Today we’d like to introduce you to Ian Mayer
Hi Ian, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born and raised in San Francisco, CA, and moved to Los Angeles when I was 25. I originally moved to Los Angeles because I wanted to be a drummer in a rock band. I told myself I was going to make it in the music business or die trying. Many years later, I woke up and realized I didn’t want to die that badly! The music business is tough, with so much out of your control.
Along the way, I did earn a degree in finance. One night, I was at a party a friend of my wife was hosting, and I met a woman who told me her company was looking for people with a finance degree. Six months later, she got me an interview at a wholesale mortgage company. The person interviewing me was also a frustrated musician, and we spent an hour talking about music. I got the job, even though we never talked about what the job was. Once I got into the company, I just fell in love with everything about Real Estate. I had no idea I would love Real Estate as much as I loved music.
I also have always had a knack for finding problems. Give me anything, and I can find the flaw in it. At most jobs, this is seen as a detriment. Most employers want a yes man, not someone who’s constantly analyzing flaws. However, at the wholesale mortgage company, they saw this as a skill and eventually moved me into a quality control role, where it was my job to find the problems with loans that had been funded. My job was to determine whose fault it might be, or what circumstances led to the problem. And most importantly, how could we fix it? It was a match for my skill set.
From this role, my wife and I bought a fixer-upper house. This house needed just about everything, The roof leaked, there were holes in the floor, the plumbing was shot, and overall, it had a lot of problems. So, in short, I looked at homes all day from an office, then I went home and worked on our house all night and weekends. I started to think working on homes was more fun than being in an office, and I looked into maybe one day I’d become an appraiser or perhaps a home inspector. I considered maybe starting my own business.
Then 3 things happened rather closely that talked me out of it. First, my mother passed away.
Then, the financial crisis hit in 2006/2007, and the mortgage company was sold off and eventually ceased to exist. And then my wife was pregnant with our first child. So, I talked myself out of starting a business.
I did several other things, waiting for the crisis to blow over so I could get back into a real estate or mortgage role. But those jobs just didn’t return anytime soon, and eventually, I took a job doing something completely different just to pay some bills. A few more years went by, and that job laid me off.
At that point, I was at my lowest. I had a mortgage, a wife, and two kids, and not only was I out of a job, I didn’t even have a real career to speak of. I knew I wanted to go back into the Real Estate world, but most importantly, I vowed to myself no one would ever lay me off again.
So, I revisited the idea of becoming a home inspector. I thought if I could memorize tax codes to pass a college class and memorize lending codes to work for a lender, I could memorize building codes and safety standards to be an inspector. And so I did.
I remember the first day I got paid to be an inspector; I felt like I was finally home. I was finally in the career I was meant to be in all along. The first two years were a real struggle, but by the 3rd year, the business was doing well enough. After the 5th year, I realized trying to do everything myself was too much, so I began hiring people.
Now, my company is celebrating ten years in business. I have an awesome team of people around me who handle the day-to-day business of answering phones and doing the inspections. I now focus on leading and growing the company.
I am also involved in public speaking and running a podcast.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It was never a smooth road.
The first struggle was just the mindset to start a business at all. I grew up being told if you go to school, you’ll get into college, and if you go to college, you’ll get a good job, and if you get a good job, then you’re set for life. My teachers in high school never discussed self-employment, In college, if I told a professor I wanted to one day have my own business, they looked at me like I was an alien who just landed. To break that mold of thinking took me a long time.
My grandfather had run several businesses, but they were always centered around manufacturing parts for something. I had no idea how to manufacture anything or even find an idea of something to make. I used to think I just didn’t have that gene. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could make a business around a service instead of a product.
Even once I got the business started, I vastly underestimated how much marketing it would take to have enough work. I remember I had set aside a certain amount of money to live off of and a certain amount to spend on marketing. In retrospect, I really wish I had reversed the numbers! I finally had to say to myself until the business hit a certain point, I need to think of myself as a marketing person who does home inspections on the side. Getting the word out that the business existed was a full-time job in itself for the first two years. And even once the business got steady enough, the marketing side never ends.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
IM Home Inspections is unapologetically the Most Customer-Focused Home Inspection Company in Los Angeles. We have a dedicated phone staff of local people to ensure our clients get great service from the get-go. We don’t have off-shore people or a call center in a different state answering phones. We want people who know the area and can speak to local concerns. Also, our phone staff is deeply knowledgeable about the inspection process and our reports, so they can answer nearly any question a client may have. Unlike other companies where you have to track down the inspector to ask questions while he’s in the attic of another house.
What I am most proud of is our quality control. With other companies, you might get a really good inspection or a bad inspection, depending on who they send out. I am confident that everyone on our team can deliver the same high-quality inspection. This comes down to our in-house training and quality control steps we take. And we only hire and retain amazing people who are happy to deliver the level of service we expect of ourselves.
What most sets us apart is our ability to do team inspections on larger properties and our luxury division. For most home inspectors, taking on a 10,000-square-foot Estate could mean being there all day, or even two days. We send a team to knock out the house in 4 hours or so. Our team understands luxury swimming pools. and the complications of large luxury homes. With our software, the team can merge their findings into one comprehensive report and have the report within 24 hours. We also understand when you are inspecting on behalf of celebrities or high-net-worth individuals, they want discretion. Unlike many of our competitors, we do not sell client data to 3rd parties. We don’t need to sign an NDA because we give that to the home buyer automatically. We have worked with numerous celebrities, but we never post photos of who we are working with on our social media channels. That has earned us the reputation of the company to go to for high-end properties.
If nothing else, we have the most 5-Star reviews of any Los Angeles-based home inspection company. So when I say “we are the best” it’s not just hyperbole, it is what our clients say about us.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Networking is incredibly important. There was a time when a business could just buy an ad in the Yellow Pages, and people would assume that the bigger the ad, the better the company is. Now, no one uses the Yellow Pages, and anyone can throw up a website claiming to be whatever it is you’re looking for. Word of mouth and referrals are key to any business. If you’re not networking on some level, people will assume you’re dead.
What really worked for me was starting with a few networking groups, and then talking to people in those groups who would recommend other groups, which led to finding the better groups that worked for me. There is a certain amount of trial and error. Not every group was a good fit. Not every group is right for every business. I built the business off of networking, and it is still an important aspect of the business today.
As for mentors, the best advice I got was from an audiobook about business philosopher Jim Rohn. Which is to have more than one mentor because no one mentor is going to be perfect in every aspect of life. Also, over time, you may find one mentor has taken you as far as you can go with them. Don’t be afraid to ask that mentor if they have someone else they can refer you to to take you to the next level. The best mentors have their own mentors. Much like networking, you just have to start somewhere and work your way up. I think some people get hung up on they need to find THE ONE ALL mentor, and that is unlikely. Rather it’s a process that evolves over time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://imhomeinspections.com/
- Instagram: im_home_inspections
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imhomeinspections
- Twitter: Pro_inspector
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/imhomeinspections
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/im-home-inspections-woodland-hills
