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PM Collective - The ART of property management
The ART of property management with Ashleigh Goodchild is a leading platform supporting collaboration not competition through an online community and events throughout the year with one purpose: to create happier property managers. She creates connections for property managers looking to create momentum in their careers and personal life. Join Ashleigh and her guests as they discuss challenges, struggles, mental health, mindset and give advice to property managers and anyone in the industry. To get the support in your property management career, join our PM Collective Facebook and Instagram community.
PM Collective - The ART of property management
When Should You Hire an Operations Manager? One Agency's Journey
Marisa Reeves, Operations Manager at SOCO Realty, shares insights on when real estate agencies should bring in an operations manager and how this role transforms business efficiency and team productivity.
• Difference between operations manager, head of department, and general manager roles
• Assessing team capacity versus feeling busy through one-on-one staff meetings
• Identifying whether staff are utilizing available tech tools to their full capacity
• The critical role technology plays in creating additional capacity for property managers
• Importance of property retention as a key performance indicator
• Creating personalized career growth paths for team retention
• Signs that your agency needs an operations manager
• The necessity of delegating responsibility, not just tasks
• Reflecting on 12 months of operational improvements
If you're a business owner spending more time putting out fires than growing your business, it might be time to consider bringing in an operations manager to help streamline your processes and support your team.
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All right. Today I have a person who is close to home joining us, and that is our operations manager at SoCo Realty, marissa. Marissa, welcome, thank you happy to be here. You probably haven't done a podcast before, or have you?
Speaker 2:No, I've never done one.
Speaker 1:There you go, and you were one of those lucky ones that I actually did some prep for, because normally the guests that came on board know that you don't get any questions prior, but I have given them to you because I know how you work and I know that you're a little bit more process driven than I am, which makes you a wonderful operations manager. So I am. I've got our list of questions that we're going to go through today, but I really just wanted to have a discussion about when real estate agents should bring in a like a head of department or a general manager or an operations manager, because it's one of those positions that I see a lot of agencies bring them in, like when they've only got a hundred properties, and then I see people agencies bring them in like when they've only got 100 properties, and then I see people not bring them in at all. Now, if you can just share a little bit about your experience and your last couple of roles, just to set the scene, and then we'll sort of get into that topic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So. I started as a property manager assistant in 2019. So I was 19. It was my first full-time job and I very quickly went from PM assistant to managing my own portfolio of about 250 properties just myself. So I learned a lot very quickly, was definitely thrown in the deep end there, but, like I said, I learned a lot and from there I moved up, became a property manager. Eventually, senior property manager moved on to become an office manager and then kind of went into the operations space after that. So I'd been doing PM for about five and a half years when I realized I'd kind of hit my limit. But I still have a love for the industry. So becoming an operations manager was the perfect way for me to still be involved but kind of take that step back from being as client facing as I was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and do you see a difference between an operations manager, head of department and general manager and do you want to just describe your thoughts around those three positions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I guess a head of has more, I guess, ownership over one specific area, so it would typically be for just property management or just sales, and they're also normally more client facing. So if there's issues or complaints from people, that's who it gets escalated to. As an operations manager, I'm a lot more behind the scenes so I'm focused on you know all of our systems, our processes, what sort of policies we have in place. I manage all of our offshore staff and their training, all of our in-office staff and their training as well. So a lot more behind the scenes. I guess for a general manager, you'd be looking at someone kind of overseeing a lot more of the behind the scenes stuff with the business in terms of financials, which for me, as operations, I'm more focused on, I guess our efficiency of the business and how it's running, rather than the degree financial side of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent. Now you came to us and sometimes people say to me oh how did you find Marissa? And I'm like actually really funny story, because I didn't really think that I needed someone and I don't even know how you ended up starting. And maybe you could share your experience with how that looked, because I have a really basic memory and you probably will know in more detail how you came about being an operations manager in our office.
Speaker 2:It was funny, wasn't it? It kind of all just fell into place Like there was no specific. You know, you weren't technically advertising I never technically applied but it was like the stars aligned and everything was saying like this is meant to be. I had kind of hit my limit of where I was previously and was looking to make a change, but I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do next. So I reached out to my mortgage broker, diana, who I didn't actually realize was your sister at the time.
Speaker 2:I knew that she worked out of the SOCO office because I'd come and seen her a few times for different appointments. But just from chatting to her she said look, I'll put you in touch with Ash. If she doesn't know someone, she might have something for you. You might just want to temp for a while and she'll be able to help you figure out what you want to do. And then we met. I think we actually met over Zoom the first time. We didn't even meet in person until I'd been properly hired. So it all just kind of fell into place where I said the sort of things that I'm really passionate about and I love doing, and we both realised that it was actually going to be a great fit.
Speaker 1:And so for me, who didn't think that I well, I hadn't actually even exercised the thought of do I need someone in that place? I mean, when you came along I was like stupid. Like of course I needed someone in that place because I was being a disservice to our team for various reasons. But what was it? And and this, I guess, is for for business owners to understand like what was it? And and this, I guess, is for um, for business owners to understand like what was it that attracted you to our business as an operations manager? Um, so that other business owners can get a little bit of an idea of how to be an office that you know operations managers or people in that position want to come and work for. Like what was it about us that, yeah, that made you sort of say, yep, I do want to work there. Was it not the opportunity? Was it us? Was it like, yeah, what was it?
Speaker 2:It was a bit of everything. Like I said, the way that everything happened kind of seemed like it was meant to be. But I think reputation had a big part to play in it. Before I even realised that you were Diana's sister, like I'd heard of SoCo, I knew who you were in the industry and I knew that you had a great reputation. So immediately I was like this is somewhere that I do want to be involved with. You know, somewhere I would be proud to work and be happy to, I guess, help a team that's clearly already great. So, to be honest, when I first started, I was wondering do they even need me? Like am I going to come in? And things are already working. But yeah, I guess industry reputation, the location was great as well.
Speaker 2:Like I was happy to work in South Perth and I think that's a big thing for people right now and we often talk about it in the recruitment space is that people are so focused on location and travel time. I think even if I had found the perfect fit for me but it was, say, north of the river, it wouldn't have actually been the right fit for me. So you guys, being based where you were, worked out really well and I think also just the team culture. Like, aside from the reputation, just from chatting with you, chatting with Di and the people that I kind of had known, that had spoken to you in the past, knowing the sort of team culture that you had, that definitely attracted me. Like to have a team culture where everyone's really proud to work there and everyone gets super involved. I remember when you first added me to the work chat, just being able to scroll through the previous messages and seeing how everyone supported each other. I think that plays a massive part in where people choose to work these days.
Speaker 1:Do people when I add people to that group chat? Can you see all the previous messages?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything. I don't think I knew that. I have to remember that, so lucky, nothing bad was said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. Like, yeah, lucky, I hadn't sort of put in there, so we've got this girl starting on Monday. Not sure how it's going to work out, but be nice to her so we'll see how it goes. Correct? What was your thought on coming on board when you knew that there hadn't been a previous position, as opposed to taking over a position? Do you hold any sort of opinions on your side of things?
Speaker 2:I actually think it made it easier when you're replacing someone and people are used to you know someone in that position doing things a certain way. When you come in, like already coming in as an operations manager, I was a bit unsure of how the team would take any changes I was going to make. You know, are they going to understand that I'm making these changes to make their lives easier, not harder? Is that going to be a bit of an age thing, because I'm a bit younger than some of the team, like you do think of those things. But coming in and it being a brand-new role kind of gave me the flexibility to customise it as to how I saw it would fit and where it was required, whereas if I'd come in and there was you know someone, it and where it was required, whereas if I'd come in and there was, you know, someone else's shoes to fill, it does definitely make it a little bit harder if people were used to things a certain way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was no comparisons that people were comparing you to, so they were only comparing you probably to me, who was doing a pretty half-assed job of giving them any attention, so that definitely made it a bit easier. Now it's great because you have got that property management experience. But capacity is always a hot topic in property management. So how and we talk about it quite a lot I mean that's always sort of the game to sort of increase capacity and efficiency. How are you assessing whether our team has reached that true capacity versus feeling busy, like I'm not sure if that's like it's a focus for me, I'm not sure if it's a focus for you. But, yeah, how do you think our team are at capacity? Or do you think they've got room and how much room do you think they've got? And keep in mind that they probably don't listen to this podcast, so we can have it like as a business meeting right now.
Speaker 2:I think. So what I do is I actually sit with a lot of the staff one-on-one, and I do it on a regular basis, depending on who needs it the most. So if I notice that staff are kind of struggling, they're quite busy. I will make time with them, which, getting the time in the first place can be difficult because they're already busy enough. They're in and out of the office. They don't want to put that time aside to sit together with me, but when I do, I sit down and I look through everything with them. So I'm checking.
Speaker 2:You know, how are they sending their work orders on TAPI? Are they doing it the right way or are they making them, you know, making more work for themselves? What ways can I improve their day-to-day workload to make it more efficient? If they're sending the same email four times in a day? Perfect, let's set up a template, so those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:If I was to sit down with someone and they were using every single system that we have the correct way, the efficient way, um, you know they were doing all of all of these things right and following all the processes and they were still, you know, on the edge of burnout or still completely snowed under, they would be at capacity.
Speaker 2:But, with love to the team, I'm yet to find anyone that is actually using everything the way that they should.
Speaker 2:So when they do kind of come to us and they're saying, oh you know, I'm really snowed under with this, I'm really struggling, you know, trying to fit all of my inspections in that's when you and I, kind of both, will chat to them and say, okay, have you tried doing this? Are you making the most of this tool that's available to you, or what else can we do to kind of make that easier? No-transcript, they all definitely have more capacity and I think, coming from the perspective as a property manager, all of the tools that we use now were tools that I used as a PM, except for PropertyMe. So I know it can be done because I did it myself, and I think having that experience behind me does make it a little bit easier. When I have those chats to them, because I'm not coming at it from a perspective of a general manager that's never worked a property management day in their life, I'm saying look, guys, I'm asking you to do this and I'm setting it up this way because I've done it myself.
Speaker 1:It's tried and tested, I know it will work. Yeah, so your first step I mean first tip, this is for business owners. First tip or operations manager, sorry, um. First tip would be to give the team the time, one-on-one, to see how they're feeling and checking in on whether they're feeling a little bit chaotic or not. Second tip would be are they using everything that we've given them available from a tech space and are they using that to its capacity? And if they're not, then focus on that training. And then, if they are, and then they're still under the pump, then we know okay, yep, they're operating exactly the way that they should. We now know they're at capacity.
Speaker 1:So I think that's probably a really good three-step process for business owners, because quite often people will just say I'm busy, and my favourite thing to teach is that, like, don't blanket busy your role. I need to know specifically what you are busy with. Are you busy with phone calls, emails, maintenance, lease renewals, home opens, like out on the road? What are you busy doing? Because then, when I know what you're busy doing, I can help or you can help create a process for that. So that is something that I think always needs to be focused, because that's where we get that. The problem with not increasing the capacity. If someone goes, I'm busy, so you just go slap a band-aid on it and give them an assistant or give them something, and then that will pacify them for a couple of months and then they go.
Speaker 2:I'm still busy, because that's because they're not actually following the correct process no, no, exactly.
Speaker 1:Um. So let's just go into the tech um tech space for the moment, because I know that you do love it. Um. So what role does the technology play in creating the capacity and how do we avoid the trap of tech overwhelm and focusing on the right tools?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Technology plays a massive part in our jobs. If I was to look back to when I started in 2019 to now even just that short amount of time it's just completely changed the role of a property manager, and I often say when I'm using the tools that we have now, like our 360 cameras, I'll say to the team I wish I had this as a property manager, because, first of all, they're fun to use, but the amount of time that it saves is just insane. So when you have the right systems and you're automating all of the routine stuff, it means that your staff can focus on what's important. So if you're a business owner and you're not looking through and reviewing your tech stack and reviewing what sort of technology you've actually got for your staff to make their lives easier, you're doing yourself a disservice, because that is where their additional capacity will lie. And the staff that are saying you know, I'm busy, I'm full of my capacity, it could very well be that they are stuck in a business with a business owner that's not implementing, you know, even just simple things like mail merge templates. If I was to sit down with someone and find out that they're manually typing in dates and times on their routine inspection letter. I'm horrified. So those sort of things, yeah, just make sure that your staff can actually focus on what's important in terms of building the relationship, spending more time actually face-to-face with clients, that sort of thing, I guess, to make sure that you're not getting bogged down and just constantly changing and I do see this in a lot of businesses where they pick up the shiniest new thing and just run with it. You have to actually focus on how is this going to improve my staff's day-to-day work experience. If you just you know someone pitches you a product, you do a demo, you love it, you implement it without going through and actually identifying how it's going to improve their processes, everyone's going to get exhausted. Your staff are going to start to resent you and it's not going to work and basically it's just going to cost more money in the long run. But get your staff involved. Like a lot of business owners make decisions without chatting to their staff because they don't either don't want to stress them out or don't want to get the whole eye roll of great another technology item. But if you speak, to speak to your staff and actually get them excited about how this can improve their lives actually implementing it. It completely changes their mindset and it will make the whole process smoother for you and for your staff.
Speaker 2:I guess my other favorite thing so like I love to speak to other people in the industry. As you said, you know that I love this, so you know, if I meet people at Coffee and Conversations, my favorite thing to say is what's your tech stack? What systems are you guys using? And I think that that's a great way to get actual, real feedback of people and how they've got things set up. So next time you do get an offer to have someone pitch a new system or a new tech item to you, you've got that in the back of your mind. That oh actually, I remember Someone told me that they do use this and they do love it, rather than just getting bogged down in great another new shiny toy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was Bec Holton that gave me a bit of a tip one day and I think this is really great. Is that, with your tech stack that you've got, if you are like thinking, oh, I think I might need to change it, there's something new out there, potentially getting a demo of the product that you're already using? But go to that company and say, hey, can you just do a demo? I know I use your product, but can you do a demo for me, like what you're doing for new clients, so I can just have another refreshed look just to see whether there's something that I'm not doing, like what's the latest features? And I thought that's actually a really good thing to re-ask for a demo for an existing product, and then that will sort of put you back into that new position of maybe just picking up something that you literally had no idea about. So I would do that these days, I think, before potentially considering moving as well, so that would be my little tip.
Speaker 1:Now we don't really do KPIs or we don't do KPIs in our office. The reason why I don't is because many, many years ago, I had one of the teams say to me Ash, I'm offended that you would even think that I would work harder for a KPI. I work hard, um, and I don't need to. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm not going to work any harder than what I do, like in a good way. She works really hard, um, and so she didn't feel she felt like that was, in some ways, a little bit of a just disrespect, that I thought that there was more in her yeah for a reward, um, and it really changed my concept of KPIs. If we were to do KPIs just hypothetically, or if an agency listening to this was going to do KPIs, what are the ones that you think would be the most important that you would want to track?
Speaker 2:I'd say property retention, number one. That's pretty quickly a red flag If you've got something that's not right whether it be a staff that's not the right fit for the business, or maybe they just need further training. They've kind of been put on the tools straight away without the right support and they're losing properties. That's immediately a red flag that something's not right. So I'd be focusing on that out of everything. When it comes to things like arrears and maintenance and lease renewals, a lot of these things are pretty heavily automated these days. So I guess having a benchmark rather than if you don't want to because some people do look at KPIs as micromanaging If you don't want to micromanage, you've just got a rough benchmark in your mind that you know. Okay, this is where most of my staff should be sitting at and you're just kind of touching base and checking on that, you know, once a fortnight, once a month, not necessarily sitting down and going through a spreadsheet with them every single time, because that's when people do feel like you're not trusting them to do their job and do it well, but just in the back of your mind, knowing where things should be sitting and just quickly touching base on it and seeing how everyone's going.
Speaker 2:I think that's a better approach to it rather than, like you said, some people do take offense at it these days If you sit there and you say you have to hit X, y and Z because also it doesn't allow for certain things, like you might have that repeat offender tenant in arrears when no matter what you do, they're always going to fall behind but it's the owner's cousin and they don't want you to terminate.
Speaker 2:You know there's there's certain things that you need a bit more context for, so it's not just numbers driven. You have to have that additional information to understand. You know this portfolio because the demographic plays a big part in it as well. You know we've got staff with portfolios out in Armidale and Kelmscott and Gosnells and their arrears are always going to be higher than the staff who have a South Perth portfolio, and so you have to make allowances for those sort of things. And that's why coming at it with a one size fits all approach just doesn't really work. And I think also the systems that we have in place these days allow you to have a quick look and see where people are sitting, so you can check in TARPY and see how many outstanding jobs there are. You can check how many unanswered emails are at PropertyMe so you can kind of gauge how staff are performing based on those sort of things, rather than having to sit down and go through like a structured spreadsheet every single time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the retention. I think there's mixed opinions on this. Some people think that it costs more for retention and some people think it costs more for growth. What systems or processes do you think directly improve that client retention? But I also want you to touch on team retention as well, because the retention is a big thing in our office, and maintaining that so what do you think would be? So it's easy to calculate, so that's fine.
Speaker 1:I think my theory with retention is that people including me have previously underestimated what our loss rate was, and if someone had asked me a few years ago, you know how many properties do you lose each month? I'd be like, oh, probably like two to five a month, and my theory is is that I would lose two to five per month, for example, for the noisy owners that there's a problem. They leave, they cause you a headache, like I remember those ones. I don't remember the silent ones, the ones where they just moved in, everything was perfect, the ones where the owner's selling. We don't calculate them because they're not in our brain, they're not the problems, and so I feel like the loss rate is higher than what people always think about. So it's really, really interesting to do that exercise. What do you think is the best technique for for retention? Is there one?
Speaker 2:For client retention.
Speaker 2:I would say I would say automation, yeah, uh, the systems that we have available to us. These days. It's so easy to set these client touch points on a regular basis. Like to be able to set up the automation um on tarpy to notify owners when a job's sent and when an invoice is received. Like, not all owners want that, but you have the option to customize it for all those high touch owners that do literally want to know every single step of the way what's going on, and that can create a lot of extra work for the property managers, and that's when they get really bogged down and frustrated with those high maintenance owners. But having the right systems and automations in place can reduce that and it still allows the property manager to maintain that communication by just automatically updating the owner or automatically updating the tenant. And when you do that, so it's not only better service to the clients but it's reducing the staff stress as well. So they're not feeling so, you know, so full on with this owner. Every time that owner calls they're rolling their eyes because they're thinking great, that's another 10 minutes out of my day, but no update is still an update, and so when you have these systems in place to send those reminders out. It just prevents that. You know you're getting to that owner and you're sending them that quick you know 30 second message or whatever it is, before it actually becomes a 10, 15 minute phone call. Yeah, and also allows for consistency, which clients appreciate. I think that they notice the consistency. They notice if they don't hear from you until it's going to cost them money. But when you're sending out, you know owner updates or just little things that are keeping them in the loop or you know. It was a great routine inspection. Just thought I'd send you an extra little note. Like these sort of things do make a difference and it does affect how the client, I guess, sees the agency as a whole. You know, every time you're picking up the phone and speaking to them, if it's costing them money, it's not going to frame you in their minds as really doing a good job, whereas if that's, you know you call them and there might be, you know, maintenance job, whatever it is. But the other five times that you call them are about good news calls or whatever it is. Yeah, it can really change their perspective.
Speaker 2:In terms of team retention, I would say having a process for career growth is one of the biggest ones, but also noticing and understanding that that looks different for everyone. Not everyone wants to start as a PM assistant, become a PM, become a senior PM, become a head of department. People have different goals and they have different professional things that they want to work towards. So making sure that you've actually got a system in place to sit down with them one-on-one, understand what they're wanting to work towards, it gives them a bit of a purpose with the business and it stops them from reaching that point of okay, I'm, I've hit this, I've hit senior PM or I've hit whatever it is and I'm now at the ceiling. I can't go up, so I'm going to go out and start looking elsewhere yeah, um, the.
Speaker 1:At the event last week I think it was Olivia that was talking about how, like the, the average PM generally is stays in a company between 12 to 18 months, and so therefore, in the first 12 months, that's sort of when you would want to capture any opportunity for that career growth, I think, because that's probably when they're going to start feeling a little bit antsy, a little bit like not bored, but a bit oh, what am I doing, you know, and getting a bit itchy. So that will be probably the. I think, even bringing it up at the start doing you know, um, and getting a bit itchy, so that will be probably the, I think even bringing it up at the start.
Speaker 2:you know, even it might seem a bit early, but even an interview process to you know, if you're hiring for the x role but you want to make sure that you understand where they're going, you can kind of create that into your, into your business plan, and go okay, we don't have capacity for this yet, but I know that this specific staff member would love to do that one day. So we've just brought them on board and now we've got a plan for the next 12 to 18 months or two years, whatever it is. But when you identify early on, you can kind of work around it and again, it gives people that they feel more invested in the business. They're not just a number, because they understand okay, this is where I am now and they've given me a clear plan of how I'm going to get to exactly where I want to be as well yeah, um now last question for you how does an agency know that they need to bring in an operations manager?
Speaker 2:um, if you're a business owner and you're spending more time putting out fires and chasing your own tail, that's when you know. So, um, honestly, I would say, take note of what your day-to-day looks like. You know over a one to two week period, and note down how many times you're doing tasks that aren't really contributing to the growth of the business. You know you're handling staff issues with your tech stack, or you're trying to clarify a procedure with someone or handling offshore training, these sort of things. If you actually look at it and you see how much time you're spending maybe even wasting on these tasks, then that's, I would say, the perfect time to to jump in and start looking for an operations manager. But you also need to make sure that if you're going to do it, you're ready to let go of control.
Speaker 2:I've seen it happen. I've seen people hire operations managers but they don't give them the authority to make decisions in the business, and it's never going to work if you're not actually ready to let go and step back. Not me. I remember when I first started on, like my very first day, you just sat me down and you were like I don't even know what to do with you, like pretty much you do what you want. I was like right, but that, you know, by giving me that trust it meant that I felt that I could really jump in and sink my teeth in. I didn't have to, you know. Second guess you know, is she going to be annoyed if I change this or is there going to be a problem if I implement that? So you really have to trust 100% whoever you are going to bring into the business. You need to know that they are the right fit for your culture and they are the right fit for the team, because you do have to give them that control and if you don't, it's just never going to work.
Speaker 1:Do you think that there's a size that you would bring someone in, like when you've got five staff or ten staff or this many managements? Anything like that, or not necessarily?
Speaker 2:no, not not necessarily if I think of um. You know I have friends that work in smaller agencies and I know for a fact they need an operations manager. But that's because I think of you know I have friends that work in smaller agencies and I know for a fact they need an operations manager. But that's because I think about you know their setups and they are lacking the structure with their policies and procedures from day one and has built that business with them in mind to begin with. They might not need it until they're, you know, a couple of years down the track.
Speaker 1:So I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all approach yeah, I think for me I like I mean, I know that you were sort of a little bit more accidental, but if, in hindsight, for me, what I I recognized was that I had quite a long to-do list of stuff I wanted to do in the business.
Speaker 1:So it might have been something as simple as, like you know, updating the website or doing, or you know, creating this department or updating all our templates or doing the process, and like it was always on my to-do list but it never got there. So I'm pretty sure that I just dumped a bit of my to-do list on you. So that would be sort of, maybe, if you're an agency and you've got that same sort of thing of things that you want to do in your business or in the department, that would be you know what might be a good time to get that operations manager For me. I will finish off just by like with my tip and exactly what you said before with trusting someone. I am very fortunate that I've got the personality where I trust everyone beforehand until you give me a reason not to where. There are people out there that don't trust anyone until you've you know you've To yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, correct, correct. So there's two different personalities there. But something that I think is important to say or finish off with is that if I'm employing someone, I try to employ that person to take responsibility, as opposed to like delegating responsibility, not delegating tasks. Because if I was just to delegate tasks to you but I need to double check everything, then I'm not really saving myself any time. And so I really do try to delegate responsibility and you know and trust you to take on that and you only need to let me know.
Speaker 1:You know, you know you know when to let me know of something, or if I've actually got to physically sign off on something financial. But otherwise that responsibility I put onto you, which I don't understand why people don't do it Cause if I'm paying you money like why would I bother paying you money If I wasn't going to let you take full control of? It's like going to a lawyer and paying for a lawyer and not trusting their advice, like that just seems to me so wasteful. So I um trust you know. If I'm paying you for that role, I trust your advice that you're giving me, otherwise why bother having that in the first place?
Speaker 2:that's just exactly, and it just. If you don't, it's just going to create more work for yourself because you are going through and you're double checking things. It's going to create confusion for your staff. So, again, more work for yourself, because they're going to be coming to you not sure who to go to, confused on the processes, and then it's likely not going to work out and you're going to end up back to square one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. So in 12 months, oh because the happy anniversary. Oh months, oh because the happy anniversary, um, thank you, it's been 12 months. I didn't want to say yesterday because I didn't want you to think that I'd forgotten and I knew you wouldn't have seen your balloon, that, um, that got delivered, so, um, but in 12 months, let's just quickly reflect on what you've been able to do, so that other business owners can hear how much has been done in 12 months. I mean, do you want to just start off by rattling a few things that you've started doing or that you've accomplished in 12 months with us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Malmo's templates was my day one thing. I started on that and I sunk my teeth in and I loved it. I really enjoy going through and refining things. So I took all of our brand messaging across everything and I've actually made it cohesive. So now we're sending out the same things. It's consistent across the entire portfolio. So all of that sort of backend stuff I've fixed up.
Speaker 2:I brought on two new offshore staff members and we've also completely, I would say, close to double the amount of work that the offshore are doing for the team. So that's been, that's definitely been great in terms of training them up, getting the staff to feel more comfortable and trusting of the offshore as well. We've just recently rolled onto Hubdash, which is Airtable's alternative, through StaffLink. So we've completely rebuilt all of our workflows to make everything more consistent and again taking more tasks off the property manager's plate. We are rolling out Leesy, which is an alternative to CoreLogic, and I was actually quite surprised by how excited the staff were to get on board with that.
Speaker 2:So all of these little things it might not seem like, I guess, super important to some people to go through their Malmoge templates or to go through their brand messaging or to update their policies. To them it might just seem like it's not really worth the time. If you're a busy person, you're a busy business owner, but for the staff it's made such a big difference and I have had that feedback directly from the team, which makes me happy to hear that when they actually do say oh, thank you so much, like I've been wondering how to do this, or having that loom video for me to refer back to every time I get stuck, has made such a big difference. So for me that's what I pride myself in is how can I make the staff lives easier and how can we improve our customer experience?
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's Well. There's more. You've done the logo redesign, which then went through and redesigned, like our business cards, and just polished that up a lot. You now are doing the website, so the website's getting a revamp. You are changing through our CRM, so that's all updated, and you are now in the process of creating the whole sales team to put some time and energy into the sales department.
Speaker 1:You have documented all year things that the team have been doing that could be included in awards and then you just spent a lot of time submitting I think it was 15 award nominations, 14, yeah-huh, I did leave you alone in that time, so that was like a massive role. Um, you have um helped, obviously, with a lot of it's been a big one oh, the investor audit. So you've taken that off me so that, um, we don't sort of just fall off the bandwagon with that one. You've um done more of the offshore like contact and communication with those meetings and ultimately, where the staff were, the team were hesitant to come to me to say, ash, can you just update that? Can you just change that? Because they could see that I was a little bit more flustered. They just didn't. They stopped asking because they felt bad asking me to do something. So now they don't feel bad asking you because they know that that's your role.
Speaker 1:So the fact that we've yeah, that that's probably the best thing that I've seen is the fact that the team, if they need support, they ask you and they get it where before they were very hesitant and you might be if you were listening you might be a director where you, you know, like me, we're sort of, you know, running around lots of things. Maybe you're a selling agent, maybe this, maybe that Just identify your team being hesitant to come to you to get those changes done because they feel bad, or maybe you're being unapproachable, which was my problem and how much that's inhibiting your team growing and getting the support that they need. So it's very much a servant leadership that we work in the office with you and me on the bottom, on the ground, with everyone above us and us going what do you need to make your life easier? That's like our role. What and whatever you need is is you know we'll deliver it.
Speaker 1:I think that that's ultimately, our role. So that's, for me, like something that, yeah, something that I noticed and that's when I started the podcast, where I was being a disservice to my team. That's what I meant. I was being a disservice, or I was rushing things and yeah, just not making their lives easier.
Speaker 2:But you do. I'm glad that's the aim, excellent.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll have to start finding. You know, actually we've got plenty of projects for you to do. But yeah, the sales department is going to be a great project and then the short-term management is going to be a great project. So that will be the next two things that you know Marissa in our business is going to be helping with, and it's just always, it's just progressive, isn't it like? I just love the progression that the business has got, like we are absolutely not a stagnant business and the fact that we've got you gives us the ability to continue to progress because we've got someone to help do that. So many offices don't have that opportunity, so we're so lucky.
Speaker 2:I always say you're the ideas person like you come up with the ideas and I make them happen. Like that, yes, and I feel like that's just the perfect balance because we are. It does give us the opportunity to keep growing and have that capacity for you to come up with these ideas, but if you didn't have someone there helping you implement them, they'd never go anywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, well do you remember I don't know if you know that I do this, but, like when I go to events, um and I remember being at the IGT one in Queensland and you know those listening will know exactly what I mean you write your to-do list, you're motivated, you've been at an event, you've got all these great things to implement in your business. Now I was pretty good at implementing, at implementing them, but I'm pretty sure at the October one, I just screenshotted it and sent to you and said here's what I need you to implement. I mean, like, as a business owner listening to that, how awesome is that. You go to the course, you get the ideas, you've got someone who can go okay, this is what I want done and they work with what they think is the priority over the next 12 months. I mean, dream come true.
Speaker 1:I say Stop it. You're flattering me, amazing. Well, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing those insights into what an operations manager looks like, how it can benefit a company and things to consider as well. I reckon that's going to be super helpful for everyone that's listening. So thank you for reaching out and anyone can contact me if they've got any other questions. Amazing, thanks for having me.
