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18 Plays3 months ago
🎧 Welcome to Thoughts For Rent — the podcast where real estate gets real (and local)!
Hosted by Jenni McKenna, a Las Vegas born and raised seasoned broker, and Owner of McKenna Property Management, this show is your inside look at what’s really happening in the Vegas property management and real estate world. With over 20 years of experience herself - Jenni brings not just knowledge, but heart to the conversation.
Whether we’re talking market trends, property tips, community happenings, or just the everyday quirks of Vegas living, this podcast is all about keeping you in the know.
💬 Real talk. Local stories. Professional insight – provided from a company who has their boots on the ground and hearts in the community.
In this episode, we’re covering talking about the company culture and what we strive to live by in our office. And we do it with one word. ELEVATE!
McKenna Property Management, proudly managing Las Vegas homes since 2005 (and loving every minute of it).
Hit subscribe and comment down below to join the conversation! 💛
✨ Stay connected with us!
Instagram: @mckennapropertymanagement
Facebook: McKenna Property Management
TikTok: @TheMcKennaTeam
Website: McKennaPropertyManagement.com
Phone: 702-434-HOME (4663)
Owner/Broker: Jenni McKenna B.29819
#ThoughtsForRent #McKennaTeam #LasVegasRealEstate #JenniMcKenna #PropertyManagement #MarketTrends #PropertyTips #Community
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Las Vegas Climate
00:00:20
Irelynn Zurflueh
Hi everyone. Welcome back to Realtors Keeping It Real. I am Ireland and this is Jenny McKenna. And it's heating up. We've got some AC work orders coming in. The sun is out.
00:00:34
Irelynn Zurflueh
We got some pool work orders coming Oh my gosh. I can just imagine. So it's not too hot yet, but some people are still dealing with the...
Podcast Themes: Property Management & Real Estate
00:00:42
Irelynn Zurflueh
colder weather but we're up to the 80s now at this point in Vegas yeah I imagine that everybody that's on the east coast wishes that they could have the sunshine like we've been having and hit 77 78 which is funny because when it did get close to 80 I was like oh my gosh turn on the AC it's so hot But yeah, well, we're glad that you joined us for ah thoughts for rent.
00:01:06
Irelynn Zurflueh
And a lot of what we talk about is just property management, real estate, life in general. I think the biggest thing is, is we like to, as Ireland said, keep it real.
NARPUM Convention Highlights
00:01:17
Irelynn Zurflueh
And we're just going to keep it real. And what I wanted to talk about today, or at least start our conversation, when I went to NARPUM last week at Colorado Springs, which by the way, stayed at the Broadmoor, oh my gosh, I have heard of the broadway the Broadmoor for years and years.
00:01:35
Irelynn Zurflueh
I actually skated at the ice arena there as a competitor, never could afford the Broadmoor back then. but stayed at the Broadmoor and it is a five diamond resort and it deserves it.
00:01:49
Irelynn Zurflueh
It's in c incredible. If you want to ever go and just experience good customer service in restaurant, in housekeeping, in the grounds, you name it, they have knocked it out of the park.
00:02:06
Irelynn Zurflueh
So it was great, but I sidetracked. I was in Colorado Springs staying at the Broadmoor for the NARPUM convention, which NARPUM stands for National Association of Property Managers.
00:02:18
Irelynn Zurflueh
And it was an interesting one because this is the broker owner. the R in NARPUM? Residential. Oh, okay. Yeah, residential. So um it was for the broker owners of the company. So a different...
00:02:31
Irelynn Zurflueh
set up It's not like the
Value of Business Fundamentals
00:02:33
Irelynn Zurflueh
day-to-day setup. You know, this is how you take a property management account. This is how you talk to an owner. This is how you do evictions. That's not what this convention and conference was about. It's about a higher level of learning. Because sometimes the conventions will send...
00:02:49
Irelynn Zurflueh
like employees but with a specific, like I went to a repairs convention one time and it was just all about how to make work orders and how to close work orders and things of that nature. so sometimes the conventions are intentionally for certain things. Right. There's a lot of conventions that I like to send our team members to that are specific for the job but um that they were in charge of or the department head over.
00:03:14
Irelynn Zurflueh
So this one is the one I get sent to so that I can get a little idea nationwide of how some of the other owners in the same industry are building their business. And that's the big thing. Because business, whether it be property management, whether it be real estate, whether it be a tire shop or whatever, the foundation of building a business is is the same.
00:03:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
Mm-hmm. And Gary Keller from Keller Williams ah Realty taught me that. ah When I started as a just a real estate agent at at KW, Keller Williams, I was able to mastermind with ah Gary Keller at some of his classes.
00:03:53
Irelynn Zurflueh
And he said, it doesn't matter what you are selling or doing, ah business is a business is a business. So how often do they have this convention? Like how many times a year? Is it once a year?
Importance of Yearly Conventions
00:04:05
Irelynn Zurflueh
Once a year for the owner broker. And then there is going to be another one that is more um set around your team members. So we'll send some of our team members to that.
00:04:16
Irelynn Zurflueh
So if, you know, if running a business is the same pattern or the same formula in any career field, do you still feel like you're going there yearly to hear new stuff? Or do you feel like it's the same formula that you've already heard a thousand times over?
00:04:33
Irelynn Zurflueh
Do you know, I heard a long time ago, somebody said, you will be ready to hear it when you are ready. So I think that whatever, they might've been saying this last year, but for whatever reason, i wasn't the student ready to hear that.
00:04:52
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I heard it this year. So I think every year i get super valuable information.
Networking and Small Business Focus
00:04:59
Irelynn Zurflueh
And especially because, like i said, it is throughout the entire United States.
00:05:03
Irelynn Zurflueh
So I was sitting around a table, eight of us or so round table. And there was somebody from Chicago, somebody from Minnesota, somebody from Arizona, two people from California, one North, one South, myself from Nevada. And it's really a great...
00:05:23
Irelynn Zurflueh
opportunity to ask questions or have them volunteer information that has worked for them. And are these all small businesses or do you get like the really big national companies that we we're kind of seeing pop up in property management?
00:05:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
Funny that you say that because you know what, and this is just my opinion, please don't get too mad at me. The franchise companies, so the ones that have come in, bought property management companies, and then It's basically just a franchise. They don't have feet on the ground.
00:05:56
Irelynn Zurflueh
therere Their company is in, I don't know, Idaho or whatever. And they're just buying up all of these little smaller property management companies. They don't go to this. And I think, I'm going to give you my opinion.
Company Culture and Values
00:06:08
Irelynn Zurflueh
I think it's because they only look at the bottom line. They don't want to build a culture. They don't want to have team members that go out there. And when somebody says, do you like working for whatever company they're working for, they don't go, oh, I love it.
00:06:25
Irelynn Zurflueh
They don't really give a hoot. They are looking at how inexpensive can they pay that individual and get as much out of them as they can. So I'm not a big fan of of that corporate world.
00:06:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
And there was not, to my knowledge, any of those guys represented at the conference last week. yeah But I will tell you one thing. What I learned is culture.
00:06:52
Irelynn Zurflueh
who Your business, no matter what it is, needs to have values. Values that every single one of the team members has bought into, believe, and your entire organization needs to live and die by that value system.
00:07:10
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. yeah And I know last year, not even realizing this was going to be the big topic at the conference this year, last year we decided to create our own value cultural cultural system.
00:07:27
Irelynn Zurflueh
Because you had one previously, but it was kind but You can tell that it was in the back end. I stole it. like Yeah. I stole it from Keller Williams. It was the Y4C2Ts, right?
00:07:39
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I brought it in and I was like, okay, team, we're going to be Y4C2Ts and it's win, win or no deal and I for integrity and, you know, all of that really cool stuff. And hey, there's nothing wrong with it.
00:07:51
Irelynn Zurflueh
I love all that. But it didn't resonate maybe with every single one of our team members. So that's why i sat down and said, okay, guys, what is the one thing that we always want to do each and every day when you come to work?
00:08:09
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. And that came to? Elevate. And why did we pick Elevate? We chose elevate because it was a matter of we're always trying to rise to the occasion in customer service, in the overall value of the properties that we manage, in you know how quickly we're responding or how effective our repairs are. And so there's always this underlining expectation of here's where we are and let's elevate it to the next step.
00:08:41
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I noticed that as I walked around the office, it it was our normal vocabulary. That word constantly was being used. Hey, so-and-so, I think to elevate that, we should do it this way.
00:08:57
Irelynn Zurflueh
Or the process great, but man, if we just wanted to elevate it, we could do this. So it was a normal... Yeah.
00:09:10
Irelynn Zurflueh
you know what why not use elevate and then we'll take every letter of that word and we attach something to it that is that means something to us as a company So that's what we did. And it was fun because I was able to talk about that with everyone at the mastermind.
00:09:29
Irelynn Zurflueh
And they're like, Oh, yeah, that sounds great. That's so cool. I've been using this one that I got from main company out of Colorado and blah, blah, blah. So it did, it resonated with them that making it a little more personal experience.
00:09:42
Irelynn Zurflueh
you would get a little bit bigger buy-in from your team members. And I think that's what it's done for for our company. So why don't you talk a little bit about what we did once we had Elevate as the word?
00:09:53
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah, so once we had Elevate as the word, we kind of took each letter and we thought, what's something that we could attach to to make acronym out of this?
Creating Company Values: ELEVATE
00:10:05
Irelynn Zurflueh
And then we kind of presented a couple options to the team. And that's also how we made it even more personalized is that we... took some options and we made some final votes because, you know, you got three E's and L of A's. So we had, we had a lot of options to choose from. And so to make it more personal, we did take it to the team and the team ended up getting to choose those final, more specific breakdowns of each letter.
00:10:30
Irelynn Zurflueh
So it ended up being enhance, love what you do, excellence, vigilance, authenticity, teamwork, And every client matters.
00:10:43
Irelynn Zurflueh
So we elevate at all times. And the way that we elevate at all times is by focusing on those seven characteristics. And I mean, to just give an example, there are a lot of ease and elevate. I remember going, Oh, I wish I could have picked a word that didn't have so many ease.
00:11:01
Irelynn Zurflueh
But, but the one that I, i guess I am grown, um drawn to is excellence. So, I might be drawn to excellence, but you might be drawn to...
00:11:16
Irelynn Zurflueh
Oh, um, elevate? Yeah, as a whole. I would probably say vigilance is the one that I like resonate with the See, and that's probably the lowest on all of them for me, which is which is what I think is really cool because we have a team of 13, but all of them were participants in coming up with what our words were.
00:11:37
Irelynn Zurflueh
And excellence for me from the day I entered real estate That is what I wanted to be known for. I wanted excellent customer service.
00:11:49
Irelynn Zurflueh
I wanted excellent knowledge of the inventory. I wanted excellent callback record. So everything in my mind was excellence.
00:12:00
Irelynn Zurflueh
And so that's what really, you know, I'm drawn to. But I know for you, it's different. I know for maybe Destiny, it's different. And that's okay. Because as a whole, our company wants to elevate as a whole.
00:12:16
Irelynn Zurflueh
And then we just dissect it out. So what do you think about doing ah ah a situation where you pick a word and then you create letter or take the letters and create words with it? I think it's a great start. And it is even still a similar structure to the Y4Cs, 2T of Keller Williams, because again, they were just taking singular like statements and that they really resonated with.
00:12:40
Irelynn Zurflueh
I just really enjoyed when we kind of mixed it up and changed it because now everyone can ask themselves, how do I better my job by elevating? Where previously, because the Y4Cs leaned more towards like the buying and selling of real estate, not necessarily the upkeep and maintenance of an investment, some of those you couldn't directly be like, well, how can I...
00:13:06
Irelynn Zurflueh
win-win or no deal on a repair. like Yeah, because the toilet's not flushing. yeah Well, the win-win would i be get the toilet fixed, right? But still, I get what you're saying. um But instead, now we can say, well, how can we elevate this experience for both the resident and the owner with this repair?
Impact of ELEVATE Culture
00:13:27
Irelynn Zurflueh
So the more personal you can get with your company, obviously, I think the more successful it's going to be And especially if you get the buy-in from your team, that culture will bleed through.
00:13:40
Irelynn Zurflueh
We have someone on our team, Andrew, who I think really takes the elevation very seriously because he's consistently pitching ideas with this mindset of how do i elevate the specific department that I'm in? So you see that with everyone where they actually have this drive to want to do better, to want to elevate.
00:14:02
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I think that's crazy because just like you said with the big corporate companies, some people just don't care. yeah It's about the dollar line. It's like the bottom line, just how much money's coming in.
00:14:14
Irelynn Zurflueh
I also think that if you create a culture like Elevate or whatever it is that you decide to do, um you are opening the discussions for your team members to bring you ideas. Right.
00:14:28
Irelynn Zurflueh
m I think that in a business, whoever's running it, sure, they've got great ideas, they've got vision. That's why the business even opened its doors. But it would also be great if there were some other ideas they get brought. Now, not all of them are financially feasible or it may not work with the rules and the laws, whatever.
00:14:50
Irelynn Zurflueh
But just to be able to have the opportunity to go in and talk to somebody about an idea, you open it up when you have a culture that says, we believe in elevating the experience for everyone we are in contact with.
00:15:07
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. So I was sitting around that round table and, you know, everybody was discussing about the turnover that they were having with their team members and how expensive it is, um you know, to hire and train.
00:15:21
Irelynn Zurflueh
And i just kind of said, hey, this might be something that would work. And then a few other people said, yeah, we've done that. And it's been amazing. And it's ah it's our foundation, of our company. We have mission, we have the vision, and then we have our values.
00:15:37
Irelynn Zurflueh
And elevate for us is our values. Yeah. And I remember even last year we were reading the book Traction and one of the things that they had suggested is that you compliment or even criticize based off of your values because then that way nobody's blindsided.
00:15:55
Irelynn Zurflueh
and if you very clearly go up to someone you say, you know, you really showed an active you know, teamwork in this moment. So awesome job. Or if you say, hey, you know, there was a lack of vigilance in this moment. Let's talk about it.
00:16:09
Irelynn Zurflueh
No one's shocked by that. And I thought that was very, in small businesses, it's easy to, you know, step over a boundary or step over a line or or get confused because not everything's written down or it's not handed to you.
00:16:24
Irelynn Zurflueh
But putting down a mission and putting down the values, it's like, this is what we follow. And if you follow it, that's amazing. You're going to see awesome rewards. And if for whatever reason you're starting to stray from it, we can have a conversation that brings us back rather than people being shocked or surprised when conversation is brought up.
00:16:44
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah, and I think it it's, if you're going to have that uncomfortable conversation, i think it's a lot easier to have it when you are having it around your value. So love what you do, right? We love what we do. That's part of the L in Elevate.
00:16:59
Irelynn Zurflueh
If somebody comes in in the morning and they're just down in the dumps, right? They're the Debbie Downer, or you go to them and they give you a little bit of, you know, attitude, right? Well, that's not displaying loving what you're doing.
00:17:14
Irelynn Zurflueh
So that uncomfortable conversation is going to happen no matter what, but you can have it around something that they have the buy-in for. And it's it's really easy. You don't even have to come up with much other than, hey, um we believe in elevate.
00:17:30
Irelynn Zurflueh
We believe, you know, that's what what our foundation is. L, love what you do. I'm not really seeing that in the last couple of days. Can we talk about that? Yeah. So that's one of the secrets that um I got from NARPM. I'll call it the secret sauce.
00:17:46
Irelynn Zurflueh
Of course, mission and vision is also important, but I think that everybody talks about that. That's kind of the buzzwords right now. Get your mission, get your vision. But I think that they forget sometimes on the values and um traction. The book traction was live and die by, by those values. And I think that that makes a big difference.
00:18:07
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. Nope, I agree. Yeah. So that's a little insight of what I actually learned and that what McKenna Property Management follows. And I think it's done really well for us so far.
00:18:21
Irelynn Zurflueh
And it has the ability to expand and shouldn't ever just stay in the box. It should be able to expand when we expand. And maybe that's a good suggestion for somebody who's starting a business or wants to elevate yeah their business.
00:18:36
Irelynn Zurflueh
They can incorporate something like that.
Podcast as a Growth Tool
00:18:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
And one way that you've decided in this year that you want to elevate the businesses through this podcast, which is very exciting. So even the smallest, not that this podcast is a small thing, but even the passion projects or the small changes or things of that nature, there's always a way to elevate.
00:18:56
Irelynn Zurflueh
um So we're going to keep... Elevating in office. We're also going keep elevating on this podcast too. Max is very heavily discussing not holding the mics anymore. i know. So maybe the next step in elevating the podcast will be ah some stands that we can put the mics on and then you guys will know that we've been elevating behind the scenes. I think that they'll be watching as they started from the beginning of Thoughts for Rent till I would say a year from now, there's probably going to be tons of to our podcast because like anything, when you do it you learn from it. And Ireland and I are are on the path of ah bettering whatever it is that we do. And so, yeah, I'm sure podcast will be involved in that.
00:19:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. But if you feel like somebody in your life would ah like to hear what we talked about on our podcast, feel free to share this podcast. And the other thing is, is to subscribe.
00:19:51
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yes. And if you're ever looking to elevate your investments or elevate your ah portfolio for your retirement or things of that nature, then just give us a call or reach out to us and we'd be happy to help.
00:20:05
Irelynn Zurflueh
That's right. We'll talk again soon. Thanks. Keep all your ACs on in the meantime.