22 years later, I finally got what they've been telling me. What’s it like being in the other shoes?

Hi, my name is Mendell Gosnell with Centurion Real Estate Management, and I just wanted to share a quick story about, man, the shoe being on the other foot. So for over 22 years, I've been in the property management and real estate industry, and day in and day out, it's, uh, for the most part, it's been a joy. It can have some tough days and be, um, not a very, uh, appreciative business to be in. Uh, you kind of get, uh, slings and arrows from both sides, the owners and the tenants competing desires and outcomes, but it's been a very fulfilling career. But over the last 5 years, I've owned with some partners a property in Arizona, and initially we tried to do the management remotely. There was an onsite manager as well, and that was fine. It was just between me and 2 other partners, we're always trying to get the other partner to do stuff, and eventually we just decided, Hey, we're not, we're not getting paid for this. And one of us is always getting shortchanged. So let's just hire a local property manager down there, which worked out really good. We vetted a couple companies and, you know, turns out they had the same challenges that we do managing for other clients and just the challenges of tenants not doing what they're supposed to and trying to enforce the deals. And the point of sharing this kind of video is, is I had to kind of look myself in the mirror and adjust kind of my tone and just the way I was communicating with the property manager, I realized that, you know, I would get frustrated with something on the property or with the situation that was going on with the tenants, and I would take it out on the property manager. And I realized, gosh, you know, I don't like it when owners do that to me. It's not my fault, you know, we're doing our best. And I think at the end of the day, we want to work with good people that we have confidence in, that we trust, and that's, you know, what we try to strive for here at Centurion, to put in an honest day's work, be people of integrity, do what we say, and do our best in a really challenging industry. There's a lot of details, just a million things that could go wrong, balls drop all the time, but what do we do to correct those and how do we set up a system and processes to take care of those and ensure that things get taken care of for our clients, and when things go wrong, to make them right. But I just, I had to readjust how I was interacting with the property manager. And by, you know, they say you catch more flies with honey. So I changed my tone with the property manager and I was a lot more encouraging and not starting off with assuming that he's not doing his job or, you know, the accusatory, what are you doing? Why didn't you do this? But of course, trying to grease the wheels and keep him motivated. And it really changed the dynamic of the situation. And man, that made a big difference. And I think that if you're out there and you have a property managed by a third-party property manager, first you should try, you know, hire somebody that you see as a professional in their industry and someone that you can, you align with philosophically and that you can trust and then treat them well. They're taking the beatings out there for you on a daily basis. And certainly there's some times that they're, they're missing their mark and they— you need to call them out. But I think forging a good relationship, good working relationship, instead of being at odds with your property manager is definitely the way to go. And I just wanted to share that piece of wisdom, encourage everyone out there, no matter where you're at in the real estate spectrum, I think having a positive attitude and being nice is going to be the recipe for success over the long term. So thanks for watching.