He Turned Down 4,000 Units And Still Grew - with Stephen Glover

How Peak Property Management turned fee discipline into 1,300 units

Stephen Glover built Peak Property Management into roughly 1,300 units in Richmond, Virginia, and nearly sold at 300. He bought out his partner instead, then learned that revenue growth and profit were separate problems. Margin came from rebuilding fees around value, and scale came from hiring people better than himself and declining clients who did not fit.

Takeaways

• Rebuilding fees produced 25% to 30% margins. In early 2021 Glover rebuilt Peak's fee structure on Tony Cline's Fee Max program and rolled it out to 400 to 500 units. Within months the company ran at 25% to nearly 30% profitability, which funded more staff and better technology.
• A flat maintenance package replaces coordination fees. Peak charges a flat monthly maintenance package covering any coordination instead of a maintenance coordination fee, and Glover says no other company in its market does this. Fees must be backed by value, and Peak was never the cheapest in its market.
• Owners cannot outwork the business past 400 doors. Glover says property management is easy up to 400 doors, but past that an owner cannot outwork the problems. He is not the best property manager or financial person on the team, so he hires better people and lets them decide.
• Peak declined 4,000 units to protect standards. On the way to 1,300 units, Peak turned down more than 4,000 and manages nothing larger than 66 units. It has terminated large clients on team feedback, and at 1,000 units it needed to feed the team while holding the relationship standard.
• Response times and churn are tracked company-wide. Peak targets under two hours to respond and under two hours to a solution, with a 10% churn target. Core values include immediate responsiveness and owning the outcome, reinforced in quarterly and weekly meetings.
• A podcast now feeds the slowed referral flywheel. Peak's word-of-mouth flywheel slows without nurturing, so Glover started the Virginia Investor Podcast and hired two business development managers and a marketing team. An investor he had never met was 30 minutes into episode 21, and Instagram drew nearly 20,000 views in 30 days.

The 300-unit crisis

1. Glover came from fitness and knew nothing about real estate when a friend invited him to build a high-end Richmond management company.
2. Peak took on its first clients in early 2019. By 300 units, he and his partner believed the business could not be grown profitably and considered selling.
3. The partner offered Glover a $100,000 check to walk away and let the business dissolve.
4. Glover asked to buy the company and hold majority interest so it would be his own money at stake. The partner agreed and stayed a minority owner.