Interview With A Business Process Manager

Find that key person and invest your time into them. I know your time's expensive, but that's, that's way worth it because that person is going to come out on the other side truly believing in the mission and the goals that you're trying to achieve and your vision.

It's Dave. And we're here with a systems champion, Mattie Todd from Real Property Management Express. And we're going to find out the ins and outs of what it takes to systemize a business. So firstly, Matti, welcome. And yeah, perhaps you can start by telling us a little bit about what RPM does.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So, yeah, I work for Real Property Management Express and we are a third party property management company that's dedicated to making investment easy and profitable through exceptional asset management. Our mission is for residents to help you live where you live and for our owners and our investors. Yeah, to make, to make it easy to invest in real estate and cash flow over time. So that's a little bit about what we do.

Perfect. And as far as the systems champion role, is that something that you were recruited in for that particular position or did you already work in at RPM and then you. They identified this as a role. Can you tell us a little bit about how the Systems champion role came to be?

Yeah, so I started in, in 2020, actually really interested in just real estate investment overall. I had an interest in getting my real estate license and so as an intern I worked through all of the, the positions possible. So I coordinated maintenance, I did leasing, I worked for the different types of all different types of properties that we've managed and that gave me a really in depth knowledge of how it is that we do things at our company. And so that level of expertise paired with an interest in teaching people how to do it and standardizing things across the business was kind of what piqued my interest. We also read, interestingly enough, we read E Myth as a group and that kind of got us into the understanding that we as a company really need to standardize our processes as we grow. And so I actually volunteered for the task just for merely the experience of doing it and then the excitement of building something that's bigger than myself.

Yeah, I love that. What qualities? Because I'm always looking for what makes a good systems champion. And you already hit on a couple of things. I really like the idea of that intern position where you're hungry to learn and you know a little bit about the industry or doing the technical work and then what a great way to Learn about the business of doing that technical work. So when you think what makes a great systems champion, are there any qualities that stand out for you?

Well, I think it's a lot of attention to detail is the big thing. And the not necessarily having the experience, but the humility to try and understand the experience through that other person's point of view, I would say. And being an intern sets you up perfectly for that. So, yeah, I would say that's. That that was a key characteristic that I had that really helped me to push. Push that forward. And then the way that we are as a company, our operations is extremely dynamic. I mean, we work with people and people are very different and we want to make sure that we're treating everyone fairly as well. And so understanding the different levels of detail is extremely important as well.

Your leadership team or direct supervisor, they obviously recognized the value of this particular role. Was it something that you shared multiple roles or was it exclusive? I'm always curious about how much time or resources are allocated to get this work done, because it does take work and the business needs to understand that. So I'm curious to know how that was either justified or what time it was given.

Yeah, so I would say it's kind of challenging to put to compare our experience as a company to what it would be like starting from the ground up. I can't really speak to the whole thing because it started before we read E Myth even. We were documenting our processes before and we were actually using ASANA to do that. So we would use, like, we'd throw together entire sets of processes into Asana and then we would actually record loom videos for each task and how to do those. So we started doing that and we were having our operators do that. So we were extracting that data in that way, and that took several months to do. But the actual pulling things into System Hub following having just a decent, like, rubric of those tasks in Asana, that was actually fairly quick. So for people that have been documenting their systems for, you know, a while, and you've got them scattered about, you know, you can use what you currently have, and that can actually speed up the process of, you know, getting that all consolidated into one space.

Is that how you came across my work? Was that through System Hub or Systemology?

We read Systemology right after emyf.

Oh, perfect. Yes.

Yeah.

And were there any particular things that stood out for you in the book? Obviously reading the E Myth, which is a real foundational work in the space, were there any particular distinctions that you picked Up.

I just think the overall importance of it, like, it can literally make or break a business. And it was so interesting. Again, I haven't, I haven't read it in a while, but what really still stands out to me is the ability to scale as a business is just completely like, you can grow without nearly as many pains as you would before, like if you have these, these processes documented. And we saw that time and time again. And incorporating into our culture as a company and just driving that home has really, really improved our company's just ability to operate overall.

Yeah, yeah. So these kind of stages, you went through the organization, had an understanding of systems and processes and started documenting and you came across Systemology and then you start organizing things a little bit better inside System Hub. And then you're still using Asana as your project management platform.

Yeah, we, we actually took a little inspiration from one of the videos you made about how you incorporated Systemology or System Hub into Asana and kind of, yeah, you have them kind of split out. So we were actually had them like together trying to force that into its own thing where, okay, now you do this, check that task done. Now you do this, check that task done. And that was a challenge to get people to adopt that because you got 40 tasks for processing one application and you're asking people to process 20 applications a day or whatever. And so the, the beauty of your idea was you're saying, no, this is the. How you do it. And this is the, all right, what do you need to do? And so people from any stage can reference that in their career. Can reference that and, and just go to work.

Yeah. Some of the changes that you've seen as you've rolled this out. Have you had any stories that have popped up? I don't know how receptive the team was or if there were any challenges or resistance from team members or anything like that. I'd love to know if you found anything particularly challenged.

Oh, yeah. I mean, initially there was not a huge adoption rate. They're like, why? Why are we doing it this way? And for me and our CEO Josh, we, we understood it because we both read the book and we're like, this is. This is the way. Like, this is. We got to do it this way. But for even our president and some of our other leadership, there was just kind of a disconnect. And so it really took time explaining the value of it, explaining this is the, this is the, you know, five year outlook. If we have standardized processes that people are following and using for them to see and then eventually when we started incorporating it into our task management using, you know, your, your video as inspiration, we, I created a project in Asana that was every single application task. Had a system. Yeah, had the application system. People were using that. And then we went from having like six different ways of processing applications depending on what region you were in, to one way. And we're seeing just not only people in the company knowing what's going on, but the customer experience improved overall too because people are getting the same consistent experience on an employee level we had before. We adopted System Hub and started to consolidate how it is that we do things into one one streamlined process. Our company churn just for employee turnover had reached an all time high at 114% which is imagine hiring everybody and then losing more over the course of a year. So then the next year we adopted System of April. It went down to 72% and the year following 56% churn for employees, which was actually better than we did in 2019 when we started tracking the whole thing. So we're, we're really seeing employees just feel like they have a place to go when they have questions and onboarding, you have a roadmap, you have an understanding of what's to come, what comes next. How do I do this? Go look it up, find the answer. People really, really appreciate that.

Do you have any insight in the time it takes to onboard? I know once you get like a learning track for someone when they start and they've got a particular bouncing ball that they follow, that getting someone to the point at which they can productively add value to the business tends to shrink. I don't know if you've got any insight into that or if you saw any changes there.

We're still working on that craft, but I will say it has dramatically increased in terms of, or improved in terms of like the time spent onboarding. Folks before we had kind of a scattered means of doing it where you, you know, depending on what team they were going on, you know, they're doing the same function but if they're in a different region, they're going to learn in a completely different way than someone else. This kind of enabled us to standardizer training. So we're bringing them on, we're giving them the same Asana project. You got to learn this, this, this and this. They're going through that. They're working with other people referencing the system that has really, really dramatically improved the process. We're still kind of getting, figuring out the best mechanism for training, but this is really, really helped with that. Yeah.

In the tail end, if someone was thinking about becoming a systems champion or had the opportunity to work as that in that particular role, I don't know if there's anything that you can say to that person. Like I'm really trying to make the case for the system's champion and I feel like it's such an important role that's very commonly overlooked. Yeah, you sort of have. Having been in that position, I don't know if there's anything, anything that comes to mind about that particular role that you could speak to a potential systems champion about.

Oh man. I would say recognize the technology around you and to use that, be able to use that. Like when I started that process, ChatGPT was not yet a thing. And I will say that has dramatically improved our ability to document how it is that we do things. So you actually have an incredible video. I was a part of that webinar where you were talking about using recorded loom video transcripts to throw in paired with a really nice prompt that you guys built out. And it just delivers this beautiful step by step process for how it is that you do the specific task that's basically just ready to like do a once over and plug in and go. So as a, as somebody who's documenting processes, you don't have to necessarily get stuck in the. Oh well, I don't know what comes after this or you know, the actual deep thought that it takes to write through those things. Yes, you still need to be detail oriented and have a really good understanding of what it is that you're trying to teach folks. But with the right prompt engineering, it's, it's really something that's achievable at a much faster pace than you think.

Feel like there's a couple of qualities that we're seeing surface that attention to detail, comfortable with tech and trying new tools. And I think there's a, that curiosity is another one that stood out for me, like genuinely interested in how the business works. And my question also around how you like drive yourself, what sort of input have you got from your leadership team and the business owner? Is this something that you've kind of just taken on and really driven yourself or is that something that they've really had to drive to get the outcome? That's, that's another quality I'd be interested to know.

I think being a self starter is important as a systems champion, but in terms of having a leader that is also driving you and that was one of the most important pieces for me was that I was kind of taken in as an acolyte of our CEO and said, hey, what do you think about doing this? What do you think about doing this? And so I think as if I'm speaking to an owner of a company or a CEO or president who's looking to document their systems, find that key person, and invest your time into them. I know your time's expensive, but that's way worth it because that person is going to come out on the other side truly believing in the mission and the goals that you're trying to achieve and your vision. And when someone has a deep belief and a deep understanding in what the end goal is, they're going to take that way further than you expected.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And a good reminder. I remember when I was doing some work with Michael Gerber and he had commented not to let the business owner off the hook. As in, even though you might have a systems champion and they're going to be doing, documenting and organizing, you still need to lead the way and demonstrate to the team that this is important, give it your full support, help provide that guidance and direction. But that systems champion can grow into such a critical role. I've seen it on more than one occasion where that person then's being groomed into, like, general manager, like a real key leadership role that has visibility across the organization. So I think being aware that that's a possibility might mean that the CEO is more likely to invest time and energy and effort into that person. So definitely. Very good. Well, we might call it a wrap there yet. Just want to say a huge thank you, Maddie, for sharing your insights. And if people want to find out a little bit more about real property management Express, what's the best place to send them to?

Yeah, you can check out our website@expressrpm.com perfect than.