A Podcast | Robert and Tony Locke

Pete Neubig: Welcome back everybody. And so we have a kind of a different show. I have two guests on. I got Robert and Tony Locke. Normally, I have one guest on. So, we're going to have these guys fight. We're going to arm wrestle for time. Robert, Tony, thank you so much for being here, guys. Appreciate you all.

Tony Locke: Thanks, Pete.

Robert Locke: Thanks, Pete. Appreciate it.

Pete Neubig: All right, so, Tony, you and I just literally met at NARPM Broker/Owner earlier this year. Robert, you and I go back a couple of years, a few years back, and you're one of the OGs, right? So, let's talk a little bit about your journey and then how you decided to create Rent Recovery. And then we can talk a little bit about Monica Gilroy, who's also a part of this. And she's a huge NARPM advocate, but love to hear a little bit of your backstory, Robert.

Robert Locke: All right. Well, Betty and I start buying houses in the late 70s. In 1980, we decided to start managing not just our own professionally, but taking on properties from other owners. Fast forward to the 90s when tenants moved out of our houses, you know, we'd turn them over to debt collection companies like everybody seems to do. And, you know, we didn't get a very good result. And so in 2000, with Monica's help, we started post-move out collections. We just started down that learning curve. We were at about 300 doors and we had tenants moving out on our properties, leaving behind balances of $2000, $5000, $8,000. And we got tired of waiting around for consumer debt collection companies. So we kind of decided to figure it out ourselves. And Monica's a creditor's rights lawyer, so she was able to give us a lot of guidance. It took us 4 or 5, six years to kind of learn the business. And we collected 40, 50, $60,000 a year on our tenants. We never collected for other managers. We just... we were just going through a learning curve, trying to figure out how to do that business. And then that bumped up to 90, 100,000, 110,000 bucks a year, and then it jumped up to 120 to $150,000 a year. And so we figured it out, and we just didn't have to use the debt collection companies anymore. And in 2015, when we sold out to Coldwell Banker, they made me sign an agreement to stop doing it. They were afraid of property management. They were terrified of debt collection. Because anytime you step into the post, move out chasing tenants for the money, you're in a debt collection space. And Google Banker was terrified of that. So after that period of time ran its course. Monica came to me one day and said, Robert, I managers constantly. You come up and say, when are you and Robert going to start doing post move out collections for other managers? And that's when we resurrected Rent Recovery about or, you know, late 23, early 24. And so we resurrected a business that we were already had 20 years of experience in.

Pete Neubig: Alright. Before we get into Rent Recovery, you were managing properties in the in the early 80s. What did that look like? Was there even a third party management industry back then, like NARPM didn't start 'til the 90s. From my understanding? Like what did that look like compared to what it is today? Is it just crazy or what?

Robert Locke: Tony and I were laughing about this the other day, because I remember sitting around my office, around the conference table and. And just This. This will make you laugh. We printed 800 owner statements. We printed 800 owner checks, and we sit around a conference table, about eight of us, trying to make sure we got the right check with the right owner's statement. Right. And we printed 800 mail labels and put them on envelopes and hopefully got the right owner statement and check in the right envelope. Didn't always have that happen. Put it in boxes and carry it to the post office. This was before PROMAS, which was kind of the first property management software out there. And so this is when we were mailing 800 owner statements, hard copy mail, you know, to 800 owners before the software industry kind of came into this space. Crazy, Crazy. Showed every house. No remote showing.

Pete Neubig: I'm going to do a podcast where we're going to go back in time, and we're going to pretend to be property managers back in 1980 one of these days.

Robert Locke: Oh my gosh.

Pete Neubig: So, Tony, tell me, uh, tell me, how did you get involved in, uh, in, um, credit recovery, red recovery. Sorry.

Tony Locke: Sure. So, uh, elevator pitch, man, I was Army chaplain ten years, and then I pastored 20 years, and then I was always involved in my dad's business because I'm in tech. I started a nonprofit and ran a whole bunch of other people's ideas into the market for money.

Pete Neubig: Being a nonprofit used to asking for money, right?

Tony Locke: Uh, well, so I would take other people's ideas branded, prayed, put them in charge of it, and then run it as a nonprofit idea for their company, for PR value, and for volunteer for their staff. And we would do special things in communities. Believing that for people sitting at waffle House have better ideas for change in their community than for people in Washington. That was our slogan.

Pete Neubig: I agree with that, brother.

Robert Locke: So I was really involved in tech. And when I was looking for an exit in my early 50s, I was like, dad, what ideas do you have? And he was just coming out from underneath that...

Pete Neubig: NDA?

Tony Locke: Yeah. The NDA. Right. So it was, good timing. And we've made a lot of progress in the last two and a half, three years.

Pete Neubig: All right. So let's let's talk about this Rent Recovery deal. Because when I owned Empire, it was a huge pain in the butt, right? We get residents, they get evicted, or they break a lease. Right. And then you charge them, and then they kind of stay on your books. Right? And they're just always there. And finally like, oh, crud, I'll just write it off and eventually you find some kind of credit debt collections company. They want to take 40, 50% and they don't collect anything. I mean, I think I've gotten like three checks for like $100 or something like that in like the five years that I or the 7 or 8 years that I owned, owned empire. So tell me, Robert, how does it actually work? So I'm a property manager and I have a resident that gets evicted and they owe me, let's just say five grand. What's the next steps? Do I have to wait so many days? Like, you know, you have to wait so many days before you can actually send them to quote-unquote, collections, like some kind of give me the timeline and step by step on what that looks like.

Robert Locke: Yeah. Well, first of all, property managers have this instinctive idea that after the tenant moves out, that it's kind of a reasonable idea that you ought to be able to chase them for a while under the rights of your lease, leaks. In other words, you got a lease. They owe you money. And and and so we all feel like...

Pete Neubig: They moved out on the fourth, I want my. Money on the fifth. Or they got evicted on the fourth. I want my money on the fifth. Right. Like that.

Robert Locke: Yeah. Of course, of course. And and debt collection is a completely different space in the economy. Different software, different trade associations, different contracts, different processes. So it's kind of a dark space because there's so many regulations, fair debt collection practices act, fair credit Reporting act, telephone Compliance Act. I mean, it's not something that property managers really have any training in. They don't really know the space. And the thing that they have to kind of be aware of is the day after move out. Listen, the day after, move out. The right to pursue money in their lease dissolves and they step into this very dark space called debt collection.

Pete Neubig: So what you're saying then, is a lot of private managers unknowingly are doing debt collection without realizing it. And they have a whole new set of rules that they have to abide by.

Robert Locke: Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: Am today's years old when I learned that.

Robert Locke: Well, I learned it the hard way because it crowned. We started pursuing tenets in 1980. It's kind of our we're going to figure this out. Okay. And with Monica on my arm, who who's 30 years litigating in this space. So you can't do better than Monica Gilroy in this space, right? Her clients are banks, mortgage companies. Anybody that's owed money.

Pete Neubig: NARPM. NARPM is a client of hers now. Yeah.

Robert Locke: Yeah. So she's kind of moved into property management because when we met, we started doing three hour classes in Atlanta and training the property management industry because I've done it 20 years and she was a litigation lawyer. So it was a good combination. Then I got her co-teaching with me on the national stage at NARPM. NARPM fell in love with her. So now she general counsel for NARPM. So I kind of brought her into this industry. And her first experience was with Crown. And we got our company up to about a thousand doors. Sold it off to Coldwell Banker from Mark Kreditor. They bought out Mark Kreditor. Then he introduced them to me and then they bought out Crown. Now they did it differently. They bought the company. They wanted the platform. They wanted the intellectual property.

Pete Neubig: Oh, they didn't just buy the contracts they actually bought. They bought the assets.

 

Robert Locke: They wanted to know how to do property management. And when they bought out Mark, he was. If you knew Mark's operation, he was really good at low end rental.

Pete Neubig: He. Oh, he was. Yeah, he was the.

Robert Locke: He was a master at it. And so after Coldwell Banker bought him out, they kind of realized that wasn't the model they were looking for. And so they came to crown our average rent back then was $1350. I know we would have 5 to 6 evictions a year and a thousand doors.

Pete Neubig: Well, what was Mark? What was Kreditor doing 5 to 6 a week?

Tony Locke: Oh 21 to 22%, according to him.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Robert Locke: Evictions are skips in Mark's model.

Pete Neubig: Alright. So now so Tony, take take me through the timeline. Okay. So, let's just say I have an eviction goes on and on June 5th, they they finally the writ disappears. They owe me three months rent and they owe me, you know, five grand. On June 6th, I'm now in his debt collector type of situation. So is it, the. So give me kind of like best practices. If I'm a property manager and I'm using Rent Recovery like let's let's just kind of go that route. So then kind of like say, okay, if you're not using Rent Recovery, this is what happens. Versus if using Rent Recovery this is what happens.

Tony Locke: Right? So the first thing you want to do is, is um, make make sure that you are tracking this tenant so that you can turn them over to me. You want to make sure that your move out inspection is done. Well, you want to make sure that your tenant ledger is updated and correct. You want to manage that security deposit transmittal form correctly. Um, all these issues become important paperwork that we're going to need in the process of collections. Okay.

Pete Neubig: So is it similar to all the paperwork I need for an eviction? Is it kind of very similar?

Tony Locke: It is, it is. But you need to make sure that it's all current, because when you give it, uh, when you give this tenant to us, we're going to, we're going to start a process and the process isn't, um, immediately report them to the credit bureaus. Um, our process is, um, mandated by federal law. And so the law is going to require that, first of all, we rightly identify them, uh, the bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax, they're not going to let us give them a tenant name and a debt without making sure that their Social Security number and their birth date and everything is correct. And then we have to start sending letters. We don't report them to the bureaus. We start sending letters, notification letters.

Pete Neubig: Okay. So, uh, pause there. Do you have to do I have to wait 30 days before I send it to you? Like I, I keep hearing like, oh, you got to wait at least 30 days before they can, like, make the payment. Is that part of the 30 days like or or is that or is that just me? I have this mindset that it doesn't really matter. You can send them over to collections at any time.

Tony Locke: Yeah. So you don't want to automate this process. You want to do this process intentionally, one tenant at a time. You want to have a policy that you keep and you want to do it thoughtfully. Um, Robert's got a better answer for this because we've recently, um, been talking about this with Monica. In the last week, we spent three hours in her office sort of dealing with this, uh, question on, um, you know, is it kind of like, uh, selling, is it kind of like repossessing a car? You know, you're making payments on a car, and then the day you lose the car, can the loan company keep coming after you for money? Um, or does it go into collections? So I'm going to let Robert kind of flesh that out.

Robert Locke: Yeah, well, it's reasonable. Every property manager wants to spend the first 30 or 60 days trying to get the tenant to pay them money without engaging a debt collector who's going to take half of it. So it's it's reasonable that you let a property manager go 30 days, 60 days, try to get the tenant to pay something, try to settle it before you turn it over to a debt collector. Okay, so everybody's got this. How long can I chase it before I turn it over to a Rent Recovery? And the problem is, nobody can really tell you there's no rule. So if you chase somebody for 60 days violating Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and that tenant goes to a lawyer, and the lawyer comes back after you and saying your debt collector and you violated Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and we're suing you. Well, in a sense, they're right, because the day the tenant moves out, you move into a debt collection space. Monica, defending the property manager, would say, but the manager has a reasonable period of time that they should be able to pursue the tenant before they turn it over to a debt collector. So nobody can really tell. Is it 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, so nobody can.

Pete Neubig: My understanding, my understanding was like, I have to hold it a period of time before I send it to a debt collector. You're saying no you can send to a debt collector. The next day, however good practices go, try to get the money in 30 days. Now.

Robert Locke: The most of the time, the law says you can't send them to the, uh, security deposit report for 30 days.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Robert Locke: So in most states, you move somebody out and you got 30 days to notify them if they owe money or send them a check. So there's that 30 days that certainly the property managers has a right under their lease to try to get them to pay some money. After that 30 days, it starts getting murky.

Pete Neubig: Right? Now the challenge is we all know this. Property managers are terrible at collecting money. I mean, there's probably a couple of percentage of of property managers that are really good at it. I can tell you that my property managers at Empire were terrible at it. Right. Just a different type of personality profile. So would you like okay. So I would probably get better results. And we know that once after 30 days goes the chances of collecting go down. Is that is that correct in the in your data?

Robert Locke: Sure. And we can go back three years. So think of it this way. The low hanging fruit are the tenants that have moved out in the last 12 months. That's the low hanging fruit. They kind of remember who you were. They got to remember they left owing something. But we've been very successful at going back three years. So it's pretty common too and the manager can just send us the database. Click click send us a CSV file. And that's all we need for 24, 23 and 22. But the success rate of collecting in 2022 tenants that moved out, compared to the success of collecting in 2024 tenants that have moved out changes. So the older.

Pete Neubig: 2025. Right, the ones that are just 30 days old that you're going to have a most probably the highest on that.

Robert Locke: Yeah. And here's a statistic at Crown when we did that in, if it was within the last six months, we were successful in the 72 to 75% range because we figured it out.

Robert Locke: That's great. Alright. So now let's say, Tony, I'm going to go back to you. I use Rent Recovery. June 15th, whatever. They're out there. You know, I sent them their report already. Maybe it's two weeks, maybe it's 30 days, or I want to send them to you right away. Or should I send the security deposit report first and then send them to you? What what is the way that you guys love it? Like it best?

Tony Locke: Uh, we like it. For you to wrap up the numbers before you send it to us, because we have to have a final number, a total that we're going to give to the credit bureaus. We have to send some letters. We have to wait. We have to send a letter. Wait 30 days. They have 30 days to dispute it. Right? These are the these are the laws that we are governed by. So it's not fast, but we have a file that we upload to Equifax, TransUnion, and, we get your portfolio. We put it into this template, and then once a month, we send it to the bureaus. And so, you have to have that number solidified, and it it can't be changing, you know, because you. You'll get in trouble, we'll get in trouble.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. You have to do your move out process your eviction process, tie it up in a bow. Great. And instead of making phone calls to try to collect, I just send it over to you. And you. Your team sends the letters, sends the phone calls and does all that stuff.

Tony Locke: If you're making phone calls to collect, you're rolling the dice in Vegas, hoping not to crap out and have a tenant with a lawyer who knows the law, who says you're acting like a debt collector and you're a property manager, and you haven't followed all the little things that you're supposed to do. Every time you try to collect, you're taking a chance. And so if you have a lot of people you're trying to collect on as a property manager and you're doing it 60 days, 90 days, you're increasing your risk. If you want to know the limits of the risk you should be taking, ask your, you know, company who has insurance over your property management company to say, how long should I give myself freedom to go after this debt on my own before I turn it over to a collections agent? They're going to give you a shorter window than you're probably comfortable with on your own. You want to send that to us. You want to start with a CSV file and export out of your software. You're onboarding with Rent Recovery, we get 22, 23, 19, you know, 2024. Um, first part of 2025, we put those into a portfolio with your name and we start the process. It's really easy.

Pete Neubig: And then after that, as they come up, I just send them to you. I don't have to.

Tony Locke: One at a time. One at a time. Yeah. We do a monthly phone call, uh, to talk to you about where your portfolio is, uh, who's making payments, who's signing notes, uh, where, uh, your, um, uh, you know, all your files are. And then we, uh, gather the new ones like once.

Robert Locke: Pete, Pete, let me tell you what Tony did, though, because Tony comes at this from a technology standpoint in our system. Uh, think of think at AppFolio, Rentvine. Think of that kind of model. Tony's got it set up to where you, as the manager, have a portal. Just like an owner has a portal in the Rentvine.

Pete Neubig: Mhm.

Robert Locke: And the tenant has a portal into the software. So we use Rentvine to manage the money that the tenant pays. So if you might have ten tenants making payments. So this month you as the manager get an owner statement with a check just exactly the way you would with Rentvine or AppFolio. So we use Rentvine to collect the money from the tenant and pass it over to the owner. But that's not the real crux, it's what Tony built. You can go into our website. You come up with a manager dashboard and over on the right every tenant in your system is identified right there. You can double click on any one of them and open up a tenant dashboard and see a archive of every communication we've had with the tenant to date.

Pete Neubig: And then do you have a dashboard that tells you how much money you've put out to Rent Recovery, how much was actually collected? And I could see that percentage and I could see all that good stuff.

Robert Locke: Not we we're not that far yet.

Tony Locke: But we do a report.

Robert Locke: Yeah. We're only a year and a half into this.

Pete Neubig: I know it's amazing.

Robert Locke: So I can give you metrics of what we did at Crown. But remember, the big shift is that we're now doing it for other property managers. And you and I used to think managers kind of all do it the same way. No they don't. And so we're our learning curve is how to deal with the tenant with section eight houses and the tenant with student housing or the manager with student housing and a manager with single family and some multifamily. And a manager with single family and mobile homes. It is unbelievable the the what it has taken for us in the last year and a half to figure out how to deal with all these crazy property managers that all do it differently.

Pete Neubig: So you guys basically created a process, figured it out and uh, have have really good results. And so now it's like, if I'm a property manager, I don't have to worry about it. I just hand it over to you guys and you guys take care of it. What's that split. Because normally it's a pretty it's like a split. Do you guys work off a split? Is it a monthly fee? What's the what's the what's the you know the the charges look like.

Robert Locke: Yeah. It's 50/50. It's the same as a traditional debt collection company. But here's the big difference. Property managers have not embraced this idea of post-move out collection for decades.

Pete Neubig: Oh. Agreed. Agreed.

Robert Locke: Because. Because there's no money in it. Think about this, Pete. When you go out and collect $5,000 from a tenant. Most of it is unpaid rent and property damage above the security deposit. Now, whose money is that? It's the owner's money. You're an agent for the owner. So if you collect 5000 bucks, 4500 belongs to the owner. You get chump change.

Pete Neubig: All right, I gotta ask you.

Robert Locke: We figured out what we figured out eight years into our model is how to get the owner to release that account so that you can go out and collect $5,000 and keep it all.

Pete Neubig: Uh, so I was going to ask you that because I think in our PMA, we had a clause and approved by an attorney, Texas attorney that, um, any money that was outstanding over so many days, we would get a percentage of it regardless of what it was earmarked for. So I'm guessing that's kind of something that you that you guys now do you have to make an addendum or an amendment to the PMA?

Robert Locke: We have a whole list of enhancements that Monica and I have developed over the last 20 years. Language you can put in your management agreement, language you can put in your rental agreement to kind of lock this all down.

Pete Neubig: That alone is worth the price of admission.

Tony Locke: I mean, that's really where the secret sauce is to use to use. Uh.

Pete Neubig: Do you guys have to different language for different states, or do you guys have universal language?

Robert Locke: No. That for this particular issue post-move out collections. It's not the states really don't address it in their landlord tenant.

Robert Locke: It's more federal.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Got it.

Robert Locke: Yeah. And remember remember federal law. Trumps state law. Yeah. So if this is debt collection law, doesn't matter what the state law says.

Pete Neubig: It doesn't matter, by the state and by the fed.

Tony Locke: Nice. No, I was just going to add that we're talking about Monica Gilroy putting together little snippets and paragraphs and addendums, so that, you can, um, do this in a way that you make a lot of money so that you, as a property management company, are not, uh, getting collections for someone else. You're getting it for yourself. This is, um, part of the intellectual property that we bring to the table. It's Monica Gilroy's brilliance and Robert's experience and knowledge of this industry. To put the property manager in a position. So when they're bringing in, let's say again, the company, the first company that did this at 300 doors when it was bringing in over 100,000 a year, so 300 doors, 100,000 a year, that was the number that was sustainable. With what we're talking about.

Pete Neubig: Got, I'm going to ask I'm going to I'm going to throw a curveball here. Um, at Empire. Believe it or not, I had a lot of owners that we used to allow to go negative. I know, not the not the best practice, but you gotta get stuff paid. You gotta get stuff done, and we all fall into the trap. And then the owner, you know, properties vacant three months. You're paying electric bills, they fire you. They never make a contribution. Can I use Rent Recovery for owner recovery?

Robert Locke: Absolutely. Here's the difference. Here's the difference. Tenants cannot afford to hire a lawyer to fight you. Owners can. So it's three times harder to succeed with owners than it is to succeed with tenants.

Pete Neubig: Interesting.

Robert Locke: In other words, I can get tenants to settle and make payments much easier than I can an owner. So if I put my thumb on the credit score of an owner. Remember, he's a wealthy real estate baron, isn't he? He owns more houses than he can afford to live in. Yes. Right.

Pete Neubig: You and I will disagree.

Robert Locke: He knows a lawyer. Tenants are the vulnerable ones. They're the ones that are much easier to deal with.

Pete Neubig: Man, I gotta tell you, that floors me. Because my experience was different. I was able to get more money from the owners than I could for the residents, because the owners cared about their credit reporting. And everybody today got an attorney on in their in their five. My favorite.

Tony Locke: You got Monica Gilroy if you got Rent Recovery.

Pete Neubig: That's right. There is again price permission.

Tony Locke: That's the golden ticket man I mean come on Monica Gilroy as your attorney.

Pete Neubig: Monica, you better be listening to this. Big kudos.

Tony Locke: I'm telling you.

Robert Locke: Here's what happened. Pete, when we did this on our own for 15 years. Okay. Tony. Robert. My assistant, Denise. Okay. And when we restarted it, when we resurrected it, Monica said, I want to be part of this. I want to be an owner. I want to be one of the founders. I want in on this. So it's kind of cool to have a 35 year veteran in the business that knows exactly what you do. And a 30 year veteran trial lawyer who is general counsel for NARPM.

Pete Neubig: And Monica, must have been the trial lawyer when she was like ten years old, because she don't look a day over 40 and she's doing it for 30 years.

Tony Locke: You're a smart man, Pete.

Pete Neubig: All right. Guys, so, I appreciate your time. We're going to take a quick commercial break. We're going to come back with a lightning round, and this will be interesting. We're gonna do a lightning round with multiple people. Alright, guys, we'll be right back after this.

Robert Locke: All right.

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back everybody. We got the Lockes. Robert and Tony Locke. They're going to get into the lightning round. We're going to do an abbreviated one because we have both of you guys answer this stuff. Okay. Alright, Tony, you first. Uh, what is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in business?

Tony Locke: In business? Just general business. I would tell them to get.

Pete Neubig: My own business.

Tony Locke: Get, uh, a good, uh, consultant. Um, there are people with industry knowledge that you don't know, that you don't know. Make sure that you're surrounding yourself with the the people with that industry knowledge who can, um, connect you with all the stuff that's going to make your business scale faster.

Pete Neubig: Brilliant, I love it. I actually, when I started Empire, I actually hired a business coach because I didn't even know about the industry, so very similar. But I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't speak business yet. And he translated for me, which is nice. Robert, what about you? What's one piece of advice you give someone just starting out in business?

Robert Locke: I have the I have the advantage of having a couple of minutes to think about it. So here's my piece of advice. It's astounding to me, Peter, how many people are not members of NARPM and they're trying to learn property management by the, you know, suspenders. I mean, they're just doing it out of the out of their hip pocket. And that what what I learned from NARPM, what I learned by listening to audio tapes 35 years ago of Dave Sheets, Dave Holts, How to make money in property management. I realized, man, these NARPM people, they got some knowledge. I better join this group.

Pete Neubig: All right. Robert, does pineapple belong on pizza?

Robert Locke: Say that again.

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Robert Locke: Absolutely. Are you kidding me? Hawaiian pizza. Fabulous. Yes.

Pete Neubig: Tony.

Tony Locke: Only if you've got bacon and barbecue sauce and not pizza sauce.

Pete Neubig: Uh. All right, Tony, what's your favorite fast food restaurant?

Tony Locke: Favorite fast food? Man. Gotta be Zaxby's.

Pete Neubig: Zaxby's.

Tony Locke: Tongue torch. Yeah. You get the chicken strips in tongue torch. Best sauce that they have.

Pete Neubig: Hot. It sounds. It sounds.

Tony Locke: It's medium hot. It sounds crazy, but it's perfect.

Pete Neubig: Robert, you Zaxby's guy. What's your favorite?

Robert Locke: Oh, absolutely. Mellow mushroom. Can't beat it.

Pete Neubig: Mellow mushroom with your pineapple pizza.

Robert Locke: Pineapple pizza.

Pete Neubig: You and I are definitely not pizza buddies. I'm going to tell you that right now. Robert, what was your first job?

Robert Locke: My first job was bagging groceries at a Kroger store.

Pete Neubig: Kroger was around back then?

Robert Locke: Yeah. Way back.

Pete Neubig: Just teasing.

Robert Locke: let's see. That was about 1955, I guess.

Pete Neubig: Wow. I thought you'd tell me you milked cows on some farm. Tony. What about you? What's your first job?

Tony Locke: Pizza Hut, 16 years old, making pizzas. And I still make them fresh today. Everything's scratch. It's awesome.

Pete Neubig: Really? Oh, see, now you and I, we could be pizza buddies, I think.

Tony Locke: There you go.

Pete Neubig: Alright. Um, Tony, what was your. What's your ideal vacation?

Tony Locke: Uh, my ideal vacation is a place where I can do stuff so it can be in the mountains. But I have to be skiing. It can be, um, on an ocean front, but I need, um. I need to be able to be fishing or doing something. I don't like to sit and stare.

Pete Neubig: And then making me a pizza at night. Alright.

Tony Locke: That sounds good too.

Pete Neubig: What about you? Ideal vacation.

Robert Locke: Betty and I have had several in Tuscany. We love northern Italy. We'd go to Como and Garda and, uh, and sit out on a veranda drinking some good wine, snacking on some cheese, walking around during the day.

Tony Locke: Oh. That's good.

Pete Neubig: You win. I'll take that one too.

Robert Locke: That's a good answer. Yeah. Pete, I've been in 35 countries, and I'm just tired of seeing old buildings and architecture. I gotta be doing. Doing something.

Pete Neubig: Alright, alright. Last one. Um, Tony, what book are you currently reading or what is one that's impacted your business or life?

Tony Locke: Um, Atomic Habits, uh, recent book that I read. Um, actually, the most recent that's sitting on my nightstand is Fingerprints of the Gods. And, um, it's, uh, kind of about ancient Egypt and pre diluvian civilization. There's some way that they were moving, you know, 50,000 ton rocks that don't make sense to us today. Right? It's just, I mean, all of the, uh, all of that stuff just interests me very much so.

Pete Neubig: All right, Robert, I'm going to I'm going to change the question on you here because, uh.

Robert Locke: Are you cheating on me now?

Tony Locke: He's a big reader.

Pete Neubig: All right. What is one challenge you're currently facing in your business?

Robert Locke: Time allocation. A part of me wants to retire from the standpoint of more road trips with Betty, seeing people around the country and not put my feet in the sand. I'm still I'm very active. But the challenge is Rent Recovery is exploding. We're having people join us left and right. I think we have 42 right now. People that came off Broker/Owner and wanted to know more about Rent Recovery. We're signing them up as fast as we can get them. It has taken a year and a half to kind of get our roots. Figure out how to deal with different property manager systems. And, um, we're well beyond that startup phase. It's it's escalating very rapidly.

Tony Locke: Hey, I'm going to tell you a secret.

Robert Locke: I love it, I love that part of the business because I've done it for 20 years, and nobody's in this space that knows debt collection and property management.

Pete Neubig: All right.

Tony Locke: I'm going to tell you a secret, man. My dad's turning 80 in, like, three months.

Pete Neubig: Holy cow.

Tony Locke: 80. Zero.

Pete Neubig: My mom's 80, and she's nothing like you, Robert.

Tony Locke: He's doing three mile walks every other day. He is up. He is a hard worker. He is running rings around me. It's crazy.

Pete Neubig: Alright, Tony. If somebody wanted to learn more about Rent Recovery, how do they get in touch with you guys?

Tony Locke: Yeah. The simplest way is to go to Rentrecovery.com. Go to Rentrecovery.com/guest. Just fill out a contact form. Contact page. Yeah. Let us know that you're interested. We'll send you, rentrecovery.com/NDA and we'll send you that link, and you can sign it and we'll start sharing our intellectual property and how we help you make money.

Pete Neubig: Awesome. And, uh, if you are not a NARPM member and you're listening to this, why are you not a NARPM member? Go to narpm.org or call them at (800) 782-3452. And if you are looking for remote team members, maybe they need to make some tough phone calls for you guys. Go to vpmsolutions.com. Or email me pete@vpmsolutions.com. Robert, Tony, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. And, uh, good luck on this business that is blowing up and and booming.

Robert Locke: Appreciate it Peter. Thank you.

Tony Locke: Thanks, Pete, for your, uh, very generous time. Thank you. It was a lot of fun.