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In this podcast, EAG’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Randolph, tells us about an important and necessary new tool to make your website compliant and accessible for everyone. Then, Jeff meets with Terrell “TJ” Jolly, founder of Integrity Capital Management, a firm serving residential property owners and tenants with honesty, diligence and expertise.
Transcript:
Jeff:
Welcome one more time to the Small Business Miracles podcast. My name is Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice business owners can use to keep moving forward. Plus a featured interview you’re not going to want to miss. Let’s get started. For our tip today, we’d like to talk about accessibility. Website accessibility has been an issue that has come up and has really played a bigger role in lots of organizations. Governments are starting to really pay attention to it, and you may even have some negative impacts that you’ve seen that drive this choice.
In the past year, we’ve seen more and more website owners getting demand letters from people with disabilities and forcing them to make their website fully accessible. Oftentimes, you may get a demand letter from someone in a law firm who is hoping that they can help steer you in the right direction in making sure that you have a good accessible website, and they may be threatening to sue you if you don’t. There’s a whole topic we could talk about there, but the accessibility portion, regardless of who is making you do it, is a good thing to do. You should offer a good accessible website. You want people going to your website to have a good experience and to be able to get the products and services that you offer. So to make some accessibility, we did find a solution that we like. It’s an AI solution that’s an automated system that can achieve full a compliance within about 48 hours, and provides 24/7 automatic maintenance.
It’s developed by a company called AccessiBe. So accessibility, it’s access, it’s simple, it’s automated, it’s affordable, and it isn’t tough to implement either. After reviewing their system and testing it on our own website, we like it. So go to Eagadv.com and look for the blue control panel dot on the left. It’s got a little human looking character inside of it By clicking on it gives the user all kinds of access controls to make the website easier for them to use. Increasing font size, increasing the contrast, reducing flashing, making it accessible by a screen reader, colorblindness safe profiles, so many controls.
If you need to have accessibility turned on, you’ve started looking for this little blue dot and it makes it very easy to use. There are also some tax credits you may qualify for if you’re a small business and you are making accessibility edits to your website. So that’s something you could look into to see if your small business qualifies. AccessiBe is the tool. And that is a handy marketing tip.
It is time for our featured guest and I’m here with TJ Jolly. He’s the managing partner of Integrity Capital Management. TJ, welcome to the show.
TJ:
Thanks for having me.
Jeff:
We’re excited to have you here. First you’re a business owner, you’ve got, you’ve been doing things for a very long time now. Tell me about your background and how you got here and then we’re going to dive into the business.
TJ:
Okay. Well, born and raised. Originally in Detroit, Michigan. I guess you could say entrepreneurship was in my blood. My dad was entrepreneur all my life. So I knew the aspect of what it means to be an entrepreneur just by watching and being around him. So he owned a towing company, one of the first minority-owned towing companies that had contract with the state police, state of Michigan. Also had a detail, a detail shop, and in his later years now I guess his retirement, he’s being a chauffeur with his own private-
Jeff:
Oh. Wow. Yeah.
TJ:
… transfer company. So graduated high school, went to Alabama State University, while I attended school I fell in love with the aspect of growing in Home Depot.
At one point in time I thought I’d bleed orange. And while I was working there I met a gentleman that just drastically changed my life. A gentleman by the name of Mr. Queen who was a customer, I thought he was a hard customer at first. I’ve had him prejudge in a way of saying that he was going to give me a hard time, but he was putting me through some drills, and ended up building a long-lasting relationship with him, and he offered a job that essentially changed my life as a plant manager for a lumber company.
Jeff:
Okay.
TJ:
And being a kid from Detroit, Michigan, let alone barely knowing how to cut the grass. You’re talking about lumber-
Jeff:
Oh. Yeah.
TJ:
… that was definitely an eye-opening. So Mr. Queen took me under his wing, offered me a job, and then he stated said, “Hey. Are you ready to go? You’re going to Kansas City, Missouri.” And at this time I knew I’d been to every plant that we had, and I’m like, “We don’t have a plant in Kansas City, Missouri.” Well, actually he was mentioning Pleasant Hill, Missouri, which is drastically different than-
Jeff:
It is a little bit different. That’s true. That is true. But he’s telling you you’re going there.
TJ:
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So came down to the Kansas City area as an assistant manager, single guy not knowing anyone, and kind of just honed down at really understanding the operations of plant operations, how to engage people. That was really an eye-opening situation, and I could look back at the experience in how I applied every day. Being an entrepreneur is really understanding that the driving force is to people. So I really like to look at words and dissect them in a way. So the line of work I was in was manufacturing. So if you think about manufacturing, you can’t get the factor done if you don’t take care of the man.
Jeff:
That’s a way to diagram that word. That’s well done.
TJ:
So the thing about it is I 100% locked in on how to engage people. Really get with them in a way of one day you might be Dr. Phil, the next day you might be a counselor in a way of financial whatever. I had to meet the people where they’re at, because they’re doing a job that I don’t really want to do, and they doing the things that needs to happen to make the plant run. So I really took those principles and really understood what servant leadership was and applied it into my everyday business.
Jeff:
Hearing about treating individual people and workers as individual people so that it’s not just an endless supply of labor, and they’re faceless, and nameless, and, “Who cares? Let’s just go get more.” But treating every individual like an individual, I mean it almost sounds like that is exactly the way that Mr. Queen treats everyone. Like walked in and isn’t working at Home Depot, but changes your life. That’s an amazing story.
TJ:
Exactly. Exactly.
Jeff:
Tell us about Integrity Capital Management and how that shift then, and you now show up here.
TJ:
Right. So as I mentioned, I was a single guy and ended up meeting my lovely wife, Crystal, and we wanted to purchase a home. So in the process of purchasing a home, I had met another gentleman by the name of Bill White, White and Associates, and his wife Rhonda, and they was helping us in the home buying process. But in that process, bill said, “Hey. You’re really organized, have you ever thought about doing property management?” And at that time I was really excited and really overconfident in a way, because I was finishing up my MBA and I thought I knew everything at that point. I was at the tail end, I know everything about business and I said, “Yeah. I can put something together.” And I did, and I put together Integrity Capital Management pitched to him. He thought it was a great idea and introduced me to my first customer. Now, one thing that business school doesn’t teach you is actually how to run a business.
Jeff:
It’s funny how that works.
TJ:
So I think Mike Tyson said it best, “You have a plan until you get smacked in the mouth.” So really jumping out there, and at that time, that was 3/29/2013, 11:43 AM exactly when I hit the button to hit my LLC here at the Secretary of State and just cranking up. And I just never forget that time, because not really having a whole plan in front of me, but one thing I knew in order to scale the company, I had to continue to do two things. I had to continue to do the nine to five just to support my family. And I also had to really get razor focused on where I actually want to take this piece of the company.
So Integrity Capital Management is a property management firm where we could do every aspect of managing investment properties, or just managing property for anyone. You have different situations. People get married and want to hold onto their home, some people get divorced, they want to hold onto their home, some people are relocating, all those aspects. But we try to take the headache away from managing every aspect of the property, from leasing to maintenance requests, to understanding the market. We can work with acquisition, and every aspect of just investing in single family homes and multifamilies.
Jeff:
I know there are competition out there for all of that. Property management. How do you stand out?
TJ:
Well, the reality, what I understand now about property management, I never want to be the biggest property management company. I want to be more of the boutique. Unfortunately, and fortunately, Kansas City is a cheap market compared to the rest of the nation, which can bring several things that can bring a lot of slumlords to our market, which I refuse to work with. So I never really try to put myself out there as trying to take on a whole bunch of doors, because I’m really concerned about the end user. I’m concerned not only about my investor, I’m concerned about the tenant. I really want to be able to have my pulse on the tenant base and everything. And I think when you kind of scale to be a large property management company, I think you use some of that personal feel.
The other thing I understand about property management too is that you would never be a billionaire off of property management. What property management for me is more like a lead generator to other aspect of the business. I’ll give you just a quick example of roofing. A lot of people think it’s a lot of money in shingles.
It’s no money in shingles at all when you go to a Lowe’s or Home Depot. What really is everything that happens before you put the shingles on. So it’s money in the plywood, the nails, the flashing, and all those different things, and the shingle is low margin. So that’s how I look at property management. The goal is to at minimum break even, but different things happen out of property management, “Who wants to sell first before it hits the market?”
You have a tenant that possibly want to buy a home, you don’t have an investor that want to buy a home. I’m also growing out a portfolio of my own that’s geared specifically towards attainable housing through [inaudible 00:11:57] Associates. And now I have the property management arm built into what I’m doing on that side. So when you talk about the functionality and staffing and everything, that’s what property management really is, and what I think that’s the tool I usually to make everything else run.
Jeff:
It’s a smart approach and it’s one that helps keep in perspective, “Yeah. This is the core part of the business, but here’s where all the opportunity is and if we are straight dealing fair, dealing with our clients and then also with tenants.” I mean, it sounds like a great recipe for success.
TJ:
And I think property management, and I really don’t even like the word property management, but it is what it is. But the reality is that property management has a bad context in a lot of ways, because people really don’t understand what property management is. They always think they’re getting a nickel and dime with repairs and different things like that. And I have once been in a situation when I relocated here, I had a realtor that stated that they were a property management, and then number one thing that stuck out to me is that she paid me when she felt like it.
So the reality is that I focus in on the cashflow. I really don’t get into the nickel and diming or whatever as long as our cost is covered because that’s not the main revenue stream. The main revenue stream is leasing, acquisition, and renewals just to keep the cashflow going because if that person has confident that we take care of the asset, they eventually will buy more.
Jeff:
Let me use this as the opportunity to switch us into the lightning ground.
TJ:
Okay.
Jeff:
Lightning round sounds cool. I mean, it just sounds like a cool thing to do. Short answers, soundbite answers, one or two word answers, whatever. But I promise you this, there are no wrong answers.
TJ:
Okay.
Jeff:
So just throw it out, whatever it is, because they’re your answers, and that’s what’s important. But also we’ll dive into it, and we’ll talk about things, which is the opposite of what lightning round ought to be. We’ll just see where this is at. Let me start with what businesses inspire you? What brands inspire you?
TJ:
You know, I never forget when I first moved here and before I really knew my entrepreneurial journey, I had an opportunity to attend, I guess a TED Talk before it was a TED Talk with Henry Bloch and Tom Bloch.
Jeff:
Oh. Yeah.
TJ:
Right? And I knew about H&R Block from the aspect of the grand scale of what they are now. But to hear the story of Henry saying no one believed in this concept, how family members went engaged and then they didn’t engage. It was just hearing those different things, and hearing a story about one of his first clients was a hotdog stand downtown Kansas. That was so inspiring-
Jeff:
Inspiring.
TJ:
… because the reality was it’s like now look this big national company, and I think that’s a testament to Kansas City. The one thing I always tell people, Kansas City is a place where you can touch anybody that you might look up to or respect, some kind of way you can get to them. So after I witnessed that TED Talk, I just went online and just googled and it came up Tom bloch@gmail.com. I said, “Wait a minute, that can’t be the same-
Jeff:
Could this be it? Isn’t this easy?
TJ:
Right. And I shot an email, and it was a response, and the next week we’re having coffee. And I’m like, “What’s the odds?” Wow.
Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah.
TJ:
So I love Kansas City.
Jeff:
I think that’s a Kansas City story that you can look up to Henry Bloch, and I don’t know all of the background of Henry Bloch to know how he is outside of the information I know, but I know that he was approachable. And I don’t know how many times in my early career I walked into the Westport Flea Market on whatever day of the week that he was always there. And it’s him and a group of execs sitting down at a table eating a flea market burger, which the common uniter among all of Kansas City is going to be a flea burger or barbecue.
TJ:
That’s right.
Jeff:
And just super approachable, and isn’t there with an entourage and is too good for everybody else. It is that kind of spirit that I think we dig about Kansas City.
TJ:
Yeah. I love it.
Jeff:
Let’s talk about next lightning round question, your favorite social media platform?
TJ:
My social, I really love LinkedIn.
Jeff:
I noticed you’re all over it.
TJ:
I love it.
Jeff:
You posted a lot.
TJ:
I love it. I love it. Because nothing wrong with Instagram, or Facebook, but in LinkedIn, you know why people are there.
Jeff:
Yes.
TJ:
Right? It is very intentional. You can’t bluff much on LinkedIn. It’s not just for show. It’s real stuff, and it is just the most efficient way to really connect with people, and I love it a lot for the simple fact that I can be really intentional, engage, and really make some connections across the globe, literally.
Jeff:
I like it. I like it a lot. Tell me about big success. If you’ve just had some amazing success, you sold something big, you reach a milestone of some kind. How do you celebrate that victory? What is it that you do to say, “I’m congratulating myself on this one”, taking time for the wins?
TJ:
That’s a great question. I definitely think you have to take times for the wins. I think often people don’t recognize a wind no matter how big or how small it is. But one thing outside of wins, I know a win to me is making payroll every week. That’s a win.
Jeff:
That’s a win. That’s a win.
TJ:
The aspect of I have people depending on me to be active enough to cut them a salary, that’s a win. So how I celebrate wins, I try to celebrate every single day by recognizing a win is a win. I enjoy a good cigar-
Jeff:
Now we’re talking. Okay.
TJ:
… so every Thursday I celebrate that weekly win with a cigar, because that’s the day my wife let me actually have to myself. So I celebrate every week with a cigar. Because I do enjoy that. So every week is a win.
Jeff:
That is a good win. That is a good and a good tradition as well. That is a good tradition. I just have so much regret the next day after a cigar where you open your mouth and go, “Oh. That was a bad idea. I just made a bad idea.”
TJ:
Every Friday morning.
Jeff:
Every Friday morning, you start. The win on Thursday turns into a regret Friday morning.
TJ:
Yep. Yep.
Jeff:
There’s not enough mouthwash for this.
TJ:
It’s not.
Jeff:
So you’ve done quite a bit with just kind of that pathway to ownership and affordable housing. Tell me a little bit about how you approach it, what the thought process is there.
TJ:
Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, through a portfolio I’m building through Jolly and Associates, I just want to focus in on attainable housing. Affordability is used so loosely, but I don’t think in these conversations we are being intentional on who we were trying to affect. I think in a lot of conversations that’s happening now that people are wrapping houseless with affordable as two different conversations, two different buckets. In my opinion, the houses need a drastically different situation. They need more wraparound services and a good roof over their head. And when you talk about attainable affordability, you might have a single mother that has children and might be paying high rent and might have some subsidies, but she can’t have the ability to scale to own a home if she choose to. That’s the other key piece.
It’s one thing to own a home, it’s another thing to afford one. So people constantly say, “Hey. Homeownership is the first way to wealth.” That’s 100% true if you know how to extract the wealth. There’s no education around that specifically, right? Do you know how to check the gutters? Do you know how to change the air filter? I mean, all these different things. So I really try to focus in on a portfolio that I’m building out is have these service somewhat incubators, and then you can really test the aptitude of what the person really wants to achieve.
If they just want a solid place that they don’t have to worry about or whatever, and we don’t get into bumping the rent up way past the market, then that’s fine too. Or if it’s someone that express homeownership, then we can take it to another level and start having a conversation around, “Okay. This is what it means to be financially fit to do that. This is what it means to once you have the home, how do you budget to maintain a home? You don’t necessarily have to be a do-it-yourselfer, but how do we be resourceful?”
So those things I really try to focus on, and it’s a lot of resources that we have in Kansas City that people just don’t know. A lot of these communities that I work in fall in what is called an urban renewal zone, and this tax abatement actually seemed like it was made for the big boys, but actually it is made for homeowner too. If you can prove and a document that you did a minimum of $5,000 worth of work on your home within a year, you can apply for a 10-year tax abatement.
So when we talking about that ugly word, gentrification, or people being pushed out their communities, what about people actually knew that this tool was available, that you can actually put this in place, sustain your taxes, and continue to live in the community that’s thriving around you? Paint programs, home repair programs. It’s all these different resources, but it is just the fact that people are not aware. So every aspect of housing, I really just want to create a situation where it’s more of a resource center, because in order for our communities to be sustainable, we have to work in a spirit and a mindset of abundance.
Jeff:
I’m editorializing of course, but man, we need more small business owners like you. This has been a great conversation. This has been inspirational to hear about what motivates you. This is spectacular. TJ Jolly, managing partner of Integrity Capital Management. Thanks for being with us on the show.
TJ:
Thanks, man.
Jeff:
TJ Jolly was our guest today. I am so happy we got a chance to sit down and talk to TJ. He’s moving, he’s shaking, he’s making it happen. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at Eagadv.com if you’ve got some thoughts to share. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.