A Podcast | Sam Eddinger

Pete Neubig: [00:00:36] Ironclad. There we go. Awesome. All right. Welcome back, everybody to the NARPM radio show. And as promised, I have Sam Eddinger here with Ironclad Property Management out of the northeast. So we don't have many of our members out of the New York, Connecticut, uh, tri state area. So, Sam, thanks so much for being here today.

Sam Eddinger: [00:00:56] Thanks, Pete. Enjoying being here with you.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:59] So you, uh, you've kind of started getting a following on social media from some property managers. I know I'm now a follower, and you always have some really good ideas. So for those of you that are listening, you should probably go look Sam Eddinger up. I'm sure he will request he will accept your friend request, but he is a good fellow. And he also does a lot of stuff in the, uh, in a lot of the property management, uh, Facebook groups. So thank you so much for, for giving back. And one of the things that you talk quite about quite a quite a bit about is working with your significant other. Right. And so um, having like I call my ex my, my old partner Steve, like my old like he's like my work wife. Almost. Right. So like we have like this kind of interesting relationship by being business partners. But I never worked with with Felicia, my, my, my wife. So tell us, what is the secrets to that?

Sam Eddinger: [00:01:50] I don't know if there is actually a secrets. I think some people do it better than others. Um, I think the main thing is to figure out ways to not take it home with you. Uh, and so in trying to understand the specific strengths and weaknesses of each party and try to have a cater to to that. So I know that a lot of my inspiration came from my parents. So my dad was a business owner. He owned, uh, basically construction on the side. My mom would do his invoicing. Um, and then also my dad owned real estate, my mom would do the collections and a lot of those activities, a lot of the paying out invoices. And my dad would, you know, be the handyman to fix stuff. And so a lot of times when I try to model it, at least for me, I try to say, okay, what is the unique strength of my wife? What are the things that she would love doing? Because you want to for it to be successful, you need to have at least one person focusing their efforts on the areas that they're uniquely great at. And so my wife, we have her as our business development manager manager because she loves people. She loves going to events. She loves meeting people. Um, I don't like that stuff as much. And so it really works well because we can complement each other. But, you know, my wife was really afraid when we were starting this, and she was joining the business because she thought that it was never going to stop. But one thing that's really great about me is I compartmentalize really well. So when I'm at work, I don't want to even think about my house. When I'm in my house, I don't want to think about at work. So, um, people talk about rituals. I have a ritual. I get up in the morning, I wake up my kids. I do a few things, activities that I do every morning. Um, then I ultimately go drive the kids to the bus stop, and then I continue to work. It's part of my ritual. I work, I get in about 6:40 in the morning, and I work till about somewhere between 3 and 5 at in the evening, and then I end up going home. And when I go home I'll check my email. But I'm really not doing anything. I'm not talking to my wife about work. I'm talking about the kids. We're doing activities, um, we're triaging because the fact we have six kids, there's constantly something that we have to do, some emergency that we're dealing with. And so I don't think about at that point. So that's what works for us. I've seen other relationships where the husband and wife really integrate completely together, business and families kind of very much integrated. We try to keep everything kind of separate and compartmentalized because that works really well for me.

Pete Neubig: [00:04:17] A lot to unpack there. So first question I have is, um, did you did you and your wife do some kind of personality profiling or you just I mean, obviously you're married, you know each other really well, but did you actually just kind of do that just to make sure it matched with this, with the job skills that the jobs that she was going to do and you were going to do.

Sam Eddinger: [00:04:36] Yeah, we, we have done some, but I, I knew her, so I knew what it was going to be. We've done the disc profile. She's an is um I was kind of hoping she'd be an ID right or die because that's the traditional BDM. But, you know, she's an ES. I'm at this point, I'm a CD. A lot of people would think I'm a DC, but I'm a strong c conscientious from my engineering background. We actually just read a book called Six Working Geniuses. Peter Lencioni, uh, brought it in 2020. Um, and that actually talks about like, what are your unique geniuses? And, um, and kind of how to put people in places to be successful in their ongoing work. Um, the acronym for is widget, which stands for wonder, Invention. Discernment. Galvanizing. Enablement and tenacity. I'm a W and a T, I'm wonder and tenacity. I'm at both ends, which means I think a lot about a lot of things. But I also like to get stuff done. Not everything in between I don't like as much. My wife is an I and a D, so even in those things we actually complement each other. She likes to come up with inventions and, you know, has ideas of what she thinks is good or bad. Um, and so we really do compliment each other rather well in those regards.

Pete Neubig: [00:05:48] Now, do you have a physical, by the way? Uh, Patrick Lencioni, I love all of his books. The Five Dysfunctions of a team is probably the big one. Death by meeting is another good one, and I'll tell you that story one day when I sent my old, old boss to death by meeting book. Uh, so do you guys have office space or do you or do you office out of the of house?

Sam Eddinger: [00:06:08] So this is our office space right now. I bought an office building about a year and a half ago, and, uh, we moved it. I moved into it. I'm the only one that goes to the office every single. The remainder of my team. Everyone's remote. They come in to get keys. Mostly. I have an ongoing, uh, meeting with the team. Or I should say, lunch with the team every two weeks. And that's mostly to get them to come into the office and to hang out and to try to build some of that team bonding. But at this point, we're pretty much fully remote. I would not need this facility, but because I like to, I have my ritual where I go to the office. I really like a space where I can do my work, and then when I leave that space, I don't do my work.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:48] So that's what I was getting at. So by having do you think by having the office and your own space carved out, it allows you to not. That helps with coming back and talking to your wife about business after hours. Do you think that there's a you know, there's a that's what I'm there that that's kind of my persona.

Sam Eddinger: [00:07:07] For me, it's exactly the case. Um, I've had situations where I worked, uh, at the home. My my work gave us the flexibility to do that as an engineer. And I was always so distracted, I. Oh, what's going on? I smell food. Oh, you know, you're doing this. Oh, the kids just came home and all of those distractions. I noticed my productivity just went way down. And so I always enjoyed having a space to go to to ensure that I was able to not have all of those distractions. So my, my, all my guys have the ability to come in the office if they want to. But really we we support the determination of whether what the people are doing and whether or not they're doing their job based on, you know, KPIs, OKRs. Um, as, as the predominant measure of, you know, whether or not we're, we're accomplishing the things that we're supposed to be accomplishing.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:57] You know, it took me, uh, it took me a long time. It took me about a year to to figure out how to work from home because I was like you, I was during the pandemic, I'd go to the office. I'd be the only one there, uh, even on weekends when, uh, when I had extra work, I would go to the office and I would work out of the office. And, uh, now that I have VPM, we don't have office space, so I work out of my home office, and it took a while for me to set those boundaries up where, you know, because work can consume you. It becomes your identity. And when I go, when I leave this office, my study here, and I go into the kitchen and I start talking to my wife about work, I realize I'm like, that's kind of a boundary that I've, I've, I've over. I shouldn't I shouldn't be doing that. So I actually try to have meetings with my wife in her office upstairs or my office down here and not in the the living room or the social spaces. Uh, you know, because we're trying to do something like you're saying, because we don't want our whole life to be about the business. I think it's a big part of our life, but it shouldn't be the whole life. How does your wife do? Like so you have your your boundaries and you have your, you know, your ways to to to combat this. What about your wife? Does she does she talk business after or after a certain time, or how does she how does she deal with it?

Sam Eddinger: [00:09:15] Yeah. So one of the unique things that we did actually is I don't manage my wife. So I'm, you know, integrator visionary. She's a BDM and I have a sales marketing manager that kind of separates us and it becomes a little bit awkward for him. But, uh, we have noticed that there's situations that becomes uncomfortable for the team where we'll, you know, because of the fact that we have our own personal relationship with each other and are able to, um, you know, speak critically to each other about whatever it is, like people see it and they're like, ooh, that's like touchy. So, um, you know, we've kind of made a conscious decision that I don't really manage my wife because, uh, again, what what's interesting about our marriage is what makes my wife a great spouse. Doesn't make her the best employee. Always. And what would make her the best employee always would not make her the best spouse. So I love that she is, um, you know, a free spirit. And she pulls me in all these directions. But because she's a free spirit, she's always pulled in all these directions, and maybe she doesn't always get focused where I would need her to get focused if I was, you know, paying a high level BDM. And so, um, so what we've tried to do is actually have a little bit of separation. I have my, my, uh, sales marketing manager do one on ones with her. Uh, we do talk about things, but I'll say some. Sometimes she'll send me something. I'm like, why are you sending this to me? Why not send it to, you know, the the manager. And then if he needs to engage me, he can wanting to keep a little bit of separation. So, you know, we don't really. To be honest, I don't really talk much about work with her. Um, we, you know, I give her lots of praise, like a, like a team member. Um, but, you know, I we definitely try to keep certain aspects of it separate. I know for me, I'm uniquely great at accounting and operations, and I'm uniquely not great at sales marketing. So, you know, having someone else that's leading that organization, I'm a support person in it. Um, kind of allows us to have some of that separation so we don't actually talk much about work. Um, still to this day, um, and, uh, we try to do that purposefully so that we can save our marriage.

Pete Neubig: [00:11:34] Well, I think I did something smart there because I, I same thing. My wife does not report to me at VPM. She does work with VPM. Um, you know, a portion of the time, she doesn't have a full time job with VPM, but she does do a lot of stuff. And I have a report to to other people. So I think I think we both uh, and to her credit, she never pulls the owner card. Right. Because our wives through extension of us are owners of the company. Uh, and so my wife never pulls the owner card when she reports to somebody. Um, she which my business partner, he would be the sales and marketing, like, kind of VP, and I'd be the CEO. And he had a report to me, and he would throw the owner card around every once in a while. And that was that was a difficult situation to get out of, because when you're 50, 50 owners, it's, uh, it becomes a stalemate.

Sam Eddinger: [00:12:17] Yeah. And there definitely that does cause some issues periodically. She doesn't pull the owner card either, but she'll say something and people get feel like they're stuck because they feel like she's the owner's wife. Right. And so that does cause some problems at times. Um, but, you know, we try to mitigate it and explain and try to have her understand the dichotomy I hate in general, people that play the owner card. Um, what I, what I like to think is I'm here to serve my team, not to mandate to them. You know, you have to do this. You have to do that. And in serving the team, you'll find that they want to work for you that much harder. Whereas playing the owner card and trying to scare people into submission, I never think that's a good approach to running business.

Pete Neubig: [00:13:03] Agree. There's this, uh, there's this famous business coaching slide that it's like your job is to actually support the team, the team's job to support the client, the client's job to support the business and the business job to support you. And that's kind of the circle. So, uh, I'm a big believer in that. Yeah. If you and if you want to, if you want to, you know, look property management wears people out regardless, right? People get burnt out all the time. If you want to burn your people out even more, be that guy that tells them, like, do it because I said so. Do because I'm the owner, right? Like, yeah, um, you have to do it this way or the highway type stuff. Uh, so, uh, so you talked about you have lots of people in your organization and none of them are in the office. So give me a breakdown of how many people you have us based versus virtual, you know, or offshore near shore. And then tell me a little bit about how you go about, um, you know, filling the roles for those people and just like how you find good people and, and how you elevate them so that you can take your hats off.

Sam Eddinger: [00:14:06] Sure. So, uh, at this moment, we have 12 total employees, including myself. Five of us are local and seven are international. We have, uh, remote teams from India, from Mexico and Nicaragua.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:21] And what is your tell me to break down. What do US people do and what do you what are your remote teams do?

Sam Eddinger: [00:14:26] So, um, it's a great question. So the US people, uh, do some things that only us people can do. And some of them do things that remote people could do. But we had hired those people prior to us having a really strong push to trying to encourage the ability to to support remote staff wherever, wherever they want to be. So I am the CEO. Um, you I call myself the business manager. I function as the integrator and visionary. I also function as the finance manager. Uh, and we have something called special projects. I manage the special projects division, kind of as like the as the integrator. Uh, that's my role. Uh, my wife is the BDM. I have a person who's a client success manager local. I have a field inspector local. And then I have my ops manager, who also is the sales marketing manager, who's local. All the remainder of the people are international. Uh, the we talk about in our business, the only things that you really need to do locally are, um, are very few things. So one is office manager. I function in that role as well, because I'm the only one in the office to get the mail and to scan it, we scan it into a Dropbox, and then our remote staff does what they need to do with it. Um, the so so office I do um, the other things that have to be done locally, I would say are, um, finance manager and that would be the moving of money, because if you have a person international that moves money and they take the money from the business, like I'm not sure the other countries are going to extradite them to the US to have a trial for theft. And so every movement of money is done by me. But I could do that anywhere in the US, so that doesn't have to be done. I would say local to Connecticut. It could be done anywhere. Field Inspector has to be done locally. Being a licensed person, there's certain licensing requirements. I would say that has to be done locally. And the last but not least, I would say, you know, we still like to have a personal touch as a BDM. And so I would say that has to be done locally, but a lot of people are challenging even that assumption. So everything else we have built so that it can be done remotely anywhere in the country or the world.

Pete Neubig: [00:16:49] Right. So now, um, tell me what the the Client Success manager does. That's a, that's a broad term.

Sam Eddinger: [00:16:59] So yeah. So the um, so in looking at our structure, our structures pod. And so our operations department is composed of I think six of the people. Um, so we have about six direct and six indirect uh, staff. Uh, the client success manager is responsible to manage the entire pod as well as to do all communication with the client as well as deal with any hot items, red items, things that are difficult to handle, um, as well as make readies, uh, things that deal with like significant amounts of money. Um, they would also be an interface to discuss, uh, applications, uh, things like that. So a lot of times we want our client success manager to be a licensed person, but they don't have to be. Um, but a lot of their predominant stuff is to manage the pod. Um, the next second role, we would say, is the maintenance coordinator. They're responsible to vendors, to finding new vendors. They're responsible to receiving invoices. Um, the client success manager is also responsible to accept, uh, the the invoices and to approve them, because, again, they're the ones communicating this back to the owners. So we want them to have the approval process the maintenance coordinator is dealing with maintenance and supporting the client. Success manager on turnovers make readies, you know, hairy maintenance activities, finding vendors, things like that. Then we have the resident experience specialists. They're responsible for everything resident related. So lease renewals um, you know if there is a resident that needs to put in a mold, we would say the resident specialist should call and explain how to do that. Um, they're doing those type of activities. Section eight discussions. Uh, then the next would be the field inspector. They're doing move ins, move outs. They're doing property reviews. They're meeting, uh, inspectors for fire Marshall's, um, you know, insurance agents, appraisers. You know, they're doing the boots on the ground. I consider them to be the eyes of the organization. So they're always using a camera or a video camera or recording videos, uploading it, and then the client success manager, the maintenance coordinator, whoever can watch the videos to be able to see what's going on in these physical properties. Then we have a leasing specialist who does everything leasing. So everything up to the point in which we've accepted an applicant and they're moving in. Then it gets handed off to a transition to the resident experience specialist, and then any and all of the accounting functions, everything that's putting in stuff in Appfolio we have done by our book bookkeeper, accounting person.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:33] So, um, remind me, uh, how many do you do? Only single family or do you do multifamily as well or. So we.

Sam Eddinger: [00:19:41] Do. We do single and small multi. So probably the majority of our profile of our portfolio is two and three unit buildings. We have about a little over 100 units that we manage, and about 300 or 100 properties and 300 total units.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:55] Got it. So do you have like an equation that you're looking at now, now that you're a little bit more established. Do you know, like when your next new hire is going to be and what that position is. And then if so, how so?

Sam Eddinger: [00:20:07] So um, I think we can I think we have about 20 to 30% capacity. I think we can get to 400 units. Uh, I think what probably breaks next might be might be the client success manager just managing all of that and the extra stuff that that goes on, I think maintenance coordinators and how I do it can probably do 600 or more units because they're not doing any of the accounting. Um, you know, they're not really actually even doing approvals. The resident experience specialist, I like to think could do 400 as well pretty easily. Um, the the lease renewals could take some time. The leasing specialist, I think could use. Some people say they could do up to a thousand units in doing the application reviews and stuff like that. Um, and then last but not least, the accounting that might break sooner because we have them do a lot of, of functions, but somewhere around 400 units will break off and we'll make a second pod. And then some of those, like I've had maintenance coordinators that are also resident experience specialists, so they can do both functions at the same time if they're only doing like 200 units, let's say. Um, and I, you know, you could have a field inspector if you only have 200 units that also does resident, resident, uh, type activities. So there's certain things that roles that you could kind of combine together. Uh, when we had started, we had field inspector and client success manager being the same role because they were local. And then we had maintenance coordinator and resident experience specialist being combined. So the different ways that we can skin this cat and kind of utilize those roles creatively so that we don't need to hire, you know, 4 or 5 more staff when we break off a new pod.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:47] Yeah. One of the things that that, that we did in Empire is we had our, our existing org chart, and then we had an org chart for the next five. Like that was going to be the next five jobs that we felt we needed to hire for. And then we had an org chart of what it looked like when when it was completed. And um, we started looking and we started getting really good at, you know, okay, we knew how many doors we're bringing in per month, right? It became like it became pretty like clockwork. Like we were getting, like, anywhere from 25 to 30 doors a month. Single family. And then we knew that after, you know, we also know how much churn we had, which was higher than I like to admit, you know, and so I knew that I was getting X doors a month. Right. But at least it was still positive. Not negative. Right. And, uh, and then we knew, okay, after that, we knew. Okay. Then if we just follow this over the next X amount of months, five, six months, we have this many doors and we knew. All right. It now takes us maybe two weeks to find somebody, 2 to 4 weeks to, to um, to train them. So I got to find somebody when I need them. If I start looking for that person the the day I need them, I'm already too late. And so I would need to find them a month or two prior to I actually needed them. Do you find the same same kind of, uh, same same deal or do you follow some some rule like that.

Sam Eddinger: [00:23:11] Yeah. So again we so for the last year or so we haven't seen a lot of growth in our company. That's why we're focusing so much of our attention on sales, sales and marketing. Right? Connecticut is a different beast. We still have, um, all time high housing prices. Uh, people like a lot of our clients are selling to owner occupants. It's a different world in Connecticut than it is a lot of other parts of the country. I wish I could get to 25 to 30 units a month. That's that's our goal. That's our big hairy, audacious goal is to be able to do things like that. Um, but yeah, we were hiring people that we did not expect that we needed because we wanted to have an excess capacity. It's a blessing and it's a curse. It's a blessing because they are trained. It's a curse because I find that they can get to be a little bit, um, complacent. Right? You know, if you have 200 units and you have the ability to run 200 more units of excess capacity, and they're only half time, well, when you get the units, they're going to be like, this feels like a lot, right? Right. It's not. It's just that they haven't been used to it. Um, and so that's kind of my experience is I've always been a little bit over overstaffed relative to the real needs. Um, but I still like that because I'd rather be able to have, like, seamless transitions for my for my people or for my clients. Um, so that's kind of how I, I try to do it. So I would predict, okay, we're making good progress...

Pete Neubig: [00:24:37] I run it both ways and it's much easier when you have excess people, and then you bring on the business and there's just less stress and less churn versus bringing on the business. And now I need to and, you know, literally training people as they're working. Right. Versus like, I can train you ahead of time, so to speak. So I get it. So you're you're big on team. You're big on finding team. So give give like so people listening to this are obviously property managers. You know hopefully they're growing and hopefully that they need you know they need to look at team here in the short term future. So give me a couple of tips tricks or just process that you use when you hire people, regardless if they're US based or near-shore.

Sam Eddinger: [00:25:20] Yeah. So a couple that I would say are really important to us. The first is that we read the book who, um, and I built out the top grading process for it. Um, and so that's been very helpful to when I do the interviews, we ask really good questions. One is like, what are your goals? I just want to know uniquely what they're trying to do and trying to be and see if there's any alignment. Um, my US based people, I want them to have a passion for real estate in some capacity internationally. I just want to hear that they have, you know, bigger, bigger ideas, bigger goals for the future. It's also one of our company culture is or two of them is always improving. Um, and so we want to see that people have big goals. The next thing that we ask in that process is what are things that you're uniquely great at? What are things that you know you enjoy doing and that you've been told that you're really good at? Um, and we do that because we want to put people into those places to be successful. Um, in the next question is, what are you not good at? Or people have said that you don't like doing and that you you shouldn't do. Um, that's a hard one because people don't ever, in an interview want to say that they are bad at anything. But I always explain it like, I don't like computer programming. I'm not going to be good at it, so don't put me into that position. I know I'm uniquely great in these other places, so put me here and we'll thrive. Put me here and we're not going to have success. And I think when people are mature and they have that understanding of what they're great at versus not, um, that actually allows you to have a lot more success. Um, and so I'm always trying to pull that out of people. And it's hard, but it's super valuable if they're willing to to admit it and watch players.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:56] What you just did right there, what you just did right there is you found people who embody your core values, and you just did a disc profile without really doing a DISC profile and finding out if they're in the right seat. Right. So those are the two main things. All right. So and so and.

Sam Eddinger: [00:27:10] So continuing on. So and then pull it out. Any of the bad stuff that they have um or that they don't like. And I do that and I, and I explain to them, look, life is not worth going to a job you hate. We want to put you in a position that you're going to be successful. And then what we do is we also ask, based on their resume, who are their bosses? What would their boss rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 and why? Right. And it's all from the Who book they talk about. You know, if they give you a 6 or 7, that really means like a two. So, you know, if you have too many of those, you got to find out, like what's the reason? And it might be a red flag if they should have eight, nine, eight nines and tens ultimately. And so from there we can get a relatively good idea of whether or not they're a good fit. Um, with the US based, we continue on and we do in person interviews where we do, uh, a lot more of the full top grading for the remote staff. That's our final process. Before that, we do DISC profiles. We do, um, a a video of them with a, you know, speaking English about why they want this position. Um, you know, we do a lot of the traditional things that you would do to, to make sure that you that the remote staff is able to provide good service, make sure their internet is working well, things like that. So that's so that's the first process to pre-screen. And then after that we end up, um, we end up actually doing that half an hour interview. A lot of times I'll do it with, especially in that situation, 2 or 3 people, I'll bring my ops lead in with me, as well as one of our remote staff. A lot of times I'll let the remote staff talk with the other person so they can give an unbiased opinion about our company, our culture. If we think that it's a it's a person that we do want to hire, we want to give them an opportunity to ask real questions to, you know, a fellow countryman, for example, so they know what they're going to get themselves into. So we're definitely we're trying to get people to like, exclude themselves, especially if they're good, if they're not going to be able to fulfill our company culture. So that's basically our process to interview and then make a choice on a on a higher.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:14] I love it. It's it's actually very similar to some of the stuff that we're building in VPM right now. We're building a discourse right inside the so they can take a take a disk and you can you can actually search by disk. We've got um self interview questions. So you can actually, you know, have a couple of interview questions before you spend time interviewing people. We have the video profile already. So a lot of things that you had thought of, we're actually building inside the platform. So it'll be cool when when all that stuff comes out. So what are some common mistakes that you've made or that you see people make when they are hiring people?

Sam Eddinger: [00:29:50] Yeah. So, um, some of it was one of my biggest mistakes that I've made was hiring people because people said I should hire a person. So I had a situation where I used to be, um, I, my property management company, I incubated underneath my brother. What does that mean? He has a property management company in Connecticut. So when I quit my job as an engineer in 2018, I went underneath him because he was trying to really focus on accidental landlords, and I wanted to focus focus on strategic investors. And so he basically, uh, kind of guided me for the first few years. But a number of the first hires that I had were ones that he said, hey, if you end up hiring this person, he could be really good or really bad. If you like, build into him. This could be an amazing hire. And those were some of my worst hires, just inevitably like I felt too much like I was going to try to change the person and I was going to help them realize their full potential. And I still I still am like that with my entire team. I'm like, there's so much more in you. You can do so much more. I want to help get that out of you. Um, and that's a lot of what my company is about, is trying to help build these remote staff to be entrepreneurs, things like that, that they never thought possible. But with some of these other guys like that were US based, I think that they just they didn't really want it. They didn't really want it to that level. And they, you know, like so many us people, they complained and didn't want to do that. Um, with respect to the remote staff, the vast majority of the remote staff that I've hired are still with me. Um, uh, I think I had to let one go because he basically stopped showing up to work. Um, but, you know, and I've given other ones some chances a number of times, you know, we've done kind of employee improvement plans, making sure you set really clear expectations of what is needed. Um, my, my belief on it is, unfortunately, uh, with staff, I like to follow the philosophy of trust but verify. So we do use time, doctor. Um, and so, like, if I feel like someone's taking advantage of the situation, I just go in time, doctor. I look at all the screenshots, I see whether or not they're actually doing work or whether or not it's the same, same, you know, uh, snapshot for a number of times consecutively. Um, and that can kind of tell us that the person's not really doing it, what's necessary, but and then it's really trying to hire for people that have the aptitude that you want, the company culture, if you really only hire for the company culture that you want, you're going to have more success because you're going to cue in on those unique attributes that the person's expressing as part of the hiring process. So ours in particular is called SWAT. So serve first serve well that's the foundation of our company culture. Then it's win together and lose together. It's about accountability and teamwork. If I hear someone says, oh, he didn't do this or he didn't do this, I get really upset because we're all in this together. We're all winning and losing together. Then it's always improving. You know, I'm on this growth. I'm on this kick to try to become the best I can be. And I want people around me that are trying to become better every day. And then technologically focused is the T, and that's about utilizing and leveraging leveraging technology to help us be more efficient, to provide a better service to our clients, not to relate, not to replace people So hire for culture, fire for culture. Like those are all the things that I think will help you be able to really have success.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:16] Just curious, you mentioned time, doctor. Do you use that for your US based people too?

Sam Eddinger: [00:33:20] I don't and I probably should, but I don't. The problem that we have is the US based ones. Um, they're always on different, uh, different computers. So they have my own computers here, which when they're here, they use. But then they use their own computers at home. So it's like kind of this Cluj thing together, whereas our remote staff are always on the same computer. So I do time doctor for myself. Um, but I don't actually do it for my staff. One thing that we do do though is we calculate so time doctor, it also gives you, um, it gives you how many hours they worked, but it also gives you their percentage of productive time, which is defined as so many keystrokes in a 15 minute period. And so we kind of look at that with respect to the role. And sometimes that might flag something to to look at as well.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:09] So yeah, I find that one of the biggest, one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they have a one way of hiring and managing remote team, but then they don't use the same methodologies for the local team, whether they're remote or not. Right? Like the local. But they never come into the office, uh, like time doctor or, um, you know, or just, you know, focusing on the hours versus like, well, I remember when I was at Empire, my probably manager gathered around the water cooler to go out for a smoke break. They take two hour lunches. I didn't care about their productivity or I care about their productivity, but I don't care about their. Are they putting in the hours they say they're putting in? But then my people in Mexico and they work for me, I'm like, wait, you you didn't put in your, you know, you put in eight hours and you're supposed to you only put in seven. And it's like, I'm like, I got this thing all backwards, man. The people in the US, I pay way more higher. I'm like, I need to make sure that, you know, they're being productive versus putting in the hours. And that's. And I changed that concept with my remote team. All right, Sam, we're going to take a quick break and when to come back for the the lightning round. You ready.

Sam Eddinger: [00:35:19] Looking forward to it.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:20] All right buddy, we'll be right back. And then we're going to put Sam on the not the hot seat but the lightning round. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. We got Sam and he's getting ready to do the lightning round. Sam, are you nervous? You should be. It's a big it's a big a little bit a little bit. All right. What PM software do you use?

Sam Eddinger: [00:35:48] Uh, we use lots of property management software, but our accounting software is Appfolio.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:53] Uh, what? So I just go back, use a lot of software, but Appfolio use the main PM software. Got it. What do you run on top of that? Anything else you're using?

Sam Eddinger: [00:36:02] LeadSimple, Property Meld, Tenant Turner, RentCheck. We just started using Notion, Abodea for our maintenance. Uh, RightSignature for e-signature, which I don't really like. Um, I'm sure I'm probably missing some more things, but that's good. But there's a lot.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:19] All right. What is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in the PM business?

Sam Eddinger: [00:36:25] Oh, um, one of the pieces of advice that I really like is build your business for what you want it to be, not what it is today.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:34] Like it. What was your first job?

Sam Eddinger: [00:36:37] Uh, lifeguard. My first job was a lifeguard back when I was 16.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:41] What is your ideal vacation?

Sam Eddinger: [00:36:44] Uh, I love one of the things my wife and I want to do is to walk. Uh, it's called, uh, Camino Santiago. It's the walk through Spain and Portugal. It's like a pilgrimage, and it takes a few months. But you meet people. It's kind of like low key. You kind of decide if you want to keep going or hang out with people for another day. Um, it it kind of, to me, sounds like perfection.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:08] That sounds like a nice bucket list. Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Sam Eddinger: [00:37:14] You know, I know this is a tough one. I'm going to say yes, I do like my pineapple with bacon on my Hawaiian pizza. Like, it's kind of a guilty pleasure. Uh, my family has it. When it's super loaded, it's got the the sweet and savory. Um, so I thought.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:29] I thought a good a good guy from from Connecticut, where Pepe's is and was the other one. Sal's.

Sam Eddinger: [00:37:35] I thought Sally's and Modern and, uh, there's a bunch of others as well. So there's some delicious pizza places. Um, yeah. They didn't do.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:43] They didn't do. They didn't do pineapple. Back in the 80s when I was living in Connecticut.

Sam Eddinger: [00:37:47] You know, I don't really I wouldn't eat pineapple on any of those places because they would definitely throw me out. But, I. Mean, it is a guilty pleasure.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:54] What is something that most people don't know about you?

Sam Eddinger: [00:37:57] Um, one thing that most people don't know about me is that I have a really big family. I'm one of five kids. My, uh. I have six kids myself. My dad is one of seven kids. And so we're a big family. I have 27. There's like 27 or 28 grandchildren from my grandmother. Um, my generation has 18, uh, nieces and nephews and cousins and stuff. So part of a big family.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:24] Holy crap. Yeah. I'd like to see what the, uh, the, uh, the family reunion you need to like. You need to, like, rent a whole city out. Uh, if you could have dinner with anyone alive, who would it be?

Sam Eddinger: [00:38:40] Um, I don't know. You know, I don't know, uh, maybe some one of the people. Actually, I know Warren Buffett. I would, I would do Warren Buffett. I always thought that that would be a great thing. And I know he does it. And I was always like, oh, do I have $1 million to have dinner with Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett, while he's still alive?

Pete Neubig: [00:38:58] Got it. All right. Um, what Disney character do you most associate with Disney character?

Sam Eddinger: [00:39:04] Disney character? Um, maybe Aladdin? I think that I'm a little bit like I, you know, I'm a little clueless and and and, uh, inspirational and stuff like that, but I'll say. I'll say Aladdin.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:17] And what do you prefer, dogs or cats?

Sam Eddinger: [00:39:20] Neither. I'm not really a pet guy, but if I had to pick one. Ah, that's really hard. Um, I probably would say cats, because if I said dogs, my kids would convince me to get.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:35] All right, Sam, if somebody wants to reach out to you or they want to, um, they want to start, you know, getting want to connect over social, what's the best way to for them to connect with you?

Sam Eddinger: [00:39:44] Yeah. So you can find me on social media. I'm probably the only Sam Eddinger. I think I have two Sam Eddinger accounts. So either of them are me, but the one that has more friends. That's really me. Um, but also, you can email me at Sam. S-A-M @ironcladpm.com. It's I-R-O-N-C-L-A-D p as in Peter M as in Mary .com you can also call me directly. My phone number is (860)254-7343. (860)254-7343.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:15] Thanks a lot, Sam. And if you want to join NARPM, go to NARPM.org or call them at (800) 782-3452. And if you want to be cool like Sam and have a bunch of remote team members, uh, give VPM solutions a try. It's free. It's vpmsolutions.com. Or you can give shoot me an email at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Thanks again, Sam, for your time. Appreciate you. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time.

Sam Eddinger: [00:40:42] Thanks, Pete.