DGS 348: When Should Property Managers Hire Next?

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, Jason and Sarah Hull break down one of the most expensive mistakes property management business owners make: hiring based solely on what the business appears to need instead of what the owner actually needs. They explain why this common approach leaves entrepreneurs overwhelmed, wearing the wrong hats, and trapped inside businesses they no longer enjoy running. 

You'll learn how a simple time study can reveal where your energy, focus, and profitability are being lost, why every new hire should solve both a business problem and an owner problem, and how reallocating your time toward high-value activities creates sustainable growth.

 

You’ll Learn

[00:00] Why Most Property Managers Hire the Wrong Way
[03:18] The Hidden Cost of Bad Hiring Decisions
[08:25] Using a Time Study to Find Your Next Hire
[13:05] Balancing Your Needs With the Business's Needs
[18:12] Why Every Business Owner Needs an Assistant
[22:20] Stop Doing Low-Value Work
[26:15] Freeing Yourself to Focus on Revenue Growth
[29:10] Building a Team That Creates Freedom

Quotables

"One bad hiring mistake is usually a 10 grand minimum mistake." Jason Hull 

"You cannot build the right team around the wrong person." Jason Hull 

"Every team member should be born out of a time study." Jason Hull 

"The point of having a business is you should get more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, more support." Jason Hull

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason Hull (00:00)

Okay, we are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGro, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGro, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.

 

We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. All right. So today's topic, we're going to talk about how to make the decision as a property management business owner to hire. How to effectively decide it's time to hire and how not to screw this up. So we're not going to get into the whole hiring process. We've talked about that a bit on some other

 

Episodes. If you'd like to hear more about that, reach out to us or check out our other episodes. But today we're going to talk about how to make the right decision of who to get and when to hire and who you need in the business. Cool.

 

one bad hiring mistake is usually a 10 grand minimum mistake. And anybody that's gone through hiring a lot of team members, you know. Like I've hired lots over the years, and it's been some of them can be pretty painful when you make a bad move. So you want to make sure you make good decisions. So

 

So here's how most people do it, which is wrong. How most people do it is they look, what does the business need? And they're like, the business needs a maintenance coordinator, or the business needs this. And they just continually keep giving the business what it needs. And so this I call kind of the solopreneur way of hiring hiring. They think the way a solopreneur thinks, they think I do everything. Now I need to hire somebody to do these other pieces that the business needs. And they start building a team based around.

 

What the business wants.

 

every team member, should exist if they are taking something off of your plate because you do everything initially. Now, sort of, they're like, well, you know, I'm doing the maintenance stuff, so I need a maintenance coordinator. And that's kind of works. But the problem is if you continually build your team based on what the business seems to be asking for and what it needs, and you're not taking care of yourself, you end up with an entire team.

 

And you're still miserable in your own business. And this is pretty much most business owners at NARPAM. This is most of the people in the two to 400 door range. So I'm calling you out. So if you are a member of NARPAM and you have between two to 400 units and you are still wearing hats you don't enjoy in your business, I promise you you have the wrong team. Why? Because I know for a fact you cannot build the right team around the wrong person. And so if you're still wearing hats you don't enjoy,

 

Meaning you are showing up as the wrong person in the business, doing stuff that you don't like doing, that's not your favorite thing, and you've built an entire team around you, you have the wrong team. All right. So how do we fix this? Well, first you have to know that that is your case. So sometimes you talk to people and they have no idea. They don't realize. They go, no, I have a great team. My team is awesome. I I really

 

So it's hard to fix a problem if you don't recognize that it's the problem. It's almost like when you have a plumbing leak. It's hard to fix that leak if you're not sure where the leak is coming from. So we need to identify where the issue is and then rip the walls open. If we just start ripping the walls open and looking for the leak, it's

 

just

 

pretty expensive and inefficient. So we need to recognize, hey, there's a problem leak here. And then we need to identify where is the leak and what is the actual problem. So I'd say that's the very first thing. And sometimes that's also really hard for people to do. Especially when they're attached to their teams. Like, no, I love my team. How many times have we heard that? I love my team. I have to my team's great. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So but they might be great. You might have great people, but they are not

 

Your ideal team because you're still involved in stuff. So usually what we do is we have them do a time study. This is how we figure out five different currencies: time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. These are the five things that you have to invest in the business that the business has to invest. These are your resources and

 

In order to hire a new team member or bring somebody else in, you have to make sure that if you're going to reallocate these resources, you've got to do it in a way that's really effective. Otherwise, this could be dangerous. So a lot of times I'll share the analogy so people understand how important this is. if you've ever seen Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones, he's running from this giant boulder. He's carrying this gold statue. He's trying to like

 

Get out of there, and this boulder's rolling down the hill at him, and he's trying to get out of there as quick as possible. Otherwise, squish, Indiana dies, right? So, this is a great analogy for business. So here's how I look at this. Imagine this picture. There is an entrepreneur running from the boulder. What is the boulder? Expenses. It's always moving, it's always coming after you. And sometimes that boulder picks up speed or grows as the business grows.

 

And so that's expenses. Indiana Jones running, that's sales and revenue generation and generating cash like for the business. The gap in between Indiana Jones running and the boulder, which is expenses, is cash flow. If the business runs out of cash flow, the business is essentially dead. The business dies. Or it goes into debt, which it's just eventually going to die. So we want to make sure that we are.

 

Constantly generating revenue. The speed, the slope of this path is the speed of which the business grows. And so if we want to grow really fast, we spend a lot more money. There's a lot more expenses. Everything's moving a lot faster.

 

And so this is where hiring can cause some big problems, or rolling out new tech can cause big problems because we get distracted and we're no longer focused on revenue generation and that has to stay the main thing. So you've got to keep running and you can't stop and unless you're able to somehow dramatically reduce expenses. So it slows down or it's less scary. But you've got to keep running. So we do a time study, and this helps us figure out time, energy, focus, cash, and effort.

 

Where am I currently investing all this? And is it giving me what I want? Is this according to my highest priorities and what I need? So this is the lens we look at for you. So imagine a Venn diagram with two circles. Circle on the left is you. Circle on the right is the business. Most entrepreneurs build their team, build their systems, build the business, only focusing on the business. And so they end up neglected and they end up more and more miserable. And they end up with a business that becomes like almost like a

 

master to them. You're like a slave. If you ever felt like a waking up and you're a slave to your own business, you've put too much attention on the business and not enough on yourself.

 

What happens if your expenses catch up to Indiana Jones? Squished. Right? He gets squished. And as a business owner, it's not a great thing to feel squished. But there is something that probably should be squished. And that's pests. Yuck. So moving into a new place is exciting, but setting up utilities, that's a big pest, isn't it? Yep.

 

That's where Utility Profit comes in. It's a free tool that property managers share with their tenants during move-in, and it completely takes a headache out of getting the utilities set up. So it's less stressful for you and for them. So here's how it works: tenants get a personalized page with their utility options that are already mapped out for their specific address. Things like internet, electric, gas, you name it, they pick what they need, they set everything up, and it's all in one place.

 

No Googling, no back and forth with landlords saying, hey, who's the electric company here again? Never heard that one. And for property managers, it's white labeled, so it feels like part of your own onboarding process. You get notified once your tenants' utilities are set up. It's one less thing for you to follow up on on your probably never-ending list of things to follow up on. It's completely free for everyone. There's no contracts and it takes only minutes to get started. So check out

 

Utility Profit because movement day should feel like a win, not a checklist nightmare with a big pest. Perfect. All right. Thanks to Utility Profit for sponsoring today's episode. All right. And check them out at DorGro Live. That's coming up in October. Yeah. In Austin, the ninth and tenth. So if you're interested in checking out Utility Profit, you can just do a quick search. They should come right up, Utility Profit, or you can see them at

 

Dorboro Live. Okay. So getting back to what we were just chatting about, Venn diagram, you, the business, we need to shift the attention to you. We have to make sure every new hire is taking something off of your plate because you are doing everything in the business in the beginning. And so if you do a time study, you'll be able to see where am I investing time? What is that time worth financially? Where is my focus currently? Is this helping me reach my goals?

 

And then we look through a lens for the business, which is the six core functions, which is lead gen, nurture, conversion, delivery, lifetime value, and financial. And so then we're looking what does the business need most? So what does the business need most and what do you need most? And the overlap is where you make your best decisions. So every team member should be born out of a time study.

 

Basically, when we have our clients do a time study, one of the big factors is energy. It's like, is this a plus sign for you or a minus sign? Does it give you life or energy, or is it taking it away? And if it is a minus sign, we need to find somebody that this would be a plus sign for them and bring them in. And so you're able to give your minus signs to somebody else that enjoys doing it. And this is how we free you up from the business and how we make sure we're hiring somebody that makes sense. And this person

 

should be helping the business improve your cash flow situation, which means if you're the revenue generator, you're the salesperson or you are your own BDM, that means we're freeing up your time doing minus signs that are also financially draining and getting you to spend time doing revenue generating activities. And that's a really awesome trade. You're basically trading and giving up a little bit of money to go be able to make more money.

 

And then it's a smart decision to make because that's what the business maybe needs as well, is more lead gen, more nurture, conversion. Those first three functions are sales. So this is how we make the decision to hire. So every new hire, I think, should be born out of a time study. Every new tech or new system you roll out should be born out of a time study. Because otherwise you're just adding expense, you're just adding stuff, you're just adding people, and it's not actually giving you more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution.

 

More support. And this is the point of having a business is you should get more of what I call the four reasons:

 

Usually the first person that we recommend that people hire is what? An assistant. Which is wild because a lot of times we'll see a business owner with an entire team and what don't they have? An assistant. And sometimes they'll even have team members. Yeah and he doesn't have an assistant. And I went, Ew, why? What's what's really funny is a lot of times as business owners, because we're hiring and getting what the business needs and not taking care of ourselves.

 

We will even see team members that have assistance. we have a property manager and an assistant property manager. And yet the business owner is still involved in a lot of things and doing really low level financially ineffective tasks that are like low level, that your time probably as a business owner should be calculated based on what the top line revenue of the company is, divided by like 40 hours a week, divided by, you know.

 

50 weeks in the year. So basically divide it by 2000, your your annual revenue. That's what your hourly rate should be sort of judged by. And so, you know, if you're a million-dollar business owner, your hourly rate is like probably like 500 bucks an hour or something like this. And you might as well just double it, just for perspective. But you the goal is to get you to a place where you are worth that amount of money. And you're not doing five dollar an hour tasks that maybe or even less that maybe AI could do.

 

Maybe $10 an hour tasks that a good VA in a foreign country could do that's really seasoned. Maybe $20, $25 an hour tasks that a decent US-based team member could do. And so you want to make sure that you are doing stuff that makes sense for your business. Otherwise, you are losing money.

 

it's it's hard to argue when you go, Well, you're spending 70% of your time doing tasks that cost twenty dollars or less. And then they go, it's kind of hard to argue with that. Then it starts to become very, very clear that yeah, we need to make some shifts in the business. Yeah. If if I ever hear hear a business owner and I ask, Who's your main salesperson? Who does the business development? And they're like, That's me.

 

Cool, what are you spending most of your time doing? If they don't say that thing, there's a problem. Because sales is the lifeblood of the business. They're like, I want to grow. Cool. Who's your salesperson? Me. Cool. What are you spending your time doing? Maintenance, coordination, leasing, inspections, well, like posting notices. Cool. So if you're great at doing sales or you have a team member that's great at doing sales, your whole job is to free up that person's time. If it's you, free up your time.

 

To allow you to spend more time doing sales. Otherwise, that's kinda like buying a Ferrari, paying for it, and then you're using it to plow a field, as I usually say. That does not make sense. It doesn't make sense at all. Literally does not make financial sense.

 

All right. Cool. So that's today's episode. So if you've ever felt stuck or stagnant and you want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgo.com for a free training on how to get unlimited free leads. Text the word leads to 512-648-4608.

 

Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners by going to doorgrowclub.com. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas to learn about DoorGro's offers, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on wherever you saw this. 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.