No, I am telling them to stop worrying about money. Whatever you worry about you attract, look at Gary Farnsworth…
If you concentrate on quality and quality alone, you can charge whatever you feel it is worth. I don’t charge wealthy people more than average people. I charge what I charge without reguard to area, price of home, or persons income.
I probably could get more on the $47,500,000 I inspected last month, but felt the price I gave him was fair for the services rendered and it was the 6th inspection I have done for the guy.
To me its not about sucking every nickle out of a person. Its about getting a fair wage for a fair and honest job. Whatever YOU determine that to be. Hell there was times I told people the job took alot less time than expected and charged them less.
Its just the fundemental differences between us Nick. I will admit your more of a cut throat business man. That is just not my personality.
Once gain, you see it your way and I see it mine. Who is right or wrong is just personal preference.
I believe that if you are in business for yourself to make a good living… get the hell out.
The only reason to be in business for yourself is to make a really great living.
This thinking may not apply to you personally, but many in our industry need to bump up their fee schedules IMHO. Otherwise, they might as well just go get a job, suffer a lot less aggravation… and net the same.
My feeling is that home inspectors should be netting at least twice as much as the pay their skill set would command in their local job market. Being in business for yourself should be more financially rewarding than mere employment IMHO.
Sorry, explain for me what thier “skill” set would be considered. If I am a new inspector and was a 7-11 attendant before entering the home inspection market, would my pay be twice the 7-11 job. If so then that would be about $500 a week. So if he did a job a day he should charge $100 a job?
Uh, your example would be gross, not net Russell. Anyway, I would hope a home inspector doing 5 inspections a week would command a position in his/her local job market that pays more than a 7-11 attendant.
So lets say you have a job as a construction crew foreman earning a salary of $50K/year… don’t go into business for yourself as a home inspector just to make $60K. Not worth it IMHO.
To me your wrong. A person making $25K a year is most likely under capitalized to start ANY type of professional business and that is the #1 reason for small business failure.
Nick please keep in mind this profession is about providing a professional service in which people spend hundreds of thousand of dollars and even millions based on our professional opinions and inspection procedures.
You #1 problem is not undercharging it is under capitalization. They start a business and do not have the money to hack it during rough periods, so they lower their price, to put food on the table.
I think you should be preaching more about WHO should get into business and not pricing.
But then again, that would lower the NACHI precious numbers…and we know who doesn’t want that…
I’m not seeing undercapitalization as the primary reason for failure, mostly because unlike many other businesses which have high overhead, the home inspection business has relatively low overhead (fixed costs). For instance, most home inspectors work out of their homes.
The primary reasons for failure, IMHO, is marketing (or lack of it) followed by fee structure (too low). Service level (poor) which repeat customer base relies on, is a close third for some, but not most.
What’s ridiculous is suffering all the aggravation and long hours of being in business for yourself and yet netting anything less than twice what you could earn working a day job. If anyone reading this feels I’m describing them… bump your prices up.
I think you are probably pretty close on this, at least on the marketing portion. I am fairly new to the inspection business (although I have 30 years experience in remodeling). I would have to give myself an F, or at least a D- on the marketing aspect. I really need to get better at this portion of the business.
I think if we have a B in service then our fee schedule is right where it should be. We need to update our service if we are going to deserve an updated fee schedule. Charging more now to give a better service later is absurd.
When you charge a low fee to start out, it is hard to move up the fee, but it is easy to lower the fee.
Russell is right on concentrating on quality, then the money will follow. You do not need to add onto your services to raise your fee, but you usually need a more quality service for the customer to pay you more than your competition. My dad always told me while growing up on a farm, if you are not going to do it right, you might as well stay at home.
Nick is right about the marketing. I have mentored a lot of inspectors, most of them went under because they could not market themselves. I tried to tell them how, but they never understood.
You do not need a lot of money to get started, it will just take you longer to achieve your goals. It took me quite awhile myself. I just plugged away at it every single day.