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Author: Mark Ainely | Partner GC Realty & Development & Co-Host Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcast
A personal note from Mark Ainley on being featured in a Progress Podio case study
This is the operator's side of that story. (Progress Software, the company behind Podio, recently published a full case study about what we built. If you want the version written for the software side of the story, that's the link.) What follows is what it actually felt like to be on the inside of that growth.
Property management has 5 core processes that run the business. Leasing. Maintenance. Renewals. Collections. Turnovers. Our property management software told us whether a task was done or not done. That was it. It never told us where in the process our team actually was. Our renewal process alone has 17 steps. The system could only tell us if a renewal was complete or incomplete. It could not tell us which of those 17 steps we were stuck on. To know what was really happening, somebody had to ask somebody.
Here is the part I will own. We were growing fast, and I was newer to managing people. I was not great at it. The only way I knew how to stay close to the work was to micromanage. I chased people for updates because the system gave me no other option. That is exhausting for the person being chased and just as exhausting for the person doing the chasing. At the time, I just thought this was how it was supposed to be.
We had actually started using Podio earlier on the rehab side of the business, tracking property purchases and renovations with simple checklists. It worked. So we brought it into property management and slowly built out workflows for those 5 core processes. Now instead of asking somebody where a task stands, I open Podio and see exactly where a renewal, a work order, or a turnover is sitting at any moment. The visibility replaced the chasing.
The AI layer came next. The specific problem we wanted to solve was issues not getting escalated quickly enough. By the time something reached me or anyone else in leadership, the resident or owner was already unhappy, or we had missed the window to actually offer a solution. AI now reviews every incoming email for sentiment and risk, and leadership gets a daily summary of the items most likely to blow up. AI also reviews work order details and flags anything that needs a closer look before it moves forward. Lower risk items keep moving. The things that need a human eye get one.
We now manage around 1,500 units. The 4.8x revenue growth the case study highlights is real, but the honest answer is we could not have done it without Podio. The platform let us stay responsive to residents and clients without adding a body for every new door. It let me stop being the bottleneck.
The reason I am sharing this is not really about software. It is to say that responsive service at our size does not happen by accident. It happens because we built the system to support it, and we kept evolving that system as the business grew. That is what the last several years have actually been about, and that is what the next several will be too.
Don't Go At This Alone!
If you are reading this and recognizing your own portfolio, the spreadsheets, the chasing, the feeling that nothing moves forward without you in the middle of it, we get it. That used to be us. We view this as a team sport. Who's on your team?
GC Realty & Development, LLC has a dedicated team of professionals with decades of experience across brokerage, leasing, and property management, backed by the same systems and AI workflows the case study describes. Whether you hire us or not, we are happy to share what we have learned.
What gets me up in the morning and keeps me going for 12 hours a day is the ability to add value for local area investors in Chicago and beyond. Those who connect with me often hear me say that our goal is to bring value to everyone we come in contact with. In return, they will one day hire us for tenant placement or property management, refer us to someone they know, or leave a review about our services. We would love all three, but we are happy whenever we get the opportunity to help.
