Stress-Free Property Management: is it Possible?

Unlock the secrets to thriving in the property management world with insights from Ben Parham of Integrity Realty and Management. Discover how he balances an intense travel schedule, fulfilling his role as Southwest Regional Vice President for NARPM across five states, while also indulging in personal adventures to exotic locales like Costa Rica and Australia. Learn how Parkinson’s law can impact your productivity and how Ben navigates these challenges to maintain a successful property management company.

Unlock the secrets to thriving in the property management world with insights from Ben Parham of Integrity Realty and Management. Discover how he balances an intense travel schedule, fulfilling his role as Southwest Regional Vice President for NARPM across five states, while also indulging in personal adventures to exotic locales like Costa Rica and Australia. Learn how Parkinson’s law can impact your productivity and how Ben navigates these challenges to maintain a successful property management company.

Explore the shifting dynamics of the property management industry, where success is no longer measured by sheer volume but by aligning business growth with personal lifestyle aspirations. Hear firsthand how the landscape is evolving with increasing regulations and what potential opportunities these changes present. We discuss strategies for building a business model that prioritizes quality, emphasizing revenue per unit over managing more properties. This approach not only enhances financial success but also contributes to a balanced, stress-free work-life dynamic.

In our conversation, we also delve into effective strategies for client qualification and the importance of a strong online presence. From using Loom for efficient training to structuring a business that empowers property managers to grow their portfolios independently, we provide a comprehensive guide for creating a seamless and harmonious operation. Join us as we share the keys to maintaining peace of mind in the high-pressure world of property management, ensuring that both work and personal life are equally rewarding and enjoyable.

visit pmsuccess.com for more value packed property management related information or to hire Tony as your property management coach.

Podcast Episode Transcript

Ben Parham: 0:00

It’s my goal to make sure I keep the business structured to where it’s fun for me. Certainly it’s got its ups and downs, like any job, any business. I have days. I think anyone in property management is questioned why they do this for a living. There’s got to be easier ways to make money. But business is fun, and even more so. It’s just the community.

Tony Cline: 0:18

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets to profitability, efficiency and achieving true freedom, whether it’s your time, money or lifestyle, I’m your host, Tony Cline, and I’m here to help you build a wildly successful property management business. Let’s get to it.

Tony Cline: 0:37

Welcome. Today I’m joined by Ben Parham with Integrity Realty and Management. He’s actually a broker and property manager in the local market that I have spent the last 20 years in, and so Ben and I have crossed paths quite a bit. We actually met, I think, ben. I think we met through NARPM at some point, if I remember correctly, we did.

Ben Parham: 1:01

We initially met at a realtor association property manager meetup one time you attended, and I think Mike J Lanz invited you, and then after that that’s right, that’s right.

Tony Cline: 1:12

I forgot about that. That was down south, that’s right. Yeah, did that. Well, let me finish up my introduction here for you. And so we did talk briefly there for you, and so we did talk briefly there, but then we both got involved with NARPM quite a bit and we’re both president of the Denver chapter here locally, and then you went on to do some other things, and so what are you doing for NARPM right now?

Ben Parham: 1:37

I’m the Southwest Regional Vice President.

Tony Cline: 1:40

And what does that entail for those that aren’t familiar?

Ben Parham: 1:43

Yeah, so we’re basically a support to the local chapters in this region. So I’ve got five states, 11 chapters, about 8 them aware of tools that are already available, that they may not be aware of, and then also take any improvements that they have or help them to solve problems, to fulfill their role as being the president of their chapter.

Tony Cline: 2:18

Very nice. So I’m interested we won’t necessarily dive deep into this, but I’m interested how you’re fitting that in with all your recent travel you’ve been doing.

Ben Parham: 2:29

It’s definitely a challenge, but I found that the amount of time required to fulfill tasks will swell to the amount of time that you give yourself to do it in. So I just have less time and still got to get stuff done.

Tony Cline: 2:41

Yeah, I think that’s called Parkinson’s law, I think.

Ben Parham: 2:44

It is. There’s definitely a scientific name for it that I’m glad you articulated it. I forgot it, but that’s basically the concept. If you have a week to do a task, you’ll take a week. If you’re told you have a day, you’ll take a day.

Tony Cline: 2:54

Yeah Well, I’m really excited to have this conversation with you because I know we just came back Both of us just came back from the NARPM Broker Owner Conference in Amelia Island, Florida, and before that you had been traveling around a little bit. So, if you’re open to it, just kind of share with what you’ve been up to lately with travel. And the reason I want to start with that is I want to dive deep into how you’re able to actually do that while also running the company that you run.

Ben Parham: 3:24

Sure. So yeah, this is a busy travel year for me, both personally and helping out with NARPM. So personally, this year I’ve been to Costa Rica for about a week and then I came back for a few weeks and then went to London for a week, came back for another week and then went to Australia for about 10 days, flew back to Denver, was in Denver for five hours and I didn’t even leave the airport. I did a little suitcase exchange with my dad and flew off to Millie Island for broker-owner for another week. So now I’m back here.

Ben Parham: 3:56

Then I’ve got another trip to the Dominican Republic coming up, but beyond that, being on the board for National, we have to attend a few in-person board meetings. We’re expected to be at Berkler-Oner the convention and as well as I have to travel to each chapter. I’m supposed to visit them at least once every couple of years and just to show my face, be a support to them and their members, and then also do a chapter health assessment on just making sure that they’re kind of checking the boxes and their chapters firing on all cylinders. So so I’ve got 11 chapters to hit as well. So I’m going to try to do some of those this year and I’ve got two wonderful ambassadors that helped me with that as well. I’ve got taylor haas here in denver and crystal sherry out of nevada, so they kind of help spread that workload. But, uh, definitely a lot of travel involved, and so, yeah, I’d love to dive into how I can handle that as well as manage a property management company.

Tony Cline: 4:51

Yeah, you and I have been around the industry for a long time and we’ve seen a lot of different ways to run businesses. And I know it’s still a question that gets asked but there’s less importance put on it. But it used to be five or 10 years ago. It was how many doors do you manage? And that was the big thing and there was not a lot of other metrics that we could measure by. And it seemed like the people that were running a really big company were really focused on just maximizing revenue and maximizing impact in their marketplace, and that seemed to be the image that was put out there.

Tony Cline: 5:31

And some of the little companies were almost looked down upon because they weren’t trying to grow this enormous empire and they were really focused on having a business that provided the right lifestyle that they wanted to live. And I know that you’ve grown your company. You’ve sold off some of your doors. I’m not sure where you’re at now, but I know you’ve kind of focused on having the business intentionally support the bigger goals and bigger visions you have outside of the business and just had it support your overall lifestyle. So how did you go about deciding? Was it decided for you or did you intentionally grow this lifestyle business.

Ben Parham: 6:18

It’s just kind of what’s happened along the way. Property management’s a stressful business for sure. So I tried to say as long as I’m having fun, I’ll continue doing this business. And I’ve had employees in the past ask me are you going to sell the company? What are your plans? And I’ve told them as long as I’m having fun and I’m enjoying it, I’ll keep doing the business I’m having fun. So it’s my goal to make sure I keep the business structured to where it’s fun for me. Certainly it’s got its ups and downs, like any job, any business. I have days where I think anyone in property management’s questioned why they do this for a living. There’s got to be easier ways to make money. But by and large the business is fun, and even more so it’s just the community you and Mark Cunningham and all the. You know all the people in Narcon that I’ve met through Denver and nationally. It’s just a blast to. You know trade war stories with them and and know that we’re kind of in this great business that’s constantly changing. There’s always new challenges, there’s always new technology coming out, so it’s a lot of fun. So that’s been my goal as to whether I’m growing, regardless of what size I want to get to. It’s just got to remain fun for me and make sure that I have a business that helps me live, and I’m not just living around a business. And I think that’s the trap that a lot of property managers get into, especially the owners of the company. They get sucked into going from one fire to the next, to the next and not really stepping back and identifying what’s the cause of the stress and these fires that I’m having to put out. How can I minimize that and stay in this business and enjoy it and also turn the profit that I need to run a good life? So that’s what I’m always looking at and, like you said, I’ve grown and shrunk. We’re at about 250 doors right now. We’re trying to hit 350 this year. So we’re back in growth mode.

Ben Parham: 8:09

As you mentioned, at one point I’d gotten up to about 215 or so and I sold off a chunk, actually to Mark Cunningham and I was looking at what it was. You know season of life I was in. I had a few young kids that were at home and I said, ben, you know you’re never going to have them at home again. Eventually they’re going to be in school full time. And then now I’ve got two teenagers, and my teenage daughter calls me bruh and it really doesn’t care to get excited about dad being around as much, and they still need dad, but not the same way. So I knew that life was coming.

Ben Parham: 8:43

But right then in that moment, you know, I wanted to focus on my kids, so you know. So I’ve shrunk the business during those periods to make sure it met, you know, those needs for me. And then, now that I’m in a different season of life and I’ve learned a lot along the way, we’re kind of back in growth mode, because there’s a lot of opportunities with growth as well. You had a whole new set of challenges. So that’s kind of where I’m at with it, and I don’t know where I’ll be five years from now. But as long as I’m having fun, I’ll keep doing it.

Tony Cline: 9:10

If you could take your crystal ball out. We talk a lot about the changes that are happening in the industry and how those that adapt are able to figure out where the new opportunities are. Nothing is going to stay the same I don’t know that it ever has but we’re seeing the speed of change just rapidly increasing. Where do you see just even 12 or 24 months from now? Where do you see the business going or the industry going, and where do you see us being able to have the biggest impact as property managers?

Ben Parham: 9:46

I mean I see there being a lot of opportunity in property management and a lot of that’s based on the regulations that we’re seeing come in and everyone gets really fearful of that regulation word. And I know we try to go down a Capitol Hill and defeat these bills that are proposed, but I kind of take a step back from it and I think you know really, regulations are good for our business. They’re not necessarily great for the consumer, although that’s the intent of why a lot of these regulations get passed. Ultimately they raise rents and you know they make it more difficult to get into the market. They’ve reduced supply of rentals but, as a property manager, we have more opportunity for business.

Ben Parham: 10:27

I think in America it’s something like 70 to 80% of houses are single or self-managed. So, versus you, look at a country like Australia which is highly regulated. I mean they make California look like they’re a bunch of Trump supporters and over there it’s flip-flopped. It’s like 70% to 80% are professionally managed. So it just goes to show regulation actually helps give more opportunities for property managers. So instead of getting stressed about it and I hear people say I’m going to leave this business, it’s just I don’t want to deal with this.

Ben Parham: 10:59

This is what we do on a daily basis. Regulations are just a challenge that we kind of wrap our mind around and we figure out how to solve it, and then we just put it in our pipeline and we try to automate it. So I kind of use the example of CPAs a lot. You’d never see CPAs trying to make it easier to do your own taxes. They love complex tax codes and the more tax regulations, the better. So I think it’s a great time to be in property management. Certainly, it takes a little bit more, you know, a little bit more diligence on making sure you’re complying with a constantly changing landscape. But for those that can do that and have the energy and the willpower to, you know, to wrap their mind around that and find a solution to it, I think there’s going to be a lot more opportunity coming, and it’s a great thing about this business and why we can be so cooperative. The pie is so big and there’s so much opportunity and that’s just going to continue to grow, I think.

Tony Cline: 11:53

Yeah, I think to just to kind of put the cherry on that, the legislations make it so that the the consumer needs us more, but it also gives us more content for us to put out into the marketplace. That will make us different than the quote competitor or the other business down the street. If we’re able to lean into that show that we really understand it and we’re guiding people through that it just gives us. You know, we’re all looking for a way to put our message out there and make a difference and I think that’s a really good way to kind of wrap around all of these things that are coming down, sharing that with the market in general, sharing it with our clients, but just making it so that they understand that we understand the complexities and that it’s more difficult every day to do it on their own.

Ben Parham: 12:46

So it’s a good point Absolutely, and we get to identify ourselves as the expert.

Ben Parham: 12:50

And you look at businesses like the legal profession. I mean, it’s so complex to try to navigate that on your own that if you have any kind of serious matter you’re going to consult an attorney and attorneys love that and we go to them for their expertise. I know you’ve probably experienced this. You go on your first visit with a potential homeowner, especially one that’s never rented their house, and they’re scared to death. They’ve heard all the horror stories and they have all these unknowns and you come in answering the questions that they don’t even think to ask and just really show them that you’re like this beacon of hope in this land of stress that they had. And the more complex it becomes to rent your own property, the more so they’re going to see us as those experts. So yeah, I think it’s a great time.

Tony Cline: 13:35

Okay, so you mentioned you’re transitioning, or you have transitioned back into a season of growth. So let’s talk a little bit about that. What’s that look like for you? How are you structuring your company? How are you bringing on team members? Just kind of share with us what all that looks like, sure.

Ben Parham: 13:52

So we don’t just have a door.

Ben Parham: 13:53

count number I do have a number that we’re trying to get to and it’s one of those kind of big, hairy, audacious goal kind of deals. But we kind of insert we don’t just want, say, 1,000 doors, we want 1,000 quality doors. So I’ve modeled a lot of my business off of kind of the philosophy that Steve Crossland had, which his mentality primarily was stay 100 doors or less, but I’ve expanded that into a larger door count. However, we only work for the certain kind of owners, ones that are completely hands-off. They recognize us as the expert. We take our fiduciary role very seriously. So we are there to act for the owner, not to help them manage their property themselves, but to manage their property for them. So we’re very selective. The owner has the qualify to rent or to have us manage their property and their property itself has the qualify. So we primarily focus on class A to B plus properties. We’ll take anything that’s single family.

Ben Parham: 14:53

We have done multifamily in the past but I’ve found by and large the margins are just too small. So my goal isn’t to go to an ARPM conference and puff my chest and say I’ve got 500 doors or 1,000 doors. I’m really more focused on that revenue per unit number because I can manage 200 doors and still make more money than someone with 500 doors if they’re managing the wrong properties. Compound it with a time factor. If you could put a dollar amount on your time, what’s it worth to be able to go travel and leave the country for 10 days and not have to worry about it? And if you put a value on that, your revenue per unit would be even higher. So that’s kind of our focus and I’ve communicated that well to my team. They know kind of all the horror stories with hiring the wrong kind of properties and just really trusting our gut. I tell them if you’re already exhausted and you haven’t signed the management agreement, it’s not going to be a good fit for us, and they know the classic kind of red flags to look for. So that’s how we qualify our owners.

Ben Parham: 15:52

As far as the company itself, we’re mostly structured as independent contractors. Scott Brady just spoke at Broker Owner, but I’d actually heard him on I believe it was Jordan Moyla’s podcast years ago and so when he was up on stage just a couple of weeks ago I didn’t know his name, but as soon as he started talking and mentioning his business I was like that’s the guy I heard, and so it’s kind of similar model to what he’s doing. We’re going to hire independent contractors who are licensees and they can run their own property management business under our umbrella. You have to follow our policies. I hire a lot of property managers that have never been in the business, which is a little higher learning curve. But I can train them in the way we do property management so they don’t bring any baggage to the table. So they get the opportunity.

Ben Parham: 16:40

Most start with zero doors Sometimes I have a handful to give them but most start with zero and they build their own portfolio. So they go on their own business development calls, they do the site visits, they sign up the owner so they establish that relationship up front with the owner and then they’re their point of contact. We do have a bookkeeper office manager on staff that handles all the back-end accounting, handling the utility bills, and you’re just dealing with that side of it. She actually works remote as well. She lives down in Oklahoma so she used to be here in Denver but we’ve kind of structured it to where no one has to be in the office. We do have an office location at a work share center. If we need to meet clients there we can, but everyone pretty much works from their house, from their phones and their laptops Because, as you know, most property management’s in the field anyways Sure. So that’s kind of the structure and I’ve told them what I had done in the past.

Ben Parham: 17:33

As I was growing again, I got up to about 130 doors and I was getting a little busy doing all the field work, so I hired an assistant. I’ve had a couple. Some were unlicensed, some were field work, so I hired an assistant. I’ve had a couple. Some were unlicensed, some were licensed and they were doing, you know, could really expand the capacity because now they’re helping with the movement, inspections and move outs, putting on lock boxes, doing showings, just made it to where I could now manage even more properties. So I have a property manager now who’s built up to probably 80 properties and she’s at that level to where she’s now had someone come on to help her as well and you know that person will work directly for them.

Ben Parham: 18:07

They won’t be a salaried employee of myself, but they have to follow our policies and still, you know, sign on non-competes, so so that’s kind of our structure is hey, you get to run your own business and here’s the playbook on how to do it. You know I’ve done a lot of video training. We can delve into some, but I’ve tried to make it to where I can hire someone new and give them about 80% of their knowledge in either video or written form, which cuts down on the individual training time, and just really show them. Here’s the playbook. It’s worked successfully. We’re growing doors, we have mostly five-star reviews and not a lot of stress in our life. So to the extent you stick to this playbook, you can replicate that. To the extent you start. You know getting the beggars can’t be choosers kind of philosophy and signing up anyone and everyone, you’ll bring stress and disaster into your life. So um so for the most part I think we’ve articulated that well and they’re following that plan for the most part and seems to be working.

Tony Cline: 19:00

So I think there’s a lot of people that are consuming this content, that are going to be interested in that structure, that business structure that you have, because at this point, the way that I understand it is, your business structure really allows you unlimited growth because you’re bringing in people, you’re providing a platform, but they’re plugging into that and then it’s really how big do they want to grow? And so I’m curious. So, number one how do you communicate that target client? Is your target client profile the same across all of your property managers or do they kind of pick their own little niche that they go into?

Tony Cline: 19:44

I know you talked about residential single family, but do they have any leeway on the type of clients they work with? Or have you guys got really dialed in on that target client profile so that not only can you send out the right marketing and messaging, but your business and your backend is built to support that client? And then my second question to follow up with that is with everybody being remote and even spread across the country, how do you communicate that? You mentioned some video library training and things like that. I’d like to get a little bit more into the details of how all that comes together so that you can create what I call the championship team Sure.

Ben Parham: 20:30

Yeah. So they have a little leeway as far as what kind of properties. I should say. Within a certain classification they have to be single family if they’re wanting to do commercial or short-term kind of housing. Family If they’re wanting to do commercial or short-term kind of housing. We’re not really set up for that. We do a little commercial but we don’t do any vacation rentals. We dabble in corporate housing a little bit, but for the most part the property managers have to stay within the single family space. Anything outside of that they would just need to bring to me and really, to be honest, I don’t think they’d want to do it anyways. They really like being able to repeat the process. I think so in the beginning. It’s just really reiterating to them why we manage the kind of properties we do and let them know there is a reason for it. And when you’ve been in business for a little while and you have a track record of good reviews, you can say look, this is the result. If you go off of this path you might get a good result, but there’s a chance that you won’t. And I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I can tell you most likely you’re going to start having problems. So we kind of drill that in.

Ben Parham: 21:33

I’ve also recorded pre-recorded actual introduction phone calls. I’ve got three or four. We use RingCentral for our voice over IP phone, but most of the online phone services have some kind of recording function. If yours has that, you want to use it, and if it costs extra, do it, cause I like having every phone call, inbound and outbound, recorded. Um, but when it was just me doing everything, I thought to myself you know, ben, at some point you’re going to have staff again and you’re not going to want to have to sit down every single time and have them listen to you do an introduction phone call with an owner. You’re not going to have to go with them on four or five appointments. So I would have these introduction calls and if I feel like it really went well and I nailed it, I would go and download that call. Or if I had a call with a bunch of red flags in it, like, well, that’s a great example of an owner we don’t even need to schedule an appointment with. So we download that one. So that’s their very first task. Once we get through the onboarding paperwork and get their account set up, day one, they’re just listening to the introduction of phone calls, because that’s where they’re going to start is. We’re going to send leads to them and they’re going to start talking to owners. So I want them to have an idea of what to listen for, just on that phone call alone, and then, you know, on the site visit as well, we’ll kind of drill into it a little bit more.

Ben Parham: 22:53

I’ve heard at some point crazy will identify itself. So you know, the longer you’re talking to that owner, if they’re crazy or they have any kind of problems that are going to make it difficult to manage, you’ll discover them. Usually Sometimes they slip through the cracks. So that’s just how we’ve tried to solidify in their mind what we want to manage. But as far as where I mean they try to stay in the Denver metro area we have a vendor list already set up so they know if they go too far outside of the area we service they’re going to have difficulty with vendors. So to the extent they want to just keep it really easy and rinse and repeat, we kind of give them this is the box that we want to try to stay in, and outside of that it’s always worth a discussion and always chat with them about it.

Ben Parham: 23:35

We do. You know, in the past I would hire someone and I’d say, ok, here’s how you do it, I tell them once and I thought, okay, I told them. So they obviously know what to do now. And I’ve learned a lot. I was a good property manager, not necessarily a great broker owner, so I’ve learned over time that when you tell people something, they probably only remembered about 10% of it and you have to keep telling them over and over and over again.

Ben Parham: 24:00

So we do have monthly meetings for their first year that they’re on staff and if they’re local, we’ll go to a coffee shop or go have a drink at happy hour or something, or we’ll meet in the office, whatever’s convenient. If they’re not able to come in, we’ll just do a Zoom call, but every single month they’ll meet up. I don’t call it a performance review, it’s just a broker check-in, a broker property manager sync-up meeting and they have KPIs. Every position in our company I’ve written out with the key performance indicators are for that job. So they’ll self-grade themselves before they come to the meeting. I think I got this idea from Mark and then we’ll go through it and if they rated themselves eight out of 10 or higher. We don’t drill too much into that, but if they’re having a lower score on anything then we’ll kind of dive into it.

Ben Parham: 24:48

Know why? Why do you think you’re struggling there? Is it because you need more training or our systems aren’t efficient, or did you just drop the ball? You know they’re usually very upfront about it and they know it’s a. You know I’m not going to yell and scream at them, it’s just we’re trying to solve problems.

Ben Parham: 24:59

So we do that every single month for the first year and I thought they wouldn’t like it.

Ben Parham: 25:05

It would be something that they have to need a schedule to do, but I think they really they love it.

Ben Parham: 25:08

They come with a list of questions that they want to go through each time and we’ll just kind of go through scenarios and so I’ve learned you have your baseline and then they start veering off and when you do that little monthly thing, you pull them back and they veer off a little and you pull them back and you just you get to keep them on that path that you want your company to go on, and over time you know they’ll become that, will become a habit.

Ben Parham: 25:29

But if you just tell them one time and then you’re so busy managing properties that you go off to do your own thing and you let them go wild out there. You know you can’t be shocked when six months later you find out they haven’t even been sending the move-in inspection report link to the tenants to do their inspections. There’s lots of things I’ve caught along the way and I’m like, oh good, I’m glad it’s only been a month that you’ve been doing that wrong versus six months. So that’s kind of how we keep them structured. Then we’ll go to every two months normally. After that I think Mark just said the other day you should meet with them every single week. We don’t do that. I don’t know if I could handle that myself, but certainly once a month meeting with everyone I think is really valuable and we meet as a team once a week or so just to kind of sync up on new legislation and issues like that.

Tony Cline: 26:15

But the one-on-ones are really critical the training and communicating new policy and process. Number one where are you storing or what technology are you using to help facilitate communicating the things that you want them to know? And, like you said, when you tell them once, if they remember it 10% of the time, then they need to hear it nine more times. So how are you communicating that? How are you giving them the resources to be able to get that training without you having to be the one that’s delivering it in person?

Ben Parham: 26:54

So if it’s a training issue, that’s going to happen. Every time I hire someone new, um, you know I’ll I’ll record a really good quality video of me doing that. So I’ve used different software through, uh, the years. I used to just do kind of screen capture software on my computer. Uh, the best one now is loom. It’s like $80 a year, I think, for the premium version, and at any time you just click the button and it starts recording your whatever’s on your screen and it makes it easy to share those videos. So, but, however, you want to record it.

Ben Parham: 27:24

And when I, after I, shrunk my portfolio down to about 90 properties, I thought to myself okay, ben, you’re back doing everything. You got your sleeves rolled up. But at some point, once you’re out of this season of life, you’re going to probably want to grow again and this is your chance. Now you know exactly how to write a property management agreement, so just record a screen share or screen capture. I pretended like I had a new associate sitting right next to me and I said okay, here’s how you fill out a property management agreement. And we went through how to do it in our e-document software and so I just did that, recorded that video and where you want to put those. There’s lots of different ways to do that. I just use a free, the free version through Google’s platform. They have a Google Sites, but there’s some paid ones out there, like Trainually is a great one, it’s a couple hundred bucks a month. That’s a really good one for putting all your procedures and policies and tasks and workflows, everything into. And there’s other ones as well. So, but I just put that in there.

Ben Parham: 28:25

I say, okay, I’ve got different categories. Here’s the property acquisition category, so they need to know how to do an introduction call site visit. Here’s how you send the property management agreement. Then we have a leasing section. Here’s how you update the Appfolio profile to upload your photos. Make sure you watermark your photos. So all of our policies because we have a policy that we watermark all photos, so I show them. Here’s how you can do the watermarkings. Here’s how you upload them in Appfolio. So I only had to do that one time.

Ben Parham: 28:55

And obviously, when you’re doing everything yourself quickly, you just know how to run through it and you do it fast. So when you record a video, it’s going to take two to three times as long because you want to do a really good quality video and make sure you’re explaining every step that you are used to just doing automatically. But you only have to do that one time and then you never have to give that spiel again unless your software updates or your policies change. So every step along the way from inputting a property into the system to posting and advertising, how to configure Tenant Turner, what the expectations are on showings, how to process applications, doing lease agreements just all the steps through the entire life cycle I’ve tried to get a video on on and it’s a constantly evolving process because things are changing and sometimes I realize there’s holes in my training. So, but the goal you’ll never get to a hundred percent. You’re trying to get 80% of those routine processes in some kind of video or documentation or both.

Ben Parham: 29:50

Some people like to read more than they like to do a video. So, however, you want to do that that, but you wanna make it to where your new associates can know that that information is there and it’s easily searchable to find it. And I kind of have a joke with them, but it’s not really joking. It’s more serious that if you’re gonna call me with a question or you’re gonna send me a Slack message with a question you have to start the question with. I’ve already checked our video library and our procedures guide. I can’t find the answer and then you can ask my question or your question. But just because it’s quicker to ask, ben, it’s just there’s only one of me and there’s five or six of them. There’s not enough time in the day for me to answer questions. I’ve already invested time in a video to answer. So they know that’s the expectation is that they at least go check and, as they get their feet wet and they know their way around our company, if they see something’s out of date or needs to be updated or missing, they’ll let me know, and I add that to my list of videos that I need to go record. So that’s where the routine training.

Ben Parham: 30:47

But Loom’s super helpful, even just to get out a message for something new, like if there’s a new requirement, like in Colorado, we have to do the portable screening report language on all of our advertisements now. So instead of trying to send a long email out about that, I just recorded a Loom video. I showed them exactly. Here’s the language. Here’s how you paste it into your ads. I need you to go to all your active rental properties now and put this language on there so we comply, and then it just drops it to a little URL link. You just email it out to them or we use Slack for internal communication.

Ben Parham: 31:20

I just send that out. They can watch it on either normal speed or 1.2 or 1.5. I already talk kind of fast, so if they want to get through it even faster, they can speed that up. And I even paid for that subscription for them as well, because you’ll get owners saying I can’t figure out how to download my statement. Instead of trying to do snapshots, they can just record a video and say, okay, you click here, you click here and just send that link to the owners and they love it as well. So I think video is really, really critical and it’s getting bigger and bigger, it seems. So that’s how we’ve done it and it’s made it easier to just communicate as a team and just make sure that they always can not just hear it from me once, but they can go back and find that video and just click that link again if they need to hear it again.

Tony Cline: 32:06

Well, ben, we’re coming up on time. But I didn’t want to end this without talking to you a little bit about I know you’ve spent some time streamlining your sales process and I want to get a little bit of feedback from you on. You mentioned Steve Crossland and there’s a lot of people in our industry that know him. He had some pretty strong opinions about how to run a business and he’s retired twice. So he’s built a business, sold it, retired, got bored, built another business. Built a business, sold it, retired, got bored, built another business, sold it, retired, and now I think he’s living in Playa del Carmen. So he obviously knows what he’s talking about. But you’ve taken some of his basic philosophy and built on that. But I wanted to just see if you had anything you wanted to add around your sales processes, if you had anything you wanted to add around your sales processes.

Ben Parham: 32:58

Yeah, I mean, we’ve systematized the sales process just like anything else. Most of our leads come in via our website. If you haven’t built up your online reviews, you really got to start there. That social proof seems to be kind of the way that people are going. You can be ranked first on Google all day long, but if you have a low review rating it’s really not going to get you very far. So most of our leads come via that source and obviously you can get them through networking events as well or postcard mailers. However you get the lead doesn’t matter. But once they get into our funnel, we normally will schedule the introduction call 20, 30 minutes. That’s our chance to vet them, let the owner vet us and then, if that goes well, then we’ll schedule that site visit to go qualify, you know, continue qualifying them, but also qualify the property as well. Sometimes they’re not local, so you can’t do that, but most of our leads are, you know, first-time landlords. They’re living in the property themselves. So obviously if you have an investor that’s calling and they’ve got 10 properties, you’re not going to probably meet them. But by and large, for us, most of ours are homeowners converting it to a rental. So that’s our general procedure and the main goal in that is that we want to make sure they fully understand that they’re giving us the keys to that property not just literally but metaphorically, that they’re giving us the keys to that property not just literally but metaphorically. We’re going to run their property. We are the experts.

Ben Parham: 34:21

Steve Crossman, mitch Ham again had a presentation called who’s the Boss that he gave a lot. He gave it out in Denver and with his permission he sent it to me and I’m kind of revamping it and I’m retitling it. You are the expert, but it’s basically getting in the mindset that the owners don’t drive this train any more than if you needed heart surgery, you wouldn’t go to the heart surgeon and tell them what kind of blade they’re going to use and what kind of anesthesia they’re going to use. They would tell you how the surgery is going to go and if you don’t like that, you just find a different surgeon. And that’s what I tell my employees. To tell my employees, I said even if you’re brand new in the business, you have a real estate license, and if you’re a member of NARPM and you work for a management company that has good systems in place, even on your first day, you’re probably five times more qualified than that do-it-yourself landlord. That’s never done it. So just remember, you are the expert. You’re always bringing more knowledge to the table in most cases and that’s how we go into every sales call.

Ben Parham: 35:16

We make sure that the owners know that if they’re going to hire us, they’re going to let us manage the property the way we manage properties. If they don’t like that, it’s their house and they, of course, are welcome to find another property manager. But we don’t want to sign up every door. We want to sign up the right ones. Some examples we qualify tenants. The owners don’t qualify. They find out we rented their house when we send them the lease agreement. They find out that the water heater got replaced after the bill comes in and we say, oh, by the way, the hot water heater went out. Same thing with heat and air. Like I’m not going to ask the owner if they want me to get five bids while the tenants are cooking in their house in 100 degrees. I’m just going to get it done and I tell them that. And if you don’t like that, that’s fine. We’re just not the property manager for you, but we’re going to manage your property.

Ben Parham: 36:03

Well, we have a great reputation. Don’t try to tell my employees hey, they called us, we didn’t call them. In most cases they came to us because of our reputation. We have that reputation because this is how we manage properties. So don’t forget that. Don’t let the owners try to dictate to us how we’re going to manage their properties, and if that’s the way they want to do it, that’s their house. They can go somewhere else. So we keep that philosophy. That’s kind of the Steve Crossland-ism, as I call it. I’m not sticking to the hundred doors or less, but we do stick to that. You got to make sure you can put those properties in the system that you run, and if you do that then it’s a lot easier to manage them. It’s a lot lower time commitment because the amount of time you put in it doesn’t necessarily increase the management fee. You make the same amount of money, so you might as well reduce that time.

Tony Cline: 36:47

Yep, well said. All right, ben, I’ve got a close-out question that I’ll ask you, and then we’ll wrap up. I’ll give you the last word. But, if, if you were able to go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be? Lord?

Ben Parham: 37:07

I know exactly what it’d be. I spent too much time stressing about all the little problems that come up and I would remember that this is just a job. And I thought to myself, in a hundred years from now, when I’m dead and the owners are dead, they’re not going to even care what these problems were. So you know, live your life, enjoy your life. This is the one life that you get, so don’t spend that precious time that you have worrying about the house.

Ben Parham: 37:34

I mean, obviously we have a duty to protect the houses, but don’t let it affect your health. You got to make sure that you stay in shape, that you keep your mental health good, you know, make sure you’re spending time with your kids and that at the end of the day, if you structure your company right, you should be able to sleep well at night. The problems will still be there the next day and by having that kind of 30,000 foot view it kind of keeps things in perspective. So I spent way too much time, I think, really stressing about things. Let my heart rate get too high before I finally came to that realization.

Tony Cline: 38:04

Well said, Ben. Thanks for hopping on here with us and really appreciate it. And we need to. We’re so close. We need to actually spend a little time in person over the next time you’re in town for more than 48 hours, we need to grab lunch Sounds good Thanks for tuning in to the Property Management Success Podcast.

Tony Cline: 38:25

We’ll be back with another value-packed episode to help you level up your property management game. If you’ve got something valuable out of today’s episode, please share it with a friend or colleague, and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics. Until next time. Here’s to your success.