Why Property Managers Need a Technology Partner in Modern CRE Operations

Why Property Managers Are Carrying More Technology Responsibility

Drew Hall: Welcome back to the Peak Property Performance Podcast. I am your co-host Drew Hall, and with me today, co-host Bill Douglas. Welcome, Bill.

Bill Douglas: Hey, bud. Glad to be here as always. Thanks to everybody for listening.

Drew Hall: Today's a little bit different. We're not going to have a guest with us today. We're going to talk internally because we got to chatting this week and realized that there's, there's a lot of stuff that we could talk about with regard to property management, who are an incredibly important component of this whole commercial real estate operation, and they've got a lot on their plates. And I feel like we've learned a lot over the years, and I feel like perhaps they've learned a lot from us as well. So I feel like we've got some good stories and some, some really helpful things to touch on that would make for a great podcast episode, honestly.

Bill Douglas: Yeah, you and I were talking about this last week, again this week, and I'm glad we're gonna just have a conversation and share it with other people. Just think about everything the property manager has to do on a site, and I don't even know everything they have to do, but I I know it's a lot more than I know. We are very good at what we do and they are very good at what they do. But relative to technology, look at how much has changed in the past 5 to 10 years at any commercial real estate property. I'm not going to say poor property managers, because maybe they don't want the sympathy, but the property managers, majority of them, shall I say, I'm trying to use holistic words. A majority of them are expected to keep track and keep up and make decisions on all this. And they're, they're not technicians. If some of the bigs have technical divisions and things, but this is a whole nightmare hairball problem that, that there's a whole industry around and property managers are the ones that have to take the lumps from tenants when it doesn't work, when it's not addressed. I don't know when the LPs or GPs or the asset managers want information that they can't get, like the whole thing has changed. So I'm glad we're going to talk about how we engage with and learn from and help property managers, especially relative to taking care of the tenants.

The “Hairball” of Operational Technology in CRE

Drew Hall: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, on an ongoing basis when things are steady state, it's busy enough, you know, all of the components that they have to deal with from what somebody might say, wow, that's the most mundane thing ever to things that you can't even imagine. I mean, it probably starts with, if you walk an entire building wall to wall and you look floor to ceiling on every single space of every single floor of every single building, and then you do any kind of common spaces, uh, you know, that are outside so many those things fall to responsibilities of property management. And I was thinking about, you know, just the concept that they're left holding the bag so many times. And again, steady state is hard enough. But to go back to this idea of lifecycle, these buildings are living, breathing things over time, right? They'll outlive any of us. But there's so much disruption of a fluid lifecycle, whether it be ownership change, management change, management team line change, or even,

Bill Douglas: we'll see management companies change and the people will stay. Sometimes we see the opposite. Sometimes we see both. Sometimes the property manager sticks with a building when it's traded, sometimes it changes, and sometimes we just see property managers change when ownership doesn't. So I, I think that's all the variations we've seen. But regardless, every time we deal with a, not new company, but new to us relationship-wise property manager, this conversation comes up again. So I'm glad we're just sharing it, right? I think that property managers have been handed this hairball of operational technology, OT, not IT, OT, all the operating platforms within a commercial real estate property. So you can call it prop tech, you can call it telecom, you can call it that hairy, dirty closet that nobody wants to open the door to because there's all the blinking lights and yellow and gray and red cables. I think that they get handed that problem because they deal with the property management system, PMS, and that is such a critical part to the commercial real estate operation because it handles leases and rent flows, right? And that is what everybody's about is what's the rent roll. But there's so much more to technology than... I shouldn't say just the PMS, solely the PMS. That's the eye-opening thing. Every time we talk to an asset manager or an LP or GP, an owner, architects, anywhere along the line, we get to explain like the property management system is critical, but we see the PMS change with property managers too. See a property management firm come in, especially the bigger ones, and they say, we were going to change the platform, right? They don't change a single thing about the hardware. So that is how it should be. You should be able to change platforms and vendors, but so many of the operational technology platforms are stuck. They're hardwired, they're glued in. Nobody knows where they are, what they are, or how much they cost. A lot of times it's shocking.

Why Documentation Matters in Commercial Real Estate Operations

Drew Hall: Yeah. And I think it starts with just knowing what is there. I mean, you know, just in the past week we've seen commercial tenant move into a space where they're going to be subleasing from a longstanding tenant. And there were questions about door access because they had their own subpanel. And yeah, you know, who's got this document? Who knows about it? So as is often the case, there's one person who knows about it. And in this case, it was the tenant and the building management knew enough about it to say, oh yeah, that's a, it's a sub panel that's plugged into the main building system. So there's a relationship between management and the tenant who's now physically moved out, but subleasing. And then the subleasing tenant is in the process of moving in. So all of those components. And so, you know, it's kind of fun to be involved in those things because what works best is when you have a complete inventory of everything. And the better you can document it, the better off everybody is. Not just when it's working well, but the moment it stops working, you're gonna want to have it documented well.

Bill Douglas: Well, I'll point out that the reason that was smooth for the property manager that was on site is because there was documentation. And not to, to toot our own horn, but we were able to handle that. And we knew where everything was. And the property manager was grateful because they didn't. They were signing the lease, they were moving the tenant in, they were making sure the TI was getting done, the deadlines were done. They did have all their access cards, right? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The technology, they would... I'm going to let you tell your analogy there. They would turn and ask for help because we're their technology partner and it worked great. But the converse is true. If the property management is expected to know it and does not have a technology partner or a technology staff in-house, maybe they have it in-house. Some of these firms do. When they don't have it, then the poor property manager on site is dealing with a tenant that's asking questions the tenant thinks you should know about your building, but you don't. And then the, the tenant experience drops because the property manager is standing there. They're left holding the bag for so many things. Remember that apartment complex? The property management changed and they wanted to know where the cable guy, who, who has wired the cable for the internet? How do we get tenants internet? And they really had a hard time understanding that as soon as the lease was signed, the tenant had internet. And if there were any issues, you call this 888 number or email or text, like, here's the support and it's not you. Make these little stickers, stick them out, you know, give them away, put them on the refrigerator. You don't take that call. Push them here. And within 3 weeks, they became raving fans because there was a whole set hours of week per agent no longer that they have to deal with. And it didn't cost them a thing.

How Technology Partnerships Reduce Tenant Friction

Drew Hall: Yeah, it's, it's, it's almost like maybe someone listening here is the type of person who has a hard time accepting a gift, or at least you know someone who has a hard time accepting a gift. It's almost like that is what I feel like is what you see in terms of the experience of the property management team. Like in that case that you're explaining, the property management team steps into a property and they're like, what is this? What is this? Okay. Yeah, we're used to this. We're used to that. But whoa, what is... oh, what is the system? Oh no, we have to know more. Ah. And then like you said, we ended up talking with them and for them it was Magnets. They wanted magnets. They wanted to hand out magnets that made it very clear that they were not... they didn't want to be responsible for the technology facing the tenant. They wanted the tenants to be like immediately online and managing their own little things campus-wide, all the things. But it took a little bit of time to convince them like, no, no, this is not your responsibility. We just want you to know that the system has been performing perfectly for whatever it was at that time, 4 or 5 years. And now that you're stepping into this role, it's traditional in many ways, but you know, there's a lot here technology-wise that's very different from what you're used to at any of the other properties that you manage. But guess what? That's not a bad thing. It's actually a really good thing. If there's any kind of technical question regarding, I would say regarding anything that connects ultimately, let's say to the internet, because that knocks out 99% of the things that are connected. Don't even worry about it. You're welcome to know all about it if you'd like, but don't stress about it. You don't have to, because like you said, Bill, 888-OptiWise is right on the magnet for those guys, uh, because that's what they wanted. But that's true of all of our clients. Call us at 888-OptiWise. The support team will take care of you.

Bill Douglas: That same property manager, 3 or 4 weeks later, was like, what do you mean there's a unified backbone? They called it a backbone. We'll say network or digital infrastructure. What do you mean there's 1 or 2 networks in this building? I was like, yeah, and they work all the time. Like even when the power's out, like, and here's the network document. And what would you like to know about all the systems and sensors connected to it? And they said, I've never seen this before. For. So they went from, it's ours to, wow, we don't have to do this. Remember, not... there was zero expense in all this. This is tenant paid for, right? So zero expense to the owner or to the property manager. But the property manager said, wow, I don't have to mess with that anymore. Like, yeah, if this goes down, I do the same thing. I call our trusted technology partner. So we went from being a vendor to being a partner. Only over time. Now, the, the building, when that was built, it took us just as long to do that with the vertically integrated company that built it, but they sold the property to a REIT, and the REIT hired a property manager. So there was an education in the whole thing, and that happens every time there's a change. We keep seeing the property manager left, especially in new builds, left, and then the last 90 days to pick all the technology. And the property managers are great at leasing up the building. They're not trained or staffed to be technical. And I don't mean they can't do it. I probably, you know, learn some things if I needed to. I'm not even trying to find an analogy now, but in my personal life, there are things I'd pay to do and there's things I know to do. We had a pipe crush in our house basement the other day. I probably could have rerouted the drain pipe, but instead I wrote a check and got it done because I didn't want to live without water for 4 days, right?

Bill Douglas: Or 3 days or however long it took me.

Bill Douglas: So 8 hours later, the problem was solved. Is that kind of like when you have to get something done on time and on budget because it's critical, like your kitchen sink is critical to operating a house, right? I wrote a check. I'm not saying this, so take the check out of it. Who could you turn to when Mr. or Mrs. Property Manager, when a system doesn't work, when a tenant can't get connected, when you don't have the data, the operating data that's being generated should be at your disposal as well. Do you have that data? Why don't you have the data? So the property manager are left trying to figure out how to do all this. And the owner calls up and says, I want to start using AI. Well, what's the strategy? We're like, we don't even know what's in this building. It works. It works until it doesn't, right? Let's share a couple of horror stories about when it doesn't here sometimes too, you know, especially when it's not aggregated or when we get brought into, just like a property manager, get brought into a new building. It's not new, it's brownfield, but it's new to us. There's a learning curve. You got to figure out what's there. So I have great, I was going to say empathy, but probably sympathy for property managers because they always are left to figure it out. And we don't know how to lease buildings up, but we sure as heck know technology. They know how to lease buildings up and how to take care of tenants and how to keep it clean and nice and have a community. None of which we know. We do is something that they don't know. And once both sides acknowledge that, it's, it's a very beneficial relationship.

Unified Building Networks and Vendor Integration

Drew Hall: Yeah. I mean, another example that comes to my mind, I mean, I guess this was last week, maybe when this all went down, but again, it's a longstanding client of ours that was bringing in, let's see, for the first time they were going to be outsourcing the management of an enormous parking structure and the parking vendor, let's say that they had chosen just came in with their bulleted list, you know, and we need this and we need that, we need this and we're going to install this equipment and we need this from you. And the good news is we have such a great relationship with ownership and management at this property that they immediately said, ah, this is something we need to bring in our technology team for, which is beautiful. That's a beautiful way to say it, our technology team. It's not like, eh, let me turn to my vendor named OpticWise. We are literally like an extension of their team. We are the technology arm of their team. So we got involved. Long story short, we said, nope, You're not going to install all this stuff. Nope. We're not redirecting cables. Nope. Here's all you need to do. And the beautiful thing is it's simpler for the new parking vendor. And let's just say that that parking vendor is in place for 3, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 5 years, whatever. Any of that's totally fine. It doesn't interrupt the management of that system. Nothing physically changes in terms of the installation that's already been there. Like I said, that Parking structure has been live for, I don't know, 2 or 3 years, just because it's the newest part of that big campus. But it's just, it, I guess I've never ceased to be amazed.

Bill Douglas: And the owner, our client, didn't have to spend any money for a new network or new hardware or anything like that. So there was a reduction in price and it was faster for the vendor.

Drew Hall: Yes, absolutely. And it was interesting because, you know, you got your installation people and they're already like, oh wow, this is different. We don't usually see this. We just are building our own thing. And we're like, yes. Right, I get it that that's what you might normally have to do. That's great, but you don't. The bedrock is here and we'll show you how to integrate into this bedrock. And then inevitably the conversation gets handed off to their technical person who's like, well, this is different. Here's my requirements are, and they,

Bill Douglas: Yeah, this is what we always do.

Drew Hall: They don't know if it's better or worse. They just know it's different, which probably initially feels worse. But it's just interesting because over the course of those conversations, we realized they didn't actually know exactly what they needed. But we helped them find it. We helped them figure out what they needed because they said, well, here's what I do. Here's how my team manages those gates and those intercoms. Okay, great. Try it. Does it work? No. Okay, give us a moment. And then we can say like, well, here's what we see. Here's what we see in that network. It looks like you're doing these things. We see it from a cybersecurity perspective. We see this kind of thing arriving at the edge of this campus. Hmm, that's you. Here's what your real requirement is. And they're like, oh, okay. Can we get that? Yeah.

Bill Douglas: Thank you.

Drew Hall: And we're saying, yeah, that's definitely... let's keep it down. Let's keep it locked down as much as we can. But yeah, we can open it up specifically for this type of function. They're like, oh, okay, now I can see that we have cameras, but the stream, the live stream is not streaming through. Okay, give us a moment. Same exact thing, same exact process. So they didn't have the requirements exactly dialed down because usually, again, they're building an entirely brand new network and they don't have to wonder about their requirements. Just like, eh, we let everything go.

Bill Douglas: Yeah, but that new network was $50,000. And the owner didn't have to pay $50,000.

Drew Hall: Yeah.

Bill Douglas: And you better, yeah, they already owned the network. They didn't need another one. And the property manager didn't understand that. The property manager didn't know. Yeah. The owner hired the parking vendor.

Drew Hall: And that, that default scenario is pretty loosey-goosey too, in terms of security requirements, which is not a good thing. It's not a good thing for anybody.

Bill Douglas: So there was no security standard for the property, or there was, and they just did, the property manager didn't apply it.

Drew Hall: Right. Not from this vendor. They basically say, hey, we need, give us a place to mount this stuff. And then we want wide open access in and through this stuff. We're like, well, dang, that's pretty general.

Bill Douglas: Yeah. You're using credit cards on that parking network. One of my early vendor mentors told me you can have better, faster, and less expensive. He said cheaper, but I don't like cheap, right? Less expensive is great. Pick any two. You can never get all three. So in this case, when we were talking with this vendor, we did that analogy because I talk to owners all the time and he goes, well, how does it get better? And I said, you already told me this was the the best vendor you could find. So we did less expensive and fast. Then in this case, you got them all, but remember, we couldn't do better. So relative to our SLA with you, we did faster and less expensive. And he said, how much less? And we looked at that CapEx, you know, the equipment and installation and all that, and lopped off, it would have been at least $50,000. Didn't change his monthly expenses. His MRC was still the same, but his non-recurring CapEx charge was It's drastically different and he was very happy and the vendor's happy too. But in the old world, right? The old way, it would've just been, oh yeah, go ahead, bring it on, plug it in somewhere, make it work. You're responsible for it. And now the property manager's like, is that on the document? Is that on our network diagram? Cool. If it breaks, who do I call? That's what their question was.

Drew Hall: I think that's the sweetness of what it is that we're doing in terms of, you know, it, it takes time. It definitely takes time to build these relationships with, with management so that they understand like, oh my gosh, technical, we are covered cuz we got our team here that wears the shirts that are logoed. Opticwise, and it's just one and the same. But man, does that take time. And oftentimes, yeah, there's a trust component in there as well, but it's not just that. It's breaking through the status quo. I mean, we've seen management teams that kind of take it upon themselves, like, oh, I'm going to try to learn all this, which is amazing. I always say, I would love for you to know exactly how to do every single thing if that's what you want to do. But I think the best intentions often fade so quickly because they're just so busy with everything that they are responsible for already. So that's another big factor.

Why CRE Technology Should Be Treated as an Asset

Bill Douglas: One of the reasons you and I wrote the book, you know, the Peak Property Performance book was to share strategies that have worked and strategies that didn't work, or even ones that didn't work in the beginning and changed. And while we made up two fictional characters, the stories in there are all true. So we really go to great lengths on this podcast and in the book to share experiences. So you don't have to hire Optic Wise. We're just trying to tell you, hey, this is our experience because we want to make the commercial real estate industry better. If you want to work with us, fine, reach out. But we're not here to sell. We're here to make this better. And Drew and I both have had several aha moments, especially in the past quarter with property managers just being tasked with ridiculous amount of technology overhead, overhead burden. That is like layer 1. That's the, what we call it, managed digital infrastructure, managed services. Like we're running the networks for them. Like I'm, I'm trying to use non-technical words. We're running the networks in the building. We're running connectivity. We're making sure the tenants get everything they need. Layer 2 is managing the data that comes out of all of those sensors and networks and system, all the other hairy stuff that comes with technology. So we're not really talking about Layer 2 in this episode, but we do all the time on the show and we do definitely in the book. We're just talking right now about Layer 1 because that is so deeply where property management is. When asset managers get involved or a building is in diligence for trading, you know, the, the data gets analyzed a lot heavier and the property manager has to find the data then. So we do hear about it then, but on a day-to-day basis, it's more about what we call layer 1, keep the building running, keep the lights on. And I don't mean just the power lights. I mean all those blinking lights in that horrible little dirty, dusty closet with all the wires. Nobody knows what's in there. I'm going to open it and say it says telecom on the door. I'm going to close it.

Drew Hall: Right.

Bill Douglas: Nobody wants to go in there. We want to go in there and we do, we do go in there and we do take care of it. So this, that's the technology partnership. So you need to find people that you trust and you could lean on because no property manager can do it all. Like I said, we don't do property management, we do You do OT and digital infrastructure and operations and managed services. You do this and we do that. Together, this building sings.

Faster Tenant Connectivity and Better Building Operations

Drew Hall: Yeah. And another thing too that we have in common with the property management company is we both share the same customer. Like ownership is our customer and our goal is to make ownership absolutely delighted. Well, how do you do that? It's different for, you know, in terms of responsibilities for the management team compared to what we do. It's definitely different. There's an overlap, but again, we're just like a brilliant augmentation to the management team. And to me, I'm always like, man, if one of the great ways to make your customer, meaning ownership, happy is to make sure that they are making more money than they did last month, how can you help them do that? Well, right. Management doesn't have as many levers. So I mean, sometimes maybe they only have a couple of levers, right? Obviously rent roll is a big one for sure. But for us, we're in those spaces having those conversations with tenants who are like, I mean, we just had a tenant ask last week, how quickly could it be possible for me to blah, blah, blah? And they were already in the space. They already had Wi-Fi immediately all across the campus. That's just default, standard, run-of-the-mill stuff. But they wanted to hook up some stuff. And so they're like, I'm here in suite 229. Would it be possible for me to... and here they go. And so, you know, we were able to look at, again, documentation is king because we were like, oh, you know what, 229, absolutely. Yes, there is cross-connect capability in 229. That's great. Here's where it is in the suite. You know, you might want to visually confirm that you see it. Does that work for you? If that location works for you, we We just probably need ours. Just sign that property's TPO, technology purchase order form, right? We'll figure out what you need. And then we could, I mean, we could deliver way beyond whatever the SLA is. And like I said, that would be ours for this tenant. And then in fact, actually today, within the last 4 hours, that tenant did sign and return some stuff. So it's a delight to be able to do that. Could management do that? No. I mean, it would be possible, but they would have to augment their team in such a way that it would be so expensive that I don't think that ownership would want them to be in that position anymore.

Bill Douglas: They think they could do it and they do it the old way. When we talk about the old way and the new way a lot, I think the old way... matter of fact, there's no think about it. The old way was to call whatever the phone company is or the internet company and pay them, and they would come put a whole nother wire through your building or a set of wires through your building every time a tenant moved and changed. So riser crowding is a real problem and it's never monitored or managed. And that's an asset that's being sold to somebody else. So I think that the old way caused more problems than it solved, and the tenant always had to wait. It was another party that they didn't have any leverage through their lease, nor did they pay them through their lease, and then they just had to wait. How many times have we seen in the old model tenants tell their employees not to come to work yet, or tenants in apartments not move in because they didn't have internet yet? Like, that's just a silly problem to have. I know it still happens. Yeah. And you talked about, you brought up a brilliant point are we have the same customer. Property managers and OpticWise have the same customer, and that is the owner. Some of the most fun conversations I have is when the property manager and we are working together and we can start to show how technology is and data and digital is the asset. You might think it's an expense on this line item, but that's because you haven't correlated the income associated with that line item. So if you make it an asset on the balance sheet, when you pay for it, like the equipment, then you can show the monthly expense and the monthly income. So you know exactly how much this blank, whether it's a system, a sensor, software, service, whatever you're buying, earns you. If it's not earning you money, then why are you paying for it? So we talk about that a lot too. Technology can be perceived as an expense, but if you look at it as an asset, an expense therefore should have an income offsetting it. At least even the best relationships are when it's more. So we talked about it, an owner being very happy because they're earning a lot of money. Well, they know exactly what they're getting from this relationship, not just throwing money at something. Oh, we have to have this. They're putting money in knowing they're going to get this back. And when that is documented, then the relationship just snowballs. It gets better and better. And the next time there's an upgrade or a budget or a problem needed, you can say, this is to support this initiative. This is how much money you made off of it last year. Oh, okay. You know, maybe it's end of life for a piece of equipment. Maybe it's the CapEx budget. Okay. There's a 10-year life on it. 2 years out. It's going to be 2 years out. We'll tell you about it 2 years ahead of time. Here it comes. Okay. We can do that. Well, cause we earn. Blank per square foot or per door per year off of that. Yeah, that's cheap. I'll do that again. I'll do that instead of going, oh my gosh, how are we going to pay for this? It's not in our budget. So the property manager has to do those budgets and this gets really, really fun when they're painless.

Drew Hall: Yeah, well, the beauty of it is, you know, in this example of Suite 229, this is a tenant that was moving into Suite 229. 229 had been occupied in previous years by some other tenant who also needed a cross-connect. and that's the reason why that was installed there for that tenant. So any of the one-time costs related to get that, getting that thing in place were long taken care of by that original tenant. But it's not just tenant specific. It stays with the building. It becomes part of the master documentation so that when this current tenant moves in and says, is it possible? Could I possibly do this? How does it work? We say, well, check it out. The backbone or whatever we want to call it, the digital infrastructure already supports it. So the one-time cost is nothing, absolutely nothing. That cross-connect port on the wall is labeled whatever it is. It's dead. If you plug into it, nothing happens. However, you sign that TPO form and according to however you want it to function, and it lights up and you got exactly what you need.

Bill Douglas: And the property manager had to do nothing.

Drew Hall: Nothing at all, except make sure the tenant knew to contact OptiWise. That's it.

Bill Douglas: Which was their technology partner. You tell the story about spin the chair now, but contact our partner. This is an extension of our company. They represent this building, call them. You don't have to pay them. You're not paying them.

“Spin Your Chair”: The Best Advice for Property Managers

Drew Hall: Yeah, it's interesting because I mean, like, it's kind of fun not to have an agenda on a podcast like this because now I'm like, holy cow, here's another example from this week. They really do come up. I mean, this one, you know about, Bill, because it's a whole different property, but it was a very unique, high-powered tenant that had a deep relationship with the nearest university research department. And they had some huge connectivity changes that they were making. And the question was, will this impact the campus? Because it was being pitched as if it would, like, oh no, this is, there's going to need to be an outage event scheduled because it's going to impact the whole campus. But it's not true at all. We were able to, you know, join in on that conversation, speak with that tenant and the university associated with that tenant and find out, okay, this is exactly what you're doing. That's great. That makes sense. What you're saying makes absolute sense. The worst case scenario is you knock your entire networks offline. and it has no impact to any other tenant in that entire campus. Beautiful. Let's quantify that, put it back in email to everybody involved, which includes management. And of course ownership wants to know, and then you're clear to go. You can do that any time of day or night. There's no impact to anyone else. And my goodness, I mean, you know, management and ownership were just relieved that it was so delineated and so safe because it felt really risky because it just so happens that management was hosting a 3-day event where they were going to have a lot of guests in the building at on and off, on and off, you know, business hours kind of thing. And they were like, oh my gosh, we cannot, we can't entertain this right now. I don't know the risk. So it was great. It was a wonderful example that kind of set itself up. You know, we were able to get it resolved right away. So they haven't conducted the cutover as we speak right now, but they could be doing it right now if they want. And so that, that's another great example of just being in there, allowing us to be in there as that technology arm of their management team, because they were the ones being asked like, hey, we need access to the facility so we could do this physical thing. And not just access to the facility, access to your data closets, property management. And that should be a very unwelcome request. Like, no, no, no, no.

Bill Douglas: Yeah. You start with no, just like zero trust in the cybersecurity world. Start with no, shut them down and then verify before trust kind of thing.

Drew Hall: Yeah. So all of these examples, I think, feed into that phrase that we've been saying on lots of calls to management company. And it is just that the phrase is spin your chair. You know, you're having a conversation about the cleanliness of the carpet. Or some common amenity that might need some maintenance or some attention or whatever. Great. Amazing. That's great. But the moment technology becomes part of the discussion, quote unquote, spin your chair, meaning, oh, you know what? Hmm. Good question. Let me reach out to the team here. I want to put you in touch with our IT team or whatever you want to call it. IT team, that's often used. It's way more than that. But technology, we are your technology arm. And it's interesting because I feel like I probably I tell the team to say this multiple times a week. But again, it's just, I think it's not as simple as it should be because it takes time, it takes trust, and you have to break the status quo and allow management to realize like, oh my gosh, I know this much about technology. I wish I knew this much. I don't even want to deal with it. I can turn, and I love that image as if they're spinning in their chair and pretend this is a glass wall connected to Oh, he said, hey, could you come over and talk here? There's a question about technology. And I'm just, that's not my area. Great. Solved. It really is that clean, but you got to make sure that everybody knows to guide the conversation that way.

Bill Douglas: We talk a lot in our own company about stay in your lane. I don't try to do things you do and vice versa. Not that we can't, but if we both did the same thing, we're kind of wasting energy and focus. So it's the same application. It's just a division of responsibilities and we believe in accountability. So we are accountable for keeping these networks alive and keeping everything connected, whether it's a person or a device or a piece of software and all the relationships that go with it. And over time, that makes the building stand out in the marketplace, not to mention make more money. But that is why owners like it so much. And property managers, once they learn how it works and they actually can let go, then it becomes a beautiful relationship. There's just so many times we see, and so many property managers I talk to have to do everything. They're expected to do everything. And technology is so broad and moving so fast, especially in the AI world of the past 20 months, that it's a really tough challenge. I know we spend a lot of time and energy here learning and training and keeping up to date on things. And I can't imagine having to do that and run a building and listen to tenant complaints and lease it up and move people in and out. That, that's, that's a lot to ask. So bend your chair, you know, building your trusted technology partnerships, OT, operational technology, right? Well, I know we could come up with a million more examples, but I think that was an awesome discussion. You said you have more and more, and I have 3 or 4 more, but they would just be piling on. So I think we'll, we probably should bring it to a close. Well, we're not going to do the, the extra floor. I'll do one question. Night owl or early bird?

Extra Floor: Early Bird or Night Owl?

Drew Hall: Yeah, I like, I like that question. And I like the follow-up, the natural follow-up, which is, has that changed? Because I used to be be way more of an early bird and I've become more of a night owl. Like, and part of that is because I feel like I value sleep so much more. It's just, I feel like sleep's either I'm paying attention to sleep science more, or there's just more sleep science out there. I don't know what it is. I have a deep respect for quality rest more than I ever have.

Bill Douglas: Sleep is not underrated. I'm an early bird, but because I like sleep so much, I just go to bed earlier, but I function so much better in the morning. I have one of my sons is a night owl. And that's the one that's an air traffic controller. He doesn't think anything about it. But you know, the other ones like me and man, by 9 or 10, he is wiped and you know, he's up and running by 5:30, you know, and they're out of the house too. I just know them because they're such good friends of mine now, but I'm an early bird with you. And I will say now that we did one extra floor that was totally impromptu. We didn't open up the show with this, but we were going to ask you again, if you want to be on the show, if you know somebody that wants to be on the show, please reach out. We're not hard to find. Thank you for listening. Like, subscribe, share it, please spread the word. If you have topics you'd like us to discuss or people that you would like us to pursue to be on the show, do that. This is a shared platform for shared experiences to make commercial real estate better relative to data and digital and technology with one rule, no selling allowed. So this is a conversation and experience share. So Drew, this has been awesome. It was fun. I'm glad we decided to do it. We should probably do one of these every quarter. Yeah.

Drew Hall: I mean, the, the power of these examples is is just never ending. And it's interesting because once you stop long enough to think about it and to talk about it in a podcast form like this, it's like, oh yeah, okay, there's more examples. The possibilities are just, they're practically endless.

Bill Douglas: Agreed. Well, thank you, Drew. Thank you everybody for listening. We'll see you on the next episode of Peak Property Performance.