Words that Work Week 172

Investigated by the FBI and Burning Through Cash

The world of real estate on HGTV is often glamorous so why would someone equate managing rental real estate to eating dog food?

In the book, The Big Long, SFR aggregator pioneers, Doug Brien and Collin Wiel are very candid about what it means to be a real estate entrepreneur and the corresponding struggles.

On the front lines of innovation with speed and scale pushing them forward, Brien and Wiel, detail an endeavor not of flowing champagne and caviar but a process they call eating their own dog food.

Founders of a company called Waypoint Homes, Wiel and Brien and one other dude (Gary Beasley) were some of the first to tackle SFR institutional ownership.

The Big Long tells their story with triumphs and travails as they go from a start-up to a publicly traded company.

Numerous insights detail the process of running a dynamic and growing business, yet the following statement of their core philosophy resonated most with what we are building at Auben:

“Entrepreneurship is, fundamentally, the art and science of building profitable systems to help people in ways that other systems do not.”

Hopefully this will be an Auben book club selection — as these guys truly are industry experts, now on new paths — having spun off Mynd Property Management and Roofstock.

Below is an example of how they distill the messy and complex world of property management into 5 core functions