A Podcast | Jonathan Cook

Pete Neubig: [00:00:05] Welcome back, everybody. And as promised, I got my my good buddy extraordinaire and basically everything property management and investing. Jonathan Cook. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here.

Jonathan Cook: [00:00:17] Thank you for inviting me. Pete. I am so excited to be a part.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:21] So you actually just had a change as we're recording this, you just actually had a change. So just tell us real quick about where where you're at right now where So that just happened.

Jonathan Cook: [00:00:32] Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I love my friend Todd was with Todd for a little over a year, but had a good buddy. I got an opportunity from, um, Maya madden with Rev up to come and join her team and be her executive consultant. So Rev Up is a start up company. We help property management companies grow, get their portfolios larger and really kind of structure that process out so that they can handle the door growth that they experience and make it like a repeatable process. It's pretty neat. It's actually really exciting to be a part of that team, especially at the level that that I've joined in as. So Maya gave me a call and she was like, Jonathan, look, I know that you're pretty happy where you are, but this is a chance to be back at home in Birmingham where I'm from, and to be a part of something bigger. It is. It is industry wide. It is changing how we as property managers see the industry. Would you like to be a part of that? And how am I going to say no to that?

Pete Neubig: [00:01:41] Pete Yeah, yeah. And look, you spent most of your career helping investors and building property management firms. So we're going to get into the the nuts and bolts of what it's going to take to grow a property management business and what you've learned. But before I ask before that question is answered, I want to ask you because we're we're we're near the beginning of 2023. So what do you think 2023 is going to be like for the property management industry?

Jonathan Cook: [00:02:11] Oh, man, that is such a good question. Um, to understand what we're about to experience, I think a lot of us are kind of leaning back on our experience from 2008, 2009 and the kind of the years after that. Um, and I think it's going to be similar in many, many ways. But the foreclosures, the economic destruction that happened in zero eight, I don't think we're going to see anything like that. But the technologies that we've introduced into this space will allow really savvy investors and property managers to kind of take the opportunities that are going to be presented with the foreclosures and with the the reductions of price. The more opportunity that there is to invest in the markets. We're going to see that grow, of course, mean interest rates being high, make that harder for the everyday investor to go out and buy a second, third, fourth, fifth property. But the bigger guys, the people that can pay cash for, you know, some of these properties, they're going to go out and snatch them up and they're going to need property management. I think we're going to see an influx of new property managers hitting the market, hitting the hitting the industry with 50, 60, 100 doors. They're going to pop in because they've got investors that are buying again.

Jonathan Cook: [00:03:41] And some of these people are younger. Some of these people are just kind of new to the space and some of them are going to do great. Some of them are going to adopt. The technology and the systems that we've all seen mean a lot of our friends mean you, for instance, that make property management companies be able to spread their wings. You know one person now. Can do the work of three people with a lot of the vendor technologies that are in the play or in the space. So we're going to see these people that are new to the industry come in and they're going to do really well if they adopt the right attitudes, which is, well, okay, what is what is my talent? My talent might be in leasing. Okay, cool. Handle leasing, do the leasing. But there's got to be admin, there's got to be, you know, maintenance, there's got to be biz dev. All of those things can be sourced right? At this point, every aspect of property management can kind of be sourced depending on what your skill set is. And we're going to start seeing property management companies built around technology solutions to still accomplish the same tasks, Right? I mean, does that. Do you seem to track with you?

Pete Neubig: [00:04:58] Yeah. Yeah. No, look, efficiency, technology and virtual team is what I've been preaching for ten years. Good times and bad times. Now, you couple things I want to touch on here. So you've mentioned foreclosure. Do you foresee foreclosures rising next year? Oh, for sure.

Jonathan Cook: [00:05:13] Yeah, I do. Sure. I mean, it's not going to be I don't even come close to think that it's going to be like zero eight. It's not the the type of lending that was happening in oh six created that. Right. We're not going to see the same types of things. But just because the economy is getting harder, inflation is getting higher people. I mean, the average American consumer doesn't have as much, you know, money as they did, I mean, 2 or 3 years ago. They're going to be some foreclosures. It's not going to be nearly what it was, but we're going to start seeing more than we saw the last 2 or 3 years because inventory is going to sit.

Pete Neubig: [00:05:53] Now, one of the things that I've seen happen just recently is a lot of these AI buyers with these algorithms are now going to buy a house and then turn around and wholesale and flip it or whatever. They're they're not buying anymore. Do you think that's going to affect the market in any way? Yeah.

Jonathan Cook: [00:06:08] Well, so so what we're seeing and it's it's like it's a shock to a lot of people's systems especially that got into the industry in the last 5 or 6 years. They've never experienced properties sitting on the market for more than a month or two. I mean five years ago the the average days on market was still right around 30, maybe 35 for everything from sales to rent to whatever. And you run into it now something sits for 45 days, 60 days. People lose their minds because they. What do you mean? It's been on the market for two days. That's still a technically a seller's market, I mean. The three months worth of inventory is still considered a neutral market.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:53] Three months is neutral. Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Cook: [00:06:55] And these people are freaking out over 60 days. Come on. But people don't know how to handle it. People have lost that skill. And so it, you know, it's affecting a lot of people.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:07] Do you do you foresee institutionals you're kind of in bed with some institutionals Are they still planning on on buying? Because they do mean a lot of them buy cash, but a lot of them don't, right? A lot of them are borrowing funds. So with interest rates going up, do you do you foresee them still buying what they claim they were going to buy, you know, in 2022 and what they claim they're going to buy in 2023? Or do you think there'll be a drop off there?

Jonathan Cook: [00:07:32] I think there's going to be a drop off because they're finding other avenues to disperse that money. Instead of buying existing properties, they can go in and build and have a nearly same return. I mean, if you can do a build to rent model and get a 12% return, why not do it? Do you know how much space of just open space there is in the Southeast? I mean, it's in Texas.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:56] Put the money in bonds and make almost as much money Exactly. As bond as bond prices, as bond rates increase. Um, so okay, so tell me about the mom and pop invest. Most of the people listening here, uh, deal with mom and pop investors with rates going up, um, do you foresee the mom and pop investor getting squeezed out as there's more cash buyers institutionals are still buying potentially, Or do you think that the sellers will finally become aware that they that they cannot sell their property for the same price? And even though rates are up, I'll get the money on the front end, meaning I'll get it off the sale of the property.

Jonathan Cook: [00:08:33] So I think mom and Pop.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:36] I'm asking personally because I'm I'm an investor and I'm trying to see if I need to buy houses next year.

Jonathan Cook: [00:08:40] You do need to buy houses next year, Pete. I this is the way that I look at it. I just recently last week, I interviewed a local real estate investor that owns about 15 properties and this is in the Birmingham Metro. And I happened to ask her over the course of about an hour and a half worth of interview where she self-assessed herself in terms of real estate investment expertise in a 1 to 10 scale. This this is a mom and pop investor and her response for a self assessment was an eight And I said, okay, you have 15 properties. A ten would be like, you know, Warren Buffett and you think you're an eight? And she said, Yes. Now, then I asked her what her annual income was per property, and she could not tell me. Now, that's that seems hilarious to us because we're in this industry. The reality is most of us that deal with mom and pops, most mom and pops realistically fit in that range to where they think they're much more educated than they are. We know that the rates are going to affect them. Most of them aren't spending their days reading through, you know, real estate articles and keeping themselves up to date on the latest interest rate changes and what's happening with, you know, Blackstone.

Jonathan Cook: [00:10:03] And you know what, how are the I buyers are working and what does Zillow think about this? They're uninformed. They're they're just uninformed. They don't spend the time in it that we do. So I don't think there. Buying natures and their selling natures are going to be much, much suede like they might not sell as often. And so property managers are going to have more opportunity to operate with them because we'll be able to rent the properties out for them as opposed to, you know, selling for them. So we'll see some of that. But I don't think the actual mom and pop investor is going to have a major shift like we have seen in the past. I don't think it's going to be major. It'll be slight. You know, it'll be more of a veer than like a hard 90 degree turn on what their strategies are. They're just going to they're going to slowly be like, okay, well, maybe I can't buy the same half million dollar property. Maybe let's drop it down to a $300,000 property. Maybe let's drop it down to $250,000 property there. They're going to change what they're looking for because they're not going to find the returns that they need. So it just changes what you think.

Pete Neubig: [00:11:08] There's actually more there's actually more potential for property managers because there's not as much, um, there's not as much income that that these people, that these, that these self investors or these, you know, these these mom and pop investors can get squeezed out of they're out of the property because they maybe they bought a little bit wrong. So they're going to lean on property managers people who know people who are experts to maybe help them find their next properties or to manage the property more efficiently, to squeeze more, more revenue out of that property.

Jonathan Cook: [00:11:39] Absolutely. I do think there's enough information now. I mean, what what is a real estate investment cycle in terms of years? 15 years, probably

Pete Neubig: [00:11:49] That's. Yeah. Mean coastlines, maybe 20 if you're not in the coastline.

Jonathan Cook: [00:11:52] So so think about the kind of information you could have gathered 15 years ago. 15 years ago, you didn't have YouTube, you didn't have, you know, podcasts like this. You didn't have this kind of information. And so the new investment cycle that we're kind of hitting on now, I mean, the the people that currently are mom and pop investors, there's more information. But they also recognize in most cases that like, okay, I can sort through all this. I can read through these websites, maybe, maybe hire an expert. I can hire an expert that typically because they're going to be positioned in terms of their income and their their economic situation, that it's going to make a lot more sense for them to just go and hire somebody that knows this inside and out. That's a much safer bet for them than I'll just go buy this house that I found on Zillow because there's Zestimates and I can estimate these numbers. They've heard too many horror stories. It's always anecdotal for them. So it's much safer to go and find an expert. And I don't just mean someone that is a professional, I mean an expert. And that's what we're going to see in the property management industry, those of us that really get what we're doing and those of us that can go out and evangelize our, you know, our information and our our expertise, those are the ones that you're going to start seeing making major rises, people that you might not even know of today, 5 or 6 years from now, they're going to be big players.

Pete Neubig: [00:13:26] So over the last year or two, it's been, like you said, very easy to sell, sell a house. Right? Like there's I mean, there's been bidding wars, right? And even now you're saying it's 30, 60 days. It's the neutral market. But we know where this is going. We know that it's going to become a buyer's a buyer's market at some point. Do you believe if you owned a property management firm, would you be creating marketing strategies around those reluctant landlords or do you do you like not worry about them? You totally want to work with investors or do you believe that there's there's a lot of opportunity for reluctant landlords.

Jonathan Cook: [00:14:00] So there's a ton of opportunity. The reality of a sales process, right, When we look at growing a property management firm, you can key into, well, my niche is investors. Great work with your investors, but simultaneously, if you're not specifically have real.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:18] Estate, right? Especially if you do realty, of course.

Jonathan Cook: [00:14:19] Yeah. So if you're not facilitating some form of marketing, some continuing education pieces, a drip campaign, a an outreach program, something that is. Yeah. So a like an outbound appointment setter, you know, calling numbers, you know, setting.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:40] Setting appointment type. Yeah.

Jonathan Cook: [00:14:41] Some some sort of program like that that he's using.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:45] He's using big fancy acronyms. People can't keep up with him.

Jonathan Cook: [00:14:48] I apologize if you if you are missing out on at least getting in front of these smaller not investors. I mean your accidental landlords if you're if you're missing out on at least an outreach program to them, when the market shifts and investment stops, you are going to be choked off on your growth potential because we all have churn, everybody has churn. So you've got to continue a level of growth just to stay even if you're trying because.

Pete Neubig: [00:15:20] Of the amount of accidental landlords. That's what you said, that you see a lot more new PMS come into business. This is kind of a direct result of that, correct? Absolutely right. Agent can't sell house. Agent can't. So agent leases house and an agent ends up getting into management whether they want to or not. Right. That's how we all.

Jonathan Cook: [00:15:36] Got into this, right? Yeah, that's, that's how, that's. That's so many story. That's so many people's story that I know it's it's unreal. But that's exactly it. It's, you know, had this house listed for six months and then they said, well, what if we just put a renter in there? Okay, I can figure out how to do that. Bing bang, boom. I'm a property manager now. I've got 50 doors, 100 doors, 200 doors. That's what's going to happen. I mean, it's it's silly to not recognize that it's a pattern. I mean, nothing new is under the sun. Pete We see the same stuff happen over and over. So, yeah, that's true. We've just got to prepare for it.

Pete Neubig: [00:16:11] All right. So here's something that's kind of newer though. Airbnb. Airbnb. Um, they, uh, there's rumors out there and I don't know how true they are because I'm not, I don't have my finger on the Airbnb pulse, but the rumor is that there's more, uh, there's more supply than demand for the first time. And there's a lot of people that bought a lot of properties that they cannot no longer Airbnb, but they bought them so wrong that they can't long term lease them. Do you think that this will have any kind of impact for property managers, um, you know, in 2023?

Jonathan Cook: [00:16:47] Yes. That's not a full answer. Yes. Is correct, of course.

Pete Neubig: [00:16:52] Moving on. No kidding.

Jonathan Cook: [00:16:56] I think trends happen. You know, people run into things that are like, oh, this is a great idea. And as long as, you know, the cash flow is coming in, it seems great. But these investments, because they get a fad behind them, they start creating. You know, their own downfall because oh well, you can Airbnb this for $300 a night. So that's, you know, whatever. You got to.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:28] Make 400% more on your on your money every month long term.

Jonathan Cook: [00:17:31] Leasing. Yeah, let's do that. But then you start inflating the price for it. So then you go, well actually instead of it being worth and then you overpaid.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:38] Then you overpay for the property because. Exactly.

Jonathan Cook: [00:17:40] So then it cycles and it cycles and then it stops working and it comes back down to education. Airbnb works. It does as long as you can legally, Airbnb, your property, it is a good investment, but you should not plan your investment based on Airbnb lifestyle. That's really hard to do because it's so short term. There is no $100,000 investment that you can plan to make your return over a handful of weekends or you shouldn't. You shouldn't.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:11] Just curious now that you're on the consulting side of things, um, when you consult with with some of your clients that are not doing short term, do you recommend they get into the short term game or it has to be the right you know, it has to be the right fit.

Jonathan Cook: [00:18:28] It has to be the right fit. I would never tell someone who has no expertise to join that mean you have it has to be something that you're already dabbling in and you have enough knowledge.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:38] Maybe you own a couple yourself.

Jonathan Cook: [00:18:40] Maybe you own a couple yourself then then you can start playing in that field. But I wouldn't tell somebody that's new to property management to, Oh, by the way, you should also open up an Airbnb branch. No, you shouldn't.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:51] All right. So we've we've talked about opportunities in 2023. We believe that property management firms, based on your assessment, that they're going to grow in 2023 it seems like is that that's kind of where you're leaning with all this, right?

Jonathan Cook: [00:19:02] Yeah, totally.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:03] So, all right. So now I want to take advantage of those opportunities. So what does it take to grow a business, A property management business?

Jonathan Cook: [00:19:11] Oh, okay. So, um, you know, the first thing you could do is you just give me a call and I'll set it up for you. It'll be done over. Game over. Done. No, um, just hit the button. Hit the button, click my name. Um, so growth is.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:27] And I know we can't answer this in one podcast, and I get that. So. But just hit on maybe 3 or 4 like big points, like what you would do if you were sitting in owning a property management firm, how would you grow it in 2023? How's that?

Jonathan Cook: [00:19:40] So consistency is key. When you create a program and you understand what your own niche is, you have to consistently perform at your niche and then let people know. So marketing. Can be expensive, but outbound calls are not. They are much less expensive than. Posting a billboard somewhere or getting on TV or putting Facebook ad pages wherever. The key to growth is just letting the people out there know what your niche is. So this is this is the great big secret in property management growth. This is the whole big secret right here, Pete. Guess what? Your clients are out there. The clients that you want as a property manager. They're next door. They're around you. They're right there and they're self-managing. They are doing it themselves because they don't know that you exist. That's the secret. The secret is let them know.

Pete Neubig: [00:20:39] About finding that client so that I can reach out to them or that I can tell them. Like what? You know, that this is my niche and you're the perfect fit.

Jonathan Cook: [00:20:45] Absolutely. So when you're talking or when you're first.

Pete Neubig: [00:20:48] Thing is make sure you define your target client. Yeah.

Jonathan Cook: [00:20:50] Make sure. Yeah. There you go. Make sure you define what your target market is. And then there's tons of, you know, lead screening.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:00] Business partner Steve Rosenberg. You'd be like, Well, the target is anybody who wants to own a house in the United States. I'm like, No, there you go. You need to define that a little bit more.

Jonathan Cook: [00:21:09] And look, he'll fly to them. He'll fly to them to get in front of them, and then he'll let them know, like, Look, I flew here myself.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:15] So it's important to understand what is your niche is what's the best that you that you do and then define your target client so that you can find them, which means it'll be less costly to find those people because you know exactly what you're looking for, right?

Jonathan Cook: [00:21:27] And so then once you once you've defined that, you go to any of these data sourcing websites, there's literally hundreds. I couldn't even drop a few without sounding silly. But I mean, because there's so many. But you can go and buy lead sources. All that is is just scrubbed public data. I mean, all this is just public record. You go and you find public record. Who owns a property that they don't live in? Ta da! On average.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:52] On average. What is that cost per like per contact on average. It's it's.

Jonathan Cook: [00:21:58] I. There are so many different companies out there that probably.

Pete Neubig: [00:22:04] Okay, so there's just a wide range. A wide.

Jonathan Cook: [00:22:06] Yeah. I mean, you're talking not very.

Pete Neubig: [00:22:07] Costly from my understanding.

Jonathan Cook: [00:22:08] No. You're going to go spend a couple hundred dollars and get a thousand leads. I mean it's it's not expensive to do. But the having the leads is I mean, that's almost nothing. It's the actual getting in front of them. Like you're not going to grow just having the leads, having the leads does nothing to you if you don't reach out to them and call them. So then the step is understand your niche and make the calls. It's hard work. It's exhausting work. It's a lot of people hanging up in your face because who answers the phone to a number that they don't know nobody now. So yeah, so you have to have a system in place. You have to have a foundation, some sort of program, some sort of and I don't just mean a CRM. Crm are invaluable, but you actually have to have a plan. And that's that's where rev up comes in. That's, that's the company that I'm with now. Rev up. We we help you actually build a foundation to do that and an actual structure because that's the key. Yeah that's the system just like just.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:06] Like I need a system for my lease renewals and I need my onboarding system, I need a sales system. And I think a lot of property management companies, they don't realize that you have to have a marketing system and a sales system and so it feels.

Jonathan Cook: [00:23:20] Ethereal to them, right? Sells seems so woo woo crazy. Oh, how do you sell? You have to have the gift of gab. No, you don't. No, you don't. It helps. I would be lying to say that It doesn't help.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:32] But so give us give us a kind of a high level example of of a sales system. Right. So. All right. So I get the lead, got the lead. I have a lead. Whether it came in through some kind of marketing activity or I or I bought a list. I have a lead.

Jonathan Cook: [00:23:47] Yeah. So the one that I like the best. And so the one that I'm going to preach about is, um, you know, having an outbound call person, a call center. To me, that is more effective than trying to do it yourself because property management is a time sink and you end up putting out fires and you don't make the calls, right? So you have a specific.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:06] Personality profile that that goes with that. I don't know if you're into disc or into so into biz.

Jonathan Cook: [00:24:12] Dev, a business development manager does need to kind of have the A right personality, someone doing outbound calls. They just have to be kind of tough that that that helps skin. Yeah thick skin helps alligator. Exactly.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:28] But, um. Italian, German and alligator and rhino. Rhino and rhino. Rhino.

Jonathan Cook: [00:24:35] Um, those help being part tank is helpful, but it's. It's the kind of task that chews you up. So having training behind it, I mean, that's kind of where we step in, is we train those people to make sure that when they're making those calls, we can refresh. They don't get burnt out. They can actually have a a warm answer to those calls. So that process looks like going through those leads in the in the whatever CRM system you use. And, you know, I'm kind of agnostic to that. I like them all. They're all helpful to some degree. But it is a a touch point and it is a continuous outreach program. That outbound outreach starts with Call one where the SDR, the the COA, we actually client opportunity advisor is what we we call our.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:26] Almost almost almost reach out.

Jonathan Cook: [00:25:28] Coa is fun because they cover our assets. So but but COA is what we call our group of outbound advisors because it's a client opportunity advisor. Every person in your lead system is a potential client and just because they hung up in your face the first time you called them doesn't even mean that they're out of the cells. The cells mean. No, it.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:49] Doesn't. It doesn't. No, it just means not right now.

Jonathan Cook: [00:25:51] Right. Cells. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. A cell cycle is from introduction of them as a lead until they've made a decision to buy with you or not. They are always in that that tracking somewhere because it all it takes is the right opportunity of oh well I inherited some money. Even if they say, Oh, I'm a renter, well, what happens if they inherit a house and some money and whatever else? Now they're a property management potential client, so if you drop them off of your system, that's not great. So you.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:23] You can create, um, you even create drip campaigns for your residents then. Yeah, we do. Yeah.

Jonathan Cook: [00:26:29] The idea is everyone is potentially a client for us like it and so it is getting in front of them, Having them actually answer the phone and have a conversation with you is step one. So that's how you have to get out to these people. And it's going back to the story.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:43] Getting the right target increases your chances of closure node.

Jonathan Cook: [00:26:47] Yes, absolutely. Yeah, totally does. And that's where the lead systems come into play. Like that's that's buying the right leads. But if you've bought the right leads, great. That's step one. Then you've hired someone to make those calls for you. A for. Rev up. Great call. Way to go. And then it is having the coaching and the help to make sure that those calls, every opportunity that they're on the phone, that it's the most effective way to handle that you're going to have people that are going to answer the phone and yell and scream and cuss at you. How'd you get my number? Why are you calling me? You're interrupting my kid's birthday party. Great. Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your day, but, yes, this is a cold call. Do you mind if I talk with you about this situation? It's public record. That's why I'm calling you is because my information tells me you might be a really good fit for what I have to offer. Can we just have a conversation about it? And that's that's the mentality that makes the growth exponential because maybe they fit with you today. Maybe they don't. Maybe they fit with you in three months. Maybe they fit with you in three years. But if you don't have a way to determine where they fall in that sales cycle and then a plan for once you've identified where they fit well, what's your plan if they tell you, Well, I don't I'm not going to buy real estate for ten years. Cool. Well, you need to have a plan to reach back out to them in ten years with the right information and the right kind of hand-holding to say, hey, we talked ten years ago, and if you've only talked to them once in that ten years, you're messing up. You have to have an outreach program that works for that full time year or that full ten year time period. And then at that ten year time period, hey, you know, we talked about you buying properties. So there's two.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:30] Things you ready to do out there that that you kind of glanced over that are that are pure gold. Number one is everybody you come in contact with should go into your CRM system. Everyone. Right? So that right there should be a game changer for some of you that are listening because a lot of you don't put in certain people like residents into your drips. The second one is every person that goes into your to your CRM should be classified some way and you should have some type of you call it a system, I'll call it a drip system. Right? They to to have the right information be in front of them for that particular, that particular instance.

Jonathan Cook: [00:29:06] Yeah, of course. Like so it's so if you want to take that down and then distill it to an actual conversation, imagine if you're talking with someone who is telling you they are having problems with placing a tenant and yet you spend the entire time talking about how your maintenance system is great. That doesn't connect, Right?

Pete Neubig: [00:29:25] Right. Right. Yep. Okay. Yep.

Jonathan Cook: [00:29:26] So when you are talking to these potential clients because everyone is you have to identify where their pain points fit, what is the information that I could get to them where they see me as an expert in their pain point? Yep.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:43] You know, think about it. That's what the social media platforms do so well, especially Facebook, right? I do one search for, you know, let's just say, you know, sports bra to buy my wife, even though I'm a male, I get ads for sports bras all the time now because, you know, I made that search. But they they realized like that was something that he was searching for. And you make a great point. If if I'm a landlord and I have challenges with maintenance and you keep talking about, you know, lease placement, the applications and the lease placement, it's a disconnect.

Jonathan Cook: [00:30:15] Yeah, well, you stop listening. Why would. Hey, you know, I'm having an issue with my maintenance, you know, programs. I can't get a general contractor over there to finish a program, and then my tenants are always mad at me about this. Well, let me tell you about how we place the best tenants in the country. Like I'm. I'm not. I'm done listening to you at that point. I'm not hearing you. Could you could tell me that you're going to find the best tenant on the planet. I'm not even going to hear it because it has nothing to do with anything that I've said. You're not actively listening. You're not following up with my pain points. You're just rolling over me to tell me about something that I don't, frankly, care about.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:52] But how can I. Can I know You and I, we're both talkers and we can talk, literally talk about this really good for hours on end. But in the interest of time, we're going to cut to a commercial break and then we're gonna come back for the show. That's the lightning round.

Jonathan Cook: [00:31:09] Ow!

Pete Neubig: [00:31:10] All right. Lightning round. All right. We'll be right back, everybody. Welcome back, everybody. All right, Jonathan Cook, are you ready for the The Lightning Round? Ready. A series of questions. I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. Whatever comes to your mind? If you want to expand on it, we're going to let you. But whatever comes to your mind, you know, there's supposed to be kind of quick questions here. All right. Perfect. What is one thing most people do not know about you?

Jonathan Cook: [00:31:34] Oh, Lord, that I played football in high school.

Pete Neubig: [00:31:37] I would go with the four kids, but okay, everybody knows.

Jonathan Cook: [00:31:40] I have four kids.

Pete Neubig: [00:31:41] That's true. All right. Football in high school, huh? Nice. What Marvel character or DC character do you most associate with?

Jonathan Cook: [00:31:48] Oh, Captain America. He's so pure.

Pete Neubig: [00:31:51] What is your ideal vacation?

Jonathan Cook: [00:31:54] Oh, fishing at the beach.

Pete Neubig: [00:31:57] What is one piece of advice you would give someone just starting out in the business?

Jonathan Cook: [00:32:02] Oh. Join NARPM.

Pete Neubig: [00:32:06] Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Jonathan Cook: [00:32:09] All right. It can. I'm indifferent. It's fine. I'm not going to be mad at anybody for eating pineapple on their pizza. Am I going to eat pineapple on my pizza? Absolutely not.

Pete Neubig: [00:32:21] So it does not belong on pizza. And I concur. What book are you currently reading or what is a book that has impacted your business or life?

Jonathan Cook: [00:32:31] Oh, okay. So. Oh, my goodness. Um, you know, you could always just say anything. Kiyosaki as written is great. That probably mean rich Dad. Poor Dad probably influenced me more than anything. And I'm. I'm always reading Rich Dad. Poor Dad. Because for a real estate investor, well, you use it like a Bible. I mean, it's I've got a lot of other ones that I'm reading to kind of associate with different parts of the industry. But Rich Dad, poor dad is the thing that you always go back to, to to sit there and make sure that you're not losing your mind.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:13] Other than an awesome podcast, what's another podcast that you like doesn't have to be business related. It could be whatever, just just any other podcast that you would recommend.

Jonathan Cook: [00:33:22] So. Some more news is a really good one.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:29] Some more news. Okay, Some.

Jonathan Cook: [00:33:31] More. Now it's a little bit you know, it's going to be a little bit leftist for for a lot of our pals. But it's a good introduction into the mindset of a concerned millennial. How about that?

Pete Neubig: [00:33:45] All right. I like it. Um, as a Gen X guy, probably not for me, but whatever. It might not be for that one. Um, what is one challenge you are currently facing in your business?

Jonathan Cook: [00:33:58] Oh, time, man. Time. Finding the time to. Not just have the consultation calls, but it's the it's the admin afterwards. It's when you're back to back to back to back with consulting calls. It's it's it's tough to stop.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:18] Sounds like you need a remote team member to to be your your admin.

Jonathan Cook: [00:34:23] Yeah. Mean that is that's so invaluable. Can someone please just type up my notes and put them into the system for me? That would be like worth its weight in gold.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:33] What do you prefer? Cats or dogs? Dogs. All right. You've passed the lightning round, Jonathan.

Jonathan Cook: [00:34:39] Thank God.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:41] All right, so if somebody wanted to get in touch with you or loved what you had to say and want to get a consultation or just reach out, what How's the best way they can contact you?

Jonathan Cook: [00:34:50] So you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or Facebook. I'm pretty active on both. Um, you can email me at Jonathan at rev up mastery.com and I spell my name j o n a t h a n because apparently there's 50 different ways to spell my name. There is. Um, but you can reach out to me on any of those platforms. I'm usually pretty responsive on LinkedIn and Facebook on email that's going to pop up and interrupt anything that I'm doing. So I'm really, really pretty apt to answer that relatively quick.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:24] If you are not an ARPA member and would like to join, please go to NRP northam.org and you can sign up right there or give the the good folks a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you are looking for a remote team members, maybe you need a maintenance coordinator or a leasing assistant or a sales associate or sales assistant or a call, what do you call them? A coa coa. You can go to VPM Solutions.com VPM Virtual Property Management solutions.com. Thank you everybody for listening and appreciate you and we'll see you next time. Peace out. Thank you.