A Podcast | Mark Ainley

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back, everybody, to the NARPM Podcast. And as promised, got world famous, world renowned podcast host himself, Mark Ainley here. Mark, thank you so much for being here, brother.

Mark Ainley: Oh, man. Pete, any chance I get to hang out with you and maybe give back to the community if that's where that turns out here. Like I'm down. So thanks for wanting to have me on here.

Pete Neubig: Awesome, brother. So, listen, the reason why I asked you on this podcast is because for years you've been creating, you've created a podcast and you have built GC Realty with our good buddy Cliff McCue into a powerhouse. You know, I think you guys, I talked to Cliff about every other week, just kind of in a mastermind. And I know you guys are rolling around 1500 units, mostly single family, not HOA, not multifamily, and you literally built the majority of this on the back of the podcast. And I just think it's fascinating. So just kind of talk about like how you decide to do it, how long you been doing it, and kind of the evolution. And then let's talk about like all the benefits and why every property manager should have a podcast in their own market.

Mark Ainley: Yeah for sure. Well, it kind of goes, you know, the podcast I've been doing for four years now. So we started right before Covid. It had nothing. It was just coincidentally, it wasn't like we did it because of Covid. But so happened just before then. And uh, it really is an extension or a modernization of really how we started as a company from the beginning. And when I say that I was always being the go to person, the way I was able to connect, network, refer other people I was always like, hey, you know, it's Chicago, right? Joke. I got a guy. But you're from New York. Same thing. But, that was always kind of the mentality. But what that created was community. And that's kind of a buzzword these days. But that's what it created. It created this group of real estate investors or people entrepreneurs, people looking to grow, you know, financial freedom. You know, it started more of on the heels of BiggerPockets. And you build this community and you build it locally and it turned into then, the next evolution of that was the podcast. And then those people you built in that initial community, you know, I mean, you're talking about lots of people, but, you know, those couple hundred people were your first listeners to the podcast.

Pete Neubig: So the you know, one of the things is like, as a property manager company, we always should have a guy. We always have a guy. I got a real estate guy, I got a maintenance guy, I got a title guy, we got we always have a guy. And so you just kind of took that to the next level. And when you started the podcast, what was the intention? Was the intention to grow the property management? Did you really not have an intention like, tell me what, what the intention was and then like what's actually transpired while you were building that podcast?

Mark Ainley: Yeah. So the mindset behind the podcast. So all right. So let me take a step back. So between '08 and '18 when the market crashed, me and Cliff and our third partner Brian, we did a bunch of BRRRR properties. We did 482 BRRRRs so bought them, renovated them, uh, rehabbed, refinanced, rented out whatever that order is for BRRRR. And we we did that and I learned I learned so much doing that. Right. You I always say I made a thousand thousand dollar mistakes. I made $1 million of mistakes. And, after, you know, there's a point in 2018 where, like, all right, prices went up. I mean, little did we know at that point, but in hindsight. But at that point, we're like, you know, price has gone up. There's a lot more competition. So let's focus more on the property management side of things. There's always operating. It's just now we're going to put our attention there. Our ROI would be better on the time being spent on the property manager company. So, I went into the role of the BDM like, hey, you know, that's that's that was around the time you guys were coming up and, and Empire and operationalizing sales and marketing, and I jumped in the BDM role and the marketing role. And it was that time where I realized that...

Pete Neubig: When you started the podcast? What was the intention behind starting the podcast?

Mark Ainley: Gotcha, gotcha okay. All right. All right. So when I jump into, uh, as you know, in sales and marketing, I was my goal was I found right away I was successful selling property management by sharing my failures. Everything I did wrong and helping people that maybe didn't even realize they're about to make a mistake. Helping them through, whether it be just the right neighborhood, using the right contractor, renting out the right rate, or just buying in the wrong HOA like so I realized I was helping a lot of people. I was only helping people on a, you know, call it 20, 30 people at a time on a weekly basis and that might have been a heavy week as a BDM. And I realized, man, the podcast is like we could reach so many more people. We could be so much more impactful. And our original goal with the podcast, like if we can, you know, talk to 200 people a month, that's still more than I could do if I was talking to me individually.

Pete Neubig: Right? So one of the challenges that I've seen in this industry is that many of us in property management don't actually go and find and purchase the homes for the investor. The investor buys the home through another realtor, typically one that says he's going to rent the property way higher than he could. And then we get it. And then we have to kind of deal with the aftermath. And, I've always felt like we should be one step ahead, we should be like, instead of the caboose, we should be in the front of the train where we get them, build those relationships, and then help them purchase properties. And because most of our clients are investors. Right. That's that's kind of most of our clients, not all, but that but that was, anyway at Empire was heavy on on investors over people who are moving away and they wanted to move back when you decided to build this podcast to talk about, like what you built it for and how you built it. Like, for example, I know you're not trying to be national. You are really diving into Chicago and you're like for investors. So talk a little bit about that and why you decided to to model it that way.

Mark Ainley: Yeah. I will say, timing is everything. I think we're lucky no one else had a, a podcast. Like, we were starting to think could be valuable in a huge market like Chicago so that we're just kind of super lucky timing. BiggerPockets was kind of, um, super big at the at that point. And they still are, but they're not they're not what they were 5 or 6 years ago. But, uh, you know, taking what they're doing and just making it very localized. You know, people talk about Chicago or the suburbs here. They kind of say it's street by street, and there's a lot of that street level knowledge that if you want to be successful here you got to know that. And we knew we could get that information out to people. So, really just adding value to other people is 100% of the was 100% of the goal. I started my podcast co-host. It's not something that works at GC. I mean, he's a broker here now, but he started out he was a client of ours at the time. He's just an investor, minor client, younger guy that he was just really hungry to learn more about Chicago real estate and talk to more people and that was super beneficial because, you know, that wasn't even a resource that the company had to use at that point to have two people on there. I know a lot of people, property managers, they will they'll say, oh, it's a lot of time. Is that it? We'll talk about more of the logistics of this later on. But when you do have two people, you don't always have to be, thinking 100% about it. You might know that as well, too. You have someone to parlay off. If I had a bad day, my co-host picks up on the question, so that was super valuable to help us. At least, you know, get out running, I guess.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So let's talk about some of let's talk about some of the benefits of of having a podcast and how it affected your business, GC, and then we'll get into like the logistics of actually how to get started. Right.

Mark Ainley: Yeah, yeah.

Pete Neubig: So let's just talk a little bit about that. I know you talked about like recruiting. So how did that help with recruiting?

Mark Ainley: Yeah. You know, having a platform that you're able to speak directly to real estate investors, you know, at our age is I think it's 25 to 35 is like a majority of our listeners, people that are interested in real estate, people that just want to be around real estate and people that line in the mission of just having that passion around real estate, like when we have a job opening that we're hiring locally. Obviously it doesn't work on the remote side of things, but when we're hiring someone locally, that's the go to place. You put it out there, you put the message out there. I got my BDM from there. We  started doing using 1099 workers for like, move out. So we use the inspector. So instead of having our technicians go out there, we pay a guy kind of a kind of gig work. We do that kind of with showings as well, too. So we kind of created that. But I'm able to go to this community, and simply put it out there like, hey, anyone wants to learn more about the move out process, you know, and get paid? And you're able to kind of recruit people, like-minded people that just want to be around the podcast, want to be around real estate and want to be around other people that are successful.

Pete Neubig: And also when you hold the microphone, you become the expert. And so you built through that podcast. You became the expert in real estate in Chicago. Is that fair to say?

Mark Ainley: Yes, it definitely. You're able to. Yes, for sure. People view you as, you know what you're doing, and that definitely helps when you know you're getting compared to somebody else.

Pete Neubig: Are you able to determine how many leads or how many properties you manage from the podcast do you have? Are you able to track that at all?

Mark Ainley: I'm not able to track that. Exactly. And it's it's no different than, the Google AdWords type, uh, problem that we all have is like, you know, they might they might click on the Google word, but then they come back two weeks later and they hire you and you're not sure you can't directly correlate back to it. But you know, where we do get, you know, one, you get business through people that find you and then see the legitimacy of you through the podcast. You get people that, you know, we'll get people that call us up on the property management side, which is a different problem, and say, oh, man, oh, I actually know that podcast. I didn't realize that was you. I didn't realize it was you. So that means I'm not branding it 100% correctly enough sometimes. But then you get a lot of, you know, a lot of our audience is self managers, which is not a bad thing. We all know the blue ocean of self managers out there. So, you know, call it that's your slow drip. But then those people are confident enough to refer us. So we end up getting a lot of referrals of listeners that might not be familiar with it. And then it's also something that we provide the realtors with. You know, we got 30,000 realtors here in Chicago market, and we can provide them with that content, which helps them easily refer stuff over which I know, our numbers are like ten x on the realtor referral side here just in the last couple of years. And I know that has something to do with it.

Pete Neubig: When you do the podcast, do you actually do any kind of commercials for GC Realty in the podcast or for other agencies or other companies?

Mark Ainley: Yeah. So in 2020, it started off as an expense under the marketing for property management. And you know, I think, you know, ten, 12 episodes in someone's like, hey, man, I'll pay you if you let me do a commercial. And you're like, sure, but I just don't know even how to figure that out. But ultimately, the first couple of years we were profitable and we've been profitable every single year. It's never cost us anything. When you when you take in the money that we take in for ads, and then we'll throw some GC ads on there, especially when around times when we're hiring and then it just ends up being, but then that ends up being something a little more harder to do. Um, we've been working now kind of shifted to more of affiliations. Use this QR code and we promote somebody and.

Pete Neubig: VPM Solutions is actually going to be...

Mark Ainley: Yeah. So we're going to be doing that with you here in the upcoming weeks. And that's a little, if we could put it out there once, promote it, then it ends up being a little more inconsistent, but a little more easier kind of lift as far as managing all of the sponsorships. So.

Pete Neubig: All right. So, basically what you're saying is you can create a podcast and it can break even or actually make some money. It doesn't have to be a loss leader to get. So really in theory, any leads you get from the podcast is really a no cost because the podcast itself is making money in it.

Mark Ainley: Yeah. I mean, the only thing you can really chalk it up to might be time, which we could talk about time dedicated here shortly, but and I think I'll tell you this, I don't even think we exercise as much of the opportunity of the market as I think about this. You know, we have 15,000, 15 - 16,000 downloads a month. You know, for a local guy that trashes out houses or a local guy that does a rehab loans or hard money like, man, there's no more of a niche. We're a niche podcast and like, so to get those niche, uh, vendors is huge. And  that's been we probably have not even scratched the surface of what we could probably do with that without, uh, you know, being annoying to our listeners.

Pete Neubig: Well, it's if it feels like that you're opening yourself up to not just property management, but like you can now. If you wanted to start an investor club, you have a built in audience. You can literally turn these people into an investor club, if you like, like a BiggerPockets or if you want if you wanted to steer people to your real estate department, right, and have agents helping these folks buy investment properties, you're able to steer them that way as well. So you're getting a client. Like I always felt like property management is like you're getting a client at the caboose. Like that's like the the end of it, right? You're getting a client at the very beginning, and you're you have the whole life cycle of the client.

Mark Ainley: Yeah, we did start a brokerage team, so we did a DBA under GC Realty at straight up brokerage. So everything kind of ties in back with the straight up concept and then the logo. So, we did do that on the brokerage side. But again, you know, you start doing these things and if you don't put, uh, you get out what you put into it. So, I mean, it has been killer. Um, but, um, there. Yes. There's all those different opportunities that that definitely branch off. And, you know, we've the other thing that's actually generated us money is throwing parties. I hated I don't know, I don't remember, I think it was Austin a few years ago where they had the event guy. He went up on stage. He said, this is how you throw events, thousand bucks. And I'll show you how to throw events. And, I remember, I remember Cliff, cliff bought that and I'm like, oh, man. Like, I hate throwing events, especially somewhere like Chicago. Right? So anyone up here, you know, I just summer.

Pete Neubig: And I'm just saying, I just saw somebody on Facebook that just had an event at some rooftop thing just a couple weeks ago.

Mark Ainley: No, no, I'll tell you. I'll circle back here. I hate the events of, like, you know, in Chicago, there's a thunderstorm. No one comes. Um, if there's in the afternoon, big, you know, big storm whips through in the winter. It's too cold like. But what this gave us was the opportunity to start throwing these parties and charge people. And, you know, a lot of times realtors or events, mortgage brokers or events and it's like, oh yeah, it's free. And, you know, and someone's sponsoring the food, but it's like no one shows up than ever. Or it's like more difficult people. But we found the opportunity to... because of this community, you know, people are willing to pay $50, $60, $70 to come out to an event. You know, you just mentioned we had the the straight up rooftop event mixer here a couple months ago, and we had 100 people out there. And so that's another way that...

Pete Neubig: Everybody paid to be there?

Mark Ainley: Yeah. A hundred people that paid to be there.

Pete Neubig: And if you get any leads from that, that doesn't cost you any money because it's.

Mark Ainley: Yeah. But then now you got face time too. So now you're meeting people and you're actually they're kind of excited to be around these other people. You're mixing with guests which they listen to guest and they want to be that guest. So now they're getting that opportunity. You're kind of bringing people together and it's kind of cool in that sense. But so events has actually became something that's possible to do without having to deal with all the like trying to drag people out there. And now you got people that want to come to to other events.

Pete Neubig: All right. So you by having a podcast in your area, you become the expert. You get to network and you get to connect people. You get to build your own community. You get to, you know, put, uh, find great people, hire people. Um, and then it gives you legitimacy and it gives you basically you are the expert. And then here you also said, uh, in our green room, you talked about put you in rooms that you wouldn't be in on new issues. Talk a little bit about that.

Mark Ainley: Again, I don't know how this happened. Um, but, you know, we.

Pete Neubig: Have a podcast with 15,000 downloads a month.

Mark Ainley: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, we became the, you know, they passed a pretty big ordinance, like a really stupid ordinance in one of the little neighborhoods in the city. But now we have Chicago Apartment Association. We have, uh, Chicago Association of Realtors. We have, um, some of the neighborhood, uh, building owner groups, like, they come to us to or they include us in these conversations because they know we'll turn around and most of them be on their side because, you know, we're more on the landlord side than tenant side with stuff or city side and help promote it. So we became.

Pete Neubig: The tenant advocacy groups. Reaching out to you, huh?

Mark Ainley: Yeah, yeah. The funny thing is we had somebody on a couple weeks ago, actually we try to play in the middle there to, you know, no matter what, we all want to want something in the middle and just get to play both sides of that fence.

Pete Neubig: Okay. A true politician. Is that the next thing, mayor?

Mark Ainley: No no, no no way. But, uh, but anyways, we're able to get in in these conversations with people because they know that we're media. Then we're able to get that message out there for whatever they need. So they include us on how to promote these type of messages or get the call to actions in place for people to reach out to the alderman or the mayor and stuff like that.

Pete Neubig: So if somebody's listening to this, they're like, they're all fired up, like, oh my God, if Mark and Pete can do podcasts, I surely can do a podcast. So talk to me. About what? That what does that look like? Um, how much time? How much? Maybe. Maybe some money invested. Um, how hard is it to to get all set up? Like, are you, like, in your office? Like what? What? Tell me where you're set up.

Mark Ainley: So, you know, we do. We have two setups here. I'm in. this is where we do our zoom recordings here. Um, we built out this year, and we had, we had a 19 year old college intern that was helping us on the podcast. So we get some volunteer help, too, for people that want to just kind of be around it and have the skill set that us older guys don't have and video editing and stuff like that, but he's like, hey man, if you guys want to get make it, you know, you guys been doing this for four years. If you guys want to stay relevant, like you guys start doing in person. So this 19 year old talked us into spending, whatever, 1012 grand building out a room downstairs and do start doing stuff in, in person, which was awesome. It was it was the best ROI we could have gotten for kind of next steps of the podcast. But, I love telling the story because it was... I did it the hard way, man. We spent eight, nine weeks trying to figure out how to get on iTunes and do all this stuff. And and the funny thing is, it all circles back to property management friend Jeremy Pound. I don't know, I think I was venting to him like, I want to do this, but man, it's such a pain in the butt. He's like, oh no, no, I he said, he told me I got a guy. He's like your girl, I got a girl for you. She's in Florida.

Pete Neubig: That's that's actually true. Jeremy has all the women around him.

Mark Ainley: Yep, yep. So I said, uh, I said he referred me to somebody that that does everything for me. I think I jumped on a call with her like that next day. I spent eight weeks and countless time getting it. She charged me 800 bucks and I was on iTunes with like eight days. Like. Like it was. It was awesome. Like, I don't know where pricing is now. I'm sure it's gone up a little, but, um, she was the who, you know, we all who who not how she was my who that I was missing in the point. And I had no clue what I didn't know about it. And she basically jumped on the call, got us all set up. And there's a few other, property managers in the industry that have used her as well, too. And, uh, it's fairly affordable. She handles the editing every week. She handles the, uh, we do six episodes a month. So she does all the editing. She does all that. Um, and I think on an annual basis, I think we pay her 11, 12,000 a year, like total for doing everything that after. So, um, we're gonna end this podcast. I simply drag and drop this to a folder she takes care of everything, comes back and says, hey, can you can you review it? Obviously there's their standards. There's things we set up. We tell her what commercial we want to put in there, but it really it's me showing up here, um, and talking to clients. And then she does all that kind of post.

Pete Neubig: Your job really is to come up with some content and get the and get the guests.

Mark Ainley: Yeah, yeah.

Pete Neubig: That's it.

Mark Ainley: And if you if you have the right guess and depending on what you're, you know, for us, we're always just trying to find real estate investors that are cool with being vulnerable about their mess ups because no one, no one cares. Like, you know, people may be listening right now like, oh, he's he's so he makes it sound so easy. Like no one wants to hear that part. They want to hear how horrible it was, how shitty it felt the day you realized he got stopped for no permits the second time. Like they want to hear all that. Like all the the the the pain points.

Pete Neubig: Misery loves company, man.

Mark Ainley: Yeah. So our goal is to get those people on there that are vulnerable enough that that want to share that. And that's what's what resonates with the audience. Okay. It is hard. And if I just know this, I don't have to do this. And the cool thing that has came from it is you get these. I posted something on Instagram today. Um, someone was motivated by us. Like I listened to this episode, I want to be like him. My goal is to be a guest on your show, and then you'll get these other ones where we're doing it for years now. It's like, hey, it was all because of you. I bought a property and then you get a kind of a follow up. It's all because you have my third property. I don't necessarily get that management, but, you know,  no doubt in the small world that that guy knows 6 or 10 people. I know that someday the management conversation will come up that will tie back to us.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Or he buys 10 properties and he needs to manage.

Mark Ainley: Yes. That's where we get a lot of management too. It's like, hey man, I want to keep growing, but I can't do this management anymore. And that's where they outsource, right.

Pete Neubig: But that guy, anytime he thinks of anything real estate, he's going to think about you and your company.

Mark Ainley: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Right. So all right, so if I'm a property manager, I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, I want to see how much how much equipment, how much does it cost of equipment just to start like. And you could because you can start from your home. You don't need to go get a studio. You don't need to have these big boards. Like you can literally just get started with, with basically just kind of like a board and a microphone and, and having zoom or something like that.

Mark Ainley: That's it. I mean you know, you have your camera on your laptop, which you could use. You could, you could upgrade to a 4K camera, which I did that.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Mark Ainley: You do. You could use your, your iPhone earbuds. You should upgrade to maybe a microphone like the one I'm on right now. I don't think this thing's more than 60 bucks with the with the pole, the stand that kind of hooks to the side. And that's it. If you're outsourcing the editing, then, then it just becomes marketing.

Pete Neubig: Soundboard for like a couple of hundred bucks, I guess. Right. You can have like a little soundboard.

Mark Ainley: Yeah. If you need that or you want to put the big light, I don't know what they call them.

Pete Neubig: Before the O rings, the ring light.

Mark Ainley: But even then, I don't think you you can get all that stuff.

Pete Neubig: Basically, for for a few hundred bucks, you can get started.

Mark Ainley: Oh, yeah. Very, very easily. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And then if you, if you uh. Because but then you like, after you do that right, you have to have a cut sheet. Somebody has to cut the podcast, somebody has to input the commercial. Like there's, there's some editing. You can learn that, or you can do what you did to who, not how. And you can hire somebody. And there are tons of companies out there that will help you with your podcast.

Mark Ainley: You could hire somebody probably through VPM that knows how to do it and they just work directly for you. I know a couple people have done that. So I mean, that's something I know another property manager that does exactly that. He keeps it up. Someone else does it, but he keeps it all in-house with his RTMs.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Now, um, if you are thinking about doing this, um, I recommend basically listening to, you know, listen to Mark's podcast, gleam off what he's doing and just kind of mimic him. I mean, you know, you don't have to you don't have to rebuild the wheel here. Just become the expert in your city. Like, I'm in Houston and I started a podcast instead of like, being like top level, like high level business, get down and dirty and talk about deals and areas in your neighborhood. Right. And investing in your hometown.

Mark Ainley: The cool thing I didn't know this back then, but now, which is even more encouraging to anyone that's contemplating this is like the amount of of just podcasts in general that get past like ten episodes is like 1%. Like it's some crazy number that people fizzle out. So it's like to get to to do 20 or 30, um, podcast episodes, you're like in the, the top 5% of people that ever like as far as how far distance you go. Like it's crazy. You think, you know, we open our iTunes and all, we see a million things. But no, those are the single digit percentage that actually have made it past this hardly past threshold of only like ten episodes.

Pete Neubig: Now tell me, how do you use your podcast in your marketing at or if you do use your podcast in your marketing, uh, for GC, for property management, for, you know, the realty, the real estate division, do you guys do anything where you cut like little clips, you put them in your email marketing, like anything, anything like with that that you do.

Mark Ainley: I think when I started off, you know, everything we've talked about today and everything I kind of wrote out just to kind of think about this, getting prepared for this. That was the the number one reason, like, all right, if no one ever hires us, at least I'll create a whole bunch of content. And that was that was hugely valuable. And it still is. And think about this. So every Thursday we send out an email of the new episode and that goes to, you know, whatever 40, 50,000 people. Um, so you have a reason to blast people, you know, think about this. It goes the content we share with the realtor community, the 30,000 people I was talking about before. I mean, as a property manager, you can only say, hey, hire us. We'll pay your referral fee. Like that only resonates so long before it's like you're just noise in the background. But if you're giving them new content, you know, we we started every two weeks emailing the realtors and we kind of created a newsletter for realtors. I think we call it the the Realtors Property Manager or something like that. We put some, uh, hook point name on that. But, uh, this this gives them it gives you actual real investor content to help educate someone like that. Now, the other huge part with that is, you know, my BDM or myself jumps on a call with someone and they're like, oh man, I'm thinking about buying in this neighborhood. It's like, hey, listen, I did a whole episode on that neighborhood I'm going to send you. When we get off the phone, I'm going to send you that episode. You got to listen to it because this guy's going to tell you everything not to do there.

Pete Neubig: Right? Great. So, you gave me two things that I'm like, one is, I need to add the podcast to my newsletter. So my latest, uh, my latest podcast, so that people more people know about the podcast. And number two, you kind of just kind of brushed over this, but you have multiple newsletters. Is that did I, did I catch that? So you have one for realtors. I'm, I'm assuming you have one for your clients as well. Yeah.

Mark Ainley: So we have one that goes out every two weeks to the realtors. And then we have the one that goes out every single week to everyone in our CRM, everyone in LeadSimple like old new, all that stuff and that. So it's two different I think that we have email.

Pete Neubig: We'll send you a letter.

Mark Ainley: Yeah. No for sure. So that's all those emails we collected over the years. It's been huge. And that that pays off and it's great. People reply back you know. We just then started doing with MailChimp, more of the personalized email where it doesn't look as scripted. So we're doing some a B testing on that. I know that's separate from the podcast, but, MailChimp has been kind of a great tool for us to kind of keep testing all this different stuff.

Pete Neubig: How are you growing your podcast? What do you think is the number one way you're growing your podcast?

Mark Ainley: It ends up being just through kind of constantly promoting the shows. And I think our it's very easy to see how many downloads you have on a weekly basis and when we're slacking or, you know, maybe we didn't post as many times that week, you can definitely see the views go down. So our ability to stay consistent helps grow that. And the other thing that we have to keep doing and the reason you have to keep doing that because you get your loyal followers that that subscribe and it falls into their, their thing every week. But I think real estate investors go through seasons as well too. It's like I'm amping up. I'm going to do all my research and buy a property. I'm going to be gung ho. And then once you buy your property now you're busy doing something else and the podcast falls behind. So you have to keep...

Pete Neubig: Managing it properly because you didn't hire a property manager like GC Realty.

Mark Ainley: Well, no. Yeah. But if they're redoing that rehab that they've never done before and they're screwing themselves on that somehow, but yeah for sure. So you get that. And then also next generation. So we realize last year we started to start kind of hitting the next generation that didn't realize that we're here yet. The 20 young just out of college people. 

Pete Neubig: Got it. So would you say like social posts is is paramount to keeping that word, that out there or is it inside your email drip campaign or it's all of the above.

Mark Ainley: I think it's all of the above. The other place that we use those videos for is in the LeadSingle drip. So if I'm the, you know, when people are when people just call in with a new lead, your BDM, you know, you have some sort of drip call it the first 20 days is, I think, what we call it before you put it into your kind of your long term drip. But, you know, you put a couple clips in there and that helps. Again, back to the legitimate, uh, makes you seem legitimate and then ongoing, you keep like, hey, if you ever want to know about this neighborhood or here's the 2024 eviction laws here in Chicago, like so as we update it every year, we always put specific episodes back in there just to kind of, um, that's another place we use it to.

Pete Neubig: And I'm assuming if I type in Chicago real Estate investment, your podcast is going to be one of those first.

Mark Ainley: I'm hoping, I'm hoping so. Uh, for sure.

Pete Neubig: So SEO still becomes, uh, becomes important in all of that. Mark, is there anything that I have not touched on that you're like, oh, Pete, I gotta tell you about this with regards to podcast or just in marketing in general.

Mark Ainley: Just talking about marketing in general. Um, like I said, I started doing it in 2018, and I was looking for that silver bullet. I mean, I was the guy calling Jeremy. Jeremy referred me to somebody or not. Jeremy, whether it be Jeremy or Jordan or I was like, I just need the silver bullet. I need the who I thought, I thought I had. There was a who out there for my marketing, and the one thing I realized over the years is our marketing has became our our like who we are and our and call it our culture or our. It's really hard to outsource your marketing if you really want to have personality behind your marketing. And, uh, this podcast has just been an evolution that's rolled into our personality and our marketing. And I think a lot of people try to outsource it, but that actually is who you really are. And it's important to keep that close.

Pete Neubig: Man, I cannot agree more with that. You know, I have been approached numerous times for somebody to, you know, hire a remote team member to run your social, you know, and I'm like, yeah, if they want to run the company social, I have no problem with that. But every time I want them to run my social, it's just not my voice. It's not who I am. And your social is supposed to be who you are, right? So you're you're marketing your podcast, your voice. If somebody's doing it for you, it's just not you. You know, and you become you almost sound sound like a fraud, right? And so you don't sound like the person that you. That's who you are. It's not it's not in it's not congruent with who you are. A lot of times.

Mark Ainley: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Yep. All right, man, we are just about up against it. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to put you in the show. The lightning round. That's my, um.

Mark Ainley: I thought it was a toilet flushing. I know that was a lightning.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Probably manage your brain on you. We'll be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right. We're back here with Mark Ainley from GC Realty. And, the host of the. What is it, straight up. Is it straight up?

Mark Ainley: Straight Up Chicago Investor.

Pete Neubig: Straight Up Chicago Investor podcast. Highly recommend that, um, that if anybody is interested in starting a podcast, subscribe to his podcast, listen to it. Um, we're going to let Mark talk, you know, give him his, uh, well, we'll have him give his contact information here in a little bit after the lightning round. But honestly, when I heard Mark and I heard about his podcast, I'm like, that is brilliant. Um, I don't know. Many people don't know this, but Steve and I actually had a radio show in Houston for a little while, and that was expensive because you have to pay, and then you had to go to the radio station. So we were always trying to get people vendors to buy airtime from us, and we'd give them, like, we'd invite, you know, it was it just became a lot. And then with the podcast, your cost to create a podcast versus a radio show is completely different. And you can track more with the radio show. I couldn't track anything I had to like, put like special 800 numbers to see if anybody.

Mark Ainley: Yeah. I was on a radio show too at that time when we first started. So it's funny you brought that up. I forget about that. But that was part of my, like, buy-in to the podcast. I'm like, man, I'm paying this other guy, this other host, to be on his show. I get about two minutes of talk time. He interrupts me most of the time. I never get my full message out and, uh, and my own show, I get a full hour. I could go do ten episodes a week. I like the amount of control and the voice I could have doing my own thing versus what I was paying him like. It totally solidified like what I was doing at the time.

Pete Neubig: All right, here we go. Lightning round. All right. What property management software do you use at GC Realty?

Mark Ainley: Appfolio. But we've built out, uh, Podio as far as a task management system.

Pete Neubig: Do you use virtual assistants?

Mark Ainley: Yes.

Pete Neubig: How many BDMs do you have?

Mark Ainley: One.

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

Mark Ainley: Do it 100% virtual and make your first hire remote.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, that's a great one. Okay. Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Mark Ainley: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Oh, man. Are you really from Chicago? All right.

Mark Ainley: I do like that. It's only at California Pizza Kitchen, though.

Pete Neubig: All right. If I you probably don't eat fastfood. But if you had to, what would be your go to?

Mark Ainley: Um. Oh, man. Because I don't eat it anymore as much. I love I was always a Wendy's person. That spicy chicken sandwich. It's kind of crappy over the years, but I've always been a Wendy's spicy chicken and frosty guy.

Pete Neubig: All right. Oh, I love the frosty, I forgot.

Mark Ainley: Yeah, yeah.

Pete Neubig: What was your first job?

Mark Ainley: Um, first official job was at Pizza Hut. I made a fake birth certificate saying I was older so I could work there. It was back when you could copy and paste things and they know.

Pete Neubig: No photos.

Mark Ainley: Yep. I was at Pizza Hut. Uh, cook.

Pete Neubig: That's awesome. What is your ideal vacation?

Mark Ainley: Um, somewhere with a beach that has real estate. I could go explore.

Pete Neubig: So you can write it off. I get it, all right.

Mark Ainley: Not even necessarily that. It's just I, I can't, I get too bored. I love the idea of sitting on a beach, but, man, after half a day, it's like, all right, well, what things are for rent around here? Like.

Pete Neubig: Uh, if you could have dinner with anyone alive, who would it be?

Mark Ainley: Um, I have kind of a guy crush right now on, uh. Um, Chris Williamson, Modern Wisdom. I don't know if you know that podcast.

Pete Neubig: I don't, I don't.

Mark Ainley: Chris Williams, he's a he's an Austin guy. Um, but, uh, it's probably one of my favorite podcasts right now.

Pete Neubig: Okay. What is one book you currently reading or one that has impacted your business or life?

Mark Ainley: Um. Oh, man, there's a lot. Um, I just got done reading the new book by Ryan Holiday. Um, and I think Who Not How is one of the biggest ones and Go Giver is another one that's been impactful.

Pete Neubig: Go Giver was a really good book.

Mark Ainley: Yeah, they have 20 different versions now. But that that book, you know between that and Mr. Schmooze I Schmooze. Don't know if you read that one. That's an entertaining one too. But, uh, yeah. It's kind of adding value to other people. That's that's what gets it done.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And your your business partner, Cliff, just just put me on Hire On Attitude. And I'm like.

Mark Ainley: Oh, I see, that's a great book. Um, I mean, that that is huge right there. So there's been so many impactful books. I you know, I try to I'm not a reader, I'm a listener, but I try to I'll take down about 50 a year just listening.

Pete Neubig: Wow. Okay. Um, what do you prefer? Prefer dogs or cats?

Mark Ainley: Dogs. Cats will kill me. I'm allergic.

Pete Neubig: Allergic? Okay. All right, Mark, you're off the hot seat. Um, if somebody was moved to to want to reach out to you. How what's the best way they can contact you?

Mark Ainley: You got to support my new Instagram page. I'm late to the game. I only started a few months ago, but it's Mark Ainley. Ainley, REI.

Pete Neubig: Mark Ainley, REI.

Mark Ainley: And it's great. So if anything, meet me actually starting and owning that page myself. I've actually got a podcast guest. I've got business. I've I don't know, it's been a great experience for that. It's funny how it's so hard to get Ahold of people, but you go on Instagram, you message them, you get a message right back. Like famous people, not famous people. Like every day. Like it's it's really cool.

Pete Neubig: Interesting. All right. Well, next there's a lot of.

Mark Ainley: There's a lot of probably 30 year old.

Pete Neubig: Have you back on and.

Mark Ainley: Say this but like it's it's been great for me.

Pete Neubig: I'm going to have you back on here when we talk about how how your Instagram is blowing up.

Mark Ainley: Yeah that's the goal. That's the goal.

Pete Neubig: All right. And if you're listening to this and you're not a member of NARPM, best way to join is go to narpm.org or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you are thinking about hiring a remote team member to help you with your podcast or just to handle back office work, try us, give us a call at, or just check us out at VPMsolutions.com. Vpmsolutions.com. Or feel free to email me direct at pete@vpm.solutions.com. Mark, thanks so much for being here, buddy. I really appreciate it. Thanks.

Mark Ainley: Thanks for having me, man.