#95: Mike Brewer: The OG of Multifamily Talks AI, Rapid Growth, Leadership & Lessons Learned
It’s not every day that you get to sit down with a leader as thoughtful and impactful in the multifamily industry. Referred to by many, myself included, as MB - The OG of Multifamily. Mike Brewer is the real deal. Get to know him better in this special episode of the Marketing Home, Marketing You podcast.
Can you share a little bit about your role and what a typical day looks like for you?
I am the Chief Operating Officer at The Radco Companies. The Radco Companies has an investment division and an operating division as well as some companies underneath that, like construction. A day in the life of Mike, let's see. I am generally running from office to office or from video conference to video conference putting out fires or anticipating where we might be going off the rails as a business and putting policies and procedures in place so that we don't do that. I consider myself sort of a counselor slash project manager slash forecaster in a way. If you're not looking out there and paying attention to what is happening on the horizon, you can definitely get your business off the rails pretty quickly these days.
What routines do you hold sacred?
I was diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult and so routine is a very important part of my life in terms of functioning partly for myself, but I think more so for the people that I work with. If I get wildly out of routine, I can seem sporadic as it relates to being a leader. So routine is important to me for a couple of different reasons. The first is showing up in the world as the best version of me for other people. Specifically speaking, I wake up every day at 4:45. I make my bed. I run. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. That's all part of what I call prime time. I go through those exercises and those routines to get myself primed for the day so that I can show up as the best version of myself for other people.
Prime time allows me to show up as the best version of myself for other people.
Feeling like I’ve made a contribution to the world that is of value and psychologically healthy for those that I work with is very important to me.
How do you set priorities for how you spend your time? Do you audit how you’ve spent your time in a weekly or monthly review?
I do use a lot of tools. I use a mindful journal and in this mindful journal, there is a daily task priority list on the left-hand side. I keep an ongoing to-do list that is just a giant list of things that need to be accomplished. I also keep a to-don't list, it's just as a reminder of things that I don't want to do that sometimes creep in. My giant to-do list is always prioritized. I generally do that every Sunday night, and I pick off the top 15 things that need to be accomplished during the week. I only focus on three things every day. In order for me to feel accomplished, at the end of the day, I have to tackle those three things. Those three things get set at the top of the calendar. I have do not disturb time built into my calendar. That is my focus work time, and it's non-negotiable. I will not violate that time.
Every night I ask myself, “What did I learn today?” This is a built-in audit and at the end of the year, I have 365 lessons that I can learn from. I try to create better behaviors through better systems or processes or disciplines. The other thing that I do is gratitude journaling- it’s a huge thing for me. So I write down at least three things I’m grateful for every day without fail.
I started journaling when I was 23 or 24. Pen to paper is where it’s at for me. Doing it in the morning and night is so helpful.
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How do you manage times of rapid growth in your company?
We as an organization are very thoughtful and mindful of what we want to be when we grow up and the type of growth that we want. We put a lot of time into putting the infrastructure in place ahead of time. We take on the burden of costs in the regional roles or the regional vice president roles or in many other roles. We're doing that in advance of growth. So the most important principle is to put it in place ahead of time because trying to do it from behind is just not good.
How do you deal with setbacks?
We are in favor of being candid with one another. When things go off the rails, we get everybody in our big conference room. We take off our stripes and leave all our egos outside. The first thing that we do is put a pure definition to the issue. So we start out by arguing and fussing and fighting about the pure definition of the issue, whatever got you off the rails. And only then can you start to think about how to put solutions in place to fix the problem near term, but also solve the problem long term so that your processes and systems lead you to good outcomes instead of potentially bad outcomes.
What kind of feedback do you personally receive best?
>>> Tune in to hear Mike share a story when he received feedback from his official “nose-puncher!”
What technology are you most excited about as it applies to multifamily?
GPT-3. It’s an AI writing tool and if you go to the homepage, it's a search bar just like Google. You can type a prompt into it. So you could say something like, “write a script for a podcast with Mike Brewer”, and it will list out if it knows who Mike Brewer is. Some people it doesn't know, you might have to feed a few little prompts in there to tell 'em who Mike Brewer is, but it would literally spit out the 10 questions you might want to ask me today.
I'm very bullish on that technology and I'm very excited about it. I've been using it to write, coupled with Grammarly because I do think that GPT-3 writes in robot. But when you marry it up with Grammarly and you use your own stories for illustration purposes, you can write pretty fun stuff and stuff that could be called real value.
What are your thoughts on personal branding?
I think it’s highly valuable if it’s done in a tasteful way.
Your personal brand can really help an organization.
You can leverage your personal brand in an organization. If I have 25,000 followers on a social platform and I show up to an organization, that is a lot of influence. My imagination tells me that I can really impact the business if done in a thoughtful way by drawing in talent or drawing in property assignments or subject matter expertise that might not be a part of the company yet. I fall on the side of the fence that personal branding is important. You should build it. But you should do it in a thoughtful way that's not off-putting, at least in the business.
🎙 Tune in to hear the top books you would encourage an aspiring leader to read.
How have you been so consistent with The Multifamily Collective? Where do you get inspiration for your posts?
My brain is wired to be rote routine and when I set my mind to something and I create a habit out of it, it's almost impossible for me to break the habit. I feel like it's a personal failure not to do it. So in the case of the blog, to not do it every day, it feels like me failing at something and I don't like failing. And I love it. I guess the other part I put in there is that I really love sharing with the industry. And I like to believe in my heart of hearts that there is some value that people get from just a daily share.
You recently spoke about diseased sheep in an organization. What types of behaviors or attitudes would you consider deadly diseases?
If you see a culture developing within a culture and there's a ring leader of that subculture, and you start to see that particular team operating differently than the broader culture, meaning there's happy hour for this group, but the rest are not coming in, or there's a separate activity that this group is doing. Obviously, some of that team building is appropriate, but when that starts to manifest itself in, “well, that's not quite the way we do.” Or, “I hear you that you need that, I can do that by Friday. I know you need it by tomorrow.” Those are the real tells- when you have somebody that's creating a divisive or contrary subculture within your culture.
If you could impart only one piece of advice to onsite property managers, what would it be?
I always default to “think like an owner” as the best piece of advice that I could ever give anyone. It's very hard to do because you don't have skin in the game. You're not exposed to the type of risk that an owner is exposed to, meaning money and finance. If you were signing the checks for this deal, what decision would you make? Or would this person work for you if you own the building and your name was on the side of it? That helps you get into that owner's mindset, even though you don't have the money in the game or the risk. Get yourself in that mindset, in thinking like an owner, and it will open up a whole new world for you as a property manager.
Where is your focus in 2023?
I'm really focused on growth in our organization. We're on a mission to get to 10,000 units, and then ultimately to 25,000. We really want to tighten processes, systems, disciplines, and routines in our organization. It's cross-departmental.
Cost control is another focus. Certainly, inflation has impacted the cost of goods all across the board so we're being very thoughtful about costs.
The other thing is learning and development. To be a world-class organization, an excellent organization, or a perfect organization, you can't do it without over-investment on the learning and development side, be it leadership and or skill development. So we're, I'm thinking a lot about that and how we make application of that and how we make that a collective effort and what systems and processes we use to get that training done this year and in the out years.
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