“How Industry Outsiders Have Scaled a Home Inspection Company in 4 Years"
Forever Home Inspection owners Lance and Brit Coffman recently had the pleasure of being on the November 10th episode of the Spectora Spotlight podcast. Spectora is a leading home inspection software company that provides home inspectors with cutting edge-tech needed to make reports, scheduling, and much, much more. In the episode (which you can find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Podbean, Youtube, and on the Spectora website), Brit and Lance break down how they got their company going, how they used their outsider status to reinvent the way inspectors can do business, and their future plans. Here are some highlights.
Starting a Home Inspection Company from the ground up
Four years ago, Brit and Lance decided they needed to make a change in order to build the life they wanted. They considered several things when deciding what industry to jump into. These questions included:
Which industry has potential for growth?
What industry was the current workforce aging out of?
What industry has a short degree of entry? How fast could they get in?
After doing their research, the Coffmans decided that home inspections met all of their criteria. They decided that they wanted to start their own company, instead of becoming contractors for another company. So in 2017, they joined Spectora, and in 2018, they began hiring inspectors. Both Lance and Brit wanted to do commercial inspections as well, but Brit felt that they couldn’t do it under the umbrella of Forever Home. After about a year, she was able to convince Lance into starting their new business solely for a commercial building, Focus Building Inspections.
What impact has Coronavirus had on home inspections?
Brit talks in the podcast about how she and Lance made a promise to each other that “we will always take care of the people that work in our organizations.” During March and April, before real estate was labeled an essential business and Forever Home was able to properly resume full operations, Lance and Brit made personal sacrifices by only doing the number of inspections they needed to do to pay their bills, and then gave the rest of the work to their other inspectors. Once Oklahoma declared real estate and its auxiliary services essential, they hit the ground running again, and Forever Home has grown exponentially during this time. Brit and Lance have no interest in restraining the momentum; they will have between 20-30 employees across the state of Oklahoma by 2021 - in a total of 4 years for the company.
More than anything, as Brit and Lance say, Forever Home Inspections wishes to “be a light” in the industry, and leave it better than they found it.
