Want your investors to keep investing? Or have them continuously provide you with referrals. Brad Randall of Welch Randall Real Estate joins Brad and shares how to enhance boring line items from a quarterly document into an interactive engagement and how he went from forgettable trinkets to providing memorable experiences for his investors.
Brad Larsen: Hey everybody. On today's podcast we'll be talking with Brad Randall Post Property Management Mastermind Conference Presentation. And we have some fantastic techniques to talk about.
Announcer: Welcome to the Property Management Mastermind Show with your host, Brad Larson. Brad owns one of the fastest growing property management companies in San Antonio, Texas. This podcast is for property managers. By property managers, you'll hear from industry leading professionals on best practices, new ideas, success stories and lessons learned. This is your opportunity to learn about [00:00:30] the latest industry buzz surrounding property management, as well as tips and strategies to improve your business.
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Brad Larsen: Welcome, everybody, to another edition of the Property Management Mastermind. And we are live and in person today at the Property Management Mastermind Conference. And so in this conversation, I'm going to bring on Mr. Brad Randall. And he was presenting before me today. So I actually had to pay attention and took a couple of pictures of your slides. I'm like, Man, this is going to be a cool conversation. I got to get Brad on because some of the techniques he's doing in his business development [00:02:30] and his owner follow up are significantly better than anything I've seen out there. And you got to share because some of the ideas are not new air quote. I'm doing air quotes as you can't see, but they're really good. And if they're implemented correctly, they're going to help you retain clients. Because my presentation today was about client retention, stopping churn, gathering more sales, and it dovetailed exactly into what he was talking about with introducing ways to keep [00:03:00] people involved in your business. So I need to introduce Brad. This is Brad Randall. I'm going to have you give us a few minutes of your time and tell us who you are. Go ahead.
Brad Randall: Thanks so much for having me on, Brad. Yes, I am Brad Randall. Different Brad and very excited to be here and loving the conference, first of all. So I am from Salt Lake City, Utah. We run a brokerage and a property management company and our PM division is just under 400 doors. And then we have about 4200 HOA [00:03:30] units in 62 communities and our company over the last couple of years has really focused in on the owner experience. We put in more budget, more time, more effort into that than probably any other endeavor in our company. So that's what I was speaking about today.
Brad Larsen: Pm M Kohn Yeah, it's hard right into what we want to chat on here, and I wanted you. There's one particular slide, there's a bunch of slides that we're going to chat on, but one in particular I wanted to start with was the PM versus the trusted advisor. You have a list of [00:04:00] PM bullet points, maybe five or six, then the trusted advisors 11. So there's obviously some differences because I want to try and paraphrase it, but you can get your property management almost anywhere. But becoming that trusted advisor to where you can recommend buying this property or this is your net operating income, this is your rent on cash, on cash return and all that good stuff. Explain to me that slide and how it worked and how do you explain it to owners.
Brad Randall: So when you are looking to when an owner is looking to hire a PM company, [00:04:30] you can do it by a lot of different ways. But if we as a property management company have price as our number one determinant for someone hiring us, then someone will move into they'll hire us. They'll hire somebody else the next year because someone's always going to be able to offer something cheaper. So a standard PM is somebody that does the basic things that you would anticipate. They collect rent, they take care of maintenance, they handle a move out, they handle a lease renewal. [00:05:00] If you look at property management in its base forms, they're doing it. However, we have gone with the approach of let's look at how wealth advisors talk to their clients about their investments.
Brad Larsen: That's a good point because to interrupt you, we are essentially wealth advisors. Yes, that's a really good way to look at it. Almost like money managers.
Brad Randall: Yes, we are money managers. We are asset protectors in a lot of ways. We are hired to help someone gain financial freedom through [00:05:30] single family, multifamily, however many doors they have. And whether they're starting with one or 20, somebody that is going into an investment property is hoping to gain financial additional freedom from having this property. So where the conversation changes with an owner as a trusted advisor when you play that role is instead of saying, you know, they ask, what are the services you provide? And we say, well, what is your overall goal with this [00:06:00] property? So it's not, oh, our management fee is this, this is how much we charge for marketing, this is how much we charge for lease renewal. We are saying we handle all of those things, but even more than that, we want to help look at this asset and see how the day to day operations can help you build financial freedom little by little. And then you use the positive money that you're gaining from the property to buy more properties, to grow your portfolio or to, you know, [00:06:30] invest in other things as well. So once again, a trusted advisor is someone that has more value than just a PM company.
Brad Larsen: Now, here's something I want you to talk about. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. In your slide presentation was you have an elongated annual, I guess a compilation report that you're sending to your owners. And and I say it's elongated because you actually beef it up. You give them a lot more than just like, here's your annual compiled statement, you know, black and white pal. Boring numbers. Yeah, it's more beefier. And I'm [00:07:00] going to have you explain that. And this is where I'm going to go with you, because I think you see it is it discourages them from selling. Let's think about that for a second, because if they sell, they might leave your portfolio. It discourages them from selling because you're showing them how well they're doing, too. It encourages them to buy another property and let you manage it. So I really think that's a stroke of genius to send them some sort of elongated annual production piece. And I want you to elaborate on that.
Brad Randall: Yeah. You bet. So think about a traditional owner [00:07:30] statement where at the end of the year you get a copy of here's what's happened with your rent, here's the expenses, give it to your tax accountant. Done. An owner is going to interpret that however they want. What we want to do, we want to control the narrative a little bit. So you look at the last couple of years with the pandemic, we didn't raise rents a ton for a couple of years. So when an owner sees that statement and they see, oh, maybe expenses were a little bit higher this year, our rent didn't go up. Maybe the rental [00:08:00] isn't as valuable for me. However, if you provide them in addition to that report, you let them know maybe expenses that were avoided or cost that were avoided by doing certain repairs. You know, you spent 400 bucks doing this, but you saved 2500 by doing preventative maintenance. Or if you look at it and say, all right, your rent did not go up this percentage, however, your home raised 90,000 [00:08:30] in value just by you doing nothing.
Brad Larsen: Because you include a comparative.
Brad Randall: Market. We do a SEMA, we do an equity. You know, we look at where their equity is based on whether they have a loan or not. So then the conversation isn't, well, I got to get rid of this property. The conversation shifts to you just got 90,000 in equity. Do you want to put it to work somehow? If so, let's get you involved with another property. So the conversation shifts from man. We didn't do as well on this rental to let's look for another [00:09:00] rental.
Brad Larsen: Yeah. And that when you put that in front of him every year, especially the equity gain, it makes it easier when they realize, okay, well, we had $3,000 in maintenance this year because it's a compiled statement, but you went up to 90,000 in value. So, you know, it's tough for them to really if you if you put that in front of them. Oh, yeah. But, you know, we had 3000 maintenance repairs this year. I don't know if I really want to do this any longer. I mean, we're getting killed by maintenance. Yeah, but you went up in 90,000 in value. It kind of like, quiets that conversation pretty quick. I really like that part. Now, anything [00:09:30] else you want to add to that?
Brad Randall: I think the only other thing I would add to it is we have seen in the last couple of years of of incorporating this type of communication that a lot of those day to day questions that can drive property managers nuts start to dissipate because our owners start to see a longer term perspective to it. So we've all dealt with those owners that you send them that first work order and they are reaching back out to you saying, well, I would never pay this much for [00:10:00] this, or Why am I getting charged for this when they see how one decision like that could fit into a bigger picture and how you are managing for the bigger picture, not just for saving $10 here or there. They start to trust your judgment more, which then minimizes the request that you get from them. So the time spent per owner has gone down because we send them stuff and the information because it's coming consistently, [00:10:30] it embeds in them that we are an expert now. Are we an expert in everything? Absolutely not. But we are presenting the fact that we're not just going to collect your rent, we are building something for the long term and I think people buy into that.
Brad Larsen: I do want to talk a little bit more about the live Zoom trainings that you're doing because I think that's a hit now. It's nothing crazy new. We all have Zoom. You always hear other conferences, Hey, why don't you do a quarterly Zoom call and and it kind of slides over your head [00:11:00] and like, yeah, it's a good idea, but you've done it and you can actually show some real results from it. I want you to touch on that because you kind of tell us how you do it, kind of what the content is, who's producing it. If they miss it, they can go to a certain web page and see it after after the fact recorded. Kind of talk us through some of this stuff.
Brad Randall: You bet. So I can tell you right off the bat, our Zoom calls are quarterly and the equipment they feature are a laptop and a conference table. That's a lot. We have no microphones. We have no lights like anything [00:11:30] like this.
Brad Larsen: It is a production through like what I have.
Brad Randall: Yeah, I've got nothing like you have here, but our owners embrace it. Now, could I invest more in a better setup like this? Absolutely. Our owners don't care. So that's the first thing is don't let thinking that you have to do something like this. Stop you from starting something. That's good.
Brad Larsen: Yeah, I got to I got to hash on that a little bit more, too, because, you know, we've been banging the drum for videos for years. Right. And you tell property management company owners [00:12:00] you need to start doing more video content. Oh, I'm afraid of the camera. And I don't have a good backdrop and I don't have good. Lightning. And I'm like, Just start your phone or start a camera. Just go like, don't worry about that stuff. And they put roadblocks in front of themselves. So I want you to the listeners to understand that what you just talked about was don't worry about the tech stuff.
Brad Randall: Yeah.
Brad Larsen: You know, if you're super worried about lighting, go to Amazon and spend 70 bucks on it, right? It's not it's not going to break your bank, but you just put it out there. And so some [00:12:30] of the content you're talking about, give me some some more nuts.
Brad Randall: So the content so we decided that we want to do it quarterly. The owners, when we first ran this, we ran it for a year and we, we got feedback from owners saying quarterly is pretty good because, you know, we make them 45 minutes to an hour. And quarterly is really what our owners felt like was good. So four times a year. Now, as far as the content goes, we have a few criteria. The first criteria is we always have a guest speaker with [00:13:00] us.
Brad Larsen: Okay.
Brad Randall: The reason being is we like having a guest speaker because it shows that not only are we trying to be an expert for them, but we are trying to connect them to the best minds in their local industry. So we have a couple of relationships with local attorneys. We had an attorney on last summer that talked about the eviction process because we had owners asking about it. So they talked about the eviction process for 20 minutes. We talked about [00:13:30] eviction coverage, eviction protection programs that we have that can protect landlords, and then we open it up to questions. So our first criteria is we like to have a guest speaker. Okay. Second criteria is we have to talk about services that we provide. We don't shove it down people's throats, but we say if we're going to talk about something, let's talk about how Welch, Randall or the PM company is solving a problem for the owner because once again, that's what we're trying to [00:14:00] embed into the owner's mindset is there's a lot of problems out there and they're complicated and you don't want to try to do this on your own. And attorneys are really good at driving that home because they start to note, you know, an act or a law or something. They spout off on that and the listeners are like, I definitely don't want to do this. And then we go into and here's the things that come included with your management fee of what we do. Here are things that you can add to it. [00:14:30] And we always have sign ups after. And then the last piece is we we make sure that we leave time for Q&A.
Brad Larsen: So there's there's a fear factor in that. I'm going to bring it up. Yeah. You might have had this conversation with your crew. So you're on an open zoom call with 50 owners, 100 owners, whatever it could be. What if somebody starts going down that rabbit hole of the hate mode? Yeah. You ever talk through this?
Brad Randall: Yes. So and I will tell you, this was a big fear of ours, because when you [00:15:00] get an open mic, somebody that's been, you know, they're angry over something. They've got an open mic. And it's like, this is my chance to let everybody know that I'm upset. I will say in in what we've been doing with this, we have only had to I will use the word redirect.
Brad Larsen: Okay.
Brad Randall: An owner one time and it was not because they got angry over something, it was because they were just going off the rails on something. However, once [00:15:30] again, I get that the fear is out there. It really shouldn't exist.
Brad Larsen: So on a techie side, maybe Matt, you could help me on this, but there's probably a way you can turn off any sort of Q&A where they can actually come in and talk to you or you just like turn it on where it's commenting in Zoom. There's got to be a way to chat.
Brad Randall: I mean, you can.
Brad Larsen: Chat only, right? You could do breakout rooms or breakout rooms. Okay. Okay. I'm just trying to, you know, quell that fear and maybe it's just a tech button, you know what I mean? Where it's just a set. Okay. [00:16:00] Yeah. So if somebody.
Brad Randall: Says, yeah, this is Zoom 101, like this is not anything that you need to lose any sleep over. I also think an important aspect of this, and you mentioned it earlier, so we record every Zoom meeting that we do and then we put it on YouTube. We have a YouTube channel and I assure you we are not getting hundreds and thousands of views.
Brad Larsen: Sure.
Brad Randall: But it helps us a little bit organically [00:16:30] on Google and it's a great resource to send to people. So when that owner calls and says, I'm upset or I have a question over this, we say, you know what, I'm going to send you a link to our discussion on pet revenue and pet protection plans. Go back, take a listen to it and then let's talk again.
Brad Larsen: Yeah, no content is bad in that regard. Yeah, it's probably. Have you added it to your website as well. Like links. Okay. So yeah, you can embedded in your website, you can add it to a YouTube channel, you can drive organic leads [00:17:00] to that as like a resource like hey, learn more about us in our quarterly Zoom meetings. Go to this page, check it out. That's a great way to close potential new owners and keep your existing owners on board with you.
Brad Randall: And the only fee you pay is a Zoom subscription. We all have anyway. We do not need to overthink this. And if you look at our videos, they're raw, they're vulnerable, and no one cares.
Brad Larsen: I wouldn't say no one cares. I think it's good stuff either way.
Brad Randall: Care, but no one cares that they're not perfect.
Brad Larsen: Well, yeah, they're going to give you some leeway. And yeah, they get [00:17:30] to be heard a little bit. They get to see what's going on and you can explain it face to face because it's much easier to explain a pet policy to a camera or to a colleague that's listening, especially when you're charging pet fees. And why aren't you giving me the pet fees? Why are you guys keeping the late fees? And you can you can answer that a bit more and start bringing in things that they didn't think of. Like we were just talking over there with Brian on another matter, and he's an East Coast guy and we're talking about maintenance and he's like, Well, I charge my owners X percent for maintenance. [00:18:00] For all the invoicing. I'm like, Yeah, do your owners understand that you're paying for the general liability insurance that you're liable for everything that goes wrong with the home that you're handling, the maintenance coordination you're handling, the invoicing. Do they understand that part? Well, no, I guess you're right. We need to do a better job communicating that to them. Right. That's fair. That's exactly what you and I are talking about in that quarterly Zoom type of meeting. You can explain why we charge for maintenance and this is how it works. Here's what meld costs. Here's what our general liability insurance costs and [00:18:30] these things we can't absorb as a business unless we charge for the action. And you can have one maintenance request in a century or one a week. We don't know based upon your home. Yeah. So we have to charge per event. Yeah. So anyway just elaborating.
Brad Randall: On that and I do think the lowest hanging fruit on an event like this do an industry update. So you're a local market expert. If you're not sure what to do for your first one, do a leasing forecast where you talk about the industry and say we're [00:19:00] anticipating rents are going to go up this amount. We're working with this, we're going to work on these programs. But owners love that stuff. Yeah, if you go to an owner and say, hey, watch this 30 minute zoom, join us and then you can ask us questions about specifics about lease renewals. It's such an easy way to just help them know what's going on and once again, establish yourself as a local hot topic.
Brad Larsen: Right now, because we're in May is the property tax assessments. So I don't know when they come out in [00:19:30] Utah, but in Texas, they're all coming out in April. So everybody is up in arms because most of the counties in Texas have gone up significantly ten, 20% and the assessed value because of the hot market. And so a good topic would be to get on to a Zoom call or bring a guest on because there are there are services out there that will fight your property taxes for you. You can bring them on and interview them and say, okay, how do we fight property taxes and just go down that topic discussion? And that alone is a value add. So I love the [00:20:00] concept and I'm beating a dead horse here because you and I know both like it. But I think we need to rent works. I think we need to do a better job at it and implement this right away. I think that's really good. Now, one of the things I want to talk about, too, is you discussed celebrating milestones during the property management lifecycle. And here you have a cadence of ten, 12 events that go on. And a lot of them are first time things like the first time they get their property management agreement signed. You have some sort of like, you know, feedback call or feedback text or something. [00:20:30] I want you to explain this and how you communicate that to the owner. Yeah.
Brad Randall: So this is something we started with a base and now we're building off of that base and I'll tell you a little bit about that. So for an owner, our goal with an owner is to have them look at the life cycle and and realize how much is happening outside of just finding a tenant and collecting rent. There is a lot happening, but if it's not being communicated, then an owner sometimes can look at it and say, Well, we got a tenant in there paying, [00:21:00] but now what am I paying for? That's what we don't want. So we celebrate milestones and the milestones, like you said, the PM agreement, a new tenant, first work order first first time the direct deposit goes through. We celebrate different things that happen and then we also look at other events that are personal. Maybe to the owner a birthday. We do an anniversary, you know, from the date that we signed the management agreement.
Brad Larsen: That's easy stuff. Let's back [00:21:30] up a bit. So let's go just a couple at a time. For example, big ones I would think would be first statement. Yep, because a lot of owners get their first statement, they just lease out their home. And of course, you've already communicated. Okay, we have an applicant. Okay, execute your lease agreement. Okay. First time ran. Okay, we got all that done. First statement goes out, you know, second week in June, first week in June. You call them up and say, hey, I know you just got your first statement. This is what triggers a call. Triggers a phone call. We know you just got your first statement. If you want some guidance on it, feel free to call us back. Always leave a voicemail, [00:22:00] right? Always. Always leave a voicemail. Maybe a text message goes out. Email, not so much. You know, I wouldn't do it on an email because after a while, emails turned into white noise. Right? You know what I mean? There's just so many of them in our inboxes, but a voice phone call is super powerful because if you get them on the phone and say, Do you have questions about this line? Questions about this line? No, I think I'm good. Brad, I appreciate your call. Okay. If you had a concern, call us back. We'll go through it again. That's really important to get them settled in. Yeah, [00:22:30] because some of the statements are confusing, and especially if you're into a new software where it might be a change or they're coming new to you from a different management company that may not even use software, I think that's something that we've got to get better at as an industry to get the owners settled in.
Brad Randall: Well, and you think about it, a lot of companies have a handbook or something like that, but what percentage of our owners receive a handbook and then say, I would like to spend three or 4 hours to [00:23:00] just dive into this? They're going to look at it when a problem comes up. So instead of waiting for the problem to come, that first statement generally has like a lease up fee or a marketing fee that can freak an owner out because maybe it's been vacant for a few weeks. They're needing the income and then we're gobbling up a percentage of it.
Brad Larsen: Oh, a big one. Interrupt you.
Brad Randall: That's the.
Brad Larsen: Biggest. Yeah, yeah. The big one time.
Brad Randall: Fee.
Brad Larsen: On those statements. Typically the first one we have Texas property code. And [00:23:30] so you probably have the same thing and a lot of us just common sense, hey, we're changing the locks, okay? We're such evil tyrants for doing that. We're adding a smoke detector. I mean, we're changing out an air filter. We're adding a carbon monoxide detector in certain states. And owners see that first time? Well, if I had known you're going to charge me $10.95 for a smoke detector. I just spent $6.95 and done it myself. Right. So it's a two headed monster. You got to warn them in the beginning. And then when they get the statement, you got to say, okay, just making sure you're cool with all the all the stuff that we had to do [00:24:00] to get your property ready and meet with the local property codes to trigger.
Brad Randall: And I do feel like a lot of this you can automate however you mention the the the problem of white noise with email. If a client gets so many automated emails, they're going to stop reading them, right? Because they can start to read an automated email, you can start to filter through it and say, Dear So-and-so, here is an automatically generated [00:24:30] email that's meant to help you feel peace. And that's a good thing. Like an automated email is not a bad thing. However, I think and this is something that we I would like to do better with that first statement. I love the idea of a phone call because even if it's a voicemail that is really going to be most likely the biggest cut from the owner during a year's period. Yeah, more than likely. Unless there's a big a big maintenance event.
Brad Larsen: Yeah. Side story on that. So [00:25:00] did a VRBO one time. Right. And you're only doing it for three or four or five nights to a short term rental. But you went and picked up the keys. This is back before they were doing Lock Box. It's kind of the beginning of the VRBO. You get settled into the property and a phone call immediately from the management company that were renting from for a four night stay. Yeah, a phone call went to voicemail. No big deal. But basically he said, Hey, just making sure you're all settled in. If you have any questions, call us back. I did not call back, but I felt really darn good, [00:25:30] right? He called me and left me a voicemail. And so I think that's pretty important. And we forget about those little things, right? Yeah. Voicemails are pretty effective. Text messages are little dryer emails are the worst. Yeah, but I do think people got to get better at doing that. Just calling.
Brad Randall: Exactly. And I think the other point of the life cycle of a tenant that gets really scary for an owner is when the tenant gives notice. Yeah. Because then it goes to what's my property going to look like? How long is it going to [00:26:00] take to fill? What now? What happens? You know, what if it's trashed?
Brad Larsen: Yeah.
Brad Randall: So I think that's another point where an email can help maybe lay out what's going to happen. But a phone call or a video email that that is a personalized we are reaching out to make sure we're connecting with you. It's night and day different.
Brad Larsen: Yeah. And there's video techniques out there like bom bom. You know, you guys talked about that in there as well. But I think that's a hugely important trigger more more than the initial [00:26:30] statement, just because when a tenant gives notice, that's when the owner start to go weird. Yeah. Meaning? I don't mean weird, but I'm saying they want to sell, they want to self manage, you want to move back in, they want to move their cousin in or something. You know, weird is what I'm trying to say. If you can get ahead of that and say, Hey, Owner gave notice they're moving out in 60 days just making sure you're good with us. Re Running the property. We're going to go through the comparables and decide on a future rent. But if anything's changed in your situation, now is the time for us to discuss it. Well, you know, I'm thinking about selling Brad. [00:27:00] I think you guys you know, I'm thinking about selling. Great. We'd be happy to help you. Let me get you over to the sales. Let me get your karma if you do that via email. They're going to say, Oh, read an email. Cool. Keller Williams, agent outside of my organization. We want to sell this property. Go take it over from the landlord. The property management company. Go take it over from them in two weeks. And they never call you to tell you that. And next thing you know, you got an agent that shows up and your desk, your front desk, your front door. So, hey, I'm taking over that property because the [00:27:30] tenants leave, and the owner hired me to sell their home.
Brad Randall: Yeah.
Brad Larsen: Real life scenario, huh?
Brad Randall: Well, case in point. Last Thursday or no, last Wednesday, a tenant contacted us, said our. Excuse me, an owner contact us and said, we think it's time to sell the property. I was headed out of town and I said, Well, I'll put together a quick KMA for you. We do the KMA. I don't check in on it. Just yesterday morning I got an email saying this was the best info. [00:28:00] We we have a cousin that's never done a real estate deal. He's going to sell it for us now. Thanks for providing him the info. So once again, that's something we could have saved, kept it in house, but I needed to do a better job of in-person working with that. Massage it.
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Brad Larsen: So one of the things I want to talk about with you, Brad, next, [00:29:00] is client events, because I thought that was a darn good idea. Now it's again, it's nothing new. It's not rocket surgery. We've all kind of heard about it. But you're pulling these off at a high level and they've evolved for you. I mean, a client event could be a customer appreciation party. Okay, let's all show up. We have a couple sodas and, you know, we go to Aqua World or Aquarium, you know, good stuff. But you made this or allowed this to evolve in a really, really type of a cool format. I want you to talk more about it.
Brad Randall: So right now, our owner events are [00:29:30] obviously in-person events where we get we get a chance for it. We're kind of knocking out a number of we're killing a lot of birds with one stone. We have a client event where owners can come with their families. We get to connect with them. We have employees that use this as an employee event, come with their families as well. So it kind of works as both. But this is a way for us and and we build our budget on this based [00:30:00] on certain ancillary revenue fees that we charge. So resident benefit package, lease administration fee, one time lease start fee and lease renewal. Those four fees, we put 30% of the income from that into what we call an owner experience budget. Now, a lot of companies I know they do gifts. I am not against gifts. I think gifts are great.
Brad Larsen: I have a whole book gift ology, remember?
Brad Randall: Exactly, you know, how to or [00:30:30] how to never lose a client. Right? A lot of different things.
Brad Larsen: Knives concept.
Brad Randall: Exactly. However, do you remember a gift you got two years ago?
Brad Larsen: Nope.
Brad Randall: Do you remember something you did two years ago? Like a trip or something?
Brad Larsen: Absolutely. You got pictures of it.
Brad Randall: It's an experience. And so what we've looked at is I can send them a personalized coffee mug and they will open it and they'll say, that is a really nice thing, but I can create an event where they get to connect and maybe do something unique that they can actually do with a family, [00:31:00] with a partner or a spouse, and also connect and get some education from it or connect with vendors, things like that. It's a win win for everybody.
Brad Larsen: Let's talk about the intrinsic value of that. Even if they don't attend, they see you as a company putting this event together, taking care of your owners, giving back a little bit to your owner base and your clients. And a lot of times they'll call you. I bet they call you up and say, Brad, I'm so sorry. I can't attend. Yeah, I really go elaborate on that.
Brad Randall: So our last event [00:31:30] was last November. We rented out an aquarium in Salt Lake. We had we rented it from 6 p.m. to 10:00 pm. We had people in tuxedos looking like penguins delivering meatballs, creme brulee. We had stations set up where you could go meet with a mortgage officer to talk about an existing home, your current loan. And it's like sitting outside the shark tank. Then you go to another area and you have a home inspection company. Then you go to another one and you have someone from our maintenance [00:32:00] division talking about maintenance plans. So we gave everybody essentially a guide book for the event. If they filled up their guidebook, they won another prize. But to do that, they have to talk to all the vendors. The vendors are paying a $500 fee to be a part of it, so it offsets some of the costs. Not all of it. Yeah, but we had clients, I mean, because not all of our clients live in in the area, it's not going to happen that way. But we had clients that called and had RSVP'd that [00:32:30] couldn't come so apologetic that they couldn't come. And we have clients saying, okay, what is the 2022? What's the next event like? What's the next.
Brad Larsen: One? They're already excited about the next one.
Brad Randall: Yes, exactly. And it's not that you don't you don't have to go crazier and crazier. But once again, people really are looking for an owner, a value add experience. And as we assert, we do a survey with owners every year, 94% of our owners said [00:33:00] this was one of the highest value things we did for them. And we had 300 people there, which maybe represented 70 to 85 owners and we have 200. So less than half came, of course, but 94% of our owners said this is a high value event that's outstanding.
Brad Larsen: So that's why I really wanted to elaborate on it here, because hardly anybody is doing that. I've heard of different techniques where they have an owner appreciation investor night like Rich Drake in Houston where [00:33:30] he does this big 1000 person event. And I've been to a couple of times, you know, you get 600 or 800 people there. It's crazy, but it's all investors. And like people that are trying to buy the flippers and all the rehab ers and all that, then you have all the vendors and it's good as a speaking event. He's doing it monthly. I don't know how much value that's adding as much as that is. What I'm saying is they all add good value, but I think the annual thing making it a bit more exclusive and making it. Asian RVP type scenario versus [00:34:00] an event where they just show up, whether RVP or not. And anyway, I just I think it's genius. Now, you've basically transitioned this or allowed it to change a bit into something a bit more exclusive. I want you to talk more about that.
Brad Randall: So we've been noticing over the last two years that we have more and more clients providing more doors for us. So everybody loves I mean, I'm a part of the Delta Sky Club, not because I think it's necessarily a great deal financially, but [00:34:30] I love the quote status that comes with going to the Sky Club, getting Miles racked up all that. I love getting the emails that say you're a VIP. There is something intrinsic that makes you feel good seeing that. So we are looking at what we call our elite investors and those are people that have multiple properties with us or they are our referring, they just refer like nobody else.
Brad Larsen: So you got to go through the list with a fine tooth comb, kind of identify. And this.
Brad Randall: Is something I do as a, as an owner. [00:35:00]
Brad Larsen: I assume.
Brad Randall: Sorry, this is not like we don't have our remote employee saying, let's invite this person. This is this is me going through saying these this number of people is going to come. So what we are doing now and this year will be our first time doing it is an elite investor summit where we're going to have 10 to 20, so not a big group and we are going to mastermind outside of Park City, Utah for a day. They [00:35:30] come for the day. We're going to have some sponsors. They're helping you. Nothing, nothing massive like this. We're talking we're going to find a venue, do it. But we are going to open it up for a lot of discussion. We're going to talk about market updates. Yeah, we're going to talk about risks that they should be worried about. And then we're going to have a very straightforward conversation with them to say, what are the values that you see and what we're doing? What are the things that you wish? [00:36:00] Like, what are things that are hard for you right now with us?
Brad Larsen: Maybe you take them through a SWOT analysis.
Brad Randall: Yeah, a SWOT analysis would be great because there is a lot of there's a lot of nervousness in the market right now with talk of recession. Is the market shifting? What's happening? You know, are we going to go to war? All of these different things. Do I think a SWOT analysis is a brilliant way to look at it. But we are we are labeling this the VIP elite and and then we're still [00:36:30] going to promote it. You know, we're going to let everybody know that we've done it. Okay. So that our owners can say, okay, well, how do I how do I get into that? Yeah. And the other thing we're doing is we're still going to do a client event, but if you are an elite owner, you get extra tickets to the event, you get early access to the event. Kind of like when you go to Disney. Yeah, you get in an hour early, it's a four hour event. You get the hour right off the bat. Yeah. You get extra tickets, you get a little pass that looks [00:37:00] different than everybody else's. And I have no doubt people will go nuts for it.
Brad Larsen: I'm pretty excited to hear how that goes. It's obviously going to work because you have a good owner base there. I mean a good place to meet. You can do a mastermind session. You can probably bring in a guest speaker or two, maybe a mortgage person, maybe a, you know, who knows? I'm just somebody to get add value to that presentation. And, you know, there could be a lot of offhand conversations just off to the side that says, you know, I'm pretty now that I hear this, I'm more confident in the market. I want to buy ten more properties. [00:37:30] Yeah. And you're like, great, we can help you and we can manage them and everybody wins.
Brad Randall: Well, in today you talked about pocket listings.
Announcer: Yes.
Brad Randall: If there's something that we can add to that investor, the investor, it's the ability to gain pocket listings. So all these people that are meeting own multiple properties. And if so-and-so says, I'm looking to grow my portfolio and we can help facilitate an in office sale at an event like that, it will pay for itself instantly.
Brad Larsen: Absolutely.
Brad Randall: So [00:38:00] that is the next phase of this that I think we want to really expand is to say we want to give all of our owners the opportunity to purchase an investment from us. And it doesn't have to go to the Mlss. You don't have to compete with all these multiple offers, but for this elite group of investors, you are going to get premier, you know, first rate, first, first look, status.
Brad Larsen: What's really going to perk their ears is no competition, right? They get first look and lowered commissions because nobody really wants [00:38:30] to pay commissions and they know you're just like doing paperwork. But you say, look, we're reducing our commissions by half or whatever the number is. All you got to do is let us manage it still just keep it under management with us. And they're like, Oh yeah, no problem.
Brad Randall: And, and we've got the data. So we sit there and we're not saying, Here's what your cash flow could be. We, we throw down the PDF, we give them the, the handout that says, here's how it's been performing over the last three years. Here's our projection for year one, two and three. This is what we're going to do to rent where.
Brad Larsen: The risk is when [00:39:00] it gets competitive. Yeah, like what if you have a solid pocket listing and you blast it to ten clients and you get eight bids?
Brad Randall: Hunger Games style.
Brad Larsen: I know. All right, let's all open it up.
Brad Randall: Yeah, open it up. But yeah, but what a good problem to have, because it would be if you have multiple people competing for a pocket listing, then yeah, maybe it doesn't work out for one. But you say, I know that this is the type you're looking for. Let me check and see if we have something else that might work.
Brad Larsen: I think that's very it's democratic. [00:39:30] Yeah, I like that style because one of the things I was talking about in the pocket listing format is eventually you'll dwindle it down to one or two investors that they will snatch up anything you put out. Yeah, right. But that's not necessarily broad based good for the business because ultimately you're trying to gain more referrals and it's almost like you should do a round robin and I'm just this crazy idea. But yeah, like, like a lottery style. Okay, if you're interested, the price is X, we'll put you in a lottery [00:40:00] ball and we'll draw in. The winner gets to buy the property.
Brad Randall: Yeah, well, so this is something that an owner brought up to us is they said, would your company ever consider being the facilitator for a larger multifamily investment? So, for example, you have a $3.5 million multifamily that you are aware of coming to the market. You get this group of investors together and you say, if you would like to participate, here's the opportunity. You can invest at this level or at this level.
Brad Larsen: It's a syndication.
Brad Randall: It's [00:40:30] just a syndication. I know others are going to talk about.
Brad Larsen: More way to spin that. I had not even thought of that, but that's.
Brad Randall: Fantastic if you could get to that point. I mean, we're only talking the biggest one we've sold as a four unit. Yeah, but think about being able to say we can put together an amazing offer for this property. We have access to it and we've got the investors behind it. Once again, you are not a property manager at that point. You are an investment advisor. Yes. And they are. There's no way they're leaving you. [00:41:00] Yeah. For for a long, you know, to say oh well someone will do it for 8%, you're at 9%. Like no one's going to, no one's going to do that.
Brad Larsen: Not when you're adding that and that's real value. That's yeah, that's exciting stuff because these investors, I mean they don't have the time to go out and look for deals. Yeah. I mean, being an investor right now is a full time job. Like how do you find the deals otherwise? But I love that because that can create an instant syndication. You can go get the financing all lined up and just explain to them, okay, we need 50 grand [00:41:30] or 100 grand ready to go within two weeks notice of us putting together a syndication and we can go buy that 2 to $3 million multifamily. And then we all own a piece of it and guess who's managing it?
Brad Randall: We get to manage. It's multi I mean, once again, these businesses for the for the companies that don't have a brokerage piece, you need a brokerage piece to be a long term advisor. I don't think you can just do PMB alone and not incorporate that aspect of it because [00:42:00] the long term value is going to involve an acquisition, a sale or a repurposing of a property at some point or multiple times. So if if you say I can manage a property really well, but I'm going to just have to refer you to Joe. You know, whoever I keep using the name Joe, it doesn't matter. Whoever it is, if you just refer it out, you are letting thousands and probably tens of thousands of dollars not only in sales revenue, but in PPM fees and all that other ancillary revenue go [00:42:30] to waste.
Brad Larsen: Because retaining a management contract is going to generate you roughly 3 to $4000 a year in just revenue per one management contract. And that's an average number. You know, we could we could split hairs there, but it was great to make the commission one time. But it's much better to make that X thousand of annual revenue year over year every year, which also creates the other opportunities of referrals and other opportunities to sell more stuff. So I'm going to cut you short here. Fantastic conversation, man. This is great stuff. [00:43:00] I'm really going to be looking forward to hearing how this summit is going to go and maybe we do another podcast on that just to kind of kind of see what's spinning off on that. I know I'm spinning because I want to take some of these back to your rent works and write board them with the team because that's how I think. I mean Trello or whatever or the other management software. So I like whiteboarding, I like big whiteboards and we draw stuff up there and we beat it up as a team and we have our quarterly meetings, which is all iOS style. So we'll bring up some of these and then, okay, set up a timeline for for implementation. Great stuff. [00:43:30] Any parting comments?
Brad Randall: Just thanks for the opportunity. These are I can assure you these ideas don't come because of any brilliance of myself or anything that way. It comes from owners being willing to share what would benefit them. And all we're trying to do is implement little by little. So if you're not sure where to start, start with something and then move from there. So happy to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Brad Larsen: Presentation Day. Brad, thanks again.
Brad Randall: Thanks.
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