A Podcast | Margo Broughton

Pete Neubig: And here we go. Welcome to the NARPM Radio podcast. I'm your host, Pete Neubig, and I know I say this every week, but today we actually have the best show, one of the most exciting shows that's ever going to be happening at NARPM Radio, because I actually have my good friend Margo Broughton and alright, I'm going to read her bio, but full disclosure, Margo used to work with me at Empire and at mind, and most of the time I felt like I worked for her. But. So Margo has been a licensed realtor since 94 and active in property management real estate since 1982. So, most of you were probably not even born yet in 1982, I listened to this. She's currently director of operations for Emerson Property Management here in Houston. She plays a critical role in maintaining and enhancing the value of the owner's properties while ensuring exceptional living experience for residents. Margo is currently the 2025 President of North Houston Chapter and holds her TRPM and TRS designations. Margo, it's a pleasure for you to be able to hear me and be interviewed by me, isn't it?

Margo Broughton: Oh, of course Pete.

Pete Neubig: All right, so, Margo, you gotta tell your story of your journey and how you got into SFR. And, please do not leave out when you ghosted me on your interview.

Margo Broughton: Oh, yeah, because that's my favorite part. So I got in this industry and again, in the very, very early 80s, I was 21, I think, at the time, and that was in, multifamily. And then finally in I think it was 1999, I got into single family management through HUD, and that was, as you remember, the times, shortly before the collapse. And so I managed single family homes for the US Department of HUD, HUD, and also Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, bunch of them. during the foreclosure crisis. So that's where I got my into single family and then.

Pete Neubig: And something I didn't read on your bio, but you taught many courses, as well when you, you were like the HUD go-to teaching courses around the US, right?

Margo Broughton: That is correct. So I spent 26 weeks a year on the road out teaching realtors how to add foreclosures into their business to help build their businesses. And that was basically our take. And and they were all continuing education. So I had to become certified to teach continuing education classes in 26 states. So that was fun. When they called me from Fargo, North Dakotand they said, yeah, yeah. Hi, Margo. We got your information. I wonder if you could fax us over some more stuff I need.

Pete Neubig: Margo, we need you to come up here to North Dakota. You need to get certified. We got three people that are going to be at this class.

Margo Broughton: I did, and I taught up there. I taught all over the place. But, there was a guy that came in to one of my classes, and his license number up there was three.

Pete Neubig: Wow.

Margo Broughton: He was. Oh, he was like 90 something. I don't know what. Anyway, he was there to learn about HUD homes and, but anyway, so I yeah, I had it was a lot of travel and a lot of time, but we had to figure out a way because nobody knew how to sell these properties. And we couldn't be successful as a management company if these properties weren't selling. So it was a gimmick to give them continuing education credits. So I wrote classes for every state, had to get them approved, the whole thing just to get them to come, and they were free. And so once they started to come, it was one class I taught in Salt Lake City. 800 realtors were at that class.

Pete Neubig: Wow.

Margo Broughton: Big venues. Anyway, once they started learning, oh, this isn't that hard. They started selling. And that's how were very, very successful.

Pete Neubig: And you basically sold yourself. You you basically taught yourself out of a job because once they're all gone. Right?

Margo Broughton: Well, yeah. Then no. Then the, the all the hedge funds bought all of them. But no, what killed us was Katrina. They took all the properties off the market when Katrina hit. And giving them out to people to live in for free from that were people that were devastated by that hurricane.

Pete Neubig: Got it. All right. So let's get let's get to the fun story about what you were going to start. You're going to start getting into SFR single family management. And, Yeah. You, you showed up to the interview, right? Or or.

Margo Broughton: Yeah, I did, so I moved to Houston, and there wasn't a lot of management companies like there are in Dallas. And I saw Empire and I'm like, oh, they seem decent. That looks like a good company. So I sought it out. And, actually, Steve called me, I think, and said, hey, would you be interested in coming in for an interview? So I did, and I loved it. And we did the interview and it was like a four hour process or something. And you guys picked me, and I was so excited, and you called me, and I don't know if it's your ridiculous accent or what, but I thought you said, come on the sixth. You said come on the fifth. And so on the fifth rolls around and I don't show up. The colors for Empire are red. I came wearing a red dress, red shoes, red bag. I'm like, I'm getting this job, I show up, oh, he's not here.

Pete Neubig: You showed up. I was expecting you to show up on the fifth, which I think is. Isn't that your birthday? Like, isn't it something to do with your birthday? Right. It's your birthday.

Margo Broughton: It's my birthday. July.

Pete Neubig: So July 5th. You don't show up on July 6th. I was out of town. So you're showing up for the final interview and, Yeah. No. Yeah. Pete's not there.

Margo Broughton: And I'm, like, looking all good, and I'm going to get this job. So I called the receptionist. The poor receptionist. I mean, I called her, like, every five minutes. Have you talked to him yet? Have you talked to him yet? I'm like, oh my God. I was so...

Pete Neubig: Was it Alex at the time?

Margo Broughton: Yes.

Pete Neubig: She just like she I just saw her. Her birthday just happened like a day or two ago. She's like 28. She's still in her 20s. I'm like, didn't we sell that company like 15 years ago? I'm like, what did I hire? When she was like 12?

Margo Broughton: I was very young. I know.

Pete Neubig: Evidently she was very young. so that's funny. Okay, so evidently we got over that because you ended up working, with Empire. And one of the reasons why I was able to elevate and become CEO was because I had somebody like you as director of operations and, you know, let's fast forward and, you know, we did our stint at Mynd. We did our time at mind. I would I'd call it right. That's better time in Mynd. And then, you ended up start working for another smaller firm, with Cameron Tope over at, Emerson Property Management and talk. Let's talk a little bit about Cameron hired you, and he moved to California. He's like the one guy that moved to California last five years. Everybody else is moving out of there, you know, getting out, getting the hell out of Dodge. And he's the one guy that moved into California. But you know, how was he able to literally leave his business 2000 plus miles away and the business is running.

Margo Broughton: Well, because, as you told him, he said, you know, I really need some help here to get to that next level. And the story that I heard was, you said you told him you you need a Margo.

Pete Neubig: I didn't say you need a Margo. I said you need Margo.

Margo Broughton: You need Margo. So, because this is my fourth startup company, and I had enough experience and been in the industry for, you know, 40 plus years that I could have a, enough forethought to see where we could go. And that's what I noticed when I got here, that the people that were here, you know. Yeah, you hear, talk about it, but what does that really look like? What does that really feel like? What does that how does that really happen? And I said, well, this is how.

Pete Neubig: Let's talk a little bit about that, Emerson, when you got there was like a little over 100 properties.

Margo Broughton: 80 doors.

Pete Neubig: 80 properties. And, you're there in the Helena three years?

Margo Broughton: Not even three years. And went, I remember at two years, we had gone to 250 doors, and we'd gone from three employees to seven in two years time.

Pete Neubig: Alright. And you guys are over 300 doors now I think.

Margo Broughton: Almost. We're getting there. We're teetering at that. So it's exciting times but yes.

Pete Neubig: Right. So he had this vision of just being like very like staying small. He had this team. They didn't know how to grow like he wanted to grow. All of a sudden he didn't they didn't know how to. So you're like okay, well I just came from a firm where I helped them grow. You know, we had almost a thousand single family properties when when we sold to Mynd. So, so you're sitting there and you're letting them know, hey, I got the roadmap.

Margo Broughton: Yep. Absolutely. So what I did, and for the most part, was I took what we did at Empire with a little bit lower tech because they didn't have the tech that they have now, obviously. And did those practices and put it into tech. And so like when were doing it, were doing checklists. And basically we built the checklists in a system that could, you know, make everything automated. And so using those practices that you and I worked with at Empire and kind of recreated them here in a little bit different format. And I mean.

Pete Neubig: When we built the processes, we basically bastardized HubSpot into tricking it into using automations and ticketing systems. Since then, LeadSimple had come out and, and you guys basically leveraged LeadSimple to build these systems and build the automation inside of it. Is that correct?

Margo Broughton: Absolutely, yes. You're spot on. Spot on.

Pete Neubig: And you actually used, is it Black Sheep Global to kind of help you guys get through that as well?

Margo Broughton: Yes. Yeah. You know, those guys are so smart. I mean, it sounds like they're talking in a different language half the time.

Pete Neubig: So, one of the things that you did that when when I talked to you, and the last couple times I saw each other was, you actually used Property Meld for your maintenance, but you also use Property Meld for listings?

Margo Broughton: Yes.

Pete Neubig: All right. So you gotta you gotta talk. You gotta talk to me about this. Because when you were telling me that, I was like, what the. So one. How did you even come up with the idea?

Margo Broughton: Um. Well, I, you know, the way I thought about it was our listing agents are a vendor of ours, right? Basically. So if you have an outside listing agent and you're not, don't have somebody on your staff. Which is what? How we worked at that time. They are a vendor, so why not send them Melds or jobs? Job requests through Melds like we do our plumbers and our electricians and everybody else. And why don't we have them upload their invoices through Meld? Like the plumbers do. Like electricians do, like everybody else does. And we also could do a reoccurring, weekly, bi weekly walk when they're walking the vacants checking the vacants, doing the vacant rent ready.

Pete Neubig: Oh, you can you can add that as a ticket?

Margo Broughton: Yes. And so and then we put those in there as recurring for every two weeks.

Pete Neubig: And then if they take photos that can get uploaded to the ticket.

Margo Broughton: That's exactly right.

Pete Neubig: That is brilliant. Okay. But now agents are like children. How did you get them to download Meld and use Meld or anything like that? Was that was that kind of difficult or not really.

Margo Broughton: It was not actually. You know, Meld has come so far and you and I worked on Meld when Meld first came out.

Pete Neubig: were one of I was one of the first people to sign up with Meld. Yeah.

Margo Broughton: Yes. And so I had that background. Had I not had that background, I probably wouldn't have thought of this. But and it's come so far now with the reoccurring and the, you know, the projects and it does so much more now than it did even then was and it's easy. And now they can do it from their phone or their iPad.

Pete Neubig: Have you told Meld about this?

Margo Broughton: No.

Pete Neubig: You're using it?

Margo Broughton: I don't think I have.

Pete Neubig: So, you're you're going to be you're going to be on the, on our webinar next Tuesday, right?

Margo Broughton: Okay. Yeah, I think.

Pete Neubig: Ray is going to be on that. well, obviously this is going to come out way after that. So sorry about that everybody. Well, maybe we'll cut this, but, Meld is going to be on one of our webinars, and you need to let Ray know.

Margo Broughton: Okay, I am. I'm signed up for that webinar.

Pete Neubig: Awesome. Okay. So now because, you know, Cameron invested in hiring you. Talk to me about how Cameron can sit in San Diego, flirt with his girlfriend and fiancé and his wife now. How involved is he in the business? How often do you guys talk? What numbers or reports is he? Are you preparing for him?

Margo Broughton: Okay.

Pete Neubig: How does that. How does that work?

Margo Broughton: Let me clarify first. That that his wife, his fiance and his girlfriend are all the same person. Let me just clarify that for Mary right now.

Pete Neubig: You're speaking Pete now. Yes. This is what Pete means. I feel like we're back at Empire.

Margo Broughton: I know.

Pete Neubig: What Pete said. Okay. What? Okay, Mr. Owner, what Pete said is this or.

Margo Broughton: Yeah, I have to translate.

Pete Neubig: You do.

Margo Broughton: We use the, the traction meeting method?

Pete Neubig: EOS? Uh huh.

Margo Broughton: Just like we did at, at at Empire. And so we have our L10 meetings every week. so every Monday we start our our week with that meeting and determine, you know, our issues and what needs to be resolved throughout the week. And so we have that meeting every Monday. And then quarterly he comes to town and we have the whole staff meet at some location somewhere. And, and we meet for two days.

Pete Neubig: And you do in your offsites then.

Margo Broughton: Yes. And we do our offsites. So that's how we're doing it. Pretty much nonstop. And then of course, during the week, as it comes up for issues and things like that, that we need more staff involvement than we do video meetings. And so we do a lot of video meetings, probably more than I like to do. But, it's we all work from home, so we don't have a brick and mortar building. So, so that's how we do it. And, and it seems to work really well. And he was able to leave to get married and, and leave for two weeks and not even look at his computer. And so that was a great thing for him.

Pete Neubig: Is he involved in operations at all at this point in time?

Margo Broughton: Well, I have to slap his hand every once in a while.

Pete Neubig: That sounds familiar.

Margo Broughton: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Use the same ruler?

Margo Broughton: So, But no, he absolutely is. And, you know, there's so many. If I'm thinking of a process, he has me write it out, and then we talk about it. We use, Trello cards to a lot to do a lot of ideas building and share those with team members that that need to be involved with, you know, building, guide books like I wrote an owner handbook that has all Emerson's processes with photos and how to, you know, use their portal and things like that. And so when I'm writing a book like that, then obviously I give it to him and he looks make sure I'm not missing anything and that sort of thing.

Pete Neubig: But he's not in a day to day. He's not like he's not talking to residents, not talking to owners.

Margo Broughton: No no no no absolutely not.

Pete Neubig: That's just you and the team and then...

Margo Broughton: With with owners, you know, for investor education and stuff like that. But no, he does not talk to owners.

Pete Neubig: So he's doing the proactive work dealing with the higher level type stuff. you're dealing with the team.

Margo Broughton: Yes.

Pete Neubig: And you're dealing with escalations. And then if anything has to get past you, then it goes to him.

Margo Broughton: Yes, but rarely does that happen.

Pete Neubig: Oh, man. Margo was the best. She was like my bouncer. I used her like my bodyguard. I didn't have to deal with any owners.

Margo Broughton: You were bigger back then though. 

Pete Neubig: The only time I had to deal with owners when we got a complaint or a, or a lawsuit.

Margo Broughton: Or a lawsuit. Yeah. And even then I'd put all the stuff together for you.

Pete Neubig: That is true. That is true. All right, So let's talk a little bit about, as you're building this company, you guys are aggressively growing again. talk about how important it is for these systems. So LeadSimple is basically saving your bacon. And as you hire new people, how does it get the new people. Like does it does it help with the trainings. It help get them on board quicker? Like talk a little bit about that.

Margo Broughton: That is a great question and I will tell you what we did. So you can build systems in LeadSimple. For those of you who don't know what LeadSimple is, you can build systems or you can build your onboarding system, for example, or your lease renewal system or what what any what, any of them. So we built, a new hire system in LeadSimple.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Margo Broughton: When a new hire comes in, we kick off a new hire, process. And they, they get tasks. Okay. You know, watch this webinar or, fill out these forms and, and what LeadSimple does is it will give them a task. And when they check it off, LeadSimple will automatically send them the next task. And so we give them, there's a task interview each employee and find out what they do on their job. And so they just literally go through that checklist, just like how we used to do only it's automated.

Pete Neubig: That is alright. That's brilliant. Never even, you know, never dawned on me that to have that and I'm guessing you can have documents in there as well, like so like the policy manual, the vision mission, the all that good stuff.

Margo Broughton: Absolutely. Core values. we have PowerPoints in there. We have videos in there. The property management agreement. Okay. Today you're going to learn the property management agreement and come back with ten questions about it.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Margo Broughton: And then today here's our lease. You're going to learn the lease. Come back with ten questions.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Like so you have a like a training video of the PMA and a training video of the lease?

Margo Broughton: Yes, exactly. So yeah. And it's all in LeadSimple. And they have to check off all the boxes to advance to the next step.

Pete Neubig: And how is that working out?

Margo Broughton: It's working amazing. And it goes out 90 days. So it gives them their very starting time and then tells them by day 30, these are the things you should be doing by day 60. These are the things you should be doing. And then in between that every month we do, you know kind of a evaluation to see where they are. And if they are where they should be.

Pete Neubig: Is this for anybody that comes in the organization. So remote team member?

Margo Broughton: Yes. Anybody that comes in. But it's designed to property managers or resident managers or things like that. So it will kick off the appropriate training for that person.

Pete Neubig: Wow. Okay. So you have like so you even have like specialized training. So like if I'm a maintenance coordinator, I might have a different training path than somebody who's a resident services manager.

Margo Broughton: Absolutely. Yes, yes. Like you would if you were the maintenance person, you would probably be more focused on Property Meld rather than Buildium.

Pete Neubig: So, honestly, you should put something together and teach that at a NARPM national or at a Broker Owner. I think that would be. I think that'd be brilliant. Well you don't have to use LeadSimple, but just the concept of having that and putting it in LeadSimple, or an aptly or a HubSpot or something like that, I think it's brilliant.

Margo Broughton: We put everything in there, Pete. I even put in there, a day off request. If you want to take a vacation, you kick off a vacation request in LeadSimple.

Pete Neubig: Really?

Margo Broughton: Because, you know, if you're if you have a property manager that's leaving, and I'm going to have to cover for you. There needs to be you need to have set up a meeting with that person to do a handover. And then when you come back, you do a debrief meeting, you have to put it on the time sheet. You have to put it in. You know, people have to know you're going to be gone. You have to look to see who's off that same time. So there's multiple steps in taking time off. It's super simple. You know, those are really simply built systems. But the more I can put in the system, the more times you used to tell me, can you do it 50 times a month? Right. Anything that you can, you should. Anything you do, you should be thinking to yourself, can you do that 50 times a month the way that the system is right now? And if not, then you need to modify your system.

Pete Neubig: Now, you guys are very system heavy, evidently have lots of systems. How are you guys going about building the systems? I know you're using LeadSimple, but, I think the question is more is like, who's involved? Who's just drawing it out? Who's leading the meetings? you know who takes the task back? So tell me a day in the life of when you guys were building these systems.

Margo Broughton: Okay, that's also a really good question. So those usually become rocks in our in our meeting system.

Pete Neubig: Yep. So goals for the quarter or quarterly goals. Yearly goals.

Margo Broughton: That's right. Goals for the quarter okay. So what do we want. Where are we having where are we struggling. Is there anywhere that we're feeling some pain. Then that's where we need to concentrate on and build that. And so it depends on who, you know, who it's going to affect. Because our, our resident services manager might, might kick something off like that. If it's operations, it's usually me. And so I start with an outline on a Google doc. And that's how that starts. And like what what will happen to happen. You know, if this then that. You know, if it goes this way, it goes that way. You have to build all those algorithms in there.

Pete Neubig: Are you doing that in a Google doc and not lucid like I taught you.

Margo Broughton: Nope. I'm doing it in a Google doc.

Pete Neubig: If you're listening to this and you're going to do an outline. Use the Lucid or Visio. Margo's old school. She likes.

Margo Broughton: I am old school. Well I'm old.

Pete Neubig: All right. So you're taking a first crack at it?

Margo Broughton: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Now, when do you bring the like? Are you bringing the team involved at some point?

Margo Broughton: Oh, yes. Absolutely. So you might meet with certain people about one part and other people about another part, and then you pull it all together and then when it comes time to really upload it into, LeadSimple. Some of the stuff we can do, we've gotten so good at it. But when it comes to the smart stuff in there, that that, uh, you know.

Pete Neubig: Ben and Black Sheep come in, they build it.

Margo Broughton: They come in and do with the jot forms and all that which is way over my head.

Pete Neubig: Okay, so one thing I got though is like, so you're basically creating a framework and then you're like, okay, well, let me go talk to this person. This person, this person. What I'm hearing is you talking to them individually. At Empire, remember? We brought everybody in. In one room or in one zoom, if you will. are you guys not doing that at Emerson?

Margo Broughton: We absolutely are.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Margo Broughton: That would be further down the road, maybe in testing. So let's all get on the meeting and let's now we've got this in here. Let's test it. Does it work for you? Does it work for you? Does it work for you? Or, you know, is does this slip in your area? we need to tweak that then.

Pete Neubig: Got it. That's brilliant. Okay, so you're going out building a framework, talking to everybody. Re-tinkering the framework building the easy stuff in LeadSimple. Giving it to Black Sheep, saying, hey, build a jot forms or the whatever the the Doohickeys and the APIs and all that good stuff. They build that. Now you're going to test it. And that's when everybody comes into the room to test it. And then if something breaks or whatever, it's tasks that got to get back or you bring in Ben or Black Sheep or whatever. And you're updating them, they have to update the LeadSimple pipeline. That's, you know, because we did it the hard way. We had everybody in the room, and then were building the framework.

Margo Broughton: Yes. Right. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Remember, I was used to be on the board, and right now the process flows. And then I would say, hey, Margo, take take take these notes. You're like, I can't read a flipping one line of sentence that you have on the board. Pete. Yeah, I have pretty bad, pretty bad handwriting.

Margo Broughton: You do.

Pete Neubig: That's brilliant. Okay, so now, you get the system in there. Now talk about, you know, obviously the systems are imperative because they allowed, you know, Cameron to, like, literally get out, get out of the, the business. But how is it imperative for you, your clients, your residents, your property managers? Right. There's so many positives about having a good system. So talk about some of those things.

Margo Broughton: I think that the one thing that that is more important than any other is to make sure that you're building in communications, whatever system you're using, you've got to build a communications in because people don't have time to communicate. You know, they're busy, they're doing it's it never stops in this business, right?

Pete Neubig: You know what? Like you, how many times an empire were actually working on something, but we didn't send anything out. And then the investor calls us or reaches out to us, and now they don't. They're upset, even if we've been working on it because they felt they had to manage us. So I think you hit on a really good point there. So communication and, the right type of communication. Right.

Margo Broughton: Yes. And so we actually write the emails in LeadSimple. And then we set it up for when we want it to send at different intervals. So for example, if you're in the middle of an eviction, you better be notified. You better tell that owner something every week or they're like you said, they're going to be calling. What are you doing? What are you doing? when you're in a make ready, they want to know every week. At least you know what is going on with that make ready. So those are high stress times for owners.

Pete Neubig: When the property's vacant. They want to. Yep. And, you know, one of the mistakes we made early on is that we wrote like six page emails to everybody. And then at the end said, well, call us. And then I got I always used to get mad, why is this phone always F-ing ringing? And when we looked at all the things that were sending out, it was like these long emails that no one was listening to. They go at the bottom and say, call us. And we changed them all to, I think, two sentences, three bullet points and no phone number. And guess what? The phone stopped ringing.

Margo Broughton: And so you know what? We put it almost every at the bottom of almost every email we send. No action needed.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, that's that's a great idea. All right, we got it. Don't call us.

Margo Broughton: And then now. We just recently started doing, videos where, quarter. Yeah. Quarterly. We're looking at, videos and sending it to the owner with an overview of their finances for that quarter.

Pete Neubig: I like that. I think also in your emails that you send out, you can do a little video of like if you want to see what the eviction process in Houston, Texas looks like, click here. Right. Then it gets you more SEO, gets you more links. And of course, it's less phone calls because you literally have the video that answers all that stuff, which is nice as well. I think it's important by having so the communication thing is, is so my guess is once you build this a lot less phone calls and emails coming inbound from your especially owner clients, is that right?

Margo Broughton: It is significant, yes.

Pete Neubig: Which means less $5 an hour job that your property managers have to do, responding and all this stuff they get to do, they get to do their work.

Margo Broughton: Yes.

Pete Neubig: the other thing that I believe systems does is it really gives, all your clients the same type of level of, of service.

Margo Broughton: Yes. And it also... That's a really good point because it also keeps things very consistent with the tenants. You're not going up and down. There's one process for tenants. You know we have one right now. Well his mother's sick so he should he thinks he doesn't have to pay late fees because of that. And we're heartless because we make him. Well, you know, you get all kinds of trouble when you do something for one and not all.

Pete Neubig: That's right.

Margo Broughton: Keeps it very, very consistent and safe.

Pete Neubig: One of the things that we're doing at VPM is we, we're creating what we call them KBAs, knowledge base articles. And early on we found out, like when people were emailing, you know, our customer success team, our customer service team. And they would email them back, kind of their thoughts on how to answer the deal. We found it wasn't consistent. And so what we have implemented now is you are not allowed to answer anybody without a KBA. So now it's like, oh, well, you know, hey, I'm not I didn't get paid whatever. Right. And it's a holiday. Whatever. It's. Oh here, check out this knowledge base article on, you know why payment has whatever. And now it's like it's not now it doesn't get escalated. Right, Angelino, our customer service guy is not in a pissing match with a with a remote team member over something because it's like, look here, here's the knowledge base article. Hopefully this answers your deal.

Margo Broughton: Do they pull those from some kind of a library that you have built. Oh that's cool.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. We built it all in HubSpot.

Margo Broughton: Okay.

Pete Neubig: But my guess is you could probably build it in Lee temple. I would, I would think. And then you know, because look, you can systemize 80%. You have to humanize the 20%. You can literally build a system to systemize 80, 85, maybe 90. But there's going to be times when you just need people, right? and if those people could literally go into a knowledge base article and make those, you know, make those answers through a knowledge base article, we have found it reduces escalations.

Margo Broughton: Yes. Oh absolutely. Absolutely. So that's definitely made a big difference. And when we put out a survey you know what do people like about Emerson. It was communication was the number one thing that our owners were talking about.

Pete Neubig: That's the only reason why people leave too. So if they don't like the communication. And so, I know historically, Emerson's churn rate has been low. Not now. You guys don't have, you know, thousand doors. You have 280, 90 doors. But your churn rate is below the national average.

Margo Broughton: Yes, yes. And our resident, the length of tenancy is way above. We're 3 to 4 years. Is our average.

Pete Neubig: Really in Houston?

Margo Broughton: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Interesting. You know what? It was at Empire?

Margo Broughton: Properties.

Pete Neubig: What's that? Say that again.

Margo Broughton: For your properties.

Pete Neubig: Except for my properties. Yeah. You know, it. It wasn't as Empire. I think it was 18 months.

Margo Broughton: That's still. That's that's good. That's high that, you know, usually they. And depending on obviously the rental rate, you know, some of them just churn every turn every year. Every year.

Pete Neubig: Alright. So, we're, we're kind of up against it with time. So do you have, any last parting wisdom you want to throw on anybody here regarding systems or anything like that?

Margo Broughton: No, I just think be consistent and you know, know that what we do is meaningful. And sometimes it's hard to remember that, you know, we're helping people with both their investments and helping tenants to have a great experience. And so what we do is very meaningful, and which is why I've done it for now, 44 years.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Listen, if you're listening to this, I implore you to go back in that hiring system that Margo talked about and building it in LeadSimple is a big aha moment for me. Hopefully it is for you. And, just putting just systemizing it, putting in the right communication. It helps with training. It helps with customer experience. It helps with reducing inbound phone calls. It increases your CSAT. It increases the residents to stay longer and reduces your owner churn. So systems where to go, systems where it's at Alright, Margo, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and just pick your brain, you're 42 years of experience. How can they reach out to you?

Margo Broughton: They can reach me at margo@emersonpropertymanagement.com.

Pete Neubig: And, if you are not a NARPM member, shame on you. Go to narpm.org. Or you can give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you are in the market for remote team members, you're looking to use some team members, maybe it's a low cost, but, you know, do bilingual, college educated folks. Give us a try at VPMsolutions.com. To be cool like Margo and team there. they have a couple of, remote team members with VPM. And you can email me directly at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Margo, thanks so much for being here.

Margo Broughton: Thank you for having me.

Pete Neubig: Ciao, everybody.