Executive Suite: Carlos De León, Bridgehampton

Carlos Robert De León, 27, vice president of The León Group in Bridgehampton, was an infant when his parents came to Westhampton Beach from Guatemala. With few connections and barely speaking English, his mother took odd cleaning and child care jobs, and his father worked for a restaurant and then a landscaper seven days a week, slowly carving out time to build his own landscaping company and later investing the profits to add cleaning, construction, irrigation and property management divisions with his wife.

De León began working for his father at age 12, earned a degree in political science and started a pool division at the company. But as he worked for and negotiated with high-end clients at their estates in the Hamptons, he saw the need for more education and went back to college for a second bachelor's degree, in finance. After graduating, he overhauled the back end of the company, streamlining workflow between divisions, adding GPS tracking on company vehicles, and creating an electronic customer portal and an app for each property.

What do you do to get high-end estates ready for winter?

It is specific to each estate. So if they want their pool ready to use until January, we have to constantly monitor the water, motors and the heaters. There are trees that are very, very expensive and can get wind burns, and we build protective windscreens and burlap them. When we first take on a client, we'll do an AutoCAD [computer-aided design] and map out where everything is, drains are, any soft spots, any lights, because once the snow hits, you can't see anything. A lot of the homes in the Hamptons, the Quogue area, they're very old and haven't been updated. We have to make the client aware of which sections of the house aren't prepared for a harsh winter. Some need to completely drain the system for the winter.

Why do you create apps for individual properties?

When we take on a client, we will decide what level of service they want, and then we will go room by room writing everything down, and then we create an app on our iPads and then that's how we track it. It's the checklist just for that house.

What problems does the property management industry face?

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One of the biggest right now is fly-by-nights. People who show up and say, "I'm gonna manage your home" [but don't], and one thing leads to another, like pipes bursting. A lot of my renovations this summer were because of it.

What questions should a homeowner ask to assess a good manager?

How are you going to manage my home? What does your program consist of? Who is going to physically show up? What do I get for these services? How much does this service cost? Is there a different cost for you to show up more than once? What do you offer beyond the minimum that you're telling me now? And if they're a fly-by-night, they're going to run away really fast because then they'll understand that you're asking them for a high level of commitment.

How did you smooth workflow at your company?

If we build the home, we're going to build the pool, and if we build the pool, we're going to build the irrigation system, and if we build the irrigation system, well, I'm going to make sure that we're designing for everything we could think of in the future, and we're also going to take over the property management.

What's your biggest challenge?

Finding the right people to continue to grow our business. I'm not just offering you a job, I'm offering you an opportunity to be a part of the estates of these families.

What's next for you?

I'm working up to become a Platinum-certified pool builder; there's only one on Long Island. And I hope to get into Columbia's master of science program in construction administration. My father has always told me, "The only way you can keep succeeding is by learning."