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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pro Show, host Erika speaks with Michael Craycraft, president of GreenWorks Service Company, about his journey in the real estate inspection industry. Michael shares insights on how he transitioned from construction to inspections, the growth of GreenWorks, and the importance of client education and service. He discusses the misconceptions surrounding environmental and engineering services, the value of building relationships with clients, and the innovative processes that have helped scale the company while maintaining quality. Michael emphasizes the role of education in empowering clients to make informed decisions about their property investments.
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Michael D Craycraft (00:00)
that like gives uskind of some pride a little bit in our service and what we do because we are a service company first and we want to again walk alongside that and be that consultant for that client so that you they they feel comfortable because I think every client at some point or investor they have a question that they that they unknown maybe unconsciously are asking and really the question is is what I’m about to spend on this house worth it now
we can’t directly tell them yes it’s worth it you know because it like that that would be my opinion and we might not be in the same position there
Erika (02:16)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Michael Craycraft, the president of GreenWorks Service Company. They are the largest privately owned real estate inspection company in Texas. Michael, it’s awesome to have you here today.Michael D Craycraft (02:35)
thank you for having me. I’m super excited and looking forward to the conversation.Erika (02:39)
Yeah, I think our listeners are going to be in for a real treat. So let’s jump on in for our audience who doesn’t know you yet. Give us the rundown. How did you get started in real estate inspection?Michael D Craycraft (02:53)
Yeah, so my name is Michael like you mentioned. I’ve been in the real estate inspection industry for almost 12 years. I got started, I have a construction background, ⁓ kind of went through some several jobs after college, but was really kind of in a transition period when I moved from Indiana to Texas and was looking to get back into the construction industry, but not swing a hammer. So I wanted to ⁓ kind of figure it out that way.and my wife and I we were happened to be buying a house at that time and our realtor we were just kind of having a conversation and he mentioned inspections and he was like hey have you ever thought about considering that well I’d never heard of it until we bought a house before and then or at that time so I started you know just kind of looking into it and I was like wow this seems like it might be right up my alley so kind of dove back into that and went back to school got my license
At that time most of it was online and I was able to go through that, the license pretty quickly and then I got to a point where I was like, man, okay, now I gotta start my own company because that’s what they tell you in school. And I was like, oh, I don’t know how to do that. started just calling around and some inspection companies were like, nope, we don’t wanna talk to you, you are a competitor, get out of here.
Couple people gave me some good direction and some good thoughts, but they weren’t hiring at the moment. And then I happened to get a hold of ⁓ our CEO and owner, Harmony Brown. She was the…
She was like, come on in, let’s talk. And went in and I guess you could say the rest is history. So I was the second inspector hired with at Greenworks and we were just a couple man, a couple person inspection company. And then now we have 150 total employees. We have 80 inspectors. So in the last decade, a little bit over a decade, we’ve been able to really massively scale our inspection company throughout Texas and now we’re in Colorado.
some other states as far as our engineering services go, but looking to continue to ramp up and scale as much as we can and get into some of these other states and really bring a good high quality inspection to the country.
Erika (06:05)
That’s really exciting and really something that you started there when you were the second inspector. ⁓ You know, what was it like being a part of all that growth up to 80 inspectors?Michael D Craycraft (06:19)
Yeah, so ⁓ it’s been a whirlwind for sure. ⁓ When I first started it was just, it was kind of like, this is a job for me. That wasn’t the conversation. The conversation wasn’t like, hey, let’s take over the world and have a bunch of inspectors, but…as time grew on and we started building some processes and procedures and really getting, I’m a very analytical person so I have to know exactly what I’m doing. I can’t make it up every day. So, you know, I started building out those processes and kind of going back and forth with our team and really refining them and making them good. we got to a point where we started bringing on some more inspectors and we wanted to create ⁓
We want to be a problem solver, essentially. And what we started to notice in the industry, a couple of things was, one, the inspector, they really only work during the summer and then they take time off during the winter because the real estate transaction and that wave is like a roller coaster and it’s lower in those winter months. Well, all of our inspectors are W-2 employees, so that just doesn’t work for them. We don’t want a 1099. We don’t want them to be without pay.
the winter. So what we started to do was really see, what are our clients asking for and how do we expand that and how do we get to a point where we have so many referrals it doesn’t matter what the real estate transaction is doing or what the market is doing we can keep our people busy. So we really started working through that and trying to solve that problem.
That’s how we came, we started as an inspection company and then we became an environmental company because if you do your job correctly you find some mold or some other environmental things in houses or commercial buildings and if you do your job correctly the next question is, well, do you know someone that does that? mold for example, we would recommend a mold inspector. Well, do you know a good one? No, we don’t. Well, you say no enough times
if you’re trying to get into that problem solving mode, well why don’t we know someone or why don’t we do that? So we started bringing on mold inspectors and sending some of our inspectors to get their mold license so that we could do mold inspections. The same thing happened with our engineering services in Texas. Our ⁓ soils are so…
volatile they expand and contract so much that we have lot of foundation issues here. So we would recommend you know an engineer for foundation assessment.
the same thing started to happen. Well, do you know a good engineer? No, we don’t. No, we don’t. So we say no enough times. So then we started partnering with one. Then we started tracking that and we were sending that person so much business. Then the question became, well, why don’t we bring that internally? So then we started building out our own engineering ⁓ staff. So we have engineered, licensed engineers on staff. We have environmental technicians on staff and consultants. So now we can do the whole process of
full structural engineering and full environmental services and testing. So everything we do is on that inspection and assessment side so that we can give more value and more information to the homeowner, home buyer.
the property purchaser. ⁓ As well as our realtors and investors, want to be able to serve them at a higher level and provide as much information as we possibly can. Because our goal is to get them to that fork in the road. And that fork in the road is, yes, I want to move forward with this house or property or no, I don’t. And we want to get them, not pushing them to one side or the other, but getting them to that fork in the road.
with so much information and so much education that they can confidently go either way and be okay with it. And that is our goal as a company is to walk alongside them in that journey. So one of our core values as a company is clients first. And it doesn’t mean that the client’s always right, because none of us are always right. But what that means is that we insert ourselves into their journey and we provide as much information and as much knowledge and remove any frustration that we
can to help them along the
Because that’s one of the largest purchases people are ever going to make is buy a home or as an investor You know buy properties or you know depending on what the model is that they’re in you know Maybe they’ll get up to ten houses, and then they want to go multi-family But those are large purchases, and we want to make sure that that investment is a good one And they have enough information to know if it’s a good one or if they need to look for a different one So that’s one of our main goals there as a company is to walk alongside our clients and
I always like to say we’re not an inspection company. We are a service company and we just happen to do inspections and assessments or engineering and environmental. But we are a service company first. We provide that level of service and that is our goal.
Erika (12:13)
I love that. And in terms of how things have evolved for you guys over the years, it just seems really practical. But I mean that also for like your customers is that it’s a win-win that when they need help with other services that you’re right there. With that expansion, has there been a system or a process that’s been a game changer as you’ve grown?Michael D Craycraft (12:39)
Yeah, a couple things in there is, you know, as we continue to grow, what we found is that for the inspector as well, ⁓ it…The same thing holds true for the inspector as it does for the client. The client feels more comfortable moving forward with the house or walking away from a property if they have more information and education. The inspector has that same feeling when they are doing the inspection. The more information, the more education they have, the more confident they are to do a good high quality inspection. So we’ve built our team around and their
comp structure and everything around adding more knowledge. So the more knowledgeable they become, the more they make and the more confident they become. So we can keep them busier in the slower real estate transaction months because they’re also mold inspectors or they’re also ⁓ engineering assistants or they have this license or that license. So we can constantly keep them busier. ⁓
outside of just the transaction. Also what that does is it keeps them in a state of variety where they’re not just doing the same thing over and over. Now that’s good for a certain amount of time, but I think us as people need a certain level of variety as well in our lives so it doesn’t become mundane. So that’s also helped people be like, ⁓ cool, I’ve got some different types of inspections today, this is gonna be fun. ⁓ So that’s really helped us been able to scale. ⁓
On the business side, operational side of it, we can send one person to do a job with multiple different services on it. So now we can… ⁓
The inspector makes more money on that job, but so does the company because I’m not sending multiple inspectors to do different things ⁓ So I can then send this inspector over here because they have all those skill sets and then this specter over here because they have all skill sets so from a routing standpoint it keeps us ⁓ a little bit tighter as well, so just as a good example what we would run into early on was if I couldn’t do
If I could do a home inspection but not a mold inspection. But the house next door was for sale.
I couldn’t go do that inspection because I couldn’t do both of those inspections. So I would have to send you who had the skill set next door to me and I would have to drive somewhere else. So ⁓ the more skill sets we got our inspectors, we could keep them closer and they wouldn’t have to drive as far. So that’s been super beneficial for us. It’s just getting additional information for our inspectors, which then allows them to go out and convey that information to the client.
in a better way.
the other the other side of it is We are very strict on the processes and procedures that we’ve had Doesn’t matter the market like this is the way we do an inspection now. There’s differences throughout the industry So some inspectors will come and say hey, we do the inspection this way, which is totally fine There’s more more than one way to skin a cat. However for our company. This is the way you do the inspection
this is the process you follow and here’s the reasons why. ⁓ So that we can maintain the quality as much as we can. So when you’re in a model where you’re trying to scale, that becomes increasingly important.
so that if I’m not available but I got requested, I have to be able to trust to send one of my other inspectors out there to do the same level of inspection. And if that’s not the case, then you essentially aren’t a unison company, which is what our goal is to be as consistent, as consistent as we can across the board. So our quality becomes the number one focus from our training perspective. So that’s been a huge thing. So just adding education and information
to our inspectors and our clients and then also sticking very strong to our processes and procedures have been two things that have really helped us scale.
Erika (17:44)
Yeah, absolutely. And I can see where the client education would lead to a lot more satisfaction with those customers too. The environmental testing and the structural engineering, that’s not something that ⁓ we hear about a lot, but when you need it, you need it. What would you say are some of the biggest misconceptions with those services that you hear, whether it’s a first time home buyer or an investor?Michael D Craycraft (18:13)
I ⁓ specifically for those two, you don’t know you need it until you see something. And I think that’s probably the biggest misconception is you can be preventative in both of those things. So from an engineering standpoint, if you think about, okay, I don’t need an engineer until… ⁓you know, I’m expanding the house or something like that, or, you know, maybe someone tells me my foundation needs work, but that’s not necessarily. So what we do from the education side of things, yes, we can come out and assess it, but we can also give you a maintenance plan. A lot of times with our engineering reports becomes there’s a maintenance plan that comes with this. How do you maintain your, your house from a structural standpoint? It’s the same thing with our environmental services. So mold, for example, a lot of our reports have conducive conditions.
So these are the things that would essentially allow water into an area where mold could then grow so ⁓ It’s their maintenance lists that you can then take and maintain your house. I would say the majority of any inspection that we do is due ⁓ Things that we find during inspection is due to lack of maintenance a deferred maintenance ⁓ because most people Based based just based on our experiences most people live in their
houses but they don’t know anything about their house. They don’t know how their houses work. Which you wouldn’t unless you built one or that’s like something that you seek after. So you just don’t walk around being like, I wonder why that wall is shaped that way. You just don’t, you don’t really care right. You go from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen and that’s about it. So you know our job is to educate as much as possible. I’m like hey here’s some things that are kind of out of sight out of mind that could cause you some major
issues later. ⁓ Or, hey, if this goes unrepaired or unfixed, it could lead to this. And I would say from an environmental standpoint,
By the time you start having some signs that you may have some mold or something going on or a sickness, there’s probably a much larger issue that you could have prevented later on just by being more aware of it. you know, our…
especially environmental mold is such a educational focus because I feel like our media has done such a poor job at actually they’ve done such a great job at scaring people on what mold is but there’s mold in the like we’re breathing it in right now there’s mold in the air now what we’re looking for is excessive mounts or you know it’s caused by water that’s growing behind the wall or something like that but walking outside there’s
there’s mold coming from the trees and the bushes but people don’t understand that they just think that if you have mold then you must have a huge issue or you must have a water leak somewhere in which is not always the case so there’s a few and there’s also there’s a couple types of mold that are really you know horrible for our health but there’s
over a thousand different types of mold that they’re not all the same. Now they may affect people differently so each person is going to have their own individual ⁓ experience with them.
But where we come from is from an educational standpoint and really telling people, you know, okay, how did it get there? What to do about it? And then connecting them with, ⁓ you know, a remediation company that can help them remove that if there’s a much larger issue. ⁓ And I don’t wanna downplay the ⁓ seriousness of mold by any means, but it is a much more common thing than most people think. ⁓
So
and especially here in Texas too from the engineering standpoint, you know, it’s very common to have cracks in your house, but people see those cracks and They freak out a little bit and they’re like, oh it’s gonna cost me thousands and thousands of dollars, which also isn’t true. So the engine So I always like to tell this story. So there’s a we just bought this house and
There’s some cracking and things going on in here. So we had a foundation company come out and the foundation company said that we needed about $20,000 worth of peer work. ⁓ Which is obviously a little overwhelming. You take that back to the seller there, like what are you talking about? No way. So we then had the engineer come out and…
The engineer was, we did all the calculations, they calculated the deflection versus a drop over a distance. So there’s a pretty big difference there. ⁓ And the engineer said, no work is needed. It’s within the deflection tolerances. So.
think to answer your question pretty directly, there is a common misconception that, I have to pay an engineer. I’d rather just have a free assessment by a foundation company. But the difference is the engineer is a third party. ⁓
Bystander in the process they don’t care whether you need work or not Most foundation companies based on my experience they want your work So they’re gonna give you a free assessment so they can tell you that you need work And they’re there you’re looking at it from a different perspective so another
Our inspectors in our company are trained by our engineers so that they have a higher level of knowledge on movement within the house. So we can talk about cracks over the doors or cracks over the windows in a higher level from an more from an engineering mindset as opposed to an inspector mindset which is going to be usually led by liability as opposed to empathy or an educational
hey, this is what the engineer would possibly say about it. So we can help kind of ease some of those concerns, especially in an area where that is a huge concern based on our soil types here.
Erika (24:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. ⁓ you know, I was just thinking about all those different services that, that you offer and you know, how much of a difference it can, you know, make for people when they’re, they’re buying that property. Do you have a story like that where, know, whether it was an inspection, the testing, the engineering, something that made all the difference for someone.Michael D Craycraft (25:06)
Yeah, for sure.mean, I think, you know, sometimes the, ⁓ we lose sight of that sometimes, you know, and I think, especially in the inspection industry, I see a lot of like, well, this is my inspection as the inspector and like, you know, like I run this inspection, but our mindset is completely different. And we want to be alongside that, that client in this journey. And I would say probably the best example of, of
That is the relationship that we build. Like we’re a relationship business. we were a service company first and I’ve had my goal is to not just deliver bad information. My goal is to create a relationship with that client so that so we do the inspection and then we want to move into that consultant area where I want you to remember me for years to come. So I’ve gotten calls three and four years after I did an inspection from clients saying, Hey,
you know we’re moving we were buying another house can you come and do this inspection for us so we really focus on that side of it and if I can meet you for less than an hour and deliver information in a way where you remember me three to four years later
Like that’s a lot of value that I’ve added to that person’s life and that’s a win for me. Now on the engineering side, there’s been a really good example. I remember I did an inspection several years ago and the client handed me a foundation report where they had put something like…
was like 50 to 60 piers underneath this slab foundation and I was like okay that seems like a lot you basically just turn this into a completely different house but I went went along with my when we get information like that we look at it but we kind of ignore it also because I have to give my own unbiased opinion so I went ahead and did my entire inspection like I normally would
And we do foundation elevations like a lot of inspectors do but we have a zip level that we measure the floor and it was still really out of level even though they had put all that information in there or that period in there. So I recommended.
They have you know a totally separate engineer come out you know and obviously we can offer that or they had they end up having another engineer come out They didn’t move forward with us which is which is fine, but I still recommend it Hey have a completely third-party engineer. It’s gonna cost you a little bit however You know like having a foundation company come out they
they’re probably gonna be incentivized to give you work, right? So the engineer came out and he ended up recommending, I had done another inspection for them so I had asked them about that one and that’s always a fun situation where we don’t always get to know the results. So let’s say they ended up moving forward with that house. I don’t know who they had come out or what the results were, but they ended up not moving forward with that house and they said that the engineer came out and told them that they needed another
peers to re-level that house so you’re looking at this house that’s not very big looking putting like a hundred peers under this thing so I ended up doing another inspection for them a couple weeks later and I had asked them about it and they were like man you saved us so much money and time because that we feel like that was like a lemon that all this these things were hidden so it’s stuff like that
that like gives us
kind of some pride a little bit in our service and what we do because we are a service company first and we want to again walk alongside that and be that consultant for that client so that you they they feel comfortable because I think every client at some point or investor they have a question that they that they unknown maybe unconsciously are asking and really the question is is what I’m about to spend on this house worth it now
we can’t directly tell them yes it’s worth it you know because it like that that would be my opinion and we might not be in the same position there
but I can give them enough information and enough education where they can feel good about yes this is definitely worth it or no that’s gonna cost me some more I don’t feel like that’s worth it and that’s that’s really where we can come into alignment with our clients you know and there’s a they tell
you that like day one inspection school don’t answer the question would you buy this house ⁓ but there’s
But that’s essentially what clients want to know. Should I buy this house? And if you just skirt away from that question and avoid it, you’re not giving them a yes to that question or a no to that question. You’re just leaving them with their arms up being like, I don’t know if we should or not. But if you can educate them and lead them down that path, they can answer that question themselves without me having to say yes or no. And it’s just through an education.
through information. So another thing I like to say is I’m in the information providing and education business. That’s what we do. So whether it’s an investor, whether it’s a homebuyer, you know, it’s all the same. Like they want to know is this worth it? You know and that’s the same thing with our service. If I’m not delivering these results in a certain way where you feel like it’s valuable, then
you’re gonna ask that same question about, okay, I just paid you $500 for this inspection, I don’t know if that was worth it. Because you didn’t see the value, you didn’t feel the value. So that’s a huge focus of our training for our inspectors is you have to make sure that you are showing up as valuable as you possibly can for that other person, not for yourself.
Erika (31:19)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I just I love the approach that you guys have. Michael, before we let you go, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about Greenworks, or you know, maybe they need help with their next inspection, what’s the best way for them to reach out?Michael D Craycraft (31:35)
Definitely. ⁓ So greenworksinspections.com is our website. You can go there, check out, we have packages and all of our services and ⁓ you can chat online with us or give us a call. ⁓ Me personally, I am on Facebook and Instagram. ⁓ Facebook is Michael Craycraft, so not too many of us out there. Kind of different name. And then ⁓ @mcraycra is my Instagram. So you guys can send me messages and I’ll get you directed to our call center.and get you hooked up if you need some assistance there.
Erika (32:09)
Fantastic. I just loved how the company’s grown and that you’ve kept quality and service first. It’s very inspiring.Michael D Craycraft (32:18)
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me and I look forward to maybe talking again in the future.Erika (32:24)
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for dropping all the knowledge that you did today, Michael. And for our listeners, if you love this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations coming up with pros like Michael who are doing fantastic things in the real estate world. We’ll see you on the next episode. Bye.
