Smart Fees and Strong Teams: Profit Beats Door Count - with Alex Yoder

We unpack how profit per door, not portfolio size, drives real success, and why the nation's legislative swing is reshaping the way smart operators price, staff, and educate. Alex Yoder shares practical fee structures, compliance strategy, and tools that improve outcomes without bloating your stack.

• evolving from maintenance coordinator to co-owner and culture built on sane workloads
• doors per employee as a quality metric, not a badge
• fee strategy with tiered services and clear boundaries
• pet fees plus guarantees as a pivotal revenue lever
• auto-enrollment solutions that reduce admin and add margin
• Colorado’s legislative shift and investor impact
• forming the Colorado Housing Coalition and winning amendments
• content marketing that educates and differentiates
• compliance as a core function and cost center
• AI tools that help, AI hype to avoid, and keeping stacks simple

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Transcript

Meet Alex Yoder And Dorman

Tony Cline 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. Featured guest is Alex Yoder here from Dorman Property Management. Alex, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Thanks for having me, Tony. Appreciate it.

Tony Cline 0:31

Yeah, absolutely. I've been wanting to have you on for quite a while. You're one of the OGs in Colorado in property management. I remember when we were the young kids kind of getting into it. Yeah. But that's been that's been a few decades ago at this point.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Yeah, the good old days before we were as jaded as we are now.

Tony Cline 0:46

Yeah. And Colorado was absolutely a much different place to manage properties. One of the reasons why uh I'm really looking forward to this interview is you have stayed current with as the landlord tenant laws have swept through our state. And you know, I remember, and I'm sure you do too, but back when we used to post a three-day notice, you know, rent could be due on the first, late on the second. You post your three-day notice. We could have them out by the end of the month in much different times. And what I've admired about you is you have stayed current with and active in the education of other people and helping them understand the pitfalls of now managing properties and owning properties here in the state of Colorado.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Yeah, I enjoy, I just enjoy helping people and I kind of nerd out on this business. The legislation can be exhausting. We'll probably go into some of that today, but I just think it's good for us to stick together. I learned that from Narpham, being a group and in an industry of people that support each other and try to navigate the craziness. This business is not easy. And I feel like in many ways, having our peers there helps it just to get through it, you know.

Tony Cline 1:56

I teased a little bit in the beginning that you've been around in the industry for a long time. So let's actually break that down a little bit, just so I think it's good for the audience to understand not only your perspective, but what your view is and why you have that view, how long you've been in the business. So let's kind of break that down a little bit. How long has your company been around? How long have you been a part of it? Where you're located, number of doors, size of teams, just anything you want to share about your company.

Career Path From Coordinator To Owner

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Uh so I started managing properties when I was about 21, and I'm 42 today. Um, so back in like 2005, if I'm doing my math right. And I started with another management company, originally hired on as an unlicensed maintenance coordinator. I had no experience. I was working working at uh at T-Mobile actually in the call center. And uh he picked me up. I was in the process of getting my license and I got it shortly after being hired. And I was at that company for about five years before I joined my current company, which is Dorman Real Estate Management here in Colorado Springs, and then kind of worked my way up from maintenance coordinator to owner over the course of 20 plus years. And we I bought into the company, man, probably about seven years ago or something like that. So, so yeah, so Dorman Real Estate is a company that specializes primarily in single family management. We also have a newer, smaller portfolio of multifamily management or management doors. And then we've branched out a little bit. My brother actually runs our commercial division, so we have some commercial stuff. We also have a sister company that does HOA management. So kind of about anything to do with management for the most part, we we have our hands in. And our residential management division manages about 1,300 doors today.

Tony Cline 3:36

So you mentioned something that I didn't think the conversation would take us this direction, but but I'm curious. You mentioned that you started out in as a maintenance coordinator and sort of worked your way up, and eventually the opportunity to buy in and and see property management from another level, from that entrepreneurial level of buying into the company. Was that something that that you determined earlier that that was something you wanted to do and it just took a little while? Or was that just one day I'm like, if I'm gonna be doing this, I gotta have some skin in the game. Like, let's have that conversation. How did that go?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah, I mean, I got married at the age of 20, and my wife and I have been together ever since, and we had kids early. And so, you know, I've always kind of felt like, for lack of a better way to put it, my DNA was kind of calling me to be a business owner, whether that was in the this industry or a different industry. And so from a very young age, I just felt the calling, so to speak, because I I enjoy brain damage, apparently. And so that was kind of always in the back of my mind. And I, to be honest, I pretty well obsessed over that for a very, very, very long time. Always tried to do more than was it what was expected of me, always took ownership, even if it wasn't mine. Um, you know, all the things that you kind of hoped that you would have and and people that you're hiring. And um so yeah, that that kind of helped me to eventually get there. And it's it's been a strange, challenging, but also super rewarding journey. Actually, full circle moment, we actually bought the company that I started with 20 years ago last year. So it's been uh it's been interesting for sure.

Tony Cline 5:14

Yeah. There's a lot long time in the business. I know you mentioned, you know, two two decades plus at this point. And uh the company Dorman, how long has that been around? How long was it around before you sort of got involved in as the maintenance coordinator, but then obviously taking over part of the leadership position. Was this a fairly new company when you joined, or had they been around for a while?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Uh so Todd, my business partner, bought another local portfolio coming out of commercial leasing and and brokerage in like 2008, 2009.

Tony Cline 5:46

So he had only been running it for a couple of years before I before I and you've grown from that all the way up to 1,300 doors plus all of these different areas. And and maybe we'll touch on that. I know most of my audience is focused more specifically on the single family, but a lot of companies are looking for as things become more expensive and as the legislation starts to squeeze our ability to make a nickel here or there, yeah. Companies are branching out into other areas. And so before we kind of go down that path though, 1300 doors, how are you guys managing those properties? Uh are you doing, is everybody local? Do you have remote team members? Are you pod-based or departmental? Share a little bit about that.

Team Structure And Door Metrics

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yeah, so we're we're I guess to address your first comment, we have had uh several different avenues uh, you know, growing horizontally or attempts to grow horizontally where we've succeeded and somewhere we haven't. So, you know, we tried to do short-term management, we've tried some other stuff like that. So I'm happy to talk about some of that stuff as well. But as far as our current team, we are sort of hybrid portfolio. We have all of our local, all of our man property managers, licensed property managers are local people that are physically in office. We do have several remote team members or virtual assistants, whatever you want to call them. And they've been actually wonderful. That's been a wonderful addition to how we have everything structured. So we're very much hybrid in terms of sort of how we facilitate management, but also in the way that we've structured our team.

Tony Cline 7:23

This question, it's when you go to conferences and people would say, Well, how many doors do you manage? And they would they would sort of gauge how successful you are by the size of your portfolio. And and I have learned just from being around this business for a long time. And the more I'm in the coaching space, the more property management companies I see, the more I understand you can be more profitable at a hundred doors than a company that's at a thousand doors if you don't structure it right. So the how many doors you manage question really is more of a an ego thing. You know, you can have a lot of doors, no profit, so big hat, no cattle. So this this next question is sort of in that same same arena because when I ask, do you guys have off the top of your head, do you know about how many doors you manage per team member? Yeah. You know, you again, because if you figure out how to really maximize your your payroll and the amount of money you're spending per team member, and you can bring in more remote team members or VAs, then you can have more people on your payroll for the same price. You could have three remotes for the same price as a local person. So it kind of it's not a real fair apples to apples comparison, but I'm just curious for 1300 doors, about how many people does it take on your team to run a portfolio that size?

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Yeah, I really appreciate that question, and I also appreciate the distinction. I don't like the how many doors do you have sort of blanket in terms of the question that you get. You know, you go to a convention and people are talking about doors, and people are, you know, I completely agree with you. Uh, I think for those of us who have been around long enough, we know that profitability per door is really the name of the game, and that's much more important than how much you how many doors you have. Uh, there are certainly companies that have big portfolios that have a five percent profit margin. So it doesn't mean a whole lot until you've really dug into it. I think what's hard in terms of the staff member conversation is it's hard to evaluate that apples to apples as well because some people treat their their RTMs differently in terms of you know giving them smaller chunks versus somebody who might be local. Or similarly, we have other divisions that are being serviced by certain members of our team. So, for example, we have two front desk people and they help our commercial and our residential divisions. And so the labor cost is being split between the two separate entities. So it's difficult to really perfectly map that out. But what I can tell you is that we've always, we've always, believe it or not, tried to be staff heavy. And let me explain what I mean by that. We tend to be between 50 and 60 doors per employee. I know I've I've been to conventions for 20 years where people are talking 60 to 100 doors per employee. I feel like when you are growing fast and when you are trying to keep your people sane, it can be hard to accomplish when you try to cram too many doors into your system. And so we want to be smart the way that we structure our fees so that we are in a place to where we're not having to be overstaffed, to where we're not having to overwork people, and we can keep people long term, have very low turnover, do a great job, and still also be profitable. We have strong, in my opinion, and based on what I've seen sort of nationally, we have very healthy profit margins, we have a forward-thinking fee structure. Um, and we really try to be well positioned to work our butts off, but not so much that we're losing people and um and are miserable.

Designing A Sustainable Fee Model

Tony Cline 12:32

Yeah. Um I actually want to dive in. You brought up your fee structure. And one of the things when I first start working with with clients, we start digging. One of the one of the key upfront pieces that we work on is helping people develop their fee structure. Because what I've what I've realized just over time is that when most people get into the business, they start a property management company, they sort of look around and say, Well, what do other people in my market charge? That's what I need to charge. As a matter of fact, I need to charge a little bit less than that because I'm new. So I want to be aggressive and get the business. So they wind up looking around to see what other people did. But what they don't know is the person that started their business five years ago typically did the same thing. They looked around the market to see what people were charging. And so they start looking at how to price their services based on what somebody else did that didn't really fully understand why they were pricing it that way. So one of the things that I'm really excited about when I work with people is figuring out how to identify their target client profile, or some people call it their ideal client. Yeah. Figure out who that is, and then figure out what their pain points are and how to actually structure your compensation model or your fee structure around the things that are important to those people so that you're attracting them and then your company is set up to support those. So I'm curious, you mentioned being like future forward with that and and being really intentional with the fee structure. So obviously, we've been around long enough to know we're not going to talk about specific percentages or dollar amounts, but I'm curious to go through that thought process with you about how did you decide to, number one, that it was important to not do what everybody else does. But number two, how you went about structuring your fees that might be a little bit different than the whole X percent, and then we have a leasing fee and that's it.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Yeah. Honestly, one of the things I really appreciate you about you, Tony, is that the way that you think about these things doesn't sort of align with that, you know, this is the way to do it type headspace. I I get very frustrated when people talk about business or property management or parenting or any other category where they say this is the only way to do it and this is the way that you have to do it to be successful. There's a lot of different ways to do it. It depends on what your end goals are. I mean, I know really successful companies that said, I'm not going to do more than 100 doors and I'm going to stop and I'm going to make every bit of those, I'm going to make those doors be as profitable as possible by having a minimum rent cap and this kind of stuff. So it is, like you said, all about what are you going after? What are you looking for? What are you trying to create? And what do you want to have to sustain as well in terms of staffing and all the other challenges of sort of running a business? I think in terms of fees, you have kind of two schools of thought from what I've seen. You have people that are really adverse to change and don't want to nickel and dime people, and that's how they say it anyways, uh, don't want to nickel and dime people, and aka they have no fees at all and they're barely scraping by, and or they're overworking their people and and and it's uh kind of an unhealthy mix. Or you have people that want to charge every fee that they could possibly get away with, which I don't think is wise either, uh certainly from a legislative standpoint. So my our perspective has always been let's be forward-thinking, let's be smart about the way we put we position stuff, but we're not going to have a headspace of what's of what we can what can we get away with. We really try to be intentional, try to make sure that if we are charging something, it has a real benefit to people. Many of the fees that we have are optional. So, for example, we we have different service tiers with property owners, and they get to choose what kind of things they get, you know, with our various tiers. And so that stuff has been really good for us. It's funny though, because at certain local events, I'm viewed as the fee guy, which I don't like. But I think that in certain marketplaces, a lot of business owners are very, very conservative and are really afraid of change. And so when you are charging any fees, you look like you're super innovative. So anyway, we really, really do try to find that middle ground sort of in a way that's healthy, doesn't piss a bunch of people off and give us a terrible reputation locally, which I care about a lot, but also which allows us to be successful and to pay people well and to not overwork people and and the uh the fee conversation where you you said in quotes, you know, people don't like to nickel and dime.

Tony Cline 17:00

There are some very, very loud voices in our industry, and and I don't actually appreciate all of them, to be honest with you. Agree. But one of the loud voices pushes, you know, the the whole fee maxing concept. And I am not the kind of guy that's going to squeeze a nickel out of somebody just because I can. I care more about that long-term relationship. I can make more money by serving you as my client for a longer period of time than just squeezing you for as much as I can and then putting you in a position where you can't wait to churn. So the way I look at what you're doing is we're not fee maxing, we're not charging a fee just because we can, but what we're doing is we're we're figuring out how to deliver as much value as possible to our clients and then being appropriately compensated for that value.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah. And I I agree with you. I I think that there's some there's some value to be gathered in terms of the idea circles where people are using the fee maxing term. I think we've gained some value from that. But I it's kind of like anything else. You want to kind of pick out the good and maybe don't walk away with some of the bad. I I think some of the bad is like you were saying, that it becomes all about money, money, money, as opposed to providing an actual service that's worth more than what you're charging. And so I think some of that can be tempered with a little bit of thoughtfulness in terms of the way that you're positioning everything. And so, you know, again, I'm not afraid to go after a fee, but I want to make sure that it's not going to be what can I get away with? It's going to be what makes sense and what can I, you know, successfully average in a way that that is reasonably unoffendable. I think that when you're comparing local companies like mine to a large corporate empire or entity, one of the ways that we stand out is that we're able to be a little bit more human in the way that we function. And I could talk more about that, about that as well. But um that's been good for us.

Tony Cline 18:54

Well, before we move off the fee topic, is there any particular fee or service that you deliver that you feel is like that's the innovative thing or that's the thing that we we struggled with before we implemented, and then it became really good. I just want to open people's eyes. I I work with people across the country, and in some markets, yeah, they don't even have like you had mentioned earlier, they're they're very limited on the fees. In some markets that I go into, the norm is we charge X percent management fee. That's it, everything's included. And they it blows their mind when you start opening up all of the different ways to compensate the company. And and again, not to fee max, but our clients should want us to be able to cover our expenses and make a modest profit. Otherwise, they're gonna have to go find somebody else to work with when our company goes under. So there has to be this level of understanding that it costs a certain amount of money to run a property management company. And then the only reason we do this is so that we can make a modest profit. You know, we're not trying to gouge people, but we want to be able to make it worth our time. And so is there anything that kind of stands out to you in in your fee structure that is like this is the one or two things that I think that move the needle for us?

Colorado’s Legislative Whiplash

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Yeah, I think probably we all know that property managers have a really, really bad habit of because a lot of property managers come out of real estate sales, right? That is that is very real, certainly in my indust in my marketplace out here. Sure. And so you come into this property management world that really requires systems and boundaries from a world that had really none of that in many cases. And so I think property managers have a bad habit of sort of doing everything and anything and everything to make their clients happy and undervaluing their time. And, you know, we we try to give away, you know, filet mignon for like McDonald's prices sometimes. It's hard to watch. And as somebody who cares about my peers, I really do. Um I I want to help those people like, man, you could you are undervaluing yourself. We've all heard this a lot, and it's very true. You know, we we we we consider ourselves less than attorneys and doctors and other experts that people rely heavily on, and I think we need to stop doing that. So the way that I think about things is like, I don't work for free. I really try to not work for fee at free ever. So I'll give you a small example. If we are expected to go to an HOA HOA board meeting or show up at court to defend on a deposit disposition dispute or show up to meet an appraiser at a property or anything that fits outside of our standard criteria or standard services that have been very clearly outlined in our agreement, we're not doing it for free. And so similarly, we've set up other, you know, kind of smart systems where so for example, you know, we use Surevester with our owners that don't have appropriate coverage or don't have Dorman listed as an additional insured. And we just say, look, if you don't have, if you don't provide your stuff, we're just going to automatically enroll you. And we as a company will charge you a fee for that. And then we will then go use that fee to pay for Surevester and we make a little bit of money for each of those properties if the owner doesn't provide that. And so now I no longer have to babysit and chase people down, and I'm making more money doing it. So I'm creating less work for myself while also making more money. And I we try to do that in many different ways. Probably the turning point, like way back in the day, I forget how long ago was, we started charging pet fees and keeping those pet fees. And at the time, we were one of the only people doing that. This was like a long time ago before this started becoming very, very common. But if you're not keeping your pet fees and giving your owners a guarantee against pet damage, you are seriously missing out. That was probably one of the biggest ones that we had. Now, here in Colorado, we have some caps now legislatively in terms of what we can charge on a monthly basis for those. But if you are like a new PM company and you're looking at like what is the thing I really need to do to get myself to the next level, I would strongly advise starting there.

Tony Cline 22:51

You mentioned legislation and some of the things that's happening in the industry here locally in Colorado. I want to dig into that a little bit more because I know you have stayed very current with that. You know, uh I don't know, seven, eight years ago, it seemed like Colorado was a landlord-friendly state. It was fair but firm. We we could enforce the terms of our lease, we could set up standards, we could charge an application fee and make a few bucks to cover our time. And, you know, there there were things that we could charge to residents to make sense. We could determine our own security deposit amounts and uh a lot of that stuff. And over the last seven, eight years, I mean, jokingly, I I refer to Colorado sometimes as California East or you know, Oregon East. It's just like it's it's moving in from the coast. And so I used to sort of I don't know, laugh it off when I'd hear stuff that was happening in Washington or Oregon or California or New York and be like, well, that had never happened here. And then all of a sudden, in just this wave after wave after wave of bills, you know, you and I both went down to the Capitol on on multiple occasions to to try to give testimony to fight some of these bills. And yeah, you know, I felt one of my proudest moments was we defeated a bill right before COVID and then COVID hit and they rolled out whatever they wanted and made it illegal to collect rent and all this stuff. But why do you think that we we had such a big swing? And then we can dig into talking about some of those big changes that have happened here locally.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Yeah, everything you said just there is everything I've experienced. You know, we we went from a three-day notice and super simple, almost wild westy freedom to the exact opposite of that and like start compar start comparison. Now we're making all the headlines and people are saying, man, thank God I'm not Colorado, which is frustrating because we we want investors to be attracted here and we don't want people to be leaving. We manage for a couple syndications and both of them have said we're not buying anything else in Colorado, which is frustrating to hear. Uh, I don't think that's good for tenants either. And I think that's one of the things that's often ignored is that when it's not an attractive place for investors, it's not gonna be as healthy of an environment for tenants because the supply is gonna be changing over time. Now, right now, the market is not that great, so it's not a good picture, but when things bounce back, it's gonna be real in terms of what that what that impact has been. So as far as legislation goes, one thing that I'm really proud of and happy about is that with some of these other states, Oregon, I'm not sure about California and how they were set up, but they didn't really have a great voice at the table early in the game to push back and at least get bills amended. And one thing that we're very fortunate about is that we were able to put together a single family manager focused organization called the Colorado Housing Coalition. And we spun that up right in time. So, like right when the craziness started, the CHC was birthed. And I think a lot of states are in denial that it's gonna come to them. And a lot of them are too late. Because by the time if you try to spin one of these nonprofits up to combat the legislation and hire lobbyists, it can be a couple of years to really get any kind of traction. And so my advice would be if you are even remotely concerned that it's gonna come towards you, now is the time to start getting your peers together to fund a lobbyist to be at the table so that when it does come, you can have that influence. Because darn near every bill that's passed in Colorado in the last five plus years has been influenced by this group. And if we didn't have it, I'm not saying it's just the CHC. There's other organizations at the table, like the Apartment Association and the Realtor Association and other groups, with that single family voice at the table, things would be wildly different. I mean, I can tell you with a straight face that every single bill passed last year, and there were a lot of them, that was kind of anti-landlord. Our organization has has and did make changes to each of those bills. And thank God for that, because man, we would have all kinds of stuff. I mean, just as one example, last year they were trying to make it so that we couldn't get security deposits at all, and you'd have to give the tenant a six-month payment plan when they move into the property to pay a deposit. Some of that kind of craziness that we've been able to prune out of some of the craziness.

Building The Colorado Housing Coalition

Tony Cline 27:08

I I want to make a confession and then give you some credit at the same time. When the CHC was spinning up, when you were helping lead that charge to get that going, there's four NARPAM chapters in the state of Colorado. And and right around that same time, I was the president of the Denver chapter, and I couldn't see the vision. I'm like, well, we're already doing some of this stuff with NARPAM, and so I didn't buy into why we needed this other thing. And and I'm really thankful that you guys that did see the vision pushed hard to make that happen because while NOR NARPum is a force, you know, NARPum locally only has so much money, and then nationally they try to fight all the crazy national stuff, but yeah, it's going crazy all across the country. And so their attention is split. So what I like about what you guys did was it's it's just focused on Colorado, fighting the laws in Colorado, and it's not just property managers. Yeah, you guys are educating the landlords and getting them to buy in, whether they are working with a property manager or not. They're facing the same legislation.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Yeah.

Tony Cline 28:22

And I think that was really smart that you guys saw that vision, did get it spun up in time, and have included the people who some might consider our competition, which is that quote, self-managing landlord. So kudos to you. Uh, this is my confession. I blew it, didn't get more involved, but uh, I'm glad that you guys did.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Well, you were involved. I mean, I know you know, maybe for that that particular spin-up um things were different, but you were involved with several of those bills on the heels of some of that stuff. Um, and and really this group is, you know, effectively, effectively a state chapter of NARPAM that just does legislation. I mean, that's really what it is. It's technically it's a separate organization, but the lion's chair of the board are NARPAM members, the lion's chair of the liaison committee are NARPA members. Um, we do have some self-managing owners as well, which is great because the voice of the self-managing landlord who's you know the actual one getting hurt is much more compelling when you're doing testimony and some of these kinds of things. But no, I appreciate it. And I it it's um it's uh it's surprising to see such a young organization having such a seat at the table. You mentioned different chapters. The challenge is when you're talking to these legislators, they can't they can't keep track of one group from another. So having just a singular cohesive voice for our specific single family management industry helps them to know, okay, that's the guy for single family, and then they go talk to the apartment association. That's the guy for multifamily. So that's that's been been really good.

Tony Cline 29:51

Before we move off the legislation topic, I I wanted to see strategically, as things become more and more crazy, you have your uh I believe you call it your pro tip Tuesdays, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Where you where you do me for the name here.

Tony Cline 30:08

Yeah. But but you you do this series where it's just uh a lot of times you're in the car or whatever, you just kind of do a five to 10 minute little video clip and educate people. Number one, I think it's really good that it gives you the content to be out there in front. But the other thing is you are elevating your status in the marketplace and in the industry. And part of what people sign up for in property management, the public thinks we're all the same until we're different.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

Yeah.

Tony Cline 30:37

And I think that that series that you do gives you a differentiator. It elevates you above all the other people in the marketplace who just say, Well, here's our pricing. Here's, you know, we do periodic inspections, or we've been in business for 15 years. Whatever, you know, that's that's not a differentiator. One of the things that you have done is leaning into that content and not just content for content's sake, but you're actually delivering real value. Um, and and there are other people I think that want to be able to do that, but maybe are afraid to do it or like don't know how to do it in front of the camera. So take me back, and we'll we'll talk about where you are now with it and what you're doing now, but take me back to those first couple of times. Was this something that you're like, I'm gonna commit to doing this and then we're just gonna do it until I die, kind of thing? Or was this like, man, this is really bad? I got to tell somebody about what's going on. Like, how did this whole thing spin up?

Content As A Differentiator

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Yeah, so it spun up because I was uh we're heavily involved with our local Realtor group here, the Pike Speak Association of Realtors. And I was attending at the time uh the Young Professional Network Group and a couple other committees on the board just to kind of be involved and give back, but also to kind of be a face, kind of an incognito vendor, you know, because I'm also a obviously we have to have a real estate license, so we're still a realtor, but effectively a vendor. You know, I'm looking for referrals from agents and this kind of thing. And what I realized was after doing it a couple of years, almost nobody knew I do property management. Now, there may be people that are better at networking than I am. I'm kind of more the one-on-one guy. I'm not that great in a big group group of strangers. I'll usually hide in the corner, you know. Um so that's on me. But having a way, because I was still connecting with people on social media, but again, they didn't know I was in property management. And it was frustrating to me to be like, wow, I've done such a bad job of branding myself that after two years of being at this YPN group, nobody even realizes I do property management. And so that was a big motivator for spinning that up. The other thing is I was watching a Gary V video, I'm a big fan of Gary V, and he made a comment about spinning out content that that kind of gives away your secrets in terms of everything that you know. Because what will often happen is people will just glaze over and think, I don't want to know all this stuff, I'm just gonna hire this dude, you know? So that was the intent, to be honest. But for people that are okay with listening to all this stuff and do want to learn all those things, I also like helping people, you know. If if they if they do want to spend the time and want to self-manage, so be it, you know, and maybe I'll be a good tool for you. And someday when you do get burned out or you retire, I'm probably the third first one that you're thinking about. So there's kind of a quite quite a few angles to that. Um, you know, in terms of legislation that's been hitting us that's provided me a lot of content for good or for bad. It is funny though, because you you you just don't know who's gonna watch these things, you know. And there's an insecurity element, I think, for a lot of people when you're putting content out there that's super intimate, you know, they're looking at your face, they're hearing your voice. Nobody really likes to hear themselves talk. I hate hearing myself talk. Nobody really likes their own face. You know, your ears are too big, your nose is too, you know, crooked, or you know, whatever. Yeah. And so I know a lot of people, even in some coaching groups that I've done where they're like just super insecure about putting their face and their voice out there. And I would just say, you're probably overthinking it. I don't think people really care about us as much as we think they do. And that's probably a good thing. And I think that anybody is capable of just showing up and delivering some expertise and uh is capable of doing that.

Tony Cline 34:06

Years ago, I did a presentation at one of the NARPAM national conferences, and it was, I think it was 2017. It was somewhere, somewhere in that area. Yeah. And it was getting getting older folks who like, you know, Facebook was a new thing for them. Now older people have taken over Facebook and chased off all the young kids. But, you know, it was we taught this thing about creating 30 pieces of content going live 30 days in a row. So it was 30 and 30. And, you know, part of that you mentioned people don't like the way they sound, they don't like the way they look. And unfortunately, we're the only ones that think we look 10 years younger and sound different. And yeah, when we're on camera, we look the same to everybody else. We sound the same as what we sound in in person. So there really is no you're showing up differently on camera or on the mic. That's just how you sound. And you're the only one that thinks it sounds differently.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

But yeah, and you know, one other thing that you mentioned. I was just gonna say, like, in terms of the reach, you don't you just don't know. Like, I literally I assume I have like two people watching these videos. I I, you know, my wife and I though, we were at uh Mount Princeton with our kids um at the hot spring, literally in the hot spring pool, and this couple swims up to us and they're like, You're the guy from those videos. And I'm like, I didn't know I had more than one person watching these things, so this is surprising to me. But it's a couple that they're both teachers, they've been buying real estate for years, and they were like, When we retire, we're calling you. So you you just don't know what you know that long game and how how it's gonna pay off.

Tony Cline 35:42

We don't we don't need to go viral with our content. We need to be put in front of the right people with the right message. And you know, I'd rather I'd rather have 200 views from the right people than you know 20,000 views from just random people who just are looking and scrolling. So I agree. And then you said something else that that I think I don't want to gloss over, and I'm gonna paraphrase it here, but you you basically said give away the information and sell the implementation and tell people all the stuff that's going on, give them the information that they're gonna need to manage their property themselves, tell them about all the legislation, tell them about inspections and notice how to give proper notice to your resident and all of that. And I I kind of equate it to if somebody wanted to tell take a trip, you tell them everything it takes to build an airplane, and then you let them know, oh, but you could just buy a ticket on my plane and I'll have you there in three hours. 100%. And that's that's kind of the the way that I look at it. So don't worry about sharing all of your quote secrets with people because that's what lets them know you know what you're doing. And now instead of doing it myself, I'm just gonna hire hire Alex and uh and have him do it for me.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Yeah, exactly. Even in even in the NARPAM groups, I mean, so many of us will talk about how we do processes and systems or this or that. And I think there's kind of a closed-minded perspective where it's like, well, I don't want to give away my trade secrets. The reality is, though, that even if I told you everything I do and exactly how I do it, you're never gonna do it exactly how I do it, and I'm never gonna do exactly how you do it. So the magic there is in the day-to-day micro decisions. It's not in these. I mean, those systems are crucial, don't get me wrong, but the way that you're leading your company and the way that you've structured your your culture and all this kind of stuff, and and how you make those daily decisions is really what's gonna propel you or or yeah.

Tony Cline 37:40

And information is valuable, but action is what actually makes you successful. And so you can give your give away the information, and it's how are we each taking action in our own way to to put our own spin on it? Yeah.

unknown 37:55

Yeah.

Tony Cline 37:56

Okay, let's let's let's shift gears a little bit. And uh I'm curious, you've been in this business for a long time. You've seen a lot of ups and downs. You've seen you know the the uh the financial crisis of 2008, then we made it through COVID, then we're getting hammered by legislation. Where do you see the property management space going in either locally or nationally, or as far as expectations? Um because I'm assuming that you are you're in a position now where I don't imagine, we haven't talked specifically about this, but I don't imagine that you're typing up leases or doing walkthroughs or doing that frontline work. You you now have a team and you're running the team and setting the vision and trying to figure out where am I taking this company in the next three years, having that three-year vision, 10-year vision.

SPEAKER_03 38:51

Yeah.

Tony Cline 38:51

And so I'm kind of putting you on the spot here, but where where do you see your company going over the next three years or even just the industry in general?

Future Of PM: Compliance First

SPEAKER_02 39:00

Yeah, I think probably the biggest change, and I can't speak nationally to this particular point, but certainly in in our state and in several others, I have never spent so much time functioning as a legislative expert than I ever did before. And think, I think companies are gonna have no choice but to hire an expert or become one themselves. I think, you know, I don't know if that's gonna be an amazing property manager or a director or a CEO or however you're structured, but you can't really just sit back and just lean on the attorney's counsel. The laws are so complicated that you have to listen to three different attorneys and then evaluate and make business decisions on 20,000 different things, you know. I'd probably spend the last five months of my life just, you know, triaging with attorneys and updating our lease and PMA. And, you know, I spent I wrote a four-page policy on gender-based violence and all the A, B's, and C's. And, you know, so I think the reality is, and something that's I guess most multifaceted in terms of uh elevating our value, but also making our lives harder in some ways, is um you have to have, and actually, I we're I was talking to another company or heard about another company up north that has like 2,500 doors, and I had heard that they just hired a six-figured person that all they do is make sure that they're compliant with everything. And I think that that's going to become more of a crucial role. That may end up meaning that you have to figure out a way to pay that person, and that may end up meaning or having an influence on how you're charging your owners to make sure you can pay for that person. But you know, the the simple the simple days of three-day demands and not really having to know that much comparatively are very much behind us. So that's a that's a big piece of it. And then you, of course, you have all kinds of new changes with AI and automation and this kind of stuff. And you know, I could speak on that a little bit too, but the first thing that comes to mind is just the complexity, which is kind of job security in a way. I don't like viewing it that way, though, because I I don't like bills that hurt a market and make it less of a free market. Fundamentally, I dislike that. So I'm not a fan of like, it's great, you know, it makes us have a job. Like that just seems like a very selfish point of view to me, but that is true. You know, I I don't know how somebody could possibly self-manage and be completely compliant because we do it every day, all day, and this is all we know. And we struggle to stay compliant sometimes. So Yeah.

Tony Cline 41:31

So I want to take us back to where we were seven or eight years ago in Colorado, where it was not quite like, you know, like you said, the wild west. We had a little bit of legislation in place. But I, you know, we have, even though we're primarily listened to and and our target market is in the United States, we have listeners in in 70 countries. I just got notified we got you know another country, so we're in 70 countries.

SPEAKER_03 41:58

Yeah.

Tony Cline 42:00

So with that, even if we brought that back to the United States, you know, I've got clients in Kentucky and Alabama and Arkansas, and they're listening. I know they're gonna listen to this conversation and be like, wow, you guys like hiring a six-figure person to just stay up with legislation, yeah. They're like, number one, that either that would never happen here, or if it happens here, I don't know what I would do about it. And so how could those people, number one, prepare for it, which is get involved early when it's still small and build your knowledge base? But the other thing is is there a way to monetize this where instead of looking at it as this is an expense? And I know we don't want to necessarily look at it as job security because I agree, I don't like making money just because it gets harder for my clients. Yeah, I do like to be there as the expert that's guiding them through the maze.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah.

Tony Cline 42:55

But is there a way to monetize as the business gets more difficult? Is there a way to leverage this hundred thousand dollar investment that these people are making? And I know that is sort of not the norm yet, right? That is, yeah, but they're forward thinking, looking at if I invest in this, that's going to pay off somehow. So what are your thoughts about how to make that pay for itself and how to monetize it? Is there a way to do that?

Monetizing Compliance And Owner Education

SPEAKER_02 43:24

It's a good, really good question. I I think the world of norms kind of facilitates some of those changes. And what I mean by that is, you know, when when we have no choice but to have that, and we have no choice but to afford that, um industry as a whole will find ways to make sure it's being paid for. Um, I think a lot of property owners don't realize that in in many cases, the property management fee is a break-even for the business. And so this is very much a numbers game. We have to manage a lot of properties to have a reasonable margin, and we have to be smart the way about the way we set things up. So it's not like I only say that because I think a lot of owners think we're just like raking in the money. And it's a lot of work to create a successful management company. And it's very difficult to make sure that it's profitable. And it's hard to not be viewed as greedy when you're trying to just have a decent margin and run a and uh run a healthy business. But as far as sort of paying for that, I think you're gonna see you may see some changes in management fees, you may see some changes in leasing fees to account for those some of those things, or you may just see PMs getting more creative by offering a different additional services just to generate more revenue so that they can afford to do that kind of stuff. And by creative, I mean sort of, you know, probably of optional things and benefits that owners can opt into or not. Yeah, I don't I don't know how the industry is going to fully respond to that. And when that the nature of that becomes more and more real, but I when I go to local industry meetings where we hash through some of these things and round table it, everyone's pulling their hair hair out, everyone's huffing and puffing, like I don't know how I'm supposed to be expected to do all this stuff. And this is a room full of experts, you know. We're just like overwhelmed sometimes by it. And oftentimes it's like, hey, this bill passed yesterday. You have to be compliant tomorrow, you know. And in the meantime, your attorney's taking four months to get back with you because they're overwhelmed as well with all the changes and with the timelines. So yeah, the the the challenge is real. I don't know if that's really an answer to your question, Tony, but the challenge is very real.

Tony Cline 45:18

Well, before we wrap up, you mentioned AI and some of the new tools that are coming down. And you know, I used to pre-COVID, I used to give a presentation called 36 months to extinction or evolution, meaning that things were changing so fast that if you kept your head down and just did business the way that you're doing business now, and you did that for the next three years, you're gonna look up and and realize how far behind you are. Now, I don't even think that that holds true. I don't think 36 months is the number. I think it's closer to six months. I think you need to be keeping your head up, looking at what tools are coming down.

SPEAKER_03 45:58

Yeah.

Tony Cline 45:59

And there's a quote, uh, I'm gonna butcher it, but it's basically it's a quote by Steve Jobs that basically says something along the lines of he's made as much or more money by the things he said no to as the things he said yes to. And and there's so many new tools. Everybody that has anything to sell as a subscription or a service, they're all starting to say, you know, it's AI enabled or powered by AI, or and so I just think at some point it's almost like back in the early 2000s when people said, you know, it's powered by the internet or it's web enabled. Nobody says that anymore. You just assume if you have anything of value, yeah, it's on the internet. And it's gonna be the same thing with AI. But yeah, what do you think about is there any tool that stands out in your mind or any service or anything that you're seeing, AI or not, anything that you think that has sort of piqued your interest, whether you're using it or just you know investigating it? Is there anything on the software or tools resources side that you're sort of on the top of your radar?

AI, Tools, And Avoiding Bloat

SPEAKER_02 47:12

You know, I I think one of the things that we see is it's really a balancing act, you know, with what you kind of just said. If you go to, if you're really plugged in in the property management space, you're gonna go to meetings and people are gonna say, you need these 500 things or you're not gonna be successful. And adversely, you might go to a local chapter meeting where that's not really being talked about. And and then you end up, you know, like we've purchased three companies in the last three years, and the main reason they sold is because they just couldn't keep up. And that a lot of that was legislatively, and they're just like, because they didn't stay on top of it, it became this mountain instead of this regular hill that they were climbing. And so they just threw up their own and said we're selling. So I think that's a big part of it. But in terms of software, again, it's a balancing act. I I I don't love the you have to have all these things like when when RTMs really became more prevalent and talked about people were basically saying if your entire company is not run by RTMs by next year, you're gonna go out of business. And like we didn't adopt RTMs for many years. I think it's great, but I think I think there's a balancing act there that you can that you can be forward, but also not like you don't have to freak out, you know, necessarily necessarily. So you want to be forward thinking, but you also don't want to be, you don't have to be like at the moment it drops. In terms of AI and software, like you just asked, I've tried a couple things out software-wise, kind of because I was feeling like, man, I really want to be on the edge of this thing. And it ended up just really falling flat and not being all that great. I think AI is wonderful. We use it for a dozen different things, but I think it has a long way to go in certain avenues. So, for example, I was working to utilize an email-based AI system that, and my thought process was it'll it'll learn my voice by reading my sent emails and it will know how to respond for me for basic questions. And what I found that not a single email it was recommending did I want it to send, you know? And so I do think we're probably a couple of months away from that being much better and uh, you know, probably go from months to weeks to days very quickly. But I think there's a balancing act in that. I think there's certain things that are tried and true already in AI that you can jump on. And there's a lot of things that will be sold as tried and true and ready to be jumped on that really are not turnkey or not as turnkey as you would think when you talk to their salespeople. So I don't know. It's very much a feel-it-out game, I think, for the next year. And for the things that really are functioning great, I think you should jump on those things because it's huge. I mean, we use a an AI-based comping system that's wonderful. And the reason that's wonderful is because the AI looks at the pictures in the comps and it'll literally adjust the recommended price in their algorithm based on finishes in the property. So it's it's doing a lot of that legwork, even beyond just looking at what things have rented for in a way that's intuitive and really functions well to be more accurate. So again, I'm a huge fan of AI. I'm a huge fan of anything nerdy like that. I love automation, I love systems, I love spreadsheets, but I think you need to be smart about kind of what you're jumping into. You know, call Tony, call someone else that you trust in the business that's actually used it before you just start shelling out per door rates on everything. That's the other thing, is they want to, these vendors want to charge you per door for every software, even if it makes no sense to be charged at a per door rate. So I'd be I'd be careful about getting per doored to death and uh to save your business to still be around. You now have no business because you're making no money. So all these things are just a balancing act.

Tony Cline 50:31

Yeah. One of the things that when we're looking at helping our our clients implement, one of our seven core components that we talk about is the equipment. So that's your tools, technology, training, and resources that we bring in. And our default position when we're walking through this is to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. Meaning, if you took away one more thing, it would break. But if you add one more thing and it doesn't drastically improve the output or the outcome, then it's not time to do that yet. It's try to keep it simple. Yeah. And, you know, I'll have people that are like when they're going through their processes, they'll have, well, I want to fire off these 12 emails and all of these. And it's like, yeah, but how does that affect the overall outcome? Get the you're not doing the basics right. Get the basics right. And then it's sort of like paint. You can put another layer of paint on top and then another layer. You know, it's very thin. Paint is a thin layer that you're putting on. Eventually, it creates this really nice finish, but you you haven't even got the first layer done yet. And so as people are looking at these different tools, if you don't have the basics right, every time you introduce a new login to your team, you're automatically doing damage to your team. You they have to now make up for the deficit that you've created in their productivity. And then hopefully, whatever those sales guys promised you, they're actually able to do with the tool. And then that might get them a little bit of progress.

unknown 51:59

Yeah.

Tony Cline 51:59

So just as you know, as you had mentioned, be really careful with the things that you introduce to the team because there are a thousand ways, as you mentioned when we first started with this. There's there's a lot of different ways to do property management right. Yeah. And there is no one way, but it's does whatever I'm introducing to the team move move the ball along, you know, closer to the goal line. And if it doesn't, or if it doesn't right now, yeah, even if it's a great tool, it's just the timing's right, don't use it.

SPEAKER_02 52:30

I love that because I think that, you know, newer, younger or companies that are kind of just trying to take more action, you know, these these guys get overwhelmed when they go to hear about all the best things you could or should be doing, and then just want to throw their hands up in the air and say, forget it. You know, I can't possibly do all this stuff. And I think, like you just said, people just need to adopt these baby steps, you know, walk away from a convention and implement one or two things. You might have heard 50 things, but just implement one or two things and do that consistent consistently over the course of several years. And now you have that base layer, and now you're fine-tuning those base layers. You look like you're amazing 20 years later, but really these things were developed over a long period of time, you know. And that also helps your team to have more buy-in because you're slowly rolling it out. Now they get used to it. There's a number of things that I introduced that people were like, you know, dear God, please don't do that. And we just baby stepped our way into it, and now they're like, I would never go back, you know?

SPEAKER_03 53:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

But people don't like change. So sometimes you just have to work your way into some of those things. But yeah, I guess my my my thought would be for anybody who's trying to develop and streamline, don't get overwhelmed with everything that it could be or that you're hearing that has to be done to be successful. Just take small steps consistently, um, and you'll find that it can be a very rewarding business.

Tony Cline 53:49

Alex, this has been a lot of fun for me. I really enjoyed catching up with you. It's been way too long since we've seen each other.

SPEAKER_03 53:56

Yeah.

Tony Cline 53:57

I want to leave you with is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't? Anything that you want to give if somebody's looking to sell a property management company in Colorado, if you guys are buying, I want to give you just a little bit of space here to sort of close out with anything you want to close out with. And then if there isn't anything, we'll just wrap it up.

SPEAKER_02 54:16

Yeah, I guess a couple things. Uh, I didn't mention the software that we're using for comps. It's called rentfinder.ai. So that's been a wonderful tool for us for AI-based comping. But the second thing is that is really passionate or really a passion for me is to promote the Colorado Housing Coalition. Even if you were not in Colorado, I would invite you to reach out and to say, how did you guys do that? What did you guys do? We'll give you our roadmap. You know, this is a nonprofit. And if you want to do something similar in your state, we will help you to in telling you how we did that. We had somebody reach out to us from Texas and one other state, and uh, we are we are here to here to help. If you are a landlord or a property manager in Colorado, joining our organization is just at the Colorado Housing Coalition.org, and it's$120 per year minimum to help us to pay our lobbyists and to continue showing up for small landlords. So that's really important to me. Beyond that, uh, I guess based on what you just asked, we are buying management companies ideally in the Colorado Springs area, but um possibly in other areas depending on the size of the portfolio. And then lastly, I just want to encourage the small business owners out there. I think there's a fear sometimes about the big pockets coming into town and taking gobbling up all the business, you know. But the reality is when that happens, and this is something that I learned through my own fears, that when that does happen, honestly, the value of the small mom and pop triples. You know, you have more because you have more of a personal touch, you have a more of a personal relationship. In my opinion, that's not going to be bad for you if you have something like that show up in your marketplace.

Tony Cline 55:51

That's probably about it. All right. I agree with all of that. What very well said. Alex, we'll wrap up here. Thanks for hopping on. Thanks so much, Tony.

SPEAKER_02 55:58

Appreciate it, man.

Tony Cline 55:59

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