Are you just managing properties, or are you managing assets? The difference might be bigger than you think. In this episode, Andrew Smallwood is joined by industry consultant Deb Newell to tackle the complex differences between asset management and property management. Deb shares her expertise on shifting from reactive to proactive approaches, adjusting management agreements, and aligning teams to create scalable processes that benefit both property owners and residents. Tune in to hear practical advice on fostering better relationships with owners, the importance of clear expectations, and why benchmarking your business against itself, rather than others, is crucial for growth.
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Season 4 Episode 22 features Deb Newell
The Triple Win Property Management Podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature.
Andrew Smallwood
Hello, professional property managers. Andrew Smallwood here with the Triple Win Podcast. I am joined by my friend and now doctor Newell.
Deb Newell
Almost? Almost.
Andrew Smallwood
Almost? Okay. Dissertation submitted?
Deb Newell
Yeah. We're right on the final step.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. Well, I'm gonna call you doctorNewell.
So Deb Newell, a lot of people listening to this podcast definitely know you, are familiar with you. You've been in this industry a long time and had a big impact and I've done a lot of education for this industry. But just in the case that there are a few people who are meeting you for the first time, what should they know about Dr. Deb Newell?
Deb Newell
Hi. I am a consultant in the industry. I do property management consulting. I focus on single family, multifamily, mixed use, HUD affordable. So I help companies maximize efficiency, revenue, people, processes, technology, focusing on those three aspects of the business, and doing everything I can really to help them become better and grow and get to that next level, whatever it may be.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. And I know we’ve got a number of mutual clients and people have really raved, that have worked with you, and I’ve always referred people your guys' way, and vice versa. So that's appreciated. But, Deb, I wanna talk about a couple of different topics today.
We're at NARPM Nationals reporting this, and there was a keynote this morning talking about asset management versus property management. I remember there was Triple Win Podcast we did a couple years ago talking about the owner experience and this very topic that you were on with Eric Wetherington and some other folks, and that you've even been talking about this talk even before that.
Deb Newell
I did! That's right. Good memory.
Andrew Smallwood
I think this is increasingly becoming a atopic that people are talking about more and more. Can you give your perspective on asset management vs. property management and how you've been thinking about this?
Deb Newell
Well, I think asset management– In property management in general, we tend to be very reactive in our industry. So, you know, we're reacting to the phone ringing. We're reacting to emails, people walking into our office, other things that go on in the business. And so it's always just something– we're always just waiting for that next thing to happen and reacting to it, rather than kind of planning ahead or being proactive.
Right? And so asset management, I take a page from multifamily. They're very good at asset management. They're dealing with large assets and large properties and having to deal with investors who are looking at their numbers differently.
They're looking at, you know, lending, things that they have to do for their lender and for shareholders and things like that. And so kind of looking at the business very differently in a sense of how do we plan for and how do we budget for things that happen to the asset. And so if you looked at a property, even if it's single family, if you looked at a single family home and you looked at the history of it, let's say you had it in your portfolio for a couple of years, you can actually gather data by putting together, saying, okay, well, how many how many work orders did we do in every quarter for the last two years?
And they kinda get averages. Right? How many turnovers did we have? How much did they cost on average?
What did the work orders look like? How many tenants, obviously, and things like that. And then late rents and all of these numbers that you could aggregate and then put together and then really put together kind of a proposal essentially for all of our owners looking at it saying, here's where we're at and here's where we're going. And, you know, to that keynote this morning, he was– and I've always said as well, if every single one of our owners today bought one more property in our portfolio, you either could double or come close to doubling your portfolio size.
And that's obviously growth. So how do we make that happen? And how do we change that mindset if it's an accidental landlord who's like, well, I just don't really wanna rent it out, but I can't sell it, or something. You know?
And I'm moving away and I don't have time, so I'm just gonna rent it out. Can you just do that? And we see that accidental landlords turn into, like, two, three, five, seven year clients. Again, because it's a little out of sight, out of mind, yet they still tend to micromanage us.
So how do we avoid having them micromanage us? It's because we need to approach it very differently with a different mindset. I know I've told you this before. It's a lot easier said than done.
And so, you know, we all conceptually can say, oh, that sounds great. I I just don't have anybody on my team that could do that. How do I do that? And we should all grab– we can figure out the reports.
It's really not that difficult. It's just taking the time to actually sit down and do it. And for single family operators, they may, if it's a one to one ratio, that can be very daunting. If I have five hundred properties and and I have close to five hundred owners, that's a lot.
But if we kind of change this and we gradually get to that point, and for every property that we onboard, we kind of set them up for success and say, this is what you're gonna expect, you know, get from us and what we're expecting from you. Setting those kind of ground rules in the very beginning would be really good, if we could really clear on our expectations. For some reason, people are very just fearful of actually saying, “this is what we're gonna do.”
Andrew Smallwood
And I mean, a couple of things reflecting back in the question.
I mean, it sounds like there's obviously a mindset shift here. And sometimes a change in language is a demarcation line and a change in the thinking. And, hey, I heard you talking about property management being reactive and how could we take a more proactive approach or more results-oriented type of approach as opposed to activity oriented?
Deb Newell
You know where I think it comes down to is, I just had this thought, is it really comes down to management agreement. So I get, like when I'm working with a client and they're frustrated because they're like, the owners, I'm being micromanaged, and that's what I get a lot when I'm interviewing the team. They don't like being micromanaged. They fear this conflict that's gonna happen.
They know it's on the horizon. They just they don't know what it is. An owner's calling because they're either upset about something or they just wanna even ask a simple question. But if you don't know the answer, that's where that fear of, like, I don't know my job. I don't know what I'm doing. Why am I doing this? It's stress, and that exasperates into other things. But I look at it and say, what's in your management contract?
Because if they're asking for something that's out of scope, meaning it's not in your contract, that's an easy answer. We can do that for you, but it will either, you know, cost this or result in this. We just tend to, for some reason, we tend to be fearful of charging more, asking for more, or saying we won't do it because it's completely out of our scope. And so I see a lot of people, we tend to do things for free.
How did we all of a sudden start drive-bys all the time? We never did them before. Now we're doing it, and that's costing our team money. I have somebody out there doing it. I have to pay for gas. They might be using a company vehicle or not, but they're out and about. They're not in the office. So the more that they're out of the office, it's taken away from the time to actually be at a computer doing other things, gathering reports or numbers or any further data.
And so they're out and about doing that. And then I'm questioning, well, are they stopping at the gas station? Are they having a nice lunch? Like, where's their productivity?
What are they doing, taking pictures? So, you know, just charge for it. If it's outside the scope of it, say we can do it or we can't do it because it doesn't fall within the scope of what our management agreement says. So stick to your management agreement. And if you're not happy with your agreement, then clearly revise your agreement with you know, if you need an attorney to help you set those parameters, but also clearly set your expectations in the agreement. This is how we manage, you know, how we handle maintenance.
And so there's a lot of people who have the same rough maintenance clauses of, like, you know, we may or may not charge a maintenance coordination fee or may charge a project management fee or something like that. And that's all fine and dandy. Just make sure you do it.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. It's interesting. You made a great point there that stuck with me of, because you're managing single family, you might have one point two properties per owner. And so if you have five hundred properties, you may have four hundred plus company owners, conceivably, in that same portfolio. And so it gets daunting and intimidating.
Deb Newell
Well, I think that and then you have how many tenants? There's usually two tenants per property, at least, that you're communicating with. Right? It's not just one.
So I might have eight hundred residents, and how many owners still? And that just exasperated it even more. So now I have all of these people and emotions and everything that, you know, that's not data. That's human stuff.
And that's what we've got. That's it. People aren't very good at that.
Andrew Smallwood
Right. And there's this many of them, and then there's, you know, like, six of us. And so, hey, we're trying to keep up with even just being reactive and trying to be responsive.
And so the idea of, we can have the bandwidth and the ability to do something proactive and systematic and programmatic across your whole offering, to be an asset manager to all of our clients, because being a property manager is challenging. So I hear you say a lot of people get stuck there. One thing I also heard you say, though, that was kind of interesting, was, you were talking about pricing just now. And it's getting me thinking about how pricing can be a way of, hey, we're going to offer this, but not everyone will accept it.
You can put a little bit higher price to see who really values the new thing that you're doing, and kind of limit the amount that you're going to bring on and making sure it's properly resourced to be able to do it, as opposed to saying, okay, I've gotta figure out how to do this on four units all at once. What are other tips you'd give to people to figure out, “how do I get started and scope this?”
Deb Newell
Well, I think asset management is also different than property management. So not every property manager could be an asset manager. So, again, depending on how many properties you manage in your portfolio and how big of a company you are, you may want a completely different position for somebody who's just doing asset management because they're focused on very different metrics than a property manager would be. And their conversations with owners are very different.
So if you're a young company with very few doors kind of growing, I think it would be– you'll transition into probably separating those roles. I think it might be good, like, asset manage lite, like, L-I-T-E like, right? Like, to have somebody who's learning parts of that that may grow into a bigger business when the business kind of continues to grow.
So you have to continually have to pivot your business as you add doors. You're not going to be the same company at two hundred and five hundred. We've heard this before at seven hundred or eleven hundred and on up.
You're always gonna have to be changing the structure of your company, the roles, what people do. You know, in the beginning, you might have somebody who's worn, like, three different hats, and now they're gonna, you know, fade that out into, like, now I'm gonna hire somebody else who's gonna take over this role.
So, that's the other thing to kinda consider and think about.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. And I love your instinct of thinking about the people aspect of this of, it sounds like, “hey, there could be a separate role or somebody who has some capacity taking it on.”
You know, how do you think about when you say, “hey, there's different metrics. It's really a different job.” Like, how would you think about the profile of the person going to be good at doing this? And again, what are the key activities that they might do?
Deb Newell
As an asset manager, you mean? As an asset manager, what would the profile of an asset manager be? That's a really good question. I don't know if I really thought more on the actual profile of them.
Here's the thing. They still need to talk to owners, so they still need to have these high level conversations with them.They're not dealing with the day to day, the tenant was late on their rent, and I have to file an eviction. Now they may have progressed into an asset manager role, but they're really more number crunching and looking at the real estate, the, the benchmarking against other properties, caprates, and things like that.
So they might have to have a little bit of analytical mind, numbers focused and things like that to really be able to have those conversations. But they have to have conversations with owners. They're not necessarily convincing owners. You might have big CapEx expenses fall onto the asset manager; roofing, big renovations that might have to happen on a property, convincing them why this needs to happen for ROI reasons, but they're not project managing.
So it's a little bit different.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. It's a little more analysis, strategic.
It's like strong communication skills and some financial acumen and there's some aspects.
Deb Newell
Which now is going to be really scary when people hear this. They're going to be like, “Great, now you're gonna tell me I have to go hire some analyst and I can't even find a property manager in my market. So how am I gonna go find an analyst?”
So I think we have to be careful and maybe take baby steps to this because, again, I'm not asking people to come from zero to sixty right there. I'm thinking, how do we just better educate clients so that they can see the value of what we actually do. Really, so that they kind of leave us alone. Because when we get hired by clients to manage their property, they've hired us because they like us, but they don't trust us, because they don't know us. They like whoever it was.
Was it whether it was the owner of the company or a BDM, maybe it was even a property manager. Whoever brought them into the fold to say we're going to now manage your property, they like us. We sold them. We were great salesmen.
Now comes the hard work.
That is we now have to manage it. And they don't trust us because yet they don't know us. And it starts with now we have to lease it out. How many days is that gonna take?
If it takes over thirty, we're losing a little bit of trust. Right? Why is this taking so long?
Yes, it could be the market. There could be a whole bunch of myriad actual reasons that this is happening, but how do we communicate that back?
So you have to build that relationship with trust, and it starts there because after leasing and you move the resident in, that's, like, kind of the next phase. Great. Now it's resident management. And how are we communicating any other things back to the owner?
Because during tenancy, we tend to see maintenance. And that's usually the next big hiccup is we're asking for money.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. So I wanna transition a little bit to another topic that I know you're passionate about, which is metrics and KPIs. And, you know, ProfitCoach is here talking about the operational standards.
A few years back, there was the accounting standard.
A number of the folks like yourself have been a really great voice for thinking about measuring your business and pushing drivers of your business. And I'm just curious, where do you think we are, state of the industry with this today? And how do you assess, like, here's where we are and what's the really important thing that we're doing next as it relates to metrics and KPIs?
Deb Newell
I don't think we're there yet. I think we're all talking about it. We've been talking about it for years. It's almost like if I talk to somebody, they're like, “Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know. I need to be doing this.”
Still, it's like, I just don't know where to start. I don't have time. I don't really know what I'm looking at. So I always say know your numbers, but know your numbers in the sense of, like, really just understand where they are coming from.
What fields did your team have to enter in, in the software to get that metric that's pulling out, just know all of that. Where is it coming from? Everybody can pull a report. I can schedule reports to be sent to people all day long, but what's that gonna do?
So we have to really have those numbers drive key decisions and make sure that they're driving those decisions in a way that everybody understands. That's the other thing. So if you are looking at your metrics and you're looking at KPIs as a business owner, how are you relating this to your team? And do they understand it?
And do they understand the why behind it?
You want to make sure that they're not just thinking that we're charging more money, and we have to charge more money to get to this percentage of profitability because they're just thinking that you're pocketing that money. And that's not usually the case. It takes a lot to run a business. You have to pay for insurance. You might have rent or a mortgage, and you have payroll. And you need to kind of explain all of that operationally to the team just so that they understand that we have to do this so that we can continue to grow as a company and get better at what we do.
Andrew Smallwood
It feels like the industry has made progress over the last few years we're starting to define. Right? Define some things. So, like you were talking about, you’ve got to know it's this calculation, this calculation.
And hey, a renewal rate or retention rate, are we all talking about the same thing? Are measuring the same thing? Are we taking this part out? Making sure that we're understanding this, defining it in a clear way.
Then there's the seeing, reporting, and then some of the technology vendors and then other folks that are helping us make progress here.
But then you talk about knowing the numbers and and the way I interpret that is not just seeing them, being able to report them, but also understand what goes into that, what influences that?
Deb Newell
And how is it driving your business?
So there's a lot of metrics out there, a ton, probably well over a hundred that we could be measuring. That's just too many. So the other thing is don’t compare yourself to other companies, per se. Really benchmark against yourself.
Where was I last year on these certain metrics, and where do I want to be this year? And really just be your own worst and best friend on that. So get better and drive your people to get better so that really– it kind of exudes. If you're really doing this and you're doing it so well, others will just see it, and you'll be well known in the community because you're doing so well.
People want to work for you. They see a well oiled machine. It just kind of falls in place because you're running well, And you're not so much worried about, like, what are the Joneses doing or those types of things. Really benchmark against yourself, but know the numbers and figure out which ones.
So, you know, I have kind of this rule of thumb, three to five metrics. Five is even a lot I'm seeing. But pick your departments, like lease marketing and leasing, property management, which could be owners and residents, and and then a few of them, maintenance and finance. It's kinda those four big buckets.
Right? And within those, choose three metrics, and that's a lot. Four times three is twelve. I'm already about twelve by measuring every single month.
That's a lot for some people. That's that might even be too much to start off with. So you might even just say, oh, I'm just gonna I'm gonna just pick maintenance and leasing. Those are my two biggest pain points.
And so I'll just focus on those. And then once I kinda figure those out and those kind of run and that might take, like, six to nine months, by the way. It’s not going to happen overnight, or even in a few months. And really trending numbers are gonna be important to you.
So a lot of people haven't been measuring anything at all. And, unfortunately, in our software, you can't go back in time. It's always in real time. So I can't go back and say, how many doors did I have last May, and what were those and can I pull metrics from that?
Unless you were pulling those out into an Excel spreadsheet, you've kind of lost that data. Even though it's there, you can't go back, unless you absolutely knew how many doors you had, and then you're doing a lot of manual stuff.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. So doing a year over year analysis or a month over month.
Deb Newell
Month over month, to build into quarter over quarter to build into year over year.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. You gotta start.
Deb Newell
So just start. Just start doing it, and just start tracking it. Even if you don't do anything more than just putting the numbers somewhere, just to start tracking it and then kinda grasping what you want to now start focusing on.
Andrew Smallwood
I wanna bring this to life a little bit with an illustrative example, if we could try that, which would be if we pick something like, the move in experience.
Let's say the property manager’s saying move-ins are a challenge and a source of complaints and it's critical.
It's an area that we want to focus on. How might they think about a KPI or two to, hey, here's what I'm going to report and see. And then also start to think through, but let's just practice an analysis of that, of, hey, here's different ways we could impact or drive that.
Deb Newell
Sure. So I think a good one is to say how many work orders were submitted within the first thirty days of move-in. So I mean, the goal would be zero, but that might be really unrealistic for a lot of people. So let's, you know, 95%, 80%, whatever that number or that metric should be. How do we minimize that?
Because there's always gonna be extenuating circumstances, things we may have just missed, and residents are residents, and they're gonna do that. But it really, so that's one piece of it. That's just one small piece. Because as you said, the whole move in experience can happen a variety of different ways.
So people can either do contactless move-in or they do in person move-in. But then are you rushed doing the move-in if you do it in person because you have ten other move-ins that are going on. So you meet the person there. They're late because they had to pick up their U-Haul late, and they have to wait for friends to help them unpack the U-Haul.
And so you're rushing them around, and you're like, I already did the move-in walkthrough. Just sign off on this. And then they're unpacking, and in the next three days, they're like, wow. This is broken, or this isn't working.
So it goes back to, did we walk the property the right way? Do we have a method?
You know, so if it's like Newell Property Management, did Newell Property Management– what's the right way to do that? Do we know that everybody, anybody in our team can walk through property and they all walk through it the same way, and we're all catching the same thing? So, hopefully, we did our job and we did it correctly so that when a tenant walks through it, they're either seeing things that we've already mapped or noted or they're not seeing anything. And then let's say they do note it on move-in report.
That's where we want them to. And then we can diagnose that and analyze that at the office. And, again, learning experience, did we miss something? Did we catch everything?
But we're giving them a little bit of time. Or did they not hear you because you were all rushed, and they just instead submit, like, ten work orders. And it was for all little things that shouldn't even really be a work order. So now we have to look through all these work orders and go, that just should have been on the move-in report.
And then you have the problem of, well, do my work orders get shared with the owner? Do they see all of these work orders coming through? Are they now frustrated with us because we just did a move out? Now they just can think of dollar signs, and they're calling our office.
And, again, so you have this whole–
Andrew Smallwood
I just paid for this turn, and there's still–
Deb Newell
Right.
So, you know, there's all– again, there's so many different things. So do we do a contactless move in, and did we prep them correctly? Whether it was contactless or even in person, did we prepare that experience of moving in the way it should have been done? Like, what are we hoping will be the experience? In the end, I'm hoping– don't want any work order submitted. I want them to have a good experience.
I want them to leave a review or whatever it could be, figure out what that expectation is and now work backwards to get to that expectation.
I like working backwards on a lot of things, by the way.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Yeah. I like that. And I appreciate you talking through that. One critical part of this that has been a theme through some of our conversations is, in property management, if you're in the experience business, you're in the expectations business. And you just talked about a move-in condition.
If you just say, hey, do a move in condition report and don't set any expectations or shape any expectations, then, you know, there may be some people who happen to have fewer expectations. They may have a different expectation.
And so, how do you think about that?
Like if you're a property manager or business owner, like, okay, I've got this critical customer expectation at this key point in time. How do I shape that and set that in a reliable way?
Deb Newell
And by the way, that's not even just for the resident. It's also for the owner as well. The owner needs to have those expectations. They need to know that rent-ready means this.
And so most people are visual, so they want to understand. I can say that behind the fridge should be swept. And I could say that under you know, that little corner in the toilet needs to be cleaned. The grout should look free of debris. You can say all of these things, but put a picture with it.
So I've kind of created this document over the years where it's kind of explaining by department a little bit, like, by category: this is what I need when I say the top of the fridge should be clean. Here's a before and here's an after. Like, give people a visual so that they can kinda go, oh, yeah. It's not perfect, but it's clean. Right? It's Swiffer clean or whatever you want to kind of term it. But, give people a point of reference instead of just a verbal point of reference or a written point of reference, give them a visual point of reference as well.
And everybody needs to be on the same page. And so that's the expectation to say, here's move-in ready. It is a rental. It's not going to be perfect. You will find some things. Put them on the report.
And if it's a need or a want, we'll address it as we're allowed to. So, the goal is that we want to be able to control the whole experience without involving the owner unnecessarily. Like, it's going to be different if, like, we somehow missed it or it just happened to, like, break between the time that we did our walkthrough and the tenant moved in. Right?
So water heaters could break. Something could have happened. Whatever that might be. But if we failed, then I want to know we failed before the owner knows we failed so that the owner just never knows.
So there's things like that you want to kind of capture in house and retrain and get better at so that we can do– the bigger we grow, we're going to have more move-ins. And that's where you also have to think, are these things scalable? Is it scalable to do in person move-ins? It is when you're at two hundred and three hundred doors, maybe.
It's not at seven hundred, eight hundred, nine hundred doors, unless you have specific people that are just out in the field doing just that. And that's it. And that's what you pay them for. Move-ins and move outs.
Andrew Smallwood
I love what you said about just making itreally clear and visual for people of here's what good looks like, or here's exactly what we're talking about.
And here's an example of what not good looks like or unacceptable.
Just making that really transparent and clear, as a part of the process. It reminds me of, one of the biggest disputes in property management is security deposits, right? And people's expectations about that coming in.
Deb Newell
Oh, it was like this when I moved in or it's better now when I moved out than it was when I'm making it in. You need a point of reference. And we're at these trade shows.
Every year, we come to these things. And there's trade shows. And there's inspection apps. And there's current property management software that have all of these tools within them.
Utilizing them is important. And that gives us a point of reference, but also making sure that you're doing them. I've met with so many companies that are like, “Yeah, we just don’t have time. I had too many move-ins. I didn't get to it.” I'm like, it's going to bite you in the rear.
It’s going to not feel great when that tenant moves out. So they're sacrificing a better experience overall because the whole tendency is just gonna not probably be a great experience.Yeah. And so, yes, first impressions are important.
Yes, there might be a couple issues, but it's really all how we handle it. And, honestly, the less I can involve my owner, I'm building that relationship of trust with them. We're handling it internally.
We want to control the outcome. Why am I getting the owner involved? Like, why are we even asking or letting our owner know this is going on? It just like, again, they're just not gonna trust us. And the more you involve them in that first thirty days after a tenant moves in, they're just going to– it sets the stage for them to call you for everything.
So let's try to avoid that.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Great thoughts there. And, again, going beyond just– most people think move-in experience, they think the resident expectations.
But that's very Triple Win thinking there. Hey. What's everyone, the staff, the owner, right, the resident, what they're thinking.
Deb, I want to finish with a lightning round.
I have a couple of questions.
Deb Newell
Oh, gosh. Okay. Go.
Andrew Smallwood
Alright. So first question is, if there is a book, one or two books that you would recommend to professional property managers,what books would they be?
Deb Newell
One is not a book probably for property managers, but it's more agnostic to any industry. I really, and I've said this before, and I think people have heard it, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Andrew Smallwood
Patrick Lencion?
Deb Newell
Yep. I really like how he builds on everything, like, accountability, conflict resolution, trust, all of that. So all of that's really important, and it starts with our team. We're in a very people business. There's so much technology out there. You can't automate property management to that degree. You can. A lot of things can be automated, but we also have to pick up the phone and sometimes call and talk to people.
Andrew Smallwood
I heard someone once say every problem at the end of the day is a people problem. Do you agree with that perspective?
Deb Newell
Well, I guess maybe. Yeah. I mean, what else could it have been? I guess if it was a computer problem that stems from something that somebody entered in, right? So was data entered in wrong? Yeah. I mean, I always look at it like, “Did a really did a computer really calculate that wrong? Probably not. So what did I do?”
But yeah. I guess I could resonate with that. Yeah.
Andrew Smallwood
Cool. Alright, so book recommendation.
Next one: what do you think is the biggest challenge that property managers are facing today?
Deb Newell
People.
Andrew Smallwood
Can you say more about that? What about people? Some of those challenges there?
Deb Newell
Well, why do we even go into this business? Probably because we love real estate or we want to have our own small business and we, you know, want to make x. I always tell people, go backwards. Again. How much money do you want to make and then figure out how you're going to get there. So how much do you need to live for whatever your lifestyle is per month that you will feel comfortable with and how are we gonna get there?
How many doors do I need? How many people is it gonna take to manage that? Oh, wait. You said people?
Oh, okay, wait, people. So I have to hire people. I have to train people. I have to make sure that they're successful so we can get to that door count so I can get to that number that I wanna get to.
So in order to get to people, I need to, you know, hire competent people that can probably do the job that I have to train them to, whether they're industry, you know, veterans or they're brand new. Somehow, I need to show them what I want, my expectations.
That's really hard for business owners to do. So we go into this business not necessarily thinking that we're gonna have to manage people, emotions, but with drama, time off. They you know, whatever that might be, maternity leave, vacation, sickness, all of that, death. Everything. Life happens. I have to manage their lives and my life, and that can also be very stressful for people because they feel that pressure too. That I have to earn this money now because I have livelihoods, like, depending on it, and that can also build stress.
So stress management and people, all of that. It's really hard.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah.
Okay. Last one. As you look to the future of the industry for professional property managers, What gets you most excited and optimistic?
What are you most looking forward to?
Deb Newell
Oh, I think we're we're always– I've always said this as well. We're kind of the win-win.
I know you're gonna say win-win-win. But it's kind of a win-win situation. No matter what political environment we're in, economical environment, everything, you need a place to live. There's always going to be a need for a property manager. We're in this industry that it's like we're in it when the economy is great. We're in it if the economy is bad because we're still having to manage these assets and take care of property.
So it's always gonna be there. So I think it's just getting better and better, and we're figuring it out. I think the hardest part probably and I always hate to bring this up, but since that pandemic thing that happened, people's attitudes have changed and people's expectations. We've seen it in the news for a lot of things, like, just so many ways that people are now looking at things or expecting things and demanding things has changed, and I don't think that will go away. I think if we let it, it will exasperate. So we have to get some boundaries and some dimension as well within our own company and set our expectations and be very clear about how we're gonna run our company.
Andrew Smallwood
Good. Deb, I think it's a great note to end on. Thanks for sharing the time.