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Playing the Long Game: Interview with Inspector Empire Builder CEO Mark Hummel

by Isaac Peck, Publisher

Building any business takes energy and intention, not just tools and skills. Building and maintaining a home inspection business is no exception, especially in an ever-changing housing market. According to Inspector Empire Builder (IEB) CEO Mark Hummel, it takes a mindset. Founded in 2017, IEB provides coaching and motivational training for home inspectors, and currently serves around 250 clients. During our conversation with Mr. Hummel, we discussed his predictions for the housing inspection market, what motivates people’s business decisions, the needs of solo entrepreneurs, and Mr. Hummel’s favorite subject, mindset.

Working RE: For starters, give us a brief rundown of your own professional history and how you came to be at IEB.

Hummel: I’m not from home inspections or home service or real estate or anything related to what we do. I’m a coach—a business coach, a performance coach. What I do is bring industry experts together and then we build communities around them.

I was a paramedic for 13 years. I ran a county EMS agency, one of the busiest in the country, for a number of years. It was high-stakes, so it was really fun. I eventually got into emergency management. I was a task force leader for the state of Texas for disaster response. I ended up going back to school. I got my degree in public administration. Right around the time I was finishing that degree, I just came to the very clear realization that government wasn’t the track I wanted to chase. And so, the same month I graduated with my public administration degree, I left the field, enrolled in the MBA program, and didn’t look back.

Soon I was running a team of coaches in the Houston area, I was completing my MBA, and I was bored. I thought, I’ll just get a job coaching, health coaching. It was part-time, 17 bucks an hour. I thought I could go help people. I got hired as a part-time health coach, so that I could finish my MBA. And within a month, I became the area manager.

Pretty soon I got to a point where it was like, OK, it’s time for me to lean deeper into coaching and see what that looks like. So, I started looking for the next great group of people to work with. And then I actually found IEB—six minutes from my house. They needed help going from an entrepreneurial kind of environment in their startup days to more of a systems and process-driven business. That’s where I came in. It’s been about four years. Now we’re launching another Mastermind group, and our intention over the next decade or so is to just continue doing that to the degree that we can and launch as many Mastermind groups as we can.

Working RE: Before we talk about your services, how about an overview of what IEB is, its mission and how it benefits home inspectors?

Hummel: Our mission says faster growth, record profits and time freedom. We get really excited when people build their business into something that’s more efficient and produces the lifestyle they’re looking for, but we also get really excited when somebody says, ‘Yeah, I got to go on a vacation for 10 days, and the business didn’t burn down. Things kept running.’ That’s what we really live for.

Most people will not make it beyond a few years in the industry because they just keep hitting those trial-and-error ceilings. They don’t know how to get above them, right? Breaks my heart sometimes. I talk to people who’ve been in the industry for five years and haven’t figured out how to get more than 150 to 200 inspections.

I think the longest I’ve heard was nearly 20 years. They were a solopreneur still butting up against the same ceiling of a couple hundred inspections a year. For whatever reason, they just couldn’t nail the idea of marketing and selling themselves, and they were just kind of taking what was on the floor. There’s a lot of stories like that in our industry.

For solopreneurs like that, we’ve got another product called Launch. There’s about 70 companies in that one. That’s a new product. We just launched it—no pun intended.

We take a truly holistic approach to building your business because we know if we can help people become really great versions of themselves, then they’ll be excited about building a really good business, and they’ll be able to do it in a more efficient way.

Working RE: About this new product, Launch; Why a product for solopreneurs?

Hummel: We want everybody to nail their business right where they are, and then they can move up if that’s what they want to do. What we’ve noticed over the last couple of years is that the people who have gotten really good at marketing themselves and they understand how to run a business rather than that technician-minded thing we were talking about, they’ve done OK through the downturn, and they’re now starting to grow again. But a lot of companies who grew during like 2020, 2021, the big boom after COVID, a lot of those companies have gone back down to maybe one or two guys. And this is one of the lessons for us.

A lot of those guys have realized that they don’t want a big giant company. They’re perfectly happy being at just a couple of guys, and they want to be around other people who are happy at a couple of guys. So that’s part of why we’ve changed a little bit of our thinking. If you were to join IEB four years ago, it would have been like higher, higher, higher, grow, grow, grow, that’s the only thing to do. But now that we’ve seen things on the other side of a downturn, we’ve grown a lot as a coaching team to help people just nail what their actual vision is based on what they think their vision is because they see other people doing something huge.

I don’t know who came up with this quote, but it’s ‘the purpose of business is to fund the perfect life.’ Well, you get to decide what your perfect life is, right? For somebody who’s a solopreneur making $300,000 a year, you may just love that. You’re probably pulling your hair out with busyness and doing a million inspections a year yourself, but you can take a vacation when you want. You don’t have employees to deal with. You can scale back if you want to. If that’s what you want, that’s your perfect life. Your business should just fund that. Absolutely nothing wrong with being a solopreneur. We think that there’s a lot of opportunity for people at the solopreneur business stage, especially in smaller markets. It may not always even be realistic to be a multi-inspector firm in a lot of markets.

What I’ve experienced is that most people arrive at the decision that they’re going to be a solo inspector shop because they’ve beat their head against the wall trying to figure out how to be a multi-inspector shop. That vision is a little bit skewed because we talk to people who want to build a business, mostly. When they come to us, it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m a solopreneur. I’ve been trying to hire people. I can’t figure it out. Everybody I hire sucks. I’m wasting all this money. Help me out.’ That’s very common.

Now, we’ve entered into this Launch program where we think if we can meet people right when they start their business journey, one, is people will stay in the industry longer than they would have without help. That means people might be able to provide a living for themselves and a lifestyle for themselves that they would have never experienced without coaching. That means these stories of, ‘Yeah, I was a home inspector for two years and then I had to go get a job.’ We can help eliminate some of that. That’s very common. We can help eliminate some of that.

In other words, fast forward five years, everybody in IEB will be people that started their company within five years, and it’ll be an incredible story to tell, I think.

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 Working RE: What are the components of the IEB Launch program?

Hummel: It’s very similar to the other groups, but it’s just a very specific target audience. They have four live coaching calls a month. I lead that call along with another coach who’s just super passionate about the solopreneur business stage. He is a home inspector, I’m not. So they’ve got their live coaching calls and then they have access to the online portal as well. That’s 99 bucks a month, man.

Working RE: So what are the group coaching calls like?

Hummel: A coach will typically present something for 20, 25 minutes, and then they’ll discuss it. They’ll talk about executing, what could go right and wrong, who’s doing it, who’s not doing it, that kind of stuff.

Working RE: If I’m a home inspector, what am I getting out of being in IEB and being in these groups?

Hummel: The most common thing I see as a result of being in the group is sanity. Sometimes these people enter into IEB from some sort of place of pain, meaning they feel isolated, or they feel like they’ve tried and tried and tried and they can’t figure it out on their own. And all of a sudden, they realize, oh my gosh, there’s hundreds of other people trying to figure this out, too. They’re actually doing what they should be doing. And sanity is a big thing.

The other thing I notice is excitement. And this is a big driver for people. If you’re not excited about what you’re doing, you’re just not going to do it for very long. Where I see people really failing in business a lot, especially in their growth activities, is if they don’t see results or if they don’t get the result they’re looking for, they’ll typically just stop doing the activity. And growth is the worst thing for it because to warm up a pipeline is 60 to 90 days, and people typically stop after three weeks. So, they never even get to the point where they have a warm pipeline. I see that all the time for people.

But when you’re around a group of folks who are focused on building true businesses, then you start to understand, OK, we’re playing the long game together. And then you start to see people get a little momentum, get a little success, and before you know it, they have a story that’s like, ‘Man, when I came into IEB, I was hitting a ceiling of 200 inspections. Now I gotta hire somebody because I’ve been at capacity for six months.’ It’s just beautiful. So, to get a little more concise, typically what we’ll see as a result of somebody being in the group who’s actually engaging is they’ll certainly grow their inspection volume. That’s a no-brainer. But they’ll get more efficient in their operations as well. And they’ll start to understand what it means to work on the most important things in their business and get help with the things that don’t make sense for them to be doing.

If they keep playing that out, if their desire is to go bigger, typically they’ll have an inspector or two. And then once they start to experience success with that—we’ve seen some companies join IEB at the Launch level, basically meaning they’ve not even done 100 inspections yet, go all the way up to nearly Enterprise level over about a four-year period. That’s the fastest I’ve seen that— Enterprise being 4,000 inspections a year. Not many people are going to accelerate that fast. But the results are pretty clear cut. People get what they’re looking for; they get what they want. That’s probably a good way to put it.

If you’re coming into the group because you want to grow your inspection volume, you’ll focus on that work, and you’ll do it. If you want sanity and camaraderie and a network, you get it. If you want to build a team and go through the entire system we teach of recruit, select, train, manage, motivate—that series we teach—then you end up becoming a world-class recruiter, and then you start winning through your team.

Working RE: How critical is continuing education and professional development in adjusting to a changing market, particularly when things get slow?

Hummel: Your business will never grow beyond your level of personal development. You’re never going to do new things if you’re not becoming a new person. So, whether you are in a slow market or a fast market, you have opportunities for success. And we’ve seen that. People who have been in slow markets have done just fine because they’ve made that shift to thinking about market share rather than inspection volume. If things are declining, you want to make sure you’re not declining as fast as your market, right? That means you’re outpacing your peers, and you’re going to position yourself for future growth. It’s really, really important. We have been preaching that for a couple of years now in IEB because of the declines.

Certainly now, numbers are down year-over-year. People would love for it to be 2020 again, 2021. I was just talking to our financial coach about this a couple of days ago, so it’s good timing. Inspection volume seems to be increasing in major markets. And what it looks like it’s going to be is maybe flat compared to 2023. So 2023 to 2024 may be flat, but the trend right now on the tail end of 2024 is up. And so that’s a good indicator that perhaps we’re getting back into some positive territory for the industry.

As a business coach, that tells me that we’re about to find out who is actually learning because when things start getting really busy and chaotic and your phone’s ringing, you better have some really good systems and processes so that you don’t get sucked back into the business and all of a sudden, you’re just answering your phone all day doing inspections.

And understanding what’s going on with the federal interest rates, all of it indicates that 2025 is not going to be like a hockey stick, J curve, I don’t think that. But I do think that the indicators are that 2025 is going to be a decent year. If you’re focused on market share rather than volume, then you’re going to be doing things that are a longer-term play.

Even in the slow times, I’m going to be talking to these [real estate] agents. Even if there’s no inspections to be had today, I’m going to be setting myself up to be the first person they think of when things get busy.

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  Working RE: How important is service diversification right now, particularly when it comes to slow markets in terms of opportunities for work?

Hummel: Sometimes it’s better to just stay simple in the beginning, get really good at selling home inspections and then add things. But we certainly believe in adding ancillary services and increasing your average ticket fee. The average ticket fee we want to see in the industry is a thousand-plus, right? And a lot of people are still hovering around like $350, $400. So there’s a lot of work to do in the industry.

Working RE: One of the things that struck me when I was at IEB was the amount of time spent on mindset. I thought that was really interesting. What is the ideal mindset for a home inspector, particularly in a market like today’s?

Hummel: So, we have a framework that we look through, which is mindset, strategy, and tools. The average inspector will think about that the other way around. What tools do I need? Now, let’s build a strategy because I have tools, and they will probably never get to the mindset piece. But mindset is the most important thing, and then you can have the strategy that you want by thinking clearly, and then you’ll know which tools to use. So, that’s the framework that everything we do kind of follows that.

Most of the industry is saying, ‘Hey, just get your home inspector training, and you’ll make $100,000 in your first year.

You’re going to love it. It’s going to be awesome.’ But our experience is people get told that, but they don’t make $100,000 in their first year. A lot of them really struggle until they start to shift the way they think about their business.

So that mindset piece, critically important. We actually look for that when we’re recruiting people into IEB. If somebody is clearly not a fit, we just don’t invite them in. And it’s very rare, but we have booted people out of IEB for not fitting the culture.

Working RE: What’s your advice to home inspectors who are feeling pinched currently? I was talking to someone just the other day. He said his business is still down about 60 percent. He’s in New York. What’s your advice to inspectors who are really struggling with low demand right now?

Hummel: Well, it’s a hard question to answer with a one-liner because if somebody tells me they’re down 60 percent, the question is: What are you doing versus what is your market doing? I don’t think New York is down 60 percent as an example. I don’t know that for sure, but I don’t imagine that that’s the case. In fact, we have people in IEB in New York and they’re not doing so badly.

Do you have a good understanding of what you’re doing versus what your market is doing? Before you behave as though your opportunity to earn is gone, we need to actually understand what’s happening in your market. So, how many transactions were there? Are they trending up or down? Are you shrinking faster than your market?

A lot of times people aren’t doing as bad as they think. If somebody says 60 percent, they’re probably doing as bad as they think because that’s a big number. But sometimes people say I’m 20 percent down and everything’s terrible. OK, let’s look at your market. Well, my market’s 25 percent down. It’s like you’re actually gaining market share. You’re doing good. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Working RE: Some of my favorite stories have always been that some of the biggest brands of today were still aggressively marketing during the Great Depression, including Disney. Often in an economic downturn, the thing that gets pulled back first is advertising and marketing. And it’s probably the one thing you want to increase so you can stay top of mind. As soon as the market comes back, then you’re in the best position to capitalize when people are looking for service.

Hummel: Yeah. And in case it’s helpful, some tactics you can spread around is like sales psychology. These agents have one or two spots in their brain to hold on to somebody or a product or a service, right? It’s Coca-Cola or Pepsi. It’s Nike or Adidas. It’s home inspector A or home inspector B. And, so, their job in a down market is to make sure no matter what, I am the number one or the number two spot in the agent’s brain. And so when they think ‘home inspector,’ they think me.

I’ll say the ROI, too. If somebody’s in a down market, 60 percent for example, and you say, yeah, just double your spend on ads, they’re going to be like, yeah, that sounds nice, but that’s not realistic. One of the things we teach is your highest ROI activity, if you’re strapped for cash or time, is to pick up your phone. Call people, go meet people. Be where they are. You don’t have to sponsor events, you don’t have to pay for digital. You can still pick up the phone and go do things and call people and build relationships.

I think for a number of reasons, guys are hesitant to do that. Fear being one of them, fear of rejection. A lot of them just don’t feel like they’re extroverts, so they just refuse to get good at it. But at the end of the day, if you don’t have money and you need money, pick up your phone. That’s always the answer.

Working RE: This has been a great discussion! Is there anything else you want to mention?

Hummel: We have a huge desire to grow that Launch product. Like I said before, there’s about 70 or so companies, maybe 80 or 90 at this point, companies in that group. And we think it could be somewhere between 400 to 600 companies within the next couple of years. That’s our vision for it. So, we’ll certainly be looking for partners to help us spread the word and grow that because we think the industry needs it.

About the Author
Isaac Peck is the Publisher of Working RE magazine and the Senior Broker and President of OREP.org, a leading provider of E&O insurance for savvy professionals in 49 states and DC. Over 14,000 professionals trust OREP for their E&O. Isaac received his master’s degree in accounting at San Diego State University. Reach Isaac at isaac@orep.org or (888) 347-5273. CA License #4116465.

OREP Insurance Services, LLC. Calif. License #0K99465