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Clay Vaughan: 0:03

You're listening to Good Business, a podcast that inspires business leaders to continue their pursuit of success while still maintaining their values. If you want to be more successful and gain valuable insight from seasoned business leaders, then you're in the right place. And this podcast was designed for you. My name is Clay Vaughn, and I'm best known as the CEO of Reverent, a full service agency that helps business leaders market their business and share their story. I'm sitting down with leaders from every industry to hear their process, the lessons they've learned and how they've been able to achieve the success every leader hopes for. John, thank you so much for joining today on the Good Business Podcast. What I'd love to discuss with you is just not only how to run a good business, how to maintain a healthy business, but also really how to maintain our values in a highly competitive, honestly, dog-eat-dog world where there are other guys out there who are willing to bend the rules to achieve their goals, hit their quarterly numbers and that sort of thing. And so starting out, I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey in business. And if you could just share with the audience here how you got to be where you are are today. You've seen an incredible amount of success managing Veritas. You were also elected in January of this past year. You were elected as president of the Houston Apartment Association, which is one of the largest apartment associations in the country. So that's pretty incredible. And you're also not afraid to get your hands dirty. That's been pretty apparent, honestly, the entire time I've known you. You've never stood back from a challenge. So John, could you share a little bit more about what you do and really what got you to where you are today.

John Boriack: 1:47

Yeah. So I'll start back in high school. I had awesome parents growing up. And when I graduated high school, my parents proposed the idea of going, of taking college money that they had saved up very graciously and using it to start a business rather than going to a traditional college and following that traditional route, which I didn't especially love studying. So that was pretty attractive of an option to me. And so when I graduated, we really set out to find an industry more than a specific business. business. Like we didn't even know where to start. My family has no background in real estate or anything like that, but the fundamentals of that industry had always been attractive of owning like a hard asset. It's not super complicated. You provide a kind of a product, a service that's you ran it out. It's pretty simple. It's not something that's super hard to understand. That was attractive. So we really set out looking for an industry and stumbled into a group called Lifestyles Unlimited that provided like some baseline education around how to do this business well. And that really sprung board from there. We took that kind of college fund and used it as seed money to buy some rent houses. First off, some single family rent homes in Northwest Houston, bought eight, I think that first single family, single families that first year. And that really gave me my first kind of dip into the water of business in general. Again, I'm 18, 19 years old at the time, have very little comparatively life experience. So just, it was important for me to run, to get started running a business and just learn the basics of accounting and and how to file a tax return and how to sell, how to talk to people, how to negotiate contracts, that kind of thing. And so that was a real big piece. starting out to just mature me personally in the business world. And so after doing some single thing, this is back in 2007, eight subprime mortgage crisis, and you could get a house for 30, 40, $50,000. It was a nice one, but you could do it, fix it up, rent it. And so I did all that. And for the first year or so, and it went pretty well and decided we want to go deeper in this industry and then flipped into a small apartment complex in a not so great area of Houston. And my Christian homeschool upbringing bubble got popped pretty quick working at this not super great apartment complex. And so I learned a lot then taking kind of the business basics and then learning the industry specific from there. Cause I was down there almost every day, making a lot of the day-to-day decisions in the office, you know, leasing when necessary, doing maintenance work orders when necessary negotiating. I would go from re hanging a sign on a wall to negotiating the contract of our assigned package or something like that, you know, just all over the place. And then I was really able to hone in on industry contacts and some tips and tricks there. And I did that for four years. And then while I was doing that during the day, I did get an online management degree at night through a college called Thomas Edison State University at New Jersey. So that got me maybe, I don't know if I learned way more working in the business than I did studying, but that getting that degree helped check a lot of boxes for investors and lenders down the road. And so did that for four years. And over that time period, started networking more, getting more plugged into the industry, different business groups, and was able for over four years to assemble a list of potential investors such that in 2012, so four years after I bought the 50 unit in 2012, I was able to buy a 200 unit apartment complex with a 12 different investors and I did it. I worked for free for that one pretty much. Like I didn't charge them any pref or any kind of any fee basically for putting the deal together, finding the property, building the business. I just said, if you give me the money to get this property under my belt where I'll have a track record going forward, I won't take any ownership in the deal as like a sweat equity piece. And so I got some management fees to pay my bills about the property and then got married a week later. So I needed to pay some bills, but, but nothing really wealth building there. That was more experience building and trying to grow our business and mature our business. Cause when you have 50 units in a not so great area of town, there's not enough revenue to have a lot of quality staff. And you're always trying to save a buck. I mean, to every $20 matters when you have 200 units. Now we can afford a professional manager and we can afford some more professional software and actually have a professional insurance broker. All those things, you get to level up and mature the business a little bit. So that was 2012. And then every about 18 months since then, I've repeated that model of getting a group of investors together, form an LLC. buy a rundown apartment complex, fix it up, operate it, put a bow on it. It's kicking out cash flows. And then we move on to the next one. So today I own six apartment complexes all over Houston, 1,522 units in total and have about 45 employees. Wow.

Clay Vaughan: 6:38

Wow. That's pretty incredible. So pretty much just that, that root, that seed money for those initial, you said eight homes that you purchased as investment property. That, that is what started that snowball effect essentially.

John Boriack: 6:51

Started the snowball effect and then bringing on more investors as we got down the road and to be able to capitalize that on even more. And then it's been a fun journey of building a profitable business, but at the same time, really focusing on building a healthy business culture with our employees. And we're very different from a lot of other management companies out there and how we treat our employees and our mindset with how we run our businesses. And that's led to a lot of success, both in the company, but also from an industry recognition standpoint. We've won about every industry award you can win as far That's awesome. and a lot more than just operating apartments.

Clay Vaughan: 7:54

Well, cool. That's great. Thank you for that kind of backward glance as to how you got where you are. So you got into the investment space, honestly, just fell into it, right? It wasn't like, hey, all I want to do is grow up and be a apartment investor, a multifamily property investor. Where's your passion? And how do you actually get up every single day to go do this since you didn't always necessarily want to do this.

John Boriack: 8:22

And I will say even the first probably four or five years when I was running that 50 unit property in the hood, I would say I very much had to force myself to get up and I did not love the job. It was driving an hour, one way commute, pull up to that property and just, okay, one more day, one more day. And fortunately the Lord had brought enough mentors into my life who were in the same business I was, but bigger and farther down the road that I could see where the path was going. And that gave me the grit to stick through those five years of really you know learning the business and growing myself as well reading a lot of books during that time and and learning how we wanted to how I wanted to grow the business and so now today we've grown matured hired some great managers and c-suite people and so we're able to the point now where I can focus on what I love and what I'm good at and I would say that what really drives me and I think drives our whole company is providing And three things. I always say all the time, we serve our investors, our residents, and our team members, our employees.

Clay Vaughan: 9:24

So when you think about just the future, what does that look like? What does it look like for John Boryak in the next few years, given this track record of every 18 months you're buying a new property and investing further? What's the end goal for you?

John Boriack: 9:39

Yeah. So I think a mentor once told me, and I think this is really pertinent, that bigger is not better. Better is better. I would rather grow slowly in a controlled quality way than making growth the end goal and saying, I want to get to 5,000 units or 10,000 units or a hundred employees or whatever it is. Like if that, you know, all those things really, when you look at the root of it, those are money goals. I want to get my revenue here so I can make this much money and money is a bad goal. Money in itself is a bad God. It will never fulfill. And you end up sacrificing other more important things to get there. And it's not, it's, it'll lead you to do things that are at the end, unhealthy for your business and your, and all those three segments of people that I talked about, your residents, your investors, your customers, whatever. And so we really focus on quality over quantity. I would rather hit fewer home runs than a whole bunch of base hits and singles. And so for us, I think we can, grow slowly in a controlled fashion to about twice the size we are now. somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 units, maybe, I don't know, 10 to 15 apartment communities. But I think it's also real important to not get distracted by what I call shiny stuff. And when you realize what you're good at, what your industry, what your niche is for your business, focus on that niche and you're going to get distracted all the time to do other things. So for me, what that looks like is I get asked, tempted, whatever you want to call it, all the time to go chase something new and exciting, which maybe is a self-storage facility, or it's a brand new build apartment community or it's an apartment community in another city or it's i don't know third party managing for another owner and we've early on defined what veritas does is we own and operate properties apartment complexes that are 10 to 50 years old in the houston area And anything outside of that niche, we say no to. So no self-storage, I don't third-party manage for anybody else, that I don't own the property also. I'm not going outside of Houston because I don't want to travel. I don't want to make my staff travel. And so when you have those parameters around, it makes it easy to say no to stuff. And then when the right opportunity comes along that fits in your box, bam, they're good. And so we've gotten really good and proficient at our niche because we haven't deviated from the niche. That was a long way of answering your question. The end game being, I want to see us be a... Business that hits home run after home run in our lane, in our niche, in Houston, getting to about twice the size we are now because I think that's how big we can get and still maintain the culture we have and make the business fulfilling in a way like it is to me right now, be able to provide those jobs and be personally connected with every aspect of it. Not that I'm micromanaging and involved in every aspect of it, but that I am small enough that we can still do the things that make the company special.

Clay Vaughan: 12:32

So you mentioned your niche, staying within your lane, essentially. And here at Reverent, we talk about that a lot. We're big proponents of Gino Wickman's EOS model for business. And I think you've used that too. Yeah, we've adopted

John Boriack: 12:46

about half of that, I would say.

Clay Vaughan: 12:46

Yeah, yeah. So niche is a big part of that. It's part of your marketing strategy too, because that gives you kind of some parameters on how to grow your business and how to make sure you're not an inch deep and a mile wide. So I love that. I love that. So what would you say to someone Now that we have an idea of how you run things, where your goals are, where you're headed, where you've come from, what would you tell someone who's maybe in your shoes, who might be thinking about moving into their industry and niching out a little bit more? What guidance would you give them? Maybe some mistakes that you've made that you wish you didn't, that sort of thing.

John Boriack: 13:22

Yeah, I got you. There's some high-level stuff and then some very practical root stuff. The high-level stuff, as I would say, you start with defining the why you're doing what you're doing. You got to set out your goal and set out your vision. And the biggest mistake a lot of new people make is making those goals money, like we talked about earlier. When a money number is your goal, that's going to lead you to do some things or down some paths and just change your focus too much into things that will not generate long-term prosperity, to put it that way. And the why needs to be a lot bigger than a revenue number or a money number for yourself. For us, like I said, we defined early on the why as being providing those quality homes for people where they can raise their families, make memories, and impact that huge cornerstone of their life for our residents, and then for our team members, providing that other huge cornerstone of a person's life as their job, right? So we're giving them a job that's fulfilling, that they feel valued, that they feel connected, and that they're known, and they know they're making an impact. That is a massive piece of a person's overall well-being, and so when you If those kinds of things are the goals, the vision, then a lot of other stuff sorts itself out. That's the defining your why and knowing why you're doing what you're doing and making, picking good goals for that is where you start. And then from a real practical stance, I would say when I got started, I made lots and lots of mistakes and got lots and lots of help from a lot of people. And then when I started bringing on team members, I think a lot of self-employed individuals who bring on a few team members, I was real tempted to get in the weeds too deep and was real slow to release tasks and real slow to release responsibilities and delegate. That was really hard. And I think it almost drove away some really key employees and our team members who are now my like VP of operations and really high ranking people in the company who I almost lost early on because I wouldn't let them do their job. And I kept, kept stuff way too close to the vest and didn't delegate well. And so learning how to do that well, make people feel valued and like they're contributing to the team. Not like I said, a cog in a machine is really important.

Clay Vaughan: 15:23

That's I tend to struggle with the opposite side because I'm so ambitious. I'm like, I just need people to help. So here you do this. And I don't even teach them on how to do it. So that's where I struggle, but your story is not uncommon. So you mentioned when it comes to your team, it was hard for you to let go at first. Where were you in that cycle where you were like, oh my gosh, I'm my own worst enemy. How did you realize

John Boriack: 15:46

that? I was opening the mail. I was doing all the accounting. And so you have a very qualified, talented individual here who's running the ship. Then the new guy comes in, buys the property and then starts doing all the tasks that she used to do before where she got bored fast. And she would come to me and be like, Hey, cleaned up my desk. Anything I can do? Hey, swept the office. Anything else you want me to take on? And I was just like, nope, you're good. You're running, playing your role. Thank you. And I didn't realize her need to be challenged and to grow. And one day when she actually got a job offer with a charity in town that would have been a very like fulfilling, rewarding job that she got very close to taking it. And I'm so grateful that she was transparent with me about that and said that she's like thinking about something else. And that really shocked me in into realizing I'm going to have to change how I do things if I want to keep quality individuals. And so that spurred me then to restruct or rethink what I'm doing and what I need to delegate to her and give her the authority to do her job well and also build her into the future growth of the company. Meaning this is where I see us going. This is how I see you playing a role in that. And here's your piece of the pie that you're going to get as the company grows. And that really, I would say, sparked a maturing of of our business to realize that I'm not going to be able to do these tasks forever. And I have to trust others, you know, to step in and do that. And I would, another thing I would say is every team member really needs three things from a job. I'm picking the number three for some reason that keeps coming back. They need to know if they're doing a good job or not, which is so you, that, and they need to know, I'll come back and explain all these, but they need to know if they're doing a good job or not. They need to know that they're having an impact on people and they need to be personally known by their leader. So what that looks like for us is the first thing is know if they're doing a good job or not. They need to have objective metrics that they're measured by on a routine time period to know I did good this month or I did bad this month. I did good this week or this was a bad week. And so what that looks like for us in our industry, say for a manager of somebody managing a property, we are going to look at your occupancy, how occupied is the property? How many people chose to renew their lease? What was the profit for this month? Did we do an event? Things like that. Really, this is not why I think you're doing a good job. These are objectively measured things to know I crushed it this month or I need to do better. This was a down month for me. And so to have that objective measurement that their leaders also see, And that's how promotions and bonuses are determined is really important to know. Like I can work harder and do better at my job and then it will be noticed and rewarded. That's really important. So that's knowing that they're doing a good job. Second thing is knowing they're having an impact. You could have a very measured job that's very profitable that takes advantage of people and you're going to either bad people working for you or they're not going to last. So they need to know here's how what you do every day positively impacts people. And that takes some creativity from the leader to define that. So for us, that's That is providing a good quality home where needs are met, maintenance issues are taken care of, and you can feel safe raising a family here. And when that basic human need is met, it allows that person, that customer to be able to focus on other areas of their life. So when you can communicate the value that delivers to the customers, it's very fulfilling for the team members to come to work every day and provide that. And that you can do that for a coffee shop. You can do that for an insurance agency, whatever. Like when you take care of a problem for somebody and provide that service and do it well, it's a very rewarding and impactful thing. So that's it. We covered two things. People need to know if they're doing a good job or not. They need to know their job is impactful. The third thing is they need to be personally known by their leader. So what that looks like is when a crisis hits, as they always will with people, their leader understands and they're known and they know what's going on. I I know my team members' names. I know their kids' names. We celebrate their work anniversaries. We celebrate if they buy a house. We celebrate if they get married. They celebrate. Last Friday, I was at a quinceanera for one of our employees whose daughter had a Latino 15th birthday party. Going to those kinds of things and showing like, I want to know you beyond just a work basis. And you can't go overbearing with that. People want some separation there. But to take interest in people's personal lives and what are they into? What really makes them feel valuable? What's their Starbucks drink? that you're going to get them personally. You know what? Get them a shirt made. Feeling that personal connection with their leader is super important for them to engage at work and feel valued there. So those are the three things that I think we really focus on is help me as a business owner and business leader craft our business systems around how team members are recognized and rewarded. They need to know that if they're doing a good job or not through scorecards or however you want to measure that, they need to know that they're known by their leader and they need to know that what they do over there has an impact on others.

Clay Vaughan: 21:02

That's great. That's really great. So there is one thing I do want to point out. Several years ago, I invested and acquired a news agency in DC. Not every business that you acquire, not every asset that you purchase is going to come just with the perfect team. And you were really blessed to have Jackie sitting in that office with you when you first acquired that 200 unit facility. But not everybody's so lucky. Not everybody's so lucky to have someone like that on the team. In fact, Maybe the owners originally decided, you know what, it's time to sell because of the toxicity in that company or in that culture. So you definitely want to go in eyes wide open, not just saying, you know what, I'm just going to let things roll the way they are. If there's issues and apparent issues for all of you guys listening, I just want to encourage you, be on the lookout. I 100% agree with what John was saying about doing scorecards and things like that, measurables. That's going to give you an opportunity to see how well that person is performing. performing and how well they respond to scrutiny, honestly, and to accountability. And that's really important. When I acquired that organization out of DC, there were obvious issues. When I looked at the QuickBooks account, they had lost almost $11 million in three years. And they had an amazing brand, but there was obviously a very big issue in the culture because there were people leaving, their attrition was terrible, there was something going on. And I made the mistake of keeping some of those people on too long. And it drained my accounts because I was keeping some of the senior leadership on board and they had quarter million, half a million dollar salaries and It took me about six months to realize this is the real reason why this company was sold. So I would just encourage you yes to everything John has said and make sure that you're holding them accountable when they are there. So only relinquish that control when they've earned that ability to take ownership there.

John Boriack: 23:09

Absolutely, yeah. And like you said, we were very blessed and I think the Lord divinely brought in the right people for that first acquisition. But I will say the other five acquisitions we've done since then. We've kept some of the original staff. We usually keep one or two out of say five or 10, but it is very clear that these businesses are underperforming because of some of the people that are in there. And so we'll usually have kind of three categories. There's people that are let go day one, And those are pretty easy to stand out. But a lot, usually there's, it takes 30 to 60 days and you realize, oh, this person's not a good culture fit or they don't do their job well. So then they're let go too. So there's like the wave one of purging. Then there's the wave two of purging. And then you see who really is a good fit. And all that comes back to defining your culture and your values and how you are going to operate. And then who's going to fit well in there. And sometimes the best thing you can do for somebody is fire them because they're never going to go anywhere in your business, but they may excel in another business that has different values and operates differently than you do and likewise people may leave a business for because of toxic reasons or whatever and they never did well there but they get the right tools and the right empowerment in your business and then they thrive so it's all about kind of defining your culture and the channel you operate and what your values are and then finding the right people in that but to sit on the bus

Clay Vaughan: 24:21

love it love it john i really appreciate you just diving in with us so in business we always have those serious struggles it's in your case harvey it's snowpocalypse of 2021 it's co COVID and eviction moratoriums, and you've dealt with so much adversity in your specific industry. There are so many ways you could have failed. There are so many areas that could have just completely taken you out. And I love that you touched earlier on having enough cash in the bank, but what would you say... has pulled you through all of that adversity?

John Boriack: 25:01

Well, you know the old saying, if you don't prepare, you prepare to fail. And having cash at the bank is a big piece, but also having invested in and trained and connected with our teams before the crises hit also led to a lot of success there. So Snowmageddon, you know, or Winter Storm Yuri that hit Houston, record lows, never seen this before, busted pipes everywhere, can't find plumbing parts, can't get to work, every real apocalyptic type of thing. I was very engaged and stressed, but I was never worried. Because I knew without me even saying our team members were kicking into action and stopping leaks and repairing pipes. We were back up and running far before most properties because of the relationships we had made with suppliers before this storm hit and the culture we had developed of a, when the going gets tough, get going, work hard, play hard culture with our team members. I knew our maintenance teams were kicking into action. I knew our managers were keeping tabs on residents. I knew that we were going to get back up and running as fast as possible because of the prep work that had been done to build that culture beforehand. And yeah, we needed cash on hand where we could buy stuff if we find it, even if it wasn't readily available. And then also know, hey, we give a lot to our team members and now was a time to, we expect some payback and they stepped up happily and were taking, you know, once we knew their personal homes and families were okay, okay, then it was time to kick into action and take care of our residents who homes were then endangered and flooded and frozen and everything else. And that's the same with a hurricane, eviction moratoriums, all that stuff. When you build the team and empower the team ahead of time, then when the crises hit, you're prepared to weather the storm. Does that make sense?

Clay Vaughan: 26:44

Absolutely. So for the business leader who's listening right now, what advice would you give them if they want to maintain their values in business? For you, you put a flag literally in regard to how you named your business. I mean... You can't get... I guess reverent is competing with you a little bit, but veritas. You obviously set out to maintain those values, but how have you seen that kind of play out in reality, in real life?

John Boriack: 27:14

Yeah, so you don't know veritas means truth in Latin, and we've been dedicated to that ever since. I think it sets the tone for who we are as a company. And I think there are really two points I want to make. First is... Regardless of what goes on out there in the world with competition, in the market, et cetera, there are always going to be opportunities to take shortcuts within your company. You can always, you know, weasel a little money out of your employees. You can always charge some undisclosed fees to your customers. You can always do some little shortcut things that make an extra buck. And I think it's really important to train yourself and your team to stick to a certain moral code when those decisions are really small. When And it's a $15 decision, not a $50,000 decision to do this kind of thing. And the Bible talks about the integrity of an upright man will guide him. And when integrity is the goal, it's not going to fix every issue. There's some gray areas that you have to navigate, but there are issues that come up where people like, Ooh, do you want to code this here or code this there? Like you can finagle accounting when you're a small company to say whatever the hell you want. And you can make a very unprofitable business look profitable if you want to by coding here, coding there, booking this here, booking this there. And when you have the kind of the ethical code of no we're going to do the right thing no matter what honestly it's freeing you don't have to choose are we going to cheat on this one or not you're not and you just do the right thing every time and and it's not always black and white but a lot of times it is and at least the black and white decisions are easy and clear and that had maybe you pay more in the short term but man over the long term that's how you endear people's loyalty and dedication and you sleep well at night don't worry about it i think there i think the lord rewards that um

Clay Vaughan: 28:52

Yeah, well, and like attracts like. So if you want to have people who maintain their values they're going to be attracted to you if you're maintaining your values. Absolutely. And with that note, John, thank you so much for joining today. Everybody listening, you guys go and run your good business. Thanks, Clay. If you like this podcast, please subscribe now and share with your friends, family, and other business leaders. You can learn more about each guest and the resources we discuss at www.clayvon.com. And if you're a business leader looking to market your business and share your story, check out my company, Reverent, at We'll see you next time on Good Business.