The Sales Steps Behind Adding 100+ Properties a Year | Mason Arispe

A Podcast | Mason Arispe 

Pete Neubig: Welcome everybody to the NARPM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. So we have Mason Arispe, who is the BDM at 1st Choice Property Management, and he's the host of the Fort Worth Property Management podcast, which I'm really excited to dive into that. Mason has been working closely with homeowners and investors throughout the Fort Worth area and helping them navigate the rental process for three years. 1st Choice specializes in single family homes, serving client base made up largely of accidental landlords and small portfolio investors. So right up our alley.

Mason's led the growth of 1st Choice Property Management from 300 doors to now over 500 doors over the last three years. He's also the creator behind 1st Choice Property Management's growing social media presence, where he shares practical insights on real estate investing and rental best practice for homeowners and landlords, which I think is a great way to get business. So Mason, thanks so much for being here today, buddy.

Mason Arispe: Pete, I'm super excited. Thank you so much for having me on.

Pete Neubig: All right. So let's start with the basics here. What does a day in the life of a BDM at 1st Choice Properties look like?

Mason Arispe: Yeah, that's a great question. So every day is completely different. I look at it as more of a weekly structure. So a lot of times we get a lot of leads that come in over the weekend. And my first focus is inbound leads. Those are going to be the warmest or the hottest leads. They typically submit a rental analysis from our website. And my job is to begin communicating with them and essentially get them on the phone and determine if they're a good fit. And so on Monday, I typically start with scheduling phone calls, hopping on calls that I've previously set. And then in the middle of the week, Tuesday through Wednesday, I am actually attending consultation with homeowners. So we do go and meet at the property. That is what the bulk majority of my time is spent doing, is visiting the properties, determining a good rental price that we think that we can get for them. And then, of course, after that, sending a property management agreement. So everything that I do day to day is centered around generating leads or contacting and trying to meet with the leads that are inbound to our company.

Pete Neubig: So you said inbound leads. Do you guys have a marketing division or do you work with a third-party marketing company to generate those inbound leads?

Mason Arispe: You know, we don't. So one really great thing about 1st Choice is that years ago, the owner of our company, Rob Kazin, he purchased the URL FortWorthPropertyManagement.com. And so, I mean, with SEO and AI now, that URL has just worked on itself. And so that's one of our biggest drivers. It's just our handle, FortWorthPropertyManagement.com. And then we use PMW who, I guess, generates our website and they do some marketing with actual ads.

Pete Neubig: They do some blogs for you guys.

Mason Arispe: Yeah. Blogs, some Google ads, but we really don't have an outside agency who is specifically working on our marketing every single day. And so we're not utilizing it as of right now.

Pete Neubig: Okay. And how many leads are you guys generating on a month on average? I know some months are others, but on average?

Mason Arispe: Yeah. On average, I would say probably about 35 to 40 leads a month. And those are going to be valid leads. Single family homes in our area, because we do get a lot of Dallas leads and we don't service those areas. So it's about 40 valid leads that I could potentially sign that month.

Pete Neubig: Got it. Yeah. So I used to call them opportunities or a lot of people call them MQLs versus SQL. So you're talking about SQL, sales qualified leads. Exactly. You're getting 40 opportunities then, which is a lot. I could tell you when we were doing it back in our empire days, we're getting about 130 leads a month. And about 50% of those were, we called opportunities, but you would call them SQLs. Okay.

Mason Arispe: Yes. That would be our 40 number. We get like 150, but they are not, I say they're invalid. I either refer them out or a lead came in from California or something like that. And they don't have a rental property here in Fort Worth. And so I filter all those out included in those 40 leads, the SQLs. I do also sometimes get owners who are not qualified. I would say half of my job in determining if I'm going to bring on a property is determining if the owner is a good fit for us. And so included in that 40, I do still filter out some that their philosophy doesn't really align with ours.

Pete Neubig: So one of the biggest challenges that people talk about all the time is the disconnect between sales and operations, right? So bringing in the wrong property or bringing in the wrong owner. So talk a little bit about how you guys decided what is a good owner? How do you determine? And I'm sure some pucks get past the goalie and there's some bad owners or whatever, but how are you pre-screening? What's some questions that you're looking for? What are you looking for in some answers that people are giving you when you're interviewing them to determine if you're going to manage your property?

Mason Arispe: Sure. So we call it discovery calls. We hop on a call and I really just talk through every owner's current situation. The first line I use whenever I get on a call is, catch me up. Tell me what you got going on. And that's an open-ended question. They could tell me literally anything. Majority of the time, they end up telling me about their current situation. And so right out the gate, I determine if they're a traditional investor whose tenant is now leaving and they need to re-rent it, or if they're an accidental landlord and they're just living in the house and maybe they're being relocated out of state. And so right off the bat, I determine what kind of owner they are through that question. And then the rest is a little bit more fluid. It does come down to their goals with the property. And so if they're just looking to get it six months into the next summer market, that's not us. If they're not trying to take care of the property over the long term, they won't jive with us. And so a lot of times we do look into the individual goals of the homeowner and make sure that they can be changed slightly to investor-minded. So they're not going to be a constant headache once they're in our system. And like you said, it's not foolproof. I'm not batting 100% or anything like that. So it is something that's fluid that we're constantly working to decide if this owner is a good fit for us.

Pete Neubig: What are some red flags that you've seen in the past though that's like, nah, this probably is not a right owner for us?

Mason Arispe: Owners who expect our business to shape exactly what they need.

Pete Neubig: You have a process and they want to do their own process potentially. That's correct.

Mason Arispe: Our company has been around for over 30 years. And when they come in here, we have a set process for how we're going to list, what's going to happen after, how it goes with maintenance and whatever they try and adjust it to their or tailor it to their needs. That's a pretty big red flag right off the bat. And it's one thing if they ask if it's possible and I can say, no, I can handle the objection and let them know why we do a certain thing that we do. But whenever they're pushy to a certain extent, whenever they're adamant that it has to be done this way, that's a pretty big red flag in my mind, because even if they agree to it now, once they get through the door, it's going to be a constant headache whenever they're asking property managers or operations for different things every time. So that's one of the biggest red flags.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I know if they ask like, Hey, I want to get final say on an application, that's usually a pretty big red flag, right? That's kind of an easy one. Yes. And then of course, do you actually get into financials? Do you find out if they have money that they can bring the house up to rent ready standards or anything like that? I know talking about money on the first date's kind of taboo, but so how do you determine if they have the cash that they'll, because sometimes it may be like, Hey man, you don't have the cash, you probably sell this thing.

Mason Arispe: Yeah. That's one of the hardest ones. I'll be completely honest on the first discovery call. I talk mortgages. Sometimes I talk rental prices, but the way that I determine if they actually have some type of nest egg or savings account to invest into the property is at the meeting. The beginning of my meeting at their house is very heavy on make ready repairs. 99% of the time they need paint. They have to clean the carpets. And so I actually bring a sheet with me that outlines the average cost to even get a rental property up and running.

It's somewhere around a thousand to $1,200. And that's really just touch ups, cleanings, and carpets, carpet cleaners, bare minimum. And so if they balk at that price and they're, well, why do we have to clean it? Well, why do we have to clean the carpets? That starts to tell me that they don't have it. And so if we talk a bigger make ready, upgrading different things to the house and they're on board, if they're okay with it and they understand why we need to make those upgrades, that signals to me that they have the money. And of course I tell them we require a certain deposit down or what we require them to pay up front. And if they're agreeable to that, that typically signals to me that they're able to afford those renovations.

Pete Neubig: Is it a red flag if they haggle about price or is it just somebody just trying to maybe get a better deal in your experience?

Mason Arispe: I don't think it's a major red flag because the bulk majority of people I think are taught that everything in real estate is a negotiation and other management companies will negotiate price. Unfortunately we do not, excuse me, we do not negotiate on our management fees, but there are a lot of companies who will. And so I think it's a common thing that they see as they make other calls because we are not the call that they're making.

And so I won't consider it a major red flag. I would probably do the same thing if I was calling management companies for myself, but it depends how much. If they're wanting a 5% decrease, that may be a pretty big red flag because we'd be way out of their budget that they have in their mind.

Pete Neubig: If somebody is asking about price on the first date, do you answer that or do you have a sales script that talks more about value so that you can show why you guys are worth what you're worth? Because I know mistakes I made early, early on was people would call me like, how much? 10%. Okay, click. You know what I mean? And so you don't want to talk price right away without showing a lot of value. So how do you get around that?

Mason Arispe: Yes, I do have a sales script that is more value oriented and it's really about deflecting the price question, especially if it's at the beginning of the call. There's a lot of different ways that you can do it. The easiest way that I found to do it is since our pricing is a percentage, I don't know what your property looks like. I don't know what rental price you're going to get yet. That happens whenever I see the house and when we actually get a plan together, but I can tell you what we're going to do to work towards those. And then I go into the services that we do during that time.

And then at the very end, I try and redirect it towards a rental price. Every homeowner wants to know what their house is going to rent for. So if I have to give them that to get around our actual pricing until I meet them in person, I'll do that because I'm very good at building trust once I'm in front of you at your house. And so the fact that I'm even out meeting with you before we've earned your business is already a step ahead of the game from other people. So I'll talk pricing at the actual meeting and I'll bring a sheet with them and walk through line by line with what we charge and reiterate what it covers.

Pete Neubig: Well, let's talk a little bit about your sales system because obviously you have multiple conversations with these folks. Let's start off with the, I mean, obviously the website is doing some education, some know, like, and trust. I'm assuming you guys have tons of reviews. So they're reaching out and calling you because they feel that you guys, that 1st Choice can manage their asset. So now ring, ring or email bings. You have that first call. You're basically interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. And now let's say you think the house is a fit. You think the owner is a fit. After that first meeting, how long does that first meeting last typically? And then how quickly are you trying to schedule a second meeting?

Mason Arispe: So the first, the first meeting is a phone call. Either they call in or they submit a rental analysis on our website. We schedule a call. The call on average is about 20 minutes. So I block out 30 minutes on my calendar just in case. And 20 minutes where typically at first I'm gathering my info. I'm asking questions off the bat. And then about midway through, I open it up to allow them to ask questions. And so that first meeting is really just policies.

Sometimes they like to get into pricing and then again, determining if this would be good for partnership. And at the end of that call, every call I get, I'm asking for the second meeting, unless it's just obvious that they would not be a good fit or if their timeline is just way too far out. And so I am asking for a meeting at the end of every phone call. And then I try and schedule what we call a consultation. The consultation is typically onsite at their house, whether they're living in it or whether it's vacant. And that meeting is typically 45 minutes. And I block out an hour for extra questions or an extra make ready, stuff like that.

Pete Neubig: So you are trying to get them at the house and you're going to each house that a prospect is calling you on. So I know there's people listening to this saying, man, there's no way we can do all that because of our service area or just the number of units that come in. So let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages of going to the property. So obviously you guys go to the property. So let's talk about the advantages of going to the property.

Mason Arispe: Sure. Yeah. That's a really great question. The only way that we're able to do it is our company, we only service about a 35-minute radius around our office with traffic. Sometimes I can be in traffic for about 40 minutes getting to a house, but our service area is not the entire Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. So it is nice that we have a set service area.

And if it's outside of that, I don't have to travel to that property. We would refer it out. And so some of the pros of meeting in person, I think the biggest one is they actually get to meet with somebody from your company. A lot of times people think property management companies are big national companies, and they'll never come meet with me until I sign up with them. That's one thing they get access to before they even sign a property management agreement. The second biggest advantage is actually seeing the property with your eyes and being able to build out a plan for the make ready. In my opinion, the make ready is one of the biggest headaches when it goes to operations. And so I can truly get a plan together and I've seen it with my own eyes and we can bullet point what exactly is going to happen after they move out. So I think those are the two biggest things.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And you can determine if the house is actually a house that you'll take. Right. Oh yeah. And obviously the negative is there's a lot of windshield time. You have to go out there and that can definitely hurt sales, especially if you're doing the whole DFW Dallas, Fort Worth Metroplex.

Mason Arispe: Yes, it is a commitment. I'm aiming to have five consultations a week. And so that's at least five hours on property plus drive time, plus prep time. I do take a folder with me. I run rental comps. I bring stuff about tenants. And so it does add up, but that's the bulk majority of my job. That's what I'm brought in to do.

Pete Neubig: I would say the other positive is because if you get the right house with the right make ready, setting the right expectations, there's a lot less pressure on operations. No one's like saying, Hey, this wasn't going to rent for this. Or no one's saying, Hey, the make ready cost is too high. Or you get a property manager. It's like, man, this house is a POS and they should knock it down. Exactly. We were the other way. So we started going to the houses and then we realized Houston is just too big. Drive time is just killing us. So we went the other way. And what we had to do is basically create definitions. If a house in a certain zip code, we wouldn't take it.

If a house rents below a certain amount, we wouldn't take it. We'd look at Google to just see Google Maps, if you will, just to see what the house, if it's still standing and everything. And it worked a good percentage of the time, but there was that 10 to 15% of the time where we took a house on that we shouldn't have taken. And then that always causes a challenge, not just for the operation team, but for the client as well. So he had the house rent, that we were going to property manage. And now it's like, no, we can't really manage this house. So it's a negative experience for the owner. But if you're in a high growth and you have a huge area, it's going to be really hard to get to those houses.

Mason Arispe: Yeah. How did y'all handle the condition of the properties? Because even when I'm meeting at these homes, I know I can't see behind the bed frame that's been there for three years or the sofa. So did y'all ask homeowners to send you pictures or how did that work?

Pete Neubig: Yeah. What we did is once the house was vacant, we had field techs. So some people might call them inspection inspectors or whatever, but we have field technicians. Their job was to drive around all day long. So I had two of them and they went and they document the house. When we got overwhelmed, we would use onsite pros. They were in our area. And so we would send them out to do an inspection of the property. And then we can see what it actually looks like, which is, again, there's a negative there because now you're seeing it after the person moved out, after you got a property management agreement signed, after you did all this work.

And then it's like, oh, by the way, this is going to be a $15,000 make ready, not a $1,500 make ready. And that always caused some tension when that happened. But again, if you're super growth minded and you're in a huge area, you have to look at the risk reward. The risk is you're going to get some bad properties. You're going to have some negative experiences, but the reward is you're going to be able to close more properties because your team's not driving all over the place. And we found our numbers didn't change much other than that 10% of, yeah, we got a bad one here, but our close rate was actually, didn't go down at all. Our close rate stayed the same, if not even a little bit higher. Wow.

Mason Arispe: Okay. That's awesome.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So that's really interesting. I think if you go to the property, your close rate in most cases will increase, I would think. So another positive going to the house. All right. So you have the first meeting, which is discovery call and basically just asking questions. You said that you did a lot of prep work before the second meeting. So let's talk a little bit about that. So you get a CMA, I'm guessing, right? A comparable mark analysis for rental. Is there anything else that you would send them to look at? We used to send a video before you even talk about the property management agreement to watch this 15 minute video. And you'd be surprised how many people actually watch that video. Our salespeople would not, if they say, Hey, you haven't watched the video. Like, no, I haven't watched it. Great. Watch and call me back in 15 minutes. We have an hour scheduled.

So go ahead and watch it. And what we found was the number of questions that they had after they watched the video was almost nil because the video basically answered all the questions. So it's another way to streamline our sales process. But when you do that, you do lose a little bit of that relationship building that it seems like that you're really into, which I think is working for 1st Choice and for you personally. So, all right. So discovery call, you do the CMA, anything else that you're sending them ahead of time or that you're doing ahead of time before you meet them at the property?

Mason Arispe: Yeah. That's actually a really great idea. So what I'm sending them, right after we get off the phone call, I typically will type up a quick recap, especially if they ask for it. But I like to do that if we set the appointment, I don't like to just send an email blindly and then hope they respond back. I do send a calendar invitation to every homeowner's email and ask them to accept it so that it's on their calendar as well.

Pete Neubig: You do that while you're on the call, right?

Mason Arispe: That's correct.

Pete Neubig: So if you didn't catch that, if you're listening to this, you didn't catch that, one of the big mistakes that people make, especially new people, is that they have somebody, they have a meeting and they don't schedule the next meeting while you're on that first meeting and now you're chasing people to come to that meeting. Once they schedule a meeting, the show rate goes up dramatically on that meeting. So that's a huge gold nugget there, Mason, that you're giving people.

Mason Arispe: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And even when you set those appointments, they don't always go through. So if you genuinely ask, can you accept that? Or did you see that come through? It increases that a lot more. In addition to that, I have an automation in our CRM that I type in the date and time that we meet and they automatically receive a few reminders before our meeting, and so I am, I'm eliminating the opportunity that I could go to the house and them not be there. So I do ask them to confirm one more time before the meeting. And then whenever I actually attend the meeting, I take a folder like this.

I'm actually going to one after this and it's branded. It has my card. Um, I bring in exactly how we screen tenants to eliminate homeowners wanting to screen their own renters and I talked through that with them and I leveraged how we screen renters to justify the make ready repairs that I suggest to say, this is what we're working towards. After I do that, I talk rental prices and I present my CMA. I go through each property that I included in there with them and then that's typically about halfway through the meeting halfway through, I do open it up for some questions that have come up since our last phone call. And then after we get those out of the way, the second half of the meeting is tailored towards getting a plan together for listing. I do this so that now we can plan together in person, a, an actual plan for their property.

This gets them a little bit more invested and it's a lot easier for them to say, yes, if you leave that meeting with a dated plan. And so I do bring in step-by-step what we're going to do after they sign a property management agreement. I give them a sample copy of a property management agreement as well that I don't go through it with them at the property, but I do just provide them a template in the folder that I bring with them.

Pete Neubig: And if they have the first meeting, they're a good fit, but they don't schedule a second meeting. They want to talk to other people, whatever. Do you, uh, do you just throw them into a drip campaign? Do you schedule up a follow-up call? Do you schedule a pay? Can I reach out to you in a few days? What do you, what do you do for those folks?

Mason Arispe: I still try, we call them dated next steps. That's where you set a follow-up. You never leave a phone call without having some type of plan in place after.

And so I try and get a dated next step. It depends on the objection they give me. It's typically all right, why I still have a few more calls to make to other management companies let me get back with you or let me talk with my wife and I'll get back with you. And so I try and get a dated next step, either another phone call. It doesn't have to be a full meeting, but another phone call for another week. And it's usually just a simple question. Okay. How long is it? Okay. How long do you need to make those phone calls? And they'll, they'll say this next week or so. And so I'll have a dated next step to call them back or at least send them a text message. I don't put them in a drip campaign unless their timeline is nine to 12 months out. If they genuinely are just in the information gathering stage, I'll put them in a drip campaign, but if they're even warm over the next four to six months, I'll stay in contact with them personally and send a reminder on my end to contact them.

Pete Neubig: You're doing manual reminders in your CRM. It then gives you a task, a reminder, and then you're reaching out to them. Correct. And CRM you're using, is it LeadSimple or is it something else? It's LeadSimple. LeadSimple. And are you using any AI right now on your meetings?

Mason Arispe: Not on my meetings, no. We are implementing AI in a few different ways. Even with the podcast that we're using, we are use using ChatGPT a lot more in operations. Our property managers were spending so much time typing every individual word out on emails, not having templates. And so we are on the cusp of using AI a lot. And that, that's why I was so locked in at Rentscale Sales Mastery. They were talking about AI. I filmed a video there so that we can start using that. And we're excited about what we're rolling out with AI soon.

Pete Neubig: I'm going to give you a tidbit here. At VPM, we built an incredible knowledge base. We use HubSpot as our CRM system. So my team does not answer any questions through writing an email. They go and they find the knowledge base article that answers the question. And if we do not have a knowledge base article that answers that, we cannot, if we do not have a knowledge base article answer that question, we create one. And then we send the knowledge base article. This way, everybody's given the same answer. It's not, it has nothing to do with that person. Right? So you're showing them, here's our kind of our process, our policy. So it's kind of like a higher authority versus like, well, I talked to Fred and Fred said X, Y, and Z.

It's like, no, Fred said the same thing as Sam said the same thing as Mason said the same thing as Pete, because we use the knowledge base. So that has saved us. We've doubled in size in our company and the amount of tickets that we've gotten has stayed the same.

Because people can actually see the knowledge base. They can, they can, and then our time to solve tickets has gone down by, I think a full day because we have the knowledge base articles now.

Mason Arispe: So this knowledge base is an internal thing that you have, or is it like a blog or something on your website that you can direct people to?

Pete Neubig: So it's both. We have some internal knowledge base articles and we have a lot of external and you can go on our site and basically just type in and search, right? Search for a question and you get the answers there. So, all right. So now you're you've decided this is a good owner. You decided this is a good home. Now, typically when you're at the home, you're going to get a yes or a no typically, or is it, Hey, I got to wait some more because they've invested a bunch of time now, so I'm guessing you got a yes or a no at this point.

Mason Arispe: Correct. Yes. As long as, as long as their timeframe is within the window that I'm allowed to sign a property management agreement, I will do my best to get a yes. And so to give you some context, I am allowed to sign a property management agreement if they are planning on moving 45 days or out or in, excuse me. If they're, I can, if they're moving further, excuse me.

Pete Neubig: If they're moving out 60 days out, no management agreement, you reach out to them at 45 days and you get the management agreement.

Mason Arispe: I have to set the date that I'm going to call them for the management agreement. Yes. If it's 45 days and in, my last question in the meeting is, so does this feel like a good fit? If they say yes, then you get the commitment to sign the property management agreement. You go home, fill out the eSign software, and then you'd send it to them immediately, right after the meeting. And so you're always wanting to get that yes after you leave.

Pete Neubig: Got it. All right. So now talk about your numbers. Do you have metrics that show you like from like your conversion rate from the first meeting to the second meeting, your conversion rate overall on, is it on property owners or a number of doors? Talk, talk a little bit about that.

Mason Arispe: Sure. We do. Uh, we have KPIs that I have to follow different metrics that we look for and we do it by owners. Majority of the time. It's one owner with one door. Since we do a lot of accidentals, if they have multiple doors, that's just the cherry on top. And so we do it by owners. Um, majority of the time, my conversion rate from leads to successfully signed and into the door is about 25 to 30, 25 to 30%. And of course that, that has to start from the average of 40 leads. You want to set, um, you want to set about 50% of that in meetings. That's where my five meetings a week came from. And so I'm trying to do 50% to the second meeting. And then from there, I'm trying to close as many as I can.

Pete Neubig: I can for a 75 to 80% close rate. If you get them to the property, I would think you want it to be pretty high if I get to meet with them.

Mason Arispe: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Okay. All right. Cause I think it's really important. If you're listening to this, not just to not just have a conversion rate on the end result, because that doesn't like if the conversion rate and the end result is low, it doesn't tell you where in the sales process is, is, is there, is there a breakage, right? Where are you breaking? Right?

Cause if you're, if your conversion rate is 20% from first meeting and second meeting, then there, then, you know, that first meeting there's things that you're saying or not saying that can increase that, that conversion rate. Right. And, but if you don't know that you don't know where the breakage is.

Mason Arispe: You're exactly right. I went through a period about two years ago where we have this stage called discovery call complete. That's where I have the first meeting, but I don't set the appointment. All of my leads were getting bottlenecked and discovery call complete. And after we finally realized it, I realized that the fact that I was giving my pricing out on the very first phone call in the first five minutes of the call ultimately led them to check out. They got the information they wanted and they went on to the next one.

Even while they're on the call with me. And so I had a bunch of people bottlenecking there. Once you fix that objection, then it starts leading a little bit more in the pipeline.

So we are always having to kind of mold where these leads are getting caught up in our sales pipeline.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And then you just, you tweak the message, you tweak the steps. Maybe you add another step. You know, I, I heard a long time ago, like it takes like seven steps before somebody closes. Right. So it's not just seven meetings. It could be a meeting, an email. It could be sending them a document. It could be a text message, another meeting, a phone call, whatever it is. But some, but I heard it takes about seven steps before somebody kind of says yes on that.

Mason Arispe: You're exactly right. And the other half of that is they say yes to you. And so as many times as I can plug Mason at 1st Choice Property Management into whatever I'm sending them, I will, even in the calendar invitation, I put John and Mason property consultation. And so I am trying to put my name and my face in front of them. And as many times as I can, so that when they say yes, I'm their go-to guy. I am the one that they're saying yes to.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Well, it feels like your whole process is about building that relationship. Whereas if you look at like the bigger companies like mine, who I used to work with, they wanted to be a faceless company almost, right. And so it's hard to do business with a faceless company. Like I love Google and I use Google because it's so easy, right? The process is so easy, but try to get somebody who works for Google on the phone or to say, Hey, I know this person. I'm going to do business with this person. If they work for Google, we're not Google. We are, we're, we're smaller businesses.

And so building that relationship, I think is incredibly important. Also, when you build a relationship, there's a little bit more forgiveness there when something does go not a hundred percent.

Mason Arispe: Exactly. Yeah. That's the big thing is all three of our property managers are here in our office every day and all three of them are women. And so whenever you bring in these landlords, you do also bring in a personal aspect because you want your landlord partners to treat these property managers with respect. And that's a big thing for us. And so if you don't respect these property managers, then you're immediately not a good fit for us.

And so building that relationship does give a little bit more forgiveness and a little bit more patience, which is always great whenever your property managers are reaching out to them for a big repair. And so that's, that's another thing that we look for when it comes to owners. We're redoing our website right now. And that's actually one thing we're going to put in the about us section is that respect is a really big thing for us just because, I mean, yeah, one of our core values. And we want to make sure that these owners are just aligning with that when they come through the door.

Pete Neubig: All right. So now they signed the PM, the PMA, they signed the property manager agreement. Where does sales stop and ops start? Like, for example, are you getting the keys? Are you getting a lease? If it's leased up already, are you turning on power electric? Like where, where, what are some of the functions that sales does, or is it, I got the PMA signed, here you go. You guys deal with it. You have an onboarding team. What does it look like over first choice?

Mason Arispe: So now as of October, 2025, now my duty stops. Once I have the property management agreement signed and we have what's called an intake form site, I have to get this signed from the homeowner. It's our first step of onboarding and it collects information like the mailbox number, the air filter size and location.

Once I have those two items, I can send it to a property manager and our operations team, and they take over everything from there. And in that intake form, they'll direct where they're going to leave the keys and operations will take over from that before October, 2025, I was doing photos. So I would come back to the property and do photos.

I would meet with them with a lockbox after signing the agreement, because we would wait until we have an agreement signed to get a key. And so I would, I would be doing some of that, but now that we're growing, we're kind of moving around the responsibilities. And so mine will end at the agreement and the intake form.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. My philosophy early on was like, Hey, we need some help from the salespeople. Then my philosophy, as we started growing was like, no, I need the salespeople to do one thing and that's, and that's sell like, like get, get them to sell.

We actually even got our BDMs, assistant BDMs. So the assistant BDM would be the one that takes that first call to schedule that discovery meeting. They would be answering the emails. They would determine if it was a lead or an opportunity, they would put them in the drip campaign. They would take all the notes. They would do the CMA for you. They would prep the PMA for you as a BDM. All you're doing is you're going meeting to meeting, to meeting, to meeting. So we're running against time, but I do want to hear about the Fort Worth podcast, because you said that you get a lot of inbound leads, but that you are creating some outbound leads. And the podcast is one of the ways you're all doing it.

So talk a little bit about why you created the podcast and how that's helping with you guys right now.

Mason Arispe: Sure. Yeah. So we, we started the podcast again, back in October of 2025.

So we are relatively new. Our first episode went great. We did a lot of marketing online. And the reason that we begin it is because we looked online at information for landlords in Fort Worth. And this was one of the avenues that nobody else was doing. Everybody was posting to cover your, your faucet covers for the winter on Facebook, everybody was doing that, but nobody was doing a podcast. And so our broker, Rob said, we want to start one and we want to be the first here in Fort Worth to do it. And so we got everything together. We had a launch date in October and it's been going well since.

And then there are two main reasons that we felt that it would be great. The first is content. It's almost an endless loop of content that we can post on, on all of our social medias.

And the second thing is the fact that if you have the, if you have in your email signature, that you're a host of the Fort Worth property management podcast in that landlord's mind, you are now a pro instantly. I realized that. Yeah. You're, you're the expert immediately. And I realized this when I got, I actually got a lead who was the host of a podcast for, they were a host for a podcast for taxes. And I was like, oh man, this dude knows what he's talking about with taxes. And I sat back and I realized, I don't know this guy. I don't know how long he's been in the game, but I immediately saw him as the expert. And the second I saw that I was all in, I jumped in. We bought the cameras, the microphones, the headphones and everything. And the second it launched, I added it to my email signature. So now every single person who gets an email from me knows I am a host of the Fort Worth property management podcast, regardless if it's great or awful in their eyes, they still see me as the expert because I host it.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I know Mark Angley is probably the most popular person in our industry and he does the Chicago investor podcast. I think it's called. And, you know, I've had him on the pod and he, you know, he's getting tons of leads from that podcast. He's also getting a lot of, you know, vendors from the podcast as well. So I think every property management company should have a podcast that services their area. Like, and so what you guys are doing is I a hundred percent believe this. You're right about the content and you're right about becoming the expert. And if anybody's looking to invest in Fort Worth, they're going to come across that podcast.

If anybody's looking for a property manager, cause they're going to leave to go to Dubai for two years, accidental landlord, reluctant landlord, they're going to reach out and see that podcast and be like, Oh, these guys run a podcast. This is what they do. So I think it gives you that expert. Well, look, I'm the NARPM podcast host. So, you know, I believe in that. So, all right, man. Well, listen, I can sit here. There's so many other questions I had here for you, but we are up against it. So I like to keep these short and sweet. So I think we did a deep dive into your sales process. So I do appreciate that. Mason, if anybody's listening to this and they want to pick your brain on your, you know, on your sales system or just on BDM stuff in general, how can they reach out to you?

Mason Arispe: Yeah. So they can reach out to me a few different ways. The best way is fortworthpropertymanagement.com. That's our direct site. I'll have all of my information pretty easily on there. We do have a Facebook page and especially a LinkedIn page. You can find Mason Arispe on LinkedIn or 1st Choice Property Management on LinkedIn. And I am the one who responds to all of that. So I will get back with you pretty quickly.

Pete Neubig: And if they want to listen to the podcast to see maybe, Hey, give them, get some ideas on what, what kind of content they can have. What's the, what's the podcast URL or podcast?

Mason Arispe: It is called the Fort Worth Property Management Podcast. It is available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. And they can go to YouTube and type in Fort Worth Property Management Podcast. It'll be the top search there.

Pete Neubig: Awesome. And if you are listening to this and you're like, I'm a BDM, I need an assistant, that should be a virtual team member. Go to vpmsolutions.com or you can email me directly at pete@vpmsolutions.com. And if you're listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, shame on you. Go to narpm.org, NARPM.org, or give them a call at 800-782-3452. Mason, thanks so much for being here.

Mason Arispe: Thank you so much for having me, Pete.