Foundation Repair Mistakes That Can Cost You $50,000+ | Stephen Burton

Stephen Burton (00:00)

Usually by the third hour, they start to say, “You’re being aggressive, Mr. Burton.” I said, “Call me Stephen, I’m coming for you.” “Well, don’t you think everybody deserves a defense?” No! Matter of fact, no, and—and if I didn’t say it right—no. No. How dare you even say that to me? This is the reason we have the problem. And boy, you get the call that evening: “Hey, we won.”

Hmm. One for the good guys. But you know what? They were scared. They were gonna get pounded for worse than what we were asking for.

Issa Hanna (02:00)

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna. And today I have a wealth of knowledge in the foundation space area, Stephen Burton. Welcome to the show.

Stephen Burton (02:10)

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been anticipating this quite a bit.

Issa Hanna (02:15)

Yeah, man, I’m super excited to have you on the show. You have thirty-five years, over thirty-five years in the foundation repair business. As a landlord who owns a lot of properties in Cleveland, Ohio, they’re a hundred years old. Have a lot of foundation issues. So I know how that or how important that is, and I know how much education you’re gonna bring to this show on foundation to the viewers. Can you kind of give us a little bit who you are and what you’re doing nowadays?

Stephen Burton (02:40)

Yeah, my name’s Stephen Burton. I’m the founder of Foundation Rescue Training Center, former owner of Waterproof Solutions, which I’m proud to say is one of the most successful foundation repair companies that was in St. Louis. And still I’ve sold it and is doing quite well to this day. It’ll sustain itself because of the proper practices. But I grew up kind of poor. I grew up in an airport town and didn’t know an airport town was kind of a poor town until you

get into the Air Force and you’re flying to different towns. And every town you fly into, that little everything around that’s not real nice. And I started thinking, yeah, that’s kinda like St. Ann, Missouri. Kind of tough. Kind of okay. I’m not being mean. I’m very proud of where I’m from. But I idolized a basement. And as a kid, I’m an artist. And I thought I took drafting classes and engineering class. I thought I was gonna be all of these things from a car designer to an architect to

but you know, God has his own ideas. And the next thing you know, I’m in Texas getting a minor in cement and concrete products with W. R. Grace. I’m at Sika learning how to do fluid-applied roofs. I’m learning all these wonderful… I’ve been in media, I worked for Fox Television, I’ve been on the radio. I’ve—I really wanted to dance. Being raised poor, I wanted to do everything. And with each one of these things, I was able to somewhat master those little groups. Now people say, “Master of none.” Well, not

garbage, no one says the rest of that. There’s a whole backside. So as I’ve matured, and I’ll tell you this, I’m not against drinking, but you know, I’m in my almost my eighth year now of being clean of something, and my wife’s a bartender, and she’s—she’s not a drinker, but I found myself ending my day with my early success, and it polluted my later life in the sense of wanting to grow. So once that went away,

and I started to realize I kind of capped in the foundation business. I could have even been bigger, but now I wouldn’t have known all my clients. I was gonna have to start hiring salespeople, and I didn’t want that. So how do you make a change in an industry that’s renegade? And I didn’t realize it was renegade until nobody would say the emperor is naked and the emperor’s—so I—it was an accident. I cannot say I had divine providence and I had some wonderful scope, but no.

Here I am, and—and I’m excited to be here, but it’s about a legacy now. You know, it’s about that next step.

Issa Hanna (04:53)

100%. Waterproof Solutions does have a huge reputation. Beautiful, great name in the St. Louis area. So you’re talking to the founder of it, you guys. You’re what you’re—you’re hearing his first-hand knowledge advice, thirty-five years in the business, he’s seen it all. Like you said, he—he’s—he’s mastered different crafts around how to build a home. He’s learned this knowledge first—like basically by first-hand. So

I—we were talking earlier, and I told him, I said, give me the guy that knows and has repaired and has seen every type of damage, every type of foundation issue, and I’ll take him over the guy that went to school and got a structural engineer degree every day. And now you touched on legacy, Stephen. 35 years in the business, you sold out. You’re not riding off into the sunset, though, right? You’re—you’re offering services, inspecting foundations, and the big thing is

you’re training homeowners on—on what to look for and how to become experts. So can you give us a little bit more about that?

Stephen Burton (05:49)

Yeah, so each person, right? You’ve got, let’s just say you’ve got three age groups. There’s more than that, obviously, but you’ve got your newer young homeowner, you’ve got the person that might be upwardly mobile, then you’ve got your person that’s wanting to sit still, possibly not. You could categorize seniors, middle, but either way, it has a tendency to be one of those. You’re either buying, selling, or sitting. And so when you’ve been weaponized into having to be a skilled buyer now

in an area that you know nothing about, except what you might have been bottle-fed by your friend, neighbor, someone else’s experience. And that’s the foundation and waterproofing business. Now, first off, it’s not waterproofing, it’s water management. And if we don’t manage it from the outside and deal with what’s going on outside, what a fail, right out of the gate. And we’ll get into that. It’s materials that don’t work. So we have to first look at that person.

Webster’s got wrong. They say an asset is a very tangible item. Well, what’s more expensive or more valuable than me in this building? Well, my director, Gabby, maybe a couple of my guys that go out and do the inspections, but you know what I’m getting at? We are valuing the house above the person. That’s wrong. And I said something to you before about, we protect our cars better than we do our homes.

Carfax, that’s good to have, isn’t it?

You want to know if your $100,000 or $30,000 whatever has been whacked and now you’ve got a junker. You want to know that. That’s a big investment. Is your home not more expensive than your house? And Texas is the only state that does an inspection after the house is new. We’re the Show-Me State. We’re from Missouri. I couldn’t believe it. So when I went to the Missouri Association of Code Enforcement,

and I spoke to them, they had the same dander about it that I do. It hurts them that they’ve been handcuffed. The American Society of Home Inspectors, handcuffed. The insurance person told them in front of me, and I quote, “Quit speaking on the foundations. You’re going to be sued. Refer it to the industry.” That would be wonderful if the industry was ready to receive you, but they are not. They’re ready to deceive you.

Now I know that sounds pretty rough. But if you have a mechanized, weaponized salesman in the house that has his idea clear in mind, what he—and I’m talking about from experience. I’ve been weaponized before. I worked for a company called Vic Tanny, which was a health club. You could have been a black man with no legs, and I would have sold you tanning and tennis. Because when you sell that membership, don’t you want to get something for it? Uh-huh.

So you don’t have an angel in front of you. In fact, I’m a jaded educator. But I don’t stand, I profile. I believe we should observe, diagram, and refer as an inspector, as an advocate. How do we, as advocates, we don’t know how to navigate the industry, but we’re gonna expect our homeowner to do it? Come on. So what they wind up doing, they make their best guess.

Good intentions are the path to hell. So people’s very biggest investment many times are collapse. I know hundreds of people that have problems that are $30,000 to $100,000 that they are stuck in making payments because the people paymented them away, they can’t get out.

There’s only so much this world can give you with things that’s going to satisfy you. Solomon said it. You can search and search and search. You’re gonna wind up just bankrupt trying to satisfy the flesh. There should be something moral compass about us that has the drive to do the right thing for our fellow man,

not for our own gain. Here’s the beauty of it. If you’re really good in the foundation repair business, you rock it. You’ll make tons of money. Fact, on a million two, you drag about $375,000 home a year after paying everybody super great and doing a lot of free stuff that you shouldn’t be talking about. You just do. Anytime somebody brags about doing a free repair, wah wah wah wah.

Why don’t you pat yourself on the back, you know?

I don’t like it. I don’t like any of that. And I think we need to call out the industry as being renegade. And you need somebody to help you navigate it. And that’s what the FRTC is here for. Foundation Rescue Training Center is here to help. We want to put boots on the ground. And we also want to help you in your home. I want to take this to every state that will have us. I want this to be something that you don’t have to search hard out for the answers. If we don’t take care of why something’s happened, what are we doing?

We’ve chased the symptom and we’ve caused them a bigger problem. There’s many, many ways to illustrate that, even from just a small wall.

Issa Hanna (10:59)

Fix that. One hundred percent.

Stephen Burton (11:00)

And you wind up fixing the one next to it if you didn’t take care of the patio, the sidewalk, the downspout, the action and reaction, the kinetic energy. So, you know, I am no engineer. That’s another thing. When I stand in front of all these guys with their PhDs and their dot dot dots, I could give a flying flip if you don’t share that information and we don’t make it available to each other. Good for you. You’re as bad as the guy that’s in the business that’s got the patented process or the proprietary repair.

We’re so smart that we changed the industry, but we’re only selling it to one guy in each town. What a bunch of crap. If it were so good, we’d all do it. I promise you, some of these little franchises, I have stolen some pretty good ideas from now. Winter discharge, for instance. When those sump pumps coming out, there should be like a honeycomb wiffle ball thing right there in the event that you have a problem downstream, your house doesn’t suffer for it. I didn’t come up with that. Matter of fact, I came up with

none of it.

Now, what I have done is I start to put my mind together and say, hey, guess what? When we got a drywall, which is a hole in the ground with river rock in it, not clean rock that turns into concrete. If we’re in clay, let’s run some bleeders off of it, which are pipes with holes in it, to send it back in the ground, treat it like a septic system. So there’s so many neat little nuances and twists that we can bring to the table. But let’s not reinvent the world. Concrete has a 10% tensile strength.

4,000-pound concrete is broken by 48 gallons of water, 400 pounds. So we have to be mindful of that. And you spoke of your 100-year houses. Did you know that soil is molested for 250 years before it’s virgin again? 250 years.

I had one person in my MACE class know that. I was stunned, walked over, shook her hand. I brought that up. Usually that’s a stunner.

So the facts shouldn’t be that hard for us. Now, why would pervious soil even matter? Because we can’t dump our water and it’s gonna come right on the foundation. And if it’s stone, CMU block, cast-in-place concrete, or a mixture, that’s a disaster waiting to happen, just depending upon load and time. So coming in and taking care of why something’s happening is the glorious part of it. And quite frankly, salesmen out there,

if you’ve got the guts to look at the big picture, you get a bigger ticket. My tickets were very big a lot of times because I just had the patience and the courage to ask them enough questions to figure out what they really wanted to do. It’s an heirloom property, whatever it might be, and it—it granted itself to make sure that we did everything in the manner that was going to be sustainable. So quite frankly,

a $450 wall crack can easily turn into a $10,000 project by taking downspouts away with cleanouts and PVC to drywalls and very necessary things. But do you have the guts to say that? Because the homeowner’s gonna look at you like you’re crazy. Or are they? How many times have we, as salespeople, misjudged our lead, qualified it before we got there? What a tragic mistake. I’ve done it.

Getting ready to pull into a town. You know, it’s dirtbag town, kind of poor, bet mentality’s not right up there real well. Then you meet that survivor, that person that is a good steward of their property, the one that does care, the one that’s fighting to hold on to what they have. That’s who I stand with. That’s who I want to help. I want to take this nationwide. There should not be a state in the union that does not wrap its arm around its people and say, we want to help you.

We figured out a way to do it with the cars. The insurance industry has come up with this Carfax thing. I don’t know who did it, but good for them. And you know, I had that epiphany on the way here this morning. Why I keep bringing it up. I had to text it to my director. It’s important that we think about what’s important in our life. What do we actually care about? If we’re selling houses,

and we don’t want to meet a Stephen Burton Foundation Rescue because who? Only if we’re going to take him to our mom’s house because that’s when we really want to know. And I get a lot of that. A lot of the powerful realtors are very afraid of me. I’m going to expose their antics. And I have, and you know, I’ve had to cut ties with some of them, and it hurts. I like to keep my enemies close. I like to put my arms around them and kiss them. Some of them you can’t break bread with anymore. You have to.

And they know it. Now I would love on them the minute they decide to reform, to repent, to turn away from what they’re doing, but they have no—no interest. That’s just the—how many times I was scoffed at when I was younger. “That’s just business. You need to grow up. You gotta toughen up.” Well, if that means getting tough, I’m the bully slayer. Come get you some of me. Try it. I’m an expert witness in court, too. I can’t stand it. I love being deposed the day before.

You got the stenographer there, right? And she’s typing everything. Then you get a break. Every hour they give you a break.

And usually the realtor at that point starting to kind of squirm around in the chair. They’re a little uncomfortable. They’re starting to realize they’re—they’ve been outmatched. Not because I’m smart, just because the math isn’t working for them and they didn’t think of the other argument. You see, I’m a poker player and I realize I’m not holding a royal flush ever.

And as soon as they know they don’t even have trips to win, they’re in big—

Issa Hanna (16:26)

Big trouble.

Stephen Burton (16:27)

Usually by the third hour, they start to say, “You’re being aggressive, Mr. Burton.” I said, “Call me Stephen, I’m coming for you.” “Well, don’t you think everybody deserves a defense?” No! Matter of fact, no, and—and if I didn’t say it right—no. No. How dare you even say that to me? This is the reason we have the problem. And boy, you get the call that evening: “Hey, we won.”

Hmm. One for the good guys. But you know what? They were scared. They were gonna get pounded for worse than what we were asking for.

Issa Hanna (16:55)

And guys, I just want to ask—

Stephen Burton (16:58)

that

I’m coming against you, you better start negotiating because I’m not backing the wrong horse. I promise you.

Issa Hanna (17:04)

One hundred percent. And you guys see the passion he’s bringing to this. So this is somebody you want. He’s an expert that’s gonna know not just how to repair the foundation, but also this preventive maintenance and also what’s causing the water. Because guess what? Water is going to come into the property. If there’s a—if there’s a will, there’s a way with water. Yep. And he knows everything. He can survey a property, can look at it, he could tell you need to do this. We touched on four-inch gutters

not being enough for a lot of property, for a lot of houses and—and having to have bigger gutters and that kind of stuff. So you need the proper drainage, you need proper maintenance outside before you even look at your actual crack in your foundation to—to look if it’s a settling crack or not. So and yeah, the realtors that—that don’t like Stephen, those are the ones you don’t want to deal with because as a—as a home buyer, right?

You want to know every single thing that you could possibly know about a property, especially if that foundation is going to need a $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 repair, sometimes even more. Can’t tell you guys how many houses I’ve walked into, as a guy who’s represented—represented over 250 first-time home buyers. How many houses I’ve walked into that were leaning like this and foreclosed, that weren’t that old because somebody,

a realtor did exactly what Stephen is saying and—and saw something and didn’t say something. An inspector did something, saw something and didn’t say something. So when you see that passion, understand it’s because he’s putting himself in that homeowner’s position of basically three, four years down the line after paying a mortgage, and now you got this bill for thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars. How can you pay it? You’re gonna lose your home.

He’s on the homeowner side in a market, like you said, it’s a renegade world. He’s—he’s on the homeowner side in a world that most likely isn’t on the homeowner side, unfortunately, 90% of the time. It’s very few and far in between that you get professionals that actually care about their clients. And that’s why you said the riches will follow, because the riches will follow because people could pick that up. They’re gonna refer you, they’re gonna say, “I got a guy,”

and proud to refer you to your people, and that’s how your money will come. So I just got wanted to highlight that for you guys and now I want to shift a little bit, Stephen. Five years down the line, I can see already you’re gonna rock Missouri with it. You bring it to Texas. Like you said, Texas has—has pretty good laws in place, but it could be better. But there’s a lot of states that need this. So five years down the line, where am I going to see you at?

Stephen Burton (19:29)

So we really wanted to make sure we took care of our home state. And again, I’m proud of Texas. I raised two Texans. I lived in Tyler and I lived in Dallas. And again, I cut my teeth down there as a young adult. So I very much appreciate that state. I wasn’t surprised to see that they took the lead. I just wasn’t. So having said that, what about the other states? What about everybody else that needs help? So after we—we’re gonna pursue two to four places in Missouri and then we’re gonna start to march out. We—we plan on heading to Nashville next.

It has a lot of the same weather patterns. We have a lot of the same type of soils and things. Because as I go into each market, what we have to do is we have to find first who are our players, in the sense that who are our foundation people. Do we have a lot of box stores with bad menu items? You know, my wife runs a wing joint. You don’t go there for biscuits and gravy. So some of the items that some of these companies that I would say are not just

terrible, but they need to take some of the menu items down and not be putting plastic on the walls anymore and things of that nature that’s wrong. So, but it’s a—it’s a big money draw. So we have to find the balance between doing the right thing and finding out what’s wrong. And so we want to be able to each city that we go into explore the materials. You know, in Texas,

you don’t get the same weather patterns that we do in St. Louis. You know, we got three rivers that come together. We’ve got a whole bunch, too. The Mississippi and the Missouri, as well as all of the others that come through. Our soils are a bit different, kind of wrecked. The storms come through and they come through so hard and heavy. So we need to design for those. So it’s about preparing each state for the things that they have in their nest that we can take care of for them. But you—we’re gonna have different, obviously, Texas.

What issues with clay, hard ground, you’got drought, you’ve got a whole plethora of things that we wouldn’t be dealing with in St. Louis. So it’s about understanding where you’re going, finding out who the players are, rising up the small men, the small guys that never wanted to advertise like myself and just managed to do it in business networking and chamber meetings and Rotary and community and any way you could do that. Was how you

united with your public, not through the traditional spending money and marching out, you know, like a Coca-Cola or something can do. They’ve got that kind of money. But people are really getting tired of having being preached to anyway and being told what to do. Why don’t we empower our homeowners? Wouldn’t it be great if you could call a foundation repair company in and hand them a scope of work and say, “I’d like you to bid that’s just like a commercial building.”

Do you realize what that guy’s gonna do when you slide that in front of him? He’s gonna be like, “Where’d you get this?” “The FRTC gave us that.” “Who are they?” “They’re the people that wrote my scope of work, and we want the work done performed exactly like this. And if you don’t, you need to tell them what it is you want to deviate.” Because quite frankly, I’m jaded. There might be something new and great out there. Let’s not—let’s not hold anybody back. Let me—my people were the best thing that I ever had.

My clients now, even my students, are constantly teaching me. I’m learning from a lot of the engineers that write these really beautiful reports. Just have a lot of stats in them, but not a how-to with it. And they’ve allowed the industry to let the industry dictate what happens. And this is the mess that we’re in, you know. And again, we didn’t do it with our cars, but we’ve decided to do it with our houses. And I think as this starts to gain legs,

no one ever pushes back on me. Even the folks that might not like what I have to say, their eyes get real big and they’re like, “Well, good luck with that. I’ve never heard of that before. It sure sounds good.” Okay. Anything worth doing has gotta be hard. This is like my Velcro. No one knew what Velcro was until it was out there. Well, I found my Velcro. So I feel—I’m tickled pink, but there’s a lot of work to do. I’m glad I’m 64 and not 84, I can tell you that because

God willing, I got a lot of time to do a lot of fun things now that I’m starting to learn a little—it took a long time to understand that the truth is the truth. You know how before I went in front of a very couple hundred people, I had an executive come up next to me and try and poo-poo on me. “Hey, Ralph Nader,” he says. “Who do you think you are?” You know, “There’s a reason why our home inspectors don’t speak on the foundations.”

“We don’t care. Have enough trouble with our historical areas in each town now. We are fully addressed as to what’s going on, Mr. Burton. But you need to understand who you are and where you are.” Kind of snuffing me. I got right out and said what was told to me in front of those people. And that guy liked to have an egg. And it cost me a little bit of trouble for a while until he got pushed out. Here’s the thing about a bully:

they’ve bullied other people.

I don’t put up with a bully. I can’t stand it when someone wants to say something louder three times that’s wrong. You know, you—Samson and Goliath, those guys, man, they come down so hard. So come—

Issa Hanna (24:12)

Hundred percent.

Stephen Burton (24:13)

get you some of me. Any state that wants some help, you found it. And it—this is just about a spark. You guys are all tinder.

All I’ve got to do is spark. I need to find my like-minded people and start these fires. Let’s do something with some real joy in your heart. Wake up knowing you’re doing something that matters in a world that’s finally wanting to look at it. It’s getting—everything’s too expensive now. You know, you used to be able to buy a home for sixty hundred thousand dollars, fix it up, rent it. Those are the crap—

that’s the repairs on a crap house now that’s 200 and something thousand. And the repairs haven’t really gone up as much as the homes have, but they’ve—the skewing and the repair ideas are out of the roof. When I first started, there might have been five guys in the industry in a town. Now there’s 50. And there’s no regulation. All you got to do is have your card printed

and get you some kind of insurance. And boy, I bet if you dug into these guys’ insurance, you’d see that they got, you know, wallpaper hangers insurance or handyman insurance. They’re not insured properly. 100%. That’s why the training needs to show somebody from the training side is they need to understand their insurance. They need to understand if you’re going to be a worker for a company first, if he pays you cash, that’s not the boss’s fault. You need to be a big boy with your money, or your wife’s going to be the one with the credit your whole life. Yeah, I said that.

That I was me at one point. I lost it. Man, I’m telling you, I’m gonna speak real truths. Don’t be your wife’s boy. Be the man of the house. Take care of your business. And if you don’t, don’t blame nobody. Don’t say, “Well, no one ever taught me that.” Yeah, well, that was because you chose not to. You know, my class is 7,500 bucks. 12 weeks, eight weeks online, four weeks in houses that have been pounded. You’re gonna walk away and

Issa Hanna (25:51)

Possibly so excited.

Stephen Burton (25:52)

start your own. But if you’re gonna work for somebody,

go work for somebody. Observe. Take note. Understand where their problems were, where they didn’t do things right, where they sloughed over, where there was no pre-construction meeting. We should be looking at videos, drawings. Has the house been marked? Is it prepped properly? Where’s the bathrooms go? Where’s the truck washout? My product data sheet shows that. I’ve got every question I could ever think of. So I was a Minuteman II missile technician in the Air Force. So standard operating procedure is very important,

right? It was neat to take a poor guy like me that knew nothing and put me in a position of excitement. And I was like, well, I wanted to contend. I’m a competitor. I wanna—I wanna do well. Rookie of the Year I was. So what? What does that matter? At the end of the day, what does it do for you now? I could have had all the accolades in the world and sit on the couch. Not gonna give me any comfort. What gives me comfort is like yesterday when I left Sherry Otzenberger’s house and she was like,

“I’m so glad you’re helping me with my daughter. You did such a good job with my house.” And this was gosh, you know, many, many, many years ago. So that’s where the joy of going home and having dinner and being excited is—is knowing that you’re valued, and it’s hard. And you have to pick sometimes. I mean, I literally had God tell one time, “You’re gonna really charge this person.” And I didn’t, I mean, there’s some people that are in such bad shape—

Issa Hanna (27:02)

You have to give back. Yeah, you gotta give back. Yeah, you gotta give back. As somebody who—whose dad was in construction, materials aren’t gonna cost as much as a labor. If you can give your labor even for a good price, unbelievable. And then you touched on it, you know, these relationships years ago that you established through your integrity, through your honesty, like we were talking about before, the daughter now

is—is getting her foundation repaired, you know. So you did the mother’s foundation, now the daughter. I want to get your advice for the new guys, right? You talk to guys with the new guys all the time, but the new guys in the foundation repair business or even in the professional space, our business depends on relationships, depends on your network, right? You’re not going anywhere without—without a network. So if somebody were to get the ball rolling, they just started out, their green,

and they wanted to establish that first business relationship, what would be the advice you’d give them?

Stephen Burton (27:52)

Well, when you’re going to go, if—if in fact we’re talking about they—they’ve entered into a contract with a company, make sure that you’ve given that company first—vet them, learn as much as you can, because you’re going to get in and find out reality. And that’s okay. Sometimes it’s a learning ground for you that first place you work. Make sure you give them a whole season. Make sure you can say

that you aren’t a part of the problem, because anybody can quit anything. Now, if you’re asked to do something morally wrong, don’t do it. Bring it up. That would be reason to walk away. If you see that you’re about to papier-mâché somebody and you know it’s wrong, don’t follow through. I’ve had many of these folks, and I’ll—I’ll be careful not to name the franchises, but the biggest one almost in—in Missouri and in St.—in America is putting plastic on the walls, plates on the walls,

cockamamy drain tile systems. They’re—they’re hiring salespeople. I—I started to hire one of them from my church, and they sued the pants off me trying to with legal, they sent all their paralegals after me saying you can’t, he can’t speak of his training. I can see why as I looked it over. My gosh, I’m sure you’ve got a gag order in law. So you can’t, these guys are stuck.

And they can’t even work in the industry for two years after they leave some of these places because of the crap that they’ve shown them and how they position that person to feel like they’ve got nowhere to go but to sign up. And then they slide the payment in front of them. You can afford 200 bucks a month. Don’t look at the 40,000. You can afford the 200.

That’s like a car salesman, a bad one. I love car people, so I’m—I don’t even want to throw them under the bus, but that’s—that’s really a rough way to get, and sometimes—

Issa Hanna (29:26)

So—

Stephen Burton (29:27)

that salesman’s starving, so he’s in there trying to make a buck ’cause he’s paid commission.

Issa Hanna (29:32)

Hundred percent. And unfortunately nowadays guys, you know, we talk about this a lot on my show. Don’t let take your wealth every month piece by piece, paying interest, that kind of stuff, right? So just like Stephen said, even the foundation repair company, they’ll give you a forty thousand dollar repair for two hundred bucks a month. You know, it sounds good. Who can’t afford two hundred bucks a month? But that two hundred bucks a month

is going to have insurance eventually, even if it’s interest-free for a year. You put 200 to the repair, you put 600 for your car, you know, you’re paying this—this payment for that. You’ve got 30% on your credit cards. Financially, that’s how the system gets you to—to not be able to rise above it. I love that you said that, Stephen, because they—they want, they know people have the credit, they know people can get financed. So

the bad salesman will max it out at the forty thousand knowing, “Hey, it’s only a two-hundred-dollar payment.” And I feel like, you know, our industry is—is wrong for that or—or, you know, the professional industry in general. So I think I wanna applaud you.

Stephen Burton (30:32)

What I want to do is—what I can’t stand, someone tears someone down to make themselves look good. So devil’s advocate with this. If the job’s six thousand and they have to make payments, there’s nothing wrong with that. If in fact their scope of work included why it happened and what was best for them, not the contractor or the house.

A lot of these guys will still, “Well, that’s what the house needs.” Well, that house needs nothing. It’s inanimate. It’s this—it’s the soul we’re worried about. It’s the person we’re giving our concern to. And if they’re 85 years old, we’re putting a black pipe on that downspout and sending it to the backyard for 20 bucks. That’s not—not go down charging $500 to fix a wall crack so that you can fix the next one next to it because it’s gonna break the wall again.

Where’s our barometer? So if we treat them, and here’s the real crux of it, treat them like a client, not a customer. You know the difference between the two? Clients buy information, customers buy products. As an expert witness in court, if the judge senses that you’re a customer—you’ve been a customer of that client for a while, and you buy their stuff, they’re gonna say, listen, this is what they do. He didn’t tell you you didn’t need any more, he just told you you needed that.

Now he’s telling you you need this. Well, if it was an advocate, he would have told you the big picture. What a tricky place, even going into court. So, all the more reason why, since I sense and know these things, I have to share that because people are stunned when I tell them some of the things I tell them. They’re just stunned. Google four-inch gutter and it says it’s for a shed. Holds 0.8 gallons per foot. The bigger problem is you got one inch of your shingle going into four inches of gutter. Now you got three inches.

We need that extra catch. And I know I talk a lot about roof pitch and gutters and downspouts because that’s our first source, that’s our first line of defense. So anybody out there that’s got trouble right now, get the concrete pitching away from your house, get the land pitching away from your house, get the downspouts away from the house. Please don’t bury them in black pipe.

That’s not aliphatic. The sun’s gonna kill it, things are gonna eat through it, and you don’t have a cleanout. There needs to be a cleanout at the downspout. So there’s a lot of really simple, small tips that you could do, but you have to trust somebody before you’re gonna listen to them, right? “They don’t care how much they know you know until they know how much you care.” This is the key.

Issa Hanna (32:47)

He—

Stephen Burton (32:48)

Embracing someone that’s hurt and vulnerable and treating them with respect and integrity based on their needs,

not the contractor’s needs. I was blessed with that intuition. I’m telling you, I’m sure I sold some things a little stronger just to not have to worry about it. Now, if I had a troubled client, we used to call it BOAT, break out another thousand. This client’s so hard to deal with, I’m going to put another grand on the yard so that if I have to rake every leaf off of it, I’m going to. Or if I’m—so don’t think that the good guys aren’t watching you as a homeowner trying to figure out are you trouble or not? Trouble pays.

That’s where retail came from. So we have to make sure we understand that we’re dealing with a business that’s coming as a homeowner. We have to have our guard up and understand are they looking out for us? This is why we want to build a scope of work for them to have whoever they want do it. And they can show them how to—just this way we strip down all the smoke and mirrors, and we’re the only ones because when all of a sudden these two guys show up and do all this stuff

you spent all this money on. You’re a little—I’ve gotten phone calls. “I’m a little concerned. I mean, are they—do they know what they’re doing? You know, only two guys here.” Well, I could send four, but it’s only gonna take two to do it. “Well, this cost fifteen thousand dollars.” Well, they sent—they set four floor joint floor soldier beams, they peered them, and they put a drainage system on, and then you break it down for them. Like, okay, I just

thought there’d be a whole bunch of guys. Sometimes that’s necessary and sometimes it’s not. But if the client doesn’t even understand the process, they’re not ready for it, even for the dirt. So just getting the client ready to feel excited and happy about what they’re about to do and feel good about it. Feel like, “I’m adulting. You’re not going to call your friends up and go, ‘Hey, I just bought three piers, I’m so psyched.'” But I’m so glad that the guy told me that

for a little bit more, we run drain tile and a sump pump along that so we don’t disrupt those piers later. We’re about to put cold joints in the concrete where there can be leaking. This is a way for them to come back and hit you for a much bigger deal. So talking about it, conversating with experience, explaining the ins and outs. Drywall’s cheap a lot of times with some people. I’m like, look, let me just do the two walls, whip through the whole basement. You’re only cutting the drywall two feet. That’s cheap, but let’s just—let’s manage our risk.

Let’s—things just don’t happen for no reason. So this is very—it’s the—it’s so much fun. Once you learn the rules and you can embrace them, you’re not afraid when you get out there because homeowners can be strong. Can—remember in the beginning I—they knocked me off my own thoughts because they were so strong, or they were older than me, you know. Now I’m older than everybody, but it, you know, that was a thing for a while. Like I was—I knew the truth, but I got shook by a strong personality. So

we have to use our skills the way we see fit. And I think that I was built for a time like this. I think Foundation Rescue is something that needs to be—I can’t wait until—I know it sounds almost like a lie, but I can’t wait until we’re replicated. I can’t wait until I start hearing there’s other companies that’s doing it better than us. Good for you. Why don’t we join up?

Issa Hanna (35:46)

Well, for right—

Stephen Burton (35:47)

By myself, you know.

Issa Hanna (35:49)

Well—well, for right now, you’re the only one in the game. You’re a revolutionary. You know, you’re a visionary. You’re coming here, you’re burning the boats, too, you know. Anybody that doesn’t want to hear your message, you know, you’re all—you’re all that—

Stephen Burton (36:02)

By the way.

Issa Hanna (36:03)

I love that, I love that. I love that you’re doing it. I love that you care so much about the homeowners, about educating them.

But if people wanted to get a hold of you, they wanted to reach you, they wanted to deal with the FRTC, how could they reach you guys?

Stephen Burton (36:15)

So, you know, I’ve got an AI assistant, 636-246-4443. FoundationRescueSTL.com is my website. And you’ll see I have my—go to the testimonials there and you’ll see I’ve got 35 years of folks that said some of the sweetest things. Fact, I can’t even—I haven’t even looked at them all because they make me cry. But it—it reminds me of all the sweet people that I’ve met through the years.

It reminds me of why I can sleep at night and feel good about what I’m doing, even when it’s hard, even where I don’t know when the next inspection might be coming or my next student. I know that it’s new and my steps have been called out for me. And I just have to have the faith and the guts to step into them each day and show up and do my best. And take the trials as they come. You know, we’re refined with fire. That takes out the things in us that are bad. So if I’m in a season and it’s hard, then I’m being refined.

And I accept that. And I’m happy during those times. That’s the difference in sustainability and flash in the pans. I’ve met a lot of folks that got excited. I could put the ether on them, right? They’re all, “Man, we’re going.” And then they got up, had their coffee, and got lazy again. And, “Yeah, I’m gonna do that.” And I don’t know. I don’t know. It requires action, you know. I’m real available, but I want people to go to the website, FoundationRescueSTL.com. It’s a place for you to get a feel for what the right things are, what the wrong things are. We’ve got a great YouTube channel that I feed it every day. I’ve got a Facebook, Instagram. We’re where we need to be, but I’m gonna give you my cell phone. It’s 636-236-9933. I would love

the fact that I couldn’t answer my phone because I get inundated. I’m realistic, but I’m also vulnerable and I’m also very exposed. So I don’t mind putting my heart out there. I don’t mind a good punch to the chiclets. I can take a hard punch, you know. I’ve—I dream of having a call-in show at some point when I was gonna call in on myself going,

“Hey yeah, Burton, my wife likes you, but I think you’re just a big pompous. You know what I think you are. But you know, we took the drywall down in my—in my utility room and there were plates on the wall. And Mr. Burton doesn’t like plates on the wall. What am I supposed to do?” I wanted to field what I would say to me if I heard it without knowing what I know. So don’t be afraid

to come at me with the hard questions. If you don’t buy what I’m selling, let’s talk about it because it’s not my opinion. It was formed on facts, materials, and a lot of smarter people that I’m around. You know, when I was able to speak with the Missouri Association of Code Enforcement, it was like walking into the room at the Lake of the Ozarks with a bunch of principals looking at you.

And a couple of the guys were like, “He’s in the foundation business. We’re coming for him.” So they’ve stacked that room. I had a convert. I—it was like—it was like watching ice melt. Second session, it’s twice as full. And I had, “Yeah, yeah.” And, “If you’re working for a boss, then you need a new boss.” I mean, I let them have it, and they were high-fiving. They told me I was—it was wonderful. So

I know the needs out there. I know the hunger’s there. They just don’t have anybody to help them. Here. Don’t be afraid to call me. What’s cool about the schools, I got people from Chicago coming to St. Louis. I got people from Kansas City coming. Got people—it’s funny because they’re finding me on the internet because there—even AI gives me pats. “You’re the only one.” Yeah, well, great. For now. But there are—

Issa Hanna (39:44)

Wow.

Stephen Burton (39:45)

nothing—everything that I’m doing is nothing that you couldn’t

do on your own if you just knew what question to ask and start looking

Issa Hanna (39:52)

Unfortunately, though—

Stephen Burton (39:53)

all the

answers, but I don’t—not afraid to look for—

Issa Hanna (39:56)

No.

And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t have that knowledge, that first-hand knowledge of you’ve—I mean, thirty-five years in the game, you’ve repaired almost any—probably every type of foundation issue. You’ve seen it all. You know, you’ve seen homeowners, you know, get that huge unexpected bill. And I love the passion that you bring into this, Stephen. I mean, truly inspiring. You know, people—we need somebody like you in the game. And I love it, like I said before.

You’re over here, you’ve burned all the boats with the—with the people that, you know, and you’re here with the message and you’re saying it loud, proud, clear, and you’re here for—for the consumer, which at the end of the day, every professional market, our number one duty is to protect the consumer. And that’s what you’re here to do. Stephen, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a true honor to interview you, pick your brain about foundation repair and just,

you know, hear—hear your perspective and what you’re bringing to the world. And I definitely know that this is gonna light like fire and take off around the United States and I know you’ll be at the forefront of it. So thank you, my friend, for coming on the show.

Stephen Burton (40:58)

I couldn’t be more grateful for Investor Fuel. When you have an outfit like yours that looks at the small man like me doing something that’s different and not being afraid of it and not trying to poo-poo it away or, “Here’s—I can only imagine what this guy’s gonna say.” But I’m grateful that you did your homework and you could see that my—I’m genuine, I’m flawed.

I’m definitely flawed and I’m skewed. My students need to constantly remind me if I do have a tendency to be a little narrow-minded. But I am open-minded and I love to take a knee and I love to talk about what I do have wrong. So thanks for having me on. I’m a bit embarrassed to be called an expert, but what I do have is experience and a passion for people that can’t be—that can’t be squashed, it can’t be diminished, and it can’t be quenched.

Issa Hanna (41:44)

Amazing. Well, what I see is integrity and humility, Stephen. So thank you once again for coming on the show. It was a true honor. And to our viewers at home, if you enjoyed my conversation with Stephen, want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time, the pros are out.