A Podcast | Benton Cotter

Pete Neubig: [00:00:05] All right, welcome back, everybody. And, uh, as promised, I have my good buddy and my old boss, Benton Carter here. Benton, thank you so much for taking the time and being on the radio today.

Benton Cotter: [00:00:18] No, I appreciate you having me, Pete. Man, it's good to catch up and good to see you. And I love hearing about all your stories and stuff. So, so love the time to catch up with you. So, boss, we use that loosely, you know, with quotations. No one can be Pete's boss, that's for sure.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:30] Well, I was unemployable, uh, in the mind. It took mine about 18 months to figure that out.

Benton Cotter: [00:00:35] So I figured it out after a day, I think. But it took a while to get rid of that right now. It's part space for us to both figure it out and admit it. I guess I'll let.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:43] People behind the curtain a little bit. The one of the funniest things now to me was funny is like, you called me up when I was working with you and you're like, hey, man, um, I think it might be good if we start editing you out. I'm like, oh, okay. Like, what are you thinking? Like October? You're like, no, I'm thinking like in two weeks. And I'm like, oh, okay. I'm like, so mine must really want to have gotten rid of me. And this is in June. And you're like, I've been saving your job since January. I said, oh, wow, okay, I get I guess I'm not going to make it to October. I guess I'm not. He goes, you're not going to make it till end of June, buddy.

Benton Cotter: [00:01:17] I don't know if that's how it went down.

Pete Neubig: [00:01:21] He's like, no, what you did say is I'm going on vacation. And then what's when I, when I get back, we'll we'll start the transition. Yeah. There you go. That was great. I'm like, all right.

Benton Cotter: [00:01:30] What am I better.

Pete Neubig: [00:01:32] Care of me? I got I had a nice little exit package and I do appreciate it. You are one of my favorite humans, brother. I appreciate you. When we were at mind and it was great getting to know you. So you exited mind like literally what, just a few months after me? I think in 21. Right?

Benton Cotter: [00:01:48] Uh, yeah. 2122 somewhere on there. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:01:51] Yeah, I think like, yeah, it's like near the end of 21, early 20. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Um, what have you been doing since then. It's we're on 24 now. So over the last few years what do you, what have you been up to?

Benton Cotter: [00:02:02] Dude, I think trying to find myself. Right, I don't know. So we, me and Jacob, my other partner, bought another property management company and we we resold that after a year to Evanesce, which was a good, fun transition with Matthew. Uh, been doing some other projects, you know, bought a cookie business and then and really kind of just focusing now, more like consulting stuff, trying to figure out what I, what I enjoy. And, and I think I've kind of narrowed it down. I enjoy talking about business and helping people with business, but I don't think I enjoy the actual hard work. Maybe, you know. So, uh, so I'm kind of doing that, finding a few things, but, uh, I think for the last few months, just more it's more about consulting and and figuring out what I want to do for the rest of my life, you know, type thing.

Pete Neubig: [00:02:39] So I'm not going to let this just we're not going to brush right past this. Yes, folks, he did say cookie business. So, uh, you bought you bought a couple of franchises in in the cookie business.

Benton Cotter: [00:02:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm in Arizona and then also around the Nashville area. And so those are just starting up. You know, it's been been a little bit different to do like retail. It's my first time doing like a restaurant retail type spot. You know I've owned other businesses before but been usually service businesses. And so it's been it's been good. It's interesting to know you don't try to use it as a passive income, but it's called dirty dough. And it's been great to have two partners that kind of run the operations on more back end and financial and marketing and stuff, and so but cool experience, you know, definitely. Uh, right now it's like I probably regret it, but you know. Yea, I'll be grateful. You know type thing. You're in the mix of it. So just been open for a few months and then Nashville. What's going up here in the month too. So excuse to me to go to Nashville? I think that's where my wife sent it for it. Like an excuse to go to Nashville. So she's all for it.

Pete Neubig: [00:03:33] It's a write off. I don't even know what a write off is, but they're doing it.

Benton Cotter: [00:03:36] That's what we keep saying about our mind stock. Oh, it's just a write off. You know, it's going to be a loss. And so we can just write it off. Right.

Pete Neubig: [00:03:41] We're going to get into that. We're going to get into that here in a second. But before that. So um, let's talk a little bit about like I know like um, with rent vest. Right. That was your old company rent vest. Um, before you sold to mind, you were kind of like the marketing guru. Like, um, one of the things that you guys did extremely, extremely well was you would market into a new market, get properties, um, under contract, and then you would hire a property manager in, in that area, which I thought was just brilliant. And, uh, it sounds like, um, maybe you're pivoting towards being a fractional CMO or helping people with their marketing. So give if you can. You know, obviously our listeners are property management, property management companies. Can you give like your top 2 or 3 like little tricks or just nuggets that you would tell clients or potential clients about how their business through marketing?

Benton Cotter: [00:04:37] Yeah, man, that's one of my favorite thing. All three of the companies know that this is my had five property management companies. And I kind of always focused on marketing. Right. And so rent is a bit unique, you know. So my number one thing is like, hey, don't go into PPC right away unless you're ready for it. You know, like Google Pay per click or Facebook or anything like that because it's expensive. But really what I the main thing I see, and this is just, you know, I've been talking to a lot of people and I've run and ran a lot of companies when we bought them with rent vest or mind. Right is they don't know who their brand like, know who you are and then market you as yourself. Don't mark it as your competitor. Right. Like if you're low cost leader, mark yourself as a low cost leader. Just own it. And so don't kind of project all these other things that you know you're not because they're going to see through it on your conversions. This is not about not about views and clicks. And I think that's the big thing for people is like, I got so many people to click on my website or view it. And so they focus more on how do I trick them to click on my website. It's like, hey, all matters is conversion. Do they sign up with you? And so start with what your value proposition is, who you are. Really promote that and then see where you need to go from there. Right. Some people can work better on PPC, some work around on Facebook, some work better.

Benton Cotter: [00:05:43] Just referral, you know, word of mouth or in your local community. Um, and you just kind of know who you are. And then if you and if you're not that person, like, I'm not the company to go on PPC, then if you want to change, change but change your brand. And so that's always know who you are, know your voice number one thing. And then really I think nowadays man everybody should just reading content. You know those peop man you're doing a podcast you content. It's all about content. Become the local expert. That's where everything's going. Um, Google's promoting it. Youtube's promoting it. Everybody's promoting it, right? Facebook. Everything's about content and being the educator. And so just do that, man. Start with that first because it just costs your time. And then once you figure out your clientele, you start getting people in. Then you can kind of hone in your message and then go to actual paid ads and advertising. So it's more systematic, you know, do it in stages. But I would focus everything on content even through the worst, like I'm the worst on video and stuff. And I just just put it out there. People appreciate it. If you're genuine and you know who you are and you're not being one of those, you know you're not going to be fake. Just be real. Be who you are, and then you'll connect with people. And then it starts from there and it snowballs. It takes a little bit. You're not going to get leads right away, but it adds up.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:50] So so if I'm a PM firm in Houston, Texas, you're saying have a podcast or something like that for content and literally just talk about investing in Houston. Would that be the would that be.

Benton Cotter: [00:07:06] Yeah, exactly. And I would just actually do YouTube shorts right now are really popular. Google's really promoting YouTube shorts. Just do YouTube shorts, two minute videos, three minute videos, and just kick one of those out a day or once every two days. You know, try to do three a week, whatever you can do. And that's what I would start with. And it starts to snowball. Like you'll see it. It's going to take a month or 60 days before you feel comfortable. Yeah. Don't don't.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:25] Do it. One time you're like, oh, it didn't work right.

Benton Cotter: [00:07:28] Yeah. You got to commit, you know, at least 2 to 3 months and then you'll start seeing the fruits of it and then it's repeatable. Right. Like let's say you have six months of content and you only got six leads. That sucks, right? Six months of time. That's probably an hour a day waste all this time. Well, you can reuse that content for the next 6 to 10 years, right. And so if you get six leads every six months from it and makes it worth its time. So you just have to remember that. And it also compounds it really has a compounding effect. You'll reach a certain threshold and the leads will just start exponentially coming in. And yeah and just talk about investments talk about anything rent collection. You can talk about evictions. We have so much stuff we can talk about. Yeah. And something that's not boring. Some of it's, you know, boring, some of it's not. And rental investment and investment portion of it is the sexier portion of it. So I always start with the sexier portion. But you can talk about anything and you just brand yourself as the the expert. Even though we are the expert. I'm like, we might not know a lot, but we know most more than these landlords. You know, that they're investing and.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:22] And these realtors that are just trying to survive and doing.

Benton Cotter: [00:08:25] It.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:25] Yeah, that's.

Benton Cotter: [00:08:25] 100%. We know way more than the realtors.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:28] Where it's not that hard. Um, where do you come on on, uh, with webinars, like, would you recommend that property management firms start doing some webinars after they get some traction?

Benton Cotter: [00:08:40] Yeah. So purpose I like the purpose of a webinars. I don't think necessarily it's to build leads directly with the people on the webinar. It's to build raving fans. You'll notice to your webinars you'll get the same 5 or 10 people whatever showing up Those who are you holding on to? It's kind of like building a community, build a community of raving fans. And I think webinars are a great way to do that or go out into local and have, you know, just have a little meeting or event, a luncheon type of thing, something lunch and learn. Because you build raving fans who actually promote you if you actually get that down. And Alex, we were talking about Alex Murcia before. Think of that. You know his one hundreds you know and so you'd have these just go where your people are at and then they become your raving fans, you know, find someone that's, you know, the best loan officer if they start, you know, talking about your name, it's their whole clientele becomes referral based. And so you just get your raving fans and webinars I think are good. You know, anything like that, anything you do is good. Anything where you're on your.

Pete Neubig: [00:09:34] Stage, right? You're on the stage or you're holding the microphone, you are the expert, right?

Benton Cotter: [00:09:38] Yeah. And and then if you know, you like start liking these webinars, do them Do more people will come. If you're like, I don't really like the webinars, I'm just going to go do local event. People will come. You just have to keep doing it and keep promoting it. And if you're not the right person or like, hey, I have no people skills, I'm not, you know, and I'm not an extrovert at all. Then hire someone to be it. You just that's dangerous because then they become the expert and they get the following. And then if they leave you.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:01] Yeah, then they may they they take their following for sure. And they may take your clients as well.

Benton Cotter: [00:10:05] Yeah. So I say if you're not good at it then just read a few books, get better at it. Everybody can get better at it. And I'm telling you it's just you're relaying information. You don't need to be the most charismatic. It works, you know? And so I like webinars, like, I like local events because I like the more personal connection. Yeah. Um, if they see you, but then you limit your audience. Right. And so anything you do though, man, try, try anything. And all these tools are super cheap to do, right? You know, I mean like local event, you may pay for lunch, right? Webinar. You paid bucks a month.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:32] So one of the things that we did at Empire is we would have these events and we would have vendors support the event. Yeah. And it went from really small into our from our office into like I think at some point we were doing at, at a hotel and, and we like literally throwing like a one day kind of kind of seminar type stuff.

Benton Cotter: [00:10:49] So I think that's awesome. Yeah. I'm just going one on like, uh, Rosenbaum. Tiffany Rose wants to do one this weekend, and she's having a pest control company sponsor it. I mean, like, just a little swim party. You know, we're in Arizona top, so we need swim parties, but, yeah, totally. Man. Do anything like that. I mean, or team up with that vendor and you get some of their clientele to come to and their client you share, you know, if you're not big enough or share with three different people, go to the real estate offices and say, hey, can I promote with your, you know, with your team, let's do an event together and they might hold the majority. Then you say, well, I'll pay more towards the, the dinner or something like that, because you know, they're getting more out of it than you are or you're getting more out of it than they are. But whatever it is, you know, just do something.

Pete Neubig: [00:11:26] Yeah, like a database swap or something like they call what they call strategic alliances, I think.

Benton Cotter: [00:11:31] Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:11:32] So that's great. That's just the tip of the iceberg. So um, so I think your calling is marketing. So, uh, we'll, we'll talk to people on how they can get in touch with you, and we're going to force you to start a fractional CMO business or a or a coaching business.

Benton Cotter: [00:11:46] And you know what? We'll see, man, I only do it for a few people. So but I enjoy talking about it. I definitely enjoy talking about it. And so that's I'm passionate about it. Have been for years 15 years in the business. You know been through the gauntlet. That's a nice thing is I had a lot of experience and I see the mistakes and I just want to share that. I mean, I've had, you know, and you've tried you you've tried.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:02] Just about everything too. Oh yeah man, you're on you're on the forefront of, uh, of all this internet stuff, you know, ten, 15 years ago. Um, so you're just. And you just keep continuously learning the new stuff and the new tricks.

Benton Cotter: [00:12:14] Yeah. And that's that's definitely the benefit, right? You kind of get the the greener pastures when you do that.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:19] Yeah. So, um, real quick before I, so I want to talk to you about the mind and, uh, the Roofstock merger here. But before I get into that, um, uh, SEO, what exactly is like to you? What is SEO? Because we have these companies out there and they promote SEO, but like how how important is is SEO and and what can you do to make, you know, to to make it better for you? Like. And what does it actually ultimately supposed to do for you?

Benton Cotter: [00:12:45] Yeah. You know, uh, SEO is great. It's also horrible. You know, if you're going to do SEO, you have to go all in. And SEO is like, hey, there's there's two aspects of it. There's one that's like technical SEO, like making sure your website is readable by Google, basically, and being right, like that's like, oh, instead of having this, you have an H1 tag here, you have H2 tag. These stupid, you know, HTML kind of coding things. And so you have certain technicals like, hey, put these keywords here. You have to have a header here. You have to have a description on each image. Those are all technical skills which a lot of people can do. And a lot of the tools out there that are, you know, AI tools. When you checked your website and say, hey, you need to do this, you need to do this. That's all technical stuff. And there's some nuances and creativity and there's good people in that. The other part of it is all about your content. And so how many, how long people are staying on your website, engaging with your website. The benefits of us is we get a lot of tenants and residents to come, prospects to come to our websites. So we get a lot of hits as a property management company. So naturally boost our SEO because Google says, hey, a lot of people are visiting that website. Well, they're only coming for a minute or two to book a showing and then they're gone, you know? And so so the rest of the part is about content keeping them on your website and building really good articles or pages of really well written content.

Benton Cotter: [00:13:56] And so if you nail those things together, it can be huge, right? So, so PPC and ad placement has definitely taken over the first page of Google. Like when you search you know your four top results are kind of ad placements. Now. It used to be just whoever had the top SEO ranking would come up number one for the keyword, right? And there's no ads anywhere there on the to the side. Well now it's I, it's the first part. Now if you notice you do Google and you have an I, you have the Gemini. And then below that's ads and then below that's your search. It's still very profitable to be the number one keyword, the number top, the top three. But really it's the number two. Number three or number one, number two of the top three of search engines. And so if you say like property management Houston, Texas, which is a strong keyword property searched, you know, a few thousand times a month at least, and your website comes up because you built SEO to say, hey, that keywords in your pages. And when people search that, they click on your page and they spend a lot of time on it. So Google thinks, oh, they Pete must be really good at this. I'm like, every time I'm going to promote that more. So you move up the list and as you get up the list, it's become number one. You can get a lot of leads, but it depends on how many keywords you're doing. Like so SEO is hard. And I think, um, a lot of our people are interested in foreign.

Pete Neubig: [00:15:07] Language, and I think a lot of us that are, you know, in our 50s, uh, owning our property management firms, we just we just fork over money and say, here you go. I need somebody to do SEO and I'm not.

Benton Cotter: [00:15:19] Yeah, I'm not a big fan of, like. I feel like if you're doing lots of different marketing channels, then go all in and do SEO. You have to go all in on SEO, and you have to be number one, number one or number two, and for a lot of keywords to make it worth it. And that's the nice thing it does compound. So if you start becoming number one for this keyword, you might have 30 other keywords where you start becoming higher up and it could really compound. And that's why that number one person in the market, that's SEO, kind of owns it, and it's really worth it. The other 50 people trying to do it, it's not worth it.

Pete Neubig: [00:15:48] That's a marathon not a sprint.

Benton Cotter: [00:15:49] Yeah, yeah. And then you really have to go and put it in and you really have to nail it. And some markets are more competitive and some like I don't know, I'd rather just build good content and naturally people will come to you. You have your YouTube video shorts, you have your Facebook articles, you have your LinkedIn articles. They kind of come back to your website. They blog, people are staying. You build up the natural good content. It's easier to get out there on the other social media platforms, to be honest, than it is to build an SEO website nowadays, just because it's built for the personal influencer. Now our whole society, but also the online and so be more of a social media presence. I would do that front than I would the SEO. I think SEO is hard and I understand you can do it. We did it. You know, we had it and I kind of gave it over to him. We just used very we tested a lot of stuff and I just gave it over to the SEO guy. Happens. My brother's firm. Like, I don't care what the website looks like, just make it the best SEO possible. And it took us a year. You know, we're in 13 different markets. So it took us a year just for pretty much for Arizona to see some real traction. And other markets took a while because we didn't have any presence there. So it's hard. We had no we moved to nine markets in a year and a half, 18 months. Right. And so we had no presence there. So SEO was super hard, way more difficult. It's like, well, might as well put it into PPC. It's way more, you know, way paid advertising. It's way more effective for us. And so I don't know, man SEO, I can talk all day long. But I would say if you're going to do SEO, go all in, spend the money, get the right person. Otherwise spend that 1500 or 2 grand somewhere else on your time and you.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:18] Dropped a serious nugget there. For those of you who are in one market and you look and go to another market, PPC is probably a much better bang for your buck than SEO optimization.

Benton Cotter: [00:17:29] Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And you can gauge it like we talked about before that you kind of let that know, like we would advertise before we moved there just to see the interest and see how effective we were. So we had 30 days to 45 days of testing the market with PPC, and I knew how many leads were getting like, okay, we're going to, you know, we're going to sign up 20 doors a month in this area. Let's go. Let's move to Atlanta. Let's open Atlanta. You know, like it was just an easy decision. And you know, some markets took a little bit longer like okay, we need to build up a little bit more of a presence to make us a little more effective. And then we can kind of hit the the fuel on the fire, you know, pour the gas on the fire. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:00] We're talking a little bit about this in the green room before we got on. So, um, you know, uh, Rent Fest and Empire both tried to go into new markets. One of them did a very successfully run fest. One of them did it very unsuccessfully. Empire. And the big difference was you invested money on the PPC and the marketing ahead of time. What I did is I hired people in that new market, and so it cost me ten times more than it cost you, and you started bringing in revenue way quicker than we did. And that's why we only got to another. We only got to two other markets, Fort Worth and Dallas. And some people say it's the same market. So we only got to two markets where you were in how many markets when you when you sold 13. Yeah 13 markets three years.

Benton Cotter: [00:18:41] Yeah. That's crazy.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:42] It's crazy. All right. So before I went on vacation, um, which, uh, we are taping this, I think it's like June 20th. Um, I was on vacation, um, Um, but right before I went on vacation, the big news dropped where Mind and Reinvest merged. And, um, every time when I was at mind and we had these stocks and everything and mind would send out some, some legalization type, legal type email, whatever I would always call Bet. And I'm like, what does this mean, man? Like so so Benton, what do you think? Because you have a unique perspective. You've been in the business for a long time. You sold your company in mind. You you and I both have stock in mind. What is what do you think the mind merger with Roofstock means? Let's talk about the industry. Let's go macro first. What do you think that means for the industry in your in your opinion?

Benton Cotter: [00:19:33] Well I think two things. One, specifically with mine coming off the table basically, you know, of the industry. Not really. I foresee them not really pushing the retail for a little bit until rates come back and Roofstock starts buying. There's no point in moving it. And so it kind of takes another big player a little bit, you know, pauses them a little bit. But kind of to be honest, I felt the going around the industry and talking to people was more like, well, is this really going to work? Are these roll ups, these big conglomerates, venture capital or equity backed players really going to make it? And is it going to kind of throw out that growth where we saw a few players coming into the field the last few years that had heavy money investment, and we're not seeing any kind of results for their money that they're putting in. Right? They're not getting any kind of payback. And so it kind of put a little bit of a, I don't know, a black eye on the industry of the roll ups type thing. Um, but I think, I think it's good. I think it's personally good one for me personally, because it's tied to Roofstock, who has lots more money to lose. And so they hey, we're live for another few more years, you know, because they could have a bunch of cash to burn through. But also it kind of gets them a little bit of a strategic advantage. I think Roofstock has because. Right. They're just about buying. They're up buying and selling homes. Right, is the big one, especially with the institutional side of the REITs.

Benton Cotter: [00:20:46] And so if they have the whole, uh, life cycle for these rights and makes it easier for them, retains it makes them more efficient. You know, all this supposedly. Uh, and so hopefully they get more clients and tracked it. And I think personally, I think all of us as property managers should not not be property managers. We shouldn't be rent collectors, we should be investment managers, and we should have that same model. We should be helping them buy and source properties properly, help them go through the closing process, find the right loan officer, do the repairs, and then close. When they close it, we manage it and then hopefully help them buy another one, or sell this one and buy two more. We should have that whole life cycle ourselves as rental managers. So rental investment managers and be the experts. I think that's a realization of true. Think of that. That mind has what, 20,000 doors plus roof stock, which, you know, had $200 million of revenue per year when they, they they got some money a couple of years ago. That's a lot of homes they're buying and selling. And so they kind of have a pretty big industry. I mean, their top mine was definitely top five of door volume for single family. And they were the top buyer and seller of real estate. Roofstock was you combine those together, you got two powerhouses. And so I see that trend continuing and continuing where it's not going to be any more property managers. It's going to be more you hold you own the whole life cycle and the platform of buying, selling and managing.

Pete Neubig: [00:22:04] So what do you think this means for somebody who owns a small mom and pop? You know, 200 to call it 1000 single family homes in a market. Does this change anything for them, or do you think this is is this a win for the little guy in a way?

Benton Cotter: [00:22:20] I think it is for a little bit, you know, saying, hey, let's roll ups hard. Right? And then I think it's, it's a, it's a realization or a proof in the pudding that, hey, the experience matters. The relationship matters. That this is it's hard to duplicate the relationship that you have with your investor. You know, the landlord. And so mine's trying to do at scale here. These other companies are trying to get scale awareness and it's a hard thing to duplicate. So I feel like hey it gives a validates that, hey, it does matter that we have this personal relationship, whether it's you or your staff, and you can actually build up a good relationship, customer service. And so I think I just found that a little bit more saying, hey, that's real. So really lean into that, really lean into the customer service and the relationship because that's something that that the scaled companies cannot repeat or duplicate. And so that's why I think it means I don't think it's necessarily thinks it's going to go away, though I still think we're going to have wait till rates come back and it gets hot again. We're going to have another frenzy of roll ups come in again. It's just because the industry is so big and nobody has over, you know, 0.1% of the market share.

Benton Cotter: [00:23:20] Think of that. There's not a lot of industries out there that there's not a big player in. If you get 1% of the market share, you're $1 billion company. So that's what's at least people are thinking. That's crazy. It's a crazy thing to to it's a huge open market. But it's still it's really hard. And so I just say keep keep focusing on the relationship and how you can make it a better experience for them. Um, you know, the tools are coming in. So even with mine or these people that have really tech backgrounds, we have a lot of good vendors that can almost not get to their level because it's all one platform, right? That's if you have total cohesion. That's awesome. But we have a lot of good vendors where you can really up your game, trust your vendors so you can kind of compete with mine with that. But mine cannot compete with your relationship. I mean, hands down, they can't. There's a few things they can add on, but really most people want is they want a good relationship that you take care of, the home that you care. It's hard for mine to duplicate that and hard these big companies to duplicate. So just focus in on that.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:13] What do you think this does for the valuations for those big companies like, you know always always you know, I mean at one point they were valued at over 800 million. Yeah. Um, and you know, they were quote unquote proptech. Uh, but if you look at like, you know, um, the history, just recent history with, uh, Renters Warehouse being what it is, uh, and with mind and now with this Roofstock merger, um, it doesn't look like they're getting the valuation that that ten ex multiple. Uh, do you think this is going to trickle down to the Pures and and, and Matthews company as well?

Benton Cotter: [00:24:51] Yeah, I think for sure I think they're going to feel the hit of it. Right. You know, I think luckily I think with Matthew he's more more of on EBITDA and you know, on based on actual profits a little bit.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:01] He was never trying to be proptech. Right. I don't think, you know.

Benton Cotter: [00:25:04] He never tried to ten times revenue at least I don't think he did with his with his investment groups that he brought in, you know, and he kind of brought in each each deal was kind of its own investment group. Right. But definitely at the pure I think that's going to take a hit for sure. The valuation is definitely taken a hit. Right. Appreciate rent as well. I mean selling for basically their debt. That's what they sold for right? I mean they sold for nothing. You know what $500 a door.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:24] Yeah.

Benton Cotter: [00:25:24] Yeah it's crazy. And so that Chinese company coming in or Asian company I can't remember it was came in and bought that. They're just buying up the debt basically and have to to service the debt. But I think that's definitely going to help. That's that's going to take a knock. But I think even where mine's at, let's say there are fourth of what they were before. That's still a huge valuation, more than I got for my company, more than you got for Empire, for selling. Right. And so that's still a win, I think, for mind. Let's say that, you know, I mean, if anything over that $20,000. So anything over $200 million is still a win for them, whatever it is. I mean, you know what I mean? Like that's still a win. I think that's where we have to put it as is. Like, hey, we're not going to get the three times our revenue that we could have maybe two years ago if you're really pushing it four years ago. Hey, but, you know, but we're we're normalizing our evaluation. We had some good times. Now we're just getting back to normal evaluation of who we are, what we represent. We're not a true SaaS company subscription service. We're service industry that has a SaaS play with it. But it's not going to be the same as what we saw before. And so I don't know if our our personal I don't know about you, but I feel like when I was looking around the industry, definitely the, the, the revenue or the the multiplier is definitely taking a hit even for the small, um, pops, um, selling just because of our economy. I don't think it's necessarily a mind of pure. I think it's more for us, it's just the economy. But definitely the higher players, the roll ups, they're going to have their evaluations hit, you know. But that was my next question.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:44] So you're you're seeing like if I'm in the market to sell my PM business, um, I could, I could have sold it for a much higher valuation, maybe not much higher, but a higher valuation back in 22 than I can. Yeah for sure.

Benton Cotter: [00:26:57] Yeah I would wait I would try if you can hold out for another year or two I think it's going to come back. Just wait till rates come back down and then people start buying again, and then we're going to have a flood of copycats for invitation homes, and then it's going to drive our market. And so if you can hold out for another two years, year or two, hold out for and you'll get a better valuation for sure. I think, you know, it's we're we're a little bit of a low. We're on a definitely a little low.

Pete Neubig: [00:27:18] Do you really think that that rates are going to come down. I mean they I feel like that they're where they should be.

Benton Cotter: [00:27:24] But um yeah I don't know man. And again.

Pete Neubig: [00:27:27] I was a guy who was saying that rates were going to we're going to go up ever since 2001. And I'm finally right 24 years later.

Benton Cotter: [00:27:36] Well, it was it was too low for sure. Right. We're never going to be in the threes again. Let's be honest. Well hopefully we're never in the threes again. That was just abnormal. But I could see rates going down a little bit more low sixes. Right. And then once the economy recovers people start buying more inventories more out there. It's going to recover. And that's what I'm saying. More of that. The actual activity will pick up. Right now people are a little, you know scared inflation's high right. Home prices are a little bit higher. They're going to come down a year or two and people will start buying again where it makes sense right now it's hard. Our cap rates suck. You know our yield sucks right now. You know people are. I had a buyer. He's willing to take 2.5% cap rate. That's what he's buying at. I'm like, how do you make it? You know, but he just has to deploy money, right? He has to deploy money. So at least he's getting something.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:17] It's like a tax like a tax burden thing.

Benton Cotter: [00:28:18] Yeah. But I'm like that's crazy. So but think they'll go back to the 4 or 5% and hopefully higher. And then people will start buying again. It's just the real estate investments just built in their economy. And it's just going to we're going to have to have it. And so that's the nice thing. It will come back. I don't think it's going to be as hot as it was, but we're going to have a little bit of that for sure. And I don't know if we're going to have a crash of prices again like that. I'm sure we will eventually, but I don't think we're in the future, but immediate future. But definitely the market will come back and we'll be strong again. I mean, that's great. Thing is, I feel like we're always strong. It's just the perception of how strong we are right now. I feel like it's a great time to be a property manager, right? I mean, there's there's lots of owners out there. There's lots of people trying to hold on to their great rate to turn into rentals. I mean, it's a great time for leads. Um, that's a nice thing, but it's all about.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:00] Yeah, you may not be getting any investor leads, but you're getting the, um, the accidental landlord or the accidental investor for sure.

Benton Cotter: [00:29:09] Yeah, yeah. And I think they're strong. People are still strong. Like, we're still strong, adding doors and growing revenue. But the perceptions out there is like, hey, the times are not right. Economy's hard. And and so the valuations are lower than what they should be. And that's what I feel like. We don't have a lot of highs and lows. I mean like we have good times, but I feel like we always have good times as property managers. We're always getting leads, almost like there's always scenarios where we get leads and so just gotta.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:32] It's one of the few recession proof businesses out there, in all honesty. Um, okay, so switching gears a little bit, um, what? What? All right. What do you think this does for us in our stock? Yeah.

Benton Cotter: [00:29:46] It's it's it's worth a lot. I already spend my money.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:51] I already spent my ten x on on what my stock was, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Benton Cotter: [00:29:55] I love this joke. So Vince is the one that kind of like he used to be, like the the relationship seller guy with mind to help us, like recruit us and sold us online. And he was like, I got I got you guys yacht money, which he never did, obviously. And now like our going joke is like, you got to like blow up kayak money. Now basically it's like, maybe we can buy a kayak at this point with our money. I took a lot in stock, unfortunately, you know, with with mine. And so I'm going to hold out I think it definitely will come back. But right now it's definitely taken a huge hit. You know, I mean it's not worth what it was roofstock's not worth what it like the last valuation of Roofstock was like 2.1 billion. I mean, that's a joke. Come on. I mean, there's no way it's worth that now. It's probably half that, right? It probably should be even way worse than that. But that's just, you know, how the markets work. I think, you know, we just have to hold out. So it's not a good time to sell. I think some people are trying to sell fire sell their stock on like these off market type thing, pre-IPO type things. And I'm like it's not worth it to sell at that price right now. Just hold on to it. And it's definitely it's you know, there's a chance it could go to zero. But I think there's less of a chance to go to zero now rather. Rather. Right, because mine was not doing the greatest. You know, what we saw externally is they're.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:59] Running out of runway, right? I mean, yeah, they're running cash in cash, and I, I believe that, you know, the one thing about the mind, um, you know, Doug and Colin, the CEO and the owners, they were the founders. They were incredibly gifted at getting money. They were able to raise funds very, very, um. Just great. They were able to do it very easily until they can. And I think that they ran out of investors that were going to, that were going to fork over more money because the valuation came down so much. And like you said, there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of, um, people are scared. Uh, so I believe they had to do this to, to survive. You kind of agree 100%.

Benton Cotter: [00:31:42] Yeah. You know, and then think of just the whole industry in general, not just our industry of property management, but of, you know, venture capitalist. It changed for they want profitable companies. And mine was not profitable far from it. And so there's no end in sight. Right. There's no end of the tunnel there for them. And so like the tunnel. And so they had to do something I don't know how much they had left. You know, they kept reassuring, you know, we hear a lot, but they definitely had I bet they had a little bit I don't know if they'd survive the next two years though. And so with Roofstock, they say they have, you know, cash for five years and they need to be profitable. That's the that's it has to be. The goal of Roofstock is to become profitable and then IPO is the next step. Right. And so that's what we're hoping for. Hey they can hopefully lean down. And I think mine definitely leaned down. We grabbed a lot of good talent you know from mine in the last few months a lot of people left a lot of good people left. And so we're able to pick up. So there's lots of good people out there. Mine had a great talent that's as crazy as looking all that talent there. I'm like, dude, there's so many rock stars there. Maybe they just weren't given the right position or the right, you know, ownership of it or right, you know, right role structure. But such good talent. And so it it had everything going. But Doug and Colin. Yeah Doug especially man he I mean they raised over $200 million. That's crazy right. That's a lot of.

Pete Neubig: [00:32:51] Money from a players from like Wells Fargo. Yeah.

Benton Cotter: [00:32:53] Yeah. Invesco I mean to me Invesco is one of the biggest funds ever, you know and like. And then they committed Invesco committed $5 billion to buy homes through mind. Unbelievable. Get for them. That's why they got the 870 million valuation is because Invesco committed the 5 billion. Well you know but if they so if they Invesco still in there right. They're a major player and they have a lot of money. And they came in late too. So their money's like it's.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:14] If they survive over the next few years and rates do come down. Um, which is a big if, uh, they're going to, they're going to be positioned really well with the with the money backing from Invesco, with the ability to buy properties through Roofstock and then the ability to manage them through money.

Benton Cotter: [00:33:28] They have it managed. Yeah. I don't think it's like and say, hey, our stocks can be worth ten times what it is today, though. I think it's like, hey, I might get back to that evaluation of 2 billion. Let's hope Roofstock gets back to valuation of 2 billion and then goes IPO. That'd be awesome. You know type thing. And so we we're definitely not going to make out like bandits. Like we should have all sold when they last round. You know like when they got that 70 million valuation. We should have just done all the off markets. We should all should have sold because I don't think it's ever going to get back to that point. But hopefully, you know, gets to a point where it makes it still a good investment for us. And, and turns out and I still believe that it can you know, I think I have a lot more I have a lot more faith that it's actually going to turn out and make some money than it is going to go to completely zero. So I held on to all my stock. I didn't exit at all. So.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:09] So what do you think? Um, what do you think this means for pure HCG and some of these other guys that are trying to roll up? Um, do you think it, uh, this this hurts them or this helps them or a little bit of both?

Benton Cotter: [00:34:20] I think it hurts for sure. I think, you know, definitely helps because they feel like they've won the battle. Right? Because then another company bite the dust, but then it's another company biting the dust of a roll up. And so it's it's no one's really proven. The model is huge, right? I hear a lot about them. That's what's funny is you don't hear a lot of news about them. They're not like the sexy player like mine and pure are right because I think they have the tech play. And HG is still trying to figure out their tech, figure out the cohesiveness of all the markets and stuff. But they I think they're in a good position if they can figure it out and then really, really nail it. I mean, they can be in a good position. I mean, they have over 40,000 doors, right? So I mean, they're in a good position. They definitely evaluation took a hit and their their private equity backed. And so I know I know those guys are itching to get out the private equity for a long time. And so we'll see what they do and see how they go over the next few years. If they can hold out, I think they're going to be the best position just because they have the the geographic they have all over the nation and they have the most doors. But it's a big if. They can make it cohesive. It's like they're all not I wouldn't say they're all different markets and different, you know, they're like, it's just hard. It's hard to manage all that in those different markets to figure it out. But um, pure I think is might be the biggest hit because they're kind of like the not the mimic of mind, but they're very similar. They're SaaS play, right? They're proptech. And so that's, that's going to be a huge.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:39] Uh.

Benton Cotter: [00:35:39] That's.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:39] Going to be a hit valuation next time the next round. Right?

Benton Cotter: [00:35:43] Yeah, I think so. Especially since they haven't released it generally to everybody and they haven't actually had everybody on the platform yet. So I think definitely they're going to have a they're going to have a hit. So hopefully they can survive the next year or two before they have to raise some funds.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:55] Yeah. That's a that's a big ask. Creating a property management software while running property management.

Benton Cotter: [00:36:03] Yeah it's hard enough, right? I mean it's crazy like it really is my back on a.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:07] Plane while you're flying it, you know. Yeah, that was the.

Benton Cotter: [00:36:09] That was always the thing of mine, right? I'm like, it's hard. It's. I mean, there's so many aspects of the property management software that's it's hard. That's why you have all these great vendors coming out. I feel like the next play is like, we just need one to actually bring all the vendors, talk to each other and bring them all together. Like we need a platform that is all integrated, that works with these vendors and doesn't try to be the best application software, the best inspection software, the best. You know, portals like just hook up with the best vendors, best in class and make it so it's accessible and cohesive and then you win. That's I think that's the next play because that's just too hard.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:38] And I think Red wine is, is, is, is doing that. I think they're, they're really focusing on that, which is uh, which would be nice for all the users.

Benton Cotter: [00:36:48] That's why that's why I love them. Right. Because the open API easy to work with the I agree with you, man. That's the right way to do it. And just be and just admit it. Right. And and you don't need it for everybody, right? The mom and pop that has 100 doors, all those softwares work fine for the inspection model and stuff like that. But I'm saying once you reach a certain level, you start competing with the bigger boys. You need top of the top of the line technology.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:09] Awesome. All right everybody, thanks. All right, here we go. Lightning round. Now, Benton, I know you're a huge follower and a downloader of the Northland podcast. I know exactly that. You know how this goes.

Benton Cotter: [00:37:19] Yeah, yeah for sure man.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:20] Uh, I'm gonna ask you a series of questions, quick answers, but if you want to expand, no problem. All right, here we go. You ready?

Benton Cotter: [00:37:27] Let's do it.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:28] What is one of the hugest mistakes or stupidest things you did when started your PM business?

Benton Cotter: [00:37:36] Uh, I try to do too much. I should have, you know, typical. I need to hire people, hire good people and let them do their thing and let them take ownership. Don't control it.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:45] What PM software did you use at Ren Fest?

Benton Cotter: [00:37:47] We used, uh, property where? And kind of built their own to supplement it.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:51] Interesting. I didn't know that second piece. All right. Yeah. Um, did you use do you use virtual assistants in your new business? And did you use virtual assistants at Rent Fest?

Benton Cotter: [00:38:00] So at Rent Vest, we didn't. That was 2016 is all here. But we definitely remote workers in the US. Um, but then yeah. Now going forward yes I do. Uh, I think with every aspect, especially marketing, great, great use of virtual assistants with the marketing field.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:15] What is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in the PM industry?

Benton Cotter: [00:38:20] Uh, hustle, you know, go out and get leads, hustle your way into relationships, and then if, uh, you know, there's a balance, like, don't hand over your books to accountant right at the beginning. Do it yourself, figure it out, then hand it over. Right. Know it a little bit. And then there's some aspects. Give up quickly because you know you're not very good at it. And find a good like a business developer. If you're not a good business developer, give it up quickly. So hustle and do the things you can, recognize the things you can't and give it up. Give it up to somebody else.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:46] I like that. Uh, does pineapple belong on pizza?

Benton Cotter: [00:38:49] Heck yeah it does. This is a that's a no brainer question.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:53] What was your first job?

Benton Cotter: [00:38:55] So I worked at my uncle's farm on the on the week, on the summers. So my my uncle loved he was a welder, really experienced, very great welder. But he loved farming. So he lose money at farming because he loved it so much. But I'd go work with him and my brothers on the farm throwing watermelons and chopping weeds.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:12] That sounds like hard work. How old were you?

Benton Cotter: [00:39:14] So I started when I was around 13, 12 to 13 and worked there till I was like 18 off and on, you know, just to help him out. It was good. I was like, great experience, great work ethic, you know, get up at, you know, be at the farm by four and be done by ten in Arizona, you know, during the summer gets up to 120. So yeah. But a great experience. Yeah I loved it. So appreciate my uncle to let me do that because we definitely was not a good worker, that's for sure. I cut plants, not weeds, on the.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:36] Farm where child labor still exists. Yeah that's. Right?

Benton Cotter: [00:39:39] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:41] What is something that most people don't know about you?

Benton Cotter: [00:39:45] I don't know, man. Uh. I don't know, I guess I have four kids. I don't know, I don't know what people don't know about me, man. I like, I like, uh, sports. I don't look like it, but I love basketball, I love baseball, I love all sports. But, uh, definitely, baseball is kind of a passion of mine, even though it's boring. But I love it.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:05] You're easily amused, uh, chopping, uh, chopping watermelons and watching baseball. That's right.

Benton Cotter: [00:40:10] You know, that's the summers. The summers are the best.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:13] What is, uh, what is one book you're currently reading or one that's impacted your business or life that you would recommend?

Benton Cotter: [00:40:18] Uh, you know what? Uh, let's see, the best one, I think, is I love this book, and it kind of goes against my my thought before, but it's called rework. It's guys that do base camp. Um, they wrote the programming language Ruby on Rails and created that. But it's a great book, super short. But it's all about simplifying your business, and it's like, that's what you did with the book, right? The book started out 700 pages and then it went down to 120. He's like, just take things out. And that's how they built their software base camp. It's like a operations type task manager.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:47] A fun fact about base Camp is, uh, no, uh, no outside money. Yeah. They don't. Yeah.

Benton Cotter: [00:40:53] Yeah. Great. You should read. They have another one too, but he has another book. But I loved his books, man. I'm like, so just matter of fact, you know, like tell you how it is. You can tell like he really wanted, right. To help you. It's not promoting himself, to be honest. You can tell it's like, hey, I want to help people. How do I do it? They have a great culture at their work. They're in Europe. They know they can do whatever they want, but people take off the summers. It's a great, uh, great book, and it's super short. Like I would read it. I listen to it on my way down to my Tucson office. You can listen it with an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and 30 minutes. I listen to the whole book on 1.25 speed and be done with it. And it was a great just. I do it every year to to read it.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:26] So it's called we work like like we work.

Benton Cotter: [00:41:29] Yeah. Like to read like to redo work like oh re.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:32] Re work.

Benton Cotter: [00:41:33] Like no meetings. You know he's like get rid of meetings, get rid of, you know simplify stuff. It's it's it's really good. Every entrepreneur should read it. It's like I know everybody's like the e-myth is important. That's important book. Rework is better than e-myth for every entrepreneur. It tells you, I really think it's a foundationally. It's great. Once you get to that, you know, then you can go up to like scaling up with the, you know, like when you get to that level. But but definitely rework is is a great philosophy and it kind of goes against all these dumb VCs and you know, you know, it's just great.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:03] Profitable anti VC I do know that. So I'm going to pick that book up. All right. What do you prefer dogs or cats?

Benton Cotter: [00:42:09] Oh, man. You're gonna make me admit this I prefer cats. I don't have any cats. We have two dogs, but I prefer cats. I know, I like cats, I'm weird like that. But, uh, my wife still won't let me get a cat. But, you know, we have two dogs, so it's still. It's still putting a little animosity in our marriage, but, uh, yeah, we had we had tons of cats growing up. My mom was like a sucker for any kind of stray cat or, you know, like, would take cats in. So we always had, like, tons of cats at our house. They're always outside cats, but some always grew up looking at them.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:38] If someone is interested in learning more about like, um, you maybe using you as a fractional CMO, even if I don't even know if you're actually doing it or not, or they just need some help with marketing. What's the best way they can get in touch with you?

Benton Cotter: [00:42:51] Uh, you know, I do have a website called PMup, pmup.co. So there's no am in it, but you can go out there, fill out a web form or call there. You know, I definitely it's it's up there. That's where I kind of do, um, you know, and you know, if you're right for it, for sure, I love it. I just like talking about it, so I don't I don't mind always just talking about it and then see if it's even the right fit. But I'm not a right fit for a lot of people. Um, but yeah, just go to PMUp.co and, you know, up. Your PM business is kind of the slogan.

Pete Neubig: [00:43:18] Awesome. Uh, and if you are not a member of NARPM and you've downloaded and listened to this, what the heck is going on? Join NARPM. Go to NARPM narpm.org or give the folks a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you want to be cool like Benton and have virtual assistants, give us a try, go to vpmsolutions.com. Or you can actually reach out to me via email Pete at vpmsolutions.com. And we can help you out with, uh, determining if you need a remote team member and, uh, and what what position you might need for Benton. Thanks so much for being here, brother.

Benton Cotter: [00:43:55] No, I appreciate it, man. Good. Good catching up with you, Pete. We'll see you next time at the next conference.

Pete Neubig: [00:44:00] Thank you everybody.

Benton Cotter:  [00:44:01] Thank you,