Unlock the secrets to transforming financial performance and compliance in the multifamily industry with insights from Michael Bowman, the visionary CEO and founder of Resident Radius. Discover how Michael's journey from an operator to a supplier partner has informed the creation of innovative cash management solutions that tackle financial evictions, late payments, and more. By listening to this episode, you'll gain an understanding of how Resident Radius builds a resident-centric approach that aligns seamlessly with owner and operator policies.
Building a platform from scratch is no small feat, and Michael shares his strategic blueprint for success. Learn about the shift from licensed software to platform development, emphasizing organic growth and the importance of an offshore team in Ireland. Michael highlights the critical role of client partnerships, addressing pain points, and ensuring user-friendly customization. This episode guides you through the strategic onboarding process and the art of communicating positive change to maximize property management efficiency.
With a focus on technology integration, this episode explores the transformative impact on property operations, particularly in cash management and regulatory compliance. Michael discusses the necessity of agile systems in keeping pace with shifting legislation, such as California's security deposit laws. By partnering with specialized tech solutions, operators can maintain excellence while respecting the multifamily industry's human element. Tune in to witness Resident Radius's success story and look forward to future collaborations and insights at their upcoming summit.
About the Multifamily Innovation® Council:
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is the executive level membership organization that makes a difference in your bottom line, drives a better experience for your employees, and allows you an experience that keeps demand strong for your company. The council is uniquely positioned to focus on the intersection of Leadership, Technology, AI, and Innovation.
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is for Multifamily Business leaders who want to unlock value inside their organization so they can create better experiences and drive profitability inside their company.
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Connect:
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Patrick Antrim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickantrim/
All right, welcome back. So today we're talking all about money. We've got the founder and CEO of Resident Radius on. We've got Michael Bowman. He'll be joining us in just a minute here.
Speaker 1:Before I set that up, I want to talk to you about why we do these interviews. Number one as you know, I meet every week as chairman of the Multifamily Innovation Council, and so we're spending time with owners and operators inside the current challenges that they face in the industry. This is what they're faced with today. And then we look at what is the bigger and better future that they want to create. And then we prioritize with the council and the operators how do they want to approach solving those problems? And then we look for who can best support the partners and the technologies to then make those problems go away or to help them achieve a bigger and better future.
Speaker 1:And so math, money, financial evictions, late payments, security deposits all these conversations are the types of things that are getting these investors to the yield, so you can generate all the rents in the world if you want, but if you can't collect them, that is a major pain point. So today we're bringing in Michael Bowman. He's the CEO and founder of Resident Radius Michael, welcome in. Thank you, appreciate you having me. Yeah, so we just opened up a little bit about your background, personal background. I think of financial performance. You think of performance. You've been a performer technically, even in cinema, the movies, all these types of things. How do you look at performance today in multifamily?
Speaker 2:I would say performance in multifamily has a number of aspects to it, because it depends on your perspective. If you're an operator, if you're an owner, if you're a supplier, partner, you have to look at the end result and the downstream effect, and I think that's what's lost oftentimes is everyone has their own focus and sometimes we have blinders on so for me, we categorize performance in a number of ways. We look at the performance as our product performs in its application. We also look at the performance in the effects downstream how are we impacting the site level? How are we impacting the resident experience? And we have to quantify each of those to determine overall performance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm going to get into a little bit about what you've built, what you're working on, so the problem it solves and all of that. Let's start there, because I've got some follow-up questions around some of the priorities that these companies have. What are you working on, what have you built and what value are you creating in multifamily?
Speaker 2:Well, I hope we're creating a lot of value in multifamily. I feel like we've done a good job and we have about eight years now under our belt doing it. As we talked, I was on the operator side before I crossed over to the supplier partner side, so we've applied a lot of my past experience into the product build and initially and it has evolved over time, obviously, as you are wont to do the original product was really just to solve for the cash deposit component and how residents onboard into a community, more for an affordability and a systematic approach that's consistent. What we've evolved to now is we've evolved to a cash management platform that the ecosystem itself actually is retroactively beneficial. So we're onboarding new residents that move into the community. We're converting existing residents that are already in the community and previously paid a deposit or deposit alternative and bringing those into our environment to support them. As well as the retroactive component with a sheetment, which has become a big driver for us as well.
Speaker 2:All of this is client-driven. I'd like to say that I'm the smartest guy in the room Absolutely not, you know. I'd like to say that I'm the smartest guy in the room Absolutely not. It's been a Jeff Bezos kind of an installment plan. That's any deposit alternative, third-party deposit alternative that the client wants to use, and we've created consistency and compliance around all of that workflow.
Speaker 1:Is that also the administration part as well, in terms of the move out and getting those statements out to the residents?
Speaker 2:Correct. Yes, a hundred percent of the the the life cycle of a resident from move in to move out, and I should say through move out, um, it's very customizable for uh our owners and operators to be able to uh streamline their workflow but also create their marketing and brand identity through our platform.
Speaker 1:So let's lean into a little bit more of that compliance. What are the biggest challenges, would you say, around that compliance conversation?
Speaker 2:That is a lot to unpack. When you talk about compliance, there's two layers to it. There's the legality, the legislative restrictions and requirements that you have to create compliance around, but there's also the administrative compliance, and so it's twofold. We've built a substantial backend deposit legislation matrix that is connected through our system to prevent our clients from risk. It's what establishes the timelines and the requirements for sending the final move out statement out. Whether it goes out US Postal or if it has to be a certified mailing, there's timelines involved. If you you know, example, if you have a state that has a 30-day requirement, you know we're backstopping our clients to ensure that you know, if the move out isn't processed within the correct number of days, that we're advising them, reminding them hey, this hasn't been done. And ultimately, if it doesn't get done prior to the expiration, we're automatically refunding the resident to ensure that nobody has risk.
Speaker 2:Even the resident has a positive experience post move out. From an operator side, you have to make sure that you know you are adaptable and malleable to support their structure and their needs and their compliance or their policies and procedures. But you have to do it in a way that's also resident-centric. We're very resident-facing. We have a 4.8 Google rating. We're really proud of that. We've really driven to ensure that our support teams are trained in sensitivity training, conflict resolution. You know we deal with all of the post-resident calls. If they have a question about their refund, they have a question about their move-out statement. You know we're taking that burden on, and so we need to make sure that our teams are properly trained to do it. So compliance creates a lot of risk. A lot of that is missed today just by virtue of the fact that operators can't specialize in that one aspect. We specialize in the move-in, move-out process, and so we're able to ensure that we hit all of those compliance requirements.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting and I know you have and it signals a lot of your success in growing this platform. You've got a lot of large organizations already working with you. You know that signals something that you know the volume I would imagine that they have. This makes a lot of sense and also for that mid-market or even smaller portfolio 1,500, 2,500, 5,000 unit portfolio this seems like a challenge for them to constantly train their teams and to turn over and they're promoting people. It seems like a nice way to stay standardized, stay compliant, without always retraining and retraining teams. Are you seeing any trends with that? Moving that outside the business? That's the goal, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would think that it makes sense, for, I mean, we're almost entirely cost neutral for our clients. In some ways we have the ability to create or generate an administrative reimbursement or AKA revenue share right historically. And so when they're able to shed a huge amount of the mundane, the manual tasks and, in addition to that, negate significant risk, it makes sense. Yes, we have a lot of large unit count clients but we do really well with the SMB and the smaller unit counts. We don't discriminate.
Speaker 2:Our system is built on the simplicity of onboarding to allow and support a 10 property PMC, a two property PMC, a mom and pop that have 50 units. For us it doesn't matter necessarily the size of the organization. Obviously, from a support perspective, you have to have dedicated account management for the larger clients and then you consolidate or group smaller clients with account management. But yeah, I think it makes sense because, as you said, it doesn't just mitigate or negate risk but it creates operational efficiencies and allows operators to scale because they don't need to add resources to bring on more properties to the extent that they historically did. And I think that you know within those organizations you find the variety of positions within a large organization are more positions to fill in those manual tasks, the smaller ones. You have individuals that do multiple tasks and eliminate daily cash reconciliation or accounting transfers or stuffing envelopes or, you know, going to a post office. It definitely saves time and creates operational efficiency. Yeah.
Speaker 1:When you're inside these conversations with owner and operators and it's the first time they're hearing about it. What are the questions they're asking about this process?
Speaker 2:I would say that the number one question that we get almost every single new business is how do you make money? Right, they want to make sure because, again, we're priced at a point that allows for adoption regardless of budget season. Doesn't matter if you're a fee manager or if you're an owner manager. You know our product runs very smooth and cost consciously is based on a way to, you know, create an onboarding experience that doesn't have to be impacted by the budget season. So, a lot of times they want to know, you know, where we make money and it's a shared responsibility, right? You know we generate revenue from the resident. We have offset costs through the operator, so it is.
Speaker 2:It is probably the first and foremost question that we get to after we get through portion of the demo, because, you know, most of our most of our folks that we're demoing to are very much understanding of the pain, and so it's. This is, this is great. How do we sign up, but this sounds too good to be true, right? So that's probably the first and foremost that we hear. A lot of times, we hear or we're asked, you know, how do they incorporate their own policies and procedures into our workflow, which, again, it's very customizable, so we meet their needs rather than them needing to meet our needs.
Speaker 1:And is that like in the communications with the residents or?
Speaker 2:Every aspect of our platform, to my own detriment and probably the angst of our developers. Everything we build is customizable, from a marketing standpoint to a workflow, even to a pricing allocation that resident facing, so we can customize it in owner level, an operator level, all the way down to a pricing allocation that resident facing, so we can customize it an owner level, an operator level, all the way down to a property level.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the building of all this, like how you innovated this from an insider's perspective, right?
Speaker 2:Well, originally, when we launched, we were a licensed software platform, and one of my peers in the industry and very, very smart and innovative individual had told me and I like the marketing stuff, I liked, I like you know, let's do a really cool booth, let's do tchotchkes, all these things. And he said he said if I could give you one piece of advice, invest in your platform, not in marketing, grow organically and under the radar as long as you can and build a really solid ecosystem that will support growth and innovation. And I really took it to heart. And that's what we focused on is we took the aspects of the license software that we were using that we needed and then built into a brand new platform the things that we wanted. And so we've grown our platform significantly. We've added three additional service lines.
Speaker 2:When you own the IP, when you're building your own technology, you have the benefit of being able to pivot or at least be dynamic in the way that you approach certain problems, and so development has become probably our biggest expense annually. We need to stay ahead of anybody that wants to be a competitor. We need to make sure that we're taking into account changes in the environment. We recently moved our development team offshore to Ireland, which was a pretty big initiative, but we found that the resources available there, the cost, all of that lent itself to a really positive switch, and so we have multiple development calls a week. I'm still involved, I have some control issues maybe. I like to see where things are at and where they're going, and so the development cycle is really interesting for me, yeah.
Speaker 1:Products. We share products that are useful, and that's a good focus. I love the strategy. If you were sitting down with the ideal customer that you wanted to spend time with, what would you want them to know about what you're working on here?
Speaker 2:I think that the first thing that I would like all of our potential clients and our existing clients that already know it is that we're not looking for unit count, we're looking for long-term partners. We want clients that are equally invested in us to perform and to provide services that benefit the resident, rather than just trying to grow to a certain unit count within our space. And then the other piece of it that I think is really important is that, while our product sounds complex because there's so much customization to it available, it doesn't have to be complex. The most difficult part is just the front end establishing. You know what are the deposit requirements. Who are the third party deposit alternatives that they work with? Is there a specific marketing message or brand image that they want conveyed in that workflow? Once we get all of that front end done, it runs really smoothly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about that a little more Like after someone says, yes, I want to move forward. What does that look like in terms of the customer experience or the client experience?
Speaker 2:Well, we have a policy and it's my fundamental policy with any client and it's the concept of if we're going to get married, we need to date first, and so we're very cautious in the implementation and approach.
Speaker 2:So once we've gone through the demo process and a client has said, hey, we want to roll this out, we complete the MSA, whether it's property level or operator level. We onboard the properties. We go through a number of calls with the right stakeholders, because there is no ability to have a successful product launch and use if you don't have buy-in from all layers of the organization. If the C-suite is really excited about something and the site level teams feel like it's a cram down and that they're not going to have benefits, there's friction. And so we ensure that we set up a number of these discovery calls with the right stakeholders involved to get them on board and find buy-in, as well as provide feedback on existing problems or structural changes or needs that they have. And then we schedule a number of. We always do a beta or a pilot group and then we schedule up those calls to support the teams and work through the marketing pieces and implementation go live and roll out.
Speaker 1:I mean you guys have it sounds like a solid process. Is it different for them? I mean, their process is they're just having internal teams, you know, handling certain things, and then you guys come in and offer a roadmap to sort of a simpler future and you have a lot of people that have bought and I'm curious how did you enroll that buy-in on the different levels, what those benefits were?
Speaker 2:I think that the simplest way to achieve buy-in at the various levels of the organization is to lead with the benefit for those individual layers. So, if we're meeting with accounting and it's always important for our product to have you know your CFO, controllers, the accounting, you know folks involved in that conversation. But if we're meeting with accounting, you know we talk about a sheetment, we talk about daily cash reconciliation and and stuffing envelopes with checks and and dealing with all of that and relate to them the way that it works in our world. Right, you know how is today for you versus tomorrow with us, and we ensure that they understand the value. And it's not a complex, you know process or workflow or technology. Right, it's just, it's change and fundamentally, property management has difficulty in change because we've done things the same way for so long, right? So it's really just understanding that the change has positive aspects to it and we just work through each layer of the organization, fundamentally identifying those pain points and how we address them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about those positive aspects. Is there any math we can talk about that benefits these property owners, operators after engaging?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We have a really solid advisory board. It's made up of client and leaders and peers in our industry and you know we've built a essentially an ROI calculator that can identify, you know, based on unit count, preemptively. That just shows by unit count or property level or property numbers that the cost and value benefit. But overall, like we see, properly employed, our services can reduce the operational costs for cash management by over 70%. There's a number of factors to that 70%. Now, we don't advocate or even sell elimination of FTEs. What we talk about is creating greater efficiency in the organization and reallocating those folks to do more revenue-driven tasks as well as promote growth. So you have scalability. If you have five accountants that are working full-time to do all of these things and we come in and we essentially remove 60 of their workflow or workload um, they're able to take on more properties. It's not work right. Yeah, it's definitely not fun moving data.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I would imagine there's impact to the employee experience as well.
Speaker 2:Like, like, if people are doing work, they enjoy, that matters of the property, even the leasing agents and you talk about what we're doing and how we're implementing.
Speaker 2:It is work that they don't. Nobody wants to print out move out statements and stuff them in the envelope and then deal with the inbound calls from a resident asking when they're getting their refund checks. You know, a statistic that is a great one to share is that you know, if you look at the traditional model of property management, on average operators, if they're sending the move-out statement out in time, it's usually 14 to 21 days after a resident's moved out. That's not the refund check, that's just the move-out statement, because that then has to get processed through accounting and then that gets mailed out. So residents are waiting anywhere between three and four weeks at minimum for a refund check or a move out statement. With our system it's real time. So the day of the move out statement is completed, it's processed, residents notified and they have access to a refund. On average, 98% of the residents processed through our system receive their refund electronically and if they select PayPal, venmo, google Pay, they have cash in hand within two hours of the move out being processed.
Speaker 1:Wow, two hours. Yeah, that's incredible. What are people saying about that? Like your clients, what's the feedback?
Speaker 2:feedback. One of the biggest pain points that clients have expressed even prospect clients have have have let us know is that the the resident complaints are typically around the refunds.
Speaker 1:That's usually the the most painful piece for them because the timing of the timing is they're just moving on and, by the way, moving is not fun, right? And then you add this income component to it. For them it may be income, you know.
Speaker 2:Yep 100%.
Speaker 1:Coming back to the Middle East, that's interesting. What do you see in trends Like where do you think everything's going with all of this?
Speaker 2:I think that there is. We've seen it.
Speaker 1:There's consistent pending legislation that's going to impact security deposits, either from a liability standpoint, I feel like that benefits you, though, or the organization, because, at the end of the day, the ability to execute on these requirements get smaller timelines usually, right, yes, in these regulations. It seems like that's where you got to bridge that tech with the process. Absolutely, yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, it is a benefit for us. I'll say that the pending legislation and while we don't lobby, it's just it's a sweeping initiative nationally to either impede owners and operators from collecting security deposits or requiring them to use deposit alternatives. We don't compete with any of those, we complete them. So we're able to insert those requirements into our workflow, whether it's on the back end in the matrix and timelines or maximum deposit requirements. California just went through a legislative change where now the maximum amount of a deposit that you can charge is equal to one month's rent. That's inclusive of pet fees or pet deposits and application. All that stuff is built into this new legislation, so our system will prevent a resident from having a deposit greater than one month's right For us. It wasn't complex to adjust the back backend matrix on that requirement. For an operator to do that and ensure that that's what's happening across all of their properties is much more difficult to get that.
Speaker 1:That's what I meant by that too is like you know some things, you just it's better to partner on with an environment where there's uncertainty, regulation, getting that certainty on compliance, things like that, because I'm just thinking about internal training, meeting those expectations and then knowing are we thinking through this? Because a client can only see their world right and you're seeing this perspective across the industry, this diverse mindset, diverse application, different asset classes, I would imagine, and that allows us to get, I think, a little bit better at certain things. We love the best-in-class. We call it the best-in-class point solutions versus doing something okay yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree 100% and I think that there's always going to be a human component to multifamily.
Speaker 2:We are a human-driven industry compliance around multiple aspects, not just the restrictions or the legislative components of it, even in the marketing, you know we struggle with.
Speaker 2:You know, at a site level, ensuring that every single one of your you know your operating team partners are trained and know how to speak to certain aspects of the workflow. Well, with our product, the operator is able to customize that messaging, so the resident's always going to receive consistent messaging, the marketing around their optionality or the affordability of a unit, and so it allows for a measure of compliance around that. But it doesn't negate the human component that's involved. So that the prospect you know we live in an industry that is similar to a grocery store right, you've got one prospect that comes in and they want to go through the self-checkout line. You don't want to talk to a person, they just need a couple of things and they're good. Conversely, you have the other resident that's a prospect coming in that wants that human component. They want to talk to a person, they want to shake a hand, they want to get their keys right there, and so by being able to support either of those, it creates a really great, consistent opportunity.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about that customization and even in the messaging how is that delivered?
Speaker 2:to take the messaging and insert that into both from a scripting standpoint. So our agents, when they speak to a prospect coming into a community, the scripting that they see on their screen is based off of that owner, operator or property level customization. And so our support teams have a direct message that they're able to provide that is aligned with our clients' wants. The resident onboarding experience everything visually that they're seeing, whether it's text messaging or whether it's via their app or screen, is also consistent and it's based off of what that Obviously, we have templates right. Like I said, we can simplify it. But if the client has the want to customize it within their brand, then we're able to convey that branded message.
Speaker 1:How long does it take from I'm in for this to we're ready to pilot or roll out the first?
Speaker 2:It's not fast. I would be doing our clients a disservice if we, if we quick turned and flip folks on. I would say it's anywhere from at minimum three weeks from the signed MSA before we have a pilot property, you know, going live with orientation. The sweet spot is about four to six weeks. For us it just depends on the size of the organization, because we do want to make sure that we're connecting with each of those layers or those stakeholders to ensure that everybody has alignment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but when you get this right it impacts every week after that in fundamental ways. I mean that's correct. I love the responsible execution there, like not the ambitious over-prompt, it's just really get alignment with what are the business objectives the client has, get their process figured out and then roadmap that onboarding. I think you start to look at what the downstream effects of getting that right are exponential. You know, because right now they're paying for it in other ways. It's much more than even you know figuring out. I don't know how a license you pay, monthly or annual. I don't know how your subscription model works, but they're paying. They're already have the costs Correct. Right, it's, it's. It may be frustration and maybe employee turnover, training, compliance risk, all that stuff. So it makes sense to focus for that period of time to get it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And by the way they develop apartments, they know like, hey, we're going to do something for 18 months to build a foundation, something that lasts for a while. I think that's positive.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and it's well-received. I mean, we've had a few, we've had a few prospects that were really, really excited and I love it, don't get me wrong, but the enthusiasm is really gratifying, right Like we want to roll everything out. You know now and you know our brand is just as important as theirs and so you know we're going to make mistakes and we'd rather make them on. You know a couple of properties in the beginning and make sure that we have it all dialed in. But, to your point, once we have all of that dialed in, supplemental ads are really easy, Like you can bring on, you know, the rest of a portfolio much faster than we can just the first piloting. You know phase of it because it's literally just turning those on in our system and those customizations are transferable A hundred percent Once we set up the client and we have we, we, we bracketed out where the the customization is and we work with owner managers.
Speaker 2:We work with fee managers. We work with owners that use fee managers and so if it's an ownership group, we build out that customization at the ownership group and then, regardless of the operator, it flows through that operator with those specifications For a fee manager if they have a standard model. That's what gets implemented with the properties. But if there is a ownership group that's under that same fee manager, then the hierarchy will take that ownership customization and apply it. And so, regardless of where the property is or how many units the property is, it takes 10 minutes to set up a new property once we have all of that already dialed in.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. What are some questions that people ask that they may think like oh, this is like something else. How do you differentiate with other people in the marketplace, maybe doing similar things or grouping them into other things? How are you leading forward the campaign to acquire new customers?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest misconception when we're out in the market is that we're competitive with deposit alternatives, and the reality is that we're not with deposit alternatives. And you know the reality is is that you know we're not competitive, we're complimentary. We actually make those programs work better because we can consistently offer them to every resident, rather than relying on a human component at the site level to potentially offer it or to you know, even from a fair housing standpoint, maybe they're not offering it consistently and they're supposed to right. And so for us I think that you know it is understanding that we are a supportive service that creates compliance around those pieces. That has been fundamentally the biggest difficulty that we've had.
Speaker 2:We had a lot of open field when we came to market because nobody else did it. We had about five years of that where the need wasn't as profound. I'd say post-COVID is where we've really seen huge uptick in the want Not really the need from a use case. It wasn't that they saw that they needed it, but they realized that they wanted it and then the benefits of implementing it created the need. So that's really where we struggled with for a long time because we were it was us or them right. When we first launched, we just did the cash deposit piece. It was about a year and a half ago that we implemented the change to insert the deposit alternatives to our workflow and that's what really opened up our opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting, you know, I think about, you know the amount of choices owner and operators have when they go to market and you know one of the things you mentioned early in your conversation was you have a product advisory or advisory council, I think of sorts. So you're kind of building along with the customer, with you know, with something that's useful for current state of business, all that stuff. And you've been great in our Multivan Innovation Council meetings, which is a separate council. It's for the sort of industry platform for that. Has that been useful for you in getting kind of the ear of the hearts and minds or the priorities or the pulse of maybe the conversations that they're having? I know that your remarks and responses in those meetings and contribution have been incredible, giving perspective on a range of things. But how has that been useful, I guess, for you in that aspect?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. Yes, I'm glad that I've been able to contribute and I definitely find it extremely valuable. You know our client-based advisory board. You know they're a range of positions C-suite to you know, regionally leveled. They don't have the availability to meet on a weekly basis, so those are really beneficial meetings to direct our roadmap and understand our platform, either deficiencies or augmenting it or enhancing it. I would say, and I would highly recommend the council meetings because the frequency weekly sometimes I can't make it, I always try to but the variety of people that are attending that it is a great opportunity to understand a broader scale perspective of the market, from whether it's a CapEx conversation or whether it's a technology conversation or compliance. I think that it is great insight that you cannot get anywhere else in the industry and not as consistent as it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the vision there is to help us build more useful things, right. So I think there's been an imbalance to you know there's the owners and operators have been so successful for so long, right, and so they haven't been in a situation where they've needed to change. And so it's always great to have what we brought in industry partners to really help guide the technical, the diverse set Because, again, like I said, if we're in a vacuum, you're in conversations across industry with some of the top organizations and all across different markets, and you've seen the regulation relation and that's just been really valuable to bring your words, your vision, your contribution to some of those means, and sometimes they may be even off topic to product. It's just more like back to your point of people and relationships and we're outside of sales, so there's no sales in there. So you're really being helpful and productive. I always just ask, because I'm always curious, like how do you make innovation flow more efficiently in the industry? And it's really bringing those conversations together.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, I think that there's a standard.
Speaker 2:It's innovate or die right and especially they know that, but sometimes they don't Like still, what do you think that is?
Speaker 2:It is the legacy unwillingness to change, and it goes more so to that, and I'll almost say it's a property management system origin.
Speaker 2:Sure, because, fundamentally, once you've picked your platform, it's like are you an Apple user or an Android user? Right, it's really hard to change out of an ecosystem, and so a lot of change is met with adversity, and you have to be able to provide as a supplier partner. You have to be innovative, but you also have to be dynamic and flexible enough to create the opportunity that the owner operator can see Not only the value, but that change management is not going to be the opportunity. That the owner operator can see not only the value, but that change management is not going to be the hurdle Sure, it's. It's more so, fundamentally getting alignment across the organization and the buy-in from the different task holders and groups. So, yeah, I think that that's really important, that you know change is hard, which is one of the reasons why we approach it cautiously, as is Does that give them a little ease, like, oh, this is actually refreshing a little bit?
Speaker 2:I think so. I mean fundamentally. It's probably selfish in our intention because we are really vested in our brand and we don't want to risk speed and haste, you know, to that would negatively impact. That. It's also protective of the client, obviously. So I think that by creating the opportunity to step into it slowly, essentially, you know test the water and you know acclimate that it does negate some of the fear. If you're going to roll out on, you know, on 25% of a portfolio, it's a lot easier to unwind if for some reason they didn't want to or they had a problem. And we're a very simple contract. We have a 30-day out If a client doesn't want to work with us. We don't want them to. Fortunately, we've never lost a client, so I'm proud of that fact. But we also would make it easy if a client did need to make a change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's it been, as a founder, doing all this? How's that?
Speaker 2:Well, I've lost a lot of hair over the years. I mean we've grown so much over eight years and we have an amazing group of individuals. Through leadership, sales, our support teams. We've found so many new friendships along the way. In our industry there's an element of pride along the way. In our industry there's an element of pride, obviously. I mean we're human. So I'm profoundly grateful that we have met and retained the clients that we have. I mean they truly are partners and I have developed some of my deepest friendships through this business that I would not have today had I not created this company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, any advice you give to other founders thinking about building stuff in multifamily.
Speaker 2:I think the two things that I would say is trust in your heart that if you truly feel you have a product that solves for pain, to go forward with it. Be cautious and respectful of everybody, because this industry is an elephant, not only by size but also by memory. And the last piece that I would say is we're bootstrapped. We've we've never taken an investment and I was cautioned multiple times by the same peer that told me to build tech, that it is a difficult position to be in because when you, when you take capital, it's not a benefit, it's an obligation. And so if you're, if you're taking seed money or if you have to do an investment round, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, and there absolutely are right reasons. Fundamentally, if your product is what it is and what you need to get it off the ground requires capital you don't have absolutely there are right reasons, but go into it understanding that it is an obligation, not an opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what would you share about building that team? I mean, that team needs different things over those stages and phases.
Speaker 2:I am blessed with great people and we, you know we are slow to hire, even slower to fire, and I mean we really haven't fired anybody, but I think I've been the opposite at times.
Speaker 2:You worry about it, but I think that we've been really lucky to find the people that we have, and some of our folks are people that I've worked with in the past. Our industry, like I said, is a big one and people have a variety of experiences, and if you bring together the right people and create a culture that is team oriented you know we don't do individualized commission plans or bonuses it's all group, everybody shares in in the opportunity and the benefits, and so that dynamic vastly alters the way that everybody interacts. There's no me or I, it's all a team. And I think that, fundamentally, finding the right people that fit in your organization is probably the hardest task to do. When you're building and growing too quickly is also a painful process because you will inadvertently bring on more people than you're ready for in the hopes or in the expectation of new business. And you know, being responsible for people's lives, their kids, their spouses, you know is a very stressful burden, so you need to make sure that you do it cautiously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then going to market sales. I mean you guys have done such a great job with with the brand. What advice do you share there?
Speaker 2:I think the brand component and I've I've actually struggled with this a few times. You know, when we first launched, we launched as Deposit Cloud and pretty much our entire existence has been under that umbrella. And then when we added additional service lines right at the beginning of the pandemic and then post or through and post pandemic, it became confusing Like, oh, who are you with? And you know, you describe what you do. Oh, you're with that company, you know. And so there was a confusion, which is what led to the rebranding under Resident Radius, trying to create a connective brand with those.
Speaker 2:I think that pivoting like that is hard because they hear or know of your, you know a different name and so morphing that into a new one or marketing under that can be difficult. But I think the brand, the most significant piece of branding that I, the multiple products you know, connecting everything to the resident at the center. So I think that marketing is really important from the aspect of having clean one pagers and having a website experience or a marketing experience that can relate what you do fundamentally without spilling the secret sauce per se. Um, so that's the difficult piece for me is, you know, we don't have, we don't have the marketing department that I would like to have, and someday we will, uh, but it's, it is a, it's a team effort and we have a, you know, a key marketing person that helps to put everything together. Um, but it is. But it is difficult from the brand perspective to ensure that people know what you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's easy to clarify a message when you have a focus and the ideal customer in mind. You're kind of just arriving at those needs. Are there questions that I should be asking, that I haven't asked, that you know, people should know.
Speaker 2:Well, you've asked some really great questions, I'll say so, I don't know that, as far as questions that you should ask, I don't know that there's a question that you should ask that you haven't already asked. There's, obviously, questions that I would love for you to ask, but Well, let's go there. What is that for you to ask? But Well, let's go there. What is that? Well, I mean, it's a selfish method to ask, but I mean we always try to figure out where the pain is within the organization, and so, you know, we oftentimes get asked the questions of. You know, when you said you know, what are you solving for? It's more so, who are you solving for and for us? Like that, you know. When you said you know what are you solving for? It's more so, who are you solving for and for us? Like that, you know the answer to that is that we're solving for every layer of the organization, whereas a lot of products out there are solving for a specific pain point, not necessarily who it serves or who it solves for.
Speaker 1:So yeah, good people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're a people industry, you know ultimately. Yeah, Anything. Uh, maybe you can't say now, but anything on the horizon for what's next for the brand?
Speaker 2:We specialize. Our goal is to specialize and do one thing better than anything else, and that is that's the cash management deposit secure deposit piece. The additional products that we've added have been supportive, tied into or tandem with. Next on our horizon is an operational compliance platform that all of those products dovetail into, and so we're looking to launch that in Q2, q3 of next year. We have a couple of clients that we're building it with, so we're excited about that piece of it, but that will be the last additional service line that we add. We just don't want to. We don't want to distract ourselves from what is most important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to ask where people can. We'll put all this information in the show notes, but how? How would you want people to reach out and connect?
Speaker 2:We have a sales email address sales at residentradiuscom. Our website is residentradiuscom and they can connect through LinkedIn with any of our team myself directly with DMs and LinkedIn, with any of our team myself directly with DMs and LinkedIn. We've got Wade McGowan, gabriella Jones, and they would be happy to help anyone that wants to find out more information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you've built what sounds like an amazing product, great team, and I love the way that you show up your heart to serve you know. So it's always good when you're interacting with a brand and they're there to make improve the lives of the people they're working for. I love the center on the people you meant. I asked you the question around. You know what problems you saw in the pain points and you went to like well, who are we solving for? At the end of the day, behind every company is just a collection of people, and if you can make their lives better, it's always a good thing. Absolutely Well, listen, this has been amazing. I know we'll be following all of your success. We're excited to see you at the summit and hopefully we can have you back on. Do some more education and, of course, our Friday meetings. That'll be great to see you there.
Speaker 2:Yes, love to.
Speaker 1:All right, good to have you on, thanks, thank you. All right, so all about Resident Radius. Click the links in the show notes and listen more Share if you know anybody that would find this episode valuable. We'll see you in the next one.