Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Enhancing Digital Marketing for Property Management Companies with a Proprietary Tech Stack, with Mike Whaling | Finance Series

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Enhancing Digital Marketing for Property Management Companies with a Proprietary Tech Stack, with Mike Whaling | Finance Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes
0:10
how they've overcome adversity and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:21
experiences so we can learn from their successes how they've
0:25
overcome adversity and explore current challenges they're
0:28
facing. My name is Anthony Codispoti and
0:30
today's guest is Mike Whaling, founder and president of 30
0:34
Lines. They are a digital marketing
0:36
agency that takes a holistic approach to online marketing and
0:40
brand presence. While they've helped a whole
0:42
variety of companies, including the Bob Evans Restaurant Group,
0:45
their specialty is in the area of property management where
0:48
they have built a suite of tech tools.
0:51
He's also on the board for the housing and Shelter for Central
0:56
Ohio for YMCA, which is something he's very passionate
0:59
about and I look forward to digging more into that.
1:02
But before we get to the good stuff, today's episode is
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benefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the
1:40
founder of 30 Lines. Mike, I appreciate you making
1:43
the time to Share your story today.
1:45
Thanks for having me on the show.
1:47
So tell us in simple language, what does 30 lines do and what
1:52
was the original inspiration behind it?
1:56
My my dad used to say he 30 lines manipulates the Internet.
2:02
I don't know that I would go that far, but that's kind of the
2:04
idea, right? So 30 lines is a is a digital
2:07
marketing studio. We were our core and our
2:11
foundation is around content marketing and everything that
2:14
you need to build a holistic online presence.
2:17
Our goal is, you know, no matter where somebody is looking, we
2:20
want them to find the message that you want them to see about
2:24
your business whether that's from you or from your customers,
2:27
probably better from your customers.
2:29
But we we really look at how do you create the content that
2:33
people are looking for today, how do you be the best answer to
2:35
their questions and and how do you build a presence that is,
2:40
you know, your online storefront in in the best way possible.
2:44
So what would be a a good first step that you would take with a
2:48
new client and in terms of trying to determine what is the
2:51
content that people are looking for in their particular niche?
2:55
Talk to their sales team, talk to their support team.
2:58
You know, really, you already know the questions that people
3:01
ask the most. If you don't, the people on the
3:03
front lines do. You know, for we do a lot of
3:06
work with apartments and the folks that know the answers,
3:08
know what people are asking about are the leasing agents
3:12
that are handling the questions, the maintenance guys that are
3:14
out on out on site and in people's homes, you know,
3:18
helping them, you know, get things fixed.
3:21
Those are the folks that are on the front lines and really
3:23
understand what people are looking for and how they're
3:25
actually how, you know, how they put things in their own
3:28
language. And I think that that really
3:30
applies to to any business. You know, if you're just getting
3:33
started, I would just pay attention to what people are
3:36
talking about in your industry, whether that's going to
3:38
conferences or paying attention to online communities or forums
3:43
or those kinds of things, other podcasts like this.
3:46
It's really, it's it's not too difficult to hone in on what
3:50
people are focused on right now. And then, you know, and I'm not
3:54
necessarily talking about just the latest buzzwords.
3:58
It's more what are the deep things that people are really,
4:01
really asking about and and want to get to so that they can
4:04
really understand how to run their business better, how to
4:06
make better decisions for for themselves or for their family
4:09
or whatever that whatever it is they're looking to do.
4:12
You know, as a tech company, I kind of expected your first
4:14
answer to be something like, oh, we use Google Trends or, you
4:18
know, different keyword tools to find that.
4:20
And I'm going to guess that's part of your arsenal as well.
4:22
But it was fascinating that the first thing that you came up
4:24
with was kind of old school, offline, talk to the people who
4:28
are out there, you know, bumping into customers every day.
4:32
It's, I mean it really is, it's things haven't changed much.
4:36
It's just kind of the places where those conversations are
4:39
happening. But, but yeah, I mean all of
4:41
those tools are available and they make sense, but you want to
4:45
get to what is it that your people are hearing and how do
4:49
you, you know, how do you put it in your customers language as
4:52
easy as possible. You know, there are a lot of
4:55
great marketing agencies out there.
4:57
I even had the privilege to interview some for this show.
5:00
But what I think is really interesting about what your
5:02
company does is the suite of software tools that you've
5:06
built. Tell me more about that and how
5:08
it separates you from your competitors.
5:11
Yeah. So we, we do a lot of business
5:13
with the property management industry and multifamily,
5:16
multifamily real estate, multifamily housing, commercial
5:19
real estate. We that industry is, you know,
5:24
like many others, they have their own set of software
5:27
solutions that are industry specific.
5:29
They call it property management software and there's all kinds
5:31
of different flavors of that and different things that it needs
5:33
to do. What we have seen is that those
5:37
tools are really good at helping people run their property.
5:41
They're not necessarily the best tools out there for modern
5:45
digital marketing, for modern marketing period.
5:48
And so as we were growing our agency, you know we've had that.
5:51
We have the agency side of the business.
5:53
We've identified, hey, this is what we want to be able to do as
5:57
a marketing agency. And those tools weren't
5:58
available. So we went out and we we
6:01
basically are. We're essentially building the
6:03
bridge between property management software and the
6:05
tools that our clients use every day and the tools that we want
6:09
to use like website platforms and local listings and AD online
6:14
advertising platforms and e-mail marketing and those those kinds
6:17
of things. That's what we know works and we
6:20
needed the tools to make it work for us.
6:23
And so we're building some of them.
6:26
So you're sort of like a super fancy customized version of like
6:29
a Zapier where you're getting one platform to talk to another.
6:35
Yeah, in a lot of ways, right. And we're, but we're trying to
6:38
add some insights and recommendations and and add our
6:41
own layer of thought on top of it, right.
6:46
So we don't just want to move the data, we want to help our
6:48
customers understand what's happening and where do we think
6:51
that their money is best invested when they're, when
6:55
they're implementing their marketing plan.
6:57
You know when we look at the numbers for us, you know another
7:00
industry that's really similar to apartments is is like the the
7:03
auto, the auto industry and auto dealers, people want to see the
7:06
apartment that they want to live in, people want to drive the
7:09
car, then they want to test drive the car that they're going
7:11
to drive off a lot. And so that typically means that
7:13
you're not making a sale online. You know, certainly people can
7:17
lease an apartment online. They can buy a car through
7:19
Carvana that those are there. But most people today still want
7:24
to take that test drive or they still want to come see the
7:26
apartment. And So what we see is that it's
7:28
a very different environment from like an e-commerce right,
7:31
which, you know, you don't have that instant gratification of,
7:37
hey, people clicked my ad, they came to the website and they
7:40
bought and I can see the purchase.
7:42
There's a whole set of nurturing that has to happen.
7:45
We got a lead now we need to talk them through.
7:48
We need to show them what we have to offer.
7:50
We need to find the right solution and then we need to get
7:53
them to an application or sit down for financing or whatever
7:55
that looks like. And what we see is you end up
8:00
with this whole big, you know marketing machine and there are
8:04
certain certain touch points there, certain places where if
8:08
you optimize those and really take care of the customers that
8:11
are right in front of you, you're it's going to be a far
8:14
more efficient system and you're not going to need to spend as
8:16
much to acquire the next lead. Do you find that in your
8:20
environment, it's more difficult to tie attribution to the final
8:26
transaction than it would be for e-commerce?
8:28
You're you're laughing. Is that like the pain of your?
8:32
Existence I I call I I call attribution kind of a pipe dream
8:35
right? Like you know there's a there's
8:39
100 year old quote about, you know, half my advertising works
8:43
and the other half, the other half doesn't.
8:45
The problem is I don't know which half.
8:48
I think that we have a little more detail than that today.
8:51
But the idea of attribution is is really it's it's kind of a
8:58
fool's errand in my mind. And I don't like, you know,
9:01
there's plenty of tools out there and there's a lot that we
9:03
can gain from looking at how people buy and how they behave.
9:07
But if if I, if I ask somebody, hey, how did you hear about 30
9:12
lines, the best answer that someone could give is, jeez,
9:15
everybody knows you guys. Everybody knows you.
9:18
And I hear about you every time I talk to a peer they say you
9:21
got to talk to 30 lines. And you know, that's the best
9:23
answer. But who do I attribute that to?
9:26
Right. And it's the same kind of thing
9:28
with with with apartments, with you know anything where there's
9:33
a pretty significant buying journey.
9:36
You know, I'm sure with you there's a lot of touch points
9:39
when you're talking with another business of all the different
9:42
people you have to talk to and the different ways you have to
9:44
get in front of them. And you know, lots of different
9:47
avenues for you to create content like a podcast like
9:50
this. And it's hard to say which one
9:53
of those really is the one that got someone over the home to
9:58
make the decision. So we kind of look at it as what
10:02
can the software tell us, what can, you know, tools like Trends
10:04
and Google Analytics and advertising and those kinds of
10:08
things. But then we also ask, you know,
10:11
how did you hear about us? And the really interesting thing
10:14
is that what is in your CRM system that the software says is
10:19
where the lead came from, is often, more often than not,
10:24
completely different from what the customer tells you.
10:27
If you just ask them and leave them, you know, make it an
10:30
open-ended question. And you know, we see this all
10:33
the time. I get leads coming in through
10:34
our website and our website says the lead came from Google.
10:38
And the and the the prospect says I heard about you at a
10:41
conference or I heard you on a podcast or I found you on
10:44
ChatGPT. All of those are, are things and
10:48
it's like who do I give the credit to?
10:51
Kind of all of the above. But that's I'm much more
10:56
interested in understanding how people behave and where people
10:59
go to get their answers than I am to say, hey, this one
11:03
specific source is the source that made that sale.
11:07
How does that come into play as you're trying to justify to your
11:11
clients that hey you should renew your service because we're
11:15
generating so much in sales for you, we've sent so many leads to
11:18
you. Doesn't that come into play and
11:21
them sort of having to justify internally that you're you're a
11:24
worthwhile expense. Absolutely.
11:27
And that's that's one of the things that we hammer home with
11:29
our team all the time is make sure that customers see the
11:32
value and can communicate the value to their team.
11:34
Because you know marketing is a lot of art and a lot of science
11:40
and a lot of people don't necessarily appreciate the art
11:43
side. They they they want it to be all
11:45
science. But what we see is because we
11:50
take that holistic view that you mentioned and because we look at
11:54
you know are we helping in, in B2B marketing people will call
11:58
it like sales enablement. Are we, are we helping people
12:02
with their nurturing emails, are we, are we helping with follow
12:06
up, what are the things that we're doing to help sales people
12:10
create more appointments and close more deals?
12:14
If we can see those numbers and we have a benchmark and then we
12:16
can say, hey, after we implemented our solutions,
12:19
here's how much better we are than your benchmark, I can start
12:22
to show that not only are we generating more leads, but we
12:26
are turning more of those leads into sales.
12:28
And that's really what we're trying to do in any business is
12:31
get to, I want to get as close to the money as possible because
12:34
that's that's what talks, right. So if I can get to how many
12:39
leads do we generate, what's the, what's your cost per lead
12:41
or how many you know, tours or how many appointments or how
12:45
many calls did we generate. And then after that, you know
12:48
for apartments, that's if somebody toured.
12:51
Can I get those tours to then fill out an application to rent
12:55
in the building? You know, in the restaurant,
12:59
it's a little bit different the restaurant, you know, we have a
13:01
little more, we can send an e-mail and we see the people
13:05
click on that. We see that they redeem the
13:06
coupon in the store. Our goal there is, you know,
13:11
understanding that customer, you know our client.
13:15
Their goal is get that person back in the store one more time
13:18
this month for three more times this year, whatever those
13:21
metrics are. So a lot of what we do is really
13:24
take some time to understand our customers goals and what are the
13:27
metrics that they care about and how do we make sure that what
13:30
we're putting together aligns with where they're trying to go.
13:33
So that when we come back in six months or 12 months and sit and
13:37
have that review to go, hey, how are we doing?
13:39
Let's renew. It's a much easier conversation
13:41
because we have the benchmarks. We know where they started.
13:44
We're all on the same page about what success looks like and then
13:46
we can have a have a same page conversation that that makes it
13:52
a lot easier. So rather than trying to show
13:54
that, hey, this Google ad campaign is what drove sales for
13:58
you guys, it's more of, hey, here were the benchmarks that we
14:01
had before we started working with you.
14:03
Occupancy rates were here. I don't know.
14:06
Click throughs were here, conversions were here,
14:07
applications were here and now. Look, all of those benchmarks
14:11
are are trending upwards. Yeah, you know, I'll tell you
14:15
the the apartment industry is a fascinating 1.
14:17
Just so many nuances. But it's it's one of the only
14:20
industries that I know of where, like, there's not more widgets
14:25
to be made, right? It's not like once I figure out
14:27
my return on my advertising, I can just crank crank up that
14:32
formula and just crank out more widgets and and push more ads.
14:36
It's you know for any given apartment building there's 102
14:40
hundred 300 people in the world that are that can only be a
14:44
customer at any one time. So once you're full you you're
14:48
done, right, Especially right now because housing supply is
14:53
you know we're building more apartments right now, you know
14:56
right now in in this very moment.
14:58
But we are behind in terms of of housing supply.
15:01
So it's a, it's a really interesting industry to do
15:07
marketing for because it's not necessarily how do I get to that
15:12
formula of maximizing my my, my Roas or my my ROI.
15:17
It's really more how do I create the most cost effective machine
15:21
to lease these two hundred 300 apartments.
15:24
And once I find that then we just start getting more and more
15:26
efficient and look at you know, I love when I can go to a client
15:29
and say, hey, we're on track, we're trending ahead of pace.
15:33
I don't think we need to spend as much on Google ads as we
15:36
originally budgeted. Here's some money back.
15:38
That's that's one of my favorite conversations to have.
15:42
That's an unusual conversation for a marketing agency to
15:44
initiate, in my experience. It's one that sets us apart.
15:50
Did I hear you say that you've had folks find you using
15:53
ChatGPT? We have actually I I did have
15:58
somebody in our contact form. They said I found you on GPT and
16:02
I checked your website and it checked out.
16:04
So we want to talk. So I I want to know what that
16:08
looked like. They were typing some sort of a
16:10
query into ChatGPT and ChatGPT came back with your company as
16:15
the recommendation. Here's here's the thing.
16:18
You go back to your question about attribution.
16:20
I'm never going to be able to directly attribute that to GPT
16:23
other than the fact that some somebody put it in a form and
16:27
typed it in because I don't get any tracking and there is
16:30
nothing from Google that says, you know, most of the time
16:33
ChatGPT doesn't even give you a link to the website.
16:35
It's just spitting out words. So there's not a direct link
16:42
from ChatGPT into your website so that your website can track
16:45
it and see, right. There's actually a whole little
16:49
kind of cottage. I mean, it's more than a cottage
16:51
industry at this point, but it's, you know, changing things
16:55
for Google and manipulating your website or adding content or
16:58
whatever you want to call it. For search engines and search
17:02
engine optimization, there's kind of a new a budding segment
17:06
of that called called answer engine optimization because
17:13
that's what these chat engine, you know, that's what GPT and
17:16
Bard and and Claude, all these systems are, they are you type
17:21
in a chat and it gives you the answer or it gives you a set of
17:25
words that it thinks is the answer.
17:28
So it becomes really difficult to track directly, but we have
17:32
that anecdotal evidence and you know we're looking at what are
17:35
the things that people are typing into some of these
17:39
engines, What are the questions that they're asking and how do
17:42
we create content that can be the best answer that then gets
17:45
crawled at some point not only for Google but also for Jet, GPT
17:49
and other systems like that. Is there some sort of a tool
17:52
that shows you what kind of queries are being generated
17:55
inside of the these large language models?
17:58
Not, not directly yet. I mean there are certainly like
18:03
there are tools out there like answer the public that will tell
18:06
you what kind of questions people are asking.
18:09
There are some keyword tools where you can really get
18:11
specific around questions how to and how do I get to or you know
18:19
what are what are the best blank for me.
18:22
There's lots of those kinds of things out there that you can
18:24
that you can you can pull those tools from Google and from other
18:30
other sources like that and then you can kind of guess that
18:33
people are having similar conversations in other in other
18:38
platforms. Do you, did you talk with that
18:41
one lead? Do you have any idea what it was
18:43
they typed in the ChatGPT that led to you?
18:46
I did talk with him. I we didn't get specifically
18:49
into what their exact query was but but but yeah it's I mean
18:53
it's fun to see it's it's definitely it's definitely fun
18:56
to see that that people are you know people are always going to
19:00
be looking for answers to their questions.
19:02
It's part of the shopping journey behavior whatever you
19:06
want to call it. It's it's fun to watch how that
19:08
behavior changes in terms of where people go to get their
19:10
answers. As we think about the property
19:14
management part of the business that you guys service, who's
19:17
your ideal client? Is it, is it somebody really
19:21
small? Do you need to have a certain
19:22
number of units to make sense to use your services?
19:27
My ideal client is somebody who is sophisticated enough to
19:30
appreciate digital marketing and some of the things that we're
19:33
able to do with it but also not necessarily big enough that they
19:38
have their own team to execute it on their own.
19:41
So you know sometimes that's somebody who has 1500 units
19:46
which is a pretty, you know it's a good sized portfolio but in
19:50
the in the in the kind of the institutional side of the
19:53
business it's pretty small. Our our bread and butter clients
19:57
are probably in the 3000 to 1015 thousand unit portfolios which
20:03
you know that's that's typically anywhere from 20 properties to
20:09
80 or 100. And you know a lot of times
20:12
they'll have multiple ownership groups.
20:19
You know, ideally the folks that we have are somewhat connected
20:22
to the ownership because. It's it's honestly easier for me
20:26
to talk money with the owners than it is with a third party
20:29
fee manager. There's just there's some
20:31
different incentives there. But like I said, a good customer
20:35
for us is someone who understands where the market's
20:38
going, wants to be a little ahead of the game, you know, at
20:42
least a little ahead of the game.
20:43
They want they want to be ahead of the game.
20:44
They don't want to just use, you know, off the shelf templates,
20:48
but they they know they can't do it all themselves.
20:53
And what separates you then from a competitor, say I'm a property
20:56
management company that's in that sort of sweet spot and I'm
20:59
shopping around, I'm talking to different providers and 30
21:02
lines, one that I'm looking at. Why am I ultimately deciding to
21:05
go with you guys? I'm not really beholden to
21:10
anyone, anyone channel, anyone platform.
21:13
We've we've purposely built our our system to be independent and
21:19
so you know we can take in data from a lot of different systems.
21:22
We can connect with multiple different CRMS.
21:26
It doesn't bother me if you say, hey I already have a chat bot
21:29
that we need to put on our website.
21:30
I don't need yours that's fine because I have plenty of other
21:34
things that I can sell that that client besides a chat bot.
21:38
Like I told you before, we we love those scenarios where we
21:41
can cut back on on things like advertising because we know that
21:46
that means that our other services are doing what they're
21:49
supposed to do and most of the time our other services are
21:51
actually more profitable for us anyways.
21:53
So you know, the fact that we have that really deep knowledge
21:59
of how people shop, You know, we've got over a decade of
22:01
research at this point of how people shop and how those
22:03
behaviours are changing. And that's not just from us,
22:06
that's from from from third parties and we're able to take
22:10
that and and turn it into marketing campaigns that that
22:14
really makes sense for the customer.
22:16
You know our goal in my head, somebody hires me, you know I'm
22:21
doing business with with another business B2B.
22:24
But really the way that things are going to work the best is if
22:27
we do the best thing for their customer, their shopper, because
22:31
if it's easier for their shopper to do business with my client,
22:35
then my client wins and we end up being the the sidekick to
22:40
their hero story. Tell me more about your
22:44
commitment to affordable housing and the time you've spent with
22:47
this YMCA board. Yeah, you know, I I think it's
22:56
it's come from working in the housing industry and
22:59
understanding some of the things, some of the some of the
23:03
misconceptions about the housing industry and seeing it from both
23:10
sides. You know I've had the
23:10
opportunity to work with some of the biggest management companies
23:14
in the country and and and what they do and I I love being the
23:19
parts about housing of like using it as a vehicle to create
23:22
wealth for your family. But the other the other end of
23:26
the stick there you know we don't have enough housing in
23:29
this country. We're behind and in a lot of
23:32
places we're making it harder for developers and real estate
23:38
operators and and landlords. We're making it harder for them
23:41
to do business and some of that is, you know, legislative, some
23:46
of that's insurance, some of that is, you know, utilities.
23:50
There's just a lot of different things that are pressing on
23:52
this. But what what's happening is
23:54
it's making it more difficult for us to develop housing when
23:59
we need it most. We're you know, a decade behind
24:03
in a lot of areas you look at here in Central Ohio.
24:07
You know we last I saw we are somewhere, if you look at the
24:11
numbers of housing that we need in 20 fifty, 70% of that housing
24:16
doesn't exist yet And we're we're not necessarily
24:22
incentivizing more development. You know and like I said some of
24:27
it's legislative, some of it is other expenses some of it is you
24:32
know the not in my backyard the the NIMBY crowd that says you
24:36
know, no, no new growth. I like things the way that they
24:39
were. And that's just not realistic,
24:42
right. And what what ends up happening
24:44
is all of that trickles down. If you look, you know, across
24:47
the history of this country, all of that.
24:50
You look at redlining and some of the, things of, you know,
24:53
some of the racial, racial legislation that have really
24:56
held people back from having the opportunity to to live in the
25:00
neighborhoods they want to live in or or buy homes.
25:03
There's a lot of work that has to be done.
25:05
And you know, I've had the privilege to work on a board
25:09
that's we are one of the largest providers of affordable housing
25:13
in Columbus, OH, in in the central Ohio area.
25:16
And there's a lot more to do. So what exactly gets done there?
25:21
When you say that you're one of the largest providers, does that
25:23
mean like you own some Section 8 housing or what?
25:27
What's it look? Like we are.
25:28
I mean we're we're developing properties now we've we've we've
25:31
successfully opened a few buildings and we're we're we're
25:33
helping people out. We are helping with supportive
25:36
services at at some of the community shelters.
25:40
We're very involved in a lot of the supportive services that go
25:43
around transitional housing. You know, what we found is that
25:48
having a roof over your head makes a huge difference with
25:51
you're trying to find a job or just trying to get back on your
25:54
feet. But that's not the only thing.
25:57
Like there's you can't just put somebody into a kind of a
26:02
traditional apartment building with no support and no help and
26:05
no services and expect them to succeed.
26:08
Especially in a place like Columbus where, you know, we
26:11
don't have any mass transit. You have to take the bus to get
26:14
over to whatever agency you have to get to to make sure that you
26:18
continue to keep your benefits so that your your kids can go to
26:22
school and you can get fed and those kinds of things.
26:25
We don't make it easy on these people.
26:27
And so, you know, we really look at what are not only what are
26:32
the steps that we have to do to provide housing for people and
26:36
transition them into sustainable long term housing, but what are
26:41
the services that we need to provide along the way to help
26:45
them make sure that they can build a life.
26:50
That's great. You know, Mike, most business
26:53
leaders I've met have at least one story where they overcame a
26:58
big challenge, something that looked like it was going to wipe
27:01
them out. Maybe it was a lawsuit or a fire
27:05
or a big accounting mistakes, some something that almost did
27:07
them in. You have any stories like that
27:10
to share? You know, I I don't have
27:14
anything that scary, but you know, we've definitely I I've
27:18
had a few times along the way where you know, I wasn't quite
27:21
sure if we were going to make payroll that kind of thing.
27:24
And we were looking for what are the things that we need to do to
27:28
to really keep this thing afloat.
27:29
I think the probably the biggest one that hit me was we really
27:33
took on two huge initiatives at once kind of but we were doing
27:37
company was doing really well this was about 2017 ish company
27:44
was doing great. We had some money in the bank
27:46
and you know I I pulled the trigger on two big initiatives
27:50
at the same time and for a bootstrap company that can kill
27:55
you and it almost did. You know we just if it was one
27:59
of those things where we just we didn't keep our focus on on we
28:04
didn't we didn't have focus we we we went in two different
28:07
directions and invested in two different in two different
28:10
places and it really it it it really slowed us down a lot more
28:17
than if we had just picked one of those and went all in on that
28:21
one thing So but we made it through.
28:25
We made it through COVID you know we that one was a big one
28:29
for us. We shut down the office.
28:31
I was flying home from spring break and got the news that the
28:36
NBA had shut down their league. And you know I sent a message to
28:40
the team just to say hey you know we're not going to the
28:43
office for for the foreseeable future.
28:47
And it turns out we haven't been back since we shut down the
28:50
office and and have been fully remote ever since.
28:52
But you know, we've, like I said, we've we've bootstrap, I I
28:59
bootstrapped this, we've we've built the whole thing without
29:02
taking on any kind of any outside money.
29:04
And when you do that, you got to stay focused, you got to make
29:08
sure that you you keep your eye on the ball and kind of really
29:12
do one thing well before you jump to the next one.
29:16
Do you feel like you've fully embraced that lesson, or is that
29:18
a mistake that you've repeated? Because what you're describing
29:21
is really common for business owners.
29:24
You have all these ideas out there and you want to go after
29:28
them all at the same time. It's it's tough.
29:31
To lay yourself in, it really is, it really is.
29:34
And you know, I, I, I imagine you probably feel the same way,
29:39
right? Like where other people see
29:41
challenges I see opportunities and my I it takes a a lot of of
29:50
restraint and filtering to hold back and go hey we want to go
29:54
after this. You know I have a long list of
29:58
road map what are the things we want to get to right.
30:02
I just kind of look at it as job security.
30:04
But but yeah, it takes a lot of restraint.
30:06
And you know, it is one of those things where I have AI, have an
30:12
operations manager on the company and one of their main
30:15
jobs is to be my filter to take this stuff in and then make sure
30:20
that you know, we're prioritizing the right things.
30:23
Hey, here's all of Mike's ideas. Here are the things that our
30:25
customers are asking for. Here are the other things that
30:28
are that the rest of our team wants to do because they have
30:30
awesome ideas too. How do we then order those and
30:33
prioritize them and and create a plan of attack?
30:37
But you know, I think that's the beautiful thing about being an
30:40
entrepreneur and being being in business for yourself is that
30:43
there's opportunities everywhere.
30:44
And as technology expands, as as things evolve, that's not
30:49
stopping anytime soon. Lots of ways to make money right
30:52
now. Coming out of COVID, you guys
30:55
like everybody else, you shut down the office and it's
30:57
interesting to hear you guys haven't gone back.
31:00
How has that transition worked out?
31:02
Do you think you're full time remote now?
31:05
Like this is how it is. Yeah, I mean we've gone from,
31:10
we've gone from 90% of our employees were within 20 miles
31:15
of Columbus, OH to we're now in 10 States and two countries and
31:22
it's a very different way to run a business.
31:26
I haven't decided which one's better yet.
31:29
I think that most people enjoy the the freedom and the
31:32
flexibility of being able to work from home.
31:35
But you know we've we definitely have to force some communication
31:39
where we didn't have to before. We do a A-Team retreat at least
31:43
once a year where we get everybody together and you know
31:45
we spend a couple of days and most of most of those, most of
31:48
that time is really just fun. It's just getting to know each
31:52
other. You when you're fully remote,
31:54
you don't have that opportunity to go grab lunch with somebody
31:56
or go out for a drink after after work.
31:59
So you have to create those opportunities for people being
32:03
fully remote. You don't have those water
32:05
cooler moments. You don't have that like, hey,
32:07
you got a minute so that I can run this by you before I put it
32:10
in front of the boss. So you have to, you have to be
32:14
much more commutative. I think, I think being fully
32:19
remote is, you know, the communication requirements are
32:23
probably 30% greater of how you have to change checkpoints and
32:29
milestones for your projects. Let's let's make sure that we're
32:32
on the right track. If you don't have those, it's
32:36
really easy. It's, you know, it's very it's
32:41
harder to tap somebody on the shoulder in Slack or in teams
32:45
and say, hey, can I borrow you for a minute?
32:48
People want to put their head down and get deep work done, and
32:50
we try and create an environment for that.
32:53
But at the same time we we have to force those issues where
32:56
people communicate and collaborate.
32:58
How do you do that? What's something you've tried
33:01
that's actually worked? So, so one thing is we we've
33:06
kind of built our schedule around creating those
33:11
environments in both ways. We did not, we just we looked at
33:15
doing a four day work week and we decided against it.
33:19
We've we got some feedback from our clients that just said hey
33:21
we work five days a week and we expect our partners to as well
33:25
and we took that really seriously.
33:27
But we also want to offer some flexibility to our team.
33:30
So we said Mondays and Fridays, I want 40% of your time.
33:35
I want that to be deep focused work.
33:38
So we do not allow internal meetings on Mondays and Fridays.
33:43
If you have to meet with the client, that's fine.
33:45
If you have to take a call, understood.
33:47
But no internal meetings on Mondays and Fridays, Those are
33:50
your days to put your head down and get work done.
33:53
And and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are the days where we
33:58
meet with each other. We collaborate.
34:00
We create some of those times to to check, check in with each
34:04
other and and you know, foster that communication that you
34:09
need. The other thing that we're
34:12
doing, go ahead. I was going to say the other
34:14
thing that we're doing that I wish we probably did more is
34:18
we're doing a lot more with audio messages and video
34:20
messages. There's a lot that you can get
34:23
done if you can just record a message really quickly or a loom
34:25
video or something like that and just go, hey, here's what I'm
34:28
seeing or here's what I'm thinking.
34:30
Take a look at it and let me know what you think.
34:32
There's so much that you can get done through through audio and
34:38
through video that you can't do in chat.
34:43
Love loom. Been using it for years.
34:45
It's a great tool. Any other little tools like that
34:48
that you guys use that pretty critical to your success?
34:55
I mean you mentioned Zapier. We we do use Zapier quite a bit
34:58
to get you know one of our company values is connect the
35:00
dots. We we really think that there's
35:03
a lot of value in understanding how things work together and the
35:06
impact that it has on other systems.
35:09
But we we love looking for, hey, once we have a checklist, once
35:14
we have a template for a project, how do we find the
35:17
things that we can automate? How do we how do we find the
35:19
things that we can connect? And you know, Zapier is a great
35:23
tool for that. Another one that's a little more
35:26
recent for me that I really like is a tool called Sunsama.
35:30
Sunsama is it connects your e-mail and your project
35:35
management system. So for me we use Asana and you
35:41
know if we have tasks in Asana, I don't necessarily see those
35:45
tasks in my calendar. But what Sinsama does is it
35:50
takes all of your takes your your e-mail and it takes your
35:54
project management and takes some other systems.
35:56
And it says, here's the work you have to get done.
35:59
We're going to put it all on your.
36:01
We're going to pull it from multiple systems and put it all
36:03
in your calendar, and we're going to force you to prioritize
36:06
and make time to get all of this stuff done.
36:10
So it's been, it's been a really nice tool for me because whether
36:14
it's in Slack or in our project management system or in e-mail,
36:19
I can organize all of those things and pull them together
36:23
and go, OK, here are the things that I need to do.
36:25
Where am I going to find time to do this?
36:27
And it helps me do that. Based on the name Sunsana, I'm
36:31
going to guess it connects specifically with Asana and
36:34
probably not other project. Management Sunsama Suns AM A.
36:40
OK. And I think it does.
36:42
It works with some other systems too.
36:44
No, it's definitely not. Definitely not.
36:45
Check that out. Yeah.
36:48
Mike, what's something you wish you could teach the 20 year old
36:50
version of yourself, Something that's pretty clear to you now
36:53
that you wish had been a little bit earlier in life?
37:02
You know, I think probably two different things.
37:04
One is you it's OK to not know what you want to be when you
37:10
grow up. You know, I had 20, very few of
37:16
us actually know. But I think that that's fine and
37:19
it's it's OK to try things and and discover what you don't like
37:23
because I think that that's a really easy way to to find you
37:27
know rule things out and get to what you do like.
37:31
But the other side of that is I think that it's I would say
37:39
swing bigger, swing bigger like we're all going to it.
37:44
It takes the same amount of time to work on a I've I've heard
37:47
this from our client, from some of our clients.
37:49
It takes the same amount of time to work on a small deal as it
37:51
does to work on $100 million deal.
37:55
So swing bigger and and go after bigger deals, Go after bigger
38:00
clients, Try bigger things. Especially when you're 20,
38:03
right? Like when you're 20 years old,
38:06
there's there's hardly any risk you could fall in your face and
38:09
fail miserably and and go out and get another job somewhere
38:12
else and you're you learned a ton, you know, worst case and if
38:18
everything works out, then you're way ahead of everybody
38:21
else who's still in college for the next few years.
38:24
So. When you're shopping for hats,
38:27
it's just as important to find out which ones don't fit as it
38:30
is to find out which ones do. Yep, same same kind of thing in
38:35
in real life. Mike, what's a challenge that
38:38
you're currently working through in your business?
38:43
And maybe something that you're not even successfully working
38:47
through quite yet. Man I am I'm one of those people
38:57
like I I think I always have more to do right like everything
39:01
feels like a challenge to be to be to be tackled I so there's
39:10
there's a number of them one that comes to mind is we I'm
39:13
really looking for better ways to to build a company culture
39:17
and you know we some some of the things we talked about before
39:20
remote we we do a lot to share our pets and share our favorite
39:28
meals and we're not afraid to have our kids jump on a zoom
39:33
call and and those kinds of things and you know we're
39:36
looking for what are the ways that we can build some of that
39:39
that culture in a remote in a in a remote environment.
39:44
And a big part of that is making sure that we are celebrating all
39:49
the wins big and small And so it's a very concerted effort and
39:55
that's one of those things you have to be very intentional
39:57
about to understand what people are working on what are they
40:00
happy with what are the things that they feel good about and
40:03
how do we make sure that we identify those and you know and
40:06
and when appropriate celebrate it with everybody else.
40:09
So that people can see what their teammates do and what
40:13
they're working on and what they're good at and what they're
40:15
passionate about and and what they can go to them for.
40:19
If they have a question about something down the road.
40:23
But that's something that we are trying to navigate, trying to
40:26
figure out and you know we've we've done OK.
40:30
But I think there's a lot more that we can do there.
40:35
And then you know, I think the other piece of it for us is, is,
40:39
is really trying to identify where new technology fits in.
40:47
You know, we did, we we actually, we wrote a book last
40:50
year about ChatGPT and AI and how our clients can use it.
40:54
And you know, I know that there's more opportunities for
40:57
us to incorporate that into how we're working so that we can
40:59
work smarter and not harder. But it's one of those things
41:05
where it takes some time to work through that stuff and and
41:08
incorporate it and make people feel comfortable with it and and
41:11
give them some understanding of how they can use the technology
41:15
to to make their jobs and make their lives a little bit easier.
41:18
So I think those are two of the big ones that we're working on
41:20
right now. Are you guys currently hiring?
41:24
We are. What positions are you looking
41:26
to fill? Client services, so account
41:31
managers, We are looking for some folks in data analysis and
41:35
reporting. We're looking for a, we're
41:41
looking for actually looking for an e-mail marketing expert.
41:44
We like a product specialist for e-mail marketing.
41:46
That's been a big one for us. And then probably by the end of
41:50
the year, we'll be looking for a couple more engineers.
41:53
Right. Where do you see AI and ChatGPT
41:57
going specifically in your industry?
42:00
How how can you leverage that? A lot of different ways.
42:05
So we see AI as kind of a a spice rack.
42:11
It's, you know, there's not like one AI that you just that you
42:15
just go, hey, we're going to plug this in and it's going to
42:17
solve all our problems. It's really what are the things
42:21
that are tedious repetitive tasks or what are the things
42:24
that would take a human a long time to do and how can we then
42:29
apply some intelligence to that and and make it better.
42:33
So the places where where we're using, the places where our
42:36
clients are using it are on a lot of marketing automation.
42:41
A lot of, you know, things like hey, you want to schedule a tour
42:46
to come see an apartment building, we can have some AI go
42:50
back and forth with that person over e-mail or over text message
42:54
and figure out a way to schedule a time for them to come in.
42:58
Another big one for us is data analysis.
43:01
We do a lot of competitor analysis and you know we'll
43:06
we'll pull data from Google reviews and then we'll go out
43:09
and we'll look at their top 10 competitors and we'll we'll
43:12
compare. Here's all of your reviews here.
43:15
Your competitor reviews here are the things you know based on the
43:18
negative reviews. Here are the things that you
43:20
need to go and prove. Here's where you need to train
43:22
your team based on your competitors reviews.
43:25
Here are the opportunities, here are the gaps, here are the
43:28
things that we're going to shift around in your marketing so that
43:30
you you know can attack their weaknesses.
43:34
So you know, those are two fairly simple examples of where
43:37
we're applying it, and there's a lot more.
43:41
If I recall correctly, you've actually presented on this very
43:44
topic at some large industry conferences.
43:48
Is that right? I have, yes.
43:50
Yeah. And what specifically have you
43:52
shared there? Very similar to what I just
43:58
mentioned. You know it's it's kind of
43:59
really understanding it's with with our clients, we work with
44:06
smaller marketing shops and in a lot of cases, you know,
44:10
bandwidth is is an issue and resources are an issue.
44:13
But when you can take that and say rather than have one
44:17
campaign, if I can say, all right, who are my top five
44:21
audiences, OK, now create marketing campaigns for each one
44:25
of those audiences and create Google headlines, create e-mail
44:29
subjects, create social media calendars.
44:32
Now I can start to create all of that content and things that
44:35
used to take us, you know, hours if not days to to put together,
44:41
we can have done in in you know 30 minutes to an hour and have
44:46
that have that ready to go. Mike, I just one more question
44:50
for you. But before I ask it, I want to
44:52
point people to your website so they know how to get in touch
44:55
with you, whether it's a client that may want to work with you
44:58
or an employee looking for a new career opportunity.
45:02
So best place for them to go is 30 lines.com 30lines.com.
45:07
Is that the best place? Yeah, 3030 lines.com If you want
45:10
to reach out to me directly, I'm most active on LinkedIn.
45:14
Right. OK.
45:15
Last question, Mike, aside from AI and ChatGPT, where do you see
45:20
the property management industry evolving in the next 5 to 10
45:23
years? Man, that's such a great
45:29
question. I I I think there's going to be
45:34
more emphasis on brand because once you start to identify
45:40
opportunities to centralized to plug in some technology to you
45:47
know, here's one thing that I'll say, if you look at the market
45:50
conditions right now with interest rates where they are
45:53
and where with investors where they are, there's a lot of call
45:57
it dry powder out there of people ready to buy and people
46:00
who are excited to build given the right opportunities.
46:05
So I think we're going to see some growth.
46:07
You know there's we've had record apartment growth over the
46:10
past couple years. It's going to taper down a
46:12
little bit, but I think that's going to come back then in 2027
46:17
ish. But as we do that, you're going
46:20
to see more opportunities for apartments to look more like
46:22
hotels. You're going to see brands pop
46:25
up, you're going to see some some loyalty programs pop up and
46:30
you're going to see more not necessarily like resort style
46:33
living, but I think you're going to see more hey, if you if you
46:38
know our brand here, we also have five other locations around
46:42
town that you might want to check out.
46:43
If you need to move across town or if you need to move to
46:47
Chicago or whatever. I think we're going to start to
46:50
see the more of that and that's something that the apartment
46:54
industry has never seen. You know hotels are hotels and
46:57
airlines and travel are much more consolidated, whereas the
47:01
apartment industry and housing is, is far more fragmented.
47:05
But I think that we're going to see a shift in, in that over the
47:08
next 5 to 10 years. Right.
47:12
Thank you, Mike. That's a wrap on another episode
47:15
of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with me
47:18
today.