Kojo means hitting on all cylinders,

say Kojo means hitting on all cylinders.

How many of you remember your very first car?

There is mine.

My dad helped me buy that.

I remember that car.

My dad helped me buy that.

I paid, I think $300 cash for it.

Susan used to call it dirty diaper, yellow.

But she dated me in it.

And every six months I had to change the spark plugs out on that because the

spark plugs would stop working properly.

Do you know what it's like to drive a car?

When one of the spark plugs is not working and yet poof.

Poof.

Okay.

If not fun.

Now imagine if two of the spark plugs ain't working, how many of the spark

plugs have to stop working before the car?

Won't start probably two, three.

And so I used to carry extra park plugs in the trunk of the car just so I could

change them out sometimes after school.

Okay.

I know what a spark plug socket looks like.

I see one today.

I go, Ooh, spark plug socket.

It's very specialized socket.

All right.

You need to be hitting on all cylinders.

You need all six of those items in your business.

Does that make sense?

So you need fast revenue growth.

You need to be taking market share.

You need to tackle and mitigate risk.

You need to upgrade talent yearly.

You need rewarding, profitable growth, and you need to engineer

culture and all that good stuff.