Property Management Success
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.
00:43:57 · Casey Howe
[00:43:57] S2: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so We're putting gas in the fire, for lack of better terms. You know, we spent the last year, I think, sort of right sizing, getting more focused on the type of business we want. We know who the ideal customer profile is. We've made some good hires. You know, we're we are um the strongest we've been operationally in terms of the service that we deliver to clients than we've ever been. Um, and we're ready for for more growth. The growth is going to come from two things. One is, you know, obviously we want to sell more units, but we also want to continue to vertically integrate. I think, you know, when you talk about some of the changes that you're seeing out there, you know, we're seeing two things with with our investors. One is this apprehension around rent control. If rent control is passed in Massachusetts, um, you know, operating properties profitably is going to be uh very, very important and mitigating costs and things like that is going to be very, very important because the the rents aren't going to increase at the rate they need to in certain situations. And so the way that we do that is is is but through vertical integration. And so we can usually, if we have, you know, we have in-house handyman and some other things now. If we do that, we can do it at a lower cost. We can still make money and it's better service for the client. And so we want to continue to bring those things in-house, make revenue there, deliver a better service, and grow our door count as well. Um, yeah, it should be a good should be a good year. We've got a business development rep that started about four months ago. We're working with um uh rent scale and and you know, we've got everything locked and loaded to to grow. And you know, we're not going out and signing anyone. We, you know, it's funny. If you want to grow by 300 doors, which is sort of our our goal this year, um, or 350, you know, that's that's we want 10, 10-unit clients, five 20-unit clients, and three 50-unit clients. You know, that's that doesn't when you break it down like that, that doesn't sound like that that much really, considering what we've already got in pipeline and stuff like that. And I have I am very confident we can serve all of those clients really well because we we know that type of client really well.
00:46:03 · Tony Cline
[00:46:03] S0: I know I said I was gonna wrap up with growth, but you said something, so I want to touch on it and then we can wrap up. But uh you talked about having in-house maintenance, and that is a topic where a lot of, you know, there there are other businesses out there that will uh tell you what your revenue per door should be, and and that if your uh revenue per door on your management side isn't high enough, they really push you to try to bring that up. But then there are companies that are making a ton of money on maintenance, and that doesn't get factored in. It's like, I don't care what pocket the dollar is in. Like if if it's in my maintenance pocket or my management pocket, I still have a dollar, right? I still got that money. And so there's there's a lot of people looking at how can I increase my overall revenue for the company? And a lot of them start looking at bringing in-house maintenance in. And I know companies who have solved it, I know companies who've tried it for a few years and never made them made money on it. So I just do you have any insights or any feedback for people who are thinking about bringing maintenance people in-house or even creating a separate maintenance company?