Tina Vitali is the Facilities and Administration Manager of HomeLight, a real estate tech startup that connects home buyers and sellers to top real estate agents. At HomeLight, Tina works directly with the CEO and Founder to leverage his knowledge of business functions and management across 32 states.
Tina has a history of working in tech-based firms, and she specializes in facility management, asset management, and project management. In 2017, Tina was a finalist for the San Francisco Bay Area Office Manager Award. She is also a member of the International Facility Management Association.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Tina Vitali discusses HomeLight’s role in the real estate industry
- COVID’s impacts on different states — and what changes will stay permanent
- What does Tina look for when hiring, and how does she find the best candidates?
- Tina’s top marketing strategies for building awareness
- How did Tina get started in the facilities management industry?
- Tina’s advice for getting your career started: LinkedIn outreach and networking
- HomeLight’s preparation for returning to the office
- Resources and advice for those looking to grow in the facilities management industry
In this episode…
How do you create a strong team that works across multiple states — or even countries? How can you build a great company culture that will benefit all employees?
Tina Vitali is here to share how you can promote a collaborative workplace while operating remotely, in person, or a combination of the two. As someone who works with a business spanning across 32 states, Tina knows how to adapt and create systems that will meet employees’ needs while helping the company grow significantly.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens talks with Tina Vitali, Facilities and Administration Manager at HomeLight, about the post-COVID future of the workplace. Tina discusses the different processes from state to state, how to hire a great team — even when working remotely, and the value of asking questions and growing your network to get the job you want. Stay tuned!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Tina Vitali on LinkedIn
- HomeLight
- HomeLight on Facebook | Instagram
- The Walkthrough podcast
- Optiver
- Nextdoor
- OrgOrg
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:31
Hello, everyone. This is Greg Owens here with the Watching Paint Dry podcast. And we are continuing our series. And it’s been a lot of fun talking to facilities, managers, property owners, building owners, and all the people that support all those different services and industries with contractors. And it’s just been a lot of fun to really sort of deep dive in this small area of the world that not many people know about. But it’s not that small. It’s like over $2 trillion in business out there and money and it’s not as glamorous as working for Facebook and things like that. But there is a lot of great benefits and we’ll get into that. This podcast is sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. It is a painting company that services the entire San Francisco Bay Area. We do both commercial and residential painting. And a lot of the commercial work we’ve done work for it’s been Chase Bank, we’re looking at a bunch of ex Google offices. It’s amazing how many buildings that Google occupies and now is leaving and it’s good opportunity for us not sure Google’s what Google’s up to and where they’re going h&m stores and many many other businesses like that. If you want to know more, you can go to McCarthy Painting.com or email us info@McCarthyPainting.com, and I’m really excited to have Tina Vitali who is joining us. Where are you joining us from? You know,
Tina Vitali 2:06
I’m actually in Scottsdale, Arizona right now.
Greg Owens 2:10
Oh, Scottsdale. That’s a great place. And we have Katrina Stephenson also from McCarthy Painting that sometimes chimes in and ask questions and I think she was just gonna ask a question about Scottsdale, Arizona or something.
Katrina Stephenson 2:24
How’s the weather there?
Tina Vitali 2:25
Oh, we’re definitely in our hot season. So we started in like the 90s in the morning. So we’re nice and hot. No monsoons yet so we’re not quite there and monsoon season, but definitely, definitely some scorching temperatures.
Greg Owens 2:43
treat us treated there like not not understanding what monsoon season is. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, Arizona is the desert and it’s unbelievably hot. I remember sitting having breakfast one day and outside and feeling the street radiating heat was too much for me. Right. So hot just early in the morning. But the monsoon season is this time of year when it actually rains quite a bit. Yeah,
Tina Vitali 3:09
some pretty big rainstorms we get definitely. I’d have to say, though, on the facility side, right, the air conditioning bills in our Arizona office much higher than some of our other locations are. Oh, I
Greg Owens 3:20
bet that’s gonna get into have you. Have you done any of the living rooms roofs yet? That would be I would think that
Tina Vitali 3:27
we’re only one suite here in Arizona on the first floor. But I would love like, yeah, to get a little bit more space building, we could do something like that would be amazing. Right,
Greg Owens 3:37
right. And the company you work for is HomeLight, let’s let’s What does HomeLight do and what’s there, it sounds like they’re a lead generation for real estate.
Tina Vitali 3:45
So we do a handful of things. When we first started out, we were partnering with agents, like you said, we would use an algorithm basically to partner agents with buyers and sellers in their area that would come through our site from past real estate data that they you know, sell in this area that their proven real estate agent they have transacted here, you know, they do do all the things that they say they do. And so that’s how we started out. we’ve acquired a mortgage company along the way, we’ve also become a title company along the way, and numerous other pieces of disclosures, documents company. So we basically now see ourselves as a platform where you can come and have one seamless transaction and one of the biggest purchases that you’ll have in your life, which is your home. So that’s really what we’re going for is like a smart, simple, fast, satisfying way to get a house all the way from start to finish.
Greg Owens 4:35
Wow, you guys must be going gangbusters now with the way COVID kind of transitioned everybody to wanting to buy houses and there’s what there’s only one of the few is only half the number of inventory that’s out there.
Tina Vitali 4:48
It’s definitely a seller’s market right now they’re getting cash bids right out the door. It’s been very interesting to watch it happen and be a part of the industry right on this side. And seeing how that’s transacting so quickly. So yeah, it’s definitely been a interesting time during COVID, as most companies, you know, we were concerned with, uh, you know, our internal, how do we like transition, right. And then, having gone through that we had, you know, business did not change, we were able to move to remote culture for a period of time and remote office kind of feel. And then we didn’t have any dip in the market, which was huge, right? That like you were saying the homestyle marketing dip. So we were able to continue and still, you know, not have to do too many drastic things as a company to keep afloat. And now we’re hiring quite a bit, honestly, which is great for my department, because we do all of that as well.
Greg Owens 5:43
Oh, you’re doing all the intake. And
Tina Vitali 5:46
yeah, I do full Yeah. So when we start out like leasing space, I do all of that going in finding the space leasing it with our brokers, all that kind of stuff in the office space itself. But then we also support the team, right? We I get the hardware in the door, I work hand in hand with our IT manager actually manage him right now. Because we have a VP of engineering, we don’t have a head of it. So I manage the IT department. So we run in tandem. So a lot of like moving pieces, right in the facilities world, you’re not always just quite the physical space, you end up having to take on quite a bit other pieces. So yeah, there’s there’s a lot there and how we we operate as a facilities team at HomeLight,
Greg Owens 6:24
Oh, right, right, Katrina, and you have a lot in common. Katrina has to wear a tremendous amount of hats, including taking care of our little puppy there. You become
Tina Vitali 6:33
a zoom expert. Right? it you know that? That was one of the biggest things in COVID. I’ve noticed this like problem solving it things. Mm hmm. It’s definitely been a transition for us and how we do that? No, we used to have a third party vendor that did that we brought it all in house hired people because we realised, you know, your internal support and keeping your employees happy is so important, right?
Greg Owens 6:57
Yeah, that’s so true. And how were you like in your role, and I kind of you kind of touched on it a little bit for COVID. I know California, we buttoned down like hardcore. And we were were the first areas to do that. I went out to Arizona once during COVID. And it was a lot different.
Tina Vitali 7:17
There’s no COVID virus in Arizona, where do you operate in a completely different way? You’re not wrong, I would say, you know, we have throughout the US We have offices in Florida, Texas, New York, Chicago, Colorado, like outside the Denver area, and then all one California, Arizona. So we saw COVID in different ways in different states. And that was very interesting, too. And as title, our title business was essential workers, because when they were closing the actual real estate transactions, they had to be in person to make sure that went through. And were considered essential workers throughout the whole entire process. So we had to have a not only work from home kind of close everything down quickly, which we did in our main offices are title offices, which are about five to 10 people in an office, we had to keep going and figure out how to do the right protocols, and which was a completely different switch. Right. So we had a little bit of both in our world of figuring out how to support this whole remote New World, but then also going and having essential workers going into the office on a regular basis. So yeah, it was very interesting. During COVID, like you said, our California office was definitely our first one that actually we had a Seattle office at the time, they were the first and I don’t know if you remember this, at the very beginning, Seattle was the hotbed of all of this. And so they were the first office to close down. And then we kind of right at the beginning of March, I made the decision to close all of the offices down. So right at that time, you know, we really weren’t hiring. So we didn’t have a lot of things going in and out. But right after about, I would say June, right after the main search came through, we started hiring again. So we became a drop shipping almost, because we had to send out monitors, you just send out laptops, you had to like learn and shift to that. So it was a complete shift, right? And how we do our process, what we’re doing all of that. So that was very interesting at the beginning to like have to make those moves have to update our cleaning procedures, right. And the other offices that we were in having to put in, you know, in some places we put in plexiglass or did things like that trying to make some adjustments. How do we get people you know, once there is inevitably there was, you know, a COVID scare in one of the offices, how do you pull them back out? How long do you keep them out of the office, all of those things that you know, we’ve all had to learn and go into. It definitely was a large switch for my team.
Greg Owens 9:35
As a company we went the whole year with I think we had one office person get it early on when when we were when we were all like separate in our own little pie. Right. And then just two weeks ago, we get like an employee that after his first vaccination One week later, he gets COVID and we just had to go through that which is mind boggling because like i know i We have a lot of Latino employees. And I know that like when I would go down at the local taco stand, they were out in numbers on like a Friday night in the middle of all this. Right? Right. And that kind of thing
Tina Vitali 10:15
it was definitely is here in Arizona, you’re not wrong. There was definitely two thought processes. And at the beginning of all of this, people were really good about wearing masks in the grocery stores and things of that nature. But like, once we got into the fall, pretty much when kids were going back to school, it was like 5050, pretty much in Arizona. Totally, totally. That back to school mentality just kicked in for everybody. It was so interesting. Compared to August, right?
Katrina Stephenson 10:44
Like, let’s get back to school. Yeah,
Greg Owens 10:46
it was so interesting to see that just shift completely. And so I’m curious now around because you had all these transitions to compete, you know, to working at home working remotely and that kind of stuff. Now, we’re a year and a few months into this, what what do you see changed, like going to like what’s going to stay going forward? Because there I think there was, especially what’s what’s interesting to me, for a title company, and those kinds of businesses is so many of the transactions were face to face, dealing that now they figured out some of these ways where like we don’t we could speed this whole process up is seeing that in your side,
Tina Vitali 11:23
right. And that’s actually piece of what we were trying to do as a company, right was trying to revolutionize that make it more digital and online. So we really jumped into that. So some states allowed us to do the the notary process is the hardest part of it. Right, right, and allowed us to do a virtual notary Arizona and move to that California didn’t interestingly enough, you had to be in person in California to do the notary. So yeah, it was really state to state that was super interesting. But I think overall, us as a team, and how what I see us like our big change, we were in in office culture, completely, we did not do remote work, really, our engineering team pushed a lot for that. And our CEO was very, very much like of the thought process that we need to be in the office. So now we’re talking about a hybrid model in some teams being completely remote and won’t be about 40% remote, no matter what, because we hired throughout the country and even internationally during COVID. So we’re never going to go back to a fully like an office culture anymore, we are definitely going to be a portion of remote. And I think you’re seeing that across the board, the more teams are going in some sort, or some form of a hybrid or remote model, which causes you to then reduce a little bit of your footprint, possibly, and we talked about that. Do we contract a little bit? You only have certain people in the offices on certain days and things of that nature. So yeah, I think one of the biggest switches that I think you’ll see staying is more of a hybrid kind of model of the novel. Right? Yeah, I
Greg Owens 12:51
know, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re experiencing that ourselves, right? Like, in this time, I, I know Katrina wants to be in the office, she does not like working from home.
Tina Vitali 13:02
I’m not made for that. And I praise everyone who can work remotely, I just get so distracted. And being a is a better culture. For me. Anyway, even alone. We saw we just so we we’ve had our offices open the whole time, just in case people had, you know, internet issues, or something went on, right. So we did have like availability for the office to be open throughout the whole entire recovery process that we were in. But we haven’t done a full return, which we’re ramping up to for August 1, actually. So that’s when we’ll start a hybrid model in office, it’ll start to become more of a thing. And we’re actually looking to we found testing like rapid testing, we’re talking about, we did an incentive programme for employees to provide their vaccination cards. So we gave a little of a bonus for people who turned in their vaccination cards so we can get an idea of how many of our people are vaccinated without having to go through, you know, any kind of messy conversations or things of that nature. More. Hey, thank you for doing that. Keeping other people in the office safe, we can give you a little something for that. So yeah, we’re trying to figure out the best ways and we’re still having these conversations right, on a daily basis and changing a little bit of the policy as we go trying to figure out what’s the right thing to do to have people safely back in the space?
Greg Owens 14:18
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ve heard that some states are actually doing like a lottery to like, if you go, if you get vaccinated, you can you’re automatically entered into a lottery and you can win money.
Tina Vitali 14:31
Pretty cool. Yeah. You know, we’re gonna do a company retreat, and we’re requiring our employees to be vaccinated on that. Yeah, there’s a lot of those conversations, right. Like, we understand that not everybody’s going to be comfortable in that and so that’s why we we have people coming back in the office, we’re gonna have the testing availability, all of that as well, right. But we really feel like the vaccination piece is going to make us the safest and herd mentality of like, actually, people you know, not getting sick. So
Greg Owens 14:59
alright. I have quite a few friends, I was just thinking of quite a few friends in Arizona. And I know that a bunch of them, I think they all carry guns and are not going to get back.
Tina Vitali 15:11
And that’s okay. Like, yeah, right, everybody gets their own opinion. And we don’t push that in any way or like, or trying to do anything on that. And but you know, want to give options available that makes everybody feel comfortable. That’s like, really what we’ve been pushing on our end is like, everybody’s comfort level, right? We all have to be respectful. That’s how we are as a community as an employee group, right? So just trying to be respectful of everybody’s decisions and their personal lives. Right.
Greg Owens 15:37
And I yeah, the knees are smaller towns in Arizona, so I could totally see why totally. And, and it’s a great idea to open sort of a hybrid model. And August, I know a bunch of companies are doing that they’re doing a hybrid opening, like in June, and I was thinking, boy, June is like when your kids just get out of school, right? You’re gonna give everybody the choice of like, you can either stay home or, or come to work. Now,
Tina Vitali 16:05
that really kind of triggered at why we did the August date you were so on point is our parents, right? Like, we know, our parents are still having to homeschool some of the kids right now as they’re finishing up the year, right? And still going through that. So that that was, yeah, come August, a lot of them are going to be going back to a normal school setting, there’s going to be a big shift in that way. So we feel like, you know, our community’s ready for it to that at that point. So you’re right on point. That’s exactly what our thought process was on the August. Yeah, that
Greg Owens 16:31
makes way more sense to me that to put it in, because it’s such a big motivator, you know, preparing and that kind of thing. I know, I know, here in San Francisco Bay Area, graduations are happening and our phone will actually start to not ring as much because you know, the parents are too busy with their kids, like, you know, graduate doesn’t matter anymore to from kindergarten all the way to
Tina Vitali 16:55
graduate everything. There’s a ceremony for every year. Right? They’re not wrong. But you’re right this time of year and people go on vacations, right? Family, vacations, all of that. So like the thought is that we really didn’t mean to open the office yet, right? Like people are still getting settled, they’re still figuring things out. And Come on, I guess we should have a better idea right of where we’re at. And we wanted to give people enough time to really digest that we’re going to go back to a hybrid model, too. So we announced that about two weeks ago in our all hands meeting,
Greg Owens 17:25
and is your CEO, have you heard they warmed up the hybrid idea and see the benefits now? And that’s because you were saying, at first he was much more like wanting that everybody here at home office. But now what he’s the See See, this is?
Tina Vitali 17:41
Yeah, great. It’s a new world, right? Like he has to adapt, or he’s gonna be left behind in that. So he definitely he like he still feels and I agree with him, you know, that the office is where we have that touch point. And that is where people can come and commune and get to know each other. And there’s, there’s definitely a need for that. Because we did miss that during the remote time, we talked about that a lot. There was a lot of people who really missed like, Katrina was saying, you know, being in the office like being that’s where you’re productive. So, you know, that’s what the hybrid model offers a little bit of both, right? So that’s what’s nice about it is like, you get those touch points, but then you can if you are a better worker at home, and you do butt heads down work at home more than you can still have that too. So trying to speak to all differ, you know, types of people are some people do work better that way. Yeah. And so he’s really come around to that he understands that much more now. But I agree like that we still need the office space. We’re not at one point, it was a conversation of do we go completely remote? I mean, I’m sure a lot of companies had that conversation, too. And it just, it doesn’t make sense for us. You know, our team really does miss that in office time if we don’t have it.
Greg Owens 18:47
Yeah. And I have a feeling well, what will play out? Because, you know, there’s there’s competition out there, right? And what will over the next 10 years, what will play out is what’s going to become like the what companies rise to the top and how do they do it? Right? And what what looks best?
Tina Vitali 19:03
Right, right? I think you’re gonna see a lot of shifting things right now, right? Because some companies did fall remote, they announced that they’re going to go that way. Some of them you’re starting to see pullback a little bit like, oh, we’re gonna open our offices, maybe try a voluntary return. Like you’re starting to see some of that. So I think you’ll see over the next couple of months, just a whole slew of companies trying to see what sticks and what people are like, actually work as now or work out of right.
Greg Owens 19:30
We’re all in this new world. And you were saying that your your hiring walkthrough like like what you’re looking for and how that is because I were you were running into a challenge now with finding employees to actually do work right and right, there’s a lot of low unemployment in your industry. Where are you guys? You seeing something similar?
Tina Vitali 19:51
Yeah, so for our end, you know, we’re really lucky unfortunately for you, you’re more physically need to have your guys there, right. So this is where that like, Hi hiring people in the remote world changed for us like, we definitely were able to start to find talent in other states, you know, other countries that things like that. And so we were we have engineers in Latin America and Canada now, we’ve definitely like expanded our footprint across different areas. So that’s, that’s how we’re getting the candidates. It’s not always just physically there in the space, it really is having that ability to hire anywhere now, and allowing that to be open. And so that’s why he shifted his mentality, right? Because we’re finding great talent all over. So that changes the conversation completely of how you run your offices. And if you’re a remote team,
Greg Owens 20:37
right, right. Yeah, yeah. And I know that my friends that are in the high tech industry here in San Francisco, you know, they’re super excited, because now they’re making San Francisco wages thing like in Montana or somewhere like,
Tina Vitali 20:53
no, it’s totally true, like engineers specifically. Right, right. Yeah, these are engineers. Yeah, they can work in a lot of places, right, and make the money that you know, they would make in this city anymore. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a different mentality, our engineers, we’re not requiring them to come into the office after August 1, there, there is a team deciding how they’re going to do that. Honestly, they’re, I think they’re going to come in about twice a week just to work on sprint projects as a group and meet up but they’re really going to work more as a fully remote team, our content team is similar to we have a full content team as well, that drives all of our you know, content out and about, you’ll see us at quite a bit all over blogs, and things of that nature, on home repairs, when to sell your house, all those kinds of things. And that team has been pretty much remote most of its time. And so we really kind of learned from that. And how we built out that team to then as we started to hire more in the remote world, how to replicate that and other teams too. So we were lucky, we had a little bit of idea on how to do that with our content team having already done that a little bit. And so that was nice that we had a kind of model and how we can hire, you know, on a remote side.
Greg Owens 21:59
I love that working on content strategies, one of them being this podcast, right? Yeah. And other when other and putting together more of a team did like what what things did you guys learn along that way of putting together? Because like, I noticed that, and looking up online, you guys do dominate a lot of sort of search, right? That’s, that’s do. Is that the primary way? You guys are marketing then yeah, like
Tina Vitali 22:25
sem searches, right? Like all that, like, we’re definitely very tuned into that we have a podcast too called the walkthrough that we do. Like another piece that we’ve added on, we do guest blogs, and like guest posts and a lot of that. So that’s a lot of how we drive that content, you’ll see. And we make sure that it’s in the Google, like, we’re getting high in the Google search, right? Like we’re catching those words. We’re doing all the things we’re supposed to. So we’ve worked quite a bit to build that. So that when you do search for some keywords, it really does pop up, like all of our information, all of our blogs, all of that. Yeah.
Greg Owens 22:58
And have you guys seen decent? Katrina here is doing like our Instagram and Facebook posts. But have you seen decent traction in that kind of, you
Tina Vitali 23:07
know, interestingly enough, Facebook more so than Instagram, our team page on Instagram gets the most like love because we have an actual team page where we post like highlights of our employees. Oh, interesting thing of that nature. And that actually gets more love than like our actual content, Instagram, interestingly enough, but yeah, we do we have Instagram. I was like I said, facebook, facebook ads, we did a lot of that in the early days, they switch that up a little bit. It’s a little different than it used to be. But we definitely were involved in that we run off of that we have. I mean, we we dabbled in a little bit of everything from Pinterest for a period of time and putting up home boards and different things like that. We didn’t find as much engagement there. So I would say like Facebook is definitely where we get the most. And like Instagram probably second but more on the team side.
Greg Owens 23:58
Have you guys played around with? I’ve been playing around with next door for the last three, three months? Yeah. Nextdoor. Yeah, it’s an interesting algorithm when it comes to how it worked out. Right.
Tina Vitali 24:10
Yeah, that’s very cool. Yeah, no, I we actually had one of our marketing people her husband worked next door and help build that up actually, interestingly enough, so I know quite a bit about it.
Greg Owens 24:24
It drives me crazy though, to go on there though. And see everybody like in my neighbourhood complaining about like, you know, the teenage kids riding your BMX bikes too fast on the street. You have to have somewhere to vent all that right. I mean, what did they do before I just they took it out on their dogs. I was gonna say that maybe that’s where the Facebook group Right, right. Right. So and you know, we touched on this a little bit but part of this podcast I’ve been really looking into and finding out how people kind of the origin story And how you got to this place? And then also, you know, well let’s go let’s go with that just like how you got to this place in time where you’re you seem like you absolutely know everything about this company and really love what you’re doing. So that’s a that’s a great place to be in life.
Tina Vitali 25:14
Yeah, it’s not bad. It’s really it’s, it’s a good place to be, you know, I I’ve been with HomeLight now, it’ll be five years in August, and I definitely started number 28. In the company, you know, very much we were a startup I did. I wore a lot of hats, right. I was our, you know, anywhere from accounting and closing checks to like getting the office space up and running. And facilities had been my background, really, but you know, in a startup world, you do so many things. So yeah, originally I, I did campaign work. I was a political science major. Or my Masters? Yeah, got my master’s degree in leadership and Policy Studies in like, specifically, politics. Yeah. So I thought I really was gonna go in that direction. But as I was getting my master’s degree, you have to make money. So I started with a company called optiver, in Chicago, and their facilities manager at the time really kind of took me under the wing, and taught me everything about the whole office that she was managing all of that. And then when she left, basically, I was the next person thought process wise, that knew all of this all that they they brought me up, we had a colo dry coolers on the roof, like we had full generator downstairs with an uninterrupted power source, like so I learned a lot, very quickly on the job there. And it was one of those things where like, you kind of just know, once you’re in it to that you’re really good at it, and you enjoy it. And so while I had the poly side degree and thought I might end up in that world, I just kind of ended up in my career as I was working for Optiver. So I stayed there with them for six years, I did two expansions with them. We did multiple floors, it was about $6 million in renovations, I got to do full our programmes for them and different things in their space. That was really cool. But the Chicago winters got to me pretty quick. So I came out west, and I was actually working for a children’s enrichment facility in Brentwood in LA for a short period of time. And then I knew I wanted to get back into the facilities world, I was interviewing with a couple companies and found HomeLight and just really loved the origin story of the founder, and knew that I could really do a big difference in that world. And so when I started with them, I was like I said, jack of all trades, I did a little bit of their accounting, a little bit of all things, but I knew I really wanted to do the office space and office work. And so that was always my communication to them, like, I’m happy to bridge and learn the business and do a lot of different things. But I want to eventually, like expand your footprint, because I knew that we would expand as a company having to have brick and mortar for some of the licencing that we needed, things like that. So I knew that it was an opportunity to move into that facility side of things throughout the whole entire process. So I was pretty keen on like carving out my own little niche there and was able to do so and so we have teams that do a lot of the things that I originally started doing right we’re about 450 people now when I was like number 28 when I started about four and a half years ago, so yeah, really was very much like not something I went to school for but something I learned on the job and it was one of those things people started teaching me I asked questions and you have to never be scared to ask the questions when you’re starting out right for somebody like to just jump into that kind of role you I did not know what I was doing 100% right. So my contractor why do we do it that way? Right? Why do we do this? What makes why this doesn’t make sense to me? Why do we do this a lot of wise asking questions and being comfortable not knowing and learning right and then just really kind of absorbing all that information around you. So I was able to build a very you know, knowledge base and that’s where a lot of that it work comes in and I’m sure Trina can tell you this too, you know I might my CEO loves me a little bit right because I can bridge some of these it things and not every facilities manager I learned from a colo right I learned how to run a data centre I learned how to like you know program a switch I learned how to do some of these things in the IT world that you wouldn’t have gotten to do right before so like it was pretty cool just learning on the job and really kind of absorbing and getting everything knowledge wise in you know that I could out of a lot of great people around me
Greg Owens 29:21
a colo is the aluminium manufacturing company. Is that correct?
Tina Vitali 29:25
Oh colo is actually like a computer location. He were basically running a full service arm in our back area. And so our back like server room for server farm, we had a raised floor we had to do dry cooling throughout it. A lot of heat running so we had dry coolers running off on the roof that had to be low speed different things. There was a lot of connected pieces there that were Wow. Within Yeah.
Greg Owens 29:53
And so when you look at it, because I love the stories around how people kind of come into this industry. And then really, you know, like you said, you really liked started, you wanted this right and put aside what your master’s degree is in political science? Like, what is it about the industry that you’re so passionate about and deeply excited about? It was showing right there as you talk. I mean, it sounds like it’s like, being a generalist in a lot of ways, and just having to get your hands dirty, and know so many different aspects of the construction process building and putting the pieces together so that they work seamlessly,
Tina Vitali 30:31
right, I think that’s a piece of it, right? I like to see a project, I’m kind of like a project driven mind, right. And that’s what a lot of our things are, you know, really seeing all the pieces kind of come together. And then for me, knowing that I’m building a space that people are going to enjoy, right? Like, they’re going to be able to function and they’re gonna be able to do their job better. Because we put the right things in the space, we have the conversations, you know, of what they need, so that we know that they’ve got what they need to be, you know, at their best, right? We’re helping people be at their best, really, we were getting them technology, they need the seat they need, you know, the space, they need all of that. But I really love that it’s like supporting, you know, the backbone of the whole organisation, really. So it’s behind the scenes, like you said in your opening. Right, right. Yeah, a lot of people don’t know what we do. But like, if we weren’t there, they would know immediately. It’s those pieces that like, get me excited. And it’s something different every day to it’s, that’s a big key, right? Like, it’s not the same thing. I’m not going to be somebody that like, sits at a desk and does the same task every day. I like something that’s a little diverse. And this is always something new and problem solving and thinking on your feet. I really love that.
Greg Owens 31:37
Right? Yeah, me too. I yeah. In the morning, right? general contractor and a painting contractor. And I like the painting aspects, so much better, because we’re there for on average, like two weeks, and then we’re on to a new project, right. Whereas like, when we’re doing big, when you’re doing bigger construction projects with big, even bigger painting projects, I start to get bored. I’m going back to the same building again, I don’t want to, I don’t want to get onto a new one.
Tina Vitali 32:06
And that’s why I like my job too. Right? Like, I have office managers underneath me, but I love I travel, I see all of our offices, I mean, all of our teams, like I really love my job for that too. Because it’s not just, you know, one office that I’m supporting, I’m supporting the whole 450. Right, which is really cool. I love that.
Greg Owens 32:23
That’s, that’s great. And what would you tell like somebody that’s either transitioning or thinking about a career in facilities management and what you’re doing? Or just getting started, like young just coming out of school? What would you tell them about how to get started? What, what resources and things like that, that you think would be good?
Tina Vitali 32:42
Sure. I mean, like LinkedIn, right? LinkedIn searches, like finding people that, like have the title that you want, right? So like, when I started, I had the facilities person there. And I was like, Oh, this is interesting. I like what they do. So I got to know that person. That’s what they do got to learn it from them. So reaching out to people on LinkedIn, I’ve done it, I’ve had people do it to me, I think it’s a great way to you know, build a community and get to know people that are in that same industry, or in that same role that you’re looking for. It’s all about the networking and who you talk to, to understand how you can get in, and then they think about you right when that new position comes up, or something happens, and they can help leg facilitate that for you. So yeah, I would say the networking piece, I can’t say enough about that. That’s really how I’ve kind of moved through each job and how it’s helped me get to the next job. Right. Right. Well,
Greg Owens 33:33
and now that you’re number 28, in a rapidly growing tech startup, you know, there’s probably an IPO in the future.
That equity will pay off all the sweat equity all the time. All the time. Yeah. And what do you what do you see, like this summer? what’s what’s exciting for you coming up? Like what for you both in the business aspect? And then personally?
Tina Vitali 34:04
Sure. I mean, the return to office is just like, so interesting to me. Right? And
Greg Owens 34:09
extrovert, too, so yeah. Is that a good stick? Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Tina Vitali 34:15
would say I’m in business on I’m an introverted extrovert. It’s interesting.
Greg Owens 34:22
depends on the context. But it’s
Tina Vitali 34:24
so true. And you say, What am I going to do personally, we actually get a sabbatical at four years, you get a one month paid sabbatical. And so I’m actually going to take a month off here in July and travels to national parks by myself and like, just really kind of lean into that. So that’s the introverted side, right.
Katrina Stephenson 34:41
So awesome. I love national parks. Yes. Yeah. I’m a huge nerd
Greg Owens 34:45
about nature then, huh?
Tina Vitali 34:48
Yes, I very much have a nature driven person and like recharge in that way. So nice that I get this opportunity to go do that for a month, right. But before I take off, we have to have everything in place, right because I’m Taking off in July, for this August return. So that’s going to be a big piece of what I’ve got project wise coming up here, we’re going to expand a couple offices, we actually can’t fit everybody that we hired into the space that we’re in now. So we’re going to expand a little bit of space here in Arizona, we just got a new office lease signed, actually in San Francisco, which we had a great opportunity to get a steal of a deal for a sublease there. And we’re very lucky to catch the market at the right time. And we’ll be moving in August into a new space at 100 Cal there in San Francisco. So what are we projects? Cisco 100, California. Oh, yeah. That another building? Well, I’ve been Yeah, we’re at 100. First right now, right across from Salesforce. Yeah, we’re in about 12k. square footage wise, there will be in about 20 that we move into and 100 cows, so that’ll be a nice, right.
Greg Owens 35:53
I would bet right now landlords are putting a crazy good deal. Yeah, we got a really great. There’s so many buildings that are still just completely empty in the city right now. Companies not coming back, right?
Tina Vitali 36:09
Yeah, this worked out lovely for us, because we knew we needed a little more space. Like I said, We’d hired more than we realised in the interim. So we really got a steal of a deal and feeling really good about that. And San Francisco, and we’ll open an office in Michigan for our title team. And then we’re going to reopen the Seattle office as well. So looking for some space there. So a lot of
Greg Owens 36:28
You’re gonna do all of that in the next 30 days, or whatever. And then you’re like, I’m offline, got to be camp
Tina Vitali 36:41
I got you and all your spaces now go.
Greg Owens 36:43
Don’t call me I’m gonna be in nature. You know,
Tina Vitali 36:46
the beautiful thing is though, I have some great office managers, so they’ll be able to keep everything functioning as we kind of take, give them give me a breather for a month, right? Build the right team around you that you can do that.
Greg Owens 36:58
That’s great. That’s great. Any other like resources you can offer or technology idea,
Tina Vitali 37:04
you know what, I’m actually a part of a group called Organizational Organizers. It’s got like facilities managers in it. It’s got admins in it, it’s got office, it’s got just across the board, just people who are in that back, like back row, like room kind of role, like you’re talking about it’s Google group called OrgOrg. And it is great. We we post a lot of like, what do you guys do and what’s going on? It’s just like an open forum to really kind of have conversations about what other companies are doing. Like facilities, people, admin people. It’s just an interesting group. I really we use that a lot. Oh, nice. And
Greg Owens 37:39
what’s the name of the group? Again,
Tina Vitali 37:41
Organizational Organizers? It’s a Google group.
Greg Owens 37:44
Oh, yeah. We’ll try to put that in the show notes here too. And yeah, no, it’s a great. Sounds excited about looking at up to
Tina Vitali 37:50
Yeah, no, it’s really great when we bounce a lot of things off and that like group and try to figure out what other people are doing.
Greg Owens 37:55
Yeah. And then so you, you’re on your sabbatical deal. And then you’ll come back and offices will be running smoothly. And you’ll be really happy with the people that you you set up and you’re in place.
Tina Vitali 38:11
And then we start opening up new offices would be my guest. We’re expanding on that title side. And you have to open brick and mortar and all of the states that were going into for title so
Greg Owens 38:22
it’s, it’s across the board ha that they Yeah, to have a physical location for title and
Tina Vitali 38:27
you know, the Regis kind of we workspaces, things like that just don’t work for the licencing boards that we have to go through. So you have to have like your own dedicated network, a lot of things. So yeah, little secure, basically, the security reasons. You got it. Yeah, because we have a lot of private information that we have coming through transactions,
Greg Owens 38:47
it was surprising that California doesn’t allow the it’s not surprising and not surprising that California doesn’t allow the notary braid is not not in person notary. Right. And I wonder if it’s like the notary union, because I know I run into this all the time as a painting contractor. You run into rules that I’m like, that’s a stupid rule, what’s going on? And it happens to be like a reunion maker. Yeah, I don’t know about this rotary
Tina Vitali 39:13
process is very interesting, because I’m a notary, actually, I had gotten my notary in California, originally, and I had to go take a Scantron in person tap to get my notary in California. In Arizona, you pay 40. I remember those $40 and Arizona, dollars in Arizona and California become a notary. Right, like it’s state driven. It really is. You’re right. It’s so weird.
Greg Owens 39:39
Like, I need a painting contractor’s licence in Texas and maybe Arizona but I know Texas you don’t need you could just start it’s so
Tina Vitali 39:48
interesting when you start to expand out a different states, right? Because it’s so different. There’s so many interests or whatever and it confuses
Greg Owens 39:55
my friends from Europe and other countries completely. Cuz they’re, you know, a lot of times like, the rules are the rules for the entire country, right? And like, so for Japan or something like that. It’s like, No, these are the rules for the whole country, whereas this country is so made up of all the states that have their own interpretation and our own rules. And, yeah, that makes that definitely makes us jump through a lot more hoops. You’re right, right. Right. That’s great. That’s great. Oh, well, this has been absolutely super fun. You have a lot of energy, and it’s great chatting with you. But any, any other words of wisdom that you are? Yeah, I
Tina Vitali 40:36
think for me, like write a big piece of how I operate is like, and we say it here, it’s, it’s always, you know, thinking on your feet and finding a smarter solution, right? Like, there’s nothing that can’t throw at me that I can’t figure out. You just got to take a breath, and then get into the problem and really start to figure out how you’re going to tackle that one one piece at a time, right? Like I I’m definitely in the facilities world, I think you have to just have an even keel and be able to, you know, step back and find the smarter solution whenever you can.
Greg Owens 41:06
I like that. Yeah, we should adopt something. I had one of my project manager just called me the other day, he says, Greg, we have a problem on this job. Something about like, we can’t find something. I’m like, Robbie, that’s all we ever had his problems on jobs. And
Tina Vitali 41:23
we’re just like problem solving. Oh. What’s next? Totally. It’s like, oh, problem. That’s what we do. We’re running.
Greg Owens 41:35
We’re running into like, finding materials, right? Because there’s a shortage shortages in materials board, right? For totally different reasons like Texas. freezing. We can’t find paint right now from certain manufacturers. Right. Yeah. Not surprised by that. And then steel like for I my understanding is like the the tariffs and Trump and those kinds of things changed up the steel industry. So now they’re the steel shortage, right, and would skyrocketed in price, right.
Tina Vitali 42:06
I mean, we had issues getting hardware, like computers. uterus, I don’t know if you know that they were backordered for a period of time, there was a whole bunch going on on that. So that even trying to get like your physical computer was difficult, like just getting that to us. So I feel you like the board on a lot of things. Right.
Greg Owens 42:25
Right, right. Well, like I said, this has been super fun having this conversation with you. And thank you so much for being on the Watching Paint Dry podcast.
Tina Vitali 42:37
Thanks, Katrina. Thanks, Greg. Appreciate it.
Outro 42:47
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.