Meet Jake Shaw of Mountain View Home Inspections LLC
My dad was a home builder so I was on the job site or learning something from him about homes and the way they were built from a very early age. When I was building homes, I loved knowing that every roof I installed or door I hung was all making the American dream possible for someone.
When building slowed during the recession, I was looking at my wife and was wondering what to do. She said why not go back to school and get an Accounting degree. She is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Fraud Examiner and accounting had been good to her so it might be good to me. I went back to school got my degree (with the help of an expert tutor – my wife) while working and worked my way up to a position working directly below the CFO. I enjoyed accounting but I missed helping people at a personal level.
As my wife has her own business (Facts Figures Forensics PLLC), I started brainstorming what owning my own business might look like and decided that whatever I did, I was going to base it on four things.
1 – Be a better husband to my wife.
2 – Help Others
3 – See a result
4 – Be my own boss.
I looked into home inspections and new that with my building background, I could really help people make informed decisions when it came to their home. That is when I started Mountain View Home Inspections LLC.
It has not been a smooth road at all! Lol More likes any washboard road you find in Colorado. There are smooth areas, bumps, sand, rocks, holes, and times where you just can’t get traction. I would say that overall it seems like things keep moving forward, though. As with any business, it just takes time to be known and develop a customer base.
I perform all types of home inspections. I do home inspections for people looking to buy or sell a home. I perform warranty inspections for those that bought a new home less than a year ago and want an inspection done before the builder warranty expires. I help current homeowners that have lived in a home for a while but have not kept up on maintenance put together a plan of attack and prioritize what items should be addressed first. In addition to home inspections, I provide ancillary services to make it more convenient for my customers. We all love to just make one call to take care of everything and I can provide that service. I offer the big five in-home inspection ancillary services: Sewer Scopes, Radon Testing, Mold Testing, Thermal Imaging, and Water Quality Testing.
I guess what I am most proud of as a company is that at the end of the day, I can say that I am honestly helping people every day. Not everybody gets to experience that feeling.
What sets my company and myself apart is my background in construction, my attention to detail, my commitment to continuing education and my ability to be a one-call solution for anything home inspection related. It is quite by accident that I am known for two things. Roof Selfies and “Taking Pictures and Pointing at Things”.
The roof selfie thing started one day when at inspection I was inspecting the roof, taking a roof selfie for the record, and a person driving by yelled “Roof Selfie!”. It thought it was pretty funny so I posted on social media and now people watch for them and ask me when the next one will be. Colorado Springs has no shortage of scenery so it is a good way to show off the rooftop view of any place in the Springs. #roofselfie
“Taking Pictures and Pointing at Things” is from a presentation I was doing at the Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce, where I said it was my job to “Take pictures and point at things”. Now people share in the fun and send me pictures of them pointing at things. Some times you find your branding, sometimes it finds you.
I think Albert Schweitzer said it best: “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing you will be successful.”
I truly love what I do, so I consider myself successful.
