Property Management Success
00:27:11 · Stephen Glover
[00:27:11] S1: Yeah, I I would say there's a lot of luck in what's happened with this company. Uh, tons of luck, but this is not one of them. You don't get lucky with good culture, you don't get lucky with good hires. Um, that is extremely intentional. Um, and it is something that you work on every single day. Every interaction that you have with an employee, you're either gaining relationship capital and leadership capital with them, or you're losing it. Whether you're saying good morning or, you know, good afternoon, or hope you had a good day, or just talking about their family or their, you know, something that they're dealing with, you as a business owner, you're either gaining relationship capital or you're losing it. You're either gaining leadership capital or losing it. And so every single interaction, you better be gaining relationship capital and gaining leadership capital. And if you could do that, people will want to work with you and want to be a part of your team. And if people want to be a part of your team, they're gonna be part of the culture and part of the values that you uphold. Now, as far as like getting that information across the whole team constantly, we obviously have like quarterly team meetings, we have weekly team meetings, we have we have meetings embedded where this is described and this is applauded and examples are called out and things like that. Um we have or 4.8 on Google with 1300, 1400 reviews. Um, and so we uh call those out frequently and reward that five-star service. We have KPIs that we monitor weekly that are self-reported by the individual that show that we're less than two hours response time or less than two hours to a solution via email across the company, company wide on our email systems, um, and then our our phone answer rates and everything like that. And so it's a it's a number of different things. It's a lot of uh acknowledgement, it's a lot of um encouragement, it's a lot of empowering the team and giving them, making sure you can hire enough people to be responsive. Because if you if you're understaffed, you can't get mad at your team for not being responsive. So there's a lot of things that you can do as a leader to make this. We have core value signs about responsiveness and communication uh all over the office. We have it in meeting um agendas and things like that. It is, it's everywhere.
00:29:25 · Stephen Glover
And so the company knows that we do not um, we are very forgiving uh and we pay a lot of tuition uh when we need to, and we're okay with that because it makes us stronger and helps us grow. But we're not forgiving when it comes to uh not following our core values, which are immediate responsiveness, top-notch communication, prioritizing relationships, and owning the outcome.
00:29:47 · Tony Cline
[00:29:47] S0: I truly believe that most people will rise or fall to your level of expectation. And so if you have high expectations, most people, given the opportunity, will rise to those. And the ones that can't, you you're able to screen them out because you do have those high expectations. One of the things that we talk about a lot in my company and with the companies that I coach is the that championship mindset, the championship formula. And we we often say, would this happen or would this be tolerated on a championship team? And if the answer is no, then it shouldn't happen here, it shouldn't be tolerated here. And by having those high standards, not everybody is going to be able to meet those. But it's it's necessary to find out which ones can and which ones can't so that you can help train up the ones that can so that they can meet our expectations and so that we can help move the people who can't meet those expectations off. Because I've seen companies where somebody will be in a position for longer than they should have been and they are not performing. And when the business owner finally makes the decision to make a change, help that person move on and find another opportunity, the rest of the team comes and says thank you. And and what we've realized is that when if you have ten people on your team and one of them is not performing, you can't be thinking about, oh geez, I can't I can't fire that person because they have this responsibility, or it's too close to Christmas, or I'm gonna give them another shot. You can't look at the one, you have to look at the other nine. And the other nine are looking to see are you holding those standards that you've set? And if you're not, then eventually they're going to stop performing and achieving those high standards because again, people will rise or fall to your level of expectation, and they know even though you set those ex standards, you're not expected to hit them.
00:31:51 · Stephen Glover
[00:31:51] S1: Yeah, we absolutely have high expectations, but I also acknowledge that it's high expectations. Like, I won't just say do this and why aren't you doing it? Like, you know, if we have a hard time hitting a certain expectation, I'll acknowledge that, hey, look, this is a brutal KPI to hit, but this is what we expect. And it's because we want to be the top 1% in the nation. We we we are not building a local mom and pop management company. We don't want to necessarily expand to different markets and do all this stuff, but we want to operate as a top 1% company in the nation. We want to set the standard, raise the bar for what the industry is doing, and do our part to improve the industry and make a make a small impact on it in the market that we operate. And so, yes, our KPIs are tough. And yes, these standards are very hard to meet, but if they agree with the vision and what we're trying to do as a company, then they're on board with trying to hit that KPI. And so we do acknowledge that some of these are really hard and we are setting the standard at uh like I sometimes I'll I'll say, like, hey, our churn metric needs to be no more than 10%. And I will get on our team, we'll have some serious conversations if it's at 12 or 13 or whatever. And the thing is, is 10% is considered incredible in the industry. And but I will acknowledge that, I don't hide that from the team. But I also say we're expected to have an incredible team. If we want to raise the bar, 10% is where we're at. And so we need to start analyzing what we need to improve if we're at 13, 14, 15%. And that doesn't mean we're always at 10. There might be some, you know, there are some clients that we lose here and there, and there sometimes that'll that'll get high, but we understand exactly what's going on and we know what what changes we need to make and we get it back to our expectation.
00:33:33 · Tony Cline, Stephen Glover
[00:33:33] S0: Yeah. I think it's really good to have the the communication that these are high standards, but we're gonna we're gonna hit them anyway. We're gonna target them anyway because that's the type of company we are, that's the type of culture. And this isn't just a place to come to work, this is a place to come to be your best and be around other people who are performing at their best. [00:33:53] S1: It it would be a shame to not accomplish what we're capable of. That is that is a fear that I have. We have such a good team, such a powerful team. We have great technology, great software, great market. We have so many things going for us. It would be a shame to settle for less. And so that's sort of the message that I give to the team is like, why would we do that to ourselves when if we work together, we can accomplish so much more? And I think that that clicks with my team. I think they understand that.
00:33:53 · Stephen Glover, Tony Cline
[00:33:53] S1: It it would be a shame to not accomplish what we're capable of. That is that is a fear that I have. We have such a good team, such a powerful team. We have great technology, great software, great market. We have so many things going for us. It would be a shame to settle for less. And so that's sort of the message that I give to the team is like, why would we do that to ourselves when if we work together, we can accomplish so much more? And I think that that clicks with my team. I think they understand that. [00:34:21] S0: It's funny you mentioned that. And uh I'll say this and we'll we'll switch gears. But um I I give a presentation and I gave this at NARPM National a few years ago, but at the end of it, I wrap it up and I tell people I, you know, my two biggest fears, and one is that I will die with unrealized potential, that I will have potential, and that I will have died without being able to realize that that potential and at least pursue it. And I think that you if you give people the opportunity to pursue their potential, um, it just opens up it, it becomes more than just a job. It becomes, you know, that that culture that you're trying to create. And once you have that momentum, it's just it's so much easier to stack better and better in people and processes and everything on top of that. Yeah, when you make some good hires and they come in and like raise your team up, it it increase like people are fired up.