She Works With the Largest Property Management Operators: Deb Newell | Peter Lohmann’s Podcast

It's that silent killer of the business. And unless we pivot and open our minds to our time, you know, our time is worth value of some sort. We can't do, you know, what's inside the scope of our management agreement, what's outside the scope. Helping them understand that what they're saying that they'll do for their client is admirable, but it's also silently killing the business if they don't change because you're going to have to add more doors in order to be more, quote, profitable, if that's actually going to happen. And more doors means more people, which then leads to more possible dysfunction. So it's kind of this domino effect.

Welcome back to Peter Lohmann's podcast. Excited today to be in conversation with Deb Newell. Deb is an executive consultant with Real Time Consulting Services, and she brings a huge amount of property management experience from her past into her current role. Deb, welcome to the show.

Thanks. It's good to be here. I appreciate it.

So great to have you. You and I have known each other just through industry circles for years now, always running into each other at conferences and love our conversations. You bring a just a, a wealth of background and context to all of your engagements. And your, your style of consulting is extremely hands-on and thorough. And I really appreciate that because I'm a tactical type of person. And I want to start by hearing a little bit about your journey from actually owning a property management business to now consulting for property management companies. Not everyone who holds themselves out as a consultant actually has direct industry experience in the way that you do. So tell us a little bit about the property management company that you owned and then the exit and sort of how you got into consulting.

Sure, not a problem. So I, my company was in Minnesota. I'm no longer in Minnesota. I went from one extreme to another.

You went to warmer climates.

I went to much warmer climates. I'm in Arizona. So Well, I say extreme because it's very extreme in Minnesota during the winter and it's very extreme in Arizona during the summer, but I definitely like the heat a lot better. So, you know, I've, I've shared this before in the past. My path really was from flipping homes. I started that in probably the late '90s or like '98, '99. And in full transparency, really the reason why I started was I wanted to get out of debt. It was, it was at a time where I was finishing up my 4-year degree, my undergraduate. And had some school loans coming that were going to be coming due, just life loans, you know, just life expenses and things. And so it was, I had met some people in actually in Colorado at the time that were doing it. And then I kind of took that and carried it over when I came into Minnesota, bought a, you know, bought a home in Minnesota. It was kind of like it, not a starter home, but it was, you know, that mid-range home and wanted to eventually, we were having kids, wanted to have a bigger home, a bigger lot. And that kind of led the path of, okay, let's, let's, what does this look like and how can we make this happen a little bit faster? So began with flipping homes, boots on the ground, learning construction, learning all of, you know, everything maintenance related, which I, I just soaked it up. I loved it. And again, very tactical, very hands-on. And really enjoyed that.

And was that your first exposure to sort of home repair, home maintenance, or were you, did you do some of that when you were younger, like around your parents' house and stuff?

Well, now there's a story. So yes and no. It's funny that you actually say that because no one's ever asked me this before. So my, my father, I love him. He is a, was a retired, now retired colonel in the Army. So I grew up an Army brat, so moved around a lot. And one of our homes, it was kind of notorious where we built our home in Washington, which is where I'm from. And it was on Cougar Mountain. We had 5 acres of land. And my dad decided with no background, we're gonna build a house. So we built this massive house, like 5,000+ square feet. And it was, I have an older half-brother who I didn't really grow up with. So I mean, he was out of the house. It was really just me and my mom and dad. And, and we had this massive house that was always under repair. When I say, I don't think it was ever finished until they sold it. So I kind of grew up always like, Yes, having repairs be made. And you would think that I would shy away from that.

Totally. I instantly think, just like you said, like, get me away from construction.

You're bringing up— I'm gonna have to go to therapy after this. It's a little PTSD because I'm now remembering, like, you know, I wanted to be out of the upstairs and, you know, I was in high school. And so, Dad, let's convert half the basement into a bedroom. And so I would go down in the basement and, you know, there would be framing and then there would be my room. So it was just really You know, it, it was always like that, but I had the nice plush pink carpet. I had all of that and, uh, the rose-colored, uh, toilet, all of it. But, you know, hey, it was pretty hip at the time. So yeah, it's funny. I, I get— I grew up all around it, but not in the sense that my dad was in con— you know, in, in construction. It was just, we always were under construction.

Yeah.

But this I think by this idea of just embracing the, I think the idea of flipping the home and just kind of like, you know, getting money out of it was just a novel idea for me and it's something I never grew up with, but you know, I really enjoyed it and I, and I did like transforming something at a much smaller scale and able to do it. So through all of that journey, I started keeping some of the properties, so I would sell we sold in the beginning and then I started holding onto 'em, not for any other reason than just thought, hey, this could be a great idea and start managing 'em. You know, I've told this story in the past. The one thing I was really smart at doing and not realizing I was smart was I created a property management company in like a pseudonym and name only for a minute, you know, for, it was just me and I was the jack of all trades. I was the property manager, the leasing agent, the maintenance coordinator.

Yep.

The delinquency, you know, person. I was everything. And so, I, I never, you know, I was the face of the company, but not the owner of the company. So anybody I interacted with, they just thought I worked at the company and I really just built it from there until we got to about 35 units and most of them all single family. We had some fourplexes and fiveplexes in there, and that's really how it grew organically. I made a ton of mistakes, a lot, and that was before I even hired anybody. And then when I hired people, I still made mistakes. So it was just, it was a huge learning experience. I, you know, there were days that I thought, why am I doing this? And, and I, I don't, I didn't like it. Some days I loved it, but I see that happen a lot where people start a company and they start it for one reason, but it ends up kind of transitioning into a whole nother thing. And, you know, now we have people, we have employees and we have other livelihoods and there's a lot of, thing, you know, all of this on our shoulders that we have to bear and keep in mind and, and move forward with.

And what should we, what should we do about that? I mean, do you think it's important to, as a business owner, do you think it's important to stay connected to the reason you got started in the first place? Like when you're working with, when you're working with business owners, do you sort of like walk them through, like, tell me why you got started and what that means for you?

I do. And I want to understand Partially because I want to understand why they're in it. You know, what was your— for a lot of people, it might be a family business. It was just, it was that succession planning. It was kind of like, I, I wasn't getting anywhere else in my other career, or this is their second career, or this is the, you know, they have visions of building something and then obviously leaving it to children or something. So it's important to understand kind of where they came from. Because I wanna understand the state of the company today and where the future state is going to look like and what they want it to look like. What is that vision going to take them to?

Yeah.

You know, so that's why, you know, when I consult people, I don't offer theoretical advice. I, I wanna deliver actionable frameworks that are grounded in real operational, you know, pain. There's, there's, you're going to experience all of these things if you haven't already, because I can tell you that as you continue to grow, which a lot of people say they wanna do, and congratulations, you You guys just hit 700 doors. I saw that. So awesome. But growth amplifies dysfunction. And so you have to like understand and invest in the people, the processes, the technology, the platforms, everything. So that's going to be really important. And helping people recognize where they came from, where they're, where they're at today and where they're going is, is really essential.

Love that. So got started flipping. As a way to make some money, started keeping some of those rentals and kind of hold yourself and built up a pretty significant portfolio of your own properties. And then I'm assuming that's when you transitioned into holding yourself out as a, as a third-party manager.

I did. I got to about 50 doors. Well, what I was— we got to about 35 on our own. And then it was really, you know, as we're buying or selling, I would sit across from the, you know, the, in the title company across the table and I'd have realtors or, or other people say, hey, hey, I know somebody, or hey, I have other properties. If you're doing this, would you mind?

Yeah.

You know, how hard, how hard could it be?

That's what I said too. How hard could it be? Yeah.

And that's exa— and, and by the way, I was very cheap. Really? Like, I'm like, how hard could it be? I'll charge you like, you know, 5%. It was really cheap. And, and I'll do everything. It can't be that difficult. And when I got to about 50 doors in, in total of just kind of managing for third party, that's when I hired my, made my first hire. But also when I realized I, I have an actual, I have an actual business. Like this is actually something that's generating income that I can use and have.

Yep. Awesome. And so that became what turned into a,, you know, a going concern of a third-party management company that you grew up. I think I heard you say as I was preparing for the show, you grew it to about 400 doors or so.

It was about 400 when I sold. Yeah. I actually got to about 650. Again, lessons learned and understanding diversity in my own portfolio is important as well. Took on a big investor client and not, you know, they can go away. Yeah. Because sometimes they'll bring that in-house. So, That's kind of what happened right before I ended up selling, which, you know, again, it, it stung, but it happens. And so I've learned, you know, diversify my portfolio, but make sure I have my buckets pretty equally evened out. Like, you know, do I have accidental landlords? Do I have small investors? Do I have institutional investors? Do I have, you know, who's in my bucket? Who's what, what persona do I have as a client? And making sure that there's not I don't have all one thing. And because had I had all institutional investors, I probably wouldn't have had anything to sell.

That's a good lesson. Yeah. Diversifying the customer base and also making sure that you don't just have a small handful of clients who have a large percentage of your portfolio. I experienced that painfully a few years ago. We lost about almost 120 doors. It was just 3 clients and they all left within about 6 weeks of each other. I wrote about this in my newsletter and that was a Painful, painful time period. So, okay. And so you sold, but you stuck around, continued to grow that business. How long did you, and are, are you able to say who you sold to?

Yeah. Well, I didn't, yes. And that'll, I actually didn't stick around. So I sold and got out, meaning I didn't stay with it. I sold it to Pure back. And I think when I finally sold to Pure, I'd been in discussion with them for a couple of years, but I ended up selling in like 2021, early part of 2021. And, but I had, for, for personal reasons, life reasons, I had moved away in 2019, but was flying back and forth. Got it. So it was, it was the right time for me to sell personally. I mean, we weren't from Minnesota. We didn't have family there. It wasn't a plan that my kids were ever gonna take over the business. So it was the right time. I had already started the consulting business in 2013. That had taken off. So things were just all kind of lining up in, in a different way. Yeah. I had a maintenance company as well, so there was a lot going on, but it worked out as things do eventually, just with where I was. So I did sell, but I didn't stay. And what was the rest of your question?

No, that's great. So you started the, I didn't realize you started the consulting firm so early on in your property management.

I did. And I had like, it was just, you know, a couple clients. It was really targeted clients, larger clients that had reached out to me really through networking and resources through the industry or other spaces. So that's how, and so I had longer term clients cuz we were building, like there was one who was trying to start a franchise at one point. There was another one in Florida that had, was very big and was trying to open multiple offices in different markets in Florida. So. They were very targeted one-on-one, and then it just kind of grew into something different as time goes on.

Got it. And the maintenance company, did that go along with the sale to Pure?

It didn't. I sold to somebody else on that. So no, that did not go with Pure. That was a separate sale, a little, probably about 6 months later.

Okay. And did that company service just your management company or other?

No, it actually, it didn't service other management companies, but it did service other. So I was really, I had a pretty good seat with the Realtor Association. I served nationally and I served locally on boards as a director. So I, and again, I did this, I kind of, you know, selfishly to kind of get my name out there, right? As I was growing the property management business, I was the only one as a board of director at the time for the local association that was in property management. So it was great because I was a great point of contact for a bunch of realtors that I never would've had access to. Yeah. So, and, and then that put me more on the national stage with NAR and I got to just know a lot of people across the country, which again was very beneficial in a lot of ways. Many of them had property management arms to their business. And so that kind of, you know, dominoed into helping with the consulting. So I would service, So in Minnesota, it's called the truth in housing after, you know, if you— for if you're going to do a PA and you're going to buy a property and you go through the inspection, the final truth in housing would, you know, pinpoint does it meet expectations, does it blow expectations? There were all these things right before closing and there would be a lot of repairs that needed to be done. Okay. Welcome. So we capitalized on that.

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So you're, so if, let me, I wanna make sure I understand your question. So where do I hone in on first when I'm working with a client?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. All right. So it, the first thing I do is I, what I call a discu— you know, obviously I'm gonna have a consultation with the client and they're telling me, here's everything I think is wrong with the company. Like, you know, my team is overwhelmed. They tell me all the time they're overwhelmed. I don't, you know, calls aren't getting answered. We wanna grow. We've been at 400 doors forever. We can't grow. Or we've been at 1,000 doors, you know, I've hit this plateau. There's something going on that's triggered. It's a, it's usually an event, some event that's triggered them to go, I, I think I need a deeper look into my business. So I, yep. So that's kind of that, the initial call. Then what I call the discovery period, which is about 30 to 45 days, depends on the size of the company. I do a deep dive and that's where I kind of look under the hood of the car and I'm like, okay, Here's everything going on and it's everything. It's, you know, I'm gonna look at your financials, I'm gonna look at your marketing strategies. I'm gonna look at everything within the business as far as the whole entire property management lifecycle, maintenance lifecycle, everything. 'Cause they all touch one another at some point. So I'm digging into processes, procedures. I'm interviewing key employees, you know, understanding. Yeah. Because it's interesting when you're an owner of a company and you can probably relate to this, you know, theoretically, this is what the property manager should be doing, right? This is what we've set in place and they know what to do. And a lot, oftentimes they just know what to do because they've been there long enough and it's just, you know, it's systematic. And so I'm looking at daily, weekly, monthly, like what are your responsibilities? What are you doing? By talking to the employees, I get a better understanding. And this is kind of where that psychology degree comes in, right? Where I kind of do a little bit of a behavioral analysis. I'm, You know, at high level, I, you know, and again, I've gotten to know the business a little bit. So high level, I know how they're structured. I know what their expectations are again, and, or what they're hoping for. And then I'm kind of going in and saying, okay, I'm interviewing people. And yes, I am kind of looking at, are they the right person and the right fit? But more importantly, I'm just understanding, oh, great. You're responsible for applications. Great. Tell me how you do an application process. I'm just wanting to hear how they do it. It's not for me to tell them. Oh my gosh, you're doing it wrong, or why are you doing it that way? Sometimes some of that may come out in our conversation just based on how it's gone. But it uncovers a lot. I sometimes call it— it can be like a very deep dive therapy session. I'm getting to know the individual at a different level than I would if I was their employer. And I feel like people just tend to open up and tell me what's going on. And they're confidential conversations that, again, give me insight to who the person is, the who, what, when, where, how, and why. That's what I call it. And it tells me everything about what they're doing every day, where that their legacy knowledge is coming from. Are they, you know, what tools are they using? Any platforms? Oftentimes I'll find out, oh yeah, I created a spreadsheet and I'm putting all of this in there. And I'll, that's when I'll probably, okay, tell me why. Why are you doing that and not using, you know, Yeah. Your Appfolio or your Rentvine or your Buildium, like whatever that platform is, why are you having to create another, you know, system for you to work in? Sometimes it's, well, I don't trust the data in, you know, or, or it's just easier for me to do it. There's just a lot of, a myriad of reasons. And I'm just deep dive into that. I put this all together and I'll put together a, a really thorough, what I call an executive summary. It's probably like 40 to 60 pages, again, depending on the size of the company. It goes into every aspect of it, all of my findings, all of my, you know, it's like a big SWOT analysis. My recommendations, here's what I found, here's what I recommend, and here's the roadmap and to how we're gonna fix it. And when I deliver that, I get a lot of, yeah, kind of thought that was gonna happen, or I knew that was going on, or yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Or very rarely is it, oh, I didn't know that at all. That there's, there is some of that, but it's, but I think instinctively as business owners, we know sometimes what's going on with the business. We just don't wanna be told. Yeah. And I'm a very blunt person. I'm, you know, you don't hire me to tell you that things are going well. You're hiring me to tell you what's not working and how we're gonna fix it. And I'm gonna tell you that, and I will be very honest and I will tell you we are gonna have some very hard decisions to make. And that could mean restructuring your business entirely or partially. That could mean letting some people go. It's not going to be easy, but I can tell you where it will end up because I've seen it so many times. And I know the path to get there is not going to be a good one or an easy one, but it will happen. And that's, that's the hard part.

And have you uncovered during this process anything crazy?

Fraud? Oh, 100%. Yes. I had one, I've told this story a couple times with his permission because it's, it's a doozy, but I had a company back east. Again, he, reason why he hired me, he literally said, I had 12 people leave in 12 months. Ooh. So that tells me something. Something's going on, but we don't quite know what it is. And that's a more of a people issue. Obviously when I hear that, I'm like, okay, something's going on. And, and he, by the way, probably one of the nicest guys I met. I met him through NAR years ago. So great contact, has a very, he's a lawyer, very profitable business. He has a title company, a, a law firm, and a property management company. But the property management company has been kind of in his family for years. So it's not something that he just started, just as a side gig. He's in it, but he wasn't in it. He was focused on his law firm, focused on other things. And so he had somebody else running the company.

Mm-hmm.

And these things happen, right? Where something else is going on. So I'm, I'm interviewing, it, he has a pretty big company. It's like thousands of doors. So it's not like, again, it's not a small company. So when I, you know, I look at the executive team and I'm like, here's who I'm gonna interview. So I start there, and as I'm interviewing people, my assistant is getting emails throughout the month saying, well, I wanna talk to Deb. Why isn't she, why am I not on her schedule? And that's pretty rare to, to have people wanna reach out to me to talk to me. And of course there's other, you know, there's reasons why things are coming out. And I have to tell you, a lot of times you would think that employees would be fearful to talk to me, but a lot of times they're hopeful that I will help change things. Because now they're looking at it as going, well, they've hired you. That means some miracle's gonna happen. You're gonna make things better. And I hope I can, but again, that's gonna be, you know, things will have to move around and change. So what it came down to was his number 2 was stealing from him. And in a way that was not at all obvious. She was not charging owners for maintenance work, but pocketing the money from the back deal from a vendor. So pay the vendor, get a kickback, not charge the owner, which is weird because I'm like, had she done that, there was probably not a lot of things, you know, we probably wouldn't have uncovered a lot. So it was hundreds of, it was close to $200,000 that had not been billed out. Also, she was so incredibly toxic to the company in general that It, that's what was causing people to leave. And I have, I mean, again, this is where that behavior of that psychological behavior comes out. When people are guilty of something, they, their behavior completely changes. It's who, it's not really necessarily who they are as a core, but guilt and fraud and other things will make you act, you know, in secret, make you angry, will bring out you know, emotions that typically aren't there. Things aren't working well maybe in your home life, so you take it out in your work life. Like things will happen and come out. And that's essentially kind of what was discovered. The hardest decision when I told him, and I actually, I said this to 2 people in my consulting career and he was one of the first. I said, if I had, if I could, I would literally tell you to fire everybody and start over. Oh, and I, and I knew that was not possible. Again, he had thousands of doors. I, I'm like, and I know this isn't possible, so I'm gonna make a really other hard suggestion. You need to fire your number 2. Yeah. And I, that is, you know, it, it was a hard year. Let's put it that way. Yeah.

So, so it did.

It was not easy. Yeah.

He did.

Wow. And that's when everything— he said he sat in her office over a weekend and just, that's when a lot of things just unraveled. Ah. And other people quit and other people were grateful. So you had a mixed bag. Yeah. But in the end it was the right thing.

Very interesting. I'm curious, I, I can totally see that a lot of business owners, they get this big report from you, they're reading through it, and then you guys get on a Zoom to discuss it and you start, you know, making recommendations. Hey, you know, there's some reorganization that's going to be needed in order to achieve the goals that you let— that you told me that you want to achieve. What percentage of owners after that process just don't do any of it?

They're just like, they I think a very small percentage. Most people, so kind of the next step is hire, you know, now we're going to enter into a consulting agreement. And, and it's hard to say how many months that could be. It really depends on what's, what I found out during discovery, right? It's like I tell them, I don't know what I don't know until I've looked under the hood of your car. So until then, as a mechanic, I, I'm going to give you the estimate afterwards. And then I'm going to tell you what we need to do to fix it. It's a small percentage that don't do it. Pretty much, I'll tell you, Peter, the summary that I give is very thorough and it pretty much is like the blueprint to say you could do this on your own. I've told you everything that needs to happen. We've talked about it. I've given you the actual blueprint, everything that needs to happen. Whether or not they decide to then move forward to do it is really on them because some of these are really hard. Decisions to make.

That's what I was curious about.

They all are gonna be, they're gonna be, yeah, they're hard decisions. So it's when I work with a client and they've had, you know, this is where that conversation of I have employees and they're just so loyal that, you know, loyalty is great, but you're also some, some of these people are handing their business over to quote loyal employees because they show up and they come to work every day, but they're also not moving the needle in the business. And they're not adopting change. Our, our industry is changing every month. There's every day there's something, you know, there's something new coming out. It doesn't mean that we have to sign up for every single thing that comes about, but our industry is changing in such a way that it's not the same as it was 5 years ago. It wasn't the same when I was in it. There's so many different things and you have to just stay up on it, even just to stay up on it, not necessarily to embrace it into your own company. But it's really important to know that. You can have loyal employees, but if they're not open to change, they're, they're holding your business back. And so that's going to be critical to, again, do I get rid of somebody who's been there 7+ years, who's so great, but I can't find another fit for them because they're not willing to make a change that would benefit the company. Drive more revenue is, I, it's not all about money either. It really isn't. It's not about revenue is definitely important because you're in this business to make money. It's not a charity as, as Todd would say, but, but it is important to, you know, livelihoods of others are, are, are weighing on this, the fiduciary responsibility that I have. They're my clients of what we do every single day and the expectations. Are we aligned in those expectations with our clients? So all of that is really important. Our business is shifted and the purpose of what we're doing may have shifted. So it's looking at this and it might also be, do I need to implement new technology? Am I on a really old, archaic property management system that no longer is supported or integrates with any other platforms out there? I have clients still on those and changing that is probably like the first thing. It's, it's even before I would restructure the company. I'm like, we need to start, you know, implementing you into another platform that integrates with other things. And then while that's going on, because that's gonna, you know, happen, we're gonna look at your team and look at the roles. And so the size of company we have, what roles do we actually need?

I'm curious how prescriptive your recommendations are. Like, it, you, I, I can imagine a world in which a consultant comes in and says every property management company needs to be running AppFolio and LeadSimple and they need to be departmental and they need a FeeMax. And like I could picture a consultant coming in with like a really specific set of like they want to, they want to snap all of their consulting clients onto this grid pattern of exactly how they want to see it. I don't get the sense that that's how you operate, but I'm curious, how much do you meet them where they're at and how much are you like, all right, listen, you really need to you really need to be organized as departmental if you're over 2,000 doors, like, or do you just find it's much more— it's not necessarily about those specific things. It's much more about you can be successful with any style, you can be successful with any modern technology. It has much more to do with like well-defined roles and holding people accountable and a great leadership team and some of those things.

I think it's probably more the latter. So I will say this, I don't come with a script necessarily. I have an idea. I can discern situations pretty easily and pretty fast that it allows me to quickly go, okay, for this to get to where they want. So, you know, if they're saying to me, I really wanna get to 1,000 doors, okay, I know that this is their goal in mind. What is their mission vision statement? What are some of their core values of the company? And then does the team embrace that? Is the leadership in, in, you know, entrenched in it? And are we moving towards this target? Oftentimes the team doesn't know that that's the goal of the owner. And so that's, that's one thing we have to kind of address and, and fix at some point. But everything is really tailored to their specific needs. You, you said something that made me smile because you said, do I sometimes meet them in the middle? And sometimes I do because I might say it's so easy for me to come in and go, okay, here's everything you need to do and it will be perfect. I know it. And it's not. Yeah, right. Exactly.

And it's not.

You have to snap this in or snap that in, right? It's not, it's not a set thing, but it is, I know if you do this and if you do that, it'll be exactly what you want. I can move fast because I can. Yeah.

And I can move a dozen other clients similar in size, adopt those things and be successful.

And that's also why they're hiring me, right? They're like, oh, I know you've worked, you know, with other clients that are around my size and everything. So, you know, tell me what to do. And I'm like, Okay. But just like how you have competitors in your market, you run your business differently than they do. And that's okay. It doesn't, there's no wrong way to really run. Well, there is a wrong way. I'm into the ground would be a wrong way, but you know, there's, you can be departmental. They could be portfolio. Somebody else could be a hybrid and you all still work just fine and you could all be on different platforms and still get some of the same results. Fundamentally what we do as property managers, it's not a secret. We charge a management fee. Most of us charge a leasing fee. Some charge a renewal fee. We, we charge some of the very same similar fees. We even do some of the same things. We market the property. It syndicates to all of these different sites, Zillow, Redfin, Apartments.com, all of this, right? Again, the process is that life cycle doesn't really change. We have from marketing to applica— you know, the leasing application, move in. You kind of get where I'm going all the way to move out. It's pretty much structured the same. The type of properties we manage might be a little different. The persona of client might be a little different. So what is our niche? What differentiates us from others? That might be a little different. Some of our secret sauce might be, you know, some of the proprietary things that we— clauses we may have in our contracts, our vendors, that's proprietary. I don't want to share that. So there's certain things that we hold near and dear. And what drives one company to be more successful than the other is that they may be more pivotal to change and open and, and ready to tackle the world and also be ready to maybe take on some debt to, to get them to that next level so they can grow. Mm-hmm. But again, I'll, some, sometimes clients will be like, this all sounds good, but let's put on the brakes a little bit. So can we take our time to do that? So meeting them in the middle might be slowing down, or I'm not ready to get rid of so-and-so just yet. And even though I'm in the back of my head, I'm like, okay, but I know eventually it will come, but I will work at your pace. It's hard. And I, I don't wanna say I warn them, but I do advise them to say, that's okay, but if you really wanna move this, you know, move this direction. We're gonna have to make a hard decision on that change. And they know it, but it could be a relative, it could be a family friend, it could be just they've been loyal to ever. It, those are the reasons why people management is what it comes down to. It's very hard to manage people for a lot of reasons. And innately, most of us, especially if we started off small in property management and got big, were not great people managers. I was terrible at it in the beginning. I learned to be better because I wanted to improve myself. I saw where I was, my weaknesses, and I knew I had to change those. That was important to me, but I had to work on myself to do that in a lot of different ways, both personally and professionally. And, you know, for me, a lot of that came through more schooling, therapy. Like, I did it all. Like, again, to— I wanted to be the best version of myself, both at work and personally. So that was important to me. It's not something that everybody can just easily do. Yeah. And so managing people is hard.

It's not intuitive for, for most of us. Uh, it certainly wasn't for me. And I went on a similar journey of figuring out how to manage people, figuring out how to identify people that should stay in the organization and people that shouldn't. And, um, once I've made those identifications, being able to move quickly on them. Today's episode is sponsored by Enterprise Bank and Trust. Stay focused on your properties and let Enterprise Bank Trust handle your banking. Property management companies from across the country partner with Enterprise for their Competitive Analysis Program, which lets you offset bank fees and third-party invoices. Let me say that a different way. When you bank with Enterprise, they have a special product that instead of paying you interest, which in most states is not allowed— this is on your trust account— they issue you credits, which can be used to pay invoices for things like property management accounting software, property management consulting, and even your CRANE membership, and much more. This is huge. They also have property management trust account experts with dedicated support teams to help you open and manage your accounts. And finally, Enterprise has a streamlined loan process for simple or complex lending needs. Enterprise's bank within a bank provides you unparalleled service as a property management business owner. I've heard nothing but great things about Enterprise. Frankly, if the state of Ohio allowed me to, I would switch to Enterprise Bank today. State of Ohio has some special rules about needing a physical location, so unfortunately I can't do that. To learn more and connect with Enterprise Bank and Trust, go to enterprisebank.com/property- management, or click the link in the description. Again, that's enterprisebank.com/property-management. Thanks again to Enterprise for sponsoring this week's episode. That, that mindset around people that you identified as something that ends up holding a lot of your clients back. What are some of the other mindsets you run into commonly that keep business owners from achieving the success that, that they're after?

A lot of it for them, for they don't believe in themselves. They're not confident enough. And it's this idea that I still, 'cause I still get people to ask me, well, isn't that what my management fee covers? Why, why would I, why would I wanna charge extra for that? I, I should just be able to do that. What I'm trying to help them understand is that, you know, this dysfunction whether it's in the team or within themself, it's that silent killer of the business. And unless we pivot and open our minds to our time, you know, our time is worth value of some sort. We can't do, you know, what's inside the scope of our management agreement, what's outside the scope. Helping them understand that what they're saying that they'll do for their client is admirable,, but it's also silently killing the business if they don't change, because you're gonna have to add more doors in order to be more, quote, profitable, if that's actually going to happen. And more doors means more people, which then leads to more possible dysfunction. So it's kind of this domino effect. And probably to pivot a little bit, what I also see happen a lot is because we're trying It's a little bit maybe of this imposter syndrome. So small companies will try to appear to be bigger than they really are to get business or to just, I, I don't, for, I don't know for any other reason, but most people then will promote their team members into leadership without proper training or into titled roles that don't really equate to what they're doing.

Right.

That's a classic mistake. It is, right? You're— so I'll interview people and they'll be like, I am the director of operations and I'll interview 'em and I'm like, you're a property manager, right? Yeah. So, but I don't say that to them, but I will tell donor that, you know, I'll tell my client that, but I'll, but again, it's, and by the way, unwinding that, that's hard.

It's a nightmare. And let me, let me just park on that for a second, just in case people are wondering why you brought that up and I emphasized it. It's because here's what ends up happening. What you— the thought process when you make this decision, and I did this multiple times, is we're a small company, we can't afford, you know, top-tier salaries, but what we can do is we can give people great titles. And who doesn't love a great title? So you find a great person who you want to work at your company, and you're like, listen, I can't pay you six figures for this role, but what I can do is I can call you director of property management. I literally made exactly this mistake like 5 years ago, and, and then the, the person's like, oh great, that sounds awesome. I love that title. I'm gonna feel fancy. I'm gonna get to tell my friends. And you're feeling great. I'll put it on LinkedIn. Yeah. And you're feeling great cuz you're like, oh, I'm bringing in this great person and I got the, got them at a deal. Well, here's what ha— here's what ends up happening after a year or two. That person becomes unhappy about something in their job, which happens to everyone eventually. And then they start shopping around one day on Indeed and they put in their job title and they see all the salaries that are now, you know, what are you thinking? Well, I'm doing exactly this. This is my job title, Mr. Owner. You're underpaying me by $20,000 a year compared to— look here, you know, I've gotten like emails with PDF attachments of like multiple job postings using their title and showing how I'm underpaying them and everything. This was years ago. So that's the situation that you back yourself into. Uh, you, you end up painting yourself into a corner, but you, it takes a while to unravel and it's, it's very hard to How do you fix that, right? You're, you either give them this huge salary increase, which you really can't afford, and they're not performing at that level, or you're like, well, I actually need to downgrade your title. And it's just like, there's no easy way out of it.

No, there isn't. And, and you, and to that end, there's, there is no easy solution. I, like, for me to say, well, I think you need to do this is probably not, you know, it's, it's different for every single person. Yeah. But you, you're right. People like titles for, especially employees. They, that it makes them feel there's, it's value. And I get that. And I want them to feel valued. That's very important. But I need the title to match exactly what they do. And that is a mistake that will happen. I love that people will look on Indeed and then they'll see, but it's not an apples to apples comparison. So to look at Indeed to say, I'm looking for a director of property management, what we don't know is really how big is that company? And so there's different levels of that as well. Corporate America does this really well in the sense that there's pay grades. So you can have a property manager as a title and you can have 3 or 4 pay grades as a property manager, right? Before I even hit the senior property manager. And that's, and, and I've tried to incorporate that in a lot of what I do with consulting because I, I tell if I hire somebody, regardless of the title, I can't put them at the ceiling because then they have nowhere to go. And then I, I need them around. They're great as an employee, but if I can't get 'em a raise because the company's not growing, then we're just doing them a disservice and you, because now I have to hire somebody new and then train some— it's like, it's this cycle that's never ending. So a pay grade is a way to, again, methodically budget for the role I need. And that's also hard to do. So I'm looking at this organization and I'm saying, here's, if we could wave a magic wand, you have 1,000 doors and we're gonna just pretend that you, You know, the, the plane is flying, nothing's broken today. We're going to let it fly. And while it's going on the back end, we're going to pretend that we have this 1,000 doors. And where do we, what roles do we need? What kind of setup do you want? This is like your, what, where did it go wrong that you wish that it could have been, you know, different? So now we're like, okay, we want it to be department. Great. What does that look like? What are the roles I need for each department? And then let's build that out. Now I'm gonna go back and look at your people, and we're gonna say Sally's gonna fit over here.

Yeah.

And this was sort of her role before, but here's her new title and, and here's what those pay grades look like. And we're gonna do, it's a lot of work to kind of shift people around. We're creating new job descriptions, very intentional job descriptions with very detailed expectations. That's where I think job descriptions miss the mark. Is that people go on Indeed and they see a job posting and they think that's the description, and that's not, it's a job posting. It tells you very high level, these are the things that you would have to do. It doesn't tell me what the expectation behind that task is. That's where we build out job descriptions. So they're very intentional for that specific company with expectations. And I tie KPIs into those as well. KPIs that tie into the company KPI. So I need to know where the company's headed, right? So I also need to know where that individual role, like, fits into the company KPIs. What contribution are you making? So that's all very intentional. We build this all out, and, and again, we're, we're moving things around, and then we kind of slowly, like, integrate this. Again, introduce very intentional, important meetings every week that happen. That's the other thing that I see missed a lot. There is no strict cadence of meetings. People would be like, oh, I hadn't— yeah, yeah, we have a meeting maybe like every couple weeks, like half an hour, sometimes an hour. I get that a lot and I'm like, that's not— I mean, how— I don't know how anybody can run a business. Like, we have to be very, you know, concise and direct and we have to be on the same page. Everybody needs to be involved. The right people need to be involved in the right meetings. Hey, you may have to have 3 meetings a week, one for maintenance, One for property management, one for leasing. I don't know, but you need to have these meetings to keep everybody moving in this direction of whatever your vision is strategically. Where are we going?

Your team doesn't know. You're hitting on a couple things here that I really like and wanna highlight. One is there's this meme that gets passed around on social media every few months about like meetings are a waste of time and you'll sometimes see people like sum up the salaries of the people who are in the meetings times the length of the meeting, and they're like, meetings are costing you $300,000 a year in lost productivity. That is completely wrong. Meetings are some of the most high-value, high-leverage time in the entire workday, and they're an extremely efficient way to disseminate information, make decisions, surface problems, solve problems. The amount of time saved in meetings is what we should be adding up and calculating. And the, you know, growth of company that's coming out of highly productive meetings and well-run meetings is what we should be adding up. It drives me nuts every time I see that on social media. And I hope if you're listening to this, you're also going to now be driven nuts every time you see someone try and run one of those calculations, because it's, it's so backwards. Now, I certainly will admit a poorly run meeting that's a waste of everyone's time. Yeah, of course that's a waste of everyone's time.

It's like, how was that original thought? And 2-hour. So this is where EOS comes into play. That can be actually very beneficial, very strict on having a purpose, having an agenda. So I do believe you come into a meeting with an agenda. Your team comes in with reports in hand, whatever they're responsible for, they come in very well prepared. Oh, you're in charge of moveouts? Great. How many are coming up? Tell me what's, what's outstanding. Like, I don't need 2-hour meetings. I want very intentional 45-minute to 1-hour meetings, and that's it. Because our time is valuable. But if we just keep droning on and on and on, yeah, that's a waste.

Yeah, I agree. The other theme I'm hearing throughout this whole conversation is this concept of people and this concept of roles. And it's super clear to me that you're very— you draw a clear line between humans and roles. And I think that's a really great insight and something that a lot of small business owners, you don't necessarily grok this idea intuitively. Like a company needs to have certain roles. You know, you need to have a property manager, you need to have a receptionist, you need to have a controller, you need to, you know, salesperson. And like that role, you should go off in the woods by yourself to find the roles that you need for your company at your current size. And you went through a great exercise of define the roles you need at 1,000 doors or whatever your goal is. Start with the roles. Okay, now let's look at the people. And during your interview process, you're getting to know these people really well, and you're probably already thinking like, oh, this person could be a good fit for this role or that role, or we need to tweak their role. Being able to separate in your mind the roles that you need at a business from the people that you currently have is like a superpower. And I wish I could, I wish I could instill that ability into everybody listening. It's, it's a, it's not an easy thing to do, I think.

No. And how many people do you know create roles for the people? So like that, again, that's kind of the mistake because what happens is when that individual leaves and they were doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of this, and it kind of doesn't make sense. I can't replace that person because I can't find somebody to do all of those little bit of things. That's why it's important to say, okay, I need a property manager. These are all of the tasks and responsibilities that they're going to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And that's, you know, and, and there's always gonna be nuances to some things. In fact, where it becomes different is that I'm, I'm a company of 200 or 100 and I wanna get to 500. Well, the role will change, but you might have one person wearing multiple hats. But what happens is you're a property manager and an assistant property manager and maybe a maintenance coordinator. So you're really kind of a portfolio manager. But until when we get to this size, We're gonna break off the assistant role, which is clearly defined, and we'll give it to somebody else. Yep. So if you can do that ahead of time, that will make sense.

You mentioned this— it's hard to do. Totally. And you mentioned this idea of business owners, they wanna, they wanna create the role around the person.

That's a classic, you know, common thing. That's like hiring somebody with the wrong title, by the way.

Yeah. It's just everyone does it. You're like, well, I love Jeff. I'm gonna figure out, you know, I'll construct a role for him. I have a, I have like a nuanced thought on that, which is you are going to run into in your career some superstars that are highly capable, highly competent, high agency type of folks, A-players that you really like and you really love working with them and they work really well with you. I think it's okay to build roles for those people. And this, when I say throughout your career, you're going to meet a couple of these people. I'm talking like 1 person or 2 people over the course of 10 or 15 years that are going to reach this level of ability and sort of connection with you that it's worth constructing a role around them. I think most, you know, many small business owners that we're talking about here, they did this for 75% of their employees, right? You know, I think it's okay to do this for the one-off superstar here and there once in a while. But it should not be the default. It should be the exception to the rule.

Correct. And those people are what we would call a unicorn, right? That's the, that's the person I, that they can do anything. They're great at all of this and I have a need for something. Let's figure out how this is going to work. That's okay. But to your point, I'm talking about the majority of what we do and what I see as a default as like, oh, I just, I'm, I, I need a, I need a quick bandaid fix. So guess what? You're gonna do, I'll do this. Yeah. And that now becomes part of their role. They're not, what they're thinking is, I'm not getting paid anymore for this. It's just adding more work. I'm overwhelmed. And it can turn into a bitter attitude, which, which then brings in conflict, which brings in this whole dysfunction. And you're just in a bigger mess than you were in the beginning.

Yeah. You going back a few minutes, you were describing how in the corporate world we have this idea of multiple levels for like property manager 1, property manager 2 pay grades. Yeah. I see the multifamily world is much more on that same structured. Yes. Yep. Much more structured, much more organized. And I know that the multifamily world, what they also do is salary surveys. There are massive salary surveys that are conducted every single year, or maybe it's every other year. In partnership with the National Apartment Association and every huge, you know, multifamily property manager and multifamily property owner. They get this salary survey every year. It sits on their desk, this big thick binder. And when they need to go hire a property manager 2 or a maintenance coordinator 3 or whatever these titles are, they can look up and see, oh, this is about how much they're going to make. And it's like adjusted for different parts of the country and it's just like really cool. And like, I have this dream that we have that for our world. I feel like we really need a salary survey for scattered site, you know, SFR and small multi-family.

I think you could, but you're gonna have to have some nuances to it. 'Cause keep in mind, you have portfolio management, departmental management, you have a hybrid. Yeah. So, that's what makes it hard because I think what you have to then take into consideration is door count size. It's not just about region and market. It now becomes, here's the size of your company, And, but also what I see, Peter, is that I see companies who have 400 doors and 12 people working for them. So it, it, that, that would not work if I looked at a salary survey and go, oh, well, you should be making, uh, $55,000 a year. Okay, great. All of you're gonna make $55,000. Pretty soon you're like, there's no revenue coming. Like, right. You have no money coming in. You were making nothing. You're in fact, you're in the red because you're working just so your employees could have a job. Like, I think there needs to be, it comes down to this is where our industry is so different. Like our space of single SFR, very different than multifamily. I take a lot of what happens in multifamily because I work with them too, a lot of what they do, and I try to incorporate some of the ideology of what, how they do it and how they're structured into the SFR space because I think they have some great ideas, but not everything can transpose easily. It's a great idea. I just think we have to think through how are we going to get over some of those nuanced things that happen.

Yeah, you're, you're right. The, especially the issue of multiple ways of organizing, like what I call a property manager might be very different from what somebody else—

And it is, by the way. Yeah. So, yeah. CSM, I get, this is where also people give these fancy titles of, well, they're a client service manager. And I'm like, so they're a property manager. It's fine if you wanna call 'em a client service manager, but I try to stick to some industry terminology because let's say that person wants to go look for a job after they've been a CSM for 5 years and they have to now translate that a CSM is really a property manager. And it's, you know, that's kind of what happens. So there's some, there's some benefits to being compliant with what the industry has put out as kind of standardized position titles. But I, I also understand that, you know, the boutique sale of, of creating title titles as well.

Yeah. I wanna make sure we talk a little bit about the process for a property management business owner who's thinking about selling their company. They're reaching retirement age or they're just, you know, they're looking for a career change. It's my understanding that you help a lot of these folks out either by a consulting engagement to get the business ready to sell, sell for maximum value, or even helping facilitate the sale. Tell us a little bit more about what you're up to there, 'cause I think that's a really interesting part of the industry.

So I probably should have said this. When I do my executive summary, that full summary, I also give a valuation of the company. Oh, even if they're not going to sell. Interesting. I do that. And the reason why I do that is because it gives everybody an understanding of their numbers. They know what their numbers are. So whether it, you know, profit per door, revenue per door, their DLR, as much as information, you know, all of that is important for them to get, understand those metrics in addition to what's the EBITDA and what's the top line value. And it gives us a baseline. You know, many of them are like, well, I'm not ready to sell, but this was really good for me to kind of understand, like, I have a valuable business. Like, this is worth something. And that Sometimes that's enough to just rejuvenate their spirit to go, okay, I can do this. Like it's just enough to kind of get them started again. That passion that you saw that they had once before is back. And that's really why I had started doing it several years ago. It's just like, like this I think would be really good. And then I do, I work with a lot of, mostly with sellers and I find buyers because there's never a shortage of buyers. I get, I get calls weekly from people I don't know. I wanna buy, you know, I wanna buy a company. Do you know of any? And, you know, ironically, only one very recently turned into an actual sale of a company in California. They called me, they heard me on another podcast, reached out to me. They were a collective group of individuals and they're buying property management companies. And I said, well, I have one for sale in California if you're interested. And they're like, we'd love to take a look. And it turned out into one. But I'm more of a shortage, obviously sellers. I, I'm closing on, I just closed one 2 weeks ago. We have another one closing in a week. We have 4 that we're working on, but we will do that independently. If they're looking just to sell, we'll do evaluation of the company, let them know. We help them prepare all the due diligence items, help them kind of di— you know, prepare for the LOI that's coming in, walk 'em through this. The biggest thing I see right now, which has been really eye-opening, is that a seller, a buyer will submit an LOI to a, a seller and say, and, and an LOI for the most part is from the initial purview of what I've seen, you know, you gave me a couple things to look at. This is what I would, I, I'm, I'm saying I could buy your company for, not what I am going to buy it for, but what I could buy it for. Yep. And it gets into the head of the seller to think that they need to start negotiations right there. So that's where I come in to say, this is a starting point. This is, and now it's kind of like a board meeting. That was the vote. Now we're gonna have open discussion and then we'll have the final vote. So it's really helping them understand the whole process. You've got still a, you know, I did my due diligence. They're gonna do their own due diligence. And I'm going to kind of navigate that and mediate that for you. I help take the emotion out because sellers tend to be very emotional. Even if they, you know, really want out of the business, it's still a very emotional transaction. And I understand that. They think it's worth X amount. They want X amount. They need X amount. So it's trying to kind of come up with a happy medium. You know, I really love my employees. I want all my employees to stay. Well, it will no longer be your company. But we can probably write in that no changes happen for the first, you know, 90 days, but then they're going to want to make some changes. Like we can negotiate all of these things, but having me kind of help hold that hand helps. And then obviously then now the final purchase agreement comes in, the closing date comes and we have to kind of navigate all of that, make sure all the money's in place. Do we go through a title company? Do we not? So there's all sorts of things. There's a lot to it. Yeah. A lot more than just a handshake and we're off.

Yeah. And having participated in a number of these, you know, as a property management business owner, I also get inundated with people asking to buy my company. You know, anyone listening who owns a management company, I'm sure you've experienced the same. What are the pros and cons of like, if I wanted to sell today, which I don't, but if I did, I could just, call one of these people back, right? I mean, there's— I have a whole list of them. I keep them in a folder. Like, what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing that versus like, hey, you know what, let me just call Deb. I don't want to deal with all this. I'll let her figure out how to maximize value and negotiate everything for me and just deal with it.

You definitely could do that. And for you, you're savvy enough to probably be able to kind of do that. Not to say other people aren't savvy, it's just, it's, it, it's a big time suck. That's probably the biggest thing I could say. Because you're still running the business that you're selling. You're not going to stop doing what you're doing. So you still have fiduciary responsibilities within your business. And for the most part, your team doesn't know what's going on. So that's also kind of like, that's a lot of pressure to kind of hold onto without anybody to talk to about it. If anything, I'm there to kind of, as the counselor, to kind of help move that forward. And, you know, I've done deals where it fell through with one buyer, fell through with two buyers, and the third buyer worked out. And that can be this up and down roller coaster as well. It's a lot of, you thought you were gonna get something. I have a, a one that's going on. We went through six buyers, six, six. Brutal. And, and what's now even sadder is that this started a year ago. And what we were possibly going to get a year ago, we're not getting today. Now I came in only a few months ago where he would, he, he had done 6, 6 of no, 5 of them on his own. So it, it, I think it just, you know, I kind of helped take that pressure off. So maybe that's the pro of it. The con is. You could do it. Anybody can, but you walk away a little bit disgruntled for some reason.

Mm-hmm. I also think of it as like, if you go into this without engaging somebody like yourself, it's kind of like selling your own house without a realtor.

I was just gonna say that. That was actually my analogy I was gonna use.

I'm like, you could do it. You could do it. Like, sure.

People do it, but— Do you ever walk away completely satisfied?

No. And you might not know what to look for of like the little gotchas. I mean, just knowing some of these roll-up buyers and having actually seen some of these purchase and sale agreements, there's some tricky things that they put in there that you really want, you know, at the very least pay somebody to look it over.

And by the way, not all the buyers are that savvy either. So they're looking at numbers and they're like, I'm gonna do an SDE valuation. And I'm like, all right. Or I'm gonna do an EBITDA. And I'm like, you're buying a company of like 100 doors. I'm like, yeah, let's think about this. What are we trying to, What, you know, what are we trying to do here? So it's, do, are they also looking at the numbers correctly? I'm also there to sometimes help diagnose the numbers or explain away. So a lot of companies will, you know, integrate a lot of different things. We've, you know, we've commingled our funds in some other ways, like my, my haircuts are on there, or my car is in there, or my kids' education is in there. So a lot of it is parsing that out. And helping the buyer understand why so that it's, it's easier.

Awesome. Well, the hour has flown by, Deb. It was awesome to connect with you on these topics and, and get to hear your expertise. For folks who want to follow along with you or even connect with you for potential consulting or, or just to chat, where's the best place to do that? Super easy. It's propertymanagementconsulting.com.

What a great domain. I know.

I know I paid a pretty penny for that one, but it was a good one. All right. PropertyManagementConsulting.com.

Awesome. Thanks again, Deb.

You're welcome.

Thanks.

If you like the show and want to get connected to the community, you can follow me on Twitter @PSLohmann and subscribe to my email newsletter on my website, PeterLohmann.com. I try to share as much valuable property management content as I can on a regular basis. Thanks again for listening and have a great week.