A Podcast | Nik Boone

Pete Neubig: Welcome, everybody to the NARPM Radio podcast. I'm your host Pete Neubig. And today we have Nik Boone, founder broker owner of Ascend Property Management. They are managing over 1500 doors and 500 homes sold and a incredible reputation for industry innovation. He's also earned prestigious accolades, including 30 under 30. I don't remember how I can't remember that far back, honestly. Nik, showing my age here. 30 under 30, Inc 5000 and the Bakersfield, California best of 2024. He's committed to professionalism, community, and client success. Ascend continues to set the standard in real estate services, delivering tailored solutions that make every transaction seamless and stress free. Nik, thanks so much for being here today, buddy.

Nik Boone: Thanks for having me. It's fun.

Pete Neubig: All right, so we talked in the green room and you started your business basically from scratch. Built it to 1500 units. So let's let's talk a little bit about the early days. How'd you get started in it? And then I want to talk about your growth and how and I want to really focus on how you grew the business. But let's get started. Like how'd you get started in property management?

Nik Boone: Yeah. So I was, I was going to this. And people love when I tell the story. It's it's pretty cool. So I was going to college. I was going to community college. I was actually, pre-med at a community college, if you can be. And, I needed to pay for classes, and it was like a 20 minute drive, so gas was five bucks a gallon. I needed to pay for gas and books and all this stuff. And my mom did loans at the time, or she still does now, but she's I was like, hey, I need something to do that works with my school that I can do. She's like, get your real estate license. Like. All right. So I got my real estate license while going to school, sold the house, and I was like, all right, hook me up. That was pretty.

Pete Neubig: I like this commission, especially selling house in California. That's gotta be pretty decent size commission.

Nik Boone: It was at the bottom of the market. I looked it up actually, because we just. We just celebrated our ten year, company in business. The the check was like 800 bucks. But I remember because after broker's fees and all. Yeah, I was I was like, I just made $800 on one deal. It was a foreclosure. It took six months. Like my dollar per hour.

Pete Neubig: Your hourly rate was pretty low.

Nik Boone: But I got the 800. I was like, alright, this is pretty cool. So then I, I'm like, alright, still selling, still trying to build a book of business. I'm 18, 19. So, you know, I'm trying to basically convince people to use me to buy a house, which was tough because I looked like an 18 year old. So, I'm showing some clients one day and I get a call from an area code 310. It's basically like Beverly Hills, LA. And I answered it and he's like, hey, I'm an investor from LA. And I was like, awesome. He's like, I was. I drove down to Bakersfield. I was supposed to meet somebody. He isn't answering my call. He's not meeting up with me. But I see your listing. Like, can you show me this house? And I was like, yeah, like I was hungry. I was like, that house is in escrow. I can show you another one in a park called Oildale. And these were like 40, 50, $60,000 houses. And he's like, can you meet me in the next hour? I was like, yep. So I go to the office. I printed 20 houses, showed them a couple. I'm in this beat up truck, 19 years old. He shows up in a brand new A8 Audi like, just typical, like LA, like vibe, you know? So we, uh. I walk him through this little just. I don't want to swear on your podcast, but bad house. And we walk walked through and he's like, yeah, I like it. And I was like, okay, totally forgot to ask you, like, have you been pre-qualified? And he's like, actually, I'm going to be paying cash. And I was like, this guy has 50 grand cash. Like that's unheard. I've never even heard of that much cash. Like, this guy's a billionaire. This is crazy. So we end up, we end up making a couple of offers. He buys two houses for 40, 50 grand. Again, $600 commission check. Like, not a lot of money. And he's, he goes, hey, I need to. I'm basically renting these out, like, can you help me? And I'm very transparent. Day one I think that's been a big help. I was like, I have no, I barely know how to sell a house. I have no clue how to rent a house. I live with my parents. I don't even know how to rent a house myself. I don't know any of this. Like, this is very adult, and I'm. I'm not there.

Pete Neubig: I'm not adulting yet.

Nik Boone: I'm not adulting yet, you know? And so he goes, honestly, I don't know the first thing about it either. Do you want to learn together? It's Sure, as long as you keep buying houses from me, I'll. I'll learn whatever you need me to. So the first, the the very first lease. Can you still hear me?

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Nik Boone: The very first lease.  my things are resting up. He drives from LA and we sign a lease in a donut shop. Just. We googled the lease, tried to figure it out. The tenant paid in cash. We were at this donut shop in this terrible part of town, and, uh. And that was our first lease. And so he drove back to LA, and he called me, he's like, hey, we did it. And I was like, cool. And he goes, do you want to like, how much do you want to charge me? And I was like, I'm not going to charge you anything. Just keep buying houses and I'll manage them for free and and go from there.

Pete Neubig: Oh boy.

Nik Boone: He's like, okay, great. And keep in mind, terrible parts of town. Like yeah.

Pete Neubig: It's not easy management. Yeah.

Nik Boone: No, no. So he ends up buying. Fast forward quite a while. He ends up buying 100 houses from me.

Pete Neubig: Holy moly, he is a billionaire.

Nik Boone: He he basically was a little mini REIT. He raised some funds, bought some houses.  I didn't know any of this at the time. And so I'm a couple years later, I'm going to college full time. I'm managing all of his rentals, which he has about 40 at the time. Are you?

Pete Neubig: I'm still yet at this point. Oh, okay.

Nik Boone: I'm still selling him houses. We used to use MapQuest and it went A through Z, and I couldn't use MapQuest anymore because we had more than 26 houses to look at in a day. So, I mean, I like just with him. He was a full time client, plus management plus college, plus I had other clients. So I was my like 20, 21 days were like I was just workhorse. So I'm at this point I'm like, hey dude, I'm still happy to help you. I have no time. I can't even do school work. Like it's just crazy. He goes, well, hire an assistant and I'll pay you what she costs. I was like, awesome. So I was charging him like 25 bucks a month per door, basically paid for the assistant, and then a year goes by. She was taking files that he would buy, plus management. She's like, hey, everything's leased. I have no maintenance, which is, this is the nicest property management's ever been, by the way. And she goes, I don't have anything to do. And I was like, well, we can be a property management company or I think it's time to just give that away and just focus on sales. But I think we're we're at this divide of, you know, what do we want to do. So we actually interviewed some property managers. We went through that route. And the investor, my friend and I kind of kind of agreed. We were like, not great talent, you know, not to knock anybody at that time. But there was just not a great Rate pool of property managers. So I was like, all right, let's just do it. First year we grew 100 doors. Next year we grew to 300 doors. And then it just kind of kept snowballing from there. So that was really like the foundational days of I really have no clue what I'm doing to now. We're a property management company.

Pete Neubig: You know, I think there's a lesson to be learned there. Like you didn't, you know, you didn't charge him anything right off the bat. You didn't know enough. And so you literally, you know, sweat equity to learn a skill and a business, which it ended up being, you know, 1500 units is nothing to sneeze at now. I mean, you're you're running a really good business. and you learned a lot of that stuff. I'm assuming at some point you flip them over and he did pay some management fees. Or did you always just let him like, hey, just pay for the assistant because you got me started?

Nik Boone: He has been increased twice.  he is still so far under market rate and he's still with me.  he lives in Vegas now. He moved from LA. I see him when I go to. I'll be in Vegas a couple of months. I'll see him then. Like, just super friendly. He was advising me like through college. He. He was at my college graduation. He was at my wedding, like really, really foundational guy for the business.

Pete Neubig: I gotta ask you,  do you own any properties?

Nik Boone: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: You do. Okay.

Nik Boone: That was another. Yeah, that was another big wealth factor.  and I can talk about that if you want. So when I was, I just graduated.

Pete Neubig: I'm just always surprised how many, how many property management company owners don't own any properties. I'm always surprised on that. Yeah. So, so anyway, so he became. He became a mentor for you? Yeah. And he's still a customer ten years later. Um. Wow. Okay, so let's talk a lot, like, we, you know, we're in the green room. We wanted to talk a little bit about, like, your growth. Right? So, I mean, he's. I'm guessing he doesn't have a thousand homes with you. I'm guessing he's probably got 100, maybe 150, 200 homes with you now.  so you had to grow that property management firm.  what are you, like, if someone's listed and they say, man, I'm having trouble growing my my business. Where where have you seen the most success? What do you think are the best ways to grow your business?

Nik Boone: Um. It's changing. So ten years ago,  I thought, and I and I'm, I call myself very dumb because I just think very, like, practically, I don't, you know, we're not, like, KPI driven, like we need to focus on this minute it detail. I ten years ago, I said, hey, there's two ways we get business. People either know us, which we're brand new, so they're not going to people refer us business, which we haven't been in business long enough to be quality or like, what would I do? And I said I would Google Property Management Bakersfield and I would go with who looks great, like what I do for a restaurant or what I do for like that's what I would do as a person. So I literally just hammered that keyword. I looked, I when I would look at companies, I was like, what am I looking for? Great reviews, tons of reviews, highly rated. And I just crushed reviews. I crushed keyword searches. And this is before like SEO is super well known now. Obviously this was before it was like a hot topic of of SEO. And I just organically was trying to get tons of reviews from people and would literally ask people like, hey, this, this means a lot. We're not charging much. Please leave me a review. Like it helps me out. And so quickly we we jumped to number one like reviewed most property management company by far. So that's that was it.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So all right so that's that worked back then.  also because a lot of people weren't doing it, you probably got to Property Management Bakersfield pretty quickly, probably less than a year.  I can tell you in Houston, it took me almost two years to get to that, that top of, you know, playing the SEO game. And we were working hard at it. You don't just you don't just mess up, put some keywords in your back in your,  on your,  website. You got to create blogs and videos and you gotta do you gotta you get on to Google my business page, and you got to do all the hard work that it takes. A lot of people just say, oh, SEO, I'll hire a company, they'll do four blogs for me, and I'll get on the front page. it didn't work back then, even ten years ago. Definitely doesn't work today. The second thing that I heard you say is getting great Google reviews that that basically is creates a trust factor.

Nik Boone: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: So, so tell me, a lot of people say getting Google reviews. How did you guys do it? When is the best time to get a Google review and is it still work today that it did, you know, a few years back?

Nik Boone: Yeah. I mean, so ten years ago we were talking about Google reviews. I had a meeting yesterday talking about Google reviews. I mean, it is not something that has gone away. We're constantly trying to figure out the best time. And, you know, now we're at a point where we have companies that that help us hone in on Google reviews and ask for certain times. And so we're we still yesterday's meeting was when are people the happiest? When when are we satisfying them the most? You know what is a triggering event where they say this was a great experience and this is ten years later, we're still trying to determine like because.

Pete Neubig: Right there, if you're listening to this right there is that was a gold nugget right there. When do you get a good review? When people are the happiest. When they have a great experience. and then you have people that actually work for you to help get good reviews. So when I when I own Empire, we did we did something very similar. And I want you to expand on this here in a little bit, but we use our virtual team members, our remote team members. Part of their job was like to follow up and get good reviews, and then we bonused them. If they got a good review and we bonused them more if they got their name in the Google review. So talk about some of the happy points,  that you guys identified.

Nik Boone:  at the beginning we really didn't. So at the very beginning, we just said, hey, I'm going to call everybody to see if they're happy. If they're happy, I'm gonna ask for review if they're unhappy and see how I can make them happy. But very rudimentary, like get on the phone, start asking, are they happy? Yes. Here's a link. Cool. You didn't have to say anything, but just leave me something. Now it's we're fairly complex with it in that regard. We have systems that, you know, when an owner onboards with us because they've seen our reviews and they're excited to have property management right when we get them a tenant. Did you have a great experience? You know what were you happy with the onboarding of ascent? We rented it out quickly. Like has everything met your expectations? Same thing with tenant.

Pete Neubig: Is that getting an auto email or is that a phone call?

Nik Boone: Yeah, everything's super automated now.

Pete Neubig: Everything's all right. So, and if they give you a bad review, it doesn't go online, right? It just goes into your kind of your your back end customer satisfaction. So let me talk about this. what do you do when you get a neutral or bad review?

Nik Boone: Most of the time, we have a pulse on why? Okay.  if somebody is unhappy, my staff typically knows either this person is just fundamentally unhappy as a person, which they exist.

Pete Neubig: They do.

Nik Boone:  and they rent properties, believe it or not.

Pete Neubig: And I think you would tell me, hey, Pete, we don't get bad. We don't get neutral bad reviews.

Nik Boone: Yeah. Uh. So most of the time we'll have a beat on it. If it's something where we just have no clue. We'll call them, we'll ask them, we'll message them back, kind of see what's going on.

Pete Neubig: Do you know what you guys are using for to to manage the reviews.

Nik Boone: BirdEye.

Pete Neubig: BirdEye.

Nik Boone: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Okay. Alright. So let's talk about on the owner side. So when you get the property rented you're actually asking the owner for a review. You have a pretty good, and then if they give you a neutral review or a negative review, either a, you know, it's negative Nancy, she's never going to give us a good review or B, it's positive. Pete. And, that should have went well. Is there a phone call at that point?

Nik Boone: Yeah. Yeah. My my manager will always call any negative reviews from tenants, from owners, from anybody. If it's a negative review, we're finding out why. If she can't get them to be at minimneutral. She's very, very good. Negative. Nancy. It's. Let's. Let's stop spinning our wheels. There's nothing we can do. And I've had conversations with, uh. And this is. This may not surprise you, but it might. Owners have been upset that we have rented properties too fast. They wanted more time. They thought that it would take longer, that things where you're like, people would crush. Like they would love to have that. Like, I cannot believe you're unhappy with this. This is crazy.

Pete Neubig: The only the only time I've seen that is when they say, oh, if it if it rented so quick, we should have charged more. Which is just kind of a weird way to think of things, you know, like, oh, you you didn't charge enough. you know. Right. The rent was too low. That's that's the only time I've ever had any pushback on something got done really quick. just just real quick. What are some other trigger points that you guys look at to, to then ask for the review? So lease renewal.

Nik Boone: Owners.

Pete Neubig: For for owners. Yeah. For owners.  do you do it on a maintenance like when a maintenance ticket is done or they don't even know about it. You just do it out on the rent on the resident side.

Nik Boone:  we're working on the owners for maintenance. The residents get that form when the maintenance order is completed.  really, really good about maintenance.  for two reasons. One, everything's internal. So the guy that goes out there works for a tenant. Okay, so we're a licensed contractor. We have in place on payroll that all they do is maintenance. So I want to know how they're doing. One, two. If something breaks and I send somebody out, that's a profit center for the company, you know. So I want to make sure that they're doing great, that they're being timely. They're getting out to the next job quickly. Like we're all of that's also tracked like pretty heavily with our guys.

Pete Neubig: And do you guys get a lot of reviews, a lot of positive reviews based on your maintenance? Because, yeah, you're it's all in-house. You have control it more.

Nik Boone: And if I need to eat costs or I need to send somebody out or change a schedule like it, when we started it, it was not even considered as a profit part. So I when I started that, it was actually for the investor that I spoke about earlier and I hired two guys. I said, hey, I'm going to charge you basically what they're charging me for payroll, plus worker's comp and $5 an hour like nothing. And he's like, okay, yeah, we want, we want, I want the control. Like, hey, this job doesn't matter as much as this job. Go over here. This one's flooded. Yep. And so that's kind of how we started there.

Pete Neubig: That's a whole other show that I maybe get you back on at some point. We could talk about, you know, in-house maintenance versus third party, and, I'll be more than happy to debate you on that, because I had in-house about ten months, lost $22,000, went back to third party and found a way to to monetize that. But let's let's kind of focus on your growth because I'm really intrigued by you. So so again, so you SEO,  what what do you like? So that was ten years ago. You guys worked hard on that? Um. What are what do you think is next? Like no one knew about. Not a lot of people knew about SEO ten years ago. What's the new thing that you think people you know have an opportunity to really get found, if you will?

Nik Boone: Yeah. Big buzzword AI.

Pete Neubig: Oh. Never heard of it.

Nik Boone: ChatGPT Gemini.  we're not baroque, but so on Google like we next to none 1300 reviews 4.6. And you know this very few people say, hey, my property manager is doing a great job. I'm going to leave a good review. So to to have that many with four points, like it's been a a ten year grind. So super proud of that. But on chat that is just one factor of many that they look at. And so right now we're in the midst of like how is our online presence all over. And so we're looking at directories we have. So Zillow we have an account that somebody made us that's a logo from ten years ago that has one bad review from a tenant from ten years ago. But chat sees it and says, hey, this is the company. Yeah. They look they look cool on Google. They look terrible on this one from ten years ago.

Pete Neubig: Wow.

Nik Boone: And so we're trying to like basically tell.

Pete Neubig: A holistic approach, huh.

Nik Boone: It is. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: I will tell you this, for VPM Solutions, we got two, we got two leads because of ChatGPT last month or this month. So what the point is that people are starting to use ChatGPTto find, you know, property management companies to find to find folks.  one of the things I heard,  I interviewed Matt Spear. I highly recommend, if you listen to this, to go find that one. If if,  when it'll be out before Nik's,  go. He created, he's got he actually owns your, the URL property management. Com and he's actually creating kind of like the Carfax for property management firms. And so one of the things that AI likes is a third is a is a third party company that gives you kind of like a rating system. And so he's betting on AI just like you, Nik, to  to basically create this for property management firms. And he's got a whole process. so, so that you can get, like, a scorecard. So I'll actually connect you with him, after we do this deal. All right.

Nik Boone: I just cut him a check for a lot of money to be on there, so.

Pete Neubig: Oh, you. Okay, so you're on the propertymanagement.com. So, cat's out of the bag now. Sorry. I'm probably probably giving a.

Nik Boone: No. We actually, um. so we're very heavily into the AI like race right now, because again, I think when you think of a property manager, like if you close your eyes and you're not picturing a 33 year old property manager, you're picturing somebody that's been doing it for 30 years. That's kind of like, hey, this is you know, we still use Excel to do this. And that's a little bit changing. But those those property managers that have been in the business for 20 years, they're not thinking about AI. They have their clients. They're trying to make their clients happy on a day to day basis. Yeah, they could grow. But if their friends sends them something, they'll grow.

Pete Neubig: Now the group listened to us today. The group, they are professional property managers. They're the top 1% and they're looking at AI. But the other 95%, 99% of folks, especially the ones that do mom and pop, and they just kind of do it on the side. They're never going to invest in the technology in the AI. And I think you're right, that's a huge differentiator between professional property managers and just regular property managers. Okay, so let's put on your mentorship consultant hat on. If someone's listening to this and they are having a hard time getting noticed, what are 2 or 3 things that you would recommend? Because SEO still is the king, right? I mean, it's the AI hasn't really it's coming, but it's in its infancy and a lot, a lot of people are adopting it just yet to find people. But if I'm having trouble, like what? A couple of things that I can do to really other than Google reviews, which is great, but to to get noticed and and be found.

Nik Boone: I, I think so rudimentary and it's worked for me. I don't know if it'll work for everybody. I think about like who is hiring property managers, somebody that has.

Pete Neubig: Who's your ICP? Right. Who's your.

Nik Boone: Who is that? Mine. We certainly now get investors with ten properties, 20 properties that come to us.  a lot of our, our owners are mom and pop owners, and they Google Property Management Bakersfield that they look at it and that's that's who our client has been because that's how they find us. If you're looking for, like an owner that has an apartment, why are they even considering looking for you? Like, you have to find out why somebody would even switch. Like I talked about the happy trigger. Like somebody happy. Leave a review. What's a trigger for them to switch property managers. Why would they look? How would they look? All of that information is kind of what I think about as just a normal person. And that's really what I hone in on, you know, okay, if I.

Pete Neubig: Let's say I get that, I get the pain points of my ICP, my my ideal client profile, and I really do. What's the next step? Is it, is it keywords? Is it creating some videos? Is it creating blogs? All of the above?

Nik Boone: Yeah. I mean, it really depends on on who your client is, but all of those work,  if it's a mom and pop owner, then. Yeah, absolutely. SEO we do postcards now. Pretty ineffective. Like if I get a postcard in the mail, I don't really look at it. We do them pretty regularly.  not for instant business, but Bakersfield's a little big town, and so getting that brand recognition is kind of what we're doing now. We're a little more on the branding side instead of.

Pete Neubig: All right, I'm, I'm going to give you something and let me know if you want to use it and if it works. What we did is we used to send postcards out with those, you know, the little aspirin packets that have like one aspirin in it. We used to attach it to the postcard and we used to say, frustration free property management. We get rid of your headaches. Something like that. And it was we actually got one client from it. You know, we didn't do too many we I think we did one rollout got one client literally because he goes, I'm actually calling you just because of your postcard. So, you know, you can't just send a postcard. You gotta be a little, little, like, you gotta have a little flair to it, you know?

Nik Boone: No, that's super clever. Yep, I like that. It's you. And our whole. Our whole thing is,  stress free. So, like, on our website and everything, it's like, again, another thing we honed in on is like, why are why are we better? What do we do differently? And from like selling, managing construction, remodels like all of that is all integrated. And it's really to keep them like, hey, this was a like this was a pain free experience. This was really easy. I am like, I thought it was for you.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, right. I had a business coach that he he taught me. He's like you don't you never be better be different. And you reiterated that. And your differentiator is you're all in one stop shop.

Nik Boone: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: I can help you find a deal. I'll help you. I'll help you. Least a deal. I'll manage the deal. and I can do the maintenance on it. I could do rehab on it.  and I can evict them, and I can find you more deals.

Nik Boone: Yep.

Pete Neubig: All right, so, how to grow, how you grow your business. Obviously, marketing is a big part of it, but it's not the only part of growing. how do you reduce churn? Like, you know, like a lot of people think I gotta keep getting new clients, and, uh. And I ran into this for a little bit where I was getting new clients, but I was losing clients as well.  what what do you think is the is kind of the because, you know, churn happens, right? I think I think the, the average is like 20% year over year churn in this industry.  so what are some of the things that, that, that you would counsel people on? Here's what you need to do to to kind of reduce churn.

Nik Boone: Huge problem.  it's again another thing that we track heavily. We see why the churn from us to another property manager extraordinarily low. It it has happened. But like we know exactly why before it's coming and all of that.

Pete Neubig: Right? Bad churn. They're unhappy with you.  so they go to another company. Mhm.

Nik Boone: The natural churn we're selling our property or moving back into the property. We don't want to be landlords. All of those. If you find a way to stop that you let me know.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. No you're not going to stop that. Yeah.

Nik Boone:  the name of the game is just more clients, newer clients staying on top of it, but it's a constant grind.

Pete Neubig: I will say the churn of people moving back into property. Yep. I get that, you know, but the churn of saying I saying, I don't want to be an investor anymore. That really is bad churn, if you think about it, because they're not happy with the results they're getting now, whether it's like they just bought a bad house and it's never going to cash flow and that's all they care about.  but it could also be a reflection of how we're how we're running our businesses.

Nik Boone: For sure. Yeah, we look into that too. We have some that,  it's not really a bad churn, but it kind of is the leaf because they want to self-manage most of that.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, that's.

Nik Boone: Most of those.

Pete Neubig: You did such a good job that they make it sound so easy that even a caveman can do it.

Nik Boone: Right. And the tenant, they're like, tenant pays on time. Like they don't complain. Like, I'm just going to do it myself. Like, well, you know, can we do anything? No, I'm just going to try it on, like. And these are mom and pop people that, you know, maybe they do have a tenant that stays ten years or maybe. And we've had some call us back in here. Hey, that tenant moved out. Like I want to sign up. It's like, okay.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.  I had a buddy of mine. He actually, I think he he,  connected the management agreement with the lease agreement. So you couldn't, like, you couldn't leave management as long as it was under lease. And then before you actually renewed the lease, they you had to give like a 90 day notice when, like when the lease renewal was happening. To say that you want to, you know, you want to cancel and then they wouldn't do the lease renewal. And it obviously kept a lot of people connected. But if somebody doesn't want to stay and they want to self-manage and they become unhappy, that becomes difficult situation for your staff, I would think.

Nik Boone: Yeah. And they're not really unhappy. It's it's typically the I want to either give it a shot on my own or I have a really good tenant that you guys found for me. And we do the same thing. It's tied the management's tied to the lease, and we have to give this notice. And and still you'll just have people like, hey, you know, I've, I've actually gone over there and talked to the tenant and, and Becky's just going to pay me from now on. And  we can't solve that problem. It's just. It is what it is.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Um. All right. So. Obviously, given great service, typically people don't leave because it's so easy. It happens when it happens. It's incredibly frustrating. But mostly your churn rate is going because people are just unhappy.  how do you make people happy?

Nik Boone:  a great question.

Pete Neubig: How does it how does ascend do it? How does this because you look you're making people happy. You have 1500 units. There's a lot of happy people. You guys probably only focus on the 20% or the 10% that call you every day to tell you they're unhappy. But, you know, the silent majority is is happy. And, what are you guys doing to provide that, that happiness to them? And you got all those great Google reviews. So we know we know you have a lot of happy people.

Nik Boone: Yeah.  I just I treat it again like I'm probably going to sound dumb on this whole podcast, but we just are very rudimentary and like what makes people happy. What does a tenant want from their property manager to be left alone? They pay their rent. They don't want a bunch of notices and issues. And again, that's the 80% of people. The 20%. Yeah. They get notices they're not paying rent, their issues, stuff like that. But the people that rent a nice house in a nice area, and I would think.

Pete Neubig: I would think the number one thing for residents is, is maintenance, right? Like, if maintenance when I call, if maintenance is respond to very quickly, it gets done within so many days. and I'm not getting Nikel and dimed or I gotta pay like a fee to, to, you know, like, I would think that's probably the number one,  way to those guys. Happy. Um.

Nik Boone: Yeah. The maintenance is huge. And that's another reason why we have it in house maintenance departments. Really, really good.

Pete Neubig: I'm getting you back on. We're going to debate this one.

Nik Boone: We have third party. I mean, I've done the third party thing and we did the whole, markup and, you know, all of that. So I, I, I hear you,  and certain categories are definitely easier, a very specialty things, you know, stuff like that. For sure, I will.

Pete Neubig: I'm going to ask you one maintenance question. Do you think,  there is a number of properties that you have to manage before you bring maintenance in-house? Like in-house, if you have ten properties. Right. Like there's got to be a threshold. I would think.

Nik Boone: It depends on your goal.  if you're if you have 300 properties and, you know, that could certainly sustain one guy and then your owners are happier, the other the other really like tenant evictions. Very easy to do a third party for a turnover that has not only like drywall damage, but also the cabinets broken and the dishwasher doesn't work. And these lights are out. I mean, we're not going to call an electrician, a dishwasher guy, a cabinet guy. Only scenario there is calling a contractor to schedule it all. And you know, this contractor is very expensive.

Pete Neubig: And to get more expensive by the day.

Nik Boone: Yeah. So it's it's the control. But then it's also, you know, we do a quote. So the other thing we do is when a tenant moves out the next day, they have a quote of here's what's wrong and here's a quote. My staff walks it.

Pete Neubig: That's that's pretty good, man. To be able to walk out the next day. That's that's a that's a wow experience right there for sure.

Nik Boone: And then we quote it and I and they always ask you know are you high. Are you low because you're a contractor. And I, I give this example perfectly. A plumber is going to charge you 125 bucks an hour. A handyman is going to charge you 20 or dead. Medal winner right there in the middle of 65. I'm like, okay, like I can get behind that. I'm like, if you can, if you're okay with that, you don't have to walk the property. You don't. You just say, this is approved. We take care of it. Move the new tenant.

Pete Neubig: It makes it easier.

Nik Boone: Makes it super easy. Then we use that quote for tenant deposits.

Pete Neubig: And like I actually put a note here to, to get you on another pod. So we're going to go really deep and we're, we're kind of up against it. So any parting words of wisdom on the growth aspect. And that's a we could, we could do two, three hours on growth, but any words of wisdom like, hey, I'm listening to this. I'm having a hard time growing. I want to start growing. What's, what's a couple of things that you would recommend?

Nik Boone: Patience. I would assume it's somebody that hasn't been doing it for ten years. That's saying that do really good work every single day for ten years.

Pete Neubig: You know what's funny, man?  our SEO for Vpm is just now starting to work. Do you know when I created the business 2020, I started doing SEO in 2020.

Nik Boone: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: So I kind of agree, but some of us just can't survive without getting some new business. So, patience is. What can I do? Short term?

Nik Boone: Short term? I mean, here's a great analogy. If I gave somebody a hundred clients tomorrow, they would figure out the process to keep 100 clients happy if they're if that's their goal. They're saying, I don't know how to get 100 clients. All of your time and energy needs to be going to get 100 clients every single hour of every single day. If you're dealing with calls or issues or whatever, deal with that for maybe an hour or two and then pay somebody else to do it. So all of your focus is really on the other stuff. If you can't pay somebody to do it, then I mean your after hours time. Like, I'm not exaggerating. I was a workhorse and we didn't talk about the the financial aspect of everything.  but I, I sold a vehicle to keep the company in business. Like, I did not have rent to cover for. I mean, it was hard times.

Pete Neubig: Well, when you're when you're when your number one client got 200 doors, you're not charging any management fees. I can't imagine why you need to sell your vehicle.

Nik Boone: So, I mean, it's grind. Just grind for way longer than you think you need to. And in ten years, you'll look back and go, wow, like this. I'm now supporting 25 employees that have families and.

Pete Neubig: You know, listen to this podcast, go to the NARPM events, join the Facebook groups, find other mentors, find guys like Nik that, you know, have been there, done that, that, that have walked the path.  this way you can, you know, model, as Tony Robbins calls it. And you can skip some steps potentially. Nik, we are up against it. I do want to meet with you again. we need to become best friends. So if anybody wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way to contact you?

Nik Boone: Email. You can email me nikboone@gmail.com.

Pete Neubig: And that's N-I-K-B-O-O-N-E?

Nik Boone: Yep.

Pete Neubig: @gmail.com. And if you are listening and you are not a part of NARPM, you can go to narpm.org Or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you are in the market and you are looking for remote team members, give us a shot, vpmsolutions.com. We have 43,000 plus people looking for work, in the property, looking for work in the property management field. You can go to vpmsolutions.com or give me an email at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Nik, thanks for your time. Thanks for being here today.

Nik Boone: Thanks, Pete. Had a blast.