Property Management Success
00:07:51 · Stephen Glover
[00:07:51] S1: Yeah, so there's I think I was a little bit different than most. Uh, I had a background uh working with special operations teams. And so what I learned in working with them was that you could outwork anything. Uh it all just comes down to your mindset and you could do way more than you think you can. And so up to about 400 doors, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs learn that along the way. Up to about 400 doors, it is relatively easy. It gets very difficult towards 400 to outwork anything. You can outwork any issue in the business. The owner can outwork any issue. Yes, you're gonna need to hire a few people. The owner still has his or her hands in every aspect of the company. And so I can, at the time it didn't feel easy, but looking back, you can see why property management companies can relatively easily get to 200, 300, 400. When they get to 400, that is a massive struggle for them. For me, I never had an issue hiring anyone and trusting them to do the job because my background is building teams and communicating well. And so if I can work on my leadership and try to be the strongest leader I can be, and we can create the right culture in the team of communication and teamwork and leadership, then I can trust my team that they're gonna operate and they have the right culture and they care about the company and they understand the company's vision. And so I've always trusted my team. I've been able to hire and trust my team. I think with a lot of entrepreneurs, what I see is they need to do everything themselves and they will not trust their team. So the change for me really came down to profitability. It wasn't that I wouldn't hire people and wouldn't delegate and things like that. I was still working a ton because I wanted to fuel this company, but I had an issue seeing where what was the point based on the profitability that we were at. And so it just happened to be around the same time where everyone's feeling the pain, the same unit count where people were feeling the pain of I'm scared to hire, I don't trust my team, I don't know how to delegate, other people aren't going to treat clients as well as I do, other people aren't gonna treat tenants. I didn't have any of that. I trusted my team. We we put the right guidelines in place, uh, the right processes in place. That was fine. I was worried about the profitability.
00:10:02 · Stephen Glover
In Q1 of 2021, I figured out that my fee structure was way out of whack. I revamped my entire fee structure and within months was operating at 25, closer to 30% profitability. It was a really and we were growing quickly. So these people went quickly into this fee structure. And so the profitability just started jumping out. And I was like, okay, so now I have a team I trust. I'm able to delegate, I can hire people, and then I'm understanding everyone I hire is smarter than me, has way more experience than me in the industry, especially on the financial, the property management side, the maintenance side. Everyone, I'm bringing people in the industry around me that have years longer experience than I do so that they can add value and bring that information to our team. We're building this out together. Everyone understands the vision. We finally found profitability. Now we can bring even more uh experienced people in the team and continue to grow from there.
00:10:56 · Tony Cline
[00:10:56] S0: I want to give your insight on this because I think you you touched on something that you uh had a strength in. And a lot of the people that come to me either when they they come to one of my presentations or they want to get some coaching, they come and they they are a little bit opposite of you in the fact that they've built a company around them. They are the the genius with a bunch of assistants, and you approached it differently from your background, you were able to build strong teams. One of our core philosophs philosophies at Onyx is we we build around what I call the championship formula, and there's seven core components of that. And then the the first one is what I call our game plan, and from that game plan, we have where we get really clear on that vision of what we're building, where we're going, and then we we have to figure out how to fund that. And another component is getting, or a subcomponent of that is getting really clear on our income and revenue streams. And since you already had that, that strong ability to build the teams, what what advice would you give somebody that is trying to switch from I I've built this business around me, I'm sort of the I'm the chief firefighter, everything has to go through me. I haven't really created an empowered team because they all know that I'm gonna make the final call, I'm gonna question their judgment. How do we shift from being the person that's doing all the stuff to being the person that is what I call the conductor of the orchestra, where you have an expert playing and in each position? What advice would you have to somebody that uh to give to somebody that was trying to make those changes?
00:12:38 · Stephen Glover
[00:12:38] S1: Yeah, for me, as long as I could control the vision, the culture, and the values of the company, our company's gonna win. As long as I can control that. But I kind of am blessed with not having any preconceived notions of real estate, not thinking, you know, not doing, not knowing what everyone else was doing. And so I knew I'd come from a team-based background. Everything I've done in my career has been building the right team around me to be successful. And so I look at it as like a lot of it is humility. I'm not the best at any of this stuff. Like I think I'm I'm good, I'm decent at sharing the value, at creating a culture and at communicating, um, at looking out for my team and caring for them and giving them all the tools and resources they need to succeed. But I'm not the best property manager by any means. I'm not the best salesperson by any means. I'm not the best financial person. My team would laugh if they even heard me suggest that. And so the idea is I need to put those, it's my responsibility as a business owner to put those people in place and then let them work. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with controlling everything if you only want to grow to about 400 units. If that's what you want, that is fine. Um, but I talk to local property management companies at around 100, 200, 300 units in Richmond pretty frequently. And typically the pain point is that when they hire people, they're not as good as the owner is. And so I would suggest maybe one way out of it. I mean, you have to be humble and realize that other people can do things that you can do. Uh, or you you should take ownership and realize you're not setting the proper um processes in place to allow your people to follow them. Um, you're not giving them the tools they need to succeed if they can't do it as well as you. You're not hiring the right people. You're not sharing the vision well enough for them for the right people to want to join your team. And so I think it starts with taking ownership and looking at yourself and not saying, these people can't do it as well as me. Why is it, why can I not scale? Why can I not hire people that are a good fit for this company and that can grow with this company? You need to look at yourself first as a business owner if you want to scale. If you don't want to scale, fine, that's okay.
00:14:52 · Stephen Glover
But you will not scale probably far past 400 with decent level of service, communication, responsiveness if you are the person who needs to outwork everything.
00:15:02 · Tony Cline
[00:15:02] S0: I agree with that. I think there's I would add, I would even add a little, sprinkle a little extra flavor on what you said, which would be that there may not be anything wrong with being the person that has to control everything, but you need to realize you're not building a business. What you've done is you've created a a, in some cases, a high-paying job. In some cases, a very low-paying job, because if you haven't figured out how to become profitable, you wind up being the person that has to control everything. And in there's there's two types of people that I've found in in this business. The one that has to be the person that controls everything, all the decisions go through them, and they wind up being bitter and burnt out. And when they do hire, they want to hire somebody to make sure that they're not as good as them so that they can still kind of control the situation. The other person is when they've realized that they're building something bigger than themselves, they're building something that they've created this vision. And I think it's super important you touch on something, and I don't want to gloss over it, about the vision, really giving people something to buy into of this is where we're going, this is how you contribute, and we're giving people something to belong to. I really feel that people long to be a part of something excellent. And if you give them the place and the platform to plug into, they will do that. And then you have to go out and look for people and be humble enough to find people who are better than you at the areas that you're hiring them for, and then let them take it. And you become not a property manager at that point, but a manager of the vision and a manager of people and helping them achieve their highest level along the way.