037: Why start an Employee Owned company? How Lisa Wise of Nest DC flew past her Competition…

Background on Lisa Wise of Nest DC:

Lisa Wise is the Chief Nester//Wise Owl of the Boutique Property Management firm known as Nest DC (in Washington, DC – multiple puns intended). Lisa’s work has always been cause driven, entrepreneurial, and community focused. She served as Executive Director for the Center for a New American Dream, a national environmental non-profit and as Vice President of a national health care advocacy organization in Washington, DC. Lisa also spent five years as national field manager for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Lisa gets to channel her inner entrepreneur but also focus on making a difference in the community. Her broad range of experience means she can manage complex problems and projects, highly functional teams, and operate a large, socially responsible business with an eye toward a bottom line results.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[0:49] Lisa is the Chief Nester for Nest DC, a boutique property management company in Washington, DC.
[1:33] They don’t own any property but solely work with clients who are often foreign service or stationed overseas.
[1:46] The company currently manages 725 properties.
[1:54] She also has another business called Roost DC, a sister company of Nest DC and manages homeowners associations and condo associations.
[3:33] Roost DC was built on the success of Nest DC and to ensure total commitment from the team by co-owning the business.
[8:55] Roost has 9 employees and some of the owners are on the Nest side.
[9:14] They broke even last year and it’s up to the membership how to distribute funds.
[9:56] Lisa owned 95% of Nest DC and her COO owned the 5%.
[10:18] Her property management journey started when she was in grad school and she bought a duplex.
[11:40] “I felt like I was able offer people a great living experience and that made a difference for them every single day.”
[12:21] Liza is proud to build a company that isn’t just customer oriented but focuses more on how to give clients great living experience.
[20:33] Using Appfolio was a big changer for them.
[25:13] “I think the hardest thing for our business has always been to reconcile the fact that we have such a great enthusiasm for what we are doing….and then to have someone to come after us about something is really hard for our team. We take things really personally.”
[37:03] In a service base environment, an employee ownership model is clutch.
[39:52] “Honoring your employee before the dollar is the right way to go.”

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖📚 Favorite Book(s)? Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt &‎ Stephen J. Dubner.
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? My favorite buys are all local.
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Teamwork.
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Not the right or enough talent.