Navigating Success in Multifamily Maintenance

[Jonathan Dufner] The early 2021, we had the big winter freeze I'm sure everybody knows about. I actually lived on site during that freeze. I was the only technician that was able to respond at my property.

You can't solve the world's problems all at once. You can't fix 20 broken pipes all at once. Sometimes it takes calling in extra resources.

Sometimes you do have to shut things down. In maintenance, there are technicians that don't have so strong of soft skills and those can be difficult conversations for a technician in the middle of the night. And a lot of the times residents can, for lack of better words, bully your technicians into coming in.

You don't necessarily have to hold yourself to any standards that you just see or standards that you hear. It's okay to break the mold. It's okay to be different and you can still be successful because of that.

[Adrian Danila] Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Multifamily X podcasts, Masters of Maintenance. Our guest today is Jonathan Duffner. Welcome to the show, Jonathan.

Thanks, Adrian. Happy to be here. Please walk us through your journey in multifamily maintenance up to today.

[Jonathan Dufner] When COVID hit, I was actually in the oil field close to my hometown. I was already looking at hopefully moving to Austin. I had a good friend from high school who lived here who was a police officer.

When COVID hit, unfortunately, I got laid off from my oil field job. And my friend who lived in Austin, he was nice enough to offer up his couch, let me kind of crash there while I was on a job hunt in Austin. What I didn't know then, what I do know now, is that multifamily industry was pretty much starving for maintenance technicians.

I had seen a job posting from MAA for a maintenance technician job here in Austin and just applied. Knowing my background, I actually did maintenance for my school growing up through over summers. So it seemed like it would be something that I'd be potentially good at.

And so I needed a job. And so I just put in my application, got hired. I spent about two years with MAA working towards a promotion for service manager.

I went to a more challenging asset, trained some staff, felt like I did what I needed to promote. But unfortunately, just the amount of challenges of that asset, they wanted a tenured service manager for that position. Got back on the job search, felt like it was time to kind of see what other opportunities were out there.

Found a job with Simpson Housing as a service technician three at a high rise. The looks of the high rise and the customer service standards that seems to entail, that's what got my attention. So I wanted to apply there.

And then just shortly after obtaining that role with Simpson Housing, we acquired another property and I got the opportunity to be a maintenance supervisor here.

[Adrian Danila] Tell me about how you got promoted to a service manager. What do you think are the things that you did to get you promoted to a service manager position?

[Jonathan Dufner] Really, I believe that a lot of it was initially from my interview with Simpson whenever I applied for the service technician position. I asked lots of questions about the ownership of the properties, kind of their goals of what they wanted out of their maintenance technicians. I had given some insight about different things that I've seen from working at MAA and different things that I thought could be improved.

And then really just my property manager, my service manager from my first property, my service manager, he was actually multi-site. And so it gave me an opportunity to kind of fill in that role while he wasn't there. I believe whenever I applied, they already had that acquisition kind of in the line.

And so they kind of had that initial thought and I was urged to apply.

[Adrian Danila] I want to acknowledge our sponsors from Kairos and Appwork. I want to thank them for making this broadcast possible. Now back to you, Jonathan.

What are the things that you thought you knew about the service manager position and you learned that they weren't so, once you became a service manager?

[Jonathan Dufner] Basically, I thought that I would be able to have my hands on everything and that you can, I guess, micromanage and hone in on every little detail. And unfortunately, whenever you're a service manager, especially at a bigger site like I am now, you're not afforded the time to do that. And so it turns quickly more into being able to train the technicians that you do have underneath you to do things not only your way, but possibly their way, just the best way that you find possible, which could be different for each site and even each technician.

But that's definitely the biggest difference is not actually having my hands on the things that we are completing, but more or less kind of putting the plan in place on how we are completing tasks.

[Adrian Danila] Most of the individuals that I talked to in multifamily, their stories are, I just fell into multifamily. It was something totally by accident. How do we turn the tables on this happenstance?

Make our industry appealing for people in such a way to where they actually apply, they want to become a part of the industry because it's an amazing industry, not because, you know, just randomly or accidentally they learned that this even exists as an industry.

[Jonathan Dufner] I certainly feel that that's an uphill challenge. Speaking from my own background, where I'm from, there really isn't even apartments to be had to work at. So it's not even an industry I knew possible growing up.

Just believe it's all in the education and more into the trade schools and say supervisors like myself going to these schools and speaking about these opportunities.

[Adrian Danila] I see that you're very active over on Mainers related Facebook groups and you're a cheerleader for the industry, for your peers, for your company, right? You try to attract talent to your company. What drives that?

[Jonathan Dufner] Truthfully, I didn't see this much success for myself. And so just the amount of success that I've found in multifamily, it leads me to want to share my experience in multifamily and to let people know that this opportunity does exist, especially for people who don't necessarily have the college background.

[Adrian Danila] For someone that just starts in multifamily maintenance today, what pieces of advice do you have for them as far as advancement? You know, how can I move on the ladder and become your service manager one day?

[Jonathan Dufner] In all the steps to take, be meaningful in the steps that you do take. Of course, in our industry, there's so many properties starving for labor. There's always another job.

There's always another company willing to pay you extra 50 cents or an extra dollar. But a good job and a good career path truly is more than just that quick next step that you can make. Be intentional in the moves that you make and know that there are always people watching as far as you're posting the things that you are doing, the things that you aren't doing.

[Adrian Danila] As far as lessons learned, John, Antonio, what do you recall being the most important, the lesson that prevails over all the other lessons that you learned when you first started, when you were a maintenance technician?

[Jonathan Dufner] A big turning point for me was actually back whenever I was with MAA pretty early into my career in multifamily here in Texas. In early 2021, we had the big winter freeze I'm sure that was able to respond at my property. You can't solve the world's problems all at once.

You can't fix 20 broken pipes all at once. Sometimes it takes calling in extra resources. Sometimes you do have to shut things down.

But as well as that, it gave me a lot of confidence in what I could accomplish with being there on my own, even just as a service technician who just started out in the industry.

[Adrian Danila] I want to talk about failures right now. Everybody talks about success and that's an amazing thing, right? We want to share success stories.

We want to inspire people. How about our failures? We all fail all the time.

What's one failure that actually became an amazing learning lesson for you?

[Jonathan Dufner] Whenever I first managed my first property as a maintenance supervisor, as a smaller staff, just me and another technician. And so it kind of gave me the opportunity to kind of test pilots and different things. I created a mobile friendly app to complete make readies on, super detailed.

It would say each and everything that I would want done in the apartment. I did that in hopes that we'd be creating this perfect product and the seamless process. But in turn, it truly turned into a whole lot more work on my maintenance technician.

The phone service not always working well, having to take all these extra photos, make readies taking two, three days instead of one day. Not every idea is a great idea. You've kind of learned and find out as you go.

I do believe that there are programs that do that well, but mine didn't work out as well. And we had to kind of go back to pen and paper, but there's nothing wrong with that either.

[Adrian Danila] Definitely trial and error.

[Jonathan Dufner] But just that not everybody is, not everybody handles things the same way. Not everybody is as receptive to things like that. And so if you don't, not everybody is so tech savvy.

And so you can't force what works for you on the people below you.

[Adrian Danila] That's so true. I think everybody has, you know, an ability to handle tech, but like not every type of tech. Because I mean, when you think about it, people use like Uber, they use Facebook, they use all those apps on their phones, probably on a daily basis, you know, maybe several hours a day.

If we were to build such an app to make it so easy to navigate as like, you know, Uber. Uber is kind of like my go-to app that I always mention when it comes to managing maintenance workflows. I say, we should build the Uber of maintenance.

Actually, I think people will embrace it. But again, you know, that's not the easiest thing because if it was easy, everybody would have done it by now.

[Jonathan Dufner] Exactly. And it's just getting something streamlined like that, that everybody is familiar with, but until the day comes.

[Adrian Danila] Let's stay on technology a little bit. What's your take on current technology that's available in a multifamily space for, what are your thoughts?

[Jonathan Dufner] I do wish that at Simpson House, and I wish that we did have a little bit more at our fingertips as far as maintenance technology. Here at work, we're pretty much kind of on pen and paper doing just by Yardy, Yardy Mobile. But I have seen other programs out there.

It's like HappyCo that they see. And as well as whenever I worked at MAA, we had, we used SitePlan there and they were all nice. As well as there's some more, say in the Facebook groups I'm in, there's even appliance groups that have AI bots now that you can say, I'm having this issue with this appliance.

What are some common solutions for this? And those have always have been nice, but they're all new. And so it kind of comes with the caveat of, can you trust this information yet?

[Adrian Danila] Where do you see technology heading in the future, Jonathan, maintenance related?

[Jonathan Dufner] A lot in the AI and being able to solve more simple tasks, even into the resident's hands of possibly having an AI bot for the property for maintenance issues. Say where certain breakers may be resetting the GFCI.

[Adrian Danila] Are you using technology or specifically AI in your work or in your life in general at all?

[Jonathan Dufner] I definitely do. Even to help hone in on my soft skills, I'm using AI to kind of reword some things, to send pre-move out emails to the residents, to kind of pull that a little bit off of what would typically be the office staff doing those tasks.

[Adrian Danila] You basically use AI as a personal assistant, right?

[Jonathan Dufner] Absolutely.

[Adrian Danila] I think just right now, as we speak, there's someone building some AI profiles that will in the future replace training directors, or a big part of the training director's job, to where they're going to create those AI avatars, I should say, to pair them with you, with me, with your technicians, and just be their resource body for training for whatever questions they might have related to their job. And the same probably goes for leasing agents and every single position at the site.

[Jonathan Dufner] That's very fascinating. I can see how that could leave less for interpretation in a way. You know verbatim how your new hires are being trained and even current employees as well.

[Adrian Danila] All you have to do is to create those profiles and then you upload into those profiles the SOPs that are related to the particular job, the training curriculum that's pertaining to that job. And basically, you could actually create training on demand instead of having a technician watching like, I don't know, a 30 minutes or a one hour training class. They could just say, my condenser motor is not starting.

What should I do? And then the training body starts asking questions and then basically walks the technician through finding the problem, troubleshooting the problem.

[Jonathan Dufner] And that's a resource that a technician could have in their pocket 24-7, so even out there on call or anything like that.

[Adrian Danila] Absolutely right. You made a point of having it in their pocket, yes. I was just exchanging some messages with someone yesterday on LinkedIn and the person was in training, learning and development.

And she was mentioning certain challenges with maintenance personnel and like getting them to sit in front of a computer to train. What I said at the time was, I think that we are transitioning towards a mobile solution. I just read, I did a research last night and 60% of the internet traffic, the internet consumption, it's on mobile.

And I think it's on the rise. So if you're not mobile, you don't exist. I said, if you're not delivering that training, that learning in a shape of an app on somebody's phone, you're not relevant.

You can't get through. You're not going to get to your intended beneficiary.

[Jonathan Dufner] I agree. And especially from a maintenance standpoint, we know how it is with maintenance and how tech savvy they are with computers. And even more than that, the time that they had to sit at a desk to be in front of a computer.

[Dean Fung A Wing] And now a word from Dean Fungawing, founder and CEO, Kairos. We combine a wide area network on the property that's very, very light infrastructure, incredibly easy to install. We're not talking about putting base stations and network equipment in every apartment.

We're talking maybe five to seven base stations across the community. I can blanket the community with coverage, wireless coverage. And that wireless coverage is then used to take all of that sensor data, whether it's leak sensors or water meters or occupancy sensor, whatever kind of sensor you want, temperature, humidity sensor.

And those sensors are then going to those base stations and transferring all that data to the software layers and services. And from that software dashboard, the notification engines will kick in to then notify the site team. Again, nobody really wants to use another piece of software, right?

You guys got plenty of software to do. And last time I checked, like no one wants to sit there and stare at a fire alarm waiting for it to go off. Our technology is incredibly unsexy in that regards.

You don't want to stare at an app waiting for it to go off. But when it does go off, this is mission critical stuff.

[Adrian Danila] There's also another aspect that's called microlearning, right? So the microlearning is like taking a one hour class and slice it in like five or 10 or 15 minute portions just so someone could like take modules of that class. Someone could take a cigarette break or they're just taking a little breather from working.

They could watch a video for 10 minutes versus commit to like 30 minutes for an hour at a time. And then eventually they watch this, the questions they pass, the quiz on that particular segment. And that just adds up to like their credits of the stuff that they learn.

And that's a lot more accessible, a lot more doable than just asking them to commit an hour at a time. Yeah. So the future is here.

Actually, I know of a company that does just that, that does microlearning. So the technology is out there. Same with Uber for maintenance, right?

Our friends from Appwork, which are one of our sponsors, they actually develop amazing technology. I'm pretty impressed with what their technology does when it comes to maintenance management. So definitely a lot to look into out there.

Jonathan, what are your thoughts on centralization? I'm sure that you're familiar with at least conversations. I'm not sure if your company has any initiatives regarding centralization in maintenance or not, but definitely it's kind of the buzzword that has been taking over the multifamily industry for, gosh, probably over a year now.

Every time you go to like a conference or there's something, a conversation regarding hot topics, centralization always comes up. What are your thoughts on centralization?

[Jonathan Dufner] I do believe that there is a place for centralization and maintenance. I by no means think that it would be a replacement for on-site staff as a whole. Obviously things are always going to break.

You're going to have to have somebody here to fix them, whether that be possibly a third party vendor or a dedicated on-site staff member. Obviously, I think the drivers are the lack of labor in our industry. I think that that's the biggest driver behind it.

I think it's a good thing. I think that those positions would be more geared towards more skillful employees, which would in turn hopefully bring wages up for those positions as well. Of course, we've all worked with good technicians and not so good technicians, and I think that it would be a good stepping stone for those better technicians before say a service manager or a regional role to show what they can do across a bigger platform, a bigger portfolio.

[Adrian Danila] If you are to be approached by the head of recruiting at your company and you will be asked for feedback, what are your suggestions when it comes to recruiting maintenance professionals?

[Jonathan Dufner] I believe a lot in going to the local graduations as well as during the courses. There's actually one here local to Austin, SkillPoint Alliance. I mean, that's where the future of maintenance is, is who's coming out of, who's recently certified.

Outside of that, of course, social media. Like you said, I'm very active in different forums and Facebook groups. That's where technicians, that's where they are.

You recruit where your demographic is and that's where they are. They're not so much on Indeed, they're really not so much on LinkedIn.

[Adrian Danila] I love that you said that, you know, go where they, I call that where they live, right? Quote, unquote, live. But where they virtually live, instead of trying to like reach out to them where they don't really congregate, they don't hang out, just go where they live and advertise out there and bring the conversation.

I love that. I've been saying this actually for a number of years. Jonathan, retention in our industry, it's, you know, it's another challenge too.

I'm not sure how big of a challenge is it for you or for your company, but what do you think are some things that operators can do to increase retention rates when it comes to, employee retention rates when it comes to maintenance personnel?

[Jonathan Dufner] We're fortunate here at Simpsons where we have lots of tenured employees. It seems like people come here and they typically stay. I attest that a lot to how we treat our employees.

For my own sake, speaking on maintenance, I've been at some other places where maintenance doesn't feel like it's all that included or all that important. And I've just never felt that way at Simpson. Any ideas I've ever had, they've always been at least listened to.

I've always been invited to any company events, any industry events that we're attending. At least monthly lunches with our team here, but sometimes more often than that. Just really appreciating our employees and to speak for the guys I have with me.

Any issues that they have, if they have an idea of a new tool that might make their job easier, I will do everything in my power to try to get them what they do need. And I just believe that that is a big difference on having the tools that you need to succeed because hopefully we all want to do a good job at the end of the day.

[Adrian Danila] Of course. As far as on call, I want to talk a little bit about on call. On call is probably the most hated part of the job when it comes to apartment maintenance.

What are some things that you think will kind of sweeten the deal for those that are pulling call? How would you, if you were to have the power to say, I'm going to restructure the entire on call program for my company, what would that look like?

[Jonathan Dufner] To me, having a base compensation for being on call, calls or not. Here currently we do $100 a week. I hear some in the industry, more or less.

But more than that, a clear policy on what is expected of you whenever you're on call. As well as having an answering service in between to filter the calls that are true emergencies and that are not. Because in maintenance, there are technicians that don't have so strong of soft skills and those can be difficult conversations for a technician in the middle of the night.

And a lot of the times residents can, for lack of better words, bully your technicians into coming in. For me, that's been an uncomfortable area of being on call. And so just to be compensated fairly for taking those calls and to have clear guidelines on what is expected of you after hours.

[Adrian Danila] What type of training do you think would be very, very useful for maintenance professionals when it comes to soft skills? What type of classes?

[Jonathan Dufner] Really, that one's a tougher one for me to answer. I'm not all that sure. I know kind of shadowing other technicians that are stronger in that area has seemed to be helpful.

But it is also something that it's more of something that you have to me. Soft skills, they're a harder thing to develop and learn than, say, a technical skill. It's not so much of you do this and this is the direct result of it.

[Dean Fung A Wing] And now a word from Sean Landsberg, co-founder, Appwork.

[Adrian Danila] Tell me a little bit about data integrity. How does Appwork rank in data integrity? We all know that what you put in comes out, right?

So if the information that you put in is not accurate, it's not representing the reality, whatever comes out as data is really not accurate. So how do you fare in data integrity?

[Sean Landsberg] It's not just about the information that you put in. The information that comes out is only as good as the information that you put in. But it's also the fact that someone actually has to manually input a lot of that data.

So for us, there's two things. Number one is just about all the data that we're collecting. It happens through the normal course of using our product, right?

So no one's actually going in and manually adding information that we're then using in reporting analytics or anything like that. So all the data that we're presenting is actually not done manually. So it takes out just one less thing that people have to do.

It makes using the product a lot easier. But it also removes that whole component where people can influence the data. So everything, even take something as simple as a technician's callback.

That's a metric that comes directly from the residents, where there's no way anybody, especially the technician, can influence that. Same thing with the ratings.

[Adrian Danila] Tell me about the people that inspired you. People that you've actually learned from in your journey in multifamily maintenance. Like who are the people that you look up to?

Or one person?

[Jonathan Dufner] It starts from my first maintenance supervisor. His name is Carlos. Kind of giving me the tools I needed to find the knowledge that I wanted.

To show me the different Facebook groups that are available for apartment maintenance. To show there's different YouTube channels to show you kind of the day in and day out of what our job is. And that led me to find people like you and like Paul Rhodes.

Endlessly listen to every podcast that I can find. Reading all the different posts in the Facebook groups. I often joke with my girlfriend, who's also in the industry, that I've only been doing this for about four years.

But I feel like I have 10 years worth of experience just from reading what other technicians have going on every day.

[Adrian Danila] Yeah, this is an amazing resource. You know, instead of like trying to learn everything the hard way, it's just kind of like reading what others learn the hard way. So you don't make the same mistakes and just kind of like avoid those.

That's a really good hack. I kind of hate to, you know, use the word hack. It's like, I just don't think that there's a lot of hacks in life.

It's just a lot of, you know, blood, sweat, and tears. In any type of thing that you want to be successful at, you want to become successful. But this is definitely something you could learn.

You could actually cut, reduce your learning curve to a lower level when you look up to and you learn from others that actually have made the mistakes. So you don't have to repeat them, right?

[Jonathan Dufner] Exactly. And even in saying that, you may have one scenario, but you have 50 comments of 50 different ways that people have tried to handle that and what the results were.

[Adrian Danila] When you were very young, you know, when you grew up, what did you want to be when you grew up?

[Jonathan Dufner] Like most kids, I guess it changed a few times growing up. When I was real little, my dad, he was a truck driver. And so I wanted to be a truck driver, that kind of way.

Through high school, I took a lot of law enforcement classes. And I had a pretty big interest in wanting to do criminal justice. Really, college is kind of what pushed me away from it, I guess.

Whenever I graduated high school, I wasn't gung-ho about going to college. I just wanted to jump right into the workforce. And that's what I did.

[Adrian Danila] Who's the most influential person in your life that made the biggest positive impact in your life?

[Jonathan Dufner] Actually, whenever I did maintenance at my high school over the summers, the gentleman that I was tagging along with on the maintenance department, his name's Nathan Jones. He was actually not only that, but also a baseball coach of mine growing up and kind of took me under his wing when I lost my dad when I was younger as well. And so he taught me most of what I know, really, about being a man, life, as well as the trades, maintenance.

And that taught me young that there's a lot of success that you can have that each person, it's okay to have your own definition of success and what's important to you.

[Adrian Danila] If Nathan was to watch this conversation, what message would you have for him?

[Jonathan Dufner] I mean, we basically talk every day, but I would say thank you. Thank you for all you've done to teach me how to be successful and to not try to live up to other people's standards, but what's important to me.

[Adrian Danila] Based on what you're telling me, this mentorship has helped you tremendously. What advice do you have for some folks that don't have a mentor? Why should they have a mentor?

[Jonathan Dufner] Similar to some other points that we had said is it gives you an opportunity to learn from mistakes that aren't your own. Of course, you're always going to make your own mistakes and you'll have lessons through that. Use other people's experience to leverage yourself and to hopefully you can be the maintenance supervisor, possibly five years earlier in your career so that you could take that next step before you retire.

[Adrian Danila] How important is networking for you, Jonathan?

[Jonathan Dufner] Networking has really set me apart from other maintenance professionals in the industry. There aren't all that many of us that are active on LinkedIn and that are trying to make these connections every day. It gives me a whole list of different vendor contacts that I can call, a whole list of different industry experts I can call whenever we have issues that come up that we don't have good answers for.

Of course, maybe they have experience.

[Adrian Danila] Looking ahead, 2025 and beyond, how do you see the future of apartment maintenance?

[Jonathan Dufner] I worry a bit about the future of 2025, 2026. I know that the economy is not as well as it has been in the apartment industries. The rents aren't exactly where the higher-ups would like them to be.

I do worry there's a balancing act somewhere. What they were expecting to get on rents, they're hoping to save that, I'm assuming, in other areas. I worry about future budget cuts and how we're going to get lean and be able to get everything that we need done with a smaller amount.

[Adrian Danila] What the future looks like for you? How do you envision it?

[Jonathan Dufner] I hope to have a bigger role to have a bigger impact. Hopefully, with my company, we don't currently have anything like that, but I like to fit in where I can, even if it isn't a position necessarily, but just to help guide other technicians within the company, especially within our region, at least. Kind of navigate everyday maintenance challenges, ways to more efficiently run a property, ways to more efficiently communicate with their office team and their residents.

[Adrian Danila] There's a sales component in what we do. We don't just want to make sure we get the right candidates, but we want to make sure we sell them. We sell them the work environment, the company, because we all know that candidates have many options when it comes to working, especially in multifamily maintenance.

If I was to be a candidate that you're interviewing, and I would ask you, why should I work for Simpson Group? What would you tell me?

[Jonathan Dufner] Just that we truly care about putting our employees first, and we truly care about the resident experience. Our only words, and that it's not what the everyday life is within the company, and you could pick up the phone and, to me, talk to any Simpson employee, and they would likely give you the same exact story of that. Never have to stretch anything to my team.

They know exactly what I know. It's clear communication from the top down, and we'll do everything that we can to make sure our employees and our residents feel supported.

[Adrian Danila] What's the one takeaway you'd like for listeners to remember from our conversation?

[Jonathan Dufner] Just to be intentional in all that you do, that everybody's definition of success doesn't have to be the same, that you don't necessarily have to hold yourself to any standards that you just see or standards that you hear. It's okay to break the mold. It's okay to be different, and you can still be successful because of that.

[Adrian Danila] How can our listeners connect with you and learn more about your work, network with you, Jonathan?

[Jonathan Dufner] Currently, I'm on LinkedIn.

[Adrian Danila] Jonathan, thank you so much for being with us today. Great conversation. I hope to get you back here soon.

Hopefully, as soon as you get promoted to a regional position.

[Jonathan Dufner] Yes, sir. Thank you. Good talking with you.

[Adrian Danila] This was another episode of Multifamily X Podcast. Everybody, thank you so much for watching us, and I want to thank our sponsors from Kairos and Apple for making this episode possible. See you all here on the next episode.

Take care. Have a great day.