Unlock 5 Proven Strategies for Stress-Free Property Management Today!

John Harcar (00:02.083)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Bradley Meyer. And what we’re going to talk about with Bradley is, besides his sounds extensive journey in business and real estate, we’re going to talk about how he’s helping landlords really maximize profits while minimizing stress. If you’ve ever been a landlord, we know there’s a lot of stress. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers,

Bradley N.Meyer (00:25.998)
Thank

John Harcar (00:31.227)
Really all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their business. We provide tools and training in the community to grow the business you want to grow, which helps you in turn live the life that you always dreamed of. So Bradley, hey, welcome to our show.

Bradley N.Meyer (00:45.166)
Hi, thank you. Pleasure to be here.

John Harcar (00:47.705)
Yeah, thank you very much. I’m excited to talk about how you minimize stress as a landlord. know the stress, but I want more money and you there’s always that conundrum. But before we talk about all that, why don’t we tell our audience a little bit about yourself? You know how you got into the business? I got into real estate and you know what brought you to today.

Bradley N.Meyer (01:08.154)
actually it’s kind of a unique story. I got into the business in the seventh grade. So yeah, looking at me, can tell I’m kind of old. So I got like five plus decades in it. was living in the San Francisco Bay area. Family was living in an apartment complex and they had a maintenance guy who…

John Harcar (01:17.871)
Seventh grade.

John Harcar (01:31.515)
Hmm?

Bradley N.Meyer (01:37.079)
I guess the nice way to say it is it a tendency to have hydraulic clutches. And this particular apartment complex had an underground parking area, an underground lobby, and then…

The first floor had like a swimming pool and first floor apartments. It was an open patio thing. And instead of him typically sweeping out the underground parking, he decided to take a fire hose and after there was about four inches of water in that and the lobby and the elevator, he realized there was no drains. So when the owners and the property management company showed up, man, I’m like this.

Pardon my language, smart-ass seventh grader. I just kind of looked around and saw in the driveway there were drains, but there were two speed bumps and said, well, why don’t you guys just knock a hole in the speed bumps and the water will go out into the drains. And the owner turned around and looked at the property manager and said, you figure out how to hire this kid and fire that other guy. We’ll talk later. And he walked off. Yeah, and I’m like, damn, was summertime. I didn’t really want a job.

John Harcar (02:44.794)
That’s cool.

John Harcar (02:52.199)
Keep your mouth shut, now you gotta go to work!

Bradley N.Meyer (02:54.402)
Yeah, not a word. That was my entry into the business and then just kind of worked other apartment complexes and stuff growing up. Had some friends that worked for a company that was building and developing large-scale multifamily units and was destined to be a carpenter.

Passed the apprenticeship program, all of that, and then when I got out of high school, nobody was building anything, and they were like, hey man, you want to come to Nevada with us and help us do this punch list on this 260 unit apartment complex? They got a swimming pool, indoor outdoor pool, and jacuzzis, and we get free rent and $1,200 a month.

John Harcar (03:40.954)
Was this in Vegas?

Bradley N.Meyer (03:42.707)
No, it was in Reno. Which was a blessing because Vegas probably wouldn’t have been healthy. Reno was just as bad because this was in the 70s. And then that just snowballed into, I might as well stay here. It’s year-round work as opposed to seasonal construction and just boots on the ground, worked my way up in the business, had some great mentors.

John Harcar (03:44.483)
Right now, okay.

John Harcar (03:48.782)
Yeah, no.

Bradley N.Meyer (04:08.416)
and just stuck with it and it’s been very nice to me. So now I’m just at the point where I’m paying back.

John Harcar (04:18.872)
I love that. And that’s probably one of the more unique stories I’ve ever had on, know, cause I ask everybody like, and a lot of people tell me, it was that purple book, right? I read that book or I had a friend that was a family friend that was in real estate. You just, yeah, that was incredible. That was a great story. So as you’re doing all this and as you’re learning these things, did you just kind of learn the school of hard knocks or did you, you mentioned mentors. Did you seek out mentors?

Bradley N.Meyer (04:46.95)
early on I didn’t because I honestly didn’t have a concept of what they were. But there were some people I worked with at companies that realized my potential better than I did. And they realized that I’m a loyal employee. I’m not going to complain about what we got to do. I’m just going to get it done and move on because

My father taught me and my grandfather taught me if you’re working for somebody, if it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense. If you can’t generate your wages plus a profit, why would that person want to keep you?

I don’t know, and that resonated. Yeah, I mean that resonated with me because I’d watch friends that would complain and slack and there’s plenty of work and they’re getting laid off and I’m like, okay, yeah, I get it.

John Harcar (05:29.524)
What benefit are you to that business?

John Harcar (05:45.431)
As you grew and learn and you kept kind of going and going up the ranks, like what were some of the struggles that you ran into? just, mean, was it just the learning process? it the, I mean, what were some things that you kind of hit hurdles in roadblocks?

Bradley N.Meyer (06:02.35)
Some of the harder things to learn for me was at the multifamily investment level. Seeing the bigger picture as I was early in my career, like first starting to be senior maintenance person slash assistant manager. How

for lack of a better way to put it, how replaceable and disposable we were with new management. Now, I wasn’t seeing the big picture of investors will keep a property five to seven years and then sell it and then a new management company will come in. And instead of, and I later on thought this was the most unintelligent thing to do, they would just…

get rid of all the staff and bring in new staff that knows nothing about the property. You want to get new managers and you want to different lease up and marketing people because you think it hasn’t been handled the way you can do it? Great, but…

Don’t fire the maintenance guys and the custodial staff that knows how everything works and how everything is and who’s tenants of pain in the butt and who’s trash in the place and who’s taking care of the place and who’s going to tell you what happened over the weekend. You killed your resources.

John Harcar (07:28.826)
Mm-hmm. Well, you’re gonna take a bunch of time to train a bunch of new people. So you’re just kind of going you’re taking steps backwards. You’re not improving anything

Bradley N.Meyer (07:36.31)
Yeah, exactly. And it took a while to grasp that with some companies that they were just like going to be that way. And then I transitioned into subsidized housing and that was a bit of a learning curve, but very educational. I had some good mentors there.

John Harcar (07:52.948)
Why was it important for you in some situations to have a mentor?

Bradley N.Meyer (07:59.407)
They could show me the things that I couldn’t see. They could point out the flaws in the way I did things, but the way they did it wasn’t critical. It was beneficial and presented to like, you do it this way. However, if you got the big picture and learned to do it this way, you could be more beneficial to the people that hire you. You would be a better asset.

You wouldn’t be replaced, you would be moved.

John Harcar (08:33.434)
Yes. And that’s big, right? Make yourself, you know, irreplaceable and be able to be, yeah, be able to say, like, look, you might not be good at this spot, but look, I’m keeping you here. I’ll move you over here. I’ll do this. Yeah. That type of person.

Bradley N.Meyer (08:40.45)
What? Yeah?

Bradley N.Meyer (08:50.7)
Yeah, you’re coachable, you’ll listen, you’ll grasp a concept. And in that business, typically you never rented a house or an apartment. So when you lost a job and had 24 hours to pack your stuff and go, you had nowhere to go. Unless you had a friend that was living in their own place or renting something, you were like, well, I don’t got a job. How do I rent something like that?

John Harcar (09:07.097)
Right?

Bradley N.Meyer (09:18.424)
I don’t know, so like learning to be indispensable.

John Harcar (09:23.114)
Yeah, 100%. I think that is one of the biggest traits and along with coachable. I think those two kind of two run hand to hand because if you’re coachable, they’re going to coach you to be indispensable, right? Cause they’re going to tell you everything they want you to do. And if you do it all, you do it great. So let’s talk about what’s your business now, because I really liked the conversation we had prior to the recording, uh, you know, with this new software and stuff that you have. you say you own a brokerage. Okay. Right. Okay. And then you, you’re creating a software for.

Bradley N.Meyer (09:28.365)
well.

Bradley N.Meyer (09:46.328)
Yes.

John Harcar (09:50.68)
Real estate agents and it’s kind of, in your words, a new brokerage real estate model.

Bradley N.Meyer (09:57.819)
John Harcar (09:57.977)
Or there’s one new model coming, I guess I could say.

Bradley N.Meyer (10:01.356)
Yeah, it’s out there. We’re talking with different brokerages about putting it to use. guess the best way to describe it is it handles the complaints that most of the brokers have about their agents and what most of the agents have a hard time doing. And that’s…

Staying in communication and staying on top of.

their sphere of influence.

And if you’re a new agent, we’ve got a way to just reach out and talk to everybody without doing the run around to everybody you know and hand out business cards and go, if you ever want to sell anything, come see me. It’s like, yeah, right. Like you’re already kind of pissed me off. Just, you know, it’s just, it’s more of a how can I help you? Here’s what I can do.

Here’s some information if you run across somebody thanks but it’s automated and not invasive.

John Harcar (11:17.604)
Okay, where or what situation arise where you saw the need for a platform like this and decided to create one?

Bradley N.Meyer (11:28.942)
In talking with lot of other brokers and people that are buying property management franchises and then their biggest complaint is I don’t have time to train my staff for my expectations on everything they need to do with the tenant, with the investor, then how to do the marketing, then how to stay on top of the showing schedules. And then when I hire people to do it…

I don’t have the finances to hire the great people so when they get really skilled at it they go get swooped up by somebody else who’s going to pay them another three or four hundred dollars a month and at that level three or four hundred dollars a month is a doggone car payment. They’re not mad at the people that they train and lead. They get it. Their biggest issue is

John Harcar (12:22.042)
Right. They’re mad at the process and how it unfolds.

Bradley N.Meyer (12:26.4)
Yeah, they’re mad at how do I change this process? What can I put, what can I get that’s here 24 hours a day, seven days a week that’ll do what I want it to do, the way I want it to do it, and not bankrupt me with taxes, insurance, raises, days off, vacation, personality conflicts?

So I teamed up with a good friend of mine who, him and his twin brother had had a couple of KW brokerages over the years and dealt with all of that. Patrick was always on the marketing, cutting edge, software stuff.

John Harcar (12:56.036)
Bad moods.

Bradley N.Meyer (13:12.298)
and generating leads and income for their brokerages. We got together about four years ago and just started looking at new AI that’s coming out. He reached out to some people he’s met and like we talked about earlier, it’s not the you get on the phone with the AI and go, let me talk to a human being. And you get loops back to I don’t understand you. This is like

John Harcar (13:40.346)
Right.

Bradley N.Meyer (13:41.782)
This one goes, fine, let me find somebody who can talk to you right now. And if I can’t reach them, can I send you a link to get on their calendar to schedule a call as soon as possible?

John Harcar (13:55.781)
Did you have a background in creating this type of software or do you have a partner that you work with?

Bradley N.Meyer (14:02.094)
I work with a partner but I had a background because I was always having to fill that need too. The higher up I got in property and asset management, I started dealing with the problems with people that were higher up when I was starting out.

It’s like, why didn’t the leasing agent get here at eight o’clock this morning? Well, she stopped for donuts, gas, talked to her boyfriend, and she got in at 8.45. What did she do then? She made coffee, she filled out yesterday’s paper. When did she start calling people back? that was around 11.30.

John Harcar (14:37.37)
Yeah, around lunchtime, right before she took a 30 minute lunch.

Bradley N.Meyer (14:42.412)
Yeah, and this is like… doesn’t do that.

John Harcar (14:48.73)
So do you see, I mean, like you mentioned, new brokerage model. So I mean, with the whole AI revolution, AI thing coming, I mean, or here, you know, what are the biggest changes you’re going to see that AI is going to kind of replace?

Bradley N.Meyer (15:03.0)
think AI is going to fill in a lot of gaps that have always been in the business. And I also think that the brokerage model that’s been around for almost 100 years is going to change. And that, I believe, is driven more by the consumer than the companies. The people that are buying houses are younger, more tech savvy.

don’t mind dealing with it. Many of them appreciate dealing with it. And the new agents that are coming in are tech savvy, that dialing for dollars and doing floor time, that’s not them. You’re not gonna get them to sit in an office every Thursday from noon to five and hope somebody walks in and they can make some money. No, they’re gonna be out socializing and hustling and doing what they need to do in today’s world.

John Harcar (15:53.614)
Automate it.

John Harcar (15:58.735)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Bradley N.Meyer (15:59.203)
Things change. Thank God. Nobody loved doing floor time.

John Harcar (16:04.42)
Yeah, no, it’s the I mean it takes away all the menial to I had a guy who I had on the podcast that had an AI bot and I remember I think it’s buying properties but it sounded just like a normal human with even with the like the whole like my gosh really just the way that all sounded like a normal person would react it just it’s incredible so yeah I see it replacing a lot of stuff what other changes do you think it’s gonna impact or things it’s gonna affect

Bradley N.Meyer (16:36.3)
I think there’s going to be some opportunities opening up for…

smaller investors and smaller investor groups to get into some niches in the business that the Black Rock, Blackstone, Blue Sky are not going to be interested in or grabbing in the multifamily sector. And also the tiny houses and the mobile home park stuff. I mean, there’s guys that have been making

bank on that for decades. And now people are starting to look at it going, well, yeah, where I’m at in East Tennessee…

John Harcar (17:16.666)
Yeah.

Bradley N.Meyer (17:26.402)
There are cities that will, you put it on a foundation, banks will treat it and give you an FHA loan on it. Yeah, they’ll do.

John Harcar (17:32.846)
Really? So are you seeing tiny home communities popping up?

Bradley N.Meyer (17:37.495)
Seeing tiny home communities popping up. I’m seeing some RV parks, but I’m also seeing some of the mobile home manufacturing people team up with a buyer and like, you got a lot. We’ll do everything. We’ll do all the development work and drop the house on the lot for you. We just need a small amount down the gate going and then escrow payments.

John Harcar (17:41.176)
Are more RV parks?

Bradley N.Meyer (18:03.672)
through setting your house on your lot. And I’m seeing cities being more receptive to that. Because once they’re on a solid foundation, they’re going, hey, that’s a house. We can tax that. We can tax that lump. It’s a house. It’s real property. You know, buying a license plate and dealing with whatever, you’ve got a house. And the construction of some of them is phenomenal.

John Harcar (18:12.12)
That’s a house. Yeah, it’s real property.

Yeah. Yeah.

John Harcar (18:23.438)
Yeah, that’s incredible.

Bradley N.Meyer (18:31.106)
Compared to some construction I’ve seen some stick built stuff I’ve seen in some places.

John Harcar (18:36.26)
Well, I’ve seen some of those folding homes, right? The ones that they can deliver and they open up, fold up. And like I’ve seen about some of the construction part of it. It’s like, man, that’s nicer than, you know, some of the nicest manufactured homes I’ve seen.

Bradley N.Meyer (18:41.644)
Yeah.

Bradley N.Meyer (18:48.684)
Yeah, I’ve seen some of those too, but I’m still kind of like, hmm, I don’t know where I live. The wind blows really hard sometimes. So I don’t want it to fold my house up with me in it. It would make an envelope somewhere.

John Harcar (18:54.956)
I, yeah, right.

John Harcar (19:04.553)
I’m in Idaho. I’m in Boise. So it’s like I’m afraid to get too much snow on the roof and it just starts collapsing down and folding on itself. It’s like, I don’t know about all that.

Bradley N.Meyer (19:07.182)
Okay.

Bradley N.Meyer (19:12.48)
Yeah, yeah, snow loads and stuff. What did you guys calculate for wind shear and snow loads?

John Harcar (19:17.434)
Exactly. So, wow, that’s awesome. But let’s touch on real fast on how you’re helping landlords maximize profits and minimize stress.

Bradley N.Meyer (19:28.142)
I’ve a couple books I’ve done and I’ve got a bunch of little ebook things. I’ve got a website community that’s free. One of the main things that I tell landlords and have for decades is you start off the relationship by managing the expectations. You give the tenant what they can expect from you.

you tell the tenant what you can expect from them when you two agree on that when there is a problem and there will be problems this does not eliminate problems but this does set a foundation for having a conversation and not a screaming match and you gotta let people vent but it’s like you sit down and the tenant’s complaining about something and you go I understand your point of view but can you show me where

When we sat down and agreed on the expectations, where you got that expectation, where I wasn’t clear on making you aware that that’s not something I can do.

And vice versa, when the tenant’s late with the rent, it’s like, remember we agreed the expectation was that you don’t have any money, you’re gonna call me and you said, yeah, you thought that was fair and then you ghosted me.

John Harcar (20:41.818)
That’s big.

Bradley N.Meyer (20:56.01)
And now I got this $45 an hour off duty sheriff in uniform pounding a notice on your front door and you’re freaking out. I’m going, this is exactly what I told you I would do. Why did you expect me to do something different? You needed to call me, talk to me.

John Harcar (21:11.226)
See, that’s exactly, it’s communication.

John Harcar (21:17.818)
Communication and expectations, that’s huge. Setting that precedent, right? Knowing the rules, knowing the boundaries, knowing what’s gonna happen and what the consequences are. Then they can’t say, you never told, yes I did. Yes I did.

Bradley N.Meyer (21:28.131)
Yeah.

Yes I did. And I give people, like on the website thing, I give people what I call a landlord tin and handbook. And it’s unique for every property. You just kind of fill it out with, here’s where the valve is behind the toilet if it starts to flood. Here’s where the gas shutoff is outside. Here’s your phone company, utility company, all of that. It’s in there along with…

Here’s the number to call for maintenance. Here’s when your rent’s due. Here’s what your late fee is. Here’s what… And then you just follow up with an email every six, seven weeks. Hey, what’s going on with the house? Everything cool? Everything good? Just check it in. We’ll make sure you’re happy. You happy? Tell me you’re happy. Tell me you’re happy. You’re happy? Good. You’re happy? I’m happy. All right. Have a great one, brother. Bye. You know, come to Hollywood.

John Harcar (22:15.108)
Come on!

Yep. No, I love it.

Bradley N.Meyer (22:25.23)
Come the holidays, it’s like October, I start hammering people, just turn the oven on. Did you fire up the AC? Did you fire up the heater? Don’t call me Thanksgiving and tell me your oven don’t work, because I’m going give you an explanation on how to go barbecue a turkey. Because ain’t nobody coming out Thanksgiving because you’re defining on your part doesn’t make it an emergency on everybody else’s.

John Harcar (22:36.75)
simple.

John Harcar (22:42.842)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (22:46.362)
Hey, nobody coming out of the isle yet.

John Harcar (22:52.324)
Dove is out. hope you got a fryer because I told you what would happen to who to call. Well, Bradley, man, you came on to share some great info for folks that maybe want to talk to a bit more about it. Maybe get your free ebook or your other books. How do they get in touch with you? Best way to get in contact.

Bradley N.Meyer (22:56.978)
Bradley N.Meyer (23:09.162)
yourlandlordhub.com or was it okay to give him a phone number? Okay, I don’t have it memorized. It’s 423-451-8898. That’s actually, call that and that’s part of the AI system stuff too. So you can go in there and talk about whatever you want and tell, think that bot’s name is David or Alex or Jennifer or something. I don’t know.

John Harcar (23:15.384)
Yeah, of course.

John Harcar (23:38.66)
That’s cool, You just don’t know. I know, that’s so funny. Well, we’ll put all your contact. You sent me some stuff, too. I’ll put all that down in the show notes. So you guys, you’ll be able to reach out and connect with him. Bradley, thank you again for coming on here. And guys, I hope you all enjoyed the show. And we will see you on the next one. Cheers.