Integrated Multifamily Systems for Improved Resident Experiences

In this episode of the Multifamily Innovation® Podcast, Patrick Antrim, Founder and CEO of Multifamily Leadership, and Chairman of the Multifamily Innovation® Council speaks with Konrad Koczwara, CEO and Founder of Elevated Living and Multifamily Innovation® Council Partner about leveraging technology to optimize multifamily operations.

This discussion explores the trajectory of Elevated Living from its inception to its role in growing nationwide. The conversation delves into the company’s initial focus on fitness services and its strategic pivot to a tech-centric solution for operational inefficiencies in the multifamily industry.

This episode emphasizes the importance of integrated systems to streamline operations and improve resident experiences, as part of the Multifamily Innovation® Council's focus on industry advancements. Konrad outlines how Elevated Living addresses the challenge of multiple resident portals by creating unified access to various amenities, demonstrating the company’s commitment to enhancing property management processes and resident satisfaction.

The podcast also previews future trends, including Elevated Living's recent innovations like automated grocery delivery and food ordering systems tailored for multifamily residents, offering practical solutions with reduced fees. These developments are presented as part of the conversation at the Multifamily Innovation® & AI Summit, highlighting the event as a key platform for industry leaders to explore technological advancements and strategic partnerships.

This episode is a valuable resource for multifamily executives interested in adopting technology to enhance operational efficiency and resident services. It provides insights into how companies like Elevated Living are pioneering changes in the multifamily industry, making it a must-listen for those aiming to maintain competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving market.

About the Multifamily Innovation® Council:

The Multifamily Innovation® Council is the executive level membership organization that makes a difference in your bottom line, drives a better experience for your employees, and allows you an experience that keeps demand strong for your company. The council is uniquely positioned to focus on the intersection of Leadership, Technology, AI, and Innovation.

The Multifamily Innovation® Council is for Multifamily Business leaders who want to unlock value inside their organization so they can create better experiences and drive profitability inside their company.

To learn more or to join, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com.

For more information and to engage with leaders shaping the future of multifamily innovation, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com/.

Connect:
Multifamily Innovation® Council: https://multifamilyinnovation.com/
Patrick Antrim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickantrim/

Transcript

Founding Elevated Living

Patrick Antrim 0:21

All right, so welcome back. So we are sitting down with Conrad Coswar. He's the CEO and founder of Elevated Living. We are spending time with our partners. He's in our studio today. Happy to have him in. We're doing some great work with the Multifamily Innovation Council looking at the challenges, roadmapping the challenges and the priorities of organizations, and so with that part of the council is we spend time with our partners who are solving those problems and we get to know a little bit about what they're working on, maybe a little bit about the founder story and what they're doing to make impact in multifamily. So, conrad, welcome in.

Konrad Koczwara 0:56

Thanks for having me, Patrick. Pleasure to be here in sunny Scottsdale.

Patrick Antrim 1:00

Yeah, absolutely. And look, you know, what I'd love to do is just kind of back things up for our listeners and talk a little bit about, maybe, the genesis of Elevated Living, like how did you think of the idea, how did the company become? Because it seems like you guys are on a trajectory of growth and that's exciting. I think people should know where that started from.

Konrad Koczwara 1:21

Yeah, so it all started back in 2014. So I was actually in graduate school and I was completing my doctorate degree in super random profession Nobody's going to guess physical therapy. So I liked working out, I like sports. My parents wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor. I didn't want to go to school for 10 years for an MD. So I said, great, I'll get my doctorate in physical therapy, it's the next best thing.

Konrad Koczwara 1:48

And you know, I was always like into technology. So you know, back in the day, when I was younger, I was one of those hackers that would play video games. I knew how to hack, you know and do, had this like tech background where my original idea, you know, was you know, what can I do while I'm in grad school, full time to make some extra money, right, and I came up with an idea that was all website SEO, kind of Google AdWords based, where we would become the number one ranked website for in-home fitness, in-home training, website for in-home fitness, in-home training. So this was in Chicago and Chicago is a pretty big city and originally the plan was to focus on the suburbs, because I grew up in the suburbs, but I started getting calls from downtown and within six months, I had so much interest from property managers. They were reaching out to me. They were like, who are you guys? We see you guys with your t-shirts all over our buildings, right, and these buildings had gyms which I had no idea about. So I was like a true outsider to multifamily. I had no idea what was going on. You know did that for two years. Within those two years, we probably had over 100 buildings that we were running their gyms, right, so they were using us as, like, an amenity for the property.

Konrad Koczwara 3:08

And that's when I realized there's a problem. So, like during like again, 2014, 2016, 2017, I saw a huge influx of prop tech and even though our business at the time was services, it was kind of a tech business. I was sub-licensing a software to run the gym in the building. So residents, when they move in and they wanted to take advantage of all these nice kind of wellness amenities, they would have to log in to my software, sure, and I realized I'm like, wow, there's a dry cleaning company, there's housekeeping, there's all these other things like access control hardware, and all of them are doing the exact same thing as me, but in a different vertical right, and I always like to put myself in the shoes of a landlord, and I always so. I, you know. The way I thought about it was if I'm a landlord, I don't have any access to any of this data. Number one. So I have no idea who's coming to my building, what my residents are spending money on, because I'm giving it all away to these random one-off companies, right? So that was number one. Number two how many apps? So I was a resident of a building, right?

Konrad Koczwara 4:17

I became a resident of a few buildings downtown and every building I moved into there was at least five, up to 15 different portals for websites that I had to create an account on, being promoted all the time, and I thought this is not sustainable from a management standpoint for a management company. They have systems. You got to run the same playbook, sure. If you have 300 buildings, you got to run the same playbook, sure, across. If you have, you know, 300 buildings, you got to run the same playbook in every single city. You know it might change a little bit, but you got to run the same playbook. And if you have, you know 15 different vendors, you know in each different market, right, it gets crazy. So that's where you know, elevated Living came about.

Konrad Koczwara 5:01

I started talking with managers and, again, since I started, I always wanted to learn more about how they run their business. So for the four years, I was basically learning their back end back office. So I learned about Yardi, yarda, realpage, learned about everything they were using and I learned that it's just very inefficient and we decided we could do it better and Elevated Living started building that 2018. Lucky that we were able to bootstrap the business. We had funds from our first business, which was fitness is a good business People don't think it is, but it is so we were able to bootstrap that business. We launched the platform our kind of first version of Elevated Living in 2019. So we've been going strong now for about five years 39 states, over 600 buildings and over, I would say, 325 markets, cities.

Patrick Antrim 6:00

That's really incredible, you know let's talk and lean into that ecosystem because, as you mentioned there, incredible, you know, let's talk and lean into that ecosystem because, as you mentioned there, when you were first coming in and identifying the opportunity you mentioned, you were running the gyms and you had some software going into that I always think of, like even the self-driving car. There's still the steering wheel right now. Eventually that may not even be needed, right. So there's this phasing in of how things work. I'd love to hear what you think about fitness centers and gyms and things like that in the long term. But before I get to that, let's talk about this ecosystem, because it sounds like you're tackling the friction problem for the resident itself, the customer also, the operation, the ability to scale and systemize and run your business and then ultimately having access to your own data or value that can be unlocked with that. But take me through your ecosystem. What's that? How does that play out?

Property Management Software Integration and Benefits

Konrad Koczwara 6:56

So what I look at with my team. We look at, we basically try to do two things. We have two kind of methods that we implement right now and it's always going to be these two things, there's never really a third. So we look at what solutions out there right now are only solving for one or two problems that force, either you know, a the resident to download an app, b the management team or C both right, so you know. So if that's happening, that's a really ripe vertical to go after and add that as a feature of our platform, right. So we've done that. So, for example, I'll give you a really good example Parking, valet systems, maintenance inspections.

Konrad Koczwara 7:43

Let's maybe go with valet. I had a really, really recent example of this. I had a client of mine, big ownership group developer. They have a lot of buildings kind of all over, but in Houston and Dallas they have probably 10 buildings that all have a valet system they were using to manage their valet company. And this system you know it was pretty outdated, you know it was like Windows 98. And you know the company that was running this. It was costing probably $400 a month per location to run this really dated software. So they came to me and said hey, you know none of our data syncs from Entrata. We don't pull the license plates, everything's manual. We don't have data back through this system. Can you guys build us we're already using your apps in all of our buildings Can you guys build us a valet management system that's going to solve these three problems? So we analyzed it, figured out how we needed it to work, and we built it, and, you know, overnight, you know, they eliminated that, that solution right, and now it became a feature of our platform, and there's a lot of other stories like that.

Konrad Koczwara 8:56

The second way we do it, though, right, so that was the first way. The second way we do it is we integrate a lot of systems. So, for example, a lot of systems. So, for example, access control, thermostats, water leak detectors. We don't want to build the hardware, right, like I don't want to get into the hardware business, but what I do want to do is I want to be able, like I have a client that has whether they build buildings, or a good example is a client who buys buildings. So if you, patrick, you buy buildings, every month there's a new building. You're buying One's on the East Coast, one's on the West Coast.

Konrad Koczwara 9:33

Each of those buildings had different construction teams, low voltage teams.

Konrad Koczwara 9:36

They implemented probably different hardware, right. They implemented different package lockers. They might have put different solutions for the entry into the building, like video intercom systems, common area access and unit level access. So if one building and I'll give a shout out to some of the companies we work with but if one building has Butterfly MX as a video intercom and another one has, let's just say, comlet, right, and then for unit level locks they have Dormacaba or Salto, I come in, I create a white labeled app. So if you're a resident living in Luxury Tower, your app is called Luxury Tower and those access control kind of the front end for the resident works exactly the same in both buildings. Right, and that's the beauty, I think, of the integration part of it. We want to be Switzerland. We don't want to build our own hardware because that's a lot of work. There's already so many good companies that do it and they're open architecture. They are open. You can plug them in. You can make your own app and connect all these hardware companies.

Patrick Antrim 10:40

I love to see that. I mean, I love to see that trend. I love to see that trend and it's exciting because, as you mentioned, the custom build now becomes almost like now, productized, where now that one company has solved this, now you can scale that as your own brand to offer that to other applications. And you mentioned the hardware. The hardware companies are welcoming, I think, to the APIs and opening to Most are, I would say, like out of 10,.

Konrad Koczwara 11:11

9 out of 10 are realizing that it's actually beneficial to be open platform. You know there's stories I can tell you about. You know there's certain companies that weren't open for like two, three years and then, like a lot of developers, you know you spend money to outfit 300 units in an apartment and all of a sudden you're finding out that they're not willing to, you know, open up their API. Yeah, that's a real problem. So they had a lot of pushback from developers and owners and some owners even said they're going to never use this vendor again and they ended up changing their mind.

Konrad Koczwara 12:44

So I saw the whole thing happen Two and a half years, but they did change their mind and they opened up their API.

Patrick Antrim 12:51

And in terms of the white label, that's impressive because you have the branding aspect, you're giving control of the experience to your customer, the property, right, yeah, and that helps with the you know, not having confused customers and remembering all these different things. Because I mean, you know, you look at your own phone and there's just searching for the app. I have apps that I don't even realize I even had in there.

Konrad Koczwara 13:18

You know, I actually have a lot of data on branded versus non-branded. So, you know, before Elevated Living was Eleed. So you know, before elevated living was elevated living, you know I was doing the gyms and, uh, you know, our kind of first version of the app when we, when we first went live, it was trying basically trying to figure out how can we support our existing business without having to cut off our clients that were were already live in with these, with this fitness stuff. So you know. So that's how we decided to do white-labeled and not non-branded and we gave the clients the option to upgrade to the white-labeled right and some clients kept it. Some clients ended up going with our freemium I call it like a legacy right.

Konrad Koczwara 13:58

Sure, so nobody really uses our Elevated Living app, right, but we had to do it for some clients who didn't want the white-labeled one. Sure, and the differences were drastic. Like people, when they move into a building and they already committed, they signed a lease to like building name, right, and when you tell them, hey, go into the app store and download the Jumbo Jimbo app, whatever the name is Right, they're like do I really need this app? Versus, if it's the name of the building.

Patrick Antrim 14:29

Part of the experience.

Konrad Koczwara 14:29

Yeah, they're much more open to doing it and the numbers are like. I would say there's probably a 60% higher chance that someone will download a white labeled app versus if it's unbranded and just a random name in the app store.

Patrick Antrim 14:41

Yeah, and how important is that? What services do they get to in doing that, like with elevated living? What are the services?

Konrad Koczwara 14:49

So right now, you know we have a lot of like kind of back office operations. So you know we have a maintenance tool for residents to submit back office for maintenance, to control. We have inspections built in for residents and for due diligence and property inspections. We have amenity reservations for hourly rentals, daily rentals or rentable items like storage lockers. We have, of course, we have integrations with the thermostats, the access control package lockers. But for the fun stuff, the fun stuff package lockers. But for the fun stuff, the fun stuff I always like. I like talking about the fun stuff. That's like the back office, the fun stuff.

Konrad Koczwara 15:30

You know we have interest groups. So if you move into a building, you know, and let's just say you don't know anybody you move to a new city and you're trying to meet new people. You moved into a brand new building. It's luxury, it's super nice. How do you meet people, right? So we have something called interest groups where, from day one, if you have a dog, you could join the pet owners group. Or you know, some buildings have pickleball. You know it's hot now. Everybody's hiking, biking, I mean yes, you can create a pickle, you can.

Konrad Koczwara 15:57

I can go in and say residents do it or is it? Yeah, and the manager can improve it. So obviously there's there's some control.

Konrad Koczwara 16:03

It's like you can't right crazy group name, right like um. So the interest groups are super fun. We have something called neighborhood perks, which we help put together, which is our uh like partnerships with local businesses. So coffee shops, restaurants hey, if you live at building name, you get a discount to this coffee shop across the street. So there's something like that.

Konrad Koczwara 16:23

And then, of course, the most popular thing I would say that we're known for is the onsite services. So we basically built Uber inside a property management software. So a resident when they move in, right, for example, they can book a TV mounting or someone to come help them assemble the furniture. They can book a house mounting or someone to come help them assemble the furniture. They can book a housekeeper this is interesting A trainer so you know my old business, right, trainer and the gym a nutritionist, you know. So there's services that we run as Elevated Living and there's also services that we partner with as like third-party services. So things like junk removal, moving companies. We have some cities that we work with have a mobile car detailing that comes to the building. In California we have if you want to get tan, they'll come and spray tan you to your apartment. So every market's different. What we have in terms of like third-party services.

Konrad Koczwara 17:22

But we basically imagine we built like an Uber inside of our property management software and then we have full control over what's implemented and the customer support part of it. So landlords they don't have to do anything, they can be hands-off. We cut them a revenue share check every month for every booking that happens in their property. They can see all the data. They can see that Susie likes massages every Monday at 10 am. They can see that.

Konrad Koczwara 17:48

You know, oh, we just added a cool one. We just added. So this is like a brand new release, so I don't have too much data on it, but we can do grocery delivery through our app and food ordering through our app Is this new, brand new, just released in April, and it's basically like DoorD and food ordering through our app Is this new, brand new, just released in April? Okay, and it's basically like DoorDash. It functions the same exact way, except you don't have to change your address. It already knows your address and the fees are less. Doordash charges about 18% to 20% fees. We're charging 10% fees and it's kind of cool because you can see like Conrad likes to order ice creams at 10 pm at night.

Patrick Antrim 18:23

Yeah, you know it's cool Tacos and taquitos.

Konrad Koczwara 18:28

It gives, I think, a lot of insight into like what residents, like you know, just this morning, as I was flying here, I saw one of my clients, you know, post on LinkedIn about renewal gifts. Like what ideas for renewal gifts?

Patrick Antrim 18:44

And they're guessing at this point, until until you know what they like, right.

Konrad Koczwara 18:49

So if you see that they like or events yeah.

Konrad Koczwara 18:51

Or taco trucks, you know things like that's. I think like the true benefit of our platform is like because it's all in one. Residents are in our app so often they're cross using different features of the app, versus if you had three different apps at all. Divide those those let's just say, 30 features right across three apps. You have 10 in each. You're kind of splitting the time versus if you have 30 in one. People they go in the app, they want to sign up for an event great, they sign up and then oh, wow, oh, I could book groceries. Oh, that's amazing. And then now they book groceries.

Patrick Antrim 19:24

So they're more and they tell friends about this really cool thing.

Konrad Koczwara 19:28

So you're talking about events like you know, the events are great too, because what we do with events is we, we like to let people see who's coming, like we don't say the full last name, but we say, like you know, conrad K, and you know it creates a FOMO effect because you know, I'll sign up for the wine tasting event in my building and all of a sudden everybody else is like, oh, conrad's going, oh, I know Conrad, or you know what I mean. It's like a nice FOMO.

Innovative Marketplace Solutions for Customers

Patrick Antrim 19:54

Sure, that's really interesting. I mean, you know, I've always been talking about sort of this aggregate purchasing power of the customer and you've really tied it to creating a better experience for the customer, like Intel and data around, even, like you mentioned, renewal gifts or incentives or events you want to produce, just knowing how people share their time, you know, and the idea of at our Multivan Innovation and AI Summit, we're bringing in NVIDIA to talk All sorts of things. Not yet I want him.

Konrad Koczwara 20:28

Yeah.

Patrick Antrim 20:28

I'm on a mission I would say he's busy, right, but we've been talking to their global head of spaces and they really look at cities and spaces and in this case I mean this is apartments are spaces, of course and through, like when you have a Tesla and that product is shipped, the digital twin of how the vehicle is like, how it's used. They have Intel that other automakers don't have like how the customer's actually using the product, right, so they can innovate and think about new things and stuff like that. And so in some ways, you're doing that from an experience standpoint. After someone moves in, we really don't know much about what's going on and what they're interested in. Not that we want to get into too close to that stuff, but to make the experience better. That's very interesting.

Patrick Antrim 21:21

And then the marketplace. When you said like an Uber with the you know junk removal or services, that's really interesting because now you're unlocking like the customers, if they're spending a third of their income on rent, like they're spending money in your building other places, so you're kind of bringing in the aggregate purchasing power of the customer with I think you mentioned a rev share. That's pretty interesting. I'm sure people would want to talk through that with you individually, but also what I think there is if you're increasing the purchasing power of the customer, which means, if you think about you mentioned, you have the option to use the Elevated Living or the branded app or DoorDash, it's going to be more effective, more efficient, right? So now you're giving your customer more income to service the rent and all that kind of stuff, and so I really I didn't know that we're here to talk about it, I know right.

Patrick Antrim 22:22

Yeah, how are people responding to that? I mean, you mentioned this is an early thing, like just, but I'm sure that's.

Konrad Koczwara 22:28

Like the end of the first week of April. Yeah, so we're like two weeks well not even two weeks in. Yeah, but it's response is responding and the best part about this one is that, you know, unlike the other ones, like there's, we are involved in some of the scheduling and managing with the like housekeeping, and cause we want to. We want to make sure that we don't get a black eye right, cause we do so many things like with if someone has a bad experience with a housekeeper, right, that could affect our app, right, theoretically, right. So we there's a lot of things we keep an eye on. We don't want to get a black eye in any of our verticals that we're in. Sure, we want to make sure we're doing a good job.

Konrad Koczwara 23:07

But with this one, it's actually pretty nice because, like it's, we've built a. We built it in a way where it's fully automated and you know the customer, even the customer support. We figured out a way to automate People can see their, their delivery driver on a map. Yeah, as they're coming. It's, it's. It's very similar to doordash, right? So I'm I can probably get you some data at the end of this month.

Patrick Antrim 23:32

Sure, because I'm waiting for it myself, but we have seen bookings coming in well, we'll give you a few months to talk about that data yeah, you have till december, very good yeah that's really interesting and and I always want to ask, like where did you get, where do the ideas come from? Because you're, you're, you're creeping into value creation. Is it just because you're spending time with customers?

Konrad Koczwara 23:55

yeah. So here's I mean a lot of people always say you know, uh, they say you don't want to be like in the business right, as a ceo or founder, and I agree with that. You know there's there's certain things you don't want to be in the business as a CEO or founder, and I agree with that. There's certain things you shouldn't be doing when it comes to sales calls, like demos. I think those are the things that someone who's, you know, in charge, shouldn't in charge of product, shouldn't know what's going on when you jump on a call with a prospect when they're leaning in where they're pushing.

Konrad Koczwara 24:27

What are they interested in? Right? If you have a product team and then you have a sales team and they don't talk, right, it's a problem. And you know, for me I like to jump on you know I still have my team that does the calls but I like to jump on the call and I like to understand what are the problems they're trying to solve. You know, even our customers right now, like you know, we have a feature request section. So when you go on our backend dashboard, you know you could submit a support ticket.

Konrad Koczwara 25:00

but one of the things I like, which it basically guides our roadmap, is feature requests. So you know, someone could submit a feature request on the backend. It comes in. We can figure out. You know, the 10 other people ask for the same thing, right, and then we we create a roadmap based off of what people are asking for in terms of features.

Konrad Koczwara 25:24

But the one thing that I will tell you about like the services, like offering stuff to residents, is you have to be careful with what you offer. So it's very easy to say let's offer everything right, and I think most companies that you know want to maximize, like, their revenue. I would say like that's what they would do. But you got to be careful. Look at Groupon. Groupon came out swinging many, many years ago and it was good.

Property Management App and Services

Konrad Koczwara 25:51

I used it, but then it became too much. It was too much stuff and people stopped using it. And people stopped using it. And you've got to always think about if I was a resident, or if Patrick was a resident, would this make his life easier? Would this be an amenity for him? Is this something that would either save him time, save him money? That's what we like to look at Because it's easy. I get solicitations all the time from vendors hey, we want to be on your platform and you got to figure out, like, what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, because if you put stuff that doesn't make sense, it's going to devalue all the things that do make sense.

Patrick Antrim 27:01

So that's like a very important thing that we follow. Yeah, I love that and you know as you think about. You just mentioned the April, the new marketplace or Uber for this experience. Are you thinking about what's next or is that coming from the roadmap and floating.

Konrad Koczwara 27:20

I have something that's next, but I can't announce it yet. But we have something that so interest rates are high, owners are trying to figure out how to make more money, and we came up with something that we're going to be releasing in the next two to three months. That is very interesting actually, where they're going to be able to monetize their spaces right In a way where they haven't been able to do that before. Okay and um, so that's kind of our you know secret thing we're working on right now, sure, and trying to bring it to life we'll have to follow you, uh, for that.

Patrick Antrim 28:03

Uh, make an announcement, we'll make. Look then, yeah, make an LinkedIn and see what's happening there. Take me through the process of becoming a customer. What's that look like Someone's listening right now. They're like this sounds very interesting. How's that work for them?

Konrad Koczwara 28:19

Yeah, so you know, first things first, like we want to jump on a call, understand what the problem is, what problems you're trying to solve. You know, and sometimes people have very simple problems. Sometimes they say, oh, we had a lady the other day that said I need someone to run our pet concierge program. I'm like, well, we have this whole app that does a lot more things. But we ended up signing her up for the whole app because she came in wanting the pet concierge program. We signed up the whole platform. We got the regional, the regional got involved. Regional's like this is amazing, we want this in other properties, right. So they came in wanting the pet concierge, ended up doing the whole app.

Konrad Koczwara 29:02

But in general, like once we figure out what the problem is and again, some clients want an all-in-one app, Some clients only want three pieces solved what we'll do is we'll put together a proposal, pricing If we have to integrate things, so they might say, hey, we submit like a new community questionnaire. They'll tell us like what access control to use for common areas, unit level access, package lockers, and we'll come together, put together a proposal. Once that's signed, usually we can go live within 14 to 30 days. So we're limited by the white labeling. That's the honest truth. Like if we didn't white label, you could just, let's just say hypothetically, if we use the elevated living app, I can go live tomorrow.

Konrad Koczwara 29:45

As long as we do training and onboarding, we're good, um, and then we connect with the RD and all that, but the white labeling takes some time. So we have to get an app, we have to design the app right. It has to be. The client has to approve it. They want to, you know, because they have their icon, the app icon, on their phone loading screen, the registration screen, right. So there's a lot of things there.

Patrick Antrim 30:07

There's a lot of value you're creating right there, because you're basically building them an app. Yeah.

Konrad Koczwara 30:13

But I have some clients where, for example, they Because you could white label a few ways you could white label per community, you can white label per neighborhood, so if someone has mixed-use assets or if they have three buildings that are the same name in a neighborhood. Or you could white label per your management brand or ownership brand. So I have a few clients where you know they labeled it the third way, the ownership brand. So they'll have, like a building called like you know. You know, just let's call it brand Chicago, brand Dallas, brand Houston, so they have buildings in each city that always have the same start, Sure, First word. So we have an app called, like you know, brand living and, uh, you know those types of clients we can go live, you know, tomorrow you know two days.

Konrad Koczwara 31:01

So if they take over a building, uh, if they have to sell a building, nothing changes. We use the same app for 30,. If they have to sell a building, nothing changes. We use the same app for 30, 40 properties. So I like that way. Yeah, it's smart because you're building a brand. If you do it that way, you can also brand per community. But if you have 100 communities all have different names, it's a lot of work for the marketing team. Imagine you just had the same name, but the city, right? Yeah, it's so much easier for marketing right, yeah, and there's.

Patrick Antrim 31:33

There's a lot, of, a lot of value in that, and especially for the portfolio companies. Um, how, how do you, uh, or let's? Let's go back to the products, or maybe it's services. Um, take me through the range of things that are in there in the app.

Konrad Koczwara 31:50

Services, yeah, on-site services. So we have housekeeping, we have chores.

Patrick Antrim 31:58

Chores. Yeah, tell me more.

Konrad Koczwara 32:01

So residents can, you can give them chores.

Patrick Antrim 32:05

Yeah.

Konrad Koczwara 32:05

They can request chores to get done. So maybe they need their laundry done or maybe they need dry cleaning picked up. So you know that's kind of our home services section.

Patrick Antrim 32:18

So, handyman, handyman, you know it's actually pretty interesting, like I love so I I start to imagine, like somebody that's as you're telling me. I'm like this sounds awesome, right? So somebody looking for an apartment? I almost feel like they would be like do they have this app? Before I even consider People do.

Konrad Koczwara 32:38

They do ask oh, I know 100% and I know that the leasing teams that I work with that's their pitch.

Konrad Koczwara 32:45

They're going through the building. They're showing their white-labeled app. They're talking about the interest groups. They're going through the building. They're showing their white-labeled app. They're talking about the interest groups. They're talking about here's our pet spa. Did you know? We have a dog groomer that comes on site. You could book it through our app. Here's our fitness center.

Managing Insurance Policies and Customer Service

Konrad Koczwara 32:57

You get a free one-on-one personal training session as a new resident, because that's what we offer. We offer a one-on-one free trial, essentially essentially with a trainer. You know, you know here's our. You know, for example, like here's the apartment, well, we have a handyman that can mount your TV for you. You're all talking points to do on the tour. A hundred percent.

Konrad Koczwara 33:19

I know that because we train them that way and a lot of the marketing directors of these property management companies, they love it. They're the ones that also like once, once we step away and do onboarding and like kind of tell them they kind of implement that in their playbook for, like, new buildings, right, but going back to their services, so home services we have housekeeping chores, handyman services. We have, on the wellness side, we have a virtual coaching. We have onsite personal training. We have nutrition counseling and we have virtual coaching. We have on-site personal training, we have nutrition counseling and we have massage therapy. We have for pets, we have dog walking, cat visits, dog grooming and in certain cities we have dog training so we could train your dog and then. So those are the ones that we kind of oversee as elevated living right.

Patrick Antrim 34:12

That's remarkable.

Konrad Koczwara 34:12

Yeah.

Patrick Antrim 34:13

And so where do people push back on this? I mean, it feels like you mentioned you're in 39 states, so obviously good growth, yeah, yeah.

Konrad Koczwara 34:24

So again, I'm on these calls and I you know, especially when you're talking with like a someone at corporate super high up, sure, or you're talking about like a portfolio, like you're going to get asked every single question, right and the biggest things they push back?

Patrick Antrim 34:37

are some of these the wrong questions to be asking?

Konrad Koczwara 34:42

they're worried, you know they're worried about liability. What if someone you know steals something? What if something happens? Because people are coming on site? And number one, we have very strict vetting processes. So we do background checks.

Konrad Koczwara 34:58

We interview a lot of these candidates, especially for the stuff that we're doing. We make sure that they have insurance policies effective. We have a master policy, but we also make sure we create our own back office insurance management system on the backend where it alerts us when someone's insurance is expiring. So, you know, we'll make the vendor. We'll say, hey, you can't work until you give us a new policy. So you know we have a lot of stuff on the backend that we do. But we also, like, we indemnify the owner right, owner right, so something. It's us running the services, it's not them doing it.

Konrad Koczwara 35:31

So if, if something does happen, like, why should they be responsible? These services are coming on anyway, yeah, but but right, like problem is that like the way? Sometimes, again, people shouldn't think like this. I like, in my opinion, but sometimes people say, well, it's our white labeled app, right, so it looks like it's our services and the way to think about it is no, it's your white labeled app that has integrated elevated living services. It happens to be the same company that runs the app, but you know, if we didn't do it, someone else could, right, so it's.

Konrad Koczwara 36:26

It's one of those things where you know we could education and that's what we do, and you know we like our goal. I, and that's what we do, and you know we like our goal. I always tell here's one of my biggest best responses Right, and it's true. Um, you know one, I don't want to get a black guy. I don't want to give someone else a black guy, um, because we mess up or we don't do our job, um, but but the biggest thing is a lot of these services, if you think about it, are reoccurring. They are reoccurring in nature. You get a personal trainer twice a week. You get a dog walker five times a week. You get a housekeeper every two weeks.

Konrad Koczwara 37:00

So a lot of these services are reoccurring. So the revenue in a building doesn't really fluctuate. Once we get going in a building, it's up there, it stays up there. It might fluctuate like 10% once a month, but it stays pretty much the same. And what's interesting is that our goal is to have a long-term relationship with the residents. We're not trying to do a one-time sell somebody snake oil and never see them again. We want to have an ongoing relationship, so that, like for an owner, when I explain it that way, they're like oh, you're right, that makes sense. So you know, if the alignment's there too. Yeah, if there's an issue right, and someone says oh, you know, you guys did this or didn't clean my apartment all the way, we'll refund it. You know, our goal is to have a long-term relationship with the building but also the residents of the building and have because whatever we do, we understand that us doing something could affect them the renewal right. So that's very important to me and to Elevate Living.

Patrick Antrim 38:10

Yeah, and what values are you leading by, like? I mean, like what's important to you? I mean, you just mentioned a few things that I would suspect align with a lot of the company's expectations around resident service, and sometimes probably in a more concierge and customer service way than departments themselves, because they can't give a lot of refund on their rent and things like that, whereas you're stepping forward and really touching on those points, saying like it's going to get done, it's going to be right, and if not, we'll make it right, and if yeah, we're not going to let one service get in the way, but we want you there along the journey, that same person might book other services right.

Patrick Antrim 38:55

So as a leader, like, how do you guide that? So?

Konrad Koczwara 38:58

what I? I'm anybody that knows me personally I'm a yes man and you know, if I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. I don't like to say under over promise, under deliver. I like to do the opposite. So I expect my team the same way. So I like to hire people that have the same type of mindset.

Konrad Koczwara 39:24

For example, we're on an onboarding call, onboarding a brand new customer, and the customer and I just had a session with one of my employees about this the customer says can your, can your app do this? Whatever, this is Right and the way I think about it is, I think, well is. Is that something that will be helpful to other people Right? Two, is it hard to do? Let's talk with our CTO and get back to this client and come back with an explanation, and you know that's what I do, right, that's my way of thinking. Versus, you know, I had somebody on my team where they were talking to a client. The client said can your app do this? No, and that was it Right.

Konrad Koczwara 40:15

So to me, I don't like that Right and you know I try to teach my team that. You know you want to try to make it happen for the customer. If it becomes, you know, impossible, then you know, then we can say no, right. But. But if it's something that's reasonable and it's not going to take long for us to do, right, or, you know, if it's, if it's going to help other customers, then you can't just say no, you got to say let us look into it and actually look into it. Right, so and that. And that applies to, you know, services, it applies to everything that we do, because you don't want to tell a customer, no, it's not possible. All the features that we have, like even access control, we only had in the beginning. We had no access control integrations. Then we had a customer that said, hey, can you guys integrate our Dorma Cabo locks? We're like, let's look into it, tell me more. We looked into it, we made it happen three months later.

Patrick Antrim 41:15

And then to your point. It's valuable to other customers.

Konrad Koczwara 41:19

Then we had other customers that wanted Dorma Cabalox. Then we had another customer that were it was a prospect call and they're like we'll sign up with you guys, but you need to integrate Salto or Butterfly, whatever. And we say, okay, great, in the contract, let's put it in there by the time we start, we'll have this for you. Right, and we did right. So it was one of those things where there's things we don't have. But you gotta like, if you want to be a I think this goes for any business If you want to be relevant, you got to keep innovating.

Konrad Koczwara 41:53

You can't just turn on okay, our platform is going to be legacy now, we're not going to add any more features. It's kind of what happened with the big guys. You know, with the big guys, like you already, you know like they innovate for sure, but, like in terms of the resident app, they stopped right Pay rent maintenance, that's it. And a lot of my customers they want more than that. They want like a whole front end ecosystem. They want to manage their EV chargers. They don't want to have a separate app for that and that's kind of like what guides us. We're very like yes, let's try to make it happen.

Patrick Antrim 42:27

I love that. And to your point of yes, and what else can this do for other customers? Or is it reasonable to what are the resources required to make that happen? It's very compelling because for you I mean running a business it's a feedback loop on what to prioritize and all that stuff. So it's pretty interesting If you're in front of your ideal customer, which, by the way, who is that? I see that you have a lot of positioning around luxury or class A, but take me through who do you want to spend time with, for sure?

Konrad Koczwara 43:08

So our marketing team did a really good job with our website because our goal was class A, high-end properties, because the honest truth is our platform has so many features that that is our ideal customer Customers that have 10, 20 different amenities to rent out and manage and they need an efficient way to do it to rent out and manage and they need an efficient way to do it. You know residents that have money that want to spend. You know trade money for time yes, so you know over the years, people it's funny I have a few clients that Section 8 housing, class B, class C they use our app. They use our app for communication maintenance inspections. You know we still have the services on. Is the spend as much as we get in a Class A building? No, but our app still works.

Konrad Koczwara 43:59

And a lot of those customers it's funny. One of them specifically there was like 10,000 units but they originally didn't reach out to us. Like a year and a half ago or a year and a half before they finally reached out was because they thought we only do Class A. They went on our website, they got scared off and I found this out later and I'm like, okay, well, we got to change our website. So we actually changed our website because they used to say like an ecosystem for modern class a apartments right. Right now it just says apartments for modern apartments, right and and. But yeah, we work that like class a definitely like. I think they would get the most out of our platform. Do I think you know affordable housing, classy?

Patrick Antrim 44:43

Well, you just look at amenities anyway, like in those buildings, they're just structured, yeah, differently.

Konrad Koczwara 44:49

Yeah, it's almost like differently. It's almost like if we have let's just call it, we have 100 features in a class A building, they're going to use all 100 because they're going to need it to run their back office and not go insane, versus like a class C building. You might need 25 out of the 100. You might need a way to manage parking. You might need a way to manage.

Patrick Antrim 45:11

But you've still got the dog walking and these types of things. Yeah, people book Laundry.

Konrad Koczwara 45:15

People book. I would say it's like you get probably one-seventh of the bookings in a Class C B building. Then you get eight times more.

Patrick Antrim 45:28

Do you think it has to do with the way the marketing is done at the property, or is it just that the customer expects different things?

Problem-Solving and Collaboration for Innovation

Konrad Koczwara 45:34

I think the customer expects different things and I look, believe it or not, there's people that book, you know, trainers in these buildings Again, affordable buildings they book housekeeping. But it's a different type of customer. You know they won't spend. You know they won't like like with PT. You could sell somebody 50 sessions for five grand and they'll pay it in full in a class.

Konrad Koczwara 45:58

A building Sure, you know. You got to do a payment plan at you know more affordable building Sure, you know. So it's monthly. They pay monthly or weekly, but they'll do the same. They'll do the same amount. Some flexibility. So, there's just different. The demographic is a little bit different, yeah.

Patrick Antrim 46:18

It's like any business like that way. And so, look, you're doing some exciting things and I'm sure we could spend a lot more time. I am looking forward to what you're doing for our council. You're supporting the growth of what we're doing to bring multifamily owners and operators together. I'd love to bring you into a meeting and have you, because as we talk about these things, we just did a for innovation, what unlocked a lot of work at Intel and this other we had a guest speaker in.

Patrick Antrim 46:43

Today we're talking about, yes and around, how do you stack new ideas and when in the development process, we shared that in an environment where and it kind of came from the conversation came from the movie Oppenheimer with the scientists, and it's like you know, with technology, developers build with other developers makes the thing better.

Patrick Antrim 47:11

Like you just keep stacking and improving on other developers' work to make an ecosystem of a great product. And so we talked a little bit about the challenges that are in place today with that environment, because it isn't always we're building on top of other things. You've built this ecosystem, ecosystem in front of all that, so you can do that without even permission. You know like you just will build the new, like you know, you got the freeways. We'll just build another highway over here, prove it out. And people are like, hey, that's, we're going faster over here, let's, let's roll stuff out. It's easier to roll stuff out. But this idea of collaboration really came forward right and it was like you're, you've got collaborative services, you've got collaborative technologies and um, there's a lot of really cool things coming together. I'd love to have you come in and share more time. I was going to actually ask you cause.

Konrad Koczwara 48:06

You know if I have customers that are interested in, like the. You know the innovation council how would they?

Patrick Antrim 48:13

Yeah, so, uh, well, multifamilyinnovationcom is, uh, the, the platform we. We have a link on there. It says, council, you can click on that, but it's uh owners and operators, and we're bringing in partners like you. What we did, uh, and, and this was a little bit like you in that we didn't intend this, we just listened and and we said, well, tell us more. And the one thing was they have difficulty making, there's a lot of decisions to make, and then the priorities are different because of the interest rate environment, the turnover challenges, with just all the existing things that happen just with that, are not in their control, market conditions. And so it looks like, well, how do we solve the challenges that are going to make a difference in the business? So, profitability, results, collaboration come to mind in these conversations, and so we, we rank well, we basically roadmapped what are the 2024 challenges, right, and what are the opportunities we want to create.

Patrick Antrim 49:16

And so the goal is, like at the Innovation Summit in December, it's not, it's more like here's what we did, got it, here's the problems we solved. And so today we were talking about when you have a problem in front of you, how do you make sure, like all ideas are fostered and listened to and can be incorporated into the problem-solving activity. That's what brought me to mind when you said the yes and conversation. But they would, you know. So then we rank them sort of like your roadmap. So it's the same thing, only now these are the things we talk about. So we don't just we have a sponsor, let's come up with something to say, like it's identify the problems, what are the priorities to solve those problems, and then who out there is solving it. And that's why we're talking with you here and we'll bring into the council to help get people to think differently.

Konrad Koczwara 50:14

It's interesting because you know, like I can't obviously solve all the problems for some of my customers, right, there's stuff that I don't like. There's some verticals I just don't play in, you know, and that's why I was wondering how to get, how would I get them involved? And I know they're going to be listening.

Patrick Antrim 50:28

So yeah, yeah, no, the best and the great news is it's Need help solving problems.

Konrad Koczwara 50:36

I can't be the only one, yeah.

Patrick Antrim 50:38

The purpose. Like you mentioned, they would go to the website, click counsel, become a member and then we have a whole onboarding process. We get to know their strengths, what they like to share, what they're seeking, and we have our own sort of process and intellectual design to help extract their knowledge and match it in alignment to people join, not companies. So you have, like NAA and NMHC do great jobs, like at the property level with NAA, and you got the financial and NAA or NMHC has done some really great things around, all the things that they do to regulation and all the stuff that's important transactionally to the business. So what we focus on is the target of innovation, technology leadership, ai, and then it's not just tech. It's like how do you as an individual move through this? How do you affect change with an individual? So then they say yes to something or get the support that they need. Right, and there's a lot of resistance inside Now. There's a lot of people that probably have conversations with you but get resistance.

Konrad Koczwara 51:41

Well, me as a vendor. I told you how I started. I was an outsider and I think the more operators and vendors come together and talk, vendors don't know the problem right. So I think having these like meetups is a really good thing.

Patrick Antrim 52:00

Yeah, and that's, that's it. So when, when you come in, you'll get access to those things. It and the nice thing is you can just kind of put the there's no sales. It's like, what are we doing here and how can we support people so they can walk into an organization, ask a better question, right? Open up a different dialogue that leads to a result, not just like we're just connecting Because you know it's the in-person, is just the, we're just humans. We need to be connected, and you can do that once a year for the in-person event, but it's like you can't go to one event a year.

Patrick Antrim 52:42

I don't care if it's CES the best tech conference on the planet and design a business. Things move too fast. So that's the purpose. Is, every Friday we're having these conversations and the problems and the problems and the opportunities come from the community instead of, or the members, instead of, like what, what we want to talk about? I love it, yeah, so yeah, I'd love to invite members in to experience that. And then also just want to thank you for and you should celebrate the award that you won last year the bootstrapper. What was?

Future Award Strategy Discussion

Konrad Koczwara 53:18

that like, oh, it was great. You know all my clients. They keep tabs on what we're up to on LinkedIn. Did they know that you were a bootstrapper, a good amount did? But some were like, oh, we had no idea did. But some were like, oh, we had no idea. And I feel like a lot of the times when you're talking about big ownership groups, they always ask are you funded? And four years ago, five years ago, yes, it's a valid question. When we're starting out, you don't know if we're going to exist.

Konrad Koczwara 53:51

That could be a disadvantage in some cases, yeah, and so I get it Because, like I said, like I said, I put myself in their shoes. Right, they're big, you know, they have 80,000 units. They don't want to make the wrong decision, right, right, but you know, now, when we're in 39 states, we're profitable. We've been doubling our revenue every year. Yeah, it shouldn't matter. In fact, I think it's a good thing. It should be like a Optionality. Yeah, you know that. Hey, these guys are not needing funding, they're not needing help. You know they're in charge of their own roadmap. You know, I'm not building a roadmap for one client who gave me all the funding.

Patrick Antrim 54:28

Right, True, it happens a lot, yeah, yeah. And it could be an illusion of success. It could look like growth when in fact you know it's just you know piloting.

Konrad Koczwara 54:40

You're one client who's you know who did your whole you know investment around it and I see it all the time. Yeah, and I've been through it like you know five actually since 2014,. I've seen, you know, there's one business that was a housekeeping company and they raised 9 million bucks. There's one business that was a housekeeping company and they raised $9 million. They don't exist and there was a few more like that. There was a pet grooming company. They, I think, $4 million. They went away. So it's like, over the years I've seen.

Patrick Antrim 55:10

Yeah, it's difficult. I mean absolutely, absolutely, and that's why I wanted to, on this time we spent together, tie into what values drive your decisions, what you focus on you mentioned bringing in your team and, of course, the product focus around the solutions that really the customers are bringing to you in many cases. So that's always healthy to see in organizations.

Konrad Koczwara 55:33

The better question, though, about the award is what award are we going to take home this year?

Patrick Antrim 55:39

right.

Konrad Koczwara 55:39

We'll see. Yeah, we're going to have to. I think we're going to have to go after the tech. The technology, oh, yeah, yeah. The tech one, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Antrim 55:46

Well, you certainly have done a great job there, and look anybody. I think it's important that you're doing the great things from a brand standpoint too, because people want to know who's behind the company they're working with, more so than in the past, I think.

Konrad Koczwara 56:04

Right, well, thanks for having me. Patrick Pleasure, great podcast, yeah, absolutely.

Patrick Antrim 56:10

We'll see you in the next one. All right, take care.