Property Management Sanity with Adam Willis

Welcome back to Owner Occupied. Man, I'm excited about today's episode. We've got Adam Willis here. Adam, welcome to the show.

Hey, it's great to be here.

This is going to be a fun one. So Adam and I met through industry events. We're currently in a mastermind together, and he's got a really unique way of thinking about the industry, and he's kind of got the chops to show that basically his methods are working, and we're going to get into that. So Adam, let's start because, um, honestly, I'm not super familiar with your background and I'm guessing a lot of the listeners aren't either. Unlike some of the other guests where they've been around on a bunch of different shows, I've picked out kind of a diamond in the rough. I'm pulling you up out of obscurity. Uh, not really, but in a way, because, you know, I was, I always do research before the show and I'll, I'll just pop someone's name into Spotify and listen to like other shows that have been on just so I'm not repeating the same content. I couldn't find anything for you. So that gets me even more excited. Let's get into it. Share a little bit about who you are, what you're about, and how you got to where you are now.

Yeah. Great to be here. Great to finally put it out there. I honestly quite intentionally do keep a fairly low profile, mostly because of my own feelings of inadequacy. And then I never want to come off as braggadocious or, or, you know, anything like that. So I've honestly, even, even when I post something on Facebook, I'm like, do I really need to be saying this? Does the world need to hear that? And is it just a massive distraction? Anyways, happy to share a little bit of a background with me or about me. Basically, my family has multiple generations of real estate property managers, partial real estate, residential real estate, brokering farms is what my grandfather did up in Idaho. And so it's just kind of been indoctrinated in me and coming up through the ranks. This was a family-owned company until about 2 or 3 years ago. I finally kicked everyone out. They're now in retirement. And honestly, My father has ALS and he's able to live a really great lifestyle due to passive income that he's been able to generate over the years. My mom travels the world and is a philanthropist and she spends more time outside of the country than inside the country doing what she does. And so real estate has always been there. It's always been a means to some fantastic opportunities for them. But now there's a new guard. That's me. And Going back to when I was younger, I remember it was a very small property management company. I was 8 or 9 years old and people would come to our front door of our home and say, hey, let me, can I pay rent? And so I always knew it was the first day of the month because I'd come home from school and I'd be watching Mr. Belvedere and the doorbell would ring every 5 minutes and it'd be someone dropping off rent. And I'd have to be like, I could write, I could count $100 bills pretty quick, write receipts. And then we had this secret spot behind the microwave where we'd stick all the cash until it could be deposited night. So it's just property management. It's just all I know.

Love that. Love that story. So family business. I heard a great joke the other day from another podcast guest. He goes, this is Michael Gerdley. He's actually, I have him on the show, but he says, yeah, the fireworks business, I came by that business the old-fashioned way. I inherited it. That's a great way to phrase that. So very cool. And that's kind of a common thread among a lot of property managers I know. Family business and the new generation comes in, takes it to the next level, like times 10 or times 100 using technology really as a backbone for a lot of it. So speaking of taking it to the next level, you and I were chatting a little bit before the show. And I know that you've experienced really rapid growth. And I think a lot of people, you know, you hear the highlights, right? When you're at conferences and things like that. And people say this and they say that, and you're always kind of wondering like, okay, is that net of churn or is that, you know, oh, you added 200 doors this year. Okay. But did you actually lose 150? So share, if you don't mind, a little bit about the growth that you've experienced, and then maybe we'll get into like, how you did it and what's been the impact and the challenges.

Some points that stand out to me are basically, yeah, mom and pop, 100 doors. I was graduating from school coming out of that, looked at corporate America, wasn't— I always struggled working for a boss, knew I would. So I went to my mom and I said, "Hey, let's— can I do something with this company? What's your plan?" And so some stepping stones is me kind of cutting chops and it was just kind of learning by the sweat of my brow. It was just me and her stepping stones going through that. We're now— our highlights is, it was kind of like, hey, sink or swim, whatever you make from property management, you guys can, you can keep. And that was kind of the understanding. And that's how we initially grew was we were more portfolio. So I came in, I built my own portfolio. It was a great time of, you know, in the history of real estate. In 2005 is when I came in and lots of prolific growth. So it was very easy to bring on new doors. I did that with a number of other people who came in and they were all managing, you know, their own portfolio of 150 doors, give or take. We're making great money, but everyone started doing it a little bit differently and they started delegating and hiring their own little people on their teams. And there just wasn't cohesion or doing it our way at that time, called CDA Properties. We are now Nestwell. So when I finally took the reins and people retired out, I had put my own stamp on things. And through that, me putting my own brand on it, we really, really, really doubled down on customer experience, you know, what the customer's journey. And now, you know, we just made the Inc. 5000 list. We won Best of Salt Lake City. We're a multimillion-dollar company. And now have north of 35 people and 2 other sister companies as well.

Love it. And do you mind sharing how many doors under management?

Ebbs and flows, we're probably at 850, 900-ish. We'll be north of 1,000 by the end of this year.

So one of the things that I, very early on, one of our first interactions was around something you just touched on, which is customer experience, customer journey. You are doing something really unique here. I don't know if you know how unique this is, but it's, it has to do with self-help portals and ticketing systems. I don't know if you remember, but like a couple years ago I was like, I don't know, I forget how we got connected around this, but I was like asking you questions around, you know, many software companies, if you need help with their product or service, you go on their website, they have a help section, they have a bunch of articles on how to do everything and any question you have. They have Q&A, they have video tutorials, everything. Property managers don't have that. Like every, every inquiry right now in most management companies is being handled by a human. And you were really early to recognize, hey, there's a better way to do this. Why don't we create an owner portal or an owner help knowledge base, help section, whatever you want to call it, and a separate one for residents where they can actually self-serve and get their own information online 24/7. That has so many benefits. So I'd love to hear about how you came to this idea, what software you've tried out and used and what's working well and what's been the impact on your business.

Yeah, absolutely. Most of it was out of selfishness because it seemed to me that every question that came in had to be answered by somebody. When you're a smaller company, me, you know, like I'm wearing all the hats. I have to answer all the questions.. And when you have to answer a question more than 3 times, whether that's me being a principal broker or, you know, someone who is on the CSR team, the customer service team, like if you're answering that question more than 3 times in, you know, a month or a week or whatever, it just necessitates like, how can we stop that from happening so we can shift and say, what, what are the questions that are going to come in that we can answer in the future? So it was mostly like, I just got to get it off my plate to broaden my horizon. So it was transformative is probably the best word. We initially were with Intercom and they are fantastic in regards to their adoption of AI. I think they were kind of on the bleeding edge in my mind, but it was amazing that you have different generational tech customers who want self-service. You have the ones that want to phone call, you have the ones that want to set appointments and sit down I need going knee to knee. But if you can cure that, those people that do want self-service, it's going to be— they're going to get on with their day, right? Like it's, it's all about convenience and I want the answer now. And you can quite easily deliver on those expectations of you as a property management company if you're early in or early to adopt that. And so a great example is I cracked the ceiling of my car. It's a glass ceiling. And I went onto the app that is by Tesla and I said, I cracked my glass and it said where? And it said, take a few pictures. And within minutes I had a quote and appointment to have that fixed. And it was just this big spider web of what is the problem, diagnosing the problem, troubleshooting the problem. That's what we do as property managers is try to prevent that. Unnecessary service call that is $100 or whatever it is, and then getting a solution and scheduling that solution and getting that customer on with their day. And so we have been doing that for years as far as our knowledge base is really built out. I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles that someone could come in and say, I have this problem and I can type it out and it will deliver an answer, the video, the You know, it goes from question all the way down to resolution. And that's what we're in the business of. We're in the business of providing solutions.

For the listeners, you may be familiar with Intercom and not even know it. So for example, LeadSimple uses Intercom. If you've interfaced with their help section before, it's the one where it's like a little icon at the bottom right. You click on it, it pops up. It says like the agents who are working that day and average response time. You can type a question and it will like try and supplement, it'll try and help you with suggested help articles, but then you can click like ask a question and it will connect you with, um, it'll basically create a support ticket and then someone like a live person will jump in within a few minutes and start typing back and forth with you. So you mentioned now, did you end up switching off of Intercom or like, where are, where is it today?

Yeah. Intercom is extremely powerful. So it still powers our knowledge base. Uh, we are on Help Scout. For email support. And that is— that has its— there's two fundamental philosophies. Intercom is self-service, AI, auto-answering. Intercom is fundamentally different because they're direct competitors and they will only— they're doubling down on I only want to answer by human being. And so that for my teammates to use is a little bit more fluid., but a lot of that troubleshooting preemptive AI is, is better in Intercom. So we're using both. It's not— that's not the solution, but we're tolerating both.

Yeah. And like to this day, I think about this, it just gets me so excited. And we've taken baby steps in this direction. We actually are using a public Notion page or like site, um, one for our owners and one for our residents. It's not as slick as some of these solutions that were built from the ground up to solve this problem, but at the very least, we can link to pages when we respond to an owner or a resident who has a question. We can say, here's a basic explanation of what's going on, click here for more information, and then they have access to like a public link, public site that goes into more detail, has a video, all that other stuff. What's been the impact on your business? Are you able to see how many hits, how many reads, how many hours, how many tickets are being saved? Are you able to quantify it at all?

I am, but I don't watch it super close. But I mean, we're— it's hard to quantify other than I can see the sigh of relief my team when these products are honestly utilized well by the customers logging in and seeing it. But step 2 of this is by the time they do get to a real person, we've kind of troubleshooted the issue and we know we've distilled down what the core problem is. And then even then we can serve up safe replies, auto replies, and then our team can build off of those. Next layer is my team is is using ChatGPT and they'll say, hey, here's the issue. This has been the recommended reply. Let me— or I'm going to go to ChatGPT and be like, how do I answer this question? They plug it in and at least it gives them a bit of a stepping stone into resolving that without them going through the brain trauma of, oh my gosh, I have to think through this entire thing. I have to troubleshoot it, yada yada. It just collapses time for our customer service team.

Got it. And if you had to just make a complete estimate, Do you feel like this is heading off 20% of customer service inquiries, 50%, 2%?

[Speaker:RYAN] Yeah, we're probably well into the double digits. It's probably resolving 40% of general inquiries. I'll be looking through the— I'll go and see if I can find Intercom and check how many tickets come in and are closed. Same with Help Scout. What's also nice is from a customer experience. We have happiness scores and so they can rank and file our CSRs to see how well that they're doing and then we can engage with them and say, oh, this is working well, this teammate's shining in this department and then they can cross-train other CSRs too.

So I love that and I truly believe this is the future of our industry and I know LeadSimple has their inbox product, which is basically a ticketing system. I just, I'm so excited about the direction that this is going because it just seems obvious to me that we should allow our customers to self-serve, self-help. It's only going to increase, right? The demographics of people who rent homes, right? These are younger people. And so just by nature, renters are younger than homeowners. And so for sure, that demographic wants to self-help. They don't want to get on the phone. They don't even want to email. They want to be able to find the answer themselves and solve it themselves. And then for the real estate investor or the accidental landlord, this is an older demographic, but still, I mean, millennials are in their 30s, right? Some are in their early 40s. So these are people who grew up with technology. Now they own homes, they own investment properties, and they also by and large don't want to get on the phone and probably don't even want to email. They just want to get on a website and get the help, get the answer they need. So if we can— this is just like a win-win to me, right? Because the— those customers, that's how they want to engage with companies. And on our end, it just reduces our service burden, it reduces our workload. So explain to me why this hasn't taken off more.

What am I missing? Um, I think there's limiting beliefs about business owners. Hey, true customer service is we have a secretary sitting at the front desk and they answer the phone on the first ring and we're going to talk through it and we're going to forward them to the person with the answer and it's just going to be this lovely, really engaging thing and truly— and there are your retired people that want to do that and we occasionally accommodate them and go knee to knee with them and bring them into the office and buy lunch. That will exist. But by and large, to your point, Peter, it's, hey, I have a problem. I just need an answer. I just need a solution to it. That's what is my property manager or my landlord. And let me get to that. So I think there's limiting beliefs of business owners of what true customer service is and what it means. And they're probably coming from an older generation, older guard, not to take a stab at it because I tip my hat to you guys for doing it all manually, but that does not scale. So there's belief systems about that. Why else hasn't it taken off?

There's, there's costs involved here, right? I mean, this is another software package, you know, maybe that plays into it.

Yeah, fair enough. I spend, you know, just in 3 software systems that are customer-centric, it's about $3,000 a month. That's, you know, that's not cheap.

So half a full-time domestic employee for sure, or 3 or 4 RTMs.

The— I think there's also fear of technology. Oh my gosh, it's going to replace us. I don't understand it. I barely can check my own email and to adopt something different is very scary. And then I think that there's certainly pride of, oh, I am a property manager and I have all this knowledge in my mind and there's validation and who your identity is by saying, I have all the answers. And to, you know, to get them into a coherent database that could be served up to your customers doesn't bode well for someone's ego.

It's also a lot of work to make all those articles.

And that's what I was going to say. Finally, I'm like, I think we're so busy and overwhelmed and just firefighting that to sit down and be practical about, hey, when XYZ happens, this is the result, and I'm going to put that into a database and self-serve that up. Like, people just don't— simply do not have time.

And what was it about your own, um, like, where did this— you did it, so you obviously did think of this and envision this future and took the time and spent the money, did it, made the investment. Where did that come from for you? Did you just— did this idea just come out of nowhere? Did you see another manager doing this?

Yeah, I just turned 40. Been doing it for a few years. I'm becoming a little bit more— not as early of an adopter, but over the past 4 or 5 years, I've just been like, let's make things better, please, please, please. And it was mostly, like I said, removing my pain because it's arduous to answer the same question over and over again. And it's arduous for the customer. And So we, I, it was mostly out of necessity to just curb my own headaches. And then also I wanted to develop other teammates, right? Like I am not on the front lines anymore or in the trenches. And so when I can say, hey, here's the article, here's my video, here's the explainer on the solution. Not only do I have a knowledge base for that's owner-facing, client-facing, tenant-facing, but we also have our own internal knowledge base where people can go. And so it's not the knock, knock, knock, hey Adam, do you got a minute? Can I ask you this question? It's, did you check the knowledge base first for that solution? And when they go there, then I'm helping them feel more empowered and they can get back on with their day after resolving that customer's issue much more quickly without trying to track me down or looking for a solution.

It's nice. Love it. Let's pivot now and get into Google Reviews. So you gave a presentation at Narpin Broker Owner, I believe it was, just a few months ago on how you've driven your Google Reviews. And you mentioned in the presentation that your score was up to 4.8 and you're driving 6 new Google Reviews a week. So super impressive results, and I think most listeners intuitively understand the importance of Google Reviews to their business. So I'm going to be super rude and ask you to give us the meat of that presentation. Like give us the actual, like, how do we do this? Right? What's the short and sweet summary of how you are able to drive that number of reviews and get to a score that's that high?

The meat and potatoes, just do it. Yeah, just Nike.

That's all.

Just do it.

Yep.

Yeah, just do it. Yeah, we're currently, as of today, 1,144 reviews just on Google. There's several hundred on other platforms and we're 4.7. We dropped, we dropped a point. We're not perfect, unfortunately. Meat and potatoes. Here we go. The short version is we have, we incentivize all of our team to really champion delivering a great experience. Our motto, our slogan is delivering real estate happiness.. And so we genuinely have a belief that you can take every frown, turn it upside down to, and, and, and just go above and beyond for the customer, whether that's a resident, a vendor, or a client. Are you a net positive in their world? And we have hung our hat on that, recruited people who are championing that, exude that in their just natural ability. So they're just positive people who are willing to be problem solvers. So we've recruited those people. Those people are incentivized to deliver that great experience. We pay them $20 per review, whether they are remote or the CEO of the company. We all participate. We all have goals. We have an annual goal that goes down to each one of our departments. Each one of our departments has team leads that's responsible for incentivizing and getting buy-in from each teammate. And so those goals cascade and we have to ask for reviews every single week, every single interaction, deliver on that experience, ask for the review, get the review, and you're rewarded. That's the short version. I'm getting the review. It's also really edifying because I can have a real pulse on what's going on with the company. So when I see someone who's not asking for reviews or worst case scenario, getting a negative review, I can engage with them and say, what transpired? Why is that happening? And course correct based off of a theme of that person getting 1-star reviews. We also believe that fundamentally that tenants and landlords do not have to be adversarial. It's not innately us versus them. It's not a zero-sum game. Not warrants versus losses. We are the middleman. We mediate, we negotiate, and we think a lot of times we can expand the pie. Now, that's not saying you get a tenant who hasn't paid rent and you're evicting them and they go, you're serving it. There are certainly extenuating circumstances, but generally speaking, I think everybody wants a nice house to live and we want to provide nice housing to them and we want good tenants that will take care of them.

And that belief system as well. So this sounds like— I would call this maybe executing on the basics very well with a couple little twists thrown in. I think that's a theme I've really picked up from high performers is they're not always doing something exotic or wildly different, but they tend to execute on the basics really, really, really well. I love that. That's like the backstory. It's like, yeah, we just We ask for reviews, we incentivize them, we follow up when there's an issue. That's really neat. And I'm guessing you see a huge uptick in, I mean, a good Google score helps everything. It helps you sign up new clients faster. I know you mentioned during the presentation that your BDM is able to reference it on sales calls, like, hey, don't take my word for it, check out our Google reviews. That's a powerful statement, especially with so many reviews. And residents too, right? You're likely able to lease properties more quickly when they look up the company and see that you're engaging in the replies on the reviews and just that the score is high overall.

Yeah. With regards to residents, doing my research in that presentation, I found that if you have— the average property management company has a score of 3.8 to 4.1 on Google. If you are dropping below that, If you were 4.0 stars or less, most residents are not even going to inquire about that property. So increasing your occupancy or increasing your vacancy rate and you're attracting less qualified tenants as a result. So fundamentally our vacancy rates are lower. We are, like you had said, able to win more business. In fact, some of our other BDMs, the Utah market's very collaborative. And we'll get together and other BDMs will say, oh my gosh, like, I hate your guys' Google reviews because we lose business to it just based on your guys' high rank. You know, reading the reviews, someone will say, well, hey, XYZ company, you're only 4.5 stars and that's 4.7. Like, why the difference? And they have to talk through that. So I say it in jest, but at the end of the day, we win a lot of business because of that. Beautiful.

So you've got a great system for Google reviews, and I want to stick on the theme of systems for a moment. Something I've evolved my thinking on over time is trying to understand the relative importance of systems and process versus people. Coming from a control systems engineering background, the way I would describe my first 8 to 9 years in business was a process maximalist. Like for me, it was process or nothing. It was all about process. The people were an afterthought at best. My thinking here has evolved a little bit and I'm starting to come off that extreme and recognize the value of people. And that goes from the front lines to the mid-level managers to executive and folks on the leadership team. How do you think about this? Like when you think about why your company has been so successful, and why you're able to have financial freedom and time freedom. Is this because of your killer systems, like your Google review process and your online self-help portal? Or is this because you hired A-players and you've held that bar really high, which I know that's true for you? Or are you going to give me the boring answer and say that it's both?

I was going to say those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Correct.

That is correct. The true answer is it is both. You know, if you're the one-man band, you know, 100, 150 doors and you're looking to scale up, you know, nobody can do it as good as you can. At least that's the thought. And you do it all and then you hire 2 or 3 people and you're, you're wanting them to do it your way. And at our office, the Nestlé way. And so you go from like, I am the person doing everything to I'm now managing the people who are doing the things. And then there's, there's the next level, which is I'm managing the processes that manage the people that the people are implementing to manage the relationships. And so at the highest level, I think excellent processes will serve you very well and it will collapse time and it will give your team, it will empower them to give them, it will empower them to deliver great experience. It will empower them to hang their hat and say, I know this is the right answer and I can move forward confidently. But as far as the human component of it is, the truth is processes can't do everything. You see, Amazon is a great example. Amazon is perfect in on their deliverables and they're so systematized. But then you're scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and there's that Amazon delivery driver that stops to pet the homeowner's dog. Yeah, there is. Or they dance in front of the camera, the Ring doorbell or whatever. And like, there's still that human component that is that we are human. We are mammals, we are groupies, we're like all together. And so for me, it's not just about the processes and getting the answer quickly. It's how you're delivering the answer and how you're making people feel. Because there's this old adage, people won't always remember what you said to them, but they'll always make you remember how you made them feel, right? We totally believe in that. So there will be times where people will get declined because they have— from applying from us, we will still get 5-star reviews because we were so good to them. We really helped them out. We gave them solutions even though they couldn't rent from us. We're still earning— our applications team is on fire and they're getting 5-star reviews after they declined a tenant, a prospective tenant. It's bananas. And it's not because of our processes, although they're good. It's how we treated that person and are we a net positive to that person's world?

That is really— yeah, that's really impressive. There's a virtuous cycle here where if your hiring process for example, is great. You're going to get, you're going to onboard great people. And then those great people are in turn going to write great processes or update your existing processes to be even better. So really interesting there. And you're touching on company culture, right? The experience that residents are having with your company, even when they get declined, is such that they're leaving good reviews. That speaks to the culture within your firm. And that is something I'm fascinated by. I've realized over time as I've gotten to know other property managers and other business owners that I've realized that the culture at different companies varies wildly. And maybe this is just my inexperience showing, like I didn't work at a whole bunch of different companies before I started this business. So I didn't realize how different it could be to work in different companies, like the actual, what does it feel like to be there on a day-to-day basis? How do they interact with customers? What is acceptable and what's not acceptable in terms of work product or conversations or topics? Has there been a concerted effort by you to form this culture in a way that you thought was ideal, or was it more of a byproduct of these sort of A-players that you were bringing on?

Yeah, I, um, if I may, I'll define an A-player because I came back from Broker Owner and that was my main takeaway. A-player selling. And I spent several days before the conference, at the conference, after the conference, truly defining that for me. And A-player oftentimes has a connotation of that red personality who's, you know, just out there kicking ass and taking names or whatever, right? Like, that's not For me, so defining it is an A player is a person who possesses a can-do, positive attitude, the talents to drive outcomes, and a total commitment to the vision. And one of our visions, our vision is, or our motto is creating real estate happiness. And so at the end of the day, I only want to work with people who understand the expectations of them and will will exude these things naturally. You can't change people's personalities. You can teach them how to do the technical side of what we do. And so yes, we have made a very concerted effort. And honestly, I apologize, I lost track of your question.

No, that's okay. I was asking about this culture that seems to have been so beneficial. Was it something you set out intentionally? You were like, this is the culture that our property management should be, and I'm going to force and mold and shape it, or was it more a natural byproduct of the people that you brought on?

No, it's not. It was very intentional prior to recruiting A-players. We just said, this is who we are. And that was part of the interview question. Are you this person innately? Do these things resonate with you? Do you feel excited about them? And by them saying yes, and this, I feel I'm very passionate about your mission, vision, values, then they would come on and they just naturally exude these personality traits.

This is like a core values deal, very much like living the core values is what I'm getting from this. Are you using any of the personality profiling tools? They hate when you call it that, but we know that's what it is. The personality profiling tools like Culture Index, DISC predictive index?

No, I unfortunately, no, I wish I could say, hey, yeah, go check this one out. We have not done that. But one of my innate abilities is to read people fairly well. So my interview process is I'm just going to talk and get to know you. Mind you, I do have a number 2 who does the very formal interviews like, tell me about a tough situation. Mine is, is their personality conducive and compatible with mine? Because these are my mission, vision, values. If you're joining my team, this is what— who we are. This is who Adam is. This is what his beliefs are. And if they innately— I get along with them, then chances are it's going to be successful. We do use a product called 15Five, which is an employee engagement survey. So we're constantly keeping a pulse on our team. How are things going and making sure that they are continually engaged? And that has been really clarifying for us as far as Who's living the mission, vision, values? Are they being accountable? It's because it's very wolf pack at this office. If someone is not toeing the line, it percolates to the top very quickly. If so-and-so is treating this customer really poorly, this is not acceptable and it gets sussed out very quickly. So the 15/5, I would be a champion of that as far as for growing teams and engaging them and making sure that they're living who you are as a company.

Yeah, I'm starting to love employee engagement surveys like you were talking about. Our payroll software Gusto has, on the plan level that we're at, they have monthly surveys that they do for employee engagement and each month it's like a different theme, but they compile the answers and they give you a nice PDF where you can see the overall score, the overall employee happiness, you can see comments, it's all anonymous. And we've been getting a lot of value out of that, just like you're saying. I want to go back one second. You mentioned like if someone's not living the values, that percolates up really quickly. How do you have that conversation? This is something that I think I'm not strong in. Let's say that you've gotten a number of complaints or comments from different team members, and it's really obvious that thus-and-such person just isn't living the core values, isn't treating their team members with respect. You sit down with that person and I struggle, what do you say? Because this is all kind of hearsay and this isn't a hard not meeting the KPI type deal, but where do you— I'd love to hear how you have that conversation and where you take it.

First of all, those are hard. I mean, so many humans are just conflict avoidant, right? They just do not want awkward situations. I have recently changed that philosophy where I want to get to the root of it as fast as possible because anything that you let sit fester is only going to come to a head and it's going to be worse. So you really have to lean into those awkward conversations. And so many in my mind, I have built this conversation up and it's going to be this horrific experience. And the truth is, is, hey, can we have a heart-to-heart? Here's my observations. I would like to hear your side of the story. This is the feedback that we have received from 3 or 4 different customers about your interaction with them. And let's discuss it. I'm a true believer in second chances, and I'm not— so I'm not going in there like pitchfork and torch. That's just not my MO. But I am going to engage with them and saying, Hey, what you're doing is not acceptable and here's why. And it's really intriguing that there are people out there that just are self-sabotaging and will lash out. And Jordan Wailis, just like I was on the phone with him yesterday, he's like, I'm really into separating what the true issue is, what they're not delivering on, and then why they are behaving this way. And a lot of times there's a boyfriend breaks up with them or their dog died or whatever it is. And I would rather be there to be a supporting cause for them. But I'm also a firm believer that you are either creating or tolerating your circumstances. And that goes for— I'm not going to tolerate a toxic person or someone who doesn't live our mission, vision, values. I would much rather go out and create and find someone who innately gets it. And then I'm really interested in like, why are you doing a job that you hate where you feel the need to treat people awfully? Like, that's not happiness for you. It's not happiness for me. It's not happiness for our customers. Go find somewhere else where you can be successful and find happiness. And if you're innately an unhappy person, I'm sorry, but that doesn't work here.

Love this. I got one more question on people, and then we're going to move forward from that topic. We were chatting yesterday and you said something interesting around, like, for you— and correct me if I'm kind of quoting you wrong here— but you said something like, for you, Nestwell, your management company, is simply an umbrella under which you get the the opportunity to develop your people. Like, you get that, um, you— the way you talked about it, it almost sounded like it was, uh, something really special that was, um, made available to you. Like, I think some people think about their people, and I'm as guilty of this as anyone, they think about their people as kind of a drag. Like, I think I said something on the call that was like, then the immature view I had of, of employees when I first started my company was that they were just like messy machines. Like they were like machines that didn't work right. Like they're just unreliable and they came with all this overhead and baggage. And if I could just get everything running, you know, in LeadSimple, then it'd be golden. Right. Um, but you have a completely different view and my view has evolved somewhat, which is like you get the opportunity to develop these people. I'd love to hear you talk about that. And it sounded like to you this was almost over and above, like, yeah, you run a management company and that's fine, but really what got you excited was the opportunity to level these folks up and show them what's possible.

Yes. Full disclosure, our team is not perfect and our morale is not perfect, but it's something we're working on. I have a Post-it just right above my camera that says people, product, profit. And those things resonate with me and they're motivating to me. And so we, from a qualitative perspective, it's, it's, you know, labor expense is by far your largest expense line, hands down. And So you have to say, well, God, this is so expensive. And you can default to your settings, which is let's just systematize everything and have a bot do everything. And the truth is, if I wanted bots to do everything, I would, I would double down on AI and that would be the only thing. And I would try and remove players out of, you know, messy computers out of the system as quick as possible. So That's the qualitative. If I shift and I say, okay, I have, you know, being in my position and being very fortunate, I have been provided a lot of opportunities to branch outside of property management, to branch outside of just running my own company, whether that's coaching, syndications, buying real estate, whatever. I've just been afforded a lot. And when I say I keep coming back to no, I'm saying no a lot to those other opportunities. And the reason why is I, about 3 years ago, had a really awesome opportunity with some great friends and I ended up banking on myself and saying no to what was basically a merger. I ended up saying no to that., and I came back and I was just bummed out because I love those guys. And for me, they, when I, when I said no to that, I was like, what am I saying yes to? I'm saying yes to myself. I'm betting on myself. And I ended up confiding in my one or two saying, hey, just so you know, I'm saying no to this opportunity because I believe in you guys. And that changed my perspective and it changed theirs. That I am banking on my team. I'm betting on us. I'm betting on what me and my team can create from the newest hire all the way up to me. I am banking on us. I'm banking on what we're capable of. And that is such a strong motivator to where it's been a lot easier to gravitate or attract A-players and say, hey, This is it. And I don't have any plan B's. Like, I've burned the ships multiple times. I do not have a plan B. I am all in on this. And when I can share that vision, there's those that are going to be like, yeah, I can feel that in my core that Adam really believes these things and I want to be part of that. And so we're in, you know, our entry-level people all the way up to our execs team. Are like, yeah, we want to create something special and we want to go on that journey with Adam and the, you know, the, every team member, and we want to lift each other up. So just at our core, it's been great to bank on us, you know?

Super cool. That's a really great share. I love the idea of sharing with the team, like, hey, I had this opportunity. I said no because I believe in this company and I believe in you. There's an old saying about real estate, which is like, if you're not a seller, you're a buyer at a given price, which basically means that if you own a piece of property, you get offered $1 million, you decide not to sell it. Essentially what you're saying is I would be willing to buy this property at $1 million. And it's the same thing with an asset like a business. If you got offered X and you said no, that basically means that you're betting on the company, you're betting on yourself, you're betting that the net present value of future cash flows exceeds that lump sum payout. And that, now that I'm thinking and hearing you share, that is powerful. What I almost can't think of anything more powerful to share with your team than to let them know, hey, I had an opportunity to walk away and be rich, but I said no because I actually think that we're going bigger. We're going to be— we're going better places. We're going to be bigger, and you guys are it. I'm so confident in your abilities and in this company that I said no to X. Really interesting way to frame that. And like, as a property management company owner, if you're listening, I know you've gotten emails and letters from the buyers. Maybe consider sharing that with your team and saying, hey guys, I've gotten 10 letters in the last few years. I've said no to all of them or I've ignored them because I'm a believer in where this can go.

That's a super inspiring thought. Yeah. And back to your original question, it's like, you know, like what if I'm saying no to all these other opportunities or hitting the eject button and selling? I am banking on you guys and empowering you guys and I'm betting on you guys. And so to— I have a really great profit sharing program because I want everyone's interest to be aligned. So again, even the newest team member participates in profit sharing. And so when there is growth that we as a collective have generated, I can't take claim to hardly any of it, honestly. When there's exponential growth, they are exponentially rewarded for their lift, for their contribution. And that has been able to, again, bring the right people to join the company. But I have bet on them and I'm also rewarding them handsomely. And I. And I was on a phone call yesterday. I said, thank goodness we just ended a quarter and quarterly profit sharing's coming out because I am burned out. Are you looking forward to your bonus? And he's like, it's not about the money. I am here for a higher purpose. I believe in what you're doing. I want to be part of something special. And so there are different motives or things that make people tick that you have to suss out. And I've been fortunate enough to attract enough team members around me who share in common beliefs about and common motives to where people are like, yeah, I want that, I want to be part of that. And then the money is just a byproduct of us building something more than we could have imagined. Like where we're at today, I never would have imagined being a multimillion dollar company. Like, it's awesome. But to see those team members grow and develop and go from the entry-level guy all the way up to going from the entry-level guy all the way up to a manager, director-level position. And they have seen success. They're buying houses, they're putting their kids into different school systems and just enriching their life. Like, yeah, I have 32 people on my team. They all have wife, kids, children, spouses, loved ones. I mean, there's a lot riding on us, and so that's a lot of pressure, but they make my load lighter because they have bought in. They don't feel overworked, overwhelmed most of the time. Most of the time they don't feel overwhelmed. And it's just kind of beautiful to watch these people exponentially grow.

And that's so rewarding. Okay. Love it. So profit sharing, really interesting, really scary, I think, for a lot of folks listening, the idea of sharing profit with the team. I mean, let alone like sharing the cash, but just sharing the numbers, like the profitability of how profitable the business is, that is a little unsettling. And I think the more profitable you are, probably the more unsettling it is. How did you think about starting this program and was there fear around this for you and what actually transpired when you first started sharing the numbers and the cash?

Yeah. Initially there was a lot of trepidation and doubt about, hey, if we go down this road, what's going to happen? Are people going to get really mad? And upper-level people, C-suite people that work for publicly traded companies and everybody knows their salary, there's all these armchair experts that are like, why the heck does that dude make $30 million a year and I make $3 an hour, you know, like, and there's always that blowback. And so one of two things happens in my mind. One, you have some guilt because you might be underpaying people or you might be taking more out of the company than you think is fair. I have come to peace with that, meaning that I try to overpay, overcompensate by I try to, if you ask some of my teammates, they may not feel that way, but I try to reward them handsomely and absolutely change their lives with the amount of money that they can make. The other thing that can happen is that I think a lot of teammates think that CEOs or small business owners or whoever make a lot more money than they actually do. And so that could be clarifying. I, you know, my salary is only $10,000 more than yours, like, and I carry all the liability, you know, like they're— so that might be edifying if you're in that position to disclose that. Now, truth be told, I share absolutely all of my numbers with about 10% of the company. But everyone, we are working on systematizing all the KPIs, all of the things that we want to measure performance. And when you reach that level, you earn your bonus, which are, in my opinion, really great bonuses. And so they're participating across that whole thing. Now, they don't know exactly metrics that they can earn that reward, but we are working on being more transparent with them so they can drive the outcomes that result in them earning more money, being more recognized, and being able to have some more upward mobility as far as promotions and job titles and stuff.

Love it. So that takes some real vulnerability to share numbers like that and pull in team members with that level of of access to data. And it's making me reflect on something you said at the top of the call, which was you were sort of questioning— you mentioned that when you go to share something with the industry, whether that's a Facebook post or you're jumping on a panel or whatever, you feel like, man, do I really have anything worth sharing? Or is anybody listening? And I want to encourage you, Adam, and I want to encourage everybody who's listening please share this stuff. Please get on the internet and write about what you're doing, whether that's an email, a blog, a tweet, a Facebook post, in some kind of a mastermind or a group. The industry is still in its infancy, relatively speaking. Professional property managers, you know, NARPM's only been around like, I don't know, 20 years or something like that. I mean, it's— this industry has a long way to go and a long way to grow. And we're only going to get there by sharing best practices with each other and supporting each other. And, um, sort of, uh, cohesing around, I don't know if that's a word, um, things like the NARPM accounting standard and other efforts at sort of leveling up the industry. Um, and so the other ask I'll say is if someone shares something, give it a like, give it a comment, give a reply. Um, and let's reward those who are actually being vulnerable and sharing with the industry. That's just my little— I'll say that as like a little like pep talk for everybody as my way to try and help us all level up.

I love that. I found a ton of value in the Facebooks and the masterminds, whether they be free or paid or everything that NARPM has done for me. A lot of the vendors that support and champion transparency and cohesion like that. Honestly, one of my biggest regrets is I was a holdout of joining NARPM or sharing anything with anyone. Especially when they're in my market. And that is just shortsighted. And I wish I would've joined up and been more transparent sooner. And so I've dedicated a lot of time to serving our appointment in local roles. And that has been transformative to where my competitor can now call me and say, hey, I'm stuck. Can you help me? Sure. I would love to share my knowledge with you just so you're not reinventing the wheel. And you know, there's plenty of business to go around. Like, don't be shortsighted.

Yeah, givers gain is a good phrase. Yeah. Yeah. And like our biggest, our biggest competitor is our customers who are self-managing, which is still the majority of them. And that's not going to change. That market isn't going to open up until the overall reputation of the industry gets better. And that has to be a collaborative effort of all helping each other and holding each other to higher standards. Adam, this has been so fun. I'm so glad you came on the show. If anyone wants to follow along with you and maybe read something that you might decide to write and share, where's a good place for them to do that?

I am really great one-on-one or small groups. So if you want to connect with me, Facebook is usually where I spend most of my free time when I'm not out riding bikes or with the kids. I surf there. So if anybody wanted to chat, bounce ideas on a one-on-one, happy to do it. Otherwise, Facebook's probably the best place to kind of follow or get involved in some of those property management groups as well. I can get a little chatty when I have time.

I'll pop in there. All right. Well, thank you, Adam. This has been fun.

Appreciate you coming on the show. Yeah. Thank you, Peter. Great to have me. All right. It's great to be here.