foreign [Music] Universe podcast the cast get it the cast my name is Alina and I'm the founder and CEO of illuminate where we Mentor job Seekers and help employers to Fast Track their business goals I interview a celebrity cast of incredible individuals who have truly inspiring careers we're talking about their work Journey the process of taking the leap to create a life and career they love and what happens when they push aside their fears and doubts to unleash their fullest potential today we speak with my friend Erico Tony on the world of Entrepreneurship the real

estate industry and the world of property management eriko is the founder and CEO of reside management a vancouver-based residential property management company from qualifying the right tenant to maintaining your investment is simply Property Management Made Easy by reside hi Enrico thank you so much for coming onto the show today our first question for you as we know that you specialize in Property Management can you tell us how you got into this field thank you so much for having me Alina well it first started off I was in the business school in marketing and I I

worked for a creative agency a real estate agency here in Vancouver and back then my mentor which is my business partner now brought me up to this opportunity because we were doing for developers such as Concord West Bank and all those other big Developers for their rendering yeah digital their websites social media and whatnot so he said a lot of buildings are coming up soon and they will need someone to manage the property and he himself back then has a couple of properties that you need someone to manage and I was young I was like

oh you know what I'm in college maybe I should just try try this venture to work with family I wanted to get spill and I love it every day we we do face different things and we realize that you know if we stay at where we at and focus on what we do we will be good in the industry so that's what we've been doing for the last more than five years now yeah so everything started in the universe from a different country right I come here to study it's a requirement for us for getting

our yard to be a certain status I have to work when I was in my third year I believe so third year second year I started working so I work my way up to do the position that I want to be so back then I started all business development so tell us more about reside management resize management is a residential property management company we manage properties all the ways Abbotsford to West Vancouver so basically local Mainland we help landlords and developers to manage and find tenants currently we manage over 200 units in a portfolio and

are still looking to grow more so how do we go from University to reside management so I used to work many different things so I used to try I don't know car washing used to try cleaning houses used to try selling chilies used to try blogging used to try many different things and what I found out through all the experiences I was able to learn time management able to learn how to handle stress able to handle like what I like what I don't like because when I was in college I still remember I was so

confused people say Follow Your Passion my passion was basketball and my basketball is done my other passion was sleeping and just hanging with friends so I don't know what kind of job can give me that and I'm like okay maybe I should go out there and test many different jobs you know the Blue Collar the white collar and see what I like so I did so many different jobs I fall in love with real estate I always I remember the first time I played Monopoly and I'm like wow this is really fun and I want

to learn more about it that's how it picked me to get into even high by back then the company is called plan Communications to learn more about real estate and then that's when Property Management open so I just focus on one industry that I really love what is it about in real estate I saw my uncles and my aunties build their wealth through there and I saw my friend's family as well and then I saw that there's a certain lifestyle that I like about it and not only that I just like the mindset of building

something you basically create you buy something you build it and then it affect the community and the community also benefit from it what I found out that a lot of rich people at least a real estate portfolio and there's also a good way for me to connect with successful individuals or generational wealth and then for me to better understand how can I help them out because my main dream was if it's ever come true if I could create cleaning water for Indonesia if I can do that I could die tomorrow so that is something that

I think real estate could help me to get there because of real estate now it also helped me to open doors for other businesses that I never thought is possible and wow this is very inspirational you're making me want to get my real estate license that expired last month [Laughter] I guess it really depends on the individual itself doesn't mean that every individual would like real estate I know other people who go into real estate they don't like it they move to other Industries so I think what I learned from is you know they see

photo of passion passions start with curiosity right curiosity Sparks that you want to learn more you want to go deeper you want to you want to be good at it and you'll be best at it that's when you found passion it takes time if you're still confused just try many different things see where you like it or you don't like Okay so this leads me to my next question what is a day in the life of a that's a good question do you want me to do my personal or just work stuff tell us about

it all here at all most of the time I used to wake up at 6 to 5am first few things I'll do is do my morning routine and we'll wait myself to see if I lose some weight and then I will do some work and get some peas and drink some tea and then go straight to alright go through emails phone messages whatever I can finish up as much as possible usually I will finish it around 12 11 but sometimes in between I might get phone calls from my team about my shareholders or customers so

I try to pick it up or I try to push them to do later date after 1 pm that's what I like to do all my meetings usually but you know some urgent meetings I couldn't and then I'll do meetings back to back back to back back to back so every meeting is usually about 30 to 15 minutes sometimes an hour I'll work until maybe 8 p.m at 9pm 10 p.m and then go home and then yeah freshen up heat and then read some books and then go sleep and next day do it again can

you share with us what these meetings entail I want to give our audience a good idea of what CEOs mean about in Property Management we have different departments so every week or every month or every by by weekly I have to check in on every Department as the role as a CEO my job is to make sure everybody are happy in their role make sure they see growth make sure that we can improve the efficiency and work with them and find ways of the difficulty right and how to support them and I definitely spend a

lot of time learning about them because everybody's different the way how they learn the way how they do things so I have to make sure that the style what they're trying to create fits into whatever the companies and it has to be interconnected with all the other departments so it's a never-ending process it's an ongoing process and then of course as a CEO also especially my business is like small to midsize and you still have to do a lot of sales as well so I go out there and meet people for sales connect with people

networking I also spent time talking to vendors how to better improve ways how we can work together and talk to you know the handyman vendors the contractors all the other people that could help the business to grow more or better serve our clients but in the end as a CEO you always want to think how you can better serve your your clients how you can better serve your employees and how in campus of your shareholders and there's a more like a Jesus you just serve everybody there we go you're always so giving and what you

described here sounds like servant leadership to me which is one of the most incredible leadership styles that I look up to I find that phenomenal and that's also something I'm gonna practice as well my next question for you is what are some essential skills or characteristics that you'll say are important for a successful Property Management professional to hold time management organization dealing with stress self-esteem and everything like that Communications not only communication to your client to the tenant the strata to the you know developers to your team and integrity right because sometimes your integrity might

be questioned by many different sites because as a property manager you have to deal with tenants landlords and sometimes strata as well and they all have different opinions and you have to judge what is considered as the best option and not every option is black and white sometimes it's gray so you have to make the best decision ever this is incredible I would imagine you have to really negotiate at times and also consider both sides keep your emotions at PACE and be very logical and make sure everyone's happy that sounds like a very hard job

well this this sounds like a CEO job right some some Department might not work well with each other you also have to be the one solving it right so property management is funny it's kind of like customer service it's more like you you really help people to collect and solve issues what I do admire about what you said is the amount of time that you spend on communication with people helping people I think oftentimes when we're so busy we Overlook people we're talking about process can this process be repeated and the human aspect gets left

out so to me it sounds like you're not only a CEO but you're also a chief Talent officer so tell us tell us more about your strategies to retaining and motivating Talent especially given in this interesting time that we're in I look at the company values when I interview people always look at do they resembling tech company values and when I do interview I do three stages so one is with me first second with why the people who are the economic place are like my meditation broker and that will be the whole team and I'll

never hire anyone if my whole team doesn't like it and it's because when you are with a team it's more like a family you go up ups and downs and half time is where relationship creates right tough time is where you create memories and that's where you use you achieve together as a team you want to see with your motivation as well because if their motivation or the communication strength is different than us it's not good for it absolutely communication style is so important and being able to adapt to the values that the company has

and also those individuals personal values so this leads me to my next question what tips do you have for an individual to become more adaptable and why is this important be like a sponge keep learning you know stay humble ask questions every time an individual asks questions we know where they're at especially if you are higher stage than them you know what they're thinking how they're feeling everything but always ask questions don't be afraid sometimes you might think that your question is stupid if you really think so go Google first if you can't find us

in Google then go meet them as a person but don't be afraid I think a lot of people out there they're afraid to ask certain things or they're afraid to do things because you know you look bad on them you know hurt your self-esteem or or they look stupid don't worry about that if you don't ask you'll never know right and you never know you never grow so you always want to keep growing by surrounding yourself people that you who you want to be and ask the right question and follow them observe them so yeah

I think that'll be the biggest thing you know the be humble and ask questions and keep growing humility is very contagious whenever I'm around you I also become more humble that's what I notice about myself so thank you for letting me be in your presence I love that so I read the last question for you now we just sort of gone through the pandemic I don't know if we're completely out of it yet well given the times that we're in very interesting times what is one piece of advice you would offer to someone currently striving

to attain their dream job in a property management first of all get their license you can go to UBC get your license practitioner license and don't be afraid to be someone assistant you know you're not you might not get the best pay but you learn so much and you can see whether you actually want to do it because some people might think that oh you know what she's doing is cool on the outside but wait wait till you see the inside right and see whether that works for you because sometimes what you're good at doesn't

mean that you like it or sometimes that what you are not good at and you like it and you're willing to learn from it that's okay right in the end you have to see what makes you happy I think a lot of time if people go out there and find jobs just for money it would be hard for them to be happy but if you go out there and find job and bring it to your lifestyle this is what a kind of Lifestyle I want to be I want to kind of happiness I want to

see then you will have a different perspective different way how you how you do things I think that's very key in terms of you don't want to be a good property manager is their mindset has to be right and your heart has to be right in the first place because if you go out for the money I can tell you it's different you will not succeed in whatever field you want to be learning property manager thank you so much Erica for sharing your wisdom today it is such an honor to have you on this show

no thank you thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me and I appreciate it this time thank you [Music]