WS1861 Mastering Investor Relations | Highlights Shane Thomas

Dive into the captivating world of real estate syndication and asset management. We sat down with Shane Thomas, a  former CPA who has transitioned to becoming a multifamily property syndicator. Our conversation peeled back the layers of syndication complexities. Highlighting the crucial, time-intensive role of asset management, Shane sheds light on how his team champions effective communication with investors, helping them stay ahead.

Our knowledgeable guest further enrich the dialogue with his hands-on experience, delivering insights on strategic partnerships as both limited and general partners. He shares his wisdom on the essentials of asset management, including transparent communication, routine property manager meetings, and diligent monitoring of crucial metrics. His stories provides a glimpse into managing several deals simultaneously, emphasizing the importance of financial audits and disbursements for their investors.

Pivoting towards property management, we're guided by Shane, an accomplished pro who walks us through successful property management techniques and engaging investor communication. Delve into the significance of weekly tracking of key indicators and the skill of converting this data into digestible updates for investors. Discover how a part-time CFO can provide pivotal perspectives, becoming immersed in the operation's financial aspects. We also highlight how critical honesty is in investor relations and present smart ways to refine communication and lessen the load of administrative duties.

Explore the crucial facets of property management and investor relations with us. For a comprehensive understanding, click the links below to tune in to the full episodes and glean valuable insights from our discussions.


https://lifebridgecapital.com/2023/08/18/mastering-investor-property-updates-shane-thomas/

https://lifebridgecapital.com/2023/08/17/asset-management-leading-indicators-shane-thomas/

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Transcript

00:02 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, whitney Sewell, today. We've packed a number of shows together to give you some highlights. I know you're gonna enjoy the show. Thank you for being with us today. Tell us a little more about your background, how you got into this syndication space. It seems like everybody comes from different walks of life, right, or different industries, and so what was that for you? 

00:28 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, thanks, whitney, I'm recovering, I guess. Cpa to start. So I started my journey many years ago. I'm a management consultant, cpa, worked in corporate America for a long time but I always had the real estate bug, if you will. So I actually started buying single family in 2009, 2010,. In Toronto, canada, where I'm from, not knowing much, just knowing that, hey, I just wanted to kind of plant some seeds and it was more from a long-term investment Made my way down to the States in 2010. And then in 2015,. 

01:06
Kind of was at a crossroad in my life where I had to kind of decide if I was gonna continue to climb the corporate ladder or if I wanted to go out and do something on my own. So, kind of long story short. At that time real estate had done well for me in Toronto and I wanted to kind of replicate that in the US. And, being a finance guy and I had single family before, I just knew that multifamily resonated with me more the fact that you could force valuation based on NOI treat it more like a business and so kind of started down that path to figure out how I could buy kind of multifamily. And at the time it was smaller multifamily 15 to 20 units in Chicago where I lived, and then, long story short, ended up stumbling across kind of investing in multifamily syndications In 2015,. 

01:58
I started passively investing as an LP and then, once I kind of did that a number of times, I realized that my skill set and my interests really peaked and met my now business partner at networking event in Texas. And yeah, now we've got a company Catalyst Equity Partners. We've done close to 2,000 units as the lead GPs in Houston and Dallas and we've got construction management in-house. We've got a small team. We use third party for management and really focus on value add. We love heavy renovations. We've done everything from Class C to Class A multifamily. 

02:42 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Yeah, I appreciate that. I think your expertise, coming from a CPA background, everybody needs that on the team. I feel like, the more we've been in the business, it's like man having that we haven't for a long time. I mean having somebody internally we've had third parties that have helped us but man having somebody internally like yourself that has like a CPA, just numbers background. I'm not an accountant by trade and I don't wanna have to tell my quote accountant what to do. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, no it definitely helps. 

03:21 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
So, as you know, whitney, it's one of those things, right Like it's a team sport and kind of. There's different elements to the skills you need and I think in the beginning I was doing a lot of that accounting review function. But, just like scaling any business, I've kind of I'm still kind of maybe the lead on our team, but we have a fractional CFO that we use to really dive in, because it's one thing to review books for two, three deals, but when you've got nine, 10, 11, things change and so but yeah, I think I know enough could be dangerous, but it's been a while. 

03:59 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Now that's awesome and that's another point. 

04:02
It may not be your highest and best use of your time now, exactly Right, and we're gonna talk about some things that you've become an expert in now and you all are doing well at, which I wanna bring out to the listeners, but that's a good point. There to make is like, well, you had this skill set and you still have it, but there's another piece that's a better use of your time, right, and so let's dive into that. I know, before we started recording, we were talking about your focus on really the asset management, communication with investors, and I'm just I'm hearing it all over the place, right, it's not just you that had brought this up lately, not so much on the show, but I just mean talking to investors or talking to other operators. Man, everybody's trying to figure out how do I communicate better with our investors or LPs or Sam? We're not getting any communication from a number of groups that we've invested with. I'm hearing that way too much, but I wanna dive into that and how you all do that so well, right. 

04:58 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

05:00 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
I wanna talk about the asset management piece too, because I feel like that plays such a big piece of where the information comes from and starts, and so let's start with some of that and maybe give us some details on your asset management piece or your operations, right, and then we'll move to the communication piece to investors and how that all works together. 

05:20 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, no. I think it's a great question and I think it's one of those areas in this business that's often overlooked, because it's not the glamorous side, and you often hear about deals being acquired and everyone gets excited, or deals being sold and the returns generated. But every time you acquire a deal, the way I look at it, it's just kind of pre-work or you're just starting the race, you're just getting to the starting line and if you just look at it, just based on just pure math I mean, on average, a deal is held for 60 months, or at least that's what's projected it takes three months in the beginning of buy it and three months to sell it. So 90% of the time that you've got this deal is in asset management, but it's probably only 10% of the time talked about, and so, anyway, I think it's come to light now, obviously, with the market being what it is now and changing, and the reality is, when we charted in 2015, 2016, there was a lot of tailwinds and I think I wouldn't be alone in saying this that a lot of people there was a lot of you know sins that were forgiven, if you will, because rent growth was, you know, astronomical, or cap rates were compressed and you know the tides definitely changed now. 

06:32
And so you know, we've always, you know, put asset management is kind of the lifeline of our business, right. We know that if we cannot, you know, perform on our deals and service our investors, right, then you know those investors are not going to come back and we're not going to be able to build our track record right. And you know, and I think you know, having that that view upfront and with my experience as being an LP and my partner's been an LP prior to us being a GP you know we came out and we said you know, asset management and ensuring that our investors know what's going on, you know, is paramount to our company, right. So so you know what we've done, and you know, from an asset management perspective, is we've tried to just build processes where, you know, we've now got an asset manager in house that's full-time, that 100% overseas, our, our, our properties. And you know, just before my partner, prashant, and I were doing that. But you know, I think the reality is in this business we're handing over a keys to folks that you know aren't highly compensated or, you know, don't have a high level of education, and we're expecting them to manage. You know multimillion-dollar assets right, where we have, you know, significant plans in terms of improving them, adding other income and stuff like that. So there's a lot of sophistication that's come into play, and being able to manage that and, you know, influence those folks to be able to get the results that you desire, right. And so it's a lot easier said than done. 

08:01
But we, you know every deal that we buy. You know we go to the property manager company and say, hey, here's our business plan, they work with it with us. Then we come up with a 90-day and 180-day plan. So it's very clear because most folks you know that work in the business at the property level, right, they're just going to do what they've done previously, right, they've been in the business for 15, 20 years and they're just going to buy a deal and operate it right. So we set expectations up front 90-day plan, check in every 30 days on those high-level goals. You know, on a weekly basis, our asset manager, you know we've got like a dashboard. We've got different property management companies, so it's not fully integrated, but we've got a set of KPIs that we ask our managers to fill out every week, right, and we're diving into those KPIs and, you know, trying to look at them as the leading indicator, like, hey, if our renewal rate's low, why is that, you know, is it? And asking the questions, why are people moving out? Right, if our traffic, you know, is not high enough to generate the amount of applications we need, what can we do differently? Right? So, every indicator, you know, there's usually, you know, three or four ideas or whatnot. And then making sure that you know, each of our business plans are unique. 

09:14
We've got a couple of deals right now where we're implementing a bulk Wi-Fi, right, and that, you know, has some resistance, you know, to the residents. Residents have some resistance. I was on a call this morning where property managers like, hey, I got an earful from this resident, they have a contract with their other service provider and we're putting this on, and we said, no, well, if they have a contract and they could, you know, prove it, we'll just say they don't have to get on board on our, you know, internet until the contract's done right. So it's being close enough to the ground, you know. And so we've just built these processes where we've got, we've got weekly calls with the property manager company, that monthly review calls with the regional manager and that helps me and my partner, you know, help articulate the commentary to our investors, right? Our asset manager is talking to our construction team, right? So our construction manager joins the asset management calls, you know, on a weekly sorry, monthly basis, just so they can know how many units we're doing. So everything everyone's talking to each other. 

10:14
Because what we've noticed is that when you stop the communication, a lot of things break down, right, and then from there what we do is we have our monthly P&L reviews, right, and then we do distributions on a quarterly basis. 

10:28
So then on a quarterly basis, we work with our fractional CFO to really dive deep into our financials, understand our cash position, see what's coming ahead. 

10:38
I think a lot of times, you know, you know a lot of people are looking at what's happened and you know we've got some cash now, so let's distribute. But we know, hey, we've got, for example, older assets and you know we may need, you know, x amount more in capital to, you know, improve these deals or whatnot, right, so we have to hold that back. So, anyway it's, you know I'm trying to go from you know where we are on a day-to-day basis and we kind of bring it up top and then we're able to articulate the results financially and you know CAP, xy's and ultimately distributions to our investors. You know I know I've said a lot there, but you know we try to. You know work from the. You know the. Give them the big picture, make sure they're executing day by day by these different KPIs that we track and then able to explain the story to you know someone as an investor so they can understand. 

11:27 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Yeah, no, that's a lot of great detail there. I want to dive in a little bit on because it is a process and the more we want to communicate. Well, we want to communicate often, but there it's taxing to the team, right, you know, as we've gotten many, many, you know, deals as well and we're trying to update on all these deals. We're right there with you. You know it's like pretty soon, like this is a lot of work for a few people every month. Right, I mean, it's a lot of work and, and I think oftentimes little piece, don't maybe realize how much, how much work does go into making those updates happen, but it still has to happen, it still has to happen. So, but the but, the the more we can streamline that process, the better, right, and obviously in the more accuracy and all those things and the more we're communicating. And I liked what you said there, I wrote it down. 

12:17
You know, when you stop communicating, things break down, right, or there is something broken, right? If you're, you know it's why you're not communicating, maybe. But you know, speak to the information that's expected to come from your property management company. That helps you to maybe streamline some of the communication with investors we're going to get to the communication you know in a minute with investors. But you know, I say, as the asset manager or the operator you know, talk about what's expected exactly. You know what kind of reports on a monthly basis. How is that helping you all to generate the best information you know for investors? 

12:51 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think the good thing about this business is that there are great systems that these property management companies have to get you know all the data that you need. You know, I think you know from a summary level. You know we obviously have our P&L or balance sheet, cash flow and whatnot. But you know, those are what I kind of you know, basically financial statements, right, but really what I look at on a week to week basis are more of the leading indicators, which are occupancy, are leasing, are trends, what's our box score? You know how many, how many units are, you know, vacant not rented for how long? You know? And so our traffic, where, the sources of our traffic, our renewal rates, I think are very telling and a key metrics that we track across every single portfolio. 

13:42
You know, and you know we've done this for long enough that we can figure out like, okay, this trend is really low and is it a seasonality thing or do we just not have good leasing? And then we've got a few things that we've developed that are like, okay, if this is happening, there's like three or four things at least we've seen that most likely are at least 80% of the time are the root costs, you know, and so so, yeah, so all that information helps us, on a weekly basis, make changes, right, because you know the reality is that the financial reports you get, you know, 15 or 20 days after the end of the month and it's way too late to affect change, right, and so we're trying to make changes, you know. I mean, quite frankly, now it's daily, you know, but at least on a weekly basis. And then, you know, by the time I'm reviewing the reports that my asset manager and fractional CFO put together, you know I've already got the story because I know, from a weekly basis, I've seen the trends, you know, and so there may be something that happened in those two weeks that you know that I may have to update investors on, but by then we kind of already know, like, you know, august 1st, I already know how July financials are going to look. 

14:50
I don't know the exact numbers, but I know the general story, you know. And so, yeah, that's really you know what we look at. And there's, you know, to answer your question specifically, I mean each property manager software, they have specific reports that they send us on a weekly basis and then my asset manager has created the catalyst KPI tracker, which he puts in because we've got different properties and different systems. Puts it in so that we've got our list of 15 or 20 KPIs that we review weekly. 

15:16 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Yeah, no, that's helpful. I just want the listeners and myself to hear the things that are important to you, and I love that you're. You have a specific list of leading indicators that you're watching on a weekly basis. I think that says a lot as well. Somebody on the team needs to be doing that. 

15:31 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, no, absolutely. 

15:32 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
It's so important and keeping a pulse like that and you know, even weekly, and sometimes even more often, you know, maybe, depending on the asset and what's happening there, right, you know, speak to them and we'll start this. And just so listeners know, we're going to do another segment with Shane, we're going to dive in a little further into the communication with investors as well, but but maybe you know how, how many people are involved in the process, I guess, of converting, say, you know this information to you know your investor updates? 

16:02 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, I think it's really. It's really two, you know. Or three, when you consider me, it's our asset manager that is compiling all the data. Obviously he's working day to day, you know, in it. So he's, you know, aggregating it, you know. 

16:14
And the thing is going back to your earlier point. You know we've systematized this so that any report coming from Catalyst has the same structure, right, we've got sponsor commentary, p&l, et cetera, but then the deal story changes per deal, right, and then we've got our CFO that helps us review to make sure that you know, because, as you know, wendy, these are capital intensive businesses, right, and I think you know the reality is is that you know there's a lot of ins and outs, you know, and we're talking about thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars that are going. You know, when you're getting a draw and you're waiting for a draw, you need to submit a draw and whatnot. So we're just making sure that you know, we're understanding the cash inflows and outflows, and so once the asset manager and the CFO work together to make sure, ok, do we have that story? Then, you know, I come in and my partner come in to review, just to make sure, like you know, like there's, you know, some deals. 

17:05
We have rate caps or you know, and floating rate debt, right. So how to articulate that to investors? Right? What is the you know bigger picture, you know end goal of this deal? Are we going to be planning on refinancing in six months, you know? Are we going to try to sell? You know what are the trends. So that's where we come in to kind of tip and top, but I would say, between the asset manager and fractional CFO, 90% of it's done, and then we come in to tip and top and make sure we send it out. 

17:31 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Love that. And one quick thing and this and we're in the middle of this as well but you're a fractional CFO and so they're not. You know, just so the listener knows, you know you can, you can, you can hire somebody fractionally. You know in that role, right, yeah, speak to how you found this person and maybe you know how. You know how you implemented a skill set like that. That's maybe not an employee, right, yeah? Yeah, you know I think it was. 

17:57 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
You know, as we alluded to, I mean asset management and doing the financial reporting. I mean, just based on what I just said, it's a lot of work and, to be quite honest with you, it's a full-time job, right? So we got to the point where we were doing this role what I just described between me and my partner for the first three or four deals right, and it helped us tremendously because we were close to the details and whatnot. But it was hard for us to grow because once you can't do it, after you do. You know five, six more deals, and so you know we, you know, hired our asset manager. 

18:28
And then you know, from my perspective as an LP, and other deals. You know, quite frankly, it just. You know the property management company. Their job is to manage the property and they do property accounting, and you know not to put up any shade on property management companies, but they're just getting the books done and sending them out to you, right? They don't have the foresight to say, hey, is this deal in a bad cash position or not? They'll come to you when there's no cash to pay payroll, but they're not thinking about, hey, three months ahead, right. 

18:57
And so, you know, I was in a couple deals where I just, you know, I would look at the balance sheet and I would say, well, we got no working capital, we got no cash, but we're paying out distributions, you know. And anyway, so, using those experiences, we never wanted to be in that position and we just said, okay, let's go try to find someone that can understand our business. So found somebody actually online on LinkedIn, you know was doing this on a smaller scale and you know we kind of developed a relationship. He actually worked at previous employer minds. We kind of shared some common ground and I think at the time we were probably one of the bigger, you know multi-family clients of theirs and we just kind of just said, hey, let's do a contract, little basis and kind of did I don't know, 10, 15 hours a month. And then we've scaled that up as we've grown and it's been great. You know we collaborate in a lot of ways and he's an aide, you know. 

19:48 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
And I want to get all the way to the investor update. You know itself right, and so now you've gathered this information, they've looked at this together, you know. Let's just keep going from there. 

19:57 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. So I think you know, obviously, you know, in this indication business, we don't have a business without our investors, right, and I think you know that's something that is near and dear to us as a company. People have worked very hard for their money and you know they're trusting you as an operator and your steward of their capital, right, and I think you know, based on some of my experience as an LP, you know there was, you know, a lot of communication up front when we were trying to buy the deal and then I invested passively and then there was just no rhythm or cadence, you know it was just, you know they would give updates. You know, kind of you know, just randomly, and you know, and honestly, some of the deals performed well, but I don't think those operators, you know, would have performed as well in today's market, you know. And so you know we kind of have this saying that you know, kind of no news is generally considered like bad news, you know, and so we would rather over communicate to our investors and you know, and just show that respect, right. 

20:55
So a couple of things before we get into reports. You know it's a huge pet peeve in mind If somebody reaches out to our team. You know we've got a separate, you know current investors inbox and I told my team within 24 hours business hours, they need a response. You know these folks have invested 50, 75, 100k plus. They didn't respond. We may not know the answer, but we need to respond to them, say, hey, we're looking into it, you know. So that's kind of like one of the rules at our company. If you will and you know I just take that to you know, customer service, right? You know, I think as an LP, it's one thing that if people are not responsive from the beginning, that's generally not a good sign. So you know what we've developed, you know, and it's nothing that's rocket science but I think Our whole philosophy is that we want to treat our company, even though we're a smaller boutique, like a larger institutional private equity firm. 

21:48
Right, so that you know if we were gonna start doing deals with family offices, private equity, we have the systems, reporting processes down pat, right, and I think that comes with. You know, a starting point for us is taking all this data that we do on a month to month basis and sure, there's probably one or 2% of the investor base that wants all that data. But more often than not, most of these folks, you know, want the summary view right, how it impacts them and their investment. And so we take all that data and on a monthly basis, without fail, you're gonna hear about your deal and from Catalyst Equity, with the standard monthly report, you know, in the first year when we buy a property and generally what we buy with the value add deals that you know, between the first 18 months or so is really when we're doing the heavy lift, we always do a six month webinar, right. Cause one thing to send out a, you know, a monthly report. It's in PDF, you got all the addendums and financials attached. But at six month mark we say, hey, you know, you guys invested six months ago. 

22:50
We do a webinar which is, you know, 30 to an hour long, you know, we go dive deep into our quarterly results and then we give an opportunity. We talk about what's coming next, what are our challenges or risks, and then we give an opportunity for folks to ask questions. They could ask questions throughout the whole time anyway, but it gives them an opportunity to hear from us, you know. And then on a yearly basis, we do an annual webinar, right, and that's a reflection of basically like, how do we do, you know, kind of grade us from? We intended to do this, our projections, this is what happened. And then we kind of give a go forward of this next year, right. And I think, you know, we always talk about the risks, we always talk about the challenges, we talk about the wins as well, and then go forward from there. Well, monthly reports happen every month without fail, and then we do annual webinars. So that's kind of our standard. And then if there's anything that happens, you know, in the interim you know COVID was a good example, right Instead of having monthly reports, quite frankly, for, like I think, two, three months, we were giving weekly reports just to let investors know quick emails hey, this is what's happened, this was our occupancy, you know, we can't evict, et cetera. 

23:59
So we did that. And then we scaled that back when things kind of came back to normal. You know, if we've got a challenging deal, for whatever be the reason, right, we'll do a webinar, even if it's halfway year. Two, right, wasn't scheduled, but hey, you know we're gonna do a webinar. If we're gonna go sell or refinance a deal, you know we'll do a webinar to say hey, this is why, you know, we did an analysis, this is why we think we should refinance, et cetera. So we've got our standard process. And then there are these ad hoc you know kind of items that happen, that we, you know, address those. But I think, given that cadence and the fact that you know our folks on our team respond to investors within 24 hours, you know, you know we just want to give that good customer experience, because you know we're not perfect. Not all of our deals are perfect. There's always challenges. These are investments. We want the investors to know that we're doing everything we can and that's basically our process. 

24:57 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Yeah, you know, I guess help us to kind of see your update. You know, right, audibly, you know, like if I was looking at your update, you know, I guess, what's kind of a layout that you all present to investors and what are some crucial things that you know you're definitely including on a monthly basis. You know whether it's market data or whether it's deal, specifics, occupancy, whatever you know details there to distributions. You know what. Give us some, I guess, paint a picture for us. Yeah, yeah, basically. 

25:28 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
I mean, it's really. It starts with you've got a report that has you know, and this is the flow, right, starts with sponsor commentary, right, and basically that's hey, we just ended the month of June. You know our occupancy was X, y and Z. Compare that to last month or last quarter, whatever's relevant. Our collections were X, y and Z. You know, above or below budget for whatever reasons you know, talk about any. You know uniqueness in the expenses, like sometimes, you know in Texas, taxes will come out and you'll have to accrue or you had a insurance renewal, so those are like one-time events. So we kind of give the sponsor commentary that helps them understand that month, right. And then we've got, you know, basically, a P&L summary and essentially that P&L summary at a high level says you know what are? You know on a yearly basis, a T3 basis, which means last three months, and a T1 basis right where our actuals relative to budget and the variance for that. So then we know we could say, hey, you know T12 is here but we're trending upwards or whatever the story is. We've got charts that follow to show kind of the you know key trends and expenses. And then we've got a CapEx update, you know which. 

26:38
After we've completed the plan that becomes a little bit more light. But in the first one to two years it's hey. We knocked out phase one of our of our CapEx plan, which was most of the exteriors we're now doing, you know, 10 units a month on the exteriors. They're getting this lease trade out. You know these are some of the challenges we're having with materials and sourcing. So, and then we include pictures of this is the before unit, this is our after, this is our old signage, this is our new signage. So we include pictures and then at the end we kind of close out with a admin slash, distribution, right. 

27:10
So if it's admin, it's hey. You know we've got a webinar coming up, you know you're invited to, we'll follow. Or, hey, taxes are gonna be available in the portal March 15th. You know. If it's a distribution month we talk about, hey, you know, this is our, this is our results, this is what we're gonna distribute, these are what we're keeping in reserves, this is when you're gonna get it. So that's the general premise of our report and then we've got attached to that. You know we've got the P&L balance sheet, you know a rent roll, and then in our portal our investors can go and, you know, download the 200 different reports that you know our property manager shares with that, if they will, if they want to, I should say Ask what portal you know, investor portal you all use. 

27:53
Yeah, we're, we're on a IMS. Okay, yeah, like real page. Yeah, yeah, I know. 

28:00 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
I'm familiar, quite familiar, with them. But so you all, you all, ultimately will upload those reports from property management to the portal and then investors can log in and see those reports. 

28:12 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
Yeah, I would say less than 2% actually will review that. Yeah, I think with our, our PDF, that's ours, and those three main statements balance sheet, p&l and rent roll, you know most investors are. You know that that satisfies them, you know. 

28:31 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Every once in a while get an investor that I called me like eight in the morning. He's like Whitney. I was looking at page 13, line 42, last night at midnight and I that's very rare, right. 

28:43
However, I do love that idea that that information is available, right, or just putting it out there, just the transparency you know of that as well, that you all are putting it in a portal or if you want to see it, it's there. We're happy to walk you through it. You know, write or answer questions and and, but at least it's you know it is available, right, so they can see it. You know this report to I, you know, even internally, at life bridge, you know it's like it's morphed into a number of things, right, you know, over a lot of time and as we try to improve this process, you know, are there any ways that you've found to Maybe streamline this? You know, in a way that maybe you didn't know two years ago, right, you know? Or any thoughts behind you know, hey, you know when we really when we started doing it this way, or this process from these reports or I don't know, just any thought, yeah, yeah, so I think. 

29:36 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
I think that's a great question and one that, honestly, we grappled with for a couple years. You know, because you know you get. You get a report from one property manager company. It looks a little different that you're trying to analyze it. This deal story is different and I think the game changer happened for us when we have our asset manager and fractional CFO and we built a template right. We literally built the template that we take all this data right and we push it into our template that we use to analyze our cash and all this stuff. And then that standard template you we've got, you know, basically, our report tabs. You know we're pulling the same data that we've already mapped into our template and then we're pulling that data and so our asset manager is not thinking like, oh, for this deal I got to go do this and for this deal I got that this property manager software doesn't have this data. We've already figured that all out right, and so when we come to generate your reports, it's really the numbers are already there. It's really the story that we just have to do every month. You know, and I think that's been a huge game changer and a couple other things that we that we have in our report now that I think of what it is. 

30:40
You know we've got you know, because a lot of times investors earn 20 deals right. They don't know that, hey, we bought this deal at this time. You know this is the equity, you know this was the, this is the value right now. This is our interest rate. Another thing that we do, whitney, is we create. You know this may begin to too much detail, but a lot of investors want me to update their schedule of real estate owned right SREO. And in the beginning I used to get random emails like you know somebody's buying a deal or whatever, and they're like hey, I need you know these 20 things filled out right. And then you know the beginning of like okay, we'll do it. And then, starting like four years ago, we just said every deal, we've got a template. It's going to answer every question you need. It's on the portal for your deal, download it and you can fill it out, you know. And so that kind of alleviated some stress from our back office team. 

31:27 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
Okay, so that's helpful. I mean, that's, that's a way that you're adding value to your investors, right, and you're relieving that burden for your team, right, and I just I love that because it provides an immediate response to your investors, too, that need that right. Here's the information, yeah, yeah, otherwise. 

31:42 - Shane Thomas (Guest)
I'm traveling or my business partner, when we didn't have a team traveling, you know, and like, you know what, and this was a total game changer and we communicate that up front. We buy a deal. Hey, these are our admin steps. You know, welcome Frequently asked questions. We've got this guide and this is here and so I mean it's reduced. I mean, honestly, I probably get, I used to get, you know, just call it. I don't know five requests a month and I probably get five requests a year. Now, you know, and those folks just didn't remember that it was there. 

32:10 - Whitney Sewell (Host)
So Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you're telling your friends about the real estate syndication show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to livebridgecapitalcom and start investing today.