Lessons from 90+ Property Management Locations Nationwide - Nate Tew Interview

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Transcript

Stephen Fox 
Nate, thank you so much for joining me today to kick things off. Can you tell everybody a little bit about your background and experience in property management?

Nate Tew 
Yes, Stephen. Well, first off, thanks for the invite. And it's good to be here with you and, and hello to all those that are watching this, this episode. I got my start in property management back in 2007. So I was in real estate, with a business partner. were actually,

selling bank foreclosures in 06 and 2007 when I started with him, helping him sell bank foreclosures. And there's an element of property management when you're selling foreclosures for banks. And so a lot of people thought we actually did property management. We'd get referrals through the Keller Williams brokerage we were a part of, and we would kind of turn them away for a while. And then eventually we thought, you know what?

we were in fact, were, buying houses to flip. They weren't flipping. were turning them into rentals and we thought that maybe property management, maybe there's something there. The foreclosure market was starting to wind down with some of the foreclosure acts that were being passed. And so we looked at property management thought, you know what?

let's go for it. And we took a leap into property management. took the lead in that while my partner continued to focus on the REO, the foreclosure business and the retail side of real estate and started growing that business slowly, trying to figure it out. We didn't have a lot of support or mentors. I didn't know about NARPM. I didn't know about a lot of the resources that people have today. And over the course of several years, built something pretty great.

And I feel like we kind of fell into a gold mine and something pretty phenomenal that we just didn't even really know how good it was at the time, right? And the economics of the business and things just started to click and make sense to the point where in 2013, we decided to go nationwide.

Nate Tew 
And we were talking about it for several years before that we rebranded in 2011, but decided really to go nationwide. And we saw that we could either open up our own businesses in different markets or we could franchise. And at the time there were a couple of franchise or is out there. And the more we looked into it, the more franchise or as we saw the, the more opportunity we saw there to really align and partner with great people.

that were vested in their own businesses, in their own markets. And so we took that plunge in 2014, franchised the business. We had our first franchisees come in to initial training week in January of 2015. So just over 10 years. you know, so got my start really, you know, grassroots building a business and then work to scale it through franchising model. And today we have 94 locations.

Stephen Fox 
So.

Nate Tew 
And we continue to grow and it's been really interesting to grow the brand and the business through phenomenal people that are building their own businesses. And so in the beginning, we're helping investors, Property owners to, you know.

to get better returns, have peace of mind as we're offering those services. And now my focus is in helping other people that want to get into business do that same thing for their clients and build just great property management businesses.

Stephen Fox 
So You obviously have a unique perspective because as you mentioned you now have over 90 locations, Which is not something most people get to see, so you have a I'll call it a bird's-eye view into 90 different property management companies across different cities around the United States. if I guess you had to try to put it into a concise answer. What are

some of the biggest mistakes that you see property management company owners make when they're trying to scale past that 200 to 300 door mark?

Nate Tew 
Hmm You know, I think it's really common that folks tend to get in their own way when they're building a business, you there's there's a great book called You know the the emith revisited right Michael Gerber talking about the small business owner and how oftentimes as a small business we get in our own way and we don't understand the power of

of delegating, elevating people into the right roles. And so I think for me, as I'm looking at our network of franchise owners and some of the challenges that we face in terms of growth and scaling, it's not so much a matter of I need more leads and lead generation. Oftentimes it's process and getting the right people in the right seats. And so,

I think that not hiring soon enough, a lack of leadership skills, management skills, those sort of things that really allow people to open up the gates of their business to grow. think too, not focusing enough on process management, I think can be a challenge. But also,

in the same vein, sometimes focusing too much on process management instead of getting the people in the seats to then go to work on, you know, mapping out processes and getting the workflows together. You know, I see business owners, franchise owners as well that tinker too much, right? Instead of getting out there and just building.

And sometimes it should feel like a little bit of building the airplane as you're flying it, right? Making sure everything's working. But I think there's power in focusing on the people. And oftentimes the challenges around scaling and growing and building is a who and not a how problem. And I think

Nate Tew 
that those bottlenecks really open up when we get the right people in there to help us grow the business, allowing us as the business owner to step back a little bit more and focus on some of the KPIs and focus on the growth engine of that business that runs through the great people that we have hired.

Stephen Fox 
So in your experience, you're talking about how you have to kind of get out of your way, your own way to allow the business to grow. What would you say are some of the rules that are commonly hired too late?

Nate Tew 
Well, I think the first role, if I'm a, you know, because we've done this time and time again, right, of new franchise owners coming in and only a handful of them come in with portfolios, right? We call those conversions where they're converting brands and that sort of thing. And people are interested in doing that because they get instant infusion of support and resources and coaching and all sorts of different things. But a lot of people come in with,

You know, they might be corporate refugees or coming from different industries and they want to get into property management because they see how awesome of a business it is with the recurring revenue and all those things that all of you guys already know, all the but they come in with zero doors, right? So generally they're solopreneurs for the first while, but they can't stay there for very long.

And so in our model, and we call our model the Model 300, and in our model, they are to hire their first remote team member, and it's an office coordinator role. And that office coordinator in the beginning is generally wearing two additional hats. They've got the office coordinator, they've got the leasing coordinator, and the maintenance coordinator roles. And they're wearing those three different hats. Because why? Well, they're between zero and...

Generally 75 doors and that hire is around that 0 to 25 door mark and that really opens up the gates for Just allowing the back of the house sort of functions and responsibilities to be fulfilled By someone else other than the entrepreneur the the business owner the next hire Which is usually around 75 doors is someone that's on you know local

boots on the ground, and that's generally an assistant property manager role. Someone who's doing the maintenance management and leasing management is a little bit of a hybrid role because again, we don't have a lot of inventory. But the beautiful thing about that is it allows again, the business owner who generally

Nate Tew 
will focus more on sales and business development. Now, of course, if they don't have the skill set or the EQ, some of those smart social skills to do business development, they got to hire that very quickly. They need to hire a BDM, someone that can go out there, network, build the business, be the face of the business in that way. But generally speaking, that business owner is going to hang on to that role. They bring in an APM, an assistant property manager, to then handle more

of the field work, right? And even some of the client and resident facing roles. But the beautiful thing about that is then when it's time to hire the next person, you got an office coordinator who's trained in leasing and maintenance coordination. You've got a field person or assistant property manager that's trained in leasing and maintenance management, and they can do all the training. And so you start again, delegating the training.

You elevate those people into positions of leadership and mentorship for the team to continue to grow, build and develop. And then when it comes time to get even more refined with your processes, it's much more of a question of who here on my team is going to build this out and get a little bit more clear on how to do this the most effective, efficient way, rather than you as the business owner getting stuck in the weeds. That's where I see that most

New property management owners get stuck and they just start tripping over themselves rather than focusing on growth and building the business. It's just getting in those weeds too much.

Stephen Fox 
Yeah. So one thing you touched on was usually as the owner, your job should be focused on sales and business development. And I can say for almost every company we've seen grow to a thousand doors, that's generally how they start where the owner had not necessarily that they were a natural salesperson, but that was their main focus. And they, you grow into it over time.

so I agree with you there, I think generally, and of course you have to play to your strengths. So if you really, really are not someone who is comfortable getting into a sales call, then you will have to find another method. But generally the route we see that successful is figure out everything you're doing and slowly build up a team to replace everything you're doing other than the sales side of things. And then eventually you get to a point where you can.

Nate Tew 
Mmm.

Stephen Fox 
then replace yourself with a BDM that can take over the sales side of things. Have you seen a similar type of thing with the different key renter partners?

Nate Tew 
Yeah, yeah, very similar. mean, generally they're cashflow mindful, right? They're trying to, you know, not...

bleed themselves to death, right? And so they're going to be growing the business and growing the team and growing the payroll in parallel with the growth and revenue. Now we have several franchise owners and it's actually becoming more and more of a newer emphasis, especially with the way we're targeting for new franchise owners now is to bring on some franchise owners that really get the power of leveraging team and people and org chart and scaling.

And so we've got several that are right out the gates. hiring the BDM full time. They're hiring the office coordinator. They're hiring the assistant private manager. We're even a director of operations. We have one gentleman that hired his very first hire was a COO, know, a high salary COO because he knew he could sell. And I think you're right, Steven, like you just, you just can't replace the business owner in terms of their ability to influence.

and sell. And when I say sell, it's not necessarily to sell skills. It's just the connection that they can have with people because they own the business and people really like that. This is such a, such a relationship business. If someone here on this call doesn't have that just drilled into their head and heart, you know, get that in your mind and your heart today because you cannot replace the business owner in the relationship.

Stephen Fox 
Yeah.

Stephen Fox 
Thanks.

Nate Tew 
with clients. Now, it doesn't mean that the business owner is the one connecting with the clients, but the clients, and sometimes the residents too, they wanna know that there's a local business owner attached to the business. Even when they're dealing directly with the property manager, which of course you gotta do. You can't just be the one. That's another kind of bottleneck, Steven, is a lot of franchise owners or business owners in the property management industry.

Stephen Fox 
.

Stephen Fox 
No.

Nate Tew 
feel like they have to be the one that is connecting with their clients. How could they ever delegate that? And it's unbelievable what happens when they recognize, you know what? I've got great team members. I'm going to delegate those responsibilities, those relationships, so to speak, but you're there and they know you're there. And so.

that business development mindset for the business owner, in our case, the franchise owner, is critical, but it's not always the case. And so in this instance, they hired a COO.

they continued in that business development role because they just knew they could bring on doors and throw it over there. And the COO that came from property management could really figure it out, right? We talked about building the airplane as you're flying it. Like they're just going, you know.

100 miles an hour, right, or faster, and just moving forward and growing and developing, doing acquisitions, and that's why they grew to a thousand doors in two years, because they had that team and the structure and the operations, and they could just move and move and move and acquire and acquire and build, so.

Stephen Fox 
Definitely. So I guess looking across all the different markets, are there particular marketing strategies that you see consistently produce leads? And what are those strategies? And maybe you could even break it down by, from zero to your first 75 doors, these are some tactics that I'd recommend that you go after. And then as you scale, these are some other strategies we've seen work well.

if that's the case.

Nate Tew 
Yeah, yeah, so gosh, mean, marketing and lead generation is always a hot topic, right? And it's always a work in progress. It certainly is for us. I don't think we really have it nailed because you're trying to get that nail in and it's a moving target, right? It's just something that's always evolving, especially as technology evolves and...

the client mindset shifts and market changes and those sort of things. But there are some tried and true principles. And so what we try to avoid is

too many of the flash in the pan type marketing strategies. Some of those are fun to experiment with, to run pilots with. And we do a lot of that, just piloting and doing different things. And that's one of the beauties of a franchise model is we can test different strategies in different markets. We can pull five, 10 locations and say, Hey, we're going to run this, see how it lands, see how it sticks, see what sort of responses we get, just measure the results kind of thing.

The very first thing and I meet with and talk with some of the CEOs and leaders of some of the largest property management brands in our industry on a regular basis and we talk about these sort of things. And one of the things that's very consistent across all of them is number one, organic search. organic search and having a really solid SEO strategy. And that's why, I mean, I think a lot of folks

Stephen Fox 
this.

Nate Tew 
partner with you, Steven and Alex and UpKey Media because you've gotta have folks that get it and they get it for the industry and they know the strategies that are working. They're dialed in on the best and the latest tactics, strategies, and being able to be proactive with that SEO work that's being done on their websites because we've gotta get the page to rank.

you know, some of our franchise owners, or I should say all of our franchise owners, their first 60, 90 days, as soon as they sign their franchise agreement, they start their business, they're getting reviews, right? And many of our most successful locations, when they're asked, what would you have done different if you were to start over, they usually say, I would have gotten more reviews earlier. And number two is usually they would have hired sooner, right? That we already talked about.

Stephen Fox 
us.

Nate Tew 
But those reviews are critical. So SEO, just organic search where you're not having to pay for all those ads because they can be the red water, right? You're one of the many sharks in the space of paid ads. And so that's number one. And number two is really business development and networking.

and connecting with folks and being able to be an influence and being able to create almost a referral engine in the market. We just had one of our franchise owners just in the month of January bring on an additional 35 doors from referrals and marketing, right? And they didn't just happen overnight. Sometimes it takes time. Well, it usually takes time to, to create that trust, create that relationship.

to where you have folks sending in referrals. But that can be, that's a big deal, right? So being active, we call it being the mayor in your community, mayor of your town, so to speak. So people, they know you. They know you in the real estate offices, they know you in the investor communities, they know you, your brand, you're in front of them. There's other things we talk about as far as direct, you know, connection with.

folks through an account-based marketing strategy that we deploy. But those are the top two. And so when we think about what are we going to do to grow a business, we got to start earlier with getting the website ranking. And we got to start early with getting business development activity going on in the different locations. But it's just interesting. Some of the biggest property management companies in the country are saying the same kind of things, right? And that's where...

the most growth is happening.

Stephen Fox 
So we hear networking thrown around a lot. Let's pretend that we have no idea how to network because there are a lot of people that will say, I know I need to network, but what am I supposed to do? Can you give some, let's say concrete examples of some steps you can take to become the mayor of your town?

Nate Tew 
Well, I think a lot of folks will validate on social media. So as you're recording content, putting it on social media, it's not necessarily going to generate new leads from within the social media sphere, but a lot of folks are looking you up and getting some validation. There was a study from NARPM, I can't remember if it a NARPM profit coach kind of study. It was talking about the reasons why...

property owners decided to go with that specific property management company. And the number one reason at the time, I think there's a 2022 study, the number one reason was local market expertise. And so you've got to first become a local market expert. You got to know what the, what's happening in the market, what the rental trends are, what the vacancy rates are, what the saturations rates are and how that applies to them and their business and you know, their business being their rental properties. You got to be able to talk with them.

and instill confidence in them in your ability to do one of three things. This is our value proposition. And I think it's pretty general across the industry. We gotta be able to simplify ownership for them. We've gotta be able to enhance their return. And we gotta be able to provide peace of mind. So as we're having these conversations, they gotta feel that, right? The decision to hire a property manager, and one of the reasons, you know, 70-ish percent of

Stephen Fox 
you

Nate Tew 
the SFR owned, individually owned rentals are still self-managed because they don't know about us as an industry or they don't trust us. So we've got to be able to instill that trust and then follow through, right? Provide a great service. And so I think that's first even is like, who, what is my knowledge? What is my understanding? And how am I coming across to property owners? What sort of education am I providing to them? And so putting yourself,

whether it's at the Chamber of Commerce, whether it's a BNI, investor groups, real estate offices, mortgage lender offices, retirement communities, I mean, I could go on and on, HOA, community associations, like these different groups. What sort of education are we providing that helps those individuals recognize that we as a brand and me as a BDM or, you know, business owner can help them?

to simplify their ownership of their property, enhance returns, and have peace of mind. I think that's critical. And so it's not necessarily the specific little presentations. It's just more about being that person that cares about the results of the client. And that comes across to the agents that are referring people, comes across to your own clients for them to want to go out there and spread the word, so to speak.

Stephen Fox 
Yep. No, that makes sense. And one thing you touched on was creating educational based content, essentially, right? Whether that's in person, going to events and providing an education to the group of people that are there, but then also creating that for social media, creating videos for YouTube, putting them on your website. When you do that, as you mentioned, it's not necessarily that it's specifically going to bring in an owner.

because they found you, which will happen with YouTube. But when someone does find you at these networking events and then they go and look you up, they're going to check out your reviews. As you mentioned, super important. Then they're going to go, they're going to look you up on social media. If there's nothing there for them to find, it makes it a little less enticing and a little less trustworthy because most companies that are established in this day and age have that type of active profile, right? They're going to have.

a bunch of Google reviews if they're an active business, they're going to have some posts on social media, they're going to have content on their website. So even if you don't necessarily see that it's directly bringing in leads right away when you're doing it, it's still going to help with when even if you all your focus is on offline marketing, it's still going to help with that as well because it helps with it from the conversion standpoint. So that makes sense. so I guess for a problem,

Nate Tew 
 I comment on that for just a second? Let me just put this out there to the group. Creating content, especially doing it consistently, is hard. It's really hard. And me and Keyrenter and our franchise and franchise brand, we're in no way perfect or excellent at it or even, we can always do better. But the key is to just do it and just

Stephen Fox 
Okay.

Nate Tew 
even if you're doing it, not as consistent, but just keep going with it. You know, I remember starting to create content. I was really inspired, big shout out to my buddy, Mark Cunningham. I was really inspired by him. This is probably 2016 or 2017 when he started to develop a lot of content. And when you go back and look at some of my early videos, they were exactly like his, right? I even had the shirt and tie and I had the screen behind me because he just great. He modeled it really well

and did a great job with it. And so I since got a little bit, you know, my own flavor with creating content, same with our franchise owners, but it's really, really hard, Stephen doing this podcast consistently is hard work, right? But that's what people want to see. because they not only can they, you know, as, as some of the marketing experts out there, in fact, there's a great book called they ask you answer. Names scaping me right now sells a spas.

Stephen Fox 
something to it in.

Nate Tew 
and pools. Yes, Sheridan. Yeah. But you know, he talks about that people want to they want to get to know you learn about you. They want to like you. They want to trust you. They want to try. They want to buy all before they even talk to you, right? And so, the content is what helps people to get to know you as a person, as a brand and get to know that you actually have

local market expertise. So some of the content that we should be creating is about the local market, right? And talking to investors about how they can get better return on their investments and what's happening in the legislative session, right? And some of the laws that are being passed and that just puts you in a position for them to say, you know what? I like them and I'm gonna give them a call. And so that's another little tip too, or just another little observation is like a lot of people that are looking at you

when you have content and they're starting to have some dialogue and saying, hey, I'm interested in your property management services, they already want to buy. They already want to become a client. Now it's just a discovery process to see if you want them, right? Because they're coming to you because they saw your reviews. They already validated in a lot of ways. So you don't need to, you know, it's like Grant Cardone says, just shut up and sign the agreement at that point because you already know that they want to buy.

Stephen Fox 
Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think on that note, yes, producing content consistently is difficult. One thing that is a big deterrent for a lot of people is they are embarrassed, right? It's a little bit awkward. The first time you get in front of a video camera and you're filming yourself, you're in a room completely alone and you're literally talking to a camera. What's going to happen is I can almost guarantee it. Your first few videos will suck.

Nate Tew 
Yeah.

Stephen Fox 
That's like anything in life. The first time you do something, you're not going to be amazing or generally you won't be unless you, you know, you're born with this God given talent to be in front of a microphone and a video camera. But as you consistently do this, eventually it becomes a lot more natural. And when it becomes more natural, your content gets better. All that happens is when you're not good at the start, the worst that will happen is no one watches it.

So this content that you're embarrassed about, no one's ever going to watch it. And then because you did that, you get better. And as you get better, you start to get more people that watching your content. And that's when you end up with what you were talking about, where people reach out and they're like, hey, I've watched four or five of your videos. I have a pretty good idea of what you guys do.

Nate Tew 
Mmm.

Stephen Fox 
Just basically fill in the blanks and I'm good to go. So it makes the sales process a lot easier as well.

Nate Tew 
Well, it's like it's like Gary Vee that says just you're you're going to hate it. It's going to suck, but just do it. Just pump it out there because you think it sucks. But but the people that are watching it most of the time, they don't because you know, even if it's just a little bit more than them and there's going to be a little bit of a nugget and you know what? When you're awkward and when you're uncomfortable, it actually

Stephen Fox 
Exactly.

Nate Tew 
There's been some studies showing how a lot of people watch those videos more because you're more natural. And I think the biggest challenge when creating content is trying to be so rigid and structured, but just get up there and start talking and just, and if you say, you know, try to be mindful not to make it distracting, but if you're, you know, making a mistake,

just correct yourself and keep going. Don't worry about resetting and changing because people really gravitate towards that. And Gary Vee just says, you know, you got to get 10 X the content that you think you're doing right now.

You know to really make some great traction if you're I mean he's talking to influencers, right? Influencers got to put a tremendous amount of content. We're we're trying to be influencers but at a smaller scale of having validation Micro influencers, right? Just just get it out there. I mean, I still have people that come

Stephen Fox 
Yeah.

Stephen Fox 
micro micro influencers.

Nate Tew 
to key renter that say, you know, hey, you're the video guy. I saw a lot of your videos and for a while I'd be like, oh man, I'm so sorry. You had to watch those, but they're like, no, there's some great stuff there. I'm like, okay, well maybe, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself, you know?

Stephen Fox 
You

Stephen Fox 
Yeah, no, 100%. so shifting back to bird's eye view, because you do have a very unique perspective for a property management company owner. What is the simplest way to track whether or not the business is healthy without actually being in it? So like, what are some KPIs that you recommend a business owner tracks to have a big picture view of their company and whether they're progressing in the right direction?

Nate Tew 
Yeah, well, you can imagine with a lot of locations, we've got to get really clear on several key performance indicators, right? And we have three different sets that we focus on. We have our franchise owners focus on. We have the business ownership kind of scorecard and KPIs. We have business development or sales, right? And then we have operations. And when we think about business ownership,

you know, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel. In fact, we lean in pretty heavy into some industry best practices around KPIs. think, think profit coach really coined the phrase of the six doer diametrics, right? They've done a lot of training and done a great job with that. We lean in pretty hard there. So we, we talked about the six doer diametrics, which are profitability, RPU.

Dler which is direct labor efficiency ratio just kind of understand. yeah, yeah, yeah. Revenue per unit per month, right? So having healthy revenue and then direct labor which is really measuring am I understaffed or overstaffed? How efficient is my revenue from a labor standpoint? And then expense allocation, the way we're spending money on the expense side watching that. So at Keyrenter in our model we have

Stephen Fox 
RPU just to make sure everyone understands revenue per unit.

Nate Tew 
some really clear, if we have four buckets of expenses, actually three buckets of expense that then equal our profit target. And so we're very clear with how much you should be spending in OpEx, how much you should be spending in human resources, those sort of things. But being mindful of that and watching that on a monthly basis at a minimum. So expense allocation churn is a big deal, right?

unit acquisition costs, just how much, how much we're spending. Go ahead.

Stephen Fox 
What would you say is a healthy churn?

Nate Tew 
Well, our target is 15 % or less. I don't know if I know what healthy is because it really depends on how much new growth you're experiencing. I would certainly say that if you're over 30%, that's high and you've got some challenges there you gotta figure out. Like our churn last year was 21%, okay.

I wouldn't say I'm proud of that, but I also think it's not the worst that I've heard from other large organizations. And I think one of the reasons it's lower than say, you know,

big groups that are in the tens of thousands of units in our management is because of the power of the franchise owner that's there in those locations. So some of my friends watching that are in those groups might disagree with me, but we have those fun conversations. But I think that 15 % or less is our target. It's actually pretty hard to do, you know, because

People are moving and shifting inventory. There's some groups that are really aiming to reduce that. Blink at homes, we know that one of their missions is reducing churn and creating more stickiness around the asset management mindset. so that's where we're at. Is that healthy? I know, I think that's up for debate.

Stephen Fox 
I won't pretend to be an expert, from all the companies I've spoken with, which at this point, it's definitely over a thousand property management companies, that's within the range of what we see. What we'll tend to see also is it depends on the type of market. So really small markets, the churn tends to be a little bit less. And it might just be the mentality of people that live in small towns. I don't know.

Nate Tew 
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Fox 
It seems like you're right around like industry average more or less. On the topic of churn, what are some things that you recommend property management company owners do to try to reduce churn? Like, do you recommend that they're reaching out to the owner on a quarterly basis to fill them in on what's going on? Or do you have any pointers there?

Nate Tew 
And I don't think I have anything like very insightful other than focus on the basics first. In fact, I mean, we all know in this industry that the benchmark and the bar set from a service standard standpoint is quite low, right? We all have those property owners that call us because their property manager hasn't returned their call in two weeks or whatever it is.

I think that communication, doing the basics really well, owner statements being clean, making sure that things are, we're proactive in the business. think just doing what we say we're gonna do in terms of managing the basics and then once the basics are managed and we're doing really well with that.

then we can layer some, as we'd call it, like some bells and whistles, right? Or put some glitter on the thing to make it shine. And I think those sort of things are really important. Also, holding some workshops. Let's get our property owners in a webinar, maybe quarterly, to talk about what's going on with the market. Bring on a guest, insurance provider, tax.

Stephen Fox 
you guys.

Nate Tew 
advisor, whatever it is, and have some real interaction with the clients. And that helps them to not only feel like, you care about their properties and their success and you're doing the basics, so to speak, but also you, you care about them and their success as an investor. And they've got to see that from you. Not, not everyone's going to care about that. A lot of your clients. In fact, when I was doing that a lot,

you know, we would get maybe 10 to 15 % on a good day that would show up for those sort of things. But you don't, some of them watch the recording, but just them knowing that you're doing those things makes them think, you know what, this is different and I'm staying around for this. And of course now there's investor dashboards that I would call a little bit more of the glitter in property management. I think it's becoming much more foundational. And actually the more we all kind of lean into those sort of

services of providing Charles Schwab type dashboards for our clients to see projected returns and those things over the next five, 10 years, the more owners are going to see that and actually expect that. That's going to become one of those basic things in the next few years, I predict. I really think, Stephen, most churn, even when clients say, you know what, I'm just selling my house because I want to sell it or

You know, I really like you guys. You guys did a great job for me, but I'm just going to sell it. If we really drill down with that conversation and we get those owners to open up, they're going to say things like it was actually, you know, when I go back to our first value proposition, it was not more simple to have you managing it than if I managed myself. It was actually more work or

you did not enhance my return. didn't show me how you're enhancing my return or I didn't have peace of mind.

Nate Tew 
One of those three things is out of whack for people to just take an investment property and sell it. I call that kind of a failed rental when it's sold prematurely. Now, sometimes life situations require that or whatever it is, it's not all the same. I think in most cases, when they tell you, you were great, I just need to sell or I just want to sell and do something different, there's a story behind there we need to look at. Just food for thought for the group here.

Stephen Fox 
Yeah, for sure. As you said, there's certain times where life situations just get in the way. Maybe they really needed the cash flow for a health issue that arises, whatever it might be. But there's for sure a percentage of those owners that just didn't necessarily see or didn't understand the return that they were getting. And if you can properly demonstrate, look,

Nate Tew 
Yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Fox 
This is better than you're going to be able to make somewhere else. If you take the cash, it probably starts to sway their decision a little bit. that definitely makes sense. So for property management company owners or people that are just new into property management or thinking of starting a property management company, often a question is, am I better off joining a franchise or just going at it? I'll call it independently.

Nate Tew 
Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Fox 
Who do you think a franchise is a good fit for?

Nate Tew 
Yeah, thanks for that question. know, and I have these kind of discussions all the time with folks that are considering, you know, looking at a franchise, whatever it is, and we're in no business of selling franchises. Like our business is not to sell franchises. There's a lot of franchise brands out there. I'm not calling out anyone in our space, but just in general, there's a lot of franchise brands that want to sell franchises. That's not key renter because we're much more interested in creating partnerships where it makes sense.

and helping people grow a successful business where it makes sense for that person to be in a franchise and it's not everybody. In fact, if it was, we wouldn't be telling so many people know that you're not a good fit for this brand. But where it really makes sense is when someone, say, and let's be honest, even, like, I would gamble that most people that are serious about getting into property management,

when they have some funding behind them, can, they can actually grow the business. We'll find success. It's just too good of an industry to fail when we understand some of the fundamentals and, here's the thing, you know, and, and there's a lot of data to prove this, that, that the success rate within a franchise in general, I'm not just talking about property management, but in general is

leaps and bounds higher than folks that go out on their own. And so a lot of people take comfort in knowing that, okay, there's a system, there's guardrails, there's processes, there's, there's, you know, models, there's support, there's coaching. I would say the biggest reason people get into a franchise is because they want to be in business for themselves, but not by themselves. They don't want to be alone and having

franchise just gives support kind of a new name really when you think about

Nate Tew 
a franchise versus, you know, there's a lot of different mastermind groups and different things like that, but you cannot mirror and you can't get into the same sort of transparent discussions around revenue, around profitability that we can within a franchise. so being able to be a part of something where it's the same brand, there's a unified mission, there's a unified vision, and the systems are the same and people are kind of drinking the green Kool-Aid, so to speak, you know, and

when they're able to climb into those discussions, they know that the person that's supporting them, the other franchise owner peer has no other interest than to see them win, to see them succeed. And so I think, you know, for a lot of people, they see that they can get the football down the field, you know, so to speak, faster, easier, less fumbles, you know, and they can get there a little bit easier and quicker than they would. Who we're looking for, Steven, we're looking for people that are humble.

You know, we lean into some of the Patrick Lencioni ideal team player. You know, if you've read that book or the listeners have, we want people that are humble, they're hungry, they're smart, meaning high EQ, you know, intelligent questions that they're just really, really able to think about their business in that sort of way. And they're aligned. We had a fourth one, which is aligned and they're aligned in our vision, which is

where we're going, how we're getting there, why we exist, what our purpose is, which we're all now wearing our purpose statement on our shirt, is changing lives one property at a time, because that's...

really how we want to show up. We want to show up to the table. We want to show up to those conversations with the purpose of creating a positive impact in the lives of others. That's really important. So alignment in vision and alignment in values. We have our core values that are our guide and our compass and we believe strongly that we can be successful in this business, especially in a franchise. Together, we're stronger together when we are aligned and we're connected in values in our vision.

Nate Tew 
So that's kind of what we're thinking in the conversation I have in much more depth just around who's it right for, what are they looking for? And really it's a matter of understanding where they're at in life and where they want to go with their future. So thanks for asking that question, by the way.

Stephen Fox 
That's Yeah, for sure. So I would say just from an outside perspective, I've been fortunate enough that you guys have welcomed us into the Q-Rentor. I'll call it family. But I think the biggest benefit from an outsider perspective is that you have a peer group that is on the exact same mission that you are on. And everything is open to be discussed, I would say.

Nate Tew 
Mmm.

Stephen Fox 
Whereas if you're talking with a friend who owns a property management company, they might hold a few things back because maybe they're competitive years and they don't want to divulge too much information. Whereas within key renter, you can go, you know, if you're just starting, you can go to somebody that has 600 doors and have a full on conversation with them and ask them for advice. so anyways, just to add something onto it, to what you were saying, if

Nate Tew 
Well, and there's laws that prevent property management companies from sharing revenue and pricing and that sort of thing. And we don't have that within a franchise. We can be very transparent and very open with that sort of thing where we're the same brand. Yeah.

Stephen Fox 
 a very good point. If you could go back in time to when you started your journey in property management, what is the one thing that you would change to help yourself succeed at a faster pace, whatever your definition of success might be.

Nate Tew 
A lot of things I could think of, I would say the one is I would have been connected more intentively with mentors. I would have had people around me more that have been and are where I wanna go.

and they can show me that path and they can show me what to do, what not to do. I think I've always been a little bit of a maverick to where I'm just figuring stuff out and I'm a problem solver and I really actually enjoy that process. But how much time did I waste? and how much further along could I have been? And that's even a reminder to me now, like, do I have enough of those people in my life? I think I do, but I think people

want to help and they feel they feel honored to support and provide guidance and coaching and I think nothing can replace even that paid that paid coaching with mentors when you have a more formal relationship like that to where they're just man

you can get so much faster. And I actually learned that from some of our early franchise owners that brought in some other outside mentors to help them because it was beyond what I and my business partner and whatever we could provide to them at the time. And so that's my one thing, just mentorship and being connected with those folks to learn and grow from.

Stephen Fox 
Yeah, one thing for anyone who's wondering: okay, have companies or people I look up to, but I don't know them, how am going to get them to mentor me? One thing I always recommend is reach out to them and offer to pay them. if they don't want payment offer to donate to a charity of their choice and their name. When you reach out and you're just like, Hey, will you mentor me?

Generally people, some people might be receptive to it, but most people are like, I don't know you and I don't have the extra time. But if you offer either to pay them for their time or donate to a cause that is close to their heart, then they start to think, okay, maybe I do have a little bit more time and I'm willing to pass on some of my knowledge. But that's been huge for myself as well in business. It's find someone who is where you want to be. Reach out to them.

and offer to pay them for their time. Not everyone necessarily is going to be willing to do it, so you might have to reach out to a few people, but I can guarantee you the success rate will be higher. So Nate, thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I know your time is super valuable, so I don't want to keep you too long. If anyone does want to connect with you or learn more about KeyRenter, where would be the best place for them to reach out?

Nate Tew 
Yeah, yeah.

Nate Tew 
You know, if you just go to keyrenter.com, that's kind of our public website. There's a button on franchise if you want to learn more about that. But you can also access our different locations and learn more about the brand and everything there. So, Stephen, great being with you, man. Appreciate you and all that you do for our industry, all you do for KeyRenter. Final word for all you guys in property management, we're looking to get into it. You guys, this is a phenomenal industry.

phenomenal time to be in this industry. think the best is yet to come. And the big question I have for all of us is, are we ready to get to work? Are we ready to do this thing? Because there's a lot of great things ahead of us. And so just excited to be here and proud to be a part of this industry with all of you guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Steven.

Stephen Fox 
Thanks so much, Nate.