Dave Spooner  0:00  

It’s a big hassle to call them up and say, Hey, you got to get this to me, etc, etc? Or do I just kind of wipe my hands of it and say, Okay, I got the rent five days late, it’s not the end of the world, I’ll move on. Most people choose the latter. And when they do, the tenants learned a few things. One, they don’t have to pay late fees, right, they’re going to skip them every time from now on to the landlord is going to call and remind them to make a payment and three, the landlord’s threats are empty, right. And those are all bad lessons to teach a tenant.  With automated software you’re not involved at all right? The late fee just shows up is now on the rent, the tenant cannot pay the next month’s rent until they’ve paid the late fee and the principal rent do so even if they skip it this month, next month, they’re gonna have to pay it and they understand that Oh, these these threats have teeth now, right? If I get a late fee, I gotta pay a late fee. And that’s a huge game changer for landlords, suddenly, you’re collecting more late fees than he did before and then quickly thereafter, rent is coming in on time more effectively than it ever did before. So it’s, that’s a huge feature that it seems small seems subtle, but it’s a big game changer for landlords that are first experiencing it.

Announcer  1:06  

Welcome to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast whether you’re an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant We are here to learn from experts.

J Darrin Gross  1:25  

Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks, CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J Darrin Gross. This is a podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. 

Today my guest is Dave Spooner. Dave Spooner is the co founder of Innago, a property management software designed to simplify life for small to mid sized landlords. He’s been involved in the real estate technology space since 2013. Working to enhance the way landlords and tenants communicate. And in just a minute, we’re going to speak with Dave about property management software and how it can make your life better. 

But first, a quick reminder. If you like our show, CRE PN Radio, there are a couple things you can do to help. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, we encourage you to leave a comment, we love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you want to see how handsome our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can find us on youtube at Commercial Real Estate Pro Network. And while you’re there, please subscribe. With that, I want to welcome my guest, Dave, welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Dave Spooner  2:52  

Yeah, I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

J Darrin Gross  2:55  

I’m looking forward to our talk today. Before we jump into it, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Dave Spooner  3:04  

Yeah, no problem at all. So as you mentioned in the intro, I’ve been involved in real estate technology since 2013. My first foray was helping a company build a listing platform specifically designed for student housing. And through that venture, I got a lot of exposure to small to midsize independent landlords that’s predominantly who makes up student housing, who owns portfolios and student housing. And we just kept hearing over and over again, how much these landlords felt that they needed tools that were better suited to them to their portfolios. The existing tools were too expensive or too cumbersome, too difficult to use. And we kept hearing it and finally me and another another guy that was working at that company said, Hey, we keep hearing this, let’s, let’s go, let’s go give them what they want. And we formed Innago in 2017. And we’ve been working hard on it ever since trying to deliver just that tools that are easy to use for landlords free to use for landlords and just make management of their portfolio easier than it has been in the past.

J Darrin Gross  4:06  

No, I’m guessing when you when you hear the the, you know, the problem over and over again. If you can make a solution that fits that problem. That’s that’s a an audience that’s, that’s happy to hear from you.

Dave Spooner  4:22  

That’s right. Yeah, even an idiot like me can can can can get the message if if you hear it hundreds and hundreds of times.

J Darrin Gross  4:29  

Right, right. Well, so let’s talk a little bit about it. And I apologize. I think I might have missed spoken when I said it before, but he called it Innago is how you pronounce that correct?

Dave Spooner  4:41  

Innago, yeah, that’s right. No problem. It happens all the time. Okay.

J Darrin Gross  4:46  

So let’s talk about some of the the elements of the platform. I know I looked on it a little bit before getting on this call with you and Can you describe some of the capabilities and in the nuance or the, you know, what, what can help a landlord do?

Dave Spooner  5:08  

Yeah, absolutely. To kind of orient the audience, it’s rental management software, right. So the tools that you’d expect to find in those rental management software exists in an algo. That’s things like managing your collection, accepting rents online, signing documents online, you can do that through our platform, storing information, like lease details, automating reminders, handling, maintenance, tickets, screen tenants, all that stuff is included in the inaugural platform, kind of differentiating factors for us or one that we’re free to use. That’s a big difference maker. To that we were really designed to work with landlords of various sizes of various portfolio types. It’s not just student housing, it’s commercial real estate, it’s multifamily. It’s it’s general residential, we even work with, there’s a lot of folks that use us for they manage salons, there’s a lot of people that own salons, and then they rent out chairs within their salons to hairdressers, and they use an algo. To manage those, we have tons of those folks. So if we wanted to build a platform that was more flexible, that was easier to use. It had more features that landlords really, really needed. So the traditional features you’d expect, but kind of packaged in a way that’s easier to use and flexible enough to work however your your business operates.

J Darrin Gross  6:21  

Got it. Now I know one of the things I saw when I was looking on the website is it does have the capability to integrate with QuickBooks or Quicken or Yeah. So can you talk a little bit? I mean, obviously, there’s there’s multiple facets to it. And I know in the intro, I talked about communicating between landlords and tenants, and you’ve, you’ve mentioned a few of the things that are natural in the communication with landlords and tenants. leases, I mean, that sounds like that’s, that’s a What do you have a digital signature platform or the ability to do the digital signature on that?

Dave Spooner  6:59  

Yeah, exactly. If but most folks are familiar with like DocuSign, for example, or Adobe has an echosign platform that allows you to sign very, very similar those two, you can do digital signatures through our platform, create multiple templates, not just a lease, but anything like a pet addendum or a renewal agreement or anything like that. You can generate templates, reuse templates, and signed documents through Innago

J Darrin Gross  7:23  

Got it. And then repair requests. I mean, assume that’s the pretty standard that does a tenant have a a login, they create a login for themselves, and the landlord has log into where everybody is going into the from outside of the inside.

Dave Spooner  7:38  

Yes, exactly. So tenants have their own separate login. And you know, one of the things that we realized when we were looking at the market is a lot of the platforms that existed before would put all their emphasis and focus on the landlord side of things. But you know, landlords often forget, and certainly the companies that develop those software platforms often forget that ultimately, the customer is the tenant, right? They’re the one paying the rent, they’re the one paying the bills, and you want to give them a really good clean experience. And you want to make it as easy as possible for them to pay that rent, right, don’t put any walls in front of them. So yeah, tenants have their own login, we’ve put a ton of effort into making it as streamlined as possible for those folks. They have an app they can download. And yeah, they can, you know, from the app or from their phone or wherever they’re logged in, take a picture of a broken dishwasher, take a video of the sound that it’s making, and submit that as a maintenance request to the landlord. The landlord can obviously react to that if the landlord has maintenance personnel that work for them, property managers that work for them, they can add those people as sub users in an algo and either have those requests routed directly to them, or they can kind of intercept it first that out the request and then distributed out to those maintenance personnel to handle those issues. So lots of tooling built around work orders and maintenance requests. I know that’s a big that’s always a hot topic with landlords how to how to deal with that kind of thing.

J Darrin Gross  8:56  

Yeah, no, so let’s talk about the the money transfer here. So you have a lease rents due on the first Do you have the ability to to integrate the the tenant pain it or is it more matter of can tell me about the the payment, how we can do or collect or if you do, yeah, or collect or transfer money.

Dave Spooner  9:25  

We do online payments are offered through an algo for rent for security deposits for pet fees, or anything else that you’re charging your tenant for. that’s related to the rent. They again, they log into their account, they can add a payment method like their bank account, they can add a credit or debit card and submit a payment directly through an algo and then we send the funds right into your bank account as a landlord and the landlords can have one bank account for all their properties. They can have specific bank accounts for specific properties and units. They can have a bank account to collect security deposits and then a different one for rent. They can do anything they need to to manage where Those funds are going and we deliver the funds generally after a single business day hold. So if somebody pays on a Monday, we hold it Tuesday, it’s in your account first thing Wednesday, so the money moves quickly, lots of payment methods available to tenants and lots of control over where that money goes to the landlord.

J Darrin Gross  10:18  

So in and notices, rents due on the first isn’t here on whatever the late day is fifth, or the 10th, or whatever. Do you have the automated messaging built into this? Or is that something that the landlord Can, can augment to their own lease or other work?

Dave Spooner  10:40  

We do? Yeah, it’s all built in and not not to go on too much of a tangent here. But you know, we internally talk about a Nago as tenant management software. That’s not a term that people really use in the industry. So we don’t advertise ourselves that way. But internally, we consider ourselves tenant management software, rather than property management software. And what we mean by that is, when you’re managing properties, you can control and you’re investing in properties, you can control a lot of factors, you can control, you know, you can draw up pro formas, you can do financial forecasting for years into the future, when you purchase something you typically know the the useful life of that appliance, or whatever it may be, you can forecast all these things and control all these things for inanimate objects. But the biggest X factor for landlords, for property managers for real estate investors is the tenants, right, that’s the variable they can’t control. So we’re software that’s designed to put some controls in place, right to allow landlords to automate those pieces of the puzzle for themselves. And a huge, huge, huge part of that is effective communication. We can’t emphasize enough how important that is. And it’s been a big piece of that is, of course, those automatic reminders, like you mentioned. So tenants are gonna get a reminder five days before rent is due the day it’s due. And then the day before late fees kick in. And you can of course, automate all sorts of different late fees in a Nago, you can control any of those timeframes. So if you want to let somebody know, 30 days before, because you collect semester rent at a at a, you know, off campus housing, if you want to let them know, one day before, for whatever reason, you can control those notifications. But yeah, we’re gonna automatically indicate to your tenant when rent is due when late fees are stacking up, and we’ll automate all those processes for you.

J Darrin Gross  12:21  

Awesome. Let me ask you, I know, you know, a fair amount of tenants these days tend to be unbanked. they they they tend to pay with cashier’s check or money orders. Is that, does that work with us? Or our?

Dave Spooner  12:44  

Yeah, it’s a great question. So you can record offline payments in a novel very easily. So for bookkeeping purposes to maintain a p&l to maintain an effective rent roll, you can track all that in and Nago, right, you can record a money order or check payment. We don’t currently have any tooling that’s built in to allow you to accept those payments electronically. There are some services out there that can do that. Pfizer, for example, has a service we’ve looked into it, I think it’s something we would definitely integrate at some point. Certainly a feature down the road that we’re very intrigued by, we just haven’t seen enough demand for it yet. But if people are paying by money order, you can still of course record those payments in and Argo to keep your your books up to date. Gotcha.

J Darrin Gross  13:29  

And then what about the the platform as far as messaging the tenant, or even the the vendor that you need to help you with work? Is it strictly an email message? Or is there any option to send a text?

Dave Spooner  13:43  

Yeah, currently, it’s all email based. So you there’s a whole messaging portal within a Nago, you can create email templates, though, that you can reuse. So if you have like common messages that you send to folks, and you can autofill certain pieces of it we call personalization tokens. So like, you want to send an email to all 100 of your tenants, you can still personalize them with a first name, your lease starts on putting their lease date, whatever it is, we are we do have some really exciting stuff coming in this direction, we are working on a built in chat feature, that’s going to be really cool. It’ll help even further streamline the communication between landlord and tenant and, you know, allow landlords to keep their personal contact info out of the hands of their tenants, which I know is important to a lot of folks that we’re working on those tools, they’re gonna be really cool. We’re super excited about them. We’re hoping that they’ll roll out before the end of the year. We don’t have any set timeline on it just yet, though.

J Darrin Gross  14:35  

So as the product currently sets, what’s been the the most appealing feature that you’ve you’ve heard from the users?

Dave Spooner  14:46  

I’d say there’s a there’s a few that come to mind. You know, the obvious one is rent collection that that’s that’s one that brings a lot of people through the door. But after using a Nago, I commonly hear how excited people are about The late fee features built into the tool. First of all hourly fees are very flexible. So I’ve never encountered a landlord who couldn’t manage their late fees, however convoluted they are within our system. They’re very flexible tools. But the thing that people love so much about it, especially if you’re coming from not managing people online and not offering them this type of tooling in the past, if this is your first time with that experience, it’s going to totally change the way that you interact with your tenants regarding rent. For example, for many landlords in the past, when rent was late, let’s say rents five days late now, the tenant has a $50 fee, right? So late rent five days late landlord calls up the tenant and they say, Hey, you know, you’re five days late, you need to send me a check for 500 bucks for rent plus $50 for the late fee, 550 total. And if I don’t get it, in the next two days, I’m going to drop an eviction notice or notice to quit or whatever their their local laws say they have to do next, then it freaks out, right? They say, Well, I got to get this money in right away, they quickly put a check together, drop it off, send it in the mail, whatever they need to do to get it to their landlord ASAP. Landlord says, awesome, I got the check, they open it up, it’s 500 bucks, right? They didn’t pay the late fee, tenant never pays the late fee. And the landlord then has a decision Do I go after them for this 50 bucks that ultimately is fairly meaningless to me. And it’s a big hassle to call them up and say, Hey, you got to get this to me, etc, etc? Or do I just kind of wipe my hands of it and say, Okay, I got the rent five days late, it’s not the end of the world, I’ll move on. Most people choose the latter. And when they do, the tenants learned a few things. One, they don’t have to pay late fees, right, they’re gonna skip them every time from now on to the landlord is going to call and remind them to make a payment, and three, the landlord’s threats are empty, right. And those are all bad lessons to teach a tenant with automated software you’re not involved at all right, the late fee just shows up, it’s now on the rent, the tenant cannot pay the next month’s rent until they’ve paid the late fee and the principle rent do so even if they skip it this month, next month, they’re going to have to pay it and they understand that Oh, these these threats have teeth now, right? If I get a late fee, I gotta pay a late fee. And that’s a huge game changer for landlords, suddenly, you’re collecting more late fees than he did before. And then quickly thereafter, rent is coming in on time more effectively than it ever did before. So it’s that’s a huge feature that it seems small, seems subtle, but it’s a big game changer for landlords that are first experiencing it.

J Darrin Gross  17:20  

Now, I would concur that just even training your tenant, you know, right away that no, no there there’s, you know, their mindset changes to where it’s not like, Oh, I can pay the landlord last. Right?

Dave Spooner  17:32  

I got to pay the landlord first. Exactly. It’s a mindset change. And so that’s a good way to say,

J Darrin Gross  17:37  

Oh, that’s great. I know that a lot of the software or platforms, there’s a lot of iterations over time. Is there anything you’re working on that you’re you’re planning to introduce here in the near future that that you’re excited about?

Dave Spooner  17:53  

Yes, very excited we are. We just launched the first version of our landlord mobile apps, we’ve had a tenant mobile app in place for quite a while, we we took a bit longer to develop the the landlord side is we really wanted to make it a tailored experience for mobile, not just kind of a smaller version of our website, but a wholly wholly different platform, you know, built for for a mobile device. So that is about to come out widely. Right now, it’s only in the hands of kind of select users existing on an algo. But in the next few weeks, we’ll have that launched live, I’d say certainly within the next four weeks, everybody can access it. And then I also mentioned the communication tools, the chat features that we’re building out to make communication even simpler for landlords. So those are two big ones on the horizon that I’m really excited about. We make regular updates, though. I mean, we release new patches and builds and features every week at an algo. So there’s small things that are coming in all the time, little quality of life improvements to make the system better, and sometimes even even full on features that come out. But those are the two big ones that I’m most expect excited about upcoming

J Darrin Gross  18:56  

data. We’ve been talking about the owner operator as a primary user, do you also provide this for property managers?

Dave Spooner  19:09  

Yeah, we work with tons of property managers. And like I mentioned, we have for the the ability to have multiple users access the platform, right, you can have your maintenance personnel, you can also have your property manager access it or conversely, a property manager that manages for, you know, 10 1520 100 different owners can add those owners to a Nago with their own set of access, where they can see just their properties or just the financials on their properties and kind of keep a thumb on the heartbeat of what’s going on with their with their property. So it’s an easy way to integrate those owners and to give them a positive experience as well. So yeah, lots of property. property managers use a Nago as well.

J Darrin Gross  19:49  

And then we talked a little bit about QuickBooks or Quicken. Is there an accounting feature built into an algo?

Dave Spooner  19:58  

Yeah, in one quick point, I’m glad we can Back to one quick but a quick point of clarification we integrate with QuickBooks Online. We do not integrate with Quicken and we don’t integrate with with QuickBooks desktop. So it is the online version that will integrate with Innago directly. It’s a great feature set. Anything that happens in Innago related to your finances will automatically show up in your QuickBooks account. So it makes it really easy from a management standpoint, you just manage collection, and even expenses if you’d like in Innago. And it’s automatically up to date on on QuickBooks, we do have accounting tools built into Innago. They’re not as substantive as QuickBooks though that is very much by design. Again, we talked about ourselves as tenant management software, right? We’re not your financial tool. I own eight units myself, and I use an algo. for them. Of course, I don’t use QuickBooks at all, I don’t use any sort of accounting software. At the end of the year, I take I export all my income data from an algo, I export all my expense data from Innago. I then export my p&l report which we generate for you in Innago, which is honestly redundant, because I just got the income and the expenses, but it combines them both in one place, I send those three reports to my CPA, he does our taxes, it takes me less than three minutes to get all those reports. He’s got everything that he needs, it looks great for him, it’s in a nice format. He generates our taxes, and we’re done. That’s it. So we do have some accounting tools. If you if you are a more substantial operation, it’s great to do the QuickBooks Online integration. It just depends on on kind of what you’re looking for and what what your your business looks like.

J Darrin Gross  21:31  

Gotcha. And what about, I know vacation rentals, the Airbnb type stuff? Is there any issue with working with that that type of platform? Does that work as well?

Dave Spooner  21:44  

No, there’s not an issue at all. And we work with lots of them. We’re not designed for it specifically, you know, we’re not like constantly thinking, how can we make Airbnb rentals easier. But again, it’s kind of a testament it goes back to you know, we were with barber shops, and they rent out chairs, you can, if you’re renting something, you can use an auto right? It’s it’s easy to manage it in that way, the tools are built flexibly enough to handle just about any scenario. So yeah, we work with tons of short term rentals, you just may find that you need to dig a little deeper into things to make them work for your your situation, but I can almost guarantee they will ultimately work for your situation.

J Darrin Gross  22:22  

Is there a minimum number of units, this works best for

Dave Spooner  22:27  

No, our range is pretty large, we work with a ton of one unit landlords and we our largest landlords have as many as 2000 units. So it’s a huge range that are using our platforms, the same platform for everybody. Our bread and butter is one to 100 units. That’s who we target with our marketing. that’s who we’re generally genuinely generally thinking about. But again, we’re really intending to build a platform that can grow alongside a portfolio. So even if you have many more than 100 it’s still is something worth taking a look at

J Darrin Gross  22:57  

Got it.  And the ideal opportunity set is new. Anyone from like one to 100 Yeah, I want to come back to the the price. You say it’s free. And I know my dad told me a long time ago that nothing’s free. How is it that how is it that this is is free? Or what is it that that you’re? You know, how are you being compensated?

Dave Spooner  23:23  

Right, right, right. Yeah, there’s there’s no free lunch, right? We, we are not a charity. We are not a nonprofit, we do make money. We just don’t charge landlords for anything. And we truly don’t there’s no cash, there’s not going to be a surprise charge. You don’t hit a unit threshold and suddenly you get hit with fees. There’s no setup fees, nothing like that. We instead charged for three things in Innago. I think landlords will find all three are very reasonable all three are charged to tenants by default. 

So when a tenant pays online, if they pay rent, they pay a deposit or pet fee or whatever it is. If they pay with a bank account, we charge them $2 for that transaction, just two bucks. If they pay with a credit or debit card, we charge them 2.75%. So a little higher, but as long as they have a credit card, they should have access to a bank account. Landlords can choose to take on either of those fees, there’s plenty of landlords say, Hey, I’ll cover the AC h v two bucks is nothing to me. Give that as a free option. But let the tenants pay the credit card transaction fee if they want to. Some real crazy landlords take on the credit card fee to it’s totally up to them. That’s one way we make money. The second way we make money is on screening reports. So you can screen tenants through an algo you can accept applications through an algo and when an application comes in, you decide as the landlord whether or not you want that application to include a credit criminal and eviction history and if you say yes, the applicant pays for those reports 30 to $35. Depending on the level of screening, landlords do have the option to add additional charges on top. If they do like betting or anything like that for their time we’ll send that excess money to the landlord. For 50 bucks you get $15 if you’re doing the full screen pack The third and final thing we make money on is renters insurance, landlords are able to require renters insurance from their tenants require proof of it, I highly recommend this to folks, it’s a nice while you’re in the insurance game, I’m sure you know all about it. It’s just another barrier for these landlords from potential liability. But in any case, they can require it. And if they do, the tenants can purchase a policy through us or just upload a copy of a policy they’ve purchased elsewhere. So you know, they can buy ours or their market rate is pretty standard price. And you’ll see we make a commission on that, or, again, they can just upload a policy found elsewhere. So the three things to recap our online payments, tenant screening, and renter’s insurance, all charged to tenants by default, but the landlord can choose to take on some of those transaction fees if they’d like to.

J Darrin Gross  25:48  

Well, I would think the screening is a, you know, standard, with or without any kind of deal. In the banking fees seem to be pretty standard anymore. I mean, it’s one of the convenience fees that people are pretty agreeable to right on all sides. And renter’s insurance, I can tell you as a landlord, and as an insurance agent, I’ve got clients that had resisted, and I’m speaking as an insurance broker, they resisted requiring insurance of their tenants. And over time, they finally something changed, where they, they all of a sudden did require it. And I remember one of my clients coming to me and saying, Hey, you know, I haven’t had to call you for a long time. You know, and it was about these claims that they’ve been having, that were tenant, the tenant was responsible for, but they were able to turn them into the tenants insurance. And, you know, the tenants insurance took care of it. And I’ll remind, anybody the number one fire source in, in, you know, homes and apartments is cooking. 

So until, you know, people don’t cook, you’re always going to be exposed, and usually, so the water from the fire department that creates the real big mess. But, you know, it’s, it’s a great, great tool. And also, I think that having it in your system there kind of raises your penetration as far as the, you know, people have in it, I mean, if you require in your lease, and then you also make it easy for them to get exactly. And the last thing I’ll say is that I think that you naturally by selection or or self selection, you you raise the caliber of your tenant, you know, as opposed to having somebody that’s, that’s not doing that. So that’s, that’s, that’s my take on those things. But that’s, that’s, that’s great. I mean, I think that’s those those seem to be pretty, pretty standard and and i would think that they make a hole for a better tenant, and then landlord tenant experience.

Dave Spooner  28:01  

Yeah, I, I require renter’s insurance of all my tenants, we make them we make a provide it. I just think it’s such an important barrier these days. And it’s it, like you said, I think folks would be surprised how much damage it can cover if there is damage caused by the tenant. And it also covers in situations liability. Like if a dog you know, somebody, tenant attendants, dog bites somebody else. If they don’t have insurance, you can get called in Well, if they have that, that’s just another barrier from your insurance getting called in to cover that kind of stuff. So it’s it’s a it’s a great tool. It’s inexpensive for tenants, it’s really not that pricey, and it’s just another barrier protecting, you

J Darrin Gross  28:36  

No, that’s great. Hey, Dave, if we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. And sexy name shifting gears kind of moving forward with the risk and the insurance question here. Yeah. So by day, I’m an insurance broker, and typically work with clients to assess risk, and determine what to do with risk. And there’s three strategies we typically consider. The first is can we avoid the risk? The second is, can we minimize the risk. And if we can’t do option one or two, we look to see if we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. And I like to ask my guests if they can look at their own situation. It could be their clients, investors, tenants market, however you you would like to frame the question and identify what you consider to be the biggest risk. And for clarification, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. But if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Dave Spooner, what is the BIGGEST RISK?

Dave Spooner  29:43  

It’s a great question. It’s something we think and talk about a lot, you know, especially as a small company. We were founded four and a half years ago now a little over four and a half years ago now. And we’re at an inflection point, kind of an extended inflection point where we’ve grown really Really quickly and we’re continuing to grow. And it’s really accelerating more and more people are finding us, more and more landlords are giving us great reviews online, we’re the word is out that Innago is a premier product for small to midsize landlords. And we’re growing faster than we’ve ever gone before by exponential figures, right, which is great. It’s very exciting. But the risk that comes with that is in growing the team, right and building our team internally, in finding great employees, it’s easier to have quality control on your team when it’s just you and five other people 10 other people 15 other people, but as it grows beyond that, it becomes harder and harder. And that’s where we are right now where we’re growing pretty rapidly. And we’re expanding our team and trying to find good talent and making sure that that talent is acclimated effectively, so that they’re happy so that they enjoy working here, so that they feel fulfilled, but they’re also providing great value to the to the rest of the team and to our clients. That’s our that’s our biggest risk right now. It’s just continuing to find good team now team members. And to relate that back to real estate. I think that’s ultimately a place that landlords and real estate investors get to right, if you’re purchasing your first property, your first couple properties, it’s easy to control a lot of that stuff, it’s easy to do quality control, but as you grow bigger, you have to have a great team, right? You got to have a good broker, you got to have a good a good insurance guy, of course, right? You got to have a good lawyer on your team, maybe a tax guy, a CPA, maybe you hire internally, right? You hire your own property manager, it’s the same risk that other folks have. We’re experiencing it on a bigger scale right now. And that’s, that’s our biggest risk, something we think about a lot, something we talk about a lot. So we’re gonna make sure to mitigate as much as possible.

J Darrin Gross  31:37  

No, that’s, that’s pretty insightful. And I think you know, anybody who’s having growing pains, you know, that’s always a challenge. Like you said, it’s easy to manage five, but, you know, when you get beyond, you know, 50 or 100 It’s a whole different equation. So that’s good. Hey, Dave, where can listeners go if they’d like to learn more or connect with you?

Dave Spooner  32:02  

Yeah, you can check us out at innago.com it’s i n n ago. That’s N as in Nancy Comm. You can also find us on all the major social media platforms, we’re typically under a Innago software. But if you just search like Innago, Twitter and Innago Facebook is better. I also like to we’re very transparent. You can call us up here at Innago you can email us I like to give up my email, please. If anyone has questions, they can email me at Dave d A v at innago dot com. I am happy to to answer them or get you in touch with the smarter folks at the company that can answer them better than I can. But yeah, you can find us on online anywhere and and reach out to me directly if you’d like to.

J Darrin Gross  32:41  

Awesome. Dave, I can’t say thanks enough for taking the time today. I’ve enjoyed our talk learned a lot. And I hope we can do it again soon.

Dave Spooner  32:50  

Yeah, it’s just great. Thanks so much for having me.

J Darrin Gross  32:53  

All right. For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow. That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to Commercial Real Estate Pro Network’s. CRE PN Radio.

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