Hiring Your First BDM and Building Referral Relationships to Unlock Growth | Trent Bray

A Podcast | Trent Bray

Pete Neubig: Welcome to the NARPM radio podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I'm your host, Pete Neubig, the voice of NARPM. We have Trent Bray with us this week. He's been involved in real estate for over a decade, doing fix and flips with over 150 transactions, buying flip projects at the wrong time that he was stuck with, led him into property management. Okay, we might have to ask about all that stuff. I know we're talking about sales today. Intrigued by some of the negative public perception of PMs, he set out to change that. First it was sales as a BDM, now with PMI or Property Management Inc, he trains all the BDMs for all the franchise partners on the sales process. Trent Bray, you're in a hot seat. Welcome to the NARPM radio podcast, buddy.

Trent Bray: Hey, I appreciate it. It is the hot seat because I've got a little space heater going on underneath my desk because it's winter here in Utah, so.

Pete Neubig: The joys of living up north in America during the winter. All right, so before we get into the whole BDM role, just take me through the life of a fixer and flipper. Like just give us like a 30 second or a two minute, like give me 30 years of experience in two minutes.

Trent Bray: Well, I don't quite have 30 years of experience, but honestly, the first thing, whenever I tell people I've got that background, they're like, oh, I've always wanted to do that. And the first thing I'll say is don't do it. Like it's one of those things I kind of fell into and I don't recommend it. It is not anything like HGTV makes it out to be. No granted, if you can do it at scale, there's definitely something to say there. And it's a good learning experience for sure. But yeah, if I didn't accidentally stumble into it, I wouldn't recommend anybody like go out and actively pursue that, unless you have a specific strategy like BRRRR or something, you know?

Pete Neubig: Okay, so I'm gonna say, give us a couple of reasons why. Is it because you're always got a lot of money outlaying? Oh, cost overruns? Like what are some of the kind of mistakes that people make?

Trent Bray: Yeah, so great question. I think the main thing is, yes, there is a lot of costs, a lot that can go wrong very quickly. And if you don't have the stomach for it or the finances for it, you can put yourself in a really bad position. And especially if you're dealing with like hard money, fortunately, I didn't have to deal with that. But if you're dealing with hard money and you buy at the wrong time, or you think you're smarter than you are.

Pete Neubig: That money is very expensive, huh?

Trent Bray: Yes, it is. And as we were at the RentScale conference together and Justin Smart talked about, you know, the people who thought they were really smart flipping, and I was one of them that bought four properties when they're like, oh, yeah, I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this for eight or nine years. And I really didn't have a good, solid understanding of the market trends. And fortunately, I was able to weather that. But there is a lot that can go wrong very quickly in it. And unless you have the experience or maybe you're doing the work yourself, that's a little bit different of a conversation. I'm not handy. So I wasn't doing the work myself.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I can see when the market is good, everybody is an expert and they're great at what they do. When the market is not so great, all of a sudden all those really smart, intelligent people don't look as smart and intelligent. Yep. All right, so you're the manager of business development for PMI. So that means you've worked with a lot of folks, right? A lot of franchisees. When you're working with a franchisee, tell me like, when do you guide them onto on when they should hire a BDM? Like, is there like a kind of a rule? Like at this point in time, you should hire a BDM. Is it the same for everybody or is there the old answer, It depends?

Trent Bray: It is definitely the old answer of it depends. So one thing to keep in mind is I deal with a lot of like new franchise partners. Obviously we do have a network of over 450 franchise partners currently throughout the US, but there are a lot of them come to me at the beginning stages. Like, hey, I wanna hire a BDM right away. And we work through a cost analysis of like, okay, if you were to hire a BDM at zero doors with all your costs that you have upfront, it's typically going to see a return on your investment after a much longer period than if you just wait till you break even. And that is one reason that I tell them, hey, maybe we should wait. But the other thing is I tell them to wait to hire a BDM until they have a better understanding of the sales process. Because a lot of these franchise partners are buying into a franchise. They're not buying necessarily into property management. Like, of course, obviously the business is property management. However, they are coming from tech or they're coming from some other unrelated source that they're just like, hey, this property management thing seems pretty cool, but they just don't have the solid foundation that a lot of people in NARPM do. And so it's like, you should probably get a better grip on the sales process so that you can better manage your BDM. So figure out the sales process first, go through some sales cycles before you hire somebody. That's going to give you a better idea of how to manage that BDM as well.

Pete Neubig: Do you think that they also have to learn not just the sales process, but also have to understand just basics of property management or learn a little bit more about property management so that they actually know what they're selling or they actually know what the BDM is selling as well and they have to train the BDM on the product as well?

Trent Bray: Absolutely, yeah. You have to be able to convey some of these things to the BDM. Yes, we have a training process that will give you a pretty solid foundation, but that doesn't mean that you know everything. And same thing with our franchise partners. We have a very intensive workshop, launch program, pre-workshop, we're going through a lot of information, but you're drinking from a firehose. You've got a ton of information going at you. You need to be able to actually get out there and put boots on the ground and figure out what some of these things we teach you in a classroom translate to in real life. So for especially the less experienced franchise partners, I definitely recommend, hey, you need to, even if sales is not your strength, you should get at least some idea before you hire that out.

Pete Neubig: It's an interesting point. If sales isn't your strength, typically that means like it's not your, it's not the best personality type, right? Like if you use DISC, right? DI or ID is going to be a good sales personality. If you know somebody who's like introverted and process oriented, would you, those people you'd recommend hiring a BDM sooner than somebody who is kind of like an outgoing sales person-y type already, I would think?

Trent Bray: Yeah, and that depends on if they like doing that. I mean, there's some people who are very natural at it, but they don't necessarily want to do that. And so obviously it goes back to that, it depends answer, but for sure, and as a blanket statement, yeah, if you're good at sales, don't hire it out right away. I mean, that's something that you can excel at, get somebody to do maintenance coordination, somebody to do operations, whatever the case is that is going to be better suited for your personality.

Pete Neubig: Do you think that there is a kind of a standard door count on like, okay, now let's say the franchisee or anybody owns a property management firm, they get to 100 units. Obviously, let's say they want to grow, right? So I get to 100 units and I just want to be the guy who runs 100 units and have a really nice lifestyle business. Great, but if I want to grow, do you think that there's kind of a magic number-ish around where, hey, we should probably, we can afford to hire a BDM and let's go ahead and do that? I guess that's more of a revenue dollar versus a door count.

Trent Bray: Yeah, and there is obviously a revenue more than door count, but if you take like our best case scenario, you're focused on keeping things like pet fees and make sure that you understand the business side of things and you're in a market that commands a decent amount of dollar per door, say $2,000 a door, something in that range, you typically are gonna be in that break-even point at 25 to 30 doors if you're doing everything right. That's when I feel like we should be starting to start having that conversation because your time to be able to break even with that BDM shortens significantly if you can get to that break-even point. So that's where I'm like, okay, unless you are really well-capitalized and you have like a full-time job, I'm not gonna talk to you about BDM until we've reached that break-even point.

Pete Neubig: What are your thoughts on, do I hire a marketing person, marketing company, just somebody focused on marketing before I hire a salesperson? Or do you come to, do you say, hey, we'll hire the salesperson, let the salesperson kind of dial for dollars, so to speak. So where do you come out on that? Or the answer is both. Where do you come out? If you could only do one, what would you, what do you recommend your team?

Trent Bray: Well, if the marketing department listens to this, they're gonna have some problems with me, but I'm all about the sales side of things. Like this is such a referral-based business, very relationship-driven. To me, you're gonna get a lot more results if you're out there making those relationships. There are people that have no online presence that have tremendous amounts of doors that do it through referrals. So for me, of course, I'm gonna be geared towards more the creating the relationships, but that's not to say that in today's day and age, you don't need some marketing. I mean, you absolutely do, especially for like SEO purposes, because the AI is pulling their data from SEO. Like you need to be able to be- Found.

Pete Neubig: You need to be found, yeah. Yeah, because if they don't find you online, there's no like, they don't know you like you or trust you. Right. So I get that. But you're saying I can hire a BDM and that BDM can go out and make phone calls, go meet people and start getting business through kind of a referral network, so to speak.

Trent Bray: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Okay, so tell me about that. What are the top two or three referrals that the BDM should connect with? I'm gonna go with number one obvious is obviously other brokers or other realtors that don't do property management. So we got that one out of it. What's the other? And are there other referral sources that you like? And is there a way to actually work with those brokers? Like, because everybody says I have a referral, like, oh, we do a referral product, but is there like some of them, 80% of them just don't do it well, right? So talk a little bit about like, what are some of the other referral sources you see work and how do you work referral source?

Trent Bray: Yeah, so great questions. Absolutely. Number one is real estate agents. That's like you said, that's been my number one referral source in the past. And I definitely have what I feel like is a unique strategy for that, connecting with real estate agents. If you've seen, we're connected on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is like my, I've loved using LinkedIn for connecting with referral partners specifically. The reasons being one, if you are trying to connect with somebody on Instagram, there's a lot of realtors on Instagram and that tends to be their preferred platform. However, if I were to follow somebody like comment, it just gets buried in their notifications. They never see me. They never notice me. And I've tried this. I've tried to build these relationships there. It doesn't seem to work very well. Whereas if I connect with somebody on LinkedIn, it shows their, it sends them an email. It says my picture or has my picture, has my title, has my name. I just do likes and comments on their stuff that they put on LinkedIn. Obviously they have to be active on LinkedIn for this to work, but I don't do DMs at all. That's not my strategy at all. But the first time I did this, I was just trying it out with an agent. I saw they had an open house coming up. I go to their open house and I walk in the door and they're like, hey, Trent. I was like, oh, I've never actually talked to you in person before. I'm like, there's something here, like, okay. So I would do that. I would just start connecting with real estate agents that I saw were active on LinkedIn. As soon as I pick up the phone, they're like, oh yeah, no, I know who you are. Like it warms up those referral partners.

Pete Neubig: So you do a little making ship through social media, really, and through LinkedIn. That's fascinating. One of the things that we did early on was we went to different brokerage offices and we did the, hey, we'll pay money or we'll bring lunch to support like a CE course. Then we became CE certified and then we started teaching the classes for those other brokerages or the title companies. Anything that, have you used that in the past? Have you seen that work as well?

Trent Bray: Yeah, so what I did specifically for real estate offices, yes, I did absolutely use the lunch method, lunch and learn. I never ended up getting CE certified, so I didn't teach any CE, but I would join with other people that were teaching CE classes at like title companies. I'd bring lunches and they'd give me five minutes to talk about whatever I wanted to talk about. But again, going back to that LinkedIn strategy, I've had people who were like, I can't get into this real estate office. There's a gatekeeper there. I find the gatekeeper on LinkedIn and reach out to them there and just warm up that relationship again. So when I do walk into that office with a plate of cookies or whatever, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, let me get you back to this person. And one thing I'd also do to elaborate on that is when I am in the office, I'm at this team meeting, which the real players aren't necessarily at those team meetings. They're the people who have-

Pete Neubig: They're out and about doing transactions, yeah.

Trent Bray: So their free time is there at the team meeting. And it's like, okay, what I do is I sit there and make note of like anybody that is at the team meeting. Obviously I'd make contact, talk to them, get to know them, but I'd make note, okay, there's an office with somebody's name on it. They're not here. There's an office with somebody's name on it. There's an office with somebody's name on it. After I left that team meeting, I'd call them up and be like, hey, I just talked to Pete at your office and I just instantly warmed up that connection. So they know that I've already talked to somebody on their team and they now are giving me more of a time, more of the time of day. And I know that they're going to be one of those A players that's out there doing the work and they're going to be a better referral source.

Pete Neubig: So I like that. So you get into the office, start getting connected through LinkedIn with all of them and follow up with the producers, with the people like, hey, I just talked to Pete and meanwhile you're talking to Alex, the producer or whatever. That guy right there, he's killing it. Do you think that property management companies need more than like, do you think you can get enough business from your marketing and just having referral partners that are agents or do you think you need other types of referral partners?

Trent Bray: Yeah, going back to answer your question of like the secondary one is, personally, I liked networking with mortgage brokers and I need to make that clarification, not mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, somebody that can pull from lots of different resources because they're going to be, or tend to be a little bit more investor focused. They're going to have more loan programs that are available for investors. And so I had a great referral relationship with mortgage brokers. And similar to what I do with the real estate agents, I find their niche. So that obviously to be a BDM in the state of Utah, you have to be a licensed real estate agent. So I was, or still am, but a lot of people want to take those real estate transactions themselves, but there are a lot of niches that maybe you're not best equipped to deal with. So like, for example, here in Salt Lake, there's two streets, Harvard, Yale area, they are a completely different animal than all the surrounding streets. So somebody that focuses on that, I'd rather refer the business to them to better suit the client, similar with mortgage brokers. If I'm going to, like I had a referral relationship with somebody that they got into the mortgage business because they were a single mom, they just ended up getting out of, going through a divorce, their whole like driving passion, of course they can service all sorts of different types of clients, but they are motivated to get whatever grant that is out there for a single mom. Like that is their number one passion. So it's like, hey, if I'm dealing with anybody that needs a loan, that's a single mom, I'm sending them to this person and finding those little niches so that you can have 50 different referral partners and you can legitimately say like, hey, if I come across this, I am going to refer them to you because this is your alley, you are going to take care of them better than anybody else that just happens to also help single moms.

Pete Neubig: When you, you know, you're training, you train a bunch of people all the time, what do you have kind of a system and what's the first thing that you go over? What's the first thing you would train a new BDM?

Trent Bray: So it goes back and this is something that I know you had Jen Merritt on here not too long ago and this is something that her and I are definitely aligned on is, it starts back with the franchise partner, the person that is doing the hiring, it starts before they even hire the BDM, they've got to understand what their expectations are, they've got to understand how they're going to manage the BDM and if you don't set that expectation first, you're setting them up for failure, doesn't matter how great of a BDM that you have, it's not necessarily going to be the best relationship, they're not going to bring in the most stores if you don't know how to manage them yourselves. So going back, yes, that's the first thing they'll do, but then...

Pete Neubig: And what does that look like? Is that like understanding, having a really good thorough job description with KPIs, with DISC profile, is that kind of what that looks like? And then what is your management style? Are you going to manage them on a daily, weekly, quarterly basis, something like that? Is that kind of...

Trent Bray: Yeah, so first of all, it starts with understanding what they are expected to do and setting those expectations up front. Obviously, as you go through the hiring process, my expectation is to have a personality profile, whether it's DISC or something else, getting an idea of what their personality is, the BDM's personality is, is going to be a key factor in the hiring decision, in my opinion. We can't do any of the hiring as a franchisor, so we give them the resources, but we can't, like Jen, she can do the hiring, I cannot, but that is something that you set that expectation first of what their personality type is, but then getting into the actual, they're in the office, what their expectations are. We have a lot of disagreements with people of like, okay, who's paying for mileage or gas or to go to these events? Who's paying for the Chamber of Commerce membership or BNI membership or whatever it is, setting those expectations up front, like, hey, this is what I'm providing to you, this is what I'm expecting out of you with what I'm providing to you. So very basic, like, hey, I'm doing A, you're doing B, this is how they work together.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, it could even be as like, hey, expectations are, we expect you to make X amount of phone calls, X amount of emails, join X amount of groups, have X amount of referrals. So, okay, I like that. So, all right, so the first thing you're going over is with the company owner, make sure that you're hiring the right person, make sure that you have expectations set up. They hire that person, they say, hey, Trent, okay, now I just hired Pete, I need you to kind of help him out, right? So Pete might've come from a sales background, but what's the first thing you're going to help Pete with as a BDM?

Trent Bray: Yeah, so first of all, trying to understand their understanding of the property management industry, there's obviously some things, some nuances that you're going to have to understand.

Pete Neubig: Come on, property managers, all they do is collect rent. That's all they do.

Trent Bray: Funny thing is, that was my BNI sign off was, you know, everybody thinks property managers just collect rent. They obviously do a lot more than that. So my tagline was, don't just collect rent, call Trent. Oh, I like that. So yes, there is more to it than that, but yeah, understand a little bit of the property management industry. I'll sit down and talk with them one-to-one, but there is a part of our PMI grow program, which is going to be similar to like the rent scale, is to have mastermind specific to PMI corporate though. That is where we will go over the sales process, how we particularly deal with that, you know, obviously specific things related to the property management industry and how to conduct onsite consultations, you know, all sorts of different aspects. There's about 20 different modules that we'll go through to help get them up to speed. But it, again, is part of the expectations of the owner that will outline of like, okay, you need to be able to share your knowledge, share your referrals that you have, trying to set them up for success.

Pete Neubig: Does PMI have a CRM system that you guys partner with that you guys recommend? And is it the same one that you would recommend?

Trent Bray: Great question. I'm glad you actually said this. So, we do partner with LeadSimple and I used LeadSimple when I was a BDM. I liked it. The company I was with was not a PMI franchise. And so they weren't tied to that. And the owner of the company said, hey, you can go out and look for other CRMs that are out there. And the thing that I love about LeadSimple is it was designed as a property management CRM from the get-go. So, and I'll tell people all the time when they see LeadSimple for the first time, I'm like, it's not the prettiest thing out there, but it works. It does. And it's got the CRM side, it's got the process side. So I can absolutely say, yes, I do recommend it. It is what PMI happens to use, but it's what I used before. And so I definitely do recommend it.

Pete Neubig: That's one of the advantages of going with a franchise option. If you're kind of like, okay, I don't know if I should build my own property management firm or go to franchise. Franchise already has a tech stack. I'm sure you guys get pretty decent discounts on that tech stack because of volume-based discounts. All right, so you're basically training the BDM just on the basics of property management first, and then on the CRM, how do you CRM, and basically helping them build a sales system. Isn't it crazy how many BDMs have, they don't have a specific sales system, they just kind of do what they do. I guess that pretty standard when you get them, like, what do you mean you don't have a sales system, right?

Trent Bray: Yeah, and I can say that from my experience too. I didn't necessarily have a good solid sales system before becoming a BDM, because most of the roles I was in before didn't necessarily need that same system. I've done a lot of more entrepreneurial minded stuff. And so it's kind of like, hey, we're just gonna wing it and see how it goes. And then you never sit down and actually define that sales process. And now having been through that, define that sales process, I'm like, wow, this is so much better if you do this the right way. To be able to have a system for follow up and have a system for reach out than a system for how many dials you're doing, it makes life so much easier.

Pete Neubig: I've read, I think there was a couple of business books that said, I think you have to have seven touch points before somebody even responds. And I think the average sale takes like 11 touch points or something like that. So if you make one call one time and they don't answer, and then that's it, like that's a bad sales system, right? So you have at least seven steps is what I've always been taught. What are some of the key metrics that we should be looking at for our BDMs?

Trent Bray: Yeah, so great question. That is, there's quite a few metrics that you can track. And I know, again, listening to Jen's podcast that you did with her, she's got it dialed in probably a little bit better than I do just from experience. But obviously you wanna see how much outbound you're actually creating, what that looks like in terms of meeting set, dials that you're doing. You do want to measure response time for sure, your response to inbound leads. My expectation is three minutes, but there's obviously a lot of things that can happen on a BDMs plate or a franchise partners plate doing multiple things. So that's where you can lean on the CRM as long as you've got it set up properly, that first touch point's going out at three minutes. And so that is an expectation that it should be going out within three minutes, even if you're busy. But then once you get into that sales process, the close ratio, as well as the time to close, those are definitely gonna be points that I'm gonna be looking at with each individual BDM. And I guess the amount of touch points in that timeframe.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, so do you look more at ad activity or do you look more at end results? Like for example, I go back and forth on this. So this is a question that I have personally, right? It's like, I used to always just look at like conversion rate, right? But let's say conversion rate's 24%. Is that good or bad? Over time, that tells me if we look at the trend, but it doesn't tell me why the conversion rate is that, right? Because you just did the sales steps. It might be six or seven steps. Are you, do you actually create KPIs like early on and look at the stuff, look at the KPI on the early steps first to make sure the activity's being done and then look at the ones like kind of in the middle, then look at the ones at the end and then look at final review? Or do you like get all of them? Because you don't want to look at too many as well. So where do you think the balance is?

Trent Bray: Yeah. So I'll start at the bigger picture first and then dial it down if there's need to do that. So it's like, okay, it took 30 touch points and it took six months to close this deal. Why? Let's, let's go dive a little bit deeper. But if we're, if we're high level looking at it and it's like, okay, it took six or seven touch points over 10 days. I'm not going to, I'm not going to dive too deep into that. But I think the activity usually is related to the other metrics that you track as well. But you want to make sure that the, that activity is the right activity, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So like in my experience.

Pete Neubig: Right. So if you're just looking at, okay, I need him to send, you know, four, 40 emails or whatever. Great. He's sitting for, he's sitting 50 emails, but we're not getting anything to the next level, right? To the next step or we're not getting a conversion. All those 40 emails, the right emails. That's kind of what you're going at.

Trent Bray: Yeah. So, and are they an email person? Do they prefer text? Do they prefer calls? Are we, that's where if you're, I see a bunch of activity and a long time to close, it's like, okay, let's, let's dive in a little bit deeper. What did that look like? Are we sending videos? For example, like I'm a big proponent of using video. It's, it's statistically shown to decrease your close time and increase your close ratio. So you're trying to get people to know, I can trust you. A video is a great way to do that. And if you aren't able to get them on the phone right away, or, you know, you can respond with a video just as quickly as a phone call. So I'm big proponent of it, but if there is a way that we can dive down into those specific touch points and see, okay, you can send a hundred emails, but if they never opened their email, what's the point?

Pete Neubig: That's the point. Yeah. so what you're doing is obviously one, you're making sure you get the right person. Then number two is you got, you're going to arm them with information just about what the product they're selling. And then number three, you guys are going to create a sales system that the CRM, or that we can track all of these action items, like, you know, the response time that you talked about. And then what I'm hearing is you're tracking some of this stuff, maybe not everything at once, but you're tracking some of it along with the end result. And then you're going back and tweaking the sales steps. Is that, is that kind of the next piece of it?

Trent Bray: Yes. Yeah. Depending on the feedback we get from that high level, you know, looking at the -

Pete Neubig: From your numbers, like the numbers tell you this is working or this isn't working, tweak it. In your experience, what are some of the things that you had to tweak? Is it the copy? Is it the CTA? Is it all of the above? Like what are, what are some of the things that we should be looking at if something is not working?

Trent Bray: Yeah. So I think a lot of people are fairly passive and I tend to be in general a passive person, but I don't want to, I don't want to rub people the wrong way, but you need to have some sort of driving the next point, the next conversation. You need to be able to have some sort of call to action of like, Hey, I can send a bunch of emails that are just informational, but it's like, okay, this information is useful because of, you know, we can get you in, like, for example, we're recording this in December, not sure when, when it'll air, but you know, it's a time where it's not a great leasing season. Like we should be trying to get this on like an 18 month lease so that we can get out of this leasing cycle. So you can give them that information, but that doesn't do anything. If you're not like, okay, so let's get it listed now so that we can get those contracts. So we're not in March and we're still sitting with an empty property. And you know, you've got to drive the conversation towards the next step, whatever it is, and have some sort of call to action. A lot of people aren't necessarily doing that I find. And then also they're not hitting them where they prefer to be contacted. You know, there's a lot of people that just prefer to fire off an email. It's like the way I've designed our sales process in the CRM is we're going to hit them with a text. We're going to hit them with a call. We're going to hit them with an email. And then let's do that again. Text, email, call. We're finding where they prefer to be contacted. And then once we've got that figured out, okay, let's continue on with that. And some people are like, oh, I don't like calling. It's part of the job. You're going to have to do it.

Pete Neubig: No. All right. Well, we're up against it. So I want to be mindful of everybody's time here. So I'm just going to ask you your opinion. Now, granted, we know that you're a PMI, but when should you consider a franchise option, a franchise solution if you own a property management firm or thinking about owning a property management firm?

Trent Bray: Yeah, I think there's a lot.

Pete Neubig: I know this is not PMI's. This is Trent Bray's. We're asking Trent his opinion, not the opinion of PMI.

Trent Bray: Correct. Yes. This is my personal opinion. So this actually hit me really hard just the other day. So I'm currently reading the book, Unreasonable Hospitality. Fantastic book. But in chapter five, it talks about corporate smart versus restaurant smart. And so the corporate smart has the systems, the scaling, the cost savings, all the things that you need. But the restaurant smarts where you can be really creative and you can just do whatever you want and figure it out as you go. There definitely needs to be a balance of that. I think that that's why I like PMI's franchise model. Yes, we have the corporate smart. We'll give you the tools, the scale, the systems, everything that you need. But then you're an individual franchise. You have a lot of flexibility to be restaurant smart, as they call it in that book. So you still aren't going to lose your soul or anything like that. It's you still have the local expertise that you need. And so for me, as soon as you get to a point where you are up against the wall, where you're like, okay, what's my next step? What's the thing that I'm missing from this? If you're starting to question that, then for sure, you should be looking at the franchise model. But I'm surprised at how many people that we are that bring in with conversions that just aren't thinking big enough. A lot of people think, okay, you know what? If I could just get to a hundred doors, I'll be set. And our expectations here are like, no, a hundred's like, you know, that's more of the floor. Like we should be thinking a lot bigger. We should be thinking acquisitions. We should be thinking all sorts of different things. And people don't have that same mindset until they come into the PMI ecosystem. And it's like, we're the only franchise or that does multi-pillar. So we'll do association, we'll do short-term, we do long-term, multifamily, commercial, realty. Like there's, you've got to, if you think that property management is a small thing, like that's another indicator for me, like, okay, no, you should be maybe looking at the franchise model and realize how big of an option there is out there for your world. Like property management is huge. I'm surprised that until I got into the property management space, I didn't realize how much opportunity there really was in it.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I think that a few things that I'm just thinking off the top of my head. One is, you know, we hit it a little bit earlier about the tech stack, right? I don't have to think. I just come in, you know, I become a franchisor and I know the accounting software I'm using. I know the maintenance software I'm using, like, and I'm getting it at a deep discount. Two is right now, what's big is kind of these mentor groups. It's kind of big. And just being part of like a franchise. Now you have access to all these other like-minded people. And I know you guys throw every year, you guys throw, you know, your PMI Summit, which everybody gets together. And so they think there's value there. And then number three is you don't have to rebuild the wheel as far as like marketing and sales. PMI knows all the pain points that investors have for short term and for, you know, SFR and multifamily. And you can basically, you know, I'm guessing there's some stuff that they can leverage there and add it into their sales team. And then, of course, you get guys like you that we have, you know, that the franchisee has access to basically almost like a consulting team to help them with their business. So I think there's a lot of positives to it.

Trent Bray: Absolutely. Like, for example, you've got a lot of people in the industry that are great at what they do. So not to discredit them at all, but that will, you know, rebuild your processes, rebuild your pipelines to make them custom to you. We do that. That's included as part of the franchise model is any I've had people who will sit there and book weekly calls with me and we'll just sit there and tweak their pipelines to make it fit their voice, to do whatever they want it to do. I mean, you have access to incredible resources. We've got three calls a week of franchise partners that just get together and have a chat. We facilitate it, but they can talk about whatever they want, whether it, you know, fits the PMI byline or not. It doesn't matter. They can talk about, you know, whatever software tech sack that they like, that they've seen work well. And you just, there's a lot of power in that mentor type group, like you mentioned.

Pete Neubig: Awesome. Trent, thanks for being here, buddy. If somebody wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way that they can contact you?

Trent Bray: I'm going to go back to the beginning of this. Find me on LinkedIn, Trent Bray. You know, that's the best way to get in touch with me.

Pete Neubig: And if you're listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, go to narpm.org, 800-782-3452. And we didn't touch on this, but if you're a BDM and you need an assistant, remote team members are a great way to do that. VPM Solutions, shoot me an email, pete@vpsolutions.com, or just go to www.vpmsolutions.com.