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37 August 2024 August 2024 » C O V E R S T O R Y "It was hard to get a straight line on," Moore said. "You couldn't just go into Google and say, 'foreclosure ordinance' [and find what you were looking for for a given municipality]. Sometimes it was listed under something else. We had plenty of times where we would call a municipality about an ordinance they signed, and they would have no idea what we were talking about." Hamilton nodded in agreement, recalling one specific instance. "Six or eight months after we started, Eric found an ordinance with Lake Elsinore [in Southern California]. We could not find a single person in all of Lake Elsinore County [who knew about it]. We called everybody and nobody knew about it. It's like, 'Well, I'm reading about it in the City Council notes. I know it exists.'" Hamilton explained that Bron's paying customers are the company's clients, but in a way, the municipalities involved are also another tier of their customer base. "Our clients pay us to take care of the municipalities. We have a team that is fo- cused on customer service for the munic- ipalities we get our updates from, and we have to check every municipality, every year." These processes include every- thing from conducting web searches and research to actively calling municipalities directly. "We know who to call, we know their phone numbers, we know the snail mail, we know their email, and if it ever comes up, we're ready and proactive on that," Hamilton said. Bron's systems also have a setup to flag any property in a municipality that is not already in their database, so the team can follow up to get more information about the lay of the local land. "It's an automatic trigger," Moore explained. "We very rarely come across a municipality we haven't seen, but when we do, that's the first trigger: check this for ordinances." Hamilton notes that, although the team leans on technology and automa- tion where it makes sense, some of what Bron does will always necessitate direct outreach and the so-called "human touch." The repercussions of not getting it right leave liability not only financially but reputationally. "There's still a lot of handholding," he said. "You're never going to get out of the calls to the munic- ipalities. There's nothing that's going to get us out of calling utility companies or HOAs. It's manual. It's labor intensive." Take Care of Your People and They Will Take Care of Your Clients T hat philosophy also extends to other aspects of how Hamilton and his ex- ecutives structure and run their business, as well as how they recruit and nurture talent within the company. The company is divided into four pri- mary departments, as well as an IT team that mostly operates out of California: » Registration » Utilities » De-registration » Homeowners' associations For the team of processors who are on the front lines making those calls, up- dating the database, and serving as Bron's