WS545: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Partnerships with Maureen Miles

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:24] WS: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Maureen Miles. Thanks for being on the show again, Maureen.

[00:00:33] MM: Hey, Whitney. How are you doing? Thanks for having me.

[00:00:36] WS: I’m honored to have you back on again and just share your expertise. I encourage the listeners again to go back and listen to show WS537 where Maureen shared a lot more of her story and even yesterday’s show where we talked about developing that capital budget and just some important tips that she laid out and how she does and the mistakes she’s seen in the industry or maybe a few mistakes she’s made herself we are all learning from. It’s just amazing to see her success. Thank you again, Maureen, just sharing with the listeners and myself.

But you’ve been in the industry a while now, and we’d love to hear your success in working with or without partners and what that’s looked like. Good, bad lessons learned and let’s just dive in there.

[00:01:19] MM: I started – I was able to get my very first property, the 100-plus unit, I had actually two partners. One, what I recommend to people too, when you’re going to work with a new group of people or a partner for the first time that you come in with your own entity so that your apartment-buying entity is then owned by your entity, the other people in the group’s entity. Just be really careful about everybody saying, “Oh, this is going to be great. We’re one big happy family. Let’s form a single LLC. We’ll all own individual parts in our own name.” You don’t that to get married just yet. You want to make sure you go through a deal is my recommendation, because it’s amazing what you find out about people when the deal closes.

I always like to avoid ticks in the deal. So whenever I see a group of like I’d say three or more, sometimes even three or less but sometimes you get those ticks. You’re always like, “What does that guys really do,” and nobody knows. But he’s – I don’t know, but there are sometimes people just hang on. Sometimes, we see people say, “Well, he’s bringing equity. He’s going to raise the money for us, and that’s why he’s in the deal.” But then one of the things I see is that person fails at raising money, and so they end up paying like another part to somebody else for raising money, so they have new partners. But that person that couldn’t raise the money is still kind of hanging out there, like I said.

When you come in with all your own entities, it’s easier for the next deal to get rid of anybody maybe that you want to. You’re not married to everybody at once.

[00:02:42] WS: But if you would all just joined one entity, that’d be a lot more difficult, right?

[00:02:46] MM: Yes. Because when you sell that right, when you sell that one project, you all get your own money and you split. You go your separate ways. You may find people in that group that you did enjoy working with like, “Hey! I really liked working with you, Whitney. Let’s do another deal together. But I wasn’t so crazy about Mary over here. Let’s let her – Best of luck, but we’re going to do this deal on our own.” It is so important. You have to make sure of the integrity. Your work habits are similar. I always say like I don’t ever want to work with a partner that isn’t – If they don’t like working with me, I don’t want to work with them either, because I think eventually over time it just builds up like animosity and it just doesn’t go on.

I see it all over networking and seeing different people in here. Sometimes, you get too many partners. I’ve seen the situation where there’s so many partners that nothing ever gets done. That’s something I warn people about. There’ll be six people. They all have their job. They’re all gung-ho and never get anything done. But there are so many people trying to make decisions and too many okays that are needed. That’s another [inaudible 00:03:45] quite a bit.

Then know your partners really well. There was a particular – Go out to dinner. Spend a couple times with them. If you ever have a beer or something, make sure you have a couple beers. I remember one person I was considering working with like a waitress. She came up and – I don’t know if he didn’t have a fork or something happened with his fork and he’s like, “I need a fork.” She’s like, “Oh, okay. I’ll get you a fork.” She looped around and forgot his fork.” He’s like, “It’s a simple job. It’s a fork. You can’t remember to bring a fork.” I was like, “Wow!” He did rip this lady –

[00:04:18] WS: He was speaking like that in front of everybody.

[00:04:20] MM: Yeah. I’m like, “Wow!” There are things you learn about people. Another two guys that I went out with, they ordered a very – This is a little group of people, probably 10 of us at one of the networking events. They ordered a pretty expensive bottle of wine. Then when the bill came, they were very adamant about everybody splitting the whole bill, “Oh, it’s X amount per person.” That’s fine. Some people just roll like that. Not a big deal. But then I was with the same  people at the end of the conference and I noticed when we all had lunch or something, they didn’t have any alcohol and they were very adamant about like, “Oh, no, no, We should each do our own bill.” So I’m like, “Oh, that’s really interesting.”

You just got to look at people just trying to take advantage of others. I don’t want to work with somebody that I – I don’t even want to have to put energy into watching my partner is a really big thing. I’ve always stuck to that, because if you cannot trust your partner, you’re losing energy in the deal, right? It should always be towards making them feel better and execution of the deal and how could we run this even better. You can always run a deal tighter. No matter what’s going on, you can always save money on capital items. You can always fine tune it more and more. That’s where the energy should be put in.

It’s [inaudible 00:05:31] like this job is a roller coaster. You have to make sure you’re in the trenches with good people that you trust. It’s just key. If you are venturing down a road with somebody and if you just – You’re getting that vibe or you’re just not just trusting them or you see reasons you shouldn’t trust them, I say just run because, man, they could mess up your deal. They could do things that you don’t even think people would do to a deal. They could upset other people. You could potentially lose deals because of the way they react to brokers or other people. That’s just something I like to warn people about when they’re gung-ho.

I do think partners are important as well because to get to the finish line, there’s a lot of moving parts on these deals. It’s really I wouldn’t say impossible but almost. I could never have done it myself in the beginning, because there’s just so many things that are new to people and that you have to keep track of. There are some trends, [inaudible 00:06:22] have to go out there. There’s lender requirements that you’re constantly trying to please the lender and meet for inspections. In the same time, you’re trying to hire a good property management company or find your next manager. All while watching the numbers of the property and doing a due diligence and making sure the survey is right. There’s a ton of items that you have to do, so it really is important. 

Then there’s like fun times too. There’s times when you hit a big score. You found something awesome about the property you didn’t know or you go to get that [inaudible 00:06:53]. You want to go check it out. It’s fun to share that with people as well. Because, yeah, I mean, when you make a property great or something, you go show up. You’re by yourself. You’re like, “Oh.” You high-five yourself. So it’s a lot of fun to share the good times with people too.

[00:07:08] WS: What about – I know a lot of people are wondering, “Oh, okay.” Splitting up these roles and deciding who does want. How are you – I loved what you said too. I don’t want to have to put money into watching my partner. You wanted –

[00:07:19] MM: Energy, yeah.

[00:07:20] WS: Yeah, energy.

[00:07:20] MM: Putting energy into watching them, yup.

[00:07:22] WS: I think that’s so smart. That’s so smart. How do we know from the beginning? When are you saying like, “Okay, this is what you’re responsible for. This is what I’m responsible for.”?

[00:07:29] MM: That’s hard. When I first started – I’ll go back because I had a partner when I first started this. After about three and half years, we actually went our separate ways. I have – You know Will. You met Will before. Will is my business partner now. But my first partner, he was good. He was kind of a box checker person. I used to say a great partner for me would be someone that wouldn’t mind being locked in a room with no windows for five days. He loved like making sure the LLC dates work like, “Oh, our LLC has to be renewed,” or whatever. I hate that stuff. I’m just like, “Let me hire somebody to take care of that.” I’m not like – Everybody [inaudible 00:08:06] jokes about my calendar. I’m like calendar-challenged, so I need somebody like with that detail that can just follow-up and just go through this and who creates a list all the time. I need that person.

I think you find somebody that does the stuff that you hate, and they’re out there. You’re like, “Only a crazy person would love to talk to investors and people they don’t know all day long.” But I love doing that. I could do that all day long. Some people don’t like to talk to anybody. Give them a computer and a list, and they’re happy lie forever. You just have to find that kind of yin and yang.

[00:08:41] WS: What about how you establish who’s paid what? I know that’s a question people have asked me and my partner. How did you all split this up? What does that look like?

[00:08:48] MM: That’s tough, because for different deals, there’s different shares basically. As certain people, there’s – Your kind of functions of a – I’d say people have one of the questions like that with sponsorship, right? You kind of have somebody that’s – It could be one person but basically you have equity to bring or like money to raise, this one aspect. Another aspect that the lender’s going to look for is net worth, so that’s another I call legs on the table, right? You have the one leg on table is the equity.

Another one is the net worth. Another one is liquidity they want us to get. You have liquidity and then the other one is operations experience. Those could be four different people. They could be partners stacked where if we needed to show a million dollars cash. If you had 500,000, I had 500,000, we’re good. You could stack it. Or if we didn’t have anything, we could bring in Bill who’s never even set foot on a multifamily and doesn’t know the first thing about it, but he has liquidity in the bank. That can check the box for the lender too. We get a piece for what? That’s a hard thing, because I’ve seen it all over the place. I really have.

The one thing I’d warn people about is if you have a great network and you’re able to reach out to your doctor network or you’re able to reach out to your brother, who’s a big-wig in some IT company that has funds and you don’t have to raise money that way or something and you’re a partner in the deal, so you’re raising money for your own deal, just be careful when somebody offers you like 50% of the deal. That’s one of my – I don’t think we went over my first ones that tricked me up, Whitney, but my very first that I almost got involved in, the 100-plus, was somebody that I was going to raise all the funds for. But all of them, they weren’t putting  any money, and they’re supposed to be experienced operators and they weren’t going to give me – I don’t think I would’ve made out an even percentage, which I shouldn’t have even been doing. I’ve learned the rules since then.

Just be careful of the deal is too good to be true. Sometimes, there’s a reason for that. Sometimes, on a bad deal, they’ll have somebody new in an attempt to raise all the money or somebody that doesn’t know any better, so be aware of that kind of stuff too. If you’re an investor, know how the relationship is with the person you’re talking to and the person that’s executing the deal. Make sure they are somehow involved in that deal. It’s something I always like to say too to some degree.

[00:11:03] WS: Yeah. I mean, finding a partner took me a long time and I was asked by lots of people to partner and I turned them down. I said no. I wasn’t interested. Similar to what you just said, I was asked so many times to raise equity or raise capital for people, and this is the first conversation we’d ever had.

[00:11:19] MM: That’s crazy. I mean, like it’s good that you have integrity, and that’s probably why you got offered so many, because people want to work with honest people. That’s just so important, and somebody that’s trustworthy. That means the world. But, yeah, to just think on your part that I’m going to go take money from my family or my friends or my network, and I’m just going to give it to somebody that I don’t even know what they’ve done. That’s good that you realized that’s kind of a red flag.

[00:11:47] WS: Let’s shift a little bit. I know we could talk about partnering a lot longer but I also want to ask you just about staffing. We’re dealing with people on both sides here, whether they’re partners or whether they’re employed by us. Just really you how you’re staffing your company and finding people and vetting people and maybe even your first hire, whether it’s a virtual assistant or that executive assistant but just how you’ve done that and how you’ve grown that way.

[00:12:10] MM: Yes. The EA was a life changer like someone – I need that person that’s on top of every little detail. I need that person to follow-up to the nth degree on things, especially when you’re with investors and all the subscription agreements and all the PPMs. You need somebody that is checking every box and making sure that – When they say that every [inaudible 00:12:10]. That’s what happened to [inaudible 00:12:35]. But you need that person to do that.

She was awesome and she’s till with me, Jennifer. Shout out to Jennifer. Whoo! Yes, she’s awesome to have. So when you find that right person – I was going to give you a tip, I know you mentioned you’re looking for somebody, Whitney, is anybody in our organization above a certain layer, we do do a DISC profile. That person that makes a great EA is somebody on the C class, which is like they’re very detail-orientated. I think my kind of coach guy I was using. Because when we first started using it, we did our whole team, and I was really curious to see the great managers, where did they fall on the DISC profile? Because I want to find more like that.

If people – If somebody is an outlier, typically they weren’t great at their jobs. It’s really interesting how accurate you could start to see. So when you’re looking for an EA or somebody that just has to be just very exact, an accountant you’d want to be a C person, they’re just there detailed and they don’t want to makes mistakes. They want it to be right and they’ll double check it, triple check it. Where you get somebody that’s [inaudible 00:13:38] like influencer or as support, sometimes they have issues confronting people when something’s not right. So you wouldn’t want that person being a manager that would have to go collect rent, because they’re going to have a hard time. They don’t like to confront people. Where you get a C, it doesn’t matter what the issue is or who the person is. She’s going after them until it’s right. That’s not what you need in that role, so it’s kind of awesome.

I would say to learn a little bit above that DISC profile as you hire people, because that really is – It’s amazing when you use and use it correctly, and it’s accurate.

[00:14:14] WS: Is it important to know your own DISC profile?

[00:14:17] MM: Yes. It’ll tell you too how you work with people. Sometimes, I butt heads with certain types of people, but it’s all a good thing for me. I don’t take anything personal. I think somebody could say, “Hey, Maureen! You suck.” I’ll be like, “You think [inaudible 00:14:31].” I don’t even like – It’s okay. Some people you’d say just, “Nice shirt.” They’ll be very conscious. They’d be like, “Why did she say nice shirt? Is there something wrong with my shirt I wear all the other days,” and like their head starts going out of control. So it’s important to know who you’re working with, what their sticking points are, and it gives you tips like that. Then also, to know if someone like complements you as well. 

[00:14:54] WS: What are your like nonnegotiables? This EA is executive assistant. They have to have these skills or be able to do these things other than like what you talked about, about the DISC profile.

[00:15:05] MM: I’m looking for somebody right now for like more of a personal slash, because we actually have two EAs, one in each kind of a market, and I’m looking for somebody too. I’m looking for somebody maybe with some legal experience would be helpful in our roles, because there is a lot of legal documents. There’s a lot of addendums that get done during these contracts. It’s nice if somebody can just eyeball it and know like, “Hey! I want to add this in or something,” and then you could just tell them and they’re smart enough to understand that a little bit would be helpful. I think like a paralegal or something, because they would be great, like already tuned into dates on calendars.

That’s what I need now. I cannot hire somebody calendar-challenged like me, because nothing would happen. So you find somebody that really fits your niche. I’ve had had – You look for their resumes. Is there spelling errors in there? if you’re having somebody represent you to your investors and set up presentations, you don’t want spelling errors. You can’t have anything like that, and we’ve seen that. You want them – Are they going to be customer-facing or is anyone ever going to see them? So their appearance may be – You have to make sure they’re showered and dressed right and all that kind of stuff. Not that a normal person wouldn’t be, but that could be the face to an investor or to a – The lender perhaps, depending on which you’re going to have them do.

I need somebody that I have to trust them. I noticed with my team like if I’m – If there’s anything that kind of makes me wonder or sometimes like people will tell me something and certain things. They just stick in my brain, and I find out later like that wasn’t quite the story. They’re kind of fluffing. I just have to get rid of them eventually. I just can’t because then I’m always wondering and I start questioning everything. There’s misunderstanding sometimes that we can work out, but you have to have trust I think, especially we’re dealing with a lot of money in our business. We’re doing a lot of bank accounts, a lot of investors’ Social Security numbers. I mean, things like that, so you really have to have somebody that has really high integrity is important, somebody that shows up on time when you’re going to have that call to interview them.

I’ve had somebody late. They’re like five minutes late to the call. I’m like, “Thanks but we’re good. Don’t bother.” I don’t care what happened. I know it sounds terrible but you can’t –

If they tell you a story and an excuse right then and you accept that, I mean, gosh. Could you imagine what your next year will be like with that person?

[00:17:20] WS: I know. I know. I’ve been doing interviews the last couple days over Zoom. It’s amazing, like you knew this was happening and this wasn’t a surprise.

[00:17:20] MM: Well, I’ve had times when just for not an excuse but like, “Let’s Zoom,” and all of a sudden your computer update. You’re like, “Are you kidding me? Right now?” There are some excuses but –

[00:17:38] WS: I meant more like the way they present themselves.

[00:17:41] MM: Yeah. No, you’re right. Yeah. It’s crazy. But as far as the hiring, it’s just –

Just make sure it’s somebody you can – I’d say like just relax. I would say I can’t work with people where I have to watch every single thing I say because I just kind of – I don’t really have much of a filter. Kind of things just come up sometimes. I don’t like – If somebody is really self-conscious or easily could offer –

[00:18:01] WS: Failings on their sleeves?

[00:18:02] MM: Yeah, exactly. Yes. I just – We just have to be careful of that. So you find someone that if you’re really loud and boisterous, make sure you work with somebody that’s okay with that. You want someone that’s not going to be put off or offended or – I tell people sometimes like, “You have to stalk me with these dates. We just had some loan certification things I had to go through.” They know. I’m like, “You have to hunt me down. If these are not in by this date, like hunt me down.” So they have to be aggressive enough to like really get my attention if I’m forgetting signatures on something.

[00:18:32] WS: How are you finding these employees or specifically like executive assistants or people that are – Or approach personal assistant?

[00:18:39] MM: I mean, I love referrals. I love when it comes from somebody I trust and they know of a great person. A lot of times, executive assistants will know other executive assistants or somebody that’s a good paralegal. If you’re doing a closing and you have a great paralegal on top of everything, it will be like, “Hey! I’m looking to hire a EA like that has some experience. Do you know anybody,” because a lot of times they went to school with people or – That’s a great way of kind of getting a referral.

Indeed, there are headhunters. There’s different aspects like that, but I’m hesitant to hire just somebody you don’t know. I almost feel like that connection has to be there a little bit, because you can’t really believe resumes all the time. You could verify but it takes a lot of work. You get somebody in that role too. You have to really take the time I think to hire the right person, because once they’re in that role, that’s going to be a very hard role to disrupt. They’re going to really be involved with a lot of stuff, and it’s going to be hard to just pick somebody out and plug somebody back in.

[00:19:37] WS: Is that a role – Like that person interacting with investors. How much do you have other people like that or allowing other employees interacting with investors?

[00:19:46] MM: It takes a long time before they would get access too, because you don’t want – Everything with the investors has to be right. You’re dealing with people’s money, sometimes good amounts of it too. Your reporting has to be correct. You need someone on the ball, and that’s just exact. Jennifer that I have, she’s great with the investors, and it took a little while before I could really let the rains go, because we had to make sure that they could handle. That she could handle it. Even now as we have different people moving through our finance group and our accounting team and stuff, I will say that we can’t touch the investors, like that’s hers. It’s not getting done with a controller or in our normal realm, so I think you really have to be careful of who the face of your company is to investors.

[00:20:31] WS: How do you think investors receive that as far as, “Well, now I’m dealing with somebody else. I’m not getting to talk to Maureen anymore.”?

[00:20:39] MM: They can still talk to me too. They can always send me an email. I can give them a call. We reach out. They have my cell phone number. They can always text me as well. But they get comfortable with Jennifer too, and she’s the one now that she has a list of people for our next deal when – People will call her when they’re looking. I don’t even necessarily hear about it all the time. We’ll just – They money will just be raised, like it’s – Because she has that list of when she does reach out to them. Then we have some investors too that we know they’re a little isolated. Or she gets on and she’ll talk to them. We have our friends. We know so-and-so is going in for a surgery, and maybe he’s a little older, so let’s send him a basket or something. She’s the one that keeps track of all that stuff too but she’s very sweet and caring, as long as she’s not after you for a signature like a day. She’s just awesome. I love having her.

Sometimes, too, we get frustrated because we hire somebody. We put a lot of time and energy into them, and they would realize we made a mistake. But I try to look at it as a numbers game, right? When I’m hiring somebody, I figure, “Okay, I know I’m going to need like probably six people before I find the right one.” Or 10 people sometimes. So when I have to do that, it sucks and it hurts, because you have money and time and all that. But I just look at it as I’m one step closer to finding the right person. I think that that keeps me from getting discouraged. I’m like, “Okay, there’s one more step closer to the right person.”

I tell my team all the time when they get frustrated sometimes with people we bring in. They’re like, “Why on earth would you hire this person?” I’m like, “Well, we thought they were good,

obviously.” Then we eventually get rid of them. But if you look at the numbers game, you don’t know until sometimes people will like get in there.

[00:22:15] WS: Yeah. So how do you keep them? Jennifer, she’s done so well. What are things you have in place or why do they want to keep working for you?

[00:22:22] MM: Now, that’s a great question. I mean, I try to be very open and honest with the team. I enjoy seeing them rewarded and having fun like when I do give out bonuses for certain things. I try to have incentive games. We try to do things, so [inaudible 00:22:36] everybody is faced in the right direction, in the same direction. When you’re trying to incentivize, if you want higher rents, you try to say, “Okay. If I was a property manager, how would I feel incentivized by getting higher rents?” Things like that, so just we’ll try to try different things.

We do bonuses when properties sell. With Jennifer, she actually gets – So the asset company actually pays for a piece for her of every deal, so she actually has a little ownership in every deal that we do. So not only does she get that as a bonus, which you do have to just tax like a 1099 thing. But anyway, it is a bonus that stays in that particular though. Then when we sell it, she also sees that increase in it. That’s kind of a cool thing we implemented probably a year and half ago or so that she enjoys. Everybody’s a little different. I mean, Christmas we try to be pretty generous and give bonuses to everybody and kind of have a party.

They want to work for a company that they believe in, right. That everybody is treated with respect. We do try to – In property management, there’s a lot like – I call it cheerleader stuff or like a drama or something. I don’t know exactly what it is but I find a lot of that. In Georgia, we don’t have that in our teams anymore. It just took a lot of keep getting rid of the people that are kind of starting that stuff. That’s something you have to keep. Just having a good environment like people just want to show up and work. That’s what you want. You don’t want people that are there to play games or have power trips with you. It’s hard. It’s hard to find those right people.

[00:24:07] WS: Now, we talked about how to find them and keep them. What about when you unfortunately have to fire somebody?

[00:24:11] MM: I give chances for the most part, as long as it’s not something where I’m not trusting somebody. I always say you can’t teach work ethic. You can teach skills but not work ethic. We actually just had a instance with a secret shopper or mystery shopper going around, and I didn’t tell even my VP of operations, so nobody knew that this was happening, and she gave us great feedback. But I can tell by what happened it wasn’t perfect. There wasn’t a single site that was absolutely perfect, but I can tell by her feedback who are the just fat old lazy people that don’t care, right? There is that type of person.

Then there’s the people that are trying. Maybe they didn’t do it quite right or something but they tried, like acted like do whatever they had to do. So those are like, “Okay, these people need more training, and these people are on the short list of getting out.” As soon as we get another good option for somebody or a referral for another person fort that role, like we’ll plug them into here for the most part, and that’s what I really try to pay attention to is intent. Everybody screws up. I make mistakes. Everybody will make a mistake, but it’s like what’s your intent, and those are the kind of people you want to trust.

I know with William, my business partner now, even if he made a mistake and not that he would, but even if he made a mistake, I would know that he was doing what he thought was right. It wouldn’t just be to poke at somebody or – Some people just love chaos around them. I think they do things just to create that chaos and drama or something, and I just hate that kind of stuff. So I’d say look at the intent when somebody does make a mistake and do they need training. Do they –

Sometimes, I have meetings that skip people. I like to go to sites and I walk around and I like to talk to the maintenance person and say, “Hey! Do you have everything you need? Is there anything I should know?”  Because I borrow the maintenance people, I will – The managers I like to talk to directly, so we’re getting rid of a regional layer, the VP of operations too, and just checking. I always go when I show up at a site like I’ll say, “Okay, let’s check out a couple of your recent terms. I want to make sure they’re doing it correctly and making way for what I’m expecting.” Then I just kind of talk to them and see.

I think that means a lot to people when they know because I do truly care. I want to make sure we’re putting out a good product for our tenants. I want to make sure we’re spending the money correctly for the investors. I think when a team knows that you care, that they’re with someone that cares, I think it makes a big difference. At least that’s what I’ve been told by my team that want to stay.

[00:26:37] WS: Do you have any preferences as far as hourly versus salary?

[00:26:41] MM: For us, all of our managers are salary. Everybody else is hourly. So managers and up would be salaried employees and everybody – I mean, we even have some 1099s once in a while. Sometimes, we will have people at the site that will help pick up grounds or something that you technically have to 1099 them, which we do. We can’t just give like rent deductions like a lot of people do. You have to make sure that that’s recorded correctly. So those kind of people we’re a little flexible with. But, yeah, otherwise, either one is fine. It doesn’t really make a difference to me.

The salaries you just do want to watch. When you’re have a manager that’s running out at four o’clock that shows up at eight o’clock and it kind of makes you wonder a little bit. Where you have some managers that no matter what the issue it, they are there. If there’s any issue with their property, they show up. They just – You want somebody that’s going to take ownership of that property and really treat it like their own. That’s the most valuable type of manager there. I always say it’s somebody that’s as nice as you let them be. You want a manager that’s pleasant and can welcome people and even staff. I shouldn’t say just the managers. Just really anybody. But if they have to straighten something out, they can tell people they are late with rent. They don’t have an issue when evicting someone that’s not paying. Things like that are important.

[00:27:51] WS: Going back to like the executive assistant, that role, what about being virtual or on-site? You have a preference or a must one way or the other?

[00:28:01] MM: One of our EAs is in Colorado, and she is pretty much remote. We don’t have any properties out there. Then I have another one in Atlanta, who’s more regional, but I really don’t see her. I don’t really see either one of them very often. Just at a Christmas party really. Sometimes, I’ll swing to the office for something in Atlanta but – She is I guess technically like a virtual assistant when I really think about it. I know you can get those for a pretty good class. We do have some VAs that help with some tasks on the side. That’s something that Will manages. I don’t – I’m not the best delegator.  I could delegate to Will because I know he’ll get it done but I’m bad with giving people stuff. I’m still a little bit of an A type person.

I think that they’re a great resource, and some people are great at managing with a list, and I think you get the right ones too, depending on which country you go to and how good their English needs to be or is. But we use certain one for design. We use them for – I’ve used them for some – Like trying to visualize some capital plans that we had and different things like that. But if you can manage them correctly, I’d say pay someone five or seven bucks an hour to help you out. But we’re at the point now where we do need somebody physically as well, so that’s something I have been trying with as well is getting my own VA and then still having that person physically there.

[00:29:16] WS: When do you give somebody access even to like email and maybe sensitive information like that? I know we talked about just access to investors, but what about email and even calendar?

[00:29:27] MM: Yeah. Also, one of the VAs does have access to my calendar now, but that’s it and the email. I still haven’t found that person. If Jen wasn’t so busy, I would definitely without a doubt give her access to my email. But I really have to trust somebody and know somebody for a while or – Unless there’s like somebody who’s like a mom or grandmother that I know we can trust. But, yeah, I still haven’t found anybody to do that for me yet.

[00:29:53] WS: All right, Maureen. We are way past time this time, but any last things as far as just hiring that executive assistant specifically or just any kind of staff that you want to leave the listeners with?

[00:30:03] MM: I say just keep your ears open. During this coronavirus thing that’s going on now, somebody mentioned an offer and that was closing and it just – I heard this like three days ago and it actually just hit me as I was getting ready for this. I was like – I told my husband like, “Who did we just talk to [inaudible 00:30:17]?” Because I’m like, “I need an assistant apparently he would be perfect.” Think about what kind of experience you want that person to have and where you can find those people, like somebody that’s worked in a doctor’s office. They would probably be great with calendar management and scheduling and things like that. Try to think outside the box.

Also, people in the restaurants, they’re very service-orientated. They’re looking how can I make the situation better. We’ve had some great managers come out of restaurants in the areas. We’re like, “Hey! How are you doing? You need to come work with me.” We did have a great person that came and worked with us from a Mexican restaurant. But I suggest look outside the box. It’s not necessarily going to come in a resume. When you see somebody on the ball, even a [inaudible 00:30:58] or gas station, keep them in mind because you just never know.

[00:31:02] WS: Awesome. Maureen, thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you.

[00:31:08] MM: Sure. Our website is www.4mrei.com. Then my email is [email protected].

[00:31:18] WS: Awesome. That’s a wrap.

[00:31:20] MM: All right.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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