A Podcast | Matthew Whitaker:

Pete Neubig: [00:00:05] All right. Welcome back, everybody. So I have Matthew Whitaker, as promised, with Evan's company and Matt, Matthew and I, when we were in the green room, he just told me that he just closed on what was it for, more property management companies?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:00:19] Yeah, we did. So we're recording this. It's January 20th, 23 and at the end of last month, slash last year, we bought four property management companies that were pushing out press releases right now on.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:00:32] Well, congratulations on that. So Matthew manages Evernest now manages over 15,000 properties in 29 markets. So huge. Congratulations. That is a huge feat. So before we talk about where you are now, because I know we just touched on that, let's talk about the beginning of the story. How did you get involved in property management?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:00:51] Yeah, it's a story I've been telling a lot lately, actually. Um, you know, I've been in the single family management business for 20 years. I started when I was 23 years old. I got out of college and I started I was working a construction job like a project manager on a construction job and started buying and selling houses on nights and weekends. And my first house actually refinanced it, pulled all the cash out of it and stuck a tenant in it. And so that was my first time to manage a home. So also being doing that when I was 23, I mean, that was pretty exciting. Had a had the resident in there for six months and it's crazy to think. But you know, today, now that we manage 15,000 homes. But that resident stopped paying rent after six months in the house. So my first resident almost had to evict and didn't pay rent for three months. And normally that.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:01:47] Would that would make people not want to get into the business. Yeah, that should.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:01:51] Have told me something, right, Pete? Maybe. Maybe I would have escaped the business, but. But bought and sold houses until 2007, 2008 and 2008. Everybody that was in the business knows what happened. The market crashed and I started a property management company, and the whole idea of the property management company was number one to essentially help pay bills. But number two was to sell more houses. So everybody's heard of turnkey or the folks that are helping people buy fixing up houses and then selling it to them. And so that's what I was trying to do from 2008 until 2013. And in 2013, I went to a actually an event and got excited about potentially growing what I thought at the time would be a regional property management business. And I managed about 250 homes at the time and a lot of people in the industry about that same time know of us. And so I read the book Traction and in 2014 we kind of set this big, hairy, audacious goal, um, to grow to 25,000 homes under management at the time. Don't we just.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:02:59] Finally hit that.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:02:59] One? Well, we're close, right? We're at 15 of the 25. We think we're we hope we're going to do that this year. But but still stay very focused on it. We still have two more years left in that ten year journey. And we've actually reset that goal, which I'm happy to share later. But but only had 250 homes under management and just started kind of like grinding and the last 7 or 8 years to kind of like skip ahead. It's just been kind of this crazy story of we got into buying property management companies. We've bought 37 to date. We're growing organically very fast. So we're also, you know, it's not just like a buy strategy, but it's also a, you know, using what we do buy to, to grow as a platform from. And so it's been crazy this year is we started the year our last year, 2002. We started the year at 5000 homes under management and we ended with that those acquisitions, we ended at 15,000 homes. So 2022 was quite the year for us and we still have a lot of excitement, a lot of good things going on and continue to be really excited. And and for the people that are listening to this, I mean, we're all sitting in the right place at the right time as interest rates continue to rise and as people continue to not be able to afford to buy homes or sell homes based on equity getting reduced because of those rising interest rates, we're all sitting in a really good spot to manage a bunch of houses, so I'm very excited about the next 2 to 3 years.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:04:35] Here come the reluctant landlords.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:04:37] That's right. They left us for the last 4 or 5 years, and now they're going to come swarming back. They're coming.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:04:43] Back. So tell us a little bit about like your original vision was, you know, 25,000, which is still a huge vision early on. And then when did you know when did you shift that vision to the 250,000 that you have now? Like, so if I'm listening to this and I have a smaller company and I have like a smaller vision, but I really want a bigger vision, what what allowed you to, to think that big and what what would you tell others?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:05:10] Yeah. Well, first of all, traction talks about setting that big what it calls a ten year goal, and then it becomes essentially, you know, a nine year goal and a eight year goal. And as it got to three years, so when 25,000 houses became our three year goal a year ago, we set a new vision to by the end of the decade to get to 250,000 homes under management. And look, I've always kind of been a big thinker. You know, I never and I think this is a really important message that I've always had in the industry is it's okay to manage 300 homes or 200 and do it very profitably. And that's that's an okay. You know, if that's what you want to do, that's absolutely an awesome way to build a business and and make a ton of money like some of the people that do that make just unbelievable amounts of money because they sell the houses when they're ready to sell. It's just a very much a relationship business. I always wanted to build a business and so I set that, you know, I with two other people, we set that goal in a hotel room in Atlanta. And really there wasn't it was kind of like the Goldilocks goal at the time. It was like not too big, not too small.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:06:21] It felt just right. And we we what's so crazy is we wrote it down. We talk about it all the time. And then what I feel like happens over the course of that ten years is you start to, number one, believe it yourself. So there are times people ask me this all the time. There are times in this eight year journey that I didn't believe it, especially early on. And but as you the more you talk about it, the more you believe it. And then I feel like your brain goes to figuring out ways to get that done. And so our hope is that we cross over that 25,000 mark this year, which would put us over a year early and super exciting. I mean, but it's just amazing. You know, here we are kind of at the first year and we I think a lot about goals at the first of the year. And what I've gone is look back at the things that I've written down over the years about this time. It's just amazing. If you write something down and you think about it and you marinate on it how you can, you go to your brain goes to work figuring out ways to get that done.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:07:27] You almost speak it into existence. You almost think it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:07:32] You know, I don't. I don't think that you can just, like, write it down and forget about it, and then all of a sudden it's going to happen. But it is. I think your brain works, especially in the off hours, trying to figure close loops, especially. That's the way my brain works. And so as I marinated on 25,000 houses and how am I going to do it and how am I going to get from 500 to 1000 or 1000 to 2000? Your brain works hard on figuring out that problem. And and that's just we you know, our companies become very focused on solving that problem. And it's also about getting the right people on the bus to use a Jim Collins term. It's incredibly important for us to to for me and my team, to surround ourselves with people that believe in the vision and believe in that. And today we have 400 team members and having 400 team members waking up thinking, how can I get even one step closer to 25,000 homes is what it takes. But back when there was just three of us in a room, it was all three of us taking one step, one step, one step. And what I feel like, what it feels like, interestingly enough, is you grind and you grind and you grind and you actually work harder early.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:08:45] So if you're at 300 or 400 or 500 homes, like it's way harder for you to get to 600 homes than it is for us to add 100 homes. But we're getting the benefit of all that. And so you're having to work extra hard to get it to that next next plateau. And later in this journey, as you continue to grow your business, it feels like we have to work. Not that we're not working incredibly hard, but it feels like we're getting the payoff of all the 6 or 7 years of grinding that we did in the past. And it's not crazy because we actually look at it at our leadership team meeting the number of homes we manage. We look at it every day at our huddle. And it's not crazy for us to add 100 homes overnight, net positive. And so it's you know, I think about how hard it was for me to get to, you know, 7 or 8, seven from 7 to 800 or 100 to 200, how hard it was. And then I may wake up tomorrow and all of a sudden we're managing 100 more homes. So it's just kind of a kind of a crazy thing.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:09:50] So what was your original market and how many homes were you managing before you decided to go into another market?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:09:57] Yeah, original markets, Birmingham. And I think we got around 800 to 1000 homes and realized if we were going to reach 25,000 homes, we were going to have to, you know, clearly there's 25,000 homes in Birmingham, but we're not going to be able to manage all of them. And so we wanted to we knew we were going to have to go to other markets. And so for those of you who don't know where Birmingham is, it's about two hours, 2.5 hours south of Nashville. So Nashville was our second market, but I actually started physically going up to meetings in Nashville at least two years, probably more like three years before we ever went up there. So I was already had this vision of building a business up there. And because I was consistently going there, that's where we found Property Management Company to acquire God.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:10:45] Okay. So you acquired versus planning a flag there?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:10:49] Yeah, we actually planted a flag first and the guy spent 60 days sitting on his hands doing nothing. And then we found the business to acquire and then it was kind of off to the races after that.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:11:03] So have you planted a flag in other markets or do you always buy something before you go into a market? And we always What's the benefits and disadvantages of that?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:11:13] Yeah, we we up until about probably 12 months ago, 18 months ago, we always bought. So we found just like I was talking about earlier, it's easier to grow from 300 to 600 homes than it is to grow from 0 to 300. And so we have always bought to move into markets. That has changed a little bit. Um, we are we've gone into markets, we've started managing for some institutions in the last 18 months and so they have asked us to go to markets and they will commit a number of homes to us and that gives us the same platform to grow from. We feel like if they'll commit that number of homes to us. But up until about 18 months ago, we we only did it through acquisition. Now, I do think as we get more and more sophisticated, as everyone gets more and more sophisticated, there is a chance we're going to try to plant a flag and organically grow a market again, even without the institutional backing. But right now we kind of have our hands full with everything we're doing. So not something we're focused on.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:12:17] So you've done was it 36 acquisitions now? Did I get that right?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:12:20] 37 Yeah, 37 acquisitions.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:12:23] Okay. So obviously when you buy somebody, they have their. Own systems. They have their own software, they have their own people. So kind of take us on a high level what that looks like. How do you fold a company into Evanesced? Do you have like a have you guys perfected it yet after 37 times or is it everything is is it like a box of chocolates? Everything's different. You never know what you going to get.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:12:42] Well, you are always learning something, although you do get better at it after doing it 37 times. Look, the person that we're looking for or the group that we're looking for is a little bit different than I would say other people that are buying companies are looking for. We really look for people that want to get out of the business. And when they get when they're ready to get out of the business, we want to be there. So we think about somebody that maybe is retiring. You know, we want to be a solution if somebody is retiring or if you said, hey, look, you know, I started this property management business. I was a house flipper like Matthew was, or I was a real estate agent. And this is kind of like not what I really want to do the rest of my career. And I want to just kind of like sell it and go do something else. That's another what we call Avatar that we're very heavily focused on acquiring from. We don't look to the operator that says, I want to stay in the business and I just want to like rebrand myself.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:13:39] Evanesced That's just not what we're looking for. There are some buyers in the market that will do that, and there are some there are huge opportunities. Look, I think this is going to be a there's going to be a lot of winners in this space just because there's it's going to be such a big space. There's not going to be a single winner. And so it's just really important that we find the person, the types of sellers that we're looking for. What that allows us to do, Pete, is to integrate the business day one. So what we found is we want all of evanesced running on the same systems and processes, running the same software, running the same playbook. And day one, we flip a switch. To do that, we have an integration team. Really the mergers and acquisition teams actually run by Tim Weiner, who's the president this year. So really proud of him and excited that he's getting that opportunity to be a president. But he's also running a big piece of our business. He's running the whole mergers and acquisitions business and his team.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:14:37] He's going to have a busy year this year. In 20, he is going to.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:14:40] Have a really busy year. Yeah, there's no doubt. And his team is responsible for, you know, sourcing the deals and then contract to close the deals and then also integrating the deals. So today he has three groups of people that are doing three, three groups of probably I think it's five people. So 15 total people that are doing nothing but integration of these businesses. And so when we buy these businesses, if the owner leaves, there's typically a legacy team members. So we're having to retrain them on systems and processes. We're moving the accounting system over to our accounting system. We're just we just do everything kind of like some people call it rip the band aid. We just do everything at once. And then what we know is we're running our Evans playbook at the end of 30 days. And those those legacy team members, we have somebody that that that acquisition team will actually jump in and do a lot of the work, the day to day work and the integration of the processes while we're retraining those team members. And then after 30 days, we can like after they're trained, we can essentially introduce them back to the organization and then they're running. Evans Systems and processes.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:15:53] Are you are you migrating any data while you're in the due diligence process or do you wait for it to close? So do you like close January 1st, let's just say in January 1st to January 31st, You're moving all that data over and preparing for February 1st. The band Aids ripped off.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:16:08] This is something we learned. Is that like the diligence piece as you're building up to close, is doing a lot of the work that's required to move all the data onto your software and onto your systems.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:16:21] Got to get all management agreements. Yeah, got to dot the I's. Crossed the T's on the data.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:16:25] You're exactly right. And what we said was, look, let's do the extra 10 to 20% that that moves it all the way over onto our systems versus waiting another 30 days and then doing that same reconciliation process again. So we're already doing it. So let's get it on day one. Now we don't flip the switch and go live in our system until, you know, essentially January 1st in this example. But we are doing everything we can and putting it all in a sandbox site and it's like ready to go. And then we flip the switch when when we actually close, we actually close typically a few days before the end of the month, but so that we can get residents paying rent into our system versus paying into the legacy system, which everybody here will understand why.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:17:11] And what software are you guys using? Is it homegrown or are you guys some out of the box?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:17:15] So we are, you know, in the industry, everybody knows AppFolio, so we are running AppFolio, but we are also building our own software right now too. So building some. Proprietary software that's software right now is focused on our maintenance business. So we have an in-house maintenance business. And as most of y'all around, you know, on the podcast probably know is that there's no real software. I know there's some there's some there is some softwares out there that help with maintenance, but there's no fully integrated software that that runs the whole maintenance business. If you are the maintenance W-2 employees doing the work. And so we're we're moving that. So we've written that whole software, our teams using it, all of our techs are using it. And so we're just biting off piece by piece by piece and right now starting to work on some of the workflows in the property management business. And we call that software open the operating platform for Evanesced. And we're pretty excited about it. We think we're going to be running mostly proprietary software over the next 18 to 24 months.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:18:21] And is that just because it's more efficiency or is it more to to be a prop tech company and you get a higher valuation or is it just both?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:18:30] Yeah. Look, obviously the higher valuation is nice. So we think about this in a few ways. Number one is around client stickiness. Like how can we deliver to the client more visibility, more transparency. Have if you think about it, like more things at their fingertips that they want. And so we think about it, about client stickiness. The second thing we think about is just efficiency of our team. So there's a lot of talk in this industry around our direct labor efficiency ratio. You know, Jordan and Daniel Craig and their team talk a lot about that. And so it's anytime we can replace people with technology or or low level tasks with technology, we don't think about technology in the in the in the the, the like way of just replacing people. What we want to do is use our same people and scale using our same people and be able to do more with our team. So very much kind of like with the way lean manufacturing looks at it, how can we do more with the same team that we have? So those are the first two things that we're tackling. And then there's there's all sorts of other things that kind of like doors that get opened when you start writing your technology. Some people I'll just kind of name a few. I mean, you know, payments, you know, people monetizing the payments, being able to deliver other services through those through the technology. So look, that's that's well down the road. But right now we're just focused on creating sticky clients and making our business more efficient. And we basically reduced our tech stack from our maintenance tech. So you can imagine we have 40 maintenance techs that are running around America fixing toilets and a bunch of other things. And when they would show up day one with Evanesced, we would load five apps on their phone and we would say.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:20:29] That's yeah.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:20:30] Yeah. Well, I mean, we literally you can appreciate this, we would lose maintenance techs at week one because they couldn't wrap their brain around the technology. Now we load the Evans Tech app on their phone and it is very obvious, you know, what you need to do. And so I had a maintenance tech in here that was eating breakfast with me about a month ago, and he was just gushing about how much easier it was, how much visibility he had into his day, what was important, because we can highlight things that are important that he needs to fix and which helps us build faster. So it's just you can imagine just creating a whole lot of or removing a whole lot of friction in the process.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:21:12] Are they in every market that you're in? The maintenance company, or is that something that you're working towards? Yeah.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:21:17] Anytime we get past about 300 homes, we're going to hire a maintenance general maintenance tech. And then when we get past call it 500 homes, we've and this is this is very market specific, but generally across 500 homes, we think about hiring a plumber because plumbing is the number one specialized work order that we get and then call it seven in.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:21:40] Texas yet because it'd be it'd be HVAC.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:21:43] Okay well and then at 800 homes we get we get the HVAC tech. But you know, the HVAC seems to be a lot more seasonal than the plumbing. Plumbing breaks consistently. Hvac typically breaks at certain times of the year. But yeah, when you get to 800 homes, then all of a sudden you're able to to hire that person.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:22:04] Yeah, I will say HVAC breaks all times of the year in Houston.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:22:09] Yeah, look, there are definitely some markets like Florida and Texas and California where the HVAC is probably consistently breaking.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:22:17] So when when you were first starting to grow your business in other markets, what was the most difficult process that what was the one who kept breaking that? You're like, Man, we really got to fix this. And then how did you.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:22:30] Yeah, a lot like everything's been broken at least once here. I feel like I'm an MMA fighter. I've had this arm's been broken. This arm's been broken. Look, as you scale the organization, I heard somebody say, and I think this is generally right, like every time you double in size, like a third or a half of your process is break. And we have found that generally to be at least directionally true. And so I think the biggest key to scaling an organization is all around finding great people. And I've I've, you know, posted this on LinkedIn a lot. What I think we've done really well as an organization is gone out and find really talented people, sold them on the vision and then brought them into an industry that is a tough industry. Look, nobody I don't there may be somebody on this that's listening to this podcast, but I don't know too many people in this industry that didn't like that that ended up here intentionally like they were a young kid and they thought, I'm just going to be a property manager when I grow up. Maybe they had a family business and they inherited that family business and they did. But I.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:23:38] Think reluctantly, even even even if that's the case, it's probably that's.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:23:41] Probably true. Yeah. Because most of those kids ended up painting houses and cleaning up trash of rental houses and they're like, I'm never doing that. I'm going to go, I'm going to get a white collar job. And so so it's it's really a space where you've got to sell the vision and and it's a hard job. I mean, what we're doing is, is is a we live I tell my team all the time like our business is problems. And so, you know, whether it's the tenant has a problem or the owner has a problem, like we're all we are is problem solvers. And that can certainly wear people out. But as we scale to other markets, what I found is, yes, the processes would break down, but where there were really talented people that were there to where they broke down, either fix them or to help us rebuild the processes. That is where we found the most success. And so in our organization today, where the leaders are, where the people that are willing to kind of like buy in to how Evan sees the world. Our business is growing, it's profitable, and there are markets where people aren't quite as buy in, bought in, and the market may still be growing, but but maybe they're not as profitable. So.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:24:53] Let's switch to marketing real quick before I get you out of here. Um, you're growing organically and you're growing through acquisition. So if someone's listening to this, what is, what are one, 2 or 3 ways that you would recommend to them on how they grow their business organically?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:25:10] Yeah, they can do exactly what I did. A lot of people may or may not know, and I'm going to do a shameless plug. Spencer Sutton, who's our director of marketing here in Birmingham, he and I do a podcast called 300 to 3000. And we talk a lot about this. But when we first started and Spencer and I have been together for 7 or 8 years, we started creating content. And so I have been creating content for, you know, videos. And Spencer loves when new people come to Birmingham to throw an old picture of me with long hair up on the screen and say, Here's Matthew creating content eight years ago. But but that's something anybody can do if they're willing to do the work, you know, set your iPhone up. And the easiest thing we did was we started creating content around questions owners ask and we would answer. We tried to I sat down one day in Excel and just created 100 questions that I'd gotten when when I was on calls with potential clients and just started answering them one after another, one video at a time. And then we would post that video and that, you know, some videos would get 12 views, some of them would get 8 or 900 views. But even if you think about those 12 views, I was able to have 12 conversations off of a three minute video, and that's a great use of leveraging your time.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:26:32] And so I think from a marketing perspective, other than that, clearly, you know, paying for Google AdWords and paying for all these other sources, I think organically growing your brand is a great way to grow your business. I'll tell you, another person I think does a great job about this is Peter Lohmann in Columbus, Ohio. You know, he has grown his property management business by growing his brand, and he chooses to do that through Twitter. I know he's active on LinkedIn too, but but when you start out marketing is hustle and marketing is consistency. And I think maybe everybody hears this on this, on this, on this podcast and says, you know, I'm going to start shooting videos, but where do you stop? Do you stop at ten? Do you stop at 20? Do you stop at 100? Do you stop at a thousand or do you do a video, you know, a day for the rest of your career? And and that kind of stuff has a long tail to it. We're still getting leads today off videos Spencer and did 4 or 5 years ago.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:27:37] Wow.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:27:38] Matt? Matthew. I can sit here and talk to you all day long, but with the interest of time. I'm going to take a quick commercial break and I'm going to come right back with the Lightning Round. Are you ready for the lightning round?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:27:48] That'd be great. Don't know if I'm ready, but I'll sure try.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:27:51] All right. We'll be right back, everybody. All right. Welcome back, everybody. We got Matthew Whitaker here and he is ready for the lightning round. All right, Matthew. Here we go. What is one thing most people do not know about you?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:28:03] Let's see. I don't listen to a lot of music. I don't like to stay up late. And, uh, if I do listen to music, it's actually like Frank Sinatra. Old school.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:28:15] I like it. What is one piece of advice you would give someone just starting out in business?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:28:21] I read the book Traction.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:28:23] Does pineapple belong on pizza? No. What book you're currently reading, or what is one that has impacted your business or life.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:28:32] Uh, we're actually about to drop a podcast about this The Life. And this is a book by the same guy that wrote Traction. Gino Wickman. Yep, yep. And he wrote a book called The Life that he pushed out about a year ago. And I've been reading it every quarter for the last five quarters and setting goals around that.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:28:54] I want to get that one. Which Marvel character do you most associate with?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:29:00] I don't watch a lot of movies, so I don't know who. I don't even know a marvel. I mean, you probably could tell a comic.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:05] Book character in a.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:29:06] Comic book. Uh, maybe Superman. I don't know.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:10] What is one challenge you're currently facing in your business?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:29:15] Uh, I would say. Managing the growth along with managing cash to grow a business really fast is really hard, both emotionally and operationally, but it's also hard on the wallet. And so as we grow our organization trying to make sure we don't spend faster than we're growing the revenue.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:38] What was your first job?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:29:41] I can actually. I can literally see it. Look out my window over Smoothie King. I was a smoothie king barista, if you can call it that.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:29:51] You know, when we get together, I'll tell you the time when I almost bought a smoothie. King And no way against it. Yeah, The smoothie KING.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:29:59] I'm sitting in an office in a in an office tower, literally looking at the place of my first job. So it is the the exact smoothie.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:07] King So you know how to make an angel food? Yeah, Yeah.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:30:11] Can I can make them all.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:12] What was your ideal? What is your ideal vacation?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:30:16] I'm a mountain person. My wife is a beach person. And so that causes a lot of conflict in our marriage.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:24] So your ideal vacation is where a beach basically, wherever she wants to go.

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:30:28] Wherever she wants to go. Look, she wins way more than I do.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:31] That's right. Would you prefer dogs or cats? Dogs. All right. Well, listen, Matthew, thank you so much for being here. If somebody, you know, wanted to get in touch with you, what's the best way they get in touch with you?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:30:42] I post a lot on LinkedIn and love to push out content that I'm thinking about. And also I think I mentioned it on the podcast, the 300 to 3000 podcast that Spencer and I do. All we're trying to do, just like what you're doing here with Knaapen, which I think is great, is just add more value to property managers. And the whole goal of the podcast is to help people grow from 300 homes to 3000 homes. And so we're talking about ways that Evanesced did that.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:31:11] Excellent. And it's Evanesced echo. Correct?

 

Matthew Whitaker: [00:31:13] It is Echo. Yes. Echo.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:31:16] And if you are not a member of and you'd like to join, please go to npr.org. Or you can call the good folks there at 807 823, 452. And if you are looking for remote team members or virtual assistants to impact your business to help you grow your business at a low cost wage, please check out VPM Solutions.com. Matthew, thank you so much for being here. Take care, everybody. Thanks, Pete.