I love offering listeners fantastic benefits, such as some great discounts for products. These include the PM Grow Summit, website production through Property Managed Website, showing services through Tenant Turner, and more, with new offers coming all the time! You can see a complete list of the current offers at propertymanagementmastermind.com. For all of these offers, use the discount code “Brad” to secure your discount.
My guest today is a true luminary of the property management world. Bob Walters, who hails from Australia, is the founder and godfather of LPMA (the Leading Property Managers Association). Bob has been in the industry for over four decades, and has been doing conferences in Australia and New Zealand for over a decade. He’s a successful entrepreneur who has built up, sold, and successfully exited three property management companies totaling well over 4,000 units. Thanks to his deep expertise, Bob is also a consultant.
Together, Bob and I will dig deeply into the five S’s of property management: structure, strategy, systems, service, and standards.
In terms of structure, you need to keep in mind that there’s no right or wrong way to structure your business; you just need to delight your clients! When you start out, what you need to figure out about your structure is how many staff you need on your team to delight your clients while still making a profit.
One important aspect of strategy is having a properly documented business plan and a properly prepared budget. Even so, when Bob is working as a consultant, he often finds that property management companies don’t have these sorted out.
Having good systems for everything you do is an easy thing to say, but difficult to execute. Bob will explain how many property management businesses still don’t have properly documented systems, and clarifies that property management is mostly processes and absolutely requires strong systems to be successful.
The standards category covers both personal performance standards and company performance standards. These should be carefully calculated, achievable, and regularly monitored.
If you want to hear about the customer service side of things, tune into the episode! In addition to the important five S’s, we’ll discuss other topics including keeping your books, health checks for property management companies, why policies and procedures manuals are so important, marketing materials, and lots more. Once you’re done listening, if you can’t get enough about property management, join our Facebook group to get in touch with more industry professionals!
Here’s where you can find Bob:
Show Notes
[03:23] - Bob launches off the interview portion of the episode by talking about the five S’s of property management.
[05:26] - We move onto another of the five S’s: systems. Bob explains why systems are so vital to the property management business.
[06:47] - Next, Bob moves onto the topic of strategy, offering some basic examples of how property management companies should use strategies.
[08:15] - Bob talks about the typical goal of a property management business owner in Australia and New Zealand: to grow bigger. They usually start to stumble when Bob asks how they’re going to get there.
[09:41] - We hear about the numbers that Bob recommends planning for in terms of losses every year.
[10:56] - Bob discusses another of the five S’s: standards. Brad then offers an example of how this can function.
[12:35] - Over his career, Bob has built three property management businesses. He talks about the first one he built, which was during the 1980s.
[14:47] - Brad transitions into talking about doing health checks for businesses. Bob discusses what form a health check takes when he does it, mentioning that no two are exactly the same.
[16:39] - We hear more about Bob’s processes. He explains that many of the owners he talks to don’t value their policies and procedures manuals as much as they should.
[19:45] - Bob agrees that there need to be some paper-based forms, and talks about the value of color-coding things.
[21:14] - Bob discusses the importance of keeping proper books, and what exactly he means by the term.
[22:52] - Right now, Brad is on a crusade to develop an accounting standard that property management company owners can all use.
[24:12] - How much the owners take as their own profit can be a wild card, Bob points out.
[27:34] - We move onto the subject of customer service levels. Brad and Bob talk about net promoter scores.
[29:40] - Bob discusses the importance of customer service standards in a property management business.
[32:08] - Another thing to look for in a health check is a company’s marketing materials. Bob digs more deeply into this aspect of the health checks he does.
[34:34] - Bob shares something he discovered at the recent PM Grow Summit.
[36:28] - We hear about some of the top mistakes that Bob has made, and what people can learn from them.
[38:05] - Brad shares a story about a mistake of his own.
[40:11] - Another big mistake that Bob made in his career involved wanting to have the biggest company in town.
[42:18] - Bob shares a quick story related to what he and Brad have been talking about in terms of comparing business sizes.
[43:33] - One of the best metrics that we can eventually use, Brad says, is a profitability-per-door metric.
[44:35] - Bob walks us through another mistake that he has made in his career.
[47:47] - Does Bob have any parting words that he’d like to share with listeners?
[49:33] - Bob shares his email address so listeners can get in touch with him to chat more! You can reach him at bob@lpma.com.
Links and Resources:
I love offering listeners fantastic benefits, such as some great discounts for products. These include the PM Grow Summit, website production through Property Managed Website, showing services through Tenant Turner, and more, with new offers coming all the time! You can see a complete list of the current offers at propertymanagementmastermind.com. For all of these offers, use the discount code “Brad” to secure your discount.
Scott Lewis, today’s guest, has been wildly successful in just a couple of years, and his company eXp Realty is now hitting a viral stage. Its number of agents has grown almost ten times in size in just two years. Now that we’ve partnered with their fantastic company, it’s easy to see why they’ve been so successful!
I want you to hear about the fantastic collaboration between our companies, RentWerx and SaleWerx, and Scott’s company eXp Realty. We have RentWerx on one side focusing on single-family and multifamily property management, and Saleworks on the other side, focusing on residential single-family home sales. Both are powered by eXp Realty, and we couldn’t be happier.
In our conversation today, we’ll dig into why a property management company like RentWerx decided to team up with eXp Realty, and all the good things that have come out of the partnership. Scott will explain why the eXp model is radically different, including why he feels that the franchise model has been unfair to agents. The eXp model, on the other hand, is designed to empower the agent.
At eXp, the model involves having one broker per state working in tandem with other people to assist with questions, paperwork, compliance, transactions, and more. I used to feel like I had to constantly interrupt what I was doing with property management tasks to deal with state or local compliance issues, and now eXp takes care of all of that and let me juggle fewer tasks.
Tune in to hear more! And if you can’t get enough about property management, join our Facebook group to get in touch with more industry professionals!
Here’s where you can find Scott:
Explode Your Career on YouTube
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Show Notes
[03:23] - Scott starts things off by explaining how he and his wife, Traci, transitioned from their work with Century 21 and Keller Williams to owning eXp Realty.
[05:27] - What is Scott’s answer to the question “why eXp?”
[06:34] - Brad points out that the empowerment of agents is a big reason why they changed to eXp Realty. He gives some reasons for why this made so much sense for a property management company.
[08:02] - Scott talks about the recurring revenue stream that Brad has been discussing.
[09:01] - Brad steps in to more fully explain the difference between profit-sharing and revenue-sharing, and clarifies what eXp offers.
[12:20] - We hear more from Scott about how eXp has helped Brad be able to focus more on what he’s best at instead of dealing with distractions.
[13:58] - The key thing to look at here, Scott says, is that the only thing at risk with joining eXp is your ego.
[15:04] - Brad expands on what he’s looking for with agents and mentions the option of working with referrals.
[18:30] - We learn about cloud-based support at eXp. It’s something you have to experience for yourself, Scott says.
[20:48] - Scott quantifies eXp’s astonishing growth for the audience. The company went from 800 agents to over 7,000 in a little over two years, and is now in 47 states.
[22:25] - Brad had some losses as a real estate brokerage because there are small fees with eXp, but discovered that the good agents understand the model and don’t have any problem with it.
[25:03] - We hear some reasons why a hypothetical property management company owner in California might want to join eXp, and how it might work.
[27:52] - Brad brings up a few more points about the benefits that eXp offers.
[29:21] - Let’s talk numbers! We hear about the specific percentage of the split, as well as some of the details of the process of working with eXp.
[31:06] - At eXp, there are multiple people who are highly invested in helping you and answering your questions.
[32:21] - Scott talks more about the 80/20 split, where 80% goes to the company but 20% goes to eXp, which is owned by the agents. He then discusses the potential income one can earn with the company.
[36:26] - What made Brad’s decision for him was the realization that he had very little to lose and gigantic potential to do well.
[37:44] - Scott brings up another point, this time involving CRM tools.
[39:07] - We hear more about the costs at eXp.
[40:14] - One of the challenges that Scott and Brad have talked about is onboarding agents, Brad explains. Brad then talks about onboarding.
[42:07] - Brad talks about some of the next steps, and invites listeners to email him at brad@rentwerx.com.
[43:22] - Scott shares his parting thoughts and advice for listeners.
Links and Resources:
Explode Your Career on YouTube