Tony Cline | Podcast

Pete Neubig: Welcome back, everybody, to the NAPRM Radio podcast. Pete Neubig with Tony Cline. Tony as you know, from my intro with him, he's an avid runner. But Tony's also been a colleague and friend of mine for many years now. Tony started his own business. Then he merged, which is an interesting story altogether, but he merged his business with about 4 or 5 other people. Which was brain fart again. Tony, what was that called again?

Tony Cline: HomeVault. HomeVault Property management.

Pete Neubig: HomeVault property management. And then, of course, now, sold to to Pure. And now, founder, CEO of PM success. So, Tony, thanks so much for being here, buddy.

Tony Cline: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate any time I get to spend with good friends is time well spent. So thanks for having me on.

Pete Neubig: I had Shawn Johnson on and we talked a lot about HomeVault. So I'm going to leave that. Like if you want to hear the HomeVault story from Tony's point of view, grab him at Broker Owner or at NARPM National. We got Shawn's point of view. Let's talk more about, I'm really interested in PM success. So tell me more about, why you decided because you were kind of semi-retired, so why you decided to do PM success and then tell us a little bit about, you know, how to how it helps. How you help people.

Tony Cline: Yeah, sure. So I'll, I want to touch on the HomeVault thing just briefly because I want to talk about my personal experience as we went through that.

Pete Neubig: Go for it.

Tony Cline: So before HomeVault, I had a brokerage. I essentially bought a brokerage back in the year 2000, and I wanted to be in a specific market, A really, really hip and trending and upcoming market in downtown Denver. And I really just wanted the sales brokerage. I had an acquaintance that wanted to he was dominating the downtown market, and he wanted to move from Denver to San Diego and do the same thing there. So I wanted to buy the business and just really try to buy his book of business, his brand, the marketing and territory that he already had put together. And as we were negotiating that out, I found out that he was managing about 31 doors, and it was mostly just he had connections with the Colorado Rockies, the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, some of the the Denver Broncos. And our office was in walking distance to all the ballparks and the fields and all of that. And so he was selling to athletes, but the athletes, they didn't want to manage their own rental or investment properties. And so...

Pete Neubig: Would that be buying a property. And then when they got traded or whatever, they would leave and then they would just rent the property. Is that what they were doing or were they actually buying investments?

Tony Cline: A little bit of both, but more on the investment side. So the guy who bought the company from his name was Mark and he was a super smart guy, tied in, networked with everybody. But what he would do is he would trailer a couple of Harley Davidsons down to spring training in Arizona for the Colorado Rockies, and he would hang out with the whole team. He'd be there for all spring training. And then the ones that made the team he would have relationships with. And then when they were ready to move up to to Denver, he would help them find a place to live. And then some of them because of the market. If you remember the real estate market back in the early 2000s, I would say if you could fog a mirror, you could get a loan. But I don't even know if that was a requirement. You could just get, you know, money like crazy. So he would help them buy a home, but he would also help them buy investment properties in downtown. And the way the market was going, in 6 or 8 months, you would have enough cash where you could cash out and use some of that for a down payment for another one. So, you know,  he was really focused on that market. And so these players were like, well, this sounds like a great plan to buy these properties. But I'm an athlete. I'm busy. I'm not going to be managing toilets and tenants and all that stuff. So he would say he'd manage it. But when I bought the business, this is how they did it. They had three whiteboards up on the wall, and they had a grid with the address name. And then they would change the color of the marker that they would put the checkbox when the tenant would pay rent and they would, they would have the tenant.

Pete Neubig: Like literally like Excel spreadsheet on a whiteboard.

Tony Cline: Yeah. You could rub up against the whiteboard and wipe out, like, you know, a third of the portfolio and half the rents. But so what he would do is he'd have the tenants write the the rent, check out to the name of the landlord, mail it to us. Then we would write out a paper statement, then put that check in with the paper statement, send it to the landlord, and then hope and pray and cross our fingers that they would send us back our 10% management fee.

Pete Neubig: I thought I was the only one who did that, Tony. I didn't know you did that too.

Tony Cline: It was a mess. It was a mess. And I had just sold a technology business, so it wasn't. You know, it took me about six months to create some software where we actually ran our business in that. But anyway, the reason...

Pete Neubig: You gotta find like a Propertyware right away you actually created your own management software or accounting software?

Tony Cline: Yeah. It was basically an entire management software. I wrote it in an access database, but I had enough skill to. I think this is something we'll lead into where we talk about what the owner of a business should and shouldn't be doing. I absolutely should not have been writing software. I was not in the software business, but that was one of the things that I saw. I had some skill set and I leaned into it and it was probably the wrong thing to do. But I didn't find Propertyware or even for the first 11 years in business. So I was out there on an island doing it on my own.

Pete Neubig: That's crazy. It took me about a year to find NARPM. And I got lucky. I was in a property management class and they had sent a flyer to the instructor. And that's how I learned about it. And that was my first meeting. And when I sat in there, I was like, wide eyed and like, holy cow. Like did not know any of this existed. And then I realized, even at the local level, how much I didn't know. And then I went to the national level. I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to get sued. I better go do something about this.

Tony Cline: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: So you ran your PM firm for how many years before you merged with HomeVault?

Tony Cline: So I ran it from 2000 to 2017 under the brand Cliffdwellers Real Estate. And we were in the downtown Denver market. So the cliffs, it was like the high rise buildings branding was really worked well. But we got to the point where we were growing enough that I wanted to expand our footprint. So I actually rebranded from Cliffdwellers to HomeVault Property Management back in 2017, ran under that brand for two years. And then in 2019, I was in a mastermind with Shawn Johnson, Matthew Tringali, Jay Barrabi, a couple of other folks that wound up not coming into the merger, but in that mastermind we started talking about, well, how could we leverage some of the marketing we were doing? And because I had just released that brand of HomeVault and people thought that that was a really strong brand. They're like, what if we just started All marketing. Our company will still run our own companies, but maybe have a unified brand and that sort of under the stars of Moab. Shawn and I are driving around in those little four wheel drive racers and stuff, and we thought, what if we thought bigger? And I was at a point in my business where I was working 10 to 15 hours a week, and really, what happened?

Pete Neubig: I know people hate asking you this, but how many units at that point and how many people were working for you?

Tony Cline: Yeah. So the largest that we ever were individually was we were at about 330 units. And I had including the sales brokerage, because remember, I primarily bought the brokerage. And then we grew the property management business. But I had 11 people, including the staff and all the real estate brokers.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Tony Cline: And the reason I include those real estate brokers is because we were in a pretty walkable market. And so in real estate, at least, when there were more people coming into the office, you had floor time. So you would have specific times where if there were walk ins, you had a real estate agent on duty. We also were doing that same thing with our rental showings. So I let my real estate agents do the rental showings, and we had to do in person showings because in order to get access to these buildings, these high rise buildings, you know, they have secured entrances and stuff like that.

Pete Neubig: So self showing doesn't work for those.

Tony Cline: Right. For most of those. And so in the downtown market, it worked really well to just have an agent go out and do the showing. And if the people were interested, I had my staff take care of the application, do all the processing, you know, send them the lease, all of that. So all the agent had to do is just do the showing and then they got a set compensation if we lease that property out. So that's why I included them in that number.

Pete Neubig: 330 units. Is that you staff up and you're working 15 hours a week, basically.

Tony Cline: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Not a bad deal.

Tony Cline: Yeah. Well, the unfortunate thing is when you are working and you have things sort of on autopilot and you don't have a bigger and better goal somewhere, at least for me, you start getting bored and looking for either. How can I break this to figure out if I can fix it? Or how can I dream even bigger and go after something that is not yet possible for me? And that's where we started talking about what if instead of just sharing a brand, what if we actually merged? And it was a great plan. We put a lot of time and effort into that and we rolled that out. We signed all our papers in December of 2019, and we were going to go out to all the conferences and do all the networking and all of that. And then in March of 2020, you know, Covid shut everything down and that really changed what we were looking to do and how we were going to grow the company.

Pete Neubig: So I've heard that a lot of times where like, you know, business is supposed to be boring, but you visionaries out there love to create chaos. And so you get bored with business. So I've heard that before. So instead of creating chaos in your own business, you decided to merge and create chaos in your business with other people.

Tony Cline: It was too easy to create chaos locally. We wanted to do it nationwide.

Pete Neubig: Nationwide.

Tony Cline: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And then, I gotta ask, so any famous people, famous ball players or, athletes that we would know of that you worked with personally?

Tony Cline: Yeah, we had quite a few. I will tell you that it's funny because one of the worst athletes that we worked with was a quarterback for the Denver Broncos that wound up renting a place downtown, close to one of the ball fields so that he could have a crash pad when he was in downtown, and then his sister would rent. He'd put his sister in the other room. And you can never really you can kind of use your screening criteria for determining whether or not somebody statistically will be a good tenant, but, yeah, they, uh, they were the worst, worst tenant did the most damage, and they were just like, it's not that big of a deal because, you know, they got money. Just fix it, you know, and they moved out, left the place trashed. So I won't I won't say the name, but it was, you know. It's a well known... It wasn't Peyton Manning and.

Pete Neubig: Okay. It wasn't Peyton Manning or John Elway, that's all. Just. We'll just say that, right? Unless it was John Elway. Was it John Elway?

Tony Cline: No, no. It wasn't John Elway okay.

Pete Neubig: All right. So now, you guys merge and things are coming off to kind of a weird start because of Covid. Tell me the positives and the negatives of creating a merger. Like if somebody's thinking about, hey, I should merge with, you know, because I've heard other people, like, I've talked to  Matt Leschber in Austin. He was thinking about doing a merger. I know Brad Larson had done a merger. Todd Breen with Brad, I think. And, they kind of unraveled that real quick. So, you know, I've heard of of ones that, you know, people want to do it, but so what was your take on it, positive or negative?

Tony Cline: I will say that there weren't a whole lot of positives at the end of it. Like if you were to dissect it at the end, going into it, one of the positives for me was when you reach a certain level in anything in life, but especially for me in the business, I had kind of reached what I felt like, what I could reach with my current situation. I didn't want to work more than 10 or 15 hours on just trying to add another 50 doors for my local portfolio, or I didn't even want to double my portfolio if it meant changing the lifestyle that I had created, I needed something that was going to inspire me to drastically change my habits. Because, you know, from my history or the ultra running that I do that if, um, I'm not really interested in running a 50K or a 50-mile, like, my thing is, let me see where my limits are. Let me drastically exceed anything that I currently think is possible. Let me see if I can run a 200-mile race or three 200-mile races in, you know, a span of two and a half months. And so for me, I needed something that would really break the current mold because I knew I wouldn't be excited about growing 10% or 20%. So that's just my own personality. But what I realized was there were other people out there, other entrepreneurs that had sort of reached some sort of level of success, and it becomes lonely and it becomes you don't have a lot of people that you can share the vision of what you're trying to accomplish, or even the challenges that you're facing, because there's not a lot of people that are out there. So one of the positives that I thought we were going to get was I would have other people on that same level that would be excited about moving in the same direction that I was excited about moving in.

Pete Neubig: Got it. Kind of like a high tide rises all boats, so to speak.

Tony Cline: Right? The reality of that is, and this is in no way trying to throw stones at any of my other former business partners. But the reality of it is when you have six type A personalities...

Pete Neubig: And entrepreneurs.

Tony Cline: Yeah. Entrepreneurs. Visionaries used to earning a certain income, all coming together. What happens is you create a top heavy. You know, Shawn would relate it to flying a plane. We just had too much cargo. And you know, you can't keep six partners, all earning a certain income, all having a certain level of influence over the business, all having their own individually successful business come together without having some fallout.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Tony Cline: And that's what happened. So what I realized now with the coaching that I'm doing, what I was missing was the mentorship and that camaraderie and the community. And we could have accomplished that by just being a little bit more vulnerable and transparent in the masterminds that we were in, versus creating some legal structure where we all were handcuffed to each other.

Pete Neubig: Got it. So, but at least when you guys sold to, you know, sold out to Pure. I say sold out... When you guys exited to Pure. Did you have any, like, man, I wish I wouldn't have even done the HomeVault thing and just kept my business. Or were you kind of glad and like, hey, I'm looking forward to to moving on in the future?

Tony Cline: There was a little bit of both of that. I think the first thing is Pure came to us and made us an offer. And we initially turned that offer down. And then about eight months later they came back with a stronger offer. And at that point, we had another eight months worth of butting heads and not having a vision alignment on where the company should go. And so with that, it just was time. And so when I look back to working 10 or 15 hours a week, being able to run, you know, 3 or 4 hours a day. Be outside. Live the lifestyle that I wanted to where I was with Pure. You know, I was like, if I wouldn't have merged, I wouldn't have learned all the lessons that I learned through navigating that I wouldn't have been able to sell, and I wouldn't have found out, because I did go to work for Pure for about a year in their acquisitions team. And so I learned a lot about other companies, how other companies were structured, what people were looking for when they wanted to sell their business, what made sense there. So it was a great experience. It's kind of like running an ultra run in the middle of it. You're like, why did I do this? Why did I sign up for this? But at the end you're like, that was very rewarding. And I learned a lot about myself. And that's, uh.

Pete Neubig: So a lot of growth. And that really kind of set you up for your next venture, which was PM success.

Tony Cline: Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: Now, did you know, when you exited, when you left Pure as a team member, did you know you were going to go into PM Success, or were you thinking, like, I'm just going to take some time and just go run, you know, whatever crazy miles that you wanted to run. Like did you have a plan?

Tony Cline: Yeah. Thanks for asking that question. I have been doing coaching in some capacity since my early 20s. So, you know, the last 30 years I was coaching basketball at the YMCA, you know, coaching Little League and bringing them up. I just really enjoy watching people achieve beyond their current capabilities and helping them grow. And it was just always something I did for free. And then as I started getting into business and I became the chapter president for the Denver chapter of NARPM in 2014 and again in 2019. You know, I was on the board for like 11 years straight in some capacity. I just enjoyed being around that. And so in 2017, I started doing consulting and coaching in the property management space. But it was just sort of on the side.

Pete Neubig: That was under HomeVault too, wasn't it?

Tony Cline: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had HomeVault, we had HomeVault Academy. And so I was doing all of that. And again, my primary focus was running the property management business. But I also did some of this coaching and consulting on the side. And I will tell you, this is my own personal experience. So I'm sure the folks at Pure don't see it this way. And so I'm telling you with the disclaimer that this is my own personal experience. But when I went to work in their acquisitions team, the job changed a little bit. And eventually towards the end, I felt like my goal in my role was to find people who were having a bad day and convince them to give up on their dreams and on the business that they'd Been building for the last 3 to 5 to 10 to 20 years. Now, I know that there are other reasons why people sell, but a lot of times it's just I'm burnt out. I see a wad of cash in front of me and I'm just ready to go. And that really was inconsistent with my history of being a coach for, you know, 30 years. And what I found was I really had the desire not to find those opportunities where people were struggling and convince them to give up, but find those people who were struggling and convince them to keep going and show them a path forward and show them how to increase profitability and growth and operational stability. And ever since then, it's just been fabulous. I've just been enjoying life so much because of that.

Pete Neubig: It's amazing how many times I hear somebody who's been running a PM firm for X amount of years 15, 10-15, 20 years. They don't have any money. They have no savings, they have no insurance. And it's like, man, you would have been better off if you just would have worked for the man and put money into a 401K. They don't even have the lifestyle business that you created. And you see this albatross around their neck, and then it's like, hey, I can sell this thing. I can make a little bit of money and I can go do something else. Tomorrow looks a lot like the same as yesterday was, which a lot like the same like two years ago was. So you're giving, you're bringing instead of like taking a like. I think selling the business for a lot of people is, is the right thing. But I also think igniting that spirit in them, saying, hey, let me help you design the business that you want. Matter of fact, I was literally talking to somebody today. Their wife, uh, has has a business outside of PM, and she was just kind of going crazy, running ragged. And he sat down with her and said, let me just ask you something. What do you want out of this business? She goes, well, I want X, I want 250,000 a year. And this whatever it was. And oh, worked like 20 hours a week. And he's like, you know, you're almost there. Like, you just need like, three clients and hire one person. And she didn't even understand, like she didn't realize that I think business owners and you could tell me you're the coach. Do they get in the weeds too much?

Tony Cline: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I tell people, you know, my goal when I start working with them and obviously we we go through like a little interview process to make sure that I'm a good fit for them and that they're a good fit for, for me and my program and my expectations. But my goal when I work with somebody that does fit that is to help them become the least important person in the day to day operations of their business. And most people get too deep in the weeds. Most people feel like they have to be in control of everything, you know. And I was a super big control freak back before I got sick in like 2006 to 2008, I was I got really sick. And luckily that became a blessing for me because it forced me to say, how can I, how can I run this business without me running this business? Because otherwise I'm going to go broke and I spent about 6 to 8 months where I was out of the office more than I was in. I was in bed one stretch for 17 days straight with extreme stomach issues and, migraines and all of this. And I'm trying to figure out what are the things that only I can do and how can I delegate and offload everything else. And so my thing is, I tell my clients that I should only do the things that only I can do, and I should delegate everything else or outsource everything else. And it's the same thing for them. They should only do the things that only they can do, and they should outsource or delegate everything else.

Pete Neubig: You know, a flood of memories are coming back to me as you say this, because I live that, man. When I built Empire, I was in charge of everything. I was always stressed out and I was the choke point. And what happened was my team wouldn't make decisions because I always had to be the decision maker. And so there'd always be a line outside my office. And it was like I had this badge of pride that like, oh, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm so important. And it took me years, Tony. It took me years. But once I realized I'm not important and that I needed smarter people than me around, and I needed to allow people, I need to let go, to grow. And I needed to allow people to make mistakes and learn. And next thing you know, I too was working right before we sold. I was working about 20 hours a week at 984 units.

Tony Cline: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And then we sold. And I was so mad. But also a whole different story for another time. But what you're saying is. So it's so important to do that. So, tell me, how do you go through that process? Like, you see somebody, sometimes they don't see themselves, right? Like they're so important. How do you kind of guide them through that? How long does it typically take for them to kind of figure it out?

Tony Cline: Well, I figure it's a lot of people are in that same they have that same mentality as you and I and a lot of people that get into this business, they come from 1 or 2 directions. They are either a real estate agent that decides they're going to start doing property management because they already have the license. And so they're not truly a business person. And I don't mean that in a slight of, you know, to slight anybody, but they don't have, I came from an office, I'm growing a business, I have a business plan, I've got funding. They came from the real estate side where I go out and I close the deal and I get a big fat commission check, and I'm good for 2 or 3 months until I need to close another one. And and so you come from that side or you come from I'm an investor and I can't find anybody to manage my properties the way I want to manage. And so they start their management company. In either case, the person that's starting the business feels like they know all the answers. They know the solutions. Right. And so if I'm the real estate agent or the person without true business experience, I just do enough. I do everything that needs to be done until I can't do everything myself, and then I hire somebody to just sort of be my assistant to catch overflow. But I don't really have time to train them. And so they're basically getting paid to watch me do the work that I wish I could have them do because they need to be doing it. But I can't train them because they don't have time, you know. And so what we do is, if you were to ask me if you got an elevator and we just met and you asked me what my business is, I tell people I'm in the entrepreneur extraction business, and my job is to extract people from a business that currently owns them. And and so it starts a conversation of like, what does that mean? But again, that goes back to, I want to create a business...

Pete Neubig: That's agnostic. That doesn't have to be PM. You just happen to know PM like the back of your hand.

Tony Cline: Right?

Pete Neubig: It's really agnostic. Do you work with other people in other industries?

Tony Cline: I have a few. But what I will tell you is through my coaching I talk about what I call the championship formula. And there are seven core components of that. And I'm not going to get deep into each one. But just know that we have a program. You asked how long it takes to walk people through that, and it really is. You start at the beginning and we get to the end. And it really depends on how much time the entrepreneur has available to walk through these steps. Most people can get through this transition in about 6 to 12 months. And and so we get really intentional. But one of the things that we get really intentional about in the beginning, the number one critical component of the seven components of the championship formula, as I call it, is to develop your game plan. And your game plan is your core values, your company mission, your company vision, your target client profile, and your income and revenue streams. And I'm not going to talk too much about the core values, income and and vision, even though I think it's extremely critical in order for the entrepreneur to be able to extract themselves from the day to day, because you have to give everybody on your team a filter in which they filter decisions through. And absence of that filter, they're just making stuff up. They're going to come to you and say, what should I do? Because they don't have a filter to make those decisions through to establish policies and things like that. But the one I want to focus on is identifying your target client profile. And so what I've learned is I can help and speak the language of people in the property management space way better than I can in an accounting space or a painting business or a veterinarian or something like that. So I do have some clients just because I have personal connections with them where I'm helping them out. But primarily I'm taking my 25 years worth of property management experience layering that on top of this business framework. And it it is delivering some pretty incredible results across the country.

Pete Neubig: All right. We're we're kind of up against on time. But I do have another question for you.

Tony Cline: Sure.

Pete Neubig: Where do you come out on? Like focus. So you said identify your ICP or identify your client profile. When you talk to somebody and they're kind of running ragged and they do PM for single family, multifamily, short term, HOA, do you try to get them to focus on one aspect of the business, or do you just have them focus like on the top level, like the vision, mission, culture, all that good stuff? Where do you come out on that?

Tony Cline: So obviously we start with the stuff at the top, the mission vision, the culture, all of that. But I use sports analogies a lot just because even if you don't know sports, you kind of know the philosophy around sports. And so it's easier to tell stories versus just communicate information. So what I talk about is one of the core components that we have is identifying the positions that you need on the team. And then once we've designed the positions with the roles and responsibilities, then we can get really clear on the players that we need to recruit to fill those positions. So when we talk about focus, it really depends on how big the team is, because I want to take the owner of the business and take them from being the star player on the field and make them the head coach on the sidelines. And now it doesn't matter how many positions you have for how many verticals you are running, as long as you have the right people in the right place, we can then work with that. What I'll call the mid level manager, the person who's in charge of who's the person who's in charge of short term or long term. And we can start doing the same thing, just one level down with those people and their core vertical.

Pete Neubig: I like that. I probably would have done something different, which I don't think is right. I probably would have told them, stop those other lines of businesses. Just focus on one line of business and your solution is no, no, no. You can still do all of them. But let's get the right person in the right seat to kind of run that vertical of the business.

Tony Cline: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Make a lot more sense than what I was going to do, which is tell them, get rid of everything except for one thing.

Tony Cline: Well, in absence, sometimes people will ask me when I tell them I've run, you know, 200 mile race. They'll ever ask me, have you ever done a triathlon? And frankly, I'd rather be slightly better than everybody else in one category than mediocre at best in three categories. So I agree with you on the focus. If you can't excel in all three of those categories, then you shouldn't be in all three of those categories. You shouldn't be running the different verticals. So we are in alignment with, you know, getting rid of them. If we're not going to provide somebody that will have a singular focus for each one of those verticals.

Pete Neubig: Got it. I love it, Tony. I can sit here and talk to you all day especially. We only got through one of your seven. Um. Uh, what is it?

Tony Cline: The Core Components for a Championship Formula.

Pete Neubig: We're going to hit a commercial and come back we'll the hit the lightning round. Alright. You ready?

Tony Cline: Yep. Let's do it.

Pete Neubig: Be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right, welcome back everybody. Here we are. Tony Cline, you are on the lightning round. Are you ready?

Tony Cline: All right, let's hit it.

Pete Neubig: All right. So when you had your own PM business, what PM software did you use?

Tony Cline: We started with property. Well, we started with the thing that I built. Then we went to Propertyware then, we went to AppFolio. Then we wound up being on Rentvine and then that's when we sold.

Pete Neubig: All right. Rentvine. Did you like that one? Did you have a favorite out of all? Out of the three of them?

Tony Cline: I did the most with Propertyware. AppFolio was probably my least favorite just because I interacted with it the least. But Rentvine was the one that was the most, I believe, scalable in what we were trying to accomplish.

Pete Neubig: Do you use virtual assistants in your business, or did you use virtual assistants in your PM business?

Tony Cline: I didn't in my own business, but once we merged, we grew our business quite a bit through virtual assistants. So once we merged then we do. And I use them now in my own. Actually, I, I run my virtual assistants through the VPM platform.

Pete Neubig: You're the man. Appreciate you. I appreciate your business, Tony.

Tony Cline: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Did you use BDMs?

Tony Cline: Uh, I did, yep.

Pete Neubig: Both companies?

Tony Cline: Yes. In both companies? Yep.

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

Tony Cline: Structure your very first client like you're going to have 300 of those clients. And same with the properties. Create it so that you can streamline it. I see so many people try to get out there to get their cash flow going, which it's totally understandable. And when you launch a rocket, you got to do whatever it takes to get get launched, right. But at some point you've got to jettison the extra weight and get really focused. And so what I would say is, if you have the carrying capacity, create your business so that you can streamline it and not have 100 clients with 100 different ways of doing business. There's a lot of people out there that have a portfolio of a 30 or 40 doors, and it's a full time job for them because they're doing something different and involving the owner in too many different steps.

Pete Neubig: I like that one. Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Tony Cline: All right. Now, I know we've had this conversation in the past.

Pete Neubig: We have?

Tony Cline: It absolutely belongs on pizza. And if you have a different opinion than that, then I just don't know how we can help you with that.

Pete Neubig: We're on opposite sides of that one, brother. All right. I'm going to ask this question differently to you than I do anybody else. Normally I ask, what's your favorite fast food restaurant? But I'm going to ask you, what is your favorite food when running 200 plus miles in 1 time?

Tony Cline: All right. During the race?

Pete Neubig: During the race.

Tony Cline: You give me some some instant mashed potatoes, the mashed potato flakes, and you pour in a little bit of either vegetable broth or chicken broth. It's got to be hot enough to, like, burn your hand when you're holding it. You add in a little extra salt and that is like liquid gold.

Pete Neubig: Uh, what was your first job?

Tony Cline: My very first job was working at the Safeway grocery store, and I would use the sweeper, the squeegee machine. I forget what it's calling it, but a little Zamboni that would go down and clean up the floor. So I did that. And I also bagged groceries at the same store.

Pete Neubig: Nice. I think I know the answer to this one, but I'm gonna ask anyway, what is your ideal vacation?

Tony Cline: Yeah, you probably do know the answer to that. Um, if I'm going by myself, it would be like, I have a dream to someday run across the United States. It's anywhere from 2800 miles to 3200 or 3400 miles, depending on the route. You've got to go legally, and you can't run on highways, that kind of thing. So if I was doing my own, that would be my dream vacation. If I'm going with my wife, a nice beach vacation where you're sitting there doing absolutely nothing but drinking frozen drinks and laying on the beach with her because that's what she enjoys. Which means that's what I enjoy when I'm with her.

Pete Neubig: And I bet you after about a day and a half, you are antsy as all get up.

Tony Cline: A day and a half is a stretch, but again. The vacation would be to spend time with her.

Pete Neubig: What is something that most people don't know about you?

Tony Cline: Um. Hmm. I think something that most people don't know about me is that I'm a pretty sensitive dude. I can do things physically, but you put me in front of a movie where there's a little bit of sadness and. Yeah, I'm like a weeping willow, so.

Pete Neubig: Oh, interesting. All right. Um, what is a book or podcast that you would recommend?

Tony Cline: There's a book that I like to recommend called The Comfort Crisis, and it's all about how we as a population, a global population, have become too soft. You know, people complain that the temperature in their house is two degrees higher than it should be. Where, you know, if you go back 100 years, people would love to have the temperature we have. We've just made it so easy to anytime we experience any sort of discomfort, we wind up having extreme mental and psychological challenges. And it's the book is about intentionally putting yourself in areas of discomfort so that you become comfortable being uncomfortable and can be stronger in the things that you're trying to achieve.

Pete Neubig: I like that, and obviously you do that a lot with your running. I need to get back into that because I used to do that with my racing and my marathons and my triathlons and, uh, now I'm comfortably just walking around.

Tony Cline: I know that's worked well for you, though. I know that's been, uh. That's been good. We've talked about that off camera that you've been walking. It's all about the habits, right? It's the consistent habits.

Pete Neubig: Yep. Walking and lifting weights again. So I started that about two years ago and I'm enjoying it. So as long as you enjoy whatever you do and just be active, I think that's I think that's half the battle. And if you can, every once in a while get yourself uncomfortable though, right. Go do something. What is it they call it? Uh, Jesse Itzler. I think he calls it the Misogi.

Tony Cline: Yeah. The Misogi. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Do 1 thing difficult every year. And you're actually spearheading one of those things in June for a group of around 30 of us. And we're going to hike the Grand Canyon, the rim to rim. So, I appreciate you spearheading that. And, uh, so that is my misogi this year.

Tony Cline: I love it. Well, with the Misogi, it's supposed to be, you should have a 50% chance of failure. So I hope that we're not taking 30 people into the Grand Canyon.

Pete Neubig: And only coming out with 15.

Tony Cline: And coming out with 15. So, well stay tuned, folks. We'll we'll see how that turns out.

Pete Neubig: All right, last question. I know the answer to this one too. But what do you prefer, dogs or cats?

Tony Cline: Oh, dogs.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Moose is running with you?

Tony Cline: My boy, Moose. Yeah, yeah.

Pete Neubig: That's awesome.

Tony Cline: He used to run 50Ks with me, which was about 31 miles. Now, he had a hip injury, not running related, but had to have that surgery where they cut off the the ball of the ball and socket of one of his rear legs. And so. He still gets up to do about 8 or 10 miles, which is still super fast with just, you know, basically three, three joints still gets out there. So he's a good boy.

Pete Neubig: Tony, if somebody's interested in reaching out to you, what's the best way to contact you?

Tony Cline: They can send me an email at tony@pmsuccess.com. They can hop on the website. They can subscribe to the newsletter. We have our podcast, the Property Management Success podcast. So, uh, yeah, if somebody has any interest in finding out any more about what I do On helping people in the property management space, or they just have a problem. They want to just, hey, I got this thing. I'd like to bounce off somebody. I don't even know who to bounce it off of. I'm happy to have those kind of chats as well.

Pete Neubig: And I think the the newsletter has some really good content. So at a minimum, you guys should go out there and become a subscriber to his newsletter.

Tony Cline: Thank you.

Pete Neubig: And if you want to join NARPM, if you're listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, why not call them at (800) 782-3452 or go to narpm.org. And if you want to be cool like Tony and have virtual assistants, give me an email pete@vpmsolutions.com. I think we're at 39,000 plus profiles now for people looking to work in the property management industry. Or go to our website, vpmsolutions.com. Tony, thanks so much for spending time with us today. We'll talk to you soon.

Tony Cline: Yeah. My pleasure.