A Podcast | Todd Ortscheid

Pete Neubig: [00:00:04] Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for listening. For the few listeners who do not know my next guest. Todd, tell tell our audience a little bit about you and how you have given back to them.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:00:17] Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on the podcast, Pete. I appreciate it. Yeah. My name is Todd Orchard. I have been in the business now for probably about going on a dozen years now. I guess it is came from the airline industry. Before this, I was an airline pilot for about 14 years before I got into property management but found them sometime around, I want to say 2014, 15, somewhere in that range, and went to my first conference then and got involved relatively quickly, started doing government affairs work. I'm on the tech committee. I'm a local officer here in Atlanta. I'm the treasurer here, and I've served in several different positions. Packed Chairman Next year I'm legislative vice chair, so I stay pretty involved in them because I think it I think anybody who's in this business definitely needs to be involved in it needs to be a member, too, because this is the only organization looking out for our interests.

Pete Neubig: [00:01:15] So, Todd, you're a man of many talents. You own your own property management firm. You have purchased other firms and are a co-founder of Always There Repair and the creator of Assist Your fresh off your presentation at the National Conference As of this recording. You're passionate about helping companies not working for free and creating a fee structure that will empower companies to run a profitable business. So let's talk about one of your favorite subjects fees.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:01:42] What is always happy to talk about fees.

Pete Neubig: [00:01:45] So why is it important that property managers charge fees other than the big three management lease up and lease renewal?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:01:54] Well, I mean, several reasons. I mean, the first thing I would say is the industry has really shifted. I mean, there was a time, you know, 20 years ago where that is really what everybody was charging. But now, you know, things are different, especially in larger markets. You know, I'm here in Atlanta, which is, you know, one of the most competitive property management markets in the country. And that's just not the way things are anymore. The only way you can really be competitive with these other companies is if you have the revenue coming in to provide the same level of service that your competition is. And that's that's really where people start to fall behind. If you're just charging the big three, like you say, you know, leasing fee lease up and management fee, then you know about the best you're going to be able to do is somewhere around $170 a month per unit is probably about where you're going to top out in most markets. And when your competitors are bringing in 300 plus like I am, you know, per unit per month, you're at a significant disadvantage. You're not able to offer all the services, all the technology, the staffing, everything else. You need to be able to provide that level of service that clients now are coming to expect, you know, especially as we have so many professional investors out there now who have properties in multiple markets, you know, they're dealing with multiple property managers. So, you know, if they're, you know, for example, if someone's working with me in Atlanta, they might be working with another member in Florida and another member in Arizona. So, I mean, they're used to working with different property managers who offer different levels of service. If you're the guy who's only charging those three big fees and you can't offer everything that those other property managers are offering, you're not going to be able to hold on to your clients. You're not going to be able to attract clients. So it's not just about making more money for yourself, which of course is great. You know, I love money, but it's really about, you know, the service level you can offer.

Pete Neubig: [00:03:36] Right. And so you're finding that that clients will pay more for more or better or more efficient service.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:03:43] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was, you know, I'll give you a perfect example would be, you know, on inspections. So periodic inspections we do every year. And we started charging owners for that probably about 5 or 6 years ago and thought there was going to be a problem. But really, we had maybe two people who complained about it. And the reason they didn't complain is because the level of of service they received from it increased. You know, we started using a professional inspection company we use on site pros and the level of service that they provide, the report that they give was such an improvement over what we were able to do without charging that nobody complained about it. They got, you know, a much better product. So when you're able to provide that better service to people, they don't complain about it. You know, people are willing to pay for service. They're just not willing to pay for bad service. That's kind of the difference.

Pete Neubig: [00:04:34] So give us an example of a fee that you believe every one of us should be charging. But let's go deep into it, right? Let's talk about implementation of it. As far as the PMA, the lease, what kind of communication with the owner or the resident, etcetera. Let's let's take one fee and let's kind of go all the way through. When you when would you implement it? All that good stuff.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:04:54] Sure, sure. Think a good one to do would probably be, you know, I recently saw a discussion. I can't remember if it was on the Facebook page or where it was, but someone was asking about lease renewal fees and they were saying, you know, do you charge these to tenants? And, you know, there was a lot of people who chimed in and said yes. And then there was a lot of other people who were just shocked at that. They couldn't you know, they were just they could not understand why you were charging tenants for a lease renewal. And, you know, this is something that I think everybody should be doing because, you know, you have two sides of an equation on a lease renewal. You've got a interested party in the landlord. They're getting a lease up tenant where they're basically locked in for another year. They've got their revenue coming, so they've got the benefit. And you're charging them already for that. But you also have a resident who's benefiting from this lease renewal. They get a place to live for another year. You know, they have their rent rate locked in. They don't have to worry about their rent going up for the next 12 months. You know, this is a benefit to the resident, just like it is to the client. So, you know, they should be paying for that. They're happy to pay for it. You know, nobody really complains about this, but there's a lot of property managers who aren't charging it. So, you know, I recommend everybody roll this out, you know, build it into your lease renewal process as a way to not just make money for you, but also to encourage people to sign their lease renewals as quickly as possible. So the way we implemented this was it was a escalating fee. So, you know, we send out our lease renewal usually about 45 days prior to the lease expiration if the tenant signs it.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:21] Let me pause real quick right there. Do you put anything in the lease, in the original lease that states that there's going to be a lease renewal fee when they when they renew?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:06:29] We do, yes. So, you know, I'm big on disclosures, transparency, all of that. I don't like hidden fees. I love fees. I don't like hidden fees. So, you know, we make sure that we disclose all of that up front. So, you know, nobody's ever should be caught by surprise on any of it.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:46] So if I'm going to roll this particular fee out, I'm going to get to your escalation because I think it's brilliant, by the way. And I had sold my business right before I was getting ready to implement that one. But because I did charge a lease renewal fee, but it was it was only a one time, one fee. So I love what you do with the escalation, but so let's say so then to roll this out, you would send a new lease. Would this be just new lease ups or would would you implement this? Even though I have a lease that doesn't have the the lease renewal fee baked into it yet.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:07:19] So I would say, you know, you don't actually have to have this in the original lease. You can roll this out as you do the renewal because obviously when somebody's signing a lease renewal, that's a new contract and you can have your fee built right into it. And when someone's signing it, they know what they're signing, you know, just make sure they're aware of it so that they know they're going to be charged this fee when they sign their renewal.

Pete Neubig: [00:07:38] Got it. Okay. So you would literally put it in and then you send do you send just this is a little bit off topic, but do you send a full new lease or do you send a one page lease renewal when you do lease renewals?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:07:47] So we do a full lease renewal because I'm constantly updating my lease. So, you know, if my attorney tells me, you know, I was in court the other day and we had such and such happen, you know, that's new information to me that, you know, something I need to tweak on my lease and I'll go in and I'll tweak it. And I'm constantly doing that. So I always want to have the most up to date lease every year.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:05] Yeah, it's a best practice is to send a full new lease.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:08:10] I agree.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:10] Definitely. So now with the lease renewal, you've put it in your lease. When you send in the full lease or you already have it baked in and you just send a new lease regardless. So now tell me what goes on.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:08:22] So yeah, it's the escalation part that I think is the really big part of why this works so well. And I got to give credit to Jen Stoops over at now a pure company who got this idea from years ago. We kind of put our own spin on it.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:36] But the whole idea just another benefit of [00:08:39] NARPM, [00:08:39] by the way. Yeah, another benefit of being being involved in [00:08:42] NARPM. [00:08:43] You meet all these cool people or being a member of NARPM. So so Jen, obviously a fellow member gives back to NARPM a lot. So you talk to Jen, and Jen gives you this great idea, which, by the way, I call Todd's idea. So sorry. Jen So. All of thes e different ideas, you know, come.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:09:00] From all over the place. You know, it's just a matter of implementing. But yeah, so the way we do it is, you know, we want to encourage people to sign their renewal quickly because if they don't, you know, what does your staff have to do? Or you if you're a one person show, you know, you're doing a million phone calls, emails, text messages, trying to chase this person down and you're getting and.

Pete Neubig: [00:09:19] You're getting calls from the owner, too, right? Like, hey, you're going to lose so-and-so going to renew. And if and when they don't, when you don't have an answer, you're doing a poor job in the owner's eyes. Yep, that's exactly right. So the whole goal here isn't necessarily to make a bunch of money. The goal is to.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:09:33] You know, make a. A little bit of money while speeding up the renewal process. So what we do is when we send out that renewal, we basically tell everybody, Hey, if you sign this within the next five days, you're just going to pay this really small fee. And I can't say what the fees are because of antitrust reasons. But, you know, it's a small fee. If you don't, though, we're going to escalate that renewal fee the longer it takes you to sign. So if it takes you 15 days to sign, it's going to cost this much. If it takes 30, it's going to take this much. If you let the lease lapse, then it's going.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:10:02] To be a really big.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:10:03] Fee If you sign it after the expiration date and it's gone month to month. So what this does, obviously, is it encourages people to sign that renewal as soon as they get it. You know, they get the they get it in their inbox. We do it all electronic signatures, they immediately sign and those few people who don't. And then you have to chase them down. Well, now at least you're getting compensated for having to do all that extra work. And it helps you to pay for the staff who's doing that work if you've got staff. So, you know, it's worked on both sides. You're either making money or you're reducing your workload. Either way, you're coming out ahead.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:35] Now. Do you do you allow your residents to go month to month? Did we do? You do. Okay. So we put.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:10:45] A limit on it, though. So we tell them if you need to go month to month, we're okay with that. Your rent is going to increase. There's going to be a big rent increase and there's a monthly admin fee for us and plus you're limited to six months. So, you know, once you hit that six month time, you have to make a decision. You either have to leave or you got to sign a full lease renewal. So we don't let people go past that.

Pete Neubig: [00:11:05] I don't know if our listeners caught that, He said he increases the rent, which is great for the owner. If your percentage base, it helps you a little bit. But what he said is he also has a what is it, a management fee, Right. Is it. An admin.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:11:18] Fee? Yeah. So I mean that's.

Pete Neubig: [00:11:20] That's something I recommend. What's that? A monthly. Admin fee. Correct. So yeah, we're collecting.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:11:25] That every single month that they're on a month to month status and there's a good reason for that. I mean if we renewed the lease we would be getting lease renewal fees, so we would be making money off the renewal. So if someone's going month to month, I'm not getting my renewal fee. I need to make up that revenue somehow. So the resident needs to pay for that because they're getting the benefit of their month to month lease that they want. So, you know, it's easy to justify it.

Pete Neubig: [00:11:46] Now. How far in advance are you sending your lease renewals out? A 90 days out, 60 days out. What's, um. So we start the process at 60 days, the will.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:11:54] Actually 90 days because we do a pre inspection. So you know, we'll do our periodic inspection 90 days out and then we based our lease renewal on what we find in the inspection, but we don't actually send that lease renewal out to them to sign until that 45 to 60 day window.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:09] So to implement this fee, it really is just creating a cover letter. Is that is that right? Like I'm creating a cover letter, I'm sending it out and telling you, you know, it's X dollars if it's within five days, Y dollars if it's in 25 days and Z dollars if it's in whatever. So many days. Exactly. So, you know, you got to put it in your lease, obviously, because you want it in the actual legally binding document.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:12:29] You want it to be in there, but then have.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:12:31] Your cover letter.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:12:32] Or your email, whatever you're doing for your renewals and just lay out how it how it works. Because again, we want to be transparent with what we're doing because not only is it just the right thing to do to be transparent, but it's also helping you accomplish your goal, which is to get people to sign their renewals really quick if they know about everything up front and what they're going to get charged and that's when they're going to actually sign their lease really quick.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:52] Okay. So then the other piece of this would you would have to create a chart of account. You split out all your tenant fees separately to track it or do you just have one lump account that says tenant fee?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:13:04] No. So we we break them all out separately so I can do a better job of forecasting what it will look like for the year. I like to be able to do my chart of accounts would drive some people crazy. I've got like hundreds of sub accounts, so I like maxed out the guys at.

Pete Neubig: [00:13:18] Profit coach cringing. Just looking at your chart of accounts. Exactly. Exactly.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:13:22] So I mean if you're doing Northam accounting standards, which I recommend everybody do, then, I mean, there is just a category there. I think it's called tenant ancillary fees or or tenant paid fees or something like that. I mean, you can put everything under that, but I like to have sub accounts for every little individual fee, which, you know, that's, that's just my personality, I guess.

Pete Neubig: [00:13:42] All right. So now to implement this fee, I have to obviously create a cover letter. I got to update the lease and then I got to create a chart of account. Sounds simple, but now I have to train the team, right? So your, your lease renewal team and your accounting team would need to know about these fees. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:13:59] Way I always recommend doing this is whenever you have a fee, make sure.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:14:02] There's a.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:14:03] Checklist item associated with that fee so it doesn't get forgotten. Because what happens with a lot of these fees, you know, I teach 80 different fees if you take my full course, I mean, it's a ton of them. It's impossible for anybody to remember all this stuff. But what you have to do is make sure that you're running your business on checklist. So every single time somebody does a lease renewal, they're working their way down a checklist on every single thing they need to do. And one of those checklist items is going to be charge the lease renewal fee. So you know what I've done? We use LEED simple for our process automation. I've set it up through Zapier where it calculates the renewal fee automatically so the team member doesn't even need to, you know, count up the number of days it took them to sign and figure out what the renewal fee was. Zapier calculates all that automatically, so it just populates into lead. Simple. They can they can send the email off reminding the tenant of the renewal fee they're paying, and then the checklist tells them to put it on the tenants ledger. So just however you do it, whether you're using process, street lead, simple asana.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:15:02] Whatever, just make sure you've got a.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:15:04] Checklist item so your team member doesn't forget to charge it.

Pete Neubig: [00:15:08] Now, do you create a report that you run at the end of each week or month on the lease renewal fees to see who who actually renewed their lease versus did the fee get charged?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:15:21] Yeah. So, I mean, we're it's really easy when you're using lead simple because you can actually see if a task hasn't been done or if it has. And then of course in property where which is our software, we get a monthly income statement where we can see and can track to make sure that the revenue is where it's supposed to be. So mean. I recommend everybody be on where you've got this stuff on a scorecard where you're keeping track of it every single month. Anyway.

Pete Neubig: [00:15:41] Yeah, I'm a big fan of trust but verify, right? So you do all this and you trust that it's all going to happen and then you verify by running a report each week or at the end of the month to make sure like everybody had had the lease renewal, actually got charged the lease renewal fee. Yep. So now what happens if your team doesn't believe in a fee? Like, Oh, we should never charge a resident a lease renewal fee. We're already charging the owner a lease renewal fee. Todd, you're double dipping.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:16:08] Yes. I mean, I've honestly never run into this issue. I hear about it a lot. I hear a lot of people who say that they run into these problems. I personally haven't had this issue, and it might be because I use a lot of remote team members. Everybody who's doing this is in Mexico. So, I mean, I you know, it might be a cultural thing where people in in different countries just follow the process regardless of what they feel about it. But the way I would tell everybody to handle this, if you're getting pushback from your team on any sort of fees is, you know, and I devoted part of my presentation at National to this is making sure that everybody understands why it's to their benefit that these fees get charged. So you know, the reason we're charging this is to reduce your workload. You know, we're doing this to make sure that a lot of this is automated so that people are signing stuff without you having to chase them down. So it's making your day as an employee at this company easier that we charge this fee, you know, and once people understand what's in it for them, usually that makes it a lot easier that they're going to, you know, see the light and they realize it's not just about you putting a bunch of money in your pocket. There's actually a logic behind this and why everybody benefits and then think you're going to have a lot more luck with that. You know, everybody's always about what's in it for them. So just make it clear to them what is in it for them.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:23] So now let's talk. Let's talk about the owner side of things. I'm assuming that your PMA already has some language in there, that you have other fees that you can charge and all that good stuff. And if you're running a management company, you do not have that in your property management agreement like that needs to be done yesterday, correct?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:17:43] Yeah. I mean, and that's why I use the term. Admin fee earlier. The way I do this is I have a clause in my management agreement that basically says, you know, the broker can charge administrative fees of any kind to tenants and that money belongs to the owner. You know, it's a really easy paragraph. You don't have to have a separate disclosure for every single fee you charge. It's just one big catchall. So then every single fee I charge. Tenants, I just. Call it an administrative fee. So it's a lease renewal, administrative fee. It's a month to month admin fee, you know, whatever it is. And that all falls under that catchall. And then, you know, nobody ever questions that. You know, I've never had an owner ask, you know, what's this paragraph in the contract about admin fees. They don't care as long as they're getting their rent, you know, that's all that matters to them. So, you know, just make sure you disclose it and make it easy on yourself. Don't do a million disclosures. Just do one big one.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:30] Now before you implement a fee, in this case, the lease renewal fee for the resident. Do you go through the potential objections and then create like for your team, like, hey, these are going to be this is going to be the phone calls that you're most likely going to get. These are going to be the the objections that you get. And then do you kind of like make sure that you answer all the potential objections before you implement a fee?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:18:52] Yeah, definitely. I mean, if for anybody who takes my course, I mean, I actually go through all that. So I mean, it's. Part of each. Fee that I teach is. These are the objections you're going. To get and this is how you can respond to them. So, I mean, you always want to make sure that you have those prepared. And honestly, 90% of the people aren't going to object. You know, it's just people are used to paying these things. I mean, that's what I always remind everybody of. You know, you've been paying ancillary fees at banks, airlines, resorts, you know, everywhere you can imagine for years. Everybody's used to paying these things. So people don't object to it. But when you do get that, you know, 5 or 10% of people who do say something about it, you want to make sure that your team is prepared for how do I respond to this and make it sound rational to everybody? Because every fee we charge, I can easily rationalize. I don't charge anything that can't be so. I mean, anything you're charging should be easy to explain to someone about what the reason is for it.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:46] Yeah, I think you bring up a good point as well. Like people kind of you don't want to you don't want to run your business on the 5%. Right. If you're so worried that, you know, you have this difficult owner and you're going to implement a fee and you're like, Oh, man, Rodney's going to call me and I don't want to deal with Rodney and Rodney this and Rodney that. You're missing the point, right? You can't run your business. You're not going to one, you're not going to make 100% of people happy, especially when you're a property management firm and you have two sets of clients. And so if you run your business on the 5%, you're you're going to try to make everybody happy. And what happens is no one no one's happy. Yeah. Or you don't implement a fee because you think Rodney's going to yell at me.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:20:27] Exactly right. And I can think of somebody who I've. Worked with previously who, you know, was talking. To them about. A security deposit, alternative option. And they kept telling me, well, I'm not going to do that because my biggest client doesn't like it, you know, and I've got 30 doors or something with them. And I said, Well, that's 30 doors out of 800. And I understand, you know, it's a big client, but you're losing out on literally, what, $10,000 a month because of this guy. You know, you can't run your business that way. You have to actually look at what makes sense and and then figure out how to explain it to that person and make it work for them. And if it doesn't, you know, sometimes you got to lose a bad client who's unreasonable. But if someone's not going. To let you charge a reasonable fee. That's not a good client you want to keep.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:08] Yeah, I'll give you a great example is I had I had a fee that I was going to I was going to add called the technology fee because we were using more and more tech and it was costing me more and more money and I was going to implement it. And we were worried about a couple of clients and we implemented it and we literally had two people get upset. We waived the fee for them for that year, and the next year we we hit them with the fee and they never they never cared. And I lost one client. One client literally let us go because of that. Because of that was the you know, that was probably a client that was unhappy anyway. But the fee put like 12 grand in my pocket. And I lost one client. But that 12 grand is not a one time fee. I got it the next year, the next year and the next year. So if that other client was making me, let's call it 200 a month, well, I lost 2400, but I made 12 grand. Is that a good deal?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:21:59] I think anybody would take that deal.

Pete Neubig: [00:22:01] Yeah, I'll take that deal. So most most property managers I speak to, they have no problem creating fees for residents or a less of a challenge. What would you say to them when when it's a fee that's going to affect an owner client? We kind of went through a little bit of this, but can you expand a little bit more like what that thought process is and what some you know and how how you would prepare yourself for that?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:22:28] Yeah. I mean. I do think that it's best.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:22:31] To get as much revenue as.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:22:33] You can from residents. So, you know, I do understand that thought process. We do want to make sure that we are maximizing our revenue potential on the residents side because it is a landlord's market right now. And, you know, the market just bears that. But, you know, there is times when it makes sense to to charge a fee to an owner for something like an inspection or a special request or whatever it may be. And some of this stuff is, you know, a lot of what I teach on the owner side is behavioral based. So, you know, it's those things where, you know, let's say an owner tells you, hey. I accidentally had a FedEx. Package delivered to my house, my rental house, and you send someone out there to pick it up and send it to me. And, you know, this is stuff that I know one property manager after another who. Just does this. Without a second thought. And it's like, man, you literally lost three hours of your employees time to do this today and you're getting nothing for it. And this is not property management mean picking up packages and mailing them to someone is not property management so you need.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:26] To charge. Or Amazon.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:23:28] Yeah exactly. So you know, I mean these are the kind of things where it's easy to charge a fee for it. And no one's going to object to this, I promise you. You kno w, when you were. Doing it for free, they were shocked. That you were doing it for free. And now that you're. Charging, they're going. To say, Oh, that makes sense.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:44] So I mean, most you'll. Have the 1% that gets upset, right? It's because you did it for free and then you started charging. It's harder than if you started charging right from the beginning.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:23:53] True. And you know, this this is something I always tell people when they start to. Charge on the owner side, make sure.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:23:58] Your operation is right.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:23:59] First, because if your clients are already mad at you and all it takes is that one last straw for them to leave, that's not the time to be charging a bunch of new fees. Fix your operation first, make sure everybody's happy, then add the fees on.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:24:14] But if you've got a bunch of happy.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:24:15] Clients, if for the most part, you know, if your churn is low, you know, go ahead and do it because nobody I promise you, nobody's going to leave. You know, a friend of mine, Darren Hunter from Australia, did did a talk on this down in Florida at the Florida State conference. And he went around the room and asked a bunch of people, you know, he said, how long have you been going to your barber or your hairstylist? And people would say, oh, five, six years. Well, if they jacked up your rate 50%.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:24:40] Would you switch? And everybody said no. And the reason is people don't like to change these things, you know, And it's easier to change a hair stylist than it is to.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:24:49] Change a property manager.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:24:51] A lot easier.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:24:52] So if they don't want to do it for a 50% increase on a hairstylist, trust me, they're not going to do it for you. Charging them an extra few percent in fees, you know, when it's much harder for them to change you again, unless they're already mad at you if they already don't like you, that's a different story. So keep that in mind.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:10] Yeah, that's good. Good advice. So tell us tell us a little bit about Assist and what prompted you to create assist. Yeah. So property managers.com is the website.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:25:21] Assist is the company I have with my fiance, Abby Wasserman. I started it up about three years ago. I think it was right during actually during the pandemic. And the reason I started it up was because, you know, I kept talking to people about fees. You know, I would do presentations at conferences all the time and people would keep asking me, Well, how do you implement that? What's the contract language? You know, what do I need to do to actually make that happen? So I figured the easiest way to do this was just to put a course together to to explain all of it and run through all the fees, all the contract language, all the, you know, all the.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:25:55] Objection handling.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:25:56] All that stuff.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:25:58] Just put it in one place.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:25:59] So if somebody wanted to implement all this, it was easy for them to do so.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:02] So I put the course together, put it out there on the website. We've had hundreds of people.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:07] Do it, lots.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:08] And lots of happy clients.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:10] And we're probably actually going to be coming out with additional content soon for new fees, new programs, and also start to work on things like process automation and some other things. So, you know, really what it is, it's about helping people to.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:25] You know, maximize the.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:26] Value of their business, you know, whether you're looking to sell your business or just.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:30] Stay in it for forever.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:26:32] Like I am, you know, either way, you need to make sure you're maximizing your revenue. So, you know, that's the whole goal.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:38] Yeah. And just somebody mentioned, uh, property management assist on, on one of the Facebook groups and somebody replied back saying it's, it's actually too low. They don't charge enough. I've made like ten times my money on it so got some really good some really good feedback on there. So what was that website one more time? W-w-w-what Property manager assist.com. Property manager assist.com. All right, Todd, appreciate you, man. We're going to jump into a quick commercial and then when we come back for the The Lightning Round. I know you're nervous about it. All right. We'll be we'll be right back, everybody. All right. Welcome back, everybody. We got the famous Todd Orange shot in the hot seat with the The lightning round. Todd, you ready? Like the sound effects there, Pete? It's Naap, and we're nonprofit, so I have to do my own sound effects. What is one piece of advice you would give someone just starting out in business? Systems, systems, systems.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:27:40] That's what it's all about. Make sure you from the very beginning write down how you do what you're doing because it makes it so much easier to scale.

Pete Neubig: [00:27:47] What software do you use?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:27:49] Uh, we use tons of software. Our main property management software is property. Where?

Pete Neubig: [00:27:53] Property? Where does pineapple belong on pizza? Hell, no. What book are you currently reading, or what is one that has impacted your business or life? Oh, I would say the book that probably impacted my business the.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:28:08] Most would be Thinking Fast and Slow by Danny Kahneman. He's a psychologist that talks about hiring and learning how to hire. Right. Is probably the thing that's impacted my business the best.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:20] I just wrote that one down, thinking fast and slow. Which Marvel character do you most associate with?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:28:27] I am not a marvel guy. I'm a guy. I got to go to Batman. You know, I'm rejecting the whole Marvel thing, man.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:33] That's. That's fine. I had one guy say, I don't even know what a comic book. I think he said Calvin and Hobbes. I'm like, Okay, uh, what is one challenge you currently facing in your business? Uh, that is a good question. I would say growth.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:28:49] At this point, it's very competitive in Atlanta and it's become very difficult to to to add doors. I would say that's probably the thing that I'm struggling with the most right now.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:59] What was your first job? I worked in.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:29:03] A warehouse for a car dealership when I was in I think I started when I was in junior high, actually.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:10] What is your ideal vacation?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:29:12] Cruise. I love a good cruise, man.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:16] Other than the Northam podcast, What is a podcast you recommend?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:29:21] Uh, does it have to be property management or just anything?

Pete Neubig: [00:29:24] Any podcast? Yeah.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:29:26] I would say the podcast I enjoy. Most is Sam Harris's podcast. He talks about everything from neuroscience to Politics and just anything you. Can think of. But I always find it interesting and can usually apply a lot of it to business to.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:40] Which do you prefer? Dogs or cats?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:29:42] Dogs. No question.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:44] You are. You survived the lightning round, buddy.

Todd Ortscheid: [00:29:48] Not too bad. Not too bad.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:50] All right. If somebody wanted to get in touch with you or learn more about assist or about your new your newest venture, always their repair, how can they reach you?

Todd Ortscheid: [00:30:00] So yeah. Property manager assist.com is for the maxing stuff. If they are looking for someone for maintenance coordination help after hours. And they can check us out at always there repair.co. 

Pete Neubig: [00:30:13] If you want to join them, please go to narpm.org or call the good folks over there at (800) 782-3452. And if you're in the market for a virtual team member, please check out vpmsolutions.com. It's the no, It's the no cost free solution for property managers and real estate professionals on finding hiring and and paying virtual team members. Thanks a lot for being here, Todd. Appreciate you. Absolutely. Thanks, man. Take care, everybody.