Stop Doing $10 Tasks And Start Leading Your Business To $1,000 Outcomes - with Mark Brower

We unpack the Systems Conference, the pros and cons of its intimate format, and why owners must guard against getting pulled into ten-dollar tasks. We map real growth math, define what true differentiation looks like, and show when to shift from property management to people management.

• takeaways from the Property Management Systems Conference
• benefits and limits of small breakout sessions
• founder time protection and role clarity
• ten, hundred, and thousand dollar work framework
• persistence with strategy and course correction
• who should attend tactics-heavy sessions and why
• realistic growth math from leads to signed doors
• building a sales qualified lead pipeline
• differentiation beyond table stakes messaging
• ideal client profile and scalable service design
• hiring leaders versus assistants for leverage

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Transcript

Welcome And Conference Setup

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 on the Property Management Aid Station here with Mark Brouwer. Mark, let's get into it.

Mark Brower 0:30

Let's get into it, Tony. How's it going?

Hike Kickoff And Unique Format

Tony Cline 0:32

It's good. It's good. We were just talking a little bit about a text you received. We don't need to talk about that, but it put us both in a pretty good mood, I think. So yeah. Uh we just came back not too long ago from the Property Management Systems Conference. And I thought it would be fun to unpack that a little bit, kind of share some of our takeaways, just some insights, and just talk a little bit of industry dirt, maybe. Yeah, man. Let's do it. You lead out. All right. So it's a pretty unique conference. So the conference starts with a day where uh I lead a hike on the first day. So we start with it's a three-mile hike up through the um Red Rock Canyon, and we go do that, and that kind of starts and kicks off the conference, and that kind of gives you a chance to get to know other people. It's been a really fun hike. We've done that the last few years. Looking forward to doing it again. And then the the unique thing about this conference is it's not in a big giant conference room. I don't know how many breakout rooms there were, but there were probably 12, maybe. Uh I don't know, 250, 300 attendees, 12 breakout rooms. And so you were constantly going in and out and meeting different people. But the uh the unique thing about it is it wasn't on a big stage. There weren't people standing there talking at you. The so that's the upside. The downside was there were there were several people that I know were signed up for the conference that I wanted to connect with, and just because of the the format and the layout, I didn't get to connect with them. So so that was kind of the downside. But uh there were some great presenters, great speakers. What I like about it is you don't have to be a really good speaker to be chosen. I'm not saying that they weren't, but it's a lot more intimate, or it's just easy to be in a in a hotel suite where you're talking to five to twenty people and talking just about a specific topic. So we we got to see and interact with some people that you don't normally see on the big stages. So that was one of my takeaways was you got to see some insights from some people you wouldn't normally see.

Intimacy Benefits And Networking Gaps

Mark Brower 2:45

Absolutely. Um I agree with both um points you're making. The smaller, more intimate nature of the sessions and the abundance of scheduling options, you know, um each presenter presented multiple times. Um so that made it more accessible to get in. Um and also I I noticed feeling like I wanted a larger room to be able to move around in and help make it more likely that I would connect with all the people I really wanted to connect with. It really felt sort of siloed. You know, there was bowling night, of course, but I mean that was like hyperactive, like competition-based. Like you had to stick with your team and get that list done, the scavenger hunt, you know, bingo card or whatever. So I I was craving more of a unstructured, free-flowing, low, you know, um low structure format in a shared space where everybody could move around and talk. That's not provided. I think if they can provide that element, not just once, but two or three times during the week, that would really enhance the offering.

Bowling Night And Team Win

Tony Cline 4:04

Yeah, I agree. The the after hours, while it was fun, um, matter of fact, I want to show you how fun it was. You mentioned bowling, and uh, I don't know, uh those of you that are listening, you you can't see this, but I'm holding up this was a very hefty trophy that we won. We brought it back. We are the the property management systems conference champions for the bowling bingo a tournament. And uh yeah, so we brought this back. Mark, you and I were on a team, and we we were able to uh bring home the the champions trophy. So that was pretty on brand for us to be able to to walk away with that. It was a lot of fun, and you you had to have more creativity necessarily than straight bowling skills, but we were we were able to to pull that in as uh as the winning team. Super fun.

Mark Brower 4:58

Yeah. I uh I I sort of um probably broke protocol um when I got there. I I I arrived a day late and uh Paul P. Kinkowski was signing me in, and I I I got it, I got a preview of all the bowling teams on big sticky notes on the wall in his hotel room, and he started slating me on a team. And I said, No, no, I can't be on that team. I don't get along with that person. You need to put me on Tony Klein's team.

Tony Cline 5:29

Oh no, oh no, so now it's gonna look like we stack the team to to take home the trophy.

Mark Brower 5:34

But listen, if anybody actually is foolish enough to believe that putting me on a team stacks the team, then then they can draw their own conclusion. But no, it was really fun, it was great. Yeah.

Tony Cline 5:45

Well, what were some of the things that you saw? Uh we'll move off the bowling, even though uh I'll show you guys the trophy just one last time because you know anytime you you bring home a trophy, you gotta brag on it.

Mark Brower 5:54

It's so beautiful.

Systems vs Leadership Focus

Tony Cline 5:55

It's so heavy, it was so heavy in my my carry-on. I had to change around my carry-on uh to get it home because it was literally as heavy and fragile and all these things. So anyway, uh so talk a little bit about what you saw from takeaways from from the event. For like, was there anything that resonated with you, different topics that you saw that you thought this makes a lot of sense? Or was there anything where you saw maybe people chasing some squirrels?

Mark Brower 6:27

Um no, I thought it was uh all the topics every session I joined, um, I got something valuable from. Yeah, very productive.

unknown 6:38

Yeah.

Mark Brower 6:39

I mean, I you know how I am. Uh I like more content around leadership development and mindset. I think we're I think we're light on that stuff. Um, but but it is what it is. It's a systems conference, and the goal, the stated goal of the of the conference is to give people the opportunity to learn and live implement, like work on their systems during this conference. And I think it achieves that. I think it does. It's great.

Owner Work: 10, 100, 1000 Dollar Tasks

Tony Cline 7:12

Yeah, I think some of the things that I saw was there were multiple sessions on how to create a specific process. So there were people that were able to walk through those specific processes, get some feedback on how to do it. But I agree with you. This industry has become heavy on how to run a property management business as an operator, and there's less and less content around how to run a property management business as the owner, as the big picture thinker. And one of the things I know our listeners have heard me say this a few times now, but I'm really for 2026, I'm driving home the message that there's$10 an hour work,$100 an hour work, and$1,000 an hour work. And what I what I fear is that when people lean too heavy into being sucked in as the business owner, figuring out how to create a specific onboarding process or a specific tenant termination process or application process, it it sucks the owner back into doing that$10 an hour task because they shouldn't be the ones that are trying to decide what steps we should take. They should be the ones that set the rules of what we're trying to accomplish and then use our frontline team to say what steps should we be taking to adhere to or uphold the policies that we have in place and then get the team to help us build that out. So one of the things I worry about when you have conferences or sessions or NARPAM events where we do too much tactics, it pulls people out of that big picture strategic thinking and focusing on that thousand dollar an hour activity.

Mark Brower 8:59

100%. Well, tactical instruction is seductive because there's the immediate perceived payoff of productivity and and and forward momentum. It's the more abstract mindset work and leadership development that's more difficult to measure, I think. And sometimes feels too woo-woo, you know, for people to really latch on and say, like, oh wow, I I'm changing in the most it's harder to point to your leadership journey and say, look how much money that made me. It's a little easier to see a payoff evidence from the implementation of some tactical piece of operational advice.

Persistence, Strategy, And Course Corrections

Tony Cline 9:48

I would agree with that. I I also think though that that's where the money is at, is in the the creativity, the big picture thinking, the seeing where the company is going, setting that three-year vision and seeing how we're going to get there, keeping your head up, evaluating different tools. You know, when Jacob first joined our team, I think he had to get a little bit used to the fact that we would change directions quite a bit. And and the reason we do that is we're we're trying to create new things that haven't been created before. We're trying to do new things that we've not done before. And when you do that, you realize you're hitting your head against the wall. But if we just go around this way, there is no wall. And so we'll try something, we'll try it three or four times, we'll learn something by it, and then we will shift and do something in a different direction. And I think it takes a certain personality type to just know that success is more failure and determination and grit than it is actual success. Because you got to fail way more times when you're trying to succeed with something than then you're going to succeed. It's all those failures that teach you something. And so if you can reframe that and not frame it as, oh, I tried something, I failed, so I must not be good at that, and you reframe it as I tried something, I learned something, and now I'm gonna try it differently, and you learn again and try it differently, and eventually you you're able to make it through to the other side.

Mark Brower 11:18

Success is a persistence problem.

Protecting Founder Time And Delegation

Tony Cline 13:04

Yeah, I would agree. I also, though, you can be really persistent and walk 5,000 miles in the wrong direction, and you were very persistent. So you gotta have a little bit of that heads-up strategic direction, coaching, mentorship, bouncing it off of a good friend, or just being determined of this is where I want to go. But I think you can't just be a hundred percent leaned into, well, I showed up and I worked hard today, so I'll eventually be successful. I think you have to work hard in the right direction.

Mark Brower 13:41

Yeah. I think in back to your earlier point about getting sucked back into ten dollar an hour work if you're the owner, I think we really need to be careful about sort of jealously protecting our time as the founder. You'll never be more successful. You'll never make more money, let's just say this, than the average hourly rate of the tasks you are saying yes to. It almost seems as if there's a point along this continuum of building a business where it increasingly makes there's several points where it increasingly makes more sense to do less front lines and more high-level stuff, where it makes sense to do less direct building with your own time and more recruitment and empowerment of people. And for me, that has been that shift where I was doing everything, I was doing everything, then I was doing 90%, somebody else was doing 10%, and then and then is that shifted where operationally I'm doing almost nothing now in the company. And accordingly, I'm able to do way more because I have leaders and frontlines team people, team members doing the work. It's it's the gradual shift from being self-employed to business owner. And as it relates to systems conference, if you are under a million in revenue, certainly if you're under half a million in revenue, yeah, maybe that's where you should be plugging yourself in as the founder, the entrepreneur, and figuring out how to at least put a basic structure in place that will enable you to hire team members and get a little bit more productive. Eventually, to your point, Tony, you want to be sending your operation, your director of operations to that conference. You don't want to be going to that conference.

Tony Cline 15:54

Or at least going, but doing different things while your director of operations is being really intentional about how to build out the thing. Because there was a lot of high-level people there that if you were going as the business owner, you connect with those right people and have those right types of conversations. I still think it's a very worthwhile conference. But but you need to be protective of your time, like you'd said.

Who Should Attend Systems Conferences

Mark Brower 16:18

Here's a suggestion if if somehow this got back to to uh wolf would be uh not only to have you know a few more opportunities for those large room networking, and and they're gonna say, well, yeah, we have that's why we had the happy hour, and that's why we have the bowling. Like, okay, but actually, no, like like where everybody's there, almost like a vendor hall. I don't know, it might mess with their format. Uh the other thing I would suggest is that they show who's attending which sessions. So if I strategically want to get to to time with and to meet someone, it would be cool to see who's going to what. And you should be able to do that through the app.

Tony Cline 17:05

Yeah. Or at least allow you to follow people so you could connect. I will say their app is really good. I that's the best conference app that I've seen. Did they create that app themselves? I don't know. I I'd I'd be interested to see. I know they had a similar app last year. I think it's better this year. But yeah, allowing you to connect where if I'm gonna want to follow you, I could say I want to follow you, and then as long as you accept that, I'd be able to see what system or what sessions you registered for and vice versa. They need a stocking feature.

Mark Brower 17:36

Yeah. I want to go into stocking mode. I want to see where Tony Klein is. I I don't want it to be like serendipitous that I I walked into the same room with Tony. I want to know where he's gonna be, strategically place myself in his path.

Tony Cline 17:50

We did that a few times. Yeah, we did.

Mark Brower 17:53

It was good.

Event Improvements And App Ideas

Tony Cline 17:54

Uh you said something though I want to circle back to because you had mentioned like at what point do you need to be at a million in revenue, uh, half million in revenue. And in something that you said triggered, I don't remember what it was now, but I just held on to the thought. We all start in this business. Most of us start in this business managing a few properties ourselves, and then we hire somebody, and so we either hire somebody that's gonna be just like us. So now we're portfolio, they're gonna do all the same stuff I'm doing, and they're just gonna do it with their own properties, or we hire somebody and they become our assistant, and so essentially they start taking things off our plate. So now we're leaning into being departmental. But at some point, and I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, at what point in a property management business does the owner shift from being in the property management business to the people management business? Because there is a switch, and if you don't make that switch, you you will never grow past a certain certain level because you're constantly still dealing with managing those properties.

Shift To People Management For Growth

Product-Market Fit Then People Problems

Mark Brower 19:03

100%. And that's what leads to burnout eventually. It's the inability to sort of pull back up and out and look down on the business and say, what does it need? How am I the bottleneck? And how do I need how do I need to add capacity? It could be that you need to add better processes. That's what we kind of default to. Like, well, if I just automated everything. Well, yeah, but maybe not. Um you know, is it the people? Is it their training? Is it is it how we hire people? Is it you know, how quickly we fire people? Is it um is it uh, you know, investing in my leadership journey and going to the right conferences and being around the right people and listening to the right podcasts? There's so many pieces to it. That's what makes it such an interesting, fascinating, engaging game. It's like a real life board game that we're playing real time, you know. So the um the a very oversimplified answer to the question you're you're positing is is something I heard from um this YouTuber, CEO in a Bentley is his channel. And he said from zero to a million of revenue, you have a product market fit problem. From one million beyond, you have a people problem. You know, it's it sort of oversimplifies things. But I really think that, you know, if you have less than half a million of revenue, you know, certainly certainly if you have less than half a million of revenue, you've got to figure out your product market fit. You gotta figure out who you are, what you do. And by the way, I see people making this mistake all the time with small property management companies. Don't think it's a good idea to pretend to be bigger than you are. Like, like actually, it's a flex that you're a small property manager and that you are a unique individual that can deliver service in a way no one else can. And the level of availability and commitment and responsiveness to your brand when you're small blows away everybody else. I see way too many property managers putting up a website pretending to be a larger company than they are because they think they can borrow credibility from that faux persona. I think it's a massive miss. Anyway, that's a little sidebar. But but product market fit, figure out who you are, how you solve this problem better than anybody else, how you can articulate that well. And then uh, you know, if you if you can't if you can't start adding eight to ten doors a month, you don't have good product market fit yet. But once you are adding eight to ten doors a month, now you know that you can start making plans to hire people. And when you hire people, do not underpay for crappy assistance that are just gonna bog you down. As soon as you possibly can, hire someone who thinks and acts like a leader who can actually take things off of your plate. And that's your fastest path to accelerating out past your first million in revenue.

Rethinking “10 Doors A Month” Growth

Tony Cline 22:07

So there's two things that you mentioned I want to touch on. So the first one is, and I'll go in the reverse order, but the first one is you mentioned growing at eight to ten doors. And I I hear this number thrown around all the time. You know, I just want to grow 10 doors a month. Well, if you think about growing 10 doors a month, you think, well, it's only 10 doors. But for somebody that's at 100 doors, 10 doors, that's a that's a massive growth in in a month. And not only are you trying to grow 10 doors, but you're not gonna close every door that you talk to that is a good fit. They're just some people are gonna go in a different direction, some aren't gonna like your pricing structure. So when you're looking at growing, you're not looking to grow 10 doors. What you're looking at at is if I'm gonna grow 10 doors, based on my closing ratio, which everybody thinks our closing ratio is higher than it is until they start tracking it, because in their mind they start eliminating everything that wasn't a valid lead. And then they're like, Well, I have a I close 100% of the of the clients that I want to close, or I close 100% of the doors that I close. It's like, yeah, but the 100% of the doors you closed were only, you know, 25% of the overall opportunities. And out of those overall opportunities, only, you know, 50% of the total leads you got were an actual opportunity. Meaning, some people were calling you for short term management. You don't do short term management. Some people are calling you to manage the property just outside of the boundaries of where you work, and that's not a valid lead. So I think when you start breaking down growth, I think it's actually more sustainable, depending on where you are in your uh in your journey and how big your company is, to look at the realistically how many leads can I generate versus how many doors can I add? Because the adding doors is the end result, not the uh now you got me thrown off here.

Mark Brower 24:13

What are you saying?

Tony Cline 24:14

It's adding adding doors is the net result, not adding doors is the net result, but people focus on how many doors can I add. What we really need to focus on is how many sales qualified leads can I generate, and those are the type of people that I want to focus on. They meet the criteria, they meet my target client. Truth bombs, truth bombs like Tony client generate. But not every lead you generate from your marketing and your business development is going to be a sales qualified lead, meaning they fit your buy box, the people that you would work with. And so it's not you're trying to close 10 doors, it's I'm trying to generate 50 or 60 leads. And through the filtering of some of the leads aren't people you would work with, and then the ones that you would work with, some of them are gonna go in a different direction. So I think if you're really looking at growing 10 doors, you have to expand to look at what am I gonna do to generate enough leads to close those doors? Because your your closing ratio is not as good as you think it is.

Mark Brower 25:12

100%.

Lead Quality, SQLs, And Close Rates

Tony Cline 25:14

Okay. So that was the first thing. Then the second thing you touched on was the small companies trying to look bigger. And I I I can argue on either side. So I work with companies as a as a coach or consultant. I work with companies that are that are 100, 150 doors, kind of on that's on the smaller side that I work with. And then I work with companies that are two and three thousand doors. And the the difference is you tell me which one I'm arguing against, which one I'm up against in the marketplace, and I can give you what you need to say or how to position yourself. So, you know, if I'm going up against smaller doors, smaller companies with fewer doors, then I can leverage and have the messaging around I'm big, these are all the economies of scale, these are all the people I can bring in. But if I am one of the smaller companies, I can flip that coin and argue the opposite side of it. And so it's not you need to pretend to be somebody else, it's you need to really lean into who you actually are and leverage that. Find out what makes unique, you unique, and find out why people are attracted to that particular type of management style, and then create all your marketing and your messaging and your systems to be able to support that type of individual. Love it. It's like when you when you build it, they will come. Yep. I would add one more thing when you build it and you market it like crazy, and you tell everybody you know that that's what you built, then they will come.

Small vs Big: Use Your True Advantage

Mark Brower 26:53

And it's hard to tell everybody what you've built and who you are if you're not clear about it. And I think the honest reality is it just doesn't cut it to say the same thing everybody else says, you know. Um there's a there's a bunch of stuff that sounds really cool that actually everybody says. You know, we rent your property out fast, we find quality residents, we guarantee them, you know, we handle evictions better than anybody. You know, we treat your property like we own it, like all this BS that everybody says.

Tony Cline 27:31

You forgot transparent. We're we're transparent in the way that we operate. Uh, we operate with high integrity, like all the buzzwords that you know that are irrelevant that everybody says. That's table stakes.

Mark Brower 27:45

Those are that that's don't okay. So you just you I think you hit the nail on the head. Don't don't mistakenly don't mistakenly uh misunderstand your you know table stakes for your differentiation, your um your unique value proposition. It's not the case.

Tony Cline 28:08

From the general public, when they're looking at property managers, we're all the same to them. We're all the same until we're different. And if we're all the same, then why would I pay more for something if I can get it for cheaper somewhere else?

Mark Brower 28:28

100%.

Differentiation Beyond Table Stakes

Tony Cline 28:28

And and so our job as the entrepreneur is to help our team understand and create what makes us different. And when you can leverage that, now you can say, well, this is what makes us different to these people. And that's why really drilling in that target client profile of who I want to work with is so important. You know, when we're first getting started, of course, we want to eat so everything looks like food. So if somebody's willing to take a chance on us to manage their property, we're gonna we're gonna manage our property. And we're gonna be pulled in 10 different directions because we've got 10 different sets of standards that we're doing for different people. But as you start to grow, you realize that's not scalable. It's not good for your mental health, it's not good for your team, it's not good for churn and burnout. And so you start to look at who is the perfect person that I want to work with? What are their needs? Where do they live? Do they live local? Do they live out of state? Like, what can I do that will offer something unique to that person? And then that's all I'm gonna preach and promote. I'm not gonna preach that I'm working with investors if I don't really like to work with investors. I'm not gonna preach that I'm going to go drive by your property every six months if that's not what we makes us unique. Now, if I'm gonna say that's what makes us unique, then I need to build something out around that versus just having it as a bullet point on a website.

Mark Brower 29:58

100%. I had um someone on my team recently secret shop multiple local vent uh competitors, and uh I was delighted to find out they were all saying the same thing. And uh and we we say something very differently. We say something very different about who we are and what we do. Nobody else pitches property management services like we do. It's not a small thing to figure out what that is and articulate it very clearly.

Tony Cline 30:40

All right, I think I think that's a good place to to uh wrap up this episode. So um if you're looking to do some work on figuring out what makes you unique and what makes you uh different in the marketplace, and you want to have somebody help you with that, obviously you can reach out and uh I'm happy to give you some pointers and point you in the right direction. But uh, Mark, let's get them out of this aid station. This was a quick one, but let's get him out of here.

Mark Brower 31:11

You got this hit that trail for the next five to seven miles. And what I want you to think about as you're running is what makes me so different and so unique that people should pay more for my service. And uh not only that, tell yourself over and over that you're worth more and really believe it. And then you'll start uh formulating that picture that you can then deliver with integrity where people will resonate with it.

Tony Cline 31:48

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