gfricke wrote:Beck, I'm only speaking for me, I'm sure others can chime in. I am only right now a 2 man shop, many others on here are much larger than I, so I am no means a big fish. As the demand for my services grew, the writing on the wall became apparent. You have 2 options, either turn away work/referrals, or grow. Turning away people wanting to hand me money was not appealing, so I hired an assistant and trained to do the small things that take up time. The transition itself wasn't hard as much as finding the right person. Once you go that route, you're adding yet another USP to your repertoire, that of time savings. We can typically do a standard size house on slab here in about an hour, with 30 minutes to do the walkthrough/payment/Q&A. Thursday we did 5 inspections as a 2 man team. You can't get that efficiency with 1 person. I'd say after I made the switch in January, my business grew 25-30% instantly when people saw it in motion.

Bonnielelak wrote:We have tried to move to a multi inspector firm several times, and have yet to get it up and running successfully.... looking forward to picking someones brain about this. Perhaps we are going about it the wrong way. We have been members of Ken Comptons organization since 2007 and still are, hated to see the main workshop we needed was the same weekend as the Power Conference. Looking forward to seeing what the Power Conference has in store for us.

Eagle one wrote:What about pay? I have a person that would need little training and if needed he could be on his own in like 3 months, I would work as a team as much as possible.

jshishilla wrote:We have a somewhat different approach. We use a team, this way I see all the inspectors see. We get done faster and agents love it. We are more detailed because we have the time. If three of us spend an hour at the property it is the equivalent of three hours of a single inspector. While one drives other inspectors have a chance to finish reports. Three inspectors can easily do four inspections a day(8-5) with travel time. There is a limit because of travel and customer expectations We can do many condos in 45 mins, less than an hour makes customer uncomfortable. We add services to raise fees to cover the additional inspectors. They get paid hourly until they have a license and are on their own. At which point I send two out to do and inspection and hire another to train. Two inspectors can easily do three inspections a day, with two teams you can easily do six inspections. When someone needs a day off or you have a large home you have the resources to take it on easily. Our new inspectors see much more faster because we do much more. They typically have more experience than the single inspector when we split the team.

jshishilla wrote:We have a somewhat different approach. We use a team, this way I see all the inspectors see. We get done faster and agents love it. We are more detailed because we have the time. If three of us spend an hour at the property it is the equivalent of three hours of a single inspector. While one drives other inspectors have a chance to finish reports. Three inspectors can easily do four inspections a day(8-5) with travel time. There is a limit because of travel and customer expectations We can do many condos in 45 mins, less than an hour makes customer uncomfortable. We add services to raise fees to cover the additional inspectors. They get paid hourly until they have a license and are on their own. At which point I send two out to do and inspection and hire another to train. Two inspectors can easily do three inspections a day, with two teams you can easily do six inspections. When someone needs a day off or you have a large home you have the resources to take it on easily. Our new inspectors see much more faster because we do much more. They typically have more experience than the single inspector when we split the team.