In this episode, Mark Brower, Broker/Owner at Mark Brower Properties, talks through taking an approach of extreme ownership over his business. From radical honesty to all-in authenticity, embracing your expertise, your mistakes, and your responsibilities can create a brand built on trustworthiness.
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Season 5 Episode 3 features Mark Brower, Broker/Owner at Mark Brower Properties.
The Triple Win Property Management Podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature.
Andrew Smallwood
Hello, professional property managers. Andrew Smallwood here, Chief Customer Officer and host of the Triple Win Podcast.
I'm joined by my friend and growing industry luminary, if I can call you that, Mark Brower today from Mark Brower properties.
Mark Brower
Too kind. You’re too kind. Pleasure being here.
Andrew Smallwood
Mark, it's fun to have this conversation digitally. We were just together a couple weeks ago. I want to share with folks that Mark and a couple other folks flew all the way to New Orleans from home, time away from their families, to be with Second Nature when we get our team together just twice a year all together in a room. And we wanted Mark to be there to share perspective of what it's like to be a property management business owner in the world today in 2025, and share his perspective on what's happening in the industry, what's happening in his business, his experience with Second Nature, and for people to hear directly from our customers.
And beyond that, we kind of just open the doors to, here's everything Second Nature's doing and planning, etcetera, and giving a peek behind the purple curtain, if you will. Because as we think about designing the future of what we're trying to do at our company, we really want the voices in the room, you know, of the people that we're really building for. Right? And so, Mark, we appreciate you as somebody who's articulate, somebody who's thoughtful, someone who's energetic and passionate.
And a lot of our team was coming up to us afterwards just sharing lots of compliments of being able to meet you, hear what you had to say. And I just want to say thank you for that before we get started here with this conversation today. It was great to have you there.
Mark Brower
Andrew, the pleasure was all mine. It was really—I'm not overstating this—life changing experience for me to see the internal workings of Second Nature. Your DNA is rare and pretty spectacular. The reception I got, the unexpected encounters with members of your team, just trying to add value to my life in all kinds of unexpected ways was really, really cool. So the pleasure was all mine.
Andrew Smallwood
Well, thank you for saying that. And I think that's—I was trying to make our way to our introduction of you here, but I think that speaks to the high regard that Second Nature holds you in, and I know many people in this industry hold you in as well. And so excited to have this conversation on a couple topics we've been batting around for a minute. I'm glad we're finally getting to this.
Mark Brower
Super excited. Yep.
Andrew Smallwood
So, Mark, I want to kick off with—we had a conversation with a few dozen property managers just a few days ago about talking about their brand. And I think sometimes the word brand can be confusing for people. They can think, like, logo and typography and the color palette and things of that nature.
And so sometimes the word we like to use is, like, what what's the reputation that you're building, right, in your market, and how do you think about that and intentionally driving and building that of who you serve, what do you do for them, what is the real unique and differentiating benefit that you're providing them and why they would work with you, choose you, be happy with you, stay with you, and beyond? And really thinking about it from that kind of company strategy perspective or brand strategy perspective of what reputation you're building. And I think you're somebody who's put a lot of thought into this, right, for your own company, of what your values are and how you're connecting kind of your inner company culture to how that gets expressed out in the marketplace and how you're building your reputation.
And I'll just tee it up there of, as I share that with you, what does that make you think about, and what do you think property management business owners should know or should be thinking about as it relates to their brand strategy?
Mark Brower
I'll tell a quick story.
About a year ago, I did a consult call with a new property manager going out on their own.
This woman was a really cool person. She had served in the military. She had some really unique life experience, and she decided, for whatever reason, she wanted to jump in and start a property management company.
And she asked for my advice on how to add doors. That seems to be a pretty common theme among property management company operators is “how do I grow?”
And I looked at her website, and after speaking with her and after looking at her website, I could tell there was a total disconnect, or my perception was there's a total disconnect. She had come across to me by phone as a very unique, incredible individual. And when I saw her website, the word “we” was tossed around a lot.
There was an attempt to pretend to be something bigger than what she was at that point. She'd only had, like, six stores under management.
And it was a projection of who she thought she needed to be for people to hire, and it just wasn't her at all. And my gut instinct on that was, “Hey, why aren't you—I want to see a picture of you on your home page, and I want to see you in military fatigues, and I want to hear about your love for the country, and I want to hear about the skills you learned in the military. Because right now, you are the brand.”
“It's you. Someday that might change, but there's something really incredible about you as a person. And I'm going to choose over every other option I have in this marketplace to work with you, because of you, and I'm not seeing that anywhere here.”
So to me, that highlights a real disconnect in our industry, especially for smaller operators.
Often in business, we feel like we need to be something that we're not when the world is just begging to get to know who we really are. So the confidence to accept—the time to understand who we are and what we bring to the table and the confidence to embrace that and represent that accurately with vulnerability and authenticity, I think, is like a secret weapon that most people don't channel.
Andrew Smallwood
What I love about that story is so much about what makes a great brand. I think of the word connective, and I think of the word word emotional.
Not emotional, perhaps in a way of thinking, like, erratic, right? But in a connective way. “Hey, there's something really resonant about this, right?”
Mark Brower
Resonant, yeah.
Andrew Smallwood
And it seems like that's what you were keying on and, hey, you proceed and help somebody see that about themselves and rather than putting on a mask of what they think people needed to see or hear. Hey, there's something very real and really compelling that you can share here that's different about you.
Mark Brower
Yeah.
I'm forty seven years old, and I think for the very first time in my life, I'm getting comfortable enough with who I am as a person and my ability to add value that I'm leaning into my personal brand like I never have before.
So where I'm at with this right now, on my LinkedIn page, I have a picture of me running a race that changed my life. It's at sunset, and you can see the back of me and the trail ahead of me. And I just published an article about what that race did to change my outlook on everything, personal and professional. And I think those two things for me are really powerful expressions of my personal brand.
I think people want to do business with people. They don't want to do business with a logo. Who are we as people? When I was at Second Nature in New Orleans with you guys, I saw your brand not because I saw purple everywhere, but because people presented themselves to me in an uncommon way, and it was so refreshing and really inspiring.
Andrew Smallwood
So, Mark, how would you describe like, how do you talk to your team? How do you talk to your customers about the brand and reputation you're intentionally trying to drive in the marketplace for Mark Power Properties?
Mark Brower
Just over a year ago, I went through an exercise.
Cameron Herold, you guys, hosted or made it possible for me to interview Cameron Herold, and I had gone through this exercise of creating a vivid vision and trying to really be present and lean into that process. The words came to me when I was casting our company vivid vision at that time that we are good people helping good people do more good.
And when I shared that phrase with my team, everyone's heads were nodding and everybody was smiling. It was kind of a revelation that that's what we're here for. We're here to make the journey of owning rental properties a little bit easier, a little less stressful because building wealth in this industry takes decades, not years.
And when you help good people build wealth, wealth magnifies character. And so good people do good things with wealth. And the fact that we can raise our sights to that vision of that impact with people, that we can raise our sights to the idea that if we're successful, we can help build generational wealth for great families?
That's really inspiring. That's worth working for. And so that's part of our brand. We're not here in a transactional capacity to trade dollars for time or trade dollars for tasks.
We're here to try to engage with people. And, Andrew, you helped me with this. I don't know. It was a couple years ago. You were doing some Triple Win Leadership Exchange content where it's like, maybe you had the author on. I don't remember, but you'd talk about these different levels of value creation and the highest ones were experience and transformation, and that's what Second Nature is all about.
There's ideas that exist that, if embraced, not only do they take courage, audacity to embrace them, but if you embrace certain ideas and make them part of your purpose and your mission, they can create an audacious, beautiful brand that's really worth dedicating the best hours of your day and the best days of your life to. And when you rally a group of people around those ideas, as is evidenced with Second Nature as a company, really incredible things can happen. And people, if you can articulate that brand or share that brand for what it is openly, I think people are drawn to it.
And please forgive me. When I'm sharing these ideas, these are aspirational. We have not arrived. I cringe that people will go to my website after listening to this conversation.
We're working on bringing more resonance to our brand. It's a very big focus of mine right now.
Andrew Smallwood
You know, as I'm listening to this, Mark, I hear, man, good people helping good people do more good things in the world. It feels good. It feels inspiring. It feels aspirational.
And, you know, my natural questions are, so what are the kinds of things that you guys are focused on right now that, I'm just imagining if I'm working in your company, how do I know if I'm doing that? How do I know that I'm doing this in a way where we're moving towards success, right, in this vision that Mark is setting for us? Or are there examples you can give of how you guys are uniquely doing your work that creates that kind of relationship with your customers and exemplifies what you're talking about there.
Mark Brower
Yeah. There's an important distinction that we came that we arrived at within the last two years that the biggest enemy to building wealth through real estate—so we identified— I don't know where I heard this.
Like, talk about the trip to Maui. Everybody's going to Maui. You and your clients, everybody's going to Maui. Talk about that.
Talk about that vision. What does generational wealth look like? What is a twenty year relationship, partnership with us look like? With a mom and pa landlord that otherwise would wash out of this asset class in three to five years being frustrated?
I think about my dad. My dad's a dentist that practiced dentistry for thirty years, had a great income, worked really hard, went from working four ten-hour days to five ten-hour days. He was so exhausted with seven kids—I'm second oldest of seven—that we were walking over his resting body on the carpet floor on Saturdays.
Like, I just remember this as a kid. And here's a man, and now he's seventy-eight, and he's living on Social Security. And I think, man, if I could if I had a time machine, I would go back thirty years and partner, if I had the chance, partner with him and guide him through this journey of buying one, then five or six years later, buying another rental property, and then ten years later splitting the equity and doubling down and getting into four properties, and then twenty years later have all four properties paid off and be throwing off cash flow and be a two and a half million dollar value cornerstone to his retirement.
Imagine what he could do with that. He could take his entire extended family on really cool trips once a year. He could, with greater confidence, contribute and leave a legacy in different ways that would bless his family. So that's the kind of story that I think of when I consider the opportunity we have to impact lives for good.
And I can't remember your question now.
Andrew Smallwood
No, I think that's great. And I'd love to hear, you know, next about, can you give an example of, like, something maybe somebody on your team did? Where they really kind of went the extra mile.
Mark Brower
Yeah. So the biggest threat to this long term hold is, we're emotional creatures.
It's the emotional toll that owning rental properties takes on people that causes them to capitulate and wash out. And so what's the single most important thing we can do? Number one, be aware that these irrational emotions are the enemy of our clients, and then do everything we can to present conditions that will ameliorate or alleviate this emotional burden so they have that chance of staying in there. And by the way, the first five to seven years of being a landlord are the hardest by far.
And so if we can get intentional, if we can help our owners see where they're at, you are here in your thirty year journey. You're here. Your cash flow is tight. The stress is high. The fear of the unknown is high. One of the most important ways that we've leaned into this, lowering that stress for owners is being highly responsive with communication.
We made it our top priority last year that we were going to answer ninety eight percent of phone calls within twelve seconds, and we hit that, and we've we're holding that, and someone's responsible for that, and we see that, and we measure that. Because if you do that one thing only, it can significantly lower the stress of the owner.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Helping people get that perspective.
So something also I've noticed, Mark, that I've heard you say this a couple of times where, you know, most businesses, what they ask for from their customers is money. Right? They ask you to pay my bill and pay my fee, right? And then here's what I'm going to give you for that. And you've talked about, hey, kinda getting beyond this transactional feel in the relationship.
And, of course, I think a lot of people think about that from the standpoint of, okay, what can I generously give to my customer and everything else that you're talking about here to help more good people do more good? But I've also heard you ask your customers for more than just a paycheck. You've asked them for real significant support, emotional support for your team encouragement.
And I think that's surprising. I don't think many people would be expecting to hear that. I don't think many people would think to ask for that from a customer because that's not the typical dynamic. And it just struck me as something that you guys do a little bit differently. And I'm just curious, when do you have those conversations with customers, and what are the kind of specific examples you give them to help them understand how they can be in right relationship with you and your team?
Mark Brower
Yeah.
I had a conversation with Peter Lohman last year on a podcast, and he brought up a good point. He said, “I can't go over all ninety three things that are going to come up in our relationship when I'm in the sales pitch or when I'm onboarding a client. The surface area we cover is so vast.” And he's absolutely right. But we can go over one thing, and I think this is vital. We've built it into our sales script. We've built it into our onboarding process.
And, in order to address this one thing, we have to understand the nature of our relationship with our clients. We have to dare to believe that we can partner with them. And if we reframe from this transactional relationship to a partnership, then we can be so bold as to require not just, generous financial compensation for our impact, but we can also require support in other ways. And so it was the realization that that was the kind of relationship we want to engage in and that there are people out there willing to engage with us and look at us like a partner and then willing to give uncommon support to us if we're only confident enough and clear enough to ask for it.
So in the sales call before we get into anything else about who we are, we go over, does the property meet our criteria to manage? And that's a very short, maybe thirty to sixty seconds. And then probably the most important qualifier is, does the owner have the same expectations that we do for the business relationship? So we introduce that idea that we're gonna talk about this for a moment.
And then we identify that we require a high level of support in three specific areas.
Area number one is process support. Our happiest clients look at us as a trusted expert, and they defer the how to—the daily how to to us. And they're happiest. They really want to be hands off, and we really believe we've learned how to do the how-to very well.
Number two, financial support. We need to know if we're going to go into business with you that you have the financial means to make it through an unexpected lull in cash flow or a big expense.
And then number three, and this is the one that was the hardest for me to be really honest about, is we want your emotional support. We know that if we work with you long enough, which we hope we do, we're going to hit a rough patch or two along the way. And when that happens, we want to know that you're gonna be supportive, encouraging, and not micromanaging or critical.
And so if we're not clear about understanding that's the kind of relationship we want and if we're not brave enough to articulate that, then, shame on us really, later, three years later, when we hit a bumpy patch and that owner takes us to task, but we never had those ground rules, you know, specified.
Andrew Smallwood
Mhmm.
You know, what this is making me think of, Mark, is, there's a lot of tension in relationships between property managers and property owners as it relates to how decisions and judgment calls are made. Right? And there's oftentimes conversation from seasoned veterans to newer property managers about positioning yourself as an expert and clear on what you are an expert in, what you're not an expert in. Hey, here's what you are an expert in to avoid this micromanagement type of behavior you're talking about. And I love the way you're setting up the communication here to help people understand how to be successful as one of your clients and how to work effectively with you and your team so that they can be successful in making them successful.
I'm starting to get in a loop there. But the point being, I love the communication around this, but, can you talk more about your perspective on that, of what kind of boundaries are you establishing as it relates—how do you how do you do that with your clients? And I think, hey. There's this big frame. You don't have time to talk about everything, right?
Mark Brower
Yeah.
Andrew Smallwood
But you're setting this up. Is there more you can say about how you guys handle policy development as it relates to making these kinds of decisions on behalf of an owner versus where you might involve a property owner in the process?
Mark Brower
Yeah. So I hope this response addresses your question.
I believe if we're going to represent ourselves as an expert and if we're going to tell the owner, look, I need you to be hands off, I know you're an engineer and you've got all kinds of ways of doing this better than me, but I just need you to turn the reins over to me. And honestly, if I don't do it as well as you could have, I want you to actually be okay with that. You know, I actually want you to be okay with eighty percent of what you could do and let's agree that's good enough because we're running a business here and that's how a business owner thinks, right?
But also, here's my pledge. If you give me discretion and you follow my lead and I do something so wrong that we agree it costs you money, I'm going to pay you out of my pocket for that money. That money is coming to you from me. And I think that's the philosophy we have here.
We don't put that on our website. We don't put that in our property management agreement, but we put that into practice. I just recently reimbursed an owner twelve hundred dollars because I believe we could have processed an eviction she had. Evictions are rare for us, by the way, but she had an eviction. And I think that we were asleep at the switch and we could have done things a little faster and would have bought her, like, two weeks of time.
And so her rent was, like, twenty-four hundred bucks. I said, I'm gonna pay you twelve hundred dollars. It's gonna come out. You know, you have three properties with us.
All your management fees are going to go to zero for the next three months, and we're going to call that good. Is that agreeable? Yes.
I think we have to own the outcome if we want to add—it's a two two edged sword—if we want to ask the owner to defer to us, then we have to pay tuition when we get it wrong.
And just like, and I know you probably want to go and get to, like, the one-star reviews later. But but just like we're not going to, like, fake one-star reviews or pay five hundred dollars for some dodgy company to eliminate them from our profiles or try to manipulate our score, we're actually going to operate and live in such a way that the pain of our incompetence is present, and we have to see it and we address it. And I think, any effort to hide or obscure our faults, I think, only slows us down. It causes us not to learn as fast. We should be open and willing to pay those costs.
Andrew Smallwood
And just a question on that specific situation, Mark. Was this a scenario where it was the client that brought it to your attention and said, “Hey, this eviction, I'm not happy with this situation, and I think it went slower than it could.” And then you looked into it and saw what had happened, you said, you know what? We need to make this right. Did it happen another way?
Mark Brower
Yeah.
Great question. Here's what I aspire to. I aspire to have the oversight and controls in the company that if we mess up, even when the owner does not bring it to our attention, that we make it clear, we disclose it to them, and then we pay them for the loss if appropriate.
That's what I aspire to. Currently, we don't have the level of oversight that exists to be able to deliver on that promise, but I know we're going to get there eventually. So currently, yes, this owner escalated this, and then we examined it closely. And then we found that we could have done things better, and so then we reimbursed voluntarily.
I think it's a big problem in our business. Again, we cover such a vast surface area. There's always things that are going wrong. Most of them, fortunately, don't cost our owners money.
We can't point a really clear finger at, hey. Because you screwed this up, you know, I lost five hundred dollars. But we can during turns, vacancies, and evictions.
And so, I think holding ourselves to that level of accountability where we won't we would never, misrepresent what happened, make excuses for, sweep it under the rug, throw a head fake, Unfortunately, I think that happens a lot in property management. We are in this unique position of elevated status or elevated information. Right? Everything that goes to the owner comes through us first. There's a tremendous opportunity to abuse that trust and not be completely transparent.
I think a hundred percent of the time, there's a negative consequence of bending the truth. And, even though nobody can prove it, it affects your DNA, your culture, your brand, and somehow the public gets a sense of that eventually. It always comes out.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Something that really strikes me about you and your philosophy here is, like, it really seems like you look at things through a frame of, is our decision here and how we're going to react or respond to this going to build trust with our customer? We have an opportunity to build trust from here or not everything goes perfectly, etcetera. And, hey, we want to aspire and strive towards more and more of that.
But, hey, how we react and respond to this situation, we can do it in such a way that it expresses our values boldly and builds trust with our customer. And I imagine if I was a property owner in that situation, eviction's not an exciting place to be. You know?
But, hey, raising it, and then that's the kind of response I got, it would be building trust, I would think, going forward from there. And so many times when a property owner sees something isn't looking quite right, they aren't getting communication from their property manager or a sense of engagement, right?
A lot of times, it seems like that's where things can spiral into what else is wrong and what else do I not know about and everything else, and it gets on this downward spiral. So it seems like engaging that. And then second, how can we get proactive about communicating these things and bringing that to the client, and having the courage to even say, here's some bad news. But here's how we're handling it and responding to it, you know, is the track that you guys are on.
Mark Brower
Yeah. I I think I think property managers are making mistakes that they're hiding from their owners all the time. Like, I think it happens a lot. And how incredible would that be if—can you imagine the five star review from an owner?
“Hey, this property manager really messed up on something. There's no way I would have ever known, but they brought it to my attention. And not only did they bring it to my attention and correct their behavior going forward, but they also reimbursed me my cost that I would not have been any the wiser about.”
You know? Like, that is probably the most powerful endorsement I can imagine.
One of my business heroes is Charles Koch, K-O-C-H, of Koch Industries.
And he describes a point at which in his business growth, which has been absolutely phenomenal, exponential.
He said at a certain point, they had a number of regulatory issues, being in the, I think, oil and gas business that he's in. And he said they adopted a policy where they would, every infraction that they—their internal controls got so good that when there was an infraction, a violation, they would self report to the agency and voluntarily pay the fine and show how they corrected the behavior.
That's where we want to be.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. I mean, that's a radical level of responsibility there. Right?
Mark Brower
And can you imagine? Let's pause on that for a second.
Can you imagine the level of trust built with the regulatory bodies?
You know, think about property management, which, I think we're inviting regulation, because of, the way that we're approaching some of these issues. With fees, the fee gouging and predatory fee behaviors, and sort of hiding information. Like, can you—of course, regulators, it's an easy win for them. It's a political win for them to go after property managers. Right? So this is going to continue happening. But can you imagine if there was a coalition of property managers self reporting infractions and making their owners whole, whether the owner would have ever realized that they were damaged in the first place?
How incredible would that be to elevate our role or our company to that point of trust? The gains from trust, the long term gains from trust in that kind of a dynamic far outweigh the short term cost of tuition. And by the way, those tuition payments bring the prescient pain of our ignorance or our incompetence to, like, immediately focus on making that better now instead of just pretending it didn't happen.
Andrew Smallwood
What I love about this is when you bring this kind of philosophy and approach in a radical sense of ownership that you can take in a radical sense of agency, right, you might call it of, hey, we are taking full responsibility for the experience, right, that our customers are having, taking full responsibility for the compliance of our business.
And when that is self policed, it means your customers aren't having to police you. Right? It means regulators aren't policing you. Right?
And I think it leaves no room to hide. Right? But saying, hey, we've already accepted that. We've already said we're going to do that. And what's important is that we don't hide this and that we don't make the same mistake twice. Right?
Mark Brower
Wouldn't it be cool if property managers on their home page listed their stats, live updated stats, about how fast they were turning properties, how fast they were leasing properties, what their average time to answer calls would be. You see, ER wait rooms took a page out of that playbook and they started renting billboards and putting that up there. You know, how cool would that be to show in an industry known for sort of hiding information and not being forthcoming and hiding ignorance or incompetence? How cool would it be if we just started moving towards being an open book? That would be incredible.
Andrew Smallwood
I think that's a very cool idea. And let's talk about this. Like, how does the market understand this chiefly today? Because usually there isn't a dashboard linked or tabbed on somebody's website sharing, here's our service and support metrics and how we're performing. And that's a, I think, really cool idea. It seems like the way most people are doing that today is through reviews. You know, as people are discovering your business, going to Google and seeing what's there, or Yelp or, you know, depending on what market you're in and and whatnot, it may be a different review platform.
But it's a place where a lot of people are going to say, what's the kind of experience I'm going to have by looking at the experience other people like me are having, right, with this business? And I think it'd be good, Mark. I will probably put it in the show notes, your podcast with Peter, which I think you even referenced earlier in this episode, and Jordan Muela and I were talking about it in our webinar about reputation management, just a week or two ago. But I think it'd be good just as a level setting of sharing this philosophy you've kind of had throughout here of how you think about reviews at your company and how you talk about them with your team.
Mark Brower
Yeah. Sure. So the general idea about reviews, at Mark Brower Properties, is we don't ever incentivize for reviews. We don't incentivize external. We don't give owners a discount, or, you know, waiving fees for reviews. We don't incentivize internally for reviews.
We have taken the approach that we want reviews to be spontaneous. We're okay asking like, if someone says—let me be really clear. If someone says, “Hey, thank you so much.”
The appropriate response is, “Of course, you would do the same for me. In fact, if you could help me out, help other people, help other good people do more good in the world, would you mind sharing about your experience online?” I am okay with that. That is okay. But, never, ever, ever, have we paid internal or external to manipulate our online rating. And we've never engaged with phony marketing agencies that will write, you know, go create dozens of fake Google profiles that rate us, you know, five stars, and we've just never done any of that.
There's no integrity to it, and we believe in having the utmost of integrity in everything we do. So why would we draw a line and say, well, game on, Google. You know, you're messing with me and my business, so I'm gonna mess back.
No. That doesn't work.
Andrew Smallwood
You know, and I've just been hearing, like, in the last couple days, people are like, fifty of my Google reviews just disappeared off the face of the Earth yesterday.
There's some interesting thing going on, it seems like, with the review sites right now. But for property managers, it often is, like, how their business is discovered, and they're wanting to put, you know, their best foot forward. So it sounds like kinda your boundaries here, Mark, are paying someone twenty five dollars, fifty dollars to remove a review.
That would be out of bounds. Right?
Mark Brower
Hundred percent.
Andrew Smallwood
You know, paying someone fifty dollars to post a five-star review, you know, that that would be out of bounds.
Mark Brower
I'm not doing it.
Andrew Smallwood
Out of bounds for you. But what's in bounds is somebody has a great experience with you and makes a comment about that to someone they're interacting with, and that person saying, “Hey, can I share a link with you right now so you can say that again under the microphone,” so to speak? Yeah. So that's inbounds for you.
Mark Brower
Yes. Totally. There's a there's a temporary perishable moment of increased influence when someone says thank you to you, and it is okay to engage with that and ask for something in return, and that's good business. That's good relationships.
All the other stuff you mentioned is out of bounds. The only phony review I have on my website or on my Google My Business profile, my daughter, she knows how personally I take it that we provide exceptional service. I think about eight months ago, she heard me talking with my wife about a one-star review that we got that day. And on her own, she went and gave a five-star review on my business.
And I thought it was such a sweet expression of love from her. I acknowledged it, that she was my daughter, but that's it. That's the only one.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay.
Yeah, I think this is interesting, Mark, because, like, I'm wearing Bombas socks right now. And I don't know, I've probably spent two hundred dollars or something like that on Bombas socks over the years.
I love Bombas socks. This is probably the first time on recording that I'm saying that, and I've never left this company a review. And, actually, as I think about it, I've probably given out three hundred dollars worth of Bombas Socks as gifts to other people. But still, despite how passionate I am about their brand and the product that they have, you know, I'm like, I love that they don't have a little seam that hits your toes weird and, you know, all these things.
I'm like, man, I haven't expressed this and put this on a review site. But I bet if somewhere around the point of me being delighted, if they had known that as a business and asked me to do it, and made it easy for me to do it, I probably would have. And so, fortunately, Bombas, I think if you go look, they’ve probably got thousands of people who have done that so people can get an accurate picture of the business. But I think there's a lot of property management businesses out there who…
Listen, there's challenging situations and negative situations that people find themselves in. It can be quick to go to a review site and express that. But some of the people who are having positive interactions and great experiences, they aren't being met with that. And so it can create a distorted view in the marketplace of what's it like to work with this property management company.
What's your kind of view on, like, okay, based on what's being posted about Mark Brower Properties, do you feel like, hey. Clearly, with your philosophy, it's probably not inflated. It's probably not better than it is.
Do you think it's, like, accurate? Like, man, if people really went through that, they would say, this is exactly what it's gonna be like working with you. I'm getting a really fair and honest sense of this. Do you think it's maybe a little bit negative as a result?
Where do you guys think you are with that?
Mark Brower
Wow. That's a great question.
I hope it's about accurate, honestly.
I think that would be my goal or my intent with our online ratings is to have it be a fair and accurate, honest assessment of our experience, hopefully upward trending. Right? Hopefully, every time we mess up something, we learn from it, and we get better. We get slightly better.
Forgive me if I'm jumping ahead, but I think one star reviews, if handled in the right way, are the most powerful marketing tool a property manager can have in growing their business. I cannot tell you how many people have reached out to us specifically because I personally engage with one-star reviews, and I do it with a sincere, authentic voice trying to take extreme ownership and acknowledging the other party as an irrational, reasonable, rational person, you know, and and that there was something I could take away from that, or there was something I failed to set the right expectations around. There's always something we can take more ownership of. And when people see that, I think it's refreshing, especially in property management.
Andrew Smallwood
It's like for every one-star review, how can we respond with a five-star response, right, and integrate that into our business policies and our communication with customers so that, this is the last one-star review that looks like this or sounds like this. You know?
Bringing that attitude and that approach and that commitment to each one of those, it feels almost inevitable that an organization doing that is going to be trending in the right direction. Doesn't mean it will be perfect, but, man, if that's done with discipline each time, you can see how that creates a system of feedback and improvement coming through.
Mark Brower
What a great concept that you just pointed out there, that, when you see how someone engages with what could be considered a negative interaction, it reveals something about their character.
And you're not betting when you're working with somebody, especially a property manager, that you're never gonna have a problem. But you want to place a measured bet on their character.
And so if you can see character, through difficulty, through negative experiences that you can trust or that you can rely on or that you're you're willing to make a bet on, and you see enough evidence of that, both, you know, positive and negative, then I would think that is exceptional branding.
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome. Mark, I've got a couple lightning round questions. My quick ones here, if we can wrap it this way.
Mark Brower
Okay let’s do it!
Andrew Smallwood
I'd love to ask a question of, if there was one or two books that you would recommend to every property management business owner. You mentioned Cameron Herold’s Vivid Vision already. I'm curious, what are one or two book titles you would recommend to your peers?
Mark Brower
Yeah. I'm looking at a book across the room from me, Principles, by Ray Dalio.
So dense with incredible information.
Really, really good book, Principles by Ray Dalio.
Another one, The Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey.
Trust is competence and character, and that book is a must read in my opinion.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. Great, and how about this? If you could only give one piece of advice to somebody who's starting a property management business, what advice would you give them based on your experience?
Mark Brower
Always be completely and totally brutally honest with everybody.
Andrew Smallwood
Love that. And a theme of this episode, I think.
The next one I want to ask is, what's the best advice on the topic of leadership that you've been given?
Mark Brower
A leader exists to serve people around them.
Andrew Smallwood
And, okay, last couple things. When you look to the future of the property management industry, what's in front of us?
What do you see? What excites you most? How do you feel?
Mark Brower
We're on the precipice, I think, of a possible transformation in the property management industry. I think there's an opportunity for the forty thousand property managers nationwide to elevate their value to multiples of what it is today, to move into proactive business management and asset management, capital management.
And the numbers are staggering, that you can get a ten x or twenty x profitability per client relationship if we can achieve that level of contribution.
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome. Mark, I think that's a great note to end on. Appreciate you being so generous with your time. Always great to connect with you. Thanks for being with us today.
Mark Brower
All my pleasure.