Coach Erica Odom on Property Management, Affordable Housing, and Building Wealth With Purpose

Coach Erica Odom (00:00)
The focus is definitely continuing to scale, definitely continuing to be able to reach more community. For me, obviously, I’m a real estate investor, so, you know, it’s profit. But at the same time, it’s mission, vision and purpose for me. I want our mission statement here at the company is we strive to provide affordable housing while changing communities and bringing life back to homes. So when I when I hear that mission and remind myself of what is it that we’re doing, what are we setting to do daily?

Michelle Tack (02:02)
Welcome to Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Michelle Tack. I am the podcast leader. I’m thrilled to have a operator from the area north in the Wisconsin area. ⁓ Erica Odom, just say hi.

Coach Erica Odom (02:19)
Hi, good morning.

Michelle Tack (02:20)
Erica, it’s great to have you on. Loved our preparation that we did together to get to know you even more. For those that are, you one of the things I really enjoyed about our discussion is that, ⁓ you know, you’re trying to help, you know, others in terms of investors that, ⁓ you know, in terms of your property management business across the country or et cetera, that you’ve got a

A plus from ⁓ the Better Business Bureau, which is really hard to do, but you also invest yourself in that you’ve also had the experience of investing and come very mindfully, intentionally to the business. So I really love that ⁓ about you. ⁓ Before we get into more detail, for those that may not come from the property management side of the house,

or your type of background, can you describe what your world is about from a business perspective and what markets you serve, please?

Coach Erica Odom (03:24)
So here at Odom Investments and Property Management, we focus on three different areas, property management being one of them. We work with investors from around the world that have portfolios here in Wisconsin. We are a full-scale property management company, so we are able to service all their needs when it comes to property management relations. We also ourselves are real estate investors. So we’re always looking for opportunities

opportunities

to purchase properties, opportunities to help someone who may be a distress seller and looking for a way to come out of the situation that they’re in. And then it’s that educational piece. I’ve had the opportunity to build my own in-house internship program, which is called the Scale Up Journey Internship Program, which specifically is geared towards helping individuals ages 17 to 24 who have an interest in real estate. Not only do they have the opportunity to

that field experience but also that educational aspect when it comes to real estate property management and project management.

Michelle Tack (04:31)
That’s amazing. ⁓ I love the fact, you know, the more successful folks that I talk to, you know, have different degrees of focus. But one thing that seems to be running as a truism is they all give back to their community in some way, whether that’s teaching, whether that’s investing and just makes them feel better about what they do. And in fact, our membership started with that concept of helping others. ⁓

Can you tell me, you serve all the United States, but I could be, question mark, could I be in Germany and just give you funds and you could take them and run with those? Explain to me the markets a little bit more.

Coach Erica Odom (06:00)
Absolutely. ⁓ We have, like I said, we currently work with a lot of investor partners who are scattered out across the US who have purchased here in Wisconsin. So it’s a very fluid process. They’re able to meet with us express what their needs are as far as a portfolio standpoint, what are they looking like, looking for in a property management company, and then we, you know, we’ll go over with them what we can service and offer them.

I

would like to point out it’s a partnership. It’s a collaboration. So the big focus is knowing from an investor, I’m an investor, so knowing from an investor that I have a partnership with this company, I can focus on scaling my portfolio and building my cashflow and collecting my cashflow knowing that someone is taking care of my property as if it’s their own and things are being handled.

Michelle Tack (06:32)
Yes, I love that.

Yep.

Yeah, that’s super important. You know, what else really interested me in is that you understand what you’re trying to attract. And property management, as I said to you, I’ve owned property and had property managers and I’ve had some really bad experiences and I’m sure people listening have as well. Help me! ⁓

Coach Erica Odom (07:08)
Yes.

yeah, I’ve heard horror stories.

Michelle Tack (07:18)
Help me understand

what you do to earn that triple B plus rating, but how do you operate smoothly and efficiently to the standard that you expect? Can you show that what you’re doing to do that?

Coach Erica Odom (07:33)
Well, number one, I lead by example. And as the leader of my company, I display what Odom Investments and Property Management is all about and what it looks like. And I am very big on professionalism and moving with integrity. So that is number one. And also having the right systems in place. One thing I’ve learned as an entrepreneur in any aspect, you have to have the right systems in place to make sure that things are able

Michelle Tack (07:50)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Erica Odom (08:02)
to operate and run fluidly the way you would like them to go. So you know from a property management standpoint you know having our managers in place, having our maintenance team in place, having our leasing agents in place, you know being able to meet the needs of not only our investor partners but also being able to meet the needs of our tenants and clients that we work with.

Michelle Tack (08:25)
Absolutely. Can you be more specific about maybe some of the technology you use? don’t have to say the name, but things that you’re using from an application standpoint, because you know that’s obviously critical in terms of doing a number of actions, you know, accounting, etc. Can you talk to that a little bit?

Coach Erica Odom (08:42)
about applications that we use within the business for property management.

Michelle Tack (08:44)
Yeah, just in terms of types.

Yeah, the types of applications. Again, you don’t have to say the name just if you could just the titles.

Coach Erica Odom (08:49)
Yep. So we have different.

Yep, so we have different things in place, for example, like our property management platform that we use ⁓ that. when I talk about that system that allows things to function, they they need to be whether that’s, you know, rent collection, inputting for maintenance requests, being able to have communication with tenants through this system, being able to send out mass memos. And one thing that I point out to our investing partners that I specifically

Michelle Tack (09:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yup.

Coach Erica Odom (09:21)
a like about the system that we use, going back to your point earlier, you can be all the way in Germany and yet pull up this system and be able to see everything that we see as far as, you know, are your tenants paying rent on time, how many open maintenance tickets you have out there. ⁓ So it’s a nice feature that we use for one of our systems specifically for property management.

Michelle Tack (09:43)
That’s great. I think that’s awesome. Doesn’t it alert you to problems, Erica, also? how do you deal with, I mean, every operator’s got problems. It just happens. Something happens with someone or I don’t know what the specifics are. But do you get notifications sometimes from your applications to say, check this out, this is going on?

Coach Erica Odom (10:37)
We do. it does, whether it be an email or whatever that looks like, we’ll send out an alert real time. The particular system that we use, I will say we’ve had great experience from a support technical standpoint, whatever that looks like, to be able to address whatever is going on in real time.

Michelle Tack (10:41)
Yeah.

That’s great. ⁓ Tell me what’s next for you in terms of as you look at opportunities in the future, ⁓ as we discussed earlier from 90 days to a year out, where is your focus?

Coach Erica Odom (11:07)
Yes.

The focus is definitely continuing to scale, definitely continuing to be able to reach more community. For me, obviously, I’m a real estate investor, so, you know, it’s profit. But at the same time, it’s mission, vision and purpose for me. I want our mission statement here at the company is we strive to provide affordable housing while changing communities and bringing life back to homes. So when I when I hear that mission and remind myself of what is it that we’re doing, what are we setting?

Michelle Tack (11:21)
Of course!

Coach Erica Odom (11:38)
to do

we need growth. And so with that growth, with those opportunities, that bigger vision allows us to be more impactful to communities. So we’re moving towards the direction of switching from residential to commercial to development opportunities to be able to scale on a larger scale of multifamily apartment buildings, you know, to that extent, to be able to be able to better serve our community and have more resources to do that.

Michelle Tack (11:57)
That’s great.

That’s awesome. Another trait that I’ve seen with really successful people is the money isn’t first, it’s the mission. What are they trying to do? And the money follows because of the mission that they’re on. And I think that’s really instructive as we grow and serve in our businesses. I appreciate that. ⁓ As you grow, there’s going to be more challenges that you may have not anticipated. And we all think that we…

Coach Erica Odom (12:13)
Absolutely.

Yes.

Yeah.

Michelle Tack (12:33)
get some, we get the majority, we do our research, you know, et cetera, but there’s always something that that’s a little different. ⁓ Can you, and it gets more complicated, but can you talk about maybe share an example of a recent or within the last year situation where a deal was going south or something was going south in the business. It could be a tenant, it could be whatever. And that you had to quickly pivot and address it.

Coach Erica Odom (12:36)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Tack (13:01)
Either you were successful at a Chelsea or maybe not, but what you learned about that. think people will be interested in hearing that because real estate isn’t always perfect. It’s like any other business. There’s challenges.

Coach Erica Odom (13:11)
No.

There there I’ve been in real estate for over 20 years and let me tell you there’s never not been a challenge no matter how seasoned you are or just starting out and you’re always pivoting you’re always having to process and think through the next step. We again going back to where a property management company so we’re per door based and so we had an incident where one of our investors you know had other plans and decided that it was time for him to sell right.

Michelle Tack (13:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Coach Erica Odom (13:43)
which I get it from that lens from an investor lens of why we make the decisions when the time is right. So, but when we look at that from a property management standpoint and being ready to pivot knowing how to pivot that stores that we’re losing. So, how do we pivot quickly to make sure that we are continue to flow and flow steady and able to cover or replace those doors that now we no longer.

be able to account for. ⁓ So like in that case, that is where I’ve learned, you know, again, going back to systems, networking, creating partnerships, partnerships and collaboration is key. I’ve learned, you know, even with all my experience, we need partners, we need a team, and that continues to push us forward and help us grow and scale in what we’re doing. And so in that situation, we were able with the things that we were doing, the systems that we have in place.

marketing partners, we were able to quickly continue to grow and increase our doors, so not necessarily being impacted because that particular client decided to sell.

Michelle Tack (15:36)
Great. One last question before we close today is, know, talked, we talked network was used a lot. Can you be, and that the fact that you’re very community focused, which makes sense because you’re trying to do affordable housing and make it, you know, available to folks, many folks. Can you talk about the specifics of your networking in the community that you’ve done or are doing either way?

Coach Erica Odom (15:48)
Yes.

Yes, so I.

Yes, ⁓

so in the community, I’m very well known as Coach Erica. I am very involved right here in my local community and now expanding out to other communities. And so ⁓ I’m currently involved in an organization called the Business Professional Women Organization. So when I talk about networking, that’s an opportunity there to connect with other professionals, individuals, learning about needs and community.

being able to make connections with other community partners to figure out what’s needed. ⁓ I also am very intentional about putting myself in the right environment, the right places to connect with other like-minded individuals within the and just individuals in the real estate industry to see how we can partner or how we can potentially service them or how they can service us potentially as well. So I

I always out speaking, workshops, coaching, all of the things.

Michelle Tack (17:03)
That’s great.

I love it. You’ve brought a lot of great content, Eric. I really thank you for today. I know that folks will reach out to you. Maybe some investors that want to work with you or people that want to learn from you. Can you give your email addresses and phone numbers that you want to provide publicly for people to get in touch with you?

Coach Erica Odom (17:29)
Yes, so anyone out there that would like to connect with me right away, you can just send me an email. It’s [email protected]. that’s E-R-I-C-A-O-D-O-M at odomhomes, plural, dot com. Otherwise, you can call directly into our office. It’s 1-855-ODOM-WAY or 1-855-636-6929.

Michelle Tack (17:55)
That’s awesome. Do you want to provide anything about your nonprofit? I mean the ⁓ coaching that you’re doing with the young people?

Coach Erica Odom (18:03)
Yeah, so that’s the skill of journey internship program. Again, going back to that mission and vision, I briefly mentioned that I got into real estate at 19 and just a quick snippet. I didn’t really know much about real estate and I always say like, wow, if I have the right person, right connection, who knows where I would be this many years later. So when when we’re bringing these individuals in again, ages of 17 to 24, it’s a great

Michelle Tack (18:22)
Yeah.

Coach Erica Odom (18:31)
opportunity for them to work with me one on one and really be able to pick my brain, ask me questions, for me to provide my experience, my knowledge for them to be involved in our processes, our systems to learn and get that field hands on. And we actually bring them out to the field. We bring them into houses. We’re intentional about making sure they see and get to be a part of that tenant contact.

Michelle Tack (18:35)
Mm-hmm.

Sure. Yep.

that’s awesome. that’s awesome.

Coach Erica Odom (19:00)
those real life scenarios of how are you going to pivot? How are you going to respond in situations? Right. So it’s a great opportunity. It’s a 12 week program. ⁓ We also have partnered here with one of our local partners, Partnership and Networking here in Milwaukee, Employee Milwaukee. We partner with them. So now with this opportunity, ⁓ not only do they get experience, but they have the opportunity to get paid as well through the internet.

Michelle Tack (19:04)
Right, exactly how are we gonna do that? Right, yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

that’s even better,

Coach Erica Odom (19:29)
Yes, yes absolutely.

Michelle Tack (19:29)
right? That’s awesome. That’s great. I love it. I love the time that you spent with us. I really appreciate it. For those that are listening today, if you found value from this podcast, please continue to subscribe. And for those that have not subscribed yet, please do. Again, Erica, ⁓ very pleased to have you on board and continue to great luck in the future.