Ezekiel Lucas Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- My biggest career achievement was last week when I won the Rent Dynamics "Think Big and Take Action" values award which is given out annually to one employee.
Here's why:
Prior to joining Rent Dynamics, I worked at Oracle, a F100 company, and spent close to three years there. I was a top performer and worked in sales, advising firms like Sony, Dow Jones, Mars, and Snapchat on their technology strategy. I won many awards and was consistently ranked in the top 10% for sales. I mentored over 20 colleagues and was a "Team Lead" on every team I joined.
However, it was very hard to feel like I was making a meaningful impact because Oracle had over 160,000 employees. I felt like another cog in the machine and was left feeling unfulfilled at the end of a work day.
In January of 2022, I quit with nothing lined up except a year of savings and the the hope of finding an industry and company where I could make a true difference.
I moved from Boston, Massachusetts to Logan, Utah in April to move in with a friend from college and began researching tech companies nearby.
There were a couple, but none of them stood out except for Rent Dynamics. As I learned about their product set, culture, industry (PropTech) and team, I immediately knew it was a company I could find fulfilling work at. I've always had a strong interest in real estate, architecture, and technology, and I believed working in multifamily as a PropTech supplier would enable me to combine those three interests at a growing company where I could make a difference.
I cold emailed Mike Wolber, the Chief Revenue Officer, and Dan Ludlow, Head of Personnel, noting how they had grown their sales team from 0 to 6 and sharing that I could help them build their sales / marketing playbook as they scaled. Then over the course of 15+ emails, 4 hours of meetings, and 6 weeks, they agreed to give me a 90 day trial to prove my value.
In those 90 days, I listened to two multifamily podcasts a day, read a few articles on industry blogs, and followed creators such as Tony Sousa, Moshe Crane, and Jay Parsons on LinkedIn. I also started posting daily for a few months straight sharing what I learned as a newcomer to multifamily. I ended up growing a following of 3,793 on LinkedIn, generating over 250,000 impressions.
Related to my role, I created relationships with multiple new property management firms, self-taught myself how to implement 3 new marketing technologies, and worked as a go-to-market "free agent" straddling the line between sales, marketing, and customer success.
Apparently, I was worth keeping around. I was brought on full time in October to build out our outbound sales and marketing function -- something that Rent Dynamics had never done before.
In my first month as a permanent hire, I launched our most succesful marketing campaign to date and booked over 130+ meetings for our sales team.
In month 2, I spearheaded the launch of our Fannie Mae Positive Rent Payment Reporting program where Fannie Mae will subsidize the cost of our Rent Reporting service, RentPlus, to property management firms that use their loans.
In month 3, I moved into a manager role, hiring a team of 4 Business Development Representatives to grow our customer base through thoughtful, creative, and personalized outreach.
I've also consistently focused on being a "learn it all" and networked daily with industry leaders-- I've had the opportunity to meet Tony Sousa for coffee, virtually connected with Earl Lacey and Brett Frank (NAA 20 in their 20 nominees from last year), and even appeared on my first podcast.
I've been passionate about learning as much as I can every day, share what I learn along the way, and add as much value to multifamily as possible.
Winning the annual Rent Dynamics "Think Big and Take Action" award means a lot to me because I joined Rent Dynamics and the multifamily industry just six months ago, and it's been the most challenging and rewarding chapter of my career so far. The award validates the passion, heart, sweat and tears that I've put into the business and for our customers.
I'm excited to continue to grow in my current role, and can't wait to see where this amazing industry takes me!
Given your past experiences, what event/ project or moment would you revisit and how would you go about it differently based on your current frame of mind?
- Even if you have the best ideas and work the hardest, if you don't treat people with kindness, you won't go very far. I'm lucky to have learned that lesson in my early 20s as an eager, driven, but hard to work with college student.
My Junior year of college at UGA, I was part of the leadership team of a club called "The Society of Entrepreneurship".
As the VP of Member Engagement, I grew the club from 30 to over 150 members, reached out to executives of succesful start-ups to have them come and speak, and helped organize multiple events that had 500+ attendees.
However, while I was able to accomplish quite a lot individually, I was very hard to work with. As a first generation college student paying for college out of pocket, I had a chip on my shoulder and a deep desire to "prove myself". I would work relentlessly and would do deep research whenever I was working on a project, but I hadn't learned how to be an empathetic and kind servant leader yet.
This came to a head when I was organizing a non-profit Hackathon, an event where students create a business or project over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours.
Everything was going as planned:
-I had gotten UGA leadership from the business school, Office of Research, and the School of Arts + Science interested.
-There was a long list of industry leaders willing to participate as mentors, coaches, and judges for the event.
-Critically, I even had some companies interested in sponsoring the event.
To make it all come together, I had 1 week to provide a "Hackathon Playbook" to the sponsors showing the cost, venue, and logistics of the event and then they were willing sign off on the project.
I just needed to get help from the rest of the Society of Entrepreneurship leadership team to help me work out the details-- calling venues to get pricing, find volunteers, and show how we would drive attendance.
Unfortunately, because of my hard-to-work with nature, I quickly found that no one was willing to help me. While the Society of Entrepreneurship leadership team loved the idea, they hated working with me. I was rude, short, and condescending to others. I constantly thought I was the smartest person in the room, and would shut down any idea that wasn't mine.
I tried to scramble together a "Hackathon Playbook" for the sponsors by myself since no one would help me, and I failed. Months of hard work, planning, and anticipation all went down the drain-- all because I wasn't good with people.
This is likely the biggest failure of my career so far -- I missed out on the opportunity to raise thousands of dollars to go towards research because of my character flaws. This experience was painful, but it was extremely valuable as it did humble me.
Since then, I've worked hard to improve my emotional intelligence through reading, getting great mentors, and making service to others a core focus.
If I were to revisit this project again, I would have been a better listener, shown more gratitude to others, and been 100x more humble. People would have helped me, and the project would have been a success-- empathy and humility were my missing ingredients.
I've learned that if you put results first, people won't follow you. However, if you put people first, results will almost always follow.
While I still have work to do, I'm proud to say that I've grown to be a much more collaborative, fair, and kind co-worker the past 6 years since that failure.
From your perspective, what is the industry lacking to support the modern renter and how do you plan to help supply that need?
- As a first generation college graduate from a low income background, I wasn't taught financial literacy growing up and left college with mediocre credit and no knowledge of how to improve it. After graduation, I moved to Boston to work in corporate America where I spent $38,000 in rent over three years.
Despite paying rent that was above the cost of many people's mortgage every month, I built zero credit and didn't improve my financial standing at all. First hand, I can attest to the importance of Positive Rent Payment Reporting-- if I had an amenity that reported those $38k of rent payments, my credit score would be 100-200 points higher. If I took out a loan for a car, house, or small business, a 100 boost in credit could save me tens of thousands of dollars.
With one in ten adults being credit invisible and less than 1% of apartments offering rent reporting, I'm passionate about bridging that gap as a Business Development Manager at Rent Dynamics.
My core focus is evangelizing the importance of Rent Payment Reporting and share the various free and low-cost ways property managers can adopt Positive Rent Reporting for their residents. This helps residents pave the way for a healthier financial future and also creates a higher quality renter for management companies. This means lower delinquency, increased retention, and an amenity to differentiate themselves from the market.
I believe that Rent Reporting is incredibly valuable for people who, like me, may not have had the opportunity to learn financial literacy or who may be struggling to improve their credit. The new category of Rent Payment Reporting amenities can serve as a great equalizer for renters who may not have come from privileged background, and I'm excited to play a role in helping to equal the playing field.