What It Takes to Lead in Multifamily Maintenance

[Brian McGlawn] Nobody knows anything about multifamily. Heck, I didn't know about it. When I tell people what I do for a living, they ask, what is that?

Nobody knows what I do for a living. I worked for the tech and now I'm a director. They are now intrigued with that career path.

So I believe putting maintenance more on the forefront of multifamily will do that. It's going to require the industry to place a large amount of trust in the maintenance side, because again, we've always been on the backburner of maintenance. We were just the guys that turned wrenches.

What I thought was I had to be a master at mechanics, essentially, knowing how to fix everything, being able to do it and teach it. Once I got in the role, I learned it was a whole lot more admin and people management skills. And I had somebody call me and say, hey, listen, this is what I'm working on.

I would like you to help. Kind of give me some ramifications of my boundaries. That was when I was first introduced to the career side of maintenance.

And that's when I saw, oh, this is more than about turning a wrench. And then the questions I was asked.

[Adrian Danila] Excited to do this together. Welcome to the show.

[Brian McGlawn] Thanks for having me. It's an honor that you asked. Thank you.

[Adrian Danila] Brian, you had a tremendous career in facilities management in an industry. Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you start in the industry?

Tell us a little bit, take us on your journey so far.

[Brian McGlawn] Okay. So in high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So my parents signed me for a trade, which is HVAC.

So I attended Lincoln Tech in 2003 and 4. So once I got done with Lincoln Tech, looking for a job, not a lot of offers out there for a little bit of experience. Got pregnant with my oldest son.

And needed to actually find a job that I could take care of. So property management, they called me back, made me a good offer. I saw I was a good skill set.

So I kind of got started there back in 04. Provide for my family and myself. So I kind of just kept it going.

[Adrian Danila] So your journey and then your advancement from the maintenance tech, I'm assuming that, you know, the next step was a service manager, right? What was your first promotion?

[Brian McGlawn] First promotion was an assistant service manager. That came in 2009. Yeah.

I just moved back to Virginia from South Carolina. Went open. I applied.

I got that position. Then around about 2012, they asked me to go to a site to kind of do some cleanup work. What I didn't know was they were going to move me there and promote me to be a service manager.

So that took place at like 2011, 2012. A little small site, 200 units, three-man team, me and ASM and a tech. That was my second promotion.

Then my third one was to a service manager to a larger property, about 566. It was a six-man team, including myself. So that was my second promotion as a service manager.

Then my next promotion was to a regional maintenance associate. I was going around kind of helping our company acquire new properties through takeovers, due diligence, acquisitions. So I was on that team in between those two roles.

And I became an RMA, regional maintenance associate. Then my next promotion was to an RMM, regional maintenance manager. That came in 2018, I believe.

I became an RMM.

[Adrian Danila] Yeah. And is that your current position?

[Brian McGlawn] No. So then my next promotion, which was here recently, last December, was a regional director of facilities for the Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast Coast.

[Adrian Danila] Okay. Let's go to what it takes. A lot of the up-and-coming, talented individuals, professionals, they're looking up to someone like you.

And I think some practical advice will be very helpful, useful to them. What does it take to have such a stellar career and move up and up and up? Dedication.

[Brian McGlawn] You got to dedicate hard work, like being willing to go the extra mile when somebody's not watching. This is a thankless industry. We're not always giving the kudos.

So being able to operate within that and not going to thank you all the time, that's what I tell all of my people that I work with. And then passion, having a passion for what you do. And then just being a pure person, being able to relate to those that are at your level above or below your level.

Those are the core foundation that one would need to get to where I'm at. Because everything that I do isn't 100% mechanical. A lot of it's personality-based, whether it's me to a client, me to a candidate or to an employee.

A lot of it is just dedication, me being dedicated to learn this asset inside and out so I can then teach or hire to it. So that will be the foundational advice I would give anybody.

[Adrian Danila] I'm glad that you mentioned that not everything's technical. A lot of all professionals out there would think the better I'm going to get at this craft of fixing things, mastering my craft, I could move up. I'll say that, yeah, that could be a part of what you have to do.

But there's so much more to it than that. So going back to your transition from being a technician to being a service manager, what were the things that you thought you needed to become a service manager that you learned they weren't so once you got into the position?

[Brian McGlawn] What I thought was I had to be a master at mechanics, essentially. Knowing how to fix everything, being able to do it and teach it. Once I got in the role, I learned it was a whole lot more admin and people management skills.

Being able to write scopes of work, conduct RP meetings, create my budget, stay within my budget, present why I need so much money, how I'm going to spend it, how I'm going to maintain it. A lot of it was strategy. Those are things that I wasn't taught as an assistant or tech.

Just that my mind was give me a wrench, give me a hammer, I'm going to fix everything. So that's what I learned my first year was the soft skills that were needed. And don't want to jump ahead, but that's why I have a passion for development and teaching because we don't teach the soft skills enough or talk about them enough in this industry on the maintenance side of the house.

It's just turning a wrench.

[Adrian Danila] Yeah. Now the next step from like one side to multiple sides, I know that you kind of like you didn't transition directly into like a director role. You were more in a flooring capacity first.

I guess it's safe to call that, right? Yeah. You know, you're just floating.

What were the things that you saw that were needed in order to actually oversee a number of sites versus just one site?

[Brian McGlawn] Organization, project management. Those are two things that I affiliated that floating role with. I treated each of my locations as a project.

So instead of trying to keep a running document, I kept like a running track of what was going on. So I could have a touch base with my managers or meetings to understand what was going on, but being very organized and project management, those are two tools that I've used to kind of help manage, maintain or run multiple sites.

[Adrian Danila] How does one acquire all the skills that you just mentioned? Because it's nice that people kind of like, you know, they know what it takes, but how did you do it? Because, you know, as you were saying, we don't really have much of, you know, formal training to teach these skills.

So I'm assuming that, you know, you went on your own, kind of like learn those. Tell me a little bit about that. How did you acquire those skills?

[Brian McGlawn] Through mentorship, asking questions. I did go back to school in the middle of my career and obtained my business management degree. So a few classes there taught me and like some other trainings that I maybe got picked up from like a local adult education program.

And then I asked a lot of questions. I sat in a lot of rooms that I didn't necessarily speak in. I just sat there and listened to people exchange information.

I dealt with a lot of construction and project managers. So I kind of picked from everybody that was close to me. I wasn't afraid to ask those questions at all.

So that's kind of how I obtained it. Then the rest, you know, I went and I researched it, you know, what, in order to be successful here, what tools do I need? So a lot of reading, a lot of question asking via the internet, you know, Google, you know, we have it at our fingertips.

And books. So between school books and mentors, that's kind of where I kind of picked everything up at.

[Adrian Danila] A lot of initiative and determination. Now I want to talk a little bit of a strategy here and I'll get your take on that, you know, get you to share some nuggets. We're facing, the entire industry is facing, you know, increase in cost of operating properties.

Insurances in some states are through the roof. Your insurance premiums, those are expenses that are uncontrollable. One cannot actually control insurance prices.

The price of, you know, materials, the price of surprise has been going up rapidly for the past, you know, maybe like four or five years. I should say ever since COVID started, it started with the shortages, then inflation hit and, you know, kept going up and up and up. So it makes it harder for operators, you know, to make profit.

What are some strategies that, you know, you could think about? And I want to put this in perspective. Maintenance is the number one, the top controllable expense that a property has.

What are some strategies that, you know, you would like to share with the audience that will actually help companies improve their bottom line?

[Brian McGlawn] Yes, definitely. So what I've seen, what I've tried to put in place, one is inventory management. By actually managing inventory, you know, the proper way, only ordering what you need.

You know, when it comes, for example, you know, with vacant units, we know how many we're going to get a month. So what's the goal here? Are we replacing all toilet seats, some or what?

So let's place that order right at the top of the month and not just do a bunch of sporadic ordering where we don't know what we're going to spend at all. Second thing, bulk purchase. What can we buy in bulk?

How much of a discount can I get if I buy it in bulk versus buying one off? If I know I need 30 toilet seats and 30 come in a case, can I get a bulk rate for that versus buying two sets of 10 each month? Budget preparation, budgeting properly, everything I will speak on about preparation, budget preparation, looking at your year over year expenditures, how old your properties is getting or equipment and actually creating a plan for the equipment.

How much is needed? When is it needed? What about a PM program and putting the actual right amount of money there in the budget at the beginning versus just throwing a random number there and then you go over your budget?

When it comes to base building mechanics, for me, I'm all about PMs and life expectancy. So if I have a 15 year, you know, goal here, I mean, 15 year goal here with this equipment, what does it need each year at year three, year five, seven, and 10? Do I have in the budget?

I am doing a comparison report, you know, at year, if it's a 15 year, but year 13 has cost me more to operate. Is that operation price more or close to what it will cost to replace it? That's a conversation I'm going to have with our client and with our local teams.

Hey, let's visit this right now and not wait, wait for later. That's about all that I see that at least I can control. I mean, I don't control the prices or the commodities or whatever, but just preparation there with inventory management.

And then some stuff is trying to purchase some stuff locally, not always source things out the country where you have those high rates, but try some local stuff. And then at startup, we always provide a startup budget. And I like to make sure that the client understands this FFV that you're putting in here, it costs this much to replace it.

Are you certain that you want to stick with this? What are we looking for here? So educating the clients and the local teams on what's needed to run their building is another way that I can help them at least understand the rising costs and prepare for those costs.

And then the last thing is market research. Having my vendors provide a market research and price increase. Hey, listen, if you lock in for a five-year PM plan versus a year over year, I can save you 15%.

So then getting with the legal team to say, listen, let's take on this five-year contract, but let's make sure we have an out legally if they're not operating properly or working within our boundaries.

[Adrian Danila] One thing that comes to mind is procurement. The entire way we procure stuff, we buy stuff in multifamily, it's broken. The entire system is broken.

I see so many opportunities, but I don't want to lead you to an answer. Do you see the same challenges? Do you see some ways in which we as an industry could do better and companies in particular that actually have the leverage of five, 10, 15, 20, 30,000 units could leverage that portfolio, that buying power to actually get the best deals?

Can you think of some specific ways that you're not seeing around being implemented or applied that could actually make a difference in saving property management companies money?

[Brian McGlawn] Yeah. Procurement is one that we discuss often. You see it heavily in the supply industry or commercial industry, but not multifamily.

Again, using your purchasing power to strike those deals with procurement on lowering those prices is something that it's still young in our industry. The maintenance aspect, which leads to procurement and multifamily, it's still really young. For many years, it was seen as a jack of all trade or a handyman position.

A lot of thought and planning didn't go into this role out of the house. Now that we're catching up, proper procurement and placement would definitely help. It would give better pricing.

Again, back to the five-year PM plan. If I've got 50 buildings and I can get five-year plans procured properly and proper pricing, it will help with our year-over-year spending and expenditures for those accounts.

[Adrian Danila] Now, when you think about the buyer's experience, when you go and use a platform, let's just name Yardie Marketplace, but it could be their competitors' marketplaces that they have built. To my knowledge, they're not actionable tools that you could use to shop around. Let's just say that your company has three MRO suppliers available.

We choose typing in Red Flapper, for example, or Philwolf for the system to have the ability to pull that on a backend and show you that for a Red Flapper, your best price is going to be Chadwell Supply, for example, or Ferguson HD Supply. Do you see any products out there that are actually helping doing that?

[Brian McGlawn] No. It's funny because we had a meeting about this here recently where my team brought this up. Right now, what I'm noticing on my sites are people are using random MROs to buy things at a lower cost.

In doing that, it's not honoring our partnership agreements with some of these places. I want to buy a Red Flapper. Who has the cheapest one based on this marketplace?

Can you do that? Can we hit a Lowes and HD and Amazon or Chadwell or Granger? Can we search them all with one website?

Right now, we haven't seen anything. When I've spoken to a lot of these MRO suppliers at trade shows, they're all working on it because, again, this part of the industry is still a baby, what I call it. It's still brand new.

We're still creating and developing it. Those MRO suppliers, they're reaching out to us and asking the question like, what do you guys need to be successful and to honor your budgets? We're I need one location where I look for a light bulb and I can see four different prices and I can pick the one that is within spec, within my budget, and order it right there.

[Adrian Danila] I'll say the great news is that there's technology being developed as we speak. It's not widely known, but there are folks just like you and I thinking about these challenges and they're actually developing products to help with that. That brings me to technology.

From a technology perspective, what are some tools that you see right there that are actually working that could improve the way we run maintenance to actually help the teams improve their efficiency?

[Brian McGlawn] We use a few like autobots, I forget the names, where the resident actually they can call in work orders and place them in with the bot versus with the person. I know we're currently using those and piling those to, in my opinion, they aren't the best. The con is the questions on how often this is happening, kind of seeking more information to kind of generate that ticket.

And then a different CMMS program, but one that's driven by maintenance. There's this idea in the industry, out in the world of the industry, that like a yardie is a true CMMS. And I'm like, when it comes to maintenance, it's not. So being able to house PM documentation, asset tagging, and work orders is what our side of the house needs.

And then, of course, it's always the BMS systems. Those are improving and becoming more AI generated to kind of seek out the trends and make adjustments before the spike happens, whether it's hot or cold winter or summer time. So those are the three that I see that are working, but I would definitely want to see improvement on it.

[Adrian Danila] How about predictive maintenance, Brian? Learning about things that are about to happen before they happen. What's your take on that?

What do you see? What type of need do you see for predictive maintenance? In what areas of maintenance?

And then do you see any products? Are you aware of any products? And if you're not aware, what would be very useful to have a tool for?

[Brian McGlawn] Predictive maintenance is needed in our industry. It tends to be expensive, so that's why we don't use it. What I would like to see some predictive maintenance implemented in our industry is stuff of like vibration or noise, you know, with these RTUs and these DOAS systems to kind of help us understand where it's at, what's going to fail soon.

Currently, I have seen people, you know, conduct IRA scans on switch gears to kind of see what happened before a shutdown is needed. But those in our industry on the multifamily aspect, that's why I like to see noise and vibration for the central plant world. Anything, you know, boilers, pumps, all of that, because things tend to change based on days, temperature, dust, and just that area that we're missing because we're not able to be in the room 24-7.

[Adrian Danila] How about, I'm curious about leaks and mold prevention on those areas?

[Brian McGlawn] Our favorite word in the industry. So my thought on that is, and this is where, and again, this is me, not the industry, my thought on it is when it comes to the leaks, they have equipment and tools now that will shut off the shutoff valves if there's a leak based on it. But for me, it's about the programming, how much water needs to hit the floor of this sensor before it does a shutdown.

Because a false alarm on a leak can be detrimental to a building's systems. If it turns the water off and it's not an actual leak, but it's a sweater condensation, and I have a whole building shut down with my central plant running dry, I have that part. When it comes to the mold, or AMG as we call it in the industry, there are mold spores all over the place.

So now it's sensitivity. And then what are we agreeing to? And then legally, what's the right way to kind of word it or frame it?

Because what are we admitting to versus not admitting to? Are we saying it's a health? So when it comes to the mold part, I always look at it legally, because just the world we live in, everybody's ready to say, I have mold here, I have mold there.

So we have a detector, and that detector, again, goes off prematurely. Where does that put us at legally? And then, of course, it's programming and then maintaining the leak detector and the automatic shutoff valves for that space, that area.

[Dean Fungawing] And now a word from Dean Fungawing, founder and CEO, Kairos. Next is this fire protection solution around kitchen fires, right? Again, we are not by any means saying that this is replacing your fire suppression system.

This is replacing your building's fire protection systems, which are all regulated by fire departments and local codes and all that, right? You still have to have all that. But I'm telling you, there's actually a step before any of those systems go off.

And that is just knowing what the temperature in that kitchen above that stove is in real time. You knowing that is the difference between you stopping a fire in an apartment and not. If you knew that that apartment was 100 degrees, Adrian, you could get to it with a fire extinguisher.

You could wake up the resident, open that door, get in there, solve that problem before it spreads to the whole building. Again, you can also notify the fire department just by the moment that kitchen's over 100 degrees, notify the fire department via text message, email, phone call. You can notify your local building engineer, your maintenance staff, your property management team.

Everybody needs to know the moment that apartment's over 100 degrees. Simple solution to a problem nobody ever wants to think about. This is a life safety issue and it's no one else's responsibility except for a building owner to make sure that we take care of that building and make sure we protect residents.

We're here to help if that's something that folks are interested in.

[Adrian Danila] Now let's go to automation of the processes where we're using humans to do. For example, dispatching the technicians to certain, literally taking the service requests and either printing them or handing them to the technicians or the service manager actually spending physical time distributing those. That's one thing.

And then the way they access, the way they typically or historically we've been accessing units like using that key box in the office where it's just a box or it's like a key track, a handy track, you name it, and back and forth with the keys. They have some thoughts on seeing better processes out there to automate so then there's less travel from the office and less service managers' involvement in dispatching the techs to certain tasks.

[Brian McGlawn] I haven't seen any new tools but I know like a ComBob or a HappyCo, you can automatically have tickets sent to certain technicians based on the coding and the writing. So you have a tech that's solely working on HVAC, they can get all the HVAC tickets. So I've seen that and of course we have so much technology now where you have the Bluetooth unlocking of the doors with the Bluetooth or just a key fob.

So that way the teams aren't spending so much time gathering keys, marking the keys, and then just the whole key security thing, they can bypass that. And then of course, I always think about key safety is then you can program that this person only has access to this large amount of digital keys from the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. So that way, boom, you don't have to worry about security there. And then the same with the tickets, they go this person only this time.

So I haven't seen anything new yet, but the ones that I work with now, work within the past, they do have automatically scheduled work orders and automatic assigning of the work orders.

[Adrian Danila] Now, centralization is a big word in an industry and for larger companies, large portfolios like what you're overseeing, is this a thing that's doable? And we all have our own definitions of centralization, but while looking or thinking of different things, so what's your approach? First of all, how do you define the centralization and do you see it applicable for larger portfolios?

And how would that work if you do?

[Brian McGlawn] I like centralization. It'll make it easier, especially as the portfolios get larger. You have one location for everybody to kind of get their understanding of what's needed to roll out and use.

It'll make it easier for us to teach and to train. It's transparency, which is needed in our industry more. So that's kind of how I would define it, and that's how I would implement it within my own realm.

[Adrian Danila] Interesting take out there. I'm curious if you envision things being run from a central location and actually same person being in charge in more than one site as part of centralization.

[Brian McGlawn] I mean, right now we have in our industry, some people that oversee a few sites from only one location. They're able to roll out standards, SOPs. Once you understand the industry and you understand what asset you have in front of you, you can control from a central location.

The facilities world operates that way somewhat. They'll have an FM that oversees four or five sites, but they're not at those sites every day. They might be there once a month just to kind of do a check-in and meetings and whatnot.

Centralization does help our current problem right now, which is we are unable to find good talent mechanically. We can use that to train others and operate buildings in a different way from one location versus trying to place somebody in every building constantly.

[Adrian Danila] How do we take that model from the facilities world and implement it in garden-style communities? How do we make that work?

[Brian McGlawn] We can actually use the same exact model. It's going to be just geographically, and then you have to make amendments based on what base and equipment is there. Again, it's just learning the facility and then making the introduction.

A lot of it is going to be client buy-in. Are they willing to share one person over across different aspects? As far as implementing it, it's not that hard at all.

It creates more of a career path. Everybody just has to buy into doing it. That's all they have to do.

[Adrian Danila] We as an industry are facing an extreme talent shortage. I'm sure that you're experiencing a level of that in your portfolio more or less. How do we tackle this industry-wide problem, industry-wide challenge?

How do we get better at filling the positions that are vacant faster? We also have a generation that's like Gen X is halfway out, on the way out, pushing 60 years old, some of them. The physical work is really not an option.

They're either retiring or looking for jobs that are less demanding physically. I'm not seeing a lot from the younger generation stepping into their shoes and taking over. Also, not only that we're missing bodies per bodies, but we're losing legacy knowledge.

People that were trained to learn hands-on and know their trade, they're actually retiring. How do we pass the baton down to the newer generation with that legacy knowledge that I was talking about?

[Brian McGlawn] We have to tell our story. I'll say it again. You know, this used to be a handyman position.

This is now a career path. I'm on my 21st year. This is a career for me.

Telling our story and sharing and showing that it's an actual career path. Letting the younger generation see that, one, it's lucrative. You can make good money.

Two, you can travel and see our country with it as well. Then three, it's not just about turning your wrench. It requires some brain power as well.

That's the first thing. It's just telling our story, letting them see that it's not just grunt and dirty work. The next thing is going to be mentorships.

People like myself, the generation before me, it is our job, it's our duty to give back. This is how we give back and pass knowledge on. I've noticed too many times that knowledge is power.

In order to keep the power, you don't share it. People like myself, my position, and those above me, we are failing the industry if we do not give back, if we do not mentor, and if we do not share. That's the second thing.

The third thing is we have to currently invest in our people. We have to. We have to show them where to find the roadmap and what exit to take based on where they're trying to get to.

No exit is the wrong exit. It's just a matter of what do you want to do with your career and your life versus what I want to do with my career and my life. The next thing is stop pitting all of us against one another.

It wasn't until recently where I started to network with other directors or regionals from the opposite company. Before, we're like, no, no, no, we don't talk to them. Why not?

We're all experiencing the same issues. Why can't we come together and network and discuss, how are you combating these issues? What are you guys doing?

Most of us are doing the same exact thing. That's what I believe we can do, the changes we can make to fix our industry and to make it more enticing for people because I didn't believe it was a career path for myself when I came in 21 years ago. For me, it's about taking care of my family, and that was it.

Throughout the time, I have grown to love what I do and see that it's an actual career path, not just a job.

[Adrian Danila] I love the fact that you're emphasizing collaboration. I think collaboration is a thing that's super underrated in today's environment. Those that are actually getting it are up for incredible wins in the future.

It's not about, like you said, keeping it close to the chest and not share it with anyone else. Also, I just heard something recently on a podcast. Someone was saying, A players are hiring A plus players.

B players hire C and D players because they feel insecure. You had to look to hire the ones that actually like you or better than you to better yourself. You shouldn't be afraid that they're going to take your job when you're hiring those C and D players.

They're actually making it harder for all of you. That really made me think and put a lot of perspective right there.

[Voice Over] And now a word from Sean Landsberg, co-founder, Appwork.

[Adrian Danila] What you can measure, you can improve. You did mention an average completion time or tracking completion time for maintenance technicians. What other very important KPIs is Appwork capable of tracking?

[Sean Landsberg] All the data can also be broken down. All those KPIs can be broken down, like we said, on a property level, technician level, or back up to a portfolio level. But even within a technician, you can break that down based off of the categories.

You can see, how is this technician doing with HVAC partners, with plumbing partners? We also took the concept of KPIs. A lot of companies use a KPI to say, well, how is somebody doing?

Let's look at his KPIs. But another thing that we actually did is we took that a step further where we actually translated those KPIs into sentence-based comment. The system would automatically spit out an actual actionable sentence, whether it's positive or negative, based on that technician's performance.

[Adrian Danila] How do we advertise outside the industry? What are some ways in which we could actually get to where those candidates are? What type of messaging should we share to actually make it attractive for them and actually let them know that multi-family, it's an industry.

A lot of people don't even know. They know apartments exist. A lot of them live in apartments.

They just don't realize that it takes an entire industry to keep the lights on, to keep things running. They don't realize it's an industry like hospitality, for example.

[Brian McGlawn] Also, the same thing I said before, it's about us telling our story. Getting maintenance involved in hiring fairs, the local trade shows, letting people see us. It's funny because I'm beginning to start making my way around hiring fairs.

When people hear that I once was a tech and now I'm a director, they are now intrigued with that career path. I believe putting maintenance more on the forefront of multi-family will do that. It's going to require the industry to place a large amount of trust in the maintenance side.

Again, we've always been on the back burner of maintenance. We're just the guys that turn wrenches. It's a lot of storytelling right now because as you stated, nobody knows anything about multi-family.

Heck, I didn't know about it. When I tell people what I do for a living, they ask, what is that? Nobody knows what I do for a living.

Everybody knows what a regional vice president for operations does, but no one knows what I do. People like myself, sharing the story is what's needed to really get it out there.

[Adrian Danila] I want to go back to the technology side a little bit. There's a question that I missed there. What do you think about the advent of artificial intelligence?

It seems like it's taking over the world and we can just be like an island. We're part of the world whether we want it or not as an industry.

[Brian McGlawn] AI isn't my favorite, but as you said, we do need to learn it and incorporate it. With it, and then just use it the right way. It's the same thing with everything.

It's going to be unsafe until you learn it. Here's the dangerous side to it because I conduct a lot of interviews and I'm getting AI generated resumes. I'm like, hey, you don't know this.

We have an interview and clearly they don't know at all. That's the dangerous side is the presentation of a person or a thing because AI kind of filtered it.

[Adrian Danila] Tell me about one or two ways in which you actually use AI, like practical ways, your favorite ways to use AI in your life and in your daily tasks.

[Brian McGlawn] I use it mainly for like crafting emails. That's about the most I do with it. If I'm sending an email out to a lot of stakeholders or like a large client group, I want to make sure it just really kicks and reads a certain kind of way.

I'll use like a chat GPT, for example, as far as an AI, just kind of get that tone and make sure like grammatical things are done. Grammarly, nothing major. Everything for me is just sitting around writing, make sure that the tone is just right.

I'm just starting to really dabble into it and kind of deep dive into how it can benefit us because as you stated, it is changing the world and I don't want to get left behind with it at all, but I think that we need to teach people how to use it for work. I believe it's being used wrong for work. It's just, it's changing presentations and perceptions and it's making it harder for projects to get across the finish line or people to get hired.

[Adrian Danila] You mentioned storytelling twice during our conversation. You're a believer and I love that. I believe that storytelling is so powerful.

So I want you to share the story of an event that influenced you the most, like a specific event, something that happened in your career that had the most influence in how your trajectory went from then forward.

[Brian McGlawn] Hmm. That's a good question. Um, I would have to say when I became, so for a while I, uh, I was a director for another, for another company, um, for a managed own company.

And I had somebody call me and say, Hey, listen, this is what I'm working on. I would like for you to, you know, you to help, you know, would you kind of come on and assist? I said, sure.

I would, you know, would it kind of give me the parameters in my boundaries? That was when I was first introduced to the career side of maintenance, because now I'm going to functions with local politicians discussing, you know, future projects, land, you know, land purchasing and whatnot. And that's when I saw, Oh, this is more than about turning a wrench.

And then the questions I was asked, the questions forced me to tell a story about it. And that's when I realized, Oh, I need to have more than an elevator pitch about my career, but I need to actually tell the story why I'm trying to, what I have done and what would I do in the future? And that's when, that's when it really clicked for me on, Oh, this is a career.

This is not just a job, at least for me, it's not. And then I took that. And as I began to tell my story, I began to hire people a lot faster because they saw themselves in me.

They saw themselves potentially getting to my level by using my story as a roadmap. So I think that was the most significant part is the switch for me from being just a wrench Turner to this being an actual career for me and looking over it and then sharing my career path and journey and the steps needed, required or expected to kind of get here.

[Adrian Danila] Let's go to shout outs. Who are the people that influenced your life and your career the most in a most positive way? And tell me why, why did you pick those individuals?

[Brian McGlawn] Okay. First, interesting. So first one would be Leslie Catlin.

She was my original while I was still on site years ago. She really believed in me. You know, she saw my raw natural talent and she helped me.

She, she saw the rough rock and she helped me smooth out all those bridges and, and go from wearing khakis and boots to a button up and some slacks. She helped me kind of get into that room. My first service manager, Bo Ratten was his name.

He was my manager back in 2004. He took a chance on me coming fresh out of Lincoln tech and offered me a position and helped mold me as I've gotten up recently. A friend of mine, Brandon Jones, he helped keep my life wrath inflated.

As my career path kind of took ebbs and flows and I wasn't sure of this and maybe I wouldn't leave the industry. I'm not being hired for the right role. He was the one that kept saying, you know, listen, you operate and think differently and everybody isn't at your level just yet.

So you have to be patient. So Leslie Catlin, Bo Ratten and Brandon Jones, those are three that I would say kind of helped shape me and helped get me to where I'm at currently.

[Adrian Danila] We focus a lot of our talking and telling success stories, but I want to go a different direction this time around and just talk about failures. Yeah, so I love for you to share a story of a failure, you know, the biggest that you could think of and how did that shape your life, your career and who you became as a learning lesson after learning a lesson from that?

[Brian McGlawn] Actually, I have two at two different levels in my career. One, I was an assistant service manager and we had a huge leak and I was supposed to follow up on this leak, kind of walk through it, make sure everything was good to go. Got busy, got distracted, forgot to missed it.

Of course, as you know, it delayed the rebuild process because nothing really dried out and it affected us financially and then it affected our ratings across social media. That is one of my failures because I failed to follow up and I could have saved us a lot of money and our reputation score if I had just followed up. So that was probably my first failure, again, years ago that I learned from.

A second one would be had a building that was experiencing a lot of leaks through the building envelope. I failed to push senior leadership on removing everybody from that tier to fix it properly and so a lot more damage was done to that tier and just personal belongings that, again, costed us money and it costed us reputation. What I learned from that was to lean on my experience.

I was in both those roles for a reason. So if I had the second one, I know what I know and I have the resources at my fingertips. So it's using those resources and saying, no, this has to be done this way.

And I think about those two things often whenever I'm in a battle with somebody, especially the second one is no. So here are your options, option A, option B, which option you want. And whatever one you pick, just don't walk away from this.

So kind of really learned to stand my ground in this industry and in my position. Those are two of my failures throughout my career.

[Adrian Danila] One of the things, Brian, that I'm thinking a lot about lately is legacy. When it's all said and done, what's left behind? I want to get your take on legacy.

When it's all said and done for you, what would you like your legacy to be like? How would you like to be remembered?

[Brian McGlawn] As an impactful teacher, I lead with teaching. So just as somebody that his teaching is impactful, he cares about the person and then the industry and that I want to see everybody around me successful in however they defined it.

[Adrian Danila] Brian, it's been amazing having you on today. I'd like to get your final thoughts.

[Brian McGlawn] No, again, thanks for having me. It's been an honor. I think I shared everything I kind of wanted to share about the industry.

I am thankful for the industry and the mentors that have taken my hand and kind of helped me. Right now, my plan really is to just give back, point people in the right directions. Everybody doesn't know where everything is at all the time.

The industry has been good to me over these 21 years. I am excited for the growth and changes that are coming soon. I do see multifamily operating as commercial here shortly, just given the state of our country and the state of the markets.

So I'm really excited to see how that plays.

[Adrian Danila] Again, Brian, it's been amazing having you on. Thank you so much for making time being with us today. I can't wait for this to be published for the episode.

[Brian McGlawn] Me as well. Thank you.