Redefining Freedom: How Delegation, EOS, And The Championship Formula Transformed a 400-Unit Company - with Jared Kott

What if your growth bottleneck isn’t the market, but your operating system? We sit down with Jared Kott of Marblestone Property Group to unpack how a Chicago South Side firm turned C-class complexity into a durable advantage by rewriting the rules, clarifying roles, and trusting the team to take the shot.

Jared walks us through the model that works in a highly regulated, high-wear environment: skip security deposits to reduce legal exposure, use transparent move-in fees, keep the portfolio dense within a six-by-six-mile radius, and bring maintenance in-house to capture margin where regulation is lighter. Then we go deeper, beyond fees and doors, into the decisions that actually scale a business: codifying policies before processes, implementing EOS rhythms and Level 10 meetings, and measuring what matters with clear scorecards.

You’ll hear how an 84-page policy “rule book” aligned founders and leaders, killed ambiguity, and gave pods of ~200 units real authority. The team shifted from asking for permission to solving higher-level problems: shorter turn times, faster decisions, stronger collections, and better resident care. We spotlight how roles evolved: long-time leader Tina moving from daily triage to relationship-driven business development, offshore teammates building tools and analytics, and a culture that blends fitness challenges, a company gym, and regular one-on-ones to elevate people as they elevate the business.

Threaded through the story is a frank look at leadership growth: escaping visionary whiplash, delegating fully, and redefining the owner’s value as $1,000-an-hour work: vision, hiring, culture, partnerships instead of micromanaging $10-an-hour tasks giving Jared and Erika something rare in property management: real freedom to be present for life without the business fraying. Fair but firm, human yet disciplined, their approach shows how to win in markets most avoid.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Tony Cline 0:00

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets of profitability, efficiency, and achieving true freedom, whether it's your time, money, or lifestyle. I'm your host, Tony Klein, and I'm here to help you build a wildly successful property management business. Let's get to it. Welcome back to another episode of the Property Management Success Podcast. I cannot tell you how excited I am to have this next guest on, uh, Jared Cott from Marblestone Property Group in Chicago. Jared runs a really good, fun, interesting business, and uh I've known him for a few years. We'll probably get into how we met and how long we've known each other in full transparency. Jared is a client of ours and has worked with us for a few years. But Jared, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Tony, thanks so much for having me on. It's truly an honor, and it's uh it's always good to see you both in person and also behind the screens.

Marblestone’s Portfolio And Pod Structure

Tony Cline 0:59

Yeah, for sure. So uh appreciate that feedback. I talk a lot about uh at different times, I talk about that in in my work and in the things that I do, I'm not trying to fill the church pews. I'm trying to find my pallbearers. And what I mean by that is, you know, I'm not trying to be all things to all people and fill a church full of people, but at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, I'm looking for the the six people that can help carry me across the line, uh, you know, the final finish line. And uh and I've always been very transparent that that Jared is is one of my six, he's one of my pallbearers. If I happen to go before him, he's gonna be there carrying my casket. So that's how close we've become over time. We we started out as business acquaintances, and uh and then it's just evolved to we have uh really tight friendships. I want to focus though on you, what you've accomplished, and your journey in property management. So take us back to uh when you when you got started, and then actually tell us like the size of your team, size of your company now, what you look like, then we'll jump back to the past of how you got started. So, yeah, share a little bit about Marblestone.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah, so um, so what it looks like now is we we manage um C and C minus class um small apartment buildings between the sizes of eight, six to eighteen in the multifamily space, and that's about 50% of our portfolio, and the other 50% is in the residential one through four space all on the south side of Chicago. Now, the south side is a really large place, um, but where we go, it's about a six mile by six mile area. It's it's dense, that's how we want it to be. There's plenty of opportunity for us, and we say no a lot more than when we say yes. What the team looks like now, we've we've um with the help of you, of course, we've structured into uh pods. We have two pods that carry about 200 units in each pod. In each pod, we have a pod leader, we have a resident coordinator, a resident coordinator, a pod leader, and then um a resident manager that does some collection stuff that floats around over both, as well as a finance director. And we also do in-house uh maintenance, which includes unit turns and things of that nature, which we can dive into a little later. But all in all, uh we write checks to uh about 20, our team is about 20 people for 400 units. It's pretty intense because we do we do it all, we don't outsource very much.

Operating In C-Class And Ditching Deposits

Tony Cline 3:45

Yeah. One of the things that's really unique to me, anyways, for the people that I've coached and people that I've come across, you know, a lot of people are like, I I'm not gonna mess with that that C class property, the C minus property. And when we first started working together, you had mentioned that you all didn't accept security deposits. We were talking about the the whole rest of the world is thinking about, well, I how do I get my security deposits? And I need to make sure that I I get those in certified funds before people move in. And now we're talking about security deposit alternative programs, and you're like, yeah, man, we just we don't mess with any of that.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Still don't.

Tony Cline 4:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, it's it's not worth it. Um we're we're in a real litigious, I mean, the whole the whole business in general, right, is is very open to laws and changes. But Cook County, in particular, where where we operate within Chicago, is just uh a lot of scrutiny towards property managers and things like that. So we just decided we're not gonna put ourselves at risk. We do move-in fees, which are typically around, and I have to be very careful with the language, around 50%. And they there's so there's no chasing that, there's no putting it, there's no putting funds into a uh an escrow account and then distributing out 1% here or there. It's just a non-refundable moving fee that goes to the owner. They understand what it is and why we do it. That's one of the I don't know if that's just unique to our area in Chicago or if you have other clients that that have the same, but that's the way that we do it.

Tony Cline 5:17

Yeah, and I love the fact that you figured out how to work that model, that that type of that class of properties. And I know we've talked in the past about looking at profitability. And I always say your pants has two pockets, so you can put it in the right side or you can put it in the left side. And uh I know that when we were looking at your your financials and the analytics, we were looking at your revenue per door on the management side was maybe lower than some industry benchmarks, industry standards, but yet your revenue in the other pocket on the maintenance side, you guys are really driving a lot of maintenance revenue. And uh I won't say that it's not regulated on the maintenance side, but there's just less regulation that we have to deal with when we're dealing with maintenance income versus what we can charge on tenant fees and that sort of thing under the management side.

Origin Story: From Firing To First Units

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Sure. I think one of the big things for the audience to maybe understand and for me to be clear upon is like it doesn't mean that the tenants, which what we call our our customer, is they're not they're not bad, right? But what they are is they're just a little bit rougher on buildings than what we would know as an A class or a B class, and that's just the nature of this. Now, the entry point to these assets are also much easier to get into, right? Price per doors and things like that. So with that, there's always that give and take of um you know, there's a lot more maintenance in C class neighborhoods. All right, and I before um you know this, but I'll share a quick story. So actually coming up uh in a couple days to the day, uh I was fired from a corporate job in 2013. Um I did not but my my understanding of um labor was very minimal. Like I could, I would have trouble. I'm the kind of guy that would have trouble changing a light bulb. And when I got uh relieved of my corporate duties, which was uh commercial insurance, I decided I'm gonna get into real estate. It was 2013. We were we were out of 2008 where like that major crash happened. Banks certainly weren't lending, but I looked around the south side of Chicago and saw uh we call them flats, like a two-unit apartment building that needed some you know, paint and some calling paint and carpet. I mean, these things were trading at$15,000 to$20,000 a door. And I thought, like, how bad can this be? You know, quickly I realized like that's not really the hardest part. Like, you can find contractors and you can get a building up to speed, but now you have to learn the people skills, now you have to learn the laws, now you have to learn the scaling of how do you operate this in in this neighborhood, uh, or in these neighborhoods. But that that's how this thing got started to the to the week um this week. And uh I I don't have any regrets, although my hair is thinning a little bit.

Tony Cline 8:25

Um let's stay on that path then. Uh we we talked about kind of talking about where you are now, and uh we talked that we were gonna go back to the beginning. So you've already kind of taken us back to the beginning. It's 2013. You get into the business, and then what you're buying a couple of these buildings or these units. Sure. You're you're learning how to actually work the market in Chicago, which is a much different market than what a lot of people a lot of people would shy away from that, both with the legislation, the type of clientele, the type of customer, the type of product. And I don't know if you intentionally made a decision to do that or if it was just, I don't know a better way to say it, but out of ignorance into what you were actually signing up for.

Hitting A Wall And DIY Management Pain

SPEAKER_00 9:13

But I think you nailed it. And there was all of the above. There was a there was certainly some ignorance um and pride. Pride played a little bit of it because I was too proud to go back to the the uh arena, right? The organization that that fired me, and I was like, I gotta do something else. But as I looked in the nicer areas of Chicago, I was like, how am I gonna get into this? There's the entry point's too high. So in full transparency, uh I had a I had$200 and like$13,000 in a 401k, and I used that literally like a checking account. Don't do that for anybody that's listening. I paid huge tax penalties for it, but it was my entry to get in into this game. So I got I was able to piece up um 10 years together, right? So learned really fast that some contractors weren't cut from the same cloth that I was, meaning if I say I'm gonna show up on a Monday morning at eight o'clock and I will instore install flooring, uh, I'm a guy that typically does what I say I'm gonna do. And some people don't do that. And I was burned a little bit, and I started to think to myself, is this really what I want to do? And you know, you start to you start to realize, man, I need some systems, I need some processes in here. So I got up to 10 units, but as I filled them, now I had a whole nother uh array of issues. And this was people issues. This was this was the tenant customer thing. I didn't really, I don't, I was ignorant. This is where the ignorance piece goes. I would give them my personal cell phone and say any any issues, Tony. If you have any issues, you call me and we'll address it because here at Marblestone, the customer always comes first and we're here to serve you. And I meant that at that time, but I had no idea what this would turn into. So quickly within the first 12 months of this, I was out, I was at dinner with my wife, and I said, I can't take this anymore. Like there were three tenants that called on a Friday night where I just wanted to have a nice dinner with my wife. I said, That's it. Monday morning, we're gonna become investors. So, meaning we're gonna keep the assets and we're gonna go find a property management company to deal with all this BS because it's not for me. And I think we're eating sushi, and she took a bite of the sushi, and she goes, That sounds great. So Monday morning, I called a bunch of property management companies, and no one, this is 2013, early 2014, I couldn't get a call back. And I said, Man, I've got everything on the line here. That means I have to create my own and get serious with systems, people, processes. Um, and that conversation was a little bit, it's easier to talk about now than it was that Monday evening when I went back to Erica, my wife, who's now my wonderful business partner, and said, Listen, I couldn't even get a callback. We can't outsource this stuff, we have to build our own. So that's how that's how this thing got started. And then it got real where we had to figure out who's good at what and how are we gonna afford like how are we gonna build this thing? Who's gonna come on and work for us? How do we find these these these team members? And what do we actually need? And we learn things like uh that you talk about with basic assessments and personality profiles and all the all these great things in terms of running the business outside of the day-to-day became very real too because this was all new to me. You know, I was a W-2 guy working corporate insurance, I wasn't the guy, you know, having to answer all these questions. So it was, you know, got got kind of thrown into the deep end very fast and learned quickly. Um I like doing things like that. So yeah.

Visionary Whiplash And Micromanagement

Tony Cline 12:56

So so we went from went from uh about 10 units doing it on your own to to actually turning it into a company, growing that company. And and you and I met, I think 2021, I think, uh, and that was on our uh infamous Grand Canyon trip, and you and I got to spend quite a bit of time together on that trip. You we kind of grouped off the the two of us, Mark Ainley was there, Harris was there. I'm trying to think uh you and I, Peter McKenzie, so we kind of stayed back in that last group and uh got to spend a lot of time together. And through that conversation, we we discovered that you know you were pretty heavy deep in the weeds with running the business, and you and Erica were both working full-time, heads down, really being the puppet masters with running and pulling the strings for everybody that did everything in the business. And even though you were able to take time off and come to the canyon, you were still pretty entrenched in what was going on in the day-to-day of the business. And and I won't get into it at this point in the conversation, maybe we'll save it for a little bit as we kind of wrap up. But some things transpired on our trip to the Grand Canyon that I shared with you that I'm currently operating in what I call my bonus life. And uh and you, after that canyon uh experience, started referencing this as sort of your extra innings. And so we both had that shared experience that um we have a little bit of different perspective on life now than we did maybe before those events took place. And uh I'll give you an opportunity to kind of share maybe some of the canyon stuff, but I want to stay focused on the business. When you went back and you and Erica were talking about is this the life we want to lead? Is this what we want to do on a day-to-day basis? Do we want to be the owners of the business, but who are also the employees who can't quit? You were you were in a position where the business really would fall apart if the two of you weren't operating in the day-to-day because you had created such a framework that you guys were making all of the major decisions and frequently changing those decisions, and then the team would have to react to whatever your your most recent decision was. So take us back to what that looked like and and what mental changes that you made that allowed you, because we're gonna get to it, but you were on such a different path now, and what you're doing with life and how you're enjoying life. But take us back to that transitional moment and the conversation with Erica of we got to do something different.

Delegation, Trust, And EOS Operations

Rule Book Over Checklists: Policies First

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Sure. Yeah, I I thank you for bringing that up because um I I I'm a guy that I don't like to forget like kind of the the beginnings, even though now some things have a lot, many things um have really, really changed. You know, as a true visionary, I have ideas all the time, right? And um I think that it's good, I don't think it's healthy when I have a bunch of people around, right? I'm I'm I'm chasing squirrels all the time, and I wanted to provide clarity at that time. I really did. I wanted to provide clarity, but I was always changing my mind on the direction we were going. And Erica's personality and what she she kind of stays behind the the curtain and is really detailed oriented, which I'm not. So there's a yin and a yang balance, but the issue was the business in in full truth was dependent on both of us. If she stepped out, we we would have a major problem on the on the back end of the house. If I stepped out, growth would plummet, and it was kind of like we're in this rock and hard place. No we have we at that time we had we had a great we have great team members, we still have many of those same people, but they weren't given the full authority to make decisions. So ultimately, what this came down to, and it's um it's wild to me as I look back on this, I am not a control free guy. I'm really not, but I also did not understand the proper way to delegate. You really helped us with that. Like I sincerely mean that. Thank you very much. Um, because not only did it help myself and Erica, but like have create it continue to create an amazing life, it's changed the culture here at Marlestone, right? I'm gonna say that again through delegation, right? It has changed the culture here at Marlestone. Let me explain. Nobody wants to be micromanaged. Nobody, right? It used to be like what's going on with that? Did you get that done? Who did that? What's going on here? Blah blah blah. Now we have a whole bunch of i I don't want to go too far out here yet, but now we're we run EOS meetings, we have level 10 meetings, same time, every Tuesday, 11:30. We have scorecards, we're measuring, we have morning huddles, right? Every day there's different topics. So what it was like chaos. I mean, it was chaos for me and Erica. Luckily, um, we tr we treat our team here, we really do try to we treat them as best we can like family. And uh, I'll often ask them what was it like? And they'll say, uh, it was it was chaos, but we we managed to get through it. So um I'm not ashamed of that, nor am I proud of that moment. I think that all business owners who aspire to grow are gonna go through moments of that, right? And they're gonna hit ceilings and be like, well, I something has to give here. Something something did give with us, and it was one, it was trust. Like, why are why do we have team members if we can't trust them? What's the point? What is the point of paying people a salary, telling them we believe in you, we trust you, we but really we don't because we want to micromanage. It's it's like uh it's really major conflict of interest. So now we delegate all sorts of things, including trust. We truly do trust you. Now the question is do you trust yourself? What can we help you with to help you make better, faster, better decisions? Right. That's that's kind of where we're at now. So yeah, it's a it's a it's a neat kind of road to travel back on. Like I said, I never want to forget that, but it's also a really neat road to uh to kind of look ahead on as well, to be like, wow, like what else can we delegate, right? Not that we don't want to be part of this, there's many people that are really great and better at things than myself and Eric are right here in this in this office. I'm part of this team.

Tony Cline 21:41

And and one of the themes that I have for 2026, and uh I'm pretty sure I've said it every podcast so far in 2026, but there's there's$10 an hour work,$100 an hour work, and$1,000 an hour work. And if you are head down as the business owner doing that$10 an hour work or micromanaging that$10 an hour work, you're not actually providing the level of value that you should be to your team. You're actually you're actually stealing from their future by not doing the best that you can to run the best business that you can and keeping your head in that$1,000 an hour work, which is keeping your head up and seeing where the market is going, seeing industry trends, looking at all the new AI tools, figuring out how to get your team to buy into the vision that you're all building together and communicating that vision. And if you're not doing that$1,000 an hour work, if you're not doing the things that only you can do, then nobody is doing those things. So it doesn't matter how good you are at processing rental applications or determining a security deposit disposition. It's like those things need to be done. They don't need to be done by the guy that should be making the$1,000 an hour type activities and decisions.

Alignment Work: 84 Pages Of Clarity

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah, I agree. 100%. Um, and I but I didn't I didn't always, right? Which is testament to that that that last piece there. I mean, that was I just want to take a minute here and thank you again for that because working with you, it's really helped me and Erica with the belief of that, right? We can think one thing, but it's different to think something and then truly believe it. And at some point, you know, I say to the team here all the time, I just think it's easy and we remember it, and everybody kind of understands basketball. I'm a short, stocky guy, so I never played it. But I'm like, hey, one thing that it's okay to do around here, take the shot. Take the shot. If you miss it, well, guess what? We have good people around here that can help with. Rebound, right? It doesn't mean the ships are gonna sink, but we have to learn to take the shot, and I think that you know, um taking that first shot sometimes is the most difficult part. You can dribble, you can get on the court, you know, but it's like you start thinking, well, well, what if I what if I miss? What if I'm short? What if I bank it? What if I who cares? Just take the shot, just take the shot, keep taking shots, and um amazing things happen, you know, and we don't we don't always hit the target, but I'll tell you what, we've learned around here, we've learned how to take the shot.

From Chaos To Higher-Level Problem Solving

Tony Cline 24:19

I think one of the things that we go back to, so we we on our coaching program, we have what we call the championship formula, and that's those seven core components that we work through. You and I, a little bit in the pre-show, just when we were catching up, you had mentioned that one of the components that we go through, which is the rule book, which is you know, if we did buy an NBA team, the rules of how you win the game, what success looks like would be predefined because we're buying into an existing system, but that's not what happened. When we buy a property management business or when we build a property management business, we as the owners need to define what success looks like, what our desired outcomes are, what the rules of the game are. And so one of the one of the core components that we go through is establishing our rule book and our rule book are our policies. And you were sharing with me that as you were going through that process, you know, it was a painstaking, grueling process for you. But by doing that, it allowed people to understand what it meant to take the shot, what success looked like, what the overall goals were. And so I want to kind of walk through that process with you where we started with figuring out, you know, we went through our core values and the mission and vision of the company, where the company was going, getting you and the team to buy into that, then going through the rules, the rules of the game, the policies. And I truly believe a lot of companies make this mistake where they they think my team keeps messing up. So I need to document the processes. I need to get down every, you know, if if there is a hundred possible things that they might do in a step to get something done, I need to make sure that I document 102 of those so that they know at every step of the way which box to check. The problem with that is we create box checkers, not intelligent team members who contribute to the desired outcome. And to go back to your taking the shot and rebounding example, you can teach what the rules are, you can teach what the desired outcome is, but it would be really hard to have a hundred-step checklist that every team member has to follow. If somebody takes a shot and misses it, you teach what the rules are and let them use their skills to react, to take action, to solve problems. And people skip that. People skip teaching their team the rules of what we're trying to accomplish and the policies, which is what we do and why we do it. And they go straight to I need to create these checklists, I need to create my processes. And the more we screw up with the process, the more they document it because our team just isn't getting it. When if you would take your foot off of their throat and stop telling them how to do the job and tell them what the desired outcome of the job is, you're gonna see a lot better results. And so we went through that process with you where we did that, and we went through documenting all of those policies. And I think you had mentioned you had 84 pages or something of it.

Roles, Pods, And Elevating The Team

SPEAKER_00 27:27

You uh yeah, you remember it well, and um it was it was 84 pages, and if I if I have it right, right, the policies as we as we work through this, like those are the rules of the game, right? So it's like if we go back to the basketball, it's like, well, how how are we gonna play quarters or are we playing halves? Team members want to know that now. How many people can we have on the court? Like, I know typically in college and pros it's five, but can we bring seven? No, we can't bring seven, we can only bring five, right? So those things, those those basics really get drilled in, but what it does it brings that clarity, right? Now and for all the business owners out there that that may that may be feeling this, like just start. Trust me when I say this, just start because I know that you have these in your head. I did. This is how we do it. So Tony would say, Well, well, tell me about how you do it. It's easy, you just do it this way, okay. But Erica might do it a slightly different way, and then Tina might do it a slightly different way, and then like the cake's not coming out the same way, and there's no consistency, right? So as we went through this process, it was myself, Erica, and Tina, who's been with us pretty much from not day one, but say day six, very, very early on. She kind of knew the majority of these things as a uh uh you know forward facing to both clients and customers. So as we go through it, it was interesting because Tina would say, Well, we uh this is how we do it. We do it A, B, C, and D. And I remember looking over, I'm like, really? Because that's not the way that I would do it, I would do it like A, B, D, R. No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing it that way. And Erica's like, I do it one, two, three, not A, B, C. And it was like, whoa, guys, we need to get, we are not on the same page. So a lot of times, here's the point a lot of times we think that we're all rolling the boat in the same direction. But until you sit down and you really get these, you get this stuff in your head and on paper, that's when the real magic. So I was telling you in the beginning, and I'll be honest, it for me, you know, I'm anybody that does disc assessments, I'm a I'm a screaming high D, uh, high I medium C, and I have I have zero on the C for details. I couldn't stand it. But here's what I did understand the value of it. Right? I knew that the investment of time, capital, energy, it was all needed if you wanted to scale your business, if you wanted to have some freedom in your life, and if you wanted to delegate and give people the actual autonomy of freedom to take the shot. And that's what we did together. So although it was grueling and it was 84 pages, man, it's uh I could smile about it now because there is clarity, there's a lot of clarity to it. And um, like I think, I think we I think as business owners, we owe that to our team, and we also owe that to our clients.

Tony Cline 30:41

I want to talk a little bit about the the fact that as as we went through this exercise, and and it is it wasn't so much policy creation as policy documentation. It was doing a brain dump of stuff that was already in your head. That was our first round. And by giving our team that clarity, you know, everybody wants to know what am I supposed to do when I go to work and am I doing a good job? And without that clarity, they don't know exactly what they're supposed to do. They're guessing it. And as you had mentioned, as I go through this exercise, sometimes I'll go through it with business partners just like you and Erica, and I'll have you guys do the same exercise but separately, and we'll wind up with two different results because even though married couples who you know go home, they eat together, sleep together, drive to work together, all this stuff together, they are still on different pages. Well, you can't expect your team to be on the same page as you if your partner is not even on the same page. And so it's giving that clarity where they understand where they fit, how to contribute, and where the what the vision of the business is and where we're going. It not only gave you and Erica a ton of freedom to be able to do the things that you wanted to do with your life, but it also made your team have that structure that they could flourish and bring their best selves to the business. And I want to talk about, you know, share with us a little bit of what you saw in that team transition because I've watched your team go from that chaos and reaction to now they are running the show.

Culture, Fitness, And Global Team Bonds

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Yeah, they are. They're taking shots, they're slam dunking, they're hitting threes, and you know, every once in a while they miss a layup, but but we know the direction of where we're going. And we understand, each person on the team understands what winning looks like. That's so important. If I take a shot from from this line, is it one point, two points, or three points? How do I know if I'm winning? So, what does it look like now? Um quicker decision making, a lot quicker decision making. The intellectual conversations that can be had are tremendously of higher value, both internally, externally, to both customers or the tenants and the clients alike, because we used to spend a lot of our time on this stuff. Well, I don't know. Are we doing it right? Like, is this how wait, Tony, remind me, how do we how do we do this? How do we run this play? What's this look like? That stuff is is at minimal, right? But we still revisit it because I think it's good to fine-tune it. So the majority of our time is base is now spent on everybody here, higher level problem solving, brainstorming, we call them think tanks, right? What can we do better? How can we innovate? How do we advance in a C class market? Listen, I want to win. So I asked the team a lot, how do we dominate? How do we get by? How do we get a couple more dumb? No, no, how do we dominate? Because we've got that base. So now it's like we don't have to, we you know, it's blocking and tackling, blocking and tackling. Every once in a while we run some trick plays, we should keep everybody on their toes, right? But that's that's the outcome of going through the grueling work in the beginning and getting the stuff out of your head, right? Then you be then you have conversations on like my word of the year here, both professionally and personally, is elevate. I say it every day, all the time, in meetings, internal, external, elevate. How are we elevating and how are we doing that personally, and how are we doing it professionally? And um that's really like those are outcomes from documenting your processes, getting clarity, trusting your team, and be able in allowing them to take the shots and then help them coach them through if they if they miss a shot. Guess what? We all put our pants on the same way. It's all right. Don't stop taking the shots. Let's just tweak, let's tweak it. Where did we go wrong here? What do we need to do? So the conversations will get much, much higher level. And it's awesome for me because I I love that sort of work. Like that stuff, as you can tell, really fires me up.

Freedom, Presence, And Redefining The Owner’s Role

Tony Cline 35:08

I think one of the things that as we go through this process, we get really good at documenting the policies, figuring out what what we want to do, what winning looks like, like what the rules of the game are, the the what we do and why we do it. Then then we move on to the process, documenting the process, which is the how, the step-by-step, making sure that we all agree, this is the way we're gonna do it. And you know, we may have disagreements on as we're putting the process together, I think we should do this, well, I think we should do that. But at the end of the day, we agree with what that process looks like and we stay, we stay committed to following that process as a company. And then we go on to say, okay, well, now that we know the step by step, who should do what? And that's where we went through taking your business, we we reorganized, we restructured based on what your goals were, we moved them into pods, and now we had people being really clear on what roles did what. And then we went through and said, okay, well, if we have those roles, who are the people we need on the team? And you have some great people on your team that have been there since the beginning of when I was working with you, but we've also brought in people who have elevated, and and I don't know if you want to mention any names or not, but you have some great people, analytical people, people who are building tools for you that you've been able to empower because you've given them the whole structure of here's what we're trying to do and here's where we're going, and then you get out of the way and and they just build that, make it happen. And so, yeah, is there anybody on the team just position-wise, role-wise, that you want to talk about transitions there?

Fair But Firm: People, Second Chances, Results

Closing And Listener Invitation

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Yeah, I mean, so Tina is our our director of um our director of property management. Used to have it, her title used to be operations, but she does way more than operations, and she's been with us like forever. Like I call it the you know, day six, day seven. But here's the deal, because um, we've added some team members, shifted some things around. Obviously, we still have the pod structure, but she's also she's not getting bombarded with like, hey Tina, how do we, hey Tina, how do we, hey Tina, how do we do this? How do we do that? It's allowed her to also run uh what we would call like her core genius. She loves getting on the phone and working BDM style stuff. So on referral basis, like she spends like 50% of her time networking with brokers over the phone, building relationships that way. She's absolutely outstanding with that. And a lot of that has come. She couldn't do that, she wanted to do that before. She couldn't do it before because there was so much um, you know, just lane crossing, as we would talk about it internally, um, and with you very often. So Tina's been awesome. We just uh promoted Francisco to a director of property management, you know Pravhat. He's he's been with us for a very long time. I'll say this uh publicly because I told him told him yesterday, actually. Um I wrote down all my goals and a wish list for 2026. And one of them was to go see a Marblestone team. And Pravhat lives in India, and I said there, we're going to India. She's like, What? We're gonna go see Prabhupada, and we're gonna try to link up another team member, Miggs, who's in the Philippines, and have them meet together. But here's the deal everybody's beginning to find their core genius and what they're good at, and then through that, like we're getting where where we want to go much quicker, right? It's there's clarity behind a lot of this stuff, and it's uh the the thing that fires me up now is is watching people grow and thrive, not only in their role at Marblestone, but it's like what what exactly are what are your what are your bigger aspirations and goals with life, right? Because there's there's a lot more than just property management, right? But if we create an environment here that's thriving, we believe that we can take that thriving culture and have it outside of that. So then that becomes in the culture, all right. I haven't told you this, you're gonna you're gonna love this. I'll send you some pictures of it. Next door, we were in a bank building, um, and a suite opened up like a thousand square feet directly across the hallway. And I've been chasing this guy saying, Hey, if you ever if you ever break your leaser, head out, let me know. Well, he never told me, but I found out that he left, and then I I went up the chain. So we got a thousand square feet, and we at first I was like, this would be great. We could put our paint and storage and all this weight stuff, fine. So we did that, but then I said, you know what? We can have a gym, we can have a Marblestone gym in here, so I got a huge, you know, like weight benches, I ordered some treadmills and stuff. These are quick hits for energy. It's right next. There's like a public bathroom, just go pop in there. All right, now we can't do what Tony does and go, you know, spend a Tuesday and run 54 miles, but we can go and take 15 minutes, go get your heart rate up, have some fun, get some competition going. So there's these sort of things in culture for us really, really matter, right? And we want to see people thrive. Um, you know, I'm going a little off topic, but I might as well just run through with this. One of the my favorite part of this business is the people. And I meet with every person in within this organization, uh, minimum two times a month, scheduled, uh one-on-one meetings. You've helped me a lot with that, Tony. So I appreciate it. Uh obviously I've kept that going. And uh, you know, I'm I'm watching people now like get home approvals that never thought they can get home approvals. Um, I'm watching people go through uh transformational challenges on their fitness and life. Um seeing people work through relationship issues that they thought were devastating, and what they realized were like, yeah, everybody goes through that stuff, man. That's not a big deal. Like it's really good, good quality stuff. So the culture of this is uh is what I'm really thriving on. I know you can see behind me, I'm a big fan of Bitcoin. Not financial advice, and everybody has to say that, but it's probably a really good time to buy a little bit of it. Here's an example. In October 1st, we had 21 people, which includes some maintenance uh maintenance people on our team. There's 21 million Bitcoins, 21 million total bitcoins. You know what? We could probably do a play on some bitcoins, 21. What would this look like? 21 people, 121 days for a share of 0.21 Bitcoin. So let's just do simple math. October, which is about the high, let's just say it was 100 grand, and we're gonna split 21,000 bucks, divide it evenly. But all we have to do is we have 121 days to get to the end, which is 121 million steps combined, which checks out to about 80. I think the math was like 80, it was like called 9,000 steps. I know somebody in the audience is going, it's like 8,700. I get it, but 9,000 is easy. We had some people drop out for various reasons. We had a couple people go uh not be with the company. We're down to 11 people that are consistently in this challenge, and we have a million steps to go, which is gonna be completed in the next seven or eight days. So, like that's part of the culture, too, right? Is to see people push not only within Marblestone but across the globe, right? Like Miggs, Miggs ran his first ultra, and he's like, I might as well get a whole bunch of steps. I think he got like 120,000 steps when he ran 55 miles or something. So there's all sorts of stuff like that. That that stuff fires me up, and and and it you can build a community of people across the globe, but you have to look at it a little bit differently than just checking boxes. Get to know people on your team, right?

Tony Cline 43:40

I think that that plays right into what we talk about, which you know, you you've heard me probably say this 500 times at some point, but we talk about building championship teams and performing at a championship level, and and I intentionally use those words. Like there it wasn't, it didn't happen on it by accident. We intentionally said, you know, we have the championship formula, we build championship teams. If it wouldn't happen on a championship team, then it shouldn't happen here because that's the level of expectation. And so we've we've created this system for people to operate in, and then we gave them the scorecard where we can measure what our expectations are and the KPIs and the financial metrics. And when people start performing, what happens is one of two things when you start tracking your expectations, you start to reinforce a culture of mediocrity, or you start enforcing that we're building a culture of championship culture, and we perform at a higher level. And that's why I think it's been so successful for you to pull in all of these different things. I know Meg has run his first ultra, I know he did a bike across some continent or some country. Um, you guys have done fitness challenges. You have actually been a part of my crew multiple times at my 200 mile races because when you surround yourself with other people who are performing at a high level, it normalizes it. And when you can bring that culture into your company, it catches fire. And and you've done that for your teammate, and I applaud you for that. For all your teammates, you've done that. I I want to take you back. Uh I know we're we're running short on time and we're gonna have to wrap up here pretty soon, but I want to take you back to one of my favorite days that I've ever had. And you and I, you have been a part of many of my favorite days, but uh, I don't even know if you if this is gonna be a part of your memory or not. But we were in one of our coaching sessions, and I I saw you, you were sitting in the office, and I asked you, I said, Jared, what are what are you doing in the office? Because we had gotten you to the point where you were no longer in the day-to-day, and you have this uh place in Michigan out by the lake. You love to go fishing. And so you spend, and maybe you can talk a little bit about the time and how you spend your time now back and forth. But this was in the beginning when you were first learning to let go and to delegate and to trust. And I asked you, I said, What are you doing in the office? And you're like, I don't know. I just feel like I'm supposed to be here because I feel guilty if I'm not sitting behind this desk. I'm not really doing anything because we've got our systems running, but I feel like I need to be here. And so I'm just sitting in here. And so we had that conversation about it's not about your physical presence, it's about your leadership in what you're delivering for the team. And and sort of after that, you you really took that to heart. And and so I don't know if if you're comfortable sharing, but share a little bit about your personal life now with you and Erica and what you're able to do stepping away from the business because you've worked hard to get to this point. I I don't want to take away any credit from the the work that you had to put into it, but now you're you're reaping some of the reward of the work of putting in the structure for the company.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Yeah, thank you for the kind words. I remember it. I remember it well. It's a little bit of Catholic guilt growing up, I think. Uh like I have to be here, and then I think corporate messed with me. Um but you you taught me about leadership and you taught me that like exactly just that physical presence doesn't like I didn't even know what I was doing. I was like, what am I here? I don't even have a role, and that took me a little bit, but I certainly have a role. Um, and I'm very clear on that role now. So what does it look like today? I have a um I have a few Airbnbs on a lake uh called Indian Lake in um in Michigan, which is 85 miles from this office. And my my home is six blocks from this office, and I just put the time 50% in Michigan and 50% in Chicago. And um each year I'm gonna shave off a little bit more 60, 40, 70, 30, 80, 20. I don't I don't ever intend uh in the next decade or two, honestly, to uh abandon this ship. I'm having way too much fun. I love growing people, um, and then really the people grow the business. Um I spend my time a lot in nature on a real personal note. The last, as you know, Tony, the last year I spent close to a hundred days in Connecticut with my mom as she was sick before she passed. I'll never ever be able to reinplace that time. And man, that's that's the gift that you've given me. And uh, I want to thank you for that.

Tony Cline 48:51

Appreciate that. That that uh means a lot that I was able to help you uh achieve that.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

It's a lot of freedom to be able to do you know, in 2021 when we met in the canyon, and you have to have me back on, we'll talk about that. Um that wouldn't have been it was anything, any anything is an option, but the end result would be much different, right? For me to spend over you know a hundred, hundred and twenty days in Connecticut and be fully present and also be able to be present for my team and my mom and my family. There's a success recipe here that people should tap into because I think that you can have both. And I had a limited belief where it was like I couldn't have both. And that was my own bullshit. So today I'm here to tell you the truth, and I just want to thank you, Tony. I really appreciate it.

Tony Cline 49:44

Jared, I absolutely will have you back on because not only are you a great guest and you've said a lot of nice, very kind things about me, which wasn't the intent of having you on, but I do appreciate that. But you're also one of my favorite people. One of the things that really strike me is uh, and as we wrap up, uh you believe in people and you believe in second chances. And I know there are people on your team that you've you've given second chances, the type of people that you work with, your customers, the people that are in the Section 8 housing, and the people that are maybe not given a lot of second chances, or at least freely given second chances, you're the kind of person that sees beyond the credit score. And of course, obviously we have to operate it like a business. I'm not saying that. But every resident is a person that's going through similar things. They're they're losing their parents, they're getting fired from work, they're getting laid off, their kid needs glasses or braces or whatever. And you see the humanity behind that. And I've always respected that about you. And I know we're out of time, but I want to have you come back on and talk about that because I think that that is a big part of the reason you've been able to achieve success is because you're fair but firm. You're fair in the way you treat people, but you're firm in the way you operate the business. And I think that that is a really good combination to be able to have a successful business and have that business contribute to your successful life.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

Thank you so much, Tony. This has been a blast. I look forward to uh coming on again soon.

Tony Cline 51:23

All right, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Take care. Thanks, Tony. Take care. Bye-bye.

Tony Cline 51:26

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.