I love offering listeners fantastic benefits, such as some great discounts for products. These include the PM Grow Summit, website production through Property Managed Website, showing services through Tenant Turner, and more, with new offers coming all the time! You can see a complete list of the current offers at propertymanagementmastermind.com. For all of these offers, use the discount code “Brad” to secure your discount.

My guest today is a true luminary of the property management world. Bob Walters, who hails from Australia, is the founder and godfather of LPMA (the Leading Property Managers Association). Bob has been in the industry for over four decades, and has been doing conferences in Australia and New Zealand for over a decade. He’s a successful entrepreneur who has built up, sold, and successfully exited three property management companies totaling well over 4,000 units. Thanks to his deep expertise, Bob is also a consultant.

Together, Bob and I will dig deeply into the five S’s of property management: structure, strategy, systems, service, and standards.

In terms of structure, you need to keep in mind that there’s no right or wrong way to structure your business; you just need to delight your clients! When you start out, what you need to figure out about your structure is how many staff you need on your team to delight your clients while still making a profit.

One important aspect of strategy is having a properly documented business plan and a properly prepared budget. Even so, when Bob is working as a consultant, he often finds that property management companies don’t have these sorted out.

 

Having good systems for everything you do is an easy thing to say, but difficult to execute. Bob will explain how many property management businesses still don’t have properly documented systems, and clarifies that property management is mostly processes and absolutely requires strong systems to be successful.

The standards category covers both personal performance standards and company performance standards. These should be carefully calculated, achievable, and regularly monitored.

If you want to hear about the customer service side of things, tune into the episode! In addition to the important five S’s, we’ll discuss other topics including keeping your books, health checks for property management companies, why policies and procedures manuals are so important, marketing materials, and lots more. Once you’re done listening, if you can’t get enough about property management, join our Facebook group to get in touch with more industry professionals!

Here’s where you can find Bob:

[email protected]

LPMA

Bob Walters

Show Notes

[03:23] - Bob launches off the interview portion of the episode by talking about the five S’s of property management.

[05:26] - We move onto another of the five S’s: systems. Bob explains why systems are so vital to the property management business.

[06:47] - Next, Bob moves onto the topic of strategy, offering some basic examples of how property management companies should use strategies.

[08:15] - Bob talks about the typical goal of a property management business owner in Australia and New Zealand: to grow bigger. They usually start to stumble when Bob asks how they’re going to get there.

[09:41] - We hear about the numbers that Bob recommends planning for in terms of losses every year.

[10:56] - Bob discusses another of the five S’s: standards. Brad then offers an example of how this can function.

[12:35] - Over his career, Bob has built three property management businesses. He talks about the first one he built, which was during the 1980s.

[14:47] - Brad transitions into talking about doing health checks for businesses. Bob discusses what form a health check takes when he does it, mentioning that no two are exactly the same.

[16:39] - We hear more about Bob’s processes. He explains that many of the owners he talks to don’t value their policies and procedures manuals as much as they should.

[19:45] - Bob agrees that there need to be some paper-based forms, and talks about the value of color-coding things.

[21:14] - Bob discusses the importance of keeping proper books, and what exactly he means by the term.

[22:52] - Right now, Brad is on a crusade to develop an accounting standard that property management company owners can all use.

[24:12] - How much the owners take as their own profit can be a wild card, Bob points out.

[27:34] - We move onto the subject of customer service levels. Brad and Bob talk about net promoter scores.

[29:40] - Bob discusses the importance of customer service standards in a property management business.

[32:08] - Another thing to look for in a health check is a company’s marketing materials. Bob digs more deeply into this aspect of the health checks he does.

[34:34] - Bob shares something he discovered at the recent PM Grow Summit.

[36:28] - We hear about some of the top mistakes that Bob has made, and what people can learn from them.

[38:05] - Brad shares a story about a mistake of his own.

[40:11] - Another big mistake that Bob made in his career involved wanting to have the biggest company in town.

[42:18] - Bob shares a quick story related to what he and Brad have been talking about in terms of comparing business sizes.

[43:33] - One of the best metrics that we can eventually use, Brad says, is a profitability-per-door metric.

[44:35] - Bob walks us through another mistake that he has made in his career.

[47:47] - Does Bob have any parting words that he’d like to share with listeners?

[49:33] - Bob shares his email address so listeners can get in touch with him to chat more! You can reach him at [email protected].

Links and Resources:

[email protected]

LPMA

Bob Walters

The 40 Hour Work YEAR by Scott Fritz

NARPM

Net promoter score

PM Grow Summit