In episode 48 of The Ride Along, host Brad Lowery and special guest co-host Matt Brading sit down with Ryan Wall of Hello Home Inspections, and it’s the kind of episode every inspector should bookmark. Why? Because Ryan’s journey from “maybe I’ll do this on the side” to building a trusting, high-performing team in Tampa, FL. is a blueprint for inspectors who want to scale the smart way.
The conversation dives into everything from the importance of naming your business with growth in mind to why Ryan and his team leaned into environmental testing to stay profitable during a cooling market. Ryan talks about why knowing your value, and being able to back it up, matter more than ever.
And if you’re wondering whether it’s time to raise your prices, Ryan breaks down exactly how they used market data to do just that – without losing agents or clients.
Whether you’re running a small team or scaling up, this episode is full of insights on:
- Using pricing strategy to attract your ideal clients
- Building a brand that agents remember and refer
- Why staying open to collaboration helps you grow
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Transcript
Brad Lowery
ROLL THE INTROOOO!
All right, episode, another week, another episode of the Ride Along and we’re going right into the guest segment here because this is just inspections, inspections and more inspections. Cause we got Mr. Ryan Wall from Hello Home Inspections on the show here today. But first and foremost to my stunning co-host, Matt Braiding, how’s it going out in Texas? You have changed up the background lighting in your studio.
Matt Brading
You know, I change it up every now and again. I just like to keep it interesting, you know, but things are going fine in Texas. I just arrived back from the Round Rock area, is just north of the Austin area. Ryan, I believe you might be familiar with the Round Rock area of Texas. Is that correct?
Ryan Wall
I am familiar, that is where Hello Home Inspections was born, was in Round Rock, Texas in the spring of…
Brad Lowery
Dude, so okay, so this was back during COVID. honestly, guys, so we actually we got talking before hitting record. And the conversation went so great that we realized that we should have just been recording it right off the bat. You know, this is basically going to be take two for us take one for all of y’all watching and listening. But honestly, I’m excited, Ryan, to have you on here. Because when you know, I moved down to Florida from Virginia, first of all, Ryan, you and I have a connection back in Virginia, another home inspection connection up there – good friend of ours. We all kind of went to college, the same college at different times apparently. But as it were, I moved down here and the first, the first big inspection company that I hear of is like, you got to check out Hello Home Inspections. I’m like, oh. Okay, so not only do they have a super slick website that I refer to because you guys have some features on there that I think are awesome in terms of code lookups or permit lookups and things like that for the state of Florida. But, you know, even for me, I refer to that website. It’s awesome. But you guys have been crushing it down here, dude, seriously.
Ryan Wall
Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. It’s been fun. It’s been about four and a half years. Yeah, just to dive in there to how it all started. I’ve had a really interesting career pre-home inspection ownership, I guess you could say. Got an opportunity to work, kind of starting in the trades early on, but then also get to work for some big housing funds, investment companies, things like that, kind of behind the scenes. Got to see stuff from a different perspective.
And one of the kind of avenues that led to us being in Round Rock for a bit was I was working for a housing fund, made a couple really good connections there, which eventually led to me joining a startup that was aimed at home maintenance and basically teaching people how to maintain their homes. was everything from subscription services where we’ll come in, teach you how to do some things, but also do some things for you.
And that company was bought by a big home insurance company that was based out of Austin, Texas. And so I joined that company at this like really interesting time where they were actively being absorbed. And so I joined, you know, I joined as an employee of one company and two weeks later, I was an employee of another company by nature. And so that’s what took me to Round Rock or just north of Austin, Texas there was you know, part of the role was to be present in their offices in Austin. It just so happened that that was in the spring of 2020 . So it seemed like a great time to move. Nobody was on the road. It was like, all right, things are kind of, you know, slowing down a little bit. So we, my wife and I packed up and moved to Austin, Texas. We were there, I think about a week before like my official first day in the office, walked in, they handed me my computer and said, hey, probably kind of weird, the office is empty. There’s this thing going around called COVID. And if you don’t mind just like chilling out at home, we’re going to kind of be remote for a week or two. Yeah, and until things go back to normal. And nine months later, yeah, yeah. And eight or nine months later, still sitting on that couch at our rental house and in Round Rock still technically doing this job just, you know, not in the capacity that we were.
Matt Brading
Doing.
Brad Lowery
If you don’t mind, 15 days, that’s all it is, 15 days to flatten that curve.
Matt Brading
You
Ryan Wall
We were planning on. So there was just a lot of free time. So I use that time to dive into my home inspection course. I already had started it with a previous employer. And so I was like, why not just finish this? Because I figured at some point we’re going to end up back into Tampa area, or at least in Florida. So went ahead and finished that course and said, hey, we’ll see what happens. And by mid-November of 2020 , we were back in Tampa for the foreseeable future and figured, hey, I’ll do a home inspection or two on the side.
threw my number up on Google My Business and just stared at the phone for a month, just praying it rang.
Matt Brading
Funny because you had mentioned that at first it was like supposed to be that kind of a side gig and that’s really kind of where I started too because I was in a dead-end job. I was in a job where like I couldn’t grow anymore and I really feel like I had more to offer but it paid me very well and I had family support so I thought like how am I gonna do this you know how am I gonna figure out how to like make more money make a better lifestyle for myself and do something that actually made me proud of what I was doing because I was just I was just existing over there. And, and so I started home inspections and thinking like, yeah, I’m gonna start my own home inspection company and kind of do this on the side. You probably learned as much as me, like pretty quick. Like once you start putting money into advertising and everything, like this really in the side gig, especially if you want to maintain your license, if you’re in a licensed state that requires it, maintain your license, your insurance and all this stuff. Like you gotta be bringing in, you know, several inspections to make that make sense. And for you to actually start making money. And by that time you’re like working two full-time jobs. like, well, why don’t we just do home inspection then? Hey, I got a question for you though. I love the name. Hello. Home inspections. if I think a lot of people like fall into, naming the company after like their initials, but my company name, I mean, I love it. Right. But it’s, it’s, it has limited me a little bit. I mean, not that I’m trying to be, you know, a nationwide company, but I, I, couldn’t, right? I can’t move. I couldn’t move to another state and I would have to change the name of my company. I think it’d be weird to move to Florida and have Texas edge home inspection. I was thinking about you hire me, right? And so, but I mean, so I’ve made a name for myself here, but if I move, I’d have to change that, right? Where are you? Hello. Home inspection. You’ve made a name for yourself, but that’s totally universal. You can go nationwide. You can move. You can do whatever you want to do. and the name itself is just super inviting and unassuming. I don’t know. I really like it. Where’d you, how’d you come up with that?
Ryan Wall
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And it’s funny looking back on it for all the things you just said, right? I got a couple of really good mentors in the business startup space who taught me a bunch of things. But one of the things that always stuck, especially when thinking about naming a business is never name yourself something that either geographically or otherwise like pins you to it. So to your point, like I went through all those like, what is it? it Tampa? Is it Florida? Is it?
Matt Brading
Damn it.
Ryan Wall
You know, tropical, like anything that truly does, hey, this would be awkward if I went elsewhere, was off the table for me.
Brad Lowery
Coastal.
Matt Brading
I think this calls for an it’s not supposed to do that, right? I did that.
Ryan Wall
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Thank
Ryan Wall
The second thing was the reason I like Hello. There was a lot of I was in that kind of like startup Silicon Valley world. Those were a lot of people I was like shoulder to shoulder with especially when I was in the housing funds and when I was in Austin. A lot of they’re just like basic contact domains like it was always Hello at startup right. It was like they’re like that was what they put publicly. It seemed inviting. It was like OK. Maybe it’s a trend or a fad, but I kind of liked it. It just sounded nice. then the third thing that really drove is like what domains are available? Because I don’t want to be the guy who would like hello at gmail.com. Like what screams professionalism is like a nice domain that is consistent across all your platforms. And so as with any business that I’ve started over the years, it’s always, obviously business concept first, but like before you launch,
Matt Brading
Yeah, I agree. Yeah
Ryan Wall
Making sure that domain is available, not only for websites, but email addresses, all of that kind of stuff. And Hello Home was available in Florida, and it wasn’t registered previously as an LLC, and the domain was available. And so we just grabbed it and said, all right, let’s go, let’s see what happens. And over the years, it’s kind of become a joke. Everything I get into, somebody will just say, what is it? Hello what now, right? It’s always hello something.
Matt Brading
You
Ryan Wall
I’m not gonna say I haven’t bought all the domains. Anytime I run into something clever, I’ll laugh about it, go home and buy the domain, just in case. Yeah, just in case. Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Just to catch you in a wild hair. Yeah.
Matt Brading
Smart.
Brad Lowery
Dude, this is why I was looking forward to bringing you on the show. mean, because we’ve talked about this for a while, but you it’s you’ve had to go and have a baby and stuff, you know, just some cool, exciting life changes and all that. but no, I mean, it’s you have really just in four and a half years, I would have thought that you were a 15 year home inspection company. Like when I first heard about you, the brand was refined.
Ryan Wall
Get loaded.
Brad Lowery
The website is simple. It’s clean. You have features on there that most people don’t think to include on the website. And we’re going to get into that in a bit. But but you’ve really endeared yourself to agents all around the Tampa area in a short time. So for inspectors that are listening that are just starting out, I think you are an invaluable person to listen to. And this is going to be an episode that hopefully they save and refer back to. But before we get into it, we got to do our drink of the day because we’ve been sipping on it for a little bit here.
But, you know, at least two of us came prepared and one of us has a really good story as to why they’re not. So the drink of the day is, as of the last couple of weeks, sponsored by Inspection Fuel. And you want to sign up for this. It’s going to be in New Orleans. We definitely going to be sipping when we’re in New Orleans. It’s going to be September 8th through the 10th. So go to inspectionfuel.com to sign up. So let’s go right into it. Matt, what are you sipping on today?
Matt Brading
Okay, so today I have one of my standbys, one of my favorites. This is Wild Turkey . I know what you’re thinking, but that is some of the best bourbon, definitely the best price point out there. Always available, always cheap, always consistently good. It makes a really good cocktail because it’s higher proof and it’s just good, but it is also a sipper, which is what I’m doing tonight. So cheers.
Brad Lowery
Cheers to you sir.
All right, I am sipping on we’re skipping Ryan for reasons he’ll explain here in a bit. But I am sipping on an El Dorado 12 year aged rum spiced rum here. I get into a rum kick now that especially it’s starting to warm up in Florida. And, you know, in Virginia, it was it was a pretty good bourbon scene because you’re close to Tennessee, there’s a couple distilleries that source their mash bill out of Buffalo Traces distillery. So things were coming to Virginia from Kentucky, but you get down here. It is rum baby.
And I’ve found out on vacation, if there is one liquor that I can sip on that won’t get me in trouble over the course of a day in the sun, it’s wrong. yeah, I was going to say it’s good, man. It’s good. So Ryan, why are you not sipping? Not that we’re hazing you and judging, you know, for those that are like averse to it in our listener group, but you got a story on this one.
Matt Brading
Maybe that’s why it’s so prevalent. Big Bruce, go.
Ryan Wall
I do. Yeah. So like every good contractor has a office that is in total disrepair. Every good home inspector has problems with their house. And over the last nine months, our house basically got to the point where it was so full of mold that we moved out, sold it, sold it as a, as a lot to a builder. So there’s a lot there, but we’ve been living with my in-laws for the last nine months in a thousand square foot house, a two one, so sharing a single bathroom with a four month old baby. So it’s been fun. They’re gracious. They’re awesome in-laws. But with that being said, all of our belongings, including all of our liquor, has been packed in a storage unit for the last nine months. So I am I’m looking forward to breaking it out here in two weeks when we move into our new house. So in the meantime, we’re sipping on a nice medium roast of Tim Horton’s coffee imported from the great country of Canada, which is where I am from.
Brad Lowery
Yes.
Ryan Wall
So that’s what we’re.
Brad Lowery
Get out of town.
Ryan Wall
That’s what we’re doing with tonight.
Matt Brading
Well, cheers. Hey, hey, so question. If you were, if your liquor wasn’t locked up in a storage facility, what would you be drinking?
Brad Lowery
I… Cheers, Ang.
Ryan Wall
So I am a, it’s funny what you guys are both drinking tonight because I am a bourbon guy naturally and I’ll say I do fancy an Eagle Rare for the most part. It’s a great drink, a good friend of mine kind of turned me onto that over the last couple years. But if I’m not drinking, I guess seriously, so I’ll say if there’s my serious drink where I’ll sit down and have a good bourbon. If I’m just enjoying my day by the pool, it’s always rum.
Matt Brading
There you go, there you go.
Ryan Wall
and I’ll be honest, a little bit of coconut rum, that’s where it’s at.
Brad Lowery
I hear
Ryan Wall
Yeah.
Matt Brading
Hey, nothing wrong with some coconut rum. I get it. get it. I got a bottle of Eagle Rare back over here, so I know what you’re talking about. Well, tears. will have not an Eagle Rare, but I’ll have a turkey.
Brad Lowery
Let’s see. Dude, that’s good, I love it, dude. Ryan, let’s talk a little bit more about how you’ve kind of built out the brand with Hello, because you guys have done a masterclass job with it. So I mean, you, you told us off air before we got started that really, and I found this kind of amusing. Your goal was starting as an inspector was maybe to make the odd couple hundred bucks or so here and there, which we’ve talked on the show before about raising prices and you actually were the one that told me recently that I should raise my prices down here. So I feel like you’ve definitely broken out of that couple hundred dollar here and there mold for sure. But how did that take off and how did you end up scaling the business? it a product of COVID? Was it a product of marketing? Did you learn the marketing side as you went?
Ryan Wall
Yeah, great question. So I would say first and foremost, like not not immune to the fact that I got started a really great time in real estate, right? Things were flying off the shelf. I was just like looking back through some of these graphs that are always fun to look at, you know, on years past and just some crazy numbers. The first what was it the our highest like count of inspections ever, was in our first year, sorry, second year in July. was just like a home insurance company went under and the phone just rang off the hook. Everybody trying to switch providers, right? So we were doing like six, seven inspections a day, three guys, like just flying through these insurance inspections. so, yeah, the goal initially, going back to your question was, you know, just see what we can do and, you know, make some extra bucks here or there, Christmas money, holiday money, whatever we want it to be. And really quickly, it grew to more than I could handle part-time. And that’s kind of what I used as my initial trigger to hire my first guy. And then from there, kind of a similar trigger. But yeah, the success that we’ve had down here is nothing short of just relationship-based.
And it’s easy to say that, you you like look through the Facebook forums and you know, you see a lot of like newer folks getting in and saying, hey, where should I invest my money? it Angie leads? Is it like, you know, should I go to BNI groups? Is it, know, where do you, where do you spend your time and spend your money? I’ll say like, I’m pretty sure we’ve tried all of it. If there’s something we haven’t tried, it’s cause we’ve tried something so similar that we just, you know, assume it’s all the same. But for the most part, it’s finding out where people’s pain points are and then trying to be the one that solves it. And even if you don’t do that perfectly, I feel like people see the effort in you trying to solve their problems and they naturally want to do business with you. And so that’s what we’ve kind of seen over the years. And I really think that’s what allowed us to continue to grow consistently over the last four or five years here is anytime we feel like we’re hitting a slump or just like not going either as fast or as hard as we want to. It usually boils down to like, we’re not trying to solve people’s problems anymore. It’s like, we think we figured it out. And we’re just trying to do what we think we should do. And we’ve stopped really asking, you know, the important questions. And so, you know, probably get into a little bit later as to like, what I’m doing now as well, in addition to inspections. But, you know, that’s really what it’s all about is just solve people’s problems. And the only way you know what problems they have is if you genuinely just ask and start those relationships. So yeah, think the, you know, one of those first pain points that we discovered and we started solving was, you the first couple of agents we worked with was like, you know, hey, why did you choose us, first of all, and nine times out of , was, well, I didn’t, my client did. Like, I have my guy, but it’s great to meet you, but I’m going back to my guy. But as soon as you hear that, it’s like, that’s great. Like, I’m glad you have a guy. Why do you like the guy that you use? Like, you don’t have to use me. I’m genuinely curious why you like the guy that you’ve used for a while. And really quickly, those answers tend to, you know, start aligning. And sometimes there’s really bad reasons why, you know, it’s like, because he makes every deal easy, or because he’s really, really cheap, right? Like, those reasons are out there. But lots of the reasons that stuck were simply, you know, they make the process smooth or they educate my buyers instead of just giving them lists or things like that. so I kind of picked up those little things along the way and just started implementing them. I love healthy competition. I think it’s important in business. But if I’m not constantly learning from, I guess, I would consider competition, what am I doing? The goal isn’t just to see what somebody else is doing, laugh at it, and then go do something else. It’s like, hey, if you’re if somebody’s making a living doing something, they’re doing at least something right. And you want to take what you can. And it’s not always going to be a perfect copy. But man, we’ve learned, I’ve learned so much stuff from, you know, what I would consider my competition down here, which a lot of them are our great friends now, which is, which is really cool. Obviously like Brad, we met through a connection, but ended up down here anyway. But yeah, I have, have multiple inspectors here who, know, my phone rings daily, us talking just about like.
Matt Brading
Thank
Ryan Wall
Hey, what’s the fastest way to get a customer result on a lab test? My lab’s letting me down. Who do you use? That sort of thing.
Matt Brading
Well, that goes back to like whenever we had Travis Jones on the podcast and he was talking about training your competition and how much he would rather lose a job to the guys that are trying to do a really good job than somebody that was just, you know, undercutting bids and everything. You know, I love what you were talking about like, you know, solving people’s problems. I can’t say that I don’t do that. I think that there’s definitely an element there that I just never really like, like described it that way.
I like that though. like thinking along those lines of solving people. What are your problems and how can I solve them? And I think it’s something that I might implement in my marketing whenever I’m talking to realtors. I do want to talk to you because we started this off about pricing, right? Not that I want to get into pricing, but I feel like this goes along the lines of something that came up recently and I feel like I have to touch on it. I don’t know if you guys saw this and I hate to call him out, but I’m calling out Ben Gromigo – puts out a video like a week or so ago talking about how home inspectors need to be charging $1,000 for their home inspections. And I mean, look, you guys are in Florida, I’m in Texas. I don’t know what the difference is, but I suspect it’s not that big of a difference in terms of our price points. We can get into it, we don’t have to get into it, it doesn’t matter. know, and I mean, like maybe he’s talking about some ancillary services involved there too.
But mean, like that wasn’t what he was saying. And I don’t think that really is where he was going. And what he’s trying to say is it’s the most and I replied that that is great. And we would love to raise our prices, but that’s not the industry standard. That was my response to Ben. And he replied back to me, which is surprising, honestly, but he replied back and said, you know, this is the most important purchase people are going to make. And the most important thing they can do is have a home inspection. I’m like, Hey, I agree. Like 100%. Like we’re good there, but what I don’t agree with is that we can get that much for a general home inspection. I think that is it worth that much? Man, I think my company delivers an inspection that is worth that much. But I also know that the industry standard isn’t such that’s going to allow me to charge that much. Should I charge more? Should I raise my prices? Probably. And so I’d like to know, like you were talking to Brad about raising prices and you’ve raised your prices through the years. Like instead of getting into specifics about how much we charge.
Let’s talk about the effect of raising prices maybe for one second. Like you raise your prices. What kind of effect did that have on you? Was there a negative blowback? there realtors that gave you blowback? Was it just immediately like, yeah, I saw nothing and also I started making more money and felt better about it. Or was there anything like what happened?
Ryan Wall
Yeah, no, great question. And I truly believe like the concept of raising your prices, it has to be centered and grounded on something, right? It can’t just be nonchalantly, hey, I want to make more money, so I’m going to raise my prices. What we do quarterly, and we usually do it more often than this, but we kind of address it more dedicated every quarter, is we go and we price check as much of our local home inspection market as we can.
And so I have our admin go and like check out anywhere from 20 to 50 other home inspectors Who post their prices online and I realize there you’re probably taking a segment there that is a little bias one way or another But we go and we price check against ourselves to know where we stand because nothing’s worse than saying, you know Hey, our inspection is you know X amount and somebody says why are you so expensive?
Well, now I have to justify myself with absolutely like no data as to where that price is coming from other than how I feel about myself. I think it’s to your point with, you know, knowing the market, it’s important to know where your market is. If you believe it’s genuinely too low, like we should be pricing ourselves accordingly. But at the same time, you kind of have to know where you stand. So we like to hover somewhere between like three and five percent above the highest home inspector in the area. And the reason we do that, we like to stay on the high end because, I mean, there’s a couple reasons. One of them, it really weeds out the clients we don’t want to work with. And like every horror story I have, I can look back to the day the client booked and I compromised something when it comes to that booking and it’s usually price. So I gave a discount that was being asked for that I just should have stuck to my guns or, you know, was working with an agent who’s notoriously cheap and, you know, likes to push their clients to the cheap inspector. And so I like to kind of be priced a little bit higher purely based on who I want to work with. And, you know, the agents that refer us business, I like to align values and if they want to make more money, so would I. So that’s definitely, you know, one reason. The other is obviously less work for more or the same amount of revenue. And so we saw, you in our first couple of years, as we, you know, we started off fairly cheap, especially in like the insurance game, a lot of new Florida inspectors do, they try to like, lowball those insurance inspections, because if you do enough of them, they’re profitable. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Matt Brading
I mean, think that’s normal though. mean, I I was very low when I started. Think that’s a, honestly, think like within reason, I think that’s a pretty decent way for a new home inspector to get a foothold in the industry. That is sometimes the only way you’re going to get jobs. And yeah, you’re going to get the jobs that like me and you don’t want, right? Because they’re going to, you’re going to get those people that are literally, you know, going down to the penny to save, you know, a little bit of money here and there. And they are going to be the pain in the butt or the problem child that we don’t really want to deal with, but they’ll get them.
Ryan Wall
Absolutely.
Matt Brading
I think it’s actually a decent way to get as long as you’re within reason, a decent way to get a foothold in the industry. But anyway, sorry, total interruption.
Ryan Wall
That’s absolutely true. Yeah. we, you know, those first couple of years, it was, how much care as we raised our prices, you know, the inspection, the amount of inspections kind of stayed the same revenue increase. And it made sense. was like the two metrics kind of followed each other. And then you get to a point and we got to that point, maybe like three years in where it was like, OK, how much more can I raise my prices? Right. Like at this point, I’m kind of hitting that like $500 per inspection, no ancillaries, just home inspection mark. And it’s like, I could raise it to $550 , but I know I’m gonna start losing inspections to the next guy. So we kind of sat there for a little bit and things were good. The inspection count kind of remained consistent. And so, you know, we raised it a little bit more that quarter and then a little bit more the next to the point where like our average inspection right now is sitting at about pre-ancillaries and We are doing the same number of inspections same size staff. We are not massive. We are a Myself not included a four inspector team So we’re doing the same amount of inspections as we were doing last year with a three-person team But like revenues drastically different so we’re able to like not burn out our guys. A lot of the guys we’ve hired over the years are like, I was doing, you know, I’m coming from a company doing three full inspections a day. How do you do that and be good? You can’t, you absolutely can’t. And I’ve done it, I’ve done three full inspections in a day, you know, on a Saturday trying to, you know, just trying to wrap things up. But you never feel good about that. You never feel good about that product and you naturally miss things. And so, you know, our goal has been how do we allow our inspectors to make a living? How do I make a living from this? While also giving people, you know, their time that they deserve. We aren’t open on the weekends. We’re closed Saturday and Sunday, which is pretty wild in, I think, the real estate industry in general. Absolutely. And I am proud to refer out Saturday and Sunday work to some great inspectors down here. Because I think it says more about who we are to say, I give my guys Saturday and Sunday off for a reason, because I want them to be with their families.
Matt Brading
Thank you.
Brad Lowery
Everybody wants inspections on the weekends.
Ryan Wall
But I know that like real estate’s still moving and so I have a really good contact for you.
Matt Brading
Yeah, I think there’s a lot too. But I mean, like, I think it says a lot just that you give them off. Like, yes, the referral means a lot too. But, you know, the fact of the matter is that I get it. Real estate doesn’t stop on Saturday or Sunday for that matter. Right. But it doesn’t stop on Monday either or Tuesday. And so like, when is the day off? And these inspectors, they have families and a majority of people with families, you know, they’re going to have weekends. The kids are out of school on the weekends. It just makes sense.
Sorry, but if it can’t wait till Monday, we’re not doing it.
Ryan Wall
Absolutely. Yeah. So, go ahead. No, you’re good. was just kind of going back to pricing a little bit. You know, it’s so can we talk about like, you know, the strategy of, you can only raise your prices so much and then you kind of price yourself out of the market. So oddly enough, we actually dropped our prices this quarter, not substantially, but enough to stay in line with the market. And it was kind of we were on a trajectory to be, I think, a little bit like out of the ballpark.
Brad Lowery
Well, and not only, keep going, Ryan, I’m sorry.
Ryan Wall
And you know that from a few things, you’ll start to get more price droppers, you’ll start to get comments from agents and we could spend a whole podcast on talking about an agent’s ability to dictate a home inspector’s business. And we don’t need to go there, you both drink at the same time, so I know it’s true. So we won’t go there, but when you start to get those questions, it’s like we had one agent recently and these kind of like little stories I use as, you know, like indicators or markers along the way who said like, hey, you got, you know, my client had to go with somebody else even though I recommended you. By the way, like when did you guys raise your prices? Like I’ve been quoting my clients like X amount, right? When they ask how much is a home inspection. And I was like, appreciate the feedback first of all, cause it tells me that like I’m a little out of some expectations. But two, it’s like – o you mind if I show you what your last like 20 clients had paid because it’s over $ more than what you think they’ve all paid. like, you know, helping adjust some expectations on that side too. Yeah, so you can only kind of price yourself with the market. The other piece is really like justifying your value. So this is the core of what we’ve built ourselves on. And so all of that other stuff is great. It’s all important. all part of a pricing strategy.
Most important part that we found is you have to back up your value. And so we’ve taken like a pretty hard stance into the environmental world down here, just because naturally you have so much mold, have so much, you know, everything from asbestos to all that fun stuff. And it’s just, it shows up everywhere. And so we’re like, let’s be the best home inspector who’s focused on the environmental side of every property.
For a couple reasons, one, like it’s profitable, like doing genuine mold assessments, not just like air quality testing on home inspections is like a good thing. It’s good for everybody. But two, it’s like, you know, the age old can’t say mold. It’s like, well, one, that’s not true. Like it doesn’t exist anywhere. That rule is not real. it’s also like, you know, if you’re…
If you’re meaning mold, if you’re gonna say, I saw some microbial growth, I would hope that if I was hiring a home inspector, I would want them to be like, and I’m gonna tell you what genus and species and what those things mean and how to get rid of it. And all of those other things that come with, because that’s what we saw was killing deals unnecessarily. there’s a whole conversation about like, we deal killers, deal makers, whatever. You want the house or the product to kill the deal if it needs to be killed. You’d never want it to be you as the inspector who kills the deal because of something you did or how you describe something or like, you know, whether you over, under exaggerated something. And so we looked at like, is it? What is it that’s causing our agents, our buyers the most grief? And it’s a lot of this environmental stuff. So why wouldn’t we be as qualified and is as good at it as we could possibly be? And it just so happens that, you know, both myself, Jordan, one of our other inspectors, like had the paper qualifications to go get our, you know, mold licenses. So we did. And we’ve just really dove into that on a number of fronts and we really focus on that kind of stuff. you know, as much as we like the bulk of our business is home inspections and we kind of charge according to what we think we’re worth. We also have this, this whole other piece of the puzzle where it’s like, we’re environmentalists and.
Maybe I can’t say that but like we try to understand. Yeah, try to understand.
Matt Brading
Yeah. You’re marketing it that way. Like you’re, you’re, you’re modeling your company off of, environmental awareness, whether or not you’re environmentalist. get that. But, but yeah, I understand that it’s attractive to people, especially in this day and age and in an area like yours, which is very similar to Texas where we are to Houston, where we’re super humid and dealing with all kinds of mold and stuff. Yeah. I get that you mentioned his name. So we’ve got to talk about this. So, you know, we spoke about this before we actually went on air. I was going to keep it a surprise, like I, as a content creator, I unfortunately don’t get a lot of time to consume a whole lot of content. And so I go on whenever I try to make it a point to get on there and like watch some of my friends and see what they’re doing. But years ago, whenever I had a chance to a little bit more, I was already starting before things kind of really started going for me. I was already starting to lay some groundwork with some inspectors all across the country.
And, and one of those inspectors was Jordan Mason. and, who is out of the Tampa area. Brad, do you know Jordan, Jordan? Okay. So, I, I’ve never met him in person, but you know, we, we have, communicated via the phone or, or, or just, you know, text or something like that for not a while, but for the last several years. And, and so then, so I was kind of following him and.
Brad Lowery
I haven’t connected with him now, uh-uh.
Matt Brading
I really enjoyed his content. liked the way he put his content out there. And he always seemed like a really nice, honest guy. I sent him as much business as I possibly could. then until then, you know, I found out that Ryan was going to be on the show today and having no idea. I just a few minutes before the show, I was like, I got to figure out who guy Ryan is. And so I, I wanted to at least have some, type of value. didn’t know, you know, I didn’t know what it was going to be. I didn’t know we were going to so easily be able to chat, but I went and looked and I was like, okay,
I was trying to learn about you and I didn’t even look at the top to see like the name of the company, right? Cause it’s there. I didn’t see it. I was flipping through Instagram and then I saw Jordan and I was like, wait a minute. And so then I went to the top and I was like, Oh wait, no. Hello home inspections. This is, and I realized that a few years ago, you and Jordan’s company, I’m not sure what happened, but there was some type of merge or something. He told me about it as it was happening. And of course, you know, I knew him, I didn’t know you and he’s not as active online as he once was.
Which is a shame because still Jordan I still like the stuff that you put out there still like his presence online but I don’t think he much cared for the social media thing. Although I mean, you know, it’s a connection maker, right? That’s how I know him. That’s how I know of you. So anyway, but that’s beside the point. Yeah, I was familiar with Ryan and you guys kind of merged. So what’s the story there? You have the flip notes on that?
Ryan Wall
Yep. Yeah, happy to talk about it. yeah, Jordan was definitely one of the initial inspectors that I ever connected with when I started doing this. Can’t recall even how that connection was made, but I know he was just always so helpful, like reaching out Instagram texts and you know, when you’re, I think when you’re a new inspector, one of the biggest struggles you have is just like admitting you don’t know what you’re doing and then finding somebody who’s like, okay, with being like, yeah, we were all there.
Matt Brading
Yeah!
Ryan Wall
I know you don’t know what you’re doing. Just ask. Like just ask me about it and we’ll help. And so there were several inspectors early on who were very much like that. But Jordan was one that stuck around for a while. Always willing to just like, you know, any question, just help. Even if it meant like business got directed to me and not to him. Like he was always there. So we stayed in touch the first couple of years and there came a point where I was, know, Hello Home was growing and I was really starting to think like, who do I want on this team? Like at the end of the day, yes, I want good inspectors, but who do I genuinely want on my team? And that’s, think that’s a life lesson that you learn when you get into business more than it is a business lesson is you just want people that you can trust and who are good people and you know, would have your back. And that like profile fit Jordan really well. I was like, I would like to be friends with this guy. And if I feel like if I want to be friends with them, like he’d be a good business partner or like, you know, related in business some way. And so I bugged them a few times over the course of probably a year, I would always say like, hey man, you know, we’re hiring, come on over. And, you know, looking back at it, I was like, man, this guy’s really successful, he’s killing it. He’s been, I think he inspected for like six or seven, maybe eight years before he joined us. So I was like, who am I? Who am I to ask this guy to come join this team? Like clearly he’s killing it. And I must have persisted enough because it got to the point where I think the trigger for him was he was having his third kid under five, his third girl under five. And he’s like, you know what? I love inspecting. Don’t love the business anymore. Like don’t have the business side of this. And I’d love to keep doing this and just not have the stress of, you know, managing and running the business and the backend and all that. So yeah, we, we chatted for a while.
Matt Brading
Right.
Ryan Wall
A couple months to kind of finalize it, but it was essentially a merger, a merger where his brand died in the merger and he became part of our brand. And we were really intentional about that. was like, hey, agents in Tampa Bay, you probably know one of us. You probably know Jordan if you don’t know me. this isn’t a Jordan Mason sucks. And so he’s coming over here or this isn’t a, know, hello home failed. so we’re, you know, joining Jordan. was a Jordan’s coming to join our team and he’s going to be a huge part of it. And, would love for the business to kind of follow them over. And it was, you know, it was obviously very successful, but came with its bumps and challenges of, everything from the logistics of like, he had a phone number that rang to his business for seven years. It’s like, how do you get people to stop calling that phone number? Right. Like,
Matt Brading
Time.
Ryan Wall
There’s those little things that that seem little that are actually really important all the way to You know, he did something is a very he had all his procedures and systems a very certain way and so adapting to our way of doing things our culture is something that like I commend him for because that’s not easy to do after a long time is you know to change your ways of doing things and I’ll be the first to say like he probably took a couple steps backwards and in his professional career coming over here and then ended up helping, pulling us forward. So yeah, was, it has been a lot of fun. Jordan now runs our team. So he’s like our operations manager. He trains all of our inspectors. He’s still actively out in the field. He loves it, or at least he tells me he does. And I hope he does cause he’s great at it. He does a little bit of our social. So like if you’ll see like actual in the field videos on our like hello home inspections Instagram.
Usually it’s Jordan, but he’s really focusing on the environmental stuff like we talked about earlier, really pushing into that realm while keeping our team up and running. yeah, it was interesting because we went through the whole gambit of like, what does it mean to buy and sell an inspection company all the way to just like, what does merging look like? What is starting a new company with two existing companies look like?
Matt Brading
Yep.
Ryan Wall
It’s a lot of fun. Learned a lot of stuff through it and I’m glad he’s around and hope he’s around for a long time.
Brad Lowery
Dude, Brian, there’s-
Matt Brading
Cheers to that because Jordan’s good people.
Ryan Wall
Was great.
Brad Lowery
No, I got to meet him. Seriously. That’d be fun. mean, one just again, connecting with other inspectors in the area. But honestly, I’ve got to say there’s two things that I really we could talk about next one, I think might need to be an entirely different episode, which is how to capitalize on a down market through ancillaries. You know, you guys are leaning into mold in a time when the Florida market is dipping.
There’s a correction going on and people realtors don’t want to say that but there is it’s a slight correction and you know That’s a time where it’s like, you might not have as many inspections as you did when people were buying houses as soon as they came available But you’re leaning into something that’s gonna make you money and help establish your brand in another niche So that’s brilliant. But I want to talk about How inspectors down here are friendlier than in any other state that I have been in. Maybe, Matt, maybe Texas inspectors are awesome. I mean, Ryan, you’ve been helpful. I’ve got several other inspectors that I’m friends with down here. Kenny McLaurin is one we both know. He’s another great guy. I’ve gotten work from both of you guys. I’m just a dude that was inspecting up in Virginia for eight, nine years. And I come down here and I’m picking up stuff on the side you know, y’all don’t want to come down to Sarasota area, so you call me and you’re willing to send some down here. But I’m so used to like up in Virginia, there were inspectors that were so territorial, that if we happen to be because I was inspecting during COVID up there, if we happen to be in the same house at the same time, they wanted me to put the panel cover back on, you know, before because they wanted to take it off themselves. God forbid I should help them or leave a ladder up or a hatch open or they just it was you do you and I do me and no path shall cross beyond that. And that’s so different than what I’ve experienced down here. Where does the willingness to embrace competition as coopetition come from? And is that something that you see as significant down here? Or is that just something that’s, you know, you’ve kind of helped to bring to the area?
Matt Brading
Hey, before you answer that, like, feel like there’s been a bit of a climate shift in the industry. mean, like, I think, I think that like there, there, was a bit cutthroat, like, and I think that some of the online presence that we have worked towards creating has, has bridged a little bit of a gap and there’s enough business for everybody. And I think it’s a little bit of a climate shift. And so while you still have some of those people that are like that, I think that there’s a whole lot of more let’s work together going on, like in general, but anyway.
Brad Lowery
Ooh, that’s a good point. It’s good. Yeah.
Matt Brading
Take it away.
Ryan Wall
Yeah, no, I would absolutely agree. think whether it’s, you know, next generation of home inspectors, whatever you want to call it, I think there is there’s definitely a shift. The one of the reasons that I got into home inspections was, you know, careful how I say this, the inspector who inspected our home, who I had a lot of previous other, I guess, experience working with. And he’s I know he’s not on social or whatever. So we’re fine. But just like a very typical like what you hear about a home inspector, right? Older guy, no frills, like couldn’t get any extra other than a paper report out of him kind of guy. And I think the industry is just changing a lot there to be like, hey, if you’ve got to differentiate yourself and you can’t just do it in a cheesy way, you got to actually provide value. And I think as people start leaning into that, okay, I have to provide value in order to make it in this industry providing value isn’t just for the client. It’s gonna be working with who you refer out, your subcontractors. We do a lot of subcontracting to termite inspectors down here, because it’s a completely separate license. We work with a lot of trades and all that sort of stuff. so you naturally have to, you don’t wanna burn bridges. I think that’s just like, it’s something I live by regardless, but I think especially in this industry, like we are, by far from what I’ve seen in my short time down here. And I’m a licensed contractor. I have a plumbing company. I’ve got my hands in a lot of things. And so I get to see, it’s not. I tried to keep that a little bit separate. But when we’re over on that side of the ball, a lot of the times we see just like.
Matt Brading
Is it hello plumbing?
Ryan Wall
I don’t know why, but it’s so easy for the trades to just like rip each other apart. And especially when it comes to real estate, the trades will rip home inspectors apart, them under the bus in a heartbeat. And so seeing that over and over, like one of our core values was, and all my guys know this, it’s like if you’re on site and you see work that was done by another professional or you hear about, know, the seller drops the pre-listing inspection on the table and says, see, there’s nothing wrong with the home.
Brad Lowery
All
Ryan Wall
The last thing we wanna do is down talk another professional, regardless of whether it’s justified or not. You want to hold everybody who has a professional license or has good intent or whatever to a certain standard. And we do not talk down about those people, especially in front of a client. And I think like that mentality kind of changes how you look at your competition and who you’re.
Matt Brading
100.
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Ryan Wall
Collaborating with, competing against, whatever you want to call it. It’s like, I cannot remember a time, regardless of what another professional has said about me or my product, I can guarantee you that my intent was never ill. It was always for the client’s best, or at least always, you know, with the intent of doing the best job I could. And so I have to assume that most other people are going to have the same intent. And if you look at kind of everybody like that, sure, you’re going to be wrong here or there, but most of the time, the people who you end up working side by side with are out there just trying to hustle and be the best at what they can be themselves. And then we’re all just growing through the process. So, you know, that’s kind of how we look at it being helpful down here in this market and, you know, just trying to work with other inspectors as best we can.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, given the storm surge. sorry, Matt. Go ahead.
Matt Brading
I think that, no, no, I was just saying that like, I think that like, that’s part of like the whole, breaking the mold and the, and the shift, you know, is like, you know, we, have that, that kind of mutual respect, which I say this a lot, but I think that like inspectors had have, did have a bit of a reputation, right? very similar to the one that you described that inspected your home. And I think that that has fueled the fire with a lot of these trades people and everything that have a certain perception of home inspectors. And I think that we have worked to change that a little bit. But I think that that was earned, like I think inspectors earned that. And so it’s up to us to change that perspective.
Brad Lowery
It’s the rising tide raises all ship thing which I you know, which I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about rising tide in Florida after two hurricanes and storm surge but but yeah, no, surely it really is that I feel like that you might have been really onto something with saying that it’s the younger generation of inspectors that really embraces that model. Because Ryan, I mean, you you honestly carry that even onto the website onto the Hello Home website, which I refer to, because you have links to county permit you know, sites where it’s like, instead of having to actually like search this up myself, I can go to the Pinellas County website or the Hillsborough County website. And, you know, for Florida inspectors, you know, doing four points and win minutes and having to pull up the permits is nothing new to you, but to the rest of the country, this is something that I never had to do in Virginia. I don’t know if it’s required in Texas or in other states, but having to actually pull the permit file itself, government websites suck.
And, and, you know, Ryan, you provided a shortcut for realtors, for buyers, for inspectors to basically do the same thing that, gosh, what is it? it’s, was it building center.com? Yeah. Like they, they did for looking up serial numbers, but you do that same thing on what’s that. That org. Yeah. Yeah. Building center.org. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Wall
Yeah.
Matt Brading
org.org.org. Yeah. I don’t work for them or anything.
Brad Lowery
But I mean, it’s the cheat sheet for home inspectors. But you did that same thing for Florida permits. And I just thought that was so brilliant because one, it’s helping other inspectors, it’s helping agents. But two, I mean, it’s feeding right back to referrals and co-op petition where it’s like, we’re using your site, dude, you know, and if you, you know, the rest of us, it’s like, we could probably, you know, try to incorporate that on ours, but why reinvent the wheel, you know, and you’re getting leads straight from that just from being helpful.
Matt Brading
Yeah, it is.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, I think it’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Ryan Wall
Yeah, I think any way you can help anybody is rarely gonna be a bad thing, right? When I created that link on the site, and to be totally blunt, all it is is a page with other links that I’ve been frustrated trying to find over the years. And every time I find one where I’m like, that sucked, I’m gonna throw the link on there because I know somebody else, whether it’s an inspector, an agent, a homeowner, somebody’s gonna be looking for that at some point in the future.
Brad Lowery
Right.
Ryan Wall
The one I always laugh about is like if your address down here ends with the seat like with Tampa in the address There’s three possible websites where you need to go to find permits on your home. There’s gonna be like unincorporated Tampa which falls under you know Hillsborough County and then depending on the year You’re either gonna go the old Tampa permitting website or the new Tampa permitting website and so you can find permits on three different websites all for one address. And after a couple of times getting frustrated, I’m like, somebody else has to hate doing this. so, it was a hidden link on our website for the first year. And only our inspectors knew what, it was slash permits. And I was like, got enough requests and I was like, hey, if this is helpful to everybody else, let’s do it.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, no, I think it’s genius, man. Absolutely genius. So, well, dude, Ryan, it’s been awesome having you on the show, man. We’ll have to do this again. I think we need to get Jordan on the show as well. mean, that’d be, yeah, definitely. Any last thoughts from you guys before we sign off? What’s the craziest thing that you guys have seen this week in the field?
Ryan Wall
I appreciate that. We do.
Matt Brading
We’re totally good. Well, I mean, it’s it’s Monday.
Ryan Wall
I was gonna say, we’ve got some stuff.
Brad Lowery
Yes, this is true. Yeah. Yeah. How was the
Matt Brading
Um, yeah, I know that
Brad Lowery
Weekend?
Matt Brading
My company’s closed on the weekends and so is Ryan’s, but, I haven’t seen anything because I haven’t gone to work yet. But, uh, um, what, what I, what I have seen though is the phone’s ringing. Uh, it is picking up. Uh, I can tell that summer was around the corner and that, uh, it is about that time for people to start, uh, you know, buying and selling homes because the phone is starting to pick up.
Ryan Wall
Yeah, very true. I, for the most part, I’m not in the field much anymore. And, you know, it’s for another time, some other things I’m working on right now, but same here, I kind of keep my pulse on our incoming bookings. And it’s interesting seeing, you know, that we’ll have weeks where nearly everything’s an online booking and other weeks, everything’s a phone call booking. And I think all those things mean something, you know, figuring out exactly what that means is kind of tricky sometimes. But
Brad Lowery
Let’s go.
Ryan Wall
To Matt’s point, I think the market is picking up, especially when you have weeks where a week will be slow and then the next week is busy. It’s easy to get frustrated in the midst of that, but then you look at the data and it’s funny, it follows the same trends every year. So, looking forward to this next couple weeks here, because it’s looking good.
Brad Lowery
Nah, I love it. For all y’all watching, make sure you guys go follow Ryan. Check out Hello Home Inspections online on social media. They’re awesome down here at Tampa. Check out their website. Did a bang up job on that as well. Just don’t check out the software that they use. We don’t like them very much. anyway, Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. This has been a lot of fun. All right. And thank you guys so much for watching. And we’ll see you right here next time on You Got It. We’ll see you then.
Ryan Wall
You – appreciate you guys, been fun.
Matt Brading
Thanks for watching The Ride Along.