If you can’t create value, you can’t create wealth

As an industry, property management is unforgiving.

If you get pegged as a certain style of manager, it is very hard to change or upgrade your reputation.

However, if you insist on quality from your staff and you give great value in the way you conduct your business, then you get quality properties to manage.

You also need quality clients who share your values to reduce the stress of running your business empire. Forgetting this and just letting anyone become your client in your desperation to get business is also a mistake.

This resonates with me because we’ve been burned a couple of times by working with the wrong owners in our eagerness to add doors to our business.

Get to know people before you sign contracts with them

Take the time to know what people are really about before you sign contracts with them.

I learned this the hard way a few years ago when we took over a condo project, a beautiful new complex.

I felt a red flag go up in terms of my values when they asked us to make a major change in our standard management agreement involving a clause of liability. I should have stayed honest to my instincts and questioned them more and done further research.

But we were eager to grow our business and we agreed to manage the property. It was a terrible experience, and we soon discovered that property had major structural issues and the condo board was trying to build a case to sue the developer.

That was a second red flag. I began to understand why the owner wanted to pass on liability to us because the building was defective and we ended up in the whole mess.

It was a good lesson learned and I’m thankful we had good insurance to cover us.

Work with people who share your values

So I learned the hard way that just as it is important to work with a team of people who share my values, it is also vital to work with a team of owners who also share those values.

You cannot create wealth for your company if you forget the importance of creating value. There is no variation on this rule.

Sometimes it is hard to figure out all the aspects of this rule. But you can start with one basic premise: Never make changes to your standard management contract without consulting your lawyer. The second rule is to trust your instincts if you think something is wrong.

And as much as you want new businesses to come on board, take the time to vet the owners, just as they have taken their time to learn about you.

When you work with owners who are aligned with your beliefs and your way of thinking, things go better for both of you. You don’t spend an over-investment of time butting heads with them over every little expense and all the items you have to deal with on a daily basis.

Pick the people you want to work with

It is up to us and our full responsibility to recognize the types of owners that we want to work with and which will enhance our business and those who will drag us down.

As we diversified and began other associated companies within our “Doorpreneur” philosophy, we continued to take time to accept work from people who like us, are growth-oriented and who understand the value of good service.

Knowing this and sticking with it has made all the difference as our business empire grows. We even developed our own “starter kit” to help us better assess potential clients we are considering working with.

Remember that your associations can only help you create wealth if you are working to create value. The people you work with at all levels will either propel you forward or pull you back.

You have to make the choice every time about which way you want to go.

Tony LeBlanc, author of The Doorpreneur: Property Management Beyond the Rent Roll, is founder and CEO of Grand Floor Property Management, one of the largest property management firms in Canada, and founder of CORE Property Care. Using diversification and imagination, he developed a system for using property management to form the foundation of a robust business empire. Learn more about his “Doorpreneur” principles at www.doorpreneur.com