How To Scale From 0 to 1,000 Doors - with Casey Howe

We trace Casey Howe’s climb from zero to nearly a thousand doors, the painful but smart decision to cut 325 low-margin units, and the systems that let him step into a true visionary role. We share concrete tactics on ideal clients, empowered teams, in-house maintenance, and profit that sticks.

• niche focus on South Shore, South Coast, Cape Cod
• early growth through sales listening, not scripts
• hiring ahead of need and cash flow strain
• generalists first, then align roles to strengths
• outcome ownership over rigid checklists
• pruning low-revenue, high-cost clients
• target client profile as the bullseye for profit
• SFR vs multifamily profit and efficiency trade-offs
• EOS-like cadence, KPIs, accountability chart
• $1,000/hour work and founder extraction
• guardrails on trust funds, fair housing, lead paint
• oops fund to empower decisions and speed recovery
• vertical integration and rent control risk
• in-house maintenance economics and utilization
• growth math with mid-sized investor portfolios

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

Tony Cline 0:00

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview the 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. Today I have Casey Howe with Hauser Property Management. Casey, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Thanks, Tony. Good to be here.

Casey’s Background And Market Niche

Tony Cline 0:30

Yeah, man. It's exciting to have you on. I've been following your journey for a while now, and it's exciting to have somebody like you that has experienced big growth and grown to a large size in what I would say a relatively short period of time. I know when you're in the in the mix in the battle, it probably doesn't feel like that short of a time. But uh maybe let's just start out uh talking a little bit about how you got into the business, where we got to, where we're at now, door size, where you operate, just a little bit of the overall infrastructure of the business. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I love following what you're doing, and uh uh it's exciting for me to when you emailed me about this show, I was excited to jump on it. I have we've been a business about seven years, housing property management. We are based in uh sort of the southeastern part of Massachusetts. We don't do Boston, but we do what's called the South Shore, South Coast, and then Cape Cod. And that's been a really niche market for us, a really good niche market for us. I can elaborate more on that, but been a business seven years. You know, I I don't come from the space, I come from SaaS and software sales, um, really anything from direct sales to leading large uh you know, 300-person sales and customer success teams in the end. And I think that uh gave me unique uh unique perspective coming in, or different perspective coming in. And it's uh, you know, when we s when I started the business, I I did I did a little bit of an analysis just kind of looking around at at um competitors and such. And there's some great competitors out there, so it's not like they're all terrible, but there's a bunch that aren't. And and seven or eight years ago, that meant things like not answering the phone or just really outdated systems, or just not you know, good presence online and things like that. And I thought to myself, geez, I I think I think we can improve on that. And um I think we've done a good job at at doing that. We learned a lot of lessons this past year has been particularly uh a inflection point for us, I think. Uh, but it we've done a lot of things well too and and learned a lot of good lessons. And yeah, well I'm excited for 2026.

From Zero Doors To Early Growth

Tony Cline 2:40

So you you came from software uh or the software industry, and I I have a similar background. Mine goes way back. I uh mine was from like 92 to 2000, so uh you know everything was different. We were still operating in Windows 3.1 or DOS, Windows 95 was the big thing at one point. Uh but but a lot of the things that you learn even back then when you're doing software sales and document data management implementation, all of that, it still applies. And I'm curious as you started your company, because you started with zero doors, correct? Yep. Yeah, so you start at zero, day one, and but you still have that that thinking about running systems, and you you ran a big team of 300 people, but you start on day one, you've got zero systems, you've got zero people, zero doors. Take us through what that journey looked like from that zero to 200 in the early days.

Hiring Mistakes And Cash Flow Lessons

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting in software and status, you know, the difference I think in starting a company and working for a larger company or a company that's established is that you know, I was not as exposed to the operation side. I mean, I I didn't like I couldn't put myself in a day of, you know, like a software engineer or or a coder. I just never got that close to it. And so what I was very involved in was talking with clients, understanding what their needs were. You know, software sales is very, it's a solution sale. It's not smile and dial, it's really understanding what the marketing director at IBM want to do over the next 10 years and how does that fit into what we offer? And so I, you know, what I brought into the space, I think, is uh an ability to like sell by listening to clients and then tailor solutions around like what clients are looking for. I think what I sort of didn't have coming in, and I really had to lean pretty heavily on the the the eco, the you know, the industry and the ecosystem and other people like you, and you know, the the names that you see out there is I didn't have a good sense uh on the operation side of of what we had to do or how how to do it, and how to do it profitably, most importantly. I think I I learned pretty quick what we had to do and how to do it. I think what um you know, some of the lessons we learned along the way are how to do it profitably. Um, and so uh it, you know, that that's been my journey. And then my other, you know, my other strength, Tony, was the I think if you had to nail down one strength I had, it was not like sales, it was building teams. And so even though I work for these large companies, my specialty was sort of taking either a new product or a startup company or a new division within a company and starting from scratch and building that from zero, you know, to up to 300 at one point. And you do that through like recruiting and working really well with people and development and stuff like that. And I think that skill set's something I've brought into housing property management. And, you know, we've got a great team. There's no question about it.

Tony Cline 5:37

I want to lean into that a little bit because there are a lot of people that get into this industry, they start out by themselves, they grow to a point where they just can't handle the the company, they don't have the capacity to handle the workload anymore. So they they say, Well, I need to hire somebody. So I hire an assistant or I hire somebody that's just like me. So they either start going down the departmental route or they start going down the portfolio route. But a lot of people don't have that skill set to create a good, strong team. And so they wind up creating, I am the genius with a bunch of assistants. Yeah. And everything has to run through them. And we at some point, as you grow, and if you're at 100 doors, it's probably not as important that you get this dialed in perfectly. But as you grow beyond that, you really switch from being, I am a property manager to I am a people manager that manage properties. And then I'm a vision manager when I start to go beyond just having that, you know, first layer of team. So, how did you, you say that's a strength of yours. Share with the audience how that impacted your growth and how you put the team together and like how do you build a big, or not a big, but how do you build a good team that will support what you're trying to achieve?

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Yeah, so it's good. I mean, it's it's a good discussion point, right? I mean, I think um, you know, my natural inclination was, you know, there's different ways in which you can, there's different tools we have at our disposal to scale our business, right? Either are there is technology, right? So you can buy technology or launch technology, and that can help you manage more doors for you know with with less resources. There's people, there's process, right? Making it, which really is just making our people more efficient. I mean, there's different ways that you can do it. My sort of natural instinct was just to throw people at it. And that comes probably from my history in software sales, which was, you know, I'm the leader of a sales team and I just want more sales heads so we can sell more. And and it didn't, I, you know, I wasn't the chief financial officer. I didn't care what we were spending, I just wanted to sell more. And so so I was a little bit sort of um tunnel-visioned, I think, early on. I think I think you could make an argument that we potentially hired ahead of where we needed to. And I think there's two things, I think there's a couple things that can problems that can create. One is the immediate problem of cash flow. If you're hiring ahead of where you should be, that's an immediate problem. But the second thing is when you throw people at a problem, you are not forced to solve the problems either through process or technology or other means. And so you're you're sort of exacerbating the problem of creating an inefficient company. And I think we did both of those things candidly. Um, and you know, the the good thing is that we've sort of grew into the in I think in the past year, we've really grown into the employee count that we have through being smarter operationally. And the lucky side of that is we've had very little, we've had like no employee turnover. So we have like we're really relatively tenured staff for only being in business seven years.

Generalists, Strengths, And Org Flexibility

Tony Cline 8:42

And so it ended up working out for us. But we were talking about building building a team, and you you mentioned one of your strengths was building the team. And I think a lot of companies, when they get to this point where as the entrepreneur that starts the business needs more help, they they don't know how to release managing properties and going into managing people. And what we've seen through our coaching practice is if you don't have a strong vision of where the company is going and how they fit in and where they contribute, then they're just coming in punching the clock to get a check. Yeah. And that you can't build a team of people that are just punching a clock and getting a check. They have to buy into something bigger. They have to know where they fit into the organization, where their role starts and stops. We give them the equipment they need to be be properly equipped to go into battle. And so, as you mentioned, building a team, I just wanted to dig into are there any nuggets that we could share with the audience for people who are trying to build a team and maybe just don't have that skill set?

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, all right, cool. So absolutely. So, you know, I think the the tough thing initially, right, is when you know, I'm just going back to my initial, my first hire. It's a remote staff member. Uh, she's in the Philippines, she's still with the company. She's been here, she just celebrated seven years. Actually, just visited them in the Philippines, by the way. Beautiful country. I highly recommend um going there. I have two staff members there. Anyways, uh, and you know, the difficulty is that hiring at that stage is you're not, you can't go out and like hire this like accounting skill set or a skill set that's like really great at customer uh, you know, client satisfaction, but maybe not good at details. You kind of have to hire, all right? We I hired a generalist um because they have to do a lot of different things. They're answering the phones that she was coordinating maintenance at the time, she was paying invoices at the time. And so I think that's the you know, the the challenge. It's kind of a challenge, but it's also a benefit of that is, you know, what we would bring people in and we'd sort of see what they gravitated towards, because usually people's interests align with what they're good at. I found 80% of the time, probably. And so, you know, we'd bring on a generalist, we'd sort of train them up on everything and say, you know what, you're really good at this maintenance thing. You know, I don't know if this is cultural or what, but our gym, our um Jamaican employees are just they're so nice. They're just, I think it's they're just it's such, they're so great with maintenance. I mean, you could have your your house could be on fire and uh and all these things. And if you talked with Jordine on my team, like you'd be fine with it. Like it'd be just fine. And she's so fantastic. And um, you know, so so and she just gravitated towards that. She started off paying invoices and things like that. And so I think you, I think being a little bit flexible in like where you put people based on the skill sets that you see them gravitate into and based on what you see their strengths, I think was something that worked really well for us. And and being nimble with your org chart, you know, I know there's this like really sort of industry like desire to like really have this perfect org chart, and everyone's gotta, you know, do the org chart and then figure out who fits where. And I get that, I totally get it. You you know, people need to know what they own and the result and what they're responsible for. But I also think that can be balanced on the spectrum with when you bring people on board, you know, you can start to see what their strengths are and and and sort of leverage them and and and filter people into the areas that they'll be most successful. And we've had very little employee turnover, we've got a great team, and a big part of that is because we we try to keep people where they're productive and happy.

Team Structure And Pruning Unprofitable Doors

Tony Cline 12:10

Okay, so let's let's switch topics a little bit. We're gonna talk uh and we're switching from talking about growing the team to what did the team actually accomplish? So we went from seven years ago now, starting at zero, new industry, and where have we gotten to now? What's tell me a little bit about the organization, size of the company, doors, focus, size of the team.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Yep, yeah, for sure. So we've got 15 um full-time employees. When I say full-time, that includes our remote staff. I don't really differentiate. Um, you know, they're they're full-time employees too. Uh that includes uh uh five, let's see no, uh three maintenance technicians, three maintenance coordinators, and uh two leasing people, two client success managers. That's a title here. Um it overlaps a little bit with property manager, but they're they're very focused on ensuring the clients are successful. And then I have a uh director of operations I've just promoted to a VP of operations. So uh so that's sort of like what what our our company looks like. We went from zero to just under a thousand doors, and then last year we had a little bit of a hiccup slash in inspect uh and uh inflection point, right? So we we actually semi-purposefully parted ways with with two larger clients. We we knew we wanted to. Um it turned out they wanted to a little sooner than we were ready for, but we we it was a good thing to happen. Uh there were two clients that made up about 325 of our doors or something like that. And they were they were both low revenue per door and high cost per door. It's hard to ascertain that for specifically, but it was a lot of work for both of those clients per on a per door basis. And so we we know they're low profit. And so um, you know, that's a big hit from a cash flow perspective at one time, but it was a you know, we knew we wanted to do it, and and so we've done a little bit of a of a rebuilding since then. Um, and it was it was sort of a really good lesson to learn. Um, and I can get into that a little bit if if if and when you're ready.

Tony Cline 14:19

Yeah, I think let's just keep going. Let's keep going with it.

Balancing Client Focus With Profitability

Target Client Profile And Bullseye Strategy

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah, so it's interesting. You know, when I came into this, Tony, I I came in with this, and I'll be honest, I came in with a little bit of a chip in my shoulder just because before I was in the industry, I did a little bit of research locally, and I just wasn't impressed with what I saw. You know, like I said, people weren't answering the phones. It seemed like technology was outdated, customer service wasn't really good. And then I went on to some of the boards and stuff, and I have some stats to share with you. I went on to some of the Facebook groups and things like that. It seemed all anyone, either people weren't paying attention to anything, or they were only focused on like internal things. What technology am I using? Should I get a virtual assistant? Should I do this? Every conversation it seemed like within the management space was really internally focused, right? So I came in with this chip on my shoulder, which which served me well in some cases, but it hurt us too, which was it was almost like arrogance to an extent where I'm like, I don't feel like any of these guys know what they're doing. And and so it because no one's listening to their clients and no one's selling very effectively. They're all just sort of focused on like profit per door and stuff like that. And so I came in and I was really just focused on growth, but it turns out I should have listened to some of my peers that are smart about you know, operations and numbers and things like that, because I grew a business that turned out to be very slim on margins and not as efficient as we could be. And so I think the lesson it took me five or six years to learn was like, well, I probably should take some of those things that like Profit Coach is talking about and you're talking about, and the you know, the profit per door and uh fee maximization, there's all these things. I I need to do some of that stuff because we have to build a business that's profitable. And so, you know, if if on one end of the spectrum you had where I was operating, which was like sell, sell, sell, sell, and like keep clients happy, happy, happy, and the other end of the spectrum is like, let's have a hundred doors that generate$500 per door per month. Um, I I've I've migrated more, I think, towards the middle than I was, but that was a hard lesson to learn. But you know, the interesting thing, when I went out and looked at it, so I actually had Claude, AI, do this right before our call because I was curious. And and and I'm it turns out I'm right. So the property management space, 75 to 80 percent of all posts, according to Claude, in groups like Facebook and things like that, are internal focused, things like profit, per door, efficiency, how do we use AI in my company? And only 20 to 25% of things are external focused, like how do we client satisfaction response times, things that make clients happy. If you look at other high growth industry, healthcare is roughly 50-50, SaaS is roughly 50-50, and fintech is actually reversed. FinTech is 70% customer experience, clients, how do we keep them, how do we sell them, how do we make them happy? 30%, how do we make our business profitable or run more efficiently? And so I realize this is a bit paracadoxical, my my statement, but I came in way too focused on clients and not enough focused on profitability. That's because I think the industry is way too focused on ourselves, it's very insular and not focused on our clients enough. Um, what I've learned is I need to focus more on that, but I stand by my assertion that the industry needs to focus more on client success and listening to our clients and things like that. And so uh, you know, where that intersects, Tony, I think it there's it's very clear to me now. It's it's where that intersects is the ideal customer profile. If and you and I talked a lot about this, and to your credit, and I love the way I think you're the one that said you look at it like a bullseye, where it's you've got your bullseye. That's your thought. So I don't, I'll give you credit. You and I had that conversation eight, eight or nine months ago, and it really resonated me where it's like, well, if if you're really going after your bullseye client, which for us, by the way, is an investor with between either 20 to 50 units or a 20 to 50 unit building. That's ideal. That's it's if if we're going after that and we get some stuff on the side, we know that's gonna be really profitable business. We know for us, based on our operating model, we know we're gonna make them very happy and they're gonna, we're gonna retain them. And sort of, so all those other metrics that we have should flow downhill from focusing on that ideal customer profile. So I do think that the ideal customer profile is a way in which managers can singularly focus on like one big idea that nicely ties in profitability with creating a really great client experience.

Tony Cline 20:26

Okay, I want to I want to comment on that just a little bit. Uh appreciate you giving me credit for the ideal bullseye, ideal customer profile. But every time I hear ideal client profile or ICP, it reminds me of Insane Clown Posse. And it's like, that's not a part of our business. But um, I actually rephrase that and it's intentional because I don't want it to be our ideal client. For me, that's our target client profile. That's the target, the center of the bullseye. I want our whole company always focusing on being very selective on who we attract, but also what we build. And so I just sort of uh I won't say I coined the term, but I I am very intentional about using that because I think it makes a difference in the language that we use with our clients and with our internal team. And of course, I'm not telling our clients that they're our target client, but I am telling our internal team that that's what we target. And everything we do is built around that particular profile or of that individual, that property type, that income type. And so all of that goes into that bullseye.

Profit Per Door Nuance: SFR Vs Multifamily

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Tony, I would go, I think you're absolutely right. I'd go one step further. I do tell our clients, like if I'm on a sales call that they're our ideal customer profile. And and the re I don't say those words, but I say, I say, you know, this is very much a two-way conversation. I'm just ad-loving, but you know, this is a two-way conversation. You know, it's it's great to speak with an investor who is you know investment-minded, they're willing to invest in their property, they value, they understand that keeping tenants happy is is good for you too, and those two things aren't mutually exclusive. It's refreshing to speak with you. This is a two-way interview. I I can tell you, we would very much enjoy working with you, and I I think we do a great job for you. That resonates with them. They like that. You know what I mean? It's yeah.

Tony Cline 22:22

Yeah, I love it. Okay, so so we focus on our our target client profile. We figure out who that is, we start communicating that internally and externally, and then you you leverage that. You went from zero doors to 200 doors to now you're you were up over a thousand or around a thousand, now you're back a little bit, but you're more focused on 750 now, but more profitable than we were. Yeah. I think this is one of the challenges that I when I'm working with clients. Uh well, you mentioned something earlier about the the hundred door and a thousand door. And I want to just comment on this. I get to see inside a lot of different businesses, and we get to look at the financials and see where the profit's coming from. And there absolutely are companies out there that are operating at a hundred doors that are more profitable than companies that are operating at a thousand doors. And it comes down to your staffing, your pricing model, the type of investors you're bringing on. And I know accidental landlords get kind of a bad rap because they don't know what they're doing. They're making a lot of decisions emotionally. And I'm not saying that there's one client base that's better than another. It's find what works for you that you enjoy working with. But oftentimes people will say, I want to chase the investors. I want to go after the people that have the 30 to 50 units or 200. Units or whatever it is, but your profit per door goes way down in general when you're bringing on, if you go after an apartment building, if you have, let's just say we're bringing on 10 units, if we brought on 10 single family homes, the rent is typically higher, and you're typically able to get a higher percentage or higher management fee. And if you go after a multifamily unit or building, typically you're gonna have lower rents and they've negotiated a lower management fee. So I'm not saying that one is right or the other, but they are different and we have to look at it differently to see where that profit's gonna come from. We have to build our income and revenue streams differently for each one of those models in order to not maximize the profit. I'm not, I'm not a person that says we need to squeeze a nickel out of somebody just because we can, but I am a true believer in we need to maximize the value we deliver and then be appropriately compensated for that value. Yeah, sorry.

Operational Efficiencies In Multifamily

Extracting The Founder And Operating System

SPEAKER_02 24:43

No, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more with you. You know, I I think we I have naturally our company has naturally gravitated towards the investor, not institutional stuff, but an investor. Uh and I think that's it's based on two things. One is just sort of the market that I'm in. There's a lot of the they call them triple deckers. They're like six unit, the three-floor six unit buildings. And there um there's a lot of those. And so it's it's there's a market for there, there's a there's a gap in the market of, you know, there are companies out there that are national that will that will manage 300 unit buildings in Boston. And there are companies out there that and and agents out there that will manage like single family homes and duplexes. But like, in my estimation, when we started, there wasn't a lot of great companies out there that were managing like 20-unit portfolios or six unit buildings and things like that. So part of it's just we naturally fell there because that's what the leads we were getting. But what I've you know learned over time is I think where we add a lot of value is uh like we love having conversations with a 20 to 50 unit owner about like looking at their PL and talking with them about how we can improve their net operating income. Like that's the level of conversation that I like to have. And there's not as much competition, I don't think, to in other companies that are having that conversation and um and clients like it, and we can make them very happy by doing that. And so you're right, I think on a per door um profitability uh it it's gonna be well, I should say per door revenue is gonna be lower. I don't know, you know, our per door profitability isn't necessarily lower because where you might see lower percentages and things like that, there's also, you know, it's easier to manage one owner with 20 units than 20 owners with one unit. And so on the client success side of the house, I think our costs are lower. But yeah, our you know, our profit is pro obviously there's that other piece, which is lower percentages and lower rents and things like that.

Tony Cline 26:46

And that's why I think after you identify that target client profile, then you go through the income and revenue streams and figure out where where can you maximize your your income for that type of client, but also where can you reduce your expenses? And it all ties together. And so it's it's the whole picture.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Yeah, it is. And the other, but the other nice thing operationally about let's call it a 50 unit building. And by the way, most of our stuff is these six-unit buildings. But yeah, you know, let's let's you know, operationally with a 50-unit building, it takes a long time to go to 50 different single-family homes and do an inspection, right? It doesn't take a lot of time to go out there for an afternoon and knock out 20 inspections out of, you know, so so there are some there are some operational efficiencies that come with uh multifamily too that do not exist with single family, which and so we lean into those where we can.

Tony Cline 27:44

On the podcast, I talk a lot about the fact that I'm in the entrepreneur extraction business. So my job is to help extract the business owner from the business they built that now owns them, and they've created a business that competes with the lifestyle that they want to live as opposed to supporting it. And how do we get that back into alignment? And as you've grown, what have you done to take yourself off the front lines to be able to run the team? How are you running your team? Are you guys focused on KPIs? Are you running by uh an EOS or EOS-ish type framework? Just how are you able to manage the team where you started with you being the one person to now you have a team of people that are delivering the value and holding upholding your standards that you've set?

Visionary Shift And High-Value Work

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Yeah, uh so it's great. So I wouldn't say we're sort of EOS-ish. I just call it the houser operating platform. It's not we're not gonna like market that or anything, but it's it's not exactly EOS. There's some stuff in there we cut out and some other things that we added. But it's we do have an we do operate with a system. We you know, we document our processes, we have KPIs that we look at weekly and monthly. Uh, we have an accountability chart. I mean, we it's probably 80% of EOS that we've done. And I think it's great. Uh it's you know, the transition that we're going through now, Tony, is I have operated with sort of a head of client success and a head of operations, and then I had sort of finance roll up into me directly. We are transitioning this year into a full uh what you know you'd look at as an EOS um org chart, which is you know, the the I'm transitioning into like this visionary, and yeah, I um promoted my director of ops to VP of ops. And he's really everything is now rolling up to him. And I think I think we'll both be better because of that, because everything, you know, he'll have oversight into everything, but it also provides a great opportunity for me to go out and and do some some new things. And so what do I mean by that? Well, you know, the biggest things I think we've done to scale the team are are an account. The accountability chart is really big. Who who does what and who owns what, and how do we tie that back to a number? So I'm a big believer, like if you asked me to prioritize people or process, you know, I would if you have to pick one, I'd be 51% people and 49% process. All right, I'm not saying it's 99 and 1%, but it's I I I think that by having the right people in place and providing and having them understand they own a result, naturally you develop good processes as a company because of that. And and that we could argue that point all day long, but one way or the other, I could see both sides. Um, and so we've done a good job, I think, of giving people ownership of of results and clarity in what their roles are. And what I'm really excited to be doing now is I'm working through with my VP of operations. This is new for us, and we're trying to figure out how this whole, you know, how are we gonna sort of orient this thing going forward? But for the first time in seven years since I started eight years since I started the company, in like when I did my annual review in the first week of January, I realized for the first time, like I I could do nothing this year. I could work not at all this year, and we would minus the epsilon attrition, we would the business would function fine. It would just stay where it was and potentially grow a little bit. And so that's a really good position to be in because that means I can take literally my 40 hours a week or whatever it is and put those towards something that I think are gonna grow the business outside of just running the business. Literally all of my time, maybe an hour a week, I'm needed in the business. And so, you know, where that time is gonna be going is doing, you know, I want to really get involved with um understanding, you know, really sort of on the sales and marketing side and branding, and you know, becoming more of a uh persona and and thought leader within multifamily management in in New England, um, not for managers, but for landlords, helping them understand what best practices are and things like that.

People Vs Process And Outcome Ownership

Tony Cline 31:55

Uh I love that that's what you're looking for for this year. Uh one of my themes for 2026 is I've been really driving home. I probably said it on every podcast so far that we've released for for 2026, but you know, there's there's$10 an hour work, there's$100 an hour work, and there's$1,000 an hour work. And and I see a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck doing the$10 an hour work. And if you did that for eight hours a day, you're providing$80 worth of value to the company. And even if you said, okay, I'm not gonna do, I'm not gonna be typing up a lease and sending out a lease or dropping off a lockbox, I'm gonna now start doing the business development stuff or that equal level of opportunity. Well, the most I could do is$800 worth of value in an eight-hour day. But if you pull yourself out of that and you start doing the things that you're talking about, setting the vision of the company, becoming a thought leader in the space, becoming an authority in the space, keeping your head up and looking at what opportunities are coming down the line in the next year, two years, looking at new technology that's coming our way, that's the$1,000 an hour activity. And you can do that two or three hours a day, and you're providing two or three thousand dollars worth of value to the company. And people have a hard time understanding that if I did that for two or three hours and then I went and did whatever else to unplug to let my brain refresh, that is way more valuable to your company than you staying in the weeds and typing up leases and doing security deposit dispositions and that kind of thing, in you know, doing that$10 an hour activity.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

100%. 100%. There's a there's a Harvard Business uh review article I read in like those top 10 books you pick up at the airport, and it was titled something like Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time. And that was a really big um realization for me this year, which is if you're doing a hundred things in a day and then you've got like this really important call late in the day, like it's not gonna be effective, but you can actually be a better leader. Maybe you go for a run in the morning and then you know, read a little bit of a book about how to build a better company, and then you do like some really important call with your largest client or something, you're gonna be in like a really good place with that client. You're gonna probably pick up some things that you can do better for that client that you might not have been into if your brain was all over the place. So the two aren't mutually exclusive. I think you can sort of um do fewer things, but make the impact more meaningful at the same time. The other thing I'd say is it's playing off your first thought, which it's really interesting to me. Um, I think people that have a propensity to not elevate and delegate are, we all have this suspicion that we're better at things than we actually are, and that other people cannot be as good at things as we are. Like it's that that's an error, I think, in all of us. It's because it's scary to say, like, how am I gonna get a how am I gonna train this business development rep to be good at sales? Like I'm really good at sales. Well, I'm not as good at sales as I think I am, and he could probably be better than I I think he would be, right? So that's that's this thing. I think once you can get over that, you realize there's these opportunities where it's like, oh, wait a minute. Maybe I'm not the most patient person with clients. You know what I mean? There's there probably is someone that can do that better than me. Um, so it's hard to get over, but you need to.

Tony Cline 35:12

Yeah. You when you were talking about the the debate of people versus process or systems, you know, I I know companies that operated up to 300 doors with zero documented processes. They had their policies of what we do, why we do it. And and I think a lot of times when I if if I were a business owner and I was and I thought I know better than anybody else I could possibly bring into the team, then I create that structure of I'm the genius with a bunch of assistants. So I'm gonna create a bunch of checklists and I'm gonna create a bunch of box checkers on my team. They they check the box, they go to the next box, and you either create box checkers or you create intellectual problem solvers. Yep. And so you sometimes when we get so structured in this, we do this step and this step, and we give them 47 steps. If they get halfway through it and and it doesn't flow directly to the next box, they don't know what to do. We've created uh we've we disempowered. I don't know if that's the word. Yeah, I know. We've weakened their their ability to problem solve and to go around. And instead of saying, this is the outcome we're trying to achieve, use your brain and be smart and use the intelligence that you came on board with to solve those. We we create this box checker mentality where now I am creating a system where I have to stay involved because when things don't go just like it's supposed to, I have to be around, answer questions, put out fires, and beat my chest saying, look how important I am.

Empowerment, Turnover, And Engagement

SPEAKER_02 36:43

I couldn't agree more. And Tony, one of our core values is iterate and improve. It's it's uh it's probably the one I mentioned the most. And I think if you're sort of top-downing process, even with feedback, you're hindering an ability to iterate and improve on processes. And so an example of that is you know, we use Monday.com, we like Monday.com for for a lot of our processes. My renewal reps are responsible for renewing leases, obviously. They're not, it's not all they do, but one of the things they do is renewals. And and one of them just started using the technology within App Folio, which we switched to this year, the Realm X or whatever. And like they realize there's like a way more efficient way to reach out to all of our people that are up for renewals by just leveraging this new solution in App Folio. If we had this like documented process, it's like you have to do Monday and then do this and then do that. You know, they may not have realized that. And that's just one example. I mean, there's a balance here, right? You you can't have everyone kind of off doing their own thing, or you won't be able to pull good reports or things like that. But like you certainly, I think, want people to feel like, all right, if I own the result, how can I make this that people want the same thing we want. They want to do the most work in the least amount of time and they want to do a good job. And if and and if we tell them how to do that at times, that's that's counterproductive, I think.

Tony Cline 37:53

Yeah, I always say that is as a business owner, you own the policy. And I people remember things a lot more through storytelling than facts and figures. So our structure is we it's sort of sports-based, sports analogy, but we we come up with the the rule book. So those are rule books are policies. This is how we win the game of property management at whatever company we're working with. And and the policies are set by the franchise owner, the you know, the sports team owner, uh, and so the owner of the property management business. And then the the plays that get executed, we have the team that is on the front line help us draw up the plays that we need to execute to adhere to or uphold the policies or the rules. And so we empower them to come to us and use their intelligence and say this is what we should be doing to adhere to or uphold those policies. And then, of course, we have veto power to rearrange the order of things or whatever, but people support what they help create. And so if you give them the ability to help create it versus saying, I worked on this for four months and congratulations, I'm shoving it down your throat. You know, you're you're gonna get a much better result if they're helping you build the thing. And like you said, you have people on your team that are better at certain things than what you are or what you think they are.

Guardrails, Fair Housing, And The Oops Fund

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. And there's a little chicken and egg situation there too, where you you get, you know, I I think a lot of times people are, you know, we have very low employee turnover. And so because of that, we're able to lean on the people a little bit more than if we had like everyone was turning over once every two months, like you'd have to just have a checklist that everyone followed exactly the same way. And so those might be, by the way, a little chicken and egg where it's like if all you're doing is bringing employees in and saying, do this exact checklist, you don't have any, you don't own the results, or you're not responsible for you know using your head, that would be a very monotonous job, and they're probably going to turn over. And so you're in, you're kind of in this thing, and and it's not the only thing to do for employee retention, but I think when you have employees that feel engaged, feel like they can feed into the process and see how that process uh fits into the overall goal of the company or mission of the company, I think you're setting yourself up for um for higher employee satisfaction and retention.

Tony Cline 40:09

Right. Yeah. So that reduces churn, uh, employee churn. You know, I always say when we when we assign uh tasks to somebody or we we give somebody something that is part of their job description, they they need to have the ownership of the outcome, the authority to make decisions and the autonomy to operate without waiting for somebody else to interfere or approve. And if you can do that, you're gonna create a job where people do feel empowered, they do feel important, they do feel like they make a difference, and they feel like they're a part of something. And so they're gonna stick around much longer. So if you're having a churn problem, it's probably because you have an over control problem as well.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

Could be. Yeah, absolutely could be, a hundred percent. And I think the other thing in there is is letting is being okay with mistakes. You know, there's there's different levels of delegation, right? I mean, there's you're not gonna delegate a, you know, if if you do this wrong on your first try, this building's gonna catch on fire. Like, right? But I mean, there are there are mistakes that are acceptable. And so letting employees take a shot at a response to a client about a question they've not had before, I'd rather have them mess up and learn and and things like that than just have sort of these canned responses that they need to send out and stuff like that. So I think you know, being compassionate when mistakes are made can be really uh beneficial too.

Growth Plans And Vertical Integration

Tony Cline 41:29

Absolutely. Um there's only three three categories of things that I think that we really need to protect. Like these are the top three for me. So trust funds. We don't mess with other people's money, right? Uh to the penny. That's you you can't do that. So that's one of the areas where we we do have a little bit more stricter control and oversight. Then fair housing. I'm really big on, you know, number one, if you follow fair housing and you treat everybody the same, it just makes your systems easier because now you can have this is what we do, and we don't have exceptions. If we want to provide an option for something, like if we want to do a one-time late fee waiver for a resident, okay, that's our policy. Now it's the same for everybody. But we we don't mess with trust funds, we don't mess with fair housing. And for us, we don't mess with lead-based paint just because that's you know, we have the high penalties for for the management company and for the client. But outside of that, I'm okay. All the companies that I coach, we eventually wind up setting up an oops fund. And the oops fund are generally tied to a quarterly bonus. So the more we have to spend out of the oops fund, the lower the pool is for the quarterly bonus. But it empowers our team to solve the problem because for for business owners that are like, I have to make sure that everything is done right and I'm not willing to write a check for things when we screw up, that means they're being pulled in to make the decision because when if your team member is afraid to make a decision, then they're gonna pull you in to make it, which means you're pulled back in. So I always ask the business owner, what would it be worth? Is it worth$2,000 a month for you to not have to be involved at the ground root level? I love that. Um and and if it is, then that's your oops fund. Right? If it's only worth$500, then it's worth$500. If it's worth zero, then that means okay, you are intentionally making the decision to be sucked back into the day-to-day operations of the business. I love that. Every company is gonna make mistakes. There's different ways to solve it. And I'd rather have my employee make a mistake, we write a check, we learn the lesson, we don't make that same mistake again. Now my team is better, more empowered, and I'm not the one that's having to solve it. So eventually I continue to rise out and do that$1,000 an hour work. My team gets better at the$100 an hour work, and our clients continue to get the level of service that they deserve.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

I love that. We're gonna, I just wrote that down. We're doing the oops fund, and I'm gonna call it the oops fund too. We're gonna take your name. I love that. You know, it's it's interesting. What you did say about, you know, where you can't make mistakes, you're absolutely right. And that that's you know, we try to not leverage, we try to build things internally where we can, but where we do leverage uh great vendors is is on that. I mean, we're we have a you know a third-party accountant that keeps keeps track of everything for us, and we're very happy with them. And we're we're not you know fumbling our way through trust accounting or things like that. But but we, you know, the the other stuff we want to use as development opportunities.

Tony Cline 44:39

Well, Casey, I want to close this out with uh talking a little bit about growth. Growth is on everybody's mind. I think it always has been, but for some reason, as the market's shifting, there's um I always say that the dollars are in the change. So when the market, when the market stays the same, it's really hard to grow competitively or or take up market share. But when when the market changes, that's where the dollars are. You if you get really intentional about thinking about the changes that are coming down the line, the changes in legislation, the changes in market, uh changes in consumer expectations, that's where the dollars are. And so I'm curious, what what are your plans? What are you looking at for growth for 2026? Is it we've got it figured out, we're pouring more gas on it, or are we starting to think about maybe some different other avenues? Uh, not trying to lead you in any direction. I'm just curious about what your growth plan looks like for for 26.

In-House Maintenance: Risks And Strategy

SPEAKER_02 45:39

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so We're putting gas in the fire, for lack of better terms. You know, we spent the last year, I think, sort of right sizing, getting more focused on the type of business we want. We know who the ideal customer profile is. We've made some good hires. You know, we're we are um the strongest we've been operationally in terms of the service that we deliver to clients than we've ever been. Um, and we're ready for for more growth. The growth is going to come from two things. One is, you know, obviously we want to sell more units, but we also want to continue to vertically integrate. I think, you know, when you talk about some of the changes that you're seeing out there, you know, we're seeing two things with with our investors. One is this apprehension around rent control. If rent control is passed in Massachusetts, um, you know, operating properties profitably is going to be uh very, very important and mitigating costs and things like that is going to be very, very important because the the rents aren't going to increase at the rate they need to in certain situations. And so the way that we do that is is is but through vertical integration. And so we can usually, if we have, you know, we have in-house handyman and some other things now. If we do that, we can do it at a lower cost. We can still make money and it's better service for the client. And so we want to continue to bring those things in-house, make revenue there, deliver a better service, and grow our door count as well. Um, yeah, it should be a good should be a good year. We've got a business development rep that started about four months ago. We're working with um uh rent scale and and you know, we've got everything locked and loaded to to grow. And you know, we're not going out and signing anyone. We, you know, it's funny. If you want to grow by 300 doors, which is sort of our our goal this year, um, or 350, you know, that's that's we want 10, 10-unit clients, five 20-unit clients, and three 50-unit clients. You know, that's that doesn't when you break it down like that, that doesn't sound like that that much really, considering what we've already got in pipeline and stuff like that. And I have I am very confident we can serve all of those clients really well because we we know that type of client really well.

Tony Cline 47:45

I know I said I was gonna wrap up with growth, but you said something, so I want to touch on it and then we can wrap up. But uh you talked about having in-house maintenance, and that is a topic where a lot of, you know, there there are other businesses out there that will uh tell you what your revenue per door should be, and and that if your uh revenue per door on your management side isn't high enough, they really push you to try to bring that up. But then there are companies that are making a ton of money on maintenance, and that doesn't get factored in. It's like, I don't care what pocket the dollar is in. Like if if it's in my maintenance pocket or my management pocket, I still have a dollar, right? I still got that money. And so there's there's a lot of people looking at how can I increase my overall revenue for the company? And a lot of them start looking at bringing in-house maintenance in. And I know companies who have solved it, I know companies who've tried it for a few years and never made them made money on it. So I just do you have any insights or any feedback for people who are thinking about bringing maintenance people in-house or even creating a separate maintenance company?

Final Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Yes. I first of all, I'd say strategically, it could be a matter of life and death. And I don't want to be all doomsday, but I do think that the the ability of an owner, let's say an owner has a portfolio of 50 units to run everything on their own out of state through AI and automation and all that stuff, and just have like one local 1099 here is easier now than it's ever been. And you're seeing Zillow and all these other platforms offer these things. And I realize we think we like to think we add all this value, but like that becomes more and more attractive, not less attractive as time goes on, right? Yeah. And so as a matter of survival, I think that as property management companies, good ones, need to have boots on the ground because you can't replace that. Okay, so so strategically, for us, it's not a question of done, you know, do we make money this month? It's I don't think we're gonna be a viable business in five years if we don't do that. That's how strongly I feel about it. Secondarily, it's really hard to do. And that was an area where we certainly took some missteps. So not having things like utilization dialed in and direct, you know, labor efficiency ratio and how much you're gonna charge for things, there is a much smaller margin of error with maintenance because maintenance people are expensive, trucks are expensive, tools are expensive, their time is expensive, all that stuff's very expensive. If you make a misstep on the property management side of the house, it's easy. You know, you you can carry a couple extra remote team members for a couple months as you rebuild, but you you you can't carry extra maintenance tax when you lose 300 units. And so it's a much harder thing to do right, I think. But I think the the risk of not doing it, tactically, you provide a worse service to your client, you're leaving money on the table and you have less control. Strategically, I think you're setting yourself up for a situation where you could lose half or all of your customers in five years because you know, collecting rent um and following up on late rent is I don't know, like it's gonna there's gonna be price compression at the very least. It's gonna be a race to the bottom of companies that are based in Vegas that charge 3% flat rate um or a hundred dollars, you know, fifty dollar flat rate. And and then you have a local manager here that does everything else. That's that's a real competitor for us, I think.

Tony Cline 51:05

Yeah. I've been in this business long enough that that I remember when Zillow first hit the scene and everybody was excited about Zillow and and look, they'll advertise your properties for free. And then once they got everybody hooked on it, then they started slicing away on the things that they would do. And, you know, I uh ever since that started happening, I always said that a company doesn't have to be able to do everything you do to put you out of business. They just have to slice off enough of the profits that it no longer makes sense for you to continue to be in business. And I think that's what you're talking about here with as they start doing the price compression, as AI starts being able to dispatch and call vendors and follow up and send out uh late notices and all this stuff that could happen automatically. Where are we going to figure out how to add slices of profit back on? And that maintenance piece, if you can figure it out, is is a gold mine there because properties, no matter what you do with AI, properties are gonna continue to deteriorate, tenants are gonna continue to break things. And so there is this need for the physical component of property management. I think you're right. Yep. All right, Casey, I'm gonna give you the last word. Anything that you uh thought we would gonna talk about that we didn't, or anything that's top of mind you wanted to circle back with, leave us with something here.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

No, I mean this has been a really good call. You know, I think I I I want to emphasize that, you know, I I I did come in, I think, a bit um sort of arrogant. I I've learned a ton from other managers in the industry. You know, Profit Coach has been really helpful, just understanding, you know, profitability and how to build a business that's profitable. It took me too long to learn that lesson. Um, so I appreciate the feedback I've gotten from others on that. I would encourage other managers to make sure that we're listening to customers and clients as much or more than we're listening to each other. And um, that's usually gonna guide us to the things that we need to do in our business. I think if we can do both those things well, we can build profitable businesses that grow. I think if we just do one of those things well, we're we're gonna lose one way or the other.

Tony Cline 53:12

Well said. Casey, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, we'll wrap up. Uh I I could talk to you for another hour or two and just keep the conversation flowing. So uh let's have you back on again in the future, but let's wrap this up here. Really appreciate you joining and and sharing a little bit about your story.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

All right, Tony.

Tony Cline 53:30

Thanks for having me. I very much enjoyed it. Yeah, thanks. 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.