To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/iSroxH8taxY
In this episode, we explore the recent challenges and innovations at Spectora, including the controversial Fixel rollout, AI advancements, and the company’s future direction. Guest Peter Osberg shares insights on navigating industry changes, customer engagement, and technological breakthroughs that are shaping the home inspection industry.
Here’s the link to Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com/events
Takeaways
Spectora’s Fixel rollout revealed the importance of deep customer engagement before launching change at scale.
Not all home inspectors operate the same—optional, customizable solutions are essential.
Trust takes years to build and moments to lose, and regaining it requires action, not words.
Home inspectors have major long‑term growth opportunities by extending relationships beyond the inspection itself.
AI should remove low‑value work, not replace professional expertise.
Spectora’s AI report writing tools are already delivering 25–30% time savings on site.
AI scheduling agents can reduce missed bookings by handling inquiries, pricing, upsells, and scheduling automatically.
Inspector‑controlled workflows are critical when introducing automation and AI.
Private equity ownership is not one‑size‑fits‑all; values and structure matter.
The future of home inspection depends on listening more than telling and co‑building with inspectors.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
02:59 Spectora and the Home Inspection Industry
05:55 Peter Osberg’s Background and Journey to Spectora
11:59 Understanding Fixel and Its Rollout
14:53 Mistakes and Lessons Learned from Fixel
17:44 The Future of Spectora and Home Inspection Services
23:21 Navigating Challenges in the Service Industry
24:03 Growth Opportunities for Home Inspectors
26:21 Customer Retention and Trust
28:28 Understanding Private Equity and Its Impact
32:40 Innovations in Home Inspection Technology
38:52 The Future of AI in Home Inspections
40:50 Feedback and Communication with Home Inspectors
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:00.8)
Welcome back to the show tessa great to see is always how is every little thing going on for you?
Tessa Murry (00:08.769)
Good Ruben, thanks for asking. We don’t have enough time to get into all of that. I’ll just say blanket statement. It’s about 95 degrees down here. I’m dying already and it’s only beginning of May. So here we go. Buckle up. yeah, other than that, doing well and doing some traveling too with some teaching and speaking gigs. So that’s been nice. So looking forward to an upcoming trip with the family to Idaho, which should be fun.
Reuben Saltzman (00:32.387)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (00:38.267)
But other than that, traveling is slowing down after that.
Reuben Saltzman (00:40.484)
And you just did a engagement for Mac Ashy recently, didn’t you?
Tessa Murry (00:47.147)
He did. Yes. Yes. Shout out to the Mac Ashy group. They’re pretty amazing how well organized they are. They’ve got some good strong leadership and they still put on a lot of in-person, I think at least a spring and a fall seminar every year and they do a hybrid with in-person and online. It’s pretty impressive. Their setup. I know you’ve taught there before too, right? Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (01:07.0)
Yeah, Hollis has got like seven computers laid out and the sound boards and all that stuff. Like he has got that dialed in.
Tessa Murry (01:14.871)
It’s impressive. Yeah, it is very impressive. So that was pretty cool. How about you? How are you doing?
Reuben Saltzman (01:18.54)
Yeah. Sweet. No, I’ve got no complaints other than the weather. know, it could be warmer here. We’ve had like frost advisories. I had to take my wife’s stuff in or flowers and whatnot the last two nights. Like, come on. It’s May. We’re supposed to be done with this. But other than that, it’s been a good year. Before we get too far into the show, I want to give a quick shout out to… Every time I say it, I feel like I’m saying shout out. Shout.
out to our show sponsors, IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. We just had a call this Wednesday and I realized I’ve been using a particular vendor. This has nothing to do with home inspection software. I’ll say that. I’ve been using this one vendor for a long time and I’ve been getting more more frustrated with them. And I realized…
It seems like I’m the last one who’s using them and everyone’s like, yeah, we got sick of their shenanigans years ago. We’re using these people and it just, it’s one more reason why I do this, why I’m a part of this group. don’t know anywhere else where I can have these conversations and hear from home inspection company owners. Yeah, exactly. So just one more reason to be a part of that group. Again, this is inspector empire builder. I’ll have a link to them in the show notes.
Tessa Murry (02:17.242)
Mmm.
Peter Osberg (02:19.884)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:23.174)
you
Tessa Murry (02:31.974)
Stay relevant.
Good.
Reuben Saltzman (02:43.912)
And I want to kind of thank them for potentially connecting us with connecting us with today’s guest, who is Peter Osberg, the current and Peter, make sure I get this right. You’re the CEO of Spectora, correct? Okay. All right.
Peter Osberg (03:00.93)
Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. I’m very thankful for it for sure. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (03:03.78)
Welcome, Peter.
Reuben Saltzman (03:07.384)
Yes. Yes. So, we’re, we’re having Peter on the show because while we just did a podcast, I think my title of the show was spectora gate and talking about kind of this whole thing where home inspectors were all super whipped up about this thing that came out about fix all. And I shared my perspective on it. Peter, did you have a chance to listen to that podcast? Did I share it with you? Okay. All right. Cool. So you, you, you heard my two cents on it.
Tessa Murry (03:08.176)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (03:18.566)
you
Peter Osberg (03:21.336)
Ahem.
Peter Osberg (03:27.117)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Osberg (03:31.703)
yeah, yeah, yep, for sure.
Tessa Murry (03:37.198)
That’s why he’s here.
Reuben Saltzman (03:37.429)
And that, yeah, well, he actually reached out to me before that.
Peter Osberg (03:40.034)
Well, honestly, I’m here because of Mark with IAB and just trying to get close to all of our customers,
Reuben Saltzman (03:48.28)
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, just in case you missed it or you have no idea what happened, I’d love to hear you tell the story in your own words about what happened. But even before that, I’d love to get to know you a little bit. You and I chatted on the phone some, and I got a little bit of info about you and your background and how you got to be here. But can you just…
Peter Osberg (04:01.71)
Hmm.
Peter Osberg (04:12.856)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (04:17.177)
start over a little bit, like where were you born? Where were you raised? And how did you get end up being the CEO of Spectora?
Peter Osberg (04:18.68)
Sure.
Peter Osberg (04:24.718)
Yeah, I would love to. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. Yeah, you know, it’s great. And the great thing about, you know, all of our customers and really the whole IAB group is like, you can have conversations like this and, and be really open and transparent, which I’m looking forward to today. So I grew up. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (04:41.858)
And you know what, let me interrupt real quick. I just realized I’m making an assumption on our audience that you’re a home inspector and you know what Spectora is. For anybody outside of this, home inspectors use software to write their home inspection reports. And here at StructureTech, we’ve been using Spectora since I think 2020. Yeah, we’ve been using it for a while. We love it. And a lot of home inspectors.
Tessa Murry (04:51.77)
Mm.
Peter Osberg (05:03.886)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (05:04.326)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (05:06.35)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (05:11.234)
have started using it. I mean, what, is it Peter? Like 75 % of home inspectors use Spectora now.
Peter Osberg (05:17.974)
It’s always logos or volume, but it’s about every other house in United States goes through our platform through our inspectors. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (05:24.164)
Okay. All right. So it’s a huge piece of software for home inspectors. Okay. I got that established. Back to you, Peter. Sorry.
Tessa Murry (05:25.008)
Whoa.
Peter Osberg (05:31.702)
Yeah. There you go. Well, that’s a good, good. So I grew up in Minnesota, born or bred, went to let’s go, except for we may have a little issue with the hockey games going on right now. Cause I did convert to an as fan. Sorry, but there you go. There you go. And I grew up with two teachers as parents and there were six kids and
Tessa Murry (05:32.996)
Thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (05:38.146)
Let’s go.
Tessa Murry (05:39.78)
you
Tessa Murry (05:47.524)
I’m
Reuben Saltzman (05:48.088)
My condolences. Okay, all right.
Peter Osberg (05:56.758)
you can imagine what that world looks like, right? If you know, like teachers are heroes in my world and my wife started school and my middle daughter teaches at that school. like teaching is a big part of our life in general. went to school at Oxford college, right off the campus of the U is essentially an annex to the U. Actually it’s called Oxford university now. So I just stand corrected on that now. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (06:21.508)
Okay, okay. All right. I didn’t know that. Okay.
Tessa Murry (06:21.723)
Mm. Okay. Hmm.
Peter Osberg (06:26.478)
And I had to pay for all my college, you know, as I think a lot of us did. So I started with a company, my first job, like beyond like newspaper routes that don’t exist anymore and caddying rich people’s bags that was at a country club was a company called Innovative Sports. So I was the seventh employee there. And within six months, that company turned to be called Rollerblade. So I was the seventh employee at Rollerblade and I spent the next 10 years
teaching the world how to skate. And it was like one of the biggest joys of my life, honestly. So I got this bug for like innovation and so forth, kind of during that adventure. I was able to meet my incredible wife. We just celebrated 31 years of marriage just last year. We got married. It’s amazing, Yeah, yeah. And by the way, we still like really enjoy each other, which is like the best gift of it all.
Tessa Murry (07:13.894)
Congrats. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (07:16.558)
Yeah, yeah, congratulations.
Tessa Murry (07:25.538)
Even bigger congrats.
Peter Osberg (07:25.698)
We have three incredible daughters that we were fortunate to raise. Oldest is a lawyer for the SEC. The middle daughter is a teacher at the school. My wife started for kids with dyslexia. And my youngest works in tech and is like a semi-pro rock climber. And they’re all doing life and it’s the best. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (07:42.458)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (07:51.8)
Love it.
Tessa Murry (07:52.081)
Such a variety. Cool. All different. Yeah. Very cool. Well, how did you get into becoming the CEO for Spectora then?
Peter Osberg (07:54.454)
Yeah, if you have kids, know, they’re all just incredibly different from day one. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (07:54.52)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (08:05.602)
Yeah, great question. So I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career helping with founders to get to growth and scale. That’s been my whole kind of career arc and it’s always been in the trades. like home inspection feels like home to me because it’s like mission critical drives market, you know, drives like large market economies and essential services. So I’ve worked on like FSM platforms. I’ve worked with
Tessa Murry (08:16.24)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (08:20.251)
Hmm.
Peter Osberg (08:35.278)
pest control platforms, remodeling platforms, landscaping platforms and so forth. And, you know, I’ve been spending the last 20 years on airplanes because these businesses are generally, they’re all generally like private equity owned. And that tees up a conversation later, but private equity owned and they really want to see how you can grow the companies. Right. And generally founders in technology businesses can get to a certain
Tessa Murry (08:42.074)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (08:52.571)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (09:05.006)
point, but they just can’t get it to the next level to really serving the market as well as you could. Right. So this one came up almost two years ago where I was, you know, recruiter talked to me, like, we know you have this kind of, you, love small businesses, you know, how to grow them, you know, how to like serve customers. And it’s seven miles from my house. So.
Reuben Saltzman (09:31.094)
hello.
Tessa Murry (09:32.762)
Wow.
Peter Osberg (09:32.834)
And I spent, know, Mike and Kevin, you know, by the way, they, I w I’ve been with them a lot, but I was just with them early this week. They want to make sure everybody they say hi, they’re still involved with the company and incredible confidants and advocates, for me.
Reuben Saltzman (09:46.084)
And for anyone who doesn’t know, who’s Mike and Kevin?
Peter Osberg (09:50.626)
Mike and Kevin are the founders of the business. They’re kind of famous and they’re good at these podcasts, right? This is like my maiden voyage on podcasts, but they want to make sure they said hi to everybody. we just really clicked like personally, our view of like taking care of customers, our view of growing the business. And that’s when they decided to like step out of operating roles and just be more advisors and board members.
Tessa Murry (10:00.326)
Thank
Peter Osberg (10:20.17)
So that’s that’s how it came to be and it’s just so happens like I get to General sleep in my bed every night, which is like such a bonus for me personally
Tessa Murry (10:21.326)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (10:30.062)
Sure, and there was more to it than them just stepping back and bringing you in. mean, they sold Spectora, right?
Tessa Murry (10:30.32)
That’s great.
Peter Osberg (10:37.966)
So they did it in two different pieces. they originally sold the minority Cheryl Heller and they wanted to stay on board and continue to run the company. running something for nine or 10 years is exhausting, right? And I think we all have stories and real life experience around that. So they’re like, maybe we can get somebody who’s kind of been here done that. at that point, they…
Reuben Saltzman (10:40.045)
Okay.
Peter Osberg (11:04.622)
they’re still the owner of the company. They’re just a minority owner of the company. Like we’d like to be more of a counsel and an advisor role than the operating part of the business. So that was, you know, I guess 20 August 24. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (11:15.82)
Okay, got it, got it.
Tessa Murry (11:16.279)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (11:23.394)
Okay, so that was one part. What was the other part?
Peter Osberg (11:26.51)
Sorry, they sold their majority August 24. The first one was done like a year before that. Yeah, so that was the two parts.
Reuben Saltzman (11:32.35)
gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. And so what what
Tessa Murry (11:35.524)
So they’re still on the board then? Sorry to interrupt. They’re still on the board, so are they still involved with making decisions for the company and growth and management and that sort of thing?
Peter Osberg (11:37.613)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Osberg (11:47.918)
I mean, ultimately, like the buck stops with me and we’ll talk more about that with pixel, but they’re they’re very close to me and advising and constant, but they’re not operationally involved, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (12:01.604)
Okay. Yep. Okay. All right. There are people you can reach out to, but it’s not like there’s meeting with you every week. Yeah. Okay.
Tessa Murry (12:01.616)
Gotcha. Okay. Yep. Yep.
Peter Osberg (12:07.427)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (12:08.698)
Bounce ideas off of yeah
Peter Osberg (12:10.174)
We meet a couple of times a month. You know, they’ve just had young kids and they’re doing life and they’re enjoying those things, but I’ll get as much time with them as I possibly can.
Tessa Murry (12:12.92)
Okay.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (12:20.196)
Yeah. Yep. That’s great.
Reuben Saltzman (12:20.802)
Okay, okay, got it. All right, so that’s a little bit more about you, how you got involved. So back to the whole Spectora fixel thing. Can you just kind of walk us through the whole story? Like, how did you hear about fixel? How did you get involved? What was the rollout? Why did it go bad? Tell me the whole story.
Peter Osberg (12:22.808)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (12:31.288)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (12:43.02)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the time for the whole story. I will say this to start with, you know, huge mistakes were made. Right. And that that that starts and stops with me. I’m and hopefully the response, the quick response was like, you know, you know, proof that like committing to make a mistake.
I think how it, how it came to be is really probably spending too much time on kind of all the data in the needs and not enough time with our customers, which is what we’re really trying to do right now going forward and all these things and making sure home inspectors at the center of every decision and that they’re the center of every and controlling all of it. So that’s kind of where we’re at now. What, if you look at the whole kind of buying market and where this kind of started is
you know, home buyers need help the whole way through this process, right? And we all know that that’s true. We’ve all, if we bought a house, you know, you know, your agents have a certain role and home inspectors have a certain role. And there are, you know, home inspectors are very different too. There’s no such thing as a home inspector, right? There’s so many different kinds of businesses that are in the home inspection world, right? Some are just very transactional. Some are the lifelong of this, you know, buyer and
homeowner and so forth. So we interviewed hundreds and hundreds of home buyers and agents. And what home buyers told us in that survey data is they need help between the home inspection and the close, right? And there’s things that they need help with. They obviously need the escrow and they need title and they need to do, they need insurance and there’s scenarios which they need security and so forth. And
7 % of the homeowners said those are offered to them via their inspector. And the rest of the people said they’re getting it from Google, a friend, or maybe an agent or maybe not. That’s kind of what the survey data said. So I think we surveyed around 500 homeowners, and we talked to close to 400 agents. And they’re like, yeah, homeowners need help with this.
Reuben Saltzman (14:44.131)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (14:44.784)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (14:54.768)
Hmm.
Peter Osberg (15:07.15)
You know, the challenge with, mean, the, the, the obviously big mistake with this is that homeowner homeless vectors, not all the same. There’s plenty of home, homeless vectors that are offering these services now. fact, most of the largest ones are doing it. Right. And I think that’s, that’s true statement. The other true same is like, some are just, there’s regulations. can’t do it. That is also a true statement. There’s also somewhere.
the home inspectors agents are doing it. And now we’ve set our us to compete and then them to compete. Like it’s like, was just so, from a whole value chain, it just was like a blunt instrument when it needed like a soft touch and a more curated process to this. Right. So, so we were, you know, we were thinking like, Hey, if we can provide more value to homeowners, that’ll give more value to the home inspector and the home inspector then now obviously.
fully tone deaf, right? And that’s why we adjusted. Now we still have, you know, 55 % of our companies doing this. So it’s not like you would think that the world ended.
Reuben Saltzman (16:13.7)
And now, if you can just back up a little bit, because I’m assuming that there’s a lot of people who didn’t listen to my podcast about Spectoragate and they have no idea what we’re talking about. Can you just back up a little bit more and say, all right, you did all this market research, you found that there’s a need and then you guys had did what?
Peter Osberg (16:17.336)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (16:30.242)
Yeah. Yeah.
We, you just want me to, you want to say like how terrible stuff. We, yeah, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. And it’s true.
Reuben Saltzman (16:40.772)
Well, you don’t need to tear yourself apart.
Tessa Murry (16:44.132)
Yes, my question is what is what is fix all I guess can you define like what what is fix all.
Peter Osberg (16:49.922)
Yeah, Fixel is, is, is, was, is a brand to support home inspectors with home buyer, homeowner value. That was the intent of it. Right. So it’s, it’s like an arm for home inspectors to serve home buyers and homeowners. What, but Ruben, what you’re describing is like, we just did, like we just said it’s on for everybody. And that is the blunt instrument for.
we needed a more, I would say tailored solution to serve all the different kind of home inspectors. And that’s obvious now and it should have been obvious before, obviously, but that’s what we made the decision to make it, that you could have this not on if you don’t want to within three days of launching it. And we know that
We’ve built 10 years of trust with our customers and we have great customers like yourself and many others. And we know that saying words like I’m saying today are fine, but we have to continue to show it in what we’re doing. And step one of letting them, giving people the optionality was step one. And there’s a whole bunch of other stuff we know we need to continue to
Tessa Murry (18:14.064)
For someone who’s not actively in this home inspector world anymore, myself speaking here, what were some of these services that you guys were providing and offering to home buyers and homeowners through Fixel, for example?
Peter Osberg (18:30.252)
Yeah, so things like insurance, security, warranty, moving services. Think of all the things from home inspection to close, right, that that that home buyers need. our premise. And I think it’s still the right premise is that. When a homebuyers buying the house, they know nothing about this house and the people that know something about house are selling the house. But the but the.
Tessa Murry (18:42.405)
Sure.
Peter Osberg (18:59.818)
one entity that knows the most about the house is the home inspector. So it is a logical conclusion that the home inspector should be have a relationship going forward with that home buyer to homeowner because they know the most most about this most important asset. Now for some, that’s true. Some that’s not. So this was like a first a first attempt to continue at scale, extend that relationship beyond the
actual home inspection cell.
Tessa Murry (19:30.84)
Mm-hmm. Well, that makes sense. It’s a one-stop shop. You would think, you know, homeowners need this service. We’re going to provide it. And I can also see how, at the same time, you’ve got these home inspection companies that are growing and diversifying out there that are starting to offer these services, too. So you’re kind of stepping on some toes by maybe offering that with them. So then you realize and you pivot and you say, OK, well, this is an optional service that you can add on if you want to. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (19:31.012)
Sure, sure.
Peter Osberg (19:54.488)
Right, right.
Reuben Saltzman (19:55.48)
Yeah. Yeah. And so, and you know, for, anybody who’s not putting together the pieces, it’s like, we we’ve got this software and what happened was there was a, there was an announcement saying, all right, now before your home inspector, before your client gets the home inspector report, they’re going to see basically an ad or something, and they’re going to be offered these things and they can sign up for it. And you know, they’re not forced to submit their information, right?
Peter Osberg (20:18.83)
Well, no, there’s actually, it’s not even a layer to the home inspection. We know that’s disruptive to other people. That’s not part of the workflow. It has nothing to do with gating the home inspection, because that creates confusion for the home buyer. It’s totally out of band for that. So like after you schedule and you’re paying for it, and then that’s where it is. it’s essentially, if it’s turned on, it’s one simple pop-up.
Reuben Saltzman (20:32.622)
Okay. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (20:48.056)
that says, hey, do you want this? And the homeowner can say no, right? So it’s not, we’re not just like, you know, there’s a whole bunch of like whole bunch of fear-based information about this data privacy stuff. like we’ve not ever sold data. We’re not selling data. We’re not going to be selling data. It’s actually against federal consumer protection rights. It’s just, but, but I can see how people interpret that. Cause we’re just injecting and enforcing. It’s just not true.
but yeah, it was in, and, homeowners have to opt into it. of every, every, offer we do show it’s 30 % of homeowners are saying, yes, I want this. And part of that is because we also did a really bad job communicating. It’s not like other people who do this in our space. It’s not like our insurance company. We’re not an insurance company. We vetted 12 of the largest vendors, in the United States.
And we can actually provide insurance to every homeowner, home buyer, every homeowner in every state, which, you know, some states is very hard to get. And we can get, we can get best rates for that. like, we’re like, this is such a great service. have this marketplace of insurance vendors and they get it. They can get this confidence of getting insurance. They get opted into it and their data is theirs. but we just, the rollout was, was wrong for sure.
Tessa Murry (21:57.681)
Florida.
Reuben Saltzman (21:57.892)
Florida.
Reuben Saltzman (22:17.796)
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, we get that. And at what point did you guys realize that maybe the rollout didn’t happen the way you wanted it to?
Peter Osberg (22:27.224)
So the way we did it, we did it on March 31st as rolling out and it will be implemented a week later, which is also a mistake, but March 31st. So I get to see every chat happening in our, know, cause we’re all chat based support and we do phone too, if it’s chats not supporting it, but chat. So I can see that at scale and we’re a very kind of AI forward leaning company. So like, I can see sentiment, I can see trends, I can see all that stuff.
And, um, as soon as we kind of announced it, was at 10 o’clock on the 31st. Uh, by the end of that day, I’m like, okay, this is not, we’ve, we’ve missed the mark entirely here. So, um, I started working that night to get it to be that you could opt out of it, or you can choose to in, being it or not. That just took us three days to get there. Uh, and did that by Saturday.
Right before rolled out. This was just the announcement. We never really rolled it out. So, so we, caught it.
Reuben Saltzman (23:27.064)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:29.014)
Mm-hmm. Peter, did you ever consider saying, April fools? Just kidding.
Reuben Saltzman (23:34.66)
you
Peter Osberg (23:37.012)
I wish I could have done that. Yeah. So, but yeah, we moved as fast as we could and rallied the team and so forth. Really as quick as we possibly could.
Reuben Saltzman (23:47.458)
Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:48.359)
Would you say that this has been the biggest challenge that you’ve faced so far, you know, working with all these other companies that you’ve described, lawn care, pest, you know, in the service industry sector, has this been one of the most challenging situations you’ve dealt with when you, you know, trying to grow a company and then be forward thinking and roll out changes?
Peter Osberg (24:10.375)
- I know…
You know, I find that homeless vectors are generally forward leaning people actually. Um, I know there’s, yeah, I really do. Now keep in mind, I’ve worked in other traditional businesses in the trades world and, um, you know, it, you know, getting, you know, the job, you know, my job should be very simple. Two things I need to do. How do I get homeless vectors to
Tessa Murry (24:21.956)
Really? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:30.617)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (24:43.694)
operate their businesses more efficiently with all of our back office tools and how do we get them to grow their revenues? And that’s a pretty straightforward value proposition. And I would also say home inspectors have one of the largest growth opportunities I’ve seen in any trades. They have the right to be in the home long-term. I I believe that 100%. Whether a home inspector wants to or not is a different…
Tessa Murry (24:54.914)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (25:03.034)
Hmm.
Peter Osberg (25:12.046)
different situation, but it’s the most important asset generally people have. And the home inspector knows everything about their home. So, you know, when I was in FSM before like recurring, this spring tune up and fall maintenance, like there was decades conversation, how do we get back in the home to clean these air conditioning units and the furnaces? Not until we enabled the technology in our FSM platform, did it happen. And I would say, I bet everybody listening, I bet 50 % of everybody has a maintenance plan on their.
on their HVAC unit and their conditioning probably. And it’s recurring revenue and it’s a low cost of service. And the homeless vector has way more value to provide, in my opinion. So that makes it incredibly exciting because there’s so much room to grow.
Reuben Saltzman (25:44.803)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (25:49.733)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (25:55.876)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (26:00.046)
Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So bad rollout didn’t turn out the way you wanted, but there’s people who said, yeah, this just sounds good. I’m going to still use it. did you say 55 % of users are using it today? Okay. All right. That’s a higher number than I would have guessed. I guess a lot of people did like it.
Tessa Murry (26:01.061)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (26:17.742)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (26:25.379)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (26:29.732)
Did you notice any big drop? Cause I mean, you got the keyboard cowboys and it seems like they’re the loudest ones out there. And you know, you’re reading some of the posts, you get the idea like, all right, Spectora just lost 90 % of their users overnight. What’s the real truth?
Peter Osberg (26:34.968)
yeah.
Peter Osberg (26:49.57)
Well, we lost some customers. mean, we lose customers every month no matter what. Like people go out of business, inspector dismissed. Like these are the normal, I would say reasons people cancel with us. We did lose, I would say, dozens of customers to competitors that we haven’t lost customers to before. But I will say,
Tessa Murry (26:53.03)
Thanks
Peter Osberg (27:19.67)
It’s it’s unacceptable to lose for us to lose any customer because of like an action we did that just lost trust. So we’re, we’re, we’re acting as though we’re the scrappiest startup business right now to make sure we can serve our customers properly. But, losing one customer is not good if I’m being honest, right? And we have, you know, I’ve been doing dozens of calls and so has leadership team and, people have been.
very, you I would say gracious and, and, you know, have high demands of kind of how we move forward, making sure inspector is always in control, making sure they’re controlling the workflow, making sure, their customer is treated in a way that they want them to. like everything we’re doing is like at that epicenter of decision-making for sure. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (28:11.332)
Okay, all right. And now something that I’ve heard a few people say is, know, Spectora was bought out by this huge entity and they don’t really care about home inspectors and software. I mean, they’re huge and this is a little blip on the radar. They don’t care about any of this. All they really want is the data and they wanna get their fingers in between the home inspector and the consumer and get a…
Tessa Murry (28:12.132)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Osberg (28:21.998)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (28:39.876)
of all of this money because there’s a lot of money involved in a real estate purchase. There’s all these things you got to get and that’s really what they’re after. It’s not about the home inspectors and software. What’s the truth?
Peter Osberg (28:43.372)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (28:53.83)
so I’ll do as good as jobs as I can. So I’ve worked for private equity companies for 20 years, right? So there is no such thing as private equity, just like there’s no such thing as a home inspector. They’re very different models, right? Very different, ethos of the business. And I have worked for private equity companies that is what you’re describing. How can I like cut the cost and increase the margin and grow as fast as I can? That is true. And.
Reuben Saltzman (29:21.326)
Yes. Yes.
Peter Osberg (29:23.304)
I know whatever I say will be heard with a lens of like, you know, how do you know? So when I, when I took the job, asked earlier about the job, my first level of interview is always about the private equity group that bought the company. So that I’ve learned that the hard way to get into a group that, doesn’t have the same kind of values and, and envision I have. So that was my first kind of.
group this, our investment company is actually called growth equity, which is different than private equity, but I won’t get into all the nuance between venture growth and private equity, but I will tell you this, they’re a boutique group. So it’s not a mammoth bohemian group. The other thing that people don’t understand is at least I don’t think people understand is, it’s not like screws with duck rolling in coins in the back. Like the people who own,
who are investors, you know, there’s investors in a private equity group and they deploy the capital. So our core investors are people like, I won’t say the names, but people that do $75 billion of brain research funds, teacher credit unions, firefighting and police unions, a huge group that does low income housing in large metro areas. these are, that’s actually who the owners are.
right? They’re, putting money in and so forth. So like, it’s not as nefarious as I think, as people make it out to be. but this is a boutique group and I will tell you this, they deeply care about the home inspector deeply care. They deeply care that we’re providing the right value to our customers, that they grow their services. We grow the industry that we make sure customers retain and
Reuben Saltzman (30:59.843)
Okay.
Peter Osberg (31:21.102)
I’m incredibly thankful for that. Even with all this fix little stuff happening, you know, the sitting side by side next to me and be like, okay, how do we, how do we make sure we’re taking care of our customer, making sure we’re spending our dollars correctly. And, and you know, we have, we’ve been investing in like a lot of new products that we have still yet to like at scale talk about, but you know, they allow us to
invest in R &D and we’re investing millions in R &D to lift the industry.
Reuben Saltzman (31:53.284)
But who’s we? Are you talking about this growth equity group now or are you talking about the Tora?
Peter Osberg (31:58.744)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, they let us do this. They’re not involved in operation of the business. They’re not like looking in our platform and like siphoning data. That’s not how this, this works. We’re a standalone business. are, we are accountable to the financial and revenue performance of the company by ourselves. They’re not thinking they’re going to do something with the data that isn’t, you know, that’s, it’s just not true. But I know people have said this.
Reuben Saltzman (32:28.184)
Yeah, yep, I’ve heard it.
Peter Osberg (32:28.494)
No, yeah, but it’s not true. But they’ve said it because other people in our space have done this exact model. That’s not our model. We’re not owned by a company that is an insurance provider, has escrow company, has a mortgage services. that’s not who we are. We’re a sufferer.
Reuben Saltzman (32:45.06)
Okay. Okay. Okay. And what are you, what are you working on today then? I mean, besides the fixal thing, what else is going on right now?
Peter Osberg (32:52.162)
Yeah. Yeah. Our primary focus is, really, you know, continuing our, our leadership presence with regards to space. And that’s a lot of it has to do with AI. We have, we have taken the approach to not launch AI for the sake of AI, meaning gimmicky, like simple little things that don’t really help how a homeless vector does their job or how they kind of grow their business. So we have our AI report writer.
which is in the flow of how a home inspection happens that does both voice and photo. We’re seeing the customers that are using it today, 25 to 30 % time savings on site and completing the report on site. So.
Reuben Saltzman (33:37.928)
Who’s who’s using this today? And how’d they get on like did they get a special invitation from you like I didn’t see an invitation I Want an invitation Peter
Peter Osberg (33:40.524)
We have dozens of customers using it, dozens.
Peter Osberg (33:46.262)
Yeah, this is the… Yeah. I know we need to be, we need to be, the world has changed. So we need to be okay with our co-building with our customers. We have not been like that. So in the next couple of weeks, we’re rolling in us to hundreds and hundreds of our customers to continue to get product insights and feedback. versus like, let 10 people, let 20 people, that’s how we have historically done it.
Tessa Murry (33:47.974)
We’ve been one set.
Tessa Murry (34:06.246)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (34:11.042)
Okay, and I’m just kidding. I have no interest in beta testing anything. I’m totally kidding. Really? Wow, okay. Okay. All right
Peter Osberg (34:16.448)
It’s not beta. This is production product. This is not, this is not beta product, production product, production product. We also have been working on, and this is in production with live customers to an AI scheduling agent. So you can imagine the majority of home inspectors, you know, get their leads from agents, right. And, or referrals and it’s generally happening either through a website or it’s happening through a phone call or maybe an email.
Tessa Murry (34:16.646)
What?
Peter Osberg (34:46.06)
So we have a new AI scheduling agent that can take a phone call. It can look into the platform and actually qualify questions about like the home, the size, the year, square foot, that kind of stuff. And then we can actually then say, we have time available on Tuesday. And based on the age and the square foot of your home, we can look into the spectro, like pricing and product part of the platform and say, it’s gonna cost $500.
And then we can ask questions or our customers can curate questions like when you’re in the bay, if it has a basement, do you smell anything? What? And then we can prompt the questions like, Hey, in the Midwest, you should probably think about a radon test here. And then the AI can then upsell the radon, it to the order, schedule it. And then it’s already all in your system. So you never miss a booking. That’s the goal of it. So how can we allow our customers to never miss a booking?
Really scale their business. So we’re really excited about that one as well
Reuben Saltzman (35:47.396)
Okay. All right. Hold on. Maybe this is maybe it looks like I’ve got a poker face on and I’m not interested, but my mind is spinning right now. And I’m just, I I’m trying to process all of the possibilities of this and what, what, what this could do. That is amazing. Um, I, I want to see it. I want to try it. I want to taste it. Like give me, give me a phone number. Does there, can we call somebody? Okay.
Tessa Murry (35:48.932)
now.
Peter Osberg (36:09.1)
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it. I got you. I got you. I’m hoping I’m hoping we can work with IAB to do like a like a group like experience with it too or something like that. That’d be a good thing.
Tessa Murry (36:10.688)
it.
You
Reuben Saltzman (36:17.1)
I gotta see how this works. All right.
Reuben Saltzman (36:23.362)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I need to see it. Okay.
Tessa Murry (36:24.974)
Yeah. We could, you could even have a game of, you know, guess which one is AI and we call in and we’ve talked to different people. One’s a person, one’s AI and see if you can tell.
Peter Osberg (36:31.75)
I like it. The interesting thing about the scheduling agent, you can make it as human as possible, but people don’t trust it. we, we, we AB tested it when it sounds like a human, they’ll ask questions like, you AI? But if you make it sound like a friendly AI, it actually the, the home buyer feels better. Yes. It’s weird. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And then.
Reuben Saltzman (36:34.532)
the
Tessa Murry (36:53.082)
There’s more trust. Yeah, there’s more trust because you’re not impersonating a human. Yeah. Okay. It’s freaking people out. Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (37:01.228)
The third one that we’ve been working on this also in production today, which is probably the most requested solution our customers ask for. It comes up at every IBE conference, comes out every InterNACHI conference, comes out at conferences, is we have a brand new integration platform. It’s all agentic. So we have the ability, let’s say you work with Claude on stuff. So we have an AI to AI integration to our platform where you can build reports and workflows and all these kinds of things.
that our customers have asked to do outside of our platform. We have live customers, like incredible use cases of daily sales reports and agent profiles and preparation to go on site with this agent and this home buyer. Like that kind of work to empower the home inspector to be ready. We have, we’ve built new apps on it as well. So we have a new MailChimp app. We have a new Zoho app that’s coming to production soon.
Tessa Murry (37:46.736)
Wow. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (38:00.184)
But one of the biggest things we’ve done, which is a really simple kind of AI use cases, we now have the ability and we’re just securing all the relationships for this, that you can now allow document management to be working in conjunction with the home inspection report. So let’s say you do a radon or sewer, mold, moisture, energy, solar, termite, any of these kind of add-on things that you would be selling. We have the ability through our
a gentic integration platform to actually have those documents come in the flow, in the appropriate flow with that home inspection. Because everybody’s doing this now, but you’re just doing it out of band. You’re like, I’m doing this here and I’m going over here. So those are the three. And then we have a whole bunch of other easy to use AI stuff. But those are the three big things that we’re really excited
Tessa Murry (38:53.19)
so much is changing so quickly. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (38:53.208)
Wow, wow, a lot of new stuff.
Peter Osberg (38:57.238)
Yeah, I the world has changed. It’s the biggest transformation of technology in my life happening right
Tessa Murry (39:00.721)
my gosh.
ever. Yeah, it’s mind blowing to me when you start talking about all these things. It’s like, okay, I know Claude exists. I know you can use it in these ways. But when you think about it, just integrating, okay, tell me about this agent. What other houses have we inspected for them? What have we had any complaints? Like what, what should I be talking about with them? Bring up the notes from, you know, the buyer and tell me what their concerns are that they told the AI agent on the phone when they booked.
Reuben Saltzman (39:05.389)
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (39:26.936)
Right.
Tessa Murry (39:32.024)
And like give me a bullet point of what I need to hit when I’m there, you know at the house on site with them like that’s crazy
Peter Osberg (39:32.226)
I know.
Peter Osberg (39:37.89)
Yeah. The other thing that’s really interesting is, especially the way we’re doing it is we’re putting the home inspector at the center of all these workflows. Like they’re the, they’re the expert, right? Like how can we get rid of like manual tasks and get into that expertise area? And, these are intended to be time savings, but like allow our customers to spend more time where they’re high value, like data entry, not valuable insights about the home. Very valuable.
Tessa Murry (39:54.682)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:03.46)
Yeah, right.
Right. Scheduling things, managing people, organizing paperwork, writing reports, no. But actually getting in front of the homeowner or talking to the agent. Yeah, sharing knowledge and information, key. Fascinating.
Reuben Saltzman (40:08.312)
Yes, yes.
Peter Osberg (40:20.162)
Yeah, I was on a call earlier this week, like with a technology call, and they’re talking about like humanoids. And like, and I was like, okay, well, let’s, I think I’m in the wrong call. It’s, don’t look it up. You’ll be freaked out. Don’t look it up.
Tessa Murry (40:31.622)
Gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (40:34.052)
What’s… what… Okay. Okay. Yeah, I don’t know what a humanoid is.
Tessa Murry (40:37.036)
What industry? What industry are we talking about?
Peter Osberg (40:39.862)
Yeah, we can spend five hours on that, but yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (40:41.984)
I’m sure. All right. Well, Peter, this has been very helpful. to get to know you, know a little bit more about who is running this very critical piece of our industry now, of our profession. And is there anything else that we didn’t chat about you’d want to share with home inspectors or anybody out there? Anything we didn’t touch on?
Tessa Murry (40:43.189)
my gosh. Wow. That’s exciting.
Peter Osberg (40:52.46)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (41:01.624)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Osberg (41:12.056)
Yeah, I think the thing is like, you know, we want feedback, right? And we have to figure out how to get that. So how do we collect feedback? Right. And because every home inspector is very, very, very different. The big enterprise groups are doing something very different than brand new solos or new inspectors. So, you know, we do have we’re thinking of better ways of communicating. So podcasts are one of these things. Right.
But I always want feedback. How can we share about what we’re doing, but also more importantly, get feedback about what we should be doing. I don’t know if you guys have any ideas about that. Are there ideas that we could be, how can we do that in a more efficient and a better way?
Reuben Saltzman (42:00.686)
Well, Mark Hummel with IEB, he said that you were thinking about creating like some type of home inspector advisory board. I mean, outside of that, I don’t know. mean, that sounds fantastic.
Peter Osberg (42:09.378)
We are doing that right now.
Tessa Murry (42:12.262)
That’s a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (42:15.862)
Okay. Perfect. The problem we’ve done this in the past and what happens is we, we start telling what we’re doing versus listening. like a big part of this is more listening than telling and versus like, Hey, we’ve done this. What do you think about this versus like, what’s your gap in your business? Like, how can we help? Like, how do we streamline the workflow? How do we help you grow your business? So that’s, think the key Mark difference and make sure we’re the right people around the table to be as like open and transparent and
Tessa Murry (42:35.116)
Vroom.
Tessa Murry (42:43.536)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Osberg (42:45.23)
with us on it is really important. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (42:48.068)
Sure, sure. And you want to get the right level of feedback. I mean, you and I were chatting the other day and there’s one tiny little feature like I’m dying to get in Spectora. And as soon as, as soon as you guys get this for us, there’s another piece of software that I’ll be able to drop, but I’m still using the old home inspection software cause Spectora can’t do it. And that’s not what you want on an advisory board. It’s like, that’s just my little problem. You’re looking for high level stuff.
Peter Osberg (42:54.808)
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (43:04.492)
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Osberg (43:11.085)
Now.
Peter Osberg (43:15.288)
I mean, we want those things, so we have to address those things and we have to make sure our platform is at scale and is performing and is secure and all the kind of things you need as a software provider. But we want like where the world’s going to, right? We want to make sure we’re leading together and we’re building it together with our customers.
Tessa Murry (43:32.498)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (43:37.326)
Yep. Yep.
Tessa Murry (43:38.411)
No, back when I was still working with StructureTech and we were transitioning over to Spectora, I remember there was a lot of communication happening between, you know, people, home inspectors on our team that were using it and getting to learn it. And it was still new and developing and the Spectora team and the support staff. And it was like constant back and forth. Hey, can you change this? Hey, can you add this? Hey, do this. And it seemed like it was like live updates all the time. I don’t know if that’s still going on, but I thought that that was very impressive.
Peter Osberg (44:06.73)
It’s going on now. So we’ve got back to the basics of that. We see a bug, we fix it. We see a bug, we fix it. So that is happening now for sure. And we have a large percent of our engineering resources, like dedicated to those kinds of things. And the way to get that is through our chat. I will say this because we did learn, you know, the human condition is funny, but the people in our chat, you know, we do have Finn who’s our AI.
Tessa Murry (44:12.815)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:16.742)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:21.87)
Yeah, that’s great.
Peter Osberg (44:34.348)
chat that can get people to write content as really quick as possible. It’s resolving that like 90 % rate at a high CSS score. Like if you just need to know how to do this thing, we can get that. But the people running the chat, these are the most amazing humans. These are people and they have feelings. And I will say that if you treat them with respect and kindness, even if you’re frustrated, which you have every right to be, if something’s not working, it goes a long way. I will say.
Tessa Murry (44:44.422)
Hmm.
Peter Osberg (45:03.502)
This group of people loves our customers. They truly do. And if you can see some of the chats from March 31st through April 7th, you would be shocked. Like people finding their IP addresses of where they live. No, I mean, it was a weird, wild time, but I will tell you, they love our customers. mean, they’re the tip of the spear. They represent our brand and just be nice to them.
Tessa Murry (45:20.356)
What? I don’t know. This world. This world.
Reuben Saltzman (45:21.604)
Stop.
Peter Osberg (45:33.058)
Like it goes a ways. That’s all I can say.
Tessa Murry (45:36.048)
So you’re saying they are still humans. They’re not humanoids. They’re not AI. They’re real people with real feelings. So let’s be decent to them. Yeah. Let’s just be decent humans. Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (45:36.366)
Just be a nice person! Jeez!
Yeah.
Peter Osberg (45:42.146)
Yeah, they’re real people. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (45:46.51)
Yeah, yeah. Amen. Amen. That’s good. All right.
Peter Osberg (45:49.198)
Well, I’d love to I’d love to catch up when I’m back in Minneapolis I’ll be back Minneapolis twice in June be good to see you face to face. So Yeah good
Reuben Saltzman (45:57.892)
Give me a call. Let me know when you’re going to be around. That’d be great to meet up for lunch or something. Well, Peter, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your perspective and the new stuff that’s going on. And I need to see this demonstration of the AI bot scheduling a home inspection. That just sounds absolutely amazing. And for our listeners, if you got any thoughts, questions, whatever comments.
Tessa Murry (46:00.954)
Nice.
Peter Osberg (46:15.854)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (46:19.803)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (46:25.046)
Reach out, please email us Tessa and I read all of them. Our email is podcast at structuretech.com and we will catch you next time. Thanks for coming on the show, Peter. Absolutely. Take care.
Peter Osberg (46:36.473)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. All right. Bye bye.
Tessa Murry (46:39.27)
Thanks Peter.
Thank you.