Host: Multifamily Matters A weekly radio show that discusses the current topics and trends in the multifamily industry. Stay tuned and listen to the movers and shakers in multifamily, share their opinions and thoughts about what's old, what's new, and where the multifamily industry is heading in the future. You are listening to Multifamily Matters, because multifamily matters. 

 

Host: Welcome and thank you for tuning into Multifamily Matters, now powered by the Multifamily Media Network, and the only broadcast radio show in the nation that's solely dedicated to multifamily industry operations. I'm your host, Paul Marks, coming to you exclusively from the Smart Apartment Data Studio. We have a great show with two special guests who are extremely knowledgeable and right in the middle of today's topic. Today we're discussing something that is important and timely to the multifamily industry. Our topic is balancing business and real estate, how you make it work. 

 

Joining me by phone are two fabulous guests, Pete Schnep, the owner of Asset Stream Properties, and a wonderful supplier partner to the multifamily industry, Mohamed Hussein, the chief operating officer of Balanced Asset Solutions. Welcome gentlemen. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Thanks for having me. Welcome. Happy to be here. 

 

Host: Yeah, so, Moh, I want to ask you, kind of give us a brief description of the topic, balancing business and real estate, how you make it work. What does that mean? 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Yeah, great initial question to start with. Paul, I'll kind of draw on my own kind of personal experience. I've been in the industry now for close to about 20 years, and about 15 years ago, or 12, 13 years ago, I started off my journey actually working at software companies like Yardee and Apolio. And what I've seen in just the past two decades is specifically industries like real estate, financial services, insurance services, there's still a lot of manual work that's being done. And then there's newer software solutions that are coming out that are enabling business operators and users in the industry to be able to automate and kind of streamline their business. 

 

I always make a joke, you know, fax machines only exist today because of insurance companies and real estate companies. And looking at the way that businesses are kind of operating today, there's a significant gap in kind of technology adoption. And I'm using this as a parlayer comparison to kind of like high tech companies, if you will. We're seeing that as the newer and younger generation millennials, which I'm part of that group, are starting to run these businesses, which are a little bit more tech forward-leaning. And so the ability to be able to harness the value that comes with leveraging these pieces of technology is extremely important. And definitely makes a difference between a business that can scale very profitably and a business that's going to stay fairly stagnant. 

 

I'm never going to forget one of the quotes here from one of my old customers when I was at a Yardee I mentioned. You know, I'd rather hire more folks and more heads versus investing more and more in kind of technology. And one of the kind of distinguishing things that I've seen in the real estate market, specifically in multi-family, is kind of the notion of understanding technology being kind of an accelerant and an investment to the business versus being a cost center. You know, a good example is, you know, if there's, you know, one of these software products, a lot of these software products can help kind of streamline your AP process. It can save you, you know, 20 hours of staff time on a month, close to, what is that, close to 240 hours on an annual basis that can be saved. And understanding that opportunity cost is very important and critical to be able to fully kind of adopt and to bring kind of quality. 

 

Host: Yeah, so Pete, tell us a little bit about how your journey laid out and how as an entrepreneur you led to have both property management and owner company as well as a service company. 

 

Pete Schnepp: Yeah, sure. You know, my background is, it sounds like quite a bit different than Muhammad's, but also very same, very similar because it's entrepreneurial. I grew up, you know, my mom was somewhat of an entrepreneur. 

 

She had several different business ventures, small business ventures, and so I kind of feel like it's in my blood. But through college I learned the painting business. I learned how to start a painting business, and then I got into construction and, you know, I experienced the great recession when I was in my early 20s, fresh out of college, working for a builder. And through that, I saw a lot of people get super rich with real estate, and then I saw a lot of people lose everything. And I also saw a lot of business owners lose everything, not because of real estate, a lot of contractors and people in the service businesses that had painting or HVAC companies, trade-related businesses. 

 

They all, they went bankrupt and they lost everything. And so I had transitioned myself after that great recession out of being a W-2 employee and into being self-employed. And what I started was what I knew best because I was more in survival mode, you know, trying to establish a decent foundation for myself and be able to prepare myself for the future of my early 20s. And so I started a painting company, and I still own that painting company. 

 

It's been 17 years now. Now we do roofing as well and some other services. But along the way, I started several other businesses as well. I guess I get this itch and people that I meet with, we decide to form a little partnership and start a new venture. 

 

What I realized is, well, I like having my hands in a lot of pots, but you can only have so much time to focus on things. And so some of those businesses, you know, didn't work out too well. I actually, I started a pest control company in 2020 also, and I sold that in 2023. But along the way with my painting company, there was a realization that I had, although I was, you know, I loved being a contractor and doing what I was doing. You know, if you're an entrepreneur, maybe you can relate or even just as an employee. 

 

There was a period of my life when every time somebody knocked on my door, I had this drudging, like, feeling in my stomach like I was going to throw up. And, you know, it's not because I was scared of people selling me solar. It's because I had gotten served legal notices. I was being sued. And there was a, like, you know, a frivolous lawsuit against my business. 

 

It came down to some contractual stuff. We didn't do anything wrong. I knew we were in the right, but it was a big project. And basically, I saw myself with this reality of, oh my gosh, everything that I've been building as a business owner to create a stable and prosperous future for myself is in jeopardy. I thought I was doing everything right by being a business owner and taking calculated risks and working my tail off. 

 

But at that moment, I realized that one lawsuit or one car accident, whatever it was, could, you know, everything that I had worked for could be gone and my family's future would be a jeopardy. And so that's when I really started putting things into gear in terms of building up my real estate portfolio. And at the time, I had had a couple of rentals, but that's when I realized that real estate really is what I, it's the means to the end for me. Because, you know, sure, you're open to lawsuits anywhere, but to me, it was a way that I could ultimately achieve the life of freedom that I wanted. And, you know, collect rent while I was sleeping instead of having to be, you know, a contractor tied to my phone and servicing clients all day, every day. And so, you know, I guess that lawsuit was a realization for me that number one, I needed a backup plan for my family and for our income. 

 

And so that's what it started out as for me is really just a backup plan. And I had met an older couple one time at dinner and they gave me some basic advice that kind of put things into perspective for me in terms of something being achievable. And it was like, they said, hey, why don't you try to buy one property a year? 

 

And at the time, it was still really far-fetched. It's like, how could anybody, you know, afford an extra property every year? But I came to the realization that, okay, well, if I can earn an extra 50 to 100,000 bucks every year, live below my means and have that to, as a down payment to buy another property, that's a good goal. And so I started with that and over the course of, you know, 10 or 15 years, it's about to be a pretty nice portfolio. And so I still have the painting and roofing company. The real estate was really on the back burner for many years, just kind of a side thing. 

 

And juggling the two was really hard. It was ultimately what I knew I wanted. It was the reason why I worked was to buy real estate. But again, as a contractor, you're working 10, 12 hours a day. You're just constantly busy. 

 

So when you ask me about how did I juggle things, you know, there was no easy way. It was a ton of hard work and it was a lot of late nights. I'd work, you know, all day, every day. And then when my family went to sleep, I'd stay up for two or three hours on the computer, crunching out spreadsheets, looking at comps, and doing all the online analysis work. During the day, I'd try to go do quick drive-bys. You know, I had gotten my real estate license, so I had access to the MLS and I'd put in my own offers. 

 

But it's not easy. You put in an offer, you wait a couple of days, you get a response, and, you know, the response is not what you wanted. You put in a counter offer. 

 

And the next thing you know, you've wasted a week or more trying to get a property and then it sells to somebody else that was willing to pay more money. Right? So it definitely, juggling it was not easy, but to me, it was something that I enjoyed. And it was really like, at the time, it was my why. Because real estate connected the life that I wanted to live with the life that I was currently living. And so there was that, there was that why behind it that kept me going, I guess. 

 

Host: All right, well, we're going to need to break it here. We are going to be back right after these messages. You are listening to Multifamily Matters because Multifamily Matters. 

 

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Host: Well, we are back. You were listening to Multifamily Matters powered by the Multifamily Media Network and coming to exclusively from the Smartaparma Data Studio. And we're discussing the topic of balancing business and real estate, how you make it work. I'm Paul Marks. During the day phone are two terrific guests. Pete Schnep, the owner of AssetString properties and a wonderful supplier partner to the multifamily industry, Mohammed Hussein, the chief operating officer of Balanced Asset Solutions. I do want to remind our listeners if you would like to provide show topics, guest ideas, suggestions, or just want to listen to any archived episode of Multifamily Matters, please go to our website at multifamilyradio.com. So, in the last segment, we discussed kind of how the journey started for each of you and balancing those types of different types of businesses with real estate as well as with service businesses. Let's talk a little bit in this segment about how to build effective team to support all your ventures that you have. And Mohammed, I'll start with you. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Yeah, definitely. So, I think if you look at a business that's broken into, I think you can break it into kind of three different components. You have the people, you have process, and then your product and real estate, the product is the piece of real estate. You have the folks in your staff that are actually the engine of the business, and then you have the processes also that align with being able to deliver on user services customers. A few kind of quick tips on kind of fostering effective teamwork and maximizing productivity. One, being able to have clear goals and expectations, defining, and this helps ensure kind of every team member understands the team's goals and their individual goals and achieving them. 

 

One thing that Keith had highlighted in the previous segment was kind of the why. In business, change is inevitable, and especially with technology moving at breakneck speed and impacting almost virtually every industry, it's important to foster a culture of kind of growth and innovation within your organization. Starting off with clear goals. We like to use the framework of smart goals, which is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Secondly is effective communication, encouraging open and honest communication among team members, especially any type of critical feedback, bottlenecks, and red tape within the organization that's preventing from being able to kind of scale and deliver more effectively, efficiently, and profitably to your customers. And technology is definitely something that kind of plays into this aspect. It's important that the folks that are closest to the pain are empowered to be able to kind of change the organization and leveraging kind of technology and other resources and tooling to make their jobs easier and kind of more streamlined. You know, 15, 20 years ago, we used to see the way that the software, for example, would get evaluated usually kind of at the high end at the executive level and then kind of those mandates kind of get pushed down. 

 

Now what we're seeing is, you know, individual leasing agents or property managers or folks in kind of a lower ranking and kind of the staff totem pole, if you will, are now looking at kind of tooling. You know, during my time at Google, and Google does a lot of research on what makes teams very effective. Time and time again, the biggest thing that has come out from their research, the one most important factor, this notion of kind of psychological safety, which is essentially giving your employees and your folks the mental framework that they can fail. They're allowed to fail and this helps give them the confidence to be able to kind of try new things and not kind of stay stagnant. You know, one of the biggest things that holds back a business is, you know, the statement that we've always had done this this way. So and then kind of fostering these these these ideals, you know, positive team culture, positive mental psychology, clear goals and effective communication are all things that are very, very important and kind of critical for for building effective teams. Pete, love to hear kind of your feedback on how you've, how you've philosophized or how you kind of approach building your team effectively. 

 

Pete Schnepp: Sure. Yeah. So, you know, thinking about the question here, I've got right now I have two teams have had other businesses and, frankly, I've kept them somewhat separate, separate entities, separate teams and I try not to cross them over too much the roles because I found when I've tried, it doesn't work out. There's challenges with that when you have like an individual that's got one role with one company and another role with another company. 

 

It just frankly hasn't worked out for me. So, you know, they operate separately and honestly that the contracting business operates completely different than the property investment business. And we aren't a property management business. We're an ownership and asset management business. So we outsource property management. 

 

But I'll say the difference that I see is well in the painting and roofing company is a lot more in-house people, a lot more people in general. And, you know, I've been told that I've done pretty good at that. I've got a lot of people that have been with me for five, 10 years plus. 

 

And my really, my thing really is just to show them appreciation, appreciation. And you mentioned that TUMO empowerment. And so I'm constantly empowering my team to make decisions, to do things that would improve the business or the client relationship, whatever that may be. And so a lot of times when somebody will come to me with a question, I would always just ask, well, what would you do if this was your business? And so it kind of puts them in the driver's seat there and then we can brainstorm a little bit. And I've also been known to tell pretty much everybody, I trust you to make this decision and I will never fire you for making a decision that you feel like is in the best interest of the company or the client. 

 

If for some reason I don't agree with it, we'll discuss it afterwards. And so that fully empowers them to go ahead and make those decisions. And so what I found is, you know, the company grows a culture of its own that way. And, you know, sometimes you've got a course correct a little bit, but when you've got a bunch of people out there making decisions like they're an owner, to me, that's the ideal situation. 

 

Right? I don't want to be the bottleneck. I don't want to be the one that tells everybody what to do. And so that's the contracting business. 

 

For the real estate business, I really don't have any employees yet. I mean, we're still fairly small. I mean, some people would look at us and say, wow, you got a lot going on. I mean, we've got 20 something properties. 

 

But again, we're still relatively small compared to a lot of the big players. So all of our team members are, they own their own businesses, you know, the bookkeeper owns their business, the property managers own their business. I've got the attorney, the CPA, everybody that I outsource is to an entrepreneur. And so there's pros and cons to everything, but that's how this business operates right now. And I'm at the point to where I'm starting to make some changes because what happens is you outgrow some of those businesses or they get too busy as I'm bringing on more and more properties and got more and more going on. 

 

And they don't have the capacity to service my needs. And so that comes with its own challenges. But again, it's to me, I think the magic is really empowering people. Like you said, Mo, empowering people to make decisions that they're comfortable with and having an open honest conversation about it and continually appreciating people showing that appreciation. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Go ahead, Mo. Go ahead, Mo. Go ahead, Mo. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: I'm sorry. Pete, one thing that I wanted to kind of double click on is you had mentioned that, you know, the kind of outspoken of the bookkeeping have a lawyer also and some other services. And one thing that we've seen specifically in the multi family industry is that we're seeing more and more kind of outsourcing of certain types of work, especially, you know, since the inflation of kind of COVID years back, you know, Did you start off your business and kind of leveraging kind of outsourced services as something that you kind of organically kind of grew and drew into? 

 

Pete Schnepp: Both. I mean, I did, I built my portfolio on my real estate company the slow way, right? So one at a time. And so it just starts with that finding a bookkeeper. I've been through three bookkeepers. Now, I will tell you, in terms of outsourcing this year, I hired like a marketing assistant of VA in the Philippines, started off part time and now he's full time. 

 

He's been a great resource. And just yesterday, I onboarded a new accountant because I'm at the point with both, both of my businesses, they each had a separate third party bookkeeping company. And we were just out growing both of them. And so yesterday I started a VA accountant who's now an in house accountant for both of my businesses and we're at the stage where that that makes sense. But as we continue to grow, you know, we're going to probably outgrow her and need to hire somebody else as well. So, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you're constantly weighing where you at in the stage of this business and how can you best utilize your resources or what new resources do you need to bring in? But back to your question starting off with the real estate business. 

 

Absolutely. I outsourced my property management. I found a bookkeeper, you know, CPA attorney. 

 

That's about all you need. Really all you need is a property manager starting off. And even at that, the single family homes, those are just so easy to manage. If you don't have too many, they don't even need to be outsourced. So getting started, you don't need a whole lot. But I think that's the way to go. 

 

Host: Alright, we're up against the end of this segment, so we're going to break it here. We're going to be back right after these messages. You are listening to Multifamily Matters because Multifamily Matters. 

 

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Go to DottiePost.com to sign up. We are back and you are listening to Multifamily Matters powered by the Multifamily Immediate Network and coming to you exclusively from the Smart Department Data Studio. We're discussing the topic of balancing business and real estate, how you make it work. I'm Paul Marks and joining me by phone are two fantastic guests. Pete Schnep, the owner of AssetStream properties and a wonderful supplier partner to the multifamily industry, Muhammad Hussein, the chief operating officer of Balanced Asset Solutions. 

 

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Learn the truth about applicant income. In this segment, I think we're going to talk a little bit about some of the ways to leverage technology to help scale when you have multiple ventures that you're involved with. I know technology is a big thing for you. Talk a little bit about that. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Yeah, so I think it's important to understand that technology is a tool, like a hammer, right? The way you utilize that tool is effectively going to dictate the value that you get out of it. If we look at 20 years ago, folks that were advertising properties, users would use things like Craigslist, like maybe even classified ads. Folks would have to manually go to the actual property fill out, an actual paper application, wait days, get the screening report, and then come back to the office and actually sign an actual lease with a wet signature. Now we have folks that are leasing properties without even actually setting foot on the property itself. You're able to do remote virtual tours, you're able to apply remotely wherever you are in the world, sign and execute the lease wherever you are in the world. That's just kind of like a simple example of how leasing has been kind of automated and digitized, a particular process within the multi-family industry. But that particular example or that notion kind of spans across AP, AR, financial management, maintenance, unit terms and whatnot. One of the biggest roles that we kind of play in the industry is helping kind of educate clients, understanding kind of where their business is today, and dissecting kind of where all the low-hanging fruit is, the manual things that they're doing on a daily basis that they may not be completely very, very well aware of, how much time is being sucked from the organization in terms of productivity. And so the other kind of challenge that we're seeing when it comes to just technology adoption and just staff management is folks now want to work, be able to work remote, be able to travel and work as well. 

 

And specifically like high-end talent is going to be very difficult to kind of nail and have kind of staying just in an office kind of all day. And so like that paradigm is really shifted and was massively disrupted with COVID and the technology solutions that are out there today that allow for you to be able to run the business completely remotely, also helps facilitate being able to work and find that kind of that silence. So I would say aside from just the technology adoption itself, understanding and figuring out how the business needs to transform to be able to properly adopt and get the value out of that technology is very key. Pete, I know you're kind of growing your businesses and yet you work with a lot of different folks. I imagine that probably technology and being able to collaborate kind of digitally without having to always be kind of face-to-face is very crucial in kind of like your growth. 

 

Pete Schnepp: Yeah, yeah. So I do not really have a technology background or software background like you, Mo. To me, technology is like, gosh darn it, you can't live with it and you can't live without it. I've wasted so many hours like doing demos and diving into different software platforms and comparing the features and benefits I've done in the past. 

 

I've switched from one software to another just to realize like after I'm already too far into it that the new one doesn't have a critical piece that the old one did. You know what I mean? So gosh, it's been tough. So at this point, you know, I've got a pretty good lineup of technology and they're coming out with new and new stuff, but it's weird. These software companies, you know, they get you in and it's really tough to move. It's really tough to change a software. But you know, when you're in with a good program and they're making updates and they're constantly like, you know, they've got a good team making it more user-friendly. 

 

It can be a good experience. And so for the listeners, I thought I'd share like what I'm using. I just kind of jot it down what I'm using on a daily basis. And again, my business is a lot different than yours, but maybe it'll connect with some of the audience out there. So my contracting business, we operate the operations off of a program called Jobber. 

 

GetJobber.com. And we've used that for many years and we're really happy with it. They're constantly doing updates. But we, that's kind of like our hub for that business. And then we use another program called Company Cam a lot, mostly in the contracting business. 

 

I can use it on the real estate stuff, but it's basically it's photo driven and picture driven. And where that comes in handy, like if you're walking a property, whether you're a contractor or a property manager, it'll time stamp it. And so as a contractor, you're constantly getting blamed for things that are broken, even though you didn't do it. 

 

Or maybe there was a broken window before you showed up. But after you left, you know, the client thinks that you did it. And so like we'll do our pre inspections and we've used that on many occasions to save our butt. And so that could be a useful tool with property management as well. 

 

QuickBooks Online is like the foundation of our bookkeeping for everything. We've been using Slack a lot lately. Google Workspace is something that, well, I've always used Google, but just recently I'm starting to use some of the other features. Like chat and drive and docs and sheets and those a lot more often. Dropbox is what I use for really like online storage and it's just so quick. I'm always blown away when one of my teammates asks for a file and I can easily go on my phone, hit the Dropbox button, and the search functionality in Dropbox pulls up what I'm looking for, even if it's a five year old file almost immediately. 

 

Like it blows away my team how quickly I can access what I'm looking for. CRM I started using with the real estate company is called Go High Level. And I haven't had experience with them in the past, but I've heard that recently they've made a lot of significant updates and it's a super powerful CRM. We actually created a new website on that platform and I'm really excited. 

 

We're just really starting to get into that. Cash Flow Portal is another software I'm using as an investor portal for the real estate company. It's a really slick place where they can log in. 

 

They can see all the investments that were made, their distributions, their ROI, so on and so forth. And I've really been diving deep into different AI programs. And so for a while I teased around with like the free chat, chat, GBT or whatever and didn't really get anywhere. And then I decided I'm going to go ahead and pay the 20 bucks a month or whatever. And I've been using it almost on a daily basis. It's really incredible what these AI programs can do if you just use it. It's almost like a gym membership. If you use it, you're going to get a lot out of it. 

 

But if you don't, you won't. And so that's just the beginning. There's a handful of other ones that I'm starting to use as well. 

 

And it can get a little bit overwhelming. They all cost 20 or 30 bucks a month or whatever. And so my strategy was, okay, I'm going to do the free trial and sign up for like a month. 

 

And I'm going to give it a shot. And I always will just plug in a reminder in my calendar. Okay, free trial for this program is up. Cancel it or keep it. And so it's just a prompt to remind myself, am I getting enough value out of this program to keep it? Or should I just cancel it? But that's kind of like my lineup right now that I use on a regular basis. 

 

Host: Yeah, we've got about two minutes left. I know you want to piggyback on that, but we have about two minutes left. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Okay, real quick piece of I mean, you rattled off probably close to almost maybe a couple of dozen different pieces of programs or something. You're using what would you say is kind of the biggest challenge and actually adopting these solutions. And I'll give you an anecdote from the client that we work with. It usually comes down to kind of the change management. We thought for us have a lot to offer in terms of automating your manual workflows, but it also requires reassessing the way you do business and how you operate in order for you to actually capitalize on that value. We had an owner recently that we had implemented one of the real estate ERP products and he was used to printing his name and signing each and every check. 

 

But now with this system, they can do ACH and EFC and kind of direct transfers and using bill pay. And it was a habit that was very difficult for him to kind of break in order for the team to kind of be unlocked from being able to utilize the software. Are there any examples of maybe like hardships or complications in what you've seen within your organization and kind of adopting these newer solutions? 

 

Pete Schnepp: Change is difficult for sure because you get in your way of doing things. And so I really, like I said, both companies operate kind of independently. And the softwares are designed for different businesses. 

 

And so there's softwares that are designed for contracting companies and softwares that are designed for real estate. And so I try not to force a change unless it's absolutely needed. And if we do it, it's one at a time and it's slowly. You know what I mean? And so you don't want to do a change right away. 

 

A complete change for an entire team could be disastrous. So it always starts with like me and the key individual who might be using that. And we start with the trial. We talk about it. We say, is it worth it or not? Because we know that it's a big undertaking and then you've got to really believe in it and get behind it that it's going to work out. So it always starts with the trial and we say, yeah, you're an A and decide from there, you know. 

 

Host: We're going to be back with our final segment of this episode right after these messages. You are listening to Multifamily Matters because Multifamily Matters. 

 

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Host: We're back and you are listening to Multifamily Matters powered by the Multifamily Media Network and coming to you exclusively from the Smart Apartment Data Studio. We're discussing the topic of balancing business and real estate, how you make it work. I'm Paul Marks, joined by a phone or two awesome guests, Pete Schnep, the owner of Asset Stream Properties and a wonderful supplier partner to the multifamily industry, Mohammed Hussein, the chief operating officer of Balanced Asset Solutions. I do want to take a moment and thank some of our other sponsors that make multifamily matters possible. 

 

Allegiant, a leading provider of mobile enabled products and solutions for efficient access control within multifamily properties. Direct TV, the ultimate entertainment experience is now available to all multifamily residents. Balanced Asset Solutions, CPAs with expertise in multifamily property management. Smart Apartment Data, the most comprehensive and up to date intelligence on the multifamily industry and complete technology solutions making managed IT an easy business decision for multifamily. So let's talk a little bit about taking the incremental growth steps when you want to scale your businesses. Mo, what do you recommend? 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Yeah, definitely. And I think this is a great segue from the previous segment on kind of technology. You know, I'm going to keep alluding to kind of my notion of kind of using technology as a tool in terms of just being kind of incrementally better. You know, one thing that I like to implore on our employees is, you know, try to come in and focus each day on trying to be just just 1% better. Just do one little thing better, streamline one little process. And over time that will compound more and more and more and more. And you'll then you'll see that kind of magnified in kind of the business of everybody is kind of beating that same drum. Technology is definitely a great way to help build that or address that cabinet between between some things that you're doing internally within the business that are manually. 

 

A good example is for myself. You know, recently I started using this software called Calendly, which it integrates directly to my to my calendar. And rather than having to go back and forth with a particular individual on finding a time in our busy schedules to actually connect, I can leverage kind of the technology in a link. 

 

They can they can click on that link, look at what my available times are, boom, select a time and we already got a meeting kind of on the calendar. And it also frees up some time or my executive assistance, she can focus on other things that are more impactful. I think as a business owner and executive in general, you know, you want to have your mind and kind of attention and focus and resources go into things that are going to make drive the biggest impact on the business. Decrease the amount of administrative work and quite frankly, the things that you know are not going to necessarily distinguish you differentiate you from your competition. And you know, we we always like to say since we're CPAs and offer kind of accounting services to the industry that you know, nobody got into real estate because they absolutely love accounting. 

 

If you did, you're in the wrong industry. And so, you know, outsourcing or leveraging a service provider like ourselves will help kind of free up that time to focus on other things that are more impactful to the business. So, yeah, so Pete, I'd love to, I don't know if you have a kind of a flop and kind of incremental steps of growing your two businesses and kind of how that intertwine kind of technology. 

 

Host: Yeah, we are all. 

 

Pete Schnepp: Okay, I mean, I'm a big believer that small steps equal big results when taken consistently and in the right direction. And so a couple of things that I did, I was very deliberate in doing a while back was bringing it all together and starting with the end in mind. And so, you know, as an entrepreneur with smaller teams, everybody on my team is so critical, so critical. And so it all comes down to what do we want and why do we want it? And, you know, so we're pretty clear on that with each business and I've got that identified for myself personally. 

 

My team members have that too and they're not necessarily the same, but they're all connected. And so once we took the time to sit back and determine what that is, what do we want and why do we want it? What's our purpose? What are we doing here? You know, like what is the meaning? 

 

Like why do we get up and come to work every day? And what does that mean for me, my family, and you know, everybody around us that we touch? So that helped us kind of put things into perspective. 

 

And then from there, it just kind of notches down to really what is the next most important thing for us to do or to work on it. So a tool, it's not technology. It's an old tool that a lot of people forget about, but I think it's so powerful. And I do it at least twice a year. 

 

We're going to start doing it again right here pretty soon. It's this water analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. You identify what are those in your company and what are those for you personally? And then from there, make your decisions on what's the most important thing for you to work on for the next quarter. You know, one to three things and knock it out. And if you've got a strong why, you'll figure it out. 

 

Host: That's a great point. And Mo, tell us a little bit about what some of your clients are doing. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Yeah, I want to second the notion that Pete had mentioned, you know, small steps that, you know, that lead to big results. Pete, something tells me that he used to be an athlete. But I think that holds true in life and business. We're creatures of habit. And so in order to break a habit, we need to take small steps, consistent small steps that will eventually lead to kind of breaking that habit and establishing kind of a new process. And that's, you know, in the previous segment, we talked about kind of the biggest challenges when it comes to software is kind of the change management aspect, you know, for, you know, for you to as a business owner or operator to kind of keep things kind of stagnant as a process and then purchase or leverage a new piece of technology. 

 

It was it's like taking an old motor and putting it in a new car. So it requires kind of that constant introspection, having regular internal things like the flood analysis that Pete mentioned to understand kind of where the weaknesses exist in the organization and and not letting things kind of like faster and kind of build up and create kind of a kind of a dynamic event where, you know, everybody's extremely frustrated and even your stakeholders and customers are impacted. So this is something even myself as a, as a, as growing kind of our services business, what we're realizing and kind of reassessing kind of tooling stuff to help with project management, delegate assessing kind of timelines and how, how the different projects we're working on kind of impact our ability to serve everybody at the end of the day. And so quality of service that really kind of distinguishes us from our competition as well. 

 

Host: Yeah, we've got about three minutes left and I want to transition out of the topic and Pete will start with you. Tell us a little bit about your business as well as if someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way? What are some of the things you're concentrating on now? 

 

Pete Schnepp: Yeah, sure. So, you know, if anybody out there owns or manages property in Phoenix or Tucson, Arizona, and you need painting or roofing services done, you can definitely look us up online at www.invisionservicegroup .com. And we do residential, commercial, HOA, all kinds of work. And then in terms of real estate, you know, if, well, I've got a book that I co-authored last year is the number one bestseller on Amazon. 

 

And if anybody wants a free copy of that, I've got that on, on my website, www.assetstreamproperties .com. And again, if anybody's interested in investing in the Phoenix area or if you're an apartment owner and you're interested in selling, I'm buying. And so I put together deals out here. 

 

I've got a handful that I'm working on right now. So look me up. You could also just Google my name, peachsnap.com and connect. But yeah, that's how you can reach out. Perfect. 

 

Host: And Mo, tell us a little bit about what's going on with Balance Desk Solutions and how people can reach out to you guys. 

 

Mohamed Hussein: Definitely, definitely. So Balance Desk Solutions, we are a boutique CPA and property management advisory firm. This is dedicated to the real estate market. We offer kind of a broad range of services from software implementation, business process optimization, change management training, also outsource, CFO, boutique and accounting and impact services, including cost aggregation studies. We operate in over 38 states and five different countries. And you can find us online at www.balanceassetsolutions .com. 

 

Host: That's perfect. Guys, thank you so much for being here. I do want to let our listeners know that I've mentioned several times throughout this episode that multifamily matters is powered by the multifamily media network, which is where you can find and listen to multifamily matters and other great content and podcasts. 

 

Go to multifamilymedianetwork.com to check it out and make sure to subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Thanks so much, guys, for being here. We're going to be back next week with another great topic and power panel of industry experts. You've been listening to multifamily matters because multifamily matters. 

 

Host: Thank you for listening to Multifamily Matters, a weekly radio show that discusses current topics and trends in the multifamily industry. To find out more about the show or make suggestions for topics or interesting guests, go to multifamilyradio.com. You have been listening to Multifamily Matters because multifamily matters.