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CEOs of the Month: Ken Motew and Michael Motew, CEOs at Mo2 Properties 11-3-25
00:35:31
In this episode, Ken and Michael Motew, brothers and co-CEOs of Mo2 Properties, share how they built their Chicago-based real estate firm from 12 properties during the 2008 crash into a thriving 800-unit portfolio, emphasizing trust,
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by two remarkable leaders to have made their mark in the real estate world, the real estate business. We're joined today by Kenny and Michael Motu and we're going to talk about their company and leadership and a lot more. They're joining us this month as the CEOs of the month and we're just thrilled to have them on. And again, the name of the company is Motu Properties. And I should have said earlier someone to play on their. Their name. The name is spelled M O T E W and the company is Motu. MO2, the number two properties. Ken and. And Michael, we are so thrilled to have you with us. Ken, can you kick us off and take a moment to introduce yourself? Then I'll ask Michael to do the same.
- [00:49]
B
Well, first of all, thank you for having us. We're thrilled to be on. So again, MO2. Most people, when we go back to the name of our company, don't, don't correlate the Motu with the most. They just call it MO2 Properties, which is actually not bad for us either as well. So it's a little funny thing. And yeah, so I have been in the business for 34 years. Literally after I graduated college with a degree in accounting and I did not want to be a cpa, I started renting apartments for company, a bigger multifamily residential company in the city and did that for a while. And then in 2009, Michael and I decided to join forces to start MO2 Properties. Right, you know, right during or after the great crash or, you know, or the banking world and the mortgages all got messed up and Michael and I were like, what do we have to lose, right? We owned, I think we owned literally 12 property. Well, we own more of it. I split with my partner and So I kept 12, he kept 12. And then Mike and I joined forces with 12 properties and a couple management accounts. Back then, literally, that's all we had.
- [02:13]
A
Amazing. And just give us a sense of where you're at today and then also give us a sense that Michael have a chance to introduce himself too.
- [02:21]
C
Yeah, thanks, Scott and I always appreciate being introduced as being remarkable. I'm Michael Motu, one of the owners of Mochi Properties. We've already talked about how we got the name and that's been a nickname in our family since we were growing up. We all, we have our little T shirts when people used to make t shirts that MO2 on them. So we turned that into a logo. And like Kenny said, In 2008, 9ish. When the real estate market crashed nationally and also locally, Kenny and I came together. We didn't have much going on. We, we had relationships with banks at the time who trusted us, who were loyal to us. We were also loyal to them. And we did some receivership work. We took some properties on the south side, you know, kind of things that we had never done and.
- [03:12]
B
Yeah, expand on that. Well, I mean the reason why I say expand, I'll let Michael do that as well is that like we were like excited to pick up a $200 management account.
- [03:23]
C
Yeah, we were, we were down to seeds and stems except for our, our. The properties we, we. That Kenny brought into the deal from his previous company. I had been brokering stuff, but I'd been brokering deals. So when we came together, we had a few properties. We had these relationships with local banks and we got some receivership work and we took any business we could get. And we, we had this little office on Western Avenue. It was a first floor into a basement. One of our investors bought the building, so there's three other apartments in it. And, and then, and there is another sort of pivotal point that sort of changed the trajectory of multiproperties early on. I don't know if you want to lead into that or you have other stuff.
- [04:06]
A
No, no, go right ahead, tell us about that because I always love businesses to start with. Look, we were willing to take on a 200amonth account because we had to get going and get started and have cash flow again. And talk about that next pivotal moment when you started to see things going in the right direction.
- [04:22]
B
Well, well, we, we weren't sure what.
- [04:24]
C
Direction they were going in, but. And we really are sort of. We really didn't have much going on and we were willing to take on pretty much any business at the time. We had my, Myself, my brother, our bookkeeper and really. And some building engineers really won.
- [04:45]
B
Yeah, yeah. And the building engineer had been in our family. He helped like his wife helped like literally raise our kids and he. They're from Romania and leave. Use his name. What. I'm just saying, like it's relevant. There are three of us, four of us.
- [05:00]
C
We were, we were small and we, we just sort of coincidentally ran into a group, private equity group at a, at a walk up six unit building in Bucktown. And I had previously gone to college with the. One of the principals of the company and Kenny had known him from his.
- [05:21]
B
No I know him because he came to me, with us to talk about it. Like, so, like before Michael and I joined, I had met with him and they're called Speed Wagon. And we had met, I had met with them probably six to seven months before Mike and I joined. They're saying, hey, why not start buying multifamily walk ups just like you do in Chicago, right?
- [05:42]
C
Fast forward, then we see them in a building, we're looking to buy it, they're looking to buy it. Long story short, we end up having a conversation, having another meeting, and they come to us and say, essentially we have unlimited funds. Buy as many properties as you can and do sort of your thing with them, which at the time was we were buying distressed properties in very well located neighborhoods, renovating them, you know, like down to the studs, stabilizing them, refinancing them. And then we just kept that process going.
- [06:15]
B
And one of the things I want to say is the reason why Michael and I never falter from what we do is because the buildings that we own, we never had a vacancy. We very rarely had a lower rent. Tenants were paying, now, rents didn't go up. So we kept rents the same. But we saw that, like, hey, as bad as it is, people still need places to live in good areas and they're paying rent. And I mean, we never, trust me, we would have liked to. We got into with some banks, they never really lowered our interest rates. Some guys got it, they were like, okay, well maybe we'll do interest only, but we're not lowering your rate. And Michael and I were like, okay, well if the fundamentals are still there, that renters are still paying their rent, we're able to fill empty apartments, why are we not going out there and buying it? And we were one of the few, and I will say this, that really felt that way. I mean, you know, one of the buildings, you know, Michael and I, I was saying that we were buying six flats for $250,000 in areas today that would be going for a million dollars on react.
- [07:18]
A
And what gave you confidence to keep on going after it and doubling down? I mean, it's a quintessential story. A lot of people are running scared and you guys kept on doubling down. What gave you confidence to do that at that time? What sort of gave you sort of like, look, this is going to work, this is going okay. We don't have vacancies, we're getting rented up. We're buying things at reasonable price. What feels like reasonable prices. What sort of led you to double down and confident you can make it all work.
- [07:45]
C
Well, I think there's a couple of things and Kenny can also talk about this one is we had a pretty good understanding of the Chicago market as far as like smaller sized walk up properties on the north side of Chicago. We saw what, we saw what rents were doing, we saw that they were stabilized. We had a decent enough handle on construction costs and we had crews that wanted to do work. I mean, people wanted work at the time, so. And also we're risk takers. Like, we don't like sitting back and, and waiting around. I mean, it's just like we're, we're, we, like, we like taking risks. And now I sort of laugh like, it's not like we don't believe the north side of Chicago walk up properties, but I don't feel the north side is that risky.
- [08:29]
B
We don't feel it's that risky.
- [08:31]
C
People do, but people do. And we were looking at properties where we were like, Kenny and I would walk into a property within like, you know, 10 minutes, we're like, this works. We don't know, here's the back of the napkin.
- [08:42]
A
But that's one of the beauties of really knowing an area well, really knowing your business well, talk about that. Because that's that ability to make quick decisions when you really know something well, you, you're so much more capable of doing that than somebody who's got to do 80 hours of diligence to try and figure it out. Knowing your business well, Scott.
- [09:03]
B
Okay, so I, I learned from a guy who would walk into a building and within a minute say, okay, it works. And back of the napkin, literally, we walk through a building, we get in the car, he'd be like, okay, give me a pen and paper. And he'd write down on the back of napkin what the rent should be, what, you know, what he thinks it costs to rehab it. And you know, that's kind of how like I, I don't want to say like, you know, you're born with it, but like, I feel one of the gifts Michael and I have, and we have very few, I think one of them is that we can walk into a building and be like, okay, it works. How do we know it works? Because we know the cost of the rehab. We know we're going to get for rent, you know, you know, obviously, you know, the interest rates at the time. And then, you know, you plug it into your mortgage back and take it. This is what we'll be paying. And you know, I Just think it's almost like a gift. It's like, why is. Why is someone better at a sport than somebody else? You know, like, I'm not saying that. Like, I think that we have an ability to walk into a building on the north side of Chicago in the areas that we buy in, and say, you know what? This works here. Here's what the rents are going to be. Here's what's going to cost a rehab. And I just think that's kind of something we innately have.
- [10:10]
C
But I do think it is a good combination of very good intuition and instincts and. And previous experience.
- [10:21]
A
But talk about the other side of that is because you guys could size this up very quickly. Understand, we can make money with this. It's. It. Here's what rents will be. We know the risk. The downside risk is relatively limited because we're not gonna have big vacancies in this area. I mean, you could really size it up very quickly, and that's a gift. The other gift is in what you do, and you both have really good reputations. As people talk for a moment about the other part of this, because there's so many different teams and people you have to work with, from your contractor crews, your construction crews, to tenants, to brokers, to others. Talk about that mix of sort of the analytical ability to figure out if a building can work or not, and then the ability to execute on it and work with people and take care of that. How important is that side of it, too?
- [11:10]
C
Yeah, I think that that's really good. It's really good to point that out. I think that there is, of course, the analytical part. You know, the numbers have to make sense. And I think there's also. Kenny and I sort of often talk.
- [11:23]
B
About, will we simplify? I mean, you know, I don't think any of our models are that complex.
- [11:31]
C
And Kenny could go into the analytics if he wants. My point I was making is that there's also, like you said, there's. It's sort of layered into all this is like having good relationships with their investors.
- [11:45]
B
We.
- [11:45]
C
We raise money for all the deals. We put our own money in, and we raise money for all the deals that we do. And we have really strong relationships with our investors that are based almost entirely on trust. I mean, even before, like, past experience and like, you know, knocking out of the park with a deal and total financial success and profit, our investors are very comfortable with us because we're extremely transparent, we're very communicative, and we. We are not so prideful. That we don't admit when we make mistakes.
- [12:24]
A
And that's so important though. And then on the investor side, knowing they could trust you, every deal is not going to be perfect but that you're going to work hard at it, you're going to work in con in tandem with your investors versus against your investors and.
- [12:38]
B
Right.
- [12:38]
A
Everything's not going to be perfect. But them knowing they could trust you is fundamental to everything, isn't it?
- [12:44]
B
Yeah.
- [12:44]
C
Yes.
- [12:45]
B
I mean if you ask any of our investors that the number one word they use is trust. We trust you guys. You know, you know, Michael and I. Look, Michael and I still talk to tenants like, we still talk to like tenants who have issues. If our property managers can. We are heavily involved in dealing with the banks. You know, we still meet the appraisers at the buildings. We know Michael and I, I mean what you, we're hands on operators and, and which is why you know, the, you know, you know, we're at about 800 units right now, give or take. And like, you know, that's, you know, and we feel that, you know, we can get bigger. But like a large part of our success is that we are involved in not just like the, the big picture but also you know, the small picture, you know, dealing with like a tenant who has, you know, who has an issue with their rent or a leak or whatever it might be. I mean Michael and I will pick up the phone and talk to tenants.
- [13:36]
C
And other part of that is going back to the investors. I mean our investors, we like to sort of say friends and family, but most of them have become close friends. Even like before they, we were that good of friends with them. But they sort of through word of mouth got to us and then we started doing deals with them. I mean these are guys that are high net worth individuals that we talk to weekly, sometimes daily. They'll call us at 9 o' clock at night if they have questions. Speedway.
- [14:04]
B
I think we have calls that like. Yeah, I was thinking of that.
- [14:07]
C
Well, yeah, that. I wasn't even thinking about Speed Wagon but thinking about our current investors. I mean we, we take calls where I'm like, hold on, let me patch kenny. And it's 10 at night and we're sitting at home and we're, we're going over deals or we're explaining something or we're making decisions. And so these are, and I think part of that is like, like Kenny said, we're extremely hands on operators. We're very available, we're accessible not only to our investors. But our employees and anyone in our contractors and anyone who does business with us, we're kind of like 24, 7 on and, and, and it's, we're at a size, we're still a smaller size shop relative to some of the bigger players in Chicago in the multifamily sort of walk up ish asset class. But we're at a very manageable number and we can talk about it later and talk about sort of plans for growth and how we see that working.
- [15:03]
A
And you know, and talk about that for a second. Because the beauty of 800 units, once you get to that level of unit, you can also have the team you need to take care of things. And obviously, as you said, investors love the fact that you're very engaged. Nothing an investor hates that then calling someone they've invested with and have them say, I'm three steps away from this. Let me figure out who you know who and who know who to talk about to see what's going on with that building. People love that fact when they're, when their leaders are really, really engaged. Do talk for a second about what you're most excited on and focused on this year. Where, where are you most focused this year, next year?
- [15:42]
B
I want to go back to one thing you said. You talked about. Like, you know, you're dealing with the banks, you're dealing with all these people. We do have very, we have very good people who help Michael and I out deal with, deal, deal with all. Like we have to deal with the banks, the, the appraisers, the inspections, you know, how it all works is that like we know we have Cheryl who's been with us since the, literally the beginning, who's like the backbone of this company really, you know, and, and she gets, she deals with the financials, she deals with, with the reporting, you know, so we're very fortunate to have a very strong team behind us because we definitely can't do it all.
- [16:22]
C
And, and I would say in this business there happens, especially property management, you'll find a lot of turnover because, you know, there's a high burnout rate. And as far as property managers go, we, we've had a lot of success keeping people on board. We've lost some other key employees over the years, which is, is, is in a smaller size kind of family company. It's, it's hard, it's hard to lose people. It's hard not to take it personally. And yet we also understand that we're in a business where, you know, it's not so complicated that if you're someone who, if you're, if you're an entrepreneur or you're someone to go do something on their own, you could come to our company, learn our business pretty quickly and, and then go off and try it on your own or go to a bigger company or. And we've, in the last couple years we've faced sort of losing some key employees and we've had to manage that. And then also Kenny and I, again, we like to like, look at like what, what are our mistakes when an employee leaves? What can we have done differently? What should we do differently now when hiring someone? We like to, we like to get. We have, we. We do an office deal every year or so where we engage our employees to contribute into some of the deals we're doing. And that seems to be a very, an effective and appreciated tool in our office. And, and again, we're very small. Like we have. We. Kenny has. Kenny's oldest son works for us. My oldest son works for us. There's always complications when family works for you. Not just between Kenny and I and our children, but between employees knowing that the owner's children are here. And so we have to be careful and thoughtful on how we interact and treat our employees and what kind of systems we put in place to keep people happy and engaged while they're working here.
- [18:17]
A
Yeah, 100%. And just the fact that you're so sensitive to it is half the battle to understand those dynamics in a family business, with family business and outside business people. But all very, very important to what you're trying to do. Talk for a second about what you're most focused on now and excited about heading into the end of this year in 2026.
- [18:40]
B
You know, I think Michael and I have gotten, I want to say gotten away, but buying the six and eight unit buildings. We've been looking at bigger projects like infill projects on the north side of Chicago. You know, we're building, you know, right now we have a office conversion in river north next to Sunda. There'll be a 36 unit building with one retail where, you know, which is a big, big project for us. We have a 35 unit building next to our office. Brand, brand new construction. I think that we're looking at a couple things. One is the cost of rehab now is almost as much as it is to build new. So we're looking at building new, which is something we haven't done. I mean, I did it years ago when we did condos, when, you know, during the condo craze. In the 2000s. But, but now we're looking at, you know, looking at more land plays in good areas and building brand new because the cost of rehabbing has gotten absolutely astronomical. I mean, we're looking to converting two churches. Well, actually one used to be a synagogue. And it's funny because the price to convert a 16 unit church in Logan Square is almost per foot. Actually it might be more per foot, Michael, than it is to do brand new. So, so I think we're looking at, you know, I don't always say bigger is better, but in the case we're doing now, it takes the same amount of effort to manage a 40, 50, 60 unit building as it really does a six unit building. So, you know, which, you know, we've heard our whole, whole life. But the reality is when we're buying the smaller buildings. This is important. Yes, man, we're buying the smaller buildings. Coming out of like the great recession, whatever you want to call it, they were cheap, interest rates were low, you know, as we all know, historically low and labor was a lot cheaper. So we were able to scott, buy these buildings, rehab them and pull all of our equity, or mo, I don't want to say most of our equity out of these deals, use it to go buy another deal. That was for eight years. It was like clockwork. I mean, so you have an investor who gives you a couple hundred grand or 3, 400 grand and in 18 months you give them all their money back and you put a non recourse loan, you know, that we, I would say 99% of, actually 100% of the loans we refinance are non recourse.
- [21:05]
A
Right, Fantastic.
- [21:06]
B
I, I mean, so now you have, you know, in most of our properties, Michael, we have no, no equity in them. You have non recourse debt and your interest rates, I mean our average interest rate going into this year was 4.21% on over 70 properties.
- [21:23]
A
That's fantastic. That's fantastic.
- [21:26]
C
And I will, I just think it's worth mentioning that, you know, there was a time where we, you like one of our biggest fears because for lack of a better term, Kenny and I are somewhat deal junkies. We, what we really like to do most is to identify deals, underwrite them, raise the money, you know, and then sort of contractor, you pick the contractor and then sort of hand them over to some other people in our company and then go look for the next one. But there was a time just post.
- [21:57]
B
Covid maybe you know, yeah, four.
- [21:58]
C
Yeah. Up until a year and a Half, like, died.
- [22:03]
B
We were doing 10 to 12 deals a year. We. We literally, for three years, did zero deals.
- [22:09]
C
And what happened was, like, you had this. You had this uncertainty in real estate taxes, which you still have today.
- [22:15]
A
But we.
- [22:16]
C
We were managing to get a better handle on it. And you had an increase in interest rates that happened so quickly. It wasn't like we could tolerate interest rates if the market can tolerate them. Meaning, like, pricing comes down. And so now you're underwriting knowing that, okay, you're.
- [22:32]
A
You're.
- [22:32]
C
The pricing for the buildings are coming down, and you're underwriting it knowing what the interest rates are. We were holding on to land at the time that we eventually ended up building, but had to restructure completely, including our equity partners.
- [22:44]
A
That.
- [22:45]
C
Because the interest rate, you know, doubled. Yeah, literally doubled. And we thought, okay, this is the first time ever that we're going to be stuck with something. And we waited it out. The interest rates came down a little. We found an additional equity partner, and we. We got, you know, we got the project up and running.
- [23:03]
B
Which leads me to something that Michael and I have heard our whole lives. You like. And we wanted to build. We wanted to be done with this project, which will be done in a month, a year ago, because as everyone's seen Chicago, the. The rates for apartments have. Are the best increase in the country right now. We're getting the biggest increases we've ever seen in 34 years in Chicago. And you always want to build. What's to say you want to build coming out of the, you know, recession or a bad time? And Michael and I really, really pushed our equity partners be like, guys, we need to get this thing done. We want it to be done. I would say this last season and we'll be fine now. But. But, you know, now you start worrying, and I'm not. Michael and I do not worry a lot about stuff. But then you start worrying, like, okay, you know, you don't have a lot of product coming on the market in the next couple years, but they're counting high rises. You know, there's a lot of infill 30 to 50 unit buildings being built on the north side of Chicago that don't go into the calculations of new product coming on the market. So, you know, I think, you know, you know, you have an asset. But I think I wouldn't say a worry or one of the things that we pay attention to is, you know, we want to get this stuff done and rented. You know, who knows where the economy is going, right? I mean, Right now jobs are great, people are making a lot of money. I just saw recently that people are spending way less than a third their income on rent. I mean I didn't fully read the article, but I was like, what? You know, you know, so that's great. You know, the problem comes in if you hit a recession or a bad economic turn. You know, these rents in Chicago are still what half Michael, of what New York is.
- [24:43]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:46]
A
And the New York rents are just, are just brutal talk for a second. You've had this tremendous run. I'm going to ask you two more questions. What does the deal market look like today in Chicago and where you focus, what does the deal market look like? And then what advice would you give to other emerging entrepreneurs and founders? So what does the deal market look like today and what advice do you have for other founders and entrepreneurs?
- [25:09]
C
Well, I think the deal market today is like Kenny sort of previously mentioned because like, you know, the construction costs have soared compared to what they were five, six years ago. I think that it's an extremely competitive market. You have, Kenny, always laugh. You have these younger and better looking people getting into the business and you seem to have unlimited funds to go out and buy these sort of either infill new construction pieces of land or, or these walk ups that, that we're, we're still looking at. You know, although we're trying to get away from six and eight flats, we're trying to do bigger properties. You know, we're, we're sort of intimately connected to the Chicago brokers at some of the bigger firms. So, and everyone still thinks as of multi properties is like, oh, they're the, you know, the kings of six flats and eight flats and walk up, walk up, you know, smaller sized properties in the north side of Chicago. And we will still look at those. I mean we, we, we looked at a couple, six flats last week where we're, we're building or we're converting a church into eight units, one of them into 16 units. So we're actually seeing, we're probably seeing more deals than we have for sure in the last five years. I would say we've become a little bit more conservative in our underwriting understanding that there is this still uncertainty about interest rates, still uncertainty about real estate taxes and inflated construction costs. The only real, I think stable marker in our business right now is rents. And like we don't like to sit and think, oh, when is the other shoe going to drop? We believe rents have stabilized and are probably still going up. Chicago is a well located city. We get all these sort of Midwest Big Ten type schools with all these, you know, 20 something year old kids coming here who have good jobs out of college and want to live in the city of Chicago in spite of all the, you know, bad press we get.
- [27:10]
B
Yeah, because here's the thing. I mean you talk about that we think Chicago is the best city in the country. We really do. I mean you've got, you got, you got three, three maybe four Seasons now. You have great sports team, you have great bars, you have people who love the city. You have Lake Michigan. You have the lake. You have great food, you have entertainment. Yeah. You got plays, musicals. Like it really, I mean, really, it's despite, you know, all the negative press that we get from the killings and the mayor, you know, I mean, honestly, you don't really.
- [27:44]
A
No, I mean we all, we all know that. Those of us that live in Chicago know that it's very much like it was 10, 15 years ago. There are vast places in the city that are just a pleasure and terrific and there's places that like a lot of major cities that you largely don't go into. But in terms of like all the national press, the reality is Chicago, we have one of the kids lives downtown, they feel very, very safe. A couple of years ago or several years ago, I would have said that our kids feel more safe in New York than they do in Chicago. The Chicago is back to feeling like extremely safe, extremely, like a great place to live and very much the truth. And as you folks know, see more and more people move back downtown again where for a while that, that stopped and now really it's, you know, the city, and the city itself is hopping and going great. And so you're, you're, you're open to looking at different types of deals depending on when you have dumb money chasing certain kinds of deals, you're going to go after other deals. So, so you're, you're sort of watching that because you get people that you said like come in that weren't traditional investors in this might be doing too high price of deals and you look at different aspects of the market when that's the case. But, but overall fantastic. And you're looking at bigger and bigger projects. Give us one last thought on what advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs. I love how you guys work and how close you stay to it. I could literally talk to the two of you guys forever. But give us each you, you know, one piece of advice you give to other founders or entrepreneurs.
- [29:07]
C
I mean I think you know, one of the things I would say is.
- [29:11]
B
Like don't be afraid, afraid to fail.
- [29:13]
C
But, but, and I would add to that like you know, you don't have to hit a home run every time. Like I think a lot of people come to our business and think we need the biggest deal. We you know, like it has to work perfectly. You have to have understanding and an open mind to thinking. Like there's a lot of variables that go into doing deals there. It's not all going to work out perfectly. You know, you can't stress about every little thing and you have to be willing to take a risk and like Kenny said and you have to be willing to fail. And, and, and one of the biggest thing I would say you have to. In our experience one of the most important things in our business specifically as it relates to raising outside money is you have to communicate with your investors. It can't be something where you, you get their money and you disappear and then you hope the project works out. And I will say and it's sort of a shameless plug but Kenny and I in our experience in MOTU Properties have yet to have a deal that doesn't work out in some capacity. And maybe a better way to say it is we've never had a deal that didn't, you know, that went, that went south. Like our deal. They might not work out exactly as we predicted them to. And, and maybe our model changes a little bit and the returns change a little bit but for the most part we've never lost anyone's money. We've never had like we don't, we, I'm not even sure we've ever had to have additional capital calls. As it relates to sort of our walk up type properties.
- [30:42]
B
We have not, you know, look at, sometimes we under underestimate construction. But you know what our ren and as far as like what advice. I agree my advice is don't be afraid to fail. Like, like we have done things and you learn from your failures and especially when you're young, I mean what do you really have to lose? You don't have a ton of assets. Someone once told me that they're like what do you have to lose? You're 26 years old, you know, what are they going to take if you, you know, I mean, and that really got me over the hump to say, you're right, I don't have anything to lose. I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to do this, I'm Going to apply the principles that I've learned. I'm going to be active, deal with the tenants, deal with the contractors, deal with the maintenance men. And, you know, again, one of the biggest things that we didn't mention, Michael, is In our areas, 99 of our tenants pay the rent on their first. We have literally almost no. No time spent on collections.
- [31:41]
A
That's an amazing thing, though. Yeah.
- [31:43]
C
And I do want to say also, like, it's really important, and Kenny and I are learning this as we grow. And we're not like, super. We're not. We're not young by any means, and we've been doing this a while, is to build thoughtfully and carefully, build a team around yourself of people who, you know, who are as engaged as us and also in some cases, are smarter than us. And so, you know, we have an idea of some of the things we want to pull back on and some of the things we want to move forward on more aggressively as owners. I mean, certainly there are aspects of our company where we now feel comfortable. And it's taken a lot of years to say, you know what, we can hand this over to our property manager or our analyst or our admin or whoever it is, and we trust that they're going to get this done. Also, we have sort of the backstop of knowing that they were so accessible. We come to the office every day that they'll come and see us if they have questions.
- [32:42]
B
Yeah. And we look at reports. I mean, like, you know, I'm constantly looking at the building, is constantly looking at the cash flows, rent collections, and, you know, we have. We have a lunch every Wednesday with our entire team that we go over broad. We used to actually, we change it because we used to go over every department. Now we just go over broad things because the meetings got too long and everyone was on their phone.
- [33:04]
A
To be honest, we're a big fan of short meetings. I can't even tell you.
- [33:08]
C
No, we went through a lot of trial and error. We realized we get to get. We get the company together every Wednesday for lunch, and now we just eat lunch and people just sort of talk about stuff. And of course, some business things come up, but now we have smaller, shorter meetings with all the departments.
- [33:24]
B
Yeah.
- [33:24]
C
And even that. I mean, look, again, I think it's important to know when you're starting off in business, like, you're not going to do everything perfectly. There's a lot of trial and error and not going to learn.
- [33:34]
B
And we still learn, like Michael and I. I mean, I'm not Like you know, like, you know, through, through our employees. Like, like we're not, we have no, I like to say we don't have ego when it comes to learning and when it comes to making mistakes, like we're like, okay, we were wrong. You're right. That's actually a better approach. I think that's important too. And hiring people who are smarter than you and letting them do their job.
- [33:52]
C
And I think one more thing and I know that you're on your last question. Kenny and I have been had a close relationship since we were kids. We're closest brothers, we're closest friends and there are many times when we disagree on things and we've learned, you know, over the years that you know, we can, one of us can acquiesce and say, you know what, I, you know what, I trust you. Like I'll let you run with this or I didn't see that and I appreciate that you did or vice versa. And I think it's unique as sort of co CEOs and being, and being.
- [34:26]
B
Brothers and we know, we know plenty of friends of ours who are, who are brothers in business and don't have the type of relationship we have. I think we're very fortunate to have the relationship we have where I mean, look at it. I mean you laugh like and I only bring this up and Michael knows I'm going to say in their 16 years we've been together, we don't only one time we almost got into a fight.
- [34:48]
A
An actual. Yeah, yeah. I mean both of you are pretty strong guys. So I hope it doesn't get to fisticus because that would be a problem.
- [34:55]
C
It never did.
- [34:56]
B
It never.
- [34:56]
C
It never did.
- [34:56]
B
But we didn't employ you downstairs who. It was like at six at night. He was like, he was afraid to come upstairs. He thought we'd be in a fistfight.
- [35:04]
A
It's remarkable. It's remarkable what you've accomplished and the hands on approach and what you're doing, how closely you watch what you're doing, the team you've built. It's really inspiring. Ken, Michael, we are so thrilled to feature you and mo2 properties, motu properties today as co CEOs of the month. Thank you so much for joining us on the Becker business and the Becker Private Equity podcast. Just fantastic.
- [35:27]
C
Thank you so much for having us. It was a pleasure.