00:01.48 bizzyweb Dave have you ever looked at the statistics for the websites that we host. Yeah, um, it's it's funny because there's there's one sort of £800 gorilla elephant um and that. 00:05.60 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb All the time. Yes. 00:14.34 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Um, if it. 00:19.90 bizzyweb Has just an unbelievable amount of traffic I pulled a couple of statistics. This company has generally speaking between 5 and 7000000 hits to their website each year which you the math translates to. 00:33.86 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 00:38.91 bizzyweb At any minute of any given day. This website has between 150 and 300 people on it every every single day every single minute of every single day. 00:44.53 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Perfect. Yes. 00:53.36 bizzyweb And it's a company called structure tech they are a home inspection business and we're pleased that that that the owner of structure tech ruben is our our guest today welcome Regan um. 01:06.73 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Hey Ruben up i. 01:08.40 Reuben Hey guys Thanks for having me on. 01:13.53 bizzyweb I I make this joke but I want to start by telling that rububen is the Knight one of nicest men I've ever met and there are times in which I absolutely hate him because I am a d I wire and um. 01:22.75 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Let me. 01:30.77 bizzyweb Like with any Diy project it involves at least 3 trips to home depot and because my wife has such respect for Ruben and loves Ruben just as much as everybody does um, usually after the first one I'll start getting the um, do you think you should call ruben no. 01:49.57 Reuben Are. 01:50.27 bizzyweb I'm not calling Ruben or or or should do well I googled the problem you're having and I found this article that Reuben wrote for 4 years oh I'm not calling Ruben yeah well, it's a testament to ah the. 01:52.17 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Um. 01:57.50 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Hang it. 02:00.83 Reuben Ah, oh that's hilarious. 02:09.12 bizzyweb Just a herculean amount of education that structure checkbooks out so and and how you've really grown the business and that's why I'm just super excited to to talk to you today. So thanks, Thanks for joining us will tell tell us about structure tech. 02:12.19 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Move the link. 02:21.42 Reuben Thanks Rand glad to do it? Well we are a home inspection company I am a second generation home inspector why I say home inspector I haven't done a home inspection in many years now but back in the day I used to be a home inspector. The company was. Founded by a couple of guys back in 87 my dad got into home inspections in the early ninety s and he found out that these guys were ready to sell their business and he bought the business in 97 so my my dad bought structure tech in 97 and that's when I started so I've been with the company for over twenty five years now and then over time my dad and I became partners and then I have since bought him out probably about five years ago or so now I bought my dad out but he's still. Involved in the company today too. He still works in the company as well. So it's ah it's definitely a family owned type of business. My my sister works in the company. My brother-in-law works in the company lot lot of lot of good people in this company and we've grown you know back in the day when. He first bought it. It was just me my dad and 1 other guy and today we've got old team of people out doing home inspections and running the company. 03:42.19 bizzyweb What for for people who haven't bought a home yet or haven't bought it haven't had it in a while like explain in just a little what exactly ah, a home inspection is why you need 1 03:51.20 Reuben Sure. Well if you're going to buy any house I mean a lot of the time people get the idea that only if you buy a used house but we're we're big proponents of any house if you're going to buy a house. You need to get a home inspection and it's basically you're hiring a professional to come through that house with a fine tooth comb and let you know exactly what it is that you're buying a lot of the time people will use the home inspection report to. Negotiate down on the price of the house they may use it to negotiate repairs every once in a while they might get a home inspection and they might decide I don't want this house Anymore. It's got all this hidden stuff that I had no idea about trigby. 04:33.22 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb No. 04:37.45 Reuben You know about that. 04:39.40 bizzyweb Yeah, so I I once put an offer on the house before the the one where I live now and I hired Reuben to do the home inspection. This is probably one of his last home inspections and I got there. Um. 04:49.59 Reuben Yeah. 04:55.91 bizzyweb I don't know a half an hour into the home inspection and he was sitting on the stairs playing on this phone I was like amen what's up and he goes. Yeah, you're not buying this house like what he goes. Yeah, you're not buying this house like um, can you unpack that a little he goes sure he leaves me to the basement. And has me stand about eight feet away from a corner of the house. He goes stand here. Don't move up. We'll just wait then he leaves and it was a creepy basement and I was willing to overlook the creepy basement but here I am kind of doing the blair witch thing all of a sudden the side of the house comes off in about a three foot chunk 05:24.40 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Flat length. 05:34.33 bizzyweb And he pulls out this four foot chunk and he sticks his head and is's like this is why you're not buying this house like do you want me to keep yeah, okay now you get good good point. So. 05:39.38 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb The yikes. Minute. 05:45.60 Reuben Ah, funnyd and I'll I'll say for anybody listening Normally your home inspector is not going to do this trigby and I had known each other for quite a while. So this was the kind of more the friend to friend. 05:51.28 bizzyweb Um, yeah, yes, throat strength. 05:52.73 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb 4 05:58.52 Reuben Message that I would give me intrigued me. Normally we'd never tell people buy this house or don't buy this house. We're not there to give real estate purchasing advice. But as a friend I had no Qualms telling trigby. You ain't buying this house my friend. Yeah. 06:06.71 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Right. 06:11.90 bizzyweb You literally pulled off a corner of the house and was like yeah no, we're not doing this. It's not even my house the answer the answers. No so when you when when when your dad Neil took over structure tech. How many employees did you have. 06:18.80 Reuben Yeah, friends built my friends to confess. Yep. 06:28.98 Reuben Ah, well at that time it was it was me my dad and 1 other guy it was dwayne so there's total and all my dad plus 2 employees it was doing. 06:33.92 bizzyweb Was duwayne really the guy. Oh well Dwayne is this guy to dwayne of this guy is twenty years ago looked to look looked old and he just he wears overalls all the time he's just yeah, so. 06:46.36 Reuben Everybody knew him from the big overalls. He would always wear those overalls that was it state. Ah today I think you know I haven't taken a. 06:51.87 bizzyweb In 20 years how many people do you have now. 06:58.48 Reuben Count lately. But I think we got about 30 to 35 people on our team now. Yeah you know I'd say being intentional I still remember after my son was born back in what was it 2007 07:01.10 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Amazing. 07:02.13 bizzyweb Wow! What do you attribute your growth to. 07:18.31 Reuben Thinking to myself and our our business was the same size then it was me my dad and 1 other guy still in 2007 I remember thinking to myself I want to grow this company I want time freedom I want to be able to spend time with my son I want to be able to spend time with my kids it really it was. I want time freedom and the only way I'm going to have time freedom without compromising stuff is to grow the company and so it was it was a conscious decision to say this company is going to grow and of course the next thing is all right? Well what's going to make that happen. And 1 of the biggest things I had been hearing about and I'd spend time on forums where home inspectors get on there and we argue about how roofs should be flashed and all these little details but there was there was 1 guy on there who also did websites for home inspectors and I remember I'm talking a lot about Seo search engine optimization. 08:08.21 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Through it. 08:12.28 Reuben Which you know that's you guys's bread and butter. But this guy would give us a lot of advice and you'd say hey your your website should have these tags in the header and you should use keywords and and you should Mark up your images and your images shouldn't be just numbers. It should be Minneapolis Home Inspection Roof image 08:25.81 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh. 08:30.62 Reuben Should I have all these important words that people are going to use and I mean this blew my mind I had no understanding of any of this but I took everything this guy said as Gospel and and I kept doing everything he said and and our website actually I mean we probably doubled our traffic based on that so instead of getting like. 08:44.72 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Small. 08:47.36 Reuben 5 visitors a day we might get 10 visitors a day you know like like you know, not or tens of visitors. So started following his advice but then something else he said was you know if you really want to turbocharge your website. You ought to do a blog. 08:49.96 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And I need. 08:50.60 bizzyweb In equal. 09:04.84 Reuben And I didn't even know what a blog was but looked into it and I thought I have no idea how to do this but then eventually some real estate agent who I still blog for today she said hey ruben you want to help me blog on my website I was like yes I do I have no idea what this is but. I've heard It's a good thing. So let's do it I started blogging on her website. Not realizing at the time this doesn't do anything for me but but eventually started blogging on my own site and that really started increasing traffic and and it started to make us and. 09:34.30 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb H. 09:43.38 Reuben Authority when it comes to home inspections of course, not in the first year or maybe even the second year. But after a number of years of doing this. We started to get authority in the market and people started to recognize our name and eventually we said all right look we need to hire another home inspector or. Now we need to get another one and another one and every year we kept adding on more inspectors and you know it was never never 1 year where it was like all right? We're gonna add 10 on but it was it was slow controlled growth up to where we are today. 10:17.50 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Amazing and when you talk about your blog. It's not inherently something where you might think oh this is going to be a sexy blog that's going to get millions of visitors visitors every year but when you start reviewing and you go to structure tech dot com and go to the blog. 10:29.15 Reuben No way. 10:37.30 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb There's some very interesting and kind of fun articles I'm just I'm just looking at the homepage or at the blog page right now animal skeletons and creepy home and home inspection stuff or reviews of different tools and things so you really take a broad approach and think about what's. 10:45.52 Reuben Yeah. 10:54.58 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Most interesting to people that are in your market tell us a couple of stories about some of those blogs and maybe some of the inspections that have stuck out for you over the past twenty five years for 11:05.54 Reuben Sure well that that is an open question Dave so you're let me talk about anything I want it sounds like so 1 thing you said is that I write about stuff that's interesting to everybody and we do. We do definitely have those like. 11:13.91 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Absolutely. 11:23.64 Reuben Animals skeletons and creepy stuff I mean you don't need to be passionate about houses to click this and get a good chuckle out of it or I've I've started making Youtube videos for most of my blog posts because I understand there's a huge portion of the population who actually prefers to watch a video over read. 11:24.80 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Don' ' see like Don. 11:41.40 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And. 11:43.56 Reuben I don't understand that I was opposed to doing it for forever because I thought I need to read and skim at my own pace who who wants to watch a video instead but it turns out there's a lot of people who do so started making videos for everything but even my kids they're 11 and 15 they'll watch some of those videos and they'll get a chuckle out of them. So those are the ones that are meant for everybody but I'll tell you the ones that really good traffic. It I mean it's it's this you you guys are well well aware of this It's this thing called the long tail search. It's it's searches people make for something that is extremely specific and. 12:18.96 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yeah. 12:22.90 Reuben I mean today one of the most popular blog posts I've ever written and one of the most visited sites on our entire website. Besides the homepage is a blog post I wrote discussing dishwasher drain installation defects I mean how crazy specific is that how. 12:36.34 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh but who who. 12:41.69 Reuben Orient is that who would ever go to a site to read about that. But if that's your problem and you're going to Google this problem I'll tell you what I own that search and and there are people all over the world who want to know about problems with their dishwasher drain installation and I own it. 12:45.35 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh. Absolutely. 13:00.30 Reuben So it's it's the long tail. So it's it's having a mix of things where anybody could click on it and find value in it in entertainment and other things where you're going to see a headline you're going to skip right past it. But then once you have that that question once you have that problem and you Google it. 13:16.85 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Who. 13:19.58 Reuben Then we own it. So it's it's trying to get both sides of that both the stuff people want to click and stuff that people want to search. 13:22.70 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Sure. 13:26.66 bizzyweb I Always tell people that that you are sort of the standard bearer for how to do it right? because what you're talking about doing like like dishwasher defects. That's that's not a compelling reason to hire you. That's just straight up education. 13:27.27 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb What. 13:42.24 Reuben Yes. 13:42.29 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And. 13:44.96 bizzyweb How on how to make which then creates the expectation that you are the thought leader. So there's not a. There's not a hard sell like here's 3 reason things you should look at therefore hire us. It's it's more. It's a long 5 to 700 words about. 13:50.30 Reuben So yeah, different. So. 13:56.82 Reuben Have. 14:03.20 Reuben Yeah, yeah, and you know Treg you you talk about not a hard sell I did write a blog post and I know you saw it and this is probably the closest we have ever come. 14:04.00 bizzyweb Dishwashers. 14:11.31 bizzyweb Um, it did. 14:16.83 Reuben To make it a hard sell for ourselves in one of our blog posts and I've been blogging since I started doing this in I think 2008 2009 but this is this is the the most salesy one I've ever written where we heard about a local competitor who is calling us out by name. 14:22.27 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb O. 14:33.33 Reuben On these new construction inspections saying we do the same thing structure tech does but we do it for half the price and so we did a secret shop We secret shop These guys We did a home inspection on a new house and then we had the homeowners hire the same company and. Our inspector didn't know that this was going on I didn't even know what was going on at the time I just have the idea after we did the home inspection I Thought you know what we should. We should do a secret shop. What's a recent inspection we did and so we had the homeowners hire this other company and that other company did the did a home inspection and. 14:56.31 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb That's fantastic. Yeah. 15:09.52 Reuben The differences in our 2 reports was just night and day I mean I don't know how do I say this delicately our ours was done by a professional home inspector who knew what the heck he was talking about theirs could have been done by someone who took a two day course 15:19.74 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Hold. 15:28.18 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb A. 15:28.46 Reuben How to be a home inspector and how to fill out a report that was how different our reports were and so I talked a lot about it I didn't call anybody out by name. But that's that's about as close as I've come to being salesy in one of our blog posted rios. 15:42.38 bizzyweb Yeah, so as a result to that you have all these blogs out there and I I actually have ah a rough count to the blogs which I think willll surprise you how often back in 2007 you said okay I'm going to dedicate myself to blogging how often do you post a blog. 15:56.84 Reuben Once a week religiously every Tuesday morning six a m it's approaching that. Yeah I don't know if we're at 16 yet. But it's it's getting there I didn't I wasn't dedicated. 16:00.34 bizzyweb Every week for 16 years 16:15.00 Reuben Every day and prell prop until probably 2008 yeah 16:16.40 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Chair. 16:17.70 bizzyweb Okay, so there's there's 1 other thing that you do that sort of came into it focused in 2008 which is you started using social media to promote the and when I say promote the business again, you weren't very salesy. What did you. 16:28.30 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And. 16:28.34 Reuben Yeah. 16:36.30 bizzyweb What did you do and you do this once a day every day. 16:37.27 Reuben Facebook photo of the day. That's when Facebook was love very new at least new to me I signed up for a Facebook account only so I could use it with the business I didn't really understand what Facebook was but I thought all right I heard people are doing this. So. Monday through Friday first thing in the morning photo of the day just something interesting something that'll make you laugh something that'll make you gasp stuff that we find during home inspections because we have a never ending supply of crazy photos as home inspectors. So that's. 17:11.61 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yeah. 17:13.56 bizzyweb So I have I have my favorite photos of the day. My one of my favorites that you found in a home was a a ceiling fan that. 17:14.50 Reuben And is our photo that a. 17:30.26 bizzyweb They tied that the ceiling fan were so wilted by water damage that it looked like a ah tulip hanging from the ceiling. 17:34.25 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Telling you know? ah. 17:35.43 Reuben I Know the one you're talking about. Yes. 17:39.73 bizzyweb Yeah, then ah then the toilet of fire. 17:42.69 Reuben Oh my gosh. What was that it was the it was they had plumbed in the hot water to the toilet right? yes. 17:48.81 bizzyweb Yes, so you took an infrared picture of the toilet because the hotline the in the cold water wasn't going to that to the toilet hot water was and it looked like that was on fire. 17:51.37 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And to correct encouragement. 17:59.50 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh Wow! excellent. 18:01.21 Reuben Yes, and you know what to be perfectly honest I may have flushed that toilet a few extra times to get it hot before I take my picture but why not. 18:09.37 bizzyweb Um, ah. 18:11.33 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Warmer up? Yeah yeah, wow. 18:13.50 bizzyweb So what are some of your favorite photos of the day that you've put out that are just spectacular. 18:18.61 Reuben Oh I'll tell you one 1 of my craziest ones ever. It's one you had to stare at for a minute. It's they put an addition on this house in hopkins and there there was a crawl space and. It looks like there's a tire buried in concrete and you got to look at it for a minute you can see half the tire and then eventually you realize that the entire addition is built on top of a trailer and that the tire is actually part of this trailer like like a trailer you would tow behind a truck. 18:45.95 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh. Here. 18:53.64 Reuben That's what the addition was built on top of so that tire that is a load bearing tire. You're looking at and it took me forever during the inspection I'm just staring at it going. What am I looking at why is this tire is that an axle are those springs and and finally figured out what I was looking at. 19:10.28 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Come my lord. Ah. 19:13.23 Reuben Yeah, that that was wild some some other crazy ones are just and some of these. We probably haven't posted but it's just the the human condition where you have disorders like like hoarder houses and you can't even walk into the house. 19:27.34 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Um, yeah, those are awful. 19:32.50 Reuben Because it's so full of stuff I mean there's rooms where there's stuff piled up to chest Height. You can't enter the room I remember one of those the photo never did a justice but it it was a hoarder house like that and then we went down we turned on the Boiler. We come downstairs. And the boiler was so filthy with with soot and all this stuff on the burners that the flames were coming out and licking up the side of the outside of the boiler out one of the craziest things I ever saw. Yeah, so we we've seen a lot of crazy stuff. 19:56.30 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh. 20:06.12 bizzyweb Um, Y and I think I'm trying to remember what there was one that was there was a sign of the toilet that said, um. 20:15.83 Reuben I remember. 20:15.84 bizzyweb And I'll confess this is my house the house that I bought there's a sign one of the toilets that said, um, we know this toilet is clogged. Um, we think our our son ah flushed a prophylactic device. We're having we're having somebody come out to look at it. 20:16.74 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb 50 20:31.53 Reuben Yes, yes, that was hilarious because all they had to say was please don't operate the toilet. It's clogged and we're having somebody look at it. Did you really need to bust your son out and say what you suspected he did. 20:42.80 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Think that. 20:43.23 bizzyweb Okay. 20:48.68 Reuben Did you have to go in all this detail? No, you could have just said I think the toilets clogged I Yeah I I still have that photo and I don't think I ever shared it could did it I must I must have at least pixelated what they thought. 20:56.69 bizzyweb I think it I think it made the fap Ten Eight nine years ago so yeah 21:01.66 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh wow. 21:07.70 Reuben Their son had flushed down the toilet. 21:09.81 bizzyweb I Want to go back to the website because I think one. Ah I know one of the things that you do was on your website is that's really important to you is that you have a picture of literally everybody you have a team picture of literally everybody who works at the company and. 21:11.43 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb With the clip. 21:23.82 Reuben Yeah, we do. 21:29.59 bizzyweb Ah, that it's done in a very specific way and that was originated by a photographer that you and I know named Laura Halverson who called it the Charlie's angels photo so can you explain how that. 21:34.50 Reuben Yeah. 21:41.32 bizzyweb Done and how you do that because you don't get all 35 people together every time you hire or let somebody go. 21:44.56 Reuben Yeah, we have not been in the same room together ever I think even though we've tried we've never got everybody together. It's just we we have individual photos taken and then we turn it over to someone who knows how to use Adobe Illustrator or something like that. So I don't know what they use but. 22:01.90 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb So in. 22:04.54 Reuben They put everybody's images together and they make it look like we're all standing together and in the same room and that way we don't need to do a new group shot every time somebody gets added or leaves the company. 22:15.35 bizzyweb Which is such a brilliant hack that I've shared with people over the years to to be able to to do I wanted to make sure that that we covered that. So. 22:23.90 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Like yeah. 22:25.63 Reuben Um, and you but you always call it the hero image right. 22:27.53 bizzyweb Well, the hero owners is a top image on a website. It's that first thing that you see but I I mean if I know because I've known you for a long time. How important is that everybody at the company gets represented in that first. 22:31.54 Reuben Oh okay, got it. Okay. 22:41.66 Reuben Um, yeah. 22:45.35 bizzyweb First thing even no matter how big you get? You know there were times in the evolution of structure tech where I was the one who was editing that photo where it was I think 8 or 9 people and now it's now it's even it's it's way past that so you blogged every week for 15 years and then you post. 22:52.92 Reuben Um, yeah for sure. 23:04.21 bizzyweb Every day on social media religiously just the just just the picture of the day. What else do you? What else? you do to promote your business. 23:05.52 Reuben true true story that's right well the like like I said the Youtube channel that has really helped and I think I think we probably get a lot more traction with Youtube today. 23:24.67 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yeah. 23:25.10 Reuben Than we do with blogging I'm not not 100 % sure about that. But boy, there's a lot of people who watch those Youtube videos and when it comes to people talking about it I mean telling me oh I saw your content people always say I saw your video nobody tells me they'd read my blog anymore. Kind of hurts I know people still do because Google Analytics is telling me they do but I never have people talk about it. They talk about watching the video. So do do a lot of videos and then kind of the latest thing is what I'm doing with you right now. 23:47.22 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And. 24:00.66 Reuben Is podcasting we we started doing podcasting about three and a half years ago we we officially said we're on our fourth season now I think or maybe it's season 5 I don't know it's it's been about three and a half years since we've been doing a podcast and that's been great too. 24:02.47 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Ah. 24:19.63 Reuben I don't I don't know how much it's really moved the needle I you know we get. We get probably less than a thousand downloads a week which probably isn't a great metric for a podcast that's been around for three and a half years but 24:29.44 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb You should. 24:37.94 Reuben We have some very loyal listeners and I've really enjoyed doing the interviews with our guests and I've learned a ton just by interviewing all these different people on the podcast. So that's that's the latest. 24:49.80 bizzyweb Which all that being said, your thought leadership doesn't keep you restricted to the geographic area where you live you also get up and get asked to speak a lot. 24:59.31 Reuben Very true. Yeah yeah I I've become a very well-known name in the home inspection field and. 25:03.60 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb He. 25:13.70 bizzyweb Which I know because I know you I've known you for a long time is painful for you to say out loud because you're one of the most humble people I know too. 25:22.31 Reuben Um, yeah, trick me you know me I felt my face turning red as I was saying that like it was weird to say but I will call a spade a spade My my name is quite well Known. And home inspection field I'm qualifying this I'm being very specific about it. But yeah I've done a lot of lot of teaching a lot of speaking throughout the country at different home inspection events because I enjoy doing it I Love teaching. 25:37.97 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb He. 25:49.99 bizzyweb Yeah, and I think that permeates into what you do in how you promote the business because like I said you don't really sell anything your goal your goal of the blog isn't is just to teach because of all the things that you see. 26:03.42 Reuben Yeah, absolutely, that's that's one of our core values I mean we we kind of copied Keller Williams for a long time. Keller Williams joked around that they were an education company disguised as a real estate company. And so we we kind of copy them a little and say we're an education company disguised as a home inspection company. 26:20.88 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 26:24.61 bizzyweb So ah, just for ah, just for giggles I pulled your site statistics. Do you have an idea of you The page count of how big your site's gotten. 26:33.96 Reuben It's we've talked about this before and and I'm always wildly off I mean my guess would be about a thousand pages. 26:42.78 bizzyweb Ah, Dave do you want to take a guess. Ah, as of this morning it's forty one thousand 26:45.58 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb I'm going to guess 3000 26:53.50 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Ah, 41000 including blogs. Well, it's mostly blogs I would imagine right? hopefully. 26:55.20 Reuben Um, for her. 26:55.54 bizzyweb Yeah, it's blogs. It's assets. It's but it's going back 15 years and each one of those blogs has probably 3 or 4 pictures in it all of which is a marketable asset because all the pictures are. 27:03.26 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Right? Of course here. 27:14.25 bizzyweb Ah, unique and original so and optimized for Seo and all titled and so one of the things that Ruben's done really? well. Also recently is is made the website ada compliant so there's descriptions in the pictures of what the pictures are too. 27:14.68 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And optimized for seo. 27:17.13 Reuben You now sharp. 27:31.34 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 27:33.46 bizzyweb Which then gives him triple the triple the link juice because now not only is it words on the page but it's also the picture and the description of the picture. 27:42.24 Reuben And you know what that that triggers something for me and let me ask you guys this I don't know if there's value in this but back when we first started doing our podcast. We had a handful of listeners say you know I I know you're doing this podcast and I. Can kind of listen but I'm hearing impaired and if there's any way you could have a transcribe I'd really appreciate and we got a handful of people asking us to do that. So now we transcribe all of our podcasts and I think there's value in that too. But what? What do you guys think I mean do you transcribe your podcast. 28:03.82 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh. 28:18.74 bizzyweb We do? Yeah, we're we're transport down. 28:19.42 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb We do? Yeah and if you and if you post the contents of the transcription as as part of it that gives you those extra Keywords because otherwise. 28:20.85 Reuben And is it worthwhile. 28:33.32 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Google as brilliant as it is doesn't have a way to grab the audio and transpose it into something so you need to do that for you. So I'm sure that's where you're getting most of the Seo value on the podcast right now. 28:38.34 Reuben Um, okay, okay, all right good. Yeah. 28:47.24 bizzyweb What and plus it's just genuinely the right thing to do if somebody can't hear the podcast because it's an audit audio medium then you think a goal is always to be helpful and be educational. So sure that's it's it's ah it's a fairly easy thing to do. 28:47.90 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb A. 28:59.25 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb So right. 28:59.33 Reuben Yeah, it's it's easy, but it's also not free I got I got to pay people on my team to grab the audio send it over get it back and then when we get it back. We got to go through it all because they don't get everything right and we got to fix a bunch of it. 29:13.21 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Would. 29:16.91 Reuben And not only that but they charge money I mean I I just looked at the receipt this morning and we spent fifteen hundred bucks transcribing last year. It's like am I doing this for 3 people I mean I want to be a nice guy. But. 29:23.46 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Are right are yeah well here. 29:32.25 Reuben If there's 3 people who are hearing impaired like how much am I willing to spend on that. But maybe that's just not even a good question to ask, but. 29:40.98 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Well, the good the good answer on the question is you're you're doing it for the 3 people but you're also doing it so that the 30000 people that want to listen are going to be able to find it because it'll show up better on Google go ahead. Okay. 29:50.74 Reuben Sorry sure. Okay, cool. 29:53.34 bizzyweb Yeah, and so that's one of those things where if you if you do it for the 3 people. There's a karmic after effect and a ripple effect that is is all is all of the positive. So. 30:01.25 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yes. 30:06.28 Reuben Sure. 30:09.31 bizzyweb We've talked a lot about ah the the good stuff and the growth. But what are some of the things that have have tripped you up along the way. 30:18.70 Reuben Um, you know, probably that's a tough one I wasn't prepared for this I'd say bad hires. Ah yeah, hiring hiring people to be a home inspector and learning a weekend. 30:24.58 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh yeah. 30:35.79 Reuben Ah month in six months in a year in that they're not the right person and I've had all of these different things. Ah that that that has been extremely frustrating and I still don't have it dialed in I mean we've we've gone through. 30:42.51 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 30:53.78 Reuben Personality profiles and and all these different learning assessments and and behavioral assessments and we've tried everything under the sun and I have not yet found something that is going to reliably tell me whether someone's going to be a good hire or not I mean there was one person we hired. And they were fantastic and turns out they had and a ah chemical dependency problem that so resurfaced about three months into training and it was just like okay this is over. But. 31:18.97 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb A yeah. 31:28.61 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 31:31.90 Reuben I Don't know how I can screen for that So people that's definitely one of the biggest challenges and I I think we've been very good at it I mean I make it sound bad the vast majority of our hires have been fantastic hires. Fantastic people who are still on the team. But. 31:34.39 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yes. 31:51.52 Reuben Ah, handful who didn't make it um every one of those feels like a scar. 31:57.37 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb That's a heartbreaker. You know you you invest in people and you really love working with people and so if they don't show up like they're supposed to and or if they switch on you. That's that's just tough and the market is hard right now. 32:05.40 Reuben Um, yeah. 32:10.19 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb So I'm sure you're doing a bunch and your website is so brilliant at getting people to your website but also like trigby mentioned at the beginning with the about page if you scroll all the way down to the about page. It says your name could be here which I love you know that's that's brilliant. 32:25.40 Reuben Yeah, yeah, and right now we're not having any trouble finding people. We're not hiring at the moment. That's the thing because you know real estate market has been down I mean we're down about 40% this year from what we were. 32:36.63 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Um, right? Okay wow it did any of that did any of that. 32:42.82 Reuben What we're at last year forty percent yeah I mean market is down. 32:44.17 bizzyweb I'm sorry did you say forty four zero 32:51.57 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Switch up when when the market was super hot too and people weren't getting inspections when they should have. 32:55.88 Reuben You know it it What what ended up happening is the market gets so hot that you get this backward curve The the line goes up. It goes up. It goes up and then all of a sudden it curves Backward where Demand is so high that it's exactly what you just said. 33:13.31 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb So. 33:15.91 Reuben Aren't getting home inspections because they want to be competitive. They want to get the house and we we saw a big drop in our business in 2022 Twenty Twenty Two was the first year that we didn't have a record year we we were actually down. 33:18.86 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 33:29.40 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb 4 33:32.76 Reuben And our sales for the year ended up closer to about what we had in 2020 which was really unusual for us. But we we saw a lot of people skipping home inspections and then the feds increased rates and all of a sudden people. 33:38.59 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yeah, so. 33:47.17 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yeah. 33:51.34 Reuben Weren't skipping home inspections but then people weren't buying houses so it's like it. It overcorrected. There was a really sweet spot for about three weeks where everything was nicely balanced and we were booked to capacity. 33:53.53 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Right. 34:05.37 Reuben And I was telling my inspectors if there's anything more you can possibly do I mean we were scrambling. We're turning away business for about three weeks and then everything crossed back the other direction so it was a really strange year for us. 34:13.50 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb A wow. 34:18.10 bizzyweb To that end I know one of the things that you've done is you know people think that home inspections is just on a purchase but you don't limit yourselves just to purchase right? You do it. You have other parts of your business. 34:28.84 Reuben We do a ton of inspections. Yeah, we I mean we do single item inspections. Someone's got frost in their attic. They've got ice dams. They want to figure out why All of this is happening all these different people are telling them different different stories. 34:29.40 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Corrupt right? You can up other criteria with yeah, we. 34:46.40 Reuben We'll go out there and tell them what's really going on with their house. We do a lot of troubleshooting single item inspections like that we do home maintenance inspections for people who just want to know exactly what's going on. They've been in the house for 10 years What do I need to prioritize prioritize right now and we do a lot of inspections for people who are getting ready to sell their house. And they want to know when a buyer has an inspector come through what are they going to hear and what can I do to be proactive so I'm not getting gouged and you know a buyer is asking me to take $5000 off the price of my house when I could have had it fixed for $500 ahead of time. 35:22.79 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb He he. 35:24.74 Reuben So we build a lot lot of those sellers inspections too. 35:27.37 bizzyweb So I know we've talked a lot about the value of digital marketing and the website that and and and Seo and how that's that's really improved your business but there's a whole other thing and this is going to be hard for you to talk about because and you're not going to like talking about yourselves. But. You. That's not the only thing that has grown your business The other thing is you are consistently one of the hardest workers in any room that you get out to and so how how much time do you really put into a week I know you're up at. 35:56.92 Reuben Oh thanks man. 36:06.70 bizzyweb Ah, 5 or so right. 36:09.10 Reuben Ah, yeah I get up early depends on the day usually between four forty five and five thirty somewhere in there depending on what's going on. It's one a host 2 times and I will say though that i. Have become way more intentional and focused with my time. Um I I probably don't put in more hours than anybody else I try to really limit that I mean like I said at the beginning 1 of the biggest reasons I wanted to grow this company was to have time freedom. So I can. 36:39.95 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Right? so. 36:42.84 Reuben Have time to do what I want have time to spend with my family but when I'm working I'm very intentional about it I start my day thinking about what it is and I need to get done I I spend time meditating and I write out my list of things that must get done that day and that's. That's the most important stuff and I mean even I mean even email I Keep my email closed throughout the day I don't respond to emails throughout the day I mean trigby, you know this sometimes you'll leave me a voicemail I won't get back to it So the next day I always feel bad but I don't let things interrupt my workflow. I am very focused on what it is that I'm doing right now and then I'll take a break at say one Pm and I'll respond to emails and then I'll close my email back down if I'm writing a blog post I am laser focuseded on getting this done so more than spending a ton of time. 37:30.80 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb A. 37:40.47 Reuben And being distracted and checking Facebook and all that I'd say I'm I'm good at being focused and getting a lot done with the time that I have. 37:48.36 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Creature and you mentioned you write the blog posts right? Amazing! Do you do all the social stuff as well. Okay. 37:51.40 Reuben I do write the blog posts. Yeah for sure some of it I mean the Facebook posts I do those we've started getting into Instagram which I don't understand and somebody else on our team does the Instagram posts. 38:01.97 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb So amazing and and then there's the the whole Tiktok thing that's happening and that that's amazing to me compounding? Yeah when when you do you're going to get to a billion viewers there. 38:13.82 Reuben Ah I got to get in on that I Yeah oh yeah, we got to figure that out. 38:21.66 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb You're you're Wow yeah. 38:22.28 bizzyweb Quickly quickly. So what? ah with with the economic downturn and that the housing changes. What are you doing to continue to keep your your ranking as the top guy in town. 38:37.40 Reuben Man we just had an 8 hour meeting with the leadership team at structure tech talking about all of that like what are we going to do and I I don't know what the magic bullet is the best thing we know of is. Better communication with everybody who works with us listening to our customers having follow up phone calls emails text messages just just engaging people and listening and doing what people are asking for and trying to deliver the best service we possibly can. Ah, short of that I don't know what's left. 39:19.52 bizzyweb Gotcha Well I know I am a consistent and constant follower of ah what you do on social media people are looking to find this because it it really is a hoot because not only is it. There's a good good amount of schadenfreude. Ah, but. 39:39.00 bizzyweb It's um, it's educational and you learn why it's a problem as well. Like I think one of 1 of the most recent posts that that was on there was it was kind of a head scratcher because it was ah a temporary joist. 39:40.15 Reuben Um, yeah, yeah. 39:53.24 bizzyweb That was pushing up but then he kind of had to look at it a little carefully and when you looked at it. You realized oh they had cut into the header in order to put the temporary joyist up instead of like moving it like an inch to the left. Yeah and all the different ways people use duct tape and all the different ways that people get. 40:03.60 Reuben Yeah, yeah, yeah. 40:13.19 bizzyweb Harmed by ice stands. It makes you a better homeowner but it does so incrementally because it's couple 3 minutes of your time. So it when I had ah a unique experience in my own home where um. 40:13.34 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Has more. 40:22.88 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Hey. 40:24.40 Reuben Yep out. 40:31.59 bizzyweb One day I went in the laundry room and there was water in the light fixture and it was sloshing around and it like huh that shouldn't do that and that's probably going to kill somebody. So. 40:34.96 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb 2 40:46.82 bizzyweb I called Ruben to come out and and he sent out one of his guys to figure out why is there water in there and it turns out one of the sinks from overhead was had a little pinhole leak and over the years and it just built up and built up and built up. So. 41:00.37 Reuben Wild. 41:00.83 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb It happens? yeah. 41:04.73 bizzyweb Home inspection is not something that I think people you shouldn't shy away from just on a home purchase it. There's so many things that happen in a home that I think to me sort of get down into keeping water out and the the management of water. 41:20.38 Reuben Yes, yes. 41:22.89 bizzyweb And flow of water. That's that's as a man as a homeowner that's your primary responsibility is the the ebb and flow of water in and out of your house and keeping water out of your house. Yeah, so ah. 41:35.40 Reuben So good. Yeah well put trigby. 41:36.41 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Equally. 41:42.11 bizzyweb What if people want to start following along and start taking the structure check right? Oh there's one before we get to that I wanted to ask you I know you and I've known each other for a long time. You are one of the only people that I've known who what was your when I met you? What was your what was your website address. 42:00.58 Reuben Oh ah, structure tech one.comstructuretech.com we drop the one. 42:01.90 bizzyweb Okay, and what is it now. Oh how? how did you get? How did you get structure tech.com 42:05.29 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh. 42:11.15 Reuben Well, we originally wanted structure tech.com back in 97 or whatever when we first created a website when my dad bought this business and structure tech was not available. Somebody had purchased it. You know one of those web squatters and. 42:25.47 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 42:28.57 Reuben We tried to buy it and over the years we kept coming back to it and at some point I think at the height we could have purchased it for like $80000 and yeah, it just it. It was not worth it. We're not going to get an $80000 return but I don't know what it wants. Do. 42:35.65 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Oh my lord. 42:42.59 bizzyweb I asked I asked once and it was owned by a guy in Korea and he wanted forty Five Thousand Euros for it. 42:50.20 Reuben And I yeah I just just ridiculous amounts of money. But then I don't know in 2019 I think it was I I inquired into it again I thought I'm going to bite the bullet. 42:50.42 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Normal just. 43:06.10 Reuben What what's it going to be at this time and it was all it was down to like 5000 somebody wanted and I said all right? Let's do it. We we want to be big boys. We're dropping the one. It's structuretech.com the one is cheesy and we we finally did it we we bit the bull over paid about five thousand bucks and 43:09.17 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb So. 43:24.51 Reuben Bought the real domain name I don't think so maybe in my own mind but you know it's It's a brand. It's like it's like if you have commercials on the radio. Do they make a difference. Well nobody calls our company from hearing a commercial on the radio. But. 43:25.60 bizzyweb Has it made a difference. 43:33.61 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb It's It's a brand attack. 43:41.23 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb And. 43:43.31 Reuben It's brand recognition. It's just cementing this in people's minds. So I I think it was well worth it. 43:49.68 bizzyweb Yeah, and I'm curious also because you have so much branding on everything. What were the after effects of that in addition, just as as something as simple as changing the website from dropping the one. 44:02.22 Reuben Zero zero after effects and I will say you guys helped with that I mean it was a matter of redirecting everything and having everything that went to structure tech one.com to structure tech dot com it was it was seamless. 44:06.57 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb You know. 44:06.65 bizzyweb 1 count. 44:17.17 bizzyweb Yeah, all all 44000 pages 44:19.63 Reuben and and I mean if you yeah yeah, it took a little bit of time you know I'm sure you guys spent an hour or 2 Ah or maybe even more working on all of that. Yeah I wait. 44:20.69 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Right. 44:31.87 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb You can replace just remove the one across there and put it into a 3 ah 1 redirect page right. 44:34.27 bizzyweb You would say you'd think. But no it was It was a lot more complicated than we have to give defense to the people who aren't here It was a lot harder. Yeah. 44:39.20 Reuben Yet wait did our feet. Yeah did I say hour I meant to say month or 2 Yeah meant to say month or 2 working on all of that. 44:40.85 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Um, yes, um. 44:45.82 bizzyweb Yeah, it was a lot and you know you were a little order. Why isn't it done yet well because you think there's a thousand pages and there's not. 44:52.97 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb If the. 44:53.17 Reuben Yeah, yeah, but thankfully it it still works I mean if you send an email to my old email ruben at structure check one.com it's still going to get to me everything still works. 45:03.81 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb A. 45:07.75 bizzyweb Yeah I think ah I've told people this for a long time that if anybody really wants to look at how to grow your business using digital marketing. You are the standard error and I've always maintained that because like you said. 45:20.14 Reuben Oh thanks man. 45:24.96 bizzyweb In our discussion today. The the blogging became just part of your day weekly routine and you just did it consistently and constantly and it didn't turn over right away but it had a snowball effect that all of a sudden the more you did it. 45:36.79 Reuben Now. 45:43.95 bizzyweb More you rolled the bigger you got. 45:45.20 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Here. 45:45.20 Reuben Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's looking for that that long term effect thinking about it as farming you know you're not Fishing. You're not trying to catch somebody looking for a home inspector Today. You're just planting all those seeds and it's going to pay off big in the long run. 46:04.56 bizzyweb And so how do people find you if they want to to check out some of the the fun photos but you you got you got to leave us with one one funny photo you talked about the trailer but you got you got to come up with something better than that. 46:04.86 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Yep. 46:13.79 Reuben Ah. 46:20.77 Reuben Okay, all right? Um, well I'll I'll say if you want to find us you can go to our website. It's structuretech.com or if you just if you Google structure tech you will definitely find us. That's a good way to do it. Um, and you you want a good funny photo check out. 46:30.98 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb A. 46:38.10 Reuben Check out our 1 of our latest blog posts. It's the top twenty home inspection photos from 2023 of my favorite ones in there was somebody took their bathroom exhaust fan and they put the duct for it and they terminated it right above the entry door. So. 46:51.99 bizzyweb Oh yeah. 46:56.74 Reuben You walk into the house and whatever's going on in the bathroom you know, somebody goes in there and destroyed the bathroom. You take all those odors and bam right? right in front of somebody walking in the door. You're just pumping pump that. 47:02.70 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Um. 47:07.50 bizzyweb So if you need to if you're in the bathroom and need to use the fan. You're now sharing it with the front door. 47:07.44 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb What here. 47:12.80 Reuben Yes, yes, exactly Yeah I Love that. 47:16.27 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Ah, okay, ah it all it. 47:18.88 bizzyweb Yeah, it is ah it's a great company. It's a great resource educational resource and it truly is one of the most dialed in companies I've ever seen Ruben thanks for joining us. 47:30.51 Dave Meyer_ BizzyWeb Guest. 47:32.41 Reuben Ah, you're sweetheart. 47:35.72 bizzyweb Ah, yeah, and following. Um, ah along the on on all the major socials. 47:40.15 Reuben We are there. Sure.