Building A Profitable, Low-Drama Property Management Company - with Bob Abbott

We trace Bob’s journey from flipping houses to building a 300-door, low-drama property management company powered by policies, SOPs, and a separate maintenance engine. Along the way, we connect systems to personal freedom, from e-foils to a 54-mile ultra, and show how calm operations create room for big goals.

• shifting from flips to recurring revenue
• no-emergency culture and defined exceptions
• policies vs processes vs SOPs in Process Street
• remote team structure and CSR single contact
• why a financial analyst at 300 doors matters
• percentage-based fees and rent growth
• maintenance economics and separate entity strategy
• transparent disclosure and market-rate positioning
• steady organic growth with selective acquisitions
• EOS rocks, metrics, and the gain mindset
• fitness flywheel from 10K to 54-mile ultra

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Transcript

From Flipper To Property Manager

Tony Cline 0:00

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview the leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets of 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. Today I'm really excited to have my friend Bob Abbott with Alarca Realty on with us. Bob is out of Charlotte, North Carolina. And uh Bob, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Thanks. Great to be here. Happy New Year and good to see you.

Tony Cline 0:39

Yeah, good to see you too. Uh you and I share uh a love or a passion of uh property management, real estate. Uh also there's some running we might get into. We you just did something that was pretty pretty cool, pretty impressive. And so maybe we'll we'll touch on that. But I want to start with uh share with our audience, just uh I know you you started uh did a little bit of research from your website. It says you started your company or the company was started back in 2005. Tell us a little bit about that, uh getting started, and then give us where we are today um as far as door count and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Sure. Yeah, started this back in 05 really as to be an agent, uh, not really property management. I was flipping properties back then. I had just left the corporate world and got into the exciting world of flipping homes. Uh, flipped about 100 homes over the next three years, but during that time started my own rentals and had friends who wanted to have rentals, so ended up managing properties for them, which ended up being a good thing because then 08 hit and everything crashed. Uh, there was no way to flip houses anymore, and um, so turned full force into property management. Um pretty quickly got up over a hundred doors at that point. Uh got lucky, got a couple of big clients right out of the gate, and then joined NARPEM, learned all the stuff that I didn't know before, and learned the right way to do things and how to make more money in the business, how to add a process, add a system. Um, at that point, it was pretty much just me and a receptionist. Um, then over the next 20 years kind of built it, um, added a maintenance company along the way, got my general contractor's license along the way. So we've built some houses. Um, but we're um we're up at about 300 doors now. We uh took this past year to um diverse, uh diversify or or get rid of our clients. Uh a couple of big clients we've had for a long time that no longer fit our portfolio. They're just becoming too difficult to deal with, uh, didn't fit our philosophy. So took the opportunity to pair back a little bit um to really set us up for growth heading into 2026.

Surviving 2008 And Finding Stability

Tony Cline 3:10

You mentioned starting as a flipper and to be able to flip a hundred houses in in three years or a period like that, um, I mean, that must have been a pretty good gig. Did you did you switch into property management because you saw the the stability, the recurring income? I mean, it seems like you went from collecting fat checks to stacking nickels. And like, was that an intentional thing, or did did 08 really push you in that direction or make you even evaluate that? Or or would you have would you have transitioned, whether it's at the same speed or not, would you have transitioned into property management from there?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, those are great, great questions. Um, yeah, I mean, 08 was certainly the catalyst, right? The bank stopped it stopped lending money. So, you know, you can only buy as many properties as as you had the cash for. Um, there weren't any other buyers out there, so you couldn't really flip, so you ended up holding. Um, so they really forced that switch into um managing properties. The other thing with flipping is it was really dependent upon me. You know, I tried to hire a buyer at one point, you know, it's not his money. Um, so we bought some properties that I wouldn't have bought or paid prices that I wouldn't have paid. So trying to scale that business um was much more difficult. Um at the time I didn't have a kid, so um, I had all the time in the world to work on things myself. But then after my son was born, really looked at all right, how do we get some time, uh, some family time um into this? And that's where property management's a great business, right? You can build an exact process. You know, my motto for my team is we should have no emergencies. You know, there really should be very like I can't really think of anything that anyone needs to call me for, and I need to drop everything and handle that day. You know, there's there's really nothing with the can't wait till the next day.

Tony Cline 5:19

It's funny you mentioned that because when when I first started hanging around NARPAM, I went to a presentation and I can't remember who it was, but they were basically talking about emergency situations and they talked about well, it really only comes down to three things, and and it was kind of catchy, kind of funny. So I said it for a few years. It was, you know, there the real only true emergencies are fire, flood, or blood. And and so I used to spout that. I used to repeat that. And but I don't know what made me dive into it one day, but I started leaning into that. And really, those don't even that those aren't emergencies. If there's a fire, call the fire department. Uh my team will come and take pictures the next day. Like, what am I gonna do? Bring a bag of marshmallows and watch it burn down with you, like you know, so fires out uh and then blood. If if there's blood on the property, call the police and and then once we get the police report, you know, we'll go in and we'll take care of whatever needs to be taken care of. Though the one issue that I still have not been able to completely resolve that gets out of that emergency situation is the flood, the uncontrolled running water, where we need to take action to preserve the the safety of the resident or the the condition of the property. So really it's those three things have narrowed down to one for me, which is uncontrolled running water.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

So yeah, and then the I add one more, which is if the the door's kicked in and they don't have a secure residence.

Tony Cline 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Um, but both of those, we've got the process set up, we've got the vendor to call. Like they don't need to call me, call the vendor, send them out there, get the pictures, and we're good.

unknown 6:54

Yeah.

No-Emergency Culture And True Exceptions

Tony Cline 6:54

Yeah. Well, I I work with with clients that come to me that have that dream that you mentioned, which is property management is a great business to get that recurring residual income. You've got that income coming in month after month, and they think they're going to build this business and be able to step back and spend the time with their family and spend the time. You know, you I know you and your son have a few hobbies that you uh enjoy together, and uh maybe we'll chat about that. But um people have this fantasy that they're going to do that. But what happens is they come in and they start building this business around themselves. They're the answer man, the answer person. They're the ones that fight all the fires because the rest of the team isn't good enough for being the ones on the front line making those decisions. And you've talked a lot about systems. You talked about being able to, you know, I I tell people I'm in the entrepreneur extraction business where I, you know, extract people from the business that owns them. And you've got that figured out. And so, what did you do to go through that process from being switching over into property management, growing that first hundred doors, realizing yes, you could do it all yourself, but man, it'd be an easier life if you started bringing in some help and delegating. And so tell us a little bit about either how you came about that realization and what you did, or where you are now with the team and the systems that you have in place.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Sure. Yeah, I mean, my background, undergrads engineering. So I've I've always had kind of a systems and engineering approach, and I don't like making the same mistakes over and over. So early on, even when it was just me, I started building documentation, right? So, how do I do this? What did I do? You know, because I could come across the same situation six months from now, and my memory's not that good. Like I'm not necessarily gonna remember what I did. So let's go look at what I wrote down, right? How did we handle it? Um, who did I call, those kinds of things, and so you know, over the first probably seven years or so of just building those processes, right? Just writing those things down. And again, I went at a slow pace. I didn't want to um you know, my just to step aside for a second, my my goal wasn't to double the business overnight, it was to grow the business steadily and slowly because I still do have things outside of work. You know, I got into this as a little older in life. Had I started in my 20s, I probably would have, you know, had a target of growing it much more quickly. But putting that aside for a second, just to give you kind of the the background for it, it was building those processes, building the systems. So then when someone came in, when I finally did hire people, like they would know what to do. I could hand them a playbook. Um, because otherwise, you know, you hire someone and then your time goes from doing everything to watching over someone the whole time and training them. And if you don't have that documentation or a process or a system, we played with lots of tools. Um, we've ended up for the past five or six years with Process Street. Um, so that's what our processes are in, all our checklists. Um, but that way all the team can check in every morning, they go to their inbox and they can see everything they've got to get done for the day. They know how to do it. If we have a problem, it's real easy to go back and look all right, was it a problem with the checklist that you didn't know what to do or the step wasn't there, or was it a problem with of you not following the checklist? So it becomes very easy to manage.

Tony Cline 12:25

Yeah, I think that a lot of times when people jump into documenting their processes, they they start with the step-by-steps as opposed to the and in the the process is how we do something, but the policy is what we do and why we do it. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs skip over what is our policy around something. And it's a lot easier to build out a process once you know the goals or the desired outcome and what your policies are along the way. And so building those policies into that process, then it allows you to determine you know, is this a policy issue? Is this a process issue? And then when we're executing, is is this a system issue, a training issue, or a performance issue? And then it allows you to break that down even further.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Right. Absolutely. It just real cut and dry. Right. And if you didn't know how to do it, um, what I liked about Process Street is you could have the checklist and just follow it down real quickly. But then over on the right, you could have the video or the whole paragraph describing it in detail. So if someone doesn't know what it means to, you know, change the property status and property where you've got the video right next to it that shows them exactly how to do it.

Tony Cline 13:43

Yeah. Yeah. And in the way we kind of just uh explain that here at our company, you have your checklist that would be the process. And then when you click onto that process step over on the right with Process Street, it has the SOPs or the standard operating procedures, the individual things that need to be done to accomplish that step.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah, absolutely.

Tony Cline 14:07

Well, it's great. So you rolled that out, you started it by yourself, you you built before you needed, which is is uh, you know, unfortunately, I run into a lot of people that don't do that. They get to the point where they've got a hundred doors or 80 doors or 60 doors and they're pulling their hair out, they're going crazy, and they they need to hire help, and so they'll bring somebody in, but they they're so busy that they feel like when they bring somebody in, they check that checkbox. And but the checkbox isn't when you're, you know, when you hire somebody, that's not when you check the checkbox. It's when they're up and running and they've taken those activities, those duties off your plate. And so without having some sort of system and that training to train around that system, basically all you've done is bring in somebody else that makes your life harder because you don't have anything for them to follow. So they're gonna continue to come to you, and now your time, you have less free time than what you had before, and people will wind up saying, Well, that person didn't work out, they didn't get it. Well, they didn't get it because you didn't teach them, you didn't give them the tools, you sent them into battle without properly equipping them for success.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Um you know, we we took that a step further um with the checklist, and this was from NARPEM, but we built your a first 30-day onboarding checklist. So when someone comes on board, you know, they've got here's what's going on today, right? And here's tomorrow, then here's the next day. And so over that first 30 days, they're looking at a property management agreement, they're looking at a lease, they're learning about the policy for late rent, you know, they're just going through slowly and learn, you know, hitting up each of those things, even without our direct training and interaction. And then there's some quizzes in there and and there's touch points and things, but that's helped quite a bit to get someone into the company and learn things. I I just I didn't really talk about it, but we're a hundred percent remote. Um, we've been that way since well before COVID. Um and so you know, it becomes very important. Um, you know, most of my team is out of the country, so um, you know, you have to have the documentation, you have to have a way to follow up, you have to have a way to answer the questions because you can't just hear the phone conversation when you're in the office and walk over there and say, Hey, I heard that, but this is what I would do next time. Right.

Tony Cline 16:45

Yeah. When you say remote, um uh and and a lot of companies have now switched on. I think COVID, COVID made us a lot of us realize it gave us an excuse to close the office. It made us realize we don't need the office to be able to be productive. As a matter of fact, a lot of our people on the team are less productive when they're in the office because they should be out doing the things that they are supposed to be doing. And so um getting rid of the office is is going remote. But uh there then you can take that the next step further, which is okay, we're not just all remote here in our own town, but we're remote in other parts of the the city or the state or the country or even internationally. So at 300 doors now, tell us a little bit about how your your team is set up, how many people you have, are you portfolio, departmental, pod? What's that look like?

Remote Team Structure And Roles

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yeah, we're we're we're kind of a hybrid. I think you probably hear that a lot. Um I'm I have always been kind of a big believer in the fact that clients like a single point of contact. Um, I know it's common in our world to say, well, Bank of America, you don't have that. You call the bank, you get someone, the airline, you don't have that. But I'd argue you're not generally happy with your bank or the airline without that single point of contact, right? 100%. Keep waiting for them to adopt AI because I I I'm convinced it's gotta be better than what they're doing now. But um, so we have what we call customer service reps. So they're not licensed property managers, but it's a CSR, it's essentially their single point of contact. Those are um have historically all been VAs out of country. Um, I did just uh we added a woman here locally um as our latest um CSR, but the majority of my staff is Philippines and Mexico. Um and we are overstaffed right now for the number of properties we have. Um we're set up for growth, and there's some projects I have going on. So we have a full-time financial analyst, for example, which probably not a lot of people at 300 doors have that position. Um, my previous life was financial analysis, so um I I just felt strongly about having that position in there. And she also does work for my maintenance company as well. So some of this gets a little bit mixed up, but my maintenance company is a hundred percent separate legal entity. Um, so we've got two CSRs right now. Um, we've got two bookkeepers, one that focuses on property wear, one that focuses on QuickBooks. Um, those are both um out of the Philippines. And uh we've got a BDM who's local. So Susan actually drives to all the properties um and talks to all the clients as we're bringing them on. I think that's been a big help for us to have a real person um to talk to our potential clients. And then um see, I'm looking at my list over here. Um I've got a leasing specialist and a receptionist. Um and then that's that pretty much ties it out. Um we are looking, uh my intent is to go to a virtual um AI receptionist sometime this quarter.

Tony Cline 20:21

Share with us a little bit more about the financial analyst piece because I think it's been my experience, and of course, uh, even though I work with a lot of companies, it's it's fairly anecdotal because my sample size is is fairly small compared to you know the 40,000 property management companies that exist in the U.S. I wish I had data on all of them, but I don't. But but it's been my experience that most people come to this business from from a couple of ways that are the most common. Number one, it's a real estate agent that that does like you, they're starting to flip a few homes or they're starting to sell a few homes. They have some friends that say, Well, I'd like to buy a property, but I don't want to manage it. And so because we want the sale, we say, Well, well, I'll I'll manage it. I I'll figure that out. Don't worry about that. And uh, and so they kind of get into being a real estate broker, then being a property manager, and then they don't really have experience building a team and they don't really have the financial background to run a company. And that's not a knock on them, that's just they they haven't had that financial training. And then the other one is a an investor that is buying a big portfolio or building a portfolio of their own over time, and they can't quote, find somebody that will manage it as good as they can, so they start managing their own, and then people. People hear about it, and so then other people come and they start managing, but they they think about it from the investor first mindset versus the business first mindset, and so a lot of times they don't get their their fees structured correctly to be profitable because they're thinking, well, I would never pay$200 for that repair. So then they don't charge that or or uh expect the charges to to be that much on maintenance. And so the financial piece for me has always been super interesting for property management companies because they just don't think it gets talked about enough, and enough people don't have the expertise to be able to train up on what what it looks like to run a good solid property management company, what the finances look like, and then what do you do with the excess money that you get from running the business? So hopefully that's not a long-winded uh intro for you to say, yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. But uh yeah, share a little bit about what they're doing for you.

Why A Financial Analyst At 300 Doors

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Yeah, I mean think about what do you know. Um NARPEM came out with their accounting standards, and then they just started rolling out some of their uh performance metrics as well. You know, those, you know, if you're trying to grow the business, I think it's important to have your a handle on those. Um and it doesn't take a lot of time to pull that data together, but to pull it and then put it into a format. Again, I come from the corporate world. Um, well, I guess I didn't talk about that, but previous life corporate world, I was a business controller, reported financials to the board of directors, to the CFOs of large companies. So I'm used to creating PowerPoints and handing them to execs. So ultimately that's what I'm looking for. I want someone to hand me the PowerPoint with the information I need to know in there, or send me the you know, one page or just the one summary so I can quickly look at it and know, oh, something, something or everything looks right, or wait a minute, we got a problem here. What's going on? Tell me what happened with this ratio last month. Um, so they're looking at you know, the average fees we're pulling in per owner, average we're pulling in from a tenant, what's that ratio, what's the gross margin looking like, gross profits. Um, and then it gets more complicated on the maintenance side. So there's a lot more work going on there, which is when we're looking at you know the profit margin on a you know, service requests in-house versus service requests outsourced versus turnovers in-house, turnovers outsourced, cleaning, you know, which techs are profitable, um, what what we're doing, looking at windshield time versus shopping time versus tech time. On that world, it gets to be a lot more um involved. But even on the management side, I think what people, I guess people probably realize this is that maintenance ends up being a huge portion of where a management company spends their time. Um, and so early on I realized that and I said, well, I'm not really getting comped for this. I mean, it's in my management fee, but I didn't, well, early on I did charge an extra, you know, like uh I said, you know, there's a 10, well, the X percent per work order would get charged for us to manage it. Clients, some clients didn't like that, some did. But then I switched just to doing a maintenance company. I said, hey, there's no markup, no, no markup by a LARCA, right? The maintenance company handles all the work. Um, but that way they're able to capture all the expense for coordinating that work order, tracking the work order, you know, hiring the sub, doing all that work, and then build it into their invoice and then invoice it out. So we're able to, as a comp a um a portfolio of companies, we're able to capture payment for that work.

Tony Cline 26:01

Yeah, I think that is a struggle that a lot of people deal with with maintenance, trying to figure out how to maximize the revenue that they generate around the value that they provide in handling maintenance. And one of the ways that we've addressed that in through the coaching and training that we talk about, that people are afraid to be compensated for that. Some people are. And and it's they they approach the situation with, well, isn't that what property management is? And and I don't know who told me this, uh, and I wish I could give them credit because I repeat it quite a bit. But the property management fee is for what we do for every client every month. It's for the processing and collecting of rents, it's for enforcing the lease. But if I have to, if I have to uh work on maintenance for property A, but I don't have to work on maintenance for property B, I have to figure out how I'm going to be able to cover my expenses and make a modest profit. And what determines whether or not I'm able to make a modest profit and cover my expenses and stay in business to continue to service my clients comes down to am I able to figure out how to deal with this maintenance monster because it's a variable. It's not like you can set it. Yes, you can have your quarter or your semi-annual inspections that you can forecast those, but a lot of times the maintenance just pops up whenever. And so you got to figure that out. And so we we kind of work through those. There's two different schools of thought. Number one, I can guess on how much I how much maintenance I'm gonna have in a month or in a year, and I can set my management fee accordingly. I can raise my management fee to cover that, or I can have a modest uh maintenance coordination fee and it's a per occurrence fee. So you're only charged that when I deliver additional value. So we're appropriately compensated for the value we deliver. And even with that, it's it's hard to get people to believe in that enough to stand behind it to be able to sell it. And so I think it's really interesting that what you did with you you bypass that whole situation and just say, well, I'm gonna still provide maintenance services, I'm gonna solve maintenance issues, but I'm gonna do that through a separate company. And you're at 300 doors now. When did you realize that you could solve this maintenance conversation and capture additional revenue? Because we're all trying to figure out, again, how to stack more nickels.

unknown 28:39

Right.

Tony Cline 28:40

And uh so when did you decide that maintenance companies, separate entity was the way for you to go?

Cracking The Maintenance Profit Puzzle

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah, we were at about 100 doors. So we were very we were very early on. Um, and a lot of that was just because I I like control and you don't have control over your subs. And and maybe you do if you're 2,000 doors and you've got a lot of buying power. Um, but at 100 doors, you know, we were getting vendors wouldn't show up or they would, and there'd be you know, oh I I'm on this job, and then but I'd want to send them to a different job, and they didn't want to go. So we just we hired a tech full-time at 100 doors, and then just started running all of our subs through the the separate legal entity as well. Um, so then very quickly we were able to at the time it was my bookkeeper, but I was able to book a percentage of her time through the maintenance company because she was now doing the books for the maintenance company, but then she was also handling some of the coordination of the calls and that kind of thing, too. So we were able to start to segregate those costs, right? Because that's important.

Tony Cline 29:59

I want to dig into that a little bit more because I am super fascinated by the fact that you were able to bring in somebody at a hundred doors. I'll I'll just be totally transparent. I tried to bring in uh an on-site. Now we didn't have a separate company, I was just gonna bring in a maintenance tech inside our property management company. And this is years and years ago, but I was I was at when I hit that hundred-door mark approximately in that range. And I just it ate my lunch. I could not figure out how to make it profitable because you had to have them, and in order to have them, you had to pay them a full salary because you couldn't count on them sometimes. I couldn't figure out how to make a part-time one work, and I couldn't figure out how to financially make a full-time person work. And so we we did that for almost a full year, and during that year, it was it was probably the least profitable year I had. Um, if it wasn't, it was darn close.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Yeah, so I think, well, it it depends on your um type of properties you have as well. So at that time early on, I had I had just taken on a portfolio of what I'd call B and C and probably more C type properties, about 60 doors. Um, so they needed a ton of work. Um, and so I I was able to keep a tech busy almost full time on just that property alone for quite a few months. Um and then um I didn't pay salary, so I paid hourly. Um, so you know, if there was a week that was 32 hours, it ended up, but he knew over time I was gonna make it, you know, I was gonna make it right. Um but the other key there was I ran all my subs through that business and then was able to capture a different additional profit through those subs to help absorb any type of losses you might have had you know somewhere else. So um that helped a lot. The other the other thing that you know it's not a huge factor, but it's definitely a factor is owning the company, and property managers can do this as well. It's a little I think it's a little harder philosophically, but there are jobs I'll take a loss on owning the maintenance company to keep my client happy in the long term. Sure. And since I own the company, it's like, okay, well, you know, we make X profit across the board, but we're gonna take a hit on this one because yeah, it wasn't our fault. And I could explain it to the client, but do I really want to do that? Or do I just want to, you know, kind of make the client's life easy and keep this relationship for the longer term?

Tony Cline 32:49

With uh with digging into the maintenance and having that separate maintenance company, and I know requirements are different across the US, but what what kind of disclosure or what kind of communication did you have to have with your property management clients that you are also an owner of the maintenance business? Did you have any issues with that?

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Yeah, you have to have full disclosure on that. Um, so that that's disclosed up front as part of our onboarding before a PMA is signed. It's also addressed in the PMA on the line, they have to initial. Um, so there are some clients that don't like that. Um, but you know, it hasn't, you know, there are also clients that don't want to be charged and upcharge, you know, for you to manage the property or you know, um to manage that work order as well, right? So we all my BDM's really good at explaining the benefits, right? We're in control, we can get the job done when we want. We've got the, you know, just like you do with your PM, you've got the relationships with the subs, but we also have our fleet of in-house guys, our fleet of in-house tools, vehicles, et cetera. So um, and and then we also do work for other PM companies as well. So it's not just ours. So we're able to explain that that hey, no one else would hire us if we weren't at a market rate, et cetera, et cetera.

Tony Cline 34:17

Yeah, that's really good. Well, Bob, you and I have both been in this business for a long time, uh both of us 20 plus years, and uh, and we've had the opportunity to to see the businesses grow and change and new opportunities come along. And I know that you have had, uh, like I have, the ability to um at at different points in your career, you looked at merging with other companies, you looked at buying other companies. I I don't know if you've sold any or sold portfolios, but if somebody was looking to expand, there's a couple of ways to expand. You can go out organically, hit the pavement, you know, do do your referral relationships, you can do direct to uh direct to consumer. So doing the cold calling to for for rent by owners, doing the marketing, or you can grow by purchasing businesses or or portfolios. What would you say is sort of your your sweet spot, your preferred method, or what's worked for you guys, or not not maybe even what's worked most, but something that's been notable for you in the growth of your business?

Launching A Separate Maintenance Company

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah, I mean that I think what's just noticeable for for me is just long and slow, it just works, right? I mean, uh we never really grew uh it very early on, we grew quickly because you're so small and you had 60 doors. It's it's a big growth. Um, but other than that jump, things have just been nice and slow. Um, but you know, the the business, the revenue, um, the profits, you know, I think if we go back over the last five years, um because of what's gone in the rental market, revenues have like quadrupled, right? And that's you know, not because we quadrupled the number of properties, and we certainly grew during that time, but rents go up. So then if you're a percentage-based fee instead of flat fee, your uh revenues going up as a result with that, which as a side note, I highly recommend being percentage-based because of that. Um and so organic has been our focus, and I just look at you know, I'm I still think of myself as a young man. Um, over the next 20 years, if we grow 10 to 20 percent a year, we'll be plenty big enough. Um we have bought um a company or two in the past. Um, I bought some portfolios. Um Pam Green is on our team now. We we acquired her company last year, or now at the end of 24. Um, she's been a huge addition to the team, uh a great reason for our success. So, you know, finding people that you'd like to add to your team that you can make it work, right? So she still wanted to be involved in property management, and I don't want to put words in her mouth, um, but she didn't like dealing with all the things that she had to do. So we just sat down and said, well, what would your ideal day look like? What would, you know, how many hours do you want to work a week? Um, what don't you want to do? And I said, okay, well, let's put together a package that meets those needs. So she still had, you know, I paid her for her company, um, and then she still came on and gets a salary and gets to do the things she wants to do and really focus on helping the company grow. So I'm still looking to do that again in North Carolina. Um, I want to stay within the state, but you know, looking for people that we can add strategically, take you know, the things they don't like off their plate, you know, so we do what we're good at, but still have the people stay involved if they want, um, or if they just want to know it's going to a company that's going to take care of their clients. But that hasn't been a huge focus. We're not actively sending letters to try and grow that way. You know, these are just conversations. We just let people know, like, hey, we're here if you're ever interested. And um if it happens, it happens. If not, I'll we'll be happy with our 10 to 20 percent growth a year and just let it keep growing.

Tony Cline 38:44

All right. Well, then let me put in a plug. So if somebody's looking for an exit plan in North Carolina, whether it's now or five years from now, uh, we'll we'll get you Bob's information and you guys can connect to see if it's a good fit. Um Yeah. All right. I want to I want to go back to something that we said pretty early on in the in the podcast, and that was you had built these systems, and that allowed you to free up your time to do some things with your son and some personal goals that you have and some personal activities. And I want to pivot to that because a lot of people start a business because they think that it's going to provide them with financial freedom, time freedom. And we all have this fantasy of what it's gonna be like before we enter the arena. And then when we're in the arena, we realize, oh, I'm I'm vastly underprepared. And you become prepared from just repeated bouts in in the arena. But a lot of people stay in that where they get good enough to be the champion in that arena, to to fight the fights, but they never transition to be good enough to train other people to do that so that they can then realize the dream that they had of starting the business, which was personal options. And I truly believe that a business only exists from a selfish standpoint. The business only exists to support the the life that we've decided to live. And they work together, they work in in harmony. I don't believe in work-life balance, but I do believe in work-life integration, where the the life we we live is supported by the business we create, and the business that we create has to then support the life, you know, that that we've put together. And and from the outside, it looks like you've done a great job doing that because uh I know that you have leveraged a lot of the discipline of running a business, the discipline of having systems into the discipline of achieving some things in your personal life. And so tell us a little bit about you and I had a conversation not not too long ago, a year, year and a half ago or something, about the uh the e-foil uh things that you guys are into. So tell me a little bit about the the time that you spend there, why it's important to you, and then I want to, you know, I've got to dip my toe into the running conversation here a little bit too.

Growth: Organic Pace And Select Acquisitions

SPEAKER_00 41:06

So sure. I want to digress just for a second, talk about systems that you know, I've again just trying to get emergencies out of my life. Um, and so and and I'm not afraid to try things. Often, you know, we will go to NARPEM and people say, Oh, that'll never work in my market. Oh, that sounds great, but I could never do that, right? Um, but early on, one of the things that drove me nuts was just the move in, move outs, timing. You could never predict like every day there was a move out, there was a move in. So we just said, you know what? Move outs are all on Mondays, all of our leaders. End on a Monday. Um, move ins are always on Thursdays, right? Simple, solves a whole bunch of problems right then and there. It's very predictable. My whole team knows hey, move-ins are on Thursdays, move outs are on Mondays, so we got walkthroughs on Tuesdays. It just makes it simple. So that's just one example of you know things you can do to just make your life easier and make your you know make you have a better business that's that's easier to run. Um, but yeah, e-foil. So, you know, as COVID hit, we had all had to cancel our vacations, we couldn't go anywhere. And I had seen these things on YouTube, and uh so I told my wife, well, we couldn't spend that money to go to Paris, so I'm gonna buy an e-foil instead because I know you don't want to drive me. We've we live on the lake, we've got a wake boat. Um, she I knew she wasn't gonna want to pull me every single day that like I'd want to ride. So the e-foil you can just go out and ride by yourself. It's essentially a surfboard with a mast and a foil and a motor on the bottom. So you just hop on and start taking off and it'll lift up over the water and fly over the water. Um, and then very quickly, people wanted to know what they were, they wanted to ride it. Um, so you know, as an entrepreneur, I said, well, let me call the manufacturer and find out what it would take to become a dealer. Um, so I was able to do that, and we started giving lessons, and the very first lesson that I'll never forget, the guy's high fiving me. I'm getting hugs, he's stoked, and I got a tip. I'm like, I have been in property management for nearly two decades. I've never gotten a high five, a hug, or a tip. And you're like one, I'm like, just emotionally, I'm like, all right, I'm not the complete loser that you know that other some of my clients have portrayed me as. Like, I can actually make people happy. So emotionally, that was just awesome. And that's continued. It's just it's fun to see people get stoked and uh, you know, enjoy life and try something new. Yeah.

Tony Cline 43:55

All right. And I know just from uh from just being around you, and you and I were both on panels in uh, I think it was Texas style Narpum, where they brought us in to talk about the balancing of mental health, personal health, all of that. And uh, and I know you were you were a different type of runner than I was, but we were both into that discipline of running. And I'd like to give the audience that's listening a little bit different perspective than what I have just because they've heard me say it before. But um what do you think that well, the business allowed you to set up time to create a healthy habit because you were able to implement those systems, build your team, pull yourself out of the day-to-day um messes that that happen or the just the the routines, and gave you the time to to think what else is important to me? What can I do that can make me better, but also something that I enjoy? And and so that gave you some space to work on some of your outside the e-foil, even because I know that also worked on your your fitness. But um what do you think the business did to set you up to allow you to work on your fitness? And then how does the full cycle continue where working on your fitness allows you to improve the business?

Systems That Create Life Outside Work

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Sure. Um, yeah, I mean the the business is what really led me to running. Um I was not historically a runner at all. Um, you know, I've been in shape. I you see the skateboard behind me, you know, skater, um, you know, wakeboarding, you know, so I stayed active. Um, but again, not until COVID hit and the PM Health group sponsored a virtual 10K. That's when I started running. So it was because of property managers and the group. So there's a plug for the Facebook group, PM Health. Um, great group of people, great way to get motivated to hit your goals. Um, but I said, well, shoot, I I know I can't run a mile right now. So maybe this would be a good goal since we can't go anywhere. I want to eat foil more, I want to get to shape, I want to lose some weight. Um, so I was able to get that done and hit that 10K um, you know, through that. And you know, that just led to, you know, all right, well, now what's next? And then PM Health, D D Lee, and some folks set up a group meet in New Orleans for a half marathon. Uh, so we met down there. I ran a half marathon there, and then a few of us met together a year later in uh Georgia for a full marathon. Um and then, as you know, um I just finished my first ultra marathon on the trail. I did a 54-miler here in North Carolina that was 10,000 feet of gain. Um, kicked my butt. You know, I didn't know what I didn't know when I signed up for it. So I thought I assumed like, well, 26 miles you know was a marathon. 30 seems too easy, like just doesn't seem like a big enough jump. Um, so I'm just gonna go to 50. And I didn't realize the elevation gain and that the you know there was a lot of climbing. So what I thought when I signed up might take me, you know, seven or eight hours actually took me 16 and a half, um, which was a course record for my age group. So it's all slow, but it was for my age group was pretty good.

E-Foils, Joy, And Entrepreneur Energy

Tony Cline 47:46

So yeah, you said it it kicked your butt, but uh you know, from from somebody that spends most of my life when I'm when I'm working out in on the trail space, for you to come in there for your first 50k and and set the the record for it um for the for your age group. I mean, that's you you did you did well, you kicked its butt uh right back. So, but one of the things I want to focus on on what you just said was a lot of people, whether it's in business or in in personal health or fitness, they look at what you and I are on chapter 10. But when you came into this, you came in on chapter one first page, you couldn't run a mile a mile, and it was sticking with it. It's the same thing in business or or fitness. You can't compare where other people are that are on chapter 10. You have to look at what I can do now and how can I bring in people that will help me or how can I surround myself. When I when I first ran my first 50 miler, that was back in 2017. I said, Well, I don't know anybody that that had run a marathon, it was just me. I didn't know anybody that had run a 50 miler. I didn't even know that those things existed. But once I figured out I wanted to do that, I started hanging around people that ran 100 miles because it normalized it. Like 50 is is only half of a hundred, and it's the easy half. It's like the first half of a hundred, right? And so I I wouldn't just encourage people, whether it's in business or fitness, we we all dream way too small. We all are are capable of achieving at such a higher level, but you have to you have to build your systems, you have to surround yourself with the right people, you have to be a part of the right communities, you have to be around people that will not just inspire you, not just motivate you, not just believe in you and lift you up, but also people that can help you achieve and hold you accountable to those same standards. And and then if you have people that are further along with you in your community as well, that certainly helps because it allows you to shortcut um and uh shortcut is kind of a bad word. I I don't I don't like to take shortcuts, but allows you to accelerate the success that you have by learning lessons that other people have learned before you.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's um I often hear like, oh, I'm too old for that. And I'm I just turned 62. Yeah, most of the people I hear that I'm too old for that are younger than me. Right. So um I'm like, yeah, don't use age as an excuse. You might be, you know, too sore right now. So you don't try and run 50 miles. You you take, you walk around the block or you get on the treadmill for five minutes, right? And again, I literally couldn't run a mile um when I started during COVID. Just wasn't gonna happen. All right. So um it's just slow, slow and easy, just you know, um, just keep getting better. Same thing in business, like you said, right? There's it's great analogies there. Um you take the steps, you use the coach, you know. I hired a coach for the ultra because it was something I didn't know about. I wasn't gonna just gonna try and read a book and take a plan off the internet. Um, you know, the best money I spent, if you think about all the time I spent training for that, the the hourly rate I paid my coach was like next to nothing, right? Uh some of the best money I've spent. And same thing in business, right? It's um, you know, I I have been going to coaching now for um going on five years, made a dramatic impact in my business, um, as well as talking to other property managers. NARPEM is huge, you know, it's always motivational to get out there and see what other people are doing and see they're having the same problems that you are, but then also seeing people that have dealt with that problem and fixed it. Right. Um, you know, we've got some some guys um in in our sphere that um just bought a new airplane, just bought a new helicopter. So there might be some bigger goals for me out there after looking at those things, right?

Tony Cline 52:06

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And those guys that that have bought those things, I mean, they deserved it. They worked hard to they they had the big vision and they didn't let the little obstacles stop them from achieving that that big vision.

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Right. Absolutely.

Tony Cline 52:20

All right, as we wrap up here, Bob, I want to put you on the spot just a little bit. Um, you've had enough time now. It's been what two, three weeks maybe since you finished that race. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah, a couple of weeks. It's it's interesting to me when somebody completes something that's hard, maybe the hardest thing that they've done physically or mentally or even in business. Then when they do that, then they come back to a different part of their life where they encounter some obstacle. Like has your finishing that race done anything to your mindset or or your mentality about the other challenges that you face inside your business?

From Couch To Ultra: Health As A Flywheel

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Yeah, I think so. You know, the you know, like I said, when I signed up, I didn't know what I had done, but my very first training run on that course, I realized it, like, oh, this is gonna be a problem. Um and um you know, I just said, well, I'm just gonna put in the work, and then you know, once I put in that work, there was no way outside of you know being pulled from the race for medical reasons, I wasn't gonna finish. Um and and even you know, towards the end of that race, you know, I set the record, but only by five minutes. So on a 16 and a half hour time, I mean it was close. Um so that last you know, six hours or so, I was pushing hard to try and get that five minutes, and it was everything that I could do to get there. Um in business same way. Um, I've already signed up for the marathon in Eugene at the end of April. Um, I'm hoping to qualify for Boston at that race, so I've got some work to do to get there over the next 16 weeks. Um, but for me, if I don't have a goal in front of me, I I'm not progressing. Right? It's it's one thing to say, okay, I'm gonna keep running, but the reason I signed up for the 50 was I needed something to shoot for. I needed a target, I needed a reason to get out there when it was raining and run or when it was cold and go run. Um, because my you know my uh motivation isn't strong enough without a goal to say, well, I know I'm supposed to run today, but it's it's cold and raining, so you know I'm gonna go. But if I have the the goal there of the race, I'm gonna go do it because it's the plan. And likewise with business. You know, we've got some goals and we're still going through now, working on our 2026 goals, and then we break those down into our quarterly rocks because we follow EOS. But we know what those rocks, we're gonna, that's our number one priority for that quarter, and we're gonna hit it. And then we're gonna do it to hit it the next, you know, hit the next thing. And so even if you miss that goal, you've at least made the progress. Um, I'm a big fan of looking at the the gain versus the gap. If you've people know that book, The Gap versus the gain. As entrepreneurs, we're always looking at that gap, right? Oh, I fell short of my goal. I fell short. But if you go back and look at where you were a year ago or two years ago, like I said, we've quadrupled in you know the past three or four years, right? Still short of my goal, but quadrupled back here. Yeah.

Tony Cline 55:55

Yeah.

unknown 55:56

Yeah.

Tony Cline 55:56

I think there's uh and it just as we wrap up, I put out some content uh a week or so ago as we were heading into the new year, and it was basically there's there's the resolution. A lot of people have New Year's resolutions, and that's sort of I get excited about some idea and I'm emotionally attached to it, but I have no idea how I'm gonna do things when it gets hard. I just it would be nice to have, so I'm gonna make a new year's resolution. And most people fail at that by I think it's February 12th is Quitter's Day, somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah. Um and it's because they don't have a system behind their resolution. And so if you have a goal, well, a goal is that same emotional attachment. You have to have an emotional attachment to whatever your goal is if you have a chance of hitting it, but then you have to put systems in place to achieve that. And your goal should be something that is like out there that I want to achieve. But then the thing that really separates the people who who stick with it and achieve have a higher ratio of hitting their goal is when they make a commitment. So you have a resolution, just exciting, emotional. You have a goal, which is that same emotional excitement with some systems, but then the the commitment is breaking it down to the smallest possible starting action. And like I for my my goals when I'm running, I might have a goal of uh running a marathon, a hundred mile race, a whatever. And that's the the big picture goal. And then as part of my training, the system is I may have to go out and run eight miles today. And I know if I hit enough of those, if I have enough of those successes, I will get to my finish line. But I also know that I'm not good enough to be 100% my you know, my entire training plan. But I also know that if I have a commitment, I it will it will help me take that first action. So my commitment when I'm in my training block is I will commit to putting on my shoes and going past the end of my driveway. Now my driveway is only like 40 feet, so it's not big. But the the act of committing, I will, I will die. I don't care if I have the flu. I can commit to putting on my shoes and getting past the end of my driveway. That keeps our action going. And once you're in action, well, by the time I've already put on my shoes, I've already got my gloves, my hat, like whatever, I'm I'm I'm in motion, I might as well just go a little bit further. And then you're a mile in, a two mile in. Now, now you're just ready to go and you finish the eight miles. And so I think tying that commitment to the goal, tying to the resolution. I mean, whether it's business or personal health or um anything that you're trying to achieve, I think those breaking it down in those three ways really helps you perform at a much higher level.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

Yeah, absolutely. Right? That's that that's key. And then having the why, right? Why are you doing it? And you have to have that strong enough why. Um you take you've got the why and you take that first action, you're gonna be unstoppable.

Tony Cline 59:12

Yep. Well, Bob, it's been a pleasure having you on. And uh is if there's anything that you want to leave the audience with, any contact information, we'll certainly put that down in in the show notes. But I'll give you sort of the uh last word right here before we wrap up.

SPEAKER_00 59:29

I just want to encourage people to set big goals, you know, reach for their dreams, um, set up a process and a system. Don't be afraid to try new things. You know, again, fees are an example. Try it. If it doesn't work, then you can take it away. It's not that hard, right? Um, so and have a great 2026.

Tony Cline 59:52

All right, great. And with that, Bob, thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

All right, thank you, Tony. Great seeing you.

Tony Cline 59:59

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 aspects. Until next time, it's your success.