Property Management Success

What If Confidence Comes After You Delegate? - with Mark Brower

Tony Cline Season 1 Episode 78

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0:00 | 34:30

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We explore the leap from doing everything yourself to empowering a COO, and how clarity turns vision into results. We also share a practical approach to writing that builds trust with owners: document real work, write to one person, and favor observations over lectures.

• hiring a COO to add structure and accountability
• shifting from personal heroics to systemized delivery
• visionary and integrator roles and boundaries
• alignment through written expectations and cadences
• handling imposter syndrome with inner work and coaching
• journals and daily writing to sharpen clarity
• content strategy based on observation not how-tos
• document, don’t create to attract right-fit owners
• measuring leading indicators to coach the system

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Banter And Setup

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets to profitability, efficiency, and achieving true freedom, whether it's your time, money, or lifestyle. I'm your host, Tony Klein, and I'm here to help you build a wildly successful property management business. Let's get to it. Welcome back to another episode of the Property Management Success Podcast. I've got Mark Brouwer here on the property management aid station. Mark, welcome. Thanks, Tony Klein. How are you, man? I'm fantastic. Yeah. So we we record this in Riverside, and Riverside gave me the a summary of 2025, and it gave me the most used word on the podcast. I want you to guess what that word is.

Mark Brower

Liquid death.

SPEAKER_00

No, it's worse worse than that. It's Brouwer.

Mark Brower

No.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So it gave me all the clips of Brouwer, Brower, Brouwer, Brower, Brouwer.

Mark Brower

There's no way the most used word is Brouwer. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

You would think it's the, but it wasn't.

Mark Brower

So my goodness. So sorry to the listeners. They have to hear my last name that much.

Why Hire A COO

SPEAKER_00

All right, let's uh let's jump in. So let's do it. I had a couple of things that were top of mind, and uh and I want to go down that path. But before I do, I know that you have had a another week with your COO. Just wanted to get an update, find out how that was going, because I know that was a big step for you to hire somebody to come in and help you run your operations and see if they can kind of control you. It's a little bit like herding cats, I think, with you and your ideas, but I want to see if that's uh if she's had any success with that.

Mark Brower

Wrangle the dragon. I resent the cat reference. I like I like herding cats a little bit better. You think I'm just like some homeless cat walking around. Thanks, Tony.

SPEAKER_00

I don't say homeless, but you do have that cat wave your tail personality.

Delegation Fears And Mindset Shift

Mark Brower

No, you're not that's not going anywhere good. So I I feel like I can speak freely because my CEO doesn't know about this podcast. Just kidding. No, she is doing fantastic. Um, it's been over a month. And um I was actually just in an entrepreneursmen group this morning, a support group, um, mastermind group. Sounds better than support group. Um, and I was just reflecting that she has brought structure, accountability, clarity, connection, enrollment, like all of these things that she has already brought with her during the first 30 days when realistically she's just trying to figure out what's going on, which weighs up, the lay of the land, get oriented, get her feet under her. Um and already, already I see a change in like energy, attitude, orientation, team enrollment, uh, which I know is boosting clarity and and work productivity and um commitment and loyalty. She's done one-on-ones with everybody. She's uncovered some things that were very, very important to find out. Um her focus has been right people on the bus and the right people in the right seats, you know, kind of Jim Collins stuff. So um, man, I, you know, I know that I fall in love quickly and get totally irrational about how excited I am about people. I know that about me. So that may be what's happening here, but I think she's a rock star, and I see so much potential, and I'm so excited about it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so so take me back. You you are very transparent, very open, and I love that about you. I want you to take me back. There's a lot of people that listen to this that are trying to take that next step. Whether it's the entrepreneur that's doing everything themselves right now, they got to 60 doors or 80 doors, and they're feeling that stress, and they're like, I gotta let go of something. I've got to delegate or get something off my plate, or I'm just gonna burn out and crash.

Mark Brower

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I know you run a big organization, you've got a lot of people counting on you to have your operations.

Mark Brower

That's relative. Yeah, like 15 people.

SPEAKER_00

15 people? Yeah. That's like three pizzas at your pizza meeting.

Mark Brower

Ladies and gentlemen, Tony Klein thinks a 15-person organization is big. All right, let's continue.

SPEAKER_00

Well, in the property management space, yeah. Because most property management companies manage less than 300 doors. It's just statistically factor. True, true, true. Okay. So you've got somebody that is that is looking at delegating, no matter what level they're at, you are taking a big step to take some of the things that you used to be responsible for, that that you were intimately involved with, and giving those the success of those tasks or those outcomes to somebody else. And I want to hear a little bit about. I'm hoping you're gonna give us a little bit of an anxiety story or something where you thought, okay, I'm gonna release this. I used to control all of this, I'm nervous about doing it. But what what did you go through when you decided to make that higher? I know there's some excitement around it, but there had to have been some anxiety and and stress around it.

Visionary vs Integrator Roles

Mark Brower

Well, yeah, I think what you're talking about is that transition I went through, you know, eight, ten years ago when I hired my first director of operations, which was kind of like a baby step to where the to what I just did now. And it was, and it was very much the hey, I've made all these promises to clients. Nobody else can fulfill these promises, nobody else cares to fulfill these promises. So I've got to swoop in behind everybody and make sure everything's done. It's like the the the one of the most important pivotal moments in a small business owner's journey is the is the uh the stage where they come to believe and accept that or dare to believe that they're gonna build a business where they make the promises and other people fulfill those promises a hundred percent. That is so hard to do for those of us who care deeply about keeping our word. And it's very, very hard to do. So so it requires mindset, it requires structure, it requires the right people, it requires so many things. And for someone like me who's more of a visionary, I'm a sales guy, I can come in and solve the same problem 15 different ways. And mind you, I am never gonna want to solve it the same way. Do not ask me to follow a process, it will drive me crazy. I'm trying to break it every time I do it a different way because it's gonna make it better. And so um it was really hard for me to set up systems and processes and structures and templates and and policy manuals and you know, checklists. And I I didn't need them for myself. I didn't want them. I resented the restrictive control around them. But um all of those are necessary. You know, we talk about that a lot when we're scaling a business. You got to put that stuff together. And if you're not the person to put it together, you damn straight better find a leader that loves that stuff, and that's your first hire. And you pay them as much, you pay them more than you think you could possibly afford to pay them. Why? Because when they they allow you to buy back your time as the Rainmaker, you just go magically create more money. Just happens every time.

SPEAKER_00

So what happens? You have these big big ideas of bringing somebody in, you give them this level of authority to implement change in the business, and then it doesn't go right. What what happens then? What happens when they can't read your mind the way that you thought that they could because you didn't properly communicate your expectations? Well, there you go. So there's what happens at that point?

Mark Brower

There's nothing more, there's nothing less useless than a visionary that's not clear. Than a visionary leader that's not clear. Because then they're just a ball of they're just a mess, chaotic mess. So, so what you just said right there is vital. Like if your gifts are visionary and you don't you don't do the stuff, you don't put the process together, you don't like integrate the ideas, you don't want to watch the details and measure stuff and tweak stuff and like take the time to do it right. Like, if that's not you, if that drains your batteries, if you're listening to that and you're thinking, like, damn, that sounds terrible, okay? Then you'd better get an integrator. You'd you'd better find that person. But but guess what an integrator wants? An integrator doesn't want to work for some uh codependent, emotionally irrational basket case. They want to work for someone that that a visionary, kind of unhinged visionary, is like a kid hopped up on Mountain Dew. And you ever see uh days of what was that Will Farrell show? I'm hopped up on Mountain Dew, chip. I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey. Yeah, I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey. So so like you don't want to be that guy or girl. If you're a visionary, here's my here's my here's my call to any visionaries listening to this. Start writing for 30 minutes. My my ask of you is to start writing for 15 minutes a day, at least. And I'm not talking about emails, I'm talking about go start journaling, get Notion, start journaling every day. If you need a prompt, start with what just happened, and then and then just just write and write and write and write. Writing is the deepest form of thinking. Thank you, Jordan Peterson, for the quote. Um, uh like a good integrator that you need is going to need a clear, visionary leader who's passionate, who has grand ideas. Integrators can build their own stuff. Why do they need you? Oh, because you see the world differently with a great deal of enthusiasm, and you've developed enough character that you're worth following. So do that first. Don't just set out to find somebody. Become the person they want to follow and work with and partner.

Building Structure And Processes

SPEAKER_00

All right, so I have two things. Two things. First one is uh it took me a little bit to catch up because you said something that distracted me and I couldn't figure out if it was correct or not. I want to circle back around because I still don't know if it's correct. You said there is nothing less useless than a and I I'm not sure if it's more useless or less useful or so somebody let me know what that was supposed to be.

Mark Brower

Hold on, hold on. If you start with something useless and then it becomes less useless than it started with, then it's more useful.

SPEAKER_00

So it'd be so it'd be if you're less useless. That's right.

Mark Brower

That's right. Okay, you're right, you're right. Okay, I should have said even more useless.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, all right. So now somebody let us know if we're correct.

Mark Brower

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for uh yeah, thanks for bringing us back to that point. You must be more of a detailed integrator type person that actually cares what words mean. That's great.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'm more of a person that focuses on words because I have to use them all day long in my business. I don't get to build tools as much as I communicate. So uh but no, so I want to circle back. That was just kind of a little uh a fun thing that kind of caught my attention. Back to the cat thing with the, you know, you uh herding cats and wagon tails uh kind of caught my attention. Yeah. But you mentioned something about the relationship between an integrator and a visionary. And I had somebody on my team worked with me for 22 years and stayed with me through three different businesses where I had my business, then we sold, went to one of the aggregators, she went to work there and worked with me there. And then when I left there and came back to coaching full-time, she came to work with me here on different levels now, and and she's essentially retired, but just kind of helps me out. But one of the reasons why we have such a great relationship is I am the one that says what we're going to do, and then she figured out what steps to take to accomplish that. There wasn't this competing vision of I think we should do this, and she thinks we should do that. So the relationship, you need uh an integrator that is going to be very detail-focused, but be very detailed focused on the things you're trying to accomplish to accomplish. It's not a comp it's not a competing uh vision, it's a it's a complementary skill set.

Mark Brower

100%. Yeah, there has to be great alignment there. And you know what? Since you asked about how things are going with my COO, let me just tell you like we have spent hours, I don't know how many hours, we've spent hours and hours this first 30 days talking about alignment, getting very clear around alignment. We have written it down, we've written it down in different ways. We have asked each other questions, we have reviewed each other's expectations, we have done more work than I've ever done before in um you know, in onboarding and establishing and syncing up. So it's been, it's been, it feels like we've put in the work to get aligned.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Do you have one thing where you're driving to work now that you've turned it over? And is there any thoughts of, oh my gosh, what did I just do? She is so much better at the things I'm having her do than I was. I'm going to somehow be exposed as a fraud or because I would think that that's part of it, right? When you find somebody that's better than you at what you want to do, it's like, can I lead this person in what their skill set is? Even though it's a different skill set, there's still, I would think, this hesitation or fear that am I good enough to lead this person that has this good of a skill set?

Mark Brower

Yeah, yeah, I definitely felt that. Um that's the classic imposter syndrome, right? Yep. Yeah. And I think I had to build my confidence to the level that I would feel worthy of this kind of leader. And that wasn't just by working harder. That wasn't just by like getting good at operations myself for crying out loud. That was never gonna, I mean, come on, that's just not my it's not my gift. But there were things I have done to work on myself. I have a personal business coach. I go to business mastermind meetings. I've got a men's only group that meets once a month. I have a personal therapist. I have a also a personal life coach. I also have like there, there's all these things. I've worked with advisors. I have, you know, there's all these things. I go to like five conferences a year. I've gone to retreats that worked on like emotional release. I've like like there's leadership is like an incredible journey inward. And that's how we overcome imposter syndrome. It's not because we got better at the person that's gonna follow us at what they're doing. That's a misnomer. That's not the locus of worthiness and confidence that we need.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Let's let's switch over to a second topic I wanted to talk to you about.

Mark Brower

Yes, sir.

Imposter Syndrome And Leadership Work

SPEAKER_00

We had a conversation. I was at a client at a client uh offsite where I was doing their annual planning. I was out in Seattle, and you were kind enough to pick up the phone after I had a long day, and it was a great productive day, but I wanted to talk about something besides the things that we were implementing. I reached out to you and we had some conversations about things that we were working on, things that we wanted to get better at in the coming year. And you mentioned, number one, that you have really intentionally picked up your training for running. And one of the things that I said that I wanted to work on was being more intentional with writing skills. And you started to mention journaling and journaling 15 minutes a day. And I thought that would be a good transition to talk a little bit about what I'm trying to be better at, which is that written communication and sending out my messaging or my view of the world. And I don't know if you want to share with our audience kind of what you told me on what your strategy and structure is, because I think you are uh you have quickly become one of the masters in the online world of content creation in the written form, not necessarily on the video side, even though I have your secret YouTube channel that nobody else knows about where you practiced your videos, and we can maybe talk about that. But um, if somebody wants to get good at becoming known in their marketplace, you know, there's there is the the world is changing so fast on how we attract our audience and how we get business. And it used to be SEO, then there are people are talking about, well, you're gonna have to train your AI to feed up your results. I still think that this is an intimately personal relationship with a property manager and an owner of an investment property, it's relationship-based. They may find you somehow through some sort of search, but I think the ones that win are the ones that let people get to know who they are before they actually meet. And you've done a really good job with that with your writing. And so I wanted to maybe share with our audience if somebody was interested in creating an audience through written form, uh, how to go about that.

Mark Brower

Yeah. Yeah. So you and I we were talking about writing, and I just had some thoughts about, you know, sometimes I get a little black and white, absolute, you know, about my beliefs, and it works for me. Kind of an intense personality sometimes. And so I was I was kind of I was kind of giving you my strong opinion about the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it, so I can speak to that. Um, first of all, a quick short story. Uh, some of our listeners might know who Jinxy is. Do you know who Jinxy is?

SPEAKER_00

I'm pretty sure Jinxy is a cat.

Mark Brower

And Jinxie is from Are you sure he's not your son would know who Jinxie is.

SPEAKER_00

Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Before you before you tell me I'm wrong, because I want to make sure that there's not two Jinxies, who was the cat in uh Meet the Parents.

Mark Brower

I don't know.

Writing, Journaling, And Content Strategy

SPEAKER_00

Well, somebody call in or listen message. Did you call in live to the show? Here's here's my my phone number. I'll give you my phone number. Call me and let me know. I'm pretty sure it's well, you're talking about Jinxie, not Banksy, but Jinxie. I'm gonna look up and see if Jinxie was the cat in Meet the Parent.

Mark Brower

So thank you for that um query about who Jinxie is. Jinxie is the number one video game streamer in the world. Jinxy. Jinxy makes over a half a million dollars a month playing video games online, going live playing video games online. If anybody's under 30 listening to this, which would be a miracle, um, they would know who Jinxie is. Um fun fact about Jinxie that I learned from my son yesterday. Jinxie streamed for one thousand days in a row. Three years, Jinxie streamed. Average viewer size one person. And it was his dad. He streamed every day for a thousand days and had one viewer. Is it any wonder why this guy is now the number one streamer in the world making a half million dollars a month streaming? Is it any wonder? Okay, it's not. The point is, if you want to get good at doing something, you have to be comfortable in the fool's corner for as long as it takes to absolutely break through and own it. And um, I was inspired a few years ago. I'm not thank you, by the way, for the um overstatement about my writing and and what I'm doing. Um it doesn't feel that special to me. Um I don't mean to be too self-effacing. A few years ago, Alex Mosey, I read something he he said, and he said, Hey, just um suck until you don't suck. And then I read, and 10x is easier than 2x, the book. No, no, no, no, no, no. It was Fail Forward by John C. Maxwell, and he had a little diagram on one page, and it says, is worried about acting like a fool. And that was like the first step. Acts like a fool, you know, is the second step. And then eventually at the high at the top of the of the staircase was genius. Okay. Most of us never get past the first couple steps because we're so terrified about looking like a fool and actually being the fool. And especially in the public sphere, like Jinxie, like Alex Hermozzi, like Mark Brouwer two and a half years ago, tweeting into the void. Eventually I said something that made enough sense that Peter Lohman picked it up, put it in his newsletter, and then people are like, hey, I saw you in Peter's newsletter. Fantastic. That's my favorite newsletter. I'm like, who's Peter Lohman? Then Peter Lohman and I became friends, you know? And then, like, I just like what do we say in running? You get comfortable being uncomfortable. Isn't that one of the most powerful ideas in the entire world? If you can get comfortable being uncomfortable, there is no door locked to you.

SPEAKER_00

I want to expand on that a little bit because uh people, when they want to do something that's new and and outside of what they're they're used to. When you mentioned your writing didn't seem like it was that out of the norm for you, I was thinking, well, I run 200 miles, and that doesn't seem that out of the norm for me. But when you re when you step out of that and you reframe it, it's like, holy cow, that is that is something. But but neither one of us went from where we are or from where we were to where we are in one step. That's right. And and so it's not about, you know, I hear people say, well, if you want to be successful, you got to get out of your comfort zone. I don't actually believe that. I believe you need to expand your comfort zone. I believe you need to live on the edge. It's kind of like if you were in a balloon and you're in the inside of a balloon. Well, if you try to go too hard, you're gonna pop that. And then, you know, you've you've now destroyed your entire comfort zone. But if you are constantly just pushing and standing on the edge, as you push to the edge of a balloon, if you do it slow enough, you can take another step and your comfort zone doesn't pop. And you can take another step and it doesn't pop. It's a little uncomfortable because it's pushing against you, but it's not so uncomfortable that you've broken through it. And I think it's we don't need to get out of our comfort zone. We need to live at the edge of our comfort zone and we need to continue to expand it. And I think that's how both of us, we were willing to do things that were maybe uncomfortable and on the edge, but not so extreme that it prevented us from taking action. You know who MM is I do know who MM is, but before you uh tell me that it's not the green M in the white high heels or the brown MM or the peanut yellow MM, I want to circle back around because I asked our friend, our AI over the live collar in Google. We have a call. We have a collar calling in. Uh the famous cat from Meet the Parents and its sequel is named Mr. Jinx or just Jinx, a highly trained Himalayan cat known for flushing toilets, saying Jinxy cat. So I'm not sure.

Mark Brower

You have a finely tuned memory for the most ridiculous stuff. That's great.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you remember stuff like authors and quotes from books, and I remember ridiculous uh names of cats in in movies.

Mark Brower

Nice work.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

Embracing The Fool’s Corner To Improve

Mark Brower

Eminem, eight mile road. Yes, sir. You know the movie? Yes, sir. What did so when you eight mile yourself, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00

Uh well, if you only get one shot.

Mark Brower

You know what he did in the rap battle? What did Eminem do in the rap battle that just destroyed the other guy?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, he just admitted all of his own faults and just said, look, this is where I'm at. You can't say anything about me that I haven't said about myself. What do you got now?

Mark Brower

There you go. That's it, man. We're so worried about keeping all of our crap tucked tucked away that it actually props us up as that super anxious, fearful, emotional mess because we've created the leverage against ourselves. We decided there were things shameful about us. And freaking Eminem comes down eight miles himself and just lays it all out there. You can't, you got nothing to say. There's no leverage now. And so um I don't know. I just thought of that when you were talking about you know expanding your comfort zone. Like the the bat, it's an internal battle. There's there's no there's no tension in the outside world. Who freaking I know everybody says like, well, who cares what people think about you? Guess who cares? You do. You know, and so it's like the battle number one is overcoming your own head trash. It's overcoming your own insecurities. It's and guess what? The most powerful way of doing that is put yourself on absolute ridiculous open display to the world often enough that eventually you convince yourself there's nothing to be ashamed of. And then the learning really starts. And I think that's with content creation, it's with writing. It's like it is so intimidating. I haven't written a newsletter in three and a half weeks. Why? Because it's so freaking intimidating. Like it's never gonna be perfect. Like there's so many, there's infinite numbers of possibilities of combining words, and it's never gonna be perfect. And it's such a hard, even though I've been doing it all year, and even though people say you're a great writer and I can't wait for your next whatever, you know. I get unsubscribed every time I drop a newsletter.

SPEAKER_00

You're just you're just refining your audience at that point.

Mark Brower

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what I see. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. But some of the some of the principles that you and I talked about in that call, right? It's like, what do we say? What did what get what does Gary V say?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, document, don't create.

Mark Brower

Document, don't create. Have it be rooted in your real life. Something that you observed happen. Here's something else that's really powerful for me. Second principle here. Think of one person, one specific person. I am writing this to one person. I do not care about appealing to the masses. You want to get yourself log jammed up with writer's block? Try to write to a whole group of people. You write to one person, suddenly you cut through the noise and you find the signal. Number three, find the amalgam of two seemingly disparate ideas that you saw in a unique way come together, rooted in real experience, directed to an audience of one, and now you're like 70% there for some decent content. The rest of it is failing forward and failing faster.

Document Don’t Create: Practical Tips

SPEAKER_00

You said one more thing that stuck with me the other night. And it was because I was telling you that when I'm trying to create that written content, I feel like I've got a pretty good skill set for being able to just talk live to people being on stage, being on the podcast. But if I have to try to write something down, I don't write the way that I speak. And so there's a little bit of a disconnect. I need to still become who I am as a writer as opposed to who I am as a presenter. And when I try to write, I feel like I come off a little preachy. Like I'm telling you how to do things, not necessarily how you should do things, but it just comes off that way. And what you said was don't try to educate somebody on what they should do, but just make an observation and and find a something that is interesting and tell about your thoughts about that observation. And that's helped a lot. So when people are trying to create content for their property management company or they're trying to um do that attraction marketing, whether it's through blogs or social media posts or even with video, that was one of the things I think you said that that helped me was you don't necessarily have to have a solution at the end. You just have to have an observation and have something intelligent to say about that observation.

Mark Brower

Yeah, this is our content doesn't have to be a how-to course. In fact, I mean, some people say like, oh yeah, if you want a post to go viral, make sure you can include like you know, the number three or five, like five things that help my business go from half million to five million. You know, it's like, well, yeah, that post could be compelling. Um, but if if you have a brain like mine.

SPEAKER_00

Mark Mark, you can stop stop right there.

Mark Brower

It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard to get to like lay out a process that's gonna work.

SPEAKER_00

There's nothing less useless than a brain like Mark Browers.

Mark Brower

There's nothing less useless than storing your head full of ridiculous facts about movies and cat names. That's all I got, man. Are we wrapping this one?

SPEAKER_00

All right. One one last thing. One last thing. Um we we touched on some things that we're both gonna be working on. And so I think we could roll that over. We promised we wouldn't bring those up. We're well, okay. We're gonna bring it up in the next episode. So make sure you come back and uh and listen to us on the the next episode of the property management education with Mr. Mark Brouwer, the most used word on the podcast in 2025.

Mark Brower

And I guarantee it didn't come out of my mouth. So that just I just makes me feel really good. You're such a fan. Thank you, Tony.

SPEAKER_00

All right, get him out of here.

Mark Brower

All right. Hey, you're almost to the finish line. This is the last stretch, eight miles. You got your coke. Uh, you just drank a bunch of coke because the water wasn't working anymore. Um, and um yeah, man, you you got this. So, so um get out there and we'll see you at the finish line.

SPEAKER_00

All right, we'll do what he says. Get out of here. Thanks for tuning in to the Property Management Success Podcast. We'll be back with another value packed episode to help you level up your property management game. If you've got something valuable out of today's episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics. Until next time, here's your success.