TALKING GRIT, THE FEAR ZONE, & LEADERS
WITH PROPERTY MELD CO-FOUNDER & CEO, RAY HESPEN
PROFESSIONALSGROUP APRIL2023COMMUNITYCONNECTIONS
THERAPIDCITYYOUNG
“I DO LEGITIMATELY ENJOY WHAT I DO, SO I DO LIKE TO WORK. I WORK A LOT.”
“I don’t have a ton of hobbies, I like to golf and workout at 5:00 every morning,” he says with a smile. This guy hit an incredible milestone recently, raising some serious Series B funding to the tune of $15M. You believe a guy that can accomplish that size of an investment when he says he likes to work.
Walking into Property Meld headquarters in downtown Rapid City, you immediately feel like you’re surrounded by the brightest, most innovative minds of today. Right here in our own community. The space is beaming with light and energetic voices as we’re met by Property Meld’s sharply dressed Co-Founder and CEO, Ray Hespen. Once we sit down with him, it’s immediately evident that this guy loves what he does and means it when he says that, with the impassioned way he talks and the many insightful comments he made throughout our one hour chat.
APRIL 2023 COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS SPOTLIGHT
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THE PATH
Ray grew up in Gillette, WY, was working in the oil field and wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to go to college. Hey – he was making good money for a kid…why would he? It wasn’t until he ended up running into a South Dakota School of Mines concrete canoe at the mall (yes, you read that right), that he changed his mind. After he graduated as a mining engineer in a timely 5 years at the School of Mines, he had to make a choice on whether he wanted to stay here or go and explore outside the area. He took a leap – into Tulsa, OK – for an internship and stayed there for a few years.
Even at this point, he was looking back, wondering when he could get a job back in Rapid City. He always wanted to be back here. But because life happens and because moving is, in his words, “not scary”, he ended up taking opportunities in California, Chicago, and Baltimore. He says that you realize that the thing that you find is scary, isn’t so scary after you do it a couple times. Like moving six or seven times in 8 or 9 years. It was in Baltimore, that Ray made the decision to take another leap – this time from Plant Manager of a manufacturing facility to starting a software company.
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THE IDEA
How do we improve a problem?
Ray says that many people make the mistake of coming up with a solution in search of a problem. His now co-founder was in Albuquerque, NM at the time and he had a really bad rental experience. Knowing Ray had moved around and rented a lot, he called him up to ask if he had ever had a good experience, to which Ray simply said, “no”. This jumpstarted Ray’s phone calls and research in property management operations and realized that this was a bigger industry problem that was costing people a lot of money.
Maintenance is the number 1 driver of why a lease turns. It’s the number 1 reason why an owner will quit using a professional property manager, because they don’t think they’re running it well. They figured out how to take the process that drives so much business and built the software that turns it into a positive, exceptional experience.
85% of maintenance requests are scheduled in 4 minutes or less with Property Meld’s software
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THE COMMUNITY
It took 2 to 3 years for Ray to feel at home, acclimated, and have a community after moving back – even though he was quite familiar with Rapid City. Ray says that when you move around a lot, you get good at going right up to people and getting to know them, asking them to grab dinner, and other pleasantries. He says that the separation of the moment where you start developing actual meaningful relationships and real community from something that’s very surface level, takes a few years.
This is where he makes one of my favorite comments: a lot of people think that defining who is an introvert and who is an extrovert is based on the idea that extroverts are good at speaking out and introverts aren’t. It’s really about who gains energy from social interactions (the extroverts), and who loses it (the introverts). Wondering where Ray falls? He falls mildly in between; he jumps on both sides. He further supports this insight by saying that you’re usually energized when talking about hobbies or things you love. Ray likes his church and weight training, so those places energize him. He lovingly jokes about how those places are his “friend farms”. He encourages people to go where you enjoy the things that you talk about –those things that embolden you and make you confident.
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Ray has 5 attributes for high potentials in people that he hires: grit, humility, ambition, intellectual curiosity, and communication.
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Areyousomeonethatrunstowardproblemsorrunsawayfromthem?
HUMILITY
Thisisaprecursortobeingcoachable.Areyousomebodythat understandsthatyouhavealotmoretolearnandthatyou’rewilling toleaveyouregoatthedoor?Thisallowsmentorsandotherstohave anamazingimpactonyou.
AMBITION
Ray’sfavorite.Whatgetsyoulaserlockedintosomethingthatyou wanttoaccomplishinlife?There’snothingthatstopssomebodyfrom achievingsomethingwhentheyreallywantit.
INTELLECTUALCURIOSITY
You’rewillingtofigureoutsomethingthatnoonehasaskedyouto figureout.You’rewillingtotry,willingtotest.
COMMUNICATION
Canyougetinformationtosomeoneelse?Canyougetthemtosee whatyousee?Canyougetthemtobuyin?Canyougetthemexcited?
THE 5 ATTRIBUTES
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GRIT
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THE LEADER
Ray separates the role of manager and leader. They’re two different things. You can be a manager and say, “you have to turn a widget so much each day, and if you don’t – I’m going to come talk to you”. There are tons of people who can be managers. There’s also a lot of leaders that aren’t managers. He says you can tell who a leader is in our own organizations by looking at who constantly has someone at their desk. Who is the person that people will go to, asking for advice, counsel? Leaders are good at building trust and are willing to add value to others consistently. Leaders try to find ways to help others and legitimately want to. When that happens, people come to your desk.
In Ray’s case, he has been a great manager and he had to learn how to be a leader. He believes that leadership is a trainable attribute. When he was in the manufacturing industry, he was thrown into a less than ideal situation, having to figure out how to cut costs by 40% to keep the facility open. He was good at being the person who could hold face and manage –but he shifted the way he would manage by evolving his ability, learning how to be a lead versus a manager, and change the focus from being accountability-driven to finding out how to find those people that want to go crazy far in their career and help them find their ambition, challenge them, and push them.
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THE ADVICE
This is where Ray introduces us to the concept of the ‘Fear Zone’. Everyone lives in the ‘Comfort Zone’ really well, but there’s a sort of moat around that ‘Comfort Zone’, adequately called the ‘Fear Zone’. Terrifying for most human beings. Outside the ‘Fear Zone’, comes the ‘Learning Zone’ and the ‘Growth Zone’. His advice is that you have to find ways to press yourself into positions where you are extremely uncomfortable. This is the ‘Fear Zone’. You don’t want to break, but almost everyone can handle way more than they think they can. Like marathon training. When you find those really hard situations, where you don’t know if you can do it or figure it out, that’s the stuff you say “yes” to.
He realized that going through his pattern of saying “yes” to things that required him to go through that ‘Fear Zone’, time after time again, allows him to continue going through future ‘Fear Zones’ with ease.
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IF RAY INSPIRES YOU TO TACKLE THE ‘FEAR ZONE’ OR YOU WANT TO HEAR MORE OF HIS INCREDIBLE INSIGHT, PLEASE JOIN US FOR AN EXCLUSIVE EVENT WITH PROPERTY MELD!
TUESDAY, APRIL 25
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
PROPERTY MELD HQ
406 ST JOSEPH ST THIS EVENT IS FREE TO ATTEND! SEND AN RSVP TO RAPIDCITYYPG@GMAIL.COM
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