Tiea Vincent: A Leader in FL Real Estate

Tracy Hayes  0:51  
Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast with your host. Tracy Hayes, best of the best is what I bring to you each episode today of one of the most influential players in Northeast Florida real estate. She has made a long journey to the board at the northeast Florida Association of Realtors as we know as ne far here in Jacksonville, Florida, she is appointed as a championing for the best buddies organization. She does all this while leading a property management office at round table, property management busy to say the least, and I look forward to hearing her goals for these organizations in 2022 so let's have a cup of tea with Tia Vincent. Tia, welcome to the show. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you. I want to start off your we talked as we said, we're going to talk about best buddies, but we did a little office collection here today, and you were going to leave with $1,000 check towards best buddy. Yes, I know your goal is 100,000 so we got 1% I know there'll be some bigger checks as they get later in the year, but we I figured, let's get you kicked off.

Tiea Vincent  1:56  
Well, they say make yourself 1% better every day.

Tracy Hayes  2:00  
There you go. Before lunch. Tell us, since we're on Best Buddies, you know, tell us how you got involved and you know what? How are you playing? Some of the goals that you have to raise this 100,000 as your

Tiea Vincent  2:13  
so it was a program that I've watched. Over the last couple of years, we've had some other big champions. Cole slate was one of them. Jeff Stone King was one of them. Scott Nyman was one of them last year. I think Wade Swindell did about 60,000 last year. So we've had some other champions. It's something that I've been wanting to get into, but I just had to find the right year where I knew I could give it the time that it deserved. And so this year for me was that year growing up in high school, there was a program, it wasn't called Best Buddies, from where I was from. And if we had best buddies, I know that the program would have been so much better and amazing, but I was one of those that helped out a special needs student and took her to lunch and to help her with her homework and things like that. And I got so much out of that program, and then she got interested out of it as well. So it's been something near and dear to my heart. It's just the timing.

Tracy Hayes  3:02  
Well, I've noticed, you know, I remember a couple years ago, before covid, going and having dinner with Christina Welch at a event I noticed is seems to be, and it obviously rebar. It's, you know, what was at that event a couple weeks ago, and it's their charity. Why do you think of the real estate agents in the whole I kind of think it's the most popular charity, least that I see of the real estate we

Tiea Vincent  3:23  
love that it stays local. It is a national company. They have branches in different states, but this money stays local. And these are our buyers, children, our customers children. These are people we're interacting with every single day. And we can see, I think, as a whole, real estate agents, we'd love to see the fruits of our labor, and we like to see it come to fruition. And this is one where you can physically see the impact it has in the community, right?

Tracy Hayes  3:47  
Because, you know, obviously we've got some other great charities, like canine for Warriors. I mean, they're building a new kennel just down the street here. They get a ton of, obviously, national exposure money, I'm sure, is coming from all sorts of areas. But some of these other charities, like Best Buddies, don't necessarily get the publicity as a canine for Warriors or have the connections at the high levels, and

Tiea Vincent  4:11  
that's where the champions come in. They pick people who are influential, if that's kind of too mountain horn, but someone who's well known in a certain industry. So they'll have people who are in the medical field, some people who are in the automobile field, but they're well known, and those people champion all year long. So they use their popularity, if you will, to bring in those funds. There's two words I

Tracy Hayes  4:30  
use on the podcast a lot, and that's exploit in an influence, and they have to be understood as positive words. Yes, you're not influencing something to do, some someone they something they don't want to do. You're not twisting their arm, but you are a person that people look up to for guidance in very many ways. You're obviously on the on the board at the far as many and we have a whole list Women's Council of realtors. You've been on that board and many others, and people look up to you for your leadership, as you have volunteered. Tremendous amount of time, quite a bit of time. Yeah, at these boards that they look for you for guidance, because you are making connections with the greater good. And this is the charity to influence some that, hey, this is where we as a whole can really make an impact.

Tiea Vincent  5:15  
I've always said there's power in numbers. One person can do a little, but a lot of people can do a lot. So I did Community Affairs task force with me for our for several years, we started the the hunger fight program myself and Lisa Andrews from Golden dog. And the first year we did 25,000 meals. Everyone was like, wow. And I said, No, we can do 100,000 and they really they've pushed against it because it takes money, right? But a couple years ago, we did 100,000 meals in two and a half hours, and we raise the money from our members.

Tracy Hayes  5:43  
That's sometimes it's just asking, it's just asking. Sometimes it's just as simple as they do, there's something greater than themselves, no doubt. And a lot of times it's just asking. It's like, you know, when I knew I was gonna have you on, and then when you were announced at rebar as that you were champion, you are one of the champions you're gonna be championing, championing the

Tiea Vincent  6:05  
title of champion, unless I earn it, right?

Tracy Hayes  6:07  
I was like, What a great way to start the show. And obviously, you know, put you one step further to that $100,000 and we will be, we'll be behind you the whole way this year. So let's dig in as I normally start the show. Where are you from?

Tiea Vincent  6:21  
Originally from a very small town outside of Nashville, Tennessee. So just west of Nashville, a place called Ashland city. A couple weeks ago, I saw a weather report and Ashland city was actually on the map.

Tracy Hayes  6:34  
That whole area is growing. Oh,

Tiea Vincent  6:36  
national just spread. Yeah, they just built a high rise condominium on the river in my hometown. I'm like, who's gonna buy this stuff? Country music stars, that's who buys this stuff. But, yeah, very small town. I was a tomboy in high school. I was an overachiever then as well. So President of the hunting and fishing club, a president of the car audio club, president of the keyettes club. So I was heavily involved in high school as well.

Tracy Hayes  7:00  
All right, being involved is one thing. Being on the board sometimes, you know, to me, someone has to do it. And why is it not you? Right? I think everyone just that short little story, you were starting being on boards when you were in high school. And how many boards are you actually sitting on right now? Oh, I haven't I haven't actively.

Tiea Vincent  7:22  
I mean, I'm on the board for nefar. I am the past president, immediate past president for narcomom state, and I'm a DVP for Women's Council, and I'm involved with Florida realtors and NAR right? So I'm not necessarily cheering all those, but I'm involved with all

Tracy Hayes  7:35  
of this. And not all of them have any direct influence in your in your business directly. It's just being involved in the industry and making it better, correct, right? If someone, someone has to do it. And I think, to me, I think more people, you know, you shouldn't have to sit on the on all those boards. Obviously, you're effective and what you do, and you make your way there. But everyone should, should try to contribute in one way, shape, or even it's just one board for one year.

Tiea Vincent  8:02  
I'm always preaching, yeah, for me, from a very young age, I knew I wanted to have a seat at the table. It didn't mean that I needed to be at the head seat. I just needed to be at the table, right? And I just, like I said before, I like to see that my work pays off. And sometimes that work is a charity, sometimes that work is in my own business, and I grow the company, and I'm making more money, but sometimes it's watching another agent grow and have those aha moments, or even having those moments where they didn't get themselves in trouble, where they could have, if it wasn't for something that I said, Hey, don't do this, because you could get yourself

Tracy Hayes  8:36  
right and in every even just Being, I don't know, to me, your biggest position directly, or has probably the direct impact, is being on the board at ne far, would you agree? I would agree, yeah, and not trust me, boards, the previous board, nothing. I don't know anything about the previous board, so, but they come and go, and some boards make some bad decisions, or some boards don't, as things change as in our world and real estate, you know how social media and all that stuff has changed our aspects. I know when I was over there chatting with your team, and I interviewed Patty Ketchum for the podcast. We did it in the in the at ne far, and they were talking about opening a podcast, putting a podcast, studio or studio type thing in there. Yeah, that's what the real the real estate agents need. You want to be seen as a resource before you want people to come there. I know when I went to Florida realtors and got approved to teach intro the real estate C class, they said, don't just go and start teaching it anywhere you can go get some real estate agents together, check with your local board. And I think that was that's very important. You're the board means a lot and has a lot of there's a lot of influence. Things don't happen overnight. It's there is some politics involved, but that's why you have our pack and those type of things to slowly, you know, make things happen for the good, for the real estate, for everyone.

Tiea Vincent  9:55  
So nefar has a lot to offer our members, and historically, I think the. Problem was, is the members didn't know about it, and so therefore, while I made it like my personal, personal goal to make sure all the members knew of all the things and opportunities they had, all the education, all the networking events and things like that. But I have seen a change in the far in the last four to five years, they are really going into the future with their eyes wide open. How can we, you know, better ourselves and give our members more benefits and and you see that with the leadership line, you've got Mark Jernigan in there, or not during good mark Rosen they'll both kill me. Mark Rosener in there, but you've got Diana gallavis coming in behind. She's She's young. She's been in the profession for a long time. She's got an open mind and new ideas. Rory is in there, and you've got me coming right behind. So you've got four years of very open minded, forward thinking leaders.

Tracy Hayes  10:48  
Because I've heard it. I haven't heard it lately, though, but in the last three or four years, I've heard it numerous times, where people are afraid the zillows and the true elas are going to take over the real estate industry. Everyone's going to be buying their real estate online. And I totally disagree. There's still, there's still a human touch. There may be some transactions. You know, anybody try something, they're going to get a percentage of the pie. But I don't think it's going to take away, as long as the agents on the ground stay on top of their game, whether it's social media, video, whatever it is going on. And that's where the board, I mean, that's where nefar as a whole, comes in. There.

Tiea Vincent  11:26  
For a long time, we kept hearing videos, videos, videos and and what you're hearing from whoever told you that is true, they are putting in a video studio, and we're going to see what potential comes out of that, what we can use it

Tracy Hayes  11:38  
for, right? I'm going to let go. This is the million dollar secret right here. Okay, I'm at rebar the other day, first time I've ever been there. Okay? And I know

Tiea Vincent  11:46  
I've been involved every year. Yes, you're

Tracy Hayes  11:49  
involved in this. So here's, I'm jealous that you got to experience I'm gonna go, I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna go into depth, because I'm gonna tell you like it is, because I think, I wouldn't say you're missing the boat, but you're the the bar needs to be raised. I think there's so much possibility. There is unbelievable. 1200 agents, roughly, we're in that room and

Tiea Vincent  12:11  
one 200 We held it in the conference room at ne far, 200 and we had plastic wrap in between the seats to break out rooms.

Tracy Hayes  12:19  
That's That's good. Gotta love those stories, right? So, so we're talking about video, and you just brought that up, and I'm like, Okay, we're there were so many breakout sessions because I was going around seeing what other people were talking about in some well known agents in the area were doing some of these breakouts. This isn't like no one is here with a green room, because I have stood in front of several 100 loan officers at one time doing a presentation. Said who does video? And no one raised their hand. Yet every podcast, every top leader that you listen to in the industry, is telling you, yes, you exploit social media for what it is. It's free. Takes a few minutes of your time. And I really think the baby steps of and I think you guys are on to it, to creating that room, because people can come in there and they can make their mistakes, or whatever reality is, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. I'm stealing that from Steve Kyles, he has a podcast with the mortgage market animals. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly, get out there and just start doing it. Takes these steps. Hopefully that room will make some people feel comfortable to go in there and shoot their video. And I'm sure you're gonna have someone there to kind of help them and get those baby steps to start getting out there and moving forward. Because I think too many people are fear. Oh, what am I going to look like? Trust me, the people who love you don't care what don't care what you look like.

Tiea Vincent  13:44  
I went to a conference about five years ago, and I don't even remember what state it was in at this point. And I came back to Howard and Keith, my business partners, and I said, we're not doing video, and we're already behind the curve. No one else in Jackson at the time was doing it, but everyone else in the country already had started. And I was seeing this as a we had to do this, and we invested a ton of yes, the room is quite impressive. I get impressed by it. But we started cranking out videos. And within six to eight months, we started seeing other brokerages doing the same thing. And that's when I went to nefar and said, you know, we do this Monday morning emails that go out, but why can't we do this into a video form? Why can't we do some type of Monday morning I picture something a lot like in high school when you do that, yeah, the news channel in the morning, yeah, have a couple of well known, you know, people that people recognize, have a

Tracy Hayes  14:30  
different guest in every morning in some sort of subject matter for a few minutes, absolutely,

Tiea Vincent  14:34  
yeah, that's, that's my vision, where I would like to see things go.

Tracy Hayes  14:37  
I said 100 and 100 days. It's, I've taken a few days off. Or, I know, I skip a day sometimes, but I kind of not to put a video out every day, or two videos in the same dash today. Well, try to do a video every day. That's great. Two a day, you kind of, I think, I think it's too much of me. But, I mean, you can see how silly just, I just pick a topic of whatever it may be, self employment. And applying for a loan, and I talked for 60 to I try to keep it under two minutes and just, boom, get it out there. And you I'm amazed. Friends, family, my Alumni Association, they're all, you know, Facebook friends, they're the ones that are seeing it. It's reminding them. They may not even be interested in the subject, but you're talking about mortgages, in my case, or a real estate agent, you know, that's reminding everyone you're Hey, I'm active, I'm here, and then when you're ready, I'm you

Tiea Vincent  15:27  
know, I get emails and text messages and things like that all the time from people on Facebook who I've never met in person. And I get, are you still doing property management? Yeah, I've been doing it for my entire I'm not gonna quit anytime soon, but it's because they saw a video or a post of something in the it just reminded them, and they may have seen it two years ago, but still in their brain,

Tracy Hayes  15:48  
I literally had someone call me on a I did one of my little videos, and I actually put it on my YouTube channel. It's just a couple minutes thing on pool escrow. Out of the blue, someone called me now what she needed the escrow for was not needed, but that video is out there. YouTube's the second largest search engine to Google. People are searching and awesome that popped up, and she called me. The great thing about the video, and a lot of the subjects that we talked about can be repurposed, is to content, content, content, content, exactly, feeding it out there. Alright, so go back, skip the city where you were. You grew up

Tiea Vincent  16:20  
outside of Nashville, in a small town outside of Nashville that was a bit of a country girl. What'd you do next? Married my high school sweetheart the day after I turned 18.

Tracy Hayes  16:29  
Oh, my goodness. Welcome to Tennessee. Yes.

Tiea Vincent  16:33  
So married him. Moved away. My mom's from Tennessee. So I can say that. You can say he wasn't my cousin, by the way, just so we're putting that out there, but yeah, so he joined the military and and off to Jackson. When we came. We had a couple of small visits to Virginia and to Pensacola, but I ended up in Jacksonville in 2000 late, 2003 and my first apartment that we rented together, I was signing the lease, and I said, Hey, you know I'm new to the area. Do you know anyone hiring? And they said, Well, we're hiring great, and you get a discount on your rent for living here and working here. I got a job with the apartment community, and within six months, I kept seeing the broker, the property manager, sitting in her big, pretty office. I said, Oh, how do I get that job? You got to get your real estate license, and we can do that. So I got my real estate license, and that's all she wrote. That was, I was 18 years old, and I never looked back.

Tracy Hayes  17:26  
Wow, that's, that's interesting, because obviously, you know, how many of us, you know, have changed, done different things, and just, you know, we don't like that, don't like that. And I'm one of those. Well, it took me till I was 35 before I landed in the mortgages. I look at some of these young guys in the office, I'm like, You guys have no idea your 10 year head start you have on me well,

Tiea Vincent  17:46  
and there I was, you know, say, 25 years old, and I've got, you know, six, seven years of experience, and I'm going into an interview with a potential new customer, and they're looking at me like, I'm a child, right? Like I'm gonna hand you my $500,000 property to maintain. What am I thinking? But the truth was is I had more experience than the 35 year old or the 45 year old who this was their second career, and they've been in doing it for a year. So I fought through that, through being a female, being a young female, for a very long time. And somewhere around that 10 to 15 year mark in the business is where I started seeing okay, I don't have to fight to be taken seriously. My longevity and my experience is speaking for itself.

Tracy Hayes  18:24  
So sometimes you have to be patient in those situations. I we've had some young people, unfortunately, come and go. They come in as assistants and they want to be loan officers. But there, there is that. I mean, I don't know if maturity is the word or whatever, or, you know, in your case, it was just obviously them looking at you, going, she's way too young to have seven years experience in this business. There is a graduation level, not that you have to wait for any certain year, just different people are different. Yeah, you, I think you're a fighter, yeah, to be on any of these boards, you have to have some you have to have a backbone. Let's put it that way. Alright, so no formal I didn't see any formal college, if I recall, I looked on there, right? Yeah, I did yourself a lot of money, a

Tiea Vincent  19:09  
little stint at FCC J I thought I was going to go into criminal justice. So I was doing property management by day some college between about four and 8pm and then I was dealing poker six nights a week, from about 8pm until 2am to be able to provide for myself. But my my husband now, so I did get married, but I did get divorced from my ex husband. I'm married now. When he met me, I was dealing poker. I'm a huge Texas old woman fan. I like statistics, I like percentages, and I like to play the numbers there,

Tracy Hayes  19:41  
right, right? Because, actually, you changed, no, because we've been bouncing around a little bit. Hopefully people are following us here. But it's all it's all great about your story. You're on these boards. People see you as your leader. You were a young leader in property management. You know, well, out in front with a lot more experience. And like I said, older people, what do you do to keep your sword sharp? Are you a podcast listener, book reader? You have to be putting something into your mind.

Tiea Vincent  20:10  
So I tell people all the time, invest in yourself, right? Don't assume, even after 18 years in the business, that I know everything. So podcasts, absolutely, although I don't tend to go towards real estate podcasts. I prefer things that like to just off the wall, topics that make me think we go, Hmm, positive, yes, yeah, those things that you know I might see a question on Jeopardy, but I know that, but I like to take deeper dives into things. So those types of podcasts I do like audio books that don't sit and read as much as I used to, but I do go walk on the beach and look for shark seats with my daughter, and it's about a two hour walk that we do, and I'm typically doing an audio book while I'm doing that walk. And then I attend every property management and real estate conference I can, if I have the time, I try to get there, and I get more out of doing this right here, talking, yeah, and learning from other people's experiences and them learning from mine than I really do in the classroom, but always trying to take a couple of things on with

Tracy Hayes  21:06  
me, invest in yourself. It was I spoke about this a couple months ago at our sales, and they had me speak. And because I do invest in events as well, I follow Carl white over in with the mortgage market, animals, Freedom club over he's over in Tampa. I follow go to his events. Positive energy, positive people. They are with the great thing is, all these people are coming from all over the country with what they're doing. And they're in the in the little ideas and just share the most recent one, big one that you want to say big one, but it was a great idea we were talking about video a few minutes ago, this particular mortgage broker has had a retail space, a space next door was open, went vacant. She went and leased it. She put a little coffee service up front so she didn't have to leave to go meet the agent. She invited them to her little coffee spot, and in the back, she has a meeting room and a green room to do videos. Everything was all right there, kind of what you guys are, you know, besides putting you can put a Starbucks in there.

Tiea Vincent  22:08  
Well, we call the we have a little coffee area with the couches and things like that. We call that our

Tracy Hayes  22:13  
Starbucks. So we just come in there and lounge. Is that

Tiea Vincent  22:17  
the idea? Yeah, I, if you come into my office, you'll find bourbon, not coffee, but I do have a little bourbon bar hidden in my cabinet

Tracy Hayes  22:25  
for after three o'clock or Sure, yeah, it's

Tiea Vincent  22:29  
typically when I know I'm going to be there after four. I'm like, okay, that's fine, but the

Tracy Hayes  22:34  
invest in yourself. I think too many people wait for their company they're working for to say, hey, you should go do this training, or we're providing this training, you got to go out and get it yourself, and even if it's on your dime to go, trust me, you start doing it enough, and you start to see some results, and people see you committed to it. Your boss probably will contribute the next time you go. But you can't sit back and wait. Now we're talking about things that cost money, listening, oh my god, listening to a podcast, or grabbing one of these books.

Tiea Vincent  23:02  
These books basically free. Yeah. So absolutely, there's so many resources out there that doesn't cost a lot of money for me. I do travel if the speaker is right, and then the crowd's going to be there and it's going to have information. I will pay to go. But there's plenty of ways to go without that.

Tracy Hayes  23:17  
I'm going to put it out there. I think we should for the rebar next year. I think we, I think we need to find and I gladly help out in any way. I You see my be able to, whether it's physical labor or make contacts, but bring in, not that Kim did a bad job, but, I mean, bring in like a, I mean, heavy hitter.

Tiea Vincent  23:36  
Oh, Kim is a heavy note, like keynote speaker in other places, but we're just so used to having she sought after quite a bit.

Tracy Hayes  23:46  
Yeah, sometimes you got to get out of your Yeah, because I see Kim all the time teaching and so forth. But I think it would just wait with 1200 agents in the room. I mean, you just want to get that energy, energy going.

Tiea Vincent  23:57  
Well, they had a real rise in her there. They had Sean carpenter there. Those two speakers are amazing, but they were there as well.

Tracy Hayes  24:04  
Yes, I ran into bill because I know he does a podcast. I've listened to a couple of his episodes, and I exchanged cards with him, and hopefully have him on, eventually, on here as well. Yeah. So, yeah. So, no, I got excited. That was, that's a great, great

Tiea Vincent  24:19  
green screen idea at the event. When we go to Florida Realtors mid year and midwinter, or midwinter in conference, they typically have what they have take five so they have, like, a whole studio with Florida realtors. You can just go in there and talk about whatever topic you want to talk about for five minutes. They'll edit it. They'll put it together for you, but they're constantly looking for content, and the members are who have the content, yeah? So I like that idea. Yeah.

Tracy Hayes  24:40  
That's, that's my millionaire. It comes

Tiea Vincent  24:43  
up next year at Ari bar camp. You know, where it came

Tracy Hayes  24:46  
from, all right, so I'm looking at your, your LinkedIn. I think it was so that's generally where I get a lot of information. Some people need to adjust your your LinkedIn is pretty

Tiea Vincent  24:54  
good, you know, LinkedIn. I always took it as something that you did when you were trying to get a job. And I own my own company. And I've worked for myself for 18 years, pretty much. So I do baby it a little bit, not not as much

Tracy Hayes  25:05  
as I should. It is the, I think, of all the social media, you know, your Facebook's, your Instagrams and so forth. It definitely is a different audience. But I think you have to share your content across to LinkedIn just as much as you're sharing, maybe not, as none of us is like Instagram, you know, just throw up silly photos and stuff like that. Or, you know, hey, I'm at this, you know, then or whatever. But to put that little, short little video, or, Hey, that you are at, you know this, you know you are at, rebar, boom, put it on there and tag it. And then having, you know, for me, I'm going in there looking at people's resumes, basically, so I can create questions. And not everyone's keeping it up to date something, but if you realize our audience, or our clients are going in and researching you, yeah, it's all there online. And if they're a LinkedIn person, you're, you might be missing that person's vote. Take a few minutes, because it's not like you have to do it every day. No, you set it and you know, pretty much forget it. You know, because you're, hopefully you remain being a real estate agent or doing what you're doing just as present. Just keeps going. But just get it. Get it set your have someone, because there's people that will do it for you, like they write a resume, they'll set your LinkedIn up, and then let it go, and it looks good. And when someone looks I go, Oh, this person didn't just, you know, like you said, I think a lot of people do have going in everyone's LinkedIn that I do

Tiea Vincent  26:22  
just when they're looking for a job, and then they forget it afterwards.

Tracy Hayes  26:25  
Yes, exactly, exactly. Mr. Rickey of Jacksonville,

Tiea Vincent  26:29  
yeah, you still all know, are you? I don't. So it was a program that I bought probably about nine years ago. I had been saving my money, looking to invest in something I was with Walter Williams at the time, and I was looking at some type of affiliation where I could feed business into myself. Sure, went to a conference in Orlando, met a man named Daniel who worked for Mr. Rickey, and he was just so happy to be working for that company. I thought he owned it was just an employee. I was like, Man, I need to be a part of something where the people are this happy to be showing up to work every day. And so that's

Tracy Hayes  27:05  
why he had that position at the conference. Right? He was amazing. He had a smile on his face all day.

Tiea Vincent  27:10  
He did. And so I went to the franchise, brought the company here to Jacksonville. We had it for a couple years. Then I opened up my brokerage, and about a year into my brokerage, I realized I've got a split in the road here, a fork in the road, and I need to focus on one and the other needs to go and so I actually called back the franchise or the owner, and said, Hey, I've built this program for you. Now you sold it me this much, and now I've built your clientele. I'll give you a year of my services. I'll still help you, and I'll sell it back to you for a profit. So I sold it back. They're still here in Jacksonville, and people still call me and ask me about own it, and I give them the referral, but it is not mine anymore.

Tracy Hayes  27:48  
When I read on LinkedIn, I read into the story, and I expected you to, you know, basically explain it that way, simply because you're out of the box thinker. You're doing, you're obviously, you're in property management. What's the one thing you got to do on everything? It's re key. You got to have a service. So why not provide that service and just simply be, you know, invoicing yourself. Obviously, there can be conflicts of interest, and you want your management company to make sure everything's on above board. You're charging, yeah, you're charging the going rate. And when we wrote the management

Tiea Vincent  28:19  
agreements, we had to go back to an attorney to an attorney to make sure it was covered. We made sure that in there, we said, instead of saying, I own Mr. Rickey, I said one or more of our employees may own one or more of our affiliations. Because at that time, I was like, I might open a carpet cleaning company. I might open a maid service. So I went ahead and covered myself.

Tracy Hayes  28:36  
That's a great way to make sure things are done on time. And I know I've got a

Tiea Vincent  28:39  
guaranteed, you know, guaranteed customer. Yeah, yeah, awesome.

Tracy Hayes  28:43  
That is there. Obviously you have an entrepreneurial spirit in that, that that is something for people to to notice, even in the in the real estate business, you know, maybe you're not a great realtor, but you have, you know, the business, there's so many other things you could be doing. There's so many of these agents, whether it's transaction coordinators are virtual assistants. There's so many things that you could be doing to you know, truly be self employed, be versatile. Maybe an agent only needs you for a few hours over here, but if you're doing good work, you can do very well, absolutely. Yeah, because there's just not enough.

Tiea Vincent  29:19  
Yeah, I got myself a virtual assistant about two years ago. I fought it for a while because I thought having someone I can't see, what if they mess up, who am I going to yell at? But when I finally bit the bullet and did it, it was the best thing I ever did in business, virtual assistant. All right, so let's

Tracy Hayes  29:35  
dig into the nitty gritty of property management. How do you end up over at round table? How does this

Tiea Vincent  29:41  
you know, I had been with Walter Williams for seven or eight years. When I got hired on there, it was very interesting. The average age of the realtor agent that was there was much older. I was probably 24 when they hired me, and I remember the broker at the time who wasn't Walter. He's not there anymore. The. Man, but he came to me after he hired me, he said, don't mess it up. I was told to hire someone 35 or older. He's like, I'm taking the chance with you. I was like, thank you. But everyone I looked around at all the other brokerages in Jacksonville, and I saw that a lot of the broker owners got their start with Walter Williams. And so at 24 years old, I go, I'm gonna learn something here. It's gonna teach me something. I don't know what it's going to teach me yet, but it's going to teach me something. And I got to a point where I said, if I moved from Walter, it was not going to be a lateral move, it was always going to be move up. So either I'm going to oversee someone's whole property management division, or I'm going to open my own company. And I had taken, oh, one of my one of my post license, oh, my post broker's license course with NIFA and Howard flashin was sitting in class with me, and he was drinking like four gallons of sweet tea, and I was really concerned about his health, so I had a conversation with him about sugars, and we hit it off. And about six months later, he called me. I fought for Ricky. So he said, Come meet with us. And I said, How many agents Am I meeting with? And he said, just the two of us. So I have my read key shirt on. I have my chocolate keys. I'm ready to, like, pitch this should be your closing gift. And I get in there, and they said, Hey, we're thinking about opening a property management company. What do you think about owning it and running it? And I was like, I need to reset my brain, because I was ready to talk about locksmith. But, you know, we chatted with him for a while, and then I said, Well, if I'm going to do this, it's like marrying right? This is a he didn't have a property manager, the son. People had been coming to him. Agents have been coming to them, saying, We want to dabble in it. You don't want to dabble in property management. It's a totally different beast, totally different animal. The those statutes and the laws are not something that they teach you in your pre licensing or post licensing class. There's one question on the state exam out of 100 On Property Management, that's it. And then people get their license and get out there and say, I'm going to do this. There's so many liabilities. And so they said, We don't want our agents dabbling. We want if we're going to do this, we want to open up a division. And at that point, I had my broker's license, and I wasn't looking to make someone else rich. I wanted to work for myself. So I said, Okay, let's do it. But we wound up well, did you can make them rich as long as you're getting rich too. As long as I get rich, they get rich too. It's a good feeling for both of us. So, but yeah, so it's a separate company. We have a similar address. We went with similar logos, so they look similar, but the colors are a little deeper, darker, because I told them I'm the dark side of real estate, and so that's, that's how we formed. And I said, you know, if I'm going to marry you guys, where's my ring? And then I looked at the logo and realized there's three rings on the logo. So I got three rings instead of one,

Tracy Hayes  32:27  
awesome, awesome so separate companies, your broker owner and I'm out in Howard and his partner, have a little piece of the small profit management side, so you're in control. What are the day to day challenges? You know, as we all have, whether it's real estate agents or whatever service you got, you have the same complaint or just same you know, thing that you've got to go through, it's everyday, you know, that you got to do. What are some of those things that that makes property management? You're the core of the why you should be have a property manager, right?

Tiea Vincent  33:03  
So it, I mean, it changes with the time. So recently, our big issue is appliances. When the appliances break, there's an appliance shortage because of covid. There's a shortage of everything because of the day, I couldn't get a glass bottle because there's a bottle shortage. So we went through that. But really it gets down into fair housing. There's a ton of fair housing in there that you get involved with. And then what happens? What happens when the tenant moves their criminal brother in, or there's a mold issue and the tenant screaming, mold, I'm sick, or they have a aggressive pit bull, and it's bit someone what? What happens? Everything's great until it's not great. And when it's right, that's when you go. I wish I had a property manager, right? I called an owner two years ago, the morning after Fourth of July, which was my daughter's birthday, is July 5, and there I am at a birthday party called the Center. I said, Okay, I don't want you to freak out. Don't come. Just remember, you paid me for a reason. Calm down before you get upset. But half your house burned down last night because the neighbors fireworks went into the window. The tenant wasn't home, and it burned half the house down. We had that house up and running in about eight weeks. Had it rebuilt. The owner signed some paperwork for insurance. Tenants were put into a hotel. Didn't cost them anything. Tenants moved back in, but a typical owner is not going to be able to handle that. They're not going to know who to call, what to do, what the law says, like, you're going to pay for my stuff, you're going to pay for my hotel room, because

Tracy Hayes  34:24  
you concierge, a contractor, get out there and get things, because you want to get those, get those people out of the hotel, back in their houses as soon as possible. Let's say renting a hurricane

Tiea Vincent  34:33  
comes through. You don't live here, but you have three houses here. Are you going to go check the lawn and make sure that there's not large branches or a rake in the front yard that's going to propel through the front window. You're going to do that if your house is vacant. Afterwards, are you going to check and make sure there's leaks and no leaks in the roof and things like that? Those are the kind of things that they don't realize they need us until they need us, right?

Tracy Hayes  34:52  
Especially for someone not local, but even even the local people. I mean, one house is one thing, but you start getting I'm sure you have clients that have. Multiple houses and taking care of those things. The Well, you've had like, six questions go through my mind when I was listening to you talk there now, all six of them just blow up my mind. What I wanted to ask you, the average person buying an investment property, and I think, you know, everyone, at least, I find in the loan world, we're seeing a lot of people calling it their second home, because it's in Florida, of course, yeah, but they're actually planning to rent it out and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now shut that down so they're paying the same interest rates as an investment property, yeah, because they're slowing that that part down. But insurance, that's that's where I was leading to insurance. You're talking about the insurance, but are you making sure, as one of your services to make sure that your client is properly insured, that they don't have a primary residence policy on that one really that renters policy. If the insurance company found out there was a renter in there and he had the primary insurance and half the house burned down, that's the reason for the insurance company say I'm out of here. So our

Tiea Vincent  36:01  
management agreement is going to stay, to know that we expect them to have a specific type of policy and a minimum policy coverage. We try to go for a million we also try to get them to add us as additionally insured. That allows me to work with the insurance company if something does happen. But it also allows me to get a notification. If the owner just says to stop paying and the coverage laps, I'll get a notification of cancelation. So some companies won't do it, but we do try to do that. We tell them all the good, the bad and the ugly. This is what could happen if you don't have this insurance. We also recommend that they get liability insurance on the home to cover. You know, my sister came in. I had a tenant one time. Her sister came at two o'clock in the morning with a pair of brand new six inch stilettos, twisted her ankle really bad. She wound up with several pins and screws. Oh my goodness. She really messed her ankle up. But she said the carpet was wrinkled, and that is why she tripped and the carpet wasn't wrinkled. But the insurance wound up paying her out anyways, just

Tracy Hayes  36:57  
to be shut her up exactly while the lawyers would have cost them. Yeah, it would have

Tiea Vincent  37:01  
cost so much, but if they hadn't had that insurance, that that tenant's sister would have owned that house, she would have owned the house.

Tracy Hayes  37:08  
This is why you hire you know, someone like Tia, and I imagine knowing what I know at my age and experience with people, and just listening to you and you're you're deep into what you do you want to you. It's not for bragging rights, but it sounds like you're the type of person whatever you're doing, you want to know everything about it, which quickly rises you to the top of that. If you're not the best, you're close to the best, and that, and that's the crowd you want to hang in. And when it comes to property management and someone foreshadowing and making sure you're in the best position, that's why you're hiring. Yeah, absolutely. Because hopefully a lot of these stories you didn't experience, you've heard from going these conventions, convention listening and the bar talk, right? Rebar the bar talk of all these horror stories and other

Tiea Vincent  37:56  
people information sitting at the bar, yeah? Listening to war stories from other people. I tell you, I have one right now, an eviction that's coming up. So I pride myself in having a very low eviction rate. So four tenants in 18 years I've evicted that I personally chose for the property. Now, I've evicted a lot of tenants where the owners have put them in off Craigslist, and three months later they're not paying. They're like, help me. So I've evicted a lot of people, but I've only evicted four that I personally chose, and I'm about to have number five, and I'm very upset about that. She's messing up my score. Yeah, but this owner, this tenant's been in there for three and a half years. Every single year that she came up for renewal, I told the owner, don't do it. And every single year The owner said, well, let's just raise the rent, just a little bit, make it worth it, and now they're going to pay for that.

Tracy Hayes  38:42  
Was it an emotional or just lazy to think that the house may be vacant for mine?

Tiea Vincent  38:46  
I don't I think it might have been the vacancy and the money. They have a great home. It would definitely re rent. It's going to re rent for more. Now, I think there was an emotional piece there where the tenant was military and the homeowner was military, and they that piece of, I don't want to kick out as someone who's military, but every year she has continued, This person has continued to be a larger liability. And some of the stories I

Tracy Hayes  39:06  
could tell you rents getting later and later. Actually, her rents were almost always

Tiea Vincent  39:11  
on time. It wasn't rents, and it was she's taking care of the property, but every time something happens is I'm gonna sue you. And just crazy. Like, for example, she moved in as a pool home. The pool light went out a week after she moved in, and she said, I'm gonna fall in and drown at night time because I can't see the pool and I'm gonna drown. I'm gonna sue you. First of all, if you drown, you're not gonna sue me,

Tracy Hayes  39:33  
because I've got a truck coming over with a full of sand. It's just gonna

Tiea Vincent  39:37  
dump it in. That was, that was her first week of you know, I'm going to drown because I can't see the pool. A month later, she said, You got to fire the pool company. I hate the pool company. They don't do their job because there is a toy shark in the bottom of the pool. They just left here and it's still there. They didn't do their job. And I'm like, okay, her words were, I would go down and get the toy myself, but I'm incapable of. Emerging because I have breast implants. This is the same woman who was going to do that a month before and was going to sue me. Now she's going to Yeah, so it's one of those just never ending,

Tracy Hayes  40:10  
I'm sure. Well, your experience now is that when, because you're fielding these calls, not the homeowner, because that's what you know feeling. And it just tipped out the because a lot of us are buying investment properties or have over the last years. It may slow down right now because things are getting so expensive, but to realize, hey, when you start having those problems, here's an experienced person here that deals with multiple rental investment properties that she knows, I can tell you that history repeats itself and it's just going to continue to just grow and grow.

Tiea Vincent  40:44  
A couple years ago, Walter Williams added tenant apply. He started screaming and yelling when I declined him because of he was screaming fair housing. It had nothing to do with that. He had no credit score. He had no credit whatsoever. So that's why he wound up paying a double deposit. He got the owner involved. The owner agreed to take him. Sure enough, when he moved out, he sued us. He tried to sue me. Can't do that. Try to see the company can't do that. Wound up suing the owner, and I went to court with him. He, he sued us, saying that he that I kidnapped him every Saturday for six weeks. I'm not the judge. Had the same face that you have what? That's one of my favorite stories that I did. I kidnapped one of my tenants every six I

Tracy Hayes  41:21  
know some people probably like to be kidnapped every Saturday for six months,

Tiea Vincent  41:26  
but those are the kind of like. I can tell when it's coming. You can their language.

Tracy Hayes  41:31  
Yes, he had to mow the lawn or something.

Tiea Vincent  41:34  
His religion did not allow him to use motorized vehicles during Saturdays or any type of technology, so he had to walk to his church. And it we had had 40 days of rain that year, 40 days straight of rain, and the end of his driveway was about three inches deep of water, and so he could not walk out, and he swore it was a water leak. We checked the plumbing, we checked the irrigation, we checked the well system, everyone's bills, everyone says there's no leak here. This is just retention from is a block and a half from the river, so it's already got a high water table. We got 40 days of rain, but he swore that I refused to fix the leak, and that therefore he could not leave his home, and I had kidnapped him every Saturday. So if you want to take those phone calls, you can do property management for yourself,

Tracy Hayes  42:22  
but otherwise I am happy. How long that did you this last in court before the judge was like the doors over there.

Tiea Vincent  42:28  
We first went to mediation, and he tried to say he didn't get his claim, but then I produced the green card where he had signed for his claim, and he said, well, the day that I signed, so he already shut himself down there, they brought a judge into mediation, and the judge says, I don't normally come into mediation. But you should be quiet, and you should get an attorney if you're going to continue with this. And by the time we went to court, he did not bring an attorney, but I will tell you, because he didn't want to come out with any money, any more money, I will tell you, I learned a valuable lesson that time we have our tenants sign the Florida statute that talks about the 30 day rule on the security deposits when you go into these eviction courts or these these small claims courts, these judges are seeing cases, all family cases, car crash cases, they don't know every letter of the law for everything this this judge was going to rule against me. He said, You have 15 days to get that security deposit back. And I said, I'm so sorry, sir. I didn't have an attorney either. The guy was crazy. I didn't need one. He was gonna win the case for me. I'm so sorry, Judge, but if I'm wrong, please, I'll take myself on my hand, and I slid him the law that they had signed. He read it, he goes, it seems that you're right, in a sense, and his whole demeanor and body language had changed, and we won the case. But that judge was going to side for that tenant simply because he didn't know the law, and it's because he's seeing all kinds of cases.

Tracy Hayes  43:41  
All right, so I anyone watching this right now is going to be, can you summarize, in a reasonable fashion, the eviction process? It's obviously something you don't want to get involved with, unless you really have to. But from what I understand, Florida, it's, well, I think a lot of states, right? It's not easy to evict someone.

Tiea Vincent  44:01  
It's easier here's in a lot other states. You know, I get owners call me all the time, especially with covid. Oh, I'm scared to rent my property out, because what if they don't pay? If you can't evict tenants out, yes, you absolutely can evict tenants out, and you have been able to, for a very long time with even during covid, in the momentorium and things like that. If they're not paying, you send them the three day, the day they're late, give them three business days. If they don't pay about the third business day, send it to the attorneys. Have it filed. They'll get a summons to their door from a sheriff that says, hey, you're being evicted. They have five days to respond. If they respond in the five days, they'll write a letter stating their case. They have to put the money in the court clerk to get their their day in court. So they're going to put the money there. If they don't put the money in there, the judge is going to sign your your agreement or your eviction immediately. He doesn't, he doesn't care. But if they don't, they do put the money in the court, you'll go to the court hearing, and then you'll work

Tracy Hayes  44:50  
it alright. So let's work through your your do on the first, doing the

Tiea Vincent  44:53  
first, laid on laid on the fourth, and then on the fourth you get the three day letter. You don't count

Tracy Hayes  44:59  
weekends or. Holidays. Okay? So the fourth is Saturday, really, the sixth is your so

Tiea Vincent  45:03  
Monday would be the first. You don't count it. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is the due date. On Thursday afternoon, you send it to the attorney. Attorney, it takes, you know, depending on the the sheriff, maybe three or four days see the sheriff to actually deliver it to the door. They have five days to respond. If they don't respond in five days, the judge signs your writ. You've got your eviction. That's ideal for us, right? Ideal. You didn't sign. My bad.

Tracy Hayes  45:24  
Now I got are you? Are you? Because obviously, you don't want to have to go through this process. You don't have to what? Imagine someone you know who normally pays on time, all of a sudden, oh, hey, it's the fifth of the month. Fourth of the month you haven't paid yet. Are you like? Going, Hey, what's going on? You guys?

Tiea Vincent  45:38  
Okay, calling. We're sending statements. We're knocking on the door most of the time, the tenants, the good ones that have been paying on time, and then they get behind. They're calling us ahead. Hey, I want you to know something happened, and I'm going to be here on the 10th. What I tell them is, we're still going to deliver that letter on the fourth, because we want to start that process. In case we need to use it, we don't want to start the process on the 15th. So they tell me, I'm paying on the 11th. I'll tell Mr. Owner, Mrs. Owner. Hey, listen, they've communicated, they've told us what's going on. They've always been good. Let's wait to the 11th, because if, if I file with the attorney, and then they pay me on the 11th, the owner's paying attorney fees they didn't need to pay. So let's wait to the 11th, and on the 12th, they haven't paid, then we send it to the attorney. We're losing a couple days, but it's also saving a couple dollars in attorney fees. If you think they're good,

Tracy Hayes  46:20  
and if they're already been they already have a track record of being a great renter. I mean, you don't want to lose that. And maybe, you know, people do stuff happens, and

Tiea Vincent  46:27  
a lot of times, in a more extreme case where they've lost their job or something like that has happened, you reason with them. Okay, listen, you can't pay. We know you can't pay. You know that you can't pay. If I evict you, you're talking seven years on your credit. I'm going to ruin your credit for seven years when you go to find another house. When I evict you, you house, when I evict you, you're not

Tracy Hayes  46:44  
going to be able to get one, yeah, or one more to security deposit or whatever it cost you one way or

Tiea Vincent  46:48  
another, right? So how long will it take you to get out? You need 10 days. You need 15 days. Sign this agreement to vacate. I'll let you have the 15 days. You get out peacefully, return it to me in good condition, and go about your day, right? You know, my owner doesn't have a vacancy. They're not having to clean up a mess because the person's disgruntled and put concrete down the toilet, because I have had that happen before, poured concrete down the pipes. You know, it was, it was quite a bit of money, so about six grand to get it all out and re pipe and things like that.

Tracy Hayes  47:19  
But that's why you should have a landlord policy, insurance

Tiea Vincent  47:24  
wise, insurance policy, although that is not, unfortunately, considered vandalism, because she had rights to that property. So if they, if they put holes in every wall while they're living there, and they still have rights to the property, it's not considered vandalism. That's why you want a really good security deposit, and you want to make sure you do your due diligence up front and pick tenants who don't put concrete dust on

Tracy Hayes  47:43  
the toilets. All right, so everyone has an elevator speech, in a way. And I imagine you get this all the time, doing what you do. You're at that cocktail party or whatever, and someone's talking about, you know, they want to get invested. It's only one. They're just gonna do this one. They're gonna take you. They're gonna manage it themselves. What do you say?

Tiea Vincent  47:59  
I say, Listen, you really need to educate yourself. Make sure you know what you're dealing with. Tell me about the property. I like to hear about the property. Oh, it's 1970 so you have lead based paint contractors. Yeah. Oh, okay, so it's section eight. Do you understand that section eight is going to do their own inspection and tell you how much it's going to rent for, how much they're willing to pay you, and what you have to fix, you know, things like that. I'll lay it on them. That's I mean, Harry Hayes is an attorney out of South Florida. A lot of us use him. He comes in town every year to do CE class. He'll be here in April, at the end of this month, if you're considering getting into property management, what's the name of a CE class? It's Harry. His name is Harry Hayes. It's through northum of Jacksonville, the North association here. And he is not core law. It's landlord tenant law that he teaches landlord tenants. It's a six hour course. I think they're having it maybe at the Marriott this year, but that registration is open now, because he comes in April every year. Sounds like he's very popular having at the Marriott two or 300 people every single year, and that's in every city that he visits. He's going to lay it out to you, the good, the bad, the ugly. And you will leave there either going, I can do this, or I want nothing to do with this. Me, as a property manager, I'm going to sit outside and the ones that come out with the really scared faces, I want their referrals to me. I'll take care. Yeah, he doesn't scare me

Tracy Hayes  49:14  
well, because really, in the grand scheme of things, I mean, what is the going rate of you? I assume you it's a percentage of the rent that you're taking. I mean, is there? Do you adjust it depending on the property and what services you're offering, or is it pretty straight across?

Tiea Vincent  49:27  
The only adjustment that we make is for multi properties, multiple properties. So if you have a one landlord, absentee landlord, bought it, he was military, moved away, that's probably going to be our standard percentage. We do give a discount if you bring up more properties. So if you're an institutional investor that's got 10 or 20 properties,

Tracy Hayes  49:43  
things like, okay, all right, so the unless it's like a three unit little apartment, obviously you're charging for three units, but you would get a discount because it is in one location. You only have to make one stop, even if you

Tiea Vincent  49:55  
have two houses across town from each other, I'm still going to give you that discount for bringing.

Tracy Hayes  50:00  
Volume, yeah, from that standpoint. So tax deduction number one, because it's a cost of doing business, owning your investment properties, just like owning a business, even though it's a it's a house, it's a business and adaptable, and the the headaches of of dealing, because you're getting that call in the morning, yeah, that's really right.

Tiea Vincent  50:22  
Stepped out of bed and my carpet went squish because I accidentally left my dishwasher on, and they just installed the dishwasher last week, and they didn't take the plug out, and so it flooded the whole downstairs of the town help me at two o'clock in the morning. Those are the phone calls you're going to avoid by hiring

Tracy Hayes  50:40  
in a previous life, I had a carpet cleaning company. This is 25 years ago. Me, my cousin, and we would go and we told the property managers, hey, you know, we're, I'm, I'm 24/7 I was young guy. I'm ready. You know I was like when you started, 25 years old. So I, we were in Northern Virginia, and we get that call, I don't know, midnight 1am whatever it was, it's in middle of the winter. The three story condo, the water is running on the top floor, running out in, literally across, you know, the balconies. It's ice. It's going down. And obviously, you know, we're going in there as whatever we could save. Yeah, right, you know. So we're getting out the night. We're the carpet is holding all the water, so we're not only sucking it out, we're also, yeah, it's not, it's cheaper just to replace the the padding, because no mold issues and stuff like that. But literally, as we're throwing these, you know, probably squares the size this table off the third floor. They're hitting the ground at the bottom frozen. There's a big pile of ice carpet at the bottom. It was just one of the many stories is just cutting and throwing. It's so cold it's freezing out. But that's what property management companies do. You took that call was you have the contact to get somebody

Tiea Vincent  51:56  
out there, and the three stories were they all one owner or No, no,

Tracy Hayes  52:00  
it's the condo. So it's different, different owners. So I literally had to go open all you'll go all the way down, and obviously the damage was less and less as you went further down. But, you know, I'm sure they went in the walls later, but we were, our job was just triage at that point

Tiea Vincent  52:14  
here in Florida, you know, if you're on that second floor, you're responsible for your own damages, even if your neighbor leaked into you. That's another one. Okay, how do you handle that? Insurance? A lot of things come up with trees. Well, we have a tree, but the limb is hanging over the neighbors, and the neighbor wants us to trim this tree. Well, it's not our responsibility, because the roots are on his lawn. It's not his responsibility. So the roots can be on your lawn. Your limb is hanging over to his lawn. He wants you to trim it. He can trim it, but you don't have to, unless you physically can tell that the tree is sick. If the tree is sick and you can tell it's going to fall or something's going to happen, then you're responsible for it, that the tree is healthy and beautiful, and the lamb is over there and it bothers him. He needs to pay for it. And a lot of times they'll call and I only go, Oh, I'm so sorry, that's my tree. Let me you're talking $1,200 to trim this tree when it's not your responsibility.

Tracy Hayes  53:01  
I would imagine in the condos you get a lot of them go, Well, I'm paying my condo association. Don't understand that that doesn't cover

Tiea Vincent  53:08  
once you hit the paint that is on the owner of the condo. Most of the time the condo association handles drywall in so if there's a floor in between, it's going to be like the sub flooring to the ceiling panels underneath. They'll handle the pipes and the walls and things like an electrical in the walls, but once it touches the paint in your unit, it's yours, yep.

Tracy Hayes  53:28  
And if you don't have your own policies coming out of your pocket, and if you got we had a situation in a condo we owned, they there was a little mold spot. They didn't say nothing to us. Next thing we know, the whole ceiling, ceiling is mold, and now we're in there having to basically carve out, you know, read, I wouldn't say redo the whole bathroom, but it became a, you know, job that was probably just cut some dry wall outs get the leak a few $100 to 1000s of dollars, because your your tenant doesn't respond.

Tiea Vincent  53:56  
And this is why you want to find a property manager that is doing inspections, because tenants won't call in a small little problem, because they don't want you coming in, they don't want you to see the new puppy that they got or their cousin that they let move, and they don't want you to see that, so they don't call it in. And it gets bigger, they're smoking in there. Oh, they're smoking things like that, or growing weed in the in the closet. I've seen that a couple of times, like, Man, I can smell it when I walk through the door, at least put it outside or something. But, you know, a property manager, a good property manager, because there are lots of them out there that I call rent collectors. They collect the rent. They can't take their fee, and they don't do anything else. But we like round table. We're going in. We're doing drive by inspections on our properties every six to eight weeks. We're looking at the lawn, the roofs, the gutters, the things like that, the windows, making sure they haven't boarded anything up. Interior. We're doing every six months, you know. So we're going, I've literally walked into an apartment, look straight up and go, Wow, when did that happen? And the woman looks up and goes, Oh my goodness. I had no idea the leak had definitely been there for a while. She said, Honestly, I just come in my home and I just, I just, I don't look up. I don't look up at my ceiling. And I almost believed her. She was so shocked in her face, I think I might. Her problem. She didn't cause it, yeah? But the property manager in me, my poor parents, I go to my parents house, I'm like, oh, we need to fix this. And picking our house, I'm like, it's a great home. I love your home. I just the property manager in me starts seeing things, yeah? And I see the little things that I know can become a big thing, right? You know, fix it now when it takes you 20 seconds, and not later, when it takes you $20,000 and

Tracy Hayes  55:21  
you're talking about coming by and doing the inspections, that's your policy. So they know that when they rent the property where someone trying to manage it themselves, there is some little emotional and just so, you know, you're doing a job, because that's what you do, versus I feel the homeowner, yeah, oh, well, they're not. They're busy. The, you know, the dog sick. You know, the whole all the excuses are why someone

Tiea Vincent  55:44  
can't hear for three days while you're babysitting. It no problem. But it's here another three days too much they accept.

Tracy Hayes  55:49  
The owner is more likely to accept this from emotional, oh, we're going to be on vacation that week. Can you schedule another? You know, all types of, all types of things. I'm sure you hear where this is your job. You're coming in, because that's the contract, and you're and you're the you're the media. You don't have an emotional

Tiea Vincent  56:05  
my is my customer is the owner, owner of the property. My job is to uphold that contract. Sometimes there are situations. I've had a tenant who fell behind, the only one that ever got me I cried. I had to evict a tenant in Hawaii, his wife was the breadwinner, and she got cancer, but the owner still has to pay their bills. They still have to pay in Hawaii, mortgages is a lot of money. Yeah, Christmas time we always hear, I'm so sorry I'm late on my rent because I had to buy Christmas gifts. Well, so did the owner. And the owner had to buy Christmas

Tracy Hayes  56:35  
gifts and pay two mortgages. You're that excuse

Tiea Vincent  56:37  
to a lot of those excuses. Oh yes, for sure. I can't

Tracy Hayes  56:40  
come and why deposit for the house I want to buy because we had to buy Christmas gifts.

Tiea Vincent  56:45  
Yeah, and Fourth of July is Christmas. And fourth of July, it's like they buy $1,000 worth of fireworks, and they can't pay their rent, yes, or at Christmas time they they spend all their money, I don't Black Friday, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  56:56  
I think this perception that because someone's self employed, or someone owns a property that they must be rich.

Tiea Vincent  57:02  
They must be rich. They have all the money. They bought this house and they had to move because their company moved them right, and they couldn't sell it for what it's worth, so they had to rent it. And now they're literally months a month, hoping you pay your rent, to pay the mortgage, right, if not, they don't know.

Tracy Hayes  57:15  
They worked up and saved and bought this property as an investor. This is their lifetime. Yeah, that's their investment. All right, we're coming up on our so I want to, I want to wrap up on a couple things, though, because normally, well, obviously, north, majority of my guests are these great real estate agents that you and I know. Obviously, Howard's been here, and a couple others from round table, as well as other you've reached a high level. You operate at a high level. You're running a very difficult business. You're representing a lot of real estate agents out there, or just everyone in the industry in general, because of the different boards you're on, what are some of the things that you do consistently to make sure we talk about you're listening to books and so forth, but in your daily job, that everyone can take a What's some of the consistently things that you do to stay on top of your business, stay top of game, and make sure you're the best at what at anything that you're doing anything.

Tiea Vincent  58:14  
So I I'm a time blocker. I taught classes on time management. It's all about making time for yourself. I'm all about self care as well. You can get burnt out very, very quick. A typical property manager might make it four or five years in this business and and they're pulling their hair out and they hate it. I've mentored many, many people who call me crying because they just can't do it. You have to set healthy boundaries. My phone better not ring after APM, unless it is actually an emergency, and you better have called the police or fire department before you

Tracy Hayes  58:46  
call me. Do you have to call 911 if this is emergency? Call 911

Tiea Vincent  58:50  
on your I do Absolutely. This is emergency and this, and here's the thing, there are after hours plumbers, right? That will come out if it's an emergency, but if it's not an emergency, I'm not paying the after hours fee, you know? And that's what I say in my recording. Listen, you can call my plumber. Here's his phone number if it's an emergency, but if it's not deemed an emergency, if he charges me an after hours fee, you're gonna pay it. And I also put on there that in the state of Florida, AC is not considered an emergency. I don't know if you knew that, but it could be 95 degrees outside, and you could have a brand new puppy. It's emergency, but you might I feel like it's an emergency. Somehow, for hundreds of years, people survive. I can tell you, when my AC goes out, my my AC guys getting a call, this is an emergency, but in the state of Florida, right, is considered an emergency.

Tracy Hayes  59:31  
He does an emergency. But air conditioning is not absolutely so if

Tiea Vincent  59:35  
it's two o'clock in the morning, you woke up and you're sweating, it can wait until 8am

Tracy Hayes  59:40  
so your consistency on your schedule, your regiment, the policies and procedures that you have put forth. So for an agent listening out there, obviously, you know, property manager, I mean, you got, I mean, how many people you're, you're managing, but numerous and numerous, all these people that you're, you're kind of like the mom of the house. You're, you're taking. Care of all these properties. And you got to be consistent, because I guarantee you go to court and say, Well, you did this for this person, but not that person.

Tiea Vincent  1:00:08  
There's fair housing laws all over property management. You set your policies and procedures, Mom, come from 18 years of experience, and you do not waiver from it. And this is where, how are you interviewed, Howard. Howard is an amazing person and a bleeding heart, and he wants to, like, help everyone. You can't do it in property management. So if they called and said, Oh my gosh, my car broke down, I'm gonna be two days late on rent, and you and you waive that late fee, when they come in to pay and they say, thank you so much for waiving that late fee, and the guy next to him is paying his rent, and he hears it, oh, I see you. You waved his and not mine. Now we've got a fair housing issue, a discrimination issue. No, I tell people, I know it sounds cold, because we follow policies and procedures. I can be sympathetic, but I cannot be empathetic. I can feel bad for you, but I cannot change my policies in the way we do things, because we have a contract and that's

Tracy Hayes  1:00:55  
what we have to follow. How many do you have a staff? There is it just you? I mean, I have a showing

Tiea Vincent  1:00:59  
agent, and I have an inspector, and then I have a virtual assistant. So we run it departmentalized. Three of you

Tracy Hayes  1:01:04  
full time in the virtual assistant. Full time of all four, all four are running full

Tiea Vincent  1:01:08  
time, yeah. So they all have their own jobs. Some companies do portfolio manage, where one property manager handles a small portfolio and does everything. I didn't like that, because you might get a different customer experience if you were managing versus me managing, whereas departmentalized, we all are managing the same book. You're going to get the same experience with all of us. And if one of us has to leave, the other one's not pick we can all just pick it up. And it's

Tracy Hayes  1:01:33  
duplicatable. Yes, duplicatable. That's a very

Tiea Vincent  1:01:37  
consistent consistency in my customer service is what I like.

Tracy Hayes  1:01:40  
We talked about education, high level. Another commonality that I see with the very successful real estate agents education, I think we could probably carry even over to loan officers as well, going to these events, reading, podcasting, whatever it is that you want to do. But you know, we got grants 10x book there, because I think a lot of people misconceive what that means. And you got to do what you're doing, and 10x it educate. If you're going to be, you want to be the best at your game. You got to be education has to be one of your pillars. You constantly got to be learning. And what's changing? What are other people doing? I always tell people, you may pay a few $100 or whatever it is to go to a conference, may fly out there, maybe you end up you end up spending $1,000 for a couple of days, and maybe there was only 30 minutes during that entire thing that you actually, oh, man, that's

Tiea Vincent  1:02:31  
the big mistake everyone makes. They go to these conferences and they're just writing, writing, writing, all these ideas, and they get back and they're like, oh, it seems overwhelming, and they don't do anything. And then they're like, Why did I spend the money? I spend the money? I didn't get anything out of it. No, pick three. Pick your three biggest ones, and then make a plan to implement them. Don't overwhelm yourself. There's a lot of information that information will be there the next time you go, but pick the three that you can actually implement when you get back.

Tracy Hayes  1:02:54  
It's kind of like, you know, when you learn taking notes, I had to, I had to learn how to learn. When I was in college, in high school, I could show up. Sorry. I got accepted college. I go to college, it's like, oh my god. So I actually started listening some tapes. It was, many people are as old as me. Remember Ritter from Three's Company. He had this, he narrated this where there's an A there's a will. Okay, so I listened to these things, and I took I started implementing all the things that they were talking about. But like, when you're taking notes, don't you don't have to highlight or write down something you already know. If that's something you're already doing, great. Take a moment to process when someone tells you something like eye opening and that you don't know that's what you want to highlight or note about.

Tiea Vincent  1:03:37  
I'm not a note taker. I never have been through all my schooling and everything. Something about writing it down gives my brain permission to forget it. It's okay. It's written down. You don't have to remember, right? If I write it down, it I've got a memory. That's my husband. He'll tell you, my memory

Tracy Hayes  1:03:52  
goes back. I agree. That's a great assessment there.

Tiea Vincent  1:03:54  
Every time I write something down, it's in and write back. How many

Tracy Hayes  1:03:57  
people actually go back and go you know? Now it's the a plus students, they're going back and they're actually rewriting their notes. Yeah, if you

Tiea Vincent  1:04:04  
might catch me with like, a tagline, like one word to remind what was the thing, oh, remind me, or a phrase or something that you want to utilize. That's the closest thing to note taking you're gonna get from me. So soon, I'll be teaching. I just, I just took my LCI, W classes realtors, and I'm auditioning in August. There's only about five instructors in the in Florida realtors that teaches property management. There is a need for it, and so I am hoping to provide

Tracy Hayes  1:04:30  
that excellent in the future. Excellent. Yeah. She said, Of all the things you do this, that you weren't an instructor. I wouldn't even have thought wanting

Tiea Vincent  1:04:37  
to be an instructor for years. But again, you got to find the time. And until now, I didn't have the time.

Tracy Hayes  1:04:43  
Yeah, yeah. Sharing your knowledge that you want to get better at it, or, like you said, even memorize it better, or just be better at the con you just got, you got to get out there and teach it, yeah, and it forces you to be even better.

Tiea Vincent  1:04:54  
I love the idea of keeping people out of trouble. Don't make the mistakes that I've learned other people have made. I. Made my own mistakes before, but don't make those mistakes. Let me keep you out of trouble and let me learn from you.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:05  
Are you open to? I mean, just for people who want to call in a minute, you might see this today, or might see this, who knows, months from now, and see something about property management. Sure you feel calls about people have at least emails that you can respond.

Tiea Vincent  1:05:19  
Please do call me because, you know, I preach the realtor. That's who we are. Get involved all that. If you're out there doing property management, you don't know what you're doing. You're making mistakes. You're making a bad

Tracy Hayes  1:05:30  
name for us. I said your house might be next door to their house.

Tiea Vincent  1:05:35  
They go, why do I need a realtor? They're messing up left and right. You know, I sat on grievance for several years. I can't say which years, but I did sit in grievance for several years. Majority of the cases, and if you talk to Patty Ketchum, majority of the cases going through Freck are property management cases where people are dabbling in it that don't know what they're doing. Help me. Help you not do that. I want us to have a good name. The realtor R have a great name, and if I can keep you out of trouble,

Tracy Hayes  1:06:00  
please call me excellent, excellent, excellent advice. So, education, consistency, the boundaries. I see you quite a bit. You're taking pictures, obviously. I assume you hang out with Howard at some sort of level. Yeah, we see each other daily. How important is it? Because you're on these boards, these boards are not the other board members are not they're all good. They're all good at what they're doing. In some level, there's some level, there's some, you know, do whatever they're doing. How important has that been just to be around surrounding yourself with high level people, whatever they're doing, whether it's property management, whether it's directly, you know, sales and real estate, or instructing. How important is the mix and mingle with those people?

Tiea Vincent  1:06:42  
You are absolutely the company you keep. So I used to do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and we would go to competitions, and somebody would come in and propose a fight, and they would say, you never fight down. You always fight up. Because if you fight up and you lose, well, you fought up, but if you fight down and you lose, you know, how am I supposed to grow if I'm working below me. That being said, I do bring in people who are new to the business and are new to property management or new to leadership. When I see potential and I see that they have the drive, my big pet peeve is coming to me and asking me for advice and then doing nothing with it. So, you know, I am the company I keep, but I try to you reach a level in your journey for leadership where you stop looking at where you're going, and you start looking at who you're bringing behind you, and at some point in the last couple years, I started looking back, going, who's next, who's next that I can bring in with me, that can get into these positions, and they have a different point of view to bring to the table.

Tracy Hayes  1:07:34  
I want you to touch on because you just thought you said something that John Maxwell talks about about, you know, a true leader makes other leaders. I mean that that's really the pinnacle of leadership. But I typed the did I not? I don't know where I I'm gonna finish up with this, because we've been a little over an hour. Here are my standard questions, okay, is it who you know or what you know?

Tiea Vincent  1:07:57  
I agree. You can always Google what you know. It was a GTS. If you don't know, you'll figure it out.

Tracy Hayes  1:08:02  
Well, I think you look at the greats in around, some people say what you know, but I think when they actually think about it, because I hear they're telling me their story, and their story is who you knew, who you knew, guided you. You knew something. But you don't have to be, you don't have to be a rocket science to connect with somebody and someone sees that you have the potential. You know the leadership, because you're, I think you're, if I read it correctly, you're running over the leadership. I am the chair of the Chair of leadership. So you're looking at these people who has potential to maybe be the next chairperson at the on the board 10 years now, or whatever,

Tiea Vincent  1:08:39  
once a month, if not twice a month. Someone comes to me and says, How do I become president? Me fair? Well, I don't know, because I ain't there yet. Let's start somewhere, though, right? And they look well, what should I do to get me there? And my question to them is, always, tell me what you love. Tell me what your passion is. Because if you come to me and go, I want to be chair of our pack, that is a very good resume maker. But if you don't care anything about politics and all you want to do is give back to community. You belong on community affairs Task Force, sure you know. So tell me what you love, and I'll find a place for you. And they're constantly looking for help and constantly looking for leaders to come up. That's why they created Leadership Academy.

Tracy Hayes  1:09:13  
We're going to play the who you know after we get off here, because that's, I mean, obviously, you know, obviously, you know, we've known each other for a few years now, and that's all the things you're involved. So I wanted the content for the show, but also because we want to be involved, more involved jet as a whole, be more involved with nefar as well. And then I know Kelly here with Best Buddies. So we're gonna who you know this is the person. So we brought the who in to get to we'll learn how to get there afterwards. What's on your travel bucket list?

Tiea Vincent  1:09:45  
Oh, you know I was supposed to go to Italy in March of 2020, right, when everything shut down. And I tell people this is crazy, but I tell people that leadership academy for Florida Realtors may have saved my life because I was supposed to be in Italy, and it. Was the same day that their first meeting was for Leadership Academy. And when I made Leadership Academy, they said, if you miss one, you're out. And so I got all of my travel and every and all of my excursions that I had already booked, I moved them all back a week so that I could make Florida Realtors Leadership Academy. And while I was sitting in that class, I started getting to ding your flights been canceled, ding your hotels been canceled. So because I didn't go when I was supposed to, wow, I wasn't. I would have been in Italy the week that it shut down with my daughter. It was going to be a surprise, her very first Asha country excursion. So Italy is a bucket list. Japan. I've already been to Japan, but if I could go back, I wouldn't. Harvey, it has been by far my favorite experience, the country in the culture, is just amazing. You can walk down a dark alley at two o'clock in the morning as a single white female and be totally okay, yeah, no, no one's gonna mess with you. They don't tolerate nothing. They know they don't tolerate there's no crime whatsoever. I went to Dubai with Florida realtors, couple. Usually that was interesting. I'd probably go back when it's not

Tracy Hayes  1:11:05  
so hot. So to talk about Dubai, you know, I hear different things. I don't, you know, again, just hearsay. Really, it's a different culture. At night, sun goes down. Things like, it's like, the vampires come out, so to speak. I can't, like, oh, it's dark out now. Now we're a totally different culture.

Tiea Vincent  1:11:23  
It is a different culture at nighttime, but I'll tell you, they don't mess with the crime rate is you're not going to get messed with

Tracy Hayes  1:11:29  
in Dubai, because some of the stories I have read were single women over there, and I

Tiea Vincent  1:11:35  
had heard that my husband actually tried to get me to not go to Dubai with Florida realtors, because he was like, Tia, you're a very strong minded, strong willed, very vocal female, and you're not going to work well with him over there. You're going to get arrested. Like, please don't get arrested in a foreign country. But one time in the entire week that I was there, did I feel a little animosity because I was a female, I was conservative with the way I dressed to make sure I wasn't insulting anyone's beliefs, but I was always welcomed and friendly. But the thing is, is Dubai is not the same as the whole country, Dubai, you know, outside of the eyes of all right.

Tracy Hayes  1:12:07  
So they're a little more about as westernized as you can get, and

Tiea Vincent  1:12:11  
they want us to come there and bring our money. So don't treat us bad, because we want to come back and spend our money. So I had a very good experience there, but I'd like to go back on a less business because we toured so many home builders and spoke to so many. Yes, it was like 14 hour days of Home Builders. And the way they do real estate over there really opened my eyes up to the fact that real estate is totally different in other countries. You're talking five year loans. You're talking you buy it, but you don't get your keys for three years. And when you get your keys, they're renting it back from you, and automatic income. It's very, very different over there. Well, I'm going to finish up with this,

Tracy Hayes  1:12:50  
because I don't want to widen think about this, because I think about these, these types of things all the time. We have, you know, obviously we work with a very large builder here, and we do have a lot of people buying investment properties. And I am big on referring the people, because I think what is one of the things John Maxwell talks about, one of the ways to influence people is to introduce them to others. And so I have my insurance companies that I refer to, of course, then my people know they can go right there and get the answers real quick, because they're going to take care of us too when we're getting the loan closed. But and I've got my mover with two men in a truck. I know they're going to give quality service out there, but you know what? I don't have that property manager, so I'm going to add you to my referral list, if you don't mind, say hey, you know, give, give Tia calls. You know, Round Table property management, absolutely. Yeah, I love it, because we do have a lot of them. Actually. I think I've literally have three closing this week

Tiea Vincent  1:13:41  
that are investment properties, which is kind of unheard of right now. So Well, obviously,

Tracy Hayes  1:13:44  
they went under contract with these new builds way six, eight months plus ago. So absolutely, but T I appreciate you coming on the show. You're in the show notes. Tia's contact information, her Facebook and that sort of thing. So reach out to her. She is a plethora of information and property management, amongst greater things, real estate because she knows people. She knows people. Thank you.