Brett Frank Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- Deciding on my most significant career accomplishment is difficult, so I will talk about two that I believe are both equally as important. The first is the financial performance of my property in 2021. My property had the highest gross operating income in our company exceeding our budget by 11.4%. We also managed to come in 4.5% under budget on controllable expense and beat our vacancy loss targets by 34%. This helped us achieve an NOI of 12.1% over our budgeted target. All of this was accomplished in a highly completive Denver market. The second accomplishment that I am incredibly proud of is while working as an assistant community manager at a property in ND. I helped spearhead a fundraising effort that raised over $6800 in one day! We rode around our local community in fire trucks collecting donations from local businesses helping to raise money for a local rural volunteer fire department. I have always felt it is essential for multi-family housing organizations to give back to the communities that we operate in.
What is your ultimate career goal within the rental housing industry?
- My ultimate goal is to make a lasting impact on our multi-family housing industry. Since I was a little kid, I have always been fascinated with being a business leader. During my time in the United States Army, I was blessed with the opportunity to serve under some fantastic leaders, and they have inspired me to set big goals. After being medically retired from the Army, I was looking for a way to impact people's lives still. Working in multi-family housing has allowed me to do that. Becoming a CEO would enable me to make an even more significant impact. I am passionate about providing people with the best possible housing experience. Providing homes to families and individuals is such a powerful experience. I have had people break down in tears after moving in and thanking me for helping them finally find a home. Those are the experiences that motivate me to keep pushing to be better. I see many challenges and issues in our industry and a great captain in the Army once told me to be the change I want to see. My ultimate career goal is to help leave the industry better than I found it and become a leader to mentor and train the next generation of industry leaders. I want to inspire others to continue pushing to provide the best possible housing experience.
What's one rental housing trend you have your eye on?
- An emerging trend that I think is vital to our industry is the emphasis and focus on DE&I initiatives. I believe this to be true because, in multi-family housing, we have one of the most diverse customer basis of any industry. We also deal with something much more emotionally and meaningful than just selling a product or gadget. We are providing our customers with homes. A person’s home is the center point of their life, and in many cases, when customers sign a lease with us, it is the largest purchase they will make that year. It is vital for us as leaders in multi-family housing to have diverse organizations. This is helpful for many reasons, the first being that diverse organizations are often more successful profitable and make better decisions. Focusing on DE&I also allows organizations to understand their residents better and helps us, as multi-family housing providers, better understand the needs of our residents. It helps us create communities that are great places for everyone to live and thrive. The increased focus on DE&I has improved the quality of housing organizations provide. Employees who feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work are happier, and happier employees take better care of residents. It may seem small and insignificant to some, but even focusing on pronouns and addressing our residents and employees by their preferred pronouns does go a long way with those individuals and makes a lasting impact. There is still a lot of work to be done concerning DE&I. However, I think that we are heading in the right direction, and this trend is changing and will continue to change our industry.