There may not be a more important process in your business than the hiring process. Getting the right people in the right seats is obviously critical.
This week’s episode, recorded live at NARPM Broker/Owner, features Matthew Whitaker, founder of Evernest, and Shim Markette, Chief People Officer at Second Nature. Both have years upon years of experience getting the right people in the right seats. Listen as they share their expertise in order to help you skip the common hiring mistakes many companies make.
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Season 4 Episode 8 features Matthew Whitaker and Shim Markette
The Triple Win Property Management podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature
Matthew Whitaker
The thing that we have realized is it's always going to be a people business. Now technology is going to certainly help enable them to be superhuman, but this is always going to be a people business. And so insomuch that we make our people better because we're selling our people's time essentially to the public when we make their time worth more money, then we make more money.
Andrew Smallwood
Hello professional property managers, Andrew Smallwood here, I'm joined by Matthew Whitaker from Everlast and Shim from the Second Nature team, our Chief People Officer. We wanted to take a chance to record a quick episode while we're here at Broker Owner to pull out some wisdom from Matt and Shim, who have been longtime educators. I guess Shim, more recently an educator, joined the stage and talking about not just property management but really people management and how to hire a great team, retain a great team, lead a great team to success, and handle people management challenges. So, for those that don't know you now, would you mind just introducing yourself and giving a little of your background, please?
Matthew Whitaker
Yeah, my name's Matthew Whitaker. I'm the CEO at Evernest. I founded Evernest about 13 years ago and have really been focused on growing it for the last ten years. Evernest manages about 14,000 homes. We're in between different states and 20+ markets, and we have about for this podcast. We have about 400 team members.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Wow. And can you say where those team members are located?
Matthew Whitaker
Yeah, they're all over the US. So we have people in a number of different states. We have a number of people working remotely. We obviously have a number of boots on the ground in the markets that we manage. And then we also have team members in Mexico and the Philippines, you know, their full-time equivalents, but they're independent contractors.
Andrew Smallwood
Very good. All right. And Shim, can you give a little background on yourself.
Shimrit Markette
Yeah, hey everybody, I'm Shim Markette. I'm based out of Boston, Mass. I've been with Second Nature as their Chief People Officer for about a year and a half now. Previous to Second Nature, I worked at a company called Ever Quote where I let people operations join there as 40th employee exited eight and a half years later when we were about 750 people as a public company. it was a wild ride and, I really, really have had a great first year and a half with Second Nature. We have 165 employees, also fully remote across maybe 35, 36 states, and have been really, really fortunate to come in and be welcomed into an amazing culture that was already built. And my job has just been, has just primarily been to continue to keep it going.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, excited to have this conversation. And I'd love to start with you because a question we hear a lot from property managers at a certain stage is making their first hire or first couple of hires, you know, maybe they have a couple of members of the team and are trying to decide which is the next one. How do you, if you rewind back, tell us the story of some of the first hires, or you know, that you made, how you guys went about that decision, and how you think about it now?
Matthew Whitaker
I think one of the things we got right is the fact that we hired, well, really early. And I took a, I took a, you know, played a big role in that. My guess is I have a big say. So in the first 50 to 100 people that we hire, what I have found is that those first people are so important. If you think about it, if it's your first hire, it's 50% of your company, or if it's your 10th hire, it's still 10% of your company. That's just a big number for a small business. So, you need people who are making a huge impact. But one of the things that I found was that they were so important that we wanted to create a system for doing that really early. And so we, you know, we developed a system for hiring and finding the right team members.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. And I'm like, I think you've helped a number of organizations navigate the next hire department leaders. How do you kind of help, you know, people think about making that next hire and identifying how they're going to build the team?
Shimrit Markette
Yeah, I mean, that's a loaded question, Andrew, but I think that some of the things that I encourage hiring managers are leaders in an organization to do is really clearly define what they're looking for and understand, hey, what's the mission of this role? What are the outcomes that this person is going to drive? What are the competencies we need? does that need to be a specific set of like true skill sets or attitudes and behaviors? I love what you said about like really nailing those early hires or even later more senior leaders. they are really going to create the, cadence the, the way that everyone else works together. So you want to make sure you're hiring great people. One of my early mentors, one of my bosses, a former CEO, said that every hire you hire should be better than yourself. And really trying to like, embody that as I move forward.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, now I'd love to ask if there are 400 active team members now. I would guess that over a decade plus, there have been more than 400 people that you've hired, right? Right. Over that time. What are a couple of the things that you see are like common mistakes or pitfalls that you either learned the hard way or the easier way from other people's mistakes that you think are really important for people to keep in mind?
Matthew Whitaker
Yeah, the sense point of being very clear on what you're hiring is super important. Well, a lot of people will just jump straight into the hiring process, and they won't be super clear on Will. What is it defining what it is that they're hiring? The second thing I've seen is you need to have a consistent hiring process. I think when we first start out, we all know the questions to ask. And we kind of like go on this touchy-feely way of hiring people. Does this feel good? Sometimes that's okay because a lot of early employees are referrals from people. But as you start to scale up your organization, you really need to be very consistent because it's really hard to, you know, to, to, to compare candidates unless you have some sort of consistent process of that. And then again, I love, what Shemp said, is, and I think about it in terms of like Bezos talks about the bar raiser. Well, right. As you grow your organization, you're going to start with Berry. Berry. Like when I first started, I was doing a lot of things. I was leasing, I was, you know, doing some accounting. I was just talking to owners, I was talking to residents. But as you grow an organization, it becomes much more departmental. You need more specialists versus generalists. And I think what happens where a lot of teams will hit the like limit if you will, is when they're continuing to hire those generalists versus going out and hiring a specialist.
Andrew Smallwood
Well, yeah, Shim, I know you've seen that movie before, kind of moving from athletes who can play all over the field to specific role players who are really good at specific things. How do you kind of help people work through that transition? You know, an organization, if somebody is doing that?
Shimrit Markette
That's a great question. And I think, again, it kind of goes back to what you're looking for. And as we sort of build out the team, helping people understand where they can have the most impact, I've been in that role where I've been a department of one and then grown that team significantly. I know you've probably been in that role yourself. We probably all been in that seat as like early stage employees. Sometimes it's hard on us too, right? We love doing a lot of different things, but helping understand, like people understand, hey, here's where you have the most impact. Here's where you can have the most value. And then also kind of honoring, have you brought in these new folks, these specialists? We want to make sure that they have the opportunity to excel in understanding, like here's where the give and take is. Let's make sure people have the opportunity to try things on their own without maybe, you know, our baggage that we brought from the early years. So I think it's just coaching. I think it's a conversation. I think it's also talking to those new hires, right? Those specialists who are coming in, whether then a lot of general athletes and kind of saying like, hey, here's here is here is what some of the challenges are going to be in this role. And here's what we want you to think about and here's how you want. We want you to give us feedback as we're bringing people in because, you know, hey, maybe I've done 12 different things, but I don't actually know how to do them. I'm not a payroll specialist or I'm not a compliance specialist, or I'm not these things, and I'm hiring you to help drive me forward on that.
Matthew Whitaker
But I think people underestimate the switch from property management to people management. Well, to get this business from 0 to 1, you're really focused on how do I, you know, help clients. How do I at least houses how do I and you're like a doer of work. And then like to get this business to the next level, you have to kind of like switch into more of a people-focused organization. And so, like my day ten years ago is nowhere near what my day is today. My days are mostly focused on people, as I'm sure a lot of leaders around here are. And so you really have to decide. What I get back to is to be very intentional about what type of organization you want. I think there's going to be a future for somebody who just wants to manage 2 to 400 homes and be a great property manager, kind of like a self-employed, high-income earner. But if you're going to grow an organization that will take 400, you know, thousands of people, then you're going to have to be intentional about the switch from, you know, E-myth calls it the technician to the business owner. And that is a big shift like there is, other than the fact that I can teach somebody how to manage properties, there is nothing intuitive that I learned back here that I can apply necessarily today.
Andrew Smallwood
Now you can you only double click on that for a second and like maybe share a little bit of your own story because like to me that's a big shift not just in what you're doing, but it seems like there's that kind of identity shift that has to take place of how you see yourself as leader and how you view, you know, your organization and your role in it.
Matthew Whitaker
So I think of this in really four stages. And one of the cool things is, you know, I said you did. I didn't learn anything, but actually, I went, I, I went down the path and then I, I'm able to teach it to people that are running markets or regionals that are running, you know, multiple markets. But I really think in property management there's kind of four stages of growth. The first one is just the technician who's doing everything that's focused on, again, leasing houses at about 300 to 400 homes which ironically, is where most property managers get stuck in this. Like what from property manager to people manager, where you're managing a small group of people and that flip is you don't you start to not know all the owners well and you start to know, not know everything that's going on. And then it goes through another metamorphosis, which is leadership. So you're starting to lead managers. I think of this in the way when we started to have 3 or 4 markets, my job became more about leading the managers of those markets. And then now is to get to getting to the corporate team. It's now I'm leading leaders that are leading managers or leading leaders that are leading leaders, that are leading managers. And so, you know, you're going to go through these specific stages, and there are just different skill sets that are required to give you an example, to go from 3 or 400 homes to a thousand homes, one of the skill sets it's gonna require is being able to, you know, give constructive feedback to people, being able to, you know, do one to ones and help some help somebody along you, you, you become sort of like a player-coach in that instance. And so those are the those specific stages we saw. And now we're just literally teaching those to our organization as we grow.
Shimrit Markette
I want to chime in on one thing that you said, which is delegation, especially when we're a team of one or a team of change, it feels so incredibly painful, right? Because we know how to do things so well, and it's so easy for me to do this process. And now I've got to teach this person who's never done it before, and I've got to invest all this time and energy and watch them do it and watch them fail and watch them want to try it differently. And sometimes it's both a little bit of like, I'm losing the power, right? I'm letting them try new things, but also I feel like I'm wasting time. But you're investing that time and energy in the long term. You have to think about the long-term goal I have. I've been challenged with delegation over time, but I've also seen that, like when I kind of just let go a little bit and believe and trust the person that I've hired, that I've carefully hired through a structured, thoughtful interview process. the results are sort of like endless, and you truly kind of multiply the impact of your team members.
Matthew Whitaker
When I was the biggest lead on my team, I was trying to delegate, not things I was bad at, like accounting. It was when I was starting to delegate things. I was good at, like property management, I was a great property manager. And so, you know, because I know exactly what that owner needs, I know, I know what the right response is. To your point, it's really hard to allow somebody to make that mistake or send that email to that owner without coaching them ahead and making sure that it goes really well. But if you're going to grow an organization, you're going to have to be willing to do so. You know, I sometimes call myself the chief ecology officer. You have to be willing to allow people to fail and then apologize later and allow them to learn. The frustrating thing when you only have 1 or 2 people is you. You train them, and then they leave, right? And then you lose, you know, a third of the whole organization that you spent all this time training. Frankly, it's just a limit. And that's where people start to come back down to something a size that they can manage. But, you know, again, it's about being intentional. Do you want that big business you want to manage, you know, hundreds of people or thousands of people, or do you want to just have something that you can control? And you can I call it the genius with the with the with the thousand helpers. Do you want to be that self-employed person? And again, like, there's no wrong answer to that is it's only a right answer for somebody. But the difference is people management. That's the big difference between those two businesses.
Andrew Smallwood
I want to shift a little bit, and we've talked a lot about hiring and, you know, how you're seeing yourself, your role in what stage the businesses up to this point? I want to talk a little bit about, okay, actually, like leading and managing the existing team, like you just talked about the challenges of losing employees, especially early employees. And one thing I heard, I can't remember who said this. So maybe in the post-show notes, Alec will help me get the credit for who we should link in here, but it was like the opposite of quitting, which is not retention. The opposite of quitting is like rededication, if that makes sense of hey, not just sticking around, right? But multiple leaders proactively leading, engaged, doing their best work, growing as an individual and growing the organization towards its goals. And I'd love to talk about, you know, and hear from you, a couple of things you've seen of just engaging employees and developing a culture where people are really bringing their best selves to work, doing their best work, and supporting that as a leader and manager and what advice you have to offer?
Matthew Whitaker
So we're super passionate about this. I mean, one of the great things, it's our core focus if anybody follows us. But one of the things that we have realized is it's always going to be a people business. Now, technology is going to certainly help enable them to be superhuman, but this is always going to be a people business. And so and so much that we make our people better because we're selling our people's time essentially to the public. When we make their time worth more money, then we make more money, and so it's really a virtuous cycle. And that, like, I have a vested interest in making my team better. I actually enjoy doing that. That's one of our passions. Spencer Sutton and I talk a lot about it, and we have what we call 250K meetings internally where we're doing leadership development and personal development. But it's also very helpful to the business. And that, again, every incremental step, I can take somebody along to make them better at professional things like sending emails or having phone calls or conflict resolution and that makes Evernest better. Well, and that's one of the things that I'm so passionate about growing a team is because of that virtuous cycle, and so, you know, we remain excited about it even today and excited about reading books and teaching our team and bringing them along in our careers. And one of the things we say at Evernest is, you know, we don't want people falling out the bottom; we want them shooting out the top. And if we can't grow the organization fast enough to keep people, then we want them to go on to do great things. And some people, you know, we call it a tour of duty, which we borrowed from Reed Hoffman's book, one of his books, and that some people are just set at Evernest for a tour of duty. And that's okay. Like, we actually just lost our chief people officer, and he's going on to do something else, and that's fine. You know, we're excited about that. We hope that he learned something while he was at Evernest. But but the last thing we want is to not train them and then fall off the bottom. That's just that it doesn't create that creates negative feedback that it's just not not positive for any company.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Yeah.
Shimrit Markette
Yeah. I mean, we're going to lose people in this business, right? I mean, ideally, we sort of control that narrative, right? And we make sure that we're able to keep the people that we're excited to keep here and that they're engaged sometimes. You know, we just lost somebody as well. They went off to start their own business or something. They got funding. They got to, and it's like, we're so happy for that person. We want them to be successful. We hope that they take what they learned with us, the entrepreneurial spirit, and go start something on their own. Like, you know, that's a great story for that person. But for the folks here, right? We want to make sure that they're engaged. We want to make sure that they understand our business, and that they understand the impact of their work. That's something that I think our CEO, Thad and Andrew, and the entire executive team do a great job at. Right, really making sure that everyone knows, hey, here's what the mission at Second Nature is. Here's what our objectives are, and here's how your work ties to it, right? Here's how your work directly impacts the customer, which impacts our success. What else I think I mean, I think that feedback is a huge part of that. Learning and development are huge parts of that. Being able to try new things were at this, you know, in a smaller team, you have this great opportunity to sort of go to your team and say, what do you want to learn? What do you want to grow into? What do you want exposure to? What do you want to sit in on? Right. And being able to sort of take those folks along for the ride to grow their careers. And, you know, yeah, we'd love to keep people for ten, 15 years. But, you know, if we can keep them for five and then they go on like, you know, the greatest mark of my success will be, hey, how many, how many folks did I hire who then went on to be directors of people? And I could only have so many directors and people at one time, especially in a team of 150 people. So, you know, you want people to come to work for you and know that, hey, this is going to grow my career. This is going to turn my career. And whether it's at Second Nature or somewhere else, and then I'll learn a ton and I'm going to be, you know, a raving fan, right? I'm going to go back to the other people I meet and say, hey, you should apply at Second Nature and in a great talent bar. And it's sort of like this referral flywheel, too.
Matthew Whitaker
I think there's a natural distrust. And, maybe, it was traded in the industrial age where employees don't trust, you know, employers. And if you can break down that and develop trust with your team members, what you'll find is that team members don't give you two weeks' notice and then leave you kind of high and dry. They'll give you two months rest, and you can, like, help work them, work their way out of the organization in a super healthy way, and allow you the time to prepare for them to be on. And so one of the things that have been really important to us is just to be hyper-focused on this, develop trust within people, develop trust and also have those conversations to say, hey, you can come to me if you're not enjoying your job, like, that's okay. Like, you know, like I don't enjoy my job all the time. And so it's not it may not be that the job or maybe it's a hard time and we can get through it together. maybe you're having some personal issues, but maybe you've decided that you know, working at Evernest is not the right thing for you. That's okay. I'd rather start that month back and months in advance. we're not going to fire somebody if they're having. Because. Because you know, what they need to know is that. But leaders have those types of challenges, too. What? I'm going to fire somebody if they decide to think about something else. But we need to have those healthy conversations because it's it's just healthier for the organization to allow them. You know, I've been the biggest champion for somebody getting their next job. I mean, what a referral from a current boss. Like, hey, we can't keep this person excited. They're a fantastic team member, and we want them to go be successful at your company. I mean, that's just a great reference.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Something you both have talked about or mentioned a couple of times throughout is talking about like constructive feedback and the importance of that and developing people. And I think property managers are used to being confronted with difficult situations, whether it's with clients, residents, or people on their team. And so I'd love to hear, you know, like, and maybe Shim, I'll start with you because I know one thing we like about bringing Shim to an event like this is I'll post on LinkedIn, ‘Hey our Chief People Officer is here. She's a sounding board for me all the time. She helps me with these conversations. She's speaking at this time. She'll be available at this time for couple of you that want to talk to her.
Matthew Whitaker
Doing therapy sessions.
Andrew Smallwood
Shim graciously has met with a number of people and just like talk through conversation with them. And I know they followed up with me and that I valuable that was. Yeah. I'd love for you to talk about what are a couple of challenging conversations that you see people, managers and leaders often find themselves confronted with, and what have you found has been helpful in navigating those conversations?
Shimrit Markette
Yeah. Well, I mean, just yesterday, I was talking with a couple of property managers who were telling me about a couple of employees I have that they're having challenges. Read, read, write. And when one employee said, hey, I think this person really isn't cutting it; I think maybe I'm overpaying them. Maybe I'm paying them too much, maybe they just don't know what to do. And you know, the first thing when somebody says like, hey, this person is an up to snuff, the first question I ask them is like, have you told them that, like, you clearly think that they are not doing it right? Have you told them like, here's where I think you're falling short when somebody comes to me also and says, hey, I think maybe I'm paying this person too much; my answer is like, you're probably not paying that person too much. You just have the wrong person in the job. Like, like you need to figure out if that's the right person for your business. And maybe it's time to act with that person, right? That person also probably isn't happy. I've had to terminate some folks, and they've gone to be gone on to incredibly successful careers in other companies. And it was just they were like, wrong seat, wrong time, right? Sometimes it's not right. We work with people, and I am not everybody's cup of tea. I am deeply, deeply aware of that. Right. Like, I have a strong personality, but, you know, making sure that we're giving timely feedback when somebody sort of misses the boat, when a property manager, like, does a lease wrong or, you know, isn't giving a customer the attention they need, grabbing them afterward and saying, hey, can I give you some feedback on something I noticed? Here's what I saw. You know, here's here's the behavior I noticed. Here's what I want you to do next time, right? Giving them the opportunity to change things before things go down this cycle. And I remember with one of my first employees kind of let her do the same thing on like 15 times. An important point that I hadn't told her because it was it felt awkward to tell her. But then, when I finally had to terminate her, I was so embarrassed because I was like, hey, I'm terminating you because you've been doing this thing wrong for so long. And I just like an apology. I made that mistake very, very early in my career and swore I would never do it again.
Matthew Whitaker
Yeah, there's a great story to that point. I read, and we see this so clearly in athletes because for those of us who love sports, We're like, hey, that person needs to be coached, or that person needs to do that better. But then when we get into organizations, we're like scared to give people constructive feedback. But the story goes to this baseball player who goes up into the general manager's office, and the general manager is not there, but the general manager is the one who puts the team together for the coach. And what he realized is that, every teammate of his in him had a binder on the wall. And so since the general manager went there, he was like, you know, I'm going to get my binder down to look through this. And what he realized is that they were making notes about things like, can't hit a curveball, you know, slow turning a double play. And when the general manager walked in, he confronted them, and he said, you know, why didn't you tell me these things? If you had told me these, I would have, you know, maybe it's a blind spot for me. I would have focused on that. And actually, you know, it proved that some may be a weakness, but I would have improved it some. And the general manager realized, yeah, that's kind of dumb that we've like, aggregated all this information about people, and then we're not even willing to share it with. And that's the way we're going about growing organizations or the way people grow organizations; they have a whole binder of things in their minds that they wish they could tell their teammates. And the truth is, that's the most loving thing to do is to tell the teammate that that they're doing something wrong. That may affect their job. The last thing you want to do to your point is wait till the end and say, well, you never did this, right? You need to have. And the truth is, we're not doing it for them. We're we're basically saving the uncomfortable conversation that we don't want to have. And so it's really actually a selfish thing that we're just trying to save our own personal comfort or not having that conversation. But I think one of the, one of the things that a lot of those conversations, and you've probably experienced some Shim, is that they're squishy, like this person and I'm paying this person too much, or I don't feel like they're getting the job done. And so what I found is that it's a helpful tool or a framework that you process people's decisions. EOS has a great one called the People Analyzer. And it basically, you know, goes through a core value for which Jim Collins would say, do you want them on the bus? But then it also talks about, like, in that role, do they get it? Do they want it? They have the capacity to do it. And when you have this framework to process it, it's like, oh, that person doesn't want it. You also have a common language that you can talk about in your organization. Say, hey, so-and-so is having a problem wanting it, or so-and-so just isn't getting it. And when you can have that common language, it's much easier to process these people than surgeons and to have a frank conversation with the person.
Shimrit Markette
I love what you said to about it's like the loving thing to do is to give feedback and tell people where they stand. I had a former teammate who used to say, feedback is always kind, but it's not always nice. Right? And brought back to we have a CFO. His name is Chris Tower. And every interaction I have with Chris, he's he's kind of a of the industry and every, every conversation, he's like, do you have any feedback for me? And then I get to ask him and, and maybe, you know, he's been like on the team six months and I know I have a great relationship with Chris. Like, I know he values my opinion, and I value his. And he told me at one point, I'm like, you swear too much, and he's totally right. Nobody had ever told me that. And it totally made me check what I was doing. And he was like, I think if you swore less, you would come across more polish and more authentic for whatever reason, right? I'm a woman in an industry that's sometimes male-dominated. I‘m the only woman sitting at the C-suite, I have sort of put up some of these shields, but I heard it, and I felt it, and it felt it was like really, really helpful feedback to hear.
Matthew Whitaker
You know, when we hear that feedback or even in our daily relationships, and we go out and have relationships with people, friends, the ones you're immediately attracted to are the ones that tell you what you want to hear, but then the ones that you develop these long term relationships are the and trust are the ones that you know you're going to get all of that. You know, integrity actually comes from the Greek word that means the whole person. And so there's something attractive, maybe not in the short term, but there's something attractive about somebody that is a whole person that's always the same person and always what, you know, what they're thinking. And I think organizations are like that. They're tough. Some people leave immediately because they just can't stand the constructive feedback. That's okay. But there's something about working in an organization where, you know, there's no secrets. You know where you stand. That feels very good, it creates a lot of trust. And then those are the organizations that get to go really fast because we're not worried about politicking. Or what does Andrew think about me, or what does a chump think about me? All I need to focus on is getting my job done.
Shimrit Markette
And also knowing that when you get that feedback, that person is giving you that feedback because they want you to be the best version of yourself that's important. They're not giving it to me because I want to make myself seem bigger. This person seems smaller, but I want Shim or Andrew or Matt. I want everyone to feel like to be the best version of themselves. Here is some helpful feedback that I think they can leverage.
Matthew Whitaker
Totally agree.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, I remember we had a board member named Pete Albus who said the only appropriate response to feedback is thank you. And that struck me because there is oftentimes defensiveness in a moment or trying to be open to that. And hey, what you take into account regarding the feedback is still your choice and your decision. Right? But trying to receive that, take that as input. And hey, this person's trying to help me see something or do something better. You know, it's huge.
Matthew Whitaker
Well, as leaders we also need feedback. You know, one of the things that we run the risk of is that the organization doesn't trust us enough to give us constructive feedback. Graham is our president, and a lot of people know Graham around the industry. But he gave me some feedback recently about, you know, he said, you know, you communicate really well verbally, but you're writing could use some polishing. And so I didn't get mad. I'm like that. That kind of excited me because now I know, well, what do I need to do? Like, tell me more. And he basically gave me 2 or 3 ways that I can make my writing all I care about is communicating clearly. I don't I don't have to be like the best writer. I just want to be the person who communicates clearly. And if Graham hadn't had that type of relationship with me, I never would. Another. And then, all of a sudden, I'm not communicating clearly with my team, and that's not solving the problem at all. So, you know, this feedback thing goes both ways.
Andrew Smallwood
So before we run out of time I want to ask one more question, which is, hey, we covered a lot of ground today. Answer a few different questions. But what's one thing that people should know about hiring, leading, building culture, building, and managing an organization to success that we haven't talked about yet and that you think's important for people to hear? Maybe the most valuable thing that we haven't had a chance to talk about yet. What comes to mind?
Matthew Whitaker
I don't mind going first.
Shimrit Markette
Go for it.
Matthew Whitaker
I think the bigger you grow your organization, the more you have to think about it. And I one of the things as you become a CEO of 400 or, you know, imagine a thousand people never been there. So, I can only assume most of my job is around communication because I'm no longer I no longer have the oars in my hands, and I'm no longer rowing. But I've got to consistently paint a picture and a vision of where the organization is headed, as well as consistently paint a picture of the cadence with which we're going to get there. And so now it's everybody else's job to basically do the rowing or, you know, most people shot to do the rowing. And that's just a that's just like a different, it's just a completely different world. I'm constantly thinking about how can I paint this picture to my team better? How can I paint a picture of where we're headed? How can I use another story to reinforce a point and so that's the thing that's just struck me as just how much communicating I do.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah.
Shimrit Markette
So I think I would say that lots of people think that the hard part is hiring and finding the right person, but I'll challenge that assumption and say that I think that the hard part is actually onboarding and training those people. The first 30, 60, 90 days is totally critical. That's when we lose great hires. That's when we have the chance to, like, lose out on that investment and sunk costs that we put into bringing that new hire on. So making sure that we as the hiring managers, we as leaders in the organization, are really prioritizing that experience in those early days and making sure that we're investing in that new hire to make sure that we get that ROI and have a great long term team member who's going to grow our business.
Matthew Whitaker
And fully finish the onboarding. I think once a team member starts giving us 80% return, then we're like, okay...
Shimrit Markette
No. Done.
Matthew Whitaker
But you create a true debt to the team when you don't finish the full onboarding process.
Andrew Smallwood
Oh that's great. So Shim, Matt, thank you guys so much for taking the time today everybody. Hope you appreciate that. I would love your feedback. Let us know if you enjoyed this episode. Email us at Triple Win. That's Second Nature.com. We'd love to hear what you think. Thank you.
Laura Mac & Carol Housel
And that wraps up another episode of the Triple-Win Property Management podcast. Thank you for pressing play. We hope you've gained valuable insights and inspiration.
The Triple-Win Property Management Podcast is proudly produced and distributed by Second Nature, where we believe in a Triple-Win, building winning experiences for your residents, investors and your teams with the only fully managed resident benefits package. Visit SecondNature.com to learn more and talk to an RBP expert in your area. If you have any questions or comments or want to weigh in on the conversation, we'd love to hear from you. Email TripleWin@SecondNature.com. That's TripleWin@SecondNature.com. Stay connected with us beyond the podcast. Visit our website at SecondNature.com to stay updated with upcoming property management events and articles. And don't forget, you can keep the conversation going in the Triple-Win Property Management Facebook group. It's exclusively for property managers. To receive even more valuable insights and updates, subscribe to our newsletter. You can find the link to that and much more in the show notes. On behalf of the Triple-Win community, this is Laura Mac, thanking you for tuning in. And on behalf of Second Nature, this is Carol Housel. Check back soon for another exciting episode. Until then, keep striving for that Triple-Win.