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Welcome to the West Side Investors Network, WIN, your community of investing knowledge for growth. This is the Real Estate Professionals Investing Podcast. For Real Estate Professionals by Real Estate Professionals. This show is focused on the next step in your career....... investing.
Welcome to the Westside Investors Network. WIN, your community of investing knowledge for growth. This is the real estate professionals investing podcast for real estate professionals by real estate professionals. This show is focused on the next step in your career, investing. Thank you for listening.
Intro speaker:And please, if you like our content, rate us on your podcast provider. Just a quick disclaimer. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are for educational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any shares or securities to make or consider any investments or take any other action. And now, AJ and Chris Shepherd. We have an amazing guest for today.
Intro speaker:He is the CEO and Chief Community Officer of Vida, a Canadian entrepreneur, globally sought after speaker, and thought leader. He is also the best selling author of the books Scaling Culture and Outrageous Empowerment. Here to discuss about why their culture is different, how to get the community involved in improving your business process, and why it helps the organization overall. Please welcome Ron Lovett. Ron, thanks so much for being on the show today.
Intro speaker:Do you want to start off by just telling us a little bit more about yourself and how you got to where you are today?
Ron:Sure. Thanks for having me guys. Excited to have a thoughtful discussion today in this snowy East Coast day where school was canceled for our kids. Yes. So born and raised Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is East Coast Of Canada, single family home, raised by my mother who was just kind of a working class individual.
Ron:Was always quite entrepreneurial. I was the kid who had three paper routes and hustled, hustled, hustled, bought hats in The States and brought them back, tried to sell them at school, cut hair in the attic for $5 a haircut to provide a nice fade for kids in the neighborhood. So I was always very entrepreneurial, always taking commission based jobs at an early age. And then tried university, that didn't really work out so well for me. I'm dyslexic, have ADHD, which I didn't really, wasn't diagnosed until late thirties to even almost mid to late thirties for both of those things.
Ron:So my brain didn't know how to receive information. I certainly didn't know how my brain liked to learn. So that certainly slowed me down and I think caused some heartburn for me in the early stages. Instead of university, I traveled. I wanted to become a traveler, not a tourist.
Ron:One of my BHAGs has always been to more countries than my age. I'm 43, I've been to 56 countries, so I'm going to keep going on that. After my first big trip, came back and traveled some more, had commission based jobs. Then finally, I was looking for what I could get into business wise, my own business. And I was training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at the time and working at a few nightclubs.
Ron:Long story short, I thought, you know what, in Australia and in The UK, some individuals had figured out how to provide nightclub security for bars as a service. And I had already had a name as a doorman here in Halifax and I thought I could just come and do that. So after coming back from Columbia, spending two months down there, I came back and set up my first company, which was SOUR Security and it's providing physical guarding. And we did everything from concerts, festivals, 400 guards at a Rolling Stones concert. I would do security for Jay Z for his Canadian dates or a lot of celebrities coming through Canada.
Ron:We traveled in The Caribbean and Central South America through executive protection. Then it was a wild ride, just up down. I was sole shareholder, almost went out of business, especially in a loss about a million bucks in 2014. Got to the powerful question of what if you had to restart the industry from scratch? That was a blank slate question, which allowed me to really, as I was contemplating closing the doors, the question was answered really through what would I do if I restarted the industry?
Ron:Well, I would provide culture in a culture less environment. It was command and control. Then create decentralization, I should say, this was a very centralized environment. Everything was done through a central communications and decisions were made centrally. I became obsessive about decentralization and culture, turned the company around.
Ron:And then I sold in early 'seventeen, I guess late 'sixteen, early 'seventeen to Allied Universal out of California as their Canadian entrance. Exited at 24 times multiple, which is great. And then was looking for what's next. Had my daughter at the time. So George is now six and I have a four year old son and a one and a half year old.
Ron:But my next business piece was looking for what's next and I was trying to find passion meets purpose. The old business, I was passionate about flipping the industry on its head, doing things differently. But my purpose of kind of helping people wasn't met in that space. And so, workforce housing, affordable housing, all these things were front and center. To me it was obvious that there was an opportunity to get into that space and change what the industry had done.
Ron:Know, if you looked at that industry, it was small entrepreneurs or family offices that were owning and operating in multifamily. You had, you know, that were good people but not at all sophisticated, no real innovation, back of a napkin operators. Then you had slumlords and then you had institutional capital and institutional owners, which just drove the P and L. Whether it was in house or third party management, was typically charge as much as you can, keep costs as low as you can. I, you know, anyone who's read blue ocean strategy, thought, yeah, this is a blue ocean.
Ron:No one's really come in to try to figure out and get sticky with that customer base. And so I piloted a few things and then Vita was born in 2018, late twenty eighteen, scaled to about five fifty units on my own. And then about eighteen months ago, started bringing on some partners. We did a $90,000,000 transaction for about a thousand units last July and since continued to grow. So we've got 2,400 units, maybe 23 and change now in the East Part Of Canada and then in Manitoba and some great partners.
Ron:So it scaled quickly. We've got about 30 on our team, about 300,000,000 of assets and having, we're the S in the ESG, really trying to build a platform and a brand and having a ball. So that's kind of, that's the Cole's notes my friends.
Chris:Tell us a little bit more about VITA and how your culture is different than what you would say is kind of traditional. And what are some of the strategies that you're employing to try and increase a value there?
Ron:So Chris, when you say culture, you mean, you mean the company culture, what we do internally with the team or you mean like our strategy and execution and platform?
Chris:Well, let's hear about company culture and then let's hear about how that displays itself as a result to our tenants.
Ron:Yeah, so back to when I noticed, when I looked at the industry, so not just was it kind of stale and prime for what I'll call disruption or innovation certainly, but the culture in the industry remind me of the security industry. Know, like people just, when you have old stale industries and I'm going stick to multifamily or real estate, people confuse innovation with efficiency. And what I mean by that is people who are in the business for a long time, they're efficient and they, how to get better pricing on floors or be more efficient with whatever you're doing, but it's not necessarily innovative. And so I certainly thought there was good operators that were efficient, but I didn't see any innovation. And I think the reason for that is because it's seen as a very traditional industry.
Ron:It's buy a building, fix what needs to be fixed, renovate what you're going to renovate, put a customer in there, collect the rent and deal with something when it breaks and then turn the unit, put a new customer in. It means no offense to everybody listening, from my perspective, very boring industry. And so I was looking to shake things up and do something a little different. And the difference for us, a few things, the industry itself, and I think this is broadly, I think this is global, you know, especially in what I'm going to call workforce housing. So that's more of the affordable side.
Ron:That's where I am by the way. And so that industry is tenant versus landlord. It is, it's through government programs and tenancy board and the media, it's tenant versus landlord. And I thought what a great opportunity to come in and start as business and customer and then move to co stakeholders where people really feel like they're a part of something. Because that's what I'd done, when I exited the security company.
Ron:Was creating community at the security company. Thought, why can't we just do that in these buildings? And we call our buildings communities. And so that was to me a great opportunity to come in and do things very differently. And then, I'll pause there and go to culture for a sec.
Ron:I've been a culture person. I've really learned, there's a saying that I didn't believe in originally and now I completely live by, which is none of us will build great companies. We'll lead incredible people who build great companies. I kind of thought I was the company builder and that's just, that's BS. You lead people and so you need to learn how to lead these people.
Ron:Know how to learn, you know, learn how to bring out the best in them. And for those who played sports or understand sports, you know, you recruit the best teammates, the best players, and you get them playing well together and you win the game. The difference in business is there's no end to the season, you are constantly playing. But that's what I believe. That's at 10,000 feet.
Ron:And then you break that head up. What does that mean? How do you do that in high level without getting too in the weeds? And I've written books about this and have a masterclass and podcast, which explores culture because I think it is the winning strategy. And you have to be strategic about your culture.
Ron:So I kind of blend that old saying, oh, strategy eats culture, eats strategy for breakfast. I think you need to be strategic about your culture or it's a waste. And so anyway, creating your values and then screening for those values, onboarding with those values and then coaching and praising. Coaching people privately when they make decisions that are misaligned with your values and praising them publicly. High level, that's how it gets executed.
Ron:And that's how you sustain a strong culture. And so, our culture is incredibly important to us, and I think it's a winning formula. We've had incredible run and we continue to scale. You know, we've got another seven thirty units under agreement today as I speak and some other larger transactions. Absolutely.
Ron:We'll keep going to, you know, the plan is 10,000 units by 2027 and beyond and to build an international brand. And so back to the business for a second, I just thought these tie together a little bit. Like if those who have read my first book, Outrageous Empowerment, know that when I asked that question, if I had to restart the industry, what would I do? Well, decentralization meant removing a lot of that mid level management, right? And decentralized giving people the autonomy to make decisions on the front lines.
Ron:Now that caused, that was unknown at the time, people hadn't done it and that caused some heartburn too, which was, okay, well, the mid level management gone, so who's answering the day to day questions? And then as you guys know, I was in YPO and EO and all of a sudden the key leaders in the business that were left, their phones ringing 20 fourseven and we had to create forms. We had to create forms in the business where people could lean on each other and ask those day to day questions. The things that you used to call your manager about, it would just get added to the bottom of their to do list. We wanted to build the muscle memory, build the internal communities and the collective brainpower to make a sticky environment and to 10X people's learning.
Ron:Because they're asking people questions, not their manager anymore. They're asking peers that solve this problem over and over again and have an expertise around it, how to get through things on a day to day basis. So the idea was, well, geez, between that and asking our security guards to get involved in day to day projects that our leadership at that point didn't wanna do. So that could be the company newsletter, building out a new website, reconciling the bank accounts. We had, you know, 3,000 secondurity guards.
Ron:We could put these small projects or two like like you guys would do if you want someone to paint your garage. Say, hey, on Facebook, does anybody know anyone can paint my garage? We do the same thing internally. And so the question became, why couldn't we do this with our communities in real estate today? And that's where these businesses were quite aligned, decentralization.
Ron:And we give our customers first right of refusal to engage with us and get involved at the asset level. So painting, small maintenance repairs, as well as in the business. So we have out of our team of 30, we would have four full time people that came in as customers. So we really want the communities to be able to participate in building the brand. And that's where this business gets different.
Ron:And of course there's a whole bunch of stuff behind the scenes that make that work. But that's essentially where things get different. And I thought there was an opportunity to create the Merit Hotel brand in workforce housing, which I had not seen. And so that's where off to do.
Chris:Very, very interesting. So you mentioned values and screening on values. And so what are VITA's values?
Ron:Yeah, so we have three key headlines, servitude and gratitude, team driven and relentless improvement. So those are our three values. And so those are very broad, right? Like I made this mistake and see that from others. You create values like, we upgraded from teamwork to team driven.
Ron:But even the word teamwork, team driven doesn't matter. There's an ambiguity. What does that mean? What it means to you is different than what it means to me. So it's the sub language that gets created with the team on what do those things really mean that are helpful?
Ron:Our values are quite long and we go through them quarterly. We read them off, we talk about them, we talk openly about who's starting with me, where am I misaligned? Where do I need to lean in a little more as a leader to deliver on these values? And we've also, I learned from first business to second to build in performance. So there's language in our values that says we attain and we hit our targets.
Ron:We are on time on target, we over deliver. And so those things, once you start to build performance, not just like, because values are about building in the behaviors that allow people to collectively behave in a way that will make the company successful. Will each other successful then make the company successful? Well, we built performance language into that. You know, it's been incredibly helpful.
Ron:And you know, the other thing I'll say about values is it's something that we look at. We look ourselves in the mirror. Companies don't do that. And I used do this too. You create your values and you say, okay, it's done.
Ron:That's like this thing that you just do. It's this exercise and it's done. It's over. That's BS because you should look at your values as you look at your customer onboarding, your customer acquisition strategy, your sales strategy. It's actually in some cases more important because it drives those things.
Ron:It's the foundation. And so we constantly look at our values and a great time, a good example would be, you know, you make a good hire and they have this incredible attribute and they're fantastic. They don't need to be told what to do. They make things happen. We would upgrade our value and say, we need to capture that because we need more people.
Ron:That's a new watermark. We know more people that subscribe to that type of behavior or the other side, we'll let someone go and we'll look at what happened there. How did they get on the team? What was our participation in that? What did we learn from it?
Ron:And what can we do to protect ourselves? What was the real attribute or behavior that we think causes to not work out? Was there one in it? If so, what was it? And let's capture it in our values.
Ron:Let's agree to it, make sure we're now screening for it, onboarding it, coaching and praising for this thing or the opposite of it in this case. And so, we constantly upgrade our values. We just did it last quarter again, not too long ago, this is maybe three upgrades ago. We got to a place where in our finance and admin, it was the check ins where we're busy, we're busy, we're busy. Well, that's divisive language.
Ron:We've all heard that I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy means I'm not helping you. That's the wrong language. So we said, look, we need to make this clear. Busy is good. You want to celebrate, you should be busy.
Ron:We're trying to put a dent in workforce housing and make an impact here and build a global business. You should be busy. You should embrace And that. So this is an example of how do you really lean into values and turn something that you see that you need to change. No difference in a KPI on your business.
Ron:If you're not collecting well, you say, well, let's create a goal and let's collect well. So we can change behaviors around that. And so we've taken the same strategy when it comes to building values. And look, when people say, well, what's the outcome of that? Is it working?
Ron:Well, our company's, we're about 26,000,000 in revenue, 300,000,000 assets in about a four and a half year period. We've scaled incredibly fast. And from April to September, I took off five months with my daughter, Margo. I was out of the business. And so that to me is the outcome of a great culture.
Ron:Not just the scaling, it doesn't mean we don't have problems. It doesn't mean that we don't have challenges and opportunities to overcome, but it's how you show up for that, right?
Chris:That's what you've been doing for the past four months.
Ron:Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it.
Chris:Ron, I am absolutely impressed with your people strategy. It's awesome. And I love what you're doing just in the workhorse or the workforce housing space. Workhorse, yes.
Ron:Yeah, workhorse.
Chris:Yeah. So what's showing up in your communities? I know you mentioned that there's some handyman opportunities for tenants, but what else is showing up at your multifamily assets?
Ron:Well, so lots, right? We have people and again, it's funny. I was just thinking as you're saying it, so lots. All your general stuff that see that we don't have customers that replace windows or roofs or anything that needs really warranty work or there's high risk or need a workers' comp that we call it in Canada, those types of things. But the day to day things that we see are incredible actually.
Ron:And it's interesting because it's not just these general day to day activities, what I've seen and there's two parts of this, but I've seen customers learn things because they know they have the ability to do things. So there's one of our building ambassadors, Brittany, who's our customer of ours. So our building ambassadors, kind of the industry's superintendent, let's call it, right? Or caregiver or caretaker. There's different names for people that live in these buildings or to look after a small building.
Ron:We call it building ambassadors. And so Brandi, I don't know said Brittany, Brandi is a great example. She's a customer, became a building ambassador. And so she noticed that there were potholes in her community's driveway. And so she had no idea.
Ron:She doesn't have an asphalt background, nothing like, she goes online, figures out how to solve the problem, reaches out and says, Hey, here's the deal. I see this. I'm going to come solve this problem. I figured it out and I'm excited about it. This is my building.
Ron:I'm proud of my building and I'm going to fix it. So we have people going out of their way to solve small, very small, or large issues as they see it. And so that's one piece. The second piece is, in our application process where we ask the question, what soft and hard skills do you have? And that's important for us to know, softly, I like to do customer service calls, but I can paint.
Ron:That's what we're trying to find. But to combat inflation and to really lean into our communities, we've also identified that we want to systemize skill building. We're now training customers on how to paint, on how to caulk. You might be an immigrant that landed to this country that wants to do a side hustle. You're driving Uber and you want to do this too.
Ron:Well, great. We'll provide that as an opportunity or elderly that hasn't been working but wants to enter back into the workforce with some projects. Whoever it is that wants to skill build and create in it. We want to create an environment where you can participate in upgrading, building your community, have a sense of ownership and help you get ahead. And so we're now building that in not just as a human to human activity, but there we have an LMS, a learning management system we call BDU.
Ron:So you'd go through a portion of BDU on our purpose, our values, those types of things, how to deal with the customers and the things that are critically important from an execution standpoint. And so this thing becomes a live piece of our business and the outcome of that, again, I've mentioned, not only if I was doing it, do I get to make an extra income? I said, I have a sense of ownership. You move in next door, I essentially get to say, Hey, I painted your place. Like this is a conversation piece.
Ron:These are small little things that then happen. I've got a real sense of pride, but it also reduces costs. You know, our asset class has the highest repair and maintenance costs out of any asset class, I believe in real estate. And so, we're typically 60¢ on the dollar. So if it costs a thousand dollars to paint a one bedroom, we're $600 to a community member.
Ron:And so it works really well. It's chaotic. It's decentralized. It needs a lot of systemizing. It needs checks and balances.
Ron:And this is the stuff that I get excited about versus just owning an apartment, collecting new rent.
Intro speaker:Sounds pretty interesting. Like, I'm just kind of curious, but how do you control quality in those sorts of issues?
Ron:It's a great question. You know, we've learned. And so let's go back to a customer cleaning, right? We had very inconsistency with a unit turn and we'd say, why don't we just hire customers to clean this? And so when we started, it was completely inconsistent, right?
Ron:Because like you all go back to making your bed. My wife's version of making the bed is quite different than my version of making the bed. These are two very different things, right? And so I always say, look, you need to systemize your business because back then it was quite obvious. We had a customer that would complain.
Ron:Some people were good. Some people's expectations were higher. Mean, it's a disaster. And then it's almost like, oh, decentralization doesn't work. To beat that, what you have to do, you have to systemize and quite simply, call this the platinum triangle, right?
Ron:So anything you want to systemize like cleaning a unit, you need to have a system or process, typically a checklist. Okay, mop the floor, do this, do that, like a very simple checklist and the tools, here's all the things you're going to need to do it. And the training, I need to train you on how to use the tools and how to use the system. And we need to agree to what the outcome is and how that outcome is going to be measured. Once you go through all that, you can systemize.
Ron:And so in this case, you can imagine, here's the tools, all the cleaning supplies and safety glasses you're going to need and we'd find these things out later. Oh, we don't have safety glasses. That's a tool they need it. Here's the bucket of all the things you need. Here's the system you need.
Ron:Here's the outcome of what it needs to look like. Here's the photos. Here's the things that someone, if they were to inspect would see and the measurement is through the new customer that comes in and we ask them, are we 10 out of 10 in cleanliness? So you need to think full cycle on these things. And that's the fun part of building a business, right?
Ron:Hiring a cleaning company and just doing that. I don't find that that much fun either. But my version is chaotic. I will tell you that because you don't have a playbook for it and you have to constantly work through it's trial and error, trial and error. Then someone says, it doesn't work.
Ron:See, it doesn't work. Well, we didn't make a right system. The system doesn't work. Those tools weren't right. We miss the safety glasses, you know, whatever it is.
Ron:And so you can systemize. It's the platinum triangle. And now here's a word from our sponsor.
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Ron:So You guys hung up on me. I said platinum triangle. You guys just go quiet. What's what you don't like it?
Chris:No. Platinum triangle is great.
Intro speaker:You just delivered it so well. I mean, how can we how can we really follow that up?
Ron:Do you wanna just end the show here? We'll end it.
Chris:And it's the platinum triangle. Here you go. Here's the
Ron:golden goose. It's helpful. Look, I always say, it's so easy to blame people. Like seriously, I've done this before where somebody does something wrong. It doesn't line up with the vision that I had in my head and you don't deliver on it and I blame you.
Ron:Well, it's a look in the mirror moment, right? If you didn't provide the tools, the systems and training, it's my fault. And that's black and white all day long. There's no wiggle room. I'm very harsh with that and harsh on our leaders on that too.
Ron:It's like, man, I'm not talking about a one off thing. This is something that's ongoing, like cleaning a unit that's ongoing. That's not a one off thing that happened that you don't need to systemize. And it's very important to continue to think about those things because then you know, you know, you think about the outcome of that. Well, once you have these systems put in place, then you know how people show up.
Ron:Know, I always say, look, A, B and players. C you need to go for your business. A you can't live without and b just follow the process. So think about this triangle. Let's go back to this example.
Ron:A c player doesn't use all the tools and doesn't follow the process. They break it. Like it doesn't, it doesn't matter if you train them, they fall off. Right? But it identifies identifies them crystal clear.
Ron:You can't follow the system, you got to go. B follows along, gets it done. A says, you know, Ron, I was thinking there's a cheaper, better product that I can use to clean this place. This is $12.9 got this stuff $6.99 It's two liters versus one and it works better. Bam, a player, right?
Ron:Every time. And so systemizing things will tell you where people fit in that, you know? It's interesting.
Chris:Yeah. I'm totally gonna steal that if that's all right.
Ron:We've written about it, steal it. It's for the world. It's yours. It's our gift.
Chris:Alright. So cleaning that, I mean, honestly, that sounds like something that, you know, almost any landlord could implement if they provide the tools, the systems and the training. Is there anything that you are excited about that is something that you guys are working on that's new and fun and you feel like it's going to make a big difference?
Ron:Well, yeah. What's new? One, we're getting our B Corps, so that's exciting. That's not really at the customer level. That's just something we've been working towards, so we're going through that entire process.
Ron:I think that's great to be an impact company. What are we working on? Right now, well, front and center, this isn't, well, it is customer facing, but I would say, look, I'm happy to speak on podcasts and in front of conferences of a thousand people, I'm speaking at a real estate conference in Toronto, not too long. There's a room of a thousand. And I'll talk about the platform, the Vida brand and what we do and the impacts we make to people's lives.
Ron:And I'm very proud of that. Proud of even what we're talking about right here. I'm proud of the culture that we're building and our strategy around culture. I'm not as proud on our finance and admin. We're not world class on that.
Ron:That's today. That's as I look in the mirror. And so we just had a leadership retreat not too long ago and said, look, it's time. We need to become world class. And so that's a big challenge for us.
Ron:Finance has always kind of lagged as this business grows 10x, 10x, 10x. Finance, the foundation hasn't grown along with it. And we really need strong leadership there, people that can build systems and build, and we can build, we collaborate on that, but someone who's gets energized about building systems and energized about leading people and bringing out the best in people. And so that's big. That will impact the customers because it, I mean, that is the foundation of the business, of course.
Ron:And then the other thing that is more customer facing is more of that skill building. I mean, I just mentioned, but we're just kicking this You know, we had suppliers doing it. They'd put on, you know, show people how to paint, but we need to build it like I'm talking like a course curriculum, like tight and really execute properly on that. And so that's also one of our yearly goals is to really systemize that, make sure that we're tapping into the human brain and how they learn properly. What is like that golden triangle to a T outcome?
Ron:How do we measure that in each situation? That's a lot of work. And then there's pilots and trial and error. And then the last one, these are challenges. I'm excited about them.
Ron:The last big nugget for us is, vitaification or vitaifying a property is very different. So we provide a very different experience to our customers, high level. I'm not going to get too in the weeds, but when we acquire, we are not a renovictor. We're not a value adder. We don't do that.
Ron:We don't go into the units unless the toilet's broken. What we do do is try to create as much value outside of the unit as we can for the customer. So high level, what that looks like would be there's extra space in the basement, boom, we make it a gym or a common area. There's extra space upstairs, put a library in there. We're being very creative on these old wood frame buildings inside and outside the buildings.
Ron:Two is the experience. You if you guys are in the business, you know that in that asset class seventies, eighties, nineties, the hallways are more depressing than walking down the hospital. Right? They're so depressing. There's a lack of light.
Ron:It's dark, it's gray. It's crap, right? And was interesting when I was getting into the business, I was talking to someone about this and it was a girl that works for my wife. Her name's MJ. And she was saying, You know, it's funny.
Ron:I think back to living in one of those apartments. And because she said, as I reflect in my experience with my partner back then, but the building wasn't looked after. It was just, they just did what they did to have an apartment building, but it wasn't looked after. And because it wasn't looked after, we didn't look after our unit. And she said, I know that because now I live in a place where the owners are quite proud.
Ron:It's a brand new building, right? Spic and span. And she said, mentally, I just, I know I react a little differently. And I thought, you know, I was reading a book called Joyful at the time. It was talking about the different impacts of light and the different impacts of colors and sounds.
Ron:And that essentially, you know, high level it says, look, yes, you can be depressed, But if you're holding a baby who's smiling at you in that moment, it's really hard to be depressed. And that our exterior environment has an impact on our mental health. And so I was researching, I was looking at like the doors of Dublin that I've always loved. And so we came up with 12 unique colors that we paint each unit. So exterior door of the apartment.
Ron:If you look online, you'll find stuff. These are bright colors, bright Lego red, bright purple. And then we also said, let's create more community. Let's name them like you do in cottage country, right? You can live on the Purple, the Red Robin is your Unit 12, but you live in the Red Robin Unit on the 4th Floor.
Ron:And so being very creative, giving these people just a burst of energy when they walk down the hall, something to talk about, something to tie the community together. And so my point is this vedification and systemizing all of these things we're talking about and much, much more and building a very robust playbook about that. Like if you were to buy McDonald's, you would get a very specific, here's what happens as a contractor. That's what we're working on too. And I'm really excited because I think, and this one is much more complex than because we've added a lot of complexity to a very simple industry.
Ron:And so ours has a human aspect that we kind of get to a stage of stabilization. Then we put in a building ambassador, then we can start to Vetify. Like there's these human aspects, moving challenging customers out that are not a good fit. That kind of has to happen first. So we have to systemize.
Ron:We've been very ad hoc and we move fast, so that's fine. But just systemizing that entire playbook, which will have a better impact to our customers, much more organized with it. And so I'm excited about that.
Chris:The painting the doors each color, I love that. And just unique names for the units. It's such a small thing, but it is such a cool, you know, way to frame your building to, you know, what you call a customer, just tenants. I love how you've kind of framed that as well. So, yeah, that's so interesting.
Chris:So can I ask a, I guess, to more of a structural or like basic question? How do you have kind of the organizational chart of your business set up? And I mean, there's a big aspect of the business is growing and buying more units and that is probably a large silo. And then, you know, you've got your property management side and which is more of operations, and then you've got your financial side as well. So I'm very interested to hear how it's all set up.
Ron:Yeah, so I'm going kind of high level give you the org chart, which I think is what you're asking, right? So very simply, it's upside down. I am chief community officer. I was chief support officer in my past business, but I'm at the bottom of the org chart. And that's very clear.
Ron:We're there to support our frontline leaders and they're there to support customers. They're at the top of the org chart. And from there, quite simply, we have a leadership team. We've got in house counsel, chief investment officer, chief operating officer. So these are, everybody there is skilled as a leader and then has their lane of things that they focus on.
Ron:But the business is really broken into two sides. It's got finance and admin and everything else falls under operations. So those two leaders are the only two that really hold the organization, hold people accountable to the systems of the organization. But to keep things simple, they hold people accountable. The rest of the leadership team are on support.
Ron:And what that means is every leader is given an really, I don't know if it's three to six, seven people that they support. That's not to give direction that's so they can check-in and say, hey, how you doing? What's happening? How you doing? Their focus is just supportive leadership.
Ron:And so that allows everyone, that's the next level up to feel quite supportive because not only are you, you're going to get some support from your direct report call it, but you have other folks checking in. We're outcome based. And so when you're outcome based, you have to build great systems. And when you build great systems, then you can break the norms of management. That means that we've got a gentleman here in Halifax, Andrew Dart.
Ron:He's a community creator. We have three of them across the country. They are responsible. That would be our version of a property manager. So they're inspired, they would deal with leasing and building ambassadors throughout the building, but he would have 30 some part time people reporting to him, not seven, not 11.
Ron:It's because it's systemized and we use the resources of those people to support each other. That's how you can stay lean mean, move very fast, keep decentralized. So that's it. We really are incredibly flat, have two accountability leaders. Everybody else is on the support program, including myself and my job is support everybody.
Ron:So I do, I spend 25% of my time just checking in with people. Absolutely. So I don't know if that answers. I think that does that answer your question?
Chris:Yeah. I, that is a very, very flat chart.
Ron:It works. It's not for everybody by the way, but the culture is a strong word, but should be divisive. Know, you tell people about that and they're like, no, I'm not used to that. It's not my home. That's good.
Ron:This isn't your home. It's not, I'm not saying we're right, but there's some people that have a belief system that align with this type of autonomy, But it's not just free for all autonomy, it's checks, balances, systems, processes, and accountability with autonomy, right?
Chris:So right now, AJ and I are looking for our kind of next way to grow. We buy properties and kind of a similar model to what you guys are doing. I guess more of a traditional model, less innovative. But right now it's just three of us and then we've got our property management company and they kind of take on the property management. But one of the things we're struggling with most is finding our next deal and having enough deals come across our desk in the markets that we want to operate in.
Chris:And so I guess I'm interested to hear when you guys were growing back in 2018, 2019, how did you scale up that growth?
Ron:Back to what I saw as an opportunity, right? You guys are probably fitting in one of those three categories I talked about. You're probably in the entrepreneur category. And it sounds like that's what you're saying. Hey, like we're buying the same assets.
Ron:We're kind of in the industry doing this thing. Maybe no real story. I don't know if you guys have a brand and not saying you don't have your own story. I guess what I'm generalizing here to say that most people in real estate as I saw didn't have an incredible story. There wasn't a story.
Ron:Vida has its own story, right? It's not Ron Lovett's story, it's Vida's story. And so the outcome of a story becomes who's paying attention and what do they want to say about it. And so for instance, our marketing strategy is zero. We don't, not zero strategy.
Ron:We don't spend any money on marketing. Our marketing strategy is three things. Win with the media, media writes stories about Vita when we enter market. They find it interesting that they haven't heard of it before. You guys haven't heard it before, right?
Ron:And so people are like, Oh, you heard about this? Let's talk about this. Someone's going to want to read about this. The media will cover us. You Google beta, beta living, how we used to, it was a brand we used to go by.
Ron:There's a lot of media coverage because the story's interesting. That interesting story other operators read. And I can tell you, we get a ton of off market deals. When people call us and say, Hey, was reading about you, want to take care of my customers. I've got this for sale.
Ron:We've done $6,070,000,000 in off market deals in the last twelve months. Brokers, what do think happens when a broker reads a story? Our phone blows up when we enter a market. They're just saying, Oh, I've got something, I've got something, I've got something. So it works the broker network.
Ron:It 10X's the broker network. When I go to speak at a conference, you have capital partners, advisors, you've got investors, you have debt providers, you have everybody in that room that then says, that's interesting. You you get to tell a story because the only other way you get to tell a story is if you ran a billion dollar and you raise a billion dollar money. We're not there yet. It's the story that gets people's attention.
Ron:So my advice to people, originally you said this podcast is for people that are no real estate, want to invest in real estate, but everyone's doing the same thing. And it's not that this was a secret sauce. It was obvious and still becomes obvious that everyone does the same thing, maybe more efficient. We use in house capabilities so we can do it for 30% less. Well, guess what?
Ron:I'm falling asleep, right? Seriously, you know? And so I think it's time that people need to understand that. Do you want to build a business? Are you in real estate?
Ron:I want to build a business on top of real estate, not just on real estate. That's the opportunity. I don't care where this is. That's the opportunity. And, you know, I know this is long winded, but that's also back to your initial point.
Ron:That's how we found a lot of deal flow. You know, again, the stories get covered and you have people coming out of the woodwork to do private deals that don't want to pay an agent anyways, that say, Hey, this is groups growing. I feel good about it. Let me explore that. We've done a ton of these deals, right?
Ron:Brokers will call and say, Hey, we know exactly the asset you want. We know exactly the customer you like. We have some assets that fit. And if you can take it down before going to bid, then we'd like to do that. It's less work for us anyways, we take it down.
Ron:And so you get competitive advantage through a story, through a brand.
Chris:Wow, that is fantastic advice. Well, I think we are getting on towards the end of the episode, so why don't we move on to our last four questions?
Intro speaker:Sure. Go ahead AJ. I start us off with what's one piece of advice you would give to your 25 year old self?
Ron:Shut up. Shut up, right? Not you AJ, me, right? And so, young entrepreneurs, I was full of piss and vinegar and you're so excited and I don't think there's a bad intent, but you're so passionate and, you know, and so you fall into this category of trying to be interesting versus interested. And those are very different.
Ron:They sound the same but there's very different behaviors that go along with those things. And I wish I had, I would know so much more right now than if I had have always just been way more interested versus being interesting and people would find it interesting. But when you're being interesting, you're talking too much. And that's why I said, shut up, right?
Chris:I love that. So you already mentioned a few of your early entrepreneurial endeavors, but what was your first one? What was the one that started it all?
Ron:Again, I guess forget the dates, but probably cutting haircuts, cutting neighborhood, the guys in the neighborhood cutting their hair in my mom's attic. It was $5 a haircut. That was my first kind of unofficial, official business. I just had clippers and I just went to town. I've cut hair on the weekends and made a little bit of money.
Ron:That was probably the first one.
Intro speaker:Nice.
Chris:That is awesome. All right.
Intro speaker:How has your formal and informal training shaped your journey?
Ron:No formal, no real formal, but informal, a lot of informal. I didn't read a book until I was 21. Now I read a lot of books and even being dyslexic. I mean, sometimes I get the words wrong, but I do a ton of reading. I took EMP, you know, Entrepreneur Master Program through MIT.
Ron:I'm going back this year just for a kind of gathering of the giants or something like that, what they call it. But that was fantastic. I actually taught at EMP last year for the new group going through. You guys probably know EMP, Entrepreneur Master Program.
Chris:I was supposed to go, but I got COVID.
Ron:Yeah.
Chris:I missed in 2020. I missed in 2021. Then they finally did it and I got COVID.
Ron:Yeah, so I went last year, right? That was awesome. I did the Thursday night people and culture talk, taken some Harvard Extension School classes. I took one on negotiation, that four day course, fantastic. And it was like 190 people from like 85 countries and I just loved it.
Ron:I learned a ton and I took their design thinking course. And so love to learn, but very selective about my learning, listen to podcasts, all that stuff. So informal learning has won the day because it's so selective. You get to learn what you want based on what you need to know. Wow.
Chris:All right, and our final question. What was your biggest mistake and what did you learn?
Ron:Biggest mistake. You know, I mean, I think my biggest mistake was thinking that building a business, and I just was actually doing an interview and the guy mentioned the same thing and it's kind of a, I think he was totally right. Building a business you think because I pay someone they should do what they're told. It's just not right. And people are, I mean, and then you become, the entrepreneur journey.
Ron:You hire a few people and it's just you guys and it's no problem. And everybody's working their butts up. Then you have to hire people they're not meeting your expectations. And you're like, Oh, this is so easy when it was just us. We should go back to that.
Ron:That's the thing to figure out is not make that assumption that people, you can't manage by memo. I mean, that's bullshit. And so learning that the hard way was almost going bankrupt for me and saying, wow, it's time to do something different. And if I can, the soft stuff is the hard stuff. Get the people right, you win the game.
Ron:And so that's the hard stuff. And there's no end. It's not two plus two equals four, right? It's ongoing, but you learn and then you learn how to communicate properly. I take a lot of time.
Ron:I write about it in books and I've got a ton more to learn. But if you can become a master communicator and then train your team how to be master communicators, you win. There's who's gonna beat you? You know? Because everybody else still subscribes to command and control, pay people that should do what you want when you want.
Ron:And so my big mistake was not learning that fast enough.
Chris:Wow. That is a fantastic answer to our final question.
Intro speaker:Ron, appreciate you coming on the show. If our listeners wanna get ahold of you or learn more about you, how should they find you?
Ron:Yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn. So if you're on LinkedIn, I'm fairly active there. Ronlevitt.ca, there's some stuff on that website. And then betaliving.ca is our company and you could Google. I mean, you'll see a ton of stuff that we do on YouTube, on our YouTube channel on Beta Living.
Ron:And if you just Google online, but LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me. I'm fairly active on there.
Intro speaker:Awesome. Well, you coming on the show. I know that we all learned a lot today.
Ron:Great. Yeah. Lots of fun guys. Enjoy the conversation.
Intro speaker:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Real Estate Professionals Investing Podcast on WIN, your community of investing knowledge for growth. We hope that this episode has increased your knowledge and added value to your path to freedom. If you would, please take a second to rate us so that we can get more great investors to interview. If you or someone that you know wants to be on, please visit westsideinvestors.com and fill out our form to
Ron:be on the show.
Intro speaker:Thank you again, and enjoy your day.