Hey yall! So over the past year or so I have been working off and on trying to get my courses done and boy has it been an overwhelming amount of information! I have absolutely no experience in this field and sometimes I catch myself doubting if I can do this. My cousin started a home inspection business during the pandemic and it is doing very well. I have always worked in hospitality, bartending, and serving tables, so this is totally out of my wheelhouse but the opportunity to start a career at this point in my life is why I am willing to give this a try (and the money is great!). I really want to go into this feeling confident that I know what I am doing, I really hate the feeling of being unprepared or uneducated…would anyone happen to have any advice on how to study for the Florida state exam? Also, are there any “electrical for dummies” type resources available that can help me understand this area a little more? I feel so lost! I look forward to any help yall have to offer…thanks so much!
Thomas
First, I would jump in the truck with him/her and go get some experience!
I will let the FL inspectors comment on the state testing,.
I have gone with one of his inspectors to a few houses and it definitely gave me a little peace of mind seeing the job in action. It’s honestly all the reading and videos of this courseload that I feel like is overwhelming and I want to make sure the information stays with me when I myself get out there…was just wondering if anyone had tips on drilling this info into ya head 
For book learning, I guess whatever helped you thru school in the past.
But for field training, get on as many houses as you can as often as possible, writing as many reports as you can with as much peer review as you can obtain. IMO, the field is where you learn defect recognition and defect discernment. Report writing is a completely different skill set as well.
You can do it, we all did and so can you. Best of luck.
Thanks man…that’s what my cousin basically said too lol I was never really great at studying in school and was always able to wing it somehow! But for this, this is pretty serious stuff…I guess this may just be a challenge of its own that I will have to figure out 
You can not remember everything that you learn, but you should be able to know where to get the information, if needs be. Don’t produce a report on site; this way you can always look things up or ask here.
You’ll be way more confident and much more likely to pass the Florida test if you get your CPI certification from InterNachi. It’s a major milestone and a lot of work, but if you can pass that test you’ll be well on your way. Once you start doing field trainings (ride-alongs) with whomever you find, you can use InterNachi’s Narrative Libraries ($160 ea) to help write reports. The Library for Word/Excel is great because you can cut and paste comments from it and just read it to learn about various defects.
One thing to bear in mind is that you will be a generalist. You don’t have to be a specialist in every area. If Florida has an SOP limit yourself to studies within the scope of the SOP. You need to have an understanding of how things work not how to repair things that don’t. Leave the repair advice to the specialists unless you have skill in that area.
The three important words from any SOP are: Inspect, Describe and Report.
I did the same for 15 years before getting into inspections 22+ years ago. The restaurant biz is actually a great background for things like customer service and communication. Of course, the technical aspects are all different but it’s just another set of specs, really. Instead of remembering a set of ingredients to make a Mai Tai you just have a checklist (mental, notes, whatever) when looking at a furnace, roof, foundation, etc.
One of the real benefits to the restaurant biz is that it works nicely with inspections since inspections are generally during the day and restaurant work is often at night. My first few years in inspections I did both so I could pay the bills. I split time between Oregon and Maui and have started an inspection biz on Maui and it’s slow to start so I picked up a part-time bartending job and am loving it! Although, I can tell you my old brain isn’t quite as sharp at 50 as it was at 25 but I can still keep up 