Ep5: Starting strong, tackling new roles in Property Management — with Hayley Mitchell

“If you are that person in leadership put up your hand and offer your services as a mentor to others because although you might be giving your time, it is really rewarding to know that you are helping someone else through their career and their journey as well.” 
— Hayley Mitchell

This episode features practical tips from Hayley Mitchell, Mitchell PT, and Kate Sunol, PropertyMe on fostering the success of new talent in our industry through training, mentoring, and building a community.

Reach out and continue the conversation...
Connect with Hayley Mitchell — Mitchell PT
Connect with Kate Sunol — PropertyMe

Transcript

Kate:  Hi, and welcome to Property Management & Me, a series from PropertyMe bringing quick tips and insights that will make a difference to your everyday property management practice. I'm your host, Kate Sunol, and today I am joined by Hayley Mitchell from MitchellPT. She's super passionate about our industry and about developing property managers and she shares her knowledge with others through her training and events company, MitchellPT. Welcome Haley. It's so great to have you here. 

Hayley: Thanks so much for having me. 

Kate: You obviously interact with a large number of property managers and agencies across the country. What are some of the key themes and topics of conversation you're coming across lately?

Hayley: Yeah, absolutely. So we are seeing really big challenges when it comes to people employing at the moment. Uh, there's not a lot of experienced Property Managers in the market and there have been a lot of property managers who have obviously left over the last few years. And, um, the level of experience that's actually left the industry, when you have someone with 20 years experience go that's massive for the industry. And so what we're seeing is we are seeing Senior Property Managers and more experienced Property Managers really wanna take that next step up to the leadership position. But what we're also seeing is because it's so hard to hire people with experience, a lot of people are actually hiring people with no experience and training them on the job. But the issue with that is we've got really busy Property Managers who are trying to train on the job, and the people who have been trained probably aren't getting the support or the level of, uh, training that they need to really move forward with the role competently. So there's, there's so many gaps in all of the areas of the property management, you know, training and integration into this industry that I don't think we've seen before.

Kate: Mm, definitely. And I would imagine a lot of those agencies, when they have staff members of 10, 20, 30 plus years experience leaving. That knowledge is essentially walking out the door. They may not have those tools in place to capture the wealth of knowledge and really embed it within the processes of the business for new PMs who come.

Hayley: That's it. And a lot of people are then going to tech, which is great. And I'm all for tech. Um, as long as the tech actually delivers a better customer experience for the client at the. At the end. Um, but we are finding that a lot of people are trying to tech stack at the moment so that Property Managers are managing bigger portfolios, uh, because we can't get the people in the seats to do the job.

So it's really, I reckon we're gonna see the biggest changes in the next couple of years that I've seen in my, I don't know, 23, 24 year old career that I've had in this industry so far. There are a lot of great tech solutions out there, and I'm actually excited to be featuring some throughout our podcast.

Kate: Aside from the tech, what are some of the things maybe individually, that Property Managers can do right now if they're struggling with a new role, whether that's new to the industry or new to a leadership position? 

Hayley: Um, I think the biggest thing that I'm seeing is Property Managers burning out, and it's happening all the time because we property managers and I'm still a Property Manager, I've still got my own portfolio that I look after We wanna be the problem solvers and we wanna help people, but we have so much demand on ourselves and our time because you know, we've got so many balls in the air. So the biggest thing I'd say to someone is make sure you look after yourself first, because you can't look after your clients if you're not in a good head space and you're not fit physically, mentally, emotionally. Um, so please make sure you look after yourself first. If you are feeling like you are burning out or you are drowning, go talk to someone. See if there's someone else in the office that can help you, or a mentor that can help guide you and just. Pull things apart and sit down and look at what you've got in front of you. What is stressing you out and what can you do to alleviate those things one by one? Cuz I think we often get overwhelmed, but when we actually sit down and look at what's in front of us and pull it apart into little tasks or um, little chunks of work, then it's actually quite easy to just work through one by one, but we get overwhelmed with everything that's there and we can't kind of stick back and look at it.

So I, I've had a mentor my whole career, um, and the amount of times I ring her and I still do it, and I'm like, okay, what do I do? You've gotta have that person to bounce off. And if, if it's not someone within your organization, um, go search for someone outside of your organization that can help you as well.

Kate: Absolutely. There are definitely some great points there. I think it would really resonate with a lot of PMs that they do want to be those problem solvers, but they don't want to leave things unfinished or with a rushed attempt, but that does include looking after yourself. It's just as important to develop that skillset set of being able to switch off and refresh as it is to develop an understanding of the practical tasks like in goings, vacates, and lease prep.

Particularly as you are moving into those leadership positions and thinking about the culture and patterns of practice and essentially the legacy you want to be building within your team. 

Hayley: Yeah, definitely. And if you are that person in leadership, put up your hand and offer your services as a mentor to others, because although you might be giving your time, it is really rewarding to know that you are helping someone else through their career and their journey as well.

And I've mentored lots of people over the years and. I love doing it because you do, you can actually help someone to build a career. It's not for me. Property management has never just been a job. You know, I just didn't turn up nine to five and do my job and go home. It was a career and I always treated every, every place I've worked, I've treated my role as my own job, my own business, and I think that that's kind of why my career has moved forward because I haven't just done the nine to five. Um, I have done extra and I have treated it like it's my own. Um, so I think those people who are in it for the pay packet every week or month, it's a hard slog if you don't really love it. And I can honestly say I love, I love property management. I don't think I'm ever gonna do anything different except own a pub.

I will own a pub one day. I think .

Kate: That's pretty cool. I could get on board with events at a pub. 

Hayley: Yeah, that'd be good. I just want a gin bar and then I'll be happy. 

Kate: Very nice. There are absolutely PMs who have been there and learn how to find balance within the hectic role that property management is. So if there's someone there listening, thinking, I can help guide someone through this or if you think you might benefit from some mentoring and there's not someone available in your office, where would you start? 

Hayley: Um, I would probably start out online. If you don't have anyone in your immediate, um, vicinity, like your immediate, uh, office or friendship circle, then I'd just pop onto something like the APMC or a Facebook group and say, Hey, this is where I'm at, this is what I'd love. I can offer my services or I can actually, I'm actually looking for a mentor. Um, is there anyone out there that can help? Because you learn so much off other people as well. So you will learn off the person you are mentoring as well as the person who's mentoring you.

It's really, really good to do. So I'd probably just jump on Facebook or you've got a lot of, um, Friends in the industry, ask your colleagues, you know, if I wanted to actually have a mentor, do you have anyone in your circle that would actually like to help me? The other place is if you're at a conference or an event, um, I recommend going by yourself because if you go by yourself, you actually get outta your comfort zone.

You make friends. Whereas if you're there with your work colleagues, Then you're there with your work colleagues and you kind of don't venture out of your circle. So be brave. Go out, and I do this at my conferences. I say, stand up on the first day and put up your hand. If you're here by yourself, look around.

You are the people. You need to talk to each other. Um, because I've made some amazing contacts in this industry just from going to events by myself and making friends with people. 

Kate: Yeah, that's a really great point.  A couple of other resources that come to mind would be the Real Estate Institute. Reach out to your local member or chapter committee, or even an area manager or leader within your franchise group if you're part of one.

One of the things I love about our industry is there are so many people who want to help, who are passionate about what they do and about developing professionals. So you'll see hands flying up everywhere. 

Hayley: Absolutely. 

Kate: So if our listeners want to continue the conversation, how can they get in touch?

Uh, they go to our website, Mitchell pt au or send an email through at hello mitchell pt au um, and one of us will get back to them. Great. Thank you so much, Haley, for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks for tuning into our podcast, Property Management & Me here at Property Me. We're really passionate about putting these insights into practice, so if you head to our website, you can find resources from today's episode to get started.