Good Operators

Could your property management team run a week without you? Don Caster of Auben Realty on why teams freeze when the owner steps away.

Don Caster, President of Auben Realty, says he has bought four property management companies. The operations went the way he expected. The people were the surprise. Teams that spent about ten years with an owner who made the decisions had no practice making their own, and when that owner stepped away, "the team were deer in headlights. They were frozen."

His rule now: "Not making a decision we think is the worst decision you can make." Give people a budget, let them make the call, and ask them to "run this business as if it's yours." Don and Blake Mohseni also get into how Auben hires (job posts that filter, a required cover letter, calling references, DISC and a grit test), building culture from day one with EOS and core values, being intentionally local, and what Don plans to do differently on the next acquisition.

Chapters

0:00 Teaser

0:41 Good Operators intro

1:17 Welcome from Blake

2:30 How Blake met Don at IMN in Austin

5:07 From football to tanning salons

6:36 Into multifamily: leasing consultant to national roles

11:49 Why Auben grows through acquisitions

16:38 Choosing where to grow: the Southeast and Dallas-Fort Worth

19:12 The surprise across four acquisitions: the people

21:18 Why teams freeze when the owner makes every decision

23:16 Hire good people, get out of the way

24:37 Keeping owner relationships and adding new doors

26:59 Standard of service: residents, not tenants

31:11 Culture from day one: EOS, two required books, core values

34:49 People first: onboarding, leaders and a recruiter

37:44 The hiring system: job posts, references, DISC and the grit test

41:38 The cover letter rule, and hiring fast

45:53 What Auben will do differently on the next acquisition

49:27 When the owner's number two is the sticking point

51:18 Lightning round: build-to-rent

53:42 Advice: stay calm and never let them see you sweat

55:22 Wrap

Connect with Don Caster on Linkedin.

Don is President of Auben Realty, a residential property management company.

Connect with the hosts

Blake Mohseni's Linkedin

Tim Wehner's Linkedin

Rising Tide on LinkedIn

Good Operators is hosted by Blake Mohseni and Tim Wehner, and made by Rising Tide, which buys local property management companies and keeps them local. Find out more about what we're building at https://risingtidehq.com

David Normand spent 20 years as a property-management operator before he was ever in tech. He scaled his own shop from 80 to 600 doors, then ran maintenance for 20,000+ institutional units. Now, as Chief PM at Vendoroo, he's watched hundreds of operators try to bolt AI onto their business, and he's seen exactly where it works and where it doesn't: the operators who win change how they run the business; the ones who struggle just add a tool and keep doing everything the same way.

Blake and David get into what's actually driving adoption (and resistance), the new KPI replacing "average days to close a work order," and what Blake calls property management's own "Amazon moment."

00:00 Teaser

00:40 Good Operators intro

01:16 Welcome, and the Vendoroo dinners

06:04 David's path through property management

08:21 The moment AI made sense

11:30 Wrapper or real AI?

14:21 Who's adopting AI, and who's sitting out

17:26 Redeploying the maintenance team

20:33 The data: negative experiences down from 14% to 2-3%

23:50 Navigating fear and change

28:43 Signs your team is losing trust in the system

32:51 A new KPI: the maintenance health score

36:16 Four customers: owner, resident, vendor, employee

38:32 The Amazon moment

41:29 The future: predictive, proactive maintenance

45:00 David's advice: don't be afraid

47:36 Wrap-up

48:11 Good Operators outro

The Guest -

Connect with David Normand

Follow Vendoroo

The Host -

Connect with Blake Mohseni

Follow Rising Tide

Good Operators is a Rising Tide podcast.

Good Operators is a weekly podcast about the people who run residential property management companies.

Somebody in property management already solved the problem that is about to cost you a year. You will never meet them. The expensive lessons stay locked inside the company that learned them, and the next operator pays full price all over again. This show is built to change that. One guest per episode, an operator, a vendor or a consultant, and a real conversation about how they built it, what broke, the real numbers, and what it took.

This first episode is about the two people who will be asking the questions, before any guest comes on.

Tim Wehner got into property management by accident and never left. He almost skipped the 7am networking event where he met Duke Dodson. He took a two-week job covering for a departing receptionist and walked out seventeen years later. He started at 118 units under management as roughly employee number two. By the 2022 merger with Evernest, Dodson Property Management was at about 8,500 units under management and 180 employees. He ran for the NARPM executive committee three times, lost twice, quit, got talked out of quitting, and was national president of NARPM in 2023. He is Head of Acquisitions at Rising Tide.

Blake Mohseni came at it from the other direction and on purpose. He grew up in a family of immigrant entrepreneurs and credits them for the part he says you cannot teach: you just keep showing up. One question kept coming back to him anyway. There has to be a better way to do this. He answered it with an industrial engineering degree and an MBA in finance, operating roles across Fortune 100 manufacturing, sales, technology and finance, and three years consulting for small and mid-sized businesses. He founded Rising Tide, which buys local property management companies and keeps them local.

They get into how each of them landed in this industry, why property management is a human business before it is anything else, what actually breaks as a company scales past a few hundred doors, and the question every operator is entitled to ask an outsider buying into their industry: who the hell are you?

Near the end Blake says what the whole show is for: go carry this forward, and pay it forward to the small business owner. What one operator learned the hard way should reach the next one. That is how this industry gets better.

Recorded in GC Realty's studio in Chicago, thanks to Mark Ainley, who introduced the two of them.

Chapters0:00 Cold open0:45 Intro2:33 The books and ideas they share most7:02 How Tim Wehner got into property management by accident13:25 Losing the NARPM race twice before winning it20:43 Why property management is not just a user experience28:36 Why Blake Mohseni chose property management40:40 "Who the hell are you?" and why operators distrust outside buyers

Mentioned in this episodeWho: The A Method for Hiring, by Geoff Smart and Randy Street (2:33)Rules for My Unborn Son (3:45)The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene (25:46)Atomic Habits, by James Clear (26:04)Founders podcast with David Senra (41:15)NARPM, the National Association of Residential Property Managers (13:25)Mark Ainley and GC Realty (17:27)

ConnectFollow Blake Mohseni on LinkedIn

Follow Tim Wehner on LinkedInFollow Rising Tide on LinkedIn

Learn More About Rising Tide: Here

Music by Scott Buckley, licensed under CC BY 4.0.