A Podcast | Inaas Arabi

Pete Neubig: Welcome back everybody. And as promised, I have my good buddy, Inaas Arabi. Inaas, thank you so much for being here.

Inaas Arabi: Thanks, Pete. I appreciate it. I am really excited about spending some time with you.

Pete Neubig: So, you know, you and I go back when you were actually at RealPage, back in the day.

Inaas Arabi: That is correct.

Pete Neubig: So just kind of give us a little bit of your history. Give me your 50 plus years in like three minutes, you know.

Inaas Arabi: Awesome awesome. So it hasn't been 50 yet.

Pete Neubig: I think everybody's as old as I am. That's right.

Inaas Arabi: Well, you know what? I appreciate you, too. It's been about 25 years, actually, and I've gone through multiple things. Yes, we know each other from my days at RealPage, but prior to RealPage, I mean, I started in the early 2000. I scaled a property management and a brokerage, which I sold to a prominent Franchise. And then later on, I, worked for American Homes for rent, which is the second largest, owner operator in the nation. they had 436 doors when I started with them. By the time I left, they were 37,000 doors. And so today you've seen. Yes. And today they are close to, like, I think, 65, 70,000. So there definitely have been growing, and a lot of growth since I even left them. We took that company public, and then after doing that, I went to work for a source who was starting a property management division, also almost from scratch, third party, but specifically for institutional investors. We worked with our in-house, fund, as well as private funds and private offices and family offices, and we scaled that up to close to about 11,000 units. And then we sold that to or merged it with another company that then that got sold. The final stage for it was, Progress Residential, which is, I think, the third largest in today's world. On the owner operator front, left all the source. And then that's when I went to RealPage. I was the GM for, property where, one of the best property management softwares out there. I agree, was there for about three years. we scaled a couple of things that I'm really proud of, that I'm hoping that people still remember. One is the redoing of the entire application process that we did from scratch for Propertyware we also did the, improvements on, the vendor marketplace and the APIs and all of that. and some of the UI changes on some of the screens that we've had. And then once that, Thoma Bravo took, RealPage private, I exited left and did some consulting work for a company called My Community Homes. We started their property management platform. they were brand new, backed by PE firm, and they were trying to build out a portfolio of single family rentals in the southeast. we grew that up quite large, actually, very quickly. Like, we bought about 3000 homes in about 100 days, which was very nice. then after that, I worked for Zillow for a little bit in their Zillow Offers, program, the Zillow Offers. If people don't know this was where Zillow was buying houses, renovating them, and then selling them again on the open market. and then after they've started that program, I've consulted with a couple of companies, one of which is called Tiber Capital. I was their head product. my job was basically to build the ecosystem of services and products for them. And then, about a couple of years ago, I hitched my wagon to Block and Associates Realty. This is a very, very interesting company. It's a third party property management company entrenched into the, a very long history of providing great service in North Carolinas a property manager. But they really were struggling to grow, and they're struggling to set up for operational excellence and scalability. And that's what they brought me in as their chief operating officer, to be able to build on all of those things. And today, I'm happy to report that we've done all of those three things. We've grown up by quite a bit, doubled the size of the portfolio on the rental market. Opened up two business lines in addition to the rental property market. an HOA scaled that up to about 7500 units under management now, as well as internal maintenance business that's doing about And $50,000 worth of revenue a year. we've done all of the redesigning for the setup to make the company ready for scale. And then finally we're going around and perfecting our process and people to have much better operational excellence throughout the entire, business. So that's the whole thing. It's been more than three minutes. I apologize, but I figured that it was important for us to kind of share. I love this industry, and I love talking about it. So I'm happy to be able to have this conversation today.

Pete Neubig: Man, that is a lot of incredible experience that you have. Thank you. And you have been, you know, a key cog in helping not one but two but three before companies really scale. So I got so many questions. But the first one that comes up to mind is, you know, look, we're on a NARPM podcast and the majority of NARPM members are not less than 1000 unit, right? we're. It's about like there are a few of us out there that have multiple markets, but usually it's one market, maybe two and around 1000 units. What do you think is the biggest mindset from somebody who goes like America Homes for rent at 400 units now to have like whatever, 30 something thousand Block or any of these folks. What's the difference between those guys and the property management company that's around that 200 to 2000 units?

Inaas Arabi: Yeah. That's awesome question. So let's break this down into like three specifics. The number one is you got to do your job and you got to do it well. Right. What I mean by that is you have to have operational excellence. Even if you're a small company. Small company does not mean that you're not doing a great job, right? Second, you have to be able to be set up for scale or scalability. So if let's say you're a 200 unit company and you're running that with two people or three people. You really got to start thinking about what would look like if I move from being a 200 unit company to 300 unit, or if I'm 1000, I go from 1000 to 1500. What does that mean? What does it need to have? How would I be able to scale it, right? And then obviously third is mindset for growth. Some people are comfortable and happy with their 200 units and kudos to them if they're doing a good job. Lovely, wonderful. But if you're not happy with 200 units and you really, truly want to grow, then you have to have that mindset for growth. And you also have to have all of the backing from an operational excellence and scalability point of view in order for you to be able to grow. So I'll give you a couple of examples that might be helpful.

Pete Neubig: Please do.

Inaas Arabi: If you walk into a company and all your employees are basically saying, I can't take on any more owners, right? I don't want any more business because I'm. I'm stressed, I'm overworked.

Pete Neubig: Every property manager says that, right?

Inaas Arabi: Right, exactly. That is a hindrance for your growth. Because guess what's going to happen when you decide to grow? These people are going to either leave you or they're not going to do a good job. Right?

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Or your salespeople don't don't sell because the team is stressed out. Right. So they kind of pick up on that. And so they, you know, subconsciously don't sell.

Inaas Arabi: 100%. Exactly. But if you walk into an operation and you have a capacity where, like you've built out the structure that still gives you a little bit of room to be able to take on more, then if you do take on those more, you're not stressed of like, okay, what do I do? How do I do it? Who's going to do this? Who's going to do that? You've already thought about that. And that's the whole scalability perspective and what you need to set yourself up for scalability. I'd like to talk about Block in a sense of that scalability, because that might be a really good example here, I think.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Inaas Arabi: So when, earlier on in the day, Block was set up in a property management centric or property manager centric operation, so you walked in, it's a property manager, that does pretty much everything, right. They had maybe an assistant who did the turns. They had maybe somebody else to do something else, but they were the focal point.

Pete Neubig: So more of like a portfolio based, setup structure.

Inaas Arabi: Exactly, exactly. And look, you can scale that business to. But for us, when we looked at it, that wasn't the right setup for scale, because if I wanted to add another 1000 units, it meant that I had to add just as many as I had in property managers to be able to do that. And quite frankly, when you have that many people doing the same job. What happens? Your standardization goes down the drain, right? What that means.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Every portfolio manager kind of runs it a little bit differently. Right?

Inaas Arabi: Exactly. And then for you to be able to keep up with that standard becomes really hard, really difficult, and you start losing that operational excellence.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Also they leave and they take all of their knowledge with them and sometimes a lot of clients with them.

Inaas Arabi: That's 100% correct. Somebody said it the other day, which I totally agree that look, I mean, owners leave just as fast as your employees do. Now, if you think about this and you're saying to yourself, all right, how can I allow my company to be able to grow without breaking the bank, like, without kind of tripling my number of people in the company and tripling the expense that comes with that?

Pete Neubig: Yeah, because that's kind of the biggest, roadblock that most people would say.

Inaas Arabi: Precisely. Then you start thinking about, okay, what elements could make sense for me to offload to maybe a remote employee or an international employee? Okay. And look, before I dive into doing this, I know there's a lot of possible negativity around it, so let me just be absolutely clear about several things. Number one, this is not to exploit people. Number two, this is not to take advantage of any people. Number three, this is not to take work away from Americans. And then number four, it's helping business. And then number five it's profitable. Okay. But now with all of that, let me talk a little bit about details of what we've done at Block. We recognized that there is a lot of conversations that happens between our tenants and our property manager that yields no revenue to us. So conversations like, "Hey, how do I find a copy of my lease?" Right. Right. "Where do I pay my rent?" Or. "Hey, I have my friend coming over. and I need a parking pass." Or, Hey, I'm leaving town, and my, you know, my fiancé or my whatever is going to be visiting the property. What I was doing, like, there was a lot of that conversation right there. There are good conversations to have. But are they to the level of a property manager taking precious time out of the day to have them with the tenant? Our answer was, no. There is the right conversations that a property manager needs to have with their tenants. Like what is my rent? How can we collect? How can we work through some issues, that we leave with the property manager. But everything else is null. So what we did is we established a position that is called tenant coordinator. This is, an international employee whose hours, we've used VPM to be able to find him. Thank you to VPM. It's a really, really great product. When we found them, we hired them full time. They were assigned to a certain number of properties as a portfolio, and they were responsible to be able to handle those phone calls with those tenants. What that did freed up the precious time on our property manager to be able to do the more important elements, which is having conversations with owners or with tenants, but the right conversation with tenants.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. You're leveling up the property manager or the property manager is no longer doing the $10 an hour job. The property manager is doing the $50 an hour job, and the property manager now becomes more of an asset manager than a property manager.

Inaas Arabi: I love what you said because you didn't know, but we actually call our property managers asset managers and we are set up in an asset management perspective, not a property manager.

Pete Neubig: Words matter.

Inaas Arabi: Words. Words. Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: When I'm an investor and I call and somebody says that's your asset manager. That makes me feel different than if somebody says, is my property manager. You know, my big joke is I call property managers gophers. You know, the investor owner calls me, as the property manager says, go to my house and, go, you know, fill the pool with water. Go to my house and sit there for four hours. Make sure the gas guy comes, turns on the gas. I want to talk to you about this. $0.12. That was you know, it should have been $14. Now it's $14.12. All that stuff, once you're an asset manager, that stuff goes away and your team handles all that lower level stuff.

Inaas Arabi: 100%, 100%.

Pete Neubig: So tell me about Block in general. So when you started working with Block, as a consultant, what were they as a door count and where are they at today. And then kind of talk more about what the structure morphed into from portfolio to what.

Inaas Arabi: Yes. So there were, some thousand or like 975, just like they were in one state. They had one and a half offices, so they had a full office and a kind of like a satellite office. So then, today where we're at, we are, close to 2000 units, well, 2000 units on the rental property management. We started an HOA management business as well, that we scaled that up to 7500 units and 150 HOA's. And then we also did the internal maintenance that is doing close to about a million bucks worth of revenue a year. As of 2025, our goals by the end of 2025, we will get to about 4500 rental units, 9000 HOA units, and close to about a $1.5 million worth of revenue on the maintenance. Those are our goals.

Pete Neubig: Let me talk about that. Okay. So you have a goal of 4500 units by what year was it.

Inaas Arabi: The end of this year, 2025.

Pete Neubig: 2025.

Inaas Arabi: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Okay. So let's talk about that. How do you come up with that number? Because, a lot of people just like pull it out of the air, right. my business partners do this all the time, Steve. Like, hey, we're going to get to a thousand units, you know, by next year. I'm like, okay, great. So now I put the number out there. What does that mean? How did you get that number?

Inaas Arabi: Yeah. That's awesome. So you have to figure out what's your growth strategy and find the right goals that support those growth growth strategies. So for example, if you are completely organic and that's the only way that you're growing, there's probably no way for us to be able to get to 4500 in a matter of 7 or 8 months left in the year. Right. But our growth strategy is twofold. We do organic growth, we also do acquisitions, and we buy companies and we roll them up into the Block methodology and the Block setup. Up and we've got business lined up to be able to do that. Or opportunities lined up for us to be able to get us to that number. It's a number that we calculated based on all the probability of closing these deals and also doing the organic growth that we're known for and we're talking about. Having that we are, if I roll this back and I say, okay, you're a company that is doing this completely in an organic growth, then you really have to have a goal that makes sense. It might be like we're growing 20%. It might be growing 15%. That would be a lot more closely accurate based on what you see on the organic growth. But for us it's much larger.

Pete Neubig: So you're still going to so you're going to forecast based on like okay, if we're going to do organic growth, these are the ten strategies that we've had. We look back last year you know these ten strategies. Each one gave us just a 10 doors a month. That's 100 doors a month that, you know, and then we're going to have a 20% churn rate. And then that's going to be our forecast for the end of the year. Something like that.

Inaas Arabi: 100%, 100%.

Pete Neubig: But even if you're smaller, you can find realtors that maybe manage five, ten, 15, 20 doors and you can purchase them or take them over. So even if you're a smaller company and you want to grow and you think, man, I can't buy any, anybody or anything. but you'd be surprised if you actually put a strategy towards it. you can probably find a couple of people that manage $20 or whatever that might, you know, that would probably sell them or even give them to you.

Inaas Arabi: That's 100% accurate. some of the smaller deals that we've had. What exactly what you described a realtor that had 20 or 30 doors that they were managing for a while now they don't want to manage them anymore. Either they're getting busier on real estate or they're just too much legality, and they don't want to get the phone call at 2 a.m. in the morning for maintenance. You can purchase those. The other thing that you also got to keep in mind some of the larger companies like us, that they go through acquisitions. They may not want to keep every door that we're getting from those acquisitions, and we might want to sell off like a small subset.

Pete Neubig: So you buy 200 doors and you sell off 30 of them or something like that.

Inaas Arabi: Exactly right. It might be because, look, when you're small, you can afford to do everything in anything, right? like, I'll give you a perfect example.

Pete Neubig: That's actually a brilliant model, because instead of having a churn, you know that these doors are probably going to churn, right? Before they churn.

Inaas Arabi: Yeah. And look, and we believe in specialty and expertise, right. We're not a commercial, you know, property manager. We're not a property manager that does by the room or by the door by the bed or something like that. Yeah, or short term rental. I mean, this is or even the new thing nowadays, like the, furnished, you know.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I've been hearing more about that. Yeah.

Inaas Arabi: Yeah. We don't do any of that. Nothing wrong with it.

Pete Neubig: Right. So if you buy a portfolio, it has a few of those in there. You just turn around and flip them out.

Inaas Arabi: Exactly. Because we know that we're not going to do a great job for them. We know that they're going to be better supported by going into the expert in that kind of field. And yes, we're going to sell them off. We may not make money on selling them off like whatever we paid for them is we going to collect. But it gives those smaller companies the opportunity to be able to grow by, you know, smaller acquisitions like what we're talking about. It does not have to be multiple hundreds of doors that you're purchasing all the time. It could be small. It could be something we're describing.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. If you're a smaller firm want to grow, you can talk to some of the bigger firms out there and say, hey, anything that you buy that you don't want part of that. Yeah.

Inaas Arabi: Yeah. The other thing, too, Pete, is locality. Right. So let's say we bought a portfolio in two localities, one that has very low, you know, volume compared to the other. Some companies might say, look, I might divest that small portfolio somewhere because I just can't, you know, service it well, and that local market might have someone who would love to be able to take those extra doors and do really extra wonderful job on them.

Pete Neubig: All right. So I'm going to go back to you have the forecast of the 4500 units. Okay. Obviously you you have some ideas on when you're going to purchase these. How do you then determine and forecast your team in the structure?

Inaas Arabi: Fantastic. So this is exactly part of the problem that most companies go through. And Block had to go through that as well. You create a model, an employment model that actually is ready for scalability. So I you know, I can share what we're doing with Block.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Let's dive into that a little bit.

Inaas Arabi: We figured that the best approach is the asset management approach, but it's also within the pod structure. So I'll explain a little bit more. If you think about what's important. There are licensed activities that needs to take place by a licensed individual that needs to be in the US. It's a must. Right. Those things are never questioned. They're never going to be argued against. They're never going to. We're never going to waiver on doing those. Examples of some of this is like leasing. It's got to be done by a leasing person. Right.

Pete Neubig: Negotiating lease renewals.

Inaas Arabi: Negotiating lease renewals, negotiating rental credits if there is a maintenance issue. Right.

Pete Neubig: And negotiating PMAs.

Inaas Arabi: Negotiating PMAs. Right. On top of that, too, is figuring out what would you want to do financially. Well, for that owner. And that's where that asset management kind of comes into play. And we figured if we can couple to a listing agent or a leasing agent, we call them listing agents and an asset manager, together with a couple of more international employees, one of them that does the tenant coordination, the other one does the maintenance coordination.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I was just going to get to that. Yup.

Inaas Arabi: When you put those four together, they can support a portfolio much larger in aggregate in comparison to if they're doing it individually. Right?

Pete Neubig: Yup.

Inaas Arabi: And then that becomes your model. So we know for every X amount of doors we're going to need these four people. So if I go by a company that has that many doors that I know I gotta stand up another team and this is my team and this is how I scale. Now, it sometimes it might be...

Pete Neubig: I got a question on that. do you departmentalize the property accounting or do you have the property manager property account...

Inaas Arabi: Yeah we do.

Pete Neubig: So you have a pod and then you have a couple you, might have a department that runs accounting. Got it.

Inaas Arabi: All short services, we typically do them on a department basis. So like we're talking accounting assessments. We're talking like, you know, HR right. All of that. It's all on shared services. So we do it as a department. But the actual people that they're working on properties, it's that pod that we created with the four people.

Pete Neubig: Based on how you guys run your business, I know it's different for everybody, but just based on that, on average, how many units is that? Is that like 400 units? Is that.

Inaas Arabi: 500.

Pete Neubig: 400 to 500 units? Got it. Okay.

Inaas Arabi: 400 to 500 units. Now and again I want to be also clear. It's not like an absolute perfect science. Like meaning it's not a, where if I'm a 480, I'm not going to get anybody unless I get the 500, right. Like you have to have. You need to understand you need to Be flexible to what your growth model looks like and you need to have capacity.

Pete Neubig: The big question is when do I kind of split off another amoeba, so to speak? When do I split off another pod? Right. Because then if you have a pod with five units, you're losing ... Obviously the pods negative, right. So how do you solve that challenge?

Inaas Arabi: Right. So you solve it for us as like a 500 level. That's when we know okay. We gotta need another one. Right. and we also could figure out how we can work through what that will take as far as time and then be prepared for the higher amount of all of those folks in time to be ready to go. Sometimes I would admit, like.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Because you have to hire people and you have to train them and that takes time. You can't just, you know, find somebody in one day and put them in there and say, here you go. You're managing these, these 200 units, you know, with with a team. Good luck.

Inaas Arabi: Precisely, precisely, precisely. But if you use that for us, the threshold between 400 to 500. That gives you about 100 units worth of capacity that you can work through until you're ready.

Pete Neubig: So you hire somebody. They kind of work under that property manager, kind of a monkey see, monkey do training approach. And then when they get to that 500, they split off and take 100 units with them and then they get their leasing agent.

Inaas Arabi: Exactly.

Pete Neubig: That's brilliant. I like that.

Inaas Arabi: Right, right. And most of the time, because we're not just running one team, most of the time we've got. So it might be few properties from each team to bring them all down to that 400 to keep them at that scale. Right.

Pete Neubig: with that model, how do you handle, if a property manager needs to go on vacation for a week or so, what happens now? Because you really got one property manager for these 4 or 500 units. Do the team take it over or there's another property manager from another portfolio take on like somebody escalations or whatever.

Inaas Arabi: Right. So number one, they're asset managers. They're not property managers for us.

Pete Neubig: My mistake.

Inaas Arabi: But number two that's all right. That's all right. I just want to make sure that we're both on the same page.

Pete Neubig: That's right.

Inaas Arabi: Number two. If you think about the team dynamic. Right. They're not necessarily handing over the entire operations for that portfolio when they're going on PTO on vacation, because think about it.

Pete Neubig: Exactly. The purpose of it. 

Inaas Arabi: Yeah. Somebody is managing the tenant communication. Somebody is managing the maintenance. Somebody is managing the leasing activity. So you're handing off.

Pete Neubig: Basically owner comms. Right. Owner comms.

Inaas Arabi: A portion of that. And at that point we typically like the buddy system. So like, if I am buddied with another asset manager and I am on PTO, they're handling my portfolio. If they need help, they reach out to the, you know, head of, asset management to be able to help them out. And the opposite is true when the asset manager two is out and I am their their buddy, I am basically handling their portfolio while they're out. But remember, they're not handling every little thing in that portfolio.

Pete Neubig: They're handling basically escalations and just regular owner comms. And most of the time, if an owner reaches out on a Wednesday and say, "Hey, I'm Becca, but Anas will be back on Monday, somebody can help you with?", "Nah, I'll just get to Inaas on Monday."

Inaas Arabi: Precisely. Yes, yes. Especially if they know, like all of the urgent matters have been taken care of. Right? Like if there is an emergency maintenance issues, they're not waiting for me or, or anyone to be able to take care of them. The maintenance coordinator is absolutely doing that, right?

Pete Neubig: Yup.

Inaas Arabi: Now we do also buddy up title to title. So for example, all of my maintenance coordinators, they're buddying up with each other. So if my maintenance coordinator A is out there, buddy partner B is handling them for that day until they come in and vice versa. They also have a supervisor that is also interjected if there is a need or an escalation or something that's bigger, required a little bit more information or more work, or if they're just covering for somebody while they're out in an emergency. We've had those as well. Right.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. What I like. About the model as well, like if one portfolio is really low on work orders, for whatever reason, that week or that month, but another portfolio is really high. What I found was with this model is like, "hey, I'm low on tickets. Let me go ahead and help you out." And I've seen that happen. When we ran a very similar model at Empire, and we seen that happen all the time. And, you know, the buddy system works.

Inaas Arabi: Yeah, 100%. And you nailed it, Pete. And that's why I love kind of talking to brilliant people like yourselves, because you get what we're trying to do. It's exactly that when one day, like, let's say it's slow and one of the portfolios, but one of the other portfolios is overworked. They can always help each other out because technically they're experts in their little fields. Right. Like that Maintenance coordinator is an expert in maintenance, whether they're doing maintenance on property A or property C. It's the same process that they're doing, so they can easily fill in for that. The same thing with the tenant coordinator, the same thing with the asset manager, same thing with the listing agent. It's the same job, just different property. So if they needed to work or help a buddy of theirs in their portfolio, you know, for a week or a day or whatever, they can easily do that without a problem.

Pete Neubig: They may not know the property intimately, like the like the maintenance coordinator for that portfolio, but they can get a they can get the job done for the most part. Right. So agreed with you there. All right. We are I could talk to you all day, man, but, we're running against time. I'm going to take a quick commercial break, and then we're going to put you on the lightning round.

Inaas Arabi: Awesome. All right. Looking forward to it.

Pete Neubig: All right. We'll be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back everybody. An awesome job. You are getting ready to be on the lightning round. Are you ready?

Inaas Arabi: I am ready. Let's do it, Pete. Let's go for it.

Pete Neubig: Here you go. What property management software does Block use? We're going to go with Block since this is your your big client right now.

Inaas Arabi: So Block is on our portfolio as a property management software. there is a slew of other softwares that kind of support that. So it's not the only software. We are very similar to a lot of other companies. We run anywhere between 7 to 13 different softwares. Quite frankly, we've also used a portfolio for HOA, but we found it to be a little bit less effective. So we've recently got into CINC. C-I-N-C. That is specific for HOA management. And if you think about them this way, CINC is equivalent to AppFolio. One of them is managing the HOAs from an accounting perspective. The other one is managing the rental portfolio.

Pete Neubig: Got it. Do you all use any type of automation processing software like APTLY, LeadSimple?

Inaas Arabi: Yeah. So we do. Given the background in IT that I am. So we're really big on...

Pete Neubig: Building it yourselves.

Inaas Arabi: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Did you build it with Process Street?

Inaas Arabi: Yes. So we're really big on that. And we've utilized AI in two ways recently. That might be extremely important to mention. One, Property Meld came out with their max product. were one of the first companies to actually use it. We love it. It's a great product. It's doing a fantastic job for us. It reduced our front end for, like, a month by about 37%. that's a reduction of the number of work orders that we're taking through. So we really like it. There is another software that we deployed that basically does, communication and workflow. So it does all of the standardization have taken all communication under one omnichannel. And then you can take that and you task it to the right department, to the right team, based on all the assignments. And then on top of all of that, you also build out all of your rights. What I would say, tasking systems that allows you to be able to close out the tasks as they come through for that team, for that, person on that team. And, and we've look, this is a never ending thing. You always strive for the betterment of it. So I'm sure if you talk to me next year, we probably have employed or deployed other things to be better at it. The name of the game, as you know, peaked with this business is you have to manage your process. And you need a way to be able to find a ticketing system of some sort that allows you to be able to go through, you know, your workflow, because if you don't manage your workflow.

Pete Neubig: You know, that could we can have you back on that because I think, you know, a ticketing system just talking about that whole concept that alone could be another podcast.

Inaas Arabi: 100%.

Pete Neubig: It changed my business when I went to a ticketing system.

Inaas Arabi: Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: What is one piece of advice you'd give someone who wants to grow their business?

Inaas Arabi: Number one is do your job right, like, have operational excellence first before you want to go grow.

Pete Neubig: Be ready for growth.

Inaas Arabi: And then number two scale to grow. Like built for scalability. To be able to take on the growth.

Pete Neubig: What do you mean? Do you mean hire people or get systems? What do you actually mean by that?

Inaas Arabi: Set yourself up. Remember, we just talked about it. I provided the example of like Block for example. You have to look at the business and you have to say is this ready to be scaled.

Pete Neubig: Got it.

Inaas Arabi: And look, I'm not saying the only way to scale it is through the asset management model. That's certainly not what I'm saying. But even if you're scaling it through the property manager model, right, then you need to have enough capacity to be able to do that. The worst thing in the world, if you go get the business and you don't have a way to support it. Sure, you don't have a way to support it. You're going to get churn because you're not going to do a good job. It's simple, you know, math.

Pete Neubig: So you're you're a big fan of building building for growth. Just make sure that we understand. So like, hey, I'm going to go higher potential people because my existing people are kind of they're redlined right now I'm going to go hire train some people and then we're going to go and then we're going to build for growth.

Inaas Arabi: 100%. But be very selective on the hiring, if I may add, because you don't want to just duplicate to duplicate. Right. Like if you if you think about some of the things that I've just shared with you, even if you are a property manager centric model, if you are able to provide an assistant PM, that might be an international National employee for that PM. That could take away a lot of the. The administrative tasks, let's call them that right. And do that well. You now are able to open up the capacity for that PM. So they might go from managing 5070 properties to managing 100 to 125. Now, even though you didn't end up hiring another PM, you actually opened up capacity to be able to take on growth. Does that make sense? And that's where you got to build for scalability. And it's not always just double up with everything you're doing. It's really analysis of what you can...

Pete Neubig: You can be very, what's the word? I'm looking for.

Inaas Arabi: An article about how you do it.

Pete Neubig: Yep, yep. All right. What is your ideal vacation?

Inaas Arabi: Anywhere away from all the communication mediums. So no phones? No social media, no anything. So it might be, like on the beach somewhere. just being a really a what they call them like a beach body or a beach couch or something.

Pete Neubig: Beach bum.

Inaas Arabi: Beach bum. Thank you. For like, a day or two that would be, brilliant. But I would honestly admit I'm a workaholic by nature, so I've never been able to do this for a very long amount of time. The most I've been able to do it is about 2 to 3 days.

Pete Neubig: I'm with you, man. I about about 5 or 7 days, and then I get anxious, and I gotta get back to work.

Inaas Arabi: Yes.

Pete Neubig: I'm with you? okay. What is a book or a podcast that you would recommend?

Inaas Arabi: So some companies, they like to follow the EOS system. I think it's a great system. There's a lot of, benefit to it. And look, just like everything else in life, right? No system is perfect, but this particular system might have a lot of usability for the real estate, specifically for property management. Because it kind of keeps you on task of what you need to do. And I would say, Traction. The book Traction is probably the best first book that I would start, or advising people to read if they're thinking EOS is the right model that they want to take after or they want to model after. If that's not if that's not it, then there's plenty of great other books out there that could be very helpful in business and social.

Pete Neubig: Big fan of Traction and Gina Wickman.

Inaas Arabi: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Alright. Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Inaas Arabi: So I am a fanatic about my pizza because I lived in Chicago for, like, a long time, and I love the Chicago style pizza. And that pizza does not have pineapple on it. So I'm going to say no for pineapple.

Pete Neubig: All right. You're a deep dish guy, though, huh?

Inaas Arabi: I am a deep dish guy. Yes, sir.

Pete Neubig: Deep dish guy. All right, all right. Last one. You prefer dogs or cats?

Inaas Arabi: Neither. Not because I don't like animals, just because I travel a lot and I am working a lot and I don't have time for pets. I believe that if you are to get pets, you really need to have enough time for that, and you need to be ready and willing and able to do it. They're just like similar to having kids. And if I'm not to that point, I wouldn't do that to any animal. And because of that, I would say no to two of them. Again, not because I hate the animals, just because I'm not ready.

Pete Neubig: Right. I had one person say, can I say turtles instead of turtles and leave them alone for a long time, I guess.

Inaas Arabi: Hey, turtles. My niece. I got a turtle for my niece once, and it worked briefly, for her and for me. It's something that we talk about all the time, and. And you're right. It's a low maintenance pet, but yet still gives you that...

Pete Neubig: I I had a turtle when I was a kid, and it ran away. I don't know how I lost a turtle because, you know, they're not very fast, but it literally ran away.

Inaas Arabi: How could you have lost the turtle, Pete?

Pete Neubig: Oh, man, I was like three. So I'm going to blame my dad. Like, how did he lose the turtle? I was three years old, right?

Inaas Arabi: He might have just thrown it out just because he didn't. He didn't.

Pete Neubig: He probably told me he ran away. Yeah, yeah. Today's years old when I finally figured that one out.

Inaas Arabi: Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Pete Neubig: All right Inaas, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, what's a what's a great way to connect with you?

Inaas Arabi: I mean, I'd say the best thing is either via cell, I mean, give you my number 630-329-5000 or through email. Inaas Arabi, it's the same spelling as my first name. Last name? No dots, no dashes at gmail.com or at inaas@block.com. That's fine. To Block realty.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. You aren't at any socials?

Inaas Arabi: I am on LinkedIn. That's the only social that I'm on. So if anybody wants to connect with me there, by all means feel free to do so. I'm always happy to help. So if somebody has a question or concern. Look, don't be shy. I'll try to help you as much as I can, because I feel compelled to be able to do that for people at one point of life, people have helped me as well. So I want to pay it forward and do the same thing with everyone around.

Pete Neubig: Inaas is a wealth of knowledge. And he and I has had conversations offline. He's been very helpful to me. So I appreciate you Inaas. If you want to join NARPM, go to narpm.org. Or call the good people there at (800) 782-3452. And if you want to be cool like Inaas and have, Property Meld certified virtual team members, we have them on VPM Solutions. The candidates can take courses in Property Meld, pass an exam, get a certification. They become VPM certified Property Meld-ers. And you can go to vpmsolutions.com or email me at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Inaas, thanks for being here. See you everybody.

Inaas Arabi: Appreciate you Pete. Thank you, guys.