Profit Follows: Pick Your Strengths, Outsource The Rest - with Jonathan Cook

We trace a hard-won path from low-rent grind and manual errors to a durable property management business built on investor thinking, realtor referrals, and spotless trust accounting. Jonathan Cook shares practical steps, from BD playbooks to outsourcing bookkeeping with guarantees.

• investor mindset shaping pricing and revenue per door
• moving from manual chaos to uniform systems and fees
• mentors, NARPM, and learning from peers
• realtor referrals as the highest-close pipeline
• teach-first classes for agents pre and post Zoom
• follow-up rhythms, reciprocity, and staying top of mind
• doing only what only you can do, hiring for the rest
• the risk of messy trust accounting and audit readiness
• how APM Help cleans diagnostics and reconciles daily
• step-by-step onboarding, options, and visible work
• becoming a connector to compound brand trust

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Transcript

Two Storytellers Sit Down

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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 brought to you by Onyx. Today I've got my good friend Jonathan Cook on the podcast with me. Jonathan, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hey, how are you, Tony? I'm so excited to be here. Uh, you know, any any chance to talk to Tony Klein, I'm always going to take, whether that's a phone call or an invitation to have like an actual fun business conversation, I'm always excited to do it. I feel I feel refreshed when I leave uh a conversation with you because uh I think you tell better stories than I do.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Well, we were talking about that a little bit in the pre-show. It's gonna be we'll see where this goes because you've got a couple of storytellers on here. So we'll have to see where this story winds up taking us. But uh I always enjoy listening to uh to your conversations and being a part of those as well.

From Agent To Accidental Manager

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Well, that's great. Um I I have benefited from from having a story that I think a lot of people in our industry share, at least, at least like my entry into what this industry is. I mean, now as a vendor, it's slightly different. But I mean, I I think because my story sounds so much like a lot of people's entry into it, that that you can make those shorthands. Hey, in 2007, I was a real estate agent. 2008, I was still a real estate agent, but was not able to sell anything, right? And then that that leads into property management. Um, I think a lot of people have a similar story to that, even if it doesn't go through like the major timelines that mine did. Um, I think a lot of people relate to it. But you know, I was a kid. I I've been in this industry uh for my whole career. I mean, like as an adult, I'm I'm I'm 40 now. I turned 41 in at the end of this month, but but oh geez, you're still a kid. I yes, I am still a kid, and I'll I'll say it for a long time. Um, but but when I first started, you know, I was I was 22 years old selling real estate in Birmingham, Alabama. And I sold a lot of real estate because I didn't know how hard it was, I think. Um I I didn't know that I was doing everything wrong and you know, just kind of going. I mean, I had kids, and so it was like, well, I've got to feed these guys. I gotta sell as much as I can. I sold a lot of real estate in 07. Um, 2008 came around and and Birmingham, because Birmingham, Alabama is a we're a tertiary market. We're not a secondary market, we're small. Um and the real estate prices are low anyways. So I lost a lot of listings uh because they're like, what is this young kid gonna do in this economic downturn? What does he know? The answer is I didn't know much. I didn't know anything at the time, you know, extra over anybody else. So so I lost a lot of that business and found real estate investors in the place where I had listings. Um real estate investment was was not something that I knew well when I was 23 years old. I certainly didn't know what I was doing. My family is real estate investors, and so I like understood buy low, sell high, which, you know, let vanilla ice tell you that. And he can, he can, you know, he can run a he can run a keynote. But but, you know, when I I I got working with a real estate investor that that understood rental properties. And it's not, it's not just the flipping idea. It wasn't just the HGTV story of how to invest in real estate. It was a guy that knew what he was talking about and was like, we're gonna go buy an entire block of really F-class units that are under$10,000 a piece, and we're gonna turn it into something. We're gonna build multiple portfolios. And I think over the course of two or three years, even doing odds and ends jobs, because I definitely wasn't making money doing this. Uh, I mean, I cut grass in the meantime. I helped him build a lot of the porches. I did some of those turns because I was a kid and I needed to make some money. But we built some 300 plus units that that we had purchased at under$10,000 a piece and turned them into rental properties that were renting for three and$400 a month, which wasn't much for sure. But that's what I built. I did it all on Excel. It was a nightmare. I definitely broke every trust accounting law that hopefully we're we're beyond the statutes of limitations. So I think I'm okay to say this. I definitely broke a lot of laws because I didn't know what there was. I didn't know what professional property management was at that time. Um, and and just struggled to figure out the system until I met you and I, uh, our our other really good friend Brian Jenkins, who uh mentored me and was like, join my team. Let me teach you how to do this. And we introduce you to NARPAM. Um, I became his business development manager, and and that's where uh I first got introduced to a lot of our other friends and then the NARPAM community and started seeing this business from uh a much more professional light.

Low Rents, Lower Margins

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Um before we go, before we go down that path with with being a business development manager and and getting more involved with some of the professional, I'm gonna we we've all been there. We've all started at at zero, and some of us are lucky to to start in, you know, at a 25% benefit or or advantage because we happen to know somebody or or something. But most of us start where we don't really know what we're doing, we jump in and we we those of us that are still here, we succeed through grit and stupidity and just not knowing that we should have quit because this is a hard business. And we just keep doing it until it becomes a little bit easier. But I'm just thinking back on what you're talking about. I know we're talking about$2,008, but mentioning rent rates at$300 and$400. And yeah, you had you had uh a larger portfolio, but then that means you have to manage a larger portfolio. And one of the things that we look at is the that overall revenue per door. And I'm thinking your your revenue per door managing these properties for this guy at$300 and$400 a pop. I mean, by the time you drive over and do a showing on the property three or four times, that that just you know ate up your management fee for the month. So I mean what what was it like getting started at that level and and how did the price range kind of affect whether or not that was a good business model for you and and how much of that influenced your decision to jump in with Brian?

SPEAKER_01 7:09

I mean, in in it I can't state enough how little money I was making doing it. I mean, it's like I was making I was his acquisitions agent as well. So every every new unit he bought, I was his agent for. And I was making a hundred dollars a closing. So they were they're HUD homes. You're you're buying a HUD home. Um, and I did not know how like I definitely had never seen a property management agreement. I had never I had never looked at like how else I could be paid. So I was paid per action that I did, very like an hourly wage, essentially. I mean, I was running the business, I was collecting the rents, I was building the scopes for rent. I was making sure that the the GCs had finished the work, I was leasing the properties. And all of these things I was essentially doing for hour for like$11 an hour or something. I mean, nothing. I was making no money whatsoever. I wasn't thinking of it like my business. It was his business that I got to make some money on the side of while I did a bunch of other stuff. You know, when your focus is just I've got to feed these kids and you're 23, 24 years old. Um, there wasn't a lot of extra insight that I could spend looking into it. It was just get the things done. By the time I started working with Brian, I had made the portfolio operate itself. It really didn't require a lot of my time. And so I wasn't losing money at that point in time. I wasn't because I got good long-term tenants in there. They were paying on time. Uh, they would they started mailing me money instead of me having to knock on their front door and say, hey, can you give me$250? And we had raised the rents from, you know, under$300 to probably$500 a month by the time that I had I kind of left that portfolio. Um, it wasn't making money. I did not look at it as property management is a business in itself. It always seemed like because in Alabama there wasn't a lot of good examples, other than maybe Evernest, who was GK Houses at the time, and AHI, which was Brian Jenkins. I really didn't have any examples to go by. Um, it was the broker in my office was like, yeah, I mean, as long as, you know, I I'm not in danger of any of this, you know, you know, I think I'm okay with it. Split whatever fees that you get with me by a small percentage. Um, I'm I'm okay. And I mean, you know, I played by whatever rules that I could figure out in front of me, but if it I was not making money. There, there, nobody bought my that portfolio because it wasn't worth anything.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

So, and I I know that this is we're talking almost eight years ago now at this point, and uh and you've gone through quite a bit of transformation, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that and and some of the stops along the way. But I think there are a lot of people still that are listening to this, a lot of people that are still in that I'm doing this on the side, or I'm doing it full time, but I'm not making a lot of money. And and the emphasis needs to be put on the fact that this is a real long-term, repeatable, recurring revenue business if you figure out how to do it right. And it's it's not easy, but you know, we we most of our coaching that we do here at Onyx is around the what I call the Onyx Championship formula. And the reason we use that language is because it is a formula. You plug in certain pieces, and as long as you have those pieces, this business can be very, very successful, very lucrative for for those who put the the time into creating that system. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

I mean, that there were so many things that you I look back on it now and and I go, oh my God, I can't believe I did that manually. Oh, I can't believe that's how I collected rent. I can't believe that I didn't monetize late fees. Oh, I can't believe that that there wasn't any application fee that I was using. Like there, there was, you know, hundreds of little tweaks here and there that that if I was to take the knowledge that I have now and just plug it into 23-year-old Jonathan, um, I I would still be running that company because it would have made enough money that that that's what I would have done. Yeah. Um, but but it the big shift for me, the the biggest shift for understanding this this industry was talking to other property managers. It was joining NARPAM. It was having a a mentor that could say, okay, so let's look at what's coming in and let's figure out what our work is. If you touch it, you should be paid to do it. Um it there there were so many missed parts uh looking back on on that just absolute chaos of it that that maybe maybe I I I could have figured out how to do it on my own, but it was reinventing the wheel at every new turn, which was there was no need to do that. How do I get this leasing done? I guess I'm gonna run an open house every every day. What? What an insane thing to do. I ran open houses every time that a unit was was empty. Why? It was a nightmare. And I'm gonna check every single I mean it was you look back on it from from a the distance that I have. Um hindsight's 2020, Tony. Sure. So so you can look back on it, and to me, I just kind of pick on myself now and go, oh, what I could have done with with more knowledge would have been astounding. But when you're making you're you're not even making$10 on a unit per month because that's not like realistic dollars. I was making under$100 per unit every single month. I was making about like$7 because you would go and do it for an hourly rate. I wasn't getting paid drive time. It was when I'm at these properties. That's when I'm gonna start my ticker of pay me now. And hey, when you just go and collect rent, how long does it take you to knock on a door and have somebody to come out and hand you you know$250? Sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes two hours. But but for the most part, it's just really quick little drive here, drive there. Every lease was different. They I did not have uniform leases, Tony. Didn't have uniform leases, and so it I did it in the hardest way that I think uh I've seen it done. And I wasn't successful.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

So let's let's so you were lucky enough, or or um you just had the grit enough to to grit through that, and you've made a pass at. You wind up joining Brian's team, he brings you on as a business development, and you you've had multiple roles in this industry, so I want to make sure we we have time to get to them all. But uh walk us through what that transformation went uh from being like that property manager to what did you focus on in the business development? And what did you learn from that that you're able to then take forward to the next the next role that you had?

Pricing, Fees, And Missed Revenue

SPEAKER_01 16:24

I think because I came into it with an investment mindset. And even from 2008 to joining Brian's team in 2018, um you know, I really understood how real estate investment worked. I really understood the spreadsheets and the proformas, and I could calculate it out to like the penny from a long way out. Um, and so when I joined Brian's team, the very first day when I joined AHI, it was to meet with a nationwide investor, and the business development conversation just all circled around um talking about how the investment was going to work. Hey, this is what you can expect out of our team. This is where the numbers are gonna be, this is how the income is gonna work. How do you want to receive these payments? And how do you and having Brian there to kind of keep the guardrails into to where I didn't promise anything that we couldn't do made it a lot easier. Um, and then I was able to just take that investment knowledge and in my role as business development, instead of working directly with I'm gonna spend every day going to look for these leads, um, I knew where the leads were gonna be. I the easiest place to find leads was from referrals from real estate agents that are already selling the properties. Because by 2018, I had learned to hate selling properties. I just I had written enough offers that that I was not interested in helping anybody else write an offer for a purchase of real estate. Um in the very first day that I worked with my investor, he asked me, Are you willing to write a hundred offers this week? And I did. We wrote a hundred HUD offers a week for like something like 64 weeks. It was a nightmare. It was I I I won't I won't write an offer now. I just don't like it. Uh I'm I've been done with it. And so because I knew that real estate agents were who these investors trusted to help them understand is this going to be a good investment or not? I took the perspective of, well, what if I just teach these real estate investors how to estimate these numbers better? What if I just spend my time educating real estate investors or real estate agents and then say, I promise you, you don't want to manage this property. Because I've done that. I've done that without the resources that that my company now does have, without a property management software, without a dedicated trust account, without a maintenance team, without uh any anything designed around the operation of a rental property. That's hard. Why don't you sell the real estate and and hand the keys over to me in closing, introduce me to your investors? I will never, never sell one of your clients a house because I don't want to sell any real estate. You'll see how many real estate transactions I've been a part of, and you'll notice a very steep drop-off. I don't do that anymore. I have no interest in it. Um, and I spent the next three or four years uh building out like an education pipeline to where every quarter I was gonna go to your brokerage office and and I built a big list of brokerage offices that I would go and visit. And I was just gonna teach a class for one of their Tuesday, you know, Tuesday sales meetings. I was gonna go and I was gonna teach you about security deposits. That was my favorite one. Security deposits are scary, it has uh has implications if you do it wrong. It's a really good one. Um, I would go and teach about security deposits for 20, 30 minutes and then say, look, and if you guys don't want to have to do all of this work that it takes to do this right, come see me afterwards and you know, we can work out a referral deal. And then in another quarter, I would come back and teach them about let let's do pro forma. And I would open up a big spreadsheet and it would be broken down month to month pro forma for five years, and it's granular and it's it hurts your eyes to look at it a little bit, like which was which was designed so that they would just say, they could just lean on my expertise. I would just I would spend 20 minutes just explaining my property management perspective and how they could replicate it. The answer is real estate agents don't want to replicate it for the most part. They just want to have someone.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

I've heard that explained as if you're if you're trying to to get somebody to take action in the in the way that you want them to. Um an example would be you teach them how to build a plane. And then at the end, you let them know that instead of building their own plane, they could just buy a ticket on yours and you'll take them to the destination they're trying to go. And and so you you give them all the blueprints of how to build that plane. And what they realize is for the effort that it would take to go through and do that, it's it's much more beneficial to just buy a ticket on your plane and get where they want to go. And so I think that's a really good approach. I'm curious now if you were to look back. Because you you had mentioned this was around 2018. That was pre-pandemic. And uh at least in my experience, there were a lot more office meetings where you could go and do that. So uh has your perspective changed in using that type of uh lead gen, or would you just modify it? How could you still today use that same type of lead gen? Because I agree, realtor or licensed agent referrals are I wouldn't say a hidden gem because I think people know about it, but they uh they just don't understand it.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

They don't know how to squeeze the juice out of it.

Investor Mindset Meets BD Role

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Right. Yep. And and when they try it, they try it once or twice. They go and they do a presentation, and then they say, Well, I didn't get anything out of it. Well, it's like going on one date and and then saying, Well, I didn't get married. Well, no, you you haven't set, you you put the the motion, you put the ball in motion, but you didn't actually get to the finish line because you you took the first step and you have to continue to build those relationships, continue to add value. And and so uh I'm curious with with all your experience in the business development, number one, would would you still leverage the the referral uh as your number one source? And uh if so, how would you change it now that we're post-pandemic?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

I think it's always got to be your number one source. I I just there's there's no amount of and I've got some really good friends that understand SEO really well. There's no amount of SEO that is going to replace direct to the the client that we want to have relationship. Property management isn't transactional, it is the most relational industry I've ever been in. Um I read a book in high school from Francis Butle called uh Relational Marketing. My stepdad was like, you need to read this, it's good for you. Um you've got to build those relationships. And the real estate agents have already got the relationship built. And so their ability to refer, you're gonna close those at like an over 80% rate than any cold lead. If you have 50 cold SEO leads come in, okay, let's say you close 10% of those, that's five. If you get 10 uh 10 realtor referral leads in the same month, you close 80% of those, that's eight. That and those are low numbers. Those are really low.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

And I would argue that you are you have a better chance of actually generating more realtor referral leads than you're going to generate SEO leads, because most people are not that good with SEO. And I know you mentioned we we have some mutual friends that that uh do have a business that that do that specifically for property managers. So if you want to play the SEO game, you know, we can obviously make those connections. But most people, if they're not engaging with a professional and they're just trying to put out their articles and throw stuff at the wall and see what generates SEO. Number one, the the people that are coming in as a realtor referral, you're getting you're getting a level of status. And that's why you're able to close more because it is, you're using their authority and their status from the the referring partner to build on top of, where the cold lead comes in and says, Well, why should I do business with you? You prove to me why I should do business with you. And the referral partner comes in, you know, their referral comes in and says, Well, I've heard good things about you. Now basically just don't screw this up and we're gonna do business together.

Realtor Referrals That Actually Close

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Absolutely. That that there's a there's a there's a metric that I'm I'm not quite sure anybody that's measured this out really well, that's about like effort to close, not just not just I sent an email, I made a phone call. Like the actual effort on like what you have to do, how you have to think, how you have to build the conversation, how many steps ahead that you have to be. A cold lead is the most work that you're gonna do to close anybody. You've got to be ahead of their objections, 15 objections ahead, and you've got to paint them into this perfect corner, and they still might lie to you, and they still might whatever else. A realtor referral lead comes in and says, Hey, my sister is this real estate agent friend, and said, You are her property manager. You're the guy. I close on the 15th. Can you get the keys on the 15th? And you're like, Yeah, can I show you my management agreement? I mean, it's it's it's a fully different kind of effort. I mean, you're right, you still have to be good at it. You still have to do the right things. You have to keep that relationship with the guy's sister or whatever, uh, just as just as strong as you would a client. But they're busy, they're they're doing stuff. Just send them an email. Make sure that they have uh you're the guy. You're the guy in their email that pops up when they are prop who is my property management friend. Oh, it's Jonathan. I'll hey Jonathan, so-and-so's closing next month and he needs a property manager. Can you do it? There's just a different kind of work there. And and I was able to and we're talking about post-pandemic. When I was pre-pandemic and I was going to these offices, I could probably only do five a quarter. And then so I would try and hit the biggest Keller Williams, Remaxes, Century 21s, whatever. It's hit the big offices. Um now, you know, post-pandemic with Zoom, with Google Meets, with the 50 other different versions of like kind of how we're having a conversation today, it made it a lot easier to talk to more people. You're not gonna have as much impact over a screen as you would face to face, because when you finish your presentation and you're at the office and you brought donuts and coffee, what when the broker is going over sales numbers or whatever, you can sit in the back and the guy that wasn't gonna raise his hand during your presentation, but you're sitting next to might elbow you and be like, hey, that sounds really complicated. I'm not interested in doing all those things, but I've got some folks that that want to rent some houses. Can I can I hand them over to you? Like, you're gonna miss out on some of that for sure. But you can talk to 20 brokerages in the same amount of time that I was talking to five. And so there's just a scale of numbers that that is just going to be better for you. I still think that this is still very effective. Um, realtors are always going to be the best source of Legion. They just will. Uh I can't see anything surpassing it.

unknown 28:39

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

So before we move on to and wrap up kind of this this era here with with uh you working as the business development for Brian, I want to help people who do want to engage in this realtor referral program and even doing these either in-person presentations or presentations in Zoom. We we have a mix of people that come into the property management industry. Some are sales agents that accidentally slide into the pit of property management and they just get stuck here. Um, but they they wind up having clients that say, well, I buy that investment property if you'll manage it. And of course, we want the sales. So we say, yes, of course, we'll manage it, and we figure it out from there. The other group is somebody that is on the investment side that says, Well, I can't find somebody that's willing to manage the property the same way that I would, or that is able to manage it the same way that I would. And so I started my own management company and they come in very investor-minded, investor focused. Uh, I notice a lot of times their rates for uh maintenance are lower because, well, I would never pay, you know, I'd never pay a$75 trip charge to send somebody out to change a light bulb and replace a filter or whatever. So I don't feel comfortable charging my clients that. But it's not about the effort it takes, it's about the value you deliver. And so I want to give people like the next step. So we go out and we do these presentations. It's a mistake for whether you come in as a sales agent or you come in as an investor to expect that I did this presentation or I did five of these presentations. Now I get to sit back and just wait for those leads to come in. Like, what would be your next step follow-up to after we did these presentations? Are you are you leaving them with something? Are you asking them for something? Are you delivering something of value? Like in me, I play a lot of chess. And so when you play chess, you don't just think about the move you're making, you think about the move, two moves after that. Like, what are all the possibilities after I make this move? What what can the other players on the board do? And then what would I do based on each one of their possible responses? And so uh I'm assuming you didn't just go do this presentation and then check the box and say, okay, nailed that, let the leads flow in.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

So one of the things that you said, and I know it's hyperbole, is sit back and wait. Um if you were just now getting into property management, I'm here to tell you that there's never a time to sit back, ever, for any reason. Just don't. If you want to keep growing your business, you should never be sitting back. Um what I did neglect to add, because it's not as good of the part of the story, is before you go and make those presentations. To be able to make those presentations, you've had to call this brokerage plenty of times beforehand. You have to introduce yourself to the broker to be allowed to come and give that presentation. And so, you know, I had built a plan of call this many realtors every day, anyways, put them in an Excel spreadsheet, which now there's great CRMs that'll track this stuff. But but know who you've talked to at that brokerage and know which part of the conversation that you're in with that, with that agent. So then once you go and you present, you already have their email address. Hey, I'm gonna send everybody an email at the end of the class today. If I don't already have your email, come see me. I'll I'll take it and I'll and I'll email you a summary of what we talked about today. There, there's something of value. I'm gonna email you a summary. But but you have their email address. You you you're able to keep that conversation going. Hey, you know, in uh two months I'll be back at your brokerage and I'm gonna be teaching this class. Is there anything that that maybe in a couple of months after that you're interested in me teaching a class about? What are the issues that you're having in property management right now? And you you're building it out just like you would a client, just like you would a lead, an actual client lead. You still have to treat them the same way. You don't, it there's never a time where it's just one touch and you're done. Um, I I I know that there's enough anecdotes where somebody can say, hey, I said these six words and everybody was just like, hey, I'm in. Let me sign on the dotted line. That's never been my experience. I'm not that good of a speaker, obviously, and I don't think of myself as a great salesperson that I'm closing somebody in every conversation. It's I'm tenacious. I'm tenacious. I I'll call you and then I'll, hey, uh, you know what? I really can't talk about this right now. Call me back in like three weeks. Hey, in three weeks, I'm gonna call you. Hey, yeah, okay, this is really interesting. You know, I do want to think about it, but like I don't really have any clients right now. Um, I don't have anybody I can refer to right now. Well, hey, maybe in maybe in three months I'll give you a call and just check back in. Okay, I'm gonna do that. The the follow-up is is where all business is done. It takes something like nine touch points to really have someone know who you are when you call them. Like if if when I finally would call and someone would answer the phone and say, hey Jonathan, I knew that I was in a good space. But it it was I would have two presentations with someone like at their brokerage before they would recognize my name. But by the end of me working as a business development manager in Birmingham, Alabama, some 2,500 real estate agents, I could just pick up my phone and dial it and they'll answer the phone, hey Jonathan, how are you today? How's the kids? Because I've built a relationship with them. And a relationship in a in business, it doesn't have to be spending time with them on the weekend and having your kids play at the same playground that theirs do. It's hey, did you talk to, did you send them an email? Do you have some kind of continuing way to communicate with them? I I did podcasting. I worked as a podcaster at the same time that I was doing that. And my signature would have my podcast in it. And you are a podcaster, Tony. You know what it's like to have an audience that maybe I don't know them all by name, but man, they know all of my stories, right? How many people come up to you and be like, man, that Moab, that's crazy. Can't believe what you like. People know your stories way better than you know them oftentimes, because when you speak to crowds, that that happens.

Teaching As Lead Gen Pre And Post Zoom

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Um, really, part of building that building it. Part of building that relationship or those relationships that you mentioned is people are going to respond differently when you call. Are they gonna pick the phone and say, hey Jonathan, or are they gonna let it ring and ring and ring, you know, repeatedly after the different calls? Are you showing up to the conversation as a giver or as a taker? Yeah. And the more times you show up as a giver, there's something psychological that causes us to be out of balance where it's the law of reciprocation, where if you do for me, even small, it doesn't have to be huge, but just small things you do for me repeatedly, I feel like subconsciously and consciously, I search out ways to do something back for you to get us back in equilibrium, back to balance. And that's one of those things where building on top of the framework of I'm gonna show up at the office and give a presentation. Well, then it's how can I follow up and how can I continue to be a giver as opposed to a taker. And eventually those relationships just turn into I'm always looking for something for Jonathan to help him out.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

I I think a lot of these, like the the lessons here, I think a lot of these are things that we either know subconsciously or we've read in like some old school like Zig Ziggler style sales uh training programs. It it really can be as simple as that. Hey, I wake up every morning and send out happy birthdays, and I try and customize them a little bit. But like, hey, Facebook made that a lot easier. LinkedIn makes that a whole lot easier. And I'm not doing anything special, but I do it every day. When when you got your happy birthday this year, Tony, did you go, oh Jonathan remembered mine? Or it was because it came on Facebook or LinkedIn. I might have actually texted you. It doesn't matter. But but it was hey, that's it's it's just a way to say hey on your birthday. Hey, I want to let you know that I'm thinking I it's your birthday and I need to tell you hey today. It's just another excuse to open up that door a little bit to where hey, you actually, you know what? I'm glad that you you sent that. Hey, I've got this client that really needs help here. Can you yes, I can. Yeah, it's just saying top of mind. Diligence. It's it's grit. It's wake up with an intention to do that. I don't sit back. I don't have even if I had the time to sit back, I'm not interested in sitting back. What I do is something that I enjoy. Uh it makes me makes me feel bad for people when I hear them say things like, oh, I have to go to work today. Do you not like your job? Why don't you like why don't you find something that you like to do? I like to do this. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yeah. I think there's in every job, there's things that when you really get to be uh performing at a at a seriously high level in that, there are things that you just do that you know you may not like, but you know you have to do them to get to the things that are going to deliver the reward you're looking for. So for sure. Let's uh let's let's so you've I want to take people on this journey here with us. So you started out, you got really um you you learned a really good lesson about how not to run a brokerage, uh a property management company that taught you how to run a property management company. That then you leveraged your knowledge with the investor space, getting really in tune with what investors are looking for. Then you stacked on top of that, you stacked on the business development and learning how to really adjust your craft to be able to deliver value and and close more business. And so now let's let's move on from that. So you've left now, you've left uh the business development role with Barb. Where did you go next? What what uh facet of the business did you get into from there?

Follow Up, Reciprocity, And Staying Top Of Mind

SPEAKER_01 39:08

So when when I stopped working in business development, it was it was a slow transition. You know, uh there was even some other companies in between there where I was doing business development because Pure bought out the company that I was that I learned to do it from. But but when I left business development, uh I became a consultant. Uh, I wanted to teach people how to do this, this, this business development mindset that I had. Um, I wanted to get out there and help make people's property management companies better. And not because I thought that I had some magic tool that was going to solve everything for them, but because once I became a vendor, I was able to hear not just the one story of my property management company. I was able to hear a lot of other people's stories. And I recognized a lot of people are having the same issues. They're they're running into the same, you know, brick walls. They're having the same trouble with follow-up, or they're having the same trouble with organization, or like, oh man, my bookkeeping is taking 50 hours of my week, and I can't, I can't do this stuff. You want me to make a hundred phone calls a week? Where am I gonna find the time? And it was just, you know, working as a consultant, which is what what I started doing. Um you you tell someone, well, you've got to make this many calls a week, and you have to plan this out, and you have to talk to this many realtors, and then you have to put them in a CRM. And they they kept bringing back this idea how do I have the time to do that? I'm just a I'm a one-person show. And I was like, Well, I I did too. I was a one-person show, I did all this. And and so I I never let anybody like skate by by just saying, Well, I'm one person, I can't do all that. Yes, you can. I did it. I did it at 23. You can do it. You're a grown man. Go make these calls, wake up earlier, do some stuff. And what I realized was they were doing other parts of the business that I wasn't doing properly, but taking a lot of time to do it. Whether that's going and doing showings at properties, and oh, you just had not heard about this leasing software that will make your life easier, doing, you know, managing their properties in an Excel spreadsheet that doesn't port to anything. Oh, why are you doing that? Let's talk about some property management softwares that will just make your life easier. I'm not a homer for any one of them, but there's they're all gonna make your life easier than doing it the most difficult way that you can. Um, and and as a consultant, it gave me this different view. View on what's happening, not just in my local market, but what was happening nationally in terms of now I'm talking with not just clients and investors. I'm talking with CEOs of property management companies, and they're trying to figure out how do I increase my revenue? How do I add more doors? Do I need to worry about SEO? Do I have a business development manager? Do they know what they're doing? What is the story of my company? And that's the part that I really found like important is a lot of people have a company that they're running and it's making them money, but like the company itself doesn't really have a vision, doesn't really have a mission statement, doesn't really have a personal identity, a brand like maybe they did. And that takes time to develop. And so I spent a lot of time helping these people offload stuff that wasn't making them money to where they could focus on the stuff that takes time and attention and focus and makes them money, which is developing a personal brand that they then could go and tell that story and grow their business.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

I think there might have been some maintenance stuff in there somewhere. And then now you're you're working on helping people with some financial things. So I don't want to rush that. I want to make sure we we definitely leave time to talk about what you're doing now. But from the the podcasting or the maintenance or anything between where we are now and and where you where you currently are, where you are in the story now and where you currently are. Um is there anything you want to touch on there before we jump right to the value you're bringing to the industry right now?

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Well, I think we can kind of marry both of these ideas. What I what I recognized as a consultant um and then led to now now I work for a large national vendor that's way bigger than I was ever going to be by myself. Um what I what I found was that in in personal branding and business development and all of these building a business, um the the aspects of it, property management is is bigger than any one person can do really well. Um and even in the very best markets, there are still always going to be infinitely more potential clients managing their own properties than uh you know competition is out there to take from you. So it's never about I'm better than this company. You should always be better than someone managing it themselves. There's enough business in our industry to go around to every professional property manager. They just need to know what their strengths are. And as I moved through the consulting world and started looking at vendors and then landed on a vendor to work for, um, what what I recognized that that I had the um passion to do was to help property managers take a moment to recognize where their true passion and skill was and then build out the parts that they weren't gonna want to do. Everybody is welcome in this industry, I believe. If you are an engineering-minded person and the sales part of this, what you and I are talking about, if this isn't where your passions lie, my God, don't try and do this. If you don't like to talk to people, if picking up a phone scares you, then don't do that. Find hire somebody that can. Find somebody that that is their passion and fill in your business there. Do the parts that you're good at, focus on what you can do and hire somebody else to do the other parts. That that's what I really landed on. That's where I looked at what was happening and and realized I was really passionate about helping people define their own expertise. And it's in making the personal brand. It was making the personal brand. Um I am the face of APM help in in some ways. I'm not the CEO. I didn't found find found this company. I mean, Taylor's been around for a lot longer than I have at APM Help. People know Taylor, but but the deal is I I'm the friendly face that you should think of at APM Help at the moment. Like that's that's what I've I've tried to do is introduce people to, well, this is a company that can shore up this part of your of your business. If that if you're fine there, well, then okay, you we can still be friends. I want to have a relationship with you, and I'm gonna introduce you to the Tony Kleins of the world if that's where you need help. I'll introduce you to the, you know, the the the Z inspectors of the world, the rent checks of the world. I'll introduce you to the people that you tell me, man, I I'm missing this part of my business, and I would like some help. Well, I've spent 20 years doing this very poorly, but also I've spent my time here podcasting and in podcasting, getting to know people. I've spent my time studying what this industry is, and I'm happy to introduce you to my friends. And right now, a large portion of my friends are some of the best bookkeepers you'll ever find. And that's at 8 pm help. Yeah.

From BD To Consultant To Vendor

SPEAKER_00 47:47

I think one of the one of the biggest skill sets you can have in in building a business, especially in property management, but is being that connector. You know, and I think that's one of the things that real estate agents want to be good at as well, is if there's somebody in my sphere that wants or needs something, I want them to come to me so that I stay top of mind so that I can then connect them with the person that can help solve their problems. Because anytime somebody has an issue that they need help with, if they're coming to me, then I'm always staying top of mind. I'm always continuing to add more value. And I think it's the same thing in the property management space. As somebody that's building out a business, even if it's somebody in your own market that you would consider to be, quote, a local competitor, those can be some of your best friends in the industry because they're struggling not just in the same industry, but in the same industry, in the same market with the same issues that you are. And as you mentioned, there's enough business out there for us to be able to solve problems together and yet still compete, uh friendly competition in that marketplace. But one of the things that you mentioned uh a few moments ago was helping people find out what they're good at and focus on that. And one of the things that I like to say in our coaching program is that you know, when I'm working with an entrepreneur, you know, I say that if I'm talking about me, I should only do the things that only I should do, or I should only do the things that only I can do, and I should hire out or delegate everything else. And so this brings us to kind of where you are now. A lot of the people that we mentioned come into this business, they might be great at sales, they might be really good business development manager. And a lot of the smaller companies, the founder continues to be the business development manager. But a lot of those people that came into this business, they don't have a business background. They didn't go to school for finances or they don't really get the accounting side of it. And so when they're beating their head against, I gotta balance the books, I gotta pay my vendors, I gotta, you know, give my owner distributions, it causes a bunch of stress. And so it's much easier to just go and put out a fire somewhere else that I'm good at handling or deal with a business owner or a client that I want to work with, then sit down and do this nasty accounting numbers. I'm off by$37. What the heck happened? How am I going to find it? Kind of issue. And uh, and so I want to give you a little bit of a chance to share with us what you're doing at APM and what APM help uh does to help property managers in the management space, because I think you guys provide a pretty unique service that is desperately needed for a lot of people that come into this business without any sort of business background.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

I agree. Um even when you I meet people that have a degree in accounting, accounting doesn't make you money. It's it's not a it's not a profitable part of the business. It is a it is a necessary evil. It is something that has to be done. And it's one of the most regulated parts of our industry. It's the part where every little recording error is is dangerous. It can have a fee connected to it because I got audited and every little checkbox is gonna, I'm gonna have to pay some fine for it or whatever. Um, you know, I've never pretended to be individually uh an a bookkeeping expert because I know how complicated it is. I watch them do it. It's not just that the money needs to go to the right people. Because that if if that's all it was, I think we could all kind of do that as long as we were above board and weren't trying to be, you know, greedy stealing people's money or what have you. I think we all understand, and most of our clients understand that too. Like the money's in the right place. Well, I think so some of the time.

SPEAKER_00 52:00

Some of the time. I would say everything's easy until it's not, right? And if everything goes down that perfect golden path where everything works the way it's supposed to, there everybody's where it's supposed to go.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

But it's in the bookkeeping segment of what has to actually happen, to abide by trust accounting laws, to have what we call clean books, like real clean books. It's not just that everybody that is owed money has the money that they're owed, it's that it's tracked properly and it came from the right account. And we have all of the movements of it recorded in the right place. And I know that that sounds easier said than it's done. I know that it is, because to do that in app folio is different to do that in propertyware. To do that in propertyware in app folio is different than building. That's different than rent buying. And that's different than QuickBooks. Just knowing who's supposed to have the money, you're about a quarter of the way there. Like that's that's the reality of it. And then being able to get it done in a reasonable amount of time and and and catch those things where, hey, uh one of my maintenance guys walked in and said, I need a check for this right now because I've got to fix this thing over a weekend. And it was a Friday, and you were tired, and your son had a football game that you got to go to. So you write that check and you send it off, and I gotta go, and you close down the lights. Well, Monday morning comes in and you're like, I'm gonna record that. But you come in Monday morning and some some house on the other side of town has a plumbing league that's ruptured, and you got to put out that fire, and it takes you five or six days to even remember that you were supposed to record that check. And now you got to figure all of that out. Like, that's why this stuff gets so messy, is because that's how property management works. And trying to keep track of that on your own and know what you're missing, it's just gonna rely on you and your, you know, memory to make sure that you got everything done. And you can look back in your software and you know, I I love even when I meet really clean property managers, the real easy like demo is oh, let's open up your diagnostics. Is there anything red in there? Oh, yeah, but everybody's got something red in there because it's not all paid all the time. Yes, correct. Then you're not clean. The end, done. Like that. Yes, if there's red in your diagnostic page, you're not clean. APM help's goal is to keep that clean. Triple tied out all the time. Make sure that you are completely clean always, because you don't know when an audit's gonna happen. All it takes is a tenant that's angry that you know you charged them rightfully something on a security deposit. And I'm gonna call the better business bureau and we're gonna get some people involved. And now you're being audited. All it takes is a client that's just upset because he wanted to rent it for 3,600 and you said it'd only rent for 3,300, and whatever, whatever reason that you get into little tiffs with people, you get audited and you don't know when that's gonna happen. And all of a sudden, an auditor says, Show me your books. Well, give me a minute. No, don't give me a minute, show me your books. And you're you're there, and it's now we've got to get involved with figuring it all out. Wouldn't it be nice if it was just already figured out? Wouldn't that be lovely? And it was guaranteed. APM help stands on the back of we guarantee it.

Do What You’re Great At, Hire For The Rest

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Help help my help me walk through this. So if I was a property manager, I'm the uh the financial end of the business is not my strength. I may feel comfortable with outsourcing vendors for painting. I could bring in somebody to paint the place, and then I can judge, I can look and see that the painting was done correctly. I'm gonna hire this guy again, I'm gonna continue to pay him. But if I'm not real comfortable with the finances, how do I get comfortable with outsourcing that to somebody else to take that off my plate and then know that I've done the right thing? Like walk me through that. Because I think there's a lot of people standing on the edge of the pool saying, I wish I could jump in, I wish I could get this off of my plate, but I'm afraid to because you're right. We do have a lot of litigation, we do have a lot of licensing issues that surround the management of the books. And if I'm already insecure in how I'm managing those or overwhelmed with how I'm managing those, uh how do I get comfortable? Like what measures do you have in place? Or, you know, you know what I'm asking? Like, if I wanted to use APM help in in that uh situation, how do I take that first step? What makes me comfortable in doing so?

SPEAKER_01 56:42

I think the thing that makes our clients the most comfortable is kind of the way that we go through onboarding. There's a lot of different ways to use our services. We have a lot of different styles and options for people to utilize APM help from just reconciling your bank recks like daily, like a daily bank rec is a really nice thing to have. Because we're not running your full books. We're just, hey, you get an email every day, here's what you got to figure out. Um, or we can run your full trust account booking bookkeeping, or we can do corporate bookkeeping and everything for you. But doesn't matter where where you end up with an as an APM help client. The thing that makes people comfortable is we start every single potential client interaction with one of our actual experts, not me, because I'm not an expert in this. One of our actual bookkeeping software experts. It's gonna give you a completely free consultation, first thing. We're gonna go through your books. We're gonna look at every part of your diagnostics. We're gonna say, all right, this is read because of this. This isn't done because of this. They're gonna walk you through every step that it takes to become clean, and then they will tell you, here are your options for how we can get you clean. We can help you get this stuff cleaned up and just make you clean and you can come back to us in five or six months and get clean again if that's what it takes.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

The next time you're dirty.

SPEAKER_01 58:03

There's a lot of people that do that. And it and a lot of people get it under control because our consultative approach is very educational. We build, I've got some 30 hours of YouTube videos of us teaching you how to do App Folio and Building. We're working on one with Rentvine, just making these like here's the basics of how these softwares work. Like, here's where you need to know these things from. We give that stuff for free. Like I've got some courses on uh some of our friends, you know, networks for some courses because I want people to know how to do this. It's important to know that we're not just doing this in the background and you you can't see it. You can watch us work the whole time. That's how we've made this. We're in your software, working with you, doing it all the way from start to finish and telling you why we're doing the things that we're doing. And you can come and get clean occasionally and then learn how we've done it. And so you you can go on your way. You can come and get clean, and while we're what while you're watching us get you clean, go, oh, I have no desire to ever do this ever again. Please take it over all the way. And we can show you what that looks like with us. Or during that consulting time frame of working with us, you can say, I think I'm gonna do some of this, and I don't want to spend the maximum amount that I can with you and just give it all the way over. But I do like the idea of y'all helping me stay clean and then like maybe just keep these, this portion of it easy for me so I know what to do. And that's like daily bank recks. We'll just get you, get you a nice emailed summary at the end of the day. Here's what you need to do to stay nice and clean, get this done, and you're fully reconciled. And you, if you're not having us do it, you're probably not going to reconcile daily, but you've got a uh week's worth of emails on Friday to reconcile on a weekly basis, which is still better than what most people are doing. And because we give you so many options, it lets you it lets you be way more comfortable because we are happy to show you our work. That is what our job is, is to show the greater world, hey, look, all of the P's and Q's match up. All the I's are dotted, all the T's are crossed. We are happy to show you. And we'll show you how we do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

Well, Jonathan, if uh if somebody has listened to this and they're like, yeah, I think I want to uh at least reach out and find out more. I'm not ready to commit yet, but I'm I'm ready to get more information. How would they go about uh getting in contact with you guys?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

It's real simple to go to apmhelp.com. On the home page, there's a free consultation button. Click that. It it costs you nothing. It costs you 30 minutes to talk with one of our experts. They're not salespeople, they're they're expert consultants. Let them show you what it would look like to do business with us. No skin off your back, no skin off of ours. Most people just move forward after that because it it makes your life easier. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

Um this went by really fast for me. I think that we we had another hour or two easily that we could have talked without scratching the surface on uh things that you and I share interests in. Um, but as we wrap up, is there anything that comes to mind that you want to just say we didn't touch on it, but I want to throw this in here at the end about anything about, you know, anything from the time we've known each other, anything at APM help, anything that we skipped over. Just want to give you the chance to add the last little bit of content here before we wrap up.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

I think relationships are based on stories, shared stories. Um if you're listening to this, you have Have a story too. And you need to know a way to communicate your story to the people that you want to do business with. Do business with people that you like, tell stories back and forth. And you know, live live as your best character.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:59

All right. And with that, we'll uh we'll bring it to a close. Jonathan, thanks for hopping on here and having a discussion with me. And uh I look forward to seeing you in person real soon.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:08

Awesome, man. I was honored. Thank you so much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

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 the your success.