Finding the Perfect Tenant: How PMI Mountain and Main Transforms Property Management with Katherine Van Brocklin

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hey there welcome this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs i just want to remind you that it's that it's time to get your tickets to the ashville business summit all you got to do is go out to wncsummit.com it's coming up fast september 23rd it will sell out so make sure that you go out and get your tickets today hey i'm super pumped today i got katherine van brocklen from PMI Mountain and Main. She's going to tell us what all that means. Welcome, Catherine. Tell us a little bit about PMI Mountain and Main and you. Absolutely. Thank you, Bill. I'm excited to be here. I'm so proud of what we're doing and I love what I do.

1:16So happy to share. PMI Mountain and Main is a property management firm. We're located in downtown Asheville. If anybody's familiar with that, it's right on Wall Street, right above the iron, the gorgeous iron. What we do is bring a unique set of property management services to the area. There's a lot of great property managers in Asheville, and I'm friends with many of them. So there's plenty to go around. Our model is a little bit different in that we don't charge a lot of individual a la carte fees. We create tailored plans for our clients specializing in long-term property management and commercial property management.

1:54One thing we don't do is vacation rentals because we're not good at it. So we want to stay in our lane and we concentrate on what we know we love and what we can deliver. So what we do is we sit down with our clients and we say, hey, what are your pain points? And as we go through the pain points, we look for solutions. The number one myth in property management, not just for us, but for everybody is, oh, it's too expensive. I can't afford it. It's very inexpensive. So we're excited to be in this community. My goal is to keep giving back to Asheville. I was originally born and raised and worked in Miami for many more years than I'd like to share.

2:3113 years ago, we moved here to beautiful Weaverville and we love the Asheville community. So that's a little bit about us. Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about the, how you do it differently. What's unique? I mean, you said long-term, so is that residential? So long-term residential and commercial management. Yeah, I've always thought that property management was a great investment because, I mean, most people who own and invest in properties are not actually good at managing it. So it feels like something that would be a natural. So tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, another one of the myths about property management is anybody can do it.

3:16Now, to your point, anybody can. Anyone can buy an investment property, right, and collect a check, but there's so much more to it than that. And it's everything from the regulations. You know, North Carolina protects the tenants as they rightly should, right, from unscrupulous landlords and owners. So there's a lot of rules and regulations you need to make sure you follow, and they're updated periodically. So you want to really stay out of hot water with the North Carolina Real Estate Commission. So we help our owners ensure that they're following the rules because we do it for them, right? The other thing that we do is we make sure we stay on top of properties before problems happen.

3:55I think everyone who does investment real estate has a horror story about, you know, someone moves out and unfortunately they turned out not to be such a great tenant and they've just destroyed the home. And it costs thousands and thousands of dollars. The property is off the market for that time period while they're repairing it. And it's just a bad experience. So what we do for our owners very specifically is we do first a liability walkthrough with the owners prior to them even renting it to make sure there's nothing that's a problem that could be of a concern for them from a lawsuit perspective or for a tenant.

4:29The other thing we do is we screen the heck out of our tenants. We do a couple of extra screenings that not every property management firm does. So we're giving them what we can provide as the best tenant humanly possible. right, within the bounds of law and what we can do to screen. And then the other thing we do is we do periodic inspections. There's a fine line between a tenant renting a home. They're entitled to quiet enjoyment of the home. So we're not in and out of their house at all. But what we do is periodic inspections in between leases. So every six months, we do go in there. We check for leaks, mold, make sure that air filters have been changed.

5:08A lot of things, we've got a 31-point inspection that we do to make sure that we're not going down a bad path for our owners. So there's more, so many more things that a really good property manager will do for their owners, but that's what we're most proud of is we actually treat their property like our own. You know, anyone can say it, but we have the things in place to actually deliver. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Yeah. I think that's a lot clearer now what the uniqueness is. I love that. So let's switch gears a little bit, talk about business. So if you had to start over from square one in business, what would you do differently?

5:46That's a great question. There's a couple of things that come to mind. First thing is our name. That seems so simple, right? I love the name. It was very exciting to me. What did I know? And it sounded great. Well, it's such a mouthful. And if you just use PMI Mountain in Maine without the property management attached to it doesn't necessarily convey what we do. So that's probably the number one thing I would have done different is choose a different name. I can be in love with it, but if it doesn't represent your brand, it's a challenge, right? Yeah. And if it's not memorable, it's hard to brand something that's not memorable.

6:27That's a great one. I don't think I've ever got That is probably the number one. The second thing is, you know, you don't know what you don't know, right, when you're starting out. It's one thing to work in a role in an industry. It's another thing, you know, to go out on your own and you really don't know what you don't know. And I think I would have spent more time. I spent a great deal of time consulting with experts and other people and legal resources, but I think I would have done even more digging. But that, you know, it took me probably three to four months to really get up to speed two years ago where I felt like I needed to be.

7:00Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's great. So what have been, so that's a great learning. So what are some of the other learnings that you've had as an owner or an employer since you started? Well, you know, there's that saying that I think we've all heard to death. Work on your business, not in your business. You know, we all know that one. And we know we should be doing it. But what happens is, you know, you're in the weeds. Everybody is, right, when you start a business, especially from scratch. And you're so busy doing the operational details and helping your owners and your tenants, in our case, that you kind of lose sight of working on your business.

7:35So one of the learnings that I had after about six months of being out on my own was, you know, I had a vision where I wanted to be. I had a plan with milestones and goals, but what I lacked was accountability. You know, when it's me, myself, and I and a team of three, who's holding me accountable? Well, no one except me. So that's where I have to say I really support what you guys do because everyone needs accountability, either a coach, you know, a spouse. Somebody's got to help take a kind of 10 ,000 foot view of your business and see what are you doing. Yeah, or even just call you up and ask you, did you do the stuff you said you were going to do?

8:16Exactly. I often ask people a lot of times, are you becoming the person you said you'd become and are you accomplishing the things you said you'd accomplish? Exactly. And a lot of times that's all we have to do and that's enough. They're like, no, okay, great. Let's get into that. I love that. I love that. So what do you think some of the common misconceptions of running a business are and how do you address them? Well, I've got a good bird's eye view of that. I spent 21 years of my life running small business nationally for one of the top five banks. So I come from a very corporate environment, right?

8:53And always wanted to be self-employed. I thought, isn't it great? The mistakes are your own. The challenges are your own, but so are the rewards. Well, that's true. But what they don't tell you in business school is that it's a 24-hour-a-day job, seven days a week. Now, you can put safeguards in place. You build out the right team. At some point, that's not the case, and you do have a life. But they don't tell you the first few years when you start a business, you are all in all day, you know, all the time. You're always thinking about your business as you should. Right. So work family balance was a real challenge the first couple of years.

9:28And I had to make a conscious decision to say, OK, shut it off. Go be with your family. You need to have a life. So that that I wish someone had told me that, you know, it can be more consuming than you envision. Yeah, I mean, it's not unusual for us. No. Business owners to wake up at three in the morning with six or eight things on your mind, no matter if you made your list the night before or not. So you were talking about balance and personal life and the demands of running a business. Talk a little bit more about that. Tell us how you do that. Well, like I said, initially, I didn't. I wanted to be all things to all people.

10:04And I was delivering great service levels, but at a personal cost. We all need to recharge. And I think you can be a better leader in your business if you really do have some downtime. So what I do now is I actually set boundaries for friends, family, tenants, owners, everyone, that unless something's an emergency, you can reach me between 7.30 in the morning and 8 o 'clock at night. And after that, unless it's an emergency, of course, I'll reply the next day. And on Sundays, I, for the most part, have carved that out as a day to be with family. I go to church. Should we just recharge, do our thing?

10:41It's just everybody needs that in their life. And I honestly see looking back now that it makes you a better business person. Right? I mean, I'm sure you see it. Yep. Yeah. If you don't have the energy to work because you're working 24-7, you get less done. You work more, but you get less done. Exactly. Yep. So what do you attribute your growth to? You know, I think a lot of it is having a plan. Like I said earlier, having a plan with realistic goals, milestones, some accountability and structure. I am one of those people that love structure. And you need to know really what is your vision? Where do you want to get to?

11:23You got to start with who do I want to be, right? Where do I want to get to? Once you have that and you build out your plan and have accountability, whatever that looks like, then you need structure with some measurements so that you know where you're doing well and where you're not. And one of the things that I try to always be is honest, transparent, but most important really is consistent. Consistency, I think, is key. Do what you say you're going to do and get out there and demonstrate you're a person of character, but be consistent. Be consistent in your networking. Be consistent with your, in my case, owners.

11:58Consistent with tenants. Consistency with everyone. People appreciate that. Yeah. Well, it builds trust. It does. You know, it does. Yeah, and trust. Go ahead. What? I was just going to say in business, it's no like in trust, right? So you got to get to trust and the consistency builds trust. Well, you know, one of the things with our business that's, you know, just unique, everyone has something unique about their business, is for most people, whether it's the home they live in or portfolio of investment properties, it's usually the largest asset in their portfolio. And so, you know, we take that really seriously.

12:41So I train my team the same way that, you know, what if this were your home or your investment property? You know, think like an owner of a property. And that's what we do. So it does wake me up at 3 a.m., I won't lie, just like you. It happens. It happens. Your brain's working out stuff all the time. It is. It is. So I know you've got a small team, but you've obviously hired people over the years and other jobs and everything. So what do you look for in employees, and how do you foster a positive, productive work environment? Well, this sounds kind of trite, and everyone knows this, but it starts at the top down.

13:17It's the culture that you set, number one. And my philosophy has always been, I've hired a number of employees over the years, is we have to be honest, transparent, and accountable. Those are my three things. But we need to be flexible and fun. There's not enough fun in the workplace. So if you've got a structure and you're professional and you've got goals for your team, for yourself, they understand the vision of your business. They know what you're trying to get to, your mission statement. Okay, be flexible. Sometimes you have to pivot in every business, right? From one day to the next, you don't know what changes you have to make.

13:53But have a good time. You know, have a good time. Let your employees know that it's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to laugh. Yeah, I actually think that's a hard one for us Americans is to have fun. How do you do that? Well, I'll tell you. Coming from all those years in banking as a leader, you have to know banking is highly regulated, very structured. It's not exactly the most fun environment. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. You know, it's the little things. It's the little things from everything from saying thank you. Do you know how many business owners don't thank their employees for something?

14:29Now, you don't want to be disingenuous, right, and be thanking them for bringing you a piece of paper, you know, because it becomes not real. But when someone does something, it can be small. It can be huge. Thank them. Tell them you appreciate them and mean it. You've got to mean it or it's meaningless. But the other thing is little rewards. Like, you know, I still do it now. I'll bring in like a cup, you know, somebody likes Starbucks or something and they had a rough day. The next day I bring them Starbucks and say, hey, we're still a team, right? It was one day. Just get over it. Let's move on.

14:59It happens. So you always have to be aware. But the flip side of that is you also have to hold your team accountable, right? When people are not performing, then you kind of need to have those tough conversations in a very constructive way. Leave emotion out of it and, you know, just talk to them. Hey, what's going on? You know, these are the things we need to be doing. It's not happening. Let's talk about it, you know. And so it's a double-edged sword. Yeah, I often think that people think that they have to be serious to hold people accountable. And so, yeah, right. Right. They're not mutually exclusive to have fun and accountability.

15:38You've got to think about like your kids, right? I mean, you can have fun with the kids, but you're not going to let them get away with stuff. So it's just like that. All right. So we've got a quick fire round here. BEPIC is an acronym. And so what I'd like for you to do, a couple of words or sentences about each concept. So the B is be epic. I mean, I'm sorry. The B is bring the, sorry, sorry. I'll get the acronym right here. B is bring the energy. Okay. Well, team meetings is the first thing I think of. And I'm not talking about an hour and a half with agenda meeting, talking about we have every day, either my remote people and my in-person people.

16:24We get together, we get the energy up. We talk about the day and we get started. 10 minutes. I love that. Yep. Yeah, that's all it takes. You've got to change the level of energy. Exactly. Yeah, it's got to be a thing. So the E stands for education. We're always growing. Not only do we need to be growing, because we're a new business of two years, we have to be learning all the time. So we're educating ourselves. We read journals. We work with the North Carolina Real Estate Commission, with our vendors, with everybody we know. We attend trainings. We educate constantly. And then we bring it back and share it with the team.

16:59So one person isn't learning all the things. You don't have to send everybody to every seminar. No, no, no. We share. No, I love it. This would be a good one for you. So the P stands for planning. I don't know any successful people that don't plan. I plan everything. It's the ex-banker in me. We have a plan. We have weekly team meetings. We have a plan for the following week. We have midweek meetings, five minutes, touch point. How's the week going? We plan our goals for the week. We plan everything we do. I love planning. Love that. Love it. I is inspiration. This is going to sound really silly, but I worked at Walt Disney World for many years when I was younger.

17:40And we used to do inspirational moments with the teams. And I brought that through my entire career. The moments are a story that we read about someone, especially animal stories. Those are big ones. It could be something related to our industry. A property management firm we heard about that did this amazing thing. It could be something we just worked on, a volunteer project in our community, whatever. But something to say, hey, you know what? There's some good in this world. And then we get them going. Yeah, Disney does a lot of things very right. So really an interesting study. If you haven't read the studies on Disney, I would recommend it.

18:21There's several great books out there on that. So yeah, just really, really good. I had the ability many years ago to go through their Disney Institute. And so not working there. And I mean, it was best in class service. It was. And so delivering a wow experience for your clients, for your teams is always on my mind. Yeah, I love it. Love it. C stands. When I was coming up with the C, consistency was one of the ones I considered. But I ultimately went with commitment because I thought it also encompassed consistency. So what are your thoughts about commitment? I think everyone on the team needs to be all in and share the vision.

19:03And I think they have to verbally commit, and I think their actions need to commit. But I also think as a leader, we need to show the commitment first because people watch us to see how they're going to behave. The reason I say that is I have had leaders that were looking for commitments from us, and they weren't committed. You could tell they were phoning it in. So I say it starts at the top as well. Yeah, it's hard to fake it. It is. It just doesn't work. So I love that. I love that. So what words of advice would you offer to other business owners who are looking to grow? I think a couple of things.

19:44Number one, I would think you need to take a look at where you are and why are you there. Look at your plan, right? What are you off plan? And if you're off plan, why do you think that may be? Maybe you're spending more time in operations, working in the business. Maybe you're not doing enough of your networking and your marketing plan. Whatever it is, you need to take a look and kind of analyze. And maybe it's time to change your plan or your strategy. The other thing, and I know this is going to sound like a shameless plug for you, but I really believe in what you guys do. Get a coach. The reason I say that is I've had coaches several times throughout my career.

20:18And not only did they deliver accountability, but they also looked at things with a different lens and gave me an objective viewpoint. And then I could use that, knowing my business in and out, how I could change and transition my plan to get over that plateau. So something has to change, right? If you're not where you want to be, something has to change. And if you take no action, nothing will change. Well, there's a reason that the best in the world always have a coach, the best singers, the best. Absolutely. The best musicians, the best athletes, the best speakers. They all have a coach. Yep.

20:57Yeah, there's a reason. So if you want to be the best or you want to even just get better, you need a coach. Absolutely. So lastly, what is the best way for someone to find you? Several ways. We have a Facebook page. We've got a website, of course. And they're all PMI Mountain and Main. M-A-I-N, like Main Street. So PMI Mountain and Main. Type that in the Google search bar and it comes right up. Or my cell, 954-270-0487. 954-270-0487. Folks can call the office number, of course. But for people listening to your podcast, you can call me directly. Yeah, I love that. I put my number out there, too.

21:46I get calls sometimes, you know. And, yeah, you got to be – I mean, if you can't be found, nobody can – Exactly. You know, you can't really help them. Exactly. You can be available. Yeah. So this has been great. We really appreciate you being part of this community and glad that you've decided to be in Western North Carolina and Asheville. And we appreciate all you're doing. And I know you're going to continue to be successful and grow this business. Well, I really appreciate the opportunity. I am passionate about what we do. Finding the right tenant for our owners is like finding that last little puzzle piece when you're finishing a puzzle.

22:22And I really enjoy it. And I hope it shows with my owners. So I hope so. I appreciate it, Bill. Thank you. Thank you. And until next time, all the best.

22:39Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs Podcast. Here's three things that you can do. Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly.

23:26Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.