Episode 9
Small Business Spotlight
with Laura Hurtado
The HOA industry is in a very active phase of consolidation with mergers and acquisitions. But even as larger management corporations take over longstanding medium and small businesses, newcomers are entering the scene. Host Tom Freeley sits down with Laura Hurtado, CCAM-PM.CI, who recently launched Synergy Management Group in San Diego. After working many years in the industry managing all types of communities—from onsite self-managed to high rise, large scale and commercial associations—Hurtado broke out on her own to start a small business. Hear about her journey to becoming an entrepreneur, and what she’s doing to set her company apart.
SPECIAL GUEST:
Laura Hurtado, Synergy Management Group
Throughout her 20-year career, Laura Hurtado, CCAM-PM.CI has held various positions in community management including portfolio manager, general manager, business development and client services director, real estate manager, senior portfolio manager, and most recently CEO of Synergy Management Group. Her career has allowed her to manage various types of associations as well as lead team members. She obtained an associate degree in paralegal studies, a bachelor’s in criminal justice and a master’s in business administration. In 2007 after completing her military contract with the Marine Corps, she started her career as an executive assistant at Packard Management. Shortly thereafter she became a community association assistant manager. Her operational expertise includes client relations, problem solving, financial analysis, budgeting, vendor management, operating expense reduction, physical plant management, and construction management.
Episode Blog
INTRO: on this week’s episode of CACM chat HOA life to hear exclusive insights and expert perspectives on community association management from leaders across California. This podcast is about the hard work that managers do to positively impact the lives of more than 15 million residents living in over 50,000 homeowner associations across California.
TOM: Hey, thanks for joining us again. Today’s episode is specializing in small management companies. You know, in this industry, we’re filled with mergers and acquisitions, small companies being acquired by large companies, large companies, merging with other large companies, small companies merging with other small companies and so on. But I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming Laura Hurtado with Synergy Management.
Laura owns her own management company in San Diego, California. It is a small management company and it’s a new management company. So, Laura, thank you for joining us today.
LAURA: Thank you for having me, Tom.
TOM: It’s my pleasure. So, you own Synergy Management, but I’ve known you for quite some time and I know you have a lot more experience than, you know, just, what is it, roughly a couple of months in your own management company. Tell me a little bit about who Laura is, you know, how you, where you were, where you are and…Yeah, kind of give me a brief little give our listeners a brief little snippet of who you are.
LAURA: So where, who I am. I came to San Diego in 2007 when I exited the Marine Corps.
TOM: Well, thank you for your service.
LAURA: You’re welcome. And so, I didn’t want to go back to Northern California. I had a cousin that lived here, so I moved in with him and I was a paralegal by trade. I have my certificate in paralegal studies, my associates degree. And so, I started looking to get back into paralegal studies. However, the legal community is pretty knit. So, you need to know someone in the legal community to get in. And I had no contacts here in San Diego.
So, after six months of being unemployed, I was bored just hanging out at home. So, I applied everywhere and I received an offer to be an assistant, administrative assistant to a VP in the association management world.
TOM: So, you fell into it like everybody else.
LAURA: I fell into it not wanting to leave San Diego.
TOM: I appreciate that. San Diego is a beautiful city.
LAURA: You know, six months later. I’m like, “this is very easy. I need a challenge. Can I learn to do work orders and put board packets together?” And so, you know, my supervisor at the time said, we could need, we could use the help. So, she gave me the task of assistant manager.
Six months after that, I was conducting my first board meeting for an association out at Rancho Bernardo and then managing a little portfolio of three associations so that I could learn what management was all about.
TOM: Wow, those were the days managing a small portfolio.
LAURA: Yeah, that was my intro into association management.
TOM: Well, you know, but you’ve been, that was what in like 2014, 13, 14?
LAURA: 2008.
TOM: 2008, Thank you.
LAURA: Yeah.
TOM: So, you’ve been doing this for quite some time.
LAURA: Yes. And then I moved on to being a portfolio manager. I’ve been on site, self-managed. I’ve been on site for a large-scale community, on site as a high-rise manager. I’ve done commercial associations. And now here I am getting my own business off the ground.
TOM: So, you have an extremely well-rounded career in this crazy industry. You’ve just said you’ve managed large scale, you’ve managed high rise, you’ve managed commercial. I appreciate that and respect that because that kind of follows my career suit as well, history as well.
LAURA: And I’m owner within an HOA.
TOM: But are you on the board of directors?
LAURA: I was as a treasurer.
TOM: My gosh, were you really while you were in the industry?
LAURA: Yes.
TOM: My God. I’d be willing to bet a lot of our listeners are going, what? Why would she do that? So why would- so why did outside of your investment? Because I also own an investment property. I’m very thankful my wife is on the board. She’s not so thankful, but you know, it is what it is. So, what made you like what drove that? being on the board of directors while you’re in the industry. You should have known better.
LAURA: So, at the time I lived in the community, and I wanted to ensure that we were properly funding our reserves. Our tot-lot was getting up there in age and there were some issues with it. Being a mom of two children, I wanted to make sure that when I took my children to the tot-lot that they were going to be safe and I didn’t have to worry about something happening where I have to, you know, take them to the ER because something was not properly maintained.
Just taking them out and walks in the community just made me realize, you know, hey, this is my first home. I’ve put all my life into it, especially, you know, using my VA loan to get my first home. I needed to make sure that we were doing what we needed to do as a board. And I’d rather get my assessments raised, you know, a little bit a month versus getting hit with a special assessment because we’re not properly funded.
That’s a scary thing for me at the moment, especially as a single mom. So, at the moment, it was very scary to face a special assessment. And where was I going to get the money to fund that special assessment?
TOM: Well, those are all vital components of living in a homeowner association, especially as a young mother, first investment. Owning a home is the biggest investment people can make in their lives, or at least the majority of us normal people. That’s a huge investment. So of course, you want to do what you can to take care of that investment and watch out for the association that’s within it.
And of course, I’m sure that there was that interest of helping the association, you know, cause you’re in the industry. You, you, you see what needs to get done in a homeowner association. Why not be on a board where you could be able to try to actually assist them? I mean, that, that, that to me is common sense, but at the same time, I’ve kind of go, “AHH” no offense to the board members out there. You’re all valuable and, you know, it’s there, you’re volunteers. so.
There’s only so much expectation your homeowners should have within the association, which is why you should be hiring qualified managers and qualified management companies. Laura let’s go back to your history is in large scale. How does the, for the benefit of our listeners who are not that familiar with high rises, high rise management, how, what’s the difference between a large scale in your, in your words? What’s the difference between managing a large-scale community and a high-rise community?
LAURA: Well, the components, the type of, you know, personalities you encounter. that’s intriguing. At the association, like large scale is mostly single-family homes. There are sub associations within those large-scale communities, you know, that are condos, town homes that could be managed by you or another management company. So, then you’re facing that level of dynamics as well.
A high-rise association, you have to know, not that you have to be an expert, but you do have to know some of these components and how they work. Cooling towers, HVACs, window washing, what does that entail? Getting CalOSHA involved for the window washing, making sure that the equipment is certified, just different types of components for each association.
TOM: And in the simplest of terms, what do you think is the biggest difference between commercial association management and residential association management?
LAURA: So for commercial associations, pretty similar. They’re just businesses owned individually, sort of like your home is owned individually. Business owners are busy trying to build their own business, so they entrust you with a lot of the decision making and they trust that you’re going to do what’s right for their business as well.
And a lot of the work is eight to five, but you’re literally eight to five. You know, they expect for you to respond within minutes of their email or return their phone call same day because there’s not a lot of after our emergencies like there might be in a high-rise or you know a residential association.
TOM: So, is it reasonable to say that one of the differences would be they in a commercial association they have less of an emotional attachment than you would in a residential association?
LAURA: That is correct.
TOM: So, it’s more business basically?
LAURA: Well in residential we should also look at it that way because these are corporations, know, you’re supposed to think of it as a corporation.
TOM: We should. And I think most managers do, but I don’t think the boards of directors and the homeowners within the Homeowner Association, I think they often forget the fact that they are responsible or living in essentially a small corporation or a large corporation for a large scale because that mentality seems to go by the wayside sometimes. So it’s a very good point. So, I appreciate it.
So you own Synergy Management. This is a small management company. What made you decide to jump out of working for either directly for a homeowner association or for another management company and put yourself out into the world as an entrepreneur?
LAURA: So, I know for people that know me, they sort of think it’s like, out of the blue that I just left up and left my current company or my previous company and started my own management company. But this has been something that I had looked at for many, many years. It started when I was a self-managed on-site self-management. And I incorporated at the time.
Back then, I had the name of NextGen thought of doing something with it and I never launched it, never did anything. I was just too afraid and then I became a single mom. So that within itself was scary.
TOM: I was going to say that kind of changes that that nervousness.
LAURA: Yeah. And so, I said, okay, let me put this management company on the back burner. No harm, no foul, you know, just keep moving through the motions. Use my GI bill to get my MBA. Got my wills thinking again of a business and through my group, we had to present a business model to our class and the profit and loss and do all of the motions of actually creating a business and marketing, branding, everything.
So, it got my brain to start thinking, okay, maybe I could do it now. However, it wasn’t in management. It was in a mobile bar business, which we all know now they’re a hit for everything.
TOM: Oh yeah, did you least invest into one when you were going through that process? Because they are massive hit right now.
LAURA: So, I looked into it and I just, you know, again, just kind of being scared. I know what I know and I’m just going to stick to.
TOM: And that was a mobile bar was not something you knew?
LAURA: No, I don’t know how to bartend. So, I just decided, you know what? I’m going to just be employed somewhere. So, I started looking, getting, you know, I had just graduated with my MBA and I did some marketing for ACPA firms. So, this is all prior to COVID. Then we all know COVID shut everyone down. Everything slowed things down. So I had injured myself and I was recovering from a neck injury.
TOM: I’m sorry.
LAURA: It was, not the funniest thing, but you know, it gave me time to slow down and think of, you know, where do I see myself? What do I want to do? And in that interim, I was reached out by a commercial association management company. I said, no, thank you. I don’t want to go back into management. They said, just hear us out.
It’s different than residential. I went to the interview because I just figured, you know what, there’s nothing wrong with going to an interview and just keeping, you know, keeping my options open. Next thing I know I’m on the second interview. The next thing I know I’m accepted a position. And so, I just always think that things happen for a reason.
TOM: I agree.
LAURA: I learned so much. I learned so much on that accounting side. I learned so much on the back end, both good and bad, learning how to resolve certain problems, learning how to, you know, just strategically plan for things that I didn’t see, or I before I didn’t know how to resolve them. And I would always end up going to my supervisor. It gave me that those tools to then say, you know what? I think I can do this on my own. I am literally involved in a lot of the stuff that normally I wasn’t or before I wasn’t and I didn’t really understand all that back end with, you know, executives and, and then, you know, I, again, you know, I have my children, so I needed a schedule that was where I could work my, you know, hours, but also not tied to an office setting at all times.
And as we know, Tom, in this industry, you know, you can’t be in your office and doing property inspections. You have to get out. And so, I just, you know, I spoke to some people in this industry that have guided me throughout my career. And one of them said, you know, If you’re doing it now, why wouldn’t you do it for yourself?
TOM: There you go. Would you consider that a mentor?
LAURA: Yes.
TOM: Do you want to call them out? You can shout it out if you want. Give a shout out.
LAURA: Mark Guthrie is with CLA.
TOM: There you go.
LAURA: He said, Laura, if you have 30 hours to manage for someone else, think of yourself. And it just stuck with me.
Then I had the opportunity, honestly, I think I’ve been blessed that the person that I sort of took on some of these accounts that I have, she retired as of September 1st. And so, she’s also been guiding me even in, I mean, you would think she’s on her cruise or something, but she’s like, Laura. I’m here for you. You let me know, reach out to me if you have any questions.
I’m, again, I’m so grateful that this industry has given me the tools and the people to, you know, guide me through my process.
TOM: Well, thank you for saying that. First, shout out to Mark. You really appreciate you guiding Laura into her, into Synergy Management in her own company, because I’ve went, when you said earlier, a few minutes ago, you said, you know, lot of people that know you, you know, we’re a little blown away and that this was out of the blue. I, when I knew you, actively in the industry, I was a little surprised you weren’t doing it. So, it’s, to me, it was, it’s not out of the blue. So, I was a little surprised to hear that, but thank you for sharing that.
Because you know, one of the things that, you know, we try to, as an industry is to express, we’re a large industry, but we’re a very small community. And I love the stories when people are helping other people. Managers are helping other managers. Industry partners are helping managers. Industry partners are helping industry partners and so on. I don’t think the industry would be where it is if we all weren’t able to just put our you know, our management competitiveness aside and just converse and help learn and help educate each other.
So, I’m, I’m so happy the way you phrase that. And I’m so happy that that’s how it turned out for you. One of the things in this industry is stress. We all, this is a very stressful industry for the benefit of the listeners. won’t go into the great details cause I’ve already done a burnout podcast, but it’s a stressful industry and I think everybody in it was certainly on the management side would agree.
How do you as a small industry, I’m sorry, as a small management company with a family, how do you handle your stress?
LAURA: You know, Tom, think it’s honestly owning or starting my own management company has actually taken a lot of my stress away.
TOM: That’s interesting.
LAURA: Because I’m in control of my schedule per se. I mean, I’m not afraid to manage. I’m not afraid to, you know, work 20, 40, 80 hours. I think for me specifically, and I can only speak for myself. So, me is being able to take my children to school to pick up my children from school in my work time. Right.
I drop them off, work remotely until they’re about to get out of school, then go pick them up, drive home, finish my work from home. So, for me, that’s important. And also, the stress of, know, okay, I know what my expenses are. I know what I need to cover versus I don’t know what these other corporations’ expenses are and how much money they need.
All I know is that they’re telling me I, you know, my portfolio is not profitable. My portfolio is not profitable, but I see numbers and numbers don’t lie on there unless they’re, you know, edited or- so I just feel like I don’t have to, I guess, gain interest or revenue or income for someone else other than myself at the moment.
And I have three employees, they’re on their own per se because so their stories are similar to mine. They’re, you know, some single moms. And if our industry is good at something, it is good at giving someone a career when they, you know, don’t have the background.
I’m grateful for CACM because you guys have, and I’ve spoken to you about this many times, like classes are important. Education is important. And I think it’s great that you guys did the AECAM certification. You guys now have the commercial certification. So, I want to help women, men.
I just spoke to a prior, I should say, a Marine and, you know, about maybe bringing him on board as an admin for here for San Diego. So, I think that our industry, like you said, it’s good in helping others. And that’s where I want to take my company is to not these conglomerate corporations, but to remember that we’re here for one another. And we’re also here to manage corporations that entrust us to do what’s best for them and to do our fiduciary duties to them.
TOM: That’s extremely well put. Large corporations have a purpose. They obviously have a purpose for our industry. They’re all very successful at this industry, but they’re made up of individuals like any company. It’s not the company, but it’s the individuals that are operating the company or operating within the company.
And it’s most everybody, I think, at least this is the way I look at our career or any career. Everybody is a salesperson at some point or another. Everybody, everybody is in customer service no matter what community, no matter what industry you’re in, where you are in the world. Everybody is involved in customer service, and everybody is involved in sales at some point. And to be able to take all of that and put it into your own company, I think as a prior business owner, I appreciate the concern and the stress behind that.
And it sounds like you found a really good way of balancing the terminology most commonly known as business, you know, work life balance, business life balance. You found that you found it sounds like you found a comfortable way of making it all work for you.
LAURA: I have. Again, like I said, you know, it’s knowing my business model and what works for me and how I want to move forward with my business model and versus trying to understand what someone else has already built. And I may or may not agree with their business model. And that’s fine. It’s their business. They built it from scratch. They modeled it however they wanted. They have their own values.
And so, I thought about, you know, what do I want for my company? What do I see as my values? And you mentioned it, you know, we are a customer service industry. That was ingrained in me when we first started, when I first started in this industry. We’re a customer-based industry. How do we, you know,
How do we reach these goals? What do we do? And it’s not by telling our clients, I will have this to you within 24 hours when you know your workload is not going to allow you to have that deadline to them. It’s by being honest to them and telling them, know, I am underwater right now. I promise I will get this to you as soon as possible. If you don’t have a timeline, let them know, you know. I don’t know what my timeline is. It could be this week.
Don’t give them a specific date. And I think just letting them know that your workload is also, you know, weighing you down. I think people understand that. You know whether they’re homeowners or board members or just community members, we all work.
TOM: Well, it’s certainly multitasking. The industry is filled with multitasking.
You said it at the top end of this podcast, you mentioned personalities. You know, I’ve shared throughout my career that we are not in the industry of community management. We are in the industry of personality management. And if we’re able to manage multiple personalities on a board of directors’ times multiple personalities in a homeowner association, the owners in that, or actually the residents in that homeowner association times however many clients and so on and so on and so on.
If you can multitask and you can handle personality changes and different personalities, you should be successful in this career.
LAURA: I agree. I think sometimes too. And I all admit it. I was guilty of it when I was in residential association management. I used to take things personal when I would give my advice, my opinions, and then, you know, a homeowner or a board member would not agree. I would take it personal and it’s not personal.
I think this is where we have to step back and say, okay, this is not a personal attack. It’s not a personal opinion. This is a business opinion. And so, I will see their opinions or their advice as business advice or opinions as well.
TOM: Very well put, very well put. What would you see as a small business? What, do you see is the biggest challenge that you face in this industry?
LAURA: So, honestly, I think right now is the remote work. we still have some old mentality that if you have an office, you’re more productive. And I mean, by office and I have a dedicated office in my home, but they want to see sometimes they, know, they want to see a commercial structure.
TOM: They want to walk in and pick their, pick up their gate key.
LAURA: Right. But you know, there’s no need for that. There’s no need to add that extra expense. Not when you’re small and starting off. Maybe if I had a group of managers already and honestly my business model is to hopefully not have a huge commercial building. I want to have a small one so where we can gather maybe bi-weekly monthly, do team building stuff, but I want to be able to cater to people that are not always going to be able to be in the office.
But that I know that they can give me their all or give their clients their all without having to be confined to a brick-and-mortar building.
TOM: Sure. mean, again, brick and mortar has its purpose, but I will admit, as you just said, I’ll admit I was guilty. It took COVID and actually post COVID for me to accept that remote work actually does work. I was, and still am to a certain extent, an old soul, an old mentality. I look at it, well, you can’t provide customer service unless I can shake your hand or unless I can look at your eyes and you can hear me, and I can see your facial expression and you can see mine and we can have a conversation and interaction that’s engaging.
I’ve always felt that that had to be in person. COVID did certainly change my mind in that. We have a remote team member in Oregon. Shout out to Marcia.
We in, in, for, for most of my team here, we have, everybody gets a day to work remote, in there during the week between like Tuesday and Thursday. So, we, we, have alternating and it works, but it needed that societal change for I think people to really gather that, wait, remote really does work.
Now it and correct me if I’m wrong, because you’re in the weeds of the industry. I’m seeing that becoming more the mainstream than the one-offs. It’s now becoming more, well, what do you mean? It’s not a remote position. No, thank you.
LAURA: It is. It is becoming that. I know a lot of management companies are trying to wheel it back in. I don’t see the problem with remote working.
Your clients will be the first ones to tell you you’re not doing your job or your, you know, employee is not doing their job. And I always say, if you give back to your employee, your employee will give back to you twice as much, you know, this is they’ll, they’ll appreciate you more. And appreciation goes such a long way.
TOM: Especially in this industry.
LAURA: Yeah, especially in this industry. You know, I just think that now with, you know, like I said, moms, even dads, single dads, you know, they work, they have to juggle schedules, they have to juggle their kids being not only in school, but extracurricular activities. It’s just not the era where that my parents grew.
So, I just think that being able to be diverse for this newer generation coming in where they also want to travel and they want to be able to, you know, I know that there’s some HR things that if you’re on vacation, you’re on vacation do not work. You know, so those are just challenges depending on your employee hourly versus salary. So, you know, those are things that you look into when you get there.
TOM: So, I’m not exactly sure how to unplug. I’ve been known to be in the middle of the Baltic Sea on a cruise ship and pulling out my emails and my wife would be like, what are you doing? Stop. So, its kind of is inherent in our industry.
I think that whether you’re hourly or whether you’re salary or exempt or not exempt, should say, it just kind of goes. I think that’s an individual personality thing. I’m not familiar how to do that. I’m also not familiar with very many entrepreneurs that are that familiar with doing it. We all try. We all, I mean, I’ve literally, but I honestly, I’m guilty. I will pull up my email.
You know, especially if, you know, my wife is off doing something cool. I can spend, I can, have a few minutes. I have a few minutes. I could, I could check out something. So, the last question I’m going to ask you then, if it’s okay, what, what differentiates your company, what differentiates Synergy Management from the rest of the management, especially in San Diego, but just let’s just, what differentiates your, your management or your style of management from your competitors?
LAURA: So, I think for me, again, is my core values, my commitment in creating the perfect partnership and creating a partnership with these associations because ultimately, I want to help them be financially successful in their communities. They tackle a lot of projects. They have a lot of components. And I…
My business model is not to overwhelm my managers as I grow with portfolios that are too big for them to manage. I don’t need to make a certain percentage that bigger corporations need to make because they have, you know, overhead costs. I’m trying to keep my overhead costs as low as possible so that I can give that to my managers so that I can give that to the associations.
Respect, I believe, I highly believe in respect. I respect everyone’s opinions. Whether it’s the so-called labeled crazy board member, you know, ultimately, it’s their community. And so, they be called crazy, then, you know, then don’t manage them. But I think that everyone on the board deserves the same respect, whether you’re outspoken or whether you’re quiet, because we’re not all the same, but everyone should be respected equally.
Open-minded, again, I’m very open-minded to wanting to know what are their projects, what are their challenges. Open-minded to constructive criticism if they see that they think I need to do something differently than what they’ve you know, as long as it keeps them in line with civil code. Why not? Let’s look at what we could do differently that makes it easier for you for the community.
Ethics is a huge one for me.
TOM: I wholeheartedly agree.
LAURA: You know, more and more we’re seeing these bigger corporations bringing on a sister company or a maintenance side.
And I just think that if I am giving you my management contract, it is specifically to manage your association. I don’t want to have to face whether, you know, hey, my, management company is also can also do the maintenance. I just want to be specifically for management and nothing else.
TOM: Okay. Well, Laura Hurtado with Synergy Management. I want to thank you so much. First, it’s very lovely to see you again. I’ve missed you. I’m so happy and so excited that you started. A little shock that took so long, but I’m very excited that you started your own management company. Do you have any parting words for our listeners?
LAURA: I just want to say thank you everyone for listening to CACM’s podcast. We’re all new to this, not new to the industry, but new to the podcast. Give us your feedback. Thank you, Tom, for having me.
TOM: It’s my pleasure.
LAUARA: I hope I can serve our community and our associations to the best of my abilities.
TOM: Well, it sounds like you’re going to do that to our listeners. Thank you again so much for listening. Please make sure you send in your questions, comments, or stories to podcast@cacm.org. Laura, once again, thank you so much. We appreciate your time.
LAURA: Thank you, Tom.
OUTRO: And that concludes this week’s episode of CACMChat HOA Life. Have questions you want answered? Send them to podcast@cacm.org and we’ll address them in an upcoming episode. Make sure to regularly check out our website at cacm.org. And don’t forget to join our rapidly expanding social media community. Just follow @CACMchat on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Thanks for joining me.