A Podcast | Jordan Muela:

Pete Neubig: [00:00:05] All right. Welcome back, everybody, and thank you for joining us on the radio. I have my my good buddy and thought leader Jordan Mueller with us. So, Jordan, thanks for thanks for spending some time with us.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:00:16] Pete Happy to be here, man.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:00:17] So, Jordan, you've been supporting Northam and the property management industry for over eight years. For those who for those of you that do not know you, tell us a little bit about how you got started and the ways that you now support Northam in the industry.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:00:31] Yeah, well, you know, I love Northam. Glad to be involved with it. I got my start way back, actually, on the HOA management side of the industry, and from there got into lead generation originally for single family residential property managers, then pivoted into CRM. And right now, my company, Lead Simple, provides workflow technology to organize and streamline your processes and operations. And along the way, I've been able to start some other companies like Profit Coach and Rent Scale as well. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:01:03] And you were one of the originators of the Northam accounting standards, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:01:09] That's that's true. Yeah, that was one of the privileges of getting to be in the industry was that project and kind of see how that's proliferated.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:01:17] So, John, you're a thought leader in this space. What do you think the economy looks like in the near future and how is it going to affect the property management and housing industry?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:01:26] Hmm. That's a great question. First, it's just good to remind everybody that nobody knows. So I have no, no clue. But the things that I see broadly are that now that our policy of zero interest rates has evaporated, we could be in very new territory and new ground where the default assumption that the markets are going to go up and everything is going to go up could get called into question. I don't know what's going to happen one way or the other. What I do think is practical right now is to take hold of the promise and the belief that this industry is counter-cyclical. That's been the idea for years and years. And we're seeing the beginnings of that reality get to brought to bear in the market. I'm seeing a lot of enthusiasm from local operators that are just getting more doors coming their way, folks that are trying to list, trying to sell and they're not able to do it. So what do they do? They call a local and that is now the beneficiary of one more property under management. Now's the time to lean in. Now is the opportunity. The market is shifting and finally, in a good way, the sell off is done. Good times are coming. So my big picture thought here is that now is the time to staff up for growth, to lean into market sales and marketing and to really take advantage of this next multiyear bull market that I that I can't, can't promise, can't warrant, can't guarantee, but I'm pretty optimistic to see come to fruition.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:02:50] So you're talking a lot about those those landlords the reluctant landlord so do you see a lot of growth and reluctant landlord? Do you think that investors though, because now that interest rates are going up and the funny thing is going up to like six, 7%? I remember buying stuff at 2 in 2000 at like seven, 8% like it was norm. That was a great rate. Now it's like a terrible rate. Do you still see that will be growing our businesses through investments, through investors?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:03:18] Yeah, I think that the investors that went out over their skis are going to have to refi. There could definitely be some carnage there. The toleration of of compressed yields can't go on forever. But I think there's a lot of folks that were able to buy and get in at a great rate and they're going to be happy to hold. Do they expand their portfolios? Maybe they're maybe they're a little more reticent to do that. But I think there's countervailing factors. And one of those is the impact of consolidation in this space. We saw some pretty voracious consolidation for some time and a lot of that was built on the back of freely available funding as the funding environment has worsened, as valuations across the board, particularly in tech, have got cut in half or worse. But let's say got cut in half on average. I think that's going to take a lot of steam out of the sails of aggregators and that's also going to make it more fertile ground for the independent residential property manager who just like deeply am rooting for and believe in.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:04:22] So if I hear you right, you think that there's going to be less consolidation in 2023 because there's less money available. Is that that.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:04:30] That's that's correct. I mean, it's an inescapable conclusion that the consolidation was being driven by funding. It was it was not a organic cash flow situation. You have some exceptions to the rule. Look at it Evanesced in a Whittaker, for example. But again, that's the exception to the rule. A lot of the roll up that was happening was being driven by outside funding, and that funding is just it's harder to come by and the terms are worse. So I do expect to see some slowing there and just some some thinning out, as it were, the existing funding that's already in play and has been deployed. We're going to get to see how that pans out and what the implications are. And so the next 12 to 18 months should be really clarifying.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:05:10] Yeah, it's gonna be interesting. I know when I saw my company in mind, right, they were, they were buying, they were buying a whole bunch of, of property management firms and they were pivoting themselves or positioning themselves to be a prop tech company because they were getting 10 to 17 X valuation, even though they were kind of a property management firm wrapped up in tech. Right. And and so now we're seeing property tech valuations go down and we're seeing funding get cut. And so. Right. It sounds like and I know mine is not buying any more, they're trying to do organic growth and working with Institutionals. So some others are still buying out there, but that funding may dry up and they may put a pause until until valuations come back up. Yeah.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:05:54] Yeah. You know, funding will dry up. And then there's also just more scrutiny now that the mania and the hysteria of a market peak is gone. People are just more sober. They're more sober about all sorts of things, investments in general. They're more sober about stuff that was hot, like crypto, for example. Right. Huge collapse. And there's kind of a hangover for folks that are looking at and thinking, what happened? How did I get so excited about that? How did how did I invest all my money in that? So I think the corollary here is that the due diligence criteria will go up for folks that are thinking about being acquired, and I think that's healthy and appropriate. It's a rebalancing of the market. So when that due diligence scrutiny goes up, it will necessitate that valuations come down to earth. And as valuations come down to earth, people that raised money previously have to deal with things like uh, down rounds, which is really tough. Dealing with the down round is really challenging to your business. And so I think those are headwinds that are not necessarily insurmountable, but that it will add a bit of friction in the M&A sector going forward.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:07:04] If I'm a small mom and pop firm listening to this and I was thinking about selling, did I miss the boat, Do you think I'm going to get the same valuation for my business this next year as I am for this year, or do I need to hold What are what are your thoughts on that as these guys are these guys going to need to buy at a deeper discount?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:07:25] Yeah. My thought there is that the fundamentals of changing, of selling whether or not to sell your business haven't changed. If your business is not profitable and you can get a one times revenue multiple, that is amazing. That's a huge blessing of our industry and it's a testimony to the degree to which the market values recurring revenue, because if you're at 1% revenue and you're selling it at 1% profit and you're selling at a one times revenue multiple, then the implied EBITDA multiple is insane. If by contrast, your business is stable and profitable, it's the same situation that it's always been, which is to say that it's really, really difficult to find a mathematically positive outcome associated with selling. Almost always, if you have a profitable, stable business, the answer is simply to hold on financially speaking. And there's other considerations around maybe I'm sick of doing this, maybe I want to retire, maybe I want to get out. But if you have a profitable, stable business, it's incredibly challenging to get a multiple that outstrips the the the financial potential of just holding on. Even if, you know, the service quality declines a bit, it's a cash flow as opposed to a cash pile. And generally speaking, cash flows win.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:08:45] So if I'm a property manager firm and I'm not looking to sell, I see that there's opportunity for some growth. But in your opinion, what is the best way for a for a firm to stay become or increase their profitability?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:09:00] Yeah, well, think first. It involves just wrapping your head around the basic math of it. Getting familiar with industry standards and norms. Go look at the accounting standards and the benchmarks there. You can compare easily, for example, what your top line revenue is on a per door basis. The reason that revenue per unit was developed is because it allows for really apples to apples comparison across other operators and other markets. And the same thing with your profit per unit, your profit per unit is the driver. You should be able to wrap your head around and to understand for any given program, for any given fee, how much is it going to increase my profit per unit and what is the concomitant over administrative overhead that comes along with it? Not all fees are created equal. Some are simply more difficult to track and to place Labor behind to actually collect on. But if you've done the basic math around revenue optimization fee maxing, whatever you want to call it, then obviously the next thing to tackle is around your cost structure and making sure that you're employing the highest quality, most capable labor at the most competitive price. And we've seen that that really does involve looking at additional labor markets for at least a subset of your tasks. So working with a vendor like VPN Solutions or, you know, another vendor in the category that's able to connect you with really talented people and other labor markets is just an inescapable and obvious conclusion for somebody that's looking to to drive underlying profit. Those are the two big things. Beyond that, paying attention to your churn, a lot of folks felt disempowered with churn over the last, let's say, 24 months, particularly with the heavy sales market. What can I do? The macro headwinds are against me and now hopefully those wins are at you at your back. In either case, churn is a really big driver of long term customer lifetime values and because of that, it is something to to work around and to have strategies to try to to back up.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:11:03] One thing you didn't mention that I'm a big fan of, and that's why I love having you on here, is automation. And I know you're you're kind of like, well, have lead simple. But let's talk about how automation really helps your business. And it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be lead simple which but but it's a great it's a great solution but just talk about like even where would you start, right? So I want to start automating my business. How, how would you go about that? And then talk a little bit about how lead Simple helps with that.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:11:30] Well, I'd like to hear some of your input on this, too, because I know I've seen you go down an automation path. My broad thoughts here are that automation is the last thing that you do. The very first thing that you do is really deeply understand your business, have a vision for the kind of quality of service that you're trying to deliver. Have a vision for how you want to see work flow through the organization. It's so easy to get lost in one off tasks and to lose sight of architecting and engineering how each piece of work flows through the organization. And we're talking flow charts, we're talking roles. So rather than people thinking about what role do I is this person in, what do I have them doing and what are the responsibilities associated with that role? And if you have the mental bandwidth and and will to architect to describe to flow, chart out all of that work and get clear at that level, then it's way easier to plug it into a piece of software. And when you do take that last step of plugging it into software, what you get is visibility, accountability and some level of automation and efficiency. But let's just talk about the visibility in the accountability. Most business owners are in a position where when they ask if so-and-so did such and such, they're hoping for a good answer. They want to trust their team. But at the end of the day. That's all they got. They can't really know with certainty because there is no way to audit whether or not the work, whether or not the work did or did or didn't get done.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:13:02] Exactly. There is no there's no reporting. There's no task completion history of individual tasks or calls being completed or emails being sent. So having a unified view of reporting is a big deal and it allows you to have a different quality of conversation with your team member. That's not authoritarian. It's not driven by micromanagement. It's that you want to help people reduce the errors in their role by giving them a really clear set of responsibilities and the best tools to get the job done and the support to back them up if they did miss something, assuming that they want to do a great job. And on top of that, if you can have some emails or texts or physical letters sent out, automatically trigger it off of a sequence change because you have a given owner in a certain let's say we're doing a unit turn. You know that every time that unit gets ready to go back on the market, there's a certain email that you want to send out to your owner. Those are the examples of the sort of thing that clearly and obviously some level of automation could be applied to. That's the opportunity I see. But Pete, I know you went down this path using some other tech vendors back in the day. Tell me a little bit about your experience with Empire.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:14:16] I did. I was an early adopter. I was doing this before Lead Simple was a was a product. And I'm really glad to see that the technology has caught up with with the industry. If you hit on two things that I think most people skip over and the first one was org structure, the organizational structure. I'll tell you a story. So early on, I was one of the first people to join to jump on the property Meld bandwagon. I met Ray and the Property Meld team and I'm like, I got to have this good dude, great company, good dude, love him. Big advocate. But when I implemented property meld, I didn't have the right structure in place for my maintenance team. And what happened was by having this automation, it actually created even more challenges, meaning more upset clients. And it's like if you have, you know, what is it? If you have bad, bad data in, you get bad data out. Right? There's an old saying about that. Well, if you have no structure and you and you have all this stuff, it just happens faster and then more people getting notified and there's no structure behind it. And you don't have to write the right org chart. What happened with us was we got just angry clients even quicker. And so I had to like pause the property meld. So the, the, the aha I had was the technology is great but it doesn't solve it.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:15:39] You have to write, you have to make sure that you have the right structure in place to, to make sure that you solve the challenge and then technology can be a gift. The second thing you mentioned, which I think a lot of people hate to do, so they don't do it and they try to take a shortcut. Is to document the process. It's so simple. Just say just document your process, right? And let's be let's be honest. Most business owners are visionaries, not integrators. I happen to be an integrator. If you're down with iOS, you know, I'm like, I love like, I love creating process flows. That's like my unique ability. Like I'm like, Hey, when I'm the guy with the marker and I'm drawing the boxes and I'm doing all that good stuff, but most business owners aren't that way. A matter of fact, Steve Rosenberg, my business partner, as soon as I started creating a process flow, his eyes would glaze over. Right? Like, I'll wake him up in 30 minutes, like, let's wake him up here in 30 minutes when we have a process built out. So important, though, to create your process flow because again, now that the technology is becoming available, whether you're using HubSpot lead, Simple Monday, whatever it is, um, that is just going to push bad data through.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:16:49] If you if you don't have if you don't have any good data. Right if you don't have a good process is you're going to pass it on through and you're not going to be able to build the system the way you want it built. So I think those two things, and that's a lot of work up front, by the way. Right. And you don't like you don't really gain a lot from it, right? Like creating the right structure. It's a lot of work, but it's like, oh, you don't make a bunch of money from it, right? You don't get a lot more. Oh, wow. We're we're now we're so more efficient. It's just kind of the building block And in documenting your process, it you don't make it's like, oh, now we document our process. We're so much more efficient now you will find inefficiencies even when you document the process. But it's when you implement the lead symbols of the world and you implement some, some, some automation, whether it's using your you're using your property management software to, to to throw off a task or using some other type of software to, to, you know, send send out tasks to, to the right people. But those two things you kind of hit on. But they're man, they are so important.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:17:49] It is powerful and it's a big opportunity for folks to go and clear eyed first just thinking about how do I want to run this business policy, for example, is always going to trump process. Your policies are the broad framework for how you run your business. You have bad policies. The great processes aren't going to make up for it. Or if you don't have a.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:18:08] Policy.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:18:09] If you have none whatsoever. Sure. Yeah, exactly. There's a hierarchy based.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:18:14] On how I feel that day. Right, exactly.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:18:16] And which is confusing to your staff because if you're doing that, then why shouldn't they be able to do that? And then you're upset that they did that. And that's just kind of a vicious loop. So investing in the thinking and the frameworks and the models on the front side is worthwhile. And if you've done that, then you were in a disproportionately strong position to benefit from codifying that through process and through technology. If you haven't done that work, I mean, it's it's really it is challenging to get benefit from process 100%.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:18:46] 100%. Um, you know, the other thing is making sure that you're, um, well the other, the other piece that I liked and I'm going to talk a little bit about this, it's not super automation, but a ticketing system. You know, at Empire we ran our whole business through email and and as I talked to more property managers out there, they're doing the same thing, right? Like the property manager, like has, you know, thousands of emails and that they have to go search and they use emails as their tickets, right? They wait for the email to Bing and then they do their work, right? Very reactionary type solution. However, if that property manager goes on vacation, goes away or leaves, now you are stuck with trying to figure out what are they working on And you have to like go through all their email. When we create a ticketing system, we changed our changed our business for the better, right? Because now I can you talked about reporting. I can see how many tickets have been created, how many tickets are open, who has the most tickets? Now when somebody tells me, hey, man, I'm underwater, I can actually see it. They're underwater because they have, you know, 600 tickets that came in this last week or whatever it is Now. I know one of the things that you're working on with Lead Simple and moving forward is some kind of shared inbox that that kind of mimics a ticketing system. Can you tell a little a little bit about why you decided that is very similar to what I just said. And then like, what does that look like?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:20:15] Yeah, absolutely. So this is the cutting edge tech for us that we're excited about. And what this allows people to do is to go from hidden, closed off siloed inboxes assigned to individuals and to set instead to have leasing at mwela management.com and to manage out of that. So you have visibility on your team's performance. It's really easy for emails to get sat on and just hidden and you don't know. And when you do know, it's because somebody complained and brought it to your attention. And at that point you're on defense rather than offense. Being able to have a unified inbox allows multiple people to jump in to have visibility. If somebody goes on vacation, other people can jump in. It's proper collaboration, and particularly if you're operating in a departmental paradigm, it becomes fairly obvious when you really look at it. And so the reason we got into it is because this is a strong complement to the other pieces of what Lead Simple does, which is to provide a comprehensive CRM as well as workflow. When you're able to receive an email, to have context of the status and stage that the person that the email was sent to or from is in, and then to trigger the next activity based on that, that can lead to some really interesting possibilities of what you can build in terms of automation. But even absent automation, it provides you a comprehensive level of context around each momentary communication. And we just believe that if you give the right people, the smart people in your company, the context that they need, they're going to thrive. And they're going to do good work. But it's really easy for that context to get lost.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:21:56] I'm going to pivot here real quick. I'm gonna put you on the spot.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:22:00] Hit me.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:22:00] You started numerous companies and you've grown them. What is one quality in the team? When you hire a team, what's one quality you look for, or is there one like, how do you get great team? Mm. And no came out of left field and we didn't talk about in the green room. And I apologize for putting you on the spot.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:22:21] No, it's great. I like being put on the spot. Keep doing it. The thing that comes to mind for me I'm looking for. I'm looking for ambition, Pete. I'm looking for folks that want to go somewhere. And it's clear to me that they are ambitious. Not I'm going to be ambitious for them, not I'm going to motivate them. Do. Am I responsible for giving them a vision, a problem worthy of engaging in meaningful work to do? Yes. But I'm not here to motivate people if you're not motivated. Hey, it is what it is. I understand. God bless. But if you are motivated. Wow, we can do some serious damage. Let's talk about what we could do. Let's talk about where you could go. Let's talk about the resume and the skills you can build that you will walk away with. You won't be here forever. And when you leave this organization, aside from the pay that you took along the way, I want to see a life changing outcome for each and every team member based on the skills and abilities that they've accrued during their tenure here, the exploits that are listed on their resume. And so I want to find people that I think have a high likelihood and preponderance for achieving that.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:23:27] And the tale is simply how do they talk about their past? How do they talk about the problems that they've interacted with and how do they talk about why they want to do here based in terms of what do they want to build? What do they want to accomplish? Those are some tells. For me, ambition is definitely at the top of the list and equal with that, if not even more important are folks that want to be want to be real, want to be candid, want to have serious, meaningful conversations that require some level of vulnerability to bring their whole self to work and to work with other people that are doing the same, knowing that we're a family, not a sports team. That's a philosophical paradigm that I choose to embrace. So yes, there's a performance based piece here. Yes, we're going to be accountable. And even in the context of that environment, we can have some really deep, meaningful connection and that can be something that transcends a paycheck. There can be some real joy in that connection for folks that are willing to open themselves up in that way while committing to doing some really awesome stuff with another group of players.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:24:35] What would you say to an owner or a founder that says, can somebody be too ambitious? Like, like I'm worried like that dude that too ambitious. And then they're going to basically want to own the company or run the company. What do you is there is there such thing as a too ambitious or do you actually like that? And you just have to harness that energy?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:24:56] You know, I wouldn't say this too ambitious. There can be there can be folks that are delusional. There can be folks that are not interested in having the outcomes that they receive, be proportionate with the results that they create. Pete. Fascinating experience for me over the last 24 months was modifying someone's comp model. There was a reason I don't need to get into it, but modifying somebody's comp model, that was a pretty strong performer and removing the performance piece. Any guesses as to what happened to performance once the performance piece was removed?

 

Pete Neubig: [00:25:30] Increased dramatically.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:25:32] So after I removed the incentive pay, the performance went through the floor.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:25:36] Oh. Oh, oh. With the opposite. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're trying to give me a I thought you were trying to give me a brain.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:25:42] Brain? Brain puzzle? Yeah. No, no, no. Actually, it was.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:25:45] What it was. Huh? You got rid of performance and they went down. They went under.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:25:49] Fairly straightforward. Yeah, exactly. And so the reason that feels relevant here is, as I think about what's going to motivate people, there's always going to be compensation baked in. People are always going to want some level of upside and some level of ownership. But it's not just about the comp. It's about really telling people candidly and sincerely, I'm here to make you successful. And what that means is that when you leave here, you should be able to earn more money and have more opportunities available to you than when you first showed up here. And I'm invested and committing and making that happen now. There's always going to be some folks that want to advance faster than than the results they've produced seem to merit. And you can't always solve that. Sometimes you have to have hard conversations there. But in general, it's about making sure that the company is growing fast enough to keep the people that are growing with it motivated, stimulated, and to show them how they can grow if they if an a player ever detects that it's a two rung ladder, yeah, they're going to start to, you know, be be eyeing the exits. And so you got to calibrate the level of ambition with the level of growth that you want to sign up for and be personally on the hook for materializing in collaboration with your team.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:27:05] Yeah, you. I've always heard this saying you get the people you deserve. And I know early on in my career I didn't realize I deserved good people. And I would almost like, hire people that were not smarter than me on on almost on purpose. Right. Because I didn't. Not because I have a huge ego, which I do, but not that wasn't the reason. The reason was because I didn't think I could afford or I didn't think the company was good enough to get a super high quality person. And so if you're out there and you're listening to this, you can get A-players, you can get people that are smarter than you, that are motivated just as just as much as you are that want to help you build your company. You just have to believe that you can that that your company deserves it and that you can afford them.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:27:52] Yeah, it's the a player for the role for your hiring and a player for a leasing role. It's going to look going to look different than a player for a GM role. And you just got to make sure that you can properly motivate people, which requires you to really understand what they want. And that takes work. It takes conversation. What really motivates this person and how do I make sure that I'm delivering that.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:28:15] And Jordan can talk to you all day about this. I'm like, Oh, man, let's talk about the hiring process next because. Right, that's all goes down to. But we're up against it. We're going to take a quick commercial and then we're gonna come back for the The Lightning Round. Let's do it for the lightning round, buddy. We'll be right back after this, everybody. All right. Welcome back, everybody. We got Jordan Mueller with lead Simple in the hot seat for the The Lightning Round. John, I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. Just whatever comes to the top of your mind, if you do want to expand on it, great. But you can just answer and we move to the next question. All right. What is one thing that most people do not know about you?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:28:51] Um, one thing that most people don't know about me is that I have never paid for a haircut. That's a weird factoid, but how many people have you met that have never paid for a haircut?

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:06] I got to say, look, I haven't paid for one in about 15 years, but I've paid for haircuts. That's funny. What is one piece of advice you would give someone just starting out in business? Mhm.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:29:18] Mhm. Make sure that you make sure that you want to be in business. It's not about the money. If being in business is not its own reward in and of itself, then don't do it. There are much, much easier ways to make a buck.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:33] So if it was if it was that easy, everybody would do it, I guess, right? Exactly. That's great advice. Does Pineapple belong on pizza?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:29:41] I'm going to say yes. I'm open minded.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:47] Man.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:48] We. We still get along just so well. What book are you currently reading or what is one that has impacted your business or your life that you can recommend?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:29:56] Well, at the top of my list would be a book called Outsiders about capital allocation. That's in my top five for sure. The business, the book that I'm reading right now that I've really enjoyed is Death by Meeting by Patrick. Patrick Lencioni. I'm a bit of a Patrick Lencioni junkie. Pretty much anything he puts out I really enjoy. I love his writing style.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:20] I really do. I like stories. I love stories. And then he kind of gives you the textbook at the end of it. I like that.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:30:25] Yeah, 100%.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:27] You know, when I when I started with mind, I sent my CEO that book. Did you did. Nice. Nice. They had such terrible meetings. A little hint.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:30:36] A little nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:39] What comic book character do you most associate with?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:30:43] Um. Black Adam.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:45] Oh, right. Got him. What is one challenge you are currently facing in your business?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:30:51] Mhm. Um, one challenge for me. Mhm. Um, I think the first thing that comes to mind is around. Team building specifically in the sense of driving a high degree of connection in a remote environment. I believe in remote. I'm committed to it and I'm happy about it. However, there are times where I visit some of my in-office brethren and I do see some casual connections that are light, ephemeral just in passing that can create a bond that I don't know that we've fully recreated in a remote environment. So nailing that is definitely a big focus for us in 2023.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:31:39] So I heard about this one company that did everything remote and they didn't have any office space or very little office space, so they saved tons of money every year on office space. So what they did is they had a retreat once a year, invited everybody in the company and they would all get together for like a week, once a year, and they would start building relationships and that way. So maybe something that that you guys we're planning.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:32:06] Ours in April the lead civil annual retreat in Austin in April so yeah. Love it. Love it. We're on the same wavelength.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:32:13] Must have been in that book. All right. What was your first job?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:32:17] My first job.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:32:18] My guess is my guess. Let me guess. Let me guess. Is that you decided that you're going to create some land, like you're going to cut lawns, but instead of you doing it, you went out and found a bunch of classmates that cut lawns and you took a cut. I'm just guessing. Let me let me hear. What was your first job?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:32:32] Yeah, that's that's that's funny. That that was, you know, definitely one of the business plans, but that that's more of a hustle, right? Like the job job was actually just being the landscaper on a crew. I had my we had a family friend that ran a big landscaping crew and just working on a crew sweating in a Texas summer. Man, that was good for me.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:32:52] I bet. Bet you were lean and mean.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:32:54] Absolutely.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:32:55] What is your ideal vacation?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:32:58] Being on the beach, all inclusive resort and completely checked out. No phone, no email. Nice book in hand.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:33:07] Nice. Other than an open podcast. What is a podcast you recommend?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:33:12] Oh, um, I'm gonna have to say Peter Lowman's podcast owner, Occupied. I've been crushing a couple episodes of that lately and really like it.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:33:22] All right. And then also you have a podcast. Why don't you throw it out there?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:33:26] I do Profitable property management. We're publishing episodes weekly. Nice.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:33:32] Which do you prefer? Dogs or cats?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:33:34] Oh, dogs. Dogs. Dogs.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:33:36] Dog guy. All right. If someone listened to this episode and they wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way they can connect with you?

 

Jordan Muela: [00:33:43] Best way to reach out is to shoot me an email. Jordan at lead. Simple.com. I'm always happy to talk shop and I'm grateful for the work you're doing here and for this organization that we both get to mutually support and be a part of.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:33:58] And if you do want to join them, go to NRP. Org. Northam.org or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you are looking to reduce costs and don't don't have the money for automation yet and you want to hire some remote team, go to VPM Solutions.com or shoot me an email at Pete at VPM Solutions.com. Thanks, Jordan, for being here. Thanks, everybody.

 

Jordan Muela: [00:34:25] Happy to be here.