A Podcast | Bradley Johnson

Pete Neubig: Welcome back, everybody, to the NAPRM podcast radio show. Like I said, I would. I have Brad Johnson here, CEO of ProfitCoach. Brad, thanks so much for being here today, buddy.

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. Thanks, Pete. I appreciate the invitation.

Pete Neubig: So give us your journey. So I know that you, you know, when you and I met a little over a year or so ago at I am, you were actually running a PM firm. And next time I saw you, like a year later, you were running ProfitCoach. So tell me a little bit about that. And about your journey in property management.

Bradley Johnson: Sure. Yeah. I'll skip over the first, you know, 20 plus years of my relatively interesting childhood and go straight to my property management journey. Started in 2015, uh, when I started managing HOAs. So I was an association manager for a couple years, which, you know, in the totem pole of property management jobs, I would say that one's probably at the bottom. It's pretty tough. Good place to cut your teeth, though. On on customer service and learning how to have thick skin. So I did that for a couple of years, and then I moved over to commercial management, which in North Carolina is a real estate licensed position. So got my real estate license, managed office, industrial, retail, did that for a couple of years and then found my way into operating a 1300 unit property management company called Sawyer Property Management in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I live. So we had mostly single family homes, I think 1100 and then a few small multi-family buildings as well. So I was there for three years. My mandate there really was, 'hey, how can we how can we streamline this company? How can we can we make it really profitable? Um, you know, try to reduce complexity.' I never had a huge unit growth mindset. We already had, at 1300 units, a pretty large share of the rental market in my small to medium sized city. So the idea was, how can we leverage our size, our expertise and our in-house knowledge to build a really profitable company? And it's interesting, this concept that I'll get into in a minute when I talk about ProfitCoach of highly profitable self-managing companies, that I didn't know it at the time, but that's actually what I was after at Sawyer. I didn't own it. So my, my ambition was to make it self managing for the owner. You know, he was in the business a little bit when he hired me. I got him to a zero hours a week, zero hours a month sort of place. We just sort of met for coffee at a certain point once a month. And then I wanted to make it highly profitable. So I was trying to help him reach his goals and his dreams as an entrepreneur while getting a lot of entrepreneurial experience myself. So that was a great journey. That only ended back in April of this year, 2024. We sold the business in 2023 to Roam, an associate company. And after selling the business, I, I had the option to stay on for a while and certainly considered that and still enjoyed working there even after the sale. But I had that entrepreneurial itch and, A, wanted to help other people like me, and B, I had had an ambition for those few years of becoming a business owner. So through really just an incredible, experience actually at Leeds University last year, a conference you and I just came from, I caught up with Daniel Craig, now known to me as Danny, at ProfitCoach. And it just so happened that he was looking to transition out of his role as CEO of ProfitCoach and into something a little bit different. And I was looking for an opportunity to own and operate a business. And so that worked out beautifully. There's tons of alignment there between he and I and between my experience and what ProfitCoach was looking for. So I joined the team, became a partner in the business and took over as CEO on April Fool's Day. So I've been I've been here a little over eight months and really, really enjoy it so far.

Pete Neubig: So before we dive into ProfitCoach, let's talk a little bit about your structure at Sawyer. So, I think this is when I heard this is like, everybody that's listening is probably their dream to actually have somebody of your stature, quality, to literally run the business and think of it as your own, as the owner and then the owner, literally zero hours create incredible. And then just having coffee with you once a month. And then, of course, you built a profitable enterprise that runs without them. Definition of a business. Uh, and it was sellable. So take us through just a little bit. So obviously, you're making a salary. Did you have any kind of ownership? Like, did he gift you or did you buy into the business at all, or did you just get profit margin? How was that? How was the structure?

Bradley Johnson: It's a good question. It's actually a question I get a lot. I was on a panel at broker owner last year actually this year called How to Exit Without Selling and got to tell my story there and have been able to connect with a lot of people over this because like you said, this is a lot of people's ambition. You know, you start a business, you grow it, you get to this place and you're like, if I could just find that person, then maybe I could still make money from this thing and not really have to work in it. And that's true. That can definitely happen. I did that, and we see that at ProfitCoach with our clients on a regular basis. That's what so many of our clients are after. So to answer your answer your question pretty directly, I did not have any ownership, but I was compensated solely on a percentage of company profitability. So I had no salary. I mean, I kind of had a salary because there was this minimum that would they would never dip down into, as you know, you get to a certain size and operating proficiency in property management and your financials and your profitability can get really predictable. So I did kind of know what I would make and how that would go. But all of my compensation was tied to the performance of the business. So there was always a very clear alignment with if I am making Dave the owner, more money, I also am benefiting from that in a very direct way. If the company gets less profitable, if we're slipping on efficiency, my income is punished as well. And I've recommended that to a lot of people. You know, there are certain people who have had maybe somebody who's been with them since day one, that they want to have run the business. In those situations, it probably makes sense to do a little bit more of a ownership equity sort of thing, but a really clean way to incentivize, especially if you're looking to hire from the outside, you may not want to give equity to someone from the outside, I don't know, but a clean way to compensate them in a way that correlates with the enterprise value that they drive is to tie as much as possible. And for me, again, it was 100% of their income to the profitability of the business.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So I'm a big proponent of never giving equity away if you don't have to.

Bradley Johnson: Sure.

Pete Neubig: So that's my first thing. But so you walked into a I'm guessing a business that was profitable already.

Bradley Johnson: Yes. Right. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And so you were able to walk in there. And so based on that, you already had an idea of what kind of figure you're going to make.

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. Let me pause on that real fast. This was not my compensation model to start. I basically earned the opportunity to to get to this place. I was hired as the general manager. Salaried position with a bonus. Uh, I worked Dave out of the business. I got to the place where he was no longer working in the business. And then it became clear, 'hey, Brad's either going to buy this business, or I'm going to treat him and compensate him like an owner and tie his compensation like an owner, because I was running the business like an owner.' So I was able to do that across a period of time. It was about a year, year and a half. Um, so yeah, just for clarity, I kind of worked my way into that situation.

Pete Neubig: Okay, I get that.

Bradley Johnson: I would recommend something similar, possibly for a lot of folks to do that. Say, hey, this sort of future is on the table for you. But, you know, this is what this needs to look like as we get to know each other.

Pete Neubig: Now, one of the things that I think of is like, wow. Um, so maybe I don't buy that new system or implement something new because it might dip the profit margin down. So talk a little bit about that. Like, how did you make those decisions?

Bradley Johnson: Pretty simple. I had no ambitions of sacrificing short term profitability over long term profitability. It would be a foolish decision on my part to forego a $3,000 investment that might cost me a few hundred dollars if it's going to pay dividends in the 50 or $100,000 range down the line. So I, I was very willing to take short term hits and actually took a lot of short term hits, especially early on, just knowing that I was going to be able to reap those benefits down the line. My ambition was to create a highly profitable system that was generating profits on a regular basis. And actually to do that, so I came in, I think we were 18, 19% margin. When I left. We were are 35, 36% margin. So I knew that it would actually take investment to get to that place, that 30 plus percent place, but that was going to pay me a lot more money down the line. So that never really came into my head of, you know, am I? Yeah. Am I going to make a little less money this month? I was much more concerned about what the three and five year projection looked like.

Pete Neubig: What were a couple of the moves you made that got you from the 18 to 35%?

Bradley Johnson: Yeah, it's a good question. Um, I'll start on the on the labor. On the labor and expense side. And I'm not just playing into your hand here. This is actually what happened. We did not have any global talent or remote team members when I started. But we did have some hiring needs, and we did have a lot of some of the more administrative work to be done in the in the business that was being done by fairly high salaried, US based employees and that labor efficiency just doesn't check out when you're looking to grow a profitable company. Since, you know, one of the things we see at ProfitCoach is the biggest driver towards PM profitability is labor efficiency. It's direct labor efficiency ratio, DLER. And I knew that I needed to change that. So over the course of two years I went from 0 to 5, global team members who frankly, became some of the best employees at our company, and they're all still there today, and play ever increasingly, big roles in the company. So that was one I did not go the route of let us employees go and hire global talent. Instead. What I did was, as people left or as we needed to add employees, I would start by searching for for global talent, remote team members to be part of our team as a replacement or as an addition. So that was true on the labor efficiency side. On the revenue side, I took a good look at our fee structure and the way that we generated revenue throughout the business, whether that was refining and optimizing things like leasing fees and renewal fees. One of the things that I'm most passionate about, and I've given a couple talks on this this year, is maintenance in property management is not this thing that you must do in order to satisfy your owners. It's actually something that creates a ton of value for tenants and owners. And if you're not monetizing it, you're leaving money on the table that you're actually entitled to. And it's something that it's pretty easily provable to your owners in terms of the value that you're creating. So I implemented a preferred vendor program rather than sticking a fee on the owners in any way. What I did was I basically helped our core vendors know that the amount of business we were generating on their behalf, without any expense on their side, is actually worth a lot of money. And so I would get vendors who all of them agreed to this, and I disclosed it in the property management agreement, at the end of every quarter, to send us a check for X percent of the work that we generated for them, basically as a marketing and a partnership fee, because, you know, marketing spend in a small business can be 10 to 20%. And some of these people, we were their entire revenue source for their business. That's worth something. And a lot of them felt that way, agreed and agreed to pay us. So that was a place restructuring, pet fees, resident benefits package, kind of the list goes on. But my goal was to get to the place where we had a 50/50 split between management fee revenue and ancillary revenue. And by the time we sold the business, we were there at 50/50, roughly 300, $320 of revenue per unit. Half of it from the management fee and the other half from different ancillary services.

Pete Neubig: All right, so a couple questions on the maintenance thing real quick. Um, so you were at 1300 units. I'm sure you got to get to some kind of volume, right? You can't get a rebate program if you have ten units, I'm guessing. Right. I think what we did, we did something very similar, took a different approach. I like your approach better, by the way, because it's much easier on your accounting firm. Uh, on your accounting team. We did it where we, uh, anytime they did a job for us, they would. They would give us back 10%. Right. The challenge with that is over time, everything gets added. 10%, 10%. So they they just they just make the bill 10% more to give you back your 10% with with your solution..

Bradley Johnson: Your owners are paying for it.

Pete Neubig: Correct. Correct. Yeah. And then you're getting the 10%. Right. So you're kind of messing the owners up. With your solution. I love it because they don't even think about it until the end of the quarter. And then they're like, oh yeah, here's our marketing fee that we typically pay.

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. And they were existing vendors, so we already knew what their prices were. So if they started adding a 10% markup to their invoices, we would we would see it, we would know it. And it was part of the deal. This is coming. This is coming from your checkbook, not coming from a markup to the owners. Because if that's the case, then you might as well just ask, make the owners pay 10%, uh, as a maintenance markup. And I'm not necessarily saying that you can't do that. Their value is created for the owner in the maintenance process. And if you choose to monetize it in that way, explain it to your owners. Be up front about it. I don't see anything wrong with that. I just felt like there was so much value creation for the vendors that I wanted them to be the one to recognize that and to compensate us as a means of even more value add for the for the owners. So there's there are there are lots of different ways you can do that.

Pete Neubig: Do a whole podcast just on that one.

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. I just, I like I said, I kind of I've done some whole talks basically on that.

Pete Neubig: Love it. Let me get you back in here. Get a couple of us to talk. Just talk about maintenance and how to make it profitable. Alright. So let's let's pivot over to profit code. So, um, you talked. You met Danny. You, uh, you saw. It was a great opportunity. What else about ProfitCoach kind of drew you to that? Cause I'm sure you probably had tons of opportunities. So what else about ProfitCoach really drew you to that job? To that role?

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. There's a there's a few things here. One is, I had known Danny for a little while, and I had spent some good time with him and really just have a friendship with him and enjoy him as a person. He's somebody that I want to do business with. Um, another one is I. I didn't have a strong relationship with Jordan Mueller, but I knew him. We had spoken on the phone a few times, I had done his podcast, and I knew that he was one of the co-founders of ProfitCoach and was still involved in the business. Uh, that was a big thing to me. He I won't say Midas touch, but everything that Jordan has been involved with in property management has done well. And I don't think he spends his time doing things that don't add value for people. So I wanted to be associated with Jordan and be able to to learn from him. And that's been that's been an awesome journey. When he it actually turned out that when I came on as a partner, he came off as a partner. But we we remained friends and we still talk actually on a weekly basis. So there was that.

Pete Neubig: I would say Jordan's one of the one of the more brilliant minds in the industry. He really is. Um, and if you're not sure, just ask him. He'll tell you. I'm teasing Jordan. I'm teasing. If he. I don't even know if he listens to my podcast. But I'm messing with you.

Bradley Johnson: Someone's going to send it to him. He'll listen to this one. Uh, another one is the culture at ProfitCoach. People throw that word around a lot. Every almost everywhere I've worked has talked about their company culture. There is something unique about ProfitCoach. And I think a lot of people in our industry are hearing that and realizing that.

Pete Neubig: How do you determine.. Sorry, let me ask you a question. How do you determine the people at the company, like ProfitCoach, are living those core values like, you know, because you do hear that a bunch. How did you know that they lived those core values?

Bradley Johnson: That's a good insight there. I went to the... Danny invited me, which was a risky move on his part, but it worked out two weeks after we had this conversation, the initial one, he said, hey, we're about to do our annual planning retreat, two days with our leadership team. Why don't you come out to Denver and spend a couple of days with us and see for yourself if this is what you want to do, and these are the people you want to be involved with. So I got to spend two days in person with this group of folks, and I came away so impressed. And it was probably the biggest driver of wanting to do this. You know, there's a, any business venture has a reasonable chance of failure. But you know, I knew that I wanted to get into something more entrepreneurial, either start something or join something. And so my thought was, well, everything's got a chance of failure. I don't think this has a huge chance of failure. But even if it does, these are the sort of people that I want to be with that I want to spend my time with. I found a group of people who were genuinely encouraging, who were very real, who cared a ton about the business and a lot about our core mission, which is to help people become and achieve more than they thought possible. And that's a different sort of mission statement for a for profit business than you're often going to hear. But it's actually true. We put the needs and the development of our clients and of our team members, basically before everything else. We think that if you help people become and achieve more than they thought possible, then you will generate so much value that how you monetize that is actually secondary, because people will want to pay you and will want to compensate you for providing value like that. That doesn't just hit them at a business bottom line, but actually hits them at a at a personal and professional development standpoint, which is our aim. And that was pretty obvious to see amongst this group of folks.

Pete Neubig: That's great man. Core values is kind of near and dear to my heart, and, uh, I'm a big fan of it. I'm a big fan of really pushing it down to the company and that everybody abides by those values. And a lot of people say they got them, and then you realize that it's on a wall. They don't really they don't really push you down. And and the values are pushed up from the team.

Bradley Johnson: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: So let's talk about let's talk about the PM operations Standards. So this is, when I saw you at broker owner, before you even shook my hand, you said, check this out. I mean, and then you gave me a book that's about, I don't know, 100 pages or something like that. I don't know, 50, 60, 100 pages.

Bradley Johnson: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: The operation standards. And you guys did such an incredible job with this. And I know at least Temple University and back in December, uh, you guys kind of got on stage ProfitCoach and lead. Simple. And you kind of co-authored this this deal. Talk about, like, why you guys are doing this. And I know why. Because we just talked about your mission. But we'll kind of talk about that a little bit. And then if you can give us just a couple of findings that you were like, isn't that interesting?

Bradley Johnson: Yeah, I'd love to. So the PM Operation Standards is our attempt at answering the question or providing the framework to answer the question, how do I know I'm doing a good job? The basic premise here is the way that people have answered that question in property management for management for a very long time is way too subjective and it's not really comparable across markets, across portfolio makeups or across operations. So the idea here is rather than saying things like, well, I've got great Google reviews or my PMs manage X number of units, or I'm the leading property management company in my market, you need an answer that's actually objective, measurable, standardized and widely accepted. And the opportunity the framework to do that did not exist. And we saw that opportunity. So what we did was we authored the PM Operations Standards, which are eight core processes broken down. And this is the key. They're broken down into milestones. We all agree, for the most part, on what the core processes of property management are. Move in, move out. Property marketing, leasing, applications, renewals, maintenance requests. Turnovers. Like those are the core things that you do in property management. But underneath that, what are the core milestones that you must check off, that you must do in order to successfully complete that process? And you can get very granular on what you specifically do in your operation. But there these sets of milestones in each of those processes that never change virtually ever across organizations. And so we took those eight processes. We broke them down into milestones, came up with 61 milestones. And I'll give you an example in a moment. And out of those milestones, that's where you actually get these metrics like speed to repair. That's that's a good one to highlight. 79 metrics came out of this. And one of those, just as an example, is speed to repair, which is maintenance requests submitted to work completed. Right. That's not the whole maintenance request. That's not the whole maintenance process. That's part of it. Because obviously See before. After, uh, you know, after the request is submitted, you have to verify it. You have to get, uh, you have to get an estimate. You have to get owner approval. You have to go do the work. You have to complete it. You have to bill for it. You have to close it out. So but in there is speed to repair which is request submitted to work completed. And that is both an owner facing metric. Here's how we perform. Here's how we get stuff done at your property. And it's a tenant facing metric. Here's how fast. Here's how minimally or maximally invasive we are in your life, right from the time you send it to the time we get it done. That matters a lot to the tenant. And so as I was speaking earlier about monetizing maintenance, what did you just do with a fast speed to repair? You created a ton of value. You got out of your tenants hair as fast as they could. You fixed their issue and you provided closure and security and a job well done to your owner. So we came up with all those Milestones and those metrics. And the idea is build those milestones into your processes, whether you use Lead Simple or Process Street or APTLY or Flows or what have you, build those milestones in there so that you can measure your milestone to milestone metrics and compare them across the industry. Because what we also did in that study is we surveyed 118 property management companies and said, all right, for all of these metrics, what are your targets? What is the definition to you of this is a good job. This is what we are aiming for. And then we got all of those together. And then we have averages and we have top quartiles. So you can compare yourself. Well actually we break it down by all four quartiles. So you can measure yourself against others to see what your target is and what your actual is, and be able to prove to yourself, to your team and to and to your owners. We're actually doing a great job. Here's the standard industry average target. Here's our performance. Here's how we perform and the ways that we cut down on days, or cut down on hours or do things more efficiently. And that actually means savings or revenue for you, Mr. Owner.

Pete Neubig: So, Brad, how were you able to get the industry standard average? Because I know you guys have a bunch of clients and ProfitCoaching you can get, you know, your clients. But how did you guys go about and get the industry standard average?

Bradley Johnson: This is the awesome part about the industry that we're in. And NARPM specifically because, uh, these are most mostly, if not all NARPM companies. But we sent out a mass effort to and this survey to hundreds and hundreds of property management companies. And, we had a lot. We also had partners, sponsors of this effort, seven different companies that helped us with this, and they use their channels to recruit people as well. And through those collective efforts, we were able to get 118 people to complete that survey and give us those targets, which are, I think, pretty statistically significant of a sample size that large, really cool collective effort.

Pete Neubig: That's awesome. So then you can now is it broken out by SFR, MFR, anything like that, or is it all just all together in one lump sum?

Bradley Johnson: Yeah, that's that's a good clarification. It's all together in one lump sum. The vast majority of these companies are majority or near.

Pete Neubig: SFR. 

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. So we would consider this to be a a single family, not single family specific, but single family dominant study.

Pete Neubig: Not to put you on the spot, but I guess I'm going to kind of put you on the spot. Do you think that people who are doing really well are the ones that are more inclined to fill out the survey versus somebody who's not doing well. So do you think the numbers might be skewed that they're actually better than the industry average?

Bradley Johnson: I would say no, because I have enough anecdotal knowledge to know what good and great looks like. And I've had enough conversations with folks to have a pretty good understanding of what this looks like. If you look at the bottom quartile for targets in this study, you'll see that a lot of them are pretty bad. So for instance, the bottom quartile in speed to repair is 12 days. That means you've got folks whose operations are at the place where a simple maintenance request. And they're not always simple, but the average maintenance request, their goal is to get it done in 12 days. I would say for most people, that's pretty poor performance or days on market, lowest quartile was 20 for highest quartile was eight. So, you know, you're looking at speed to security deposit disposition completed. That's a good tenant facing tenant experience metric lowest quartile 43. Highest 14. So I don't think that low target or low performing property management companies self-select out of this, especially because it's anonymous. I think they may even contribute even more because they're, you know, they're so curious to see what the results look like and to be a part of something like this. So no, I don't think that's the case.

Pete Neubig: Makes a lot of sense, makes a lot of sense. We're just about up against it. Is there anything else in the operation standards that you want to highlight before we hit a commercial break?

Bradley Johnson: Yeah, sure. I think the most interesting metric we found was the difference in targets for days without revenue. So we took we took a we we took a metric that most people would define as days vacant. And we redefined it as days without revenue. Your owner doesn't really care about days vacant. They don't. They're not. That's not what they actually care about is how long is it sitting? What they care about is how long am I not making any money? How long is that thing just. Just not producing any income. So days without revenue is a a more owner facing metric. Um, and and we broke that out into two categories. Do you list your property before the turnover is complete, or do you wait until the turnover is complete to list your property? And what we found is that the difference in average target for, for for that operational decision is actually 16 days. So if you're waiting until turnover is complete, you are on average leaving 16 days without revenue sitting there for your owner. And if you do some quick math. 500 units. You turn about a third of them every year. Average rent, like 15, $1,600. We're talking about $130,000 of owner rent that they don't get to have because of those 16 days. And then you add your management fee, whatever percentage that is. And you're looking at, no matter how you slice it, thousands of dollars that you're leaving on the table as a management company anyways. So little things like that are all over the place in the PM operation standards, and can help property managers understand that. How you do property management, whether you do these sort of best practice things or not, can make a really big difference in the bottom line of of your company and your owners properties.

Pete Neubig: How did you categorize when an owner got a property, got no money, and he's not going to do that make ready until, you know, he wins lotto or something. And like we manage this asset that's like it's just going to sit there for potentially months now. I'm guilty. I did it like you're I know you're telling me like, go fire that guy. I get it, but he's got like three other houses, like, you know, how do you how did you categorize those type of houses? Are they lumped in with it with this vacancy deal? Or you called it non revenue deal or is that was like kind of like.

Bradley Johnson: Oh no they count because that's part of the operational decision.

Pete Neubig: I hear you

Bradley Johnson: Are you going to work with these people or are you not. And I think I think that one of the best practice things that come out of this is you need to be as, as choosy with your owners and who you want to do business with as you are in all the other areas of your life where you decide who you're going to spend your time with, which doctor you're going to go to, things like that. You know, just one of the worst things that property managers can do is sign up bad owners and the ability to screen. Whether an owner is going to be good or bad actually has starts before the relationship. It when you're you present them with your management agreement, which hopefully says by signing this document, you are authorizing me to to do your turnovers, to have this amount of reserve to operate in this manner. And the more clarity you can have on the front end of hey owner, you need to you don't walk into your surgeon's office and as they're doing the surgery, tell them how to do it or pick up the scalpel and do some of it yourself. I'm also a professional. I know more than you do. You're hiring me for a reason. Signing this document allows me to do my job so that we can have the the relationship that we're supposed to have. So that philosophy, I think, is baked in on these higher targets versus these lower targets.

Pete Neubig: Brilliant. All right. We're going to be right back after these, uh, after these messages. And we're going to get you into the lightning round. Be careful. We'll be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right. We're going to put Brad on the on the lightning round. Brad, are you ready?

Bradley Johnson: I'm ready. Hit me.

Pete Neubig: All right. Put your PM hat on. What PM software did you use?

Bradley Johnson: Uh, property. Where?

Pete Neubig: What was your org structure?

Bradley Johnson: Uh, a hybrid pod model.

Pete Neubig: Hybrid pod model. Okay. Did you use virtual assistants? Yes. And that was very, very, profitable for you. Did you use BDMs?

Bradley Johnson: I had a salesperson who was both BDM and director of sales. I had a jack of all trades.

Pete Neubig: What is one piece of advice you would give someone who's just starting out in the PM business?

Bradley Johnson: I would tell them to not work with owners who aren't a good fit for their business model.

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Bradley Johnson: It does not.

Pete Neubig: What's your go to fast-food? I know you're a runner. You don't do fast-food. But in the case of the pinch, what's your fast food go to?

Bradley Johnson: It's a tie that I can't reconcile in my mind between Chick fil-A and Chipotle.

Pete Neubig: Oh, okay. I like both of those. Very nice. What was your first job?

Bradley Johnson: Uh, I was a busboy at a local, um, beach resort. I live in a beach town.

Pete Neubig: What's your ideal vacation?

Bradley Johnson: Um, probably a hiking trip in the summer. In the mountains of... We'll go with Switzerland.

Pete Neubig: Oh, I like that one. I think we could be best friends. I want to do a hiking trip. Uh, what is. What is something that most people don't know about you?

Bradley Johnson: Um, most people, because I've. I've done all my real estate stuff in North Carolina. They don't know that. I actually grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and I'm a have a midwestern upbringing, not the the southernness that comes across in everything else that I do at this point in my life.

Pete Neubig: If you could have dinner with anyone alive, Would it be?

Bradley Johnson: Oh. This might get me into hot water. Probably not. But it would be Elon Musk.

Pete Neubig: I think so too. Man, he's just an amazing.

Bradley Johnson: Regardless of your political persuasions, you gotta admit, that'd be a really interesting dinner.

Pete Neubig: It would be. Problem is, he'd probably talk to me and, like, I wouldn't understand 90% of the stuff he says. I need, I need my AI bot with me.

Bradley Johnson: Yes. Yes. It'd be live on the phone.

Pete Neubig: What's a book that you recommend?

Bradley Johnson: Oh, goodness. Well, the cop out here is the Bible because it's a wonderful book, and I think everyone should read it. But I will say from a business perspective, a lot of people are familiar with this. But if you if you're not, you really if you run a small business, you have to read the book Traction. Uh, and at least explore the EOS model because it changed the game for me.

Pete Neubig: One of my favorite books, man. What is one challenge you're currently having in your business?

Bradley Johnson: We are in the middle of. It's not a challenge as much as it's an opportunity. But figuring out the best way to do it for our clients is challenging. And that is we have historically been a company that focuses and and prioritizes financial clarity. Diving deep on the financial metrics. Et cetera. We've been doing a lot of work in operations, as you could probably tell over the last couple of years, where we want to go is we want to be able to tie in the operational with the financial and say, as you improve in these areas and operations and move these operational levers and gain this operational efficiency, it's going to do X, Y, and Z on your financials, which, you know, forecasted over the long term is going to do this for your profitability. So the operations and finance tie in particularly on process is our big focus right now.

Pete Neubig: All right. Last one. Dogs or cats?

Bradley Johnson: Oh, dogs.

Pete Neubig: Dog guy. All right. We're going to put you off the lightning round off the hot seat. You survived. Congratulations, brother.

Bradley Johnson: All right. Thanks, Pete.

Pete Neubig: So if, uh, if somebody wants to get a copy of the PM operation standards. Um, I know it's free, right?

Bradley Johnson: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Like, this is it's a free deal. So, um, if they want a copy of it, how do they go about getting a copy of it? How do they go about getting in touch with ProfitCoach or yourself if they wanted to reach out to you?

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. Great. Thank you. So the PM ops standards, you go to pmopsstandards.com. Pmopsstandards.com. Our our website is pmprofitcoach.com. And then if you want to get in touch with me personally my email is brad@pmprofitcoach.com I always encourage anybody to reach out to me directly. You're not going to go through any hoops. I'll speak with you directly, I love that, so please feel free to reach out.

Pete Neubig: Awesome. And if you're listening to this and you have not joined NARPM yet, you need to because there's a ton of information. Uh, they have a great website. They have incredible conferences. Go to narpm.org, or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you want to reduce your overall DLER as Brad would call it, um, and you're thinking about remote team members, give us a shout vpmsolutions.com or email me direct pete@vpmsolutions.com. We'd love to talk to you. We have a free service. Um, so we have a do-it yourself, a do-it with you and a do-it for you service on finding you a great team member in over 120 different countries. Brad, thanks so much for being here today, man, I appreciate you.

Bradley Johnson: Thank you Pete, I appreciate you.