In this episode, Kandise Varvil, Co-Founder of PM PathBuilders, talks about building a process than can make any property feel like a 5-star property, and why that's essential to attracting high quality residents. From expectation setting to communications, getting your company, your owners, and your residents on the same page pays dividends.
Ready to talk to an RBP expert? https://www.secondnature.com/request-demo
Have questions? Email us at triplewin@secondnature.com
Network with professional property managers in our private group, https://facebook.com/groups/triplewinpropertymanagers
Visit our events page https://www.secondnature.com/events
Follow the Triple Win Property Management podcast by Second Nature and never miss an episode!
Season 5 Episode 8 features Kandise Varvil, Co-Founder of PM PathBuilders.
The books that Kandise recommends in this episode are Unreasonable Hospitality, by Will Guidara, and Buy Back Your Time, by Dan Martell.
The Triple Win Property Management Podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature.
Andrew Smallwood
Hello professional property managers! Andrew Smallwood here, host of the Triple Wind Podcast. I'm joined by my friend Kandise, who's joining us here today. Kandise, we just had you on a Triple Win Live not too long ago, joining our expert panel, and for those who are less familiar with Kandise, she's got– what I love is she's got experience from the industry.
She's been in the trenches of property management, and now is part of the select handful of really respected consultants—experts in the industry—who are working closely with property managers to help them improve sales, help them improve operations, and that expertise going across single family assets and multifamily. And she's just got great great experience and a real passion for the industry, which we share, and helping property managers. And so it's been great to see what you've been doing with PM PathBuilders and Kristen over the last couple of years. But that's my tee up. But Kandise, what should the audience know about you if it's just their first time meeting you before we get started?
Kandise Varvil
Absolutely! So I have worked in the industry since I was 18, and I'm not going to say how long that was because I don't feel like dating myself today, Andrew, but I have been knees deep. Started in multifamily, as you mentioned, went into single family, worked as a property manager. I was boots on the ground. I was handling the day-to-day requests from residents and owners, which really changed my perspective as a consultant in the industry, because you really see a different view of the industry on both ends.
And I’ve got to say property management can't get rid of me. I love this industry.
Andrew Smallwood
That's great! That's great. Well, excited to have this conversation today. And we're going to be talking about this 5-star concept and 5-star paradigm, and defining what a 5-star property is. And your journey in this industry has taken you different places, including managing what some would probably call like luxury homes with, you know, really, top percentile type type rents. And I'm just curious, is that your definition of a 5-star property? Is it luxury, rental, or how do you think about it? What's kind of like a useful perspective you've seen, and how you think about this?
Kandise Varvil
Absolutely. So I have seen every kind of property you can imagine. I worked in multifamily with 2 to 3 bedroom homes that rented for 600 a month, which feels almost unheard of nowadays, up to $20,000 a month, single family homes in Marin. And so when you look at that range, you see a really broad spectrum of what a 5-star property is whenever you consider the residents perspective and also an owner's perspective. Now I will say there are 5-star properties that are $10,000, $20,000 a month, and there are 5 star properties that are $1,000 a month. I don't think price range has anything to do with the quality of a rental, and how it's perceived in your market.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay, well, say more about that then, because I think a lot of people might come in, and even I'm catching myself a little bit thinking, “Wouldn't price correlate to the quality of the rental?” So you're saying it isn't necessarily correlated to that. How do you think about what determines a 5-star property?
Kandise Varvil
Absolutely. When we think about price, market determines price, nothing else. Right? So I remember, I had a day that broke my brain when I was working in Marin. I had an owner call, and they were asking me about their property. I did my quick search of it. I was like, “Oh, this is probably around $5,000 a month.” In my mind I was like, “This is going to take forever to rent. I do not want to manage this property.” In that moment I realized there was something inherently wrong with me as a person that $5,000 correlated to that.
But really the market determined the rent was $5,000 a month for that property. It was not a 5-star property. It was a 1-to-2 star property falling apart, the owner did not take care of it. You could tell by the curb appeal that there was absolutely no love put into this rental. Now I'm in Arizona. We have a much lower cost per property. Price per square foot, nothing compared to what you see in California.
So a $5,000 a month property out here is very likely going to be a 5-star property, because that's what the market dictates. So I think fully, if a property is 5-stars, that is the effort we're putting into it. That's the way that property is being maintained. And it's the way we're presenting it to the potential renter.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, like Marin and Maricopa, I guess, are like different.
Kandise Varvil
Oh, yeah.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. And so you were starting to talk about the condition that the home is in, and these are– So if I'm a professional property manager, how might I go about evaluating or setting some criteria, you know, for defining what a 5-star property might be? How might I think, through that process?
Kandise Varvil
Yep, if you are a property manager who's listening to this, and you cannot pull up on your computer right now the standards you have for the rentals that you are listing on the market, then you need to work on that immediately. That is something that I think every company should prioritize, and you should have a list of– you should know on sight if a property meets your standards. And that's going to be, what do we expect for condition of the home? Are we willing to accept homes beyond a certain age? I'm not very ageist when it comes to properties. I think if it's maintained, and there's no deferred maintenance, it shouldn't be an issue if we bring it into our portfolio. But I think, having very set clear standards is going to be the number one way that a company is able to know, okay, is this up to the echelon of what I expect for the properties in my portfolio?
Andrew Smallwood
Ok, so maybe age of a home could be an example of this Maybe, maybe not, right?
It'll be up to each property manager to make that decision. What are like 3 to 5 examples of criteria that you've kind of seen other property managers say, these are things that we want to take a stance on, and maybe you don't have to do 5. But hey, if there's 2 or 3 examples of this, and kind of the why behind that thinking of like hey, we would actually rather say no to something outside of this. And again, different property managers may say I'm going to make different decisions about that. But just would love for you to walk through a couple of examples.
Kandise Varvil
Absolutely. I have a list of 20 for you, Andrew. I'm ready. I'll pull it up.
Andrew Smallwood
Let's go. Let's do it.
Kandise Varvil
So I think number one is going to be just overall, has this home been updated? Right? Are we looking at wood flooring that hasn't been updated, and is, you know, from the 1920s that has just been scuffed and worn and torn over time? Or do we have really beautiful vintage flooring that has been maintained and looks good in this home? Landscaping, I would say, is the number one. I think, that we have all experienced a resident pulling up to the property and curb appeals turned them off. Because there's been no maintenance. It's outdated. It's overgrown.
Curb appeal should be the focus of most property managers who have these single family homes with these yards.
Roofs. Roofs are not something that a resident's going to really care much about, but that is going to be deferred maintenance that's going to cause a lot of pain for a resident. So as we think about like a 5 star property, we're not just saying that we updated with the best IKEA finishings that we possibly could and it looks beautiful in photos. We're saying that this resident who's paying a premium, ideally, at this property, is not going to deal with a bunch of deferred maintenance issues after they've moved in. So there should be a level of standards we have that's not just going to increase the rent, but is also going to increase the lifespan of that resident and their happiness while living in the property.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, yeah, got it. Okay. So we’ve got like, property age, there's curb appeal, what's the condition of the roof? And you can start to imagine this list ticking on down to the twenty or so aspects that you mentioned.
In evaluating a process, do you feel like there's a certain number of criteria that is a good like, if I was just starting this and saying, you know what I don't have standards really like established with this yet, this may add a little friction to my sales process if I have to like, go through 21 questions, so to speak, about every property that I'm looking at, and maybe that's good. Maybe that friction is really good. What are you kind of finding as people are getting into this of, hey, maybe some guardrails on how I might approach that or think about that?
Kandise Varvil
Yes. So, as I mentioned to you, I worked as a business development manager in addition to being a property manager. That was my “moving on up” within the industry as I went from PM to BDM.
And the saying that I say quite a lot, which is 5-star properties attract 5-star renters. I coined that because while I was talking to owners, when I'd get pushed back on items they didn't want to repair at the property, that was my default. “I totally understand you don't want to fix this, but I do want to make it clear that 5-star properties do attract 5-star renters. If you expect a resident to maintain your home, we have to expect that you will also maintain your home.”
So, as we develop these standards, I really like transparent communication. We want this owner to know during these first contacts what the expectations are we have for their home from them, but also from their renter. So they feel protected while also seeing, okay, I understand why you want this, because you expect the same standard from the renters living at the property.
Andrew Smallwood
Kandise, is there a time from when you were managing property where the property brought on wasn't at a 5-star? Maybe it was a 4 or 3 or 2, or one, and you kind of had to do the work over a period of time to kind of get it to a 5-star? Is that like something you’ve got a story about? Or should we think about that differently?
Kandise Varvil
Oh, boy, do I, Andrew and I have fallen victim to what a lot of salespeople do, and it is the thrill of the chase, right? You get really excited to close this deal. So maybe you aren't looking as closely at the quality of the deal you're bringing on, because you have a goal you're trying to meet, and it's the end of the month.
So yes, I've absolutely brought on properties that maybe weren't up to our standard. What often happens in those instances, because, again, ideally, we are proactive with this, we are notifying owners of our standards early. This isn't even a question that's coming up past the sales process because the owner knows what's going to happen next.
But in the instances where maybe that wasn't communicated clearly enough in the beginning., now you have to have that hard conversation with the owner about, hey, this is what we need to do to get your property up to standards. We're providing estimates. We're telling them why. We're having a lot of one-on-one conversations. Or you're having to say, okay, this owner is resistant. Maybe this is an owner we need to off-board that does not match the standards for our portfolio.
Andrew Smallwood
Hmm, got it.
And so, where we're starting with this is like, one question in my mind, was like, okay, 5-star. Who gets to decide what's 5-stars? The way we've talked about this so far, it sounds like I as a property manager am kind of deciding and defining what a 5-star property is, and filtering potential properties and property owners through what I want to bring up. You mentioned, 5-star property attracts 5-star residents, and it just makes me think about what's the perception of residents out there and what are they calling 5-star, and what's ultimately going to earn a 5-star review, of course, in their eyes?
And that's something a lot of property managers who are trying to get discovered on Google and build a great reputation locally and everything else, like something they really care about. When you think about the resident perception, what attracts them?
How much of that is the property itself! How much of that is the service that a property manager is providing around it? How much of that is the communication that a property manager is giving, and the perception, the marketing around it to communicate things effectively? How do you think about the balance of those thing, and what's most influential in shaping resident perceptions?
Kandise Varvil
Absolutely. So whenever we think about a resident looking for a property, if it is a bad fit home that is not in the location they need or does not fit their lifestyle or their household size, no matter how amazing your services, you're not going to get them to rent that home, right? So there is a level where we have to know, okay, there's going to be things that are outside of our control when it comes to this property. But when you're looking at two homes that are pretty much equal, or even a home that maybe costs a little bit more, or is a little bit smaller and around the same price range, that's where you really see that quality of service start to make a difference.
And those little things amplify that experience where you may tip the scale. So we're not trying to convince people to come, move into the homes that don't qualify, or it just doesn't make sense for them, but what we can do is make it so when a resident looks at one of our homes and is talking to someone they know who happened to rent with us, that person's going to say, “Go with them. I never had a single issue, whereas this company, yeah, constantly have problems.”
So we're trying, we're looking marginally, I think the decision is going to be 25% on the experience with the company, 75% is the actual property that they're renting, but that 25% goes a really long way when you're looking at that final decision making that a resident's making.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, what are some of the things in your experience, and that you've seen with the clients that you're working with, like, there's the property itself, and there's things you can do to also impact the condition of the property and make it more attractive, right? But in that service element and the things that are directly in the property manager's control, what are some of the most impactful things that you've seen in your experience and in your clients’ experience?
Kandise Varvil
I think honesty, quick responses, answering questions, and having an educated team. We were talking a little bit about experiences. One of the best experiences I've had at a conference that we've had recently was at the Broadmoor. I feel like everyone had amazing things to say about the Broadmoor, which is where Broker/Owner was hosted this here in Colorado Springs. And so one of the things that really stood out to me about the Broadmoor was we pulled up, we went to the very front gate you entered. We were like, “Hey, we're here for a conference.” The person finished our sentence and said, “Oh, yeah, you're here for NARPM? Go park over there.” The second we pulled out, I was there with my business partner, Kristen, and I looked at her, and I was like, that's how you know this is a fancy hotel, because everyone knows what's going on.
That everyone knows what's going on makes such a difference whenever you have a resident calling and saying, “Hey, is this property still available?” And the person answering the phone doesn't accidentally say yes whenever we have an application, right? Or they're able to say, “Oh, yeah, it is, and actually, we have a showing happening tomorrow. Do you want us to sign you up?” That communication and having a really educated team, and people who know what's happening, where it's not so isolated in individual portfolios? That changes the game when you have someone who's stressed out looking for a home, and this is one of the highest tension points within anyone's life is moving, finding a place to live.
So if you can make that a little bit easier for them. That's game changing.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree with your characterization of the Broadmoor as like, this is a 5-star property and a 5-star experience that I'm getting here. And I think it's really interesting to think about like hospitality experiences and thinking about how can the long term residential rental space bring a little bit more of that feeling of hospitality?
But that's challenging. I mean, there's a different business model when it costs, you know, $1,500 right to stay at the Broadmoor, for I don't know 3, 4 nights, whatever it is? Versus that that is stretched across a 30 day period. And there's there's a different level of interaction and care that you typically experience there. But like, what are the ways that long-term residential property managers can kind of create that feeling of, Wow! This person knows me. They're showing me they know me. They know what's going on. What are some of the bigger challenges that get in the way of long term rentals, and what are some of the ways people can start to effectively do that in a way that works for their business?
Kandise Varvil
I mean, I think the number one issue that I've heard from clients that I work with, and people in the industry, is the concern of “Do we have the staff to support the level of service that we're being told we need to provide to residents?” And so I think that there's a really delicate balance and a lot of times it's not as hard as it can initially seem. This doesn't mean we need to hire a brand new staff member who is fully educated on all our properties, and they're exclusively answering our phones.
But this does mean we need to have processes in place where information is really easy to find. I am a big process person. At PM PathBuilders our slogan is trust the process, because I think process is key to everything running smoothly.
And so whenever we look at the process, do we have a process in place where I, as an employee, can find very quickly what's happening with an active rental? So if I'm answering a call, I'm able to access this and be able to give information on the fly. That's not hard to do. There's so many ways that we can have this information easily accessible, and that, I think, the hardest part about it is the time it takes to set it up and get the team to buy in.
But once it's there it's going to make the experience better for everyone, including our team, who's not stressing out because they're trying to find information on the fly.
Andrew Smallwood
You know, something that makes me think about second nature is like, maybe I'll recontextualize a quote we often say, in this five-star context, it would be behind every 5-star experience is a 5-star process.
And can you give an example like, can we dive deep into like one example of a process, whether it's a move in process or a renewal process or take your pick. There's tons of opportunities. What's an example of a 5-star process we could walk through in detail to give an example of, here's a level of process that if you have it, it's going to create this kind of experience for customers.
Kandise Varvil
One of my favorites is the move-in, because I think that one of my hot takes is, I think, people really undervalue the importance of move-in experiences, and how that changes your relationship with a resident.
So, walking through a perfect move-in process in my mind, that would be a process that we are starting from the get-go with just so much communication. Andrew, I want us talking to the resident. I want the resident to have zero questions about this property by the time they get keys. If there's a mailbox number I want them to have that. If there is a parking space number, they should have that in their email, easy to find.
If it's move in day, they should have no questions about when they're getting keys, or how they're getting keys for that property. As we go to the post-move-in, I call this our raving fans procedure, because I like up to a 6 month cadence of emails that this resident's getting after they move in where we're sending them emails about our favorite places to eat locally. We are asking them for their recommendations of places. We're asking them, how are they liking the home. We're teaching them how to put in maintenance requests. So whenever I think about a 5-star process, and that experience, it is giving them information that's valuable. We are not spamming them. We are not trying to sell them anything, we're not trying to get them to give us more money. We are just providing value.
Best thing about that? Whole thing can be automated. We can create this process that feels so warm and welcome. And we can automate 95% of it.
Andrew Smallwood
So it's like, there's an element of personalization here, like enough personalization for people to feel like, wow, Kandise really cares. Like somebody receiving this would say, wow! They really took the time. They didn't have to do this. This is more exceeding expectations, at least by a little bit, right?
But also being thoughtful of, okay, am I going to spend 90 min like every time looking up like the most current restaurants, and here's a list of 17 and… there's probably a balance there of saying, hey, this needs to be templated enough and automated enough to be scalable and work, and also exceed expectations.
How do you make those kind of judgment calls? What are you seeing working of like, here's a place where it works to invest for the personal touch, versus here's a place where it makes sense to be more scalable, and you know, and be able to still exceed expectations?
Kandise Varvil
I see a lot of the time. The issue that comes is, we don't have time to do it, and that is where the feedback I almost always get is, why don't we have this in the process? Well, I just don't have time. I don't have time to create these things.
But the time investment in the front is going to pay dividends in the long term, and that is something that I love to convey, because yes, we are going to have to sink some time into this to make it not feel like we put a prompt into ChatGPT and got something back and now it's in an automated email. That's going to take time. That's going to be an investment we have to be willing to put in. But that is going to pay off in the long run.
And again, as we think of automation and creating these items, once you have a really solid nurture campaign, for after a resident moves into a property, that's something, yeah, you'll probably want to update it every year or so. But we can have this sit for a decent amount of time where now it's going to become fun when we update it and we're going to get ideas based on conversations and it's only going to become better.
So that is the pushback, I see. And I just urge everyone that time is worth it, even if it feels like it's not because we have emergency work requests, and we have residents that are upset and owners have questions about their disbursements. We're always going to have those problems, but these little investments are going to pay dividends in the future.
Andrew Smallwood
What do they say, it's like an ounce of prevention saves pounds of pain later on? Yeah, it can be easy to underestimate the value and the impact of building trust early on and engendering that cooperation from people who you depend on to get certain things done to be successful together.
I want to ask this question, Kandise, because I think, 5-star. I think of the benefits that are obvious from a standpoint of okay, I'm getting a 5-star review, and I'm building my reputation.
It just feels good. It's morale building right in a tough and thankless business sometimes to like, know you're really doing a good job right, and providing great service and getting some of that validation. And even when you don't, even just being proud of giving that. Obviously like, it's kind of, if you've got a 5-star property and you're providing 5-star service, there's probably a little bit of a premium in in price that that commands as well, which is great.
Are there any other benefits, maybe that are less obvious? You mentioned attracting great residents. I guess that could have an impact on vacancy, or like, what are some of the what are some of the maybe less obvious benefits of taking this mindset and approach?
Kandise Varvil
I mean, you're throwing me a softball, Andrew. It is the owners who are looking up your services, go and look at the available rentals you have, and all they see are beautiful properties.
That is, I mean, that was one of my number one selling points the amount of times an owner called me and was like, “Wow, you guys manage really nice homes.” And I'm like, “Yes, I do. Thank you. Do you want us to manage yours?” Right? And so it helps change that relationship you're having with potential clients that come in. It also helps level set expectations. So again, whenever you have an owner, if you have pushback or repair, you're having difficulty getting approved, you have this track record of expectations you have for the property, and you're able to say, “Hey, owner, you know our expectations. We want to make sure that we are getting you the best possible resident. But to do that you have to have a working fireplace. We're not going to rent this at a premium rate if your fireplace isn't working.” Now we have this leverage and conversation we can use, because we've set the expectation that we are the best, and we expect the best.
Andrew Smallwood
This point kind of keeps coming up, of having a standard and keeping it. And this can be something that, emotionally, is very appealing, especially in the property management industry where it can be easy to feel kind of disrespected or underappreciated.
It's like, no, I'm taking a stand here. I'm in control of my destiny a little bit here, and I'm not going to tolerate less than what I know I need to be successful. But that's challenging sometimes. When you're building your business, it can feel easy to say I want to cut a corner or fall a little bit short or, here's the leads that are coming in, and that's kind of like what I've got to work with, so to speak. And I'm just curious, you work with clients kind of through this, like, how have you seen people kind of successfully navigate that to the kinds of decisions that ultimately are going to build their business in the right way?
Kandise Varvil
And I think that is a challenge I see across the board. A lot of the times, whenever you have a company that is hesitant on saying, “Hey, owner, I'm not going to take on your property because it's not up to my standards,” It's because there's fear.
So many decisions when it comes to sacrificing quality of service is fear-based because we want to grow our business. We want to make sure that we are able to afford the employees. And we need, we have to make payroll. We have to keep the lights on. So it's a very delicate balance. And being really intentional about these decisions early on helps. So the the big considering factor that I like people to think about is, properties that don't meet our standards are going to cost us a lot more money, a lot more time, a lot more energy than properties that do. When we're chasing around a bad fit owner because they're not willing to approve the work that we shouldn't have said yes to In the first place, we have an opportunity cost, because we are now losing this opportunity to get on really good high quality owners.
And if we don't have them in the lead funnel, that means there should probably be some outbound effort. We should be putting in effort elsewhere that we're potentially now sacrificing because we're having to chase around these owners that are a bad fit. Or we have team members that are burnt out and now maybe they aren't giving that 5-star service, because they're dealing with so many other issues that could have been avoided.
So I think that whenever we have this scope where we're saying yes to owners that are bad fits, it's because we're not seeing how that's affecting the big picture. We're not seeing how that affects every other role within our business. And now we're causing this break in the beginning parts of our process, and we're feeling that ripple all the way through the end. So I think that it can be a little bit shortsighted, which I get. I think it's easy to be short sighted when you're worried about the financial aspect of your business.
But sometimes we need to take a step back and say, okay, can I survive in this direction? Can I survive saying yes to everything? And if not, then it's time to make a change.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, when you're saying yes to something you're definitely saying no to something else, thinking about the opportunity cost of that. And hey, the time it's gonna take to manage this and go outside of our process and everything else, we could be allocating that time to going outbound if we could be allocating that time to driving the quality inbound leads that we wanted to. Can we get to our ultimate destination faster, even if it feels like, you know, the immediate step right towards the next revenue dollars is a touch slower?
Something you're making me think about is something really unique about property managers. I was talking with Melissa Gillespie. She was in Canada with us last month at Second Nature University, and we were talking about how most businesses, you get to 100% choose your customers, right? Or fire your customers. And because of fair housing, it's not quite a hundred percent that way for property managers. But you are 100% in control of the properties that you're choosing to take on. And if you do this and you're attracting 5-star residents, and you're doing what you just talked about a minute ago, and you're showing owners the beautiful properties that you manage, and you're attracting more five-star owners, and you're putting your team in a position with great processes, everything else, where you're able to attract better talent, that really feels kind of like the triple win flywheel right there. Attracting great residents that attract great owners that attract great opportunities for your teams. Can you get engaged and keep turning that wheel around and around? Is that how you think about it, or do you think about it differently?
Kandise Varvil
Oh, absolutely, and that I wish that I had the solution to never have a difficult resident. But unfortunately, that is par for the course, right? That is always going to be an aspect of any company that runs in property management, that's going to happen because you can't control the people that are coming and renting the property. But you can control the standards they expect and the standards you expect of them and the way those are communicated.
So again, we're being very proactive. We do want this win-all approach where we have every single party who is like, heck yes, this is exactly what I want. That's the owner happy because they have a resident who's paying a premium at the property. It's us because we're not having to deal with all of this deferred maintenance. And it's residents who are not complaining about a bunch of issues that could have been prevented.
And by doing all of these things. We're going to be able to maintain those relationships better with our residents. Residents are typically going to give us more grace if there's an issue at the property if it's not happening every week, right? So we're able to change the way this relationship looks and the way that we're able to respond where it's not a constant reactive approach. We're able to be proactive because we're not surrounded by fires constantly.
Andrew Smallwood
Trust the process.
Kandise Varvil
Trust the process, Andrew.
Andrew Smallwood
Love it, love it! Kandise, can we do a fun lightning round to close us out?
Kandise Varvil
Absolutely!
Andrew Smallwood
Let's do it. Let's do it. Kandise, if you could recommend one book for everyone in the industry to read, that's had a big impact on you, or that you've shared with other people, and it's had a big impact on them, what would it be?
Kandise Varvil
Can I recommend two, Andrew? I can't. I have two that are immediately forefront. Number one: everyone on your team should read this: Unreasonable Hospitality. It is, I think it completely changed my relationship by what's possible in having just an unreasonably positive experience with your customer. So everyone, every person on the team, your leasing agents up to the owners of the company, everyone should read Unreasonable Hospitality.
Every business owner, and this is a recommendation from Jordan Muela, is Buy Back your Time. He mentioned to Kristen and I that we needed to read that because we were dealing with some stresses within our business, and I have now sent it to every new client we have brought on in the last three months, because it is game changing as a business owner. So I have two books for all our business owners, one for everyone else on the team.
Andrew Smallwood
Love that, and we’ll get the links in the show notes to both those books, just for easy reference for people to check it out. Kandise, that's great. Okay, next one. What's one topic that isn't getting enough airtime in the industry right now that you think's more important for more people to be thinking about.
Kandise Varvil
Such a good question. I will stand on my soapbox really quick. Our renewals should not just be a transaction. We should be looking at renewals as a conversation, as a relationship building experience for our team and our residents. We should not be reaching out to the resident one time with their rent increase, and saying, “Let us know if you plan to leave.” We should put more attention into our renewals and make it a much more thoughtful experience.
Andrew Smallwood
Hmm, love that. Love that. Yeah, you think about renewals. It can be just like a very transactional, templated email versus like, how do we make this a great, memorable interaction? One of the biggest asks, right, with huge consequences one way or the other. Big opportunity. Big opportunity. Okay.
Kandise, I want to ask, when you look to the future, and you think about where the industry is going, what gives you hope, optimism… what gets you most excited?
Kandise Varvil
I am really excited about the conversation we're having about leveraging tech in property management companies, but that also makes me feel a little bit worried because I do see a lot of tech, and I'm not going to name any names… I don't feel like upsetting anyone here today, but I do see a lot of tech that I think potentially leverages fear above leveraging the actual opportunity to increase the services that we are providing. Or, I think that also sometimes things are communicated in a way that's supposed to increase ease of life but is causing more pain for our teams, because a lot of this is built not for property managers. It's built for the people supporting property management companies, and that's a really different dynamic.
I think, though, there are a lot of things that we are creating within the industry that people are implementing that is going to make this a much better experience for property managers and for residents. I just urge caution to everyone who sees the shiny new object, and they need to look intrinsically at their team, at their portfolio, at their owners and determine, will this actually help me move forward, or is this something that's potentially going to be a setback that's going to cause more issues?
Andrew Smallwood
It's a good time to be thoughtfully aggressive as it relates to tech.
Okay, that's great. Kandise, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate this, and, thanks to all of our listeners making it all the way through the episode, really appreciate it. If people are looking to connect with you or learn more, stay connected. What's the best way for people to do that?
Kandise Varvil
Absolutely. They can go to pmpathbuilders.com. That is where you can find all information about us. You can email me at Kandise@pmpathbuilders.com, or they can find me on Linkedin, Facebook. Wherever they are I probably am as well.
Andrew Smallwood
All right. Check your socials and Kandise@pmpathbuilders.com can check out them at that same domain. And, URL, we'll definitely get that in the show notes as well. Kandise, thank you again, really appreciate the time today.
Kandise Varvil
Thank you for having me, Andrew.