Winning at Life: How to Cultivate a Mindset of Unbreakable Resilience

Stephen S. (00:02.454)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs and service providers to the real estate industry Welcome back to the show if you are joining us for the first time or the third or a hundredth time We’re going to have a ton of value going into today. I have Charles Bellefontaine in the house. He has been in the home inspection business For over three decades and he’s here to share his knowledge and his wisdom

of all things home inspection. just remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That being said, Charles, welcome to the show. Did I say your last name correct? Is that Bella Fontaine? Did I say that okay?

Charles Bellefontaine (00:45.856)
Thank you. It’s my honor.

Charles Bellefontaine (00:52.799)
Absolutely not. know, so it’s it’s sorry. Got to have a little bit of fun with it. And trust me, very rarely does anybody ever get it right. All right. So it’s yeah, it’s it’s B.L.L.E. like Beauty and the Beast, know, Belle Fontaine. And I know it’s a little bit dirty, but when I was on the fire department, they I told them that it meant in French, beautiful fountain. And they kept calling me beautiful bidet. So

Stephen S. (00:54.586)
no!

Stephen S. (01:04.127)
Really?

Charles Bellefontaine (01:22.97)
Guys in locker rooms and firehouses, there’s no mercy. So… Sorry.

Stephen S. (01:28.302)
Oh my gosh, I love it. Well, you know, usually I asked before and then I realized as I was going into my intro, was like, well, it’s a little too late to ask if this is how to pronounce it now, but Bellefontaine, is that how it is then? said? Bellefontaine, I love it, that’s awesome. So with what you’re doing now, home inspection, we’re gonna get into a ton of content here today and I’m gonna really have a great conversation with you, I already know.

Charles Bellefontaine (01:37.077)
It’s good. Yeah. Yeah, that’s the record. It’s all good. Yeah.

Stephen S. (01:55.779)
about what it is that you do, but for our listeners sake and even for mine a little bit, can you give us a backstory of how you got into home inspecting and what made you get where you are today?

Charles Bellefontaine (02:07.033)
All right. In high school, everything started off in the fire service. So in high school, they had a fire department paramedic program. So by the time I graduated high school, I was already on my way to be a state licensed fireman and a home inspector. I’m sorry, not home inspector, but a paramedic. But I always was intrigued with construction. And, you know, I did not go to college. So I ended up, you know, getting into concrete work.

is what it was. And after about three, four years of that, I realized this is hard work. I don’t want to work hard. I’m not afraid to say it even today. I don’t want to work. I want to develop systems that work for me instead of me working for it. And I still like building science and building construction. So I found a class. I think it was in Indianapolis. I went there for a couple of weeks.

Next thing I know is poof, I’m a highly trained professional. Took four months to get a gig. I was scared out of my pants there at the very beginning, doing the very first one. And just like with growing up, when I was 18, I knew everything in the world and nobody could tell me anything I didn’t already know. And the older I got, the dumber I realized I actually was. And same thing in this business.

You know, we ended up doing very well in the beginning. Like I said, I started in 93. The business started taking off in the late 90s. And we were doing about 1500. Around 2002, we opened up a school. 2008 hit. Everything came to a crashing halt. And then when I retired from the fire department in 18, I asked my wife to build it up again. Now we have 15 inspectors here.

We probably train, I’m gonna guess, some around 150 to 200 home inspectors every year. We work with a lot of community colleges and such. And one of my favorite phrases is gonna be, the more you know, the more you’re worth. And knowledge is power. So if your listeners and your investors believe in what I’m saying, then the more they learn about the properties that they’re buying, the better decisions they’re gonna make.

Stephen S. (04:32.014)
Yeah, that’s amazing actually. You said something right there and I’ll get into another question, but I just want to highlight that I’ve never actually heard anybody say what you did. Most people that I listen to, it’s not what, it’s who, it’s not, you know.

Charles Bellefontaine (04:32.715)
That help?

Stephen S. (04:54.03)
Whatever, you know, it’s your network, you know, your network is your net worth and like, all those things are true. You know, one of the things that you also said was you said the more you know, the more you’re worth. And I’ve never I’ve never heard someone put it so succinctly. but it hit me and I’m like, wow, you know, as I even look at my own life, you know, just the knowledge that I’ve gained over the last 10 years, you know, it’s put me in a position to be able to.

Charles Bellefontaine (05:06.656)
yeah.

Stephen S. (05:22.848)
understand that my value is higher than it was 10 years ago because of the experience and the things that I know today that if I didn’t self educate myself, I wasn’t a college grad either myself. And if I hadn’t done that, I’d still only be worth minimum wage. So that’s what an incredible quote. So let me ask you this, because one of the things you also mentioned, I think most of us entrepreneurs are like this in the sense of I wouldn’t say we’re the hardest working lazy people you ever meet. And so

With that, you talked about systems. I think this is something that a lot of people fail to put in, right? Like most people, even in the construction industry with like GCs or whatever, it’s a one man show. They have to do everything and it means that they end up working hard forever with not really a whole lot to show for it at the end. So like, what are some of the systems that you’ve put in place to work for you in your business?

Charles Bellefontaine (06:17.271)
Actually, I think you and I use the same one if I remember. So I use high level and we’re actually an agency for high level as well. And I do a lot of coaching for other home inspectors across the board. So, you know, we run a 15 man full time home inspection business and I do it with myself and one virtual assistant. All right. Everything else, all the scheduling, appointments, report, everything is done.

all automated. So we use an IVR through high level, which so when somebody calls and finds out about, or I should back up when they call and they’re looking to hire a home inspector. And the biggest thing I go after is why choose me. And, you know, we figured everybody has the same question, how much what do you do, what tools, all this stuff. Why not put it in writing?

Why not have all that stuff pre-written so when somebody calls and asks for it, I don’t have to read it out loud to them. I just have that automatically texted to them. And then it’s like a six-page PDF document that’s overwhelming of what makes us your best choice in doing a home inspection. And I pair that with Google Ads and Yelp advertising because…

I guess the two different things for your investors, they’re going to be more nurturers. And what I mean by that is you’re going to have somebody who wants to sell their house. They really don’t want to work that hard to get rid of it. But they need to be, you know, hung on to for a while. It’s not going to be a snap decision. They’re going to be a nurture situation. So basically, that’s where a funnel comes into play with them. For us, for hiring a home inspector, they only have five days.

So I have to get all those systems for the scheduling, the billing, the contract signing, payments, sending out all my other vendors for radon, mole testing, anybody else that I bring involved. It’s all done automatically through this high level engine that comes in there. Did that answer your question?

Stephen S. (08:27.47)
And and yeah Yes, absolutely high high levels a great system and so it sounds like you’ve really worked on just automating putting SOPs in place to To be able to make your life so much easier So that way you’re not constantly having to answer questions all day every day to 15 different people, too

Charles Bellefontaine (08:46.877)
I can’t. Yeah, in order for me to schedule 15 inspections a day, that means I have to talk to 20 people or more a day in order to get that percentage to hire me or I have to hire someone to do it. And I know this sounds pompous and I’m just going to ask for forgiveness. I just don’t have that time or desire to do that. I want their business. I want their money. But I just don’t want to do the work, you know, and it’s repetitive. So we don’t have to.

Stephen S. (08:53.923)
Right.

Stephen S. (09:06.317)
Right.

Stephen S. (09:12.472)
Yeah, 100%.

Sure. Now, what are, tell me a little bit about like the types of individuals you serve and maybe how that could theoretically relate to real estate. mean, I know a lot of our people that listen, they’re in, you know, multiple different things, but a lot of it is, you know, fixing and flipping on the investment side. And so when is it valuable to have a home inspector come in and actually do an inspection on your property? Should it be every single property you buy? Should you just have a general contractor come look?

Like what’s kind some of the differences and why someone would want to hire a home inspector?

Charles Bellefontaine (09:49.173)
Yeah, and I think it’s what you’re more or less what you’re looking for and everybody has a different goal. All right. So my target market is going to be people that are buying high end homes and they’re going to be, you know, pools and irrigation, radon, you know, we want to make as much money as we can. I am in business. I wake up every morning to make money. And I know that sounds horrible, but it really is the truth. All right. But I also want to do it.

with honesty and integrity and value. That’s the key component. Now, I don’t mesh well with investors, all right? And I get it because with somebody who’s doing a fix and flip, you really don’t care what the condition of the drywall is or the windows are or the kitchens and the bathrooms and stuff. You’re gonna be probably gutting and redoing those anyway. So what do need me to go ahead and give you a report on that stuff?

Stephen S. (10:23.182)
Mm.

Charles Bellefontaine (10:49.394)
So when I talk to my investor friends that I do work with, I still want to be able to make 500 or more dollars per inspection. right. So I’m trying to figure out what can fit well for an investor. And where it’s come out, you know, we have an investor inspection where we’re going to be doing the roof because that’s a big ticket item. The structure, especially with water leakage and along with the exterior.

seeing how tight the shell is. We’re going to do, again, the actual basement structure if it’s visible. So we’re going to be looking at four-joist beams post exterior foundation walls. We’re going to shoot the electrical panel and let everybody know how big this thing is and whether or not it needs to be replaced. Water service entrance pipe is a big one in the Chicagoland area because we have a lot of lead water pipes and that does bother people. Heating systems.

And then I think the other one that’s really big on older homes is going to be a sewer scope. That can end up being a pretty expensive stuff. what we did was we removed the insulation, windows, doors, kitchens, bathrooms, interiors, flooring, all that stuff. And we replaced it with a sewer scope. You know, so we’re still going to do the roof, the exterior structure, plumbing, heating, electric, everything from the basement and then along with the sewer scope. And we could do that for 600.

But I know a lot of people want to roll the dice on that as well. And, you know, I’m very active in our state of Illinois. And what I mean by that is I’m also a lobbyist for our state association. And which means that my head is sticking so far out of that whack-a-mole machine that there’s a whole bunch of people with rubber mallets ready to knock me down. So I can’t violate the laws. And I am, I’ve heard rumors.

that we have people doing walk and talk inspections and they’re charging about half the price. I’m not going to compete with stuff like that and there is value to the investor with that. But for me it’s like the big ticket items are going to be the important stuff.

Stephen S. (12:58.946)
Yeah, no, I think that makes a ton of sense. I mean, you know, when you’re looking at potentially purchasing a house and I can get, you know, if you’re doing a massive amount of volume, how it just wouldn’t make sense to do every single one because you’re probably looking at five to 10 and only buying one. so, you know, when you put it in perspective like that and you’re spending five grand on home inspections to get one property versus one, you know, I can see where some people might balk at doing that. However,

Also, that 500 bucks could potentially save you from getting into a deal that you then lose 60,000 bucks on. You know what I mean?

Charles Bellefontaine (13:36.019)
And you’re absolutely right. that’s the you know, everything is a risk and a reward. And I don’t know, one of my most hated sales tactics, and I just refuse to do it is that fear monger stuff. And, know, yeah, there is always a worst case scenario. And, you know, most home inspectors, we’re not we’re not a smart breed. All right. Where it comes with it, you know, and this I think is important to your investors.

Stephen S. (13:49.558)
Right.

Charles Bellefontaine (14:05.938)
All right? People don’t realize what it takes to get a license to be a home inspector. Like here in Illinois, somebody has to watch 60 hours of YouTube videos, get 70 % on a multiple choice test, and do five ride-alongs with an experienced home inspector. Actually, it’s six now, but still. It’s hardly anything, you know? And now you’re going to be paying this person to help you with the biggest purchase of your life. And we’re talking about a normal home buy.

not necessarily invested, right? And, you know, if you start thinking about it, you want to be a licensed electrician in Illinois, five years of schooling and on-the-job training. You want to be a licensed plumber in Illinois, five years of schooling and on-the-job training. HVAC, four years. Now we start aiding on the roofers, the framers, the concrete pours, the window installers, the door installers, cabinets, countertops. There’s a lot of different things. Installation, overhead garage doors. There’s a lot of different trades in our profession.

But don’t worry, I watched 60 hours of YouTube videos, I got this. The average life span of a home inspector is not much different than a real estate agent. And that’s less than two years. 80 % fail in two years. And that’s a big number to remember. So if you’re gonna really go for somebody with knowledge, you really wanna start checking their background, their experience. And truthfully, for your investors, you really wanna learn

Stephen S. (15:20.419)
Really.

Charles Bellefontaine (15:34.926)
about every trade. You want to learn as much as you can about your mortgage guys, your real estate agents, your home inspectors, laws that come in there. Because that way you know if the people that you’re hiring are going to do well for you. You don’t want to just take it for granted. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in trusting. But I also believe in verifying.

Stephen S. (15:47.886)
All

Stephen S. (15:55.224)
Sure. Well, you said something incredibly important there, which I’ve also found, which was the actual lack of knowledge that most home inspectors, at least that I’ve ran into, have had. Right. And it’s one of those things like, you know, I went out, so I have a roofing background and, you I’d go out and I’d look at a roof and a homeowner would say, well, you know, we had a home inspector look at it or do a four point or whatever. And I get up there and I’m like,

This isn’t installed correctly. You’ve got hail damage all across the back half like did they even know what they were looking for? And and so and then I had a battle, you know with the you know, the homeowner or whatever because then I’m having to convince them that the other person You know didn’t do an accurate job So what why do you think that there isn’t more training and what what do you what can some people that are in in the business do to? Continue, you know

furthering their own knowledge so that way when they get hired like they actually are going to give the best possible product because I think that’s really the biggest downfall to me is like you said how do I know that who I’m hiring actually knows what to look for with the plumbing the HVAC the electrical the roof all of these different things

Charles Bellefontaine (17:07.801)
Yeah, that’s a hard one, you know. A lot of it has to do with experience and that if somebody puts themselves out there, and a lot of people don’t, then you can go ahead and view any sort of training materials, any YouTube videos that they put out there and stuff, and we do put a lot of content out there. My goal is to educate as many people as I can. And I’ll let you in on a little secret here too, because I posted, I posted,

a video that I was training other home inspectors. I had my web guy come out there and do it. And I was talking about notching and floor joists and holes and bores. And this is something that I learned wrong over 30 years ago. And I just kept saying it over and over again. But I posted that video up on Instagram where he did, you know, and man, when did I get hate mail? It was awesome.

I had like 750,000 views on that one Instagram post. I picked up something like 6,000 followers on it. And I apologized for it. I mean, what am gonna do? I was wrong, you know? But I thought I was right, all right? You don’t know what you don’t know. And then…

Stephen S. (18:20.632)
So this was something you learned 30 years ago that you’ve been saying for 30 years basically. And then finally everybody’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up.

Charles Bellefontaine (18:23.503)
30 years? Yeah.

Charles Bellefontaine (18:29.846)
I wouldn’t go everybody, but there were other people and he’s like, look at the diagram. The one guy was awesome. I wish I could remember his name, but he’s like, you know, here’s the code. You know, here’s where it says that you got to do it. I put everything up there. Yeah, I did the same thing. But look at the diagram. It doesn’t say anything about holes in the middle third. It just says no notching or cutting in the middle third of the floor. And I’m like, I cried out loud, you know, but I’m glad.

You know, I’m OK with making mistakes. I don’t judge people by the mistakes they make. I judge them how they handle the mistakes. So if somebody is going to keep going, yeah, I’m right, and I don’t want to admit I’m wrong, that’s somebody to stay away from as far as I’m concerned. You know, me personally, I’d rather say, yeah, I learned that wrong a long time ago, and now I know better. You know, but it’s, yeah, I don’t know if I have a good, good answer to your

question. But, you know, the more I think the more you know, is the investor, then you could tell when somebody is giving you a bunch of BS. All right. And and I see that a lot with my clients, we get that we’re a contractor is going to come in there and then they get them for real expensive price and they do fear mongering, get them to sign this stuff. And then my clients will call me and ask me about this stuff.

And I’m like, oh yeah, no, this is this is somebody trying to take advantage of you. had one where one of my clients, they they bought a four year old home and it had a front wall mount chamberlain garage door opener. The seller of the home didn’t give them the openers, know, the things you put on your visor, those little remote things. So she went out and bought some universals and then she didn’t want to learn how to program them. So she called the garage guy.

He charged her 150 bucks a program. He gets there, he says, yeah, you can’t program these. They’re, you know, it’s proprietary system and you’re going to have to get a new garage door opener. But don’t worry, they’re on sale. We got them for $1,500, you know. So she calls me up, swearing at me. And whenever you want to get my attention, start swearing at me. It really does work. And so I just lit there and I listened and stuff. I’m like, yeah, he’s lying to you, you know.

Charles Bellefontaine (20:54.595)
There’s not one that you can’t program. And I’m out of town at a convention and I was going to come back Monday. So then I’m driving there. She calls me up again, starts swearing at me again. She’s got a plumber there. They lost power over the weekend and it was a draft-induced water heater. And then she didn’t have water, hot water when the power came back on. Plumber is there and he’s telling her that the water heater was installed wrong.

and the inducer fan motor is now damaged and you got to replace the whole water heater and he’s going to charge you $5,500. Anybody who’s listening knows that all these numbers are inflated tremendously, right? And I’m like, yeah, it’s a $900 water heater and they want to charge you $5,500. It turned out, so I asked her to wait till I got there, I arrived and the plumber was still there. He’s giving me the song and dance.

And then I go, you might if I look at it, I follow the cord, it’s plugged into a GFI, I’ll plug it, reset it, plug it back in. Water heater fired right back up again. And like it was just a GFI trip. And he goes, and he got angry. And he goes, I knew the GFI was tripped. And I’m like, well, why didn’t you reset it? You know, I’m not allowed to. You’re allowed to sell this single mother of four and a four year old water heater or $5500 water heater, but you can’t press the reset button.

How the hell are going to get the new water heater working if it’s in deuce fan without resetting it in the first place? that’s the type of stuff that when we educate ourselves, we don’t worry about the evildoers out there taking advantage of us. I get emotional. Sorry about that.

Stephen S. (22:29.848)
No, you’re good. That’s man. You, you’ve got a real big heart for people, huh?

Charles Bellefontaine (22:37.26)
Well, it’s, I, yeah, I want to say that, you know, being a fireman, I took that job because I thought it was cool and I get to help people. I didn’t realize the pay was good and the retirement’s even better. All right. And I’ve done some really cool things in my life. I delivered five babies. Not a lot of people could say they did that. I pulled people out of buildings and they were still alive. I can’t tell you how many people I cut out of cars, you know, because we had a lot of highway in our district. So, yeah, but

That was all few and far between. right. And every time we do this home inspection stuff, buying a house, and in your case, investors, it’s a big deal. It’s a lot of money. You’re playing with big dollars, and you can actually financially harm somebody if you don’t give them the proper knowledge. So yeah, I do believe in knowing more, doing more, providing more. And I want to be able to go toe to toe with every single contractor, especially the evil ones. All right. So that I know what my clients are being taken advantage of.

Stephen S. (23:37.922)
Yeah, you bet. So let me ask you this. If you had to go back to the beginning of it all and kind of like really put yourself in those shoes for a minute and you had, you were able to take all of the knowledge, all of the wisdom, all of the things you’ve learned over the past, you know, three decades and you could start over from scratch. What would you do different and what would you do the same?

Charles Bellefontaine (24:00.044)
I would set up a routine where I would constantly set time aside where I learned something new. I don’t care what it is. And I do that now. I have one day a week and whatever it is, I want to learn something new. Right now I’m really into marketing and sales and growing the business. So the biggest things is always going to be one stop shop.

Stephen S. (24:05.41)
Mmm.

Charles Bellefontaine (24:28.331)
So I want to get more services to add in there. then, you know, it’s just, yeah, I just you don’t know what you don’t know. But you got to remember 30 years ago, you know, 30 years ago, I got my first cell phone 30 years ago was in a bag. All right. 40 years ago, we didn’t have computers in the houses. We didn’t have really have the Internet.

You know, I got a plum thing when I was in high school. That was our first video game, you know. Now I kill nine year olds over the internet, which is awesome, by the way. First call of duty, you know, get them crying like there’s no tomorrow. Yeah. How many boomers you know they go first person shoot?

Stephen S. (25:18.414)
That is the most unexpected thing I think anybody’s said on the show so far. my gosh. man, that is so incredible. Now I’m just on the internet killing nine year olds at Colle Deere. that’s amazing.

Charles Bellefontaine (25:22.327)
Sorry.

Charles Bellefontaine (25:34.068)
I love to hear him cry. go, yeah, nevermind. We’re going to get bad. Yeah, we’re going bad.

Stephen S. (25:39.436)
We’ll get suppressed. There’s some clips that hopefully nobody takes out of this show that would sound like, that could be bad of it. Circulated to the wrong places. my goodness, that’s amazing.

Charles Bellefontaine (25:52.236)
You know what I am. You know, and I like playing the video games and yeah, we joke about that.

Stephen S. (25:58.356)
Right. Well, Charles, thanks so much for being here today. I really got a lot out of this and I know anybody listening will have gotten some things out of it as well. Really a ton of value, just for people that are in business, but just principles to live by. So I really appreciate that a ton. So just before we head out, if people want to learn more about you and what you’re working on, where can they connect with you for more?

Charles Bellefontaine (26:27.03)
Sure. We are in the Chicagoland area and that’s the area that we service. Our website is The Home Inspectors and that’s plural, it’s an ORS and it’s a dot com. We also train home inspectors. I’ve been doing that since 2001 and in fact I’ll give all of our training that we give to home inspectors free to anybody who wants it.

There’s a bunch of videos, tests, questions, everything else. That is part of Home Inspection University. And there’s one in Florida, one in Illinois, and then Mike, he owns the nationwide version of everything. So we work as a group, kind of. But I manage all of our Illinois spots. So it’s H-I-U-I-L, Home Inspection University, Illinois, and that’s a dot com. And you can always reach out to me there.

and even though it’s going to ask you for $250, what I’m going to do, if you don’t mind, I’m going to give you a promotional code and you can put it in the link in here. So anybody can get to the online portion and they can get all that for free. I don’t really care. And if you want to take the time to self-educate yourself on these things, my knowledge is your knowledge. So I hope that’s beneficial to your listeners.

Stephen S. (27:55.054)
Man, what a giver. That’s awesome. Yeah, we’ll definitely have that discount promotional code available. thank you again for joining us for today’s episode. Just make sure to subscribe and learn more about Investfuel. Hope you enjoyed today’s show. We’ll see you on the next episode.

Charles Bellefontaine (28:11.691)
Thanks for watching.