Introduction to Property Management Training

Well, greetings. I'm Robert Locke. Thank you for taking the time to hang out with us today. We are starting a series. I've been coaching property managers all over the country on either rebuilding or replacing their property management agreement, and I've been kind of saying to them over the phone the same things over and over and over again.

So I thought what I would do is trap all that, do a series of videos about how to build a killer property management agreement, and then offer it on our website and stream it out to people over a period of time. So we are building a series of how to build a killer property management agreement. There's about 40 training videos. Some of them are six minutes, some of them are 10 minutes, some of them might even go up to 12 or 14 minutes. And so we'll be streaming it out every week for as long as they are.

And you can disconnect any time. We're not trying to lock you in. And this will be covering the best language and the best strategies for a property management agreement. Kind of doesn't matter what part of the country you're in or what your business model is or how you do property management. We're going to cover a ton of big-picture philosophies and legal issues and then get way down in the weeds and do some specific language conversations as well.

So whether you're an owner, broker, or just somebody in the business, it'll be, we think, of great help to you. Monica and I are doing these videos. I don't know how many I can get her to do. Sometimes she'll do every third one, sometimes every fifth one. But we've got her coming into the studio as a lawyer to address some of these issues so that you can get the best advice we can on certain topics.

Importance of Management Agreement

Now, why do we spend so much time on the management agreement? Well, the management agreement is really the foundation of your management company. It's amazing to me how many people want to start with a rental agreement. Fact of the matter is, the rental agreement is not where you start. Your management agreement is the foundation.

It defines your property management style. It defines your relationship with your owner. It also defines the relationship with the tenant. It kind of defines how profitable you're going to be. And people kind of on the surface say, "What does my management agreement have to do with profitability?" And the answer is, it has everything to do with your profitability.

One of the big topics on our website here is how to turn a nickel-dime business into a money machine. And the things that you say or don't say in your management agreement is going to define that to a great extent. It'll also define how much your company is worth. When we sold Crown four years or two years ago to NRT, that was a Fortune 500 company. They wrote us a very big check for that and just kind of walked away, and the reason is because it gushed money.

And so your management agreement and how you build it, the theory of going into that management agreement, is going to define what your company is ultimately worth. And we can help you make it worth a lot of money so that someday you can step out of it and sell it like we did and retire. And ultimately, how much fun you're going to have. Now, people kind of say, "Robert, the word fun and property management don't belong in the same sentence." I believed that for 20 years. Yeah, 20 years.

2000, I really started putting my shoulder behind the business. When we got ready to sell, we were making a ton of money, and so we had seven letters of intent and ultimately sold it to Realgy, a Fortune 500 company. So the way you build your management agreement is ultimately going to decide how profitable you are, how much your company is worth, and ultimately how much fun you're going to have in the business.

Management Agreement Details

Now, let me say it another way, because I don't want you to miss the point. The management agreement defines your style and your model. It defines the speed at which you operate. Part of our training is going to help you understand that how you manage at 50 properties is not how you manage at 200. As a kid, I did go-karts, and it was really fun going on go-karts, but you couldn't go 50 miles an hour in a go-kart.

And things that work at 50 miles an hour don't work at 200 miles an hour any more than managing 50 properties is done the same way you manage 300. And so since this is really a nickel-dime business, it needs volume, and volume requires speed. And how you set up your management agreement is going to define how fast you can operate. It's going to define how safe you operate, how scalable you are. I come across plenty of people who have a management agreement in place that works really good for 200 properties, but it won't work at 400 because what works at one speed doesn't work at another speed.

And many people build systems that prevent them from being scalable. And so the management agreement is going to ultimately define that, again, how profitable you're going to be, and then ultimately the value of your company in the end. Now, some of this material is going to be at a 30,000-foot level, where we're going to talk about management theories and different styles in property management, and we're going to talk about different ways to do property management. Some of it is going to be way down in the weeds. Some of it is going to be actually not just legal theories, but language, terms of labels, disclosures, what to include and what not to include.

We'll talk about exculpatory language and the five filters that you want to have in your head as you build your management agreement. So some of this on the front end is going to be big picture, and very soon we'll get down granularly and actually give you language that you should consider putting in your management agreement. Now- This will be completely free to you if you're engaged with our site. And if you go to our homepage in the far upper left-hand corner, up in the left-hand corner, you're going to see a website option. It's a button that gives you eight different ways to be engaged with our company.

And so this series is completely free if you're a subscriber, a super subscriber, if you're on a 12-month consulting agreement, if you're on a revenue-sharing program, or if you're not. If you're not engaged with us in some financial way, then after about video number seven or eight or nine, there's going to be a small monthly fee involved if you want to continue it to the end. We're not trying to handcuff anybody. You can quit at any time. And we are open to giving a ton of stuff away.

We're not trying to sell everything. We give a lot of stuff away on this site. But somewhere along the line, we've got to figure out how to monetize it and how to pay our overhead here. Because we got two full-time staff and an office and studios and all that stuff. So we do have an overhead.

We'll push out a bunch of them for free. Somewhere along the line, if you're not engaged with us in other ways, you'll be asked to pay a small fee to continue. Okay? So join us on this adventure. This is going to be fun.

I'm bringing Monica in. We're going to do some debates together. I'm going to take some issues, then she'll do a couple of videos, and you'll gain a ton of information. I'm telling you, what I have been able to teach other property managers over the phone over the last year about the strategies to build in a good management agreement are accelerating them by five and 10 years, making them much safer to operate as a business and making them a lot more profitable.

Engage with the Class

Okay? Now, if you're out on YouTube or you found this video somewhere, the way to engage with this class, go to trainingpropertymanagers.com. There's a button all over the place called Courses or Workshops.

Sign Up for Free Videos

Go to the online one, and you'll find the one that says Building a Killer Management Agreement. Go there, sign up for this, get a bunch of free videos, see what we're bringing to the table to contribute to your success as a property manager. Well, thank you very much. We've got one last short video for you to watch before you go. Thanks for taking the time to meet with us today.