Bridging the Gap: Mastering Property Manager and Maintenance Vendor Partnerships | Patrick Jacobs

A Podcast | Patrick Jacobs

Pete Neubig: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the NARPM podcast. I'm your host, Pete Neubig. And we have a good buddy of mine, Pat Jacobs, who is an entrepreneur, operator and industry leader in property maintenance, construction and field services. He's the CEO of Shamrock Property Maintenance and Shamrock Dirt and Forestry. He's built multi-state operations. Pat focuses on systems, accountability and doing work the right way. He's known for his hands on leadership style and straight talk approach. He brings real world insight to scaling service businesses, improving field execution and leading with integrity. And Patrick and I, we met at an IMN conference. We hit it off. He's another lover of cigars. So we we've solved many of the world's problems by smoking a cigar together. And I asked Patrick here to jump on to the NARPM podcast to talk a little bit about the vendor side of things. Right. We always talk about, you know, our maintenance coordination and, you know, and, you know, maintenance. But we never talk about what we what we can do to make life easier for our vendors. So, Patrick, thanks so much for joining us today.

Patrick Jacobs: Man, Pete, thank you so much for having me. And, you know, I think often about those world's problems that we solved smoking those cigars at IMN. But it's great seeing you today, buddy. Thanks for having me on.

Pete Neubig: No problem, man. So, you know, I know you work with a lot of property management companies, some of some of the bigger ones in, you know, nationally. And you're in multi multi-states, multi-markets. And so I was like, man, I'd love to just pick his brain on behalf of some of our smaller, you know, NARPMs, not IMN, where we're, you know, probably average around 200 units per property management firm. You know, we do have some big folks there as well. But so I was thinking like, OK, how can property managers work efficiently with maintenance vendors? Because you hear it is like, you know, we're on a we're supposed to be on the same team. But a lot of times it could get competitive. So what are some of the things that you've seen where some maybe some of your clients are working more efficiently than others with Shamrock?

Patrick Jacobs: You know, that's a great question. And I think it's something that is really a hot button issue for a lot of the maintenance vendors or folks like myself. I think the first thing is a clear set of rules of engagement. Right. Is by giving us a an idea of what they really, truly expect. A lot of times, you know, it's the maintenance coordinators are just looking for somebody that can solve a problem. But if we could have an upfront meeting in the beginning to say, hey, here are some of the core values that we have as a company and that we would need from you as the maintenance provider out there to do X, Y and Z. And just I would think of it. Call of it is like a vendor guide. Almost a lot of the larger companies do that. They give you a vendor agreement that you read through and it gives you a list of rules. This is how a code of conduct when you're out there on the property and things like that. And I'm not necessarily saying just for us, but there's you know, they use a lot of smaller those smaller companies use. You know, I like to refer to these folks as chucks in a truck. And a lot of times those guys, they don't they don't know what's expected out of them except for to go and take care of the maintenance issue. So, the first thing I would start out with is a good vendor agreement. And that's listing the things that you really, truly need.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Patrick Jacobs: Another thing that we struggle with sometimes to be quite frank and honest is communication. We I tell folks sometimes that I feel like we over communicate. Right. We're trying to update every last thing that we possibly can to make the to make the process as good as possible. But getting that communication back from the property management companies and the maintenance supervisors that they have or technicians is really, really difficult. And it's hard for us to do our job if we don't have that open line of communication.

Pete Neubig: So, a couple of things there that are great points. So, a vendor agreement and having like an onboarding, almost like when we onboard a new owner, we should onboard a new vendor and almost have an orientation. Right. And the vendor agreement should have things like, hey, like not only just go do the job, but like never talk bad about the property management firm to your clients, to the residents. That's right. Don't point out all these different things that are wrong with the property. Like you can you can take notes of them, but don't let the resident know. Let the property manager know type deal. It should also talk about getting paid. Right. Like they should get like when do I when do I invoice? What should an invoice look like? When do I and then what's the payment look like? Is it net 30? Is it net 15? I'm guessing maintenance guys like to get paid like right away.

Patrick Jacobs: They do. They do. As soon as possible. Right.

Pete Neubig: But it's also should be like, hey, when you do a job, we expect an invoice in the next seven days or something like that. Right. I mean, one of the one of the big challenges I had, my property management firm is I had I had one guy as a plumber. He's great. Got the work done. But he would invoice me like six months later. And I'm like, dude, I don't even manage that property anymore. I can't I can't pay you. So I think, you know, having the rules of the game to the vendor agreement is paramount. So, I like that a lot.

Patrick Jacobs: You know, let's talk about invoicing just for a second. We invoice. Our rule of thumb is within 24 hours. And we. Boy, I couldn't even imagine trying to invoice something months out. Right. That just doesn't. But knowing those terms. Yes. Because with property, with large institutional homeowners, they own all the properties. They're the ones that are paying you. And a lot of times they can pay much faster than a smaller PM. Right. But because a smaller PM, let's say they have 200 doors, they might have 10 or 20 or 30 different owners that has those 200 doors in each one of those different owners does something a little bit different than the other.

Pete Neubig: Believe it or not, brother, it's more like 100 owners for those 200 doors.

Patrick Jacobs: Wow. OK. All right. So those hundred owners that you have, they all pay differently. They all have different expectations on their properties. I also think that the that the property management company should have a set of rules of engagement with them as well. What do we expect from the owner to be to be able to make our jobs easier? But go back to the invoicing just for a second. Having that laid out to where someone that is coming to do business or do maintenance services for you, having that laid out for them right away allows them to know what level of expectation is there. And it's not a surprise, right? Oh, well, I didn't know when it's they were requesting payment. And it's like, well, it's not going to be until the end of the month. Like we said, well, I didn't hear that. Right. If it's in writing, then it's in writing.

Pete Neubig: Yep. Now let's talk about communication real quick, because you said communication is key. One, one, one of the feedback, some of the feedback I got from some of our vendors is that we send too many, too many things. The vendor can't get anything done because he's like he's getting blown up and he's like trying to, you know, trying to get stuff accomplished. So, what is there? Is there kind of a rule of thumb like, hey, send me stuff in the morning and in the evening or like I get a new tickets or whatever, like we're going to send it to you when they come available. But like getting updates and stuff like is there. Have you ever had any challenges with having your guys have too many, you know, too much communication, too many people asking because sometimes we used to have like three maintenance coordinators. And again, that was a problem on our part. But all three would literally email or message the same vendor on the same one time. Yeah.

Patrick Jacobs: Yeah. So, if any of our technicians and vendors was on this call with me, they would say, absolutely, we get too many, too much communication. So, does that happen? Yes. What's interesting about us is that we have a full team here that's able to handle those communications and they're broken. Those teams are broken down by location. Right. So, another thing is really helpful that I would urge any PM that is out there is to have an operating system of some sort for your maintenance. If that's using property milled, if that's using, oh, gosh. Sorry. Some of the other ones that are out at Folio is one. We are well versed in all of those different types of portals. As a matter of fact, on a daily basis, we might go into 15 different portals in order for us to manage our workflows. So, but having a portal to be able to communicate back and forth because the emails, I'm not saying that it's old school, but it really, truly is emailing a work order somebody. And then we have to send the quote back in email. The thread becomes 20 different messages have been on this. It's hard to locate what was originally said. When you have a portal to operate in, then it's so much easier for us to communicate back and forth because I can put messages in that portal just for that specific maintenance request. And I can communicate to that maintenance coordinator. It's easy for them to go in there and to look at that and then to be able to get back to us in a timely fashion about whatever issues we might be having. And it's the same for us. It makes that communication, I think, just so much that it's more open.

Pete Neubig: I love that. I was a big property mail user and still think very highly of those guys. And you're right. Everything is in one like one place. Yep. Right. What are vendors think about taking the before and after photos? Not a big deal. Big deal. Just kind of SOP standard operating procedure.

Patrick Jacobs: Well, you know, I guess as the years have gone on, you know, Shamrock Property Maintenance has actually been in existence. February 6th was our 20th anniversary. Oh, congrats. When we started 20 years ago, it was a digital Kodak camera that you put two batteries in. You carry it around in your truck. You had these rechargeable batteries in there. You had an SD card and sometimes you were swapping those out and things. Now it's transitioned to where, well, now I've got a cell phone. I can take all the pictures. Then it transitioned to now I've got a mobile app that I can take all the pictures with. It has it is really, truly evolved into just a this is the cost of doing business is that you have to take these pictures. Now, before, during and afters, we're real sticklers on that. As a matter of fact, we even take it another level. We make our guys flag the photos to tell us the before, during and after of each different thing that's being done because we it a simple maintenance request, you know, replace a faucet. OK, that's a few pictures, right? But if we're doing replace a faucet, repair flooring, cut a tree outside, whatever, you're doing multiple things. You need to kind of separate those photos. It's become pretty standard procedure.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. What about video? You guys, do you guys doing any video yet or is it all just or just before and after photos?

Patrick Jacobs: Well, we do video sometimes. We do a lot of damage stuff.

Pete Neubig: Like if you see a truck in that, got it.

Patrick Jacobs: Yeah, got it.

Pete Neubig: And again, all that stuff is if you could put it all in one spot like the meld or the folio makes things so much easier.

Patrick Jacobs: Well, and to touch on the photos just for a second for those for those companies out there that maybe are still using email and things like that. One of the struggles that you have with the photos that you take with, you know, your iPhone here, right? The picture is too big. It is it's got the megapixels on it are so large that then you have to take and you have to put it into some sort of a system that makes the picture smaller and things like that. Our operating system takes the pictures down to a four hundred by six hundred. And then we can make it into a PDF and we can send it to you and put one on there or two pictures or four, whatever it is. But that slows the process down when a gentleman or a maintenance tech is trying to send you the pictures or a company is trying to send them to you. And it's just through email, because the email may not allow you to attach more than just a couple of pictures.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Patrick Jacobs: In some ways.

Pete Neubig: Now you have to send like 14 emails.

Patrick Jacobs: Correct. And once again, that thread just grows and grows and it makes it more and more difficult.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Let's talk about quotes.

Patrick Jacobs: Yep.

Pete Neubig: Right. So, you know, one of the things that I that I always just like, oh, man, you know, I got to send somebody out to get a quote. Then I got to send another person out because the client doesn't like the quote. How do you guys like quotes? Would they like ban of your existence or like how do vendors feel about quotes?

Patrick Jacobs: So quoting is we could we could touch on that for the whole entire half an hour. Right. But let's just really break this down is once again, having good information on the work order. We also have to realize that tenants are the one that are giving the description of what's going on in the house. And in no disrespect to said tenant, but they may not have an idea of what even is happening. Right. They're still trying to learn that. Having that good information on the front side helps to, quote, be more precise and more direct. We you know, we want to stay clean, safe and functional. Right. Those are the three main things that we're looking for in that property for the folks that are living there. So, we're trying to base our quotes off of that. Our quotes sometimes very robust and large because of situations that are at the property. Yes. But if we know what an owner or what a PM is really looking for and we get good detailed instructions on the front side, then it's easy for us to submit that quote. Right now, we're quoting anywhere between, I don't know, three and four hundred jobs a week that we're quoting. And in that process, we have some pricing that we go by that were kind of said, all right, this is what we're going to charge for all that. But another thing to speed that process up for quotes is that we can sit down with that PM and we can put together a tailored pricing structure for them that we've agreed on, that they feel like they can sell to their owners. And then it just makes it makes that process so much easier.

Pete Neubig: Do you have to go to the house to quote on majority of this stuff or you can quote it right from your office with the information that you get?

Patrick Jacobs: Boy, I never like to quote with just the information that I get, because once again, I don't know if the information I'm getting is 100 percent fully correct. Right.

Pete Neubig: So, you guys are making appointments. You're going out to the property and you're basically doing a quote. If the quotes under the not to exceed. Do you guys try to get on like on site approval? Like, hey, this quotes for 300 bucks, but you're not to exceed 500. Like, can I just knock it out?

Patrick Jacobs: Well, most of the time, because of that not to exceed, they've already allowed us to do that. So, they set the parameter. If it's at 500 and 300, we just do the work when we're not even calling for approval. If it's over the 500, let me use a good example, because this is this is probably one of the number one issues for any PM that's looking at this. Right. Hot water. OK, plumbing is a huge issue. It's our largest part of the business that we do. We get their hot water heaters out. I've only got a five-hundred-dollar NTE. I'm trying to get it on site because I'm dealing with a single mom that's got two kids at home there. She's got to give them baths tonight and get them ready for school in the morning. She wants to have that hot water as soon as possible. It would be tragic for us to leave it. I will tell you that sometimes I just approve it. Just tell them to go ahead and do it without even getting that on site approval, because I work on that end of the backside. I just want to do my due diligence. But having that ability to get that on site and actually being able to talk to somebody or give me parameters, because that goes back to once again, if we have some agreed upon pricing with each other and I can show you what it's going to cost for that, then that can speed that process up a whole lot and save so much in between time.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Again, it goes back to the vendor agreement. Right. So, you should be able to determine the agreement. What is actually what is actually an emergency? Right. Because hot water, in theory, under property code needs to be fixed. I know each state is different, but most states are like hot water is kind of a fire alarm. Like it's got to be it's got to be fixed and it's an emergency. And so, if you have an agreement with the vendors and hey, if it's hot water, it's an emergency, then they're going to go ahead and do it. But you also have to have on the onboarding of the owner like, hey, if it's hot water going out, we're just going to go ahead and get it fixed. We're not going to go do three quotes and all that good stuff. Now, you keep saying you keep saying having an agreed upon price. Do you have like a pricing book that you work with? OK, because a lot of vendors don't because, man, like a lot of a lot of maintenance is out there, it's not like it's not cut and dry. No.

Patrick Jacobs: Well, OK, so our pricing book is not all inclusive. There's no way for it to be all inclusive because, you know, you sent me five water heater work orders this week and all five of them were completely different. I was able to drain one and fix it. I was able to...

Pete Neubig: One's in the attic, one's in the garage.

Patrick Jacobs: Correct. So, it's not cookie cutter. But having that pricing book right now, I think we have over 300 different maintenance items that we have a price for that we can provide to a PM that are negotiable. Right. We feel like that these are solid prices. But I hear all the time that pricing is just all over the board. It's just and we're trying to really drill down. We've worked on this extremely hard to drill. Excuse me, to drill down and to make it as affordable as possible. So, we're willing to meet with that PM and sit down and have that conversation and say, what do you really need us for? And here's what we can do. We'll also tell you what we can't do.

Pete Neubig: I think a lot of challenges that we have with vendors get solved with this onboarding thing. So, I keep going back to it because really, I mean, all the challenges we have with our owners, we saw the great many of them when we had the onboarding with them, right? A real good onboarding. So, what are some of the things that a property manager company should ask a new vendor before they onboard them?

Patrick Jacobs: Oh, well, you know, the old adage, don't have anybody work for you that doesn't have insurance, right? I and let's go back to the Chuck in a truck. In a lot of states, you know, you don't need workers comp if you work for yourself and things like that. But I think that, folks, there's got to be some requirements. I think insurance requirements and asking what they have on the front side, asking them if they're fluent in the operating system that you use or if they're even tech savvy. Let's be real about this. Maintenance guys, a lot of times are not tech savvy, right? They really are. They are they they're skilled. They know how to do things. But technology is not something that they've ever used. Now, you put a circular saw or, you know, a pipe wrench in their hand and they'll go to work and do things that are amazing. What happens, Pete, is that sometimes this gets so cluttered and so confused and there's so many hoops to jump through that there's a lot of guys out there that are well versed in this that just won't do it anymore or won't even get into it because they're like, there's too many requirements. Right. I think it goes back to, you know, there was an old saying, keep it simple, stupid. You know, it's and there's a lot to be said about that. We try to do that. We try to simplify it for the PM, but we're also trying to simplify it for the gentleman that's going out there to actually do the work. And if you can, there's got to be a fine line in there because the technology or some of the things that are being asked of them sometimes is just not conducive for them to be successful.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. What are some things that you ask if a property management company is trying to onboard you? What are some of the things that you're asking them?

Patrick Jacobs: First of all, is, you know, how many doors do they have? How many maintenance orders are they dealing with on a monthly basis? How many have said maintenance orders is being done by an internal maintenance tech if they have that and what's their level of expectation from us? Let's set that from the very beginning because it goes back to the rules of engagement. If I know that, then we're good. And then one of the one of the main things that I like to ask from them is that and it's a pretty direct question is, is how many maintenance vendors have you used in the last year and how many of them are still with you? Because not all work is good work. I don't I don't mean to single anybody out, but it's just maybe we're not a fit for you? Maybe you're not a fit for us. I would rather know that on the front side from a good interview process to have that conversation, to know if we can, if we are going to be a good fit for one another, because we go back to those hundred owners, right? There's a hundred different people that we have to please through that PM and the pricing sometimes based off of what the level of expectations is, is sometimes just not conducive for us. It just really isn't.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And then do you talk about like payment, though, as well?

Patrick Jacobs: Like, yes, we do. That's one of the that's one of the main questions. Michael, our CFO says, you know, we have to know what the payment terms are.

Pete Neubig: Because you're paying your people to go out there. A lot of times you're paying for material and all that stuff, and then then they hold it for, you know, 30, 60, 90, whatever it is like.

Patrick Jacobs: There's many, many, many times that our I pride myself we're on a 30-day net schedule. We pay every week to our guys and gals that are out there to our vendors and that we are turning that over as quickly as possible to them. And we're lucky to be able to do that through, you know, some unique relationships that we have in the banking world and that we have built over the years. But that is a big question for us because that determines the amount of cash flow. But I will also tell you that the amount of time that you're going to hold the payment from the vendor dictates on what they're going to charge you. There's a cost to that.

Pete Neubig: Got it. OK, so it might not be in late fees, but it might actually be in. Hey, we're going to we're going to increase this on the on the next whatever work orders, whatever, because they're not a great client, right? Like we always say, if I have D clients in the product manager world, I don't just fire them. I just increase their price until they decide they want to leave.

Patrick Jacobs: It's the same for us. We have walked away. We'll honor any commitments we have. We also tell them we'll honor our one-year warranty on any of the work that we do because we offer that on everything that we do. I'll honor that even if after I backed away, because it's still my it's still my work order.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Patrick Jacobs: And if there's a problem with it, then I'm going to take care of it. But, you know, that that comes back down to good communication. Good communication can solve that. I think that any problems that happens between a vendor and anyone that's out there is that if we communicate it well, we can get through this.

Pete Neubig: You know, one thing I learned early on when I started my firm was that cheaper isn't always cheaper. And so, I was the guy that got the truck in the truck and I learned a few lessons. Number one was they don't have insurance a lot of times. And if you're not getting the insurance from the vendors and keeping up with it, that's something that we supposed to do. But a lot of us don't because we're so busy or we forget about it. It's not in our calendar. And you don't have an onboarding system, right? The onboarding system is get the insurance and all that good stuff. So, I learned that the hard way. The second thing I also learned is they they'll say that they that they mean that they have like a one year, you know, where well, they maintain their work. Can't find them. Right. A lot of times. And the third thing I learned is a really hard way. I had a work order one time. I forget what it was. It wasn't a very, very big work order. The vendor was driving out there and he never goes, never gets there. And I'm like, what the hell? The residents calling me, yelling at me and everything. I'm like, what the hell happened to Lawrence? And I find I think maybe Lawrence is in a ditch somewhere. Maybe got into a car accident. Now, Lawrence ended up getting a call on the way there for a tile job. That was going to be three days of work. And he made a left turn. That's it. And next thing you know, the other thing I also learned is like I got something done. I didn't go with the plumber. I went with the handyman, the junk and chuck in a truck. He did the job. It worked for about five hours and then it stopped working again. He goes back out this time. He went back out, couldn't fix it. And then, you know, and then the third time he doesn't go back out. So, I had to go to plumber anyway. Meanwhile, he already got paid, you know, and I had to call the plumber. And that that's a tough conversation to have with your investor owner, who's like, wait a second, you know, you sent this guy out there and I'm like, yeah, I try to do cheap. And, you know, so sometimes it's better to go a little bit more expensive. But using the vendor that will use the mill has the insurance will warranty the work will go out there when they say they're going out there. Right. How many times they say they're going out there? They don't show up. We'll do the before after photos and videos. We'll give you line-item bids. We'll give you a pricing sheet ahead of time. Like these are all important items that it does cost a little more to get that. But man, I think in the long haul, it's actually a little cheaper.

Patrick Jacobs: I will. You know, this is this is one of the one of my biggest. Oh, one of the one of the biggest topics that is that that comes up a lot when I talk to folks is, you know, are you actually going to show up? I can't tell you how many times that we have talked to folks that we win jobs just because we showed up. It happens all the time. That's that is 90 percent of the battle. After you show up, you know, we can we can make things happen. It's it also, though, comes from that property management company setting a level of expectations for that, but also being good stewards towards that vendor is because knowing the level of expectation or the level, not expectation, excuse me, the level of skill in that vendor and who we're going to send out there, are they able to actually do that? Do I would check references, man. I mean, before I send anybody, we do. We check our guys that we hire and we make sure that they can actually do this type of work. Send me some pictures of work that you have done before. Send me the phone number to people you have. Do a little bit of research on this, because in and I would assume just like us, we can lose a client so fast because of a poor service.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Patrick Jacobs: And you can lose an owner investor so quickly because of a shoddy job that was done by someone. And, you know, I just really think that it's that important for us to make sure that we're giving a good product and showing up. But also, once again, you do get what you pay for. Now, I think our pricing is extremely competitive across the board in the industry. I can't say it on here, but I'm going to tell you, we just dropped our water heater pricing to a level that I know is absurdly competitive. Right. But we need to have those conversations on that front side. But we do show up and we do make sure that it's being taken care of. We'll answer the phone. And if you tell us that there's an issue, we'll go out and fix it.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Patrick Jacobs: That simple.

Pete Neubig: Same thing for property manager companies. You know, answer the phone. You get you get a lot of business.

Patrick Jacobs: That's all you get. A lot of times, that's all it is.

Pete Neubig: You guys answer the phone, show up, just answer the phone. Yeah. Well, Patrick, I appreciate you, man. It's always good catching up. This was this was this was good insight to how maintenance vendors think. What you guys are semi-national. What areas do you guys service?

Patrick Jacobs: So, we're based out of the state of Tennessee. We're in a I’m really proud to tell you this. Um, We're in a small community in western, Tennessee. Well, we're almost in middle Tennessee Um, it's called um, Henry County. Um, but our hometown here is Paris Tennessee like Paris France even got an Eiffel tower. It's an awesome community. We're right off of Kentucky Lake. It's absolutely beautiful here Um, I I'm so happy that this is where our base is So, uh, we service Memphis Nashville and Knoxville in the state of Tennessee We're in Georgia pretty much just Atlanta. We also service Florida Jacksonville Tampa in Orlando um, we service A small area of Mississippi just south of Memphis We're also in Kansas City Missouri and then We expanded it in Texas at Late last year we Serviced the areas of Dallas San Antonio and Houston So real proud of that. We're looking at going into Oklahoma this year but you know, that's going to be determined by some things but You know, I'm real proud of the fact of where we're where we're located at And if somebody, uh was listening to this and they want to reach out to you and learn more about your services How's the what's the best way? Uh, well, um, they can give us a phone call and our number is 731-642-0899 And a member of our team can speak with them. We can also be found on the interweb by going to our website shamrockpropertymaintenance.com And or excuse me, the LLC is not in that just shamrockpropertymaintenance.com and then you know, uh I can always be reached on LinkedIn. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn and you can just reach out to me and I can connect you with a member of our team

Pete Neubig: awesome, and if you're not a member of NARPM go to narpm.org Or give them a call at 800-782-3452 And if you need a maintenance coordinator then shoot me an email or just go to our website vpmsolutions.com or pete@vpmsolutions.com and we have Maintenance coordinator courses on there and we actually have some software property mill courses are on there as well So you can find a really good certified maintenance coordinator. Patrick, Thanks so much for being here today.

Patrick Jacobs: Hey, can I bring up one more thing before you close one more thing before we close? We are part of the vendor Nexus program with Property Meld So it's really easy for a property management company That is working with Property Meld to connect with us in any of the locations I gave you can go right in there and just connect with us Then we can have an open meeting have a discussion about our services I'm, really proud of that fact that we're part of that program So it makes it really easy for the PMs to find us.

Pete Neubig: That's great And VPM is part of that as well. So, you could go and find both of us on there.

Patrick Jacobs: Awesome.

Pete Neubig: Thanks, man.

Patrick Jacobs: Thank you.