 Hi everybody, welcome to Kondo Insider on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, attorney Nalan. Joining me today is our guest, Mr. Mano Wing, CEO and owner of NK Management LLC. Mano is a graduate from the University of Hawaii and Manoa's Executive MBA program. His company NK Management LLC provides administrative support, site management, maintenance, resident and general management services for condominium associations. Prior to establishing his own company, he worked as a property manager for so many years, respectively at Touchstone Properties, Hawaii First and Associate Hawaii. Mano is the current general manager at Kapiolani Residence. Welcome Mano. Thank you Na. So today we invited you to explain to us the different roles, job duties of different types of property management professionals working in the industry, in the condominium industry. Our goal is to help people understand what such professionals respectfully do and what would be the best way to communicate with each type of them. We also hope you can share with us some creatives for people who might be interested in becoming such a professional. So we've always heard all these different job titles, general manager, resident manager, site manager, property manager, what do these titles mean? Yeah, all good questions now. And when you start diving into the condo, the condo world is what Susabio, one of my mentors likes to put it, the condo world, property manager can mean a lot of things. And generally in real estate, property managers are usually the rental managers in real estate, right? Where the owners hire rental agents, pay them about 10% of the fee and they'll find long-term or short-term tenants, whatever the agreement may be. But when you get into the condo side, it starts off like property managers at the managing agents, which is like, Hawaii Anna, Touchstone, Hawaiian properties and those types of properties, those companies where owners send their maintenance fees into a lot of those property manager, their titles are property managers. Some of those titles could be community association managers or portfolio managers or account executives. They just manage a large portfolio basically, right? But they're all property managers, okay? So I guess to answer your question, the word property manager can mean a lot of things. It just depends on who you're speaking to. And then a site manager would be, it could be a lot of things too, right? Site managers can run a building that's 50 units or a few hundred units. And they basically do the same things that resident managers do, but resident managers are often provided a place to live on site, right? And then there's the general manager. I would say the difference between a resident manager and a general manager, some general managers live on site. So some general managers are resident managers and some general managers don't live on site, but they're given a housing allowance, right? So it just, again, it all depends. But when you start earning the title of general manager, those salaries and responsibilities of those individuals are often much higher because they're overseeing a larger staff where they have to submit time sheets and do more work with the managing agent and the board and the budget and stuff like that, right? Not to discredit all the hardworking site managers out there, but some of them may not have the skill set to work in a larger setting with tons of entities and running operations in a large building 24-7. Some of the smaller buildings will hire site managers that kind of do the work of a janitorial person and a maintenance person all than one, you know? Those smaller buildings will require less admin work and so forth and so on. So yeah, I hope that answers the questions. Yes, I guess for site managers, maybe that could be some entry-level position, someone who just got your foot into this industry started doing, but it sounds like general manager, you do have to be very experienced and could be very experienced property managers, with combined experience inside manager, that will entitle you to apply for that position. Usually you'll get a much higher pay and you're really in a manager role because there will be a lot of subordinate employees who report to you. You're sort of in charge of the buildings all administrative, like maintenance and security, HR issues. It's really important, especially for bigger projects, right? 100%. And thanks again for inviting me on the show now. It's been a long time. Yeah. Congratulations on you making partner at your firm and everything I've seen you work with. Well, that was three years ago, though. It's good to meet you, but thank you. It's a late congratulations because there's a risk for things like that. No, and you had reached out because I was on the cover of that magazine recently, the Building Hawaii magazine. And just for the record, I wanted to go on air and say that, you know, there's a lot of people I didn't thank in there because I didn't necessarily work for some of these management companies. Like I've never worked for Hawaii, Anna. I was never on their payroll, right? Or Hawaiian properties. I never worked there, but I did work at the other places. But even though I never worked there, I was what I was their subcontractor at many, many, many buildings. I've in my career, what Hawaiian managers have hired me at a lot of associations and my staff, as well as Hawaiian properties. And there's a couple of executives at Hawaiian properties that said, hey, man, you never thanked us. And I was like, I never worked for you guys, but, you know, technically I did. And I just want to say thank you to all the managing agents out there that have given our team an opportunity to represent your association. Specifically, Kevin, again, from Hawaiian properties in Glen Suzuki. Thanks guys. So, you know, I've also, I'm so glad to, you know, see how you, you know, develop in your role and making such a, you know, good success, especially also as, you know, I know you're also, you know, with immigrant background. So I'm really proud of that. And have you worked in these different professional roles? What do you like about your profession and what do you not like about it for people who are thinking about, you know, maybe try this? You know, that is a great question. Although I've never been asked that question, I think it's quite easy for me to answer. And I probably wouldn't know how to answer this if you asked me a few years ago, but, you know, when we become professionals in our space, we get really good at what we do. And we, sometimes we put on an act. It's a professional act. You have to be confident. You have to get back to the customer right away. You have to do all these things, right? But at the end of it, you have to be yourself, right? And I think naturally I'm a really helpful person. And so in all of my buildings, there's so many different demographics of people. There's military veterans, you know, there's local Asian, there's Europeans, there's mainlanders from Texas or California. I feel that I've lived all over the place and had so many experiences being an immigrant. And I'm able to relate to residents and multiple languages, you know what I mean? I don't speak it, but thank God for Chad GPT and Google translate, we can do notices in multiple languages now, you know what I mean? So, but yeah, I feel comfortable being myself speaking to residents. And does that answer your question? So good people skills sounds like would be a necessary, you know, tool you have to have to be in this industry. Sounds like that would be a big plus, right? That's one of them, you have to have really, really thick skin also, you know. Understandably, because people usually reach out to these managers when they have problems. And some of them may not be in a good mood by the time they need to reach out to a property manager or general manager, right? Yeah, if my phone is ringing, some association is having a hard time, right? And what I enjoy is being a problem solver. And I think I love to sit down with the board and set goals and crush those goals together. And that's what I enjoy doing hard things and making it easy and just accomplishing things that other people, where people failed at because, and you know, you're asking me about what's the difference between all these different types of managers, right? And it's basically there's entry level and then you work your way up to a GM, right? And all the top GMs in town are making top dollar. So people that are getting into the industry, my recommendation, the pro tips are, you know, get into a small building and no matter where you're at in the process, find a mentor, right? And there's best building practices. Call me, I'll give you free advice. You know, every building should have a tailored approach because the X, Ys and Zs that I do for this association is gonna be different over here, plus depending on their budget. You know, some people always say like, oh man, this building over here has this and this and this. Yeah, but you have like 1,000 units and they only have 100, you can't afford it. You know, you have to be very realistic on what budget is and what you can afford, right? So... So have a good sense about the numbers, you know, budget, you know, maybe have some building maintenance related technical background that helps as well for sure, right? And what I've seen lately is there's a lot more reserve studies, types of company third parties that are forming because associations have a very hard time with their budget and their reserve studies, you know, inflation's going up, contractors pricing's going up, everybody's got to get hold of their budgets, right? So, you know... Yeah, there's also changing the statute. That's also why, you know, good opportunities there and crises always bring opportunities as we always see. Yeah, so, you know, what be the preferred way, you know, or the best way to communicate it with them? Cause everybody is so busy, especially they could be outside, you know, they could be, you know, in a meeting. What would be the recommended way to communicate with such professionals to, you know, basically improve like an owner or tenants communication with them? Technology and cloud. You can be in multiple places at once. I used to follow one of my mentors around, Jim Merrill. He's arguably one of the most knowledgeable guys in the industry over at Touchdown. And every board meeting, he would literally love the bylaws, which are like this deck, declarations and house rules, you know, all printed out. He carried everything with him. And any question that any resident had, he said, hold on one second, don't do it. Oh, it says here that it's not allowed, you know? Or a comment area says this and you have just look it up, you know? And, you know, that's a lot of times other properties. Oh, let me, let me, you know, get the attorney to be involved. You know, but a lot of times you can just read the documents and the documents will answer the questions. And he was always available to do that. So to answer your question, the way I do it now, I'm not gonna lug around all these books. I mean, you digitize everything and put on the cloud and you can have access to data at your fingertips. You know, to me, that's a faster way of giving customer service. You can email things to people, you can text message. You know, you have to use the tools in this day and age. So I think Zoom is also a good way for people, especially during COVID, you know, to do board meetings. It's quite efficient. You have a chair that, you know, so. Learning how to do one hour board meetings too. I should teach a class on that. So I guess for owners and residents, they also need to understand, you know, a property manager may not have the answer you want at the fingertip, you know, because they manage so many projects. As you said, they may need to look up the project documents or even consult with the attorney for the association. So probably better if something, you know, urgent, I would see make a phone call, but then definitely follow up with something, we email that way, you know, people can go back to refer to that to get, you know, a record of what was communicated and what needs to be done for a follow up. Does that sound fair? Yes, I would definitely, you know, again, you have to learn the ways other people communicate. I mean, you can, some people communicate through social media nowadays through business, right? So how do they like to respond to you? Like they prefer to be texted on their phones. Do they prefer to be sent it to me on text, send it to me on WhatsApp, email me. You just have to ask how people want things delivered really just customize that approach. But there are so many different ways you can share information on the cloud and, you know, collaborate nowadays and work efficiently. And I would love to do a separate seminar on that because I think that, I think the workforce that serves the condo industry could be better, you know? I think a lot of times we have a lot of classes for general managers and stuff, but you know, when they're really teaching to admin people how to be faster, you know, because I'll sit with people. I used to teach keyboarding at Coimbatan High School as a teacher for a very short time, but, you know, just cutting and pasting using hotkeys, you know, keyboard efficiency is, you know, I can type 80 words a minute. So I think if you trained admin people to do work more, you know, more efficiently, I think the workforce could also increase, you know, productivity. Because the reason I say that is because when we pick up, when we pick up buildings, it's been neglected when either somebody, you know, couldn't service it or just didn't show up for like three months or maybe they struggled to admin, you know, and they're great janitors and they promoted them and just couldn't do that more. So a lot of the admin side of the association suffer badly. I mean, I think they agree all over the place on that. So I see. But like many other industries, especially post pandemic, you know, I think party management companies are also struggling to try to staff for their workforce, right? So it's always a challenge to find good candidates to fill those open positions. So why, you know, what are the special challenges unique to this industry? You know, I have some friends of mine from the MBA program and they're getting married this weekend and I wanted to talk to a few of them because there is no curriculum at UH that teaches like condo management type stuff. There's around, there's between two to three thousand condominiums in Hawaii. Okay. That's the inventory and there's really no governing body that standardizes training for all these managers. Now, granted there's organizations like I-ROM and they have the accredited resident manager but that's very basic to me and I don't want to discredit that organization or what that is, but there's lots more, you know and maybe we can take that and, you know, expound on that type of training and then community association institutes they also offer training for board members and managers and stuff like that, but I think we can do more. I think the association can, I mean, I think the industry can do better and I'm actually working on that because I've been networking with a lot of the super block guys, those building managers, those GMs super experience and a handful of them they're dealing with construction defects with these developer issues. Regardless of the building, right? It's luxuriness, it's salary, it's people, it's bored. Whatever the manager, you know, absorb whatever negligence or construction wise or good or bad, we have to deal with it, right? And I think, you know, being organized administratively there has to be a better training system because, you know, I think boards go from staff to staff members, manager to managers hoping they find somebody and it's, yeah. That's what I see. So then like for the existing, you know, professionals in this field, what are their typical academic or training background? Are they like a fresh graduates from college or no, they usually switch career? If you're looking at all the top GMs in Coca-Cola, their backgrounds are all over the place, right? There's Lee Linnai, he's at the work. He has a college degree, he worked for Hwayana for a while, then he became a GM, like the community brothers that attend day Felipe. I think there was in hospitality and hotels and security. Brian Liu from Hawaii, I think he came from a social. So there's some people that come from the managing agent side. Some people come from security, but it just, you know, I mean, the industry, it's a lucrative industry. A lot of people get into it for, you know, but yeah, you kind of fall into it, right? Some people come through real estate, but there's really no entry point. It's just, yeah, there's not, there's not. How did you become one? What motivated you to pursue this industry initially? I was playing tennis with Keone Gaspar. He was the owner of Blazing States Atkinson, and his dad is Jim Merrill, and they're here. Wow, that's a good one. You're happy, but you're a really good tennis player, right, as I recall. Keone is like a brown belt jujitsu, and he would just punish me. But I think that was like one of the best introductions that I've had was my introduction to Jim. And then, you know, and I've met tons of other people, you know, over at Hwayana, and Hawaiian properties, like Kevin again, and Clint Suzuki, those guys have, you know, and then the thing is, I work with a lot of these managing agents now, and these property managers, and I used to work with them. I was in the cubicle next to them when I was at a social, you know, so there's an industry relationship, you know, like, oh, when I stopped by the offices, like, I know they're admins, you know, like, you know, like how property managers jump around from Hwayana to Hawaiian properties. So do the admins, so do the accountants, you know, so it's, the industry is really cool. It's cool to see, you know, the industry feeding a lot of families here, you know, as well as yourself, right? You're growing out the condo division in your firm, how's that going? It's been good, yes. So I guess, I really, I think today's show that will be a valuable one, because we really want to inspire people to maybe consider this industry, if, you know, either you haven't thought about that, perhaps you're in the process of thinking about a career switch, or even for high school students, or, you know, college students who are thinking about your next step in life. So what would be your advice to them for those very young people, either in high school or college, you know, you know, dream about their future, what they would do, what would you give them, if, you know, this could be a good one to start, and how do you prepare for that? Do you like superheroes? Do you watch? My boys love them, yeah. Do they like Batman? Batman, yes. Superman, yes. Batman used to, he's the one with commission of Gordon, and when commission of Gordon needed him, he put the bat signal, right? So, and then he would call him on the bat phone. So, there was a time when, man, I was at Shidler at UH, and I just started the company in 2015, and I recruited a lot of the undergraduates from the Shidler Business College, and we recruited heavily, and these guys are all tech savvy. Some of them are still in the industry, some of them went to other contractors, but there's a season where the company grew like 400% that year, I think it was in 2018, and it was a great way to get people in the industry. We were going to a lot of the human resource recruitment at UH, and I'm not that big anymore because I'm kind of doing more of the consulting and doing the bigger buildings, but when a staff, it was a great way to get people in the industry at those, what are those, the job fairs? Yeah, there's one actually upcoming, the city's job fair is upcoming at the lead. Yeah, so I just set up booths, and getting into the industry also is tough, and again, I wanted to share my frustration a little bit because it's not standardized, and I'm talking to a few educators at UH to develop a curriculum to actually teach it, and I don't think one exists right now, so maybe I'll go back and get my PhD and do it. That's actually a serious conversation that maybe will, but somebody should, somebody needs to, and up until then, you'll just get lucky if you have a good resume that can service everything you need, right? That you're put into the door and then you'll get all the training you need. Both are the best, but I think if you're really trained in this, and then you'll have more answers, right? So, you know, off the bat, so sometimes you have to wait for managers to kind of like a couple of months to get used to it, but sometimes you may not, you may not need to turn things around sooner, you know? The timeline for certain associations are different, depending on the needs and the budget and everything, so. So for people who got some years of work experience under their belt, if they're thinking about applying for an open position as a property manager, what would be the minimum requirements? Now, see, I mean, are you asking to do on-site management or general manager or go work? I mean, why don't we start with a site manager and property manager? Yeah, because see, you could go work for the managing agent also, and those guys are the ones that take minutes and they deal with the contractors, they help you with your budget, you know, there's a liaison between you and the managing agent and ownership. So that's another route to take and that's another lucrative industry. I think a full portfolio, a seasoned manager might juggle 10 to 15 properties, you know? Especially now with technology, the way it is. So I think if you're new just getting into the industry, the managing agents will give you some small buildings that, you know, if you mess up, you know, they're giving you the ones that just don't pay that much, right? You're gonna get like the small, and they move with 20 unit walk-ups and you'll probably have like 10 of those. You may not enjoy it either because, you know, the small buildings, they don't pay that much. You might deal with board members just they're not like executive CEOs, right? You might deal with board members just regular, regular maintenance people that they just live somewhere that, you know, I mean, they're gonna take their knowledge and their education as far as they can while serving on a nonprofit board, right? Because these associations are nonprofits, you know? And there's another fiduciary responsibility with being a board member, right? So anyways, I'm kind of jumping to different tangents, but getting in the industry as a site manager, with no college, you can do, you don't need college. You don't need college to do this, right? I think what college does, it might be impressive for some board members because it shows that you've completed something difficult. But, you know, it depends on what your degree is in. If it's in business, sure, you should be expected to be a high level communicator writing good notices. You know what I mean? Effectively communicating with vendors, you know, and being helpful like that. But again, at the end of the day, it's hospitality, right? So if you come by the open part and you're helpful, even if you don't know the industry, but you're a helpful person, if you're naturally a helpful person, this is a good industry to be in. That's great. Because some people, they're loving with acts of service, right? If you're a service type of person and have an understanding personality to deal with multiple types of people, then this is an industry for you, right? But, you know, if you're sensitive and you don't know how to multitask, maybe it's not for you, but if you wanna get better multitasking, this is definitely, there's tons of challenges that get thrown at you every day that you have to like, what was important yesterday might be moved on the back burner tomorrow because something else, more priority came up, right? So it's a constant juggling act of priorities, right? So using the Google calendar, or if you're using Outlook, use the Outlook calendar, regardless, sync your calendar to your phone. Everybody has a phone nowadays. And if you're not using the calendar, when Alicine Mechanica was shown at 3 p.m. tomorrow and you copy all your team members, right? Those basic communication type stuff like that can also be the success or failure of a team, right? So when I started this company through Inside Management 2015, I wanted to give a team approach, you know, kind of blending white collar and blue collar work together with all this information on the cloud. And it's worked well, you know? We still pick up buildings where they will create a Gmail account for the building. I'm like, it's funny to me that some resident managers, they'll use their personal emails, like their Yahoo accounts for business. I don't agree with that, right? Because if they get fired, all of that information that was for the building is lost, right? So there's another pro tip, guys. If your associates just don't already have a cloud-based storage for the documents on file, give me a call. We gotta get an email, it's all about streamlined communication because resident managers inside manage get fired or they quit or they move on. You're never gonna, no one's ever gonna retire there. So you have to have consistent information with the association, with the board, you know? And they- So we're running out of time, but thank you so much for the information. And we really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Thank you, Mano.