April 17, 2025 • 47 mins
Communication failures are silently sabotaging multifamily operations. Between overflowing inboxes, missed text messages, and information scattered across multiple platforms, your teams are spending countless hours searching for information while important details fall through the cracks.
In this eye-opening discussion, Jim Rostel, COO at Anchor Northwest Property Group, shares a harrowing story about facing a lawsuit eight months after a property disaster, only to discover critical communications were inaccessible after an employee left the company. This real-world example highlights how our industry's fragmented communication approaches create serious business liabilities that extend far beyond day-to-day frustrations.
Jason Griffith, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Synco, explains why property management needs specialized communication tools rather than generic platforms built for every industry. "Most people are using the same software for communications that the local dog kennel, barbershop, and Department of Defense use," he notes. "It has nothing to do with property management, which is why the current way of doing business causes so much pain."
The conversation reveals how centralizing communications creates transparency from "boardroom to boiler room," allowing executives to monitor critical situations in real-time without micromanaging. We explore how features like instant translation help diverse maintenance teams communicate effectively, and how integrating communications from other alert systems eliminates inbox overload.
Most compelling is Jim's insight on implementation: the executives initially most resistant to change became the platform's biggest champions once they experienced the benefits. "This is one of those questions like as an executive, once you make the move to a new way, why would you go back?" he asks.
Whether you're considering centralization initiatives or simply tired of information falling through the cracks, this discussion provides a practical framework for rethinking your communication strategy. How much more could your team accomplish if they weren't constantly searching for information across multiple platforms?
About the Multifamily Innovation® Council:
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is the executive level membership organization that makes a difference in your bottom line, drives a better experience for your employees, and allows you an experience that keeps demand strong for your company. The council is uniquely positioned to focus on the intersection of Leadership, Technology, AI, and Innovation.
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is for Multifamily Business leaders who want to unlock value inside their organization so they can create better experiences and drive profitability inside their company.
To learn more or to join, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com.
For more information and to engage with leaders shaping the future of multifamily innovation, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com/.
Connect:
Multifamily Innovation® Council: https://multifamilyinnovation.com/
Patrick Antrim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickantrim/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, well, welcome back.
Today.
What we're doing is we'retalking about the biggest
challenges of multifamilyoperations and that can be
oftentimes simple ascommunication and, more
specifically, we're talkingabout how decentralized let me
just say disjointedcommunication is holding teams
(00:20):
back is holding teams back, andmany of you know this.
This is communication at themaintenance level, the
operational level, investmentlevel, vendor level.
There's all kinds of thingsthat rely on this to make
business happen.
And I've got two industryleaders here joined with us
today on the podcast.
They've looked at this insideout.
(00:41):
I have Jim Rostel.
He's the chief operatingofficer at Anchor Northwest
Property Group and Jim is he'sbeen a recognized leader in this
.
He's centralized already hisproperty management and he has
is serving the council with thisdeep expertise on.
You know, the things that arenecessary in operations, sales,
(01:06):
marketing, customer experienceand he's built this already
right.
He's implemented a fullyintegrated centralized
management system and many ofyou know and he's been seen on
expert panels around speakingand obviously he's seen in the
council talking about this as anexpert.
So a lot of people respect himaround this conversation.
(01:26):
He has a different point ofview on this.
And then also we've got JasonGriffith.
He's a co-founder and co-CEO ofSynco and Synco is this
real-time really one of the mostbeautiful softwares I will say
I've seen.
But it's a real-time messagingplatform and it's built
(01:48):
specifically for propertymanagement teams.
You start to think about thetools we use today and they're
not really built for the uniquebusiness operation.
But Jason's been just aseasoned veteran around prop
tech.
He's done some great thingsbefore this and I'm always
excited to watch him what hebuilds.
But Synco is designed toeliminate this email overload
(02:12):
and you're looking at not justdirect communication that you
may do with peers and colleaguesand investors, vendors, all
that stuff but also at theproperty level, the direct, even
the unit level, right, thiscommunication and what we're
aiming to do here is how do wethink about integrating all this
communication seamlessly intothe systems that we already use,
(02:35):
right?
That's a nice thing to havethat too.
So Jason's going to help usunderstand that point of view on
the tools and the tech thathelp solve some of the things.
I wanted to bring Jim on here,who's working through those
things.
So, jim, I'd love to start withyou on this.
We had a call or we talked inanother form around this sort of
(02:56):
most obvious and glaringlimitation that happens if
you're centralizing, when yourteams are using all these
different things to communicatein these systems.
Take me through what that waslike before you made some
certain investments in Synco andsome other initiatives.
What was that like before andwhat is that like now in terms
(03:19):
of communication in all thesedisparate systems?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Thanks, patrick.
I think in general, you look atany organization any
organization I've been a part ofover my 30 plus year career and
the one thing that all greatorganizations have in common is
they're great communicators.
And the reality is and whatSynco has done that I think is
really brilliant here is they'recreating a product specific for
(03:44):
our industry, right, specificto our needs and understanding
the nuances of what we do andallowing us to improve our
communication process.
So if you look at anyorganization, any type of change
, any type of thing you're goingthrough, you want to make sure
you have a communicationstrategy and a platform on which
you can communicate amongstdepartments, amongst individuals
, and do so in a manner that isorganized and scalable.
(04:11):
So you know, for us, you know,we've always been pretty much
centralized, like from theget-go.
That's just the way we evolved.
But what we found after gosh 10years of being centralized was
that the communication piece wasvery, very difficult for us and
that everything in our systemis very siloed.
(04:33):
So very rarely do you have oneperson that takes a job from
point A to point Z.
It goes through multiple peoplethroughout that process.
To give you an idea, if youlease a property with us, you're
going to meet with fivedifferent people by the time you
move in right, and so if youdon't have great communication
structure amongst that process,throughout that process, you're
(04:56):
going to have problems.
So, yes, communication isprobably one of the most
important things that we haveand that leads to our success in
a centralized model.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, and I would say , jason, just building on that
from what Jim is setting up interms of the communication,
obviously we want to do things,but we need great companies
communicate very well.
Talk to us about what you'vebuilt and how you're going about
solving that.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, so maybe a little bit of background on how
I got here.
As you had mentioned, patrick,I'm a two-time entrepreneur in
the prop tech space.
My previous company, sitecomply, built up over a decade.
We were really focused in theNew York market, helping leading
owners and managers with amillion units on the system
(05:49):
maintain compliance with thecrazy local laws that exist in
New York.
So we really got a front rowseat in terms of how people
communicate with critical issues, sold that business to Inhabit
and joined up with myco-founders and we just started
(06:09):
interviewing a lot ofmultifamily executives and what
we heard over and over, similarto what Jim said, was the
following you take a typicalproperty manager they get 300
emails a day.
You've got people on alldifferent sorts of communication
systems and you stop and thinkwhen you first ask someone how
(06:33):
do you communicate, they mightanswer Outlook or Teams, right.
But then when you just sort ofpeel back the layer a little bit
, what they say is well, we useTeams over here, we use it for
video calls, sometimes we chat,but we get 300 emails a day.
But also we use text messagingand, of course, our field team
sometimes use WhatsApp andsomewhere between.
(06:54):
All of that is how wecommunicate, and what struck us
was that this is an industrythat has gotten very used to, on
the accounting side, having acentralized platform.
I mean, it would be crazy ifyou said, well, where do you
keep your rent information?
Oh well, we keep it somewherebetween these seven systems.
No, you have Yardi or Resmin orwhat have you right.
(07:17):
So you bring a new propertymanager very easy to say show me
the history of rent paymentsfor this building, for this unit
.
But you bring in that sameproperty manager who wants to
see the history of teamcommunication for that same unit
.
That's impossible, and I thinkthat this industry has almost
been like a frog boiling in thepot.
(07:38):
It's just such a painfulproduct problem that has gotten
progressively worse over time asoperations have gotten more
complicated, that people justbecome accustomed to living in
the pain right.
And so what we built at Syncowas a centralized communication
(07:59):
platform for communicationsacross the enterprise, from
boardroom to boiler room, whereall communications are on one
platform.
It's in real time, itunderstands what buildings are,
what units are.
It organizes all of thosecommunications by building, by
unit, by project, by vendor,what have you.
(08:20):
It interacts with the outsideworld in the same way that
property management firms do allday long and I think,
importantly, it starts talkingto your other systems as well.
So that's the basics of what webuilt, and I think Jim is just
a great example of how hemarried the concept of
(08:43):
centralization, which is soimportant to our industry, with
technology to make sure that youunlock the full potential of a
centralization program wheredifferent teams and groups and
people can be seamlesslyinteracting to make that as
frictionless as possible.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, jim, I have a question for you, and
Jason was talking about you know, we we tend to grow accustomed
to uh scenarios that why do wehold on to these situations that
aren't serving us, uh, for solong?
Uh, maybe it's just not a lotof well, first of all, there's
not a lot of options for whatyou've created, right?
(09:21):
So, uh, you're in a good.
But why do you think, jim,people accept these conditions
of you know, do theseworkarounds and end up in all
these different channels tocommunicate and it could be
passed on to other things?
We do accept conditions,sometimes far too long.
Anything you want to share onthat one.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, no, I think it's true If any company, any
industry, that people getcomfortable and they do what
they're comfortable doing.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
If I know how to do something.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That's how I'm going to do it right, wrong or
otherwise right and so having tolearn something new is always
going to be a bit of a lift foremployees.
Some people are going to beeager to do it, other people are
going to be resistant and gofrom there, but I mean, I think
it's just that comfort level.
Once you get into this, onceyou get into a new system that
(10:13):
works, it truly works you findthat people at that point will
never want to go back, right.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So you know you've got a good product in your hand,
but people are like no, we needthat, we have to stay with this
yeah, and let me dive intosomething a little bit more
specific around what the problemaround the you know, having
this information in all thesedifferent places, what, what are
the risks that could go wrongthere?
(10:38):
You know, nine months after asituation, you know, and then
you know how even litigious ourindustry can be.
Or you know you've got to provesomething, or or it could be
anything from employment tolegal to incidents at properties
.
How important is it to get thisstuff right and get ownership,
(11:00):
this data, in other words, right?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, it's huge.
It's huge.
We had an incident last yearwhere we lost an entire property
to a busted sprinkler systemand eight months later a lawsuit
shows up on our doorstep anddiscovery and they want every
piece of communication that wentin from the time that pipe
broke until three weeksafterwards.
(11:24):
And the reality was this iseight months later.
We have one person that leftthe company and we cleaned his
phone off and there was norecord of any of his text
messages at that point.
And just the time it took forus to gather all that
communications from emails, fromgetting individuals' phones and
texts, emails from gettingindividual's phones and texts
(11:47):
from Teams messages and justfiguring out where they are was
huge.
I mean, it was a huge, hugeproblem for us.
We have since obviously switchedto Synco, so everything on
every event goes into Synco.
So if I need anything at thispoint with this new solution, I
just go there.
We have a thread set up forthat specific issue and
everything we have is right inone slot.
It doesn't matter if peoplehave left the company or not.
(12:08):
We keep the information on thecloud and it's there for our
access at any time.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
This is one of those questions like as an executive,
once you make the move to a newway, why would you go back if
you had that?
Jason, tell me a little bitmore about how that happens,
Maybe even technically or, youknow, with the platform.
Uh, Jim's talking about a lotof risk management stuff.
I start to bring the gravity ofour fiduciary responsibility to
make sure that we minimize thisrisk.
(12:34):
What, uh, what are yourthoughts there?
Or maybe take us through howthis works?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, there's a lot of different levels here, but
like the nuts and bolts of itare.
The first thing that we say islike, if you step back and
really think about this, it isludicrous to run your business
on text and WhatsApp.
I mean, with WhatsApp, you areliterally locked out of your own
information, right, becauseit's all you know, it's on the
phone, it's secure.
(13:00):
And with text, I mean, again,you don't want someone sharing
pictures of their kid at homeand then suddenly sensitive
information about the firmbecause it's all in one place,
et cetera.
That's sort of bucket one, Ithink, from a just risk
mitigation, best practicesperspective.
But I think the second thingthat we find fascinating is, you
(13:23):
know, I think most people inthis industry use Outlook on
some level, right.
And when we speak to people andthey talk about information
organization, it's absolutelyfascinating, especially when you
compare it to what they livewith right now, with Yardi or
Entrata or what have you, whichis most people will say that
they spend a good chunk of timeevery day if they're trying to
(13:45):
be organized, literally draggingmessages on Outlook into
folders, right, I mean, I'vebeen in a room with 13
executives where each one saysthat they spend an hour, and
what's so fascinating about thatis like that's all well and
good for the executive.
I mean, I don't know if it'swell and good because it's still
an hour of your time every day,but it doesn't do any good for
(14:06):
the organization, right?
So you bring in a new executive.
They they still start from zero.
They start from a zero inbox.
Hey everybody Patrick's newhere Bring them up to speed.
Suddenly you have 100 forwardedchains and you're like that's
the norm.
(14:26):
And you know, we just thought toourselves, like man, in an
industry where you see turnoverrates as high as they are, you
need to be able to bring peopleup to speed on the history of
team communications just as fastas you would bring them up to
speed with important accountinginformation.
And so the way it works onsynco is that when you're having
a thread of a conversation witha topic, one person can say you
(14:47):
know, this topic is about unit4B at the Hillcrest and, unlike
Outlook, where that's anindividual exercise that is now
organized for everybody who hasaccess to that thread, and
whether that's the person whoyou know, whether that's a GM,
right, who's looking in on that,or whether that's the person
who comes here two years fromthat's a GM, right?
Who's looking in on that?
Or whether that's the personwho comes here two years from
now who is in charge of thatbuilding, who now wants to get a
(15:10):
history down to the unit level.
So that's sort of the mechanicsof how it works.
But I think it's just soimportant to say, a we need to
be on one system and B, thatsystem needs to be organized and
aligned with the way thatcompanies do business.
And, let's face it, ourindustry is very unique, prior
(15:33):
to Synco, I think, and look,we're still a young, growing
company.
Most people are using the samesoftware for communications that
the local dog kennel and thebarber shop and the barbershop
and the Department of Defenseuse.
It has nothing to do withproperty management, which is
why the current way of doingbusiness causes so much pain.
(15:53):
And I think the other thing Iwould say is Jim spoke about a
very acute issue, a lawsuit,which is very real, but just the
day-to-day pain, right.
I mean, I remember there's agreat organization, swift Bunny,
which talks a lot about teamcommunication, and they had
released a report last year thattalked about the frustrations
(16:17):
that drive a lot of the turnoverin the industry where you're a
property manager or a regionalmanager and you're sitting there
waiting for the person belowyou and the person above you to
get back to you and you're justwaiting and you can't do your
job and you want to do your joband they're just like oh, I'm
sorry, you were one of 312emails I got today and I'll get
to it at some point, but I thinkwe've really been able to.
(16:40):
As Jim can tell you, cincomakes everything faster and
you're not buried in that samemountain.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Hmm, Jim, anything you can share You've been
through.
Are you guys on board fully orare you in process?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, we're fully on board and we have been for gosh
now four trigger on this thingand I'll be honest with you just
fully transparent, not theentire executive team was on
board.
I mean, that was something thatwe got some people 75% of the
way there.
The people that were not onboard are the people that are
the biggest champions of it now.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
This goes back to that comment you made about
they're comfortable doing thisforever.
One way right Making that shiftis, you know, overestimated in
terms of the challenges.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, they're comfortable.
I mean, I think the initialresponse in the pushback we got
internally was it doesn't reallydo anything that we don't
already do.
And to some extent that's true.
You know you can get a GeoMetro car and it does the same
thing a Mercedes does.
Right, it's going to drive youfrom point A to point B.
You may have some issues, youmay not get there as quickly,
(18:04):
but you know you'll get thereright Once you get on board.
This is not what it does.
It's how it does it and howmuch power it gives you in
retrospect.
Right, it's like taking all ofyour communications from all of
your if you've got site teams wedon't.
But if you have site teams,from all your site teams, from
all your regional management,from all your executive people,
(18:24):
putting it in one place.
And not only putting it in oneplace but putting it in a filing
cabinet where you can find thatcommunication.
What happened at this eviction?
That was three months ago?
What was the communication?
Internal communications.
Well, here's so-and-so talkedto so-and-so.
You've got it all in one placeand you can look and search it
and pull it all up.
In the current system, in theprevious system we had, we
didn't have that ability, wecould potentially find something
(18:46):
.
We'd spend hours and hours andhours Was that an email?
Was that a text?
Was that a WhatsApp message ora Teams message?
And you just didn't know whereto look.
And sometimes someone reachesout in Teams and the other
person responds in text, andit's just a big mess.
Right, this puts it all in oneplace, it organizes it for you,
it gives you search options.
It's just a really, reallypowerful tool for your
(19:08):
communication solution.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
You're a KPI guy, right.
How has that improved theability for you to make either
portfolio or decisions in thisprocess, or even oversee
operations?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I am a metrics guy all day long and this is a hard
one for me because most of thetime I'll look at a product,
someone will come to me and I'llsay you know what?
are we doing that already, anddoes this make it better?
Right?
So if we're spending that money, can I spend it and get a
better result?
And that's an easy one.
If I'm not spending money onthat solution, then how does
that impact my financial, right?
That's always what I'm lookingat.
(19:42):
I want to know that's myscorecard.
This is so hard to see on how itimpacts your financial, and
that's where there's got to be alittle bit of a leap of faith
in there and go where are we atand what problems and how do we
solve this faster?
Right?
How do we become more efficient?
And that doesn't always show upin a KPI for solutions such as
(20:05):
this, right.
And so I think in general, wefound in the first four months
that we are more efficient,we're communicating better,
we're not seeing as manyproblems and let's face it, I
mean, I think anybody that'sbeen in the industry will tell
you a majority of the issues werun into are due to poor
communication.
They're not due to somebody notwanting to do their job or
(20:26):
somebody being lazy.
It's usually the ball gotdropped somewhere along the line
, someone didn't communicateproperly, a message was missed,
that type of thing, and thoseare the things that are hard to
quantify in a KPI, right.
So if you're just eliminatingthose, anecdotally eliminating
those problems, you don't havethose issues popping up.
That's a step in the rightdirection.
And for Cinco, like I said, thepeople that were probably the
(20:49):
most hesitant are the biggestchampions at this point.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And that speaks volumes for us.
Yeah, and I'm sure Jason hassome reflection on that as he's
talking to industry-wideexecutives around this challenge
when you rolled it out andknowing that, just as humans, we
want to do, like you mentioned,what's comfortable, what we're
known to do, what gives usconfidence, all that stuff, when
you're making that move, thattransition, how did you lead
(21:18):
through that number one?
And maybe Jason, you guys canbanter back and forth on how you
work together on that.
And then, were there anythingspecific that the team noticed
in the process where theystarted to have the ahas and
they became the believers, right?
That's what I'm curious about.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, I can start with that.
We worked with Cinco closelyand we first rolled it out just
to the executive team Like playwith it, find out how it works,
figure out how you want to setup your threads, your individual
chats, what groups you want toset up that type of stuff.
So we put probably 60 daysworth of thought just into the
(22:02):
foundation and the structure,knowing that we weren't going to
be 100% right, but the closerwe could get to the way we
wanted to be ultimately, thebetter off we'd be.
So we've got everybody thereand that was a big deal for us
because that took some of theexecutive people that might've
been hesitant and turned theminto believers right away.
So that when we did start toroll it out to our field
(22:22):
personnel specifically ourmaintenance and our leasing
people everybody had buy-in.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Not only did they have buy-in.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
They had answers for the questions that came up
because they had already askedthose questions.
They had already been throughthat and said what happens if,
and they got those answers.
And, like I said, the trainingpiece for for cinco was
fantastic.
Aaron, who headed that up forus, was amazing.
He's a really, really good guyand that made the whole process
easier as well.
But I think if we did it on atiered approach, I think that
(22:51):
was the key to having asuccessful change for us.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So I think Jim brings up a really important point
here, because you know, I thinkwhere Jim and team were before
is where a lot of people are,which is you just sort of have
these organic processes that arelike, yep, I know how to sort
of get a message over to Jim orMelissa or what have you, and it
just kind of grows up, it justhappens right.
(23:17):
And I think what we really sawin Jim's rollout was like this
deeply thoughtful process wherethey weren't actually they
weren't just thinking aboutCinco, they were really
rethinking their communicationstrategy, and I think that
that's why they got suchthinking about Cinco.
They were really rethinkingtheir communication strategy and
(23:40):
I think that that's why theygot such as Jim pointed out such
a tremendous buy-in of likewe're going to be thoughtful
about how we want things tohappen when incidents occur.
And I think, maybe even goingback to your ROI question for
companies out there who are notas far along as where Anchor is
in terms of centralization, Imean, people are putting
millions of dollars worth ofmanpower over years into these
(24:00):
centralization efforts andwhat's sort of amazing to us is
like they're making hugeorganizational changes and then
the part that's kind of not evenbeing talked about is like,
well, that team tends to useWhatsApp and this team tends to
use Outlook and no one eventalks about that, right, and
then the rubber meets the roadand they figure things out in
(24:22):
not a thoughtful way, but justsay here's kind of the organic
way it happened, then it's kindof a mess.
So I think the thing that youknow worked very well is that,
you know this, the spirit ofstrategy development, the spirit
of partnership, worked greatbetween our two teams.
And, um, you know, I think theother thing that that Jim and
(24:42):
team have really embraced is thefact that you know there's a
double-edged sword to to workingwith a young company like us.
We're certainly not Microsoft,right, but what the benefit of
that is that this is a perpetualwork in progress, like we're
talking to the anchor teamweekly, right, and we're working
(25:04):
through, you know, featurerequests and changes that
they're looking for.
That's how the product getsbetter.
We only build this product forone audience, and so I think the
folks who are coming onto thesystem now not only want to
benefit from the collectivewisdom of folks like Jim, but
want to be part of shaping thatfuture and say I have a vision
(25:27):
about how this should work inthe AI age of property
management, in you know name anyof the range of changes that
are on the horizon, becausethey're all going to affect
communication, all of them, andthat's why we've put a, you know
, real emphasis in terms ofworking with our clients to
develop new features andfunctionality.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah, you know you may beevaluating those other
initiatives and if you don't getthe communication right, it may
be that the steps that weretaken in other initiatives may
not even be an isolated,truthful assessment of what's
working and what's not working.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, I mean, I think my biggest challenge as an
executive, and what we spend alot of time trying to
communicate to our prospects,really is that I think that
there's different types oftechnology, right, there's point
solution technology out therethat may improve a specific
function, and then there's morebroad-based, enabling technology
(26:28):
which improves your ability todo other things, technology
which improves your ability todo other things.
And I think you know what weobviously like to avoid is a
situation where someone's likewell, you know, I've got the AI
initiative, I've got the Yardiupgrade, I've got this, I've got
that, I've got that and I'vegot you.
And where do I put you in thatgroup?
And I think you know andfortunately, thanks to you know
(26:50):
wonderful clients like, like Jim, you know they will tell others
like it would be very hard togo back to the old way and do
anything difficult, right, Imean, I'm I'm a Cinco user
myself.
If somebody said to me go outand do X, where X is something
hard moving offices, changingyour branding, implementing a
(27:10):
new system, anything right, andI had to go back to some mix of
email and text message andWhatsApp, like that would be
awful, right, I mean, I would doit three times slower, right?
So you know, we've used Syncoas this kind of enabling
technology which makes all otherefforts easier to do, and I
(27:31):
think that's you know, that'sthe message we're trying to get
out, and I'm glad to see Timshaking his head in agreement.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, no, it's great.
And when you say that, Jason,it reminds me a little bit of
what we did before.
We had PMS software, right, westill ran our business, we still
managed everything.
Everything was paper files,everything was done.
Could you imagine going back tothat and trying to do that
again without your PMS software?
And again, when you talk aboutROI, it's hard to look at your
(27:56):
PMS software and say where doesthat show up on my financial
right?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
It's my biggest expense.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It's everybody's biggest software expense, right,
but it's hard to measure andthis is one of those things that
at some point people are goingto go.
What did we do before there wasSenco?
How did we manage to keep allour communications there?
Right, and I think it's like Isaid, I really appreciate the
solution and we're big fans.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, is there anything more you can share
about the?
I mean, you mentioned your.
Your executive team rolled itout.
But like, specifically, I knowpeople are thinking, listening
to this, thinking like how wouldthey go about it?
I know your portfolio may bedifferent than others, some are
smaller, some are larger, someare third party and all of that
stuff.
Like, how would you be thinkingabout this if you're outside of
(28:44):
your organization and you're,you know, you've already, you've
already sometimes, when we wecan appreciate what we
understand when we do it, versusobserving it, and so, like
knowing what you've observed,what advice would you give to
others thinking through this?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
thinking through this .
I think a couple of things.
One is just you know, obviouslyand I think most people have
this a good grip on what you'redoing now, like what happens and
where are we at with ourcommunication strategy now, like
just a self-assessment, that'shonest, and is this really
working for us or not?
Right, and then you look atthat and you go is this an
(29:27):
improvement?
How much of an improvement?
How is this going to help us?
And then, if so, how do I thenwhat's the best way to roll it
out?
So with us, because we'recentralized, we won't roll a
software out on one or twoproperties.
If we're rolling it out, it isthe entire portfolio.
That's just the way we operate.
Right, we have a veryhomogenous tech stack and it
(29:48):
works across the entireportfolio and we couldn't do
just single properties in mostinstances.
I should say I think if I am alarger operator and I still have
onsite staff and that type ofstuff, I think it makes sense to
be able to roll it out to aproperty or two properties,
staff and that type of stuff.
I think it makes sense to beable to roll it out to a
property or two properties andget it going on those properties
(30:09):
as well as the administrativeteam and the executive team, and
they need to be on it.
And the great thing is for usis I don't have to be actively
involved in a conversation topop in and see what's going on
and then make decisionselsewhere based on that
information.
Last night my Cinco went off at1030 at night and I looked and
(30:31):
our garage door was broken onone of our properties.
But I watched thatcommunication for about 45
minutes.
I know it's 1030 at night, it'sa problem, but that's what I do
and make sure it was all undercontrol.
I didn't have to say a word,but I could see all the steps
they were taking.
All the communication was goingback and forth and it was fine.
I left alone.
If they had gone awry, had gonesideways, had done something
(30:52):
wrong, then I could have poppedin and said hey, by the way, we
need to blast the tenants, letthem know to get their cars out
during the event, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So a key difference between Cinco and email is that
on email, the person who'sinitiating the email is the one
deciding whose inbox it goesinto, which is so messed up if
you think about the world thatwe live in.
Right, like, they usually aregoing to get it wrong, they're
going to not guess right.
And so in the world prior toCinco, in the world of email,
(31:36):
there's always someone sayingwell, where are we on that?
Because they didn't know aboutthat other email, because they
weren't CC'd right, or they wereCC'd on a whole bunch of the
wrong emails and it was bearingin their inbox.
And with Cinco, what happens isJim, as COO, has visibility
into all the different teams andwhat they're doing, but Jim
gets to decide what nature ofmessages should actually notify
(32:00):
him at 1030, right?
So easier, obviously, to showin a demo, and I'm always it's
my favorite thing to do is givea demo of Cinco, so I was happy
to do that, but it reallyprovides a sense of transparency
that didn't exist before, Ithink.
The other thing that I wouldmention is and I don't know if
(32:21):
Jim and team are actively usingthis, this feature, as much as
others, but like we try to comeup with instant delight type of
features.
So, for example, one of themost popular features that we
have is real-time translation,and this has been really
especially effective with fieldteams, where you have folks who
(32:42):
can speak or type in anylanguage they want and it is
translated in real time andlands in the inbox in the
language of the recipient.
And what we found is that's thetype of thing where, when
you're trying to get thatorganizational change to be able
to say to someone who may below-tech or tech-phobic or what
(33:04):
have you, you don't have to type, you don't even have to, you
can just speak.
And not only that, you canspeak in your native tongue and
know that the other person'sgoing to get the message and
that you can be as verbose asyou'd like and you don't have to
try to speak English as asecond language.
Like that was a huge unlock,one of several, but we try to
(33:25):
mix those things in to make thatkind of rollout more seamless.
But, like Jim said, there aresome companies that have rolled
out with us and they've startedout with a region and executive
team and then expanded beyondthat over time.
I think Jim was very, verythoughtful in the process, where
he was definitely a measurethree times cut.
(33:47):
Once, you know, we met severaltimes with his team, going over
it again and again to make surethat we got everything
configured right.
The team really became expertsin it and then they engaged in a
really effective train, thetrainer process, which you know.
We're now taking a.
You know, taking a page fromthat playbook and using that for
(34:07):
other new clients.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
That's good.
You know, I start to thinkabout these off the shelf
solutions that people are mosteverybody is using right now.
Right, and you developed thisspecific tool for our suite of
tools here for enabling manyother things that they may be
working on in their business.
How has the collaboration gonein terms of making the product
(34:34):
better?
I imagine, Jason, you're on aroadmap of continuous innovation
and progress.
What's that been like in termsof working with customers and
building with them as much asshowing them what you've built?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yeah, I mean, I've actually I've really appreciated
and I'll say that that comesfrom a place of deep experience.
So my previous company was moreof a passive product, meaning
like when something wascatastrophically wrong we would
alert people about it and thatwas the core of the product and
even though it's evolved overtime, like 90% of the value
(35:13):
while I was there was drivenfrom that core right.
So we kind of had a sense oflike here's what we need to
build.
But with Synco being one of thefour icons in the bottom of
their screen, like the level ofscrutiny, the level of
engagement, the level offeedback that we get is
unbelievable.
(35:33):
I mean, I have a list of 100fantastic ideas that you know.
Every month we me and my teamsit there and be like how do we
prioritize which of these greatideas we're going to do next
there, and be like how do weprioritize which of these great
ideas we're going to do next?
And you know so we've.
Really my product team's job iswhen we start hearing about
things.
We, you know.
(36:00):
We then go back to our clientslike Jim and pressure, test them
and really try to get at whatis the underlying issue.
There we come up with multipleapproaches, we show them
screenshots.
The underlying issue there wecome up with multiple approaches
, we show them screenshots, sowe really develop in concert
with our clients.
Which when was the last timeMicrosoft showed up at your door
and said, hey, how can wereally improve Teams?
Obviously, that's just not howthey operate, because they're
(36:21):
operating from a much wider,broader audience and I think the
folks who are coming on to theplatform like that type of
engagement and I think itcertainly makes our product.
It gives us an unfair advantagein the market.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, I can contribute to that a little bit
that they have been great interms of listening to feedback.
The product we have today isfantastic the way it stands, but
the exciting part is theycontinue to improve it for us
and they look at our specificfeedback and what our specific
needs are and they're buildingfor that and that is worth its
(36:58):
weight in gold.
And, like to Jason's point,Microsoft's not doing that Teams
, you know they don't care whatwe think or how our product
works, and these guys have beengreat about that.
So, yeah, no, I appreciate thatquite a bit.
We have a saying here If itdidn't happen, if it's not in
Synco, it didn't happen.
So we're trying to geteverything we do, all our
communication, even ourdocuments.
(37:18):
When someone emails usdocuments outside of Synco, we
bring them into the conversationthey're germane to, and so
we've got everything right thereready to go at any point in
time.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
So we've spent a lot of time on not just like deep
integrations with Yardi and theother big systems, but with
let's call it out of the box,light touch integration with all
the other software that's outthere, and Jim alluded to that.
When we were talking withclients and we asked them, well,
(37:49):
what's the nature of the 300emails in your inbox?
And a big chunk of what theytalked about was actually output
from other systems.
Well, I bought this boilernotification system.
It's constantly sending mealerts.
Or I bought this securitysystem and it's constantly
sending this or that type ofstuff.
And so one of the features thatwe built is the ability to pipe
(38:13):
those emails directly into Syncoto the right groups with the
right notifications and filing,so that all of these other
systems they actually get morevaluable as you bring them in.
And whether it's a system or,to Jim's point, someone emails
you something, you can forwardthat right into Synco and then
start collaborating immediatelywith the team.
But like none of those featureswere there on version one, they
(38:37):
only came from feedback fromclients saying, hey, you know
I'm using Synco, but how do Iget this email in here?
So it's been.
It's very fortunate in that wehave people who are very engaged
with the product.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, yeah, I really like what you said.
You guys Both of you aligned onthis as the stepping back a
little bit and thinking throughyour communication strategy.
You know, I know there's moreto each company and they
probably should just jump on acall with you, jason, and figure
it out for them, because everycompany has their unique
(39:13):
investment objectives,priorities, all of those things,
and it's one that encouragesmore deeper thought or deeper
conversation.
I know what I wanted to do herewas really support the
initiative.
See, you know, technologymoving so fast it's changing
(39:33):
other parts of the business and,to the notification system you
just described, it's making itmore of a challenge, you know,
with all these different toolsand point solutions coming into
our systems and communications.
I think it was Dr GeorgeWesterman who said that
technology moves fast because itcan be programmed and it
(39:55):
typically does what we tell itto do in programs, whereas
companies move slowly becausethere's people involved and
there's fears and there'suncertainty and there's levels
of comfort and there's pastsuccess, and all of that needs
to be dealt with in terms of howyou innovate and create value,
moving forward, and this ideaand the series that we're up
(40:19):
with for 2025 here is thischange I wouldn't even say
change of management, I wouldjust say it's transformation of
how we rethink creating valuefor companies and multifamily,
and this is obviously a topicthat we wanted to explore.
For those of you that arelistening, I encourage you to
(40:41):
reach out to Jason and ask him.
I've got a great team to sharewhat they can do for you for
your reasons.
But that's up to you to decideand figure out and prioritize.
I like the idea of what yousaid around rethinking your
communication strategy.
Ultimately, even if you'redoing other things, this is the
enabler of all of it.
(41:01):
All of it and you know, justkind of putting a bow tie on
that is.
Are there any other finalthings you guys want to share
with our time together today?
Just because we're coming upand I know we'll have you back,
we'll talk more about otherthings.
I think that, jason, you have apassion for the organizational
change.
I know, jim, you're getting itdone together.
There'll be more to discuss,but for today, any other final
(41:25):
thoughts you want to leave ourlisteners with and I'll go with
you Jim, first, and then we'lllet Jason wrap it up.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
You know, I think well for anybody that's
listening to this now andthey're not a member of the
Multifamily Innovation Councilget on there.
It's a great outlet and ashameless plug for you, patrick,
but I'm telling you, I get moreout of those Friday meetings
and learn about these types ofproducts and these types of
solutions and how we use themthan probably any other group
(41:55):
that I'm a member of, so it's afantastic option.
Secondly, in terms of Cinco,they're probably one of the best
vendors we've worked with interms of being able to work with
us on our specific needs andreally trying to understand what
issues, what we were trying tosolve and what would be best for
(42:17):
us.
And, given that we're a littlebit different in our structure
than everybody else, they werewilling to come and meet us
where we were and provide asolution that worked for us and,
like I said, we don't see thatvery often from our vendors.
They want thatone-size-fits-all, and these
guys have been great to dealwith.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
That's awesome, jason , any.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah, look, I would say first of all mirror Jim's
enthusiastic support of thecouncil.
It's been great, not only thecalls, but the in-person event
was just one of the council.
It's been great both.
Not only the calls but thein-person event was just one of
the best I've ever been to andit's been great to meet so many
talented folks out there.
I would say sort of two things.
(42:56):
Number one you know Jim and Ihave become, have gone from a
cold call many months ago tofriends and you know I wish that
the world were as open-mindedas Jim.
I mean, I reached out earnestlybecause I was so kind of
intrigued by his LinkedInprofile of being a
centralization master and like,yeah, he was like happy to jump
(43:18):
on the phone and share somethoughts.
So then, you know, showed himwhat we're working on.
He had some great thoughts andjust sort of blossomed from
there.
So open-mindedness is awonderful quality and I
encourage people to stay curious, I think you know.
The second thing that I wouldsay about Cinco, but generally
about the world, is when peoplethink about new software
initiatives, oftentimes they'restuck in the like.
(43:40):
I remember when I implementedYardi, right and like what that
felt like.
And now, as you know, patrick,when you know, in the age of AI,
right, where it's like youthink of something and 18
seconds later you have a workproduct that you could have
never dreamed of, right, andsimilarly, I think Synco is
always 100 times easier thanpeople imagine it to be and
(44:04):
people actually like using itbecause they're coming from a
place of pain and it's a painthat has been creeping and
sustained for so long that theydon't realize they're in the
boiling pot.
It's only once that you showthem what communication could be
like that they say oh, this isactually much more pleasant and
this is culture building and itmakes my job easier and it et
(44:25):
cetera, et cetera.
But you know, we train peopleand they are using it 15 minutes
later.
It's not like a Yardiimplementation.
So you know, I thank you forthe, for the shout out.
I encourage, you know, anyonewho wants to chat with me to to
reach out with me.
I'm sure we'll put in thecomments, but team Cinco
S-Y-N-C-Ocom.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I love it.
I love it and thank you for thegood wishes there.
I mean, we love having you guys, and your contribution to the
council is what makes it reallyspecial, and I like what you
said, jason, about show themwhat's possible.
Out here in Scottsdale and eventhe Phoenix Valley, we have
Waymo the self.
You know driving vehicles andyou know I was in an Uber and we
(45:11):
were in a destination from onespot to the other and halfway
through the destination, youknow, the driver started getting
erratic and you know, lookingback, I realized that he was
racing to get our ride done sowe could get to the next and
pick up the next ride.
So the incentives were a littlemisaligned, you know, and so
(45:33):
that encouraged us.
There was enough pain there togo like, wow, that was crazy.
We saw Waymo drive by and Iwent and got the app and, uh, it
was super easy, and and uh andisn't it amazing how fast you
get comfortable with somethinglike that.
Yeah, but you know, what wasfunny is when I um opened the
app, it said the most umexperienced driver is on the way
(45:57):
, like uh, it was.
It was almost like, yeah, youknow what they.
They have driven.
Uh, you know more than mebecause the thing is doing miles
and miles.
But you have to just experienceit to appreciate it and I would
imagine you probably have thosebenefits as well where you can
(46:17):
get people on a call.
I've seen it up close.
So I do encourage anythingthat's going to help
organizations move productivelythrough change, because there's
the status quo Keep doing whatyou're doing Linear, and you're
going to get outpaced by thecompetition.
Or there's radical change whereyou're ripping things out, and
that's never good.
You're leaving people behind.
(46:38):
But being able to productivelymove through change in a way
that is helpful for the businessand employees and all that
stuff, I mean we're all in forthat.
So keep us updated.
I would love to jump on withmore people making bold moves
and making businesses better,and that's the purpose of what
we're doing here.
(46:58):
So I appreciate you guysjumping on to do that.
We'll let you get back to workand we'll put in the show notes
ways that you guys can reach outto both of these guys and
hopefully not flood their uhappointments, but uh, make it
useful for you guys and whatyou're working on.
So with that, uh we'll wrap anduh we'll see you in the next
one.
All right, well, welcome back.
Today.
What we're doing is we'retalking about the biggest
challenges of multifamilyoperations and that can be
oftentimes simple ascommunication and, more
specifically, we're talkingabout how decentralized let me
just say disjointedcommunication is holding teams
(00:20):
back is holding teams back, andmany of you know this.
This is communication at themaintenance level, the
operational level, investmentlevel, vendor level.
There's all kinds of thingsthat rely on this to make
business happen.
And I've got two industryleaders here joined with us
today on the podcast.
They've looked at this insideout.
(00:41):
I have Jim Rostel.
He's the chief operatingofficer at Anchor Northwest
Property Group and Jim is he'sbeen a recognized leader in this
.
He's centralized already hisproperty management and he has
is serving the council with thisdeep expertise on.
You know, the things that arenecessary in operations, sales,
(01:06):
marketing, customer experienceand he's built this already
right.
He's implemented a fullyintegrated centralized
management system and many ofyou know and he's been seen on
expert panels around speakingand obviously he's seen in the
council talking about this as anexpert.
So a lot of people respect himaround this conversation.
(01:26):
He has a different point ofview on this.
And then also we've got JasonGriffith.
He's a co-founder and co-CEO ofSynco and Synco is this
real-time really one of the mostbeautiful softwares I will say
I've seen.
But it's a real-time messagingplatform and it's built
(01:48):
specifically for propertymanagement teams.
You start to think about thetools we use today and they're
not really built for the uniquebusiness operation.
But Jason's been just aseasoned veteran around prop
tech.
He's done some great thingsbefore this and I'm always
excited to watch him what hebuilds.
But Synco is designed toeliminate this email overload
(02:12):
and you're looking at not justdirect communication that you
may do with peers and colleaguesand investors, vendors, all
that stuff but also at theproperty level, the direct, even
the unit level, right, thiscommunication and what we're
aiming to do here is how do wethink about integrating all this
communication seamlessly intothe systems that we already use,
(02:35):
right?
That's a nice thing to havethat too.
So Jason's going to help usunderstand that point of view on
the tools and the tech thathelp solve some of the things.
I wanted to bring Jim on here,who's working through those
things.
So, jim, I'd love to start withyou on this.
We had a call or we talked inanother form around this sort of
(02:56):
most obvious and glaringlimitation that happens if
you're centralizing, when yourteams are using all these
different things to communicatein these systems.
Take me through what that waslike before you made some
certain investments in Synco andsome other initiatives.
What was that like before andwhat is that like now in terms
(03:19):
of communication in all thesedisparate systems?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Thanks, patrick.
I think in general, you look atany organization any
organization I've been a part ofover my 30 plus year career and
the one thing that all greatorganizations have in common is
they're great communicators.
And the reality is and whatSynco has done that I think is
really brilliant here is they'recreating a product specific for
(03:44):
our industry, right, specificto our needs and understanding
the nuances of what we do andallowing us to improve our
communication process.
So if you look at anyorganization, any type of change
, any type of thing you're goingthrough, you want to make sure
you have a communicationstrategy and a platform on which
you can communicate amongstdepartments, amongst individuals
, and do so in a manner that isorganized and scalable.
(04:11):
So you know, for us, you know,we've always been pretty much
centralized, like from theget-go.
That's just the way we evolved.
But what we found after gosh 10years of being centralized was
that the communication piece wasvery, very difficult for us and
that everything in our systemis very siloed.
(04:33):
So very rarely do you have oneperson that takes a job from
point A to point Z.
It goes through multiple peoplethroughout that process.
To give you an idea, if youlease a property with us, you're
going to meet with fivedifferent people by the time you
move in right, and so if youdon't have great communication
structure amongst that process,throughout that process, you're
(04:56):
going to have problems.
So, yes, communication isprobably one of the most
important things that we haveand that leads to our success in
a centralized model.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, and I would say , jason, just building on that
from what Jim is setting up interms of the communication,
obviously we want to do things,but we need great companies
communicate very well.
Talk to us about what you'vebuilt and how you're going about
solving that.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, so maybe a little bit of background on how
I got here.
As you had mentioned, patrick,I'm a two-time entrepreneur in
the prop tech space.
My previous company, sitecomply, built up over a decade.
We were really focused in theNew York market, helping leading
owners and managers with amillion units on the system
(05:49):
maintain compliance with thecrazy local laws that exist in
New York.
So we really got a front rowseat in terms of how people
communicate with critical issues, sold that business to Inhabit
and joined up with myco-founders and we just started
(06:09):
interviewing a lot ofmultifamily executives and what
we heard over and over, similarto what Jim said, was the
following you take a typicalproperty manager they get 300
emails a day.
You've got people on alldifferent sorts of communication
systems and you stop and thinkwhen you first ask someone how
(06:33):
do you communicate, they mightanswer Outlook or Teams, right.
But then when you just sort ofpeel back the layer a little bit
, what they say is well, we useTeams over here, we use it for
video calls, sometimes we chat,but we get 300 emails a day.
But also we use text messagingand, of course, our field team
sometimes use WhatsApp andsomewhere between.
(06:54):
All of that is how wecommunicate, and what struck us
was that this is an industrythat has gotten very used to, on
the accounting side, having acentralized platform.
I mean, it would be crazy ifyou said, well, where do you
keep your rent information?
Oh well, we keep it somewherebetween these seven systems.
No, you have Yardi or Resmin orwhat have you right.
(07:17):
So you bring a new propertymanager very easy to say show me
the history of rent paymentsfor this building, for this unit
.
But you bring in that sameproperty manager who wants to
see the history of teamcommunication for that same unit
.
That's impossible, and I thinkthat this industry has almost
been like a frog boiling in thepot.
(07:38):
It's just such a painfulproduct problem that has gotten
progressively worse over time asoperations have gotten more
complicated, that people justbecome accustomed to living in
the pain right.
And so what we built at Syncowas a centralized communication
(07:59):
platform for communicationsacross the enterprise, from
boardroom to boiler room, whereall communications are on one
platform.
It's in real time, itunderstands what buildings are,
what units are.
It organizes all of thosecommunications by building, by
unit, by project, by vendor,what have you.
(08:20):
It interacts with the outsideworld in the same way that
property management firms do allday long and I think,
importantly, it starts talkingto your other systems as well.
So that's the basics of what webuilt, and I think Jim is just
a great example of how hemarried the concept of
(08:43):
centralization, which is soimportant to our industry, with
technology to make sure that youunlock the full potential of a
centralization program wheredifferent teams and groups and
people can be seamlesslyinteracting to make that as
frictionless as possible.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, jim, I have a question for you, and
Jason was talking about you know, we we tend to grow accustomed
to uh scenarios that why do wehold on to these situations that
aren't serving us, uh, for solong?
Uh, maybe it's just not a lotof well, first of all, there's
not a lot of options for whatyou've created, right?
(09:21):
So, uh, you're in a good.
But why do you think, jim,people accept these conditions
of you know, do theseworkarounds and end up in all
these different channels tocommunicate and it could be
passed on to other things?
We do accept conditions,sometimes far too long.
Anything you want to share onthat one.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, no, I think it's true If any company, any
industry, that people getcomfortable and they do what
they're comfortable doing.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
If I know how to do something.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That's how I'm going to do it right, wrong or
otherwise right and so having tolearn something new is always
going to be a bit of a lift foremployees.
Some people are going to beeager to do it, other people are
going to be resistant and gofrom there, but I mean, I think
it's just that comfort level.
Once you get into this, onceyou get into a new system that
(10:13):
works, it truly works you findthat people at that point will
never want to go back, right.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So you know you've got a good product in your hand,
but people are like no, we needthat, we have to stay with this
yeah, and let me dive intosomething a little bit more
specific around what the problemaround the you know, having
this information in all thesedifferent places, what, what are
the risks that could go wrongthere?
(10:38):
You know, nine months after asituation, you know, and then
you know how even litigious ourindustry can be.
Or you know you've got to provesomething, or or it could be
anything from employment tolegal to incidents at properties
.
How important is it to get thisstuff right and get ownership,
(11:00):
this data, in other words, right?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, it's huge.
It's huge.
We had an incident last yearwhere we lost an entire property
to a busted sprinkler systemand eight months later a lawsuit
shows up on our doorstep anddiscovery and they want every
piece of communication that wentin from the time that pipe
broke until three weeksafterwards.
(11:24):
And the reality was this iseight months later.
We have one person that leftthe company and we cleaned his
phone off and there was norecord of any of his text
messages at that point.
And just the time it took forus to gather all that
communications from emails, fromgetting individuals' phones and
texts, emails from gettingindividual's phones and texts
(11:47):
from Teams messages and justfiguring out where they are was
huge.
I mean, it was a huge, hugeproblem for us.
We have since obviously switchedto Synco, so everything on
every event goes into Synco.
So if I need anything at thispoint with this new solution, I
just go there.
We have a thread set up forthat specific issue and
everything we have is right inone slot.
It doesn't matter if peoplehave left the company or not.
(12:08):
We keep the information on thecloud and it's there for our
access at any time.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
This is one of those questions like as an executive,
once you make the move to a newway, why would you go back if
you had that?
Jason, tell me a little bitmore about how that happens,
Maybe even technically or, youknow, with the platform.
Uh, Jim's talking about a lotof risk management stuff.
I start to bring the gravity ofour fiduciary responsibility to
make sure that we minimize thisrisk.
(12:34):
What, uh, what are yourthoughts there?
Or maybe take us through howthis works?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, there's a lot of different levels here, but
like the nuts and bolts of itare.
The first thing that we say islike, if you step back and
really think about this, it isludicrous to run your business
on text and WhatsApp.
I mean, with WhatsApp, you areliterally locked out of your own
information, right, becauseit's all you know, it's on the
phone, it's secure.
(13:00):
And with text, I mean, again,you don't want someone sharing
pictures of their kid at homeand then suddenly sensitive
information about the firmbecause it's all in one place,
et cetera.
That's sort of bucket one, Ithink, from a just risk
mitigation, best practicesperspective.
But I think the second thingthat we find fascinating is, you
(13:23):
know, I think most people inthis industry use Outlook on
some level, right.
And when we speak to people andthey talk about information
organization, it's absolutelyfascinating, especially when you
compare it to what they livewith right now, with Yardi or
Entrata or what have you, whichis most people will say that
they spend a good chunk of timeevery day if they're trying to
(13:45):
be organized, literally draggingmessages on Outlook into
folders, right, I mean, I'vebeen in a room with 13
executives where each one saysthat they spend an hour, and
what's so fascinating about thatis like that's all well and
good for the executive.
I mean, I don't know if it'swell and good because it's still
an hour of your time every day,but it doesn't do any good for
(14:06):
the organization, right?
So you bring in a new executive.
They they still start from zero.
They start from a zero inbox.
Hey everybody Patrick's newhere Bring them up to speed.
Suddenly you have 100 forwardedchains and you're like that's
the norm.
(14:26):
And you know, we just thought toourselves, like man, in an
industry where you see turnoverrates as high as they are, you
need to be able to bring peopleup to speed on the history of
team communications just as fastas you would bring them up to
speed with important accountinginformation.
And so the way it works onsynco is that when you're having
a thread of a conversation witha topic, one person can say you
(14:47):
know, this topic is about unit4B at the Hillcrest and, unlike
Outlook, where that's anindividual exercise that is now
organized for everybody who hasaccess to that thread, and
whether that's the person whoyou know, whether that's a GM,
right, who's looking in on that,or whether that's the person
who comes here two years fromthat's a GM, right?
Who's looking in on that?
Or whether that's the personwho comes here two years from
now who is in charge of thatbuilding, who now wants to get a
(15:10):
history down to the unit level.
So that's sort of the mechanicsof how it works.
But I think it's just soimportant to say, a we need to
be on one system and B, thatsystem needs to be organized and
aligned with the way thatcompanies do business.
And, let's face it, ourindustry is very unique, prior
(15:33):
to Synco, I think, and look,we're still a young, growing
company.
Most people are using the samesoftware for communications that
the local dog kennel and thebarber shop and the barbershop
and the Department of Defenseuse.
It has nothing to do withproperty management, which is
why the current way of doingbusiness causes so much pain.
(15:53):
And I think the other thing Iwould say is Jim spoke about a
very acute issue, a lawsuit,which is very real, but just the
day-to-day pain, right.
I mean, I remember there's agreat organization, swift Bunny,
which talks a lot about teamcommunication, and they had
released a report last year thattalked about the frustrations
(16:17):
that drive a lot of the turnoverin the industry where you're a
property manager or a regionalmanager and you're sitting there
waiting for the person belowyou and the person above you to
get back to you and you're justwaiting and you can't do your
job and you want to do your joband they're just like oh, I'm
sorry, you were one of 312emails I got today and I'll get
to it at some point, but I thinkwe've really been able to.
(16:40):
As Jim can tell you, cincomakes everything faster and
you're not buried in that samemountain.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Hmm, Jim, anything you can share You've been
through.
Are you guys on board fully orare you in process?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, we're fully on board and we have been for gosh
now four trigger on this thingand I'll be honest with you just
fully transparent, not theentire executive team was on
board.
I mean, that was something thatwe got some people 75% of the
way there.
The people that were not onboard are the people that are
the biggest champions of it now.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
This goes back to that comment you made about
they're comfortable doing thisforever.
One way right Making that shiftis, you know, overestimated in
terms of the challenges.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, they're comfortable.
I mean, I think the initialresponse in the pushback we got
internally was it doesn't reallydo anything that we don't
already do.
And to some extent that's true.
You know you can get a GeoMetro car and it does the same
thing a Mercedes does.
Right, it's going to drive youfrom point A to point B.
You may have some issues, youmay not get there as quickly,
(18:04):
but you know you'll get thereright Once you get on board.
This is not what it does.
It's how it does it and howmuch power it gives you in
retrospect.
Right, it's like taking all ofyour communications from all of
your if you've got site teams wedon't.
But if you have site teams,from all your site teams, from
all your regional management,from all your executive people,
(18:24):
putting it in one place.
And not only putting it in oneplace but putting it in a filing
cabinet where you can find thatcommunication.
What happened at this eviction?
That was three months ago?
What was the communication?
Internal communications.
Well, here's so-and-so talkedto so-and-so.
You've got it all in one placeand you can look and search it
and pull it all up.
In the current system, in theprevious system we had, we
didn't have that ability, wecould potentially find something
(18:46):
.
We'd spend hours and hours andhours Was that an email?
Was that a text?
Was that a WhatsApp message ora Teams message?
And you just didn't know whereto look.
And sometimes someone reachesout in Teams and the other
person responds in text, andit's just a big mess.
Right, this puts it all in oneplace, it organizes it for you,
it gives you search options.
It's just a really, reallypowerful tool for your
(19:08):
communication solution.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
You're a KPI guy, right.
How has that improved theability for you to make either
portfolio or decisions in thisprocess, or even oversee
operations?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I am a metrics guy all day long and this is a hard
one for me because most of thetime I'll look at a product,
someone will come to me and I'llsay you know what?
are we doing that already, anddoes this make it better?
Right?
So if we're spending that money, can I spend it and get a
better result?
And that's an easy one.
If I'm not spending money onthat solution, then how does
that impact my financial, right?
That's always what I'm lookingat.
(19:42):
I want to know that's myscorecard.
This is so hard to see on how itimpacts your financial, and
that's where there's got to be alittle bit of a leap of faith
in there and go where are we atand what problems and how do we
solve this faster?
Right?
How do we become more efficient?
And that doesn't always show upin a KPI for solutions such as
(20:05):
this, right.
And so I think in general, wefound in the first four months
that we are more efficient,we're communicating better,
we're not seeing as manyproblems and let's face it, I
mean, I think anybody that'sbeen in the industry will tell
you a majority of the issues werun into are due to poor
communication.
They're not due to somebody notwanting to do their job or
(20:26):
somebody being lazy.
It's usually the ball gotdropped somewhere along the line
, someone didn't communicateproperly, a message was missed,
that type of thing, and thoseare the things that are hard to
quantify in a KPI, right.
So if you're just eliminatingthose, anecdotally eliminating
those problems, you don't havethose issues popping up.
That's a step in the rightdirection.
And for Cinco, like I said, thepeople that were probably the
(20:49):
most hesitant are the biggestchampions at this point.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And that speaks volumes for us.
Yeah, and I'm sure Jason hassome reflection on that as he's
talking to industry-wideexecutives around this challenge
when you rolled it out andknowing that, just as humans, we
want to do, like you mentioned,what's comfortable, what we're
known to do, what gives usconfidence, all that stuff, when
you're making that move, thattransition, how did you lead
(21:18):
through that number one?
And maybe Jason, you guys canbanter back and forth on how you
work together on that.
And then, were there anythingspecific that the team noticed
in the process where theystarted to have the ahas and
they became the believers, right?
That's what I'm curious about.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, I can start with that.
We worked with Cinco closelyand we first rolled it out just
to the executive team Like playwith it, find out how it works,
figure out how you want to setup your threads, your individual
chats, what groups you want toset up that type of stuff.
So we put probably 60 daysworth of thought just into the
(22:02):
foundation and the structure,knowing that we weren't going to
be 100% right, but the closerwe could get to the way we
wanted to be ultimately, thebetter off we'd be.
So we've got everybody thereand that was a big deal for us
because that took some of theexecutive people that might've
been hesitant and turned theminto believers right away.
So that when we did start toroll it out to our field
(22:22):
personnel specifically ourmaintenance and our leasing
people everybody had buy-in.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Not only did they have buy-in.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
They had answers for the questions that came up
because they had already askedthose questions.
They had already been throughthat and said what happens if,
and they got those answers.
And, like I said, the trainingpiece for for cinco was
fantastic.
Aaron, who headed that up forus, was amazing.
He's a really, really good guyand that made the whole process
easier as well.
But I think if we did it on atiered approach, I think that
(22:51):
was the key to having asuccessful change for us.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So I think Jim brings up a really important point
here, because you know, I thinkwhere Jim and team were before
is where a lot of people are,which is you just sort of have
these organic processes that arelike, yep, I know how to sort
of get a message over to Jim orMelissa or what have you, and it
just kind of grows up, it justhappens right.
(23:17):
And I think what we really sawin Jim's rollout was like this
deeply thoughtful process wherethey weren't actually they
weren't just thinking aboutCinco, they were really
rethinking their communicationstrategy, and I think that
that's why they got suchthinking about Cinco.
They were really rethinkingtheir communication strategy and
(23:40):
I think that that's why theygot such as Jim pointed out such
a tremendous buy-in of likewe're going to be thoughtful
about how we want things tohappen when incidents occur.
And I think, maybe even goingback to your ROI question for
companies out there who are notas far along as where Anchor is
in terms of centralization, Imean, people are putting
millions of dollars worth ofmanpower over years into these
(24:00):
centralization efforts andwhat's sort of amazing to us is
like they're making hugeorganizational changes and then
the part that's kind of not evenbeing talked about is like,
well, that team tends to useWhatsApp and this team tends to
use Outlook and no one eventalks about that, right, and
then the rubber meets the roadand they figure things out in
(24:22):
not a thoughtful way, but justsay here's kind of the organic
way it happened, then it's kindof a mess.
So I think the thing that youknow worked very well is that,
you know this, the spirit ofstrategy development, the spirit
of partnership, worked greatbetween our two teams.
And, um, you know, I think theother thing that that Jim and
(24:42):
team have really embraced is thefact that you know there's a
double-edged sword to to workingwith a young company like us.
We're certainly not Microsoft,right, but what the benefit of
that is that this is a perpetualwork in progress, like we're
talking to the anchor teamweekly, right, and we're working
(25:04):
through, you know, featurerequests and changes that
they're looking for.
That's how the product getsbetter.
We only build this product forone audience, and so I think the
folks who are coming onto thesystem now not only want to
benefit from the collectivewisdom of folks like Jim, but
want to be part of shaping thatfuture and say I have a vision
(25:27):
about how this should work inthe AI age of property
management, in you know name anyof the range of changes that
are on the horizon, becausethey're all going to affect
communication, all of them, andthat's why we've put a, you know
, real emphasis in terms ofworking with our clients to
develop new features andfunctionality.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah, you know you may beevaluating those other
initiatives and if you don't getthe communication right, it may
be that the steps that weretaken in other initiatives may
not even be an isolated,truthful assessment of what's
working and what's not working.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, I mean, I think my biggest challenge as an
executive, and what we spend alot of time trying to
communicate to our prospects,really is that I think that
there's different types oftechnology, right, there's point
solution technology out therethat may improve a specific
function, and then there's morebroad-based, enabling technology
(26:28):
which improves your ability todo other things, technology
which improves your ability todo other things.
And I think you know what weobviously like to avoid is a
situation where someone's likewell, you know, I've got the AI
initiative, I've got the Yardiupgrade, I've got this, I've got
that, I've got that and I'vegot you.
And where do I put you in thatgroup?
And I think you know andfortunately, thanks to you know
(26:50):
wonderful clients like, like Jim, you know they will tell others
like it would be very hard togo back to the old way and do
anything difficult, right, Imean, I'm I'm a Cinco user
myself.
If somebody said to me go outand do X, where X is something
hard moving offices, changingyour branding, implementing a
(27:10):
new system, anything right, andI had to go back to some mix of
email and text message andWhatsApp, like that would be
awful, right, I mean, I would doit three times slower, right?
So you know, we've used Syncoas this kind of enabling
technology which makes all otherefforts easier to do, and I
(27:31):
think that's you know, that'sthe message we're trying to get
out, and I'm glad to see Timshaking his head in agreement.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, no, it's great.
And when you say that, Jason,it reminds me a little bit of
what we did before.
We had PMS software, right, westill ran our business, we still
managed everything.
Everything was paper files,everything was done.
Could you imagine going back tothat and trying to do that
again without your PMS software?
And again, when you talk aboutROI, it's hard to look at your
(27:56):
PMS software and say where doesthat show up on my financial
right?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
It's my biggest expense.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It's everybody's biggest software expense, right,
but it's hard to measure andthis is one of those things that
at some point people are goingto go.
What did we do before there wasSenco?
How did we manage to keep allour communications there?
Right, and I think it's like Isaid, I really appreciate the
solution and we're big fans.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, is there anything more you can share
about the?
I mean, you mentioned your.
Your executive team rolled itout.
But like, specifically, I knowpeople are thinking, listening
to this, thinking like how wouldthey go about it?
I know your portfolio may bedifferent than others, some are
smaller, some are larger, someare third party and all of that
stuff.
Like, how would you be thinkingabout this if you're outside of
(28:44):
your organization and you're,you know, you've already, you've
already sometimes, when we wecan appreciate what we
understand when we do it, versusobserving it, and so, like
knowing what you've observed,what advice would you give to
others thinking through this?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
thinking through this .
I think a couple of things.
One is just you know, obviouslyand I think most people have
this a good grip on what you'redoing now, like what happens and
where are we at with ourcommunication strategy now, like
just a self-assessment, that'shonest, and is this really
working for us or not?
Right, and then you look atthat and you go is this an
(29:27):
improvement?
How much of an improvement?
How is this going to help us?
And then, if so, how do I thenwhat's the best way to roll it
out?
So with us, because we'recentralized, we won't roll a
software out on one or twoproperties.
If we're rolling it out, it isthe entire portfolio.
That's just the way we operate.
Right, we have a veryhomogenous tech stack and it
(29:48):
works across the entireportfolio and we couldn't do
just single properties in mostinstances.
I should say I think if I am alarger operator and I still have
onsite staff and that type ofstuff, I think it makes sense to
be able to roll it out to aproperty or two properties,
staff and that type of stuff.
I think it makes sense to beable to roll it out to a
property or two properties andget it going on those properties
(30:09):
as well as the administrativeteam and the executive team, and
they need to be on it.
And the great thing is for usis I don't have to be actively
involved in a conversation topop in and see what's going on
and then make decisionselsewhere based on that
information.
Last night my Cinco went off at1030 at night and I looked and
(30:31):
our garage door was broken onone of our properties.
But I watched thatcommunication for about 45
minutes.
I know it's 1030 at night, it'sa problem, but that's what I do
and make sure it was all undercontrol.
I didn't have to say a word,but I could see all the steps
they were taking.
All the communication was goingback and forth and it was fine.
I left alone.
If they had gone awry, had gonesideways, had done something
(30:52):
wrong, then I could have poppedin and said hey, by the way, we
need to blast the tenants, letthem know to get their cars out
during the event, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So a key difference between Cinco and email is that
on email, the person who'sinitiating the email is the one
deciding whose inbox it goesinto, which is so messed up if
you think about the world thatwe live in.
Right, like, they usually aregoing to get it wrong, they're
going to not guess right.
And so in the world prior toCinco, in the world of email,
(31:36):
there's always someone sayingwell, where are we on that?
Because they didn't know aboutthat other email, because they
weren't CC'd right, or they wereCC'd on a whole bunch of the
wrong emails and it was bearingin their inbox.
And with Cinco, what happens isJim, as COO, has visibility
into all the different teams andwhat they're doing, but Jim
gets to decide what nature ofmessages should actually notify
(32:00):
him at 1030, right?
So easier, obviously, to showin a demo, and I'm always it's
my favorite thing to do is givea demo of Cinco, so I was happy
to do that, but it reallyprovides a sense of transparency
that didn't exist before, Ithink.
The other thing that I wouldmention is and I don't know if
(32:21):
Jim and team are actively usingthis, this feature, as much as
others, but like we try to comeup with instant delight type of
features.
So, for example, one of themost popular features that we
have is real-time translation,and this has been really
especially effective with fieldteams, where you have folks who
(32:42):
can speak or type in anylanguage they want and it is
translated in real time andlands in the inbox in the
language of the recipient.
And what we found is that's thetype of thing where, when
you're trying to get thatorganizational change to be able
to say to someone who may below-tech or tech-phobic or what
(33:04):
have you, you don't have to type, you don't even have to, you
can just speak.
And not only that, you canspeak in your native tongue and
know that the other person'sgoing to get the message and
that you can be as verbose asyou'd like and you don't have to
try to speak English as asecond language.
Like that was a huge unlock,one of several, but we try to
(33:25):
mix those things in to make thatkind of rollout more seamless.
But, like Jim said, there aresome companies that have rolled
out with us and they've startedout with a region and executive
team and then expanded beyondthat over time.
I think Jim was very, verythoughtful in the process, where
he was definitely a measurethree times cut.
(33:47):
Once, you know, we met severaltimes with his team, going over
it again and again to make surethat we got everything
configured right.
The team really became expertsin it and then they engaged in a
really effective train, thetrainer process, which you know.
We're now taking a.
You know, taking a page fromthat playbook and using that for
(34:07):
other new clients.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
That's good.
You know, I start to thinkabout these off the shelf
solutions that people are mosteverybody is using right now.
Right, and you developed thisspecific tool for our suite of
tools here for enabling manyother things that they may be
working on in their business.
How has the collaboration gonein terms of making the product
(34:34):
better?
I imagine, Jason, you're on aroadmap of continuous innovation
and progress.
What's that been like in termsof working with customers and
building with them as much asshowing them what you've built?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yeah, I mean, I've actually I've really appreciated
and I'll say that that comesfrom a place of deep experience.
So my previous company was moreof a passive product, meaning
like when something wascatastrophically wrong we would
alert people about it and thatwas the core of the product and
even though it's evolved overtime, like 90% of the value
(35:13):
while I was there was drivenfrom that core right.
So we kind of had a sense oflike here's what we need to
build.
But with Synco being one of thefour icons in the bottom of
their screen, like the level ofscrutiny, the level of
engagement, the level offeedback that we get is
unbelievable.
(35:33):
I mean, I have a list of 100fantastic ideas that you know.
Every month we me and my teamsit there and be like how do we
prioritize which of these greatideas we're going to do next
there, and be like how do weprioritize which of these great
ideas we're going to do next?
And you know so we've.
Really my product team's job iswhen we start hearing about
things.
We, you know.
(36:00):
We then go back to our clientslike Jim and pressure, test them
and really try to get at whatis the underlying issue.
There we come up with multipleapproaches, we show them
screenshots.
The underlying issue there wecome up with multiple approaches
, we show them screenshots, sowe really develop in concert
with our clients.
Which when was the last timeMicrosoft showed up at your door
and said, hey, how can wereally improve Teams?
Obviously, that's just not howthey operate, because they're
(36:21):
operating from a much wider,broader audience and I think the
folks who are coming on to theplatform like that type of
engagement and I think itcertainly makes our product.
It gives us an unfair advantagein the market.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, I can contribute to that a little bit
that they have been great interms of listening to feedback.
The product we have today isfantastic the way it stands, but
the exciting part is theycontinue to improve it for us
and they look at our specificfeedback and what our specific
needs are and they're buildingfor that and that is worth its
(36:58):
weight in gold.
And, like to Jason's point,Microsoft's not doing that Teams
, you know they don't care whatwe think or how our product
works, and these guys have beengreat about that.
So, yeah, no, I appreciate thatquite a bit.
We have a saying here If itdidn't happen, if it's not in
Synco, it didn't happen.
So we're trying to geteverything we do, all our
communication, even ourdocuments.
(37:18):
When someone emails usdocuments outside of Synco, we
bring them into the conversationthey're germane to, and so
we've got everything right thereready to go at any point in
time.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
So we've spent a lot of time on not just like deep
integrations with Yardi and theother big systems, but with
let's call it out of the box,light touch integration with all
the other software that's outthere, and Jim alluded to that.
When we were talking withclients and we asked them, well,
(37:49):
what's the nature of the 300emails in your inbox?
And a big chunk of what theytalked about was actually output
from other systems.
Well, I bought this boilernotification system.
It's constantly sending mealerts.
Or I bought this securitysystem and it's constantly
sending this or that type ofstuff.
And so one of the features thatwe built is the ability to pipe
(38:13):
those emails directly into Syncoto the right groups with the
right notifications and filing,so that all of these other
systems they actually get morevaluable as you bring them in.
And whether it's a system or,to Jim's point, someone emails
you something, you can forwardthat right into Synco and then
start collaborating immediatelywith the team.
But like none of those featureswere there on version one, they
(38:37):
only came from feedback fromclients saying, hey, you know
I'm using Synco, but how do Iget this email in here?
So it's been.
It's very fortunate in that wehave people who are very engaged
with the product.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, yeah, I really like what you said.
You guys Both of you aligned onthis as the stepping back a
little bit and thinking throughyour communication strategy.
You know, I know there's moreto each company and they
probably should just jump on acall with you, jason, and figure
it out for them, because everycompany has their unique
(39:13):
investment objectives,priorities, all of those things,
and it's one that encouragesmore deeper thought or deeper
conversation.
I know what I wanted to do herewas really support the
initiative.
See, you know, technologymoving so fast it's changing
(39:33):
other parts of the business and,to the notification system you
just described, it's making itmore of a challenge, you know,
with all these different toolsand point solutions coming into
our systems and communications.
I think it was Dr GeorgeWesterman who said that
technology moves fast because itcan be programmed and it
(39:55):
typically does what we tell itto do in programs, whereas
companies move slowly becausethere's people involved and
there's fears and there'suncertainty and there's levels
of comfort and there's pastsuccess, and all of that needs
to be dealt with in terms of howyou innovate and create value,
moving forward, and this ideaand the series that we're up
(40:19):
with for 2025 here is thischange I wouldn't even say
change of management, I wouldjust say it's transformation of
how we rethink creating valuefor companies and multifamily,
and this is obviously a topicthat we wanted to explore.
For those of you that arelistening, I encourage you to
(40:41):
reach out to Jason and ask him.
I've got a great team to sharewhat they can do for you for
your reasons.
But that's up to you to decideand figure out and prioritize.
I like the idea of what yousaid around rethinking your
communication strategy.
Ultimately, even if you'redoing other things, this is the
enabler of all of it.
(41:01):
All of it and you know, justkind of putting a bow tie on
that is.
Are there any other finalthings you guys want to share
with our time together today?
Just because we're coming upand I know we'll have you back,
we'll talk more about otherthings.
I think that, jason, you have apassion for the organizational
change.
I know, jim, you're getting itdone together.
There'll be more to discuss,but for today, any other final
(41:25):
thoughts you want to leave ourlisteners with and I'll go with
you Jim, first, and then we'lllet Jason wrap it up.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
You know, I think well for anybody that's
listening to this now andthey're not a member of the
Multifamily Innovation Councilget on there.
It's a great outlet and ashameless plug for you, patrick,
but I'm telling you, I get moreout of those Friday meetings
and learn about these types ofproducts and these types of
solutions and how we use themthan probably any other group
(41:55):
that I'm a member of, so it's afantastic option.
Secondly, in terms of Cinco,they're probably one of the best
vendors we've worked with interms of being able to work with
us on our specific needs andreally trying to understand what
issues, what we were trying tosolve and what would be best for
(42:17):
us.
And, given that we're a littlebit different in our structure
than everybody else, they werewilling to come and meet us
where we were and provide asolution that worked for us and,
like I said, we don't see thatvery often from our vendors.
They want thatone-size-fits-all, and these
guys have been great to dealwith.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
That's awesome, jason , any.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah, look, I would say first of all mirror Jim's
enthusiastic support of thecouncil.
It's been great, not only thecalls, but the in-person event
was just one of the council.
It's been great both.
Not only the calls but thein-person event was just one of
the best I've ever been to andit's been great to meet so many
talented folks out there.
I would say sort of two things.
(42:56):
Number one you know Jim and Ihave become, have gone from a
cold call many months ago tofriends and you know I wish that
the world were as open-mindedas Jim.
I mean, I reached out earnestlybecause I was so kind of
intrigued by his LinkedInprofile of being a
centralization master and like,yeah, he was like happy to jump
(43:18):
on the phone and share somethoughts.
So then, you know, showed himwhat we're working on.
He had some great thoughts andjust sort of blossomed from
there.
So open-mindedness is awonderful quality and I
encourage people to stay curious, I think you know.
The second thing that I wouldsay about Cinco, but generally
about the world, is when peoplethink about new software
initiatives, oftentimes they'restuck in the like.
(43:40):
I remember when I implementedYardi, right and like what that
felt like.
And now, as you know, patrick,when you know, in the age of AI,
right, where it's like youthink of something and 18
seconds later you have a workproduct that you could have
never dreamed of, right, andsimilarly, I think Synco is
always 100 times easier thanpeople imagine it to be and
(44:04):
people actually like using itbecause they're coming from a
place of pain and it's a painthat has been creeping and
sustained for so long that theydon't realize they're in the
boiling pot.
It's only once that you showthem what communication could be
like that they say oh, this isactually much more pleasant and
this is culture building and itmakes my job easier and it et
(44:25):
cetera, et cetera.
But you know, we train peopleand they are using it 15 minutes
later.
It's not like a Yardiimplementation.
So you know, I thank you forthe, for the shout out.
I encourage, you know, anyonewho wants to chat with me to to
reach out with me.
I'm sure we'll put in thecomments, but team Cinco
S-Y-N-C-Ocom.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I love it.
I love it and thank you for thegood wishes there.
I mean, we love having you guys, and your contribution to the
council is what makes it reallyspecial, and I like what you
said, jason, about show themwhat's possible.
Out here in Scottsdale and eventhe Phoenix Valley, we have
Waymo the self.
You know driving vehicles andyou know I was in an Uber and we
(45:11):
were in a destination from onespot to the other and halfway
through the destination, youknow, the driver started getting
erratic and you know, lookingback, I realized that he was
racing to get our ride done sowe could get to the next and
pick up the next ride.
So the incentives were a littlemisaligned, you know, and so
(45:33):
that encouraged us.
There was enough pain there togo like, wow, that was crazy.
We saw Waymo drive by and Iwent and got the app and, uh, it
was super easy, and and uh andisn't it amazing how fast you
get comfortable with somethinglike that.
Yeah, but you know, what wasfunny is when I um opened the
app, it said the most umexperienced driver is on the way
(45:57):
, like uh, it was.
It was almost like, yeah, youknow what they.
They have driven.
Uh, you know more than mebecause the thing is doing miles
and miles.
But you have to just experienceit to appreciate it and I would
imagine you probably have thosebenefits as well where you can
(46:17):
get people on a call.
I've seen it up close.
So I do encourage anythingthat's going to help
organizations move productivelythrough change, because there's
the status quo Keep doing whatyou're doing Linear, and you're
going to get outpaced by thecompetition.
Or there's radical change whereyou're ripping things out, and
that's never good.
You're leaving people behind.
(46:38):
But being able to productivelymove through change in a way
that is helpful for the businessand employees and all that
stuff, I mean we're all in forthat.
So keep us updated.
I would love to jump on withmore people making bold moves
and making businesses better,and that's the purpose of what
we're doing here.
(46:58):
So I appreciate you guysjumping on to do that.
We'll let you get back to workand we'll put in the show notes
ways that you guys can reach outto both of these guys and
hopefully not flood their uhappointments, but uh, make it
useful for you guys and whatyou're working on.
So with that, uh we'll wrap anduh we'll see you in the next
one.
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