DGS 325: The Door Machine: Property Management Growth

When your property management business isn't growing, relying on cold digital leads or hiring a salesperson might seem like the obvious solution, but what if those are actually the biggest time and money sinks? 

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull breaks down why cold leads from digital marketers are "garbage," why most Business Development Manager (BDM) hires fail, and how he's seen a repeating pattern of busy owners having no time to execute growth strategies. He dives into the Door Machine, a game-changing new growth model designed to help property managers scale with warm, relationship-based leads and a Door Grow-trained salesperson, all with no upfront salary risk and a focus on guaranteed results.

 

You’ll Learn
(00:00) Introduction to DoorGrow and Its Mission 

(06:50) The Door Machine: A New Solution for Growth 

(12:25) Understanding the Cost and Value of the Door Machine

 

Quotables

“When's the last time you actually worked on growing your business instead of just running it?” 

“The real path to growth isn't more cold leads. It's warm leads from relationships.”

“Without the foundation, a salesperson is wasted. With it, a salesperson becomes a weapon.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason Hull (00:01)

All right, five, four, three, two, one. All right, I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading coaching and consulting firm for residential property management entrepreneurs. We've helped hundreds of property management business owners add doors, increase profit, add and build winning teams. Think of us as like bar rescue for property managers. We've cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses.

 

At DoorGrowth, we believe good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. We're on a mission to help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Let's get into the show. So, hey, property management entrepreneurs, I've got a question for you. When's the last time you made a cold call to an investor?

 

When is the last time you followed up with that realtor who said they'd send you referrals? When's the last time you actually worked on growing your business instead of just running it? If you're being honest with yourself, it's probably been a while. And look, I'm not judging you. I've been doing this for a while. I've been coaching property management managers for over 15 years. I've seen this pattern thousands of times.

 

and you started this business to manage properties, not to be a salesperson, but somewhere along the way, you became your company's only source of new business. The problem is you don't have time for it, you don't enjoy it, and if you're really being honest, you avoid it. So today I'm gonna share with you something we've been working on that solves this problem entirely. It's called the door machine. And by the end of this episode, you're gonna want to know everything about it. Okay.

 

So welcome to the DoorGrow show. I'm Jason Hull. And if you're a property management entrepreneur who wants to grow your business and your life, you're in the right place. Our mission at DoorGrow is to help property management business owners transform their businesses so they can have freedom and fulfillment. Today's episode is different. I'm not bringing on a guest. Instead, I'm going to pull back the curtain on something we've been developing that I believe is going to completely change the game for how property managers grow their doors. Let me paint a picture for you.

 

Okay, it's Monday morning. You've got a list of investors. They are people you should be calling. And there's that realtor you've been meaning to reach out to. And you told yourself, like last week, that this would be the week you finally get serious about sales. Then a tenant calls, something comes up, you have a maintenance emergency.

 

An owner is upset about a repair invoice. Your bookkeeper needs something. Someone on your team has a crisis. And suddenly it's 6 p.m. and you haven't made a single sales call. Again, sound familiar? Here's the thing. You're not lazy. You're not bad at sales. You're just spread too thin to give sales the attention that it deserves. You've got other fires to put out.

 

Maybe you're running other businesses. A lot of you are, you're entrepreneurs. Maybe a family that actually deserves your attention is waiting for you in the living room. The last thing you wanna do at the end of a long day is cold call investors or go schmooze at some networking events. So what happens? Growth stalls. You hit a plateau and you stay stuck. Not because you don't know how to grow, but because you don't have the time or energy to do what it takes.

 

And I've talked to hundreds, maybe thousands of property managers who are in exactly this situation. They know they should be doing more sales. They just never get to it. Okay, now at this point, some of you are thinking, Jason, I don't need to do sales myself. I just need more leads. So you call up a digital marketing agency. They promise you SEO, Google ads, Facebook leads. They show you fancy dashboards and talk about cost per lead.

 

You write a check every month and wait for the phone to ring and here's what those marketers don't tell you. Not all leads are equal. Digital marketing leads are cold leads. These are strangers who clicked an ad. They're price shopping. They're talking to five other companies. They convert it maybe 10 % if you're lucky. Here's the bigger problem. There just aren't that many people searching the internet for property management. You can prove this on Google Trends.

 

It's not like HVAC repair where people Google in a panic. Property owners aren't searching. 60 % of them are self-managing and don't even know they need you yet. So you end up paying 200, 300, sometimes $500 per lead for tire kickers who ghost you after one call or ghost you after you send your proposal to them. Meanwhile, the marketing agency keeps cashing your checks and showing you impressions and click through rates.

 

that don't translate the doors. The math doesn't work. The leads are garbage and you're still stuck. The real path to growth isn't more cold leads. It's warm leads from relationships. This is even going to be more pressing and more present in the future with AI. Human interaction is going to matter even more. There's AI Slop.

 

So what are warm leads? What are these relationships? They're referrals, they're strategic partners, direct outreach to investors who don't know they need you yet, but that takes time and effort you don't have. So at some point, most property managers realize they need help. They try to hire a salesperson, a BDM, business development manager, to take sales off their plate. You post a job listing, you sift through hundreds of bad applicants, finally hire someone,

 

who seems promising, pay four to $6,000 per month in salary, train them, wait, hope, six weeks later the salesperson quits or they get fired because they just don't produce. Meanwhile, you've burned 10 to $15,000 with nothing to show for it. Ask me how I know. I've watched this play out over and over again with clients. Here's what nobody tells you. The problem isn't just hiring. The problem is that most property management companies don't have the foundations

 

that make a salesperson successful. Without the right positioning, reviews, website, pricing, pitch, systems, accountability, and lead flow, even a talented salesperson will fail. And even if you do have all these things, who's gonna train them, manage them, hold them accountable? You? Mr. Busy Person or Mrs. Busy Person or Miss Busy Person? You barely have time to do sales yourself.

 

let alone manage somebody else doing it. Okay, so I'm gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna get into the solution, but this, I'm gonna tell you about our sponsor for this episode. If you're dealing with maintenance stuff, you may wanna check them out. This episode is sponsored by Vendero. Many of you tell me that maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 %? That's exactly what Vendero has achieved.

 

They've leveraged cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders and troubleshooting to coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee, learning your preferences and executing tasks flawlessly, never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees up you to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio or even just taking a well-deserved break.

 

Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendero. Visit vendero.ai slash doorgrow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need. Okay, back to what we're talking about. Come with me for a moment. I want you to imagine something. It's Monday morning. You check your pipeline. There are three new owner leads that came in over the weekend, all qualified.

 

all in your target market, all ready to talk. You didn't generate those leads. You didn't make those calls. You didn't do any of the follow-up. Someone else did. You didn't pay to run ads to get them. By Friday, one of them has signed 12 new doors. You didn't lift a finger. Now imagine that happening every month, 10 doors, 20 doors, month after month. And here's the best part. You didn't pay a salary.

 

You didn't gamble on a maybe salesperson. You only paid when doors actually closed. No salary, no upfront risk, just results. No more guilt about the sales calls you're not making. No more networking events you dread. No more lying awake wondering how you're gonna grow this thing. Just doors showing up in your business while you focus on operations, owner retention, and actually living your life.

 

What I just described, that's the door machine, the door grow door machine, and it's real. Here's how it works in plain English. So we assign you a trained door grow salesperson who works your market. You pay nothing upfront, no salary, no retainers. You only pay when doors actually close. The salesperson executes our proven growth engines, getting realtors to introduce them to investor clients, reaching out to self-managing landlords, building relationships with other property managers

 

who send overflow your way. We recruit them, we vet them, we train them, we manage them. We hold them accountable. We're better at this. All you have to do is take on the doors they bring you. These aren't cold internet leads that close at 10%. These are warm leads from relationships that close at 90%. Our goal after a 90-day pipeline build is 10 to 20 new doors per month. Some of our clients have added over

 

300 doors in a year just using one realtor referral strategy and if the salesperson doesn't work out we replace them no hassle No drama, no extra cost. That's our problem to solve not yours They work for us Now some of you are thinking this sounds too good to be true. Let me explain why it's not we've spent 15 plus years coaching property managers on growth We are the best in the industry

 

We've helped hundreds of clients at Doors using our growth engines, sales strategies, and proven systems. We've also watched the same pattern repeat over and over. We teach the strategy, but the busy owner doesn't have time to execute. We train their salesperson, but the owner doesn't hold them accountable. The system works, but the weakest link in the chain is usually the overwhelmed business owner who can't give it the attention it needs. The Doormachine removes that weak link entirely. Now we recruit the salesperson.

 

We train them on our systems. We hold them accountable. We manage the process. We give them the support they dream of having. You just take on the doors. Same strategies that have worked for years, but now with DoorGrow controlling the execution. Now I need to be upfront with you. The door machine is not for everyone. We're selective about who we work with, and that's by design. This is for you if you want to add more doors, but don't want to do the selling yourself.

 

if you've been burned by hiring salespeople before, or if you're smart enough to want to avoid that mistake if your margins are too thin to gamble on another salary. If you have the operational capacity to handle 10 to 20 plus new doors every month, then it might be a fit. If you want predictable growth without the drama, it might be a fit. But here's the thing, a salesperson can only succeed if your business is ready for them. That's why Door Machine is only available to active members

 

of the DoorGrow Mastermind who have completed our rapid revamp. That means your brand, your website, your reviews, your pricing, your systems are dialed in first. We've watched too many property managers throw money at salespeople without fixing the foundation first, it never works. We refuse to set any of our salespeople up for failure like that. Without the foundation, a salesperson is wasted. With it, a salesperson becomes a weapon.

 

Let me break down what this actually costs versus what you're probably spending now trying to grow. So with door machine, you pay 50 % of the first month's rent when a door closes. That goes to the salesperson. They only get paid when they produce. Then there's a 20 % rev share, revenue share on the monthly management fee for the doors they add. That goes to door grow. And if it doesn't work, you pay $0. These are doors you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Compare that to hiring

 

your own salesperson, $4,000 to $6,000 a month in salary, whether they produce or not, plus failed hires that cost 10 to 15,000 each, plus your time recruiting, training, managing, holding them accountable, plus opportunity costs of all the doors you're not adding. While you're stuck being the bottleneck, let me give you a quick example. Say the salesperson has 15 doors in their first month, average rent of $1,500, you get 50 % of the first month's rent is commission. Well, they do, the BDM does. That's about

 

$11,000. Now you're collecting $2,250 per month in the new management revenue. Our 20 % share is for $50. You keep $1,800 per month in the new recurring revenue, plus your leasing fees on those 15 doors, plus the long-term value as those owners stay with you for years. That's the difference between gambling on growth and guaranteeing it.

 

Many property managers are already spending 20 to 30 % of their top line revenue, not just the management fee. There's lots of ancillary fees you can make money on, but they're spending 20 to 30 % just to acquire new business. Or they're discounting the rates. They're dropping from 10 % to 8 % by two points. They're giving up 20 % just to get business on because the leads are cold and garbage. All right, I've given you the overview. I painted the picture. Now here's what I want you to do. I put together

 

a complete document that breaks down everything about the door machine, what's included, how it works, the timeline, the investment, the terms, FAQs, frequently asked questions, right? Everything, I want you to read it. Go to doorgrow.com slash door machine to download the full offer doc. I'll say that again, doorgrow.com slash door machine, one word. Or you can text the word door machine to

 

512-640-2092. That's 512-640-2092 and I'll send you the offer doc. That's my personal iPhone. I respond personally. This document is going to answer every question you have and if you read it and you're interested, we'll have a conversation to see if you're a fit. Important note.

 

Salesperson slots are limited by our training capacity. That's our biggest constraint. We maintain a wait list and place clients on a first come first serve basis, but only after they meet our requirements. We're looking for the best match, not just anyone who applies. I want to build multi-million dollar property management businesses with them. We're partnering in this way. That's the idea. I want to build multi-million dollar property management companies where it's a win-win-win for all three parties involved.

 

the BDM salesperson that works for us and DoorGrow. Look, here's the bottom line. You didn't start this business to be a part-time salesperson. You started to manage properties, to build freedom, to have freedom, to build something. But somewhere along the way, you became the bottleneck in your own company. The door machine is designed to fix that, to take the thing you hate, the thing you avoid, the thing that keeps you stuck and hand it off to someone who's trained to do it and held accountable to produce.

 

Our goal is to build multi-million dollar property management companies. I'm looking for long-term partners who want to grow with us, that I can continually invest in your business, that I can give you more and more of my attention and time to help improve your growth. If that sounds like you, go download the full offer doc at doorgo.com slash door machine. Stop being the bottleneck, start being the business owner. You've got better things to do than cold call investors. Let us handle it.

 

Okay, that's it. If you're feeling stuck and you're ready to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com. We can help. For free training on getting unlimited leads, if you want to do this yourself, go to, just text the word leads to 512-648-4608 and join our free community for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com.

 

If this episode helped you subscribe and leave a review, we'd really appreciate it. Until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.