March 27, 2025 • 48 mins
Nicholas Cook shares how Sleep Sound Property Management has created a successful business model in Portland's highly regulated property management environment by focusing on reputation, content creation, and operational excellence. He details their journey from struggling with regulations to leveraging them as opportunities through clear communication, systematic approaches, and building a strong team culture.
• Navigating Portland's tenant-friendly regulations by leaning into challenges rather than fighting them
• Building a differentiated brand through maintaining a 4.5-star Google rating with over 500 reviews
• Creating educational content to position the company as an authority and intercept clients at different decision stages
• Setting clear expectations with clients about communication styles and response times
• Implementing service level agreements requiring tenant emails to be answered within one business day and owner emails within two days
• Using Culture Index for hiring and focusing on careful onboarding to ensure team success
• Tracking key performance indicators tailored to different roles while maintaining flexibility for exceptional situations
• Conducting weekly team meetings to address problems, audit work, and ensure quality control
• Recognizing when something isn't working and having the courage to make necessary team changes
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You have to decide what you want to tell people and
why.
That's gonna help you betterunderstand who your audience is.
And once you better understandwho your audience is, you'll
understand what they're lookingfor.
What are they trying to learn?
Where is their knowledge gap?
Welcome to the.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Property Management Success Podcast, where we
interview leaders in theindustry to uncover the secrets
to profitability, efficiency andachieving true freedom.
Whether it's your time, moneyor lifestyle, I'm your host,
tony Klein, and I'm here to helpyou build a wildly successful
property management business.
Let's get to it.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Property Management
(00:37):
Success Podcast, really excitedto be joined by Nicholas Cook
from Sleep Sound PropertyManagement out in Portland,
oregon.
Nick, welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey, tony, good to be with you.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, absolutely yeah .
You and I have known each otherfor quite a while and I've
never really dug into yourbusiness, and so I'm really
excited to kind of see what youdo there and what's going on out
there in Portland.
I'll start with one of theobvious things, which is when
you talk to property managersacross the country, portland has
a reputation for being sort ofdifficult to operate in, and
(01:16):
they're really tenant-friendlycompared to a lot of the nation,
and I'm curious have you justalways operated in that market?
So it's just, it's no different, or do you see the struggles
and have figured out a way toprovide good value to your
landlords in that space?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, I mean that's a great question.
Well, you know, when I firstgot into property management, it
was just about the time theystarted introducing more of
these regulations to propertymanagement.
It was just about the time theystarted introducing more of
this regulation.
So in many cases, or at leastfrom my experience, I've only
operated in a kind of moreregulated environment, and
that's compounded over time andit's been difficult.
I mean, there's been someserious hurdles that have come
(01:57):
along with that and somefrustrations, and especially
when we talk to people indifferent markets, you know
around America and kind of howthey get to operate, and you
know, it would be one thing, Ithink, if a lot of the
regulations that wereimplemented made logical sense,
then you'd say, ok, I understand, this is a safety issue or
something like that, but they'rereally just ideas that people
(02:19):
want to test and they test themat scale and they test them in a
manner that is pretty draconianand without kind of easing into
the process.
And probably the mostdisappointing aspect of it is
that they've been very resistantto accepting feedback from
people who actually areexecuting on these rules.
So we're just kind of dealingwith those challenges and that's
(02:39):
, I think, probably common alongthe West Coast.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's interesting because you interesting because
you always hear what happens onthe coast moves to the center of
the country.
In Colorado six or seven yearsago it was kind of like the Wild
West.
We had a three-day notice topay or quit.
After three days we could startthe eviction and a lot of the
legislation that you guys havebeen dealing the ones that are
(03:05):
actually figuring out how tonavigate in the marketplace
(03:28):
versus feeling like they'rebeing pinned down.
Obviously, none of us want thatadditional regulation that
governs how we do business, butI think there's something to
leaning into it and takingadvantage of some of these
things.
If we're going to have to dealwith them anyways, let's lean
into it and see how we canbenefit from it.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's kind of thechoice.
Either that, or you go to adifferent market or you find a
different career.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Speaking of career, so let's take our audience back.
So when did you get intoproperty management?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, I got into property management at least
offering the service for thirdparties in 2008.
So I had actually been flippinghouses from 2005 to 2008,
picked up a couple of rentals,and was in school actually
getting a bachelor's degree inreal estate finance.
You know, it seemed like, youknow, kind of a natural
(04:20):
progression for a lot of reasons.
I wanted to be in a businessthat was more stable, that could
be scalable, and I wanted tostart a real estate fund.
At the time, though, I didn'trealize that my lack of
experience was going to be apretty big barrier both to
growing the business but also totrying to start a fund.
It just seemed like something Iwanted to take a swing at.
A lot of it was just beingnaive.
(04:43):
I thought that, you know, myreal estate knowledge from
flipping houses would carry overand I'd be able to manage
rentals from the beach, and thatwas not true at all.
In fact, it was a prettydifficult slog for the first you
know, five, six years to evenbuild up any sort of momentum.
But yeah, so I started in 08,kind of during the whole
(05:04):
financial crisis, you might say.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And so from that point to where you are now, how
big is your company, your team,your portfolio?
Because there's people in ouraudience that are listening at
different plateaus wheresometimes they plateau because
they're comfortable, sometimesthey plateau because they can't.
They haven't figured out how tobreak through that next plateau
yet, and so I just want to givea little bit of perspective on
(05:28):
the rest of our conversationhere, sort of where you're at
right now in your organization.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, so currently we've got about 17 people on our
team.
Six of those people are remotefull time and then everyone else
here is local.
And then you know, in terms ofour portfolio, so we manage
basically a 50-50 split ofresidential and multifamily, so
scattered site, individualhouses, and then we've got
multifamily and on themultifamily most of it's, you
know those buildings are 10 to50 units in most cases and
(05:57):
essentially you know we'reprobably about 700 units under
management.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Are you guys set up more departmental pod?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
it's under management .
Are you guys set up moredepartmental pod portfolio?
Probably a little bit of hybrid, so, and what I mean by that is
that maintenance and leasingare separate departments, but
within the property managementteam there's, you know, kind of
a senior property manager andthen we've got property
associates.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And then as far as the multifamily that you're
doing, I'm curious how peopledeal with this, because it seems
like every company does it alittle bit different, and so do
you have managers that aremanaging only multifamily or
only single family, or is itsort of like by area?
How do you break that up?
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, so it varies a little bit.
So when somebody managesexclusively multifamily, that's
usually because a client issubsidizing part of their salary
, and so in those cases we tryto either have a single client
managing someone's salary, whichwe have, or we have multiple
multifamily clients that arebasically subsidizing the salary
.
In that case we consider thosepeople their title is community
(07:00):
manager versus property manager,and so the people who are
property managers, they're theones who have kind of a mixed
portfolio of individual homes,you know small plexes and then
maybe some smaller multifamily.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And, as you've grown that portfolio, to be able to
assign the different propertiesto the different property
managers.
I mean, outside of yourfantastic dress code and the
spectacular bow ties that Ialways see you in, what are you
guys doing to set yourself apartin the marketplace?
(07:31):
Because I think the public,until they're given a reason to
differentiate us other thanprice, all they have is that's
all they know to say well, thisone is X percent and this one is
X percent minus one, and so I'mgoing to work with them because
we're all the same.
So how do you differentiateyourself from everybody else in
(07:53):
the marketplace?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I mean it's a difficult thing to do because,
as you said, a lot of timespeople view us as a commodity,
and so we really basically havethree things that we try to.
You know, I mean there's a lotof things that we do that
differentiate ourselves from anoperational standpoint in terms
of like nuances that we couldget into, but a lot of times you
don't have either enough timeor people don't have enough
background or context to reallyunderstand what those things are
(08:16):
.
So we really kind of hammer onthree things.
One is going to be ourreputation.
So we've done an incredible jobof building up a really solid
reputation.
We've got over 500 reviews onGoogle and our Google rating is
4.5.
So 4.5 in and of itself, withthat many reviews, really
differentiates us from ourcompetition in a really
substantial way, because theproof is in the pudding right,
(08:37):
like you can see that, and wereally safeguard that as much as
we can.
You know we don't let justrandom people you know some
people I've seen do some thingsabout getting reviews from, like
, friends or vendors, and that'sjust something that we police
and don't want to happen.
Reputation is going to be amajor driver.
The second thing is we try tocreate content around our
expertise.
(08:57):
So a lot of the times whathappens is people are thinking
about, especially with a house,if they're going to rent their
property out and if they shouldself-manage.
Usually that starts with acursory like understanding of
okay, well, I need to knowwhat's maybe involved, what are
some rules, and you know, forbetter or worse.
That's kind of where theregulations help us, because
then people start to digest andrealize the you know degree to
(09:21):
which the complexity of managinga property is not, like you
know, just a simple landlordtenant relationship, like it is
in some places, or maybe whatpeople held in their mind, you
know, from the 1970s, and theyalso realize the consequences
are pretty severe.
So creating content tointercept them at different
stages of their search is goingto be the second thing.
And then the third thing isreally just comes down to
execution.
Right, like we use a variety oftools to make sure we're
(09:43):
monitoring and staying on top of, like, the quality of work
we're producing and that's fromyou know, setting internal
standards, monitoring thosestandards and then investing in
the team, reading books as ateam, going to conferences,
going to classes, doingproficiency testing those are
all things that are reallyimportant for, you know,
assuring that you're going toprovide good quality service and
the right people I mean, at theend of the day, it's the people
right.
(10:03):
If you've got the wrong people,you can have the best systems
in the world and it may not gowell.
I mean it's just, even ifyou're in something as simple as
making a sandwich, I meanyou've got to at least have
somebody that you know is goingto take it seriously Sure.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So I want to break down each one.
The first one is the reviewsand the reputation.
I think some people in propertymanagement just sort of let
their reputation happen.
They're not proactive with it,and I think just the Amazon
culture teaches us before weinvest, we should see what other
people think.
Right.
So before we invest in aservice or a product, we want to
(10:42):
see what the reviews are andwhat other people think.
Sometimes, like I will take alook at some of the five-star
reviews, but I'm really moreinterested in like the two,
three and four stars.
One stars is they would givezero stars if they could.
That's a pretty common theme.
But what are the people sayingabout the two, three and four,
(11:03):
and do you guys have anintentional response, like are
you responding in a specific waywhen you get a four-star or a
three-star, or do you just sortof ignore those?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, so it's a good question.
We generally don't respond tomost reviews unless they're like
a one or a two-star review,maybe a three-star.
We don't get a lot ofthree-stars because I think
people, you know, they eitherlove us or hate us, right?
People?
When they feel middle of theroad, they probably don't take
the time to write a review.
And so the five star ones wedon't really respond to because
I mean we could just say hey,thanks for the review, but that
(11:38):
doesn't really do much forpeople and it looks a little
redundant.
I think four stars is goodenough.
I mean, people are being honestand some people just don't want
to give out five, so we're goodwith that.
But the one stars, you know wedo respond to those.
You know, have we been perfectwith that?
I'm sure we can go through andsee some one stars we did not
respond to, but as a generalrule we really do try to respond
to the one star reviews andwhen we're, we just want to lay
(12:00):
out our side of the story andmake the case, for you know why
we, why this situation occurredin the first place, why is this
person taking the position thatthey're taking and responding to
that message and you know, atthe end of the day we feel that
the public can read between thelines and kind of identify Is
this a one star review that theydeserved and they did a bad job
(12:21):
, or is just somebody upset?
And so we're just very clearright back, kind of fact-based.
If you look at our reviews,I've got some long responses to
some people depending on whatthey've said, but at the end of
the day I mean we're just goingto say look like, in most cases
our one-star reviews are forthings that we're doing because
it's our job.
Right, they got denied for theproperty, they got charged a
late fee, we kept some of theirsecurity deposit.
(12:41):
It's kind of the the same stuff.
There's a couple out therewhere you know legitimately we
probably didn't do a great jobin a certain situation and you
know we do our best to learnfrom it and take accountability
for that.
But overwhelmingly they'rereally just from people who are
unhappy with the fact that we'redoing our job, and that means
their residents and it meansthat, hey, we can point to
owners like hey, we don't avoidthe tough conversations.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I think it was probably 10 years ago, I was at
a conference and I was listeningto a presentation by Todd Breen
and he was mentioning the waythat they respond to one.
Star reviews is actually allreviews.
But they responded it not to theperson that left the review but
to a prospective client thatwould be reading those reviews,
(13:24):
and so it really it helped meframe my responses.
So, yeah, I want to be factualand yeah, I want to address
those concerns, but I really I'mnot talking in rebuttal to the
complaint or to the accusation.
I'm really talking to aprospective landlord that might
need to understand why we didsomething in a certain way.
(13:47):
So, like you mentioned, yeah,we have a resident that's
unhappy that we quote, stoletheir security deposit when they
moved out, and explaining thefacts and the steps that we go
through to be able to documentthe condition and the move in
and move out and all of that sothat we can present that to the
(14:07):
landlord who's thinking abouthiring us to say, well, yeah,
these guys really did a good job, they represented their client
and I want that kind of serviceor company looking out for me as
well, and it just helped meshift the way I decided to
address those because, you know,anytime you get a one star
review and it's even the slightbit exaggerated or not factual I
(14:31):
don't know about you, but itmakes my blood boil and I'd
start to type out a response andthen I'd be like, okay, cooler
heads, you know, let's deletethat and be more reasonable in
our response.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, and I think that makes sense.
We kind of blend to thatapproach, we have some direct
response and then also obviouslyyou know we don't think we're
going to win the one-star personback, like that's not going to
happen.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, okay, let's address the second thing that
you said was you are putting outcontent to address some of the
pain points, and I think we'rein a point not in just property
management, but since that'swhat we're talking about in
property management where youcan't just have a website and
hope people that are interestedin your services start searching
(15:18):
and looking for your websiteand reading your About Us page
and looking at your pricing page.
If you have a pricing page,they're really at this point.
They're looking for what I'llcall an authority in the
marketplace.
They're looking for somebodywho is speaking directly to
their pain points and in I'mintrigued by what you said about
(15:38):
putting out specific content toaddress some of these
legislative issues or some ofthe things that an accidental
landlord or an intentionalinvestor might be looking for.
So can you tell us a little bitmore about that plan that you
do?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, and we've done different things over time and
you know we're kind of gettingback in the swing of generating
more and more content, butinitially just started out
talking about some of the laws,right, and some of the best
practices, we were really tryingto create content that was
there to answer questions forpeople that were thinking about
self-managing or wereself-managing, because at the
(16:16):
end of the day, you know, wewant people to see the videos,
and our kind of position is thateither a they see this and hire
us, or maybe hire us down theline, or they, end of the day,
we want people to see the videos, and our kind of position is
that either A they see this andhire us, or maybe hire us down
the line, or they decide toself-manage, but at a minimum,
they will be better prepared toself-manage.
And the reason that benefits usis because the industry as a
whole doesn't have a greatreputation, and so it's
basically in everyone's bestinterest for people to operate
(16:39):
in a way that further improvesthe reputation of the industry.
So if these small landlords arebeing educated and now they
know how to operate properly,then that's a win for us, and
maybe they don't want to have aproperty manager, but they would
still refer us to somebody elsebecause sometimes people, just
from a personality standpoint,they just don't want to have
(16:59):
somebody else manage theproperty.
So we've done that and then wejust talk about the things that
we do as a business and againit's kind of with the same kind
of audience in mind, butsometimes even that it's geared
towards peers, right, becauseyou know, again, if we have
peers who are able to be exposedto our material and content,
that's going to help everyone inthe long run.
I know that there are people inour market that are competitors
that watch our content.
(17:20):
They do, and that's great.
It's not a secret.
And at the end of the day,execution is much more difficult
than crafting the policy.
It's like actually operatingand executing on that is a
different ballgame, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I remember at one point when I was in a different
business so this is like 27years ago, but I remember I had
a mentor in business and it waswhen websites were really first.
People were trying to decide,like, what do you do with a
website?
So I mean, this is takes you wayback, but we were trying to
decide how much of our quotesecret sauce were we going to
(17:55):
put on the internet?
Cause we were doing consultingand we were doing document data
management and workflowmanagement in military
installations and high securityclearance companies and fortune
100 companies and and we had togive enough information that the
people who were looking forthat type of service would
actually read it, but not somuch that our competitors would
(18:18):
take our playbook and run withit and and we were trying to
decide what to do there.
And my mentor told me somethingvery that our competitors would
take our playbook and run withit, and we were trying to decide
what to do there.
And my mentor told me somethingvery important that really
stuck with me, I mean and we'retalking about it now, 27 years
later which is you can givesomebody the manual on how to
build a 747 and hand it to them,and most people aren't going to
(18:39):
do it, either because theydon't have the skill set or they
just don't have the intent toactually go through and copy
that.
You can put all that informationout there and say this is
everything that it takes tobuild that 747, or this is
everything that it takes tomanage your property in Portland
.
And then you also say butinstead of building your own
(19:00):
plane, you could just buy a seaton one of ours and we'll take
you where you want to go.
And and that has been reallyinfluential in me just being an
open book and providing all theinformation because, like you
said, the magic is in theexecution, not just creating a
playbook.
It's, it's executing by that.
Yeah, I mean it's, yeah 100%.
(19:22):
So what are you guys doing asfar as the content that you're
putting out?
So you mentioned you guys areputting out content.
I think you've done video inthe past.
You've done a podcast in thepast.
You've done.
I will tell you from a peerstandpoint.
I have really seen youpersonally on LinkedIn.
(19:43):
One of the people I look for tosee what are they posting is
you and the content you'reputting out, because I think
it's quality content, it's notsalesy, it's it's very like
educational and I think it'screating a space for you to be
seen as that expert or thatauthority in the marketplace.
(20:04):
Is there anything that is thatI missed or anything you want to
add to the content that you'reproducing?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I mean, I think that I mean you've definitely covered
the avenues that we've, youknow, produce content and
platforms we produce content on.
You know, I think one of thethings we're going to be doing
is getting back into doing morevideo and certainly into some
more podcast stuff.
But LinkedIn has kind of beensomething we have been doing for
only about a year and a fewmonths.
It's something that's arelatively new thing and a lot
(20:36):
of it was just because it likefor a long time I really didn't
understand what the point ofLinkedIn was Like.
I was like I don't understandthe point of this website.
If I'm not trying to get a jobsomewhere which I'm not I don't
really understand why I wouldever be on it.
And I don't know if maybe thisis something that happened, you
know, kind of simultaneouslywhen I started to become more
engaged in LinkedIn, or hasalways been there.
(20:56):
But I found a lot of people onLinkedIn that were sharing
content, kind of like I am thatI found interesting, and then I
started connecting with and Iwas like, oh, this is a great
way to meet other people who areactive and knowledgeable, and
I'm a big believer in kind ofpaying things forward and giving
things back, and also realizingI've been in real estate all in
(21:17):
all for 20 years and I've donea lot of stuff, whether it's
been a broker, on, you know,both sides of the transaction.
I've, you know, owned rentalproperty, I've developed
multifamily, I've done a ton ofstuff right.
So I forget what I knowsometimes and it goes back to
you know, paying it forward, andso I like just creating content
and sharing it and I use itreally as for a couple of
(21:40):
reasons.
I mean, one is as, as we'vekind of talked about, is giving
back.
But two, it's an opportunityfor me to meet people I
otherwise would not have met.
And then, you know, also I getto learn too, because sometimes
people post things on there thatare through a really different
lens than I see things, and sothat that's why I've become more
active, active on that site.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I've seen your content and to me it looks like
you've got it figured out as faras just the consistency of it.
If somebody was looking attrying to create more content to
be seen more in the marketplace, what advice would you have for
(22:17):
them to get started withcreating that content?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
have for them to get started with creating that
content?
Yeah, definitely, well, I mean,I think the thing is you have
to decide what you want to tellpeople and why.
Right, so, because that's goingto help you and better
understand who your audience is.
And once you kind of betterunderstand who your audience is,
you'll understand what they'relooking for, like.
What are they trying to learn?
Where is their knowledge gap?
And then you can start making alist of things of like okay,
(22:44):
well, these are some things thatyou know.
If I was in their shoes, I wouldwant to know or I might find
valuable, and you can use thatas kind of a brainstorming
session to create some generalthemes and ideas.
And then, kind of beyond that,you know there are things that
happen throughout the day, in aweek or in a month, that you
know your problems you'resolving or confronting in your
(23:04):
business, and those are lessonsthat, like, a lot of people
would want to know.
And for you it might just seemlike another day, or mundane, or
fire you're putting out, but inreality it's like oh, let me
just slow down.
What are we learning from thisexperience?
How could have we prevented it?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Or how is this a reoccurring event that we've
built systems around to dealwith?
And then you can the knowledgefallacy, which is we just assume
that everybody knows what weknow, and so there are things
that we've developed skill andknowledge around where, if we
shared that with people, theywould be amazed or educated or
(23:55):
enlightened or entertained, andso it's not like we have to
think of something out therethat we need to go research to
find out, and sometimes that'sgood content.
But my take on it is youalready know what kind of
content to put out, as long asyou know who you're talking to,
which is what you started with,is identifying your audience and
(24:19):
then leaning into what theyhave to, what interest they have
and what they're wanting toknow.
Yeah, um, okay, so we've comeup with the content.
What about?
Did you guys have any starts orstops as far as like that
consistency, because I thinkthat is.
It's really easy for people tocommit to go to the gym on
January 1st.
(24:40):
It's February 17th, you knowwhen you've been at it
repetitiously.
Did you fill in and do all ofthat?
Have you guys had any startsand stops?
And, if so, are there thingsthat you would tell people who
are trying to be more consistent.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, well, I think that overall with LinkedIn,
we've been pretty consistent.
I've been pretty consistentwith that in terms of content
creation, and I think a lot ofit is just because, you know,
sometimes there are things thatI try to plan in advance, right,
Like, if I have ideas, I keep arunning list on my phone and my
notes of like just concepts orjust, you know, just ideas, to
kind of spark you know whatmight be a good post, and that's
(25:17):
because, you know, some daysI'm just out of ideas and so I
go back to that, that notepad,so that helps a lot.
You know, one of the things inthe past with the videos and
stuff like that that we didwhich really got great feedback
on.
But the issue and the biggestbottleneck, which I'm gonna be
handling differently as weproduce more content moving
forward, is the post production.
Right, cuz I'd like sit downand record this video that cool,
(25:38):
and then say, okay, I gottalike load this into my computer.
I gotta like sit down andrecord this video, be like cool,
and then say, okay, I got tolike load this into my computer.
I got to like throw it intoAdobe and chop it up, and it
really doesn't take that long,but it's an extra like hour of
work and just losing thatmomentum.
So, for, depending on what yourschedule is like, that may be
something you want to handleyourself or you might just want
to hire somebody to do it.
And I've just come to theconclusion that I need to hire
(26:00):
somebody to do it because I wasnot getting it done.
But from the LinkedIn standpointI think it's just.
You know, having a running listis helpful, but I am committed
to not putting out poor content.
So I guess, from thatstandpoint, I don't want to put
something out just to beconsistent.
I want what I put out to havemore impact and to be something
(26:22):
that people are going to getvalue from.
Because you know, if you startreading something and it seems
like a waste of time, you'llgive people maybe some leniency
on that occasionally.
But if it starts to just seelike OK, this is just, I'm not
going to follow this personanymore, right, and that damages
the reputation and it's reallykind of against the mission of
what I'm doing.
Anyways, you know, if I go onvacation, I don't really create
(26:44):
content, I'm usually off doingsomething else.
But that running list ishelpful because I don't have to
start from scratch every time Isit down to write something.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
So Sean Johnson and I were on a podcast and we were
talking about the quality overquantity in putting out video
content and we had a greatconversation about it.
I agree everything you thingsout and you learn and you
consistently improve, and so Ithink there's definitely a
(27:20):
balance between waiting tillyou're an expert and all things
and the polish of the editingand all of that, versus let me
just start putting things outthere and improve as I go.
So if you had to decide, okay,I'm going to put out 100 pieces
and on the 100th it's going tobe excellent, or I'm going to
(27:41):
wait until I'm excellent to putout the first piece, which?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
end of the spectrum are you on?
Well, I would say this it'sdefinitely about getting started
right, because, you know, doneis better than perfect and at
the end of the day, I mean I'llbe candid the things that have
gotten the greatest responsethat I've posted surprised me,
and the things that I postedthat I'm like this is gold
didn't really go anywhere, andso there's a lot of learning
(28:05):
that happens in through creatingthe content.
Like you learn about theaudience.
You learn what people respondto, what they bite on.
Sometimes they take interest inthings that are like you know,
that's not really my style ofhow I would typically write this
, but if that's what gets peopleto engage, then I'm going to
modify my writing style.
So it's definitely notsomething where I would
encourage people to wait around,but I also wouldn't just like
(28:26):
dump junk out there.
You know, like sometimes peoplejust post a bunch of cliche
things that you've just heard amillion times and you're like
this is not a new idea.
You're not even commenting onan old idea, You're just
regurgitating something.
So I think that, like you know,certainly don't wait for
perfection, but but be mindfulof you.
Know, would you want to readthis?
Would you get value from this?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, I think a good summary.
The way that I would interpretwhat you just said is do your
best and then let it go and moveon to the next one.
Yeah, exactly Okay.
So the third thing that youbrought up that kind of makes
you guys unique in themarketplace is you mentioned the
systems and things that you setup and then the people that you
have on the team to run those.
So you want to talk a littlebit about, like, the policies,
(29:11):
the processes, the people youhave, how you bring people into
the team.
I'd really love to hear alittle bit more about how you
operate the organization.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, definitely, and this has been a moving target
always right, because just themarkets change and your business
size and scale changes and therules and regulations change.
But there are just some thingsthat you need to be focused on.
I think, honestly, like I wouldstart with talking about hiring
, because at the end of the day,that's the most important
factor for how your business isgoing to perform.
(29:42):
I kind of believed in that fora while, but I really became a
believer in that over time as Imade mistakes along the way, and
so, you know, one of the thingsthat we've done, that we
implemented and use as a toolwhich you've probably heard of
is Culture Index.
Culture Index is a really greattool for helping us hire.
It is not a silver bullet.
It is basically one third ofthe process, right, you know.
(30:04):
So it's like, okay, what's yourexperience?
How do you interview and what'syour Culture Index profile?
But at least I know, with theright Culture Index profile for
the position, that I've gotsomebody who's capable of
stepping up and learning what weneed them to learn and then
operating in a way that's goingto be sustainable.
(30:25):
Going through the hiring processis super key.
As painful as it is it's betterto have a position set vacant
than it is to put the wrongperson in the position, and
especially when you're a smallercompany, because it only takes
one or two people to really sourthe culture and start to create
problems within theorganization.
So getting the right people inis huge, I think you know.
(30:47):
Making sure you onboard themproperly.
It's also a painful process toonboard because you know you
want them to be effective andhelp and they want to be helpful
, because they're sitting therekind of feeling like they don't
really know what to do quite yet.
But taking a disciplinedapproach to that's important.
But when you get intooperations I mean a lot of it
comes down to, you know,aligning your systems with your
(31:07):
brand promises right, and so oneof the things that we are not
good at is answering the phoneright.
That's just not something thatwe're very good at.
Some people don't like that.
But we make that really clearto our clients and to our
residents on the front endbefore we engage in a
relationship, how we operate andhow we communicate, and we
basically say you know you'rewelcome to call, but a lot of
(31:28):
times people are either inappointments or they're out in
the field and because we managemore than one property, we may
not be as familiar with yourimmediate issue and it takes
time to get up to speed.
So if you want to have a call,make an appointment using a link
to our calendar.
But the ideal preference is tosend an email to one of our
inboxes and we have what arecalled shared inboxes so that
way everyone who's on thatspecific team, whether it's a
(31:49):
leasing team or our propertymanagement teams, are broken up
by color.
So we have green, blue, red, etcetera.
Everyone who's on that team cansee that email.
That prevents one person frompotentially dropping the ball,
whether they're busy or out onvacation.
And then we set standards forour residents and our owners
about what they can expect interms of response time and we
created they're called servicelevel agreements, which are SLAs
(32:11):
, and we use a tool to basicallyflag emails if they violate
what is considered our SLA.
So a tenant email has to beresponded to within one business
day or less.
That's the requirement.
Owner emails are two businessdays or less.
Now in most cases it's within acouple hours and same day, but
we set that standard and we tellclients at the beginning your
communication needs are going tocome second to the resident,
(32:32):
because the resident is yourcustomer.
They're the person who mighthave something that is usually
more pressing.
We want to do things that aregoing to impact resident
happiness, satisfaction, whichleads to retention.
And so, owners, we said we askyou to allow us up to that
amount of time.
It doesn't mean we're going totake it, but we've made that
really clear at the beginningand we've reinforced that if
somebody forgets, and so thatmakes people happy because they
(32:53):
know, like, okay, this is whatyou promised, this is what
you're doing, and so that helpsa lot with communication and it
allows us to sort through andprocess a volume that we could
not do on the phone.
Now one of our goals is toimprove the calls, and so over
time we're going to be buildingout structure and systems to be
able to do that, but we're notout there making that promise,
you know, and so that's that'sgoing to be.
One thing is how we do that.
(33:14):
The other part of execution istraining and testing proficiency
, making sure people know how todo their jobs and to ask
questions.
We have a couple meetings thatwe do.
One is specifically for theproperty management team.
It's every Tuesday.
We budget 90 minutes for it.
We don't always take all 90minutes, but it's an opportunity
(33:34):
to sit down.
Everyone on the PM team gothrough a list of like what are
the current problems people arefacing and how are we going to
sort through these right?
Or we train on something or weaudit work that's been completed
.
So it says hey, you said youdid that lease renewal last week
.
Cool, let's go ahead and lookat that lease renewal.
Is it in?
Is it titled properly?
Is it in the right folder?
Is it all there?
(33:54):
That's an important step forquality checking to make sure
something's not missing.
For properties that are vacant,we have what's called a
rent-ready meeting.
That's typically a 10 to20-minute meeting two days a
week.
Right, it's just themaintenance team, the leasing
team, the property managementteam just running through
properties that are vacant.
Either a new one's comingonline, one's being moved out
(34:15):
and being turned over, or somejust moving out and going back
to the owner going for sale.
So those are some of the thingsthat help us have a clear line
of sight into kind of what we'redoing.
And then you know, on top ofthat we've got Lead Simple that
we use and we're in the processof really trying to create some
discipline around.
You know some of the metricsthat they offer and their like
overdue tasks and things likethat, so we can really build our
(34:37):
workflows to be accurate about.
Is this an actual overdue item?
If it is, you know that meansyou're not done for the day you
got to finish it, but having adashboard and having things to
look at is important.
We also have people everyonereports weekly on a couple
metrics and then there's onethat we, you know, primarily
focus on, but it just variesbased on the position.
You know we want to know speedof repair for maintenance
(34:59):
technicians, right.
We want to know any past duebills for accounting, like, did
you get any bills that weremarked past due?
Like that's a problem, you know.
So there's different positionsthat we have different.
You know goals for and theyknow what they are and that's
how we take a pulse.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So I want to make a statement and then I want to ask
an unrelated question, but yousaid something that I want to
make sure that doesn't get lostin the conversation.
The first thing is, youmentioned that you are setting
expectations with your landlordsup front, that your skill set,
or your strong set or strongskills, is not answering the
(35:37):
phones because you're out thereserving the needs of their
client.
And I think it's I think that'ssuper impactful, because it's
been my experience that most ofthe time when we've attracted
attracted the type of clientthat we want to work with, most
landlords are trainable and Imean that with with respect but
they don't know what to expectuntil we tell them or they make
(35:59):
it up, and so the more clear weare in giving them what they can
expect and what we expect, thesmoother the relationship goes.
Because if you call somebodyand they don't call you back for
one day and then they don'tcall you back the next day,
you've got two choices you getupset and say why didn't they
call me back?
(36:20):
Or, if it's beenpre-communicated that we're
going to get to you as soon aspossible, but we're actually
serving your client so that wecan minimize your vacancies so
that we can make sure that theresident happiness causes them
to renew.
Now, all of a sudden, as alandlord, I get it Like I've
been trained that I shouldfollow your policies because
(36:42):
they're in my best interest, orat least I understand them.
So I think it's super key tostart out with that.
So, yeah, kudos for that.
And then the trials andtribulations will teach you that
.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And then the question that Ihad for you was you mentioned
the metrics, the KPIs, those keyperformance metrics that people
(37:03):
on the team have.
I talked to a lot of companiesand they try to come up with
their KPIs.
They're like, okay, I hear thisthing about KPIs, I hear that
we should be measuring stuff.
That's important, but when youreally break it down, they have
a hard time determining what isone, two, three, even up to five
(37:24):
KPIs that each person on theteam might have.
How did you guys go throughthat and break that down and do
those KPIs change?
Does the metric change or doesthe result we're trying to
achieve change percentage wise?
Or just take us through thatKPI process that you go through?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, well, it's definitely been an evolution,
right?
So when we first started, likea lot of people, we didn't
necessarily know what to measure, and part of that was because,
you know, it was a new thingthat we're implementing, and
part of it was we didn't haveenough experience with any set
of KPIs that would tell us ifwe're measuring the wrong things
.
And so, as time went on, webasically figured out, you know,
(38:06):
what are the?
What are the canary in the coalmine, right?
Like, what are the things thatare going to be telling us about
a problem that's going to comedown on the line, and also,
what's going to drive thebusiness, right?
So, like with maintenance andthings like that, you know we
have three in-house maintenancetechs and utilization rate is an
important thing, right, becausewe want to understand, like,
(38:26):
how much are you billing?
Right, because maintenance isvery expensive when they're idle
, and so it's important for usto understand, you know, not
necessarily just because oftheir cost, but we want to make
sure that if we're outsourcingwork that we could be keeping
in-house, that that utilizationrate helps us say we need to do
something about this.
And so we've gone through thedifferent departments and looked
(38:47):
for that I mean, like you know,classic with leasing it's like
okay, well, days on market,right, that's a pretty
straightforward one.
How many properties are, youknow, been on the market over 20
days?
Right, we do 20, because 30 iskind of the point where it gets
a little too late.
If it's 20 days and you've beenon the market, let's start
doing something proactively.
So hopefully we don't make itto 30 days, you know.
(39:07):
And so we also look at, you know, how we process speed of
processing applications.
You know there's a lot ofdifferent things that we've
tried and some things we look atand we're like, ok, we've been
measuring this for a while andit's not really meaningful and
we're not really getting thevalue from it that we thought we
would.
But I think after a couple ofyears of doing this, we've
settled on some pretty goodnumbers.
And that changes too as yougrow your team, because now
(39:29):
you've got new positions andthen you've got division of
labor and so you can zero in onthings that maybe previously you
weren't able to zero in on.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
So I'm going to ask you to be a little bit
vulnerable here.
Sure, how good do you guys doat achieving those metrics on
the scorecard?
Are you like a 70%, 80%, 100%,20%?
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think that I mean overwhelmingly
we're probably achieving, atleast, you know, in terms of the
KPIs, because we have twodifferent kind of things that we
look at with people, you know,one is the metrics that we're
talking about, which is kind ofthe weekly stuff, which I would
say our success rate without itis probably north of like 80%,
(40:14):
80, 85%, maybe 90%, a lot ofhundred percent.
I mean we're there are thingsthat we've decided are important
, so we really focus on them.
Um, and there's some things youcan't control.
Again, like you know, you don'tget to control how many
maintenance requests you get,but we can't control how we
respond to that and and thingslike that.
But some of them were prettystellar at, I mean, and I would
(40:36):
I mean this credit really goesto the team like our sla
violations.
Like we rarely violate our slaviolations.
It gets rare.
Like in a year we might have,you know, 30 or something like
that, which, compared to thethousands of emails we get,
that's stellar, but we've, we'vebuilt it to be good at that.
If you looked at our missedcall rate for people call our
(40:57):
company when they're not callingour sales line it's pretty bad,
but that's by design, so wekind of accept that for now this
is not our core competency.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
We do set.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Like a lot of people, we follow an EOS model, so we
have quarterly they call themROCs.
We have adopted the frameworkof OKRs, which is objectives and
key results, but it'sessentially the same thing that
I would say.
We have some people who hit100%, some people who hit, you
know, 60%, but generallyspeaking, on average we're above
70.
People you know meet weeklywith their supervisor to kind of
(41:29):
give progress reports on wherethings are going.
But sometimes things happenright we lose a team member and
someone has to take on extrawork or they've been out sick or
maybe they didn't plancontingently very well, so
something took longer than theythought.
But those are learningexperiences and, no matter what,
we're making some forwardprogress.
And sometimes I'm thebottleneck right Like I'm in the
bottleneck to people gettingstuff done, which is why last
(41:51):
year I hired somebody with theformal job title of integration
manager, because there's a lotof things that were getting
stuck on my desk and this reallyhelped kind of open up time for
me to focus on other things andmake sure that I'm not getting
in the way of other people.
But we're quite good at a lotof the things that we measure on
the KPI front.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
So here's a question that I have when I start working
with clients.
When I start working withclients and if they either have
KPIs or they are trying to comeup with KPIs, the question is,
what happens when my teamdoesn't hit the KPI?
And that's why I kind of wantedto get a framework from you of
(42:33):
like so let's just use thenumber 85%, so you guys hit the
KPI 85%.
What do we do as leaders in thecompany that other 15% of the
time?
Do we let it go and keep an eyeon it?
Do we stop the meeting and say,okay, well, what's going on
here?
Are we addressing it?
Each missed KPI, Like?
What's the thought processaround?
(42:54):
Why track this information ifwe're not going to take some
sort of action?
So what does that look like foryou?
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, well, it depends on what the issue is.
I mean, there are some things.
So, you know, one thing that Ithink is worth sharing is there
are some things that are soimportant that we don't have a
KPI for them, and what I mean bythat is there are things that,
regulatory wise like sending outa security deposit return or we
call them final accountingshere within the required time,
is not something that peoplehave a KPI for, because that has
(43:21):
to go out.
It's non-negotiable and it hasto go out on time.
You know owner statements thatwe send out every month on the
20th or next business day.
That is non-negotiable.
So there are certain thingsthat we don't put in the KPI
camp because they're tooimportant.
The KPI camp is, like you know,here's how you measure success
and your role and if you'redoing well and if things are
going smoothly.
And so if we see because youknow this is something they
(43:43):
report weekly we start to see atrend, and there's some
framework around this of, likeyou know, two weeks where this
is off, then we need to talkabout why is this happening and
what is your proposed solution.
Right, everyone has a bad week,so it's like not that big of a
deal.
But if we see a pattern, wewant to know, like what are you
doing to resolve this and whatdid we learn?
(44:04):
Maybe there's something that'sjust like hey, there's a
bottleneck here that was unknownand now this is what's going to
happen.
So we really try to certainlyuse it to problem solve and be
proactive and make decisionsaround it, but nobody's KPI is
so serious that their job's atrisk.
(44:25):
Obviously, if they'reconsistently bad at it and it's
a performance issue, that's adifferent story, you know.
If we're just talking about,you know, having a tough quarter
or something like that, if allelse makes sense and they've
been communicative, that'sreally important is like are you
taking ownership of this?
Are you being accountable, andare you coming to these meetings
(44:45):
prepared and ready to figureout how to resolve this?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Thanks again for hopping on and sharing your
wisdom and insight with ouraudience.
I want to give you the lastword.
Is there anything that I didn'ttalk about or anything that
you'd like to add as we closeout here?
Speaker 1 (44:59):
You know.
I think that if you're inproperty management, you know
you have to realize that this isa really challenging business.
It's certainly a Rubik's cubethat you know you got to work
with, but the biggest thingthat's going to make a
difference is your team, and youneed to move with your
instincts.
If you're thinking aboutsomebody who's on your team and
(45:20):
it's keeping you up at night formore than one night, your
intuition is probably correctand a lot of the times, as a
leader, you will notice thesethings after the rest of the
team does.
So by the time you've come tothat conclusion, everyone's
already in the know.
So you really need to takeaction.
This is your business, this isyour team, and don't let anybody
take your culture down thewrong tracks.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
That's a good thing to wrap up with, and that's why
I always ask that questionwithout any context, because
that's where some of the top ofthe mind nuggets come from.
So, nick, thanks again andwe'll talk soon.
Perfect Thanks, tony.
You have to decide what you want to tell people and
why.
That's gonna help you betterunderstand who your audience is.
And once you better understandwho your audience is, you'll
understand what they're lookingfor.
What are they trying to learn?
Where is their knowledge gap?
Welcome to the.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Property Management Success Podcast, where we
interview leaders in theindustry to uncover the secrets
to profitability, efficiency andachieving true freedom.
Whether it's your time, moneyor lifestyle, I'm your host,
tony Klein, and I'm here to helpyou build a wildly successful
property management business.
Let's get to it.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Property Management
(00:37):
Success Podcast, really excitedto be joined by Nicholas Cook
from Sleep Sound PropertyManagement out in Portland,
oregon.
Nick, welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey, tony, good to be with you.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, absolutely yeah .
You and I have known each otherfor quite a while and I've
never really dug into yourbusiness, and so I'm really
excited to kind of see what youdo there and what's going on out
there in Portland.
I'll start with one of theobvious things, which is when
you talk to property managersacross the country, portland has
a reputation for being sort ofdifficult to operate in, and
(01:16):
they're really tenant-friendlycompared to a lot of the nation,
and I'm curious have you justalways operated in that market?
So it's just, it's no different, or do you see the struggles
and have figured out a way toprovide good value to your
landlords in that space?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, I mean that's a great question.
Well, you know, when I firstgot into property management, it
was just about the time theystarted introducing more of
these regulations to propertymanagement.
It was just about the time theystarted introducing more of
this regulation.
So in many cases, or at leastfrom my experience, I've only
operated in a kind of moreregulated environment, and
that's compounded over time andit's been difficult.
I mean, there's been someserious hurdles that have come
(01:57):
along with that and somefrustrations, and especially
when we talk to people indifferent markets, you know
around America and kind of howthey get to operate, and you
know, it would be one thing, Ithink, if a lot of the
regulations that wereimplemented made logical sense,
then you'd say, ok, I understand, this is a safety issue or
something like that, but they'rereally just ideas that people
(02:19):
want to test and they test themat scale and they test them in a
manner that is pretty draconianand without kind of easing into
the process.
And probably the mostdisappointing aspect of it is
that they've been very resistantto accepting feedback from
people who actually areexecuting on these rules.
So we're just kind of dealingwith those challenges and that's
(02:39):
, I think, probably common alongthe West Coast.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's interesting because you interesting because
you always hear what happens onthe coast moves to the center of
the country.
In Colorado six or seven yearsago it was kind of like the Wild
West.
We had a three-day notice topay or quit.
After three days we could startthe eviction and a lot of the
legislation that you guys havebeen dealing the ones that are
(03:05):
actually figuring out how tonavigate in the marketplace
(03:28):
versus feeling like they'rebeing pinned down.
Obviously, none of us want thatadditional regulation that
governs how we do business, butI think there's something to
leaning into it and takingadvantage of some of these
things.
If we're going to have to dealwith them anyways, let's lean
into it and see how we canbenefit from it.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's kind of thechoice.
Either that, or you go to adifferent market or you find a
different career.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Speaking of career, so let's take our audience back.
So when did you get intoproperty management?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, I got into property management at least
offering the service for thirdparties in 2008.
So I had actually been flippinghouses from 2005 to 2008,
picked up a couple of rentals,and was in school actually
getting a bachelor's degree inreal estate finance.
You know, it seemed like, youknow, kind of a natural
(04:20):
progression for a lot of reasons.
I wanted to be in a businessthat was more stable, that could
be scalable, and I wanted tostart a real estate fund.
At the time, though, I didn'trealize that my lack of
experience was going to be apretty big barrier both to
growing the business but also totrying to start a fund.
It just seemed like something Iwanted to take a swing at.
A lot of it was just beingnaive.
(04:43):
I thought that, you know, myreal estate knowledge from
flipping houses would carry overand I'd be able to manage
rentals from the beach, and thatwas not true at all.
In fact, it was a prettydifficult slog for the first you
know, five, six years to evenbuild up any sort of momentum.
But yeah, so I started in 08,kind of during the whole
(05:04):
financial crisis, you might say.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And so from that point to where you are now, how
big is your company, your team,your portfolio?
Because there's people in ouraudience that are listening at
different plateaus wheresometimes they plateau because
they're comfortable, sometimesthey plateau because they can't.
They haven't figured out how tobreak through that next plateau
yet, and so I just want to givea little bit of perspective on
(05:28):
the rest of our conversationhere, sort of where you're at
right now in your organization.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, so currently we've got about 17 people on our
team.
Six of those people are remotefull time and then everyone else
here is local.
And then you know, in terms ofour portfolio, so we manage
basically a 50-50 split ofresidential and multifamily, so
scattered site, individualhouses, and then we've got
multifamily and on themultifamily most of it's, you
know those buildings are 10 to50 units in most cases and
(05:57):
essentially you know we'reprobably about 700 units under
management.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Are you guys set up more departmental pod?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
it's under management .
Are you guys set up moredepartmental pod portfolio?
Probably a little bit of hybrid, so, and what I mean by that is
that maintenance and leasingare separate departments, but
within the property managementteam there's, you know, kind of
a senior property manager andthen we've got property
associates.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And then as far as the multifamily that you're
doing, I'm curious how peopledeal with this, because it seems
like every company does it alittle bit different, and so do
you have managers that aremanaging only multifamily or
only single family, or is itsort of like by area?
How do you break that up?
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, so it varies a little bit.
So when somebody managesexclusively multifamily, that's
usually because a client issubsidizing part of their salary
, and so in those cases we tryto either have a single client
managing someone's salary, whichwe have, or we have multiple
multifamily clients that arebasically subsidizing the salary
.
In that case we consider thosepeople their title is community
(07:00):
manager versus property manager,and so the people who are
property managers, they're theones who have kind of a mixed
portfolio of individual homes,you know small plexes and then
maybe some smaller multifamily.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And, as you've grown that portfolio, to be able to
assign the different propertiesto the different property
managers.
I mean, outside of yourfantastic dress code and the
spectacular bow ties that Ialways see you in, what are you
guys doing to set yourself apartin the marketplace?
(07:31):
Because I think the public,until they're given a reason to
differentiate us other thanprice, all they have is that's
all they know to say well, thisone is X percent and this one is
X percent minus one, and so I'mgoing to work with them because
we're all the same.
So how do you differentiateyourself from everybody else in
(07:53):
the marketplace?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I mean it's a difficult thing to do because,
as you said, a lot of timespeople view us as a commodity,
and so we really basically havethree things that we try to.
You know, I mean there's a lotof things that we do that
differentiate ourselves from anoperational standpoint in terms
of like nuances that we couldget into, but a lot of times you
don't have either enough timeor people don't have enough
background or context to reallyunderstand what those things are
(08:16):
.
So we really kind of hammer onthree things.
One is going to be ourreputation.
So we've done an incredible jobof building up a really solid
reputation.
We've got over 500 reviews onGoogle and our Google rating is
4.5.
So 4.5 in and of itself, withthat many reviews, really
differentiates us from ourcompetition in a really
substantial way, because theproof is in the pudding right,
(08:37):
like you can see that, and wereally safeguard that as much as
we can.
You know we don't let justrandom people you know some
people I've seen do some thingsabout getting reviews from, like
, friends or vendors, and that'sjust something that we police
and don't want to happen.
Reputation is going to be amajor driver.
The second thing is we try tocreate content around our
expertise.
(08:57):
So a lot of the times whathappens is people are thinking
about, especially with a house,if they're going to rent their
property out and if they shouldself-manage.
Usually that starts with acursory like understanding of
okay, well, I need to knowwhat's maybe involved, what are
some rules, and you know, forbetter or worse.
That's kind of where theregulations help us, because
then people start to digest andrealize the you know degree to
(09:21):
which the complexity of managinga property is not, like you
know, just a simple landlordtenant relationship, like it is
in some places, or maybe whatpeople held in their mind, you
know, from the 1970s, and theyalso realize the consequences
are pretty severe.
So creating content tointercept them at different
stages of their search is goingto be the second thing.
And then the third thing isreally just comes down to
execution.
Right, like we use a variety oftools to make sure we're
(09:43):
monitoring and staying on top of, like, the quality of work
we're producing and that's fromyou know, setting internal
standards, monitoring thosestandards and then investing in
the team, reading books as ateam, going to conferences,
going to classes, doingproficiency testing those are
all things that are reallyimportant for, you know,
assuring that you're going toprovide good quality service and
the right people I mean, at theend of the day, it's the people
right.
(10:03):
If you've got the wrong people,you can have the best systems
in the world and it may not gowell.
I mean it's just, even ifyou're in something as simple as
making a sandwich, I meanyou've got to at least have
somebody that you know is goingto take it seriously Sure.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So I want to break down each one.
The first one is the reviewsand the reputation.
I think some people in propertymanagement just sort of let
their reputation happen.
They're not proactive with it,and I think just the Amazon
culture teaches us before weinvest, we should see what other
people think.
Right.
So before we invest in aservice or a product, we want to
(10:42):
see what the reviews are andwhat other people think.
Sometimes, like I will take alook at some of the five-star
reviews, but I'm really moreinterested in like the two,
three and four stars.
One stars is they would givezero stars if they could.
That's a pretty common theme.
But what are the people sayingabout the two, three and four,
(11:03):
and do you guys have anintentional response, like are
you responding in a specific waywhen you get a four-star or a
three-star, or do you just sortof ignore those?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, so it's a good question.
We generally don't respond tomost reviews unless they're like
a one or a two-star review,maybe a three-star.
We don't get a lot ofthree-stars because I think
people, you know, they eitherlove us or hate us, right?
People?
When they feel middle of theroad, they probably don't take
the time to write a review.
And so the five star ones wedon't really respond to because
I mean we could just say hey,thanks for the review, but that
(11:38):
doesn't really do much forpeople and it looks a little
redundant.
I think four stars is goodenough.
I mean, people are being honestand some people just don't want
to give out five, so we're goodwith that.
But the one stars, you know wedo respond to those.
You know, have we been perfectwith that?
I'm sure we can go through andsee some one stars we did not
respond to, but as a generalrule we really do try to respond
to the one star reviews andwhen we're, we just want to lay
(12:00):
out our side of the story andmake the case, for you know why
we, why this situation occurredin the first place, why is this
person taking the position thatthey're taking and responding to
that message and you know, atthe end of the day we feel that
the public can read between thelines and kind of identify Is
this a one star review that theydeserved and they did a bad job
(12:21):
, or is just somebody upset?
And so we're just very clearright back, kind of fact-based.
If you look at our reviews,I've got some long responses to
some people depending on whatthey've said, but at the end of
the day I mean we're just goingto say look like, in most cases
our one-star reviews are forthings that we're doing because
it's our job.
Right, they got denied for theproperty, they got charged a
late fee, we kept some of theirsecurity deposit.
(12:41):
It's kind of the the same stuff.
There's a couple out therewhere you know legitimately we
probably didn't do a great jobin a certain situation and you
know we do our best to learnfrom it and take accountability
for that.
But overwhelmingly they'rereally just from people who are
unhappy with the fact that we'redoing our job, and that means
their residents and it meansthat, hey, we can point to
owners like hey, we don't avoidthe tough conversations.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I think it was probably 10 years ago, I was at
a conference and I was listeningto a presentation by Todd Breen
and he was mentioning the waythat they respond to one.
Star reviews is actually allreviews.
But they responded it not to theperson that left the review but
to a prospective client thatwould be reading those reviews,
(13:24):
and so it really it helped meframe my responses.
So, yeah, I want to be factualand yeah, I want to address
those concerns, but I really I'mnot talking in rebuttal to the
complaint or to the accusation.
I'm really talking to aprospective landlord that might
need to understand why we didsomething in a certain way.
(13:47):
So, like you mentioned, yeah,we have a resident that's
unhappy that we quote, stoletheir security deposit when they
moved out, and explaining thefacts and the steps that we go
through to be able to documentthe condition and the move in
and move out and all of that sothat we can present that to the
(14:07):
landlord who's thinking abouthiring us to say, well, yeah,
these guys really did a good job, they represented their client
and I want that kind of serviceor company looking out for me as
well, and it just helped meshift the way I decided to
address those because, you know,anytime you get a one star
review and it's even the slightbit exaggerated or not factual I
(14:31):
don't know about you, but itmakes my blood boil and I'd
start to type out a response andthen I'd be like, okay, cooler
heads, you know, let's deletethat and be more reasonable in
our response.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, and I think that makes sense.
We kind of blend to thatapproach, we have some direct
response and then also obviouslyyou know we don't think we're
going to win the one-star personback, like that's not going to
happen.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, okay, let's address the second thing that
you said was you are putting outcontent to address some of the
pain points, and I think we'rein a point not in just property
management, but since that'swhat we're talking about in
property management where youcan't just have a website and
hope people that are interestedin your services start searching
(15:18):
and looking for your websiteand reading your About Us page
and looking at your pricing page.
If you have a pricing page,they're really at this point.
They're looking for what I'llcall an authority in the
marketplace.
They're looking for somebodywho is speaking directly to
their pain points and in I'mintrigued by what you said about
(15:38):
putting out specific content toaddress some of these
legislative issues or some ofthe things that an accidental
landlord or an intentionalinvestor might be looking for.
So can you tell us a little bitmore about that plan that you
do?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, and we've done different things over time and
you know we're kind of gettingback in the swing of generating
more and more content, butinitially just started out
talking about some of the laws,right, and some of the best
practices, we were really tryingto create content that was
there to answer questions forpeople that were thinking about
self-managing or wereself-managing, because at the
(16:16):
end of the day, you know, wewant people to see the videos,
and our kind of position is thateither a they see this and hire
us, or maybe hire us down theline, or they, end of the day,
we want people to see the videos, and our kind of position is
that either A they see this andhire us, or maybe hire us down
the line, or they decide toself-manage, but at a minimum,
they will be better prepared toself-manage.
And the reason that benefits usis because the industry as a
whole doesn't have a greatreputation, and so it's
basically in everyone's bestinterest for people to operate
(16:39):
in a way that further improvesthe reputation of the industry.
So if these small landlords arebeing educated and now they
know how to operate properly,then that's a win for us, and
maybe they don't want to have aproperty manager, but they would
still refer us to somebody elsebecause sometimes people, just
from a personality standpoint,they just don't want to have
(16:59):
somebody else manage theproperty.
So we've done that and then wejust talk about the things that
we do as a business and againit's kind of with the same kind
of audience in mind, butsometimes even that it's geared
towards peers, right, becauseyou know, again, if we have
peers who are able to be exposedto our material and content,
that's going to help everyone inthe long run.
I know that there are people inour market that are competitors
that watch our content.
(17:20):
They do, and that's great.
It's not a secret.
And at the end of the day,execution is much more difficult
than crafting the policy.
It's like actually operatingand executing on that is a
different ballgame, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I remember at one point when I was in a different
business so this is like 27years ago, but I remember I had
a mentor in business and it waswhen websites were really first.
People were trying to decide,like, what do you do with a
website?
So I mean, this is takes you wayback, but we were trying to
decide how much of our quotesecret sauce were we going to
(17:55):
put on the internet?
Cause we were doing consultingand we were doing document data
management and workflowmanagement in military
installations and high securityclearance companies and fortune
100 companies and and we had togive enough information that the
people who were looking forthat type of service would
actually read it, but not somuch that our competitors would
(18:18):
take our playbook and run withit and and we were trying to
decide what to do there.
And my mentor told me somethingvery that our competitors would
take our playbook and run withit, and we were trying to decide
what to do there.
And my mentor told me somethingvery important that really
stuck with me, I mean and we'retalking about it now, 27 years
later which is you can givesomebody the manual on how to
build a 747 and hand it to them,and most people aren't going to
(18:39):
do it, either because theydon't have the skill set or they
just don't have the intent toactually go through and copy
that.
You can put all that informationout there and say this is
everything that it takes tobuild that 747, or this is
everything that it takes tomanage your property in Portland
.
And then you also say butinstead of building your own
(19:00):
plane, you could just buy a seaton one of ours and we'll take
you where you want to go.
And and that has been reallyinfluential in me just being an
open book and providing all theinformation because, like you
said, the magic is in theexecution, not just creating a
playbook.
It's, it's executing by that.
Yeah, I mean it's, yeah 100%.
(19:22):
So what are you guys doing asfar as the content that you're
putting out?
So you mentioned you guys areputting out content.
I think you've done video inthe past.
You've done a podcast in thepast.
You've done.
I will tell you from a peerstandpoint.
I have really seen youpersonally on LinkedIn.
(19:43):
One of the people I look for tosee what are they posting is
you and the content you'reputting out, because I think
it's quality content, it's notsalesy, it's it's very like
educational and I think it'screating a space for you to be
seen as that expert or thatauthority in the marketplace.
(20:04):
Is there anything that is thatI missed or anything you want to
add to the content that you'reproducing?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I mean, I think that I mean you've definitely covered
the avenues that we've, youknow, produce content and
platforms we produce content on.
You know, I think one of thethings we're going to be doing
is getting back into doing morevideo and certainly into some
more podcast stuff.
But LinkedIn has kind of beensomething we have been doing for
only about a year and a fewmonths.
It's something that's arelatively new thing and a lot
(20:36):
of it was just because it likefor a long time I really didn't
understand what the point ofLinkedIn was Like.
I was like I don't understandthe point of this website.
If I'm not trying to get a jobsomewhere which I'm not I don't
really understand why I wouldever be on it.
And I don't know if maybe thisis something that happened, you
know, kind of simultaneouslywhen I started to become more
engaged in LinkedIn, or hasalways been there.
(20:56):
But I found a lot of people onLinkedIn that were sharing
content, kind of like I am thatI found interesting, and then I
started connecting with and Iwas like, oh, this is a great
way to meet other people who areactive and knowledgeable, and
I'm a big believer in kind ofpaying things forward and giving
things back, and also realizingI've been in real estate all in
(21:17):
all for 20 years and I've donea lot of stuff, whether it's
been a broker, on, you know,both sides of the transaction.
I've, you know, owned rentalproperty, I've developed
multifamily, I've done a ton ofstuff right.
So I forget what I knowsometimes and it goes back to
you know, paying it forward, andso I like just creating content
and sharing it and I use itreally as for a couple of
(21:40):
reasons.
I mean, one is as, as we'vekind of talked about, is giving
back.
But two, it's an opportunityfor me to meet people I
otherwise would not have met.
And then, you know, also I getto learn too, because sometimes
people post things on there thatare through a really different
lens than I see things, and sothat that's why I've become more
active, active on that site.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I've seen your content and to me it looks like
you've got it figured out as faras just the consistency of it.
If somebody was looking attrying to create more content to
be seen more in the marketplace, what advice would you have for
(22:17):
them to get started withcreating that content?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
have for them to get started with creating that
content?
Yeah, definitely, well, I mean,I think the thing is you have
to decide what you want to tellpeople and why.
Right, so, because that's goingto help you and better
understand who your audience is.
And once you kind of betterunderstand who your audience is,
you'll understand what they'relooking for, like.
What are they trying to learn?
Where is their knowledge gap?
And then you can start making alist of things of like okay,
(22:44):
well, these are some things thatyou know.
If I was in their shoes, I wouldwant to know or I might find
valuable, and you can use thatas kind of a brainstorming
session to create some generalthemes and ideas.
And then, kind of beyond that,you know there are things that
happen throughout the day, in aweek or in a month, that you
know your problems you'resolving or confronting in your
(23:04):
business, and those are lessonsthat, like, a lot of people
would want to know.
And for you it might just seemlike another day, or mundane, or
fire you're putting out, but inreality it's like oh, let me
just slow down.
What are we learning from thisexperience?
How could have we prevented it?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Or how is this a reoccurring event that we've
built systems around to dealwith?
And then you can the knowledgefallacy, which is we just assume
that everybody knows what weknow, and so there are things
that we've developed skill andknowledge around where, if we
shared that with people, theywould be amazed or educated or
(23:55):
enlightened or entertained, andso it's not like we have to
think of something out therethat we need to go research to
find out, and sometimes that'sgood content.
But my take on it is youalready know what kind of
content to put out, as long asyou know who you're talking to,
which is what you started with,is identifying your audience and
(24:19):
then leaning into what theyhave to, what interest they have
and what they're wanting toknow.
Yeah, um, okay, so we've comeup with the content.
What about?
Did you guys have any starts orstops as far as like that
consistency, because I thinkthat is.
It's really easy for people tocommit to go to the gym on
January 1st.
(24:40):
It's February 17th, you knowwhen you've been at it
repetitiously.
Did you fill in and do all ofthat?
Have you guys had any startsand stops?
And, if so, are there thingsthat you would tell people who
are trying to be more consistent.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, well, I think that overall with LinkedIn,
we've been pretty consistent.
I've been pretty consistentwith that in terms of content
creation, and I think a lot ofit is just because, you know,
sometimes there are things thatI try to plan in advance, right,
Like, if I have ideas, I keep arunning list on my phone and my
notes of like just concepts orjust, you know, just ideas, to
kind of spark you know whatmight be a good post, and that's
(25:17):
because, you know, some daysI'm just out of ideas and so I
go back to that, that notepad,so that helps a lot.
You know, one of the things inthe past with the videos and
stuff like that that we didwhich really got great feedback
on.
But the issue and the biggestbottleneck, which I'm gonna be
handling differently as weproduce more content moving
forward, is the post production.
Right, cuz I'd like sit downand record this video that cool,
(25:38):
and then say, okay, I gottalike load this into my computer.
I gotta like sit down andrecord this video, be like cool,
and then say, okay, I got tolike load this into my computer.
I got to like throw it intoAdobe and chop it up, and it
really doesn't take that long,but it's an extra like hour of
work and just losing thatmomentum.
So, for, depending on what yourschedule is like, that may be
something you want to handleyourself or you might just want
to hire somebody to do it.
And I've just come to theconclusion that I need to hire
(26:00):
somebody to do it because I wasnot getting it done.
But from the LinkedIn standpointI think it's just.
You know, having a running listis helpful, but I am committed
to not putting out poor content.
So I guess, from thatstandpoint, I don't want to put
something out just to beconsistent.
I want what I put out to havemore impact and to be something
(26:22):
that people are going to getvalue from.
Because you know, if you startreading something and it seems
like a waste of time, you'llgive people maybe some leniency
on that occasionally.
But if it starts to just seelike OK, this is just, I'm not
going to follow this personanymore, right, and that damages
the reputation and it's reallykind of against the mission of
what I'm doing.
Anyways, you know, if I go onvacation, I don't really create
(26:44):
content, I'm usually off doingsomething else.
But that running list ishelpful because I don't have to
start from scratch every time Isit down to write something.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
So Sean Johnson and I were on a podcast and we were
talking about the quality overquantity in putting out video
content and we had a greatconversation about it.
I agree everything you thingsout and you learn and you
consistently improve, and so Ithink there's definitely a
(27:20):
balance between waiting tillyou're an expert and all things
and the polish of the editingand all of that, versus let me
just start putting things outthere and improve as I go.
So if you had to decide, okay,I'm going to put out 100 pieces
and on the 100th it's going tobe excellent, or I'm going to
(27:41):
wait until I'm excellent to putout the first piece, which?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
end of the spectrum are you on?
Well, I would say this it'sdefinitely about getting started
right, because, you know, doneis better than perfect and at
the end of the day, I mean I'llbe candid the things that have
gotten the greatest responsethat I've posted surprised me,
and the things that I postedthat I'm like this is gold
didn't really go anywhere, andso there's a lot of learning
(28:05):
that happens in through creatingthe content.
Like you learn about theaudience.
You learn what people respondto, what they bite on.
Sometimes they take interest inthings that are like you know,
that's not really my style ofhow I would typically write this
, but if that's what gets peopleto engage, then I'm going to
modify my writing style.
So it's definitely notsomething where I would
encourage people to wait around,but I also wouldn't just like
(28:26):
dump junk out there.
You know, like sometimes peoplejust post a bunch of cliche
things that you've just heard amillion times and you're like
this is not a new idea.
You're not even commenting onan old idea, You're just
regurgitating something.
So I think that, like you know,certainly don't wait for
perfection, but but be mindfulof you.
Know, would you want to readthis?
Would you get value from this?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, I think a good summary.
The way that I would interpretwhat you just said is do your
best and then let it go and moveon to the next one.
Yeah, exactly Okay.
So the third thing that youbrought up that kind of makes
you guys unique in themarketplace is you mentioned the
systems and things that you setup and then the people that you
have on the team to run those.
So you want to talk a littlebit about, like, the policies,
(29:11):
the processes, the people youhave, how you bring people into
the team.
I'd really love to hear alittle bit more about how you
operate the organization.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, definitely, and this has been a moving target
always right, because just themarkets change and your business
size and scale changes and therules and regulations change.
But there are just some thingsthat you need to be focused on.
I think, honestly, like I wouldstart with talking about hiring
, because at the end of the day,that's the most important
factor for how your business isgoing to perform.
(29:42):
I kind of believed in that fora while, but I really became a
believer in that over time as Imade mistakes along the way, and
so, you know, one of the thingsthat we've done, that we
implemented and use as a toolwhich you've probably heard of
is Culture Index.
Culture Index is a really greattool for helping us hire.
It is not a silver bullet.
It is basically one third ofthe process, right, you know.
(30:04):
So it's like, okay, what's yourexperience?
How do you interview and what'syour Culture Index profile?
But at least I know, with theright Culture Index profile for
the position, that I've gotsomebody who's capable of
stepping up and learning what weneed them to learn and then
operating in a way that's goingto be sustainable.
(30:25):
Going through the hiring processis super key.
As painful as it is it's betterto have a position set vacant
than it is to put the wrongperson in the position, and
especially when you're a smallercompany, because it only takes
one or two people to really sourthe culture and start to create
problems within theorganization.
So getting the right people inis huge, I think you know.
(30:47):
Making sure you onboard themproperly.
It's also a painful process toonboard because you know you
want them to be effective andhelp and they want to be helpful
, because they're sitting therekind of feeling like they don't
really know what to do quite yet.
But taking a disciplinedapproach to that's important.
But when you get intooperations I mean a lot of it
comes down to, you know,aligning your systems with your
(31:07):
brand promises right, and so oneof the things that we are not
good at is answering the phoneright.
That's just not something thatwe're very good at.
Some people don't like that.
But we make that really clearto our clients and to our
residents on the front endbefore we engage in a
relationship, how we operate andhow we communicate, and we
basically say you know you'rewelcome to call, but a lot of
(31:28):
times people are either inappointments or they're out in
the field and because we managemore than one property, we may
not be as familiar with yourimmediate issue and it takes
time to get up to speed.
So if you want to have a call,make an appointment using a link
to our calendar.
But the ideal preference is tosend an email to one of our
inboxes and we have what arecalled shared inboxes so that
way everyone who's on thatspecific team, whether it's a
(31:49):
leasing team or our propertymanagement teams, are broken up
by color.
So we have green, blue, red, etcetera.
Everyone who's on that team cansee that email.
That prevents one person frompotentially dropping the ball,
whether they're busy or out onvacation.
And then we set standards forour residents and our owners
about what they can expect interms of response time and we
created they're called servicelevel agreements, which are SLAs
(32:11):
, and we use a tool to basicallyflag emails if they violate
what is considered our SLA.
So a tenant email has to beresponded to within one business
day or less.
That's the requirement.
Owner emails are two businessdays or less.
Now in most cases it's within acouple hours and same day, but
we set that standard and we tellclients at the beginning your
communication needs are going tocome second to the resident,
(32:32):
because the resident is yourcustomer.
They're the person who mighthave something that is usually
more pressing.
We want to do things that aregoing to impact resident
happiness, satisfaction, whichleads to retention.
And so, owners, we said we askyou to allow us up to that
amount of time.
It doesn't mean we're going totake it, but we've made that
really clear at the beginningand we've reinforced that if
somebody forgets, and so thatmakes people happy because they
(32:53):
know, like, okay, this is whatyou promised, this is what
you're doing, and so that helpsa lot with communication and it
allows us to sort through andprocess a volume that we could
not do on the phone.
Now one of our goals is toimprove the calls, and so over
time we're going to be buildingout structure and systems to be
able to do that, but we're notout there making that promise,
you know, and so that's that'sgoing to be.
One thing is how we do that.
(33:14):
The other part of execution istraining and testing proficiency
, making sure people know how todo their jobs and to ask
questions.
We have a couple meetings thatwe do.
One is specifically for theproperty management team.
It's every Tuesday.
We budget 90 minutes for it.
We don't always take all 90minutes, but it's an opportunity
(33:34):
to sit down.
Everyone on the PM team gothrough a list of like what are
the current problems people arefacing and how are we going to
sort through these right?
Or we train on something or weaudit work that's been completed
.
So it says hey, you said youdid that lease renewal last week
.
Cool, let's go ahead and lookat that lease renewal.
Is it in?
Is it titled properly?
Is it in the right folder?
Is it all there?
(33:54):
That's an important step forquality checking to make sure
something's not missing.
For properties that are vacant,we have what's called a
rent-ready meeting.
That's typically a 10 to20-minute meeting two days a
week.
Right, it's just themaintenance team, the leasing
team, the property managementteam just running through
properties that are vacant.
Either a new one's comingonline, one's being moved out
(34:15):
and being turned over, or somejust moving out and going back
to the owner going for sale.
So those are some of the thingsthat help us have a clear line
of sight into kind of what we'redoing.
And then you know, on top ofthat we've got Lead Simple that
we use and we're in the processof really trying to create some
discipline around.
You know some of the metricsthat they offer and their like
overdue tasks and things likethat, so we can really build our
(34:37):
workflows to be accurate about.
Is this an actual overdue item?
If it is, you know that meansyou're not done for the day you
got to finish it, but having adashboard and having things to
look at is important.
We also have people everyonereports weekly on a couple
metrics and then there's onethat we, you know, primarily
focus on, but it just variesbased on the position.
You know we want to know speedof repair for maintenance
(34:59):
technicians, right.
We want to know any past duebills for accounting, like, did
you get any bills that weremarked past due?
Like that's a problem, you know.
So there's different positionsthat we have different.
You know goals for and theyknow what they are and that's
how we take a pulse.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So I want to make a statement and then I want to ask
an unrelated question, but yousaid something that I want to
make sure that doesn't get lostin the conversation.
The first thing is, youmentioned that you are setting
expectations with your landlordsup front, that your skill set,
or your strong set or strongskills, is not answering the
(35:37):
phones because you're out thereserving the needs of their
client.
And I think it's I think that'ssuper impactful, because it's
been my experience that most ofthe time when we've attracted
attracted the type of clientthat we want to work with, most
landlords are trainable and Imean that with with respect but
they don't know what to expectuntil we tell them or they make
(35:59):
it up, and so the more clear weare in giving them what they can
expect and what we expect, thesmoother the relationship goes.
Because if you call somebodyand they don't call you back for
one day and then they don'tcall you back the next day,
you've got two choices you getupset and say why didn't they
call me back?
(36:20):
Or, if it's beenpre-communicated that we're
going to get to you as soon aspossible, but we're actually
serving your client so that wecan minimize your vacancies so
that we can make sure that theresident happiness causes them
to renew.
Now, all of a sudden, as alandlord, I get it Like I've
been trained that I shouldfollow your policies because
(36:42):
they're in my best interest, orat least I understand them.
So I think it's super key tostart out with that.
So, yeah, kudos for that.
And then the trials andtribulations will teach you that
.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And then the question that Ihad for you was you mentioned
the metrics, the KPIs, those keyperformance metrics that people
(37:03):
on the team have.
I talked to a lot of companiesand they try to come up with
their KPIs.
They're like, okay, I hear thisthing about KPIs, I hear that
we should be measuring stuff.
That's important, but when youreally break it down, they have
a hard time determining what isone, two, three, even up to five
(37:24):
KPIs that each person on theteam might have.
How did you guys go throughthat and break that down and do
those KPIs change?
Does the metric change or doesthe result we're trying to
achieve change percentage wise?
Or just take us through thatKPI process that you go through?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, well, it's definitely been an evolution,
right?
So when we first started, likea lot of people, we didn't
necessarily know what to measure, and part of that was because,
you know, it was a new thingthat we're implementing, and
part of it was we didn't haveenough experience with any set
of KPIs that would tell us ifwe're measuring the wrong things
.
And so, as time went on, webasically figured out, you know,
(38:06):
what are the?
What are the canary in the coalmine, right?
Like, what are the things thatare going to be telling us about
a problem that's going to comedown on the line, and also,
what's going to drive thebusiness, right?
So, like with maintenance andthings like that, you know we
have three in-house maintenancetechs and utilization rate is an
important thing, right, becausewe want to understand, like,
(38:26):
how much are you billing?
Right, because maintenance isvery expensive when they're idle
, and so it's important for usto understand, you know, not
necessarily just because oftheir cost, but we want to make
sure that if we're outsourcingwork that we could be keeping
in-house, that that utilizationrate helps us say we need to do
something about this.
And so we've gone through thedifferent departments and looked
(38:47):
for that I mean, like you know,classic with leasing it's like
okay, well, days on market,right, that's a pretty
straightforward one.
How many properties are, youknow, been on the market over 20
days?
Right, we do 20, because 30 iskind of the point where it gets
a little too late.
If it's 20 days and you've beenon the market, let's start
doing something proactively.
So hopefully we don't make itto 30 days, you know.
(39:07):
And so we also look at, you know, how we process speed of
processing applications.
You know there's a lot ofdifferent things that we've
tried and some things we look atand we're like, ok, we've been
measuring this for a while andit's not really meaningful and
we're not really getting thevalue from it that we thought we
would.
But I think after a couple ofyears of doing this, we've
settled on some pretty goodnumbers.
And that changes too as yougrow your team, because now
(39:29):
you've got new positions andthen you've got division of
labor and so you can zero in onthings that maybe previously you
weren't able to zero in on.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
So I'm going to ask you to be a little bit
vulnerable here.
Sure, how good do you guys doat achieving those metrics on
the scorecard?
Are you like a 70%, 80%, 100%,20%?
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think that I mean overwhelmingly
we're probably achieving, atleast, you know, in terms of the
KPIs, because we have twodifferent kind of things that we
look at with people, you know,one is the metrics that we're
talking about, which is kind ofthe weekly stuff, which I would
say our success rate without itis probably north of like 80%,
(40:14):
80, 85%, maybe 90%, a lot ofhundred percent.
I mean we're there are thingsthat we've decided are important
, so we really focus on them.
Um, and there's some things youcan't control.
Again, like you know, you don'tget to control how many
maintenance requests you get,but we can't control how we
respond to that and and thingslike that.
But some of them were prettystellar at, I mean, and I would
(40:36):
I mean this credit really goesto the team like our sla
violations.
Like we rarely violate our slaviolations.
It gets rare.
Like in a year we might have,you know, 30 or something like
that, which, compared to thethousands of emails we get,
that's stellar, but we've, we'vebuilt it to be good at that.
If you looked at our missedcall rate for people call our
(40:57):
company when they're not callingour sales line it's pretty bad,
but that's by design, so wekind of accept that for now this
is not our core competency.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
We do set.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Like a lot of people, we follow an EOS model, so we
have quarterly they call themROCs.
We have adopted the frameworkof OKRs, which is objectives and
key results, but it'sessentially the same thing that
I would say.
We have some people who hit100%, some people who hit, you
know, 60%, but generallyspeaking, on average we're above
70.
People you know meet weeklywith their supervisor to kind of
(41:29):
give progress reports on wherethings are going.
But sometimes things happenright we lose a team member and
someone has to take on extrawork or they've been out sick or
maybe they didn't plancontingently very well, so
something took longer than theythought.
But those are learningexperiences and, no matter what,
we're making some forwardprogress.
And sometimes I'm thebottleneck right Like I'm in the
bottleneck to people gettingstuff done, which is why last
(41:51):
year I hired somebody with theformal job title of integration
manager, because there's a lotof things that were getting
stuck on my desk and this reallyhelped kind of open up time for
me to focus on other things andmake sure that I'm not getting
in the way of other people.
But we're quite good at a lotof the things that we measure on
the KPI front.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
So here's a question that I have when I start working
with clients.
When I start working withclients and if they either have
KPIs or they are trying to comeup with KPIs, the question is,
what happens when my teamdoesn't hit the KPI?
And that's why I kind of wantedto get a framework from you of
(42:33):
like so let's just use thenumber 85%, so you guys hit the
KPI 85%.
What do we do as leaders in thecompany that other 15% of the
time?
Do we let it go and keep an eyeon it?
Do we stop the meeting and say,okay, well, what's going on
here?
Are we addressing it?
Each missed KPI, Like?
What's the thought processaround?
(42:54):
Why track this information ifwe're not going to take some
sort of action?
So what does that look like foryou?
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, well, it depends on what the issue is.
I mean, there are some things.
So, you know, one thing that Ithink is worth sharing is there
are some things that are soimportant that we don't have a
KPI for them, and what I mean bythat is there are things that,
regulatory wise like sending outa security deposit return or we
call them final accountingshere within the required time,
is not something that peoplehave a KPI for, because that has
(43:21):
to go out.
It's non-negotiable and it hasto go out on time.
You know owner statements thatwe send out every month on the
20th or next business day.
That is non-negotiable.
So there are certain thingsthat we don't put in the KPI
camp because they're tooimportant.
The KPI camp is, like you know,here's how you measure success
and your role and if you'redoing well and if things are
going smoothly.
And so if we see because youknow this is something they
(43:43):
report weekly we start to see atrend, and there's some
framework around this of, likeyou know, two weeks where this
is off, then we need to talkabout why is this happening and
what is your proposed solution.
Right, everyone has a bad week,so it's like not that big of a
deal.
But if we see a pattern, wewant to know, like what are you
doing to resolve this and whatdid we learn?
(44:04):
Maybe there's something that'sjust like hey, there's a
bottleneck here that was unknownand now this is what's going to
happen.
So we really try to certainlyuse it to problem solve and be
proactive and make decisionsaround it, but nobody's KPI is
so serious that their job's atrisk.
(44:25):
Obviously, if they'reconsistently bad at it and it's
a performance issue, that's adifferent story, you know.
If we're just talking about,you know, having a tough quarter
or something like that, if allelse makes sense and they've
been communicative, that'sreally important is like are you
taking ownership of this?
Are you being accountable, andare you coming to these meetings
(44:45):
prepared and ready to figureout how to resolve this?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Thanks again for hopping on and sharing your
wisdom and insight with ouraudience.
I want to give you the lastword.
Is there anything that I didn'ttalk about or anything that
you'd like to add as we closeout here?
Speaker 1 (44:59):
You know.
I think that if you're inproperty management, you know
you have to realize that this isa really challenging business.
It's certainly a Rubik's cubethat you know you got to work
with, but the biggest thingthat's going to make a
difference is your team, and youneed to move with your
instincts.
If you're thinking aboutsomebody who's on your team and
(45:20):
it's keeping you up at night formore than one night, your
intuition is probably correctand a lot of the times, as a
leader, you will notice thesethings after the rest of the
team does.
So by the time you've come tothat conclusion, everyone's
already in the know.
So you really need to takeaction.
This is your business, this isyour team, and don't let anybody
take your culture down thewrong tracks.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
That's a good thing to wrap up with, and that's why
I always ask that questionwithout any context, because
that's where some of the top ofthe mind nuggets come from.
So, nick, thanks again andwe'll talk soon.
Perfect Thanks, tony.
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