A Podcast | Bart Sturzl

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back everybody. Uh, as promised, I have past president and, uh, one of one of my mentors as well. Bart. Bart, before we get started. So, Bart, so much, thank you so much for being here today, by the way.

Bart Sturzl: Hey. You bet. Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Neubig: So, um, I actually have a Bart story. So, um, I was I was still new to NARPM. And the NARPM way is basically you get voluntold is, uh, that's kind of like a running joke inside of NARPM. And I was voluntold to be a secretary of NARPM for the local Houston chapter. And I was secretary in January. I became president elect in February, and I became president in October. So I was supposed to be like two years later, and I got president within ten months and I put on my signature president of NARPM. And Barak calls me, goes, Hey Pete, man, I love you, buddy, but you're not president or you're partisan of the Houston chapter. You need to you need to update it on your signature. And I go, oh, yeah, that's right.

Bart Sturzl: What's funny is later you did end up serving on the national board, too. So you got up there.

Pete Neubig: I did, but my other Bart story is I posted something before we had a Facebook group. We had like these discussion groups just in the NARPM website, and I posted something. I was really new to property management, and I didn't know what I was doing. And I got a phone call and I had never met you, Bart, before that. And you called me and you're like, hey, man, um, this is a longer answer than just doing a discussion group. And you basically helped me out tremendously. And we had never met before. And matter of fact, you had to go find my phone number inside the directory. And so I really, really always remember that. And that is the NARPM way.

Bart Sturzl: That's right.

Pete Neubig: It is. And so that leads me to my question, Bart. You've given a ton back to NARPM. You were, you know, I mean, a national president. Serving takes time. How was your business affected when you were the national president? When you were given back so much? And how were you personally affected by these? You know, by by giving back?

Bart Sturzl: Well, it's opposite actually. The year I was president, you travel so much and I don't know if people understand that the time commitment, especially back then, I think it's changed a little bit after Covid. Just like every industry, we've learned to do things differently. Um, but before Covid, I was president and I was gone from my company about six months of the year. Steve Schultz was the president elect behind me, and we traveled constantly to conferences, events, things across the country for different chapters and stuff like that. And so my business actually stagnated the year I was president. Um, and, you know, it's hard because if when you're a ma-and-pa, I call myself a ma-and-pa because I'm kind of a small company. Um, nobody sells the company like I do. And when you're away, it just makes it hard. And, you know, and I had to learn how to work remotely before remotely was a big thing. And so it was just it was hard on the company, but the opposite of that was how it benefited me personally, because it just makes you feel good to give back and help other people. Like you said, I didn't even know you. And I gave you a call and said, hey, you know, what can I do to help? I remember Greg Dearing, another great friend of both of ours, when he first got into business. I had met him the first time at a conference and I said, oh, great, I got a property for you. And he was brand new, had no properties, and I gave him his first couple properties because they were outside of an area I really didn't want. Later he had an issue with an AC problem, and I immediately called him up the next day and said, how can I help you? So it's just one of those things where that's happened to me in my life, through my career. People would call me up, Betty Fletcher, Tony Drost, Vickie Gaskill, these kind of people in, in my.

Pete Neubig: Some OGs right there, Bart.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah. Well, you know, I'm getting I'm getting old. Pete. I've been in this industry for almost 30 years now. So, you know, back when I was first starting out, though one of my biggest mentors was Michael Francis. He just was great for me. And what's funny is, you know, as I become older in this industry now, Michael calls me for advice and I'm like, oh, grasshopper, the rookie has become the master now. So it's kind of funny, but just the feeling you get personally just by giving to other people makes it makes it worth it to me. And I hope other people feel that way, but I certainly do.

Pete Neubig: So one of the things that's going on right now, as we're recording this in the last couple of years, is there's a big push for growth, growth, growth. And I actually see this in my podcast. Any podcast I do regarding growth, I get about double the downloads. So everybody's so worried about growth. And you come at it from a different point of view. You've been doing this for a long time. And you personally have kept your property management company at a certain level. I think you said you like you're around 300 units.

Bart Sturzl: Right.

Pete Neubig: And so tell me, like the reasoning behind that, some of the benefits that you see and we can and I'll, you know, I went the other way I was about growth guy. So we'll kind of I'll kind of do tit for tat here and talk about some of the benefits of growing and some of the pitfalls of growing.

Bart Sturzl: Sure. So don't get me wrong, there's a lot of great companies out there that are big and strong. I mean, you had a huge company and were very successful and was able to sell it. Uh, Brad Larson has a huge company. Brian Birdie has a huge company. There's a lot of big operators out there. Operators that were big before Big Box came in and started buying. People like, I don't count pure as one big company. I count pure as a conglomerate of a bunch of different companies. Right. But when I got into this, I got into this knowing I don't want to be the next Gary Keller. I'm not looking to be the biggest, baddest property manager in the United States or even the state of Texas. And so I started looking at different spreadsheets and different KPIs and different numbers and looking at things and said, okay, look the way I want to run my company and the way I want to have my personal time. I mean, I've got a daughter who's in high school now. So you can see throughout my career I've raised a daughter and I've been able to have the freedom to do things with her and go do stuff and and be in and out of the office when I need to be in and out of the office. It also has given me the freedom to run NARPM as a president, but I don't know if I would have been able to do that as a CEO or a conglomerate of a big company. Maybe I would have, but I don't know. But I've always kept it small because it's profitable. I mean, that's the bottom line. I looked at the numbers and said, look, if I go over this number, I've got to hire another property manager and maybe even another maintenance coordinator. And then once I hire them, I got to get bigger. And then it's like, and then I got to get bigger and then I get bigger. So I got to hire more people and I got to hire more people, so I get bigger. But you keep doing that. But the returns, the returns on that are diminishing. I've looked at it. I'm about 42% profitability at 300 properties. That's good money. I mean, it's like Steve Schultz would always say hit National Bank, that that's money in my pocket. And Robert used to always say, Robert Lock used to always say, we're in a nickel and dime business. We just need lots of nickels and dimes to make some money. But I have found that it's about 300 properties. Um, I'm at a sweet spot. I've got me another property manager. I've got a maintenance coordinator and several leasing agents, and that's it. I'm a tight ship. I'm three full time staff and two leasing agents, and they're 1099, so.

Pete Neubig: So let's break this down a little bit here.

Bart Sturzl: Sure.

Pete Neubig: So because there's a famous property manager in Austin, Steve Crosslin.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And he is famous for the 100 doors.

Bart Sturzl: 100 doors. But he was a one man show. Don't forget.

Pete Neubig: He was a one man show. Okay. So what made you decide? Like, did you get to 100 doors? And it was just you, and you decided, let me just go a little bit further. Or was 300 the number based on spreadsheets originally? Kind of give us the, the history of like when you went in, were you trying to grow, grow, grow and then you decided you cut back or like just talk a little bit about the the door count?

Bart Sturzl: Sure. So when I started, it wasn't just me. Um, my my company has always been a been a partnership. So it's me and Marissa. She's my business partner. When we came into this together, we knew where we wanted to be. I did a business plan. I knew where I wanted to be. I wanted to be about 200 to 300 doors. We got up above that at one point and we started firing people.

Pete Neubig: When you say people customers or firing employees?

Bart Sturzl: No. Customers, not employees.

Pete Neubig: Customers. Got it.

Bart Sturzl: I've only had to fire employees a couple of times due to theft or some other things that they did that were stupid. But luckily enough, in my industry, with  being small. My shortest term employee now is going on eight years. I haven't had to hire anyone in eight years. Because  I think the way I run my company people, it's like a family, almost. And so people stick around. I know a lot of my friends who are bigger, and they go through employees left and right. And to me, that's not something I want to do. But I knew going into this, I didn't want to be the next Gary Keller. I said that right from the get go. I was looking for an income that would make me very comfortable in life, which this does. Am I a billionaire? No. I'm never going to be a billionaire. But I live very well on 300 properties at 42% profitability. So, it's just one of those things I knew where I wanted to be, and I knew how much I wanted to work and how much I didn't want to work. So.

Pete Neubig: So your vision originally was anywhere from 200 to 300, 350 properties. You got above that.

Bart Sturzl: I did.

Pete Neubig: You felt some stress inside the business, maybe getting getting some bad clients, and you just kind of trimmed it down and you found your sweet spot.

Bart Sturzl: Not just bad clients, but bad service. I got to a point where I couldn't keep up with what I was doing, and I felt like I wasn't providing the service I should be providing. And so what we decided to do was to streamline that. And so I got rid of Fourplexes first, and then this last year I got rid of all my duplexes. And so now we are strictly we're at 280 something doors, all single family now. So I gotta grow a little bit to get back up to 300 after firing these duplexes.

Pete Neubig: Right. But this goes back to your vision. You were steadfast on your vision. You never wavered. And I think that alone right there, Bart, is if you listen to this, that right there is worth the price of admission. The worth the download right there. I'll tell you a different story. My vision with Steve Rosenberg is my business partner was 300 units, and we got to 300 because we were not profitable, because we didn't know how to run the business yet. We ended up going to 400, 500 and then eventually to over 1000 units. The one thing that we stayed true with you did is we we didn't take anything fourplexes or we only took Fourplexes or below. So we never did anything more than that. HOA nothing like that. But that shows the steadfastness and how you ran your business, because I'm assuming it wasn't always 42%. I'm assuming you might have. You've grown it a higher profitability over time, right?

Bart Sturzl: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because I wasn't always where I was. I mean, I started with 17 properties. There was a point where I was losing money, too.

Pete Neubig: Um, we've all been there. Yup.

Bart Sturzl: Right. And so I had to grow and do some stuff to, to get to that point. And it's also about finding the right people in the right spot and getting a team that that just flows well. And I didn't always have that. I mean, I trust me, I tell people all the time, I learned the hard way through blood and money, so I don't do anything easy. It seems like, in my life. Maybe it's the marine in me. I just eat too many crayons or something, but I it's just one of those things where once I've learned how to do it and I get it down, then that's how I do it. And, you know, it's like business 101 in college. I tell you, if a business isn't growing, it's dying. And I wouldn't say I'm not growing. I'm always growing. But because of natural attrition, either from sales or something like that, I lose properties too. Don't get me wrong, every year we have sales. We have people who say, hey, you know what? I've had this had this property 30 years. It's time for me to retire. We want to get rid of it. So I lose properties. But the goal is to always be bringing on better properties. And so what I do is I call it front loading. I will bring on a property that's got a better rent or a better area than my average rent roll is right now, and then that property is making me more money automatically because it's a nicer property. And then what I do is I give my maintenance coordinator and and I give her a Christmas gift every year. She gives me one owner's name, she wants gone, and I fire that owner. And that keeps her happy because, as you know, maintenance coordinators are it's a tough job. And so you got to give them time off. You got to give them stuff they need. And so one thing I do for her is I give her a property owner and and she gives me a name, no questions asked. We terminate that owner.

Pete Neubig: That's pretty cool. I used to do that, but they want to get rid of a hundred of them. I only gave him four. So let's go back here. So back in time, when you get to that that 350 mark, let's just call it and you realize you're not giving great service. So now you have a decision to make. There's one, which you took was like, I'm going to prune back decision. Two, which what I took is I'm going to go hire more people. And by doing that I went into debt. Where but when you turned back, you probably were still profitable.

Bart Sturzl: I was more profitable.

Pete Neubig: More profitable, because you were okay. Now you talk a lot about team and how they stay with you a long time. You know, I actually had originally bad success, right? We all have to learn how to, you know, what our core values are, how to get the right person in the right seat and profiling and all that stuff. One of my mindset, it's a belief I have and it's I don't think it's true, but it's true to me because it's my belief, um, is that I always think people want more. They want to grow like they want to be in a growing company so that they can kind of step up. You're saying that because you're, let's call it, you're growing, but you're not like you haven't you haven't added more job, job positions probably in a year or two. So how do you keep your people happy when, when there is no like there's no growth potential as far as job roles, but maybe maybe you found different ways for growth potential, or maybe you just found a different type of person. So tell me about your team members and how do you make them so happy for being in the same role for eight years?

Bart Sturzl: Well, one, I'd probably say they're all older. They're they're all my age. My maintenance coordinator is in her 50s. Missy, my business partner, is actually the oldest person in my corporation. She's a decade junior to me. But either you're a type of person who really wants to excel and keep going up and up and up and up the corporate ladder. Or you're someone who says to yourself, all right, I want to make a good living with an honest job. And so every year my employees get get raises, every year they get a raise, every year they're making more money. And every year that I can trim my portfolio down to a cleaner portfolio. We all have to work a little bit less, right? So if I can keep making good money and have to work less, isn't that just as powerful as growth and becoming higher up on something?

Pete Neubig: I think you hit something. I think you hit the nail on the head there. I just something I'm such growth minded. I never like it. Just never like you literally taught me something just now. I'm like, wow, that makes a lot of sense. You are literally the one of the few property manager companies running a stress free property management for your team.

Bart Sturzl: Oh, no no no, don't don't. I'm not that I we have stress, I have stress. There's stress. You know.

Pete Neubig: But your stress is probably not day in and day out week in.

Bart Sturzl: No no no no no, I don't worry about the little property management things and that kind of stuff. But they're don't get me wrong, we live in a stressful industry. People will get upset. Things happen. We make mistakes. The thing I've learned as a property manager, though, is own it. Hey, you know what? My manager made a mistake. She thought she was doing the right thing. We made a mistake. We'll make it right. And here's how we're going to make it right. We'll either compensate you, we'll pay for it to be repaired again. Whatever it is, I mean.

Pete Neubig: And this something you can do when you're at a 42% profit margin.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah. I mean, in this industry.

Pete Neubig: You have a slush fund of mistakes, right?

Bart Sturzl: Right. And so I do I have a in my budget, I have a budget item called concessions. And so we have to give concessions out. So it's just one of those things. But I think just having a good team and not and knowing that we're going to stay where we're at, I don't have to worry about I mean, I haven't gone below my numbers in forever, even with attrition from sales, even during Covid, we didn't lose the properties that we thought. Even in the boom after Covid, where everyone was selling like crazy because the market was so ballooned in Austin. I mean, we still kept our numbers. And so I think job security for my employees knowing that, hey, we're here, we're not going anywhere, is also important so they don't have to worry about, am I going to have a job tomorrow?

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I think, so some of the benefits of, of a of a company that is very steady is that it's very steady. Right. There's not a lot of ups and downs. Right. You don't have these huge like with, with Empire. Right. We have these huge ups and downs. Right. We got all these doors and now we got people leaving us and we got, you know, all you know, I mean, it's just it's just, uh, you know, we were growing like, I think it was like 30 to 35, you know, new properties a month. Well, that puts a lot of stress on onboarding and leasing and and maintenance and make readies. And it just puts a lot, a lot of property. My guess is you're probably bringing in, what, 2 to 5 properties a month?

Bart Sturzl: That's about right. Yeah. 2 to 5 a month. And I in the winter time I probably don't lose any. But in the summertime I'm losing, I don't know, 2 to 3 for sales. Maybe in June, July, August. I mean, I probably lose a I probably lose a handful to sales, but I'm picking up, you know, properties as well. So yeah, it there's ebbs and tides, but the difference between the ebbs and tides between me and someone like yourself or Brad Larson or someone like that is, if an owner came to you and said, hey, I have 50 doors, you're jumping on that. I'm passing on that because the first thing in my mind says, how would I like that? Later down the road when those 50 doors go out? And I wouldn't. And so I don't look for owners that big. I think my biggest owner is probably besides myself, maybe 10 to 15 doors. So I don't have, you know, if that owner fires me, I lose 15 doors. That's not great, but that doesn't kill me. 50 doors in or out for a company my size hurts.

Pete Neubig: Oh, yeah. Even a company my size. Uh, it would it hurt when that happened? Not. Not just because you lose the lose the revenue, but because of the amount of work it takes to offboard all those properties too man. So one of the differences I've seen between your business and the one I ran was that, we were a stressful business. Sun up to sun down, week in, week out. And so that causes... It gets you different types of personalities. Right? It's the ones that really want to grind it out. And they love the they love the action. Um, want to move up? I think you get some of those folks, but it washes out three quarters of the people because they're like, man, I can go make this kind of money somewhere else for a lot less stress in your life.

Bart Sturzl: Right.

Pete Neubig: Well, I think the benefit of staying small is really a big. It's a lot of it's a less stress on your team and on you as the business owner, because as you grow, you can literally, and I almost did this, you can literally grow yourself out of business. And if you're not careful with the with the funds and the money and how you're spending stuff, you can literally like, I'll tell the story one of these days. But, I mean, I almost lost a whole business back in 2018 before I sold and I cleaned it up in 19, and then we were able to sell, but because we almost grew ourselves out of business. And so my guess is everything is easier. Your finances are easier to do, like your operations, like implementing new stuff, like to talk about implementing, like if you go to like, I think I've seen you at an NARPM event once or twice, right? Like you learn something new and you want to implement. How is that?

Bart Sturzl: We're implementing stuff right now, just that we learn from convention. So I met with Bob Hansen. We're implementing a whole new way that we run applications. And so and so we're fighting through that right now. There's some bumps, there's some there's some hiccups. And we're having to learn a new process. I think they're new in what they're doing. So they're having to kind of learn how we do it on the single family side because I think they've been dealing multifamily mostly.

Pete Neubig: Where's Bob now these days?

Bart Sturzl: What's that?

Pete Neubig: Where's Bob these days?

Bart Sturzl: There. VeriFast.

Pete Neubig: Verifast.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah. He's over at Verifast now. Doing back background checks with facial recognition so that it cuts down on the fraud, making sure that people who are what they say they are, that they are and stuff. And so we thought that was pretty innovative. And so we're kind of changing the way we do things right now. And so but with a small team, it's a small hiccup with a big team. You've got all these different personalities saying you got the one type of person who says, I don't want change. Why are you coming in here messing up my job? I had this down. And you got the other people are like, okay, let's do this and let's do that. But then you know, it's the flighty. So it's hard with multiple personalities and multiple employees. And that's one of the things also keeping small. I don't have to deal with that. And I'm not in business to be an HR person. I'm a property manager who runs a pretty decent company because I've got the education on how to run a company. But and I'm not a CEO. I'm not someone like yourself who has the education on running a CEO company. I'm a property manager who runs a company. I work daily in my business.

Pete Neubig: I think that's interesting. You know, so your a property manager, that happens to be a business owner and I was a business owner that happened to run, that happened to own a property management company.

Bart Sturzl: Exactly. Like Andy is another example, because I compare you and Andy a lot similar. Andy's the same way. Andy was a CEO. He was an entrepreneur type person in his head, and he happened to be in property management. But then. But Andy could run a company in any industry because it's not property management that, that he thrives on. It's the fact that he can run a company.

Pete Neubig: Business. Right. That makes a lot of sense. So if somebody's coming to you and they hit you in the hall and they say, hey, Bart, you know, I'm really thinking about growing my property management firm. What are some things you would tell them like to kind of think through?

Bart Sturzl: Yeah. So, you know, first thing is you got to think about how much you want to grow and how much you can handle and where you're at now. The first question I ask them are, are you a sole proprietor? Are you a one man show right now? And if you are, you're thinking about growing and becoming a two man show. What's the first person you need to hire? I typically would say a maintenance coordinator in my opinion. Because then you can offload all the maintenance that's happening. And that's a lot of the driven calls and complaints or what drives us on a daily basis from our tenants on a daily basis is maintenance. And so if you can offload that maintenance off you, then that frees you up to do other things, you know. So I would say the first thing to hire would be a maintenance coordinator. Other people would say, depends on how you want to grow. If you're going to do portfolio and you each handle your own portfolio, then you want to hire a property manager. Um, but you got to get to a point. And some people say grow first, hire later. Some people say hire first and then grow later. I like to hire first, then grow later. Kind of aspect. It costs you more in the front run, but you don't stress the people out while you're growing and overworking them before you hire someone else.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, as long as the business can afford it. I'm kind of with you on that one.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Neubig: Do you ask them like, what their mindset is and what their vision is because.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: People that don't have any doors and they're like, yeah, I want to I want to get to 250,000 doors. I'm like, you're not even a door one. Like.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah, let's try for 100 doors first. You know, grow to a higher.

Pete Neubig: Start from one.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah, yeah. Let's go to 100 then. Let's go to 200.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Bart Sturzl: And then scale up from there and see where you're at and what you want to do. Because and and I would say as, as I, I don't know, maybe I'm different. But as I get older I don't I'm not driven like that anymore. I mean, when I was young, I was driven, I was like, yeah, I'm going to be the next King Kong of the industry. But that was never me anyway because I came into this industry late. Um, because I was a marine long before I was ever in business, and so I was older as I got into the industry. Anyway, I got into the industry probably when I was 30 ish. And so it's just been one of those things where I was already kind of established when I started. So and I would tell anyone who's wanting to grow, the first thing to do is ask and tell people I want to grow. I remember walking into my first meeting and saying, hey, I'm Bart. If you got a property you don't want, feel free to crap on me. I'll take it, and I did. I took some really bad properties when I was the first property manager. I didn't start with what I have now. My average rent was probably $500 when I started. I mean, I had to knock on people's doors for rent. It was bad. I mean, the judges knew me by name because I was the eviction king. It seemed like. So we all start somewhere, though, right? And so that's how I started. And so as I, as I got bigger and bigger and grew properties, I was 100. I had 100 properties of the worst properties in Austin. And I picked up that really good home somehow because someone was said they would trust me with it. I was able to fire like 20 doors because the one house was the equivalent to 20 of those doors. So, you know, it's just one of those things. That's how bad it was.

Pete Neubig: Oh man, I'll never forget one of my I hired a property manager and she's like, um, you'll you'll manage the worst doors in town. She's like, we're going to we're going to increase our rent roll. And she's. And but at the time I was managing, I think $800 doors was was the average. And she's like, we're going to start managing $1,500. I'm like $1,500. I'm like, people will rent for $1,500. My mortgage was $1200 at the time. So I'm like, there's no way someone would would rent a house for 15. You don't even get any equity. And man, she proved me wrong in 30 days. And then she turns around, she goes, I need you to fire these 30 clients. And I'm like, yes, ma'am.

Bart Sturzl: That's right. So now I pick up a house and it's like, it's almost even one for one. But back then, yeah, one nice house was like 20 of my doors. It was hilarious.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I think, one of the things that that you kind of mentioned, but we didn't really harp on it was the amount of free time you have, like, because you are not always trying to grow you, you said you, you, you kind of, you know, you helped raise your daughter because you were around, you were available.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: You were present six months on the road. You were able to live life. I'm sure you could go on multiple vacations, right?

Bart Sturzl: And more. I used to. But my daughter is in FFA now, and so we always have farm animals we have to feed, and so we're kind of home based until she's done with that. But but yeah, I mean, we used to we used to go, go, go on vacations and stuff. And with our daughter my daughter's been gosh, I've been to every continent but one. So yeah we go places.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So I'll put it in perspective. When I was growing my business like I could not go on vacation, my phone came with me. I remember being in Italy and like, I get called the first day, I'm in Italy and it's like one of my key people left. I'm like, okay, so I spent like, the like the rest of Italy, like, you know, getting on the phone and, you know, trying to figure things out. Like even at conferences, I would be like, gotta leave the conference to go to the room to go to go work. So I think that's a big difference. So if somebody's sitting there like, hey, I really want to grow, you gotta let them know. Like by growing a bigger firm. I personally think that the other side, once you break through to the other side, I think it's I think it's worth the squeeze because I did it right. I think it's worth the squeeze. But, man, if you don't have... Like in the marine, right. You have to like, go like, you know, you have to go in a foxhole and you gotta you gotta freaking go after it. Like you gotta go charge the machine gun to shooting at your ass. If you don't have the the wherewithal to go through that, you're not going to make it because it it is not easy growing a property management firm.

Bart Sturzl: And don't get me wrong, I mean, some of these guys have these big companies. They're doing really well and don't don't think I don't sit here and go, it'd be nice to have a Ferrari or gee, wouldn't it be cool if I if I could go do this frivolously or, you know, but they have different drive. They have different things that they want. I mean, everyone has different things that they want. It doesn't mean it's better or worse. It just means it's different. And so they may have the drive and that's what they want. And and I have the drive and this is what I want. Maybe their wants have bigger numbers than what my numbers are to say. Hey this is where I'm comfortable in life and this is where I'm happy in life. And I can live very well right here. Could I get here? But what would it take for me to go from here to here? And do I really want to do that? Some people do, some people don't. My best friend is Steve Schultz, and he's that kind of person. I mean, it is all about growth, money, building an empire. And he works hard. Um, so, I mean, I'm one time I was out at a charity golf tournament on a Wednesday or something. He texted me and I sent him a picture of me playing golf. He goes, man, what am I doing wrong? I was like, dude, you're not doing anything wrong. You're just doing it different.

Pete Neubig: You're doing it different.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah, when you're in when you're in France for two for two months, and in Africa on a safari for a month in the summertime. What are you doing wrong? You're not doing anything wrong. You're just doing it different. You're at a different level than I am.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I think one of the things. And we'll kind of go right back to the very beginning. You said you sat down with your partner and you had a number in mind, and once you hit that number, you were okay. Yeah, you were fine with that number. And I'm sure that number is increased a little bit over time. But you didn't exponential increase to change your whole business model. And I would caution anybody that's listening to this, like if you have a specific number, like if you're making $50,000 a year, you know, being working a dead end job and you said, man, I'd like to get to 200,000 a year and you get there. There's nothing wrong with staying there.

Bart Sturzl: No.

Pete Neubig: Especially. If you have a lot of time. If you want to grow and you want to go through the growing pains. It's called growing pains for a reason. Right. And, you know, Bart, you've been able to grow your business with with less pain than I have. I could tell you that much because I had a lot of freaking pain growing empire, I'll tell you that. Especially because I had no idea what the hell I was doing half the time.

Bart Sturzl: It's what I wanted because my wife's a school teacher, so she's in a job where she can't just say, hey, I'm going to go help my daughter with something or I'm going to go, you know, my daughter wants to go feed animals over here or go to this show and show her animal or go do this. My wife can't do that. I mean, she's in a she works for a company where she gets a certain amount of PTO or sick or whatever they get over there at the school. Um, and so, but I, I can do that. I can say that's not a problem. Yeah. I'm going to leave the office today at two, and I'll see y'all in two days.

Pete Neubig: You built you built a lifestyle business.

Bart Sturzl: Right?

Pete Neubig: And that's really what it's great. And and if you have a certain lifestyle that you want to live, you can literally build the business up to that lifestyle, whether you're Bart at 300 units or Steve Schultz at 1500 units and buying companies. It's just like you said, it's it's just a decision.

Bart Sturzl: That's right.

Pete Neubig: This has been great. Bart, I thank you so much for imparting your wisdom on this, because I think a lot of people get caught up in the door count and.

Bart Sturzl: I hate that. I hate that when you go to NARPM. What's the number one thing people always ask you? How many doors? How many doors? How many doors? You know what? Why don't you ask me how profitable I am? Why don't you ask me that instead? You know, you may have 1500 doors, but I'm probably taking more money home than you are.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I would say, the only reason why I like the door count number is because I'm an operational mind. And so running 300 units and running 1500 units in three markets...

Bart Sturzl: Is different.

Pete Neubig: It's a different business.

Bart Sturzl: Really different. I get it.

Pete Neubig: Yep. But that's not why they ask. They ask because it's a swinging contest.

Bart Sturzl: And there you go. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: This is a NARPM podcast so I'm not.

Bart Sturzl: That's right.

Pete Neubig: You guys can use your own thing. All right, Bart, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll put you on the lightning round.

Bart Sturzl: All right.

Pete Neubig: We'll be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back. Bart Sturzl, you are in the lightning round. Are you ready?

Bart Sturzl: You bet. Let's go.

Pete Neubig: What property management software do you use?

Bart Sturzl: PROMAS because I'm old.

Pete Neubig: That's a first on the show. We've been doing it three years.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah, it's it's the most sound software in the market for accounting, but man, it has no bells and whistles. Trust me, it has no Rentvine by far. But. And I was going to switch. Don't get me wrong, I was going to go to Rentvine because I love Dave and he's built a great product over there. But I'm, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm almost 60 and I'm getting ready thinking about retirement. And the last thing I want to do is put myself through the pain point of switching software. In the last couple of years of my life.

Pete Neubig: I got a promise, man. Uh, do you use virtual assistants? Remote team members?

Bart Sturzl: I have a remote team member, but she's salaried salary, remote team member. 

Pete Neubig: Okay, so she's in the States, and she just lives somewhere else.

Bart Sturzl: That's correct.

Pete Neubig: Yep. Do you have BDMs?

Bart Sturzl: No. But I am the BDM.

Pete Neubig: BDM. All right. What is one piece of advice you would give someone just starting out in the in the PM business?

Bart Sturzl: Don't. No. I'm joking. Go for it. But do it right. Kazen. Darryl Kazen used to always say this. Rob's father. He used to always say, do it right. If you're going to get in the PM business. Educate yourself. Join NAPRM. Take classes and be a professional property manager. Don't be a real estate agent who dabbles in property management. Do it. With both feet in and do it.

Pete Neubig: Well said. Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Bart Sturzl: No.

Pete Neubig: Uh, now I know why I liked you. Favorite fast food restaurant? Do you have a go to?

Bart Sturzl: Oh, gosh. Whataburger.

Pete Neubig: Texas boy right there, folks. What was your first job?

Bart Sturzl: Oh, I worked at a bowling alley. I started... I lied about my age. I told him I was 15, but I was only 14. So I started working at 14.

Pete Neubig: They didn't have that verification with the...

Bart Sturzl: The back, then they couldn't. Plus, I knew a lot of people at the bowling alley. And so at 15 I got to work. I think back then in the early 80s, you could work like 20 hours at 15, and then when you were 16, you could go full time or whatever. But yeah, I was a mechanic on the machines in the back of the bowling alley. I would turn wrenches. And it was a great job, because then I could do my homework when nothing was broken or anything like that. And, you know, I played I wrestled and stuff in high school, and so it gave me the flexibility to work on weekends and late hours and get some money.

Pete Neubig: Very cool. What is your ideal vacation?

Bart Sturzl: You know, I love Vegas. My ideal vacation is go to Vegas and just watch people and drink beer and have a good time. I just, I like to go do things and I like being around people.

Pete Neubig: What is something most people don't know about you?

Bart Sturzl: I don't know, I'm a pretty open book. If you know me, you know me. I guess the most people don't know that the most important thing in my life is not this company or this job or anything like that. The most important thing about me is I judge my days. On whether I had a laugh with a friend that day. If I can laugh with a friend, that was a good day.

Pete Neubig: I love that. What's a book that you're currently reading or one that you've read that's impacted your business or your life that you would recommend?

Bart Sturzl: Um. I like Turn the Ship Around. It's by a naval commander. It's a book about, there's different ways to do things, but sometimes you just gotta stop and reassess and change the whole system at once. I like that one. I liked.

Pete Neubig: It's a great book. That's a leading from the bottom up. Right?

Bart Sturzl: Basically leading from the bottom up. And then I also like, Leaders Eat Last. It's written by a marine Corps officer. It talks about taking care of your people before you take care of yourself and making sure that your employees are taken care of. So.

Pete Neubig: Both very well. Good. Very good. Books. Uh, what Disney character do you most associate with

Bart Sturzl: Mickey Mouse?

Pete Neubig: I love it. Dogs or cats? What do you prefer?

Bart Sturzl: I like dogs, but my wife has cats, so.

Pete Neubig: I guess you're a cat guy.

Bart Sturzl: No, I'm a dog guy.

Pete Neubig: I'm gonna allow this one time only for you to say horses.

Bart Sturzl: Oh, that's my daughter. And trust me. You know what? If you want to be in property management, stay out of the horse business. It's expensive. It's no fun. Horses are expensive.

Pete Neubig: Bart, you're out of the lightning round. If somebody hears this and they just want to pick your brain on, you know, staying small or for any reasons, what's the best way to reach you?

Bart Sturzl: Yeah. Email. Email me. Yeah. So it's Bart. Bart at Bella, b e l l a the number four, the letter u. Com. bart@bell4u.com. Email me.

Pete Neubig: Awesome.

Bart Sturzl: Yeah. And if it takes more than something. I can shoot back on an email. Send me your phone number. I'll call you.

Pete Neubig: And if you're listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, why not join? Go to NARPM. n a r p m.org, narpm.org. Or call the good folks (800) 782-3452. It's funny, I can't even read the number anymore because my...I'm almost as old as you, Bart, but it's...

Bart Sturzl: Well, I got 'em too. But I refuse to wear them unless I have to.

Pete Neubig: (800) 782-3452. And if you are looking for remote team members, and you're looking for a place where you can find them, you can get free training for them and you can pay them. Uh, please think of us vpmsolutions.com. You can email me direct, pete@vpmsolutions.com. Bart, thanks so much for being here today.

Bart Strzl: You bet Pete. Thanks for having me.