A Podcast | Diego Alatorre and Tom Van Waelem

Pete Neubig: [00:00:03] Welcome back everybody to the NARPM Podcast. And we got a twofer today. We have Tom and Diego with Cavalry Works. Fellas thank you so much for being here today.

Diego Alatorre: [00:00:13] Thank you for having us.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:15] All right. So, Diego, you and I work together very closely at Empire Industries, where, um, you know, I tell the story numerous times where we had 30% churn rate, mainly due to maintenance. Um, you then worked with, uh, with us over at Mynd, and then you started. You and Tom started Cavalry Works. How did that come about? Because for those of you who do not know, Diego was actually a virtual assistant or remote team member out of Mexico, and now he owns a company that services the property management industry. So super proud of you, buddy. Tell me how how how it happened. And and of course, you can tell everybody how I was very, you know, instrumental in your growth.

Diego Alatorre: [00:00:54] Yeah. No, you were you were a very big mentor for me, Pete. Um well, as you know, I started from the very bottom, you know, as a virtual assistant. I think back then it was, you know, a PM assistant, not necessarily a maintenance coordinator yet. That's where we started. We started to notice that, you know, maintenance was the biggest issue. I felt like it was the biggest issue when it came to losing owners, as you just mentioned. And so we started to build out maintenance processes, um, as you recall. And little by little we started to perfect, um, maintenance, you know, seeing what were the biggest issues, what things were the biggest, uh, type of work orders that we would receive on a weekly basis, you know, finding ways to troubleshoot them, to save time, to save the the owners money and so on. And so I actually, you know, I learned a lot from you and Steve when it came to building out processes you know, and building out the the actual department from there. You know, we moved to, to Mynd. We implemented all of those processes at Mynd, but we did it at a bigger scale. You know, if I'm not mistaken, they used to have around 9000 doors. They went up to like 18,000 within the year. And so we were able to put those processes in place. And it turned out great. You know, maintenance was no longer hindering, you know, the company from from actually scaling and growing and, uh, acquiring more and more units. And so one of the things that that I noticed after I left Mynd was there were so many companies out there that needed that help, that needed those processes, and that's how I ended up working at AustinVestors. I was able to implement the same, you know, the same processes improve in in a lot of ways that that I felt like, you know, there were areas that needed to be improved on. And from there I actually met Tom. Um, so I'll let you, you know.

Pete Neubig: [00:03:11] Yeah. So. So, Tom. You were you were actually a you owned a roofing company. So Diego has seen it from the PM side. And I'm guessing you're you're seeing it from the vendor side and how hard it is to work with with PM companies from time to time. Take me through that journey.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:03:26] Yeah. Correct. Well, I didn't own a roofing company, but I was in a in a I was a roofing sales representative, if you will, and I also did repairs and so on. Um, but that was the time when there was a time where I was knocking doors. So the regular, you know, back in Texas, there's a lot of hail storms. And one of the things that happens then is that, you know, your insurance has to be getting involved to, to claim a new roof. And one of the things that is often done in the industry is knocking doors, making sure like, hey, have you had your roof checked and all of that to then start the process now? Um, I was kind of tired of doing that, to be quite honest. And I was looking for bigger ways, better ways, um, to earn a living. And then I started knocking doors on property management and property management companies to basically tell them, like, hey, why don't I inspect all of your roofs and I'll do it for free, and then I will give you a report. Worst case scenario, your owners will know at least what's going on. And our recommendations, there's, you know, no obligation to do anything. So and Diego was one of the first that said, yes, let's do it. And so we I inspected personally over 500 roofs in the next three months. And we got like almost 70 replacements, 200 repairs. So it was a it was a great success. So then afterwards I told Diego, I asked Diego, I was like, hey, are you the only one who maybe wants to do this? Do you think we can go national with this? And he said, yes, but you're also forgetting about all of the other trades. And then we got talking. He. He started telling me about the Bible that they wrote about processes and how maintenance should be done, how big of a problem it is in the PM industry, and how vendor rebates work so that we put all of that together. I love building processes, I love tech, I love making everything automated. So we were a perfect match. So Diego has all the knowledge. I try to, you know, pick up all the knowledge as soon as possible and we just build a company out of it.

Pete Neubig: [00:05:29] So, Diego, let's talk about the Empire days. Um, you know, because Empire is a microcosm of the industry as a whole is what I think, right? Maybe we had a little bit bigger problems than what most people are just because we had more doors, which we had more, um, you know, more, more work orders. So, um, what were some of the challenges that Empire has had that you see other clients have. What are some of the some of the common threads that somebody listening to this are probably going to be like, yep, that's me. Yep. That's me. So what were some of the things that that we saw at Empire that, that we were able to solve? And then now that now Cavalry, that's what they do is they solve these challenges?

Diego Alatorre: [00:06:12] Yeah. So one of the biggest challenges I see are since there's no structure, PMs tend to dictate how maintenance should be, you know, how how it should be run and what ends up happening, if you have three different PMs, those three different PMs might give you a different version or a different answer depending on the scenario, right?

Pete Neubig: [00:06:36] Lack of consistency lack.

Diego Alatorre: [00:06:39] Exactly. And so when that happens now you have a very confused virtual assistant or coordinator. I was there, you know, that would get different answers every single time. So that's what we see commonly in the industry. If the PMs are handling maintenance, they're usually doing it the best way that they know how. But that could be very different from the way that other PMs are doing it in the same company. And then if you do have maintenance coordinator, the same thing happens. Then also the PMs are also having to, you know, spend over 80% of their time on maintenance, you know, um, taking on escalations, uh, answering questions and so on. And yeah, it's not efficient. So once you have processes in place like the ones that we we started to build at Empire, that's when you start to overcome those difficulties, you know. Um, yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:40] I would say, um, two things that we did that were instrumental that you helped with was number one is we actually when we were building the the Bible, as Tom called it, we we were building it and we realized that there was a lack of policy. There was a huge lack of policy. Right. And policy is not a process, right? They're different. Um, so the policy was whatever Pete felt that day, right? Because it would get escalated to Pete, the owner, and Pete would be like, yeah, I like I'm I'm in a good mood today, so let's go ahead and give them a rebate or do this or do X or Y or Z. And so while we were kind of steamrolling the process, we realized there was lack of policy. So if you're listening to this and you do not have a policy and something pops up and you don't have a policy for it, you need to create a policy with the team and create a policy. And and that becomes the policy. And then you have to put it in some kind of Bible manual documented somewhere. So when it happens again it's not how you feel. You actually have a policy. Right. So that was the first thing that that you and I created. The next thing is it's you're kind of glossed over it. Right? We we built processes. That one sentence seems oh it's so easy.

Diego Alatorre: [00:08:50] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:51] Tell the audience. How long do you remember how long it took us? Took all of us. You know, for me to train you and the team and for you guys to kind of get it. And then when you guys took over, I call it the 90/10 rule. You guys took over. And when I say you guys, I mean, you know, Diego and his four other maintenance coordinators all got trained here. So it's five of them together. And they ended up taking over 90% of all, um, of all, um, maintenance tickets. And then 10% would get escalated to the property managers. But take us through that like because that's that was no easy task.

Diego Alatorre: [00:09:30] Yeah. No, it took a very, very long time. I remember you, uh, Steve, Margot, you guys would sit down with us constantly. Um, and we we spent, I would say more than six months, you know, just on the basics, you know, and that's where I feel like a lot of PMCs, they think they can just hire a maintenance coordinator and expect them to, you know, perform the way that they do. But they need training. You know, they need they need to understand the industry. They need to understand, um, how to handle maintenance. And it's not just a two week type of training. It takes a very, very long time to get them to, you know, up to your standards. And so that's where I got to give you a lot of props, VPM Solutions, you know, where you're able to get people, uh, ready before they even start working with the company. You know, um, what we do is we, we go in, you know, train individuals for countless months, just like the just like you used to, so that they're prepared to handle maintenance once they're, you know, once we're handling maintenance on behalf of a property management company.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:44] Yeah. So if you take on if Cavalry takes on a property management firm, You adhere to their policy, and if they don't have a policy, you kind of help them build policy. Is that is that kind of a true statement?

Diego Alatorre: [00:10:57] Yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:58] And then you also help like if they don't have processes, you guys have processes. You guys are very process oriented. Um, so you were able to take the the so you could do end to end. Right. So you do end to end maintenance coordination. Is that is that accurate?

Diego Alatorre: [00:11:15] Yeah. We handle everything from start to finish. Um, what what we will do is we'll handle everything that's maintenance related, whether it's make readies, uh, regular work orders. But we do it all from start to finish. So that's troubleshooting, um, finding the correct vendors to, you know, to handle that work order. If the troubleshooting didn't work, taking a look at the lease at the PMA to see what is covered. What isn't covered. Um, and we use our processes in order to ensure that the maintenance coordinators are, you know, not making mistakes whenever they are handling a work order. Like if the property has a home warranty, or if they have their own vendor that they like to utilize. All of those little things. Um, yeah, we we handle it all.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:05] Yeah. So so basically, if a resident calls in with a work order, you guys would actually receive the call, wouldn't be the PMC. You guys would then, um, do the troubleshooting. Right. And I'm sure you have certain aspects, whether you're using, you know, YouTube, Google or just have, you know, your own documentation. Then from there you will dispatch a vendor. The vendor could be the property managers vendor, or it could be part of your vendor database. Is that right? So you you you basically extend the property managers database of vendors inside their, um, in inside their database. Correct.

Diego Alatorre: [00:12:41] Exactly. So what we use either our own or their own vendors. Um, a lot of times we've noticed that they want to use their own vendors at first until they see that maybe they're not performing as great as they they thought, you know, because we love looking at data, and KPIs never lie, you know? So we'll we'll look into how how long a work order was open for, which vendor was assigned what the tenant satisfaction was. Um, and we'll, we'll take we'll gather all of that information to decide whether someone is, is actually worth utilizing, you know, using for the work orders or not. Um, one really quick thing that I do want to mention, Pete, that everyone you know listening in should know is, um, what we do at Cavalry. You know, where we handle maintenance on behalf of property management companies. Right now, we're doing that completely free of charge to the property managers. Um, we find ways to get vendors to provide better pricing for owners. We provide a better service when it comes to, you know, handling. Um, the tenant service request so that the tenant satisfaction goes up. Retention. Um, you know, increases, and then you have less owner churn, you know, because of it. So it's, it's a, it's it's a place where the property management company wins. But not only that, vendors also win because vendors are a huge factor to what we do since they provide a rebate to us, that's how we actually make a profit. They actually get more work from it. And so I just wanted to point that out.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:27] I love your model because I have the exact same model, right? VPM, the company. It's free for the company and the virtual team member who gets the job right. Like the vendor who gets the job pays me a percentage. The vendor gets the job, pays you guys a percentage, and you guys make sure they get paid. You're doing all the communication. You're giving them more work. It's it's a it's a as second nature call. It's a triple win. Right. It's a win for Calvary a win for the property manager and win for the, uh, for the vendor. Uh, I'm going to switch gears. You mentioned KPIs, and, uh, I'm glad that I instilled KPIs in you ten years ago. And you're. And you're still and you're still passionate about them. If I'm a property management firm, listen to this. And I don't have Calvary and I don't, I'm just running management on my own. What are the metrics that we should look at to determine if our maintenance is healthy? What do you think? I have my own opinions, but I want to hear what the expert has to say.

Diego Alatorre: [00:15:22] Yeah, that's a great question. So, um, what a lot of people don't know is that let's say you have 100 doors, right? From that, those 100 doors, you should expect at least half of work orders a month from those 100 doors. So let's say, is it that.

 

Pete Neubig: [00:15:40] Is it still that high? It's still that high holds 50% of your units will put in a work order every month.

Diego Alatorre: [00:15:46] Yes. Now that is, if it's an actual healthy maintenance department. And the reason why I say that, you know, that includes preventative maintenance. It includes, um, you know, handling the make readies correctly.

Pete Neubig: [00:16:02] Inspections in there as well. So make ready is a part of that. Um, and inspections would be part of that. Okay. Yes. So interesting enough that you say that because we were 46 to 54% of our portfolio for since I owned Empire, and I always thought we just had bad houses. Right. Like and we had like class D houses. Then we went to class C, then we went to class B and we still had that. And you're seeing that across the board. 50% of all units are putting in a work order. So if you don't get anything else from this, from this deal other than you know this number, realize that 50% of your houses or your residents are putting in a work order every month. And of course, the other thing is that Cavalry is free, which is crazy. So, um. But so. Okay, so take me through that more. This is interesting.

Diego Alatorre: [00:16:48] Yeah. So I've actually noticed to to different things, if maintenance is not being run correctly, what ends up happening that number can actually drop. And the reason for that and it's very interesting, like when we started working with, uh, quite a few property management companies this year, they had an outrageous amount of open work orders. And so we started to call the tenants to find out, you know, hey, was this issue resolved? Could you give me some feedback, like how is maintenance being handled and so on, and you would be surprised by how many tenants said, I don't submit new service requests unless they're an emergency because I know they're not going to be handled, you know. So that's that was a very, you know, big, uh, statement from a lot of tenants. Yeah, exactly. Because they...

Pete Neubig: [00:17:44] My guess is those residents would probably not renew their lease if they know that.

Diego Alatorre: [00:17:48] Exactly.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:48] Right. So the turn now the turn becomes more expensive and the turn becomes now you're you're, uh, you're you're lease life is down to 12 months, which. That's crazy.

Diego Alatorre: [00:17:59] Yeah. And so if you're not doing inspections, you know, at least twice a year and the tenant moves out, you go into the home to do the make ready. And there there are so many things that are broken down, but no one notified you because they just didn't want to submit a service request that they knew was not going to be handled. And so, um, what we've noticed is once Cavalry goes in, we start cleaning up the, the, the work orders. We start handling maintenance and gaining trust with those tenants again. Then tenants start to submit new service requests and they're like, hey, now that I know that you're here to help me. Um, I want to let you know that there's this issue. Could you please help me with this? And so what ends up happening after you start a cleanup? That's what we call the, you know, the maintenance cleanup. What ends up happening is now that number goes up slightly before it starts to come down. So there was a client, um, they.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:00] Because they waited months and months before they put in a work order. Now everybody realizes. So now there's a there's a backload of work orders and then it smooths out again.

Diego Alatorre: [00:19:08] Exactly. And so there was a particular client. And this has happened so many times, but this particular one had 380 homes, but they had over 400 open work orders. And they didn't even realize that they were open. And that's what that's what we're noticing a lot of times, that there are so many things that get, um, put behind that no one is even looking at or touching. And some, some work orders were from 2019.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:38] That. And those are. All of those are negative reviews and and lawsuits. All they're just sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting to kind of mushroom up.

Diego Alatorre: [00:19:49] Exactly.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:50] I gotta on this. I do have a quick question. I know you're not a lease guy, but I'm going to ask anyway. And if you don't know, it's okay. But, um, some people put in their leases that the resident is responsible for the first x dollars of a of a of a, um, you know, of a work order. Do you come across that very often? And if so, do you think that that prevents people from putting in work orders and then you just have deferred maintenance when you do the make ready?

Diego Alatorre: [00:20:18] Actually, Pete, from every client that we've onboarded, none of them have that policy in place.

Pete Neubig: [00:20:24] Interesting.

Diego Alatorre: [00:20:25] And yeah. And so I actually personally I wouldn't recommend it because just like you said, what would end up happening is a negative trigger, which is tenants not submitting service requests request because they don't want to pay for that for that upfront fee. You know, I do believe it's best to separate what our true tenant responsibilities and what our owner responsibilities like. For example, once the tenant moves in, maybe the lawn, the pest control, that would be the tenant's responsibility. But when it comes to plumbing and electrical issues, functionality of the home, um, that would be on the owner.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:02] Yeah. Yeah. I've actually used to have that in my when I first started. And what I found is, you know, it just creates a lot of contention between the resident and the property manager. Right. Like a dishwasher goes out that's been 19 years old. President moves in. Six months later, dishwasher goes out and you're telling them you got to pay the first $250. And they're like, wait, what? I didn't do anything. Uh, so so we we got rid of it pretty quickly because, um, at the end of the day, your residents are your clients as well, and you want to treat them really well. If you treat them well, they're going to treat your house well. They're going to stay longer. And let's let's be honest, if you're listening to this and you're a property manager, most of your owner clients leave you when the property is vacant. They don't leave you in the property. Is is running running pretty well. All right. So 50% of your work or work orders come in. So tell me about your KPIs. So how do I know. What am I looking at to determine I have a healthy maintenance company maintenance division in my property management company.

Diego Alatorre: [00:22:01] Yeah. So from those 50 work orders that you receive on a monthly basis, over 70% of those work orders need to be closed out every single month. And that's that's to keep it healthy. Now, of course you can. You can push your team to get it above that. And that is always the goal. But you need to handle work orders under seven days. That that should be your minimum. If you have work orders that are open over seven days there, and it's a big percent of that, there is a big problem there, and that would be the first thing that I would suggest that you look into. So, so.

Pete Neubig: [00:22:41] So obviously I can't get it to be zero, right. That that's just impossible. So I can't have 0% of my work orders be over seven days. It's going to be a percentage. What should I strive for? What should I strive for? Is it like 20%? 30%? 15%? What should we strive for? Where if I look, if I'm an owner and I'm on a deserted island, I look and I say, oh, I have, you know, x percent of work orders that are open that are greater than seven days. What makes me happy? What should make me happy?

Diego Alatorre: [00:23:15] So let's start from the actually the oldest to the newest. That way, you know, it's it's a little bit better there. Okay. Um, when you have what we like to call the oldest type of work, orders are anything over 30 days okay? Anything over 30 days? It should be less than 2%. That should be your your goal. That should be your minimum. And you use that for, you know, if you're doing a roof replacement, um, there's a, you know, an insurance claim or a big construction type of project, that's that's what you use that 2% for now. Um, then you look into what it's the 15 or 14 day type of work orders. Right? The ones that surpass that. Why are those so important when a work order surpasses the seven days and the 14 days, it starts to double in the amount of time it takes you to actually handle that work order, because the tenant is going to be impatient, owner is going to be impatient, and everything's going to start to, to get escalated. So that should be less than 10%. Less than 10% should go to that. And anything over 7% again you want to you want to.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:31] Over seven days. Over seven days.

Diego Alatorre: [00:24:32] Yeah. Oh, sorry. Anything over seven days? Um. You know, you want to keep that below. Uh, the goal should be 80% of those work orders should be cancelled out. You know, within that, um, that time frame, within those seven days. But if you have, you know, um, 20% that go that surpass that 7%, that's not a that's not a bad number.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:57] All right. So if I'm looking at three numbers, percent of work orders open greater than seven days should be if it's 20% or less I'm I'm healthy over 15 days old. If it's 10% or less, I'm healthy and over 30 days. If it's 2% or less, I'm healthy.

Diego Alatorre: [00:25:15] Yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:15] If it's greater than those numbers now I'm I'm going into unhealthy and and my maintenance division is not running peak performance. And I get it. There's reasons why you have work orders over seven, 14 and 30 days. That's why it can't be 0%. I get that okay Um so big, big fan of that. Go ahead. Tom.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:25:35] Yeah, I just wanted to say an easy calculation that we also implement if you want to have like a quick view rather than digging into the KPIs. So per every 100 um, units that you manage, you should have around uh, 12 to 70. Well, let's say 10 to 15 open work orders if your average closing time is around seven days, if it's around 14 days, which may be the case, then you should double that. It should be around ten, 20 to 30 open work orders. That's like a quick view. If it's far above that, you know there's something and then you go dig deeper, okay.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:10] All right. So I like that. Um, now tell me about, um, you know, Property Meld and some of these other software they have, like a tenant rating system. Um, do you guys look at the tenant rating system at all?

Diego Alatorre: [00:26:22] Yes, definitely. That is one of the most important metrics that you should be looking at. And if it's anywhere below below 4.2. You should really be questioning what's going on.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:37] So give me examples of what brings a A rating down. Give me an example of why why a rating would go down.

Diego Alatorre: [00:26:44] It could be you know the main one is communication within your team with the tenant and letting them know what's happening. You know, what they should expect and so on. It could also be the tenant, the vendors that you're utilizing. Maybe they're not they're not good at handling those type of issues, or they did the repairs incorrectly, or maybe they didn't even complete the job. Those those type of, um, things would really hurt that metric. So...

Pete Neubig: [00:27:11] And of course, the the days, the days that goes longer and longer reduces, reduces that as well. Right? So if I'm at 14 days and it should be really seven, um, my rating is going to go down. Is that correct?

Diego Alatorre: [00:27:24] Yes. Correct.

Pete Neubig: [00:27:25] Why are tenant ratings important? I think we hit on this already, but I'm going to ask again.

Diego Alatorre: [00:27:30] Um, yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:27:31] Is it basically because they stay in the home if they're.

Diego Alatorre: [00:27:34] Yeah. It correlates to them wanting to renew the lease. If the if the tenant is unhappy, they're not going to want to renew the lease. They're going to look, you know, somewhere else to, to manage. And that's usually when you get really bad negative reviews on Google as well. Most tenants, if you look at the Google reviews, most tenants will leave a negative review right after they move out. And, um, you know, or once they get the deposit basically. But that, that usually correlates to that.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:28:08] Um, I'll also say one easy way to, to improve your tenant ratings is first of all ask for more ratings. So if you, if you never ask a tenant to to put in a rating, chances are that negative, um, ratings will be more likely to be, um, submitted, right? Yeah. But also...

Pete Neubig: [00:28:28] People only put in bad ratings on like they don't put in good ratings normally. Yep. Got that.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:28:33] Yeah. So but then also if you just implement one simple thing that is ask your maintenance coordinators to call the tenant, uh, the next day or a few hours after the work was scheduled, you call them, you're like, hey, how did it go? What's the job complete. How was the vendor? Was he on time? Just ask 2 or 3 questions. Now all of a sudden you have a bunch of information. Are they happy? Are they not happy? If they're happy, ask for a rating. But also, if they're not happy, you nip it in the bud immediately. You're like, hey, I'm so sorry. I'm going to look into this opportunity.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:08] It's an opportunity to get a good rating because you take a bad. Yeah.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:29:11] And also they feel heard. So now all of a sudden there's a relationship that you're building and it doesn't work if you do it every now and then. No. If you just do it every single time, you catch problems really fast and and tenants are happy, they feel heard. And it's an opportunity to ask for a good rating. Yeah, it It's great.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:28] You always you always ask for the the satisfaction rating or a positive review when they, when they're happy. Right. So if they're not happy you don't ask for the rating. You take care of it. You make them happy and then you ask for the rating.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:29:42] Exactly.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:42] Brilliant. All right. Are there any other KPIs that you guys are passionate about that you should be looking at that gives you a car like that, basically tells you if your maintenance is is successful or not.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:29:54] Communication, Diego. Yeah, I would say the number of messages. Yeah.

Diego Alatorre: [00:29:59] Yeah. So those, those would be the, the basic and the main core ones, but a one that no one really likes to focus on is communication. How many messages, you know, were sent out with the tenant with the vendor that will ensure you that you're actually handling that work order correctly. So anywhere above 18 messages per work order that that...

Pete Neubig: [00:30:22] That's a problem.

Diego Alatorre: [00:30:22] What?

Pete Neubig: [00:30:25] Problem, right? 18 messages means that's a big problem or is that a good thing?

Diego Alatorre: [00:30:28] No, that's a good thing.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:30] Really?

Diego Alatorre: [00:30:30] Because that means you're communicating with the tenant. You're letting them know, hey, um, you know, try these troubleshooting steps, see if that works. Right. Um, you can have automations in place to send out troubleshooting type of messages. You're also keeping the tenant informed, like, hey, the tenant is scheduled for X date. Uh, you confirm that that appointment with them, um, you know, you you basically utilize the platform, whatever platform you're utilizing for open communication with the tenant so that everything is documented. And if there's no communication happening, what what I've noticed is companies that have that, uh, if you have Meld, you know, the communication number is below 18. That usually means the tenant is not receiving enough information. They don't know what's going on. And so that usually correlates to a negative review because they didn't Sometimes a tenant will put in a bad review because they didn't know it was scheduled, you know, or things like that.

Pete Neubig: [00:31:32] That is super interesting because I would have thought 18 messages means hell. You know, you're just going back and forth and you're kind of fighting with the resident, but it's actually you're if you I'm sure there could be there could be times when you have 23 messages and it's not going good. Things are getting escalated. But you're saying in a normal circumstance and you're keeping people updated on what's going on. If you have 18 messages, it's you're you're going to get good tenant satisfaction.

Diego Alatorre: [00:31:59] Yes.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:31:59] Now but even then, even then, if you even if there's an issue and you have many messages, at least you're handling it. And again, they feel heard, you know. So it is actually again...

Pete Neubig: [00:32:10] Of course. If I'm if I'm listening to this and I'm already overwhelmed with my maintenance, the first thing I'm saying in myself is like, this is great, but there's no way that we can afford we can have somebody call every time a work order is done to get a customer satisfaction. There's no way we can put in 18 messages. My property managers are completely overwhelmed. And I would say to that, you know, talk to these guys at Calvary and see if there's a way to help you with that and alleviate that pain. We're up against the time. But before we go to commercial break, I really let's talk a little bit about vendor relations, right? I mean, there's so much more we can go over, but I think vendor relations is really important. What are some challenges that maintenance company that that property management firms do? Um, that that kind of hurt their relationships with their vendors. And what should they be doing to build those relationships with their vendors?

Diego Alatorre: [00:33:02] Tom, I'll let you answer this one. Yeah.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:33:04] Well, that the the main issue there is payments. So many people or many companies that we we speak with many, many companies and most of them are either pay once a week or, uh, once a month or once a week, right. So the things that we're seeing is or the misconception that we're seeing with many companies is that, oh, well, if I pay every week, it's going to be so much more work, it's going to be so much worse, and we're going to get overwhelmed. Actually, it's quite the opposite. That's what we've noticed. We've noticed the more you pay, the less the happier your vendors are, because not only will it help dramatically with their cash flow, that also means that they can take on more jobs. So now you need to maintain less relationships with less vendors. Those less vendors now have more work. Happier. Also, in terms of questions that you're receiving from vendors on late payments from owners, for example, let's say if you only pay once a month and the owner gets a statement once a month, they might be like, oh, what was that again? That's another email that comes in. So on time payments is really um, is is really crucial.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:15] I found that they'll go they'll go also go above and beyond for you. Right. They know they're going to get paid if you put in a invoices by Tuesday. You get paid on Friday and they'll go above and beyond. Matter of fact, at Empire, we went from monthly to every two weeks to weekly, and when we went to weekly payments, our vendors were a lot happier. And they were they would go above and beyond for us. All right. What else you got?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:34:37] Yeah. And I'll tell you that too. Um, so they work vendors work with different PM companies. If a vendor works with 1 PM company, they usually work with different ones. And then for you to pay every week, you will stand out. Guaranteed. Um, then also communication, setting expectations. Very important. The vendors appreciate it so much. If you just give them feedback you're like, hey vendor, um, we're looking at your KPIs. You're really fast at responding and accepting the job, and then you're fast at scheduling even, but you're really lacking a little bit in creating the estimates. We have to wait three days for an estimate that, you know, if you can improve there. Now you're with the top 5% of vendors. They appreciate that so much. Sometimes they just don't know. They just need guidance And when you give vendors feedback and you give them guidance, they feel heard. Once again, you're building a relationship. It's all they want. You know, they want more predictable income. And they know that predictable income comes when you build a relationship with them.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:36] Yeah. You know, one of the challenges that we had at Empire, I don't know if you remember this, Diego, was that the vendors wouldn't give us the invoice. We'd have vendors that wouldn't invoice us for weeks, sometimes months. I had one vendor, Endurance Plumbing, loved them. They were really nice guys, but they, at the end of the year, would do their books and send me invoices from like January.

Diego Alatorre: [00:35:56] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:57] Of the previous year, um, they went out of business, by the way. So if you have vendors that cannot get your invoices, that's a telltale sign that they may go out of business. And if you remember, Diego, we actually put in a KPI for our maintenance team that they that they had to close a high percentage of work orders, but they the policy was you could not close a work order until you got the before and after photos and the invoice. And yes, what that did is that made the team put pressure on the vendors. And you guys decided to use the vendors that would start invoicing us, right. Because you wanted to close your work orders. So. Very interesting. So, um, what about, uh, Tom? What about, like, um, doing, like, a vendor appreciation or or a vendor onboarding? Like, what are your what are your thoughts on that? If I'm a if I'm a property manager company is that there's their value there or is it just kind of a waste of time.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:36:51] What do you mean exactly by vendor appreciation or.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:54] Like um, like maybe having a party for vendors, like a quarterly, you know, like they're, they're like, they're kind of like your owners and your residents. They're a big part of us. So, um, you know, just like like when I onboard a vendor, do you do a zoom meeting with them and, and kind of go over the rules of the games and have an agreement with them, like, what's your what is the onboarding process? What should that look like? And then afterwards, like, do you have a party and just like appreciate your vendors every once in a while.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:37:19] Yeah. So what we do is we set the right expectations. So we have a vendor onboarding team continuously onboarding new vendors, trying new people out, giving everybody a chance basically. And um, and then we set the right expectations. So we have a list of uh, of, of requests that we want. One of them is invoicing within a week, preferably um, and then we set the right expectations before pictures after pictures for make readies. These are the the steps that we want to follow. That is what we do. That's the biggest part of our onboarding process we have not.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:50] You're setting the rules of the game right. Like and you tell them what you're what you're like. So not only what do I expect you, Mr. Vendor, to do, but what are you what you should expect from us. We you you should expect us to invoice by Tuesday. Pay by Friday. You expect us to, you know, give you opportunities and not just not just have you just quotes and never get a job right to. So I think there's there's going to be rules of the games on both sides. Is that is that kind of what you guys do you guys set expectations on both sides.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:38:17] Yeah that's correct, that's correct. We also try to minimize multiple bids as much as we can. Why? Because we trust our vendors. So when we work with a new property management company sometimes they're like no we want three bids. Like, well look, we know these vendors, we we kind of know and maybe it will take you a while to get to know them, but trust us that getting multiple bids is difficult because vendors quickly catch on to that. You're wasting their time, their gas, your its opportunity cost as well. Vendors really don't like that and I cannot blame them at all. So we also try to fight for vendors. So we like to look at ourselves as a mediator. We protect our owners and the property management companies and the tenants, but we also try to protect the vendors. We really try to see stay neutral in in most situations and, and just, you know, fight for everybody and see who's right.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:11] Yeah. So if you're listening to this and you do not have a vendor onboarding system, we have an owner one. We have a resident one. Um, we need to have a vendor onboarding system, and you should have a vendor agreement as well. So that sets the rules of the game. Boys. I can talk to you guys all day. Uh, we're we're actually over on time, so I'm going to hit a commercial break real quick, and then we're going to hit the lightning round. Alright. We'll be right back everybody. All right.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:40] Welcome back everybody. All right Tom Diego we're going to do the lightning round. You ready. All right Tom you answer first on the questions and then Diego. We'll have you answer afterwards. Okay. Um. Does Cavalry use salespeople or BDMs?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:39:59] Um, yes, yeah we do.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:02] Okay. Um, do you use virtual assistants?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:40:06] Yes. That's our bread and butter.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:08] All right. For both of you. Now, what is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in the PM business? Tom, you go first.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:40:17] Get a virtual assistant. Put time into building processes, writing everything down, even if it's not perfect. Doesn't matter. Write them down and have your virtual assistant perfect them as you go. Or hire a company like ours. We do it immediately without the hiring and keeping people accountable.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:37] On the maintenance side, for sure. Diego?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:40:39] Yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:39] What is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in the business?

Diego Alatorre: [00:40:43] I would say write down every mistake you make so that you don't make it again. I believe that's one of the most important. Yeah, that's the most important one. And then, of course, piggy. Piggy back on what Tom said. Hire Cavalry. If you're struggling with maintenance, you'll reduce your time by 80% if you're not handling maintenance yourself.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:41:06] And payroll.

Diego Alatorre: [00:41:08] Yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:09] Pineapple on pizza?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:41:11] Yes. Hell, yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:15] You guys were friends. All right. Favorite fast food restaurant your go to? If you ever have to have fast food.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:41:23] In and out.

Diego Alatorre: [00:41:26] Oh, that's a that's a really tough one. It's because I have so many. But, um.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:33] Your go to which one is it?

Diego Alatorre: [00:41:35] Wingstop. That's the first one that came to.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:38] Okay. Yeah. All right. All right. Tom, what was your first job?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:41:44] Uh, Army. Ten years.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:47] That was your first job. Seriously?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:41:49] Yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:49] You didn't work when you were in high school?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:41:52] Oh, yeah. Okay. So I did one month working in McDonald's. Yes, I did one month in McDonald's when I was 16.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:58] That's why it's. In and out. Not McDonald's. Is your fast food favorite?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:42:01] Uh, yeah. No. Exactly.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:03] There you go. What was your first job?

Diego Alatorre: [00:42:05] I actually worked at a jewelry store. It was pretty amazing.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:10] Did you have ice all around you? Were you able to borrow stuff from there?

Diego Alatorre: [00:42:15] Yes. Actually the the owner would allow us to, you know, to use jewelry while you were working so that you can actually, you know, shine.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:24] Um, what is one thing most people don't know about you?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:42:29] Um. I'm bald.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:35] Diego, what's one thing most people don't know about you?

Diego Alatorre: [00:42:38] Um. I love to paint, draw, and I box.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:46] I can see who the creative one is and who the process guy is. Tom's the process guy.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:42:51] Yeah. Yeah, I should have said I'm actually a registered nurse. That's something nobody knows of me either.

Pete Neubig: [00:42:56] Oh. That's good. Because I can tell your boss I'm watching you on video if you listen to this.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:43:00] I know.

Pete Neubig: [00:43:01] But we do video as well. All right. What is one book that you're currently reading or have read that is impacted your life or business that you would recommend?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:43:12] Oh, give me a second.

Pete Neubig: [00:43:13] Go, Diego.

Diego Alatorre: [00:43:15] I would say, well, right now I'm reading. Jesus. I don't want to butcher the name. Scaling.

Pete Neubig: [00:43:21] Scaling up by Verne Harnish?

Diego Alatorre: [00:43:24] No.Uh, scaling. Jesus, I have it. I left it in the other room. Jesus. Let me think of the the.

Pete Neubig: [00:43:32] It must be super impactful if you can't remember the name. All right, Tom, let's go to you. Do you have a book that you're, uh, that's that's impactful in your life?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:43:40] Yeah. It's, uh, choose your enemies wisely. Wisely by Patrick David. And it's not so much about enemies. It's more about creating a life and business plan and always choosing an enemy to keep you hungry.

Pete Neubig: [00:43:55] Okay, I read his other book. What is it like your next seven moves or something like that? I think it's called. It's, uh. It's a play on chess. I like that one. Yeah. All right. Diego, cats or dogs?

Diego Alatorre: [00:44:06] Dogs. I have four.

Pete Neubig: [00:44:09] Tom

Tom Van Waelem: [00:44:10] Cats. I have 4.

Pete Neubig: [00:44:11] You're a cat guy. All right most people don't know about you. Okay. Um, if somebody listens to this and they're like, Holy crap, this is exactly what I'm looking for. How do I get in touch with you guys and learn more about Cavalry?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:44:25] Well, we have a special offer for all NARPM members. It's basically we will take a look at your KPIs, and we will give you a free assessment of what we feel the health score of your maintenance department is. And then, um, and then from there, you know, during the call, we can discuss whether or not we would be a good fit. But, um, I suggest going to the website, scheduling a call with us, and allow us to just check it out in that website.

Pete Neubig: [00:44:52] And the website is?

Tom Van Waelem: [00:44:53] Um, it's yeah, it's cavalry.works. So, like, here comes the Cavalry, not Cavalry. It's a c-a-v-a-l-r-y dot w-o-r-k-s because Cavalry works.

Pete Neubig: [00:45:08] cavalry.works

Tom Van Waelem: [00:45:09] Yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:45:10] All right. Um, and if you are listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, um, please give the folks at NARPM a call or go to the website to join. Uh, we'd love to have you as a member. NARPM.org Or you can call them at (800) 782-3452. And, um, if you are stressed, your property management team is stressed. They need help. They're overworked, overwhelmed. And you want to hire, um, you know, high, uh, high character, uh, remote team members. You know, people like Diego, who's actually, uh, was was a remote team member for Empire back in the day. Go to vpmsolutions.com, or you can email me at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Tom, Diego, thank you so much for being here today. Um, and everybody else. We'll see you next time. See you guys.

Tom Van Waelem: [00:46:04] Thank you, Pete.

Diego Alatorre: [00:46:05] Thank you Pete. Bye.