My property management company does about $3 million a year, including our maintenance operation, and I spend less than two hours a week running it. I've also taken all of June off for the last four years. No email, no Slack, no phone calls.
When other owners hear that, a lot of them assume I sold most of the business or abdicated my responsibility as an owner. Neither is true. I'm still the final authority on the things that matter. What changed is that I built a leadership structure that operates without me, gave it a clear operating cadence, and stopped jumping in every time something looked imperfect.
This course covers how the company actually runs, what my team owns, what still stays with me, and the uncomfortable part of delegation most PM owners avoid. It's for owners who have their processes in place and are still the bottleneck for every decision.
What you'll learn
- Hand day-to-day execution of the business to one operating leader who reports to you
- Give that leader real authority, and live with the mistakes that come with it
- Delegate decisions as well as tasks by turning your recurring decisions into written policies
- Run your leadership team on EOS: a 3-year vision, 1-year goals, quarterly rocks, and weekly L10 meetings
- Decide which decisions stay with you as the owner and which fires to let burn
- Work up from a one-week break to a full month away
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What "running without me" actually means
Key takeaway
The goal is a company that handles the normal, recurring work without you. If something happens once a month or more, you shouldn't need to be involved.
Some things still escalate to me, and I'll cover exactly what those are later. But I've delegated the vast majority of day-to-day decisions, put a leadership team in place, and empowered that team to make most decisions without me.
The goal I had in mind was a company that could run without me for the normal circumstances that come up in the cadence of an operating business. My test is frequency:
- If it happens once a month or more, I shouldn't be involved. Owner disbursements are a good example. That's a process we can document, hand to somebody, and let them run.
- If there's an exception or an unusual problem, the person running it raises their hand and grabs me.
Give day-to-day execution to one person
Key takeaway
Make one operating leader accountable for the performance of the business, and have everyone else roll up to them.
Up until now, that one accountable person has probably been you, and most owners are comfortable there. Nothing wrong with that; it's what got you where you are. To get to the next level, find someone at your business (or bring someone in) you're comfortable handing the keys to, and say: "You're now accountable for the performance of this business. I'll set the vision and give you some guidelines, but this is on you now."
For me that's Brennan, my number two. Everyone at the company rolls up to him, and he reports to me. I run a few different businesses, so having one direct report matters. I can't have a pile of one-on-ones every week with people from all over the company.
The people who report to Brennan are managers themselves:
- Director of accounts, who handles all the property managers
- Director of maintenance, who runs the techs and maintenance coordinators
- Marketing manager
- Business development manager
These functions interact every day. It just doesn't go through me.
Why it matters
I first hired someone into a COO-type role in 2021. Her name was Kathy, and the first thing I did was move everyone who reported to me under her. That was a huge load off, in time and even more in headspace. I was no longer carrying every open loop at the company.
You can't really step away if six or seven people still report to you. The business grinds to a halt while everyone waits on your decisions.
What to call the role
Call it COO, VP of operations, or president. In EOS parlance, this person is the integrator, and that's what they do: integrate the departments and keep everything running smoothly and improving. They solve problems, resolve conflicts, get involved in key hires, and operate the business. That's why I gave Kathy the COO title.
Hand over real authority
Key takeaway
A title and direct reports aren't enough. You have to give your number two a big leash and let them make mistakes, because that's how they learn.
This is the uncomfortable part. You can't jump in every time you see your number two doing something a little differently than you would. It was hard for me, and it's hard for most owners I talk to. They love the idea of working a few hours a week and taking a month off. When it comes down to brass tacks, they're uncomfortable fully delegating their authority, because that person will do things differently and will make mistakes with your name on the door.
Two areas tend to hurt the most:
- Work product. Property management agreements, leases, letters, notices, eviction notices, anything written that goes out the door. You're used to making sure it's right every time.
- Relationships. Key relationships with property owners, vendors, tenants, even software providers. You may need to release these to your leadership team, especially your number two.
Empowering them means giving them a shard of the authority you have as the owner. In practice, that can mean:
- Not going to every meeting
- Not being copied on every email
- Not participating in every Slack thread or channel
Let them touch the stove
The more you delegate, the faster your team learns. If you're always firefighting and preventing problems before they happen, your team never learns from those problems. It's like a toddler with a hand on the stove: no matter how many times you tell them, it doesn't sink in until they get a little burned. Constantly jumping in front of your team robs them of learning opportunities.
Nobody wants mistakes going out the door. You still have to allow some significant ones (short of business-ending mistakes or losing your largest client), so your team feels empowered, learns, and doesn't repeat them.
Clients will get mad, payments will get missed, and strange health insurance problems will come up that never would have happened if I were in charge. That's true. It's also where the freedom comes from, and on the other side of that discomfort is the freedom you've always wanted.
Where this goes wrong
- Title without authority. Making everyone report to a new leader doesn't work if you keep making their calls.
- Jumping in on every imperfection. Your team stops learning, and you stay the bottleneck.
Delegate decisions, not just tasks
Key takeaway
Write down the decisions you make every day, group them into categories, and turn each category into a policy your team can use without you.
Delegation has two parts:
- Delegating tasks. You look at everything on your desk and in your inbox, document how you do it, and hand it off. "Here's how I do disbursements every month." You need to do this for almost everything.
- Delegating decisions. These are distinct from tasks, and they're the part most owners skip.
Your leadership team, especially your number two, is likely coming to you multiple times a day for decisions. Should we evict this tenant even though their daughter is sick? Should we terminate this client because they've been a pain and the property managers hate them? Should we take on this short-term rental account even though we don't do short-term rentals, because it's a client we really like?
There are a million of these. If you want to work only a few hours a week, delegating tasks isn't enough. You have to delegate the decisions too.
Turn decisions into policies
- List the decisions you're making. Every day, week, and month. Open a Google Doc or grab a notepad. This morning I was asked whether we'd allow a dog at a rental property, and my maintenance operations leader asked if we could replace a garbage disposal even though we couldn't reach the owner for approval. Write them all down.
- Group them into buckets. You'll find categories of decisions you're asked to make over and over.
- Document your decision-making process for each category.
- Write policies that capture those decisions.
- Introduce the policies to your team.
- Watch the number of decisions coming to you drop over time.
Stop being so responsive
Key takeaway
If you're always available, your team never has to decide. Slow down your replies and let people figure it out.
Another way to make fewer decisions: stop being so responsive.
I know that gives some of you shivers. Being responsive is part of your identity. People know they'll get an answer from you when they need it. I get it, and I'm not saying don't be there for your team. But by being continuously available, you may be robbing them of some of the most important growth opportunities of their careers. People need space and time to make their own decisions and learn from the mistakes they make.
To make fewer decisions:
- Stop answering every Slack message as soon as you see it.
- Turn off phone notifications for new email.
- Let questions go unanswered for a couple of days, even weeks.
You'll be amazed how people figure it out and make a decision. Usually the right one, if you've built a great culture with clear core values.
Yes, that means ignoring your team a little on things that just aren't that important. Whether you collect a late fee from this tenant or that one, or replace a garbage disposal or not: let the team decide.
If you see a consistent pattern (they make the wrong call on maintenance requests every time, or you're always waiving late fees), step in: "I've been looking at this, and we need to adjust course." Your team wants to hear that. They want to know what you want.
What you don't want to be is an answer dispenser. Your team is resourceful. They have NARPM, newsletters, podcasts, probably a knowledge base like Notion, and teammates and industry contacts they can email or Slack. How did you figure it all out? There was no handbook. You got resourceful, and your team is just as capable as you are, especially in their own area.
Run the business on EOS
Key takeaway
EOS turns your vision into a 1-year plan, quarterly rocks, and a weekly L10 meeting, so the leadership team knows what to work on without you.
We run my company on EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It's an operating system for small to medium-sized businesses like mine.
- Set a 3-year vision. As the leader, you write down in detail what you want to happen in the business over the next three years, and hand it to your leadership team. In EOS it's documented on a single page, the VTO (Vision/Traction Organizer).
- Build a 1-year plan. You and your leadership team decide what has to get done this year to hit the three-year vision. People who run on EOS often take a two-day annual retreat with their leadership team for this. (Ours is coming up in about a week.)
- Set quarterly rocks. From the one-year goals come rocks: specific, measurable quarterly targets. They're big, hard, important goals for specific people or specific metrics.
- Meet weekly in an L10. The leadership team meets every week in a Level 10 (L10) meeting. They review progress on the rocks, check the scorecard for key metrics, glance at the one-year goal, and solve issues.
Solving issues in the L10
Every small business has issues come up during the week: problems, roadblocks, difficult people. Write them all down and solve them together in the L10.
- Run every issue through IDS: identify, discuss, solve. Go after the root cause. Ask why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again, beyond just making the problem go away. That's the most important part.
- Capture to-dos. Solving an issue often produces a to-do, like "Jeff goes and talks to this customer to reset expectations." Put it on the to-do list.
- One name per item. Every rock, issue, and to-do gets exactly one person's name. If two people are responsible, you get "I thought you were doing it." The named person doesn't have to do the work themselves. They can delegate or collaborate, but it's their name on it and they're accountable.
Step out of the meeting
Once your business reaches a certain point, you don't need to attend every L10. I stopped attending our leadership L10s earlier this year. They're running fine without me, because we have a great team in place.
What I still handle as the owner
Key takeaway
I keep a short list: leadership hiring and firing, odd legal and tax items, banking, and major vendor decisions. Everything else belongs to the team.
Still on my plate:
| Area | What I do |
|---|---|
| Leadership team changes | Anyone on the leadership team being hired, fired, or promoted. Brennan and I sit down, usually with his recommendation, and I make the final call. It's my business and I'm accountable for it. |
| Odd legal and tax items | The strange IRS letter, or the invoice from a company you've never heard of that turns out to be your benefits manager. It's not a lot. |
| Banking | The bank relationships, new accounts, new credit cards, and anything involving a loan. Whether you use a specialty bank that understands property managers and trust accounts, like Enterprise Bank, or a big bank for corporate accounts (we use Chase), that relationship is very important. I'm not comfortable delegating it yet. |
| Vendor decisions | When to select a new vendor, switch, or expand the services we buy, from our main PM software to self-showing and listing tools to maintenance coordination and workflow software. |
Why vendor decisions stay with me
I'm at conferences and talking with vendors all the time (a lot of them sponsor my newsletter, and sometimes these videos), so I know what's out there. Inside the business, I'm always asking whether something would work at RL Property Management. Should we switch maintenance coordination software? Should we use the new built-in rental applications and showings feature in our main accounting software, since we're paying separately for that today?
The cost matters, but even more than the dollar amount, I'm weighing how a change affects the team's workflow. How many tools are we asking them to use every day? Do those tools work together? Are people entering the same data in multiple places?
Most of your team operates in departments. They see what affects them and will advocate for the best tool for their own day. Only you have the 30,000-foot view of how the whole business works together and what's best long term for software, integrations, and vendors.
So make the decision with that big-picture view, then explain it to your team: "We're rolling out Property Meld, and here's why." Nobody likes change, whether you're adding software or taking it away. Use your credibility as the owner to help the organization through it.
Decide which fires to let burn
Key takeaway
You can't fix everything. Let the low-stakes problems slide and hand customer escalations to your team, but jump in on safety, your license, fraud, or unsafe homes.
You already know you can't fix everything. A lot of us are perfectionists and don't want to see any problems in our business, ever. If you want time freedom, you have to decide what fires to let burn.
This was one of the hardest things for me. I have an engineering background, I like things exactly right, and I don't like mistakes. I had to adopt a new mindset and get comfortable letting some stuff slide. Another way I put it: I had to get comfortable with 80%.
Example: the messy warehouse
Out at our office we have a warehouse for air filters, smoke detectors, and other supplies the team uses, especially on the maintenance side. Right now it's pretty messy, and I don't love that. If I had my way, I'd pull everyone out of the office to organize it today.
But organizing the warehouse doesn't solve a customer problem, make us more money, or reduce risk. There's no real business purpose to it, or a very small one. So I decided it's a fire I'll let burn. I see it every day and don't like it, and that's the price I pay for my time freedom.
Example: the owner who emails me directly
Once in a while, a property owner still contacts me directly: "Peter, I'm having a real problem with your team, and it's still not fixed."
Some of you will disagree with how I handle this. I click forward, type Brennan's name, and hit send. Now it's Brennan's problem, and he reaches out: "This is Brennan, I'm number two here. I hear you've had some problems. I want to talk about it."
That wasn't easy the first time. I know a lot of these owners personally. I see them around town, at church, in my community. Handing off difficult customer problems was one of the last things I let go of.
If I keep jumping in to save key accounts, I'm not doing right by the business or the team. I might be doing right by that one customer that one time, but every future customer runs into the same problems, because I saved the day and the team never changed what caused them.
This is probably the most controversial advice in the course: once you have a great team, I don't think you should keep talking to rental owners. Let the team handle them and solve the difficult problems.
Where I still jump in
I haven't abdicated my responsibility as the owner. Some fires I never let burn:
- Safety
- Our ability to keep operating, such as anything threatening our real estate license with the Division of Real Estate
- Fraud or criminal negligence
- People's rental homes becoming unsafe or unhealthy
The test is one question: safety, license, or fraud? If yes, I jump in. If not, I let the team handle it.
Everything else, I let the team handle. Sometimes I get a difficult client email, think about it for 10 seconds, forward it to Brennan, drive home, have a drink, and play with my kids. That's a choice I get to make as the owner. It's why we took on the risk, the stress, and the huge time commitment of starting a business in the first place. Give yourself a little permission to reap the rewards. I don't feel guilty about it at all, and I don't think you should either.
Work up to a full month off
Key takeaway
Start with a one-week full disconnect, build up to a month, and debrief after every break so the same problem can't happen twice.
For the last four years I've taken June off completely: no calls, no email, no Slack. On my way out the door, I tell Brennan: "I don't want a call from you unless the building burns down, you quit, or something is preventing us from operating as a business, like our license being revoked by the Division of Real Estate. Everything else can wait until I'm back on July 1st."
It wasn't perfect, especially that first year. A major health insurance renewal landed in the middle of June (I'd sort of forgotten about it), and I had to sign documents so our employees didn't lose coverage. You have to stay a little flexible. Some problems will need you. The more you do this, the better you get at it.
Build up to it
- Start with a one-week full disconnect. In the Crane community, we call these Crane Breaks.
- Work up to two weeks.
- Then take the full month.
Each break gets easier, because your team gets used to it and you offload any lingering tasks and decisions.
Debrief every time
When you come back from a break, sit down with your leadership team and figure out what broke, what happened, and what went wrong. Go through your inbox, your mail, and your issues list, and ask what you could have done ahead of time, or how to set up the business and systems so it doesn't happen next time.
Build the business this way and it keeps getting stronger. The better it runs without you, the more valuable it is, and the more engaging and fulfilling it is for your team.
Give your team the chance to build their judgment. If you make every decision for them, they never get it. They want to excel, and believe it or not, they want you to take time away. Tell them you're taking two weeks off and they might ask, "Can it be three?"
If you want the systems that support this structure, take my free course on the three systems that let me take a month off.
Resources mentioned
- Property Management Systems That Let Me Take a Month Off: my free course on the scorecard, task map, and wiki behind this structure.
- EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System): the operating system we run the company on.
- Crane: my private community for PM business owners with at least 150 doors, where we take Crane Breaks.