The Future of PropTech and Community Building with Wolfgang Croskey

Wolfgang Croskey: So one day, business partner Peter Lohman is like, hey, I built this thing on lovable. What the heck is lovable? Right? And so because in our business relationship, I tend to do more of the tech stuff. So I'm like, wait, Peter's out teching me? We can't have that.

Jordan Moyla: Welcome to the profitable property management podcast. I am your host, Jordan Moyla, and I have Wolfgank Roski back on the show.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yes.

Jordan Moyla: Uh, Wolf, glad to have you here.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah, glad to be here. Here in Austin, your neck of the

Jordan Moyla: woods and hometown, man. Yeah, uh, we get to have breakfast this morning.

Wolfgang Croskey: That's right. Heat's a little intense, but other than that, it's great.

Jordan Moyla: Well, I gotta tell you, it gets much harder than this. But I hear you. Speaking of heat, I'm gonna bring the heat in this episode and I want to talk about all of the latest developments industry, which is considerable. We've both been in the industry for a minute. My feeling is there's a lot going on right now in this exact moment. It seems like things have only gotten more interesting over the last decade. Rather than getting more bored and kind of sick of it, I'm even more into what we're doing in sfr. One of the things that comes to mind is the shift with technology, which we've all been seeing, but you specifically been getting your hands dirty. You've been putting your hands up this technology and saying like, okay, what exactly can it do, separating fact from fiction? Here is my question to you. Can you talk to me about your journey with vibe coding? Uh, what was it like? What use cases were you attacking and what did you experience and see?

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah, so I guess take a couple steps back. The offering of software out there is pretty immense. There's a lot of options and doesn't matter which software you go to, you're going to be left with like, man, I wish it would just do this. And so that's where Zapier came in. Right. I'm m like, okay, let me take this and duct tape it to that. And then, you know, you'll have this Rube Goldberg project going on just to fill out a three day notice. It was kind of like mouse trap to ping pong ball to get the jam on the bread. And all of a sudden here's a three day notice. And I'm like, yeah, I did it. I've. I've automated something and felt really successful at that, and then was able to interact kind of behind the scenes at Lead simple and seeing what SaaS is about and why SaaS providers don't build every feature. We throw on the feature request and the wisdom behind that, but it's still, man, I wish it could do this. Mhm. So one day business partner Peter Lowman is like, hey, I built this thing on lovable. What the heck is lovable? Right? And so because in our business relationship I tend to do more of the tech stuff. So I'm like, wait, Peter's out teching me? We can't have that. No, I'm like, no, let me look at lovable. And cranked out some stuff. I'm like, well, this is pretty cool, but kind of outgrew it pretty quickly. Its interface is great, it's solid, but it's like it's gotta do more. So I found this thing called replit and logged in and was instantly intimidated because I was like, oh, this is like real code. I don't speak this language. But then they have this little button that's purple, it says AI Agent. And I was like, okay, you put your prompt in and it just starts building. And they work on a credit model. So the more you do, the more it costs. And I well, how can we save money? Oh, let me do my brainstorming and chat GPT, have it write a prompt that's better than I could write because it speaks AI. Throw it in there and then you have this outcome. So I build a couple things and then it got to the point of I could probably fill my needs. Now all these missing, all these voids that all the different tools I use don't have, how could I do it? So I start building it. It's like, oh, I need API access. You always hear people say, oh yeah, I want open API. But most people, they say it, they don't know what to do with it. Well, I'm going to find out what to do with it. So I learned all that, got it going and I said, I'm going to make the big ask. Hey, Appfolio, can I have API access? Sure. There's extra fee. I don't fault them for that. Knowing how things work, that's not a problem. And got it going. So basically what we've built is an operating system that looks at all of our endpoint solutions. You know, we have Property Mailed, we have Lead simple, we have Rent Engine, we have Appfolio. It's pulling all that data together and then using OpenAI, helping us to find meaning with all of that. You know, how does the information lead simple impact what we're doing in Property Meld and vice versa and connecting all these. So now my goal is that based on who you are at our company, you will log in, it's going to tell you these are the three things you need to get done today. And these are the three things you need to be on the lookout for, based on the playbook that we have for that role in our notion. And so using AI to really look at, what should you be focusing on? Because a lot of the dashboards, lots of gauges disparate, but I don't need to know that. I need to know this and that's what I should focus on. I don't want to get distracted by that. So that's what we're building, uh, then built for crane. We have our own software now, our own dashboard and we're doing, working with, you know, Sagan to do remote team member placement. Now our members can easily go through the profile, show interest. We got all kinds of cool stuff going on. So it's a lot of work. I'll uh, be the first to admit that can be frustrating, but it's pretty rewarding.

Jordan Moyla: I appreciate you highlighting. It's a lot of work. I've seen repeatedly someone build something great, build a Ferrari and show it off. And people say, wow, that's a really cool looking Ferrari. Where I find fault is the difference between someone saying, yeah, it only took me 2000 hours versus somebody pretending like, and this too can be yours for, you know, a couple of late nights. No, you have a, you have an interest.

Wolfgang Croskey: Huh?

Jordan Moyla: You have a skill set and you have the willingness to press through a series of problems. What I think is disorienting for the market right now is to see what you just described and to see other instances of it and to not immediately go to. So why am I paying appfolio?

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: Can I build my own trust accounting software? Because I'd like to. There's these things I'd like to do differently and I'd like to not pay any money. Xyz. What's the caution or the wisdom and the kind of guardrails that you would counsel people on, on how far this tech can or cannot be pushed at present.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. So I think to answer your question, yes, you could build your own app folio. I think that's possible. It would take a lot of time and the biggest problem is I don't know how secure it would be because what people don't look at when they're vibe code and they're just typing away. Oh, let me connect this API key

Jordan Moyla: and this Security is an afterthought.

Wolfgang Croskey: And they don't realize that information is out in the Internet going back and forth because you didn't tell the AI agent, hey, I would like to have these types of security measures in place. I shouldn't hard code my API key into this code. I should use secrets and all this other stuff. And they're just doing it because the AI told me to do it. So obviously it's looking out for my best interest. And all sudden, you literally have done the equivalent of handing your key to every single person in your city and saying, hey, here's my address. I won't be home at 7. Here's the key. Have fun. Uh, like that's what you're doing. And I haven't had any issues, but I did see that I was doing that and not knowing until replit came out with a feature to try to help people. It has security recommendations like, hey, did you realize you hard coded your password into this URL? Uh, you probably shouldn't do that. Yeah, I shouldn't do that. I didn't know that that was a thing. Right. And so I think people could find themselves in a world of hurt because the tools exceed people's knowledge set. You don't know what you don't know, but the tools will allow you to do things. Right. I put it to the equivalent of there are some really, really fast cars out there that you could buy, and legally, you can buy them, legally, you can drive them, but if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to be in the ditch at best, if not dead.

Jordan Moyla: I've had that experience, actually. It's, uh, a great analogy. You brought this up. I don't know if you've ever used a racing simulator, but my observation about racing simulators is that I am not capable of driving a car that can go 250 miles an hour. I am spinning out almost immediately. So the power is there, but the common sense and the wisdom of to know how to use it, that takes more effort. One of the things I find interesting about you as a character in the industry is that you sit at this nexus between being an operator, running a business, like you run a property management business day to day, and you're highly involved in the technology. You're deconstructing it, tearing it down. You have this bent in this wiring towards getting as much leverage as you can if you marry these things and we just zoom into your local operations, you know, trying to be objective and reflecting what kind of leverage are you getting from the technology that you have deployed at your office and what would happen if somebody bought your business and says, you know what, that technology stuff was screwy, we're deconstructing that and going back to the way it was, you know, what would you lose? What are the gains you've, you've seen on the ground as an operator?

Wolfgang Croskey: So first and foremost, data insights. You know, being able to have access to data and being able to analyze in a way that I don't know, three, four years ago you'd have, you know, some pretty expensive business intelligence tools.

Jordan Moyla: Mhm.

Wolfgang Croskey: Now you can have that. And now that I have that information, now you can act upon it and do something. So if you strip that out, I think it would be not impossible, but it'd be a lot harder to get meaning from your data because currently in the PM SFR space, it's hard to get the data that you want. For example, owner churn rate.

Jordan Moyla: Hm.

Wolfgang Croskey: Mathematically it's a pretty simple calculation, but getting that information out of your software is full of friction. And so you're like eh, you really gotta want it to do it the least. Renewal rate. You know, some of these really basic things require multiple reports and putting together data and somebody cleaning it up in Excel and whatever. So now you can have AI do that. So that has definitely been really impactful for our team because what I was finding, you know, we do EOs getting everybody to fill out their portions of the scorecard. It was a challenge, right? We would play hammer, we'd play carrot, we'd do all these different things just like fill out the scorecard we need. This is because it was a pain in the butt to get some of these data points. Now it's a lot easier. So that's one. The second one is being able to have kind of this third party that's always working alert us of things. For example, what we've done in the last eight months is we've taken our showing information, we were using show Mojo. Now we're on Rent engine, putting it in there and having AI make recommendations that are specific to that property and then asking us down the road how did it go. So that can be trained on whether that was a good recommendation or not really helpful, especially for a small company to have access to that. So we've seen our days on market go down. Even at a time when right now days on market seems to be increasing across the nation, we've seen a little bit of a decrease. I would have been happy with just staying flat Knowing that most M places are seeing an increase, but we have seen a decrease there and then the other one with our maintenance. We've seen our speed to repair go down to below four days. And that was a huge win because that was something that constantly was brought up in our MPS surveys that we do of our tenants about basically around repairs. So right there. Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: What about the staff vibe and ethos? How do you find that your staff as relates to this technology? I can only imagine that they've had the experience of, well, uh, found a new tool, new tech, new login, blah, blah, blah. How do you think your staff relates to this? And what are some examples of like, delight for them where they're feeling like this is making their quality of life better.

Wolfgang Croskey: So, uh, just recently, the operating system, we call it Crosby os, they've been delighted because now they have one place to find data and that's been helpful for them. We're a family business. I do have non family members who are employees, but my mom works at the front desk. She loves it. She hates when developers change user interface. I can't find anything. Like I'm not to the point of I'm going home. Like, we've had it. So that's when I say, hey, we got another tool. We got this, we got that. It's just check out. It's a little crazy. So we have a wide range of capabilities in our company, but one of the things I do do in the hiring process is I let them know, like, hey, I don't want to scare you, but I like to try new things, learn, and either keep it or move on quickly. We're not the type, well, this isn't working, but let's give it another year. That's not us. Uh, so we change quite a bit. Are you comfortable with that? Everybody always says yes. Gonna start using Culture Index. And maybe that can help find people that maybe are not interested in that kind of environment. But it's a challenge. I mean, they've shared frustrations with me. You know, when we. We went from Shomojo to Rangen in the middle of leasing season, that went over like a fart in church.

Jordan Moyla: I can only imagine.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: How did, how did you pick leasing season to do that, Wolf?

Wolfgang Croskey: I'll be honest. The frustration I had at some of the changes, it was enough that I was like, screw it, we're doing it. You know, I'm like, you know, they. The range had a great onboarding, so that part was pretty painless. Changing lock boxes. We had some hiccups there, but you know, life goes on. What's the worst that could happen?

Jordan Moyla: So this is interesting specifically with Show Mojo because it's a little microcosm of kind of what's happening in the industry overall. Show Mojo around for decade plus Acquired by Property Brands, a PE shop.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: And that tonally for the rest of the market, it has a certain feel. I'm not going to say that every PE shop is the same or every outcome for an acquired company is the same, but optically there is a concern and a sense of what was the goal and what was the agenda of the acquiring party. Was it to plow a bunch of new capital in to rebirth it and innovate it, or was it to suck about a bunch of EBITDA out and to turn it into more of an annuity? Can't comment, comment on that specific situation. What I can say is that category of leasing and self showing well trod, right?

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: A number of vendors in it and now we're just seeing some new life. The last one before Rent Engine was showing hero and now Rent Engine comes up and they're doing some interesting stuff. I would say without commenting on any of the tech, the approach, the vibe, the energy feels fresh and newer and that is exactly what the market wants every five, five to 10 years. Let's refresh the category. We've seen less of that than I would have liked. In the PAS category, for example, we're starting to see it in that category a bit. Renvine, newer incumbent. There's another one. His name's on the tip of my tongue. I can't remember. But certainly in the point door loop. Door door loop. Magic Door I think is another one. Certainly we're seeing that in the point solution category.

Wolfgang Croskey: Right?

Jordan Moyla: Boom. Another example. Really fun, fresh energy in a very old, crusty, well trod space. As you look at and you evaluate these new vendors coming on board, what is the lens and the frame that you encourage others to apply? On the left hand, we have just pure novelty and being on a merry go round of forcing your staff to ingest every new tool. On the other side is I'm gonna wait a couple years and we'll see. How do you approach thinking about when is the right time to turn over technology?

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah, that's a great question. A lot of it comes down to your ability to lead change in your organization. If you're not great at that, then you need to, I think, make sure the tool's a little bit more fleshed out because it's gonna be a Little bit easier to implement. You're not gonna have as many bugs or, you know, trying to help your team deal with constant changes. Because when my experience has been with a software that when it's newer, the changes happen more frequently because there's more bugs to flush out. Like, uh, oh, that user interface isn't what we wanted. Let's tweak it. And so there's just a lot more change. And not everybody likes change. If you have the capacity to lead change and you've led other initiatives in your company and you feel pretty comfortable with that, I think it's great to look at software solutions annually. Just what's out there, what's new. When we made the change from Show Mojo the range and it was, they're building AI natively into their solution, it wasn't going to be an add on. Is it where it needs to be? No, but you can see where it's headed and that it's part of its core. Opposed to spinning something to OpenAI, bringing it back like they're, they're, it's part of the framework. And so to me that's exciting. The five years ago I would have said you could probably get away with checking stuff every three years. But the speed at which things are changing, I think an annual review is a great thing to do during the winter when it tends to be slower. Just you have the time to look at what's working, what's not working, survey your team members, what are their pain points, what do they wish the software could do and then go see what's out there. You know, just, I think there's a lot of interesting things that will be coming. For me, going back to the vibe coding piece, it's like, well, shoot, if I could add this feature that quickly, why can't this provider do it? And so seeing providers that are not bringing new to the table is frustrating, stagnant. Yeah, because it's like, well, we got all this stuff over here, why aren't we doing anything here?

Jordan Moyla: It, ah, creates space for new vendors to come along, right?

Wolfgang Croskey: Absolutely. It's, you know, there's, there's blue ocean everywhere and I think we're going to see a lot more of that in ways that we've never thought of. AI obviously is the big new topic that everybody's talking about and it's incorporated everywhere but machine learning, automation. I think there's still room there for a lot. What gets in the way though is legislation or the fear of uh, being sued. You know, like right now, fair housing, you know, screening all those concepts. I think there's fear to interject more technology because you know, what is that going to look like? We've had the companies that got in trouble for you know, quote unquote price fixing around using software and tools to help come up with rental pricing. So people are like oh, even though those are some unique circumstances, I think they get grouped into this. What can technology do next? And like well maybe we hold off on that.

Jordan Moyla: So my observation is that it's becoming more overwhelming.

Wolfgang Croskey: Oh absolutely.

Jordan Moyla: There's always been a lot of choice but vibe coding is a great example of what's happening. The cost to build new software is going down. Vibe coding is not producing a bunch of new commercial grade software. What is though are the traditional tools that are being enabled by things like cursor, which requires you to be technical. You do have to be an actual dev. But devs are getting more productive and the cost to build is going down and therefore there's just more and more choices and the existing competitors are, are rolling out more and more add on features. It's a bit overwhelming. And that's why I loved what we talked about at breakfast this morning.

Wolfgang Croskey: Absolutely.

Jordan Moyla: Which I understand doesn't have a name or an entity or a governance. Uh, no, but, but the idea of tech tear downs from Wolf, somebody that has industry contacts, somebody that is tech savvy and it's kind of low key, obsessed with technology. I'm really interested in, in what you see the opportunity being to help kind of clear the air and to provide a uh, better buying criteria I think really is the answer. My observation is it's so tribal right now. Go on the Facebook group, this vendor versus that vendor. Which one is better? 20 people flood in half of the 20 own stock in one of the companies that they're recommending.

Wolfgang Croskey: That's problematic.

Jordan Moyla: The whole thing is just a little convoluted and one off and incomplete. And that model, let's say you refine it by saying well it's not 20 people, it's 100 people. And none of them are conflicted. That still is just sifting opinions. I believe in efficient market theory, but that is different than having thoughtful buying criteria and saying let's weight the buying criteria. Here's what really matters, here's what's nice to have, here's how they weigh. That's what came up in my mind as instantly as soon as you said this.

Wolfgang Croskey: Mhm.

Jordan Moyla: What is in your mind of the clarity that you want to try to help operators achieve when sifting through all these choices.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. And you nailed it. The choices because of vibe coding are going to be greater because people think like, oh man, I just cranked out this thing that worked for me. Let's bring it to market. Like we had a vendor for the systems conference, you know, they're like, hey, we got this tool, whatever. And I looked at it and I looked at the URL, I'm like, did you build this in repl it? And he just kind of looked at me like, oh, you know about that? Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: You know that magic trick?

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. And I'm like, okay, so there, I think there's just gonna be more noise or things. Developers who actually know what they're doing, their side hustles now could become viable products. And so I do see a lot of noise. And you also have the fact that we, being the pm, the consumer, build friendships, fall in love with, not romantically, but like with the actual vendors themselves. It's like, yeah, Jordan's a great guy, you should use the software. Well, does it work? Yeah, but Jordan's a great guy. Right? Or they took me to this event or they did this, or they gave me that.

Jordan Moyla: I went to the second nature party and it was poppin.

Wolfgang Croskey: It's popping.

Jordan Moyla: It was objectively amazing.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: And separately from that, uh, are the actual buying criteria.

Wolfgang Croskey: Right. And so for me, I see an opportunity to help people that are swimming in this sea of options, surrounded by noise and people that are not fully disclosing their interests in companies to just say, look, here's this particular piece of software. This is the criteria that we have, this is what we ran it through. Here's screenshots, here's, you know, screen recordings, here's me actually using in my own company and the results that I got. And here's my write up. Was not swayed by a check, not swayed by this, or a hot tub being dropped off at my house or anything like that. This is what it is. And now you can look at this and know that there's an unbiased opinion, there's data behind it, and that there's actually something that gives you meat on the bone as a buyer. You're not just swayed by some random opinions. And that's. You go to Facebook and 10 people say, oh, it's the best software. I don't know who these ten people are. Mhm. That could be an employee of the company. You know, there's some Facebook groups that it is that's they made this big deal about, we don't want any vendors in here. Because you have account executives that are playing ninja and saying, oh yeah, at uh, my PM company. Wait, when did you have a PM company?

Jordan Moyla: I have one door.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah, well, yeah, I manage my 1. My grandmother's rental unit. Oh yeah, that makes you an expert. So I think there's a huge opportunity to provide unbiased vetted information by somebody who is still managing properties, has an affinity for technology, and is truly just trying to make it a lot easier to decipher through, through all that. And so that's kind of the concept that we're putting together. I mean, if you think about review sites like Consumer Reports, power, et cetera, that's kind of the, that we're going for.

Jordan Moyla: I think capture is one of the problems, but I don't even know that it's at the top of the list. I think clear buying criteria, that is not just mob rule of opinion. I like this when I like that. Well, why. Yeah, what are your needs? My, my feeling is you could bucket operators into a limited number of Personas. There's not that many different ways to run a property management business. Of course, everybody is, you know, a unique snowflake in the eyes of God.

Wolfgang Croskey: But pod 2 hybrid style at our office. Come on.

Jordan Moyla: Exactly. But probably for most instances there's a limited number of variations and therefore, on the basis of what you're solving for, is it pod squad, departmental maintenance, in house, out of house, Those things guide the software. It's not, is it this one or this one in general, which is better? You can get an answer there, but the quality of the answer is going to be so much lower than based on, for your general setup.

Wolfgang Croskey: Mhm.

Jordan Moyla: Which is stronger, that can be much more accurately adjudicated. But that takes time, effort, insight, and a whole lot more of a thought than use this one. You really gotta dig into that. And that to me is a huge form of service for the industry. So I'm excited to see this.

Wolfgang Croskey: No, been thinking about this for quite a while and just my journey through technology in the PM space and the struggles I've had and being duped by certain opinions like, oh yeah, I should try something. You go do it. And then you find out, oh, they're a shareholder or they're whatever, or you know, they've never used this software, whatever it may be. And you're like, you just felt, you know, cheated. So want to make sure that people in our space have great accurate data that they can then make a decision upon. And uh, like I said, great vendors in our space. This isn't a slam on vendors. This isn't a slam on selling tactics or strategies because those strategies are not unique to pm. Those playbooks are everywhere. Well, the one playbook that is missing is an unbiased, like I said, Consumer Reports I think is a great example or JD Power some of these others people could argue that there's a pay to play component to any of these sites like G2 or Capterra. We want to avoid that at all costs because we want there to be integrity in the write ups, the reviews of these providers and being able to make sure that when you look at it, you know that yes, it may be my opinion but it wasn't swayed by outside influences. It was just here it is, you know. So now you'll be a more informed consumer when you go to the trade shows. You'll hopefully be able to have a shorter shopping list of who you want to speak with. Maybe even be able to set that appointment up before you even get to the trade show through some of the things that we're looking at. So I think uh, it's a good opportunity. There's no shortage of vendors now and there'll be no shortage of vendors in the future. And one side benefit I think that we're going to see from this is as vendors and their software earns scores basically it's gonna drive some innovation and I think that's really exciting part.

Jordan Moyla: Let's get into a specific example. M something HM just came up a couple of days ago. It's a hot topic that is now it's a hot button issue that has been pressed by multiple vendors. In this specific case there was a post by our mutual good friend Peter Lohman about Bill D charging some fees to not charging some fees, rolling out some services without consent with a opt out but by default opted in. And this is controversial for good reason. First thing that come to mind is just the analogy. I find that for some reason in the context of this industry somehow it seems more normalized. But if we port it to another instance like if I was using HubSpot and HubSpot looked at who is in my database and started selling them things that would be uncomfortable and it would seem odd and like it's crossing some lines. I find two things interesting about this. The first is they're not the first ones that have that have done it. This has been done elsewhere.

Wolfgang Croskey: This bubble of Peter just posted on the same comment he forgotten we both use the same payroll provider. Gusto is constantly slinging financial services to your employees.

Jordan Moyla: Right.

Wolfgang Croskey: QuickBooks does it to, hey, let your vendors know they can get paid instantly if they cut us some of the action. So it's not unique to pm. You're right on that. But it's painful when it happens to you because you're like, wait a second, I spent all this time and energy building this audience that I now pay you because I'm paying for your software so that you can then upsell them. And not only. I didn't. You didn't ask for my permission. And I don't get a piece of the piece.

Jordan Moyla: Yes. Let's get into what's problematic. You just listed some specific items. I wasn't consulted.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah.

Jordan Moyla: I'm not being compensated.

Wolfgang Croskey: Uh-huh.

Jordan Moyla: Here's a third item. Is it any good?

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah, I don't know.

Jordan Moyla: Is this something I want to actually be selling to my audience? The premise of selling insurance or move in products, that's not offensive. But is it good? Is it a good offering? I am sure I am. Based on what I have seen being sold, I am sure that there are good versions of each one of these offerings that are value added. But is the specific one that was chosen good? You as the operator are the steward of the relationship, the service quality, the life cycle of what it means to be a rental owner. That's your job to be controlling. And now there are some potential pieces of that experience that you're not actually adjudicating because you weren't consulted in the first place. I don't know what the stack ranking of these things is, but that's a pretty non trivial one as well, in my opinion.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. Well, and I think the not being consulted is the biggest one because we have an example right here. Don't want to name drop vendors because it's. They're a great vendor, but it's a vendor we use in our screening process in the application. And I didn't know that after the first year there's a re up to keep your profile going. And so we did lease only for an owner. Got their tenant moved in, all the screening was done. All sudden the tenant calls us, just pissed because of this $40 charge. And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Jordan Moyla: $40 charge to a tenant is a big deal.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. I'm like, what are you talking about? You made me do this. It was part of your screening process. I want my money back. I'm like, we didn't take your money. But it's. You're the vent. That's the vendor. You made Me go through. So now I got to figure out, okay, how do we fix this? Why is this happening? I didn't even know that this was a thing after year one. So it was again, problematic. That wasn't really transparent. You know, maybe they sent an email, I don't know. In fairness, a lot of vendor emails now with AI inbox management go to spam. So it's plausible. But still, this was the reality we were facing at this time was a, uh, vendor that was connected to us has this outside process that sold to the tenant, but we're seen as the ones. It was our vendor, we're the ones that made them use it. What happens on some of these other tools where the tenant signs up for service? We end management, but their tenant is still there with their owner and now they have this service. Like, how does that transfer? So there's just a lot of problems when you cross sell. The other one is, is this going to get me in trouble with my state department of real estate? Am I even allowed to offer this in my area? You know, I don't know. I need to research. But when we're finding out after the fact, we find out about these services because our tenants signed up and we didn't know. You know, like, uh, it's just, it's just not cool. You know, it's not that we would say no, but we would like to know and quite frankly, why can't we be partners in this? We're the ones that brought the client. Every real estate transaction I know, when you bring a client to somebody else, there's a referral fee paid. A, uh, thank you. And I understand that there's rules around that, but there's ways to deal with it. But the fact that it's not even thought about, it's just like, man, all these people, they got 200 clients, 210, it's 500, a thousand. How can we monetize this audience? It's a little breaks trust.

Jordan Moyla: It does big trust. And the takeaway for me here is that this is not about a specific vendor. No, this is about a business practice.

Wolfgang Croskey: Absolutely.

Jordan Moyla: Because multiple PMS providers have done this or some version of this. This isn't about a specific fee or a specific program. It's just about the crossing the common sense line of consult of consent. It's 2025. We're in the consent era. You need to get consent to go into somebody else's business and capture, gain and offer something to their clients. This is common sense. Right. This is not an overly complicated Conversation. The inverse of this is the posturing around moral high ground of folks saying, I wouldn't do that, I would never do that. Every time there's a misstep, never say never by one vendor, another vendor comes up and says, oh, we would never do what those dummies just did.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah, sign up for us.

Jordan Moyla: It's opportunistic, it's common sense, it makes sense. I can see the value in doing that.

Wolfgang Croskey: And I think the person who, the people, when they say that, I genuinely believe that they mean that. I agree they're not being malicious, they genuinely believe that. But, but you don't always control everything.

Jordan Moyla: No, you don't. I mean there are situations, you go back and you said you wouldn't do this and the company says, who, who told you that? Uh, they don't work here anymore. They haven't been here for some time now. The company has switched hands three or four times from them. So that kind of moral high ground posturing is a little off putting to me. The reality is at the point that you take institutional capital, your leeway in navigating the conversation changes significantly. Regardless of whether or not it was a majority deal or a minority deal, you have people to answer to. And when you answer to those people, what you're answering to is whether or not you are making the most of the investment dollars that went into the business. Are you responsibly stewarding the capital that was invested and telling people, well, you know, we made this cutesy promise that we don't do that sort of thing. Like no, that doesn't hold water. Questions are, is it leg, is it ethical? What are the long term implications? How is this going to impact churn? AKA it's going to be read through, run through a spreadsheet, right? Someone is going to run this through

Wolfgang Croskey: a chat GPT and they're it's going to analyze it and give you a confidence score and if it's above 80, you're going to run with it.

Jordan Moyla: How many customers will I lose? What is the value of those customers relative to the potential upside? And I say all that to say this. People have to understand that in this space the vast majority of revenue for, for the largest scaled companies, which in general are PAS providers, comes from transactional revenue. This isn't a small little side garnish, no, that we're talking about giving up. This is the bulk of where the revenue comes from and therefore the temptation is high, the moral hazard is high. Which all the more speaks to having somebody like you looking at the situation objectively and just calling a spade a spade. It's not meant to shame anybody, but it is meant to say there's like, there's some basic rules of decorum here and let's have an open conversation on how that's going.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah, don't hate the player, hate the game. It's, it's a game that's, it's like we talked about in Payroll. Intuit does it, your banks do it. It's, it's not a vendor specific. That's. Oh, there's one vendor space that's really doing. It's just, I think it's, as an industry matures is when that playbook creeps in. Uh, an industry's got to get to a certain point where it's ready for PlayBook 2A and then it just somehow that playbook falls in and then where our industry is now at that level. The problem is our industry is tied to something that is on lawmakers radar. And that's problematic because whether Femax or not, that's not the point. It's. There is a group that sees housing as a right and we could argue both ways and I think see points on both sides as being valid. And that's not the point of the conversation. The point is that that's on the radar. And so when we start interjecting and I say we because yes, we are using this vendor. So if they decide to interject something that looks like it's coming from us because the portal has our logo on it. Not the company's logo, the messaging. When vendors do this, hey, I've partnered with your management company. They've approved this. I run a chamber of commerce and we see it all the time. Vendors that are, oh, we're doing an economic development project with the city, they've already approved. Would you like to make a statement?

Jordan Moyla: Write that reputation?

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. So it's happening everywhere. But we're in a highly, highly analyzed industry where housing for many is seen as a right. It should not be a place where people make profit. We have the large institutional buyers bragging about how many tens of thousands of single family homes they're buying and people saying that type of real estate should not be an asset class that uh, should be invested by Wall Street. And we're now stuck in the middle of Wall street buying it. And in a lot of cases, Wall street interjecting new things for tenants to pay for and we're stuck in the middle. Not only do we don't get a piece of the pie, we're the ones that get the bad rap when it goes bang. Nobody's going to give my software a uh, one star review on Google. They're going to give our company the one star review.

Jordan Moyla: And it doesn't.

Wolfgang Croskey: I got no compensation.

Jordan Moyla: Having the logo on it I don't even think is like the bright line. If you send a crappy vendor to someone's house and they are a separate brand in a separate company, that still blows back.

Wolfgang Croskey: Absolutely. Happens all the time.

Jordan Moyla: All the more so something that's integrated optically and looks like it came from you or like mhm. Surely you signed off on this.

Wolfgang Croskey: And I think the part that frustrates me is I spend a lot of time and energy making sure that my last name means something not only in our immediate market, but then, you know, larger as I do other projects, but in our community, our real estate company, our brand, I hope for most people means that they're people of integrity, they're doing the right thing, create product and they'll take care of us. That potentially now is on the line. When vendors interject new things that we didn't know about. It's that's uh, to me is. It's just wrong.

Jordan Moyla: I think we put that issue to bed as far as next as far as the two of us are concerned. No bias here at all. Wolf, another thing I wanted to ask you about is you have been for a couple years now building a unique community, um, within the industry. We talked about the sea change in vendors. You had the old vendors and a new wave coming along. And similarly community is also shifting. Crane has been around for a couple years now, so it's no longer fun novel concept. It's something that's actually existing and you're getting to feel the operating rhythm. One of the questions I wanted to ask you is what has it felt like and what have you learned from the experience of running, overseeing and shepherding a community of what, close to 200?

Wolfgang Croskey: Close to 200, yeah.

Jordan Moyla: Property management professionals.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. It is probably been one of the most rewarding things I've done professionally and I've been a public school teacher and that was pretty rewarding. But being able to be with people who are all great operators of different sizes. We have people that are right at 100 doors and we have some that are over 10,000. Right. So we have a huge spectrum and being able to be around that caliber of operator is very fulfilling. And knowing that I'm helping to build a community with people in some cases that are light years ahead of me, I Think sometimes people think, oh, you built a community because you want to keep people just behind you. And m. Like, no, no. There's people in our group I learn from all the time I was in Tampa, Florida and at uh, Eaton Realty and got to see how they do stuff and they deal with hurricanes. I don't deal with that in California. Uh, but seeing not specifically the hurricane process, but the fact that how they evaluate it and go through their process, there was some really cool things to learn from that. So it's been extremely rewarding. It is a lot of work because community is built around norms and trust and because of the caliber of people inside of Crane. There are a lot of people that want to get inside of Crane and we have to. Not because we're all that, Peter and I, but protect the community from that because otherwise it just becomes like any other Facebook group. You know, it's. We have norms in Crane that we value very highly. We had actually an opportunity from an uh, outside vendor that. Sorry, no. And you're like, what do you mean no? Yeah, no, that's, we don't do that. And they just like didn't know what to do. So it's, it's really exciting. But to uh, to know that we're finding those people that want freedom of time, whether you know, there's organizations and groups and vendors that will help you make more profit. Mhm. That will get as many do forces. You want all the scenes. Well, why do you want more money? Why do you need to be more profitable? Because ultimately there's something else you want to do. Yes. Maybe you want to start a non profit, maybe you want to start another business. Maybe you want to earn more money so you can pay other people to do the work so you can spend more time with family, whatever it may be. But nobody just says, yeah, I want my business to be more profitable just because, well, you can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have the time, what are you going to do? So for Crane helping people, I mean we've had some members that they did their one week Crane break and this is the first one week they've had in a long time. So that's really rewarding. Peter's known for taking the whole month off of June and seeing other members doing the same. We have several that have taken four week breaks and we're not talking about on the beach with their laptop, answering emails. We're talking about like detached, like we don't want them even commenting inside a crane. We Actually give our members out of office scripts and profile images. Nobody's used them, but they're there to, like, we want you unplugged and detached, like truly away. And seeing more and more members do that, it's One of our KPIs on our scorecard is what percent of our members have taken a crane break in the last 12 months. And we look at that every week because that's what drives things for our partners. They have to respond with, how does your offering or the value you're going to bring to our community help our members have more freedom of time? So everything drives around that concept. So, yes, you can make more money, you can get more efficient, you can have more automations, you can do all this stuff, but ultimately you're doing all of that because there's something else you want to do. Nobody's life's work is tenants and toilets. I shouldn't say nobody. I doubt there's anybody. It's. This is a means to an end. Well, if you don't have control of your time, you're never gonna be able to do that. So helping great property management operators achieve that has been very rewarding. Having been in that same spot where you're like, man, I'm always grinding, I'm always doing this. You see certain caller IDs pop up and you just get sick. This guy, I don't want to deal with that, like, run, you know, so that, that's. Having felt that pain also. Then I know the relief that comes when you're like, I'm leaving for two weeks. And I, I'm good with that. So it's good. We have our application window opening up end of September, September 26th. And so we're, you know, if you're feeling that you're got kind of the, the core standards down in your management company, you have 150 doors or more. We definitely love to have, you know, people apply. It's joincrane. And if having freedom time resonates with you, then we're the place to be.

Jordan Moyla: The concept of culture is generally pretty poorly understood. It's very amorphous. It seems like something you can create. My version of culture is that it's simply what the organization values and it's not hard to pick up on what people value. You're praised for this, you're punished for that. Uh, Crane is elevating time freedom and saying we reward, we incent, we are facilitating time freedom, which is opinionated in many ways. It is the polar opposite of the grant Cardone grind harder, uh, 10x energy, et cetera. And in my mind, a strong community has to have a pov. If it's for everybody, it's for nobody. By contrast, you're calling your shot. And for folks that want time, freedom, that, that really value that, like this is a really clear clarion call. And in my mind it is the thing that is achievable and practical for operators. It is getting to a thousand doors. Some folks will do that. It's a minority building a huge business, you know, 10 million bucks in revenue, hundreds, um, of people, very few operators. That's not equal opportunity mathematically. Most people cannot do that.

Wolfgang Croskey: Right.

Jordan Moyla: The idea of having time, freedom and running a business that doesn't run you ragged. And yes, you're taking a vacation, but you're also not working 60 hours a week to justify a couple of vacations. That's doable. It is, that's achievable. That's a mass market possibility. I think that's what excites me and connects me to it. Not just that it's specific, but how accessible it actually is for people that aim at it.

Wolfgang Croskey: Right. Yeah. No, and it's like I said, everything we do is focused around that. From our, uh, crane pins, having different ones depending on which level of crane break you've been able to achieve. The partners that we work with, the content that we provide in the community, the experiences. Like we had our Crane Horizons event, which was for our members. We held it in Colorado and uh, we didn't talk about business. Now if you want to talk about business, that's fine. But that was, we didn't have sessions on how to improve your call tree or how to build automations. It was working on yourself. We did whitewater rafting, we did a ropes course. We did all kinds of great things. It was just a way to unplug. Um, and that was specifically designed to give people a taste of what it's like if you do unplug. You know, we have our crane, we call them Crane Unplugged. They're dinners, they're all across the US and the concept is, well, let me fly out there. Yeah, fly out for dinner. I've done it many times. You literally fly across the country for a dinner. But what does that require? It requires me leaving my office. It requires me being in a place where I can't just run and go fix something. And so that two day event, you know, we throw in travel is a baby step. Then you go to, uh, a three to four day Crane Horizons Retreat, that's another step. Then I'm going to take a week off. And each week, you know, one week, two week, four week, we have content, we have people giving, like, hey, this is what I did to get ready to help provide scaffolding and support for you so that you can be successful. And so it's really, for us, it's really, really important. That's what's about. Because like I said, tenants and toilets, that's great. But each one of us has something that we can contribute to society. But if you're so bogged down by the grind, the emails, the phone calls, all of that, you're never, ever going to be able to achieve that.

Jordan Moyla: Yeah, it can become soul sucking.

Wolfgang Croskey: Oh, yeah.

Jordan Moyla: Uh, and you can start to resent the thing that in most cases really is a gift.

Wolfgang Croskey: I mean, it will make you physically sick. Right. And that's just not in pm. You see that all throughout, especially in the tech sector. People that are getting physically sick because of the grind at work, the stress, the whatever. So is Crane saving lives? Maybe. I don't know. I, uh, I don't know if we want to make that our motto, but it's to me, like I said, it's, it's been really rewarding. A lot of work, though. Definitely underestimated the amount of work. You know, we thought, like, all right, we're just gonna create our online component. We'll put some stuff in there and this thing's just going to go. But it's, it's a lot of work. Being able to keep building the culture of the community, protecting the community, feeding the community so that there's not just value there because people do pay, uh, a significant investment to be part of it, but that they're, they're achieving that goal of freedom of time. And seeing people posting. I just took a one week crane break. I've done my two week crane break. I tried to do my one week, but then this happened and people say, hey, try this, do this. To provide support is huge. We celebrate each other's wins. Like, oh, gosh, mine went blank. In Virginia. I just acquired, you know, a new property under management. Nice thing. Is that world new news? No, but it's a celebration. So we celebrate that, you know, other people that have different accomplishments in their, their company. We celebrate the beauty about a healthy

Jordan Moyla: community is that it is a lot of work, but it's many people coming together. Uh, if it's all coming from you and Peter, that's a following, not a community.

Wolfgang Croskey: Yeah. And they get boring What I've seen

Jordan Moyla: is that the community is really actively involved and invested and people are hosting talks and book clubs and dinners. Like community is leaned in to build this thing together and that's when you know it's working.

Wolfgang Croskey: Absolutely. That was at first we're, you know, Peter and I talked about like, well, how are we going to. Because in communities one of the things, one of the metrics is monthly active users. And we're like, all right, we got a bunch, right. We're doing well because it's brand new. Well, we're here at you know, year two and one of our software providers is emailing us like what are you guys doing over there? What are you talking about? Your numbers are off the charts. You guys are like at 93% of active users and that's kind of the norm for community is like if you can hit 70, you're doing well. And that's from our provider. So it's not bs. They're seeing the data and so they're reaching out to us, trying to figure out what we're doing. And it's nothing that Peter or Danny, you know, our community manager and myself are doing per se. It's bringing together like minded people and providing the scaffolding so they can be successful with that one thing and that for us is the freedom of time. So it's awesome.

Jordan Moyla: If folks want to find out more about Crane, where's the best place to do it?

Wolfgang Croskey: Just go to joincrain co.comjust.co and uh, you can learn more about it. We uh have our wait list is there you can join. You'll be the first to be notified when applications open but it will be open. Um, September Wolf, it's real joy to

Jordan Moyla: have you back on the show.

Wolfgang Croskey: Absolutely.

Jordan Moyla: Until next time.

Wolfgang Croskey: Absolutely appreciate it.

Jordan Moyla: It that's it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. You can check out other episodes along the way. If you're watching this on YouTube. Appreciate to subscribe. Any comments? I'm always here to engage if you're listening on an audio platform. We really appreciate review. It's a great way to help other people find out about the show.