In this episode, Tony Cline, Chief Success Officer at PM Success, talks about the importance of setting expectations, default positions, and top-tier experiences. Whether you’re balancing processes with empathy or finding the right members for your team, the service and experience you deliver is key to building a successful brand. Listen to hear Tony’s insights and expertise.
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Season 5 Episode 2 features Tony Cline, Chief Success Officer at PM Success.
The Triple Win Property Management Podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature.
Andrew Smallwood
Hello, professional property managers. Andrew Smallwood here from Second Nature and the Triple Win Podcast.
I'm joined by my friend, Tony Cline. Tony, it's great to have you on the podcast today.
Tony Cline
Andrew, it's always great spending time with you.
Andrew Smallwood
We were just at the Systems Conference. I think it was a couple weeks ago, sitting on couches, having a great conversation. I know we'll touch on a couple of items that we talked about there. But man, it's an exciting start to the year here in 2025. Tony, I'd love to kick off with just, what are you appreciating? What are you looking forward to most right now in 2025?
Tony Cline
I think one of the things that—and I've tried to live this way for a while—but one of the things that really came into some clarity for me as I was reflecting on 2024 and leaning into 2025 is that, personally and professionally, we we tend to either be in a state of friction or a state of flow.
And I've really tried to figure out how to eliminate the friction and lean into the state of flow. And sometimes those are really easy decisions to make, and sometimes they are things that are changing, fundamentally, the way that we operate, the lives that we live. But I'm really trying to be intentional about eliminating that friction. And by doing that, you know, this is an old video game reference, but if you've ever played Mario Kart, you know, having those little accelerators on the course, finding the ways to lean into flow really accelerates your personal life and your business. And, so that's kinda what I'm celebrating is the fact that I'm staying conscious about that.
Andrew Smallwood
Mhmm. I really like that. And I'm gonna use that as a segue to to cover up my mistake here. If you're a podcast host, job number one is to introduce your guests to the audience.
I'm like, gosh. Everyone must know who Tony Cline is by this point, but I'm sure actually there's some people who haven't had a chance to meet you, Tony. I love what you said about friction and flow, and something I've observed about you over the years is, whether you're in the property management business, you know, your role now really helping, you've always been educating and, like, coaching and generously kind of giving up your time to support other people in this industry and business.
I know it's something we've also appreciated. Just, you've got a very heart-centered style of leadership, that I think we really appreciate as well, and people that vibe with you notice as well. But, for people who are less familiar with you, what should they know about Tony Cline and what you're up to these days?
Tony Cline
That's a great question. I think it's not one that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I've just been me. You know?
I'm pretty transparent with some of the successes I've had and, more importantly, a lot of the failures that I have. I feel like there are people that do the highlight reel when they're talking about what they have going on, and I kinda lean into the opposite. I think you build connections by shared trauma or shared situations that you've both struggled through, and that's one of the things as an ultra runner. I learned that you can be out on a course with somebody, and within, you know, thirty or forty minutes, you're sharing things that you don't share outside of that environment just because you have some similarities.
You talk about the things that you're going through, and that's where the progress is. And, you know, one of our core values for our company is courage. And I talk a little bit about the difference between courage and bravery.
And to be brave is to charge into battle without fear.
But to be courageous is to feel the fear and do it anyway.
And I feel like I've tried to lean into that and just, you know, we try new things in business. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, and I don't try to hide those things. And I think one of the reasons why I think I do have so many connections in the industry is that I'm just pretty transparent with what I've been through and where I'm at now. And I think people are drawn to that because they want to have those true genuine connections.
Andrew Smallwood
Mhmm. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that.
Well, Tony, I know we're gonna get into a couple different topics here today, but wanted to kick off with this. There's been a lot of conversation, continues to be conversation, about people in this industry moving from seeing themselves as a service provider to seeing themselves as an experience provider or having kind of a service-centric lens on the business versus an experience-centric type of lens on the business. And I'm curious what that means to you.
You know, what does that make you think of when you hear people talking about that?
Tony Cline
I think for—to take it back when I have my property management business, we were really focused on, you can call it being smart. You can call it being lazy.
I'm sure there was some combination of the two, but I wanted to figure out, it didn't make sense to bring on new doors and then churn them out the back end. Right? So the better experience I can provide for the people who are management clients, who are residents, the better experience I can provide, the more sticky they become, meaning they're not looking to churn out either as a client or as a tenant. And so we really tried to figure out what is the best experience that we could provide.
And an example of that would be, we really tried to set ourselves up as the authority in the marketplace. We had clients that would come to us that were looking for an expert. They weren't looking for somebody to assist them in managing their property. They were looking for somebody that would manage their property, take the headache off their plate.
And so we might have a client that, after we onboard them, and you go through the first initial calls and emails and exchanges, but after that, I might not actually hear from them for two, three, four years.
But when I did hear from them, I would make sure we solved their issue, but it was not uncommon for me to spend forty-five minutes on the phone with an owner talking about nothing really related to property management. We solved their issue. But I wanna know, you know, what their sports teams were doing, what the weather was like, how the kids were growing up. The last time we talked, they were, you know, getting ready to go into college, or whatever. And so for me, it's more about being that person that is building those connections and the network and connecting them with other clients or vendors or whatever that I might have just to build that relationship. And I might not speak to them again for another year or two or three years. And the reason why that is important is I need to be able to operate my business the way that it is the most efficient and effective.
And the way you do that is eliminate input from your clients.
And I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the better I can provide a better service if I can streamline that service and make it uniform and that be the default. And then I can offer the ability to customize it and make it special.
But now I'm making a choice to do that versus having a hundred different clients and a hundred different ways to manage those properties.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. I'm hearing you say, hey, there's a way of doing things that you're empowered and your clients are empowering you, right, to bring your expertise to, right, make decisions on their behalf. And as opposed to reacting to different client needs or requests or whatever it might be that, hey, you can choose to do those things, but it's gonna be an intentional choice and something you're proactively deciding, as opposed to running around, right, and kind of chasing that, really setting the right expectations, getting in the right relationship with your clients, in a way where you can have deep relationships.
But that doesn't—it sounds like that doesn't mean, hey, I'm talking to these clients forty-five minutes, etcetera, every day.
You know, it's—you are building deep relationships, but in a way that, also, your business model supports.
Tony Cline
Yeah. We were a high touch business, but we were not a frequent touch business. Right? So it was high impact.
And you mentioned, or you're you questioned, how do we take from being a service-based industry to an-experience based industry? And, you know, if we're looking at just providing a service, our service is to lease the property.
And so you could check the boxes both on the landlord side and the tenant side where I've checked all the boxes to lease the property.
When we leaned into the experience, we wound up having a welcome gift bag. We had a gift bag. We had you know, if you think about when you're moving into a new property, there are things that just you might have packed up your paper towels. You might have packed up your toilet paper.
You know, moving is stressful. So one of the people that are moving into the property probably has a headache. So we were providing little packets of ibuprofen. We were providing a roll of toilet paper or a hook to clean out the drains and a couple of water bottles, some candy.
We had a little letter. And not that that was, I mean, it cost us, like, eight bucks to put all that together in a bag, but it added to the experience.
And then we would ask the people to send us a selfie inside their new unit when they moved in just to show that they were having a good time. We could use that for our marketing. And so really shifting from checking the boxes to, how can we get people emotionally excited about one of the most stressful events in their lives, which is moving?
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. I love what you shared there because I think most residents' expectations moving in is I just hope the place is clean and I’ll be able to get in properly, etcetera, and they're focused on getting all their stuff in.
Even just a little bit of saying, oh, here's this unexpected package right there is a chance to surprise and delight. I love what you said too about the selfie and being able to use that as a way of connecting and then also, you know, reusing that for marketing.
Okay. Here's an expectation. How can we meet, exceed it, and insight some positive emotion that this customer's gonna associate with our brand?
I love what you shared there.
Tony Cline
And that one step is just one component of it. Right? So in and of itself, it's not that special. But as you build these different connecting pieces, you know, one of the other things we did when people would move in is we would allow them to do their own move in walk-through.
We can't call them inspections in Colorado because we're not licensed inspectors, so we call them walk-throughs. But we would allow them to do their own, and we would give them seventy-two hours to complete that. And if you think about it from a resident experience, we've already done a move out walk-through. We've already done the repairs.
We've already documented those, so we know the condition.
The last thing that somebody wants to do when they've taken time off of work and they've scheduled a moving truck or they've asked friends to come help them move is to walk through the property with you so that you guys can agree on the condition of the property. Right? So it's, how can I lean into that experience of making their move-in more streamlined? So we would say, “Look, we know you got a lot going on, but after you get moved in, you know, we need to get the documentation. If you don't return it within seventy-two hours, then according to the lease, we're all agreeing that everything is in great condition.
But we wanna give you the opportunity to document anything that comes to mind for you.”
And so we remove that whole obstacle of, I’ve got to get this moving truck back by five o'clock or I get charged another day, and it allows them to just move in when they want. And, occasionally, would they put a hole in a wall, move in a bed frame upstairs? Maybe.
But the economies of scale of me not having to have somebody there, it was worth it to pay for that and, you know, just starts the relationship off on a much better foot, which y'all know how when you start a relationship, it generally will continue going in the direction that it starts.
Andrew Smallwood
So I want to ask you about that, Tony, because, you know, something property managers face, I think, is that, many people, because of their past experiences or stories or Hollywood movies, you know, about landlord coming at the door, knocking, etcetera, in many cases, there's a default of mistrust.
There's a default of, disrespect, right, that starts. And maybe it's not just property managers. Sometimes I'll see this in, like, travel industry. We travel a lot. And so, you know, you see people approach a gate agent or something like that. And because of the context that they're in, they may just interact with that person differently than they interact with the barista at their local coffee shop, so to speak.
But property managers experience that a lot. And so I'm curious how you think about, you know, how you found your way to how do we get this relationship on the right foot? How do we kind of break that pattern?
Is it by doing these little things of the move in gift and here's our policy around move in and the move in condition, etcetera?
Is that part of it? Is it something else? What do you think are kind of the keys to help getting off on the right foot and setting that context for the relationship?
Tony Cline
I love this question. I think there are—in everything, in the coaching that I do, I talk about there is a default position for everything. Right? And so when we're working with a client, when we're working with a resident, you know, we should have our default condition that, in absence of any additional information, this is our default position, and this is what we're going to do.
And so if we start with the default of people are good people, most people, given the opportunity, will do the right thing most of the time. Right? Now I am guilty of doing the wrong thing on a bad day. Right?
So none of us are immune to acting a fool or taking our aggression out on the wrong person or whatever. But I think the default is most people are good people most of the time. And so if you start with that default, then you can build on top of that where I firmly believe that people will rise or fall to your level of expectation.
And so if you just expect that we're gonna have a great relationship, and I'm gonna take care of this resident, I'm going to, on the, on average, four times a year that they put in a maintenance request that is maybe a mid-level maintenance request, we are going to take care of that quickly and communicate appropriately.
They're going to treat us well, and we're going to treat them well. And if you come to it with those expectations, then I think they return the same energy that you're putting out.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Love that.
How much of this, Tony, you know, do you think kind of connects to brand? And as a company, you know, you could come at this saying it's a brand strategy or just really our company strategy, what reputation we want to have.
You know, how do you when you're talking to clients and people you work with, how do you teach people to think about that, their position in the market, and how this connects to what you're talking about, the experiences that are being created, the emotions that are being incited in customers?
Tony Cline
I think, first, we need to enable our team to be critical thinkers. And I think there's been a push in our industry over the last few years to document and automate our processes, right? Which I think is appropriate at a certain point in building out our businesses. But I think what happens is people skip over some of the initial work that needs to be done. And, you know, I read out one of our core values, but one of the things that is important—and I used to think this was just, I don't know, either a bunch of, like, hippie type of speak or something that you sat around in a boardroom, and people in suits and ties would put together their core values and their company mission and company vision.
And then they'd throw it in a drawer, and they'd check the box and say, well, we did that. Now we should be better. But I think if you can create those core values where you say this is the filter. These core values, these three, five, six core values that we have, in absence of any other information, everything we do needs to be filtered through this lens of these core values.
Now all of a sudden, I can create critical thinkers where people can challenge things at the company and say, is this decision, are these actions in alignment with those core values?
And now I can build a brand around those core values. I can have messaging around those core values.
And then the next step that we do is we take those core values, and we now say, okay, what are our policies? And this is a huge area that most companies skip. They go right to process. And I want to make sure I communicate the difference between a policy and a process because it can be confusing if you don't spend the time in it like I do.
So a policy is what we do and why we do it.
A process is how we do it. The step by step actions that we take.
And so, you know, if a software that we're using to document our processes or automate our processes or check boxes on our process flow, if that went down for two or three days, but my team still knows what our policies are around how we treat people, around what we do when we post notices, they can be proactive and responsive to situations versus just, well, I don't know. The box says I'm supposed to check this box, and if they don't get back to me, I don't know what to do because they haven't checked that box yet. And so I think it's really leaning into those core values in the policy, and that creates the marketing messaging around the brand that you create.
Andrew Smallwood
You know, maybe, Tony, you mentioned one of the core values earlier, courage. Could you give a couple other examples of core values and then maybe how that even filters down into policies that are developed and, you know, an example of a process?
Sure. So I'll just give you ours. So the first one is courage, and we talked about that. Having the courage to do the right thing, having the courage to try new things, having the courage to say when you've made a mistake and then make it right, you know, having the courage to own when we fall down. I think some of my best clients actually came from us screwing up.
And then, you know, I would tell my team, I care less about what happens than I care about what happens when something happens. Meaning, as hard as we try to be perfect, we may screw up.
And when we screw up, that's what reveals our true character.
When we screw up, what do we do about it? How do we make it right?
The next core value that we have is impact. We want to have a big, deep, wide impact, not just in the marketplace, not just for property managers that we work with, but for their owners, for their residents. We wanna have an impact that allows companies to operate in a more smooth way of operating where the owner of the company is able to step out of the day-to-day and work on these bigger issues that will drive the company forward. You know, being in a position of leadership, leadership is another one of our core values.
Learning, constantly learning is another core value. And then passion. Be passionate about what you're doing. If you don't have passion for what you're doing, then you're the wrong person to be doing it.
Right? There is somebody that is passionate about doing the thing that you're not passionate about. Let's make sure we align those things with our passion. So if you were to look at those core values just from our company, you can see how we make decisions and what we filter everything we do through that lens.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. I think that's great. And could you give an example of, you know, again, like, policy. I think you just find it as, like, here's the what and the why. Right? And then Yeah. Process being the how and how that might connect back to the values and the brand you're trying to build.
Tony Cline
Sure. So one of the things that I and I'm just pulling this policy out of the area I could have picked—we have about 680 that we walk people through, and then they, you know, they decide which ones of those they wanna apply. But, for example, the policy of posting a notice. You know, occasionally, residents will get in a position where they're unable to pay their rent by the due date.
And you have a decision to make. And I know we can lean on fair housing and say we have to treat everybody the same. We have to make sure that we're following fair housing and that we have a policy. What I love about having a policy is it makes it really clear for our team on what to do. So let's just say in this example, rent's due on the first.
It's late on the second. We give a grace period till the fifth.
We post our pay or quit notice on the sixth.
Those are policies. Right? Every one of those things is a policy. Now how we go about posting the notice, that's the process.
But as part of our policy, we used to have a policy where, and this was when we still had an office. Later in our company, we actually went virtual. A lot of people did as you entered the COVID era.
But we had the policy of, we would reach out to them starting on the second.
And if they had not paid, my goal is not to make them feel like trash because they didn't pay their rent. Obviously, there's a reason they didn't pay it.
I wanna lean into trying to be compassionate or show empathy while still getting the rent paid because I have an obligation to my landlord. So I can't just say you can't pay it. But what I would do is if I got them on the phone and they say, hey. Can I pay on the tenth? Well, instead of just saying, yeah, let's roll the dice and see if you pay on the tenth, I would let them know I have a legal obligation with my landlord.
I have to take certain actions, but here's what we can do. Now I'm not saying that you would do this, but I've had people in the past tell me that they would pay the rent on a date after it was due. So I have to post a notice.
If you pay on the tenth, we'll cancel the notice. No big deal.
If you don't pay, then I'm already in process to honor the commitment that I've made with my landlord.
If you do pay, again, no big deal. We'll strike it. So I've got a couple of options.
I can either go to the door, knock on the door, and hand you the notice, because we had to physically serve, or I can knock on the door, if you don't answer, we can post it on the door.
I want to save you any embarrassment, you know, of people seeing something. They don't need to know your business. If I post it, who knows who will see it? Or if you come to the office before four o'clock today, I can hand it to you and you can sign that you received it.
So which one of those options would work best for you? Like, it's having that compassion. I still had a policy. I still had a process.
I didn't make up on the spot what they were able to do. I gave them three options, and those were three standard options. But they were built around empathy while still enforcing what needed to be enforced for my clients.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. I think that's great. What I love about your example too is, it makes me think about how many times we're confronted in business with these choices. And a lot of times, we do things through am either-or frame versus kinda choosing how can we have a both and perspective of, hey, communicating with compassion while also, you know, being accountable, right, in the relationship.
How you provide choice, you know, but, again, and accountability at the same time.
And I think, I imagine hearing that, that probably helps some people think of some ideas of how they can do that. And, again, reflecting their policy, here's the what we're doing and why, tied to core values of the kind of relationships you want to be building the brand, you know, you want to be building in the marketplace. I think that's great.
Tony Cline
I like to say I like to say when you're working on your policies, don't provide exceptions, provide options. Right? An exception is I'm going to get out of my policy and do something that we just don't normally do, where an option is, when we come to a point of friction, I'm providing predetermined options that will help us all eliminate that friction.
Right? And so my team can operate within those policies and still provide multiple ways to solve the problem.
Andrew Smallwood
I like that. Options instead of exceptions.
Tony, last couple things. When we were talking in Vegas, you had this great analogy about building a team that I'm like, okay. This kind of contextualized and almost, like, rewrapped everything you talked about up to that point, in this kind of memorable way for me, right, of just kind of like, okay. I've got these cubby holes. I kinda understand this context, and it really fit things into place. I'm wondering if you could share that with people, you know, that analogy of kind of a sports team and how that relates to what we're talking about.
Tony Cline
Sure. Yeah. I love talking about this because I think it helps people get energized about what they're doing with their business. I think a lot of property management owners and this is an oversimplification and generalization, but I think a lot of property management company owners get into the business by accident.
They don't think, what is my business? Before I get into this business, what's it gonna look like in two or three years? They just get in, they start managing a couple of properties, and then they grow that.
Maybe they're on the realtor side or an investor side, and it just sort of grows and happens. And then they get to the point where they need help. And so they're just like, I need help. I'm going to just hire somebody.
And a lot of times, those first hires don't work out because they don't really have a system to bring those people in and set expectations.
And it's just like, I checked the box. I hired somebody. My workload should go down, but, actually, it goes up, and I'm not able to spend time with those people to train them. And so it doesn't work out, and then the company owner winds up taking back all that responsibility. And so we really lean into, you know, I call it the champion's edge or the championship formula, but, really, we talk about building a championship team.
And I'm not just trying to build a team. I'm not trying to build a high performance team because, for me, I guess, a high performance team is slightly better than a regular performance team, but it doesn't really help me understand just instinctively what that means.
And so when you build a championship team, it's really easy to filter what's happening by, would this happen or would this be tolerated on a championship team? And if the answer is no, then we shouldn't be doing it here. And so it's a way to tell a story. We didn't get into mission and vision on this podcast, but those are really important to set the vision, to give people something to buy into of, this is where the company is going. This is how I contribute.
This is where I make a difference. And by setting that vision out there, it gets people connected. I've said this for years, people long to be a part of something great.
We're less connected physically in our communities, in our churches, in just programs. We're not going to people's houses and playing poker on Friday night like we used to. It's just we try to connect online, and so we want to give people something that they can belong to.
And by creating this era of, we are building a championship team, how can each one of us contribute to play the right position to utilize our skill sets to have everybody perform at that high level of that championship team? I think really allows you to create a framework where people just inherently understand, am I contributing at that level? And do I want to? And it's okay if they don't want to. That means we've helped create a filter to get them out of the seat that they're in, maybe even trade them to a new team, so to speak, and allows us to open up space where people get excited about working with other people who want to perform at that super high level.
Andrew Smallwood
Love that. Okay. Tony, we're gonna wrap this with kind of a a fun lightning round of a couple quick questions here Alright. To wrap it up.
What do you think is the biggest mistake that's being made in the industry today that isn't being talked about enough?
Tony Cline
Oh, I have two, so I'm gonna have to pick one.
I think really leaning into thinking that AI or systems are gonna solve your problems. They're going to help you, but you have to have an idea of the level of service you want to provide. The more things can be automated, the more things can be outsourced to this artificial intelligence, the more important it is for you to have a high level of focus on the human interaction when it occurs.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. Next one. What do you think is the biggest opportunity that's being overlooked in the industry today?
Tony Cline
I think thinking big of what would scale? What can I start with, and what does that look like if we were to scale that? And how can I be different than every other property management company out there? I think there are very few people who focus on their differentiators, and you and I have talked a lot in the past about the reticular activating system or how to get messages through all the noise.
And by focusing on people's pain points that they have, these property owners or these residents, what their pain points are by focusing our messaging on that, it allows us to set ourselves out from all of the other noise that's out there. And I think that's a huge opportunity that, if people lean into that, will provide an opportunity for incredible growth.
Andrew Smallwood
What's the best advice you've been given in this industry as a property management business owner, or leader?
Tony Cline
I'm gonna try to clean it up for you.
I had a mentor years and years ago basically tell me never be the cheapest person on the corner, I guess.
Because once you're no longer the cheapest, their loyalty was to the price, not to you.
Right? And so it's not about how can I charge the least amount possible? It's how can I provide the highest level of service for the best value? Right? So it's not that price is irrelevant. It's just that price doesn't become important until you've actually able to communicate and deliver the value that people are looking for.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. I love that.
Okay. Last one, Tony. As you look at where we are today, 2025, looking forward, what you see unfolding and what you see that's possible for the industry, for professional property managers, how do you feel, and what do you see? Share us a little bit of that, like, image of the future that you see, for the professional property management industry.
Tony Cline
I think there's going to be a ton of changes with AI. You know, I mentioned AI earlier.
I do think that it's going to impact the business a lot. I think, for me, the way I see the future is the companies that are gonna survive are the companies that have a personal personality, meaning it's not a corporate personality.
To tie this back to branding, it's—we've had discussions about people don't do business with businesses. They do business with people at businesses. Right? And so the more personalized we can make our business and our offerings and our messaging, the better we're going to break through that noise.
And so what I see for the future of property management is, you can't hide behind your website and just have, I've got a slick website. Hopefully, people click and find me. We have to be almost a personal brand inside a business. We have to be somebody that is intentional about communicating the specialized value that we deliver.
And I have a presentation where I talk about “what's your cheeseburger?” And it's basically there's a McDonald's, an Applebee's, and an Elway's all in the same parking lot.
And each one of them serves a cheeseburger.
Each one of them is very clear about the level of product you're going to receive, the pricing, and the expected service and experience that you're going to have. And they all three can exist. Right? But it's being really clear on what is your brand, what is the level of service, what is the messaging that you wanna communicate around the product and service that you deliver. And it's the folks that really lean into defining that versus just saying, well, we charge x percent and we'll manage for anybody in this area. You know, those people are gonna get lost and sucked under in the tide.
Andrew Smallwood
I think it's a great note to end on. Appreciate the perspective, Tony. Thanks again for being generous with your thoughts, experiences, insights, sharing them here with us.
Tony Cline
Well, thanks for having me on, Andrew. I always appreciate any time we can spend together.
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