Building teams for different stages of a business

Welcome to our show, together we serve Welcome to our show, sit back and enjoy We will talk with people, about their stories With our host in Bramona, we're ready to start Together we serve, together we serve, together we serve, together we serve Welcome to our show, together we serve Welcome to our show, sit back and enjoy Education, inspiration, motivation for business and life With our host in Bramona, we're ready to start Welcome to our show, together we serve And I found out and my guest Harrison today has told me there's a lot of landlords, I'm a landlord. So right away, it was very impressive to me. When you own property, you have to manage that property, you go out and get a property manager. It's a third party, there's a cost, there's a disconnection sometimes. It's not always the best way to go. But now they developed this software that's super easy to use, I've used it. I've got two tenants. I just built a new lease for April 1st and it took me like six minutes. I counted with a clock, you have a stop clock, believe that stopwatch. But it was that simple because I've used other programs. I won't say names because they're all good, but they're very complex. But more so my guest Harrison also talks about building teams. Their software is a service software to help me and help you landlords out there, but also to help the tenants. This is not a landlord centric software. The tenants have the ability to use this as well to be able to communicate, do things, connect, pay their rent, whatever it may be. So it's a really synergetic software that works for both sides, which I really love. But I'm gonna stop talking, bring my wonderful guest on. Harrison Stevens, welcome to the show. Hey Steve, thanks for having me. Well, you know, I've got to say this, when you came on, we started cheering for you. Because you're that good. Nice, I like it. I've got a question. I told you before the show, we're gonna bring this question up. But can you share your journey from being a landlord to becoming the VP of marketing at TurboTenant? And what inspired that transition? So I think the first part is, what made me become a landlord? And I bought a house, I was young. It was an area I really wanted to live. And talked a woman into moving in with me. She ended up becoming my wife over time. And we lived there for a little bit. And then she talked me into moving to a more interesting area in Miami, Miami Beach. And she's like, hey, let's rent this out. We got it at a good price. And then I became a landlord by just stumbling through it, honestly. I found a way to background check someone. I knew somebody that was able to help me get a lease. I found a way to collect rent. I think they were Venmoing me for a little bit. And then they were, you know, sometimes I'd pick up a check. It was this whole process. And I got a great tenant, so I got pretty lucky. And sold that place. We ended up buying another one because we felt like we were doing a good job and it was a good idea to invest. And throughout that time, I was always doing marketing. I was always working with companies, building software or selling services. And that really was like, it's what I love to do, is build teams, market, and tell the whole world about whatever I'm doing. It's really enjoyable. And one part that I've always liked, and this is where I love this show, is building relationships with people, creating this rapport of we all help each other out, building a network, was something that I learned early on in my career was really valuable, especially when changing jobs. And most jobs I've had were through opportunities of people I knew. They recommended me, they vouched for me, they were references, or I reached out to somebody and it's what LinkedIn is trying to say all day, that they do. And this job came out of that in some capacity where TurboTenant was looking for a vice president in marketing. And I was working in an industry that had some sort of relation to what we do here at TurboTenant. And one of their investors saw me through a mutual connection. They reached out, they pitched the company a little bit, and then they discovered I was a landlord, which made this really an interesting conversation. And through there, I started meeting the team, kind of figuring out if this was the right fit for me. And they shared a lot of the same values of not only helping each other get better, but creating this great service and software to help millions of people across the country provide homes for millions of renters. And I use the word home versus just a place to live because so often this is where people are building not just a residence to live, but a home. They put up artwork, events happen in these places. And when I look at places I've lived to rent, there's a lot of places that had impactful situations in my life. First steps for my son, we're in a rental. I had a great experience with that landlord. It was a good place, fond memories. We want to create those for all of these people that are managing properties so they can have a great experience for their children. When you do it right, everybody wins. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I want to thank our sponsor TurboTenant, TurboTenant.com. TurboTenant builds software that makes it easy to manage your own rental properties and save you thousands a year. Reach out to TurboTenant.com or reach out to Harrison. And I want to thank them for sponsoring this show because it helps us get this word out about not just TurboTenant, but about building teams for different stages of the business. What's the superpower of TurboTenant? I mean, it's built by landlords. That's kind of the part that, you know, we know all of these little things that come into being a landlord. And for most people that aren't landlords, it's not that much, except for a few things that are pretty specific. Writing a lease. If you do that right, it's a great experience. If you background check and get the right tenant, it can be a great experience. If you communicate well, it's a great experience. Collecting rent is quite important if you want to be a landlord as well. And we provide those services. But after that, it's really just being a good team between the tenant and the landlord. And communication is pretty critical. But there's all these little hurdles that you go through. You know, getting someone in to see it the first time, getting somebody to go through an inspection report of like, this is what the fan looked like when you moved in, this is what it looks like. Can we eliminate all those hurdles and make it really easy with software? And the answer so far, for almost everything we've seen is yes. But it takes landlords to know all those problems. And that's where our founder and now our CEO, myself and quite a few others, because we've seen all those things, it allows us to build all those processes, which really differentiates us from a single lease solution or a single rent collection solution. It's all built for the entire journey. Because they are journeys and they can be really great journeys. My tenants have always been great. And I've had those experiences of, you know, my first tenant, they had their first child in my house. That one that I was trying to party with my wife in. And like, now they had a kid and they painted the room purple because it was a girl. And like, I felt really good. And they moved on to do great things, I'm sure. That kind of stuff, that personal part is what makes us different. And we let you use it for free. Like that wasn't just some pitch in the ad. You can use our software for free. And we provide value along the way. And there are ways that we make money off of you or the tenant. It's not a complete charity, but you don't pay for things that you don't need. Yeah, well, and I think I told you, I haven't mentioned it on the show and I want to, is me being a landlord. I was gonna pay about 500 a month for, I think they take 10%. It was gonna be 600 a month. As a property manager, I'm like, I don't wanna deal. It's emotional, especially when it's one or two property. You're a property owner and you got 100 properties. This would still be good. I've heard 60, 65% of property owners are single or, single or, not double, one or two properties, right? Yeah, the majority of landlords own one to two properties. And then if you extend to maybe 10, that is the bulk of landlords owning one to 10 properties from a unit count. And you definitely have these giant organizations that own thousands. And you got a handful of investors that own quite a lot. But most of them are the people that we're building software for. They're doing it to build a retirement or put their kids through college. They're trying to go on a vacation. They're not real estate moguls that are taking over the world. They're just making their lives better and they truly care about their tenants. And charging them 10% a month makes it harder for them to run the business or they're passing it along to their tenant in other ways. Or we can just make them more successful with the same tools that the big guys have and only charge, our premium subscription is $149 a year for unlimited properties. That's less than one month for you, Steve, what you just said. And that's where, as you add more properties, the price doesn't change. We wanna let you succeed and not punish you for expanding your portfolio. If you're doing it right, buy the next one with the savings that you use with us and then you can create a great experience for your next tenant as well. It just, it feels right. No, it does. And it's emotional. I mean, you get that text from a tenant that says, this heater doesn't work. It's 40 degrees in here. It's not your full-time gig. But then again, I don't like a third party, Joe Smith coming in and go into my tent and work with my tenant. It just doesn't feel service. It doesn't feel like you're giving together we serve. You've given me, and TurboTenant has given me the opportunity to work with my tenants, it's their clients, and still be involved without all this emotion. I mean, audience, it has been a game changer for me, emotionally. I can't stress that enough. But here's the other thing about TurboTenant, not just the cost, not just the team that you're building, not that you guys care, but talk about the tenant, how they can use it to make your experience better. Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite examples as a landlord is after a tenant moved out, I logged into WhatsApp, which I don't use. And I had like 12 missed messages from them from months ago just asking little questions. And I would have solved them within a day. Thankfully, they weren't crisises or anything like that, but they were communicating on a platform that I didn't use. And that kind of broke my heart afterwards, like months later, I'm like, oh, I could have solved that instantly. So one, if everything on onboarding, you move into a property, all happens on TurboTenant, all communications happen on TurboTenant, you're all working in the same place, all documents are there, you can see your lease the same place that your landlord can have it. And we have an app for you. So as a tenant, we built an app just for tenants. Different experience than a landlord app, like we're trying to make it unique to you as a tenant. That means that you can chat, you can message, you can submit a maintenance request on your phone, on the go, you can also use our website, but most tenants are on their phone. And you can also pay rent, just like you would transferring money to a friend, you can pay rent on the app as well. And that's what most tenants are looking for these days. I'm doing most things on my phone. Let's make it really easy and let's keep building experiences for them as well so that every time you pay rent as a tenant, you're actually asked how things are going. That feedback goes to the landlord every time and sometimes just talking really goes a long way. And we're in a society where it's a lot easier not to talk. And we give you so many opportunities to say, hey, this isn't a problem, but a heads up. Toilet's making some weird noises. If a landlord's a great landlord, they'll probably be proactive. Let me send someone out and take a look because a leaking toilet is one thing, a flooding bathroom is another. And as a landlord, I'd rather deal with a leaking toilet or fix a toilet before it even starts leaking. That's why I avoid headaches because I've got a lot going on personally. I got a full-time job that I'm really excited for. I'd rather solve a problem before it happens because once it's a real problem, then it's taking away from my day-to-day life. Yeah, and I haven't gone into this too far yet, but a lot of this is documented. So all the communique, all the stuff that had to be done is there. So six months go by and the tenant goes, hey, you never fix this. Oh, wait a minute. Talk about that because that's powerful to me. It's like, cause that's happened. Like, I remember, oh, you did change the refrigerator. Oh, and that's something that big. Maybe it was a hood, really small, they forgot. Oh, look, remember the guy came out this day. Talk about that because I think it's big for tenants, landlords as well, or both sides. I mean, it can be something small. For me, the example was, did you get two mail keys or one? Because if you don't return both mail keys, they're $50 each. Like that was the last tenant I had. And he was there for four years. I did not have that text message saved somewhere. Thankfully he found the second key. So it was two keys. We were all good and disaster averted. But with TurboTenant, we're saving all those conversations. They're verifiable. They could protect either party in a dispute. Landlord said they were gonna do something. They didn't do it. The tenant has a record of it or vice versa. And it goes back historically. And especially if you're there for a while, like text messages disappear over time. I don't know how long, but for me it was at least four years. It just takes all the guesswork out. And no one, nine times out of 10, everyone's just trying to work together, I feel like. And sometimes it's just communication. Sometimes it's just, I can't remember four years ago. And why not make it easy? Yeah, yeah. And it's always tells us that it happened when the crowd went crazy. Harris has nailed it. And then that's what TurboTenant means, that drum roll, the next big thing to happen. It is so much fun. I'm gonna just play sounds the whole day, whole show. Now, the other thing with TurboTenant and service, it's a big part of it because you were on my podcast. We spoke, you're friends with Josh, friend of mine, we've talked about what you do. How is the customer service part of it, what you guys do, just a focal point mission of the company? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things. One, we have a team of people here in Colorado that are there to answer questions about the software. And then we have a team of, you know, legal team that's looking at all the different laws and leases and stuff like that and updating it. So making sure that we're covered and we can say, here's what the law says. We don't really give legal advice, but here's a law. But also just when you treat your tenant like a customer and you're providing a service, think of your experience at a hotel. If you do it that way, it changes the way you look at it versus like, oh, this is just another business person I'm working with. It gets a little more personal and then the software helps it make it a little less personal as you said, Steve. That part is important. I think that changes the experience of living in a house versus a home. That little cliche that we hear online a lot, but like there is a difference between the two. And, you know, providing good service as a landlord is really important. And then making sure that we're providing good service to our customers, whether they're tenants or landlords, just makes our business more effective. You know, if we provide a bad experience to either party, we don't get to renew them. And we are trying to create a renewal business as a subscription. Every customer counts. And we have over 700,000 landlords on the platform. Every single one matters to let us grow and keep investing in building a better tool that I wanna use as a landlord. Right. And you're the marketing, VP of marketing, marketing is in your background. And this could be for any business. Where's that question? Here it is. When you're paying, what are the key marketing strategies that contribute to the growth of TurboTenant being from almost, you know, zero to where you are and growing, buying companies? We'll talk about that later. What have you implemented that other people listening to how businesses can implement to help them grow their company? Yeah, I mean, it's always easier when the product, you believe in the product. So, I mean, I don't get to take credit on the product. My product team and my CEO really have created something that I want to use personally, but that helps. I've marketed products that I don't wanna use. I think we got really honed in on Google search, but search in general. And we had an understanding of a lot of landlords are looking to solve a problem when they're trying to find a solution online for our business. And we can talk about other businesses I've worked on where search isn't the best example, but I need to find a tenant. Well, I wanna try and find ways to show up on searches for finding a tenant. And that could be paid. It could be organic, you know, SEO. But we started there, finding a tenant, background to check a tenant, how to market my property, how to collect rent online. These are questions that people are asking on a regular basis because they go to Google. Now they go to ChatGBT, and honestly, same strategy. We knew that we could solve a problem for them. We built a solution to solve that problem. And it's really easy to show up when people are searching for that problem from a conceptual standpoint. Doing the work still takes time to get up there and rank well. That was really important. And what's interesting now is now that we've gotten a good stakehold of, we know we can solve problems, we're learning a lot of people come to our product to solve their one problem. Hey, you need a lease? You got a lease from us? I'll go back to what I was doing, you know, in however way you were managing properties before. Now our marketing continues to shift towards we are the all-in-one solution to help you manage your properties more successfully. And I even use the word successfully in a really specifically because success means something different to all of us. Yeah, I make more money. Hey, that's success. Or I have more time. I can go on a vacation now. I don't need to become a millionaire. I just want to go and travel more. Success is different and we provide tools to be successful in either way. And that's why I want to keep it a little overmended because I don't want to assume what success is, but that is what we're trying to do. Is a tool that lets you manage from, hey, I just got a property to I've just renewed my tenant. And everywhere in between, you have all the tools you need to be successful. And that's the story that we're trying to tell now is it's not just a, hey, let me do one thing. It's let me do it all. And you can be successful because you do it all. Yeah, and it's success for the tenant, the landlord, you guys across the board. It's that shared success, which is important. What's one tip in marketing you'd give people listening to have a business with their entrepreneur, solopreneur, or a medium to big size business owner? There's a lot, but it kind of goes back to something I just said. We had a really clear understanding that people were searching for a solution. If you have a business that people search for, then this is a great place to start marketing. If you have something, and I kind of use clothing a lot as the example where people need to discover it. Like maybe they don't know they have this problem yet, but like they could discover it. Then there's discovery platform. Social media is really great for discovering. There's a lot of other examples out there. There's content marketing and distributing a lot of information out there. That's where you need to kind of figure out where your product lands and then spend the time acquiring some customers, learning from them, adjusting your product, then understanding why they purchased and doing more of that. And we talk to our customers a lot. We have multiple calls a week with different members to talk to landlords to say, what are you doing? Why are you a landlord? Like, let's just find out, you know, what motivates them? Cause that might make a difference in how we do things. You know, why did you buy this product? Are you showcasing that in your marketing or why they bought it? And you might need to talk to a lot of people. Don't ever take one person's example as what you should do, but understanding all the different places you can market and why people are gonna be interested is really important. And if you can spend a little money, you'll learn a little faster, whether it's on social media or on search. And then you can learn a little faster and double down, but try and balance out your paid and your organic methods. Cause that's where the long run growth really comes in is when you have balance. Cause if you just keep paying all the time, you're gonna keep paying all the time. That's why I talked a little bit about SEO for search. You know, as we grow that, it takes the pressure off of the paid channels or even better, it lets me invest even more because I'm getting customers at a different cost from the more organic channels. I like that because I hear people, I spend, you know, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, spend thousands a month, Google ads, and they get nothing. So the testing is, so they got to really do their due diligence. Don't just spend a thousand dollars this month on Google ads and think, hey, my company's gonna be out there everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it takes a lot of learning too. Like did this keyword actually do something for you? Like we could, we honestly, I would love to talk all day about this cause there's an endless amount of, I've been doing it for 15 years. Yeah. But there's a lot of nuance to it. But I think the really important part that I learned in various businesses that I worked for is you either have a product that people have a very clear problem that they'll search for, or if you don't, you want to get in a place where you can reach people you believe that will use it, which social media is really the great answer for that. You know, I worked in an industry for home decor, like are people searching for a product they didn't know existed? No, but once they see it, they're really interesting. It's very visual. That was a really good channel for us where search wasn't really that great. People weren't searching for the product. So that part, I've always found it's one or the other. You either have some people searching for it or they're not, and you want to get in front of them. And identifying that is a good starting point to start testing and learning. And you get to do either one for free. You can do social for free. You can do YouTube. You can do a lot of things. YouTube's a great way to actually get into search, as long as you can get in front of a camera, even if it's an iPhone, and start talking about what you do. So it sounds like the thing that companies shouldn't do in their marketing is the social media SEO without the testing and due diligence and stuff. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you still, you want to try some things. You do want to learn, but if you think and look at your product, is it solving a problem that you think people are just looking for? Or are you solving a problem that people don't know they have? And once they see it, they're going to feel it immediately. And TurboTenant is trying to actually go into the ladder these days of there's so many landlords that have been doing it for 10 years that their system is the way it is. And landlording is kind of hard. It's not too bad. Then they discover that there's a better way. And I actually have to convince them a little bit. And I can still do the problem-solving search solution that we've always relied on in tandem as we get in front of people in new ways. And that's where that commercial you played, a big part of it is, did you even know that there was something better? So, yeah. And I didn't know until I met you. To be completely honest, he jumped on my podcast. It was like, and again, audience, I know it's not for everybody, but there are a lot of landlords out there that are struggling and you have thousands, but there's many more that need to see this. Because again, for 149 a year, guys and girls, hello, game changer. Especially if you've got a full-time job, right? You got to manage both those. Well, Harrison's been talking a lot. He's a great guy. I love hearing him, but we got to give him a break. So we're going to take about a five to seven minute break. We'll be back and talk about leadership in TurboTenant. And again, I want to thank my sponsor TurboTenant. TurboTenant builds software that makes it easy to manage your own rental properties and save you thousands a year. Yes. Did I say it? Thousands a year. For me, I'll say it one more time, it's 6,000 a year it's saving me. Maybe more. So TurboTenant.com. So we're going to learn more about my sponsor. We'll bring up some video. We'll see you guys very soon. The reality is real estate is the third largest asset within the United States. So I think it's super important that individuals are able to participate that and not just companies and corporations. And real estate as an asset class, it's very valuable. It is more resistant to inflation and certainly other things like public stocks. It generates income while you're holding it, right? And then it goes up over time. And so if we're doing our job, the amount of landlords that are investing in real estate within the United States will continue to increase and those businesses themselves will be more successful. The landlords will feel much more confident and empowered to manage them. So TurboTenant is a platform used by over 700,000 landlords across the United States. And our mission is very simple. Make it easier as a landlord for you to manage the property yourself. Everything from marketing your property to filling that property, screening a tenant, making sure that you got the right tenant in your property, leasing, and then the largest part of your relationship, which is your residency, facilitating rent payments and maintenance requests. I think a big part of the rental market and even my own experience as a renter is inconsistency with different landlords. And by providing consistent opportunities to educate landlords through how they build a lease, how they collect rent, and then educating them through what we call residency once a tenant has actually moved in is just a better experience for tenants. I've had a tenant reach out to me for months on a platform that I didn't use. And then after they moved out, I discovered all these conversations and was really disappointed. These were things that I could have solved for them in a day and they waited two months to just call me. If I was using TurboTenant at the time, would have been so much clearer of your lease was done on TurboTenant, your application was done on TurboTenant, your background check was done on TurboTenant, all of your documents are stored on TurboTenant. Of course, all your communications will happen on TurboTenant. The all-in-one aspect of the product is better for everybody. I describe TurboTenant to fellow landlords as a godsend. And I know that's a little much, but literally they have helped me be organized and I really appreciate it. With one click, you literally launch your rental into the world. I love getting on webinars and communicating with fellow landlords, fellow real estate investors. Our apps streamline the most important and otherwise arduous parts of the process for landlords and managing their rentals, both in terms of vacancy and residency. So if a landlord is trying to set up a listing to host on different sites, when they're going through the process of setting up their listing, we have an AI tool that very quickly generates a description for their property. And with one click of a button, that listing will go out on a variety of different listing sites. They can also message tenants within the app, track expenses or rent payments all in one centralized location. You know, anything I need them to sign, I do it right in the app. It takes care of everything. It's perfect. And just the technology they offer, especially in regards to receiving tenant payments. I can't say enough good about them. Another way that TurboTenant helps to transform the rental management process for landlords is by distilling down and seamlessly integrating what are often unknown unknowns or variables for landlords. I'm specifically speaking within the context of compliance. So state, city, county laws, when they come to TurboTenant and they want to create a lease agreement specific to each of those states, once we know that information, which they can easily select within our software, then we automatically incorporate that and inform them of the laws that are relevant to them. And the ways in which we've already woven AI through it, helping with the custom questions to stay within fair housing compliance, helping without lease agreement to make sure that you're not putting anything in there that violates local laws. We're very excited to weave that into the other aspects of the landlord journey. So a really simple but impactful example is a very common maintenance request a landlord might get from a tenant. I've gotten this myself, right? Is the toilet won't flush. One of the ways in which AI is gonna start playing a really active role in that within the TurboTenant platform is we can actually send back, utilizing AI, the first couple steps to triage that issue for the tenant, right? And so we can ask them a couple of questions, give them a couple of things to check themselves, and nine out of 10 times, it's actually gonna resolve the problem. Let's say it doesn't solve the problem and the landlord has to do something. They've now gathered more information from that tenant about what kind of service provider they need to get. And so that's a very small interaction, but it's where a lot of the friction happens in the tenant and landlord relationship. We can actually take the landlord out of the line of fire altogether and provide solutions immediately. I watched that video and I go, thank God for TurboTenant. Because some of those things, like I'm in California, our laws are changing all the time. I know I probably, well, I probably with other companies, I was, but it was so cumbersome to do it. But did you notice that video? Those people were testimonials. They're just everyday people. They're landlords. And I'm kind of judging here. I don't mean to be, but it's not like a guy in a $10,000 suit that's like got properties everywhere. It's that person that's got one or two properties that needs to take care of the properties, wants to service their tenants. The tenants want to service their landlords. And I love Seamus Kelly, the CEO, and a great Irish name, by the way. You could tell he cares, that the leadership is there and it's powerful. And that's what we're gonna dive into now. Let's bring Harrison back. There he is, hydrated and ready to roll. I'm glad I played that video. It was about TurboTenant, but Ms. Capra and Seamus, again, great Irish name, my buddy's Irish, love that. And all the people, including you, you could see leadership's a big part of it. So I wanna ask this question that I found, your cross-functional leadership style has led to improved margins and revenue growth, which everybody wants. What are some of the key principles behind this leadership approach? So it's fun to learn. I'll say that. I've always enjoyed learning about what the other side, a vice president of finance or a CFO, what they're trying to accomplish and what they're trying to do. And then on the product side, I've really loved technology and how it's built and why, and what the user experience is and stuff like that. And when you all start to speak a similar language, it opens up more opportunities. The way that we amortize and accrue costs, can we put it in the right, can we work in an area that makes it so I can spend the right amount of money in one month, which gives us growth in another month? And there's nuance that can be powerful. Products, can we understand the product really well so that we can market it effectively? Or can we build better products for marketing? And if we're all kind of talking and working together, all of those little details start to really pile up and become game changers for a business that's communicating well and leading together. And that's always been the most fun part about leading teams is not just what I'm good at, but collaborating with the others that are better at what they do than me and finding the detail that's set for the part. Watching the video too, you can tell your culture. By the way, I don't work there. Your office looks really cool. To be honest, I know you probably work from home. I don't want to assume that, but it's such a great office. But the culture, because of this cross-functional, talk about culture, it's so big in a company. People don't realize it. Yeah, I actually am in the office about three or four days a week, just a busy day here, and I'm home. But I get that's part of the culture. We really encourage at least once a week in the office, but some people, office is better. For me, it is. But there are days where I need to be home to take care of something while I'm in the middle of meetings and such, and that's a day like today. So we treat you like adults, and we hold you accountable for success. I do think that as you get higher up and lead more, being in person helps a lot, especially for those nuanced details that I just mentioned. But a big part of our culture is, oh, the part that I like the most is a propensity to try and win. And a lot of that drives who I am, but it also drives a lot of our culture as well. We're not trying to be a good software company. We're trying to be the leader in our space. And that starts to, if you believe it at the top, it starts to infect everyone else. Infect is maybe not the perfect word, but it starts to rub off in a really positive way of that I am really competitive and trying to win, and other people see that as something to join, part of that kind of enthusiasm. And then we're really big on feedback. If I see something that can be improved, I'm gonna say it to somebody in a positive way as quickly as possible. And I expect them to do that in reverse to me too. So it doesn't matter if it's a customer support person, a CEO, anyone who's able to come to me to say, hey, I see an opportunity, or this was odd the way you said it, or something like that. We should be better every day. And we wanna do that in the software. We also wanna do that as individuals and especially as leaders. And that's really something that you feel on a daily basis. Sometimes it's a little tiring, but it's working. And it's easy to really buy in when you see it working all around you. How has the leadership changed? Because you're a perfect example from starting out. I don't think you were there at the start. Were you there? No, I was not, no. Well, you came in later, but what have you seen as leadership changed in different stages of business? Now you just bought a company, we'll talk about it in a second. You have other big things happening in the company. How has it changed? Yeah, I mean, it used to be, it used to be, how are we gonna be effective each month and each quarter? You know, are we gonna spend enough and make enough? And like, you know, we were small and we ended up closing a Series B and getting funding, which allowed us to start thinking in a year mindset and really, honestly, a five-year mindset. And that changes the scope of everything we do. And it changes the way that we need to lead as well, even as individuals and as a team, where long-term becomes a little bit more obtainable. And that allows us to take bigger bets. It allows us to invest in certain areas that we were holding on, you know, just making sure it didn't fall apart and clean up a lot of that so that when we double in size, we're prepared for it. And it was an exercise I did at a previous company of what is 10 times the size of this company look like? And how do we backtrack to get there? And we're, you know, we're a little bit more mature company here at TurboTenant. We're starting to think like that, and we have been for the last year or two since I've gotten here, of how do we get to that five-year spot that we're targeting? What are we missing? What do we need to build? What do we need to double down on investing in? What do we need to stop doing? But sometimes we're doing things that, any business can be doing things that are really helpful to get to from A to B, but now we're trying to get from B to C. We have to change. And that for me meant changing the way that we ran meetings for my department, changing the way that the team, we have three kind of teams inside of marketing, changing the way that those teams collaborate. Everything changed January 10th here in marketing. Just the way my team was structured because of what we need to get to in the next year or two, the old way worked well to get us to where we were. Now we need to start looking into the future. And that means changing. It's really hard to stay exactly the same and grow, might even be counterintuitive. So that's part of it of being excited for all of those challenges because that usually comes with change and hopefully winning. Yeah, and TurboTenant, your ability to change and innovate by buying the company is, it's a massive success. You're out there looking to buy and grow companies to help you grow, success right there. I know TurboTenant's gonna be around for a while, partly because of that. Talk about this company you purchased that you could talk about. Is it an accounting company and how it's gonna make TurboTenant even better? Yeah, so once we got some funding, we had some decisions to make, which is how do we grow and what is our software missing? And I can tell you before I was using an Excel spreadsheet to do all of my bookkeeping, my CPA is cringing for sure. We already had a partner that we were working with. We had a good relationship. They had a very similar culture, but they had a great product of, and their name is REIHub.net. REIHub, you know, accounting for real estate. This was something that we didn't really offer and we had partnered with them to basically pitch to all of our customers, hey, here's a company we really like. Here's a way that we've integrated with them and we can provide a solution that we didn't build to all of our landlords to have really great bookkeeping services and automate them. And when we got funding, our first thought was, what are we missing? We know that bookkeeping is super valuable for a successful business. And talking with REI, how that really made sense for us to acquire them and then begin to invest even more in what they're building and integrating even more into what we've built. And we'll probably be one of the smoothest transactions I've ever done in acquiring a company just because everything was just so aligned with them and really kudos to what they built. But now when you go to TurboTenant, you can get TurboTenant accounting, which is automated bookkeeping. What REI have had already built and we continue to invest in is, if a transaction comes in from a Home Depot, it's probably an expense to improve your home. It automatically tags that. If it's a rent payment that comes from the same place, ideally TurboTenant, we know it's a rent payment. If money goes out of your account to a bank every month, it's probably a mortgage. And we can automatically create rules and over time get AI to suggest more things so that you can allocate your expenses in the right place and have a really clean set of books so that when tax season comes, you print something out, you send it over to your CPA, they charge you less because it's all prepared for them. And also you learn every time a rule comes up, hey, did you know, or is it this? You might actually get more opportunities throughout the year to allocate expenses in ways that make your business more successful. There's all these tax breaks out there that I'm not super familiar with, but I discover them slowly over time. Tools like this help you discover them faster. And that can be the difference of saving you a little bit of money on your taxes, or it could be something that you can invest in something else, maybe not even business related. Hey, you could go on that trip because you now have just a little bit more because you did your taxes in a more effective way. The bookkeeping part of what we're automating just helps you kind of learn as you go and automate it and protect you too. So it's been a huge value add for our customer base. And it's certainly something that I'm gonna use because again, Excel and Google Sheets, at least I was tracking things, but it's not the best way. And you talk about accounting software, it's built just for real estate. And there's some great accounting software out there for everything in a business. And then you spend all this time customizing it to fit yours. For us, this is customized just for real estate. New tagline for TurboTenant. TurboTenant makes it so simple even a child can do. It just popped in my head. It's like, you brought on a major acquisition, but your whole thought process is, hey, Mr. Landlord, Mr. Tenant, we just wanna make it easier for you. Yeah, and that's the whole goal. Like if it's easy, then you're more successful. And then I think the price helps too, but that's really the heart of it. Why spend all of this time researching things instead of doing whatever you wanna do with your life? Don't become an expert in tax law for real estate if that's not what you wanna do. I don't wanna do that. That's not what you should have to do for a rental property. Let someone on my team that does it all day build all the guidelines so that you can answer a few simple questions and we can automate it. Same thing with leases and legal. California, there are quite a few laws that are very unique. Why do you wanna become an expert in it? Let our legal team become an expert so that when you build a lease, we're asking you questions that make sure that you set yourself up for success. And your tenant has really clear expectations on what's allowed and what isn't. That's that first interaction. The lease is critical in my opinion of setting expectations. And if you're super professional, they'll think that they can be, they're working with a professional, they're gonna be taken care of, and they're also gonna treat your place well. Background checks are only as good as background checks are. They're just a starting point. You just never know. I've been blessed all these elaborate horror stories. You're a landlord. I'm sure you might have horror stories. And having that backing legally is huge. Well, actually, you have a horror story. We had somebody that was in California that, what's the phrase when they stay, squatters. Yeah. And she had a baby, but she didn't pay rent for six months. And the police couldn't come in and do anything. They just wouldn't because she had a baby. Understood, we gave her a few months, but at six months, and I think it was 2,500 at the time, this was 10 years ago. That's, well, 14,000, that's a lot of money. It just gets you protected as a landlord. And that's what I love too. I know your guys, your team was talking about building teams, a great legal team, that go, I'm protected. They go, hey, I send this out, I know I'm covered. Because it's scary, a lot of bad people. Yeah, yeah, the squatters is a really fascinating and problematic thing for landlords. And yeah, there's a lot of states where partial payments are paying rent, and it's hard to evict someone that's paying rent. And that could be a dollar. Little nuance things that we do not allow partial payments. You can't send $1 as rent. You have to send the whole thing or nothing at all. And a little bit of a protection from that standpoint. Also, from a tenant perspective, if you're paying rent on time, we can report it to credit bureaus, and you can build your credit for just living and doing the right thing all the time. We can help you there too. So all the little things add up to something that really changes the way you're being treated. Well, and I like that too, because I could be a real nice landlord and take that. Here's half payment. I know you paid me half in three days. Or now I can just go, TurboTenant's doing it. Kind of leaving your money, personally, your company. The software go, hey, it's all built in the software. Sorry, that's kind of how it goes. You pay or you don't, or you're late. You got late fees. Yeah, and we automate the late fees. And the same thing, let our software be the bad guy. And you get to be just a good host. Yeah, see, he's a great marketing guy, because he said it. You said it like I wanted to say it, but you said it better than I said it. So thank you for saying it better than I said it. That was really weird, but I said it, so it's fine. Real quick, we're coming to the end here. What's the future of TurboTenant in rental real estate? Yeah, it's a question that we ask ourselves a lot as well. And I mean, there is a lot more automation for us to build and features to build. The video that you play a little while ago talks about a little bit of just AI, the buzzword that we all talk about. But can AI triage conversations for you so that if there is things that the tenant consultant solves, great. AI can probably have that conversation to keep it going. Or can it collect everything so that when you finally hear about it, it's like, all right, toilet's broken. They've tried these three things. They noticed that this is the problem. You send it off to your plumber and the plumber has everything they need. They can probably quote you really effectively on the phone and then they can go and do it. We have some vendors that actually can build through the platform, but we're trying to get a lot better at the conversation part. Hey, can this tenant have a dog? Well, if our AI can look at the lease and extrapolate pets or no, then you don't even have to look at your own lease. We can probably figure that out for you. Or even better, the tenant asks, can I have a dog? Well, according to your lease, no, you can't. And here's the section, the AI could do that. You start to become more and more hands-off as a landlord, even when you're managing yourself. Now that's something that we've already identified and we've been working on with some pretty big AI companies to build. And some V1s are already being shown internally of can we at least triage? And then you still get to make the decision. Because there's certain things you still want to be in control of. Like, do you want an AI booking a plumber and then replacing an entire toilet? I'd like to at least see personally at this moment, but I might feel differently in a year. Who knows? Things change fast these days, right? So we're investing a lot in that. And then, do we want to go into another country? We've talked about that. Do we want to build more tools for commercial or real estate? As our landlords grow because they've been successful, they start investing in different property types. We've discussed those kinds of things. And a lot of it is just, what will we build that helps landlords that we currently have? Let's take care of our customers first. And then as the marketing person, then I get to go and look for new types of customers as we build more things. So that part excites me, but how can we build a really successful business that grows consistently? And the first best option is always, can we build something better for our existing customers? Let's end real quick with a personal, let's get to know Harrison as a person. Well, I've got a Learjet out in your airport reserve for you. I purchased it. You've got four seats. You're sitting in one of the seats. And the other three seats in the Learjet, who would you invite that are alive, similar to the podcast one, but now you're flying? Who would you invite? Why would you invite them? Where do you want to go? Oh man, my first thought is probably the, well, in some ways the first thought and the last thought, but well, I'll make my wife happier. So in general, I was like, I have a wife and two kids. My kids are four and just about two. It'd be really great to not travel coach with them. So let's go on a nice jet. I'd love to go to Hawaii and just enjoy some time unplugged and like create an incredible memory. My second place that I thought it was Chattanooga, Tennessee just because my best friend moved there with his wife. My old company is there. I get to see a lot of people and getting there is kind of hard. So that was my first, my first answer is way better though. I want to go to Hawaii with my family and enjoy some time because, you know, we're talking about that. Can we do a six hour flight with two little kids? They're not really into TV yet, which is a huge, oh man, that's a long flight moment, but we're getting closer and that would be a really great trip. We went there on our honeymoon a long time ago and I haven't been back since. So that would probably be my best answer is I'm thinking about my family and creating a great memory. I'm not surprised as you, your leadership style is definitely family oriented. So I'm not surprised by the answer. Audience, once again, I want to thank my sponsor, TurboTenant. Go to TurboTenant.com. They built software to help you manage your properties easier, simpler, and adding more features. They got some more exciting news coming. He couldn't tell me yet because I don't make enough money. That he can't tell me, but there's some big more changes coming. Love a company like this. Why he's on my show. Together We Serve is what they're doing. You saw the video at halftime. They really care about us, the landlord and the tenant. We'll see you all on the next episode of Doing Business. Excuse me, Together We Serve, I almost said my podcast, which is Doing Business, oh, I'm sorry. Together We Serve next Friday, 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern. You all have a great rest of the day. Take care, everybody. Thank you.