Property Management Success
00:36:11 · Tony Cline
[00:36:11] S0: Yeah, I always say that is as a business owner, you own the policy. And I people remember things a lot more through storytelling than facts and figures. So our structure is we it's sort of sports-based, sports analogy, but we we come up with the the rule book. So those are rule books are policies. This is how we win the game of property management at whatever company we're working with. And and the policies are set by the franchise owner, the you know, the sports team owner, uh, and so the owner of the property management business. And then the the plays that get executed, we have the team that is on the front line help us draw up the plays that we need to execute to adhere to or uphold the policies or the rules. And so we empower them to come to us and use their intelligence and say this is what we should be doing to adhere to or uphold those policies. And then, of course, we have veto power to rearrange the order of things or whatever, but people support what they help create. And so if you give them the ability to help create it versus saying, I worked on this for four months and congratulations, I'm shoving it down your throat. You know, you're you're gonna get a much better result if they're helping you build the thing. And like you said, you have people on your team that are better at certain things than what you are or what you think they are.
00:37:30 · Casey Howe
[00:37:30] S2: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. And there's a little chicken and egg situation there too, where you you get, you know, I I think a lot of times people are, you know, we have very low employee turnover. And so because of that, we're able to lean on the people a little bit more than if we had like everyone was turning over once every two months, like you'd have to just have a checklist that everyone followed exactly the same way. And so those might be, by the way, a little chicken and egg where it's like if all you're doing is bringing employees in and saying, do this exact checklist, you don't have any, you don't own the results, or you're not responsible for you know using your head, that would be a very monotonous job, and they're probably going to turn over. And so you're in, you're kind of in this thing, and and it's not the only thing to do for employee retention, but I think when you have employees that feel engaged, feel like they can feed into the process and see how that process uh fits into the overall goal of the company or mission of the company, I think you're setting yourself up for um for higher employee satisfaction and retention.
00:38:26 · Tony Cline, Casey Howe
[00:38:26] S0: Right. Yeah. So that reduces churn, uh, employee churn. You know, I always say when we when we assign uh tasks to somebody or we we give somebody something that is part of their job description, they they need to have the ownership of the outcome, the authority to make decisions and the autonomy to operate without waiting for somebody else to interfere or approve. And if you can do that, you're gonna create a job where people do feel empowered, they do feel important, they do feel like they make a difference, and they feel like they're a part of something. And so they're gonna stick around much longer. So if you're having a churn problem, it's probably because you have an over control problem as well. [00:39:08] S2: Could be. Yeah, absolutely could be, a hundred percent. And I think the other thing in there is is letting is being okay with mistakes. You know, there's there's different levels of delegation, right? I mean, there's you're not gonna delegate a, you know, if if you do this wrong on your first try, this building's gonna catch on fire. Like, right? But I mean, there are there are mistakes that are acceptable. And so letting employees take a shot at a response to a client about a question they've not had before, I'd rather have them mess up and learn and and things like that than just have sort of these canned responses that they need to send out and stuff like that. So I think you know, being compassionate when mistakes are made can be really uh beneficial too.
00:39:47 · Tony Cline
[00:39:47] S0: Absolutely. Um there's only three three categories of things that I think that we really need to protect. Like these are the top three for me. So trust funds. We don't mess with other people's money, right? Uh to the penny. That's you you can't do that. So that's one of the areas where we we do have a little bit more stricter control and oversight. Then fair housing. I'm really big on, you know, number one, if you follow fair housing and you treat everybody the same, it just makes your systems easier because now you can have this is what we do, and we don't have exceptions. If we want to provide an option for something, like if we want to do a one-time late fee waiver for a resident, okay, that's our policy. Now it's the same for everybody. But we we don't mess with trust funds, we don't mess with fair housing. And for us, we don't mess with lead-based paint just because that's you know, we have the high penalties for for the management company and for the client. But outside of that, I'm okay. All the companies that I coach, we eventually wind up setting up an oops fund. And the oops fund are generally tied to a quarterly bonus. So the more we have to spend out of the oops fund, the lower the pool is for the quarterly bonus. But it empowers our team to solve the problem because for for business owners that are like, I have to make sure that everything is done right and I'm not willing to write a check for things when we screw up, that means they're being pulled in to make the decision because when if your team member is afraid to make a decision, then they're gonna pull you in to make it, which means you're pulled back in. So I always ask the business owner, what would it be worth? Is it worth $2,000 a month for you to not have to be involved at the ground root level? I love that. Um and and if it is, then that's your oops fund. Right? If it's only worth $500, then it's worth $500. If it's worth zero, then that means okay, you are intentionally making the decision to be sucked back into the day-to-day operations of the business. I love that. Every company is gonna make mistakes. There's different ways to solve it. And I'd rather have my employee make a mistake, we write a check, we learn the lesson, we don't make that same mistake again. Now my team is better, more empowered, and I'm not the one that's having to solve it.
00:42:10 · Tony Cline, Casey Howe
So eventually I continue to rise out and do that $1,000 an hour work. My team gets better at the $100 an hour work, and our clients continue to get the level of service that they deserve. [00:42:21] S2: I love that. We're gonna, I just wrote that down. We're doing the oops fund, and I'm gonna call it the oops fund too. We're gonna take your name. I love that. You know, it's it's interesting. What you did say about, you know, where you can't make mistakes, you're absolutely right. And that that's you know, we try to not leverage, we try to build things internally where we can, but where we do leverage uh great vendors is is on that. I mean, we're we have a you know a third-party accountant that keeps keeps track of everything for us, and we're very happy with them. And we're we're not you know fumbling our way through trust accounting or things like that. But but we, you know, the the other stuff we want to use as development opportunities.
00:42:56 · Tony Cline
[00:42:56] S0: Well, Casey, I want to close this out with uh talking a little bit about growth. Growth is on everybody's mind. I think it always has been, but for some reason, as the market's shifting, there's um I always say that the dollars are in the change. So when the market, when the market stays the same, it's really hard to grow competitively or or take up market share. But when when the market changes, that's where the dollars are. You if you get really intentional about thinking about the changes that are coming down the line, the changes in legislation, the changes in market, uh changes in consumer expectations, that's where the dollars are. And so I'm curious, what what are your plans? What are you looking at for growth for 2026? Is it we've got it figured out, we're pouring more gas on it, or are we starting to think about maybe some different other avenues? Uh, not trying to lead you in any direction. I'm just curious about what your growth plan looks like for for 26.