In episode 44 of The Ride Along, filmed while on location at the InterNACHI Pro Inspectors Conference in Orlando, FL, we’ve got a turbocharged mix of weird inspection finds, smart post-storm strategy, and some spicy opinions about home inspector vehicles.
Brad Lowery and special guest co-host Matt Brading sat down with Kelsey Soderlund of Soderlund Inspections in Worcester, MA and Shawn Mizell of Mizell Home Inspections in Tampa, FL.
Kelsey dishes on why showing up in a Focus ST (yes, a hatchback) actually helps her stand out in the best way, and why clients remember her for all the right reasons. Meanwhile, Shawn shares how he tripled his revenue post-hurricane by pivoting fast, leveraging his mold assessor license, and knocking out 125 inspections in just three days.
They also swap wild inspection stories. We’re talking secret tunnels, “meditation” crawlspaces, and some hilariously relatable ladder debates.
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Transcript
Brad Lowery
All right, everybody, welcome back another episode live from InterNACHI here. This is the… Yeah, you got it. Okay, cool. We are podcasting from the bar. No, but it’s, we only actually have one round here so far, but let’s go around the horn here. So we got Shawn. Tell them who you are away from. Yeah, you can use, I forgot you had that.
Matt Brading
I forgot what I was doing here.
Shawn Mizell
That’s it. All right. Well, I am Shawn from Mizell Home Inspections and I’m from Tampa, Florida.
Brad Lowery
Very cool. All right, Kelsey’s up next. Don’t break my mic! Party foul!
Matt Brading
All right.
Kelsey Soderlund
Put this thing on.
Brad Lowery
Think so. My gosh, that’s resilient. That’s good. Okay, cool. You’re good.
Kelsey Soderlund
Kelsey Soderlund of Soderlund Inspections out of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Brad Lowery
And it’s spelled Warchester? It’s not. That’s not how you pronounce it.
Kelsey Soderlund
Okay, no, just ask polar bear. He’ll tell you. Yeah, the manufacturer is in Worcester. I drive by a giant blow up polar bear every day.
Shawn Mizell
It’s like Washington.
Brad Lowery
He’ll tell you. Wait, is that where it’s from? By a polar bear? That’s where you’re… A polar bear. A polar. They don’t even have an arr in there. That’s it. Yeah. So you do home inspections. All right. What got you into that,
Kelsey Soderlund
Well, I’m actually a Seattleite and I had house painting as one of my very first gigs ever, working in a part of Seattle called Queen Anne. And of course, had a bunch of Queen Anne Victorians. My favorite part about that job was being in a different place every day and seeing different houses, older houses, and the little nooks and crannies and features that older houses have that we don’t use anymore. So I have this eternal curiosity of…all of the things in particular old houses and now it’s my job to go in the creepy attic and the creepy basement and.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, Queen Victoria’s just the best though. They’re awesome. mean we got a few in Florida. So but I mean do you guys have many over in Texas?
Matt Brading
Not really. mean, in the older parts of town, have like there’s an area called the Heights and they have a lot of historic buildings and older buildings. We have stuff that’s similar to that, but not so much. mean, there’s just been so much new construction over the years and they just keep building out Houston and building out Houston out in the suburbs and everything. So, yeah, I don’t see as much of that in my functions.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. Okay, but coolest Queen Anne Victorian that you’ve ever inspected.
Kelsey Soderlund
Coolest Queen Anne Victorian. So there was one that I did actually not in Queen Anne and another inspector and myself were asked by the client to haul away this giant concrete block that was on top of a mystery hole. So we pull it away and inside is a little twin size mattress and a plastic bag on the wall and it was of course dusky and day because it was a little crawl space and the seller said it was their meditation room. But it did not look very peaceful.
Brad Lowery
No, quite the opposite.
Kelsey Soderlund
The most interesting, maybe not my favorite. It’s definitely one of my weirder finds. It’s a- Yeah, definitely.
Matt Brading
Interesting.
Brad Lowery
Interesting, there’s a lot of qualifiers in home inspections when it comes to what’s interesting.
Kelsey Soderlund
So, yeah. All kinds of stuff, whether it’s a murder dungeon or something else.
Brad Lowery
A different dungeon. I don’t know what could she be talking about that? Okay, yeah, this is a family show. Yeah. So anyway, Dungeons and Dragons, you know, I would know. I why did I immediately assume that? Well, skip straight. He Shawn knows. I think he might know. Okay, wait, Shawn, since you inspect here in Florida, we know it gets weird down here. So like, what’s the weirdest thing that you’ve seen in a house in Florida?
Matt Brading
No idea.
Shawn Mizell
We’ve Jumpsnapped, yeah we’ve seen Jumpsnapped.
Brad Lowery
And remember, I get paid by Porch, so don’t cost me my job.
Shawn Mizell
So the ones that jump out to me would be the first one was a family reached out to me and they wanted me to go inspect a house that their father just recently passed away and they live in another state. And so they just wanted me to give them an idea of what the house looks like so they can start planning to resell it. Simple enough. I showed up. They didn’t mention to me that the father had passed away like three days ago and there’s been no attempts at biohazard cleanup. Like he passed away in the house and it was.
It was very disgusting. Like, but I put my ventilator on and my hazmat suit and I did the inspection and it was absolutely like his like I could tell where he died. Okay. Yes, like his body wasn’t there, but the stuff that came. Yeah, that one was the grossest. But my favorite inspection of all time.
Matt Brading
He’s still there
Yeah, that’s rough.
Insane. I can’t get over it. I gotta take a moment. That is that is crazy
Shawn Mizell
It was. I shouldn’t have done it and I did it. Yeah, totally. But my favorite inspection was, and it was funny because one of my favorite things about the home inspection community is how much we help each other. And I learned that when I was like six months in, I was in Seminole Heights and there’s a lot of mafia families there. And I go to this house and they’re like, this guy, this house used to be owned by a mafia family. So it’s going to be a little, it’s going to be unique. I walk in that house from the outside, it looks like a normal house. You go inside.
It had a full basement and it had like lifts to take cars up and down inside the basement. It had tunnels. Like if you went into a tunnel, you’d pop up in the backyard. I think I made a video about it. I’m trying remember if I made a video. I I definitely took photos, but like basically they had escape patches. So like if the cops showed up, they can all go down into the basement and escape through the tunnels. Everything was industrial. Everything was copper. I ended up having to go onto our Facebook group where a lot of us are. And I was like,
I don’t know any, we don’t have basements in Florida. Like I’m sitting here like, what do I do? Like I’m sitting there taking pictures, everyone was helping me. It was crazy.
Matt Brading
Yeah, so we don’t have basements either. was wondering about that because you said it had a basement. You seemed surprised by that. I’ve only seen one house that had a basement. Yeah, one house. where you inspect those, there’s a lot of basements,
Brad Lowery
You don’t throw it on the floor.
Kelsey Soderlund
I’ll try. No promises. So yeah, in Massachusetts, we’ve got basements in almost every house. The crawl spaces I run into are maybe a little area that’s accessible through the basement that’s underneath an addition or a porch or something like that. But typically it’s a wet basement.
Matt Brading
Right, Is there such thing as a dry basement? Not really. never. So why is it that you guys don’t do basements in Florida? Is it the water table?
Shawn Mizell
Yeah, water table. Yeah, if you’re going to do a basement, have to shore it up. like, it’s it’s not a common, you know, it costs a lot more to put a base on water.
Matt Brading
Same with us, it’s mostly like it’s water table, but it’s also bedrock. Like there’s a lot of bedrock. And so like it costs a lot to dig through all of that and to actually get a basement in Texas. Very, very few of them. Run across it every now and again. Or at least not in my area of Texas. I think when you get up in the panhandle, there’s a little bit more.
Brad Lowery
Yep. Again, I feel like it’s a little bit of a soil thing too down here because it’s a little bit sandier. It’s going to give a little bit more. This kind of goes back to Queen Anne Victorians up north where it’s much more compacted clay. I feel like those old foundations hold up, especially like the old stackstone foundations. Those will hold up a whole lot better when you have that hard clay soil as compared to down here. Anyway, so Queen Anne’s. But that’s not the coolest thing that we’ve talked about home inspection wise since we’ve been here. And guys, this is the best thing about conferences. It’s the conversations that you have after hours, right? Some of which can be shared and some cannot. But in our case, there’s a topic that I think is a fascinating one to talk about, which is home inspection vehicles. We don’t get to talk about this much, because it’s something that we all live with, but at the same time, we talk about structure, we talk about code, we talk about old home, new home, everything in between. What are properties like in your neck of the woods? But one thing’s consistent, we all have a vehicle that we take to get to where we’re going. And some of them are weird, and some of them are common, but Kelsey, you…We shared we shared some common ground on this and that we both inspected out of hatchbacks So, okay, what made you want to pick that and what were you driving?
Kelsey Soderlund
So I am, well here, my first inspection vehicle was a Kia Soul. It’s the perfect little inspection mobile. It’s like a mini SUV. It doesn’t have all wheel drive, little one four wheel, but you know, I can get places and it’s a little box. I put a pod on the top. So now, because the Kia Soul was really boring and I like power sports, I have a Focus ST, which is a hatchback with some extra horsepower, manual transmission, turbo, you know, and it’s actually roomier than the Kia and more fun.
Brad Lowery
And it’s way more fun. So all right, sound off in the comments if you’re a tuner person or like a traditional muscle car person or if you’re a truck person. now I’ve seen a have you guys heard of oh, gosh, I might have to cut this part out because I’m blanking on her name all of a sudden. Pam Pybus. There we go. Pam Pybus down in Jackson, Mississippi. Have you guys heard of her at all? All right. She has inspected like a girl. That’s her company. Yeah, yeah. So that’s Pam.
Kelsey Soderlund
Okay, that I know.
Brad Lowery
She inspects in custom wrapped Mini Coopers. And so that’s her go-to, which a Mini is kind of a hatchback. But anyway, no, I used the Fiesta ST, but man, I never had more fun driving to inspections than I did in that freaking hatchback. OK, I think what’s the most fun thing is when you have people that are really trying to get places. And yours, you did the same thing with yours that I did, which is completely full bolt-on. Which if you’re not a car person, you don’t know what that is. Everything that’s attached to the motor, that is not the motor or the turbo, you upgrade. Just better parts, better power, tune that thing up. I mean, I would smoke some people that had no idea I was even coming.
Kelsey Soderlund
One of my besties called it a econo box because he’s got a GTI so of course he’s got a
Brad Lowery
He’s a snobby little like.
Yeah. Thanks. He’s a high sobriety because.
Kelsey Soderlund
It might not look fancy, but you know, it goes.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it’s still a fun car,
Kelsey Soderlund
car people, when I pull up, they hear the engine sound and they’re like, what is that? And they look at my car and they hear that too. And it’s a really great way to build rapport. And I remember last night you had said you actually are driving something else now.
Brad Lowery
Well, look, I’m driving what is considered a more reputable home inspector veer.
Kelsey Soderlund
Let’s talk about why that’s considered reputable.
Brad Lowery
Get it. so look, Matt, what are you driving first of all?
Matt Brading
I knew this was going to happen. Texas guy. What do you think I’m driving? That’s exactly right. An F 150. I drive a truck. I have considered the idea of like a small SUV or something like that just for gas and the same miles on my vehicle. I saw Britt. Maybe I think you said that you do this too. Has a luggage.
Kelsey Soderlund
F-150. I have a pod on top and I have a conduit carrier for an extension pole on the top.
Matt Brading
Cool. I love it. I just don’t think I can pull up to an inspection in that kind of vehicle. I just don’t think I can. I’m a truck guy. I’m a truck guy.
Shawn Mizell
I definitely have something to add to this. So when I started my inspection business, I had a Prius. I worked out of a Prius. It wasn’t a choice. It’s like literally what I had. And it’s like, I didn’t plan on being an inspector. It happened really fast. And it’s like, okay, well, I have a Prius, I’m going to make it work. All my tools, my ladders, everything is a hatchback Prius. Everything fit in there perfectly. I looked up the back, everything was right there. But
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Matt Brading
Get out.
Shawn Mizell
I felt like people were not going to take me seriously. was busy, like people were hiring me, but in my mind, I see other home inspectors with like nicely wrapped pickup trucks. After a successful first year, I upgraded to a Nissan Titan. And I wrapped it, and it looks cool. I’ve gotten compliments on it. I did not get more work. My tools are way harder to get to.
Everything gets destroyed in the back of my truck. I put tools back there to get rusty, to get wet. had a flat cover on there, that fell apart. It’s been the biggest pain in my butt and I miss working out of a hatchback. And so when this truck is about paid off, I’m looking at my next vehicle and it is not gonna be a truck.
Matt Brading
I’m still gonna be in my truck.
Brad Lowery
Ha
Kelsey Soderlund
So you mentioned image, right? When you think about a home inspector, what do you think?
Brad Lowery
You think about a contractor. You’re going to look like a tool man. Yeah.
Kelsey Soderlund
Most usually look high.
Brad Lowery
Burley guy in a truck.
Kelsey Soderlund
A middle-aged white guy in a pickup truck. And then everybody… expectation because they’re worried they’re not gonna be taken seriously. Now everybody looks the same, looking the same isn’t what sets us apart. It’s not why people hire us. They don’t hire us because they, you know, they’re gonna hire me because I look like you, because I’m not a dude. And the typical image that you conjure in your head of a home inspector isn’t gonna be the cute blonde girl who shows up in a race car or picks up her radon monitor on a motorcycle.
Brad Lowery
Ellie, wonder how he got in that crawl space?
Kelsey Soderlund
Right? But things like that, driving a Prius can set you apart. The first inspector that I worked with drove a Fiat and he would shove… No, it was just a regular Fiat. But he would shove a little giant ladder into the Fiat and he had to like finagle the passenger seat in the front and it was a chore, but he got it done and it was notable. And people would think about, that home inspector that drives the tiny little clown car.
Brad Lowery
Was it the Abar?
Kelsey Soderlund
And that works for him, just like being a cute wand on a motorcycle or in a race car is making me memorable. I stand out. It’s whatever gets you to do the job. It’s not hard to find me. And that might work against me, but it also might work to my benefit.
Matt Brading
I think even if it works against you to some degree, mean, I’m sure it works for your benefit more than.
Kelsey Soderlund
And those clients are clients that I wouldn’t want anyways. Like we talked about time, know, price negotiation or things like that. And, you know, you feel like maybe you’re getting your arm twisted and that’s the thing that you should do for your business. But also you don’t want to deal with the aftermath of having done that inspection because that client is going to be a total pain. So the people who aren’t going to hire me because I’m a cute blonde in a race car instead of a pickup truck, I don’t want to with those people anyways. No.
Matt Brading
100 % think it’s like an image thing for like, I’m not really worried about what somebody is going to think of me because I pulled up in a small vehicle versus a truck or whatever. It’s just, I just don’t add. I like the truck. I feel better in the drug. Maybe I don’t I don’t know what it is. I just liked that vehicle. I like being able to throw my ladder in the back of the truck. know, there’s certain things about it. That’s really been my hangup. until it was recently that I saw Brent, cause I thought to myself, how are people doing this in like cars?
Like many SUVs and stuff like how are they doing it? And I wasn’t talking about like a big SUV or something that you can throw an actual big ladder in. I thought people were all just carrying around the telescoping ladder, which I hate by the way. Like I will use it. I have to use it sometimes, but like I really don’t like it. I don’t feel safe on it. Like I love it. And so I thought, man, is that really what people are doing? Cause I can’t imagine doing that. But I saw Brent with that luggage carrier on the top and I was like, it literally had like three ladders shoved in it. I was like,
That is amazing. You think about it and I may even consider it because I do want to keep miles off my truck. And once I found that as a possibility, but like before, I was thinking like, I’m not going to do that. Like, I’m going to throw my ladder in the back of my truck and that’s what I’m going to do. Yeah. Now it seems like a bit of a chore, especially with little giants. They’re heavy to get them up in that luggage carrier. I mean, it can be done.
Kelsey Soderlund
I’m sorry, a telescoping?
I’ve actually traded in a little giant for the telescoping ladder because it’s much lighter and it’s not as unwieldy. Maybe you got I have a frame telescoping ladder, which is actually awful. So if anybody has a recommendation for a telescoping a frame ladder, I am all ears. The one on Amazon that I got. I don’t know the bits on Amazon thing. It’s got no safeties. It’s a it’s honestly a hazard.
Matt Brading
Better company. That I saw some friends of mine, think, I think we’re at World of Concrete, which is like a trade show up in Vegas a couple weeks ago. And they were looking, there’s a ladder company there and it interested me. They had, I think it was an A-frame and some like foldable or like, what are they called? Like articulating telescoping ladder. I’ll see if can get the brand name for you. Cause I was interested in.
Kelsey Soderlund
I am on the hunt for a telescoping A-frame.
Matt Brading
Better but like they might be. Might be something you to look at.
Kelsey Soderlund
I’m interested, yeah.
Brad Lowery
Okay, but does it need to be an A-frame just by preference is what you like
Kelsey Soderlund
Well, I, yes, I, there is a necessity for an A-frame. There’s a lot of situations where you don’t have a wall to lean the ladder up against. If I’ve got an Attic Hatch in the middle of a garage, I need an A-frame or I…
Brad Lowery
There’s a will, there’s a way. I have opened so many attic hatches with my Extend and Climb. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. there’s an art to it.
Kelsey Soderlund
Don’t need an A-frame and I just need some skills. You’ll have to share them.
Brad Lowery
You have to figure it out. You just prop it open a little bit, nudge it back, then scoot your ladder forward, and then it’s the same process on the way back down.
Matt Brading
I’ve done that. But also like, think like whenever you have like moisture in the ceiling, there’s not always a place that you can get a extendable ladder, you know, you have to have an aphid. There’s been times where I needed it.
Brad Lowery
And Shawn doesn’t need one because he’s Peter Pan.
Shawn Mizell
So, what I learned is with the little giants, I have the Gorilla. And the ones that are rated for 300 pounds are much lighter than the ones that are rated for 350 pounds. And I love my ladder. I’ve been using it for five years. I can get anywhere, everything. I had a telescoping ladder in the very beginning and I hated it. Like, waiting for the air to decompress. like, with my ladders, I’m like bam, bam, bam, bam in my truck. Telescoping ladder, I’m like, psss.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Shawn Mizell
I’m like, my gosh, like, can you please close? And then I pinched my fingers.
Brad Lowery
That’s the worst part. Yeah, yeah.
Shawn Mizell
I’m good. It is the longest minute of my life. Everything needs to move as fast as me.
Matt Brading
This minute of your life.
Brad Lowery
No, I definitely get that. Different vehicles have different benefits, right? Because, Matt, you were saying you like how comfortable you feel in your truck, which, again, driving an F-150 now, I totally get it. I now get the luxury. We were talking about this last night. I get the luxury of going from job one to job two to job three with air-conditioned seats that cool the swamp you know what that you get in the dirty South.
Shawn Mizell
Heated seats for me.
Brad Lowery
Those are great in the wintertime, and especially when, you know, at a certain age, you don’t use them to warm yourself, you use them for the lower back pain. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. But the thing is, it’s like what you were saying is true too, where all of the stuff that used to fit in the hatchback comfortably, it wouldn’t slide around because it all just fit. Now, that ladder slides, unless you’re using a full proper ladder like you’re using, my extended climb will slide around in the truck bed, right?
Shawn Mizell
That’s what I’m referring to.
Brad Lowery
Box. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So just saying,
Matt Brading
That’s the one thing that. Now I carried all my gear, isn’t like in a roller bag. And honestly, I think that’s the deal. Like you got to adapt to your vehicle because everything can work no matter what you’re driving, whatever you’re getting around in. But you might adapt your gear to your it’s just like I adapt my tools to whatever gear bag I’m carrying or whatever, you know, like I recently upgraded my gas detector. I’ve been on the hunt for one that fit all my needs. And one of them was like the way I like to carry on me and when I get in my gear the one that I had that I had and I liked the best really didn’t fit very good so I wanted to find one that worked that good. But then also fit where I want it to be. think the same thing’s true when it comes to vehicles. So I do, have a low profile toolbox behind the cab of my truck and I keep my telescopic ladder in there. I’ve got my coveralls in there. I’ve got knee pads in there. There’s a handful of items that I keep back there in relation to inspection gear. Then I have some stuff just like jumper cables and stuff like that just to have around, but that opens up the back of my truck. Cause you got a four door?
Yeah, you see that big backseat area. Yeah, but that can really be if you you’re not, things can roll all over the place. So almost too much space. Yeah. Same thing with the ladder in the back. Mine does move around a little bit for the most part. It sits in there nicely. But yeah, you just kind of adapt to what you’re using.
Brad Lowery
I use that for tools.
Now, what I want to know, since we’re talking about adaptive vehicles, how does this go with picking up radon monitors on a motorcycle? And does that affect your company insurance and stuff that you’re required to carry? Or are you required to carry specific insurance at all?
Kelsey Soderlund
So I have a fantastic insurance agent. She’s handled all that stuff for me so that I’m covered commercially for my vehicles, taking them to and from jobs, as well as living my personal life, because both of these vehicles are also daily drivers. The bike weather dependent. So insurance wise, insurance agent, they will take care of it for you. Don’t use Geico.
Brad Lowery
Okay. So it’s all covered there. You’re saying don’t just use guide carl.
Kelsey Soderlund
Geico is actually what made me pull the trigger on using an agent. And if anybody in Massachusetts needs an agent, I
Brad Lowery
I got. A good one. All she’s got your person. There you go. I love it. love it. And Shawn, I want to pivot to you here, though, because we’ve been inspecting down here in Florida a bit. Matt, we were just talking with a team from the East Coast of Florida. We were talking about how the storm affected them. But for those of you, I’m sure if you’ve watched the news the last September and October, you saw the two massive hurricanes hit Florida. Shawn and I, we’re both in the Tampa Bay area. dude, we got whopped, man. We got walloped in a big way that has been generation as far as some of the damage that was done. how did that affect you? Because you were talking, we were talking to the conference area. It’s really affected your inspections post storm in a very interesting way. So let’s talk about that a little bit.
Shawn Mizell
So the way I run my inspection business is I try to keep as many like additional services as I can in case things change, the market slows down.
And one of those things is if a natural disaster comes through because people have a need for a service that a lot of us can provide and it just takes someone who’s opportunistic and energetic enough to go, you know, and tackle those things. So when the hurricane came and walloped us, I used to be in mortgages. I knew real estate was gonna shut down, like for a month.
And so I can’t afford to go a whole month with no work. And I also know that a lot of roofs just got damaged heavily and they’re going to need to get all those buildings checked again, especially if they’re under contract. You know, there’s a lot. So I started sending out emails. I started reaching out to HOAs and I just offered my services. And I just started, I was like, hey, if you guys want to have your community, if you’re going to have your roofs looked at, my team will come out, we’ll do your entire community. And of course I got a lot of nos, but then I had one person respond back to me and they’re like, we’re really interested.
Brad Lowery
Okay, cool.
Shawn Mizell
Can we send out a mass email? And I said, yeah, sure. The next day he emails me back, OK, we got 125 people ready to go. And I was like, all right.
Brad Lowery
Dude, all right. so you were doing this at a little bit of a discounted rate, and yet at the same time, you’re now doing them in bulk. And it’s keeping your top of mind,
Shawn Mizell
It was everyone. So it was me. I have two guys that work for me. We went out there and we just, we just round like one guy was on one side of the street. One guy was on the other side of the street. And then one guy went on the interiors to look for ceiling stains. And we just went house by house by house by house. It took us three days to knock out 125 houses. And so we’re some of my local inspector friends were like, we’re in a group together. We’re all like, man, there’s been no work. There’s been no work. And I’m like, I haven’t slept in four days. Like, cause
Brad Lowery
You begin it now.
Matt Brading
That’s amazing.
Shawn Mizell
Everyone needed a report. Everyone needed like, you know, then they needed a lot of needed re-inspections after the roofers came out and we found a lot of damage. And so when things were fixed, then they called us back to come back out to another inspection. mean, when you look at my like revenue for right when the hurricane hit, like everything tripled where a lot of my colleagues were like, man, I haven’t had work in forever. So it’s like thinking outside the box. And then I also took advantage of the fact that I’m also a licensed wall assessor and they got flooded south of me, like two hours south of me. So I drove two hours south and I just started talking to all the remediator trucks I saw out there, all the GC trucks I saw out there. I’m like, you know, hey, I’ve my card up. You guys need a mold assessment? If you guys need an after the effect assessment, a PRV or something to like, you know, so that you guys can put the houses back together. I made like four new remediator contacts and I’m now doing more mold assessments than home inspections for like the last three months.
Matt Brading
That’s wild.
Shawn Mizell
Just taking advantage of an opportunity of a service that people desperately need.
Matt Brading
Right.
Well, I mean, and it wasn’t taking advantage or you were taking advantage of an opportunity, but the people did need the surf. Oh, yeah. And they and most of them, a lot of them didn’t know how to find it. At least it wasn’t going to be so easy. that.
Shawn Mizell
Yeah, and unfortunately in those times there are people trying to make a quick buck and they’re not qualified, licensed or morally in it for the right reasons. So like when word starts spreading that like a reputable companies down here doing good work that then the word of mouth starts picking up and then now it’s residual. I’m still doing those inspections.
Matt Brading
Right, right. Yeah, that’ll keep paying off just like building a home inspection company with referrals and everything. It’s the same thing. So you said you were in mortgages? that what you said? And so when was that?
Shawn Mizell
For home inspections, yeah.
That was, well, it ended seven years ago and I was in it for four years, so.
Matt Brading
Okay, okay. And so, like, you saw a need for home inspection and you just went after that?
Shawn Mizell
Yeah, I was happy. I wanted before mortgages, I was a cable installer. Okay. And I did other trades work. And I just, you know, I just wanted a taste of the other the other side. You know, I wanted to get into maybe a white collar field, start making more money because I was tired of like living paycheck to paycheck. And I love math and I got into mortgages. And I was good at it. But my problem is I learned that I have a really bad ADHD problem. And I wasn’t aware of it when I was installing cable. But when I was sitting in front of a computer.
It became a reality and I tried to fight through it and after three years I realized I wasn’t going to win that battle and then through mortgages I learned about realtors, learned about home inspectors, I learned about insurance people and then I really found the home inspection sounded interesting so I started talking to one of the home inspectors and he had me do ride-alongs with them and I changed careers.
Matt Brading
Awesome. How long did that take? Like you have to have a license in Florida, correct? how long did it take you to go through all that process to switch?
Shawn Mizell
There’s three months.
Brad Lowery
I mean, three months really isn’t bad at all. But I love that each step along the way, you’ve kind of identified, one, what works for you, and two, it’s going to kind of work for the moment as well. And I feel like that’s kind of like the connecting thread here with everything that we’re talking about, Unconventional vehicles, unconventional methods of doing business, right? You want to think outside the box, right? And not just what you’re doing with your business model, but what you’re doing with your vehicle, what’s getting you from A to B, what tools you’re using on the job site as well. So it’s one of the things I love about coming to something like this, because it’s like you get different ideas from everybody that you’re talking to.
Matt Brading
There’s multiple ways to do everything. And so to learn from all of these other people how they do it, try to create your own way.
Shawn Mizell
I’ve made a lot of changes to my business model by making friends with a lot of home inspectors in a whole other states. like, we talk every single day and I’ve made so many changes by learning from colleagues.
Brad Lowery
I love it. love it. What’s some of the biggest changes that you’ve made, Kelsey, as far as just from things that you’ve picked up from other inspectors along the way?
Kelsey Soderlund
Biggest change is radon. Actually I’ve gotten a lot of influence from Fletcher. The conduit carrier that I have on my hot hatch, I got that from him too. So that’s he’s helped make my life a lot easier. Definitely. Very cool. Working through systems and social media is something that I’m still approaching but also enthusiastic about. I’m trying to learn a lot about that because it’s obviously worked really well for a lot of people.
Brad Lowery
Anybody here pretty good at social media?
Kelsey Soderlund
Any questions?
Matt Brading
So, you know, social media is interesting, right? Because like you can consume, you can create, but it’s all there. Like it’s free. And so we can, we can absorb all of this free information that’s right there. All you can do is just find the people that are out there giving it. You can also create and give back. You don’t have to go. There’s no requirement of that. You know what I mean? You can just, just like you said, like, I mean, I wouldn’t know who any of these people are. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for social media.
Yeah, but I mean like and we were talking about this a little bit earlier with it with the guys from what was it Double Scope. Yeah, the connections that we make at these that events like this and that we continue that connection and that that you know through social media we can see what these people are doing and keep in contact with them and keep learning from each other. Whether it’s about business or about home inspection or about tools or whatever it is that is where the gold is really in these things for me is actually after the event. All the connections that we make and how we continue that relationship going forward.
Kelsey Soderlund
Yeah, yeah, I haven’t taken a single class today. And I don’t think I did more than one or two last year either, because I’m here really for the people. know, Inspector Preston’s social media presence is how I ended up in his inspector retreat, which is how I met Fletcher and a few other people. And now I’m here talking to you guys and a whole bunch of other things, of course, happened in the meantime. But those connections that you make by meeting people and talking to them is really, really valuable.
Brad Lowery
Wish I had gone to that last year. He invited me to it. Was it pretty cool? It was fantastic. And it’s up on his property, right? Yeah.
Kelsey Soderlund
Was fantastic.
It’s got a pretty large amount of acreage. It is. River. It’s a nice piece of land. It’s gorgeous. It’s also got hot showers.
Brad Lowery
Does it now? That’s not even camping now. Okay.
Kelsey Soderlund
It’s glamping, honestly. You gotta bring your own tent, it’s, it’s, yeah.
Brad Lowery
I was gonna bring my airstream up there, but then suddenly there were hurricanes and things and yeah, it got it weird quick last Yeah, so anyway, very cool. Well guys, I’m so glad that we all got to sit down here I’m so glad one I got to meet both of you here this past this past week actually by this past week. I mean yesterday but It’s felt like one of those things where you don’t know how much time has or has not gone. I don’t know man
Yeah, and we still have to hang out with more people yet. So you should join us. You should subscribe to the channel. You should keep watching and let us know in the comments. One, what are you driving and does Kelsey need an A-frame or not? That’s it. So Kelsey, Shawn, thanks so much. And for the show here, I’m Brad. And we’ll see you next time right here on The Ride Along.
Kelsey Soderlund
Tell me now!
Matt Brading
I’m out.
Brad Lowery
Let’s see if it works.
Matt Brading
Roll it right.
