Building Your Business with CCPIA #22: Lucas Kirsch and Tyson Saelzer of Twenty20 Inspections and Inspectagram Software

[0:12] Rob Claus (Host): Welcome to another episode of building your business with the certified commercial property inspectors association. We’re lucky enough in this session to have two of the premier inspectors from north of the border uh from 2020 in home inspections. I’ve got Lucas and Tyson. Welcome, guys.

[0:33] Lucas Kirsch: Thanks for having us.

[0:33] Tyson Saelzer: Thanks for having us, Rob.

[0:34] Rob Claus (Host): So, so Lucas, why don’t you why don’t you begin with telling us a little bit about yourself uh and then uh and then where you’re located and a little bit about your background.

[0:47] Lucas Kirsch: Yeah, for sure. So, I’m based out of Calgary. I’m from Calgary, Alberta, but I split my time between Calgary and Atlanta, Georgia, u with 2020. So, my background is primarily in building, custom homes, commercial spaces, you name it. So, I I grew up in the trade space. Every summer, my parents, they have me working while I was playing hockey. When I’d come home, they’d say, “You got to get to work.” So eventually when my hockey career ended, I I transitioned into my own building firm, Helix Custom Homes. Um, but you know, I didn’t take the traditional college path. I just learned a lot about communication and how to present through the experience um of great mentors in my industry.

[1:30] Rob Claus (Host): Okay. So like like like what? Like like people that were building homes.

[1:34] Lucas Kirsch: I was out there slaving it with the guys. Basically working for free, learning mopping up houses, sweeping up houses, um learning how to put a house together until the point where they felt like they wanted to pay me. And really, I I tell all the guys, if you want to learn how to build a house, you sweep a house, you sweep a house, keep sweeping a house, and you’ll learn how to build a house. And I was just lucky enough to have guys that were willing to have me on site to guide me. And of course, back in the day, they were pretty hard. And being hard is is a good way to train guys. Like there’s there’s no pitily farting around and there’s no um niceness to it, but it surely drives the point home. It’s showing up every day. Yes, sir. Caring and going to do your damn job. If you can sweep a house good, that means you’re probably going to care. And actually, there’s a lot to be said about that on on my sites when we build homes. every single trade needs to clean up behind themselves because the next trade to follow is going to basically look at that as a reflection of the job site and probably do a better job.

[2:38] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. Before we let Tyson I mean that’s my background in college. I I actually owned a cleanup crew. Oh, I had I had a professor that built 200 houses a year. And so he he hired me to hire other guys. And we cleaned house. We cleaned houses every week both for final as well as just general cleanup and yard work and everything else. So I I get it. You know what I’m saying then? That’s how you learn how to build a house. A lot of guys don’t want to do it. Yeah. You need to start somewhere. Yeah, for sure. Tyson, tell us a little bit about yourself.

[3:15] Tyson Saelzer: Yeah, so I I’ve kind of similar. I I started out early in the construction industry working in the trades. You know, I started roofing and then I got into framing and I I built houses uh and commercial buildings for a while before uh putting myself through uh college for architectural technology. Um I built both down in the States and here in Canada. I’m originally from Ontario, but I’m out here in Calgary now. Um, I spent time between Calgary and Edmonton here and more recently out in BC. So, um, after taking my architectural technology, I I moved out west here and, uh, got into the renovation industry. I worked for one of the larger, um, uh, renovation companies in town here before going off on my own and and running my own renovation company for about uh, over 10 years. uh doing both high-end renovations uh to uh homes and doing commercial renovations as well.

[4:18] Rob Claus (Host): So both of you are coming from both probably medium and very high-end residential work and it sounds like Tyson, you’ve got a little bit more of a background in commercial because you said you you built some commercial and did some of that. So, what drew you to inspections? You can’t get rich in inspections.

[4:42] Lucas Kirsch: You can.

[4:47] Tyson Saelzer: Well, sorry. Myself, I I’ve always loved buildings and how they’re put together. Um, you know, how they perform and how people use them. But, uh, I think it was just a natural progression because, um, I I enjoyed more of the education kind of standpoint. Like, we’re we’re not just here to point out defects. We’re here to kind of educate clients on how the buildings work. Uh, and I I really like all that. Plus, after years of working physically in the trades, uh, you know, it gives you a way to stay connected to the industry without, uh, beating up my body.

[5:20] Rob Claus (Host): Well, let me see them. Do you have all 10?

[5:22] Tyson Saelzer: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Still got all 10, more or less.

[5:24] Rob Claus (Host): Right. How about yourself, Lucas?

[5:28] Lucas Kirsch: I got them all. I I don’t know if you can see me or not, but I’ve got all my fingers for sure. But but what drew you what drew you to you know because you said you had a hockey career what what kind of hockey career were you were you NHL were you no

[5:42] Rob Claus (Host): I was in the minor even less were you high school no no no that’s not the way in Canada it works but I mean I did go over to the USHL um in De Moines I was down south in Louisiana I was overseas in Germany but here primarily WHL the O um it’s pretty big pretty high caliber but I mean it was a it was a great place to see the world and really learn how play as a team. Really, I think that that’s one of the biggest things at this company that I focused on was trying to find guys from the building industry. Number one. Number two, if you’re an athlete, that’s a huge pro for me because, you know, this this business is all about muscle memory. This business is all about wash, rinse, repeat, going home, stick handling in the garage and understanding how to use your tools correctly to deliver number one an experience and number two information to let our clients have a a much more informed decision other than say just doing the bare minimum. That’s that’s one of the reasons why I I choose or I like to work with athletes. They like to have a good time. They’re very serious and they show up.

[6:46] Rob Claus (Host): Well, that kind of leads us to to um you have a multi- inspector firm. Yes, sir. And it sounds like you have two of them. One in Atlanta, one in Calgary, correct? Or is it all the same world?

[7:00] Lucas Kirsch: It’s all the same under the same umbrella. Um we have 2020, which is about 72. We could just split it down the middle and say half are in the States or half are in Canada. We have a sub company called Mr. poop, which is our sewer division, which is about 15 individuals, but it’s spread out throughout North America. And and I kind of like that that there’s a bit of a separation between the two businesses.

[7:24] Rob Claus (Host): And and and it’s we talked a little bit a few weeks ago, but it’s when you talk about athletes, it’s almost in the same v, you know, kind of vernacular or same kind of mindset of why people draw towards veterans. Yes. Uh because there’s a discipline there’s a there in my previous life I came from franchising. I taught a class called the winner’s edge and is the whole thing about everything you do is a win-win. It’s not a it’s not a I pull harder than you. Yeah. It’s at the end of the day, if we all pull the rope, we all raise whatever we’re raising the sale flag. Yep. Right. It’s the mentality and and and that says a lot. So, so when you’re looking when you’re looking for athletes or you’re looking for for talent, I mean, that’s that’s that’s always the the phrase that everybody uses. I I I think of a football coach uh coach Joe Gibbs. Yeah. Uh he coached the Redskins and now he owns a NASCAR team. He always talks about I don’t hire a position, I hire talent. Yes, sir. And talent finds positions. So when when you’re looking for talent and when you’re trying to trying to do the do they just naturally flock to you or are you out there searching every day?

[8:52] Lucas Kirsch: No, we don’t search. Um, and I I I was pretty adamant. Actually, Tyson’s a really was one of the only walk-ons at this team that uh him and I really hit it off. But as you as you were just saying, like he comes with more than just being an amazing builder, amazing in the commercial space and an amazing inspector. He’s also got an architectural background, right? So, he brings more than just uh an actual home inspection certification with him. And plus, the guy can talk and he looks good and he smells good and all that kind of stuff. One of the very funny things that I talked to the guys about, I’m like, “Do you guys wear pit stick?” God. I mean like presentation and perception is everything in this industry because we’re dealing with clients but I don’t go out of my way to look. Um, I think in the very beginning I did a little bit, but I went after people that I knew. And they do say you never should work with family and friends. And I will say this, I’d rather work with family and friends and people that I know. And I’d rather know what’s wrong with them. And then think, okay, I can deal with that because I know how if the good is outweighing the bad, then we’re going to work together. And if we can show up, and I know this is very cliche to say family, but you said it right there. If we’re pulling the rope in the same direction and this is an actual team and a family, then we’re all going to be very successful. We’re going to go a lot further than if we would as an individual. So, there’s guys here that are multi-millionaires. There’s guys here that are they could easily do this on their own, but we chose to work together for a number of reasons. Number one is that I like to go away on vacation every once in a blue moon. So, when I come home, my jobs could be gone. I mean, if there’s another me or another Tyson or another Rob, there’s a good chance that I could lose some business. So, we’re here to protect this as a family and work together. And that’s one of the big reasons why we work as a team. Plus, we can get more work done and we never have to say no.

[10:37] Rob Claus (Host): Isn’t that Isn’t that the greatest point is is if you’ve got a deep enough bench, no matter where the where where the situation goes, you’ve always Nobody’s going to leave a call going, I can’t use 2020 this week. Uh, you know, they’re at capacity because if that’s the case, then one of you two failed, right?

[10:58] Lucas Kirsch: Well, that’s right. You know, my wife jokes and she says, you don’t know how to say no. And I’m like, well, you know, in business, I’m not going to. And I that’s that was one of the big things for us. somebody calls, I’m going to find a way to get it done. I don’t care if it’s Christmas. But then I told her, I said, I guarantee if I was in prison, I’d know how to say no, but in business, no. I’m going to definitely say yes to everything there. And there’s something about I I I would bet as I’m just trying to think of the greatest compliment I ever got was when somebody accused me of owning the company, which okay, I never did. I was I was always a subordinate manager. I bet I bet the way it sounds like in the mantras you’re instilling in your team, I bet you that’s a daily occurrence.

[11:46] Lucas Kirsch: Well, you know, you got good questions. Um Tyson, I think you could probably even ask. No one really knows who owns this company because it’s structured in such a way that we all have we have leads here. We have firstline players here. Um, I don’t know if you’re people that watch or listen to this watch hockey or football or what have you, but you can take the Bulls. That’s their loss. You Yeah. Bulls or you can take hockey, but I always like to think about the 1986 Edmonton Oilers and Wayne Greky and Tikkin and McTavish and SL. Listen, they were all firstline players and they all had the ability to come together and no one really understood everyone needs to fit a role in order to win to win to win the Stanley Cups. No different than the Bulls and Michael Jordan and Pippen. It took a select, very structured group of people that are focused on one thing, creating good business. And it wasn’t about chasing the money. It never has been and it never will be. And there’s never a it’s my company or it’s like my real estate agents. We share and it’s a wash. That’s what I think whenever you have that level of care that everybody shares. I mean, I I’ve heard it before for sure. Like uh I’ve had an agent call me and be like, “No, I had the owner do my uh uh inspection before, but it was uh Todd or Ryan or or you know, one of the guys, and it just uh you know, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, okay.” One of the owners for sure. Exactly.

[13:02] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. It’s I’ve always been a matter of fact with our children. And so it’s like you have supper. Is today a you cared day or is today a you know, I phoned it in and didn’t really want to work too hard day? Because every day you’ve got an opportunity. Do you guys do two or three a day?

[13:20] Lucas Kirsch: Oh, well I did four a day, believe it or not. We started at 5:00 this morning, but generally speaking, sorry, you want to answer that, Tess? Go ahead.

[13:27] Tyson Saelzer: Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. So, I I think typically we’re doing three a day, but in the summers we can uh we can push four because you can squeeze in that six o’clock one when the daylight allows.

[13:34] Rob Claus (Host): Sure. So, so on our team, we we always ran three a day and and you’ve got three times a day to stand up on stage, own the room, and educate and have fun. Yes, sir. And if one of them is like, h, well, I don’t really care. Then, good news. You you you’re not going to care tomorrow either. We don’t want patron people.

[14:02] Lucas Kirsch: That you nailed that one. Like, you said it exactly right. stand up on stage and I tell the guys I’m like, “It’s like a first date. Do you want a second date? Do you want a third date? Then you need to put on a bit of a show. You need to give it a bit of an experience. You You might want to get her to try and call you back. Otherwise, I mean, like, what are you doing out here? We want to have a little fun.”

[14:22] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. There’s so many inspectors that, in my opinion, that get caught up in the minutia of dollars. Yes. and and the in instead of working every day, dollars will come. Yeah. You you count the dimes, the dollars will follow. Yeah. And and or or you count the tunies or the loonies and you know and the dollars will f but and and they lose track of of the fact, hey, I got a call. I need to make some money. Let me make a lot today. Yeah. Instead of let’s go for the W. Yeah, let’s just win this job. Let’s kill it because I get to eat what I kill. And if I ate today, tomorrow I get to eat again because they liked me. And it’s just that rock that rolls down the hill.

[15:15] Lucas Kirsch: That’s a really good point. And I, you know, some of the new guys that come on, I This is a secret the whole world can hear. I I’m not into like trying to like hoard my secrets. I’m out there trying to give away my secrets to help other people become successful. And Tyson knows this better than anyone. Like when he started and like I think I said this to you, Tyson. I said, “You need to find 15 people to really like you a lot.” And you don’t you go eat craft dinner, never jump over a dollar to pick up dime, do a great business, do a good job, the money will follow. And 15 people that that equates to a huge amount of money if you can keep them happy. If they want to go out and talk about you, guess how much money you’re spending on marketing? Nothing. Not much, right? Nothing. And you’re 15 for Tyson. I used to tell my team it takes 50.

[16:02] Rob Claus (Host): Okay. Well, that’d be great because because you’ve got the high, medium, you got the high, medium, and lows. And and if you don’t constantly keep filling your bucket, yep. You know, one one you know, there one comes in, one goes out, one comes in, one goes out, you you showed up with bad breath. You they’re going to fire you. you know, they got a you put some Trident in your mouth or pop a Tic Tac and let’s go to work.

[16:31] Rob Claus (Host): Um, so like to work with me, man. Yeah, I think we’ve got a a pretty commonality here, but here’s my question I have. Um, so you’ve built this this large group and I and and I’ve watched your videos and they’ve been they’ve been informative and entertaining and and and that those are the two those are the two eyes. Uh yeah, I know entertaining with an E, but there the two the two. Yeah, I I you know, I’m public school. Um but those are the two things I’m always looking for. What drew you to moving over to doing commercial inspections?

[17:07] Lucas Kirsch: Um well, primarily um we we’re all resi, right? But I think a lot of people are mistaken like we do a lot of commercial inspections. Um Tyson, I don’t know if you want to speak to that for a second. like you’re mainly doing that right now.

[17:22] Tyson Saelzer: Yeah. Like one of the reasons why that um I I started looking at uh commercial and and really and it’s just taken off since then is I um one of the uh commercial realtors that I uh did renovations for, you know, he he saw that I was doing inspections, I I uh speaking with him and he said um you know, I I’ve been in the industry for 35 years. I don’t have a go-to inspector. You know, the the reports aren’t great. uh I don’t like what uh the guys out here are putting together and so I started doing them for him and then uh and it kind of snowballs. It’s a it’s a small uh uh group out here anyways. They everyone seems to know everybody and uh they all talk and and uh the word gets around just to re it’s a lot less it’s a lot less cutthroat.

[18:10] Lucas Kirsch: It’s man this business is super cutthroat I think still no matter where it seems like that all over North America and we’re trying to change that. That’s a probably another conversation one day that we should have. But like just But but in But in commercial though, Lucas, is I have found to Tyson’s point that the commercial brokers are a little bit more together. Y probably because there’s less of them. That’s true. And and they’re and they’re very much client oriented versus the transactional reoders that might come from the residential side. So, to your point, um, lately when you think about this, like it’s no different than home inspections, except for this word that’s called inventory, which I actually like because that’s what we’re actually doing on houses anyway. Um, what we’re finding is like commercial clients, no different than resi clients, are expecting more for 2025, including banks and including insurance companies. They want clarity. They want photos. They want liability protection. This is million-dollar deals that they’re multi multi multi-million dollar deals. And the big thing that they want, Rob, is fast turnaround. These guys are movers and shakers. They want to know what is going on. And that’s why like, you know, we have risk ratings. We have ways of documenting that’s a little bit different than anybody else. And we did that on purpose. And that is one of the reasons why our commercial division is currently blowing up.

[20:33] Rob Claus (Host): It’s to to that point. I mean you you hear about due diligence firms uh taking three, four, five months to create a report. I have an amazing example for you that I do want to share with you. This is re what was it four months ago that we did those 80 units Tyson?

[20:49] Tyson Saelzer: Yeah, I think it’s four four months. There’s 80 units about a thousand square foot of pop.

[20:54] Lucas Kirsch: Um we took 10 of our top and we did it we started at was it 8 in the morning? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. nice and early, but we were done at 6. The report was turned over at I think seven or eight and the next closest competitor and this is they didn’t believe that we could do it. This is a multi multi multi-million dollar investment firm. So, they tried us and we produced and that is really spun something nice into our business, the quick turnaround. Like that is unconceivable for a lot of companies nowadays. But when you can work as a team like we’ve been talking about all along and simultaneously work on the same report, we’re actually doing a more efficient job and we’re double-checking, tripleeing, and if we’re doing a great job at CYA on us, we’re in fact doing an amazing job of covering the butts of our clients, our agents, and the people lending the money. If that makes any sense. So like eight, sorry, 10 guys, 80 units, thousand square feet, we were done in one day turnaround.

[21:20] Rob Claus (Host): So to that order, I want to I I you know, you’ve alluded to it a couple of times. Yeah. I know you struggled. I I I know with 2020 home inspections, you struggled when you launched of and we had talked about this before of what software you couldn’t find a software you like to use. And so what did you do?

[21:44] Lucas Kirsch: Well, like everything else, I I am a psychopath and I don’t sleep. And I decided, well, I’m going to rectify this and either keep doing what everyone else is doing, which generally is not a good idea. You go against the grain sometimes and you you take a risk and maybe you become successful. So, what I did was I’m not slanting or going to say anything bad about anyone’s software. I can say that every software comes with a pro and comes with a con. But I listened to our end user and I listened to the agents and I looked at the times that we’re in. It’s 2025. We looked at the social media. We looked at the way that people were gathering and digesting information. So, you know, I think that I thought there was a huge hole there and a weakness that we could fill. So, when we tested all these softwares before we started our own, the clunky, I’d call it the outdated that may have been a little bit too complicated, it felt a lot like using Windows 95 in a world that expects something more current. Um, and I wanted to modernize that. And so before even writing one line of code, we did a series of tests and we did a series of polls and we like these are thousands of peoples that that we went through in agents to find out exactly what they wanted. So we wanted something that looked good, felt intuitive and didn’t require a massive amount of training. So I also wanted an app that you didn’t have to continually update or that would be crashy. So we built it from scratch with one goal in mind to make inspectors faster. Even though I hate using that word, let’s just call it more efficient while reducing liabilities, which I want to make a point here to say that since 2007 to current day, we’ve not been to court. I hope it’s wood, I’ll knock on it. I hope that we don’t go to work because of our systematic procedural stepbystep Hans and Gretle breadcrumb approach of collecting information. So something that they really wanted was their reports to speak to them, right? So people that will take a report and digest a report will automatically talk about the reports which is actually if they’re talking about us they’re marketing for us. So this is something that I wanted. I wanted a way to produce reports that were clean again something that’s readable that they’ll actually use and talk about because here’s another point. 2007 to now I think of I don’t know how much money I’ve spent on marketing. I can say I want to say zero but I definitely have some fees with my website. This is word of mouth. This is Google reviews. This is water cooler talk. And so if we could build that, that’s why we built the software essentially. We did not build it for the app store. We did not build it to sell. I built it for the guys simply to keep the batter consistent.

[24:17] Rob Claus (Host): And so uh so right now you you have a And what’s the name of the software?

[24:23] Lucas Kirsch: Inspecttogram. Inspecttogram. We got in some trouble from Mr. from Mark Zuckerberg about that one, the name, but we ended up winning that and now it’s a it’s a registered trademark. Excellent.

[24:34] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. He’s gotten in trouble before. Uh and some and some of the people he got in trouble with uh are billionaires as well. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, so is this a software that’s proprietary to just to you or is it one that is it one that you want to show us that you actually have on the marketplace?

[24:56] Lucas Kirsch: It’s on the marketplace now on the Apple App Store and we are working on the Android version, but we always think like when you’re building anything you want to start I’m not even call this MVP because it’s past that point. I wanted to build something really good here and then we’ll move to Android once it’s super concrete. But we’ve also been using this now for like seven years without a hiccup in our own world. And we only launched what last March or excuse me September 27th. And since that little uh what was that? that little thing that we did in Florida where I met you. Um, it’s been going gang busters. So, it’s available to everybody soon to be on Android and it’s a one-stop shop, meaning like there’s no like jumping over a dollar to pick up a a dime here with this project. Meaning like you can collect your payments within the app that’s included in the price. You there’s 37 some odd templates within it, including the CCPIA template specifically across the board to the T, the SOPs, and a number of other templates. And then at the very back end, our scheduling, which is coming very soon. We’re about two, three weeks out max. And that’s called Inspect the Inspect the Hub, excuse me, where our contractual agreements are infused with our questionnaires and then dumped into a repository. So that was Sorry, I’m just going to back up and say when you said, why do we make an app? Because I think it’s I don’t want to say silly, but why are we buying multiple apps to do one job? Why shouldn’t it just be one job or excuse me, one app that takes the payment, does the reporting methodology, keeps track of your contracts, and does your scheduling? That’s what I want.

[26:26] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll watch an ad on TV, and it says, “Are you looking to have all your crossplatforms talk to each other? Use this AI.” You know, so now I got to buy another thing to link the five things that I already own. Yeah. It’s like, hey, you know, you said something good there, too. AI like uh you know remember when Blockbuster was around and then Netflix was like hey here we are we’re the new guys and Blockbuster said even though I actually miss going to Blockbuster be be honest with you but they had their opportunity right and a lot of people you know they have their opportunity now to see the future and the writing’s on the wall if we’re not using and working with AI it’s not going anywhere anytime soon but if we can infuse it and protect this industry then we’re winning right so we also have AI now built into our app not only from a helping standpoint, like having a virtual assistant on hand, but on the back end to our clients, like it’s reading it like a podcast, like we’re talking now. Some people like to read the reports, but some people like to listen and read the reports. So, we’re really aiming to innovate here, Rob. I don’t think AI will ever take the place of the eyeballs of an inspector and the intuition of the inspector, but I certainly think AI will enhance the the inspector’s ability to communicate intelligently. That’s the word what you just said. Enhance and not like a a knuckle dragging ape like most of us. Yeah, like Tyson. Just kidding. No. So So do you have a chance to show it to us?

[27:56] Lucas Kirsch: Uh yeah, but here sure I can give you a quick gander here. And actually, it’s funny because uh here I don’t know if I can do that. You have to show me how I can uh share my screen to you. Oh, did I lose you guys? Not yet. Okay, got us here. I think there’s a little button on the bottom that says share. I’m just trying to find that button there, bud. Okay, share. Let’s see. Screen. There we go. Make sure you do the right screen. Yeah, we’ll make sure there’s nothing up in the background there. Let’s see if you guys can see. Can you see anything right now?

[28:27] Rob Claus (Host): your daughter.

[28:27] Lucas Kirsch: Oh yeah, there’s my daughter. So there I see a report. Yeah. So these are the reports that we’re currently working on, right? Let’s say today, I just popped one up. Obviously, if you wanted templates, these are all the templates that you can have. You can learn on the go. By the way, the software’s got a simulation factor, meaning before you go out and drive that Porsche around the Nuremberg track. You should probably drive it a little bit slow. So when you buy an app or use an app like this, you can sit in your bed and do 20 reports in the comfort of your home. produce a report, feel comfortable enough to go out and actually do an inspection. But let’s just back out of there and go to the CCPIA. CCPIA. I’ll click into it. It’s supposed to look and feel and taste and touch a lot like a magazine because that’s what people want. So, if you see at the bottom right hand corner there, there’s a menu button. I’ll just go down to windows and doors for just a second. So, I remember a little while ago, I just want to talk to you real quickly and give you a sneak peek. You were talking about doing I don’t know what was it, fire doors, wasn’t it? Sure. It’s one of the it’s one of the newer courses I think on the CCPIA there. Yep. That’s and and yesterday I was like, well, maybe we we’ll have a chance to show the software. But I said, why don’t we just build a quick page? And if I wanted to build drop in a fire door page right now, all I have to do is press edit, drop down to where is it? Windows and doors. And if I hit that little plus button and I go, I’m going to drop in the fire door. That just dropped it in right there. So, what I’m going to show you is remember how I was talking about Hanzel and Gretle? Yes. Bit. So, if I were to go to Hanzel and Gretle and I’ll go down to windows and doors for a second. We’ll just get down there. There it is. So, there’s the fire door page. I know that this is like new to different people and they just want to take photos, but like everything new is going to be hard. Change is hard. Just either you do it or you don’t. Um, the way that we systematically will gather information is just by simply pressing on something like this. I’ll just take a picture of But you have to pretend for a second, I guess, that that’s a sticker. And if there was something wrong with it, I’d either rate it thumbs up or thumbs down. Why don’t I give you a quick example of that? We’ll go to the uh Where’s plumbing? Might as well do plumbing. Where’s the toilet? There it is. So, if I were to take a photo of this toilet right here, Rob, and I Let’s just give me anything like it’s a loose toilet. We’ll go with that leaking. Fine. So, I’ll give it a attention rating. And that will It’s already got predictive issues. So, if I hit the thumbs down and excuse me, the drop down. Well, we’ll just go with unstable. It already knows what’s wrong with it. The action is repair, replace, improve, what you want. Service, advice, maintenance required, or you can type it in yourself or talk it in. Like, that was another point of this software is that I don’t want to be typing. What I want to do is gather the information, get it in. Hang on a second. Delete that. Oh, did I lose you guys? Nope. Still here. I still got her. I get a lot of calls. Now we’re back in plumbing. Okay, so we’re back in plumbing. I give it an action of repair, replace, we’ll call it. I put it in a summary note. Boom. So, what that did is it’s populated itself into the summary. And I can show you what that looks like on another report by simply just backing out of this report because it’s only going to be one thing. It would do this immediately. Oh, is there nothing in here right now? Let’s go in there. Let’s do that. So, if all my entire inspection was done, I’d go like this. Boom. Done. So, I’m just trying to show you the idea of like when you take a photo of a toilet, you put in the issue, the action, the consequences. All I’m doing really is essentially taking a photo, making a rating, putting in the issues, the actions, again, consequences, maybe some verbiage that I want extra. And now I can focus on my client in communication, and I can actually do more of my job, which is inspecting. So, it’s just a brief peekaboo.

[32:13] Rob Claus (Host): Let me ask you this, Lucas, real quick. So, on on your summary that we’re seeing right now, uh, which which is fantastic. It just says exterior outlet, missing cover, wiring issue, action, and notes. Now, in the body of your report, do you have a a a longer narrative?

[32:36] Lucas Kirsch: I do. So, let’s exactly. So this is what we found again from working backwards with our clientele. You know what an outlet is and I know what an outlet is and you know what a door is in a toilet but a lot of people don’t know what an inducer motor is or a flux capacitor for that matter. So in these studies that excuse me that we’ve done people wanted to know what the component was. They wanted it defined. Then they wanted to know is there a problem and let’s get on with it. Nowadays we’re living in a world where people skim. They’re not reading heavy noisy volumes of reports and generated text that really doesn’t matter anymore. They just want get to the point as you can see on Tik Tok and any social media for that matter. So, Twitter did it best. They character counted what you could put in. I’ll go to that outlet. What does it say? Exterior outlet. Wet approved outlet covers are preferred. Tested for functionality, missing cover, wire issue, further evaluate, repair. How much more do you actually need to move the needle that this thing needs to be fixed? It gives you a photo. It gives you the issue and it gives you the action, right? So, end of the day, again, I just listen to my end users. And you know, some guys will say, “Well, no. Well, I just want to do what I want to do.” And I say, “Well, we’re missing the need. We’re missing the mark here. Our clients matter. Yes, we have to follow our SOPs, but what do they want?” And all we needed to do is follow exactly what social media is doing nowadays. Every CEO, president, and what have you is on TikTok and Twitter, and that’s how they’re digesting information. Did you guys on this again?

[34:02] Rob Claus (Host): Sorry.

[34:05] Lucas Kirsch: Oh, all good.

[34:05] Tyson Saelzer: What I what I like about the software as an inspector and it really shines in commercial I find because one of the biggest uh uh things with commercial is just the the variety of components that you get uh you know whether you’re doing a restaurant or a warehouse or if you’re doing a a swimming pool or an ice rink like you’ll be uh looking at there in Springdale, Arkansas uh coming up here for your next course there. Uh you know there there’s so many unique components and you can add new components or you can make pages uh where you need to uh document the different components of the uh you know that are all related um like with the fire doors like we showed you there. Uh it just seems to really uh shine in commercial I find.

[34:49] Rob Claus (Host): So so there so do you have the opportunity to like in commercial so often I might go to a building that might have 40 electric panels Do you have that capacity to be able to go, I’m going to put 40 electric panels in this report quickly?

[35:05] Lucas Kirsch: You can absolutely you can keep them. You can strategize a play here to keep it individually separate or you can do it all on the same page like eight, well, excuse me, four at a time with supportive photos. Our whole goal again was telling a story with pictures. And that’s the world we’re living in. From the ancient Egyptians and hieroglyphics to today, nothing’s really changed. Especially look no further than Japan. Iconology, illustrations, step by step, and photographic evidence is the way of the future and always will be. So, I just wanted to really quickly show you here that what what Tyson was talking about, but there’s 7,200 individual components. You tell me when to stop and I’ll stop. Well, I’ll just stop here for no reason. It’s got its own predictives because this is not AI. This is from guys like Tyson, guys like yourself, Rob, and my and me who’ve built these homes that know that, you know, toilets only got about 10 things that are going to go wrong with it. If you can’t find it, then just put it in with your words. But to your answer or to your question, yeah, you can. If you want to do the space shuttle, go ahead and do it. You can with this.

[36:06] Rob Claus (Host): That’s outstanding. That’s And and Tyson, you’ve you’ve been driving this around the commercial ballpark, you know, you know, is is has it done everything you’ve ever wanted it to do?

[36:19] Tyson Saelzer: Oh, yeah. So the like I said because of uh you know most houses are kind of the same whereas commercial can vary so greatly uh you know I spend a you know 5 10 minutes the night before pre-building my report you know going through the listing and seeing what what components I think will come up and then I can uh when I show up to site I’m all ready to go uh in when I need to add things like you could see how easy it is there just dropping in pages adding components. So that’s that’s terrific.

[36:47] Rob Claus (Host): Now, now let me ask you the magic question because this question comes up so often in other in other softwares. Is the app the thing on on that tool of ignorance you carry in your back pocket? Is that the ultimate end or do you have to go back sync it to a computer? No, and then manipulate data.

[37:10] Lucas Kirsch: Man, you’re asking great questions. So, you know, I had a guy um who’s got a quite quite a big team in uh Chicago and they’re using it now and they’re used to using iPads and that’s fine and dandy. And then again, I’ll just give you some information on 92 point some odd percent of businesses conducted on phones nowadays. There’s no more need to use this computer. We have this amazing camera on the front of one of these phones and the iPads and the tablets just don’t have it. And how are you supposed to shove that into the back of an induced motor? Exactly. So, when I say it’s end to end on the phone, meaning like I don’t care if you’re in the middle of Timbuktu with no Wi-Fi, you can still do a team inspect. You definitely need Wi-Fi to be able to send an email, of course. But the second that you’re done your inspection, you should almost be button up enough to be able to send or share with QR code on site. But yeah, it’s all end to end on the phone. Meaning, you send it, there’s no syncing, there’s no nothing. You don’t really need to do much of anything other than take a photo. be smart enough not to be a hyper alarmist and make a correct rating and send it on its way.

[38:00] Rob Claus (Host): What if you’re one of these uh uh people who who’s like me uh I might take a thousand photos during an inspection and only want to use 300 of them? Yep. Can I do I have that capacity to have uh the other 700 of them be uh what I would call silent or hidden.

[38:37] Lucas Kirsch: Oh yeah. So like see this is a gez it’s kind of hard to explain that one because the way that we systematically and procedurally walk through a a report there should be real known well if you have extras and you want to keep them in the report by all means. At the very end of a report you have the the capabilities of literally deleting pages out and or saving those photos. But 700 photos on on one inspection that’s a lot. I mean, generally speaking, we’re doing about 245 per house. And I don’t know how many exactly on the commercial side of things, but what I take a photo of, I include in my report. So, I don’t store a ton of photos in in I don’t know, some Google Drive or what have you, and then try to find them at a later date. And also, you know, this is one thing I don’t think that you knew about me, but I married a lawyer and I built a lot of homes for lawyers. And sometimes just take the photos, put it in there. It’s been vetted. And when I say basically what you have is what you should give. And at the very end of the day, those photos, if they’re marked, timestamped, location stamped, and all that, it’s going to serve you well in court. My wife always says it’s better to have a photo and not need it than to need it and not have it. So, you might as well just keep it in the report.

[39:48] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. Because maybe that’s my b my bias of of every software I’ve used has had uh was not commercial driven. Right. and and so I’m more of a a a a a dash and shoot inspector where I’ll go where I’ll go through a building, click click click click click click click click click and then I’ll go back and I’ll sort sort sort sort sort later. Yeah. So go ahead. Sorry.

[40:20] Tyson Saelzer: I was just gonna say you can absolutely do that if you’re taking pictures on your phone. You can drop them in later. You could build the page if you’re just trying to go go take pictures. It’s easy something easy to drop in. But the way the report’s set up where we just have components added in as we go. I mean, I know my kids appreciate it when I can come home and I don’t have to flatten a report and go through the whole process of that. Um, you know, gives us a little bit more time after the job. So, sure. I I get I I get that. Uh because I I mean I’m so used to to to being semi handcuffed.

[40:54] Lucas Kirsch: That’s what we’re trying to change, Rob, is the is what Tyson just said. Like, u I’m a dad. I’ve got a little girl, Frankie Rose. It’s very important to me that when I get home, you know, I get the time to spend with her. I don’t want to spend hours and hours and hours writing reports. Um, we figured out a system again that’s procedural and systematic. And it could be some people still want to do it the old way. That’s fine. I mean, there’s many different ways of gathering information. This way means that yes, you’ll spend 15 minutes after probably tidying it up and maybe putting some circles and arrows on the pictures, but isn’t the goal here to have a business um that’s lucrative that also will give you your time back so that you can with your wife and go fishing? I mean, like that is the ultimate goal for me and then grow your company and scale your company through an app that you can do it with. I mean, it’s not like this is big brother, but you do have full control of who’s doing what, when, why, and where. And you can see from a dispatch standpoint or make it so that they can’t send out the report until it’s been fully vetted by the authority or the principal of the company. Boom. That prevents moonlighting.

[42:01] Rob Claus (Host): There you go. Yeah, it does. But it’s it’s but in a way, you know, like if I could if I could tell anyone like uh some business advice, if you don’t mind me just putting it out there, like I I told Tyson, “Dude, you could do this on your own. Like, you don’t need me. I don’t need you. What I’m going to do here is try and stockholm you. I’m going to try to make you fall in love with me so much that you’ll never want to leave me or screw me over.” And Tyson, I mean, obviously you’re going to say nice things, but like I’ve done everything in my power to make it so that this whole company is all of our company. And that’s why no one’s left really, have they?

[42:31] Tyson Saelzer: No. Yeah. No, no, and I mean everyone, you know, in our industry, it uh I know that it can be isolating as well. Like some people think, you know, I, you know, everyone else is my competitor. We started kind of meeting with some more inspectors in town. We did a breakfast the other day with about a dozen of us and uh you know, Marty Kio. Yeah. You’re you’re uh meeting up with a bunch of guys. You like talking about the stuff that you’re talking about. Um um I know that you everyone’s got stuff to share uh from things that they’ve seen. So I’d encourage people to go out and make friends with the other inspectors in town and and you know there’s always that chance that you can kind of work together on things especially with big commercial projects and things like that.

[43:15] Lucas Kirsch: Exact. That’s why I’ve always called them coopetition. They’re colleagues. Yeah. But they’re also competition. I mean, I’m gonna, you know, I’m one of these I’m one of these weird people that I get on a plane and the first thing I look for is who am I going to eat when we when we crash. You know, it’s, you know, if there’s an interse but I think of the same thing in this industry. I mean, I’ve been here for 35 years and I’ve always maintained huge friendships in my marketplace because they’re all colleagues. Yeah. That I’m going to kill in their sleep, but they’re all colleagues.

[43:58] Rob Claus (Host): Okay. Um, you know, to your point about why aren’t we all getting along? It just seems like home. Oh, I don’t want to talk to that or this guy. It’s a compet. It shouldn’t be. It should be a team. I was surprised when we came in. We’re trying really quickly here now to bridge the gap of communication between real estate agents, clientele, and other home inspectors. And if everyone would just buy in and bite into the Kool-Aid that we’re actually here to help each other instead of like 100%, I don’t know, cut the knees out behind the new guy coming in, then, you know, we’re going to have a a bright future ahead of ourselves because I still believe that home inspections and commercial is still very much at its infancy and inspections just in general on a whole is is we’re all going to innovate and probably drive this off into another generation. So, we better protect it, right?

[44:47] Lucas Kirsch: I I think the industry is only 50 years old. I think my side, the commercial side, is less than a decade old. And and there’s still a lot of inspectors running around getting game misconducts. Yeah. For for for doing some heinous things to other inspectors because they have this attitude of I’m self unemployed. Yeah. You know, it’s I go to bed on a sun I go to bed on a Saturday night. I got no work for next week and I hope people buy buy property so I I work next next week and every job that comes in I’m going to do everything I can to say bad things about trust those guys. So that’s I told the guys never talk ill about anyone even if they’re bad people because I don’t trust the person that ever says anything bad to me about somebody else behind their back. I mean like if you’re going to say it to the face different story but like yeah like we need to change this industry a little bit. It’s a little bit too negative and there’s a bit of a stigma. I don’t know. Like there has been for years. Um I don’t even think Tyson, neither one of us thought about becoming home inspectors, but we thought why not, you know, why not try and change it for the better.

[45:54] Rob Claus (Host): I I made I made this choice back in in ’89 when I graduated college. Uh that’s a long time ago. Holy cow. Um yeah. Yeah. Why did you go to Are you just strictly commercial then? Is that is that I I in 2016 I did my last home inspection. Okay, gotcha. Do you think never never to do another one? Uh and so to that order, Tyson, what’s your goals for the rest of this year going into next year?

[46:27] Tyson Saelzer: Well, I mean, we’ve got inspectors in different provinces as well. And uh and I mean I I think it’s I know commercial is really taking off here. it would be to uh to go out and get the other locations really going with uh uh commercial and and making sure we’re all on the same page and then I go to I go to Lucas. Are you going to rebrand?

[46:48] Lucas Kirsch: Rebrand from No, because 2020 is like a Well, one thing I said in the very beginning was that 2020 and Co. is our inspection firm, but we also have Mr. Poop, but 2020 commercial um we have 2020 Atlanta. We just keep it 2020 and then we keep it below and just put a name on it. But um if I had to say goals for us like yeah expansion’s great and this and that and franchising is fun but like really at the end of the day it’s changing gently rocking the industry a little bit in the direction of innovation and helping others like guys that really want to start their own business and might had not had the opportunity beforehand to do such with an application that will do a lot of it for you in the way of like end to end. So giving somebody the ability that has the talent to use this as a tool to become a productive member of society and build a brand in a company is my goal right now with Inspecttogram.

[47:47] Rob Claus (Host): Well, my compliment I’ll give you guys is and it’s a high one. you’re disruptors and and and being a disruptor can can influence a lot of direction and and I I like what I’m seeing in your software. Boy, I love hearing your message. I love I love hearing that you grow a team that nobody wants to leave. Yeah. and and and and that’s important uh and that’s important for consistency, but it’s also important for the industry.

[48:25] Lucas Kirsch: Thank you, Rob. That means a lot because we know how well respected you are in the community and we’re very excited just to be a part of all of this. Uh I will say one last little thing to the any new guy that’s listening to this and especially if you played sports and you know this Rob and Tyson this at the very end of the day if I could say two words it’s about mental flexibility. Okay that just is the indicator that I’ve seen of every successful individual in any business. If you can be flexible enough to change and convert and innovate you’ll be successful in any industry.

[48:58] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. Simper Gumby. Always flexible.

[49:02] Lucas Kirsch: What’s that? Simper Gumby. Always flexible. I like it. Gumb Gumby was that rubber character in the old cartoons. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Always flexible.

[49:15] Rob Claus (Host): Yeah. Yeah. I like that, guys. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time. I I I sure do appreciate this and uh I look forward to to seeing more about Inspector. Inspecttogram. And I want I want to hear more about about 2020 commercial inspections. You got it. And all and all your successes moving forward.

[49:38] Lucas Kirsch: Well, we appreciate having my pleasure having us, Rob. Thank you again.

[49:41] Tyson Saelzer: Thanks, Rob. Take care.