We were lucky to catch up with Carroll VanHook-Weaver, Director of Leasing and Marketing with KENECT recently, and have shared our conversation below.
Carroll, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
Kenect is breaking barriers left and right when it comes to the future of multi-family housing. Since 2010 this concept has been researched and developed by Rajen Shastri, Founder and CEO of Akara Partners, LLC, which has its own management company Akara Property Management, LLC. Kenect is an all-in-one social club apartment community with onsite coworking offices, short term housing floors, custom furnished floor plans and mixed-use retail. Oh, and did I mention it is in the HEART of the city in a prime location, where rents are often expensive? The Kenect product is a lifestyle brand that caters to the traveling and busy professional. Kenect is a nationwide accessible social club where “members” (not residents), can visit and use any Kenect amenity when they travel. The Kenect Phoenix location offers coworking and social club memberships for those who may live and commute into the city and do not necessarily need an apartment. They can lease a private office pod in Kenect’s modern coworking area, or opt for a float membership or a dedicated dock desk for daily use. The membership gets you access to use any Kenect as well as the fitness, pool, and outdoor private members access on property. Each Kenect is pet friendly with onsite pet play and relief areas for members. Coworking members who lease a private office pod can register to bring their pooch to work for a small fee. Everything is under one roof for one price and located in the best part of the city. Since Kenect has a smaller floor plan square footage than typically found in downtown markets, the monthly net rates tend to be 20% lower than nearby competitors yet the value is through the roof with the convenience of a furnished apartment, onsite coworking, coffee bars, package delivery service and top notch amenities and programming for socializing…..oh and you can use other properties when you travel versus working out of a packed coffee house or random office spaces. You truly get the service and homelike feel when you travel.
One thing that also sets Kenect Phoenix apart from the competition is our newly launched HOTELING floors! We have partnered with FrontDesk to help run and manage our hoteling floors for nightly to 30-day rentals. Each room is fully outfitted as you would find in a luxury hotel, but it is an apartment with a full kitchen and washer and dryer in every aparthotel. Visitors get access to use the coworking space for business, rooftop pool and exclusive fitness center. There are a slew of weekly events that members can meet and network with locals. This concept will be rolled out at every Kenect location as part of Akara’s business model, which is rapidly expanding across multiple US markets. This concept was created WELL before COVID and has proven to be a momentous success in these top 30 markets where people can get everything they need under one roof, for one cost and to provide a plethora of value that goes farther than just your average monthly rent. This is a community-based lifestyle product that is attainable luxury for most young professionals and entrepreneurs. Kenect is breaking barriers in multi-family and not following the status quo of housing, working or how people connect. You must experience Kenect for yourself.
For a free float desk day pass to coworking at Kenect Phoenix email [email protected] or call/text 602-258-2828 and mention this article. Contact a membership coordinator for apartment or coworking needs to become part of our community.
-Carroll VanHook-Weaver, Director of Leasing and Marketing
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Carroll joined Akara Partners in 2019 as one of the original team members to help launch the Kenect brand in the Nashville and Phoenix markets. Carroll brings 23 years’ experience in hospitality/customer service, food and beverage, luxury hotel management and most recently 10 years in student housing development.
Carroll’s role as Director of Leasing and Marketing includes the successful execution of marketing strategies and goals to meet budgeted proforma, operational leasing policies and procedures, staff recruitment, training and motivation, competitor analysis reporting, renewal and resident retention strategies, online reputation management and overall digital presence. She is actively involved in developing and maintaining major employer relationships and community business partnerships.
Since 2010 she has been a vital leader to ten brand new construction lease ups, four rebranding acquisitions and an expansive portfolio of owned and third party managed properties. She has supported a portfolio combined of over 60,000 beds in over thirty markets across the United States. In 2015, Carroll was one of five team members to help launch University Student Living, now known as Michaels Student Living, where her teams reached an average renewal ratio of 40%. The new construction lease ups all opened at 95-100% with an 11-month lease up ranging an average 650 beds per property.
Carroll received a Bachelor of Science in Community Leadership and Development with a minor in Communication from the University of Kentucky in 2008.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
“Opening a brand-new product concept in multifamily is challenging enough for people to be educated on the vast aspects of the property and value of the product, but then throwing a global pandemic on top of it, creates even more obstacles, “says VanHook-Weaver. Covid hit during the opening of the lease up office for Kenect Phoenix. The leasing office is typically opened 8-12 months before opening of the property so people can pre-lease and reserve their apartments. This also is a time for the leasing team to set their goals to reach their budgeted occupancy at opening. It is especially important for the opening of any new property to pre-lease “heads in beds.” Right as the shutdown happened, the Kenect leasing team and I were getting ready to open our leasing office for business, located on Central Avenue, above Valley bar. We had put so much money and time into getting this space open for tours, marketing events and inviting the community to get to know what “Kenect” was. The new team had to onboard from home and take turns working from home, since we had to distance our team members while working at the office. We were not able to take people on property for quite some time for hard had tours and had to record videos to send to prospects. We instituted a Live at 5 weekly YouTube video where we would go live and answer FAQs from the property in hard hats, to make it fun. Although we were not able to have much traffic inside the leasing office without scheduled appointments, we continued to reach our leasing goals week after week. It was apparent that business was not slowing down and we found the traveling healthcare professionals loved our unique product that catered to them by offering furnished apartments and flexible lease terms. We also found that we did not have to rely too, heavily on concessions to lease because Kenect apartments have so much value included for the price and location.
The team was leasing great and then we discovered international customs delay for building materials and supplies. So, construction became halted. This is never a good situation to be in when in a new development lease-up as people are on timelines for moving and we all know moving is stressful enough. Unfortunately, we were delayed for around two months from construction delays and inspection approvals due to backups from other developments. We had to communicate the news and quickly and in true Kenect fashion, we found a solution that just about NO other community would ever suggest or do. We partnered with the Marriott Residence Inn and EOS fitness located in downtown Phoenix to help house and provide a healthy fitness outlet for those affected. The lease calls for management to be able to cancel leases in the event of a delay. Since we genuinely wanted our new members to experience Kenect we waived their rental fees and also provide complimentary hotel stays for those affected. People could have the top tier fitness membership for just $19.99 per month to use EOS fitness. The Kenect team also provide drink concessions to have a fun get together and even delivery charcuterie boxes to our members in the hotel. We tried to make it a fun experience even though their apartment was not ready. When the apartments were finally ready, we hired movers to help our members load and unload for added convenience and customer service. Although it was a hard and stressful situation while building a new reputation and launching a new product in a competitive city, we overcame as a team and opened the property at 35% leased. We only canceled a handful of short-term leases so those could find housing elsewhere. We still have renewed members ’til this day living at Kenect and we work every day to show them how grateful their business means to us. It proves our resiliency as a team and management company to go beyond for what the lease “calls for” and truly help those moving to a new city feel like they are cared for and have a personal connection to the onsite teams. I have never worked for a company that went as beyond as we did during a construction delay even when there wasn’t a pandemic.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
Our name alone exudes what our brand is about. Kenect is truly for helping people connect, explore, and grow. When people learn about Kenect and everything we have under one roof, for one cost, their light bulb goes off! I love seeing the spark in people’s eye when they say I get ALL this….and only pay this? Our clients are very smart and savvy people, they do ALL the market research for you and will be quick to tell you what others are doing as well as what you are doing right and well…. what you are doing wrong. I like hearing the bad feedback because it gives me clear direction what we need to do to improve. Sometimes it is out of our control or not within budget, but often it comes with training or giving more support to the team, and we can see improved feedback. One thing we do well is to foster relationships with our leads and members. Everyone we hire at Kenect has remarkably diverse and unique strengths. We bring people from F&B, hospitality, tech backgrounds as well as multifamily experience says VanHook-Weaver. We are building a serviced based lifestyle brand that focuses much more on hospitality than just apartment leasing. Kenect is a social club with a slew of weekly events. Our team is constantly planning, entertaining, and executing events on top of their leasing and membership duties. It all starts with our team; they are the face of the Kenect brand. They are the ones building relationship and experiences with our members. We have an intense brand immersion training their very first week with Kenect to understand that what we are doing is different from a typical apartment community and we MUST think and act different for the five business models we have under one roof.
The way we stand and greet people is different, our uniforms of band/concert tees with blazers are different. We want our teams to spark conversation and have approachability. Have you ever been able to be made at someone wearing a Green Day t-shirt that runs a property? Of course not. At Kenect we also use technology such as gamification and video platforms to incentive members to engage at the building. We use Modern Message which is a platform where members can complete actions for points, which they cash in for gift cards. This can be done by completing polls, referring friends, leaving reviews, following on social media, posting fun pictures around the community and RSVPing for event…. just to name a few. Using video technology such as Vidyard and Realync create a face-to-face experience and build relationships as well as providing video links for people to click and explore. This helps our clients learn who our team is during their leasing process. Using video as a sales tool creates faster and easier communication as well as time savings versus having to draft long emails. We also get access to analytics for every video sent and how long the person was engaged with the video. Using video has been instrumental to building brand loyalty during the sales process. Kenect is still a new brand and growing, we have our first members since 2020 who will be growing and traveling with us as we bring more Kenects to major cities.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.akarapartners.com/projects
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KenectPhoenix/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kenectcommunity/?viewAsMember=true
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kenect+phoenix
- Other: Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@kenectphoenix
Image Credits
FrontDesk Perkins & Will