Property Management Growth with DoorGrow
🚀 Struggling to grow your property management business? 🔥 Need more doors but feel stuck? ⚙️ Operations a mess? Welcome to Property Management Growth with DoorGrow! This is THE podcast for property managers who want to scale faster, add more doors, and systemize their operations—without the B.S. Hosted by Jason Hull, marketing expert, entrepreneur coach, and property management growth strategist, we bring you the best strategies, insights, and hacks to help you dominate your market. Learn from top property managers, industry experts, and vendors sharing real-world tactics that actually work. ✅ How to attract more property owners ✅ Fixing broken operations & streamlining processes ✅ Marketing & sales strategies that get you more doors ✅ Eliminating stress & scaling efficiently Join our free community of growth-focused property managers at DoorGrowClub.com and get the best property management marketing & growth strategies at DoorGrow.com. 🎧 Subscribe now and start growing your business today!
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DGS 285: The Nervous System and its Powerful Role in Business Performance
03/06/2025
DGS 285: The Nervous System and its Powerful Role in Business Performance
After working with property management business owners for over a decade, I’ve realized that the problems they are experiencing tend to be deeper than issues in the business… In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Sam Womack to discuss entrepreneurship, health, and how the two intertwine. You’ll Learn [01:57] How stress affects your health [13:48] The impact of oxygen and proper relaxation [17:40] The importance of being able to calm your nervous system [26:10] More health expert insights Tweetables “Everybody's doing the best they can with their current limited access to knowledge and resources.” “Don't beat yourself up for when you feel stressed out. Just make sure that before you continue that stress rollercoaster, like find some space to find some peace.” “You don't have to like beat all your competitors in a lot of instances, you just need to outlive them. You just need to outlast them.” “High performance isn't just how hard you push. It's about how well you recover and regulate.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Sam: If you don't find time to balance your nervous system or don't work on implementing tools to balance your nervous system, then you are limiting yourself to lower performance in the short term and decreasing performance in the long term. [00:00:15] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the Property Management Growth Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:37] Jason: So DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:21] Jason: Now let's get into the show. Cool. [00:01:24] Jason: And I'm hanging out here with sam Womack. Sam, welcome to the show. [00:01:29] Sam: Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here. [00:01:31] Jason: Cool. So Sam we met at a local mastermind here in the Austin area, which is really cool. And for those that know that I run a mastermind for property managers, I also eat my own dog food and believe in getting coaching and learning and growth and everything else. [00:01:52] Jason: And wanted to connect with some people locally and make some friends as well. So, Sam's one of those friends. So, Sam, welcome to the show. And why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself and what you do and how you kind of. Got into running businesses and doing cool stuff. [00:02:10] Sam: Yeah, no, thank you. First off, I don't do anything near as difficult as you guys. Managing property and tenants, I think is a feat to be held. And so props to all you guys out there crushing it in real estate. I cut my teeth in entrepreneurship starting at a young age. I was charging like 30 bucks an hour to teach old people how to use their computers, you know, tell their life story. [00:02:29] Sam: They'd pay me 30 bucks an hour while they sat there and henpecked. It was pretty ingenious. Fast forward into later on in life when the pandemic hit the business that I was launching just disappeared overnight. The retail died, everything that I've been working on, all the investors pulled out. [00:02:44] Sam: I was left with a few grand in my name and a baby on the way, living in a studio apartment with my wife. Had to figure something out, went into supply distribution, and a couple years later, fast forward, I did about 20 million in revenue as a solopreneur distributing gloves, masks, COVID test kits, etc. [00:03:01] Sam: But throughout that time, I dealt with like a really serious health issue. Stress had kind of overwhelmed me and I ended up with an autoimmune condition in my brain and through the journey of healing that autoimmune condition that was presenting as like early onset Alzheimer's, it was kind of a mystery. [00:03:16] Sam: They didn't know what was happening. I developed a deep passion for finding the root of health and the root of optimization and root of performance. A lot of that came through working with my mom, who's a preeminent physician focusing on anti aging and regenerative science here in Austin. [00:03:31] Sam: And so I typed her handwritten notes for a couple years and followed the patient journeys of the elite because she has a concierge practice for the elite here in Austin. And as I saw what drove change in their lives, I learned a lot about the human psyche and I learned a lot about how each of our individual unique biologies are very different when it comes to what we choose to do to find optimization or find optimal health. And so now I have a passion for bringing that to the masses. And as the pandemic waned, and as I healed, I became passionate about different physics based modalities and the different systems in the body and how to reach optimal performance. [00:04:07] Sam: And now I have a wellness center here in Austin that focuses on performance optimization, as well as maximizing human potential and transitioning the human experience as well as a research Institute called Human Beaming Research Institute, where we present the stories of the truth about health and where we help bring true health science to light so that people understand what's actually true, not truth that's manufactured by special interests, but truth that's founded in science. [00:04:36] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I mean, there's kind of a battle right now, right? We're like seeing it all play out live real time. Oh yeah. Got this whole make America healthy movement. We've got RFK, Bobby like and it seems like there's some major disruptions that are kind of happening right now and there's a battle and we're waking up. [00:04:58] Jason: A lot of people are waking up that hey, you know, big food, big pharma, you know, big government are not in favor of us being healthy for some reason, which is kind of scary. So yes, yeah kind of waking up to this and I don't know, maybe we're all biohackers now. I don't know. [00:05:17] Sam: Yeah. No, I you're absolutely right I think that humanity as a whole is kind of done drinking the Kool Aid when it comes to what we've been told is the truth. [00:05:27] Sam: And, you know — [00:05:29] Jason: Yeah. Cause the Kool Aid has like glyphosate in it and like, also like molds and mycotoxins, like it's got bad stuff all over it. And I'm not saying actual Kool Aid. This is metaphorical people. Metaphorically. [00:05:42] Sam: Yes. And when you look at like where, you know, just briefly to when you follow the money and you see that, like, from a business standpoint, one of the largest mergers and acquisitions in history, if you bring it to current dollar value was when big tobacco bought the food industry and you look at when that transition happened and you see what happened to our food supply and you know, we're fish in a barrel that they're just taking their pick of right now when it comes to what we have that's societally acceptable to put in our bodies and societally acceptable to engage in, in terms of social interaction, et cetera. [00:06:15] Sam: And it, yeah. Kind of funnels us down this path of high stress, which kind of takes us to today's topic with the nervous system. But yeah, I don't don't know if you have anything else you want to discuss before we dive in. [00:06:25] Jason: Well, I want to point out. So Sam really sharp guy, as you can tell already, Sam's going to be a speaker at our DoorGrow Live conference. [00:06:35] Jason: And he's going to talk about some really cool stuff that we're very holistic at DoorGrow. And so I know that in coaching entrepreneurs and having talked to thousands of property management business owners and coaching hundreds of clients that it's never really the business or that they're spending too little time in their business that's keeping them from succeeding in business. It's everything else, especially health, especially their relationships, especially their marriage. Like these things create a lot of friction for entrepreneurs And they've got a lot going on. You're not really talking about property management when you come to DoorGrow Live, but I do believe it will be a game changer for them to be able to perform more, be able to get more out of their business, be able to get more out of life, which is the goal of having a business, right? [00:07:20] Jason: That's more freedom and more fulfillment. So, yeah. So if you have not yet gone to doorgrowlive.Com and gotten your tickets. Go do that right now. Go get your tickets and make sure you're at that event. Come hang out with us in North Austin at round rock at the Kalahari resort. It's going to be awesome. [00:07:36] Jason: All right. Shameless plug completed. Now, Sam, let's get into talking about the topic at hand. [00:07:43] Sam: Yeah, I know. And thank you. And I'm really excited to get on stage and speak and I'm going to save some nuggets for the stage. Won't give it all the way here. So I'm really excited about that and helping you guys understand what the true root of your full potential actually is and not from some woo woo space, but actually understanding like the fundamental simple science beneath high performance and beneath fulfillment in life because it really does break down to a very simple equation. One of the key factors is a molecule, and that molecule is actually oxygen. [00:08:13] Sam: And when your brain is in a high stress state you would think that your body would give it more oxygen under high stress, right? But under high stress, you actually have vasoconstriction. Your blood pressure rises, blood gets pumped to your extremities, you got to get away from that proverbial bear, right? [00:08:29] Sam: But for y'all, that bear is the constant wave of tenant complaints, the constant wave of, you know, economic factors interest rate shifting stuff like that And so you have this like constant bear chasing you and if you're always in that state of fight or flight your brain is patterned to operate on survival mechanisms and a lower amount of oxygen and so And then we get this like male, sometimes male and female, but we get this, like this almost masculine energy of like, let's go conquer and do this high stress, high action push, push, push coffee, stimulant. [00:09:03] Sam: And we're really performing with our hands tied behind our back at that point, because our brain has less oxygen in it. And when you look at the other side of the nervous system, which is our parasympathetic nervous system you have this increase of oxygen in the brain. which actually raises serotonin instead of relying on that dopamine cortisol roller coaster, right? [00:09:24] Sam: And so, at the base of this is oxygen, which is bringing us life, which is creating ATP, cellular energy. And, to put it simply, If you don't find time to balance your nervous system or don't work on implementing tools to balance your nervous system, then you are limiting yourself to lower performance in the short term and decreasing performance in the long term. [00:09:48] Sam: Higher relying on stimulants, higher amounts of of just stress and cortisol and dopamine reliance in the long term, which takes away from your ability to connect with others, to find community, to find that real fulfillment that comes in life. [00:10:02] Jason: And so what you're saying is we shouldn't just overdose on coffee that here in the U. S. probably has mold in it and makes you not feel good and have to pee way too much. And then not, you know, take care of ourselves in breathing effectively and getting too little sleep, too much hustle, too much stress. [00:10:23] Sam: Yeah. [00:10:24] Jason: Okay. [00:10:24] Sam: Yeah, we can get addicted to that pattern because stress actually can feel really good. [00:10:30] Sam: When you have dopamine augmenting that cortisol, right? Without dopamine, cortisol feels really crappy. You know, you look at high anxiety. You look at that restlessness feeling where you don't feel good. You're on edge. That's when your cortisol's high and your dopamine is kind of low because you've been exhausting the dopamine stores by just pushing it. [00:10:50] Sam: Dopamine is supposed to be a short term reward to get us out of the stress back into a parasympathetic state. Dopamine was never meant to be the consistent ongoing reward. Because, like, think about it for survival, right? If you're, you know, trying to get away from the bear, and you're running, that needs to somewhat feel good, in order to get you through that stress. [00:11:11] Sam: So dopamine kicks in when oxygen lowers in the brain. And then, when you get out of the stress, you find that parasympathetic state again, you calm down, oxygen rises in the brain, serotonin rises, which is that more deeper, long term fulfilling chemical, that actually leads to creativity as well. But our society tells us that love is dopamine. It tells us that success is dopamine. It tells us achievement is dopamine. It gives us these dopamine triggers for all of the cultural hierarchy and the cultural validation, that external validation when you do something to succeed and you show it off, that's a dopamine trigger. Social media is a trigger. So all of these things, society is structured in a way that says, "dopamine's the reward. Now go buy shit, right?" Like almost all the financial economy is driven surrounding dopamine, which is a ultimate losing game because you guys all know that it doesn't really provide that end fulfillment, but since it feels good, we're kind of stuck in that loop. And so. What I want to help illuminate is where true fulfillment can be found and help with some kind of practical tools and a practical understanding of this foundational science so that when you're looking to perform at your best, you can give yourself a break and allow yourself to relax. [00:12:22] Sam: You know, before you have that next cup of coffee to keep yourself going, take some deep breaths, find some space to relax. Don't worry that your brain doesn't feel a hundred percent on. And give yourself some space to allow that peace in knowing that you're raising oxygen in the brain. You're opening oxygenation to areas that are going to drive creativity, that are going to allow for connection, that are going to allow for more presence in your body. [00:12:44] Sam: You'll be a different person in the home. You'll be a different person towards yourself. And so these are critical components of understanding the power of the nervous system when it relates to performance. Because high performance isn't just how hard you push. It's about how well you recover and regulate, and it's about how you create that balance that pushes for longevity and pushes for long term endurance and strength. [00:13:09] Sam: Because if you want to succeed and grow your business 5x, 10x, 100x, you need endurance. Sympathetic, nervous system tone, high stress does not create endurance. It's short term bursts, you crash out or you keep hitting the stimulants. And it keeps you in this narrow window of potential. You find that parasympathetic, you find that relaxation, you get creativity going in your brain, you get higher oxygenation in your brain, you're shifting gene expression towards longevity. [00:13:33] Sam: So it's a pretty powerful tool. And most people think, "oh, I don't want to meditate, you know, or I don't want to relax", or they don't feel safe when they're calm. And it's something to just work on shifting your perspective on because there's true power in that state of peace. [00:13:48] Jason: A while back, I read this book. [00:13:50] Jason: I don't know if you heard of this. It's called the Oxygen Advantage. It's by a guy named Patrick Mckeown and it's got a forward by Dr. Joseph Mercola, but it's interesting because basically the book is about how he trains athletes to breathe through their nose while working out instead of their mouth, which like exercises the lungs and increases lung capacity. [00:14:15] Jason: But if they're, if we're constantly operating with our mouth open and working with our mouth open, we actually decrease our lung capacity. And so, athletes are just burning out really quickly and they don't have the ability or the capacity to, you know, absorb as much oxygen. So like working out those muscles, like breathing through your nose, you know, is something that talks about, but that's interesting that when we're not calm, we're not getting enough oxygen that we're not recovering, we're not regulating our stress, our body probably starts to eat itself a little bit and, you know, and then we get addicted to dopamine and you know, in business, most businesses fail and really you don't have to like beat all your competitors in a lot of instances, you just need to outlive them. You just need to outlast them. And that, that endurance aspect. And so I think, you know, I think we're going to go through some financial turmoil in the marketplace. Things are probably going to get worse before it gets better as we're cleaning up all this mess financially that is going on in the government. [00:15:18] Jason: And the U S dollar is like, I think it's been going down from its original value down and down as they've been stripping value out of it through inflation and giving that money to who knows who. And so. I think there's going to be a big transition. It's going to get really stressful. [00:15:33] Jason: And I think the businesses that are just able to last through this transition and endure and they're focused on the long game are the ones that are going to win. [00:15:43] Sam: Absolutely. [00:15:44] Jason: And there's going to be a lot just eaten up. [00:15:46] Sam: Yeah. And if you don't allow that perspective of what you just explained about business to apply to your own self and your health, you know, what got you here won't get you there. [00:15:54] Sam: And if you want to sustain and succeed through the turmoil, then you need to adapt. And when you have a high stress state, you actually lose BDNF expression in the brain brain neurotropic factor and brain derived neurotropic factor. And that is our adaptability aspect and factor in our brain. And it literally decreases its efficiency, the higher, the more chronically stressed we are. [00:16:18] Sam: And so it's super important. You guys can look up BDNF and understand its role with oxygenation in the brain. And so fundamentally, you know, the more oxygenated your brain is, the greater your access to intuition, memory, and high level thinking. And those are key components to succeeding in business. [00:16:33] Sam: And when you are in a state of constant survival mode, constant reactivity, constant push, hustle, you lose that space to develop creative longterm solutions. You lose that space to be able to get that spark of inspiration on how to pivot around the corner and see around that corner or do something a little differently than what other people are doing. [00:16:55] Sam: And that's why even you look at like Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, like they would love to access that like state estate,...
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DGS 284: Leveraging Virtual Assistants for Lead Generation and Growth
02/27/2025
DGS 284: Leveraging Virtual Assistants for Lead Generation and Growth
As a property management business owner, how do you find the best people to build an effective sales team? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow Podcast, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Bob Lachance, founder of REVA Global, to talk about how you can utilize virtual assistants for lead generation and growth. You’ll Learn [01:22] Identifying a Need in the Real Estate Industry [08:53] How to Utilize VAs in Your Business [14:35] Creating a Hiring System in Your Business [19:30] Using VAs for Lead Generation Tweetables “When marketing consistently goes out, what we find is all those leads end up piling up.” “Over 70% of all sales never happen on the first touch.” “People want to do business with people they see, feel, touch, and like.” “Property management can definitely be death by a thousand cuts.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Bob: Virtual assistants are a big part of anyone's business. In my opinion today, I think you got to start looking at that because small businesses, a lot of times, especially when we start, we are on a tight budget. [00:00:12] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities daily variety unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:10] Jason: Now let's get into the show. And today's guest is Bob. Do you say Lachance? [00:01:18] Jason: Lachance. Yep. Lachance. [00:01:20] Jason: I nailed it. All right. So Bob, great to have you on the show. And, Bob, you are helping people discover the top marketing channels that can maximize lead generation when working with VAs. And so we're going to chat a bit about that today before we get into that, tell everybody a little bit about you, how you got into entrepreneurism and what led you to what you're doing now. [00:01:43] Bob: Yeah. So right now I'll just start right now. I have a real estate investment company as well. And I have a virtual assistant staffing company, so I use my VAs in my own business. So I have a rental portfolio as well as a buy sell fix flip company here in Connecticut, doing a couple of different states, but I started back about 20, 21 years ago now back in 2004. [00:02:06] Bob: I played professional hockey prior to that for eight years and then got into real estate. And you know, from real estate, helped start an education program while I was, you know, working on properties. I did a lot of, you know, fixed flip wholesaling, all that kind of good stuff. This is, again, I'm dating myself, but this is back in 2004. [00:02:25] Bob: And through the process, when I helped start this education company there was a huge need in the industry, just like you, right? You see a need out there. And I'm a lot like you on that side of it, helping people and figuring out, you know, where they could. Create passive income or income in general. [00:02:42] Bob: So, during the coaching program, while I was in it, I realized there was a huge need. Majority of the students that I coached didn't have the time to actually put into their real estate business because they were either working part time or full time. They just needed to, you know, they needed help. And for years, upon years, I was looking for a solution for that. [00:03:01] Bob: Whether it was a product I didn't know back then, again, this is going back from 2007 to 2013. I didn't know there was any services out there, like what virtual assistants were. And then I got introduced back in 2013 what a virtual assistant was. You know what this could help my business So I hired my first one and then light bulb went on like, you know what we could turn this into a business I could take the back end of what it helps create which is the real estate education company And our students could use it to help them grow their business help scale help, you know, get your time and freedom back. So launched it in 2014 and then fast forward today you know 10 years later i've been in business for a while and I also have like I said my real estate investment company [00:03:45] Jason: Nice. [00:03:46] Jason: Nice. All right. And so let's get into the topic at hand. So, we're going to talk a little bit about leveraging virtual assistants. And so how did you kind of start doing this yourself? [00:03:58] Bob: Yeah well, when I first got into this, like I said I door knocked first, we didn't have the opportunity to have, you know, virtual assistants do some outbound stuff. [00:04:07] Bob: And I didn't understand, you know, I didn't understand what outsourcing was when I first started. It was just me. I had an individual who was my business partner back in the day, but first year I door knocked. I went from door to door, individuals that were behind on payments. So it wasn't the easiest job in the world, but it allowed you to understand how to build a business from ground up. [00:04:29] Bob: I think that was very important back then. So nowadays you can have virtual assistants do that, whether it's you know, cold calling, whether it's responding to direct mail, whether it's text messaging, whether it's social media, whether it's going out to, you know, Facebook marketplace and going right direct to seller, you also have rarely used now Craigslist, of course, but there's different ways to acquire and use your virtual assistant to do that. So that's just, again, a long and short. [00:04:54] Jason: So go ahead and tell people a little bit about your company and what you help people do. And I'm really curious because this is usually a difficult thing for business owners to outsource. [00:05:05] Jason: Usually they'll outsource some of the lowest level stuff, and it's usually not towards growth, lead generation, outreach, stuff like that. Those pieces can be really difficult to get dialed in or to do effectively. And so, tell us a little bit about REVA global? Okay. Yeah. [00:05:22] Bob: So, you know, like I said, we started back in 2014. [00:05:26] Bob: Like I said, I've been doing this for a long time and just to fast forward to what that looks like today and working with property managers, because obviously the individuals that are on your podcast here, I'll speak to them. And I know, you know, many people that also buy and hold also probably do fix and flip or also may wholesale, but it's kind of the same concept, but there's a lot of different tasks within it that virtual assistants can do. [00:05:50] Bob: So what I did is I broke up all the stuff that our VA is doing in my own business because you know, many individuals that are listening to this will relate to a company like ours because like I said, we have a real estate investment company, but we also use our VA's which I think is pretty cool. I think Nowadays, it's very important as a service provider like myself to use it to make sure it works so I think that's a pretty unique thing that we actually have. But what we do, we have virtual assistants that acquire, we call them like a department of acquisition. So if you're looking for leads, you could do cold calling, you do text blasting, you could do lead management. You know, lead management, a lot of us, I'm just like, you will have all these leads in your database, but if you don't get ahold of them the first time, your marketing is going to consistently go out. So when marketing consistently goes out, what we find is all those leads end up piling up. And if you try to reach out to them the first time, you know you have a very small percentage that are actually going to pick up the phone. Right? So you need somebody then that will continue to follow up on those leads. [00:06:57] Bob: And a national statistic is over 70% of all sales never happen on the first touch, right? So you have to continue. And I think that's probably 90 or 95 percent nowadays. So that's what we find in our office. And I know a lot of our clients say the same thing. So that number could change a little bit depending on what you read, but our experience in our office is over 90%. [00:07:21] Bob: So what I mean by that is the first touch, whether it's direct mail call or a cold call, whatever you do for direct mail or whatever you do for marketing, that first touch will not equate to a contract, so you're going to have somebody that's continuing to follow up with those individuals. Very important. [00:07:39] Bob: I wish I would have understood that stat when I first started real estate. But again, you know, you learn over time. Another stuff. If you look at other tasks as well, that works very well is marketing. Right social media management because you look at any type of business if you don't have marketing It's very difficult brand awareness, right people want to do business with people they see, feel, touch, and like so you need to make sure that you're out there You're out in the public's eye. [00:08:05] Bob: I think that's very important. I know you guys do a great job of that Jason on the marketing side of always being out there because I see in a lot of different places everywhere I'm looking online. So whoever's doing your stuff man, great job. So you're doing a fantastic job on that side of it. And then you go into leasing so if we look at property management you know driving leads is one thing, but you also have to, you know, close them. [00:08:27] Bob: So if it's you, me, or whoever's the one on the phone locking up those deals, it then goes to once you own them, you got leasing, you got move in, move out, you have collection, you have evictions, you have maintenance, you have accounts receivable, you have accounts payable, bookkeeping, accounting etc that fall underneath that property management umbrella, that virtual assistants are phenomenal to actually take on those tasks for you. [00:08:52] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the typical process for somebody that could use some help from a company like yours? How do you engage them? [00:09:01] Jason: What's onboarding like? How does that work? [00:09:03] Bob: I think for anybody who's looking to scale or looking to just get help in their business. You know, here in Connecticut, it's pretty interesting because if you're looking to hire someone in house, you start looking at what's going on with the world and what's going on with the economy in state of Connecticut, minimum wage is up to $15.69. [00:09:24] Bob: So when you start looking at that I know in my area, if I try to hire someone at minimum wage, they don't have a four year college degree. That's just not the highest level individual that you'd want working in your office. And so now you start looking at those things and what's happening around the country. [00:09:42] Bob: Virtual assistants are very are a big part of anyone's business. In my opinion today, I think you got to start looking at that because small businesses, a lot of times, especially when we start, we are on a tight budget. Right. And so for us to start to scale or start to grow or start to hire, we really need to look at what's going out, meaning out of our pocket. [00:10:04] Bob: So it's very important. So they first look at number one, what can we afford as small business owners? If we look at that number, now we start looking at what tasks in our business do not put money in our pocket. Right? And if you look in your world, meaning the property management world, it is a lot of the tasks like leasing, like taking calls from tenants, move in, move outs, eviction process when you're calling attorneys back and forth. What does that look like? There's just a lot of back and forth, right? Maintenance concerns. You get those all the time and those are the things that burn up your time. Your phone doesn't stop ringing. [00:10:44] Bob: So if your husband or wife wants to go on vacation with you and your phone doesn't stop ringing. That's going to put a lot of stress and a lot of challenges in your personal life to where, especially when you continue to grow. You have to put more systems and processes in your business. You know, if you had one house, that's one headache. [00:11:02] Bob: You had two, that's two headaches. You have a hundred, you have a hundred potential headaches that if you don't want to take those headaches on yourself, it's always good to have somebody else take those headaches before it gets to you. [00:11:15] Jason: Yeah. Property management can definitely be death by a thousand cuts. [00:11:18] Bob: Yep. [00:11:18] Jason: Yep. And if you get it really well dialed in though, yeah, it can be a really great residual income business model. [00:11:25] Bob: So Very good. Very good. Well, two sides of it, right? You buy, right? You have an equity play there, right? And if you don't have to deal with the headache, you get the positive income, you get tax advantages, things like that. [00:11:36] Bob: So, I mean, I'm a huge advocate of buying and holding and property management because over time, the more, like you said, the more properties you actually hold, the bigger your income grows. [00:11:48] Jason: Nice. Yeah. Cool. So, so I love this. There's lots of low level tasks. It does get really expensive trying to afford staff and team members and you don't want the cheapest or lowest level or worst people. [00:12:02] Jason: You know, in the United States representing your business. And so, sometimes you can get people at a fraction of the price point that have a lot more education that are a lot better. And so when you, any of the roles that are able to be done virtually, you open yourself up to a global marketplace rather than just your local city. [00:12:22] Jason: And so, yeah, so there's definitely advantages. So my entire team are virtual and I've got team members in various areas, Canada, Philippines. Egypt gosh, I don't know where else like all over the place and I've hired people over the past and just about everywhere. So yeah. And so, and so I'm not limited, so I'm able to just go find the best and I'm able to figure out, okay what can kind of fit into our budget and what can we afford in order to do that. [00:12:49] Bob: Right. And to your point, to get back to what that looks like, I mean, anyone in this world could go out and go source for their own candidates. You know, we set up a very unique system process. We have a whole sourcing and recruiting team. All my virtual assistants are in the Philippines. We set up a sourcing and recruiting team out of the Philippines, so they're Looking through, you know, thousands of resumes every single month sifting through and we're getting the best of those Resumes that come in as soon as they pass then they go through an interview process. [00:13:22] Bob: They pass the interview process They go to our training team and they train for about a month on various tasks property management tasks lead generation tasks, etc And then once they actually get to the end of that stage, they do another test and a lot of individuals do not pass our testing phase. And that's a positive thing because, you know, that's a way to kind of weed out the individuals that wouldn't make it, yeah, very good. [00:13:48] Bob: So, after that goes to our placements team and our placements team, it's kind of like match. com. They look at exactly what you're, you know, what the tasks are. And we do DISC profiling, things like that, and predictive index. And we look at the tasks that they're good at, and we match them exactly up with the client and the tasks that they're looking for. [00:14:05] Bob: So for instance, if someone's looking for a bookkeeper, you're not going to give them a profile that's a sales profile, right? You're going to, you're going to give them the correct profile. You put them together, they go through an interview process, and they pick the best candidate that fits within them so after that, it goes to our operations team. We have what we call a client service manager that helps manage the relationship between you and your va, so it's very streamlined. [00:14:27] Bob: You know, we tried every different business model there is out there and the model that we have right now seems to be the best model. [00:14:34] Jason: Nice. Yeah, I always recommend if you're a property manager like watching this or listening if you don't have a really solid hiring process you have not like tested embedded and experimented with, then the best initial way to do hiring is to leverage other companies' hiring processes. Go and work with a company and there's lots of different companies I've worked with over the years to get people on my team, and then eventually we've built a really good process internally, but In the beginning, I do think every business eventually needs their own hiring system, but if you don't have a great robust hiring system that you can get candidates consistently, that you know are a good culture fit, a good skill fit for the role, a good personality fit for the role then you need to go leverage somebody else's hiring system. [00:15:20] Jason: So I would highly recommend, especially if you're going to dabble with VAs, especially in the Philippines or any other area, that you want to not be dealing with all the riff raff and the challenges and everything else. You want to have some help with this. So I highly recommend you leverage somebody else's hiring system. And they're going to help you not waste as much time and money for sure. [00:15:46] Bob: And that's one of the things that's a great very great point because when you're first starting out or you're smaller. The best thing to do is learn off of others, right? [00:15:55] Bob: It's you'll walk through a company like mine. You say, "wow, what a great system." You know what? Document what we do and then implement it in your own business if you start growing. I think that is a fantastic idea, Jason, for that. Because, you know, you look at the biggest companies in the world. [00:16:09] Bob: They didn't just, you know, start being the biggest companies in the world or that, you know, it doesn't, you don't have to be the biggest, but they learned from somebody and they started implementing and they tested, you don't always get it right the first time. But after a while you will hone in and get that right. [00:16:24] Bob: So I 100 percent agree whether it's with our company or anybody else. Like I said, anyone could do anything themselves. It all depends on what you need help with at the beginning. [00:16:34] Jason: Yeah. And it also depends on how long do you want to suck until you figure it out. [00:16:40] Bob: That's true. [00:16:41] Jason: Like so if you want to collapse time, I highly recommend. Because I know when I started experimenting with hiring in the Philippines. Like there's just things you don't even think to ask like we had to ask like where are you accessing the internet? [00:16:53] Jason: Is this like at a cafe at your home? Is it reliable? What kind of computer do you have? You know, we needed to be able to you know there's...
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DGS 283: Building Trust and Closing Deals with Video Testimonials
02/20/2025
DGS 283: Building Trust and Closing Deals with Video Testimonials
In a world where your potential clients are constantly inundated with marketing content, how do you create trust and ensure your property management business sticks out? In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management expert Jason Hull sits down with Dan Lievens, Founder of Share One, to talk about the benefits of collecting and utilizing client testimonial videos. You’ll Learn [01:56] Getting Started as an Entrepreneur [08:41] The Impact of Social Poof and Positive Reviews [15:39] How to Ask Your Clients for Video Testimonials [24:53] Handling Objections and Retaining Clients Tweetables “Marketing is always evolving as well. Like it's not like you learn to do it once and then you're done forever.” “If I say it, no one believes it because it's my business, but if my clients say it, that's the ultimate social proof.” “The ability to be able to create human connection in any marketing or any business, I think is absolutely critical today.” “A lot of people think, "Well I have a skill in doing something. Maybe I could start a business doing that thing," but the skill is the technician-level work.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Dan: Even if you have a solid business model, like property management, for example, which is obviously needed you know, how do you communicate that? [00:00:06] Dan: How do you attract the right people? And so it's a constant exercise of being able to put yourself in a position of your customers. [00:00:15] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management, growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. All right. My guest today is Dan Lievens. Dan, welcome to the show. [00:01:23] Dan: So glad to be here and looking forward to meeting your amazing community here. Thank you. [00:01:29] Jason: Awesome. So Dan and I, we met at a local mastermind in the Austin area, which is really cool because I need more friends and I was like, how can I meet some? I'm in all these different masterminds, but I'm like you're traveling all over the US I'm like, I don't get to hang out with any of these people that often. So yeah, so I joined a local one and there's some really cool people in that group, which is really awesome. [00:01:53] Jason: So Dan's one of them and Dan, why don't you give us a little bit of background on yourself as an entrepreneur and then we'll get into what you do. [00:02:02] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So, this is actually my 12th business and in a variety of different industries from technology to health and wellness. [00:02:12] Dan: And my last big venture was opening up coworking facilities in the Philadelphia area. So I was one of the first people to open coworking facilities there and basically catering to startups and small businesses. And we very quickly became a business incubator and a business accelerator and supporting, you know, small startups and getting going right? [00:02:35] Dan: And what I noticed pretty quickly was there is a pretty high rate of failure, and the rate of failure was primarily due to not necessarily the idea of being bad but more the lack of the ability to communicate the value proposition. So that's when I kind of pivoted and said, "Hey, how can I continue growing my impact and helping these folks?" [00:02:56] Dan: That's when I started getting into marketing, really helping them be able to communicate a little bit better in terms of why they do what they do and really meeting the clients where they're at. And so we started getting into video production and pre pandemic, we had a huge video studio with audience, live audiences and all sorts of recording stuff. [00:03:18] Dan: And then the pandemic hit and that's when we kind of realized that, "Hey, at the end of the day, yes, fancy videos are good to have, but what's really going to help people move the needle is social proof. So how can we create a service for businesses to be able to leverage social proof, in other words, video or testimonials basically, to give consumers exactly what they're looking for?" [00:03:42] Dan: So if you're in a market to, you know, rent an apartment or to buy something somewhere, the first thing you do is you look at reviews and So that's how Share One began is really being able to help businesses capture legitimate social proof to grow their businesses. [00:04:00] Jason: Yeah, awesome. Business can be tough. And like you're saying, there's a lot of good ideas out there, or there's a lot of people that think they have good ideas and you know, I've noticed not everybody tests those ideas. They just, they think the idea is so good, they're like, "everybody else has to love it." And they're surprised when nobody else has the same taste as them. You know? Other people don't love it. Or there's so many pieces that go into it kind of like the book The E Myth Revisited, a lot of people think, "Well I have a skill in doing something. Maybe I could start a business doing that thing," but the skill is the technician level work. Usually like "I can bake a cake, so maybe I should start a bakery business," you know? And then they're like, "Oh, accounting, marketing, sales, prospecting, like all the details, inventory, all the stuff besides baking a cake is where they get hung up on and they get frustrated. [00:04:59] Jason: And then there's just people that are just really bad marketers. They just don't know how to get the message across. Sometimes you run into the opposite problem though, right? Like I've had coaches and people I've worked with that were really great marketers, but their stuff wasn't super great. [00:05:14] Jason: I've had that situation happen as well. But even if they were great marketers and their stuff wasn't great, they still were making money... unfortunately. [00:05:25] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. You know, most entrepreneurs, you know, me included, we find a passion, we find a purpose and we come up with some kind of a amazing technology or whatever that may be. [00:05:35] Dan: And then, you know, our personality is just jump in and do it, you know. And it's so valuable now to really kind of take a step back and understand, you know, what the consumer wants and it goes beyond that. I think it really goes into, you know, even if you have a solid business model, like property management, for example, which is obviously needed you know, how do you communicate that? [00:05:58] Dan: How do you attract the right people? And so it's a constant exercise of being able to put yourself in a position of your customers. Right. And then even as time changes as AI comes in, which hopefully we can talk about a little bit today the landscape changes and consumer behavior patterns changes and what people are looking for changes as well. [00:06:18] Dan: So to, to have that finger on the pulse of, "Hey, what are my prospects actually thinking? What's going through their head?" Is a constant exercise that I think every single entrepreneur needs to do. And then from that perspective, it's like, okay, how do I reverse engineer what's in their mind? [00:06:34] Dan: How do I meet them where they are? Create the language and then slowly kind of invite them into the product and service that you're offering. [00:06:41] Jason: Yeah. Marketing is always evolving as well. Like it's not like you learn to do it once and then you're done forever. Right? Like what I did to grow DoorGrow in the beginning doesn't work anymore. [00:06:53] Jason: Right? Some of the things that we were doing, like I had LinkedIn automation that was able to generate profile views. And then people would look at the profile view and go, "Oh!" And it's like "somebody viewed your profile." So they go look at mine, which I had set up like a sales page and then I was getting messages and then I would message them, "Hey..." I was getting friend requests or whatever you call it, connections on LinkedIn. [00:07:16] Jason: And then I would send them a message. "What prompted you to reach out?" And then they started clamping down on how many views you could generate a day. And like, then the automation, like, and eventually that whole mechanism pretty much died, you know, and then it was Facebook groups for a while. For a while, the Facebook algorithm was heavily aligned towards Facebook groups. [00:07:34] Jason: So that went crazy for us there was a time where it was like, you know It was just, you know, organic Google was doing its thing. We still get business through that, but you know, it's always evolving as well, which is a challenge. Now, one thing that has always worked well, always, is testimonials that has always worked well for us. [00:07:56] Jason: And so we have more testimonials. I realized this early on. If I say it, no one believes it because it's my business, but if my clients say it, that's the ultimate social proof. That's the ultimate evidence. And so gathering testimonials has always been a like a focus of us at DoorGrow and we have more video testimonials than any other coach or consultant in the property management space. [00:08:24] Jason: I mean, we've been doing this a long time, but we're also really good. But the challenge is how do you show that you're really good in a way that people believe it? Well, I just capture other people's results. So we're always having clients share their wins on our calls and then we're recording it and stuff like that. [00:08:41] Jason: So what, what prompted you to start to focus on testimonials as a business idea? [00:08:48] Dan: So I do have, you know, pretty strong tech background. So being able to leverage the technology and human resources to be able to give businesses truly what they need. Just as an example we'll take care of the entire invitation interview process with the real producer and edit everything down for less than 200 a piece, right? [00:09:09] Dan: So our next competitors to do the same thing. are $3,000 to $5,000. So we've really, you know, grown this entire business to be able to scale and give businesses exactly what it is that they need. And as I mentioned before, over the years, it's like, yes, you can get super fancy with different things. But video testimonials today by far are the strongest piece of marketing content that you can use as you just mentioned. There's research that says there's an up to 62 percent increase in conversions. So the conversion could be a schedule, a call or schedule, a visit, or, you know, fill in the form. An increase of 62 percent if you start showing video testimonials on pages. [00:09:51] Dan: And today, recent research also shows that 82 percent of consumers have some level of suspicion towards written reviews. That includes Google, Yelp. Amazon today employs 12,000 full time employees just to track down fake reviews. So, you know, talking about market change, right? So that is definitely something that's changing. [00:10:10] Dan: And so being able to capture somebody in the comfort of their homes or their offices, truly speaking from their heart and sharing where they were before and how they met you and what your lives look like today and sharing that transformation is, you know, ultimately the most powerful thing you can do because it's believable, right? [00:10:29] Jason: Yeah, it's reality. It's not AI. It's not you know, even text testimonials, like on Amazon, there's lots of fake reviews. Like, you can have fake text. Somebody could type out anything. You got to chat GPT. "Type out a fake review that sounds credible," you know, or something like this. [00:10:46] Jason: Yeah. [00:10:47] Dan: So be super careful with that. If anybody out there is, you know, starting out and you're looking for some kind of social proof on your website or anything, the FTC had a new bill in October really cracking down on people that are using fake reviews, $27,000 fine, and just some really crazy stuff. [00:11:05] Dan: That's, you know, consumer protection. [00:11:07] Jason: You have to be able to back it up. So, yeah, you put some text on something with a testimonial, if you have the video original of that, you're good, right? [00:11:15] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, in my company, we take a lot of care in terms of certifying that every single video that we conduct is a true human transformation. [00:11:24] Dan: So it's a critical component, but at the end of the day, it's like, you know, any listeners today. What's the first thing that you do when you go on Amazon? You look at the number of reviews, look at the number of stars. Is that like four? Is it four and a half? Or is it five? Right? [00:11:36] Dan: And then we scroll down and say, does anybody have any videos? And do these things look legitimate? Right? It's, that's the first thing that we, that anybody does when purchasing something new. And that's part of human nature, right? Dr. Robert Cialdini has a really famous bestseller book called Influence. [00:11:52] Dan: I don't know if you've read that. It's all about the psychology of persuasion. And in there, he mentions that, you know, out of 95 percent of all consumers are what they call imitators and only 5 percent are initiator. So what that means is only 5 percent of people will be open and willing to go be that first person to try something, right? [00:12:15] Dan: Yeah. 95 percent of consumers are waiting for some kind of social proof. They're imitating somebody else's results. [00:12:22] Jason: That's why the bandwagon approach is so effective. Most people on the planet want safety and security. It's more important to them than freedom or fulfillment in life. [00:12:35] Jason: They want safety and security first. Those people are not entrepreneurs They work for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are a small percentage of people and they value freedom and fulfillment over safety and security. We want that too, but our priority is in a different order. [00:12:50] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, even attracting tenants or you know, bigger decisions to there's especially with the age of AI. [00:13:01] Dan: So I personally believe that we're going into next six months to a year. I mean, things are moving so quickly right now is that there is going to be a revolution or direct kind of already is of like humans against bots, right? So the ability to be able to create human connection in any marketing or any business, I think is absolutely critical today. [00:13:22] Jason: And [00:13:22] Dan: most people aren't doing it. So you can definitely be ahead of your competition if you start leveraging and building that human connection into your marketing. And one of the easiest way of doing that is allowing your happy clients to tell a story. [00:13:35] Jason: Yeah, I totally believe that. I think, you know, that all the interactions that AI can do are going to put a premium on humanity. Human connection and human conversation and human relationship is going to be a premium luxury product in some way. And so that's one way to set yourself apart always is to go deeper and to show care [00:14:03] Dan: Yeah. [00:14:04] Jason: Most companies are going to leverage ai and people are going to leverage ai to go wider but it's not going to have the same depth AI doesn't have that soul. Might get there. [00:14:14] Jason: Yeah, I can see that. And that'll be important. The other challenge I've noticed though, with gathering testimonials is that if I do it, It feels a little awkward and it feels a little forced. Hey, what do you think about my business, you know? And so I think there's an advantage in what you're doing. And then like I know what it takes. Like we have somebody on my team that can edit video and can reach out and like do interviews. And like this is a difficult thing for the typical business owner to like go and do. It's like almost a whole nother thing, a whole nother business or something that we've had to incorporate over the years. And our best testimonials are the unprompted things that we randomly captured during our calls, which we do three, one hour calls weekly coaching clients, group calls. And we just. Have the whole thing recorded. So we capture stuff constantly, just unsolicited, unprompted, great things. [00:15:14] Jason: But when I have to go ask the client, "Hey, how did you like this event?" It just gets awkward and it's not as effective and they can't think of what to say. And they're like, oh yeah, it's really good. And I'm like, "no, tell me about all the problems you had and tell me about all the success we've helped you create." [00:15:31] Jason: But in that moment, they're like, "oh my gosh, I'm taking a test right now in front of a camera. I don't know what to say." And then I don't get something good. So. [00:15:39] Dan: Yeah, there's quite an art to doing that. And the word awkward definitely sticks out like a sore thumb from the invitation, like asking your people, "Hey, would you record a video testimonial?" All the way to interviewing them as well. [00:15:53] Dan: So we take a slightly different approach. And the invitation, we have a 47 percent success rate in getting your clients to show up for an interview. And that's all about the way our white glove invitation process works. [00:16:06] Jason: This is like all of their clients that they give you their information, you reach out and you can get about half to give you a full testimonial. [00:16:16] Dan: Yeah. [00:16:17] Jason: It's an amazing stat that I'm just saying, by the way, everybody, imagine if you got half of all of your clients to give you testimonials, you would look like an amazing business. [00:16:27] Dan: So whether you're doing it yourself or somebody else, let me just give you a couple of pointers. We never use the words "video testimonial." [00:16:34] Dan: So it's always something along the lines of, "Hey, I realized that, you know, you've been living here for a month and you seem really happy." Or, you know, "you've recently had a transformation... [00:16:44] Jason: We've managed your property for a while. [00:16:45] Dan: Yep. So think something along those lines and say, "Hey you know, there are a couple of really cool individuals that we're trying to bring into our community, and they're on the fence about moving here, if they could hear firsthand what it's like living here from somebody like you, I think you'd have, you know, great neighbors, right?" Something along those lines. "Would you be open to meeting with one of our producers just for a quick 15 minute chat over video, just to ask you a few questions about your stay here? And you know, your story can be truly inspiring to others. And maybe you'll meet some new neighbors," something along those lines, right? So really getting creative and the invitation don't ask for video testimonials, really about, hey, how can you as the client contribute to somebody else's wellbeing, right? That's another human nature thing that's important. And then...
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DGS 282: How to Adapt When Things Don't Go as Planned
02/14/2025
DGS 282: How to Adapt When Things Don't Go as Planned
Things don’t always go as planned in life and in business. It’s important for property management entrepreneurs to be able to roll with the punches. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss a recent experience where they were forced to pivot and adapt over and over again. You’ll Learn [01:58] The Original Plan [05:31] How a Winter Storm Distrupted a Business and Family Trip [08:52] Moral of the Story: Be Prepared [11:08] Your Plan is Not Always the Right Plan for You Tweetables “Moral of the story is be prepared.” “This is how businesses work. Your best plan is sometimes going to fail and you're going to have to come up with a new way of doing it and you're going to have to adapt.” “There may be a reason that things are not going the way that you wanted them to go right now.” “ The only time that you won't have your breakthrough is if you quit.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: There is a bigger plan out there for you, and there may be a reason that things are not going the way that you wanted them to go right now. [00:00:09] Sarah: There may be a reason that you're not experiencing the results that you thought that you would at this stage in the game. [00:00:17] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:35] Jason: DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:54] Jason: At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull and Sarah Hull. Now let's get into the show. Alright. [00:01:16] Jason: So, today we are recording this episode at, what time is it now? [00:01:22] Sarah: It is almost midnight. [00:01:23] Jason: It is late. On Monday. And this will go live or be streamed later. And so if you're watching this, thanks for watching. And we're not actually like real time live at this moment, but it's because we had to change things up and make different plans. [00:01:42] Sarah: Live in the moment, we're probably still in the car. [00:01:45] Jason: Yeah, so we will be driving tomorrow during our podcast episode. So we wanted to record this episode real quick so we can get one out. And in today's topic, we're just going to share a little bit of our adventure. And, you know, the moral of the story will be things don't always go according to plan. [00:02:03] Jason: So. [00:02:04] Sarah: Sure don't. [00:02:05] Jason: Alright, so, where do we start? [00:02:08] Sarah: Alright, well, let's do quick synopsis. Where are we right now? Ohio, I think? I'm pretty sure we're in Ohio. [00:02:15] Jason: I think so. [00:02:16] Sarah: I think it's Ohio is the right answer. So, we've been to, in the last few days, we left on Friday, we've been to Texas, we've been to two days in Tennessee, we accidentally went to Kentucky, now we're in Ohio, tomorrow we're going to Pennsylvania. [00:02:30] Sarah: So, I think that's five states. Five states in five days. It's a great time. So, we're driving from Texas to Pennsylvania. It's supposed to be a straight shot, up like this. And it's this crazy record breaking winter storm, and we're driving through some of that. We're missing the big part of it. [00:02:51] Sarah: So we had to adjust our route. So our plan, this was our plan, was to leave on Friday. We're going from Texas to Memphis, Tennessee. Then the next morning, we were going to go to Graceland. We did do that, and then we spent some time in Nashville that evening. And then from Nashville, we were going to go to Morganstown, West Virginia, and then from there, drive into Dallas, Pennsylvania. [00:03:18] Sarah: So, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we were supposed to get to Pennsylvania on Monday, which is tonight, we are not in Pennsylvania. We are, I'm pretty sure, somewhere in Ohio, past Akron. And where, what's the name of this? [00:03:32] Jason: Youngstown. [00:03:33] Sarah: Youngstown, near Youngstown. That's where we are, right now. And so that was our plan. And then because of this crazy storm, we were leaving Nashville. We left Nashville. Roads were fine. Then all of a sudden, a little bit of rain. That was okay. Then, snow. And that was awful. And we were trying to get from Nashville, Tennessee up to Morgantown, West Virginia. Did not happen. Not even close. So we were going to stop in Lexington, Kentucky for lunch around like 3 o'clock or 3:30. That was not the plan. We ended up staying in Kentucky because it took us so long to get to Kentucky because of the crazy storm that we then had to stay overnight in Lexington and then reroute. So we were going this way and now we're going that way. [00:04:31] Jason: So do you want to share why we're doing a road trip? [00:04:34] Jason: Which is crazy to do. [00:04:36] Sarah: It's crazy to do. I know, right? I could have flown there in a day. So we're driving my car that I've owned for a couple years now. I'm driving to Pennsylvania, and I'm giving the car to my mom as a gift. She has absolutely no idea. [00:04:52] Jason: It's a surprise. [00:04:53] Sarah: That this is happening. [00:04:54] Sarah: I don't think she watches the podcast. [00:04:56] Jason: No. Probably not. [00:04:56] Sarah: Hopefully it's safe. But I'm gifting the car to my mom. I want her to have a nice car, and a reliable car, and not have to worry about things. So, I'm gifting her the car. She has absolutely no idea. Coincidentally, it's also in a couple of days, my brother Jason's birthday. [00:05:14] Sarah: So, shout out to Jason. Happy early birthday. We love you. And we're going to do this little trip. We're going to see my family for a little bit. We're going to go out to dinner for my brother Jason's birthday. Give my mom a car, and then fly back home and we are running an event. So that's why we're doing all of this in the first place. [00:05:31] Sarah: The whole crazy part of the story here is when we left Nashville, we were trying to get to Morganstown. It was insane on the road. Just wildly insane. Like snow, ice, there was a mix, there was sleet. We were going like 40 miles an hour. I was just happy to be moving. We saw multiple cars that had run off the road. [00:05:58] Sarah: We saw a couple of tractor trailers that we're in accidents. We saw a few accidents. We were almost in a few accidents ourselves. And this trip is not at all going as planned. We had to move our flight, and then move our flight again, and then move our flight a third time. So then we, last night we almost gave up on this whole thing. [00:06:18] Sarah: I was going to quit and just leave my car in Cincinnati, fly home. back to Texas and then come back and finish the second leg of this trip a second time. Jason woke up this morning and he said, "I think we can do it, babe. I think we can do it." So here we are, but this is not... [00:06:35] Jason: We were not prepared for this storm. [00:06:37] Jason: This car had pretty bald tires, which was... we were not ready. [00:06:43] Sarah: No. [00:06:43] Jason: Yeah. So after sliding off the road a little bit, twice, yeah, on a freeway. [00:06:50] Sarah: On a freeway. [00:06:51] Jason: On a highway. Yeah. [00:06:52] Sarah: And car is supposed to be heading in this direction, and then it turned in. [00:06:57] Jason: And we were just off to the side, so we were able to get back on the road safely both times. [00:07:02] Jason: Thank goodness. Yeah. And not get hit by a tractor trailer. [00:07:05] Sarah: Yeah, we didn't get hit by anything. The car didn't get damaged. We are safe. And to that I can only thank God. The whole time I was praying, our fathers, I was saying Hail Mary's, our fathers, the whole time. I was just praying to God and God took care of us made sure that we were safe made sure the car is safe, made sure that we got where we were going, made sure we didn't get stranded in the car because we saw a couple people stranded. [00:07:30] Jason: Yeah. [00:07:31] Sarah: It was scary. [00:07:31] Sarah: It was really scary. [00:07:32] Jason: We eventually pulled off and went and found a tire store [00:07:36] Sarah: Yeah, we were going to continue out there for a while. [00:07:38] Jason: Got new tires. [00:07:39] Sarah: And something told me it might have been God telling me like "go, you need tires. Go get tires." So I said to Jason, I said, "Can you find...?" [00:07:47] Sarah: Can you find? No. [00:07:49] Jason: I wanted to get some better tires on that car, for sure. [00:07:51] Sarah: So, I said, "is there a tire place that's like, nearby, that's open right now, that we can go to right now?" So we did. Took a little pit stop detour, but it was very well worth it. I just don't think we would have made the rest of the trip in one piece. [00:08:06] Jason: The first tire store we went to was closed. [00:08:08] Sarah: Yeah. Like it wasn't even plowed to get to it. They were closed. The third one was a tread. So we got new tires. That's good. The guy at the tire store, what did he tell you? The tread level was like a four. It's real, it's really bad. [00:08:21] Jason: Yeah. [00:08:21] Sarah: It was real bad. Yeah. So, that was fun. [00:08:23] Jason: So We got fresh tires. Then the car drove really well. [00:08:27] Jason: Plus we had pretty much made it through the worst of the weather, which we had planned. Because there were two ways we could go. The northern route had less weather, so. [00:08:39] Sarah: Yep. That's why we're in Ohio. [00:08:41] Jason: So. [00:08:41] Sarah: And not through West Virginia. [00:08:43] Jason: Yeah, we'd probably be in a very terrible spot if we had gone the wrong way. [00:08:47] Jason: So. [00:08:47] Sarah: Yeah. We'd be off on the side of the road frozen like popsicles. Oh gosh. You guys would never hear from us again. [00:08:52] Jason: So moral of the story is be prepared. Make sure you're prepared. Have a plan. And so we've done lots of plans and changing of plans and so this is part of life. And this is how businesses work. Your best plan is sometimes going to fail and you're going to have to come up with a new way of doing it and you're going to have to adapt. And so one thing entrepreneurs, we are good at is adaptability. We figure it out cause we have to, and we adapt. And so we've adapted a lot today. [00:09:23] Jason: And yesterday. The last couple days. Yeah, the last couple days. [00:09:25] Sarah: We had a plan, we changed a plan, we changed that plan, we changed a plan again. We just keep changing it. [00:09:30] Jason: And that causes us. We're just rolling with the punches. That causes us to have to adapt in business. So here we are recording a podcast. [00:09:36] Jason: Here we are. [00:09:36] Sarah: At midnight. [00:09:37] Jason: In a hotel room. [00:09:37] Sarah: Which Jason did not want to do. [00:09:39] Jason: No. No. I was like, we don't have to do anything that we don't want to do. We don't have to do this. [00:09:44] Sarah: No. And I said, we are not recording a podcast live from the car because we might die. No. [00:09:49] Jason: We're not going to do that. [00:09:49] Sarah: We might die live on camera. [00:09:51] Sarah: Yeah, that would be... [00:09:52] Jason: All right. So hopefully some of you got some value from this. If you do not have a good plan for your business, then that's something that we can help you with here at DoorGrow, help you come up with a plan, and help you adapt to some of the things that are getting thrown at your way. [00:10:09] Jason: This is why we mapped out the DoorGrow code, our roadmap, for some of the most common challenges and problems. So if you would like a copy of the DoorGrow code, just reach out to us. We'd be happy to give you one and tell you a little bit about how we might be able to help you and hear about your challenges. [00:10:24] Jason: So reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.Com or go to our website or join our free Facebook group by going to doorgrowclub.Com. Make sure to answer the questions. We reject 60 to 70 percent of the applicants that try to join that group. So it's only for property management business owners. [00:10:44] Jason: So if you own a property management business or seriously planning on starting one, then you can request access to that group. Make sure to answer the questions. We would love to have you inside. And that's it. [00:10:55] Sarah: No, that's not it. No. [00:10:56] Jason: Oh, there's more. [00:10:57] Sarah: That wasn't it. I said, what are we going to talk about this episode? [00:11:00] Sarah: I told you what we're going to talk about, then we just... So. [00:11:03] Sarah: It's not the end of the episode. Surprise! A little bit more. But wait, there's more! [00:11:07] Jason: But wait, there's more. [00:11:08] Sarah: So for those of you that do have a plan, and you're like, "yeah, no, I definitely have a plan. This is not applicable to me," we had a plan going into this as well. [00:11:17] Sarah: So, when you have a plan and life does not work out the way that you planned, and things don't work out the way that you thought that they would, and you're going through things and you're trying to figure out, you know, "what am I doing wrong? And why isn't this working? And like, why is this so hard? I don't understand why it's not happening the way that I wanted it to happen," and why it's just maybe not happening at all... [00:11:40] Sarah: or maybe it's happening, but it's just so slow, and it's so hard, then you just need to know that sometimes there's a bigger plan in place for you somewhere. And if you're religious, you might believe that God, or the universe, or fate, or whatever you might want to call it. There is a bigger plan out there for you, and there may be a reason that things are not going the way that you wanted them to go right now. [00:12:07] Sarah: There may be a reason that you're not experiencing the results that you thought that you would at this stage in the game. Just like when we thought we would go to West Virginia. Had we actually gotten to West Virginia, we'd be stranded there for sure, because they are getting hammered with snow right now. [00:12:22] Sarah: So the whole, like, West Virginia, D. C. area Hammered with snow, and that was our plan. So I'm grateful, although it's a little crazy, I'm grateful that we didn't end up going that way. I'm grateful that there was a bigger plan in place for us. So just trust that you do have support when you reach out to people like your mentors, and if you're in the DoorGrow Mastermind, there are so many resources for you, including property managers who are in the exact same spot that you are in. [00:12:56] Sarah: They've been there. They've done that. They've experienced everything. So leverage the resources that you have available to you. Know that there's support and know that everything is unfolding exactly the way it's supposed to for you in this exact moment. And you will have your breakthrough. The only time that you won't have your breakthrough is if you quit. [00:13:14] Sarah: See, and now we're done. [00:13:15] Jason: Good words. Good stuff, Sarah. All right. [00:13:18] Sarah: All right. We're going to go to bed now. [00:13:20] Jason: Yeah. Get some sleep. [00:13:22] Sarah: Yep. [00:13:22] Jason: So until next time, to our mutual growth. Hope you all crush it. Bye, everyone. [00:13:27] Jason: you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow! [00:13:54] Jason: At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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DGS 281: What's Coming Next in 2025 for Property Management and DoorGrow?
01/30/2025
DGS 281: What's Coming Next in 2025 for Property Management and DoorGrow?
It’s already 2025! What goals do you have for the year for yourself? For your property management business? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss their goals for 2025 and how they will impact property management business owners. You’ll Learn [01:36] DoorGrow’s Yearly Planning and Goals [07:30] DoorGrow in-Person Events in 2025 [13:05] The Future of Property Management: DoorGrow Live 2025 [16:11] DoorGrow’s Commitment to Rescuing Dogs Tweetables  ”Strategic time invested in the business is what actually grows businesses.” “Most of y'all are focused so heavily on the tactical, the day-to-day tasks that just come at you and the business isn't moving forward.”  ”Broke people often have a broke mindset.” “You can do it. You just need a really good plan.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Most of y'all are focused so heavily on the tactical, the day to day tasks that just come at you and the business isn't moving forward. [00:00:09] Welcome, DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:27] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:47] At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts property management growth experts Jason Hull and Sarah Hull the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:07] Now, let's get into the show. All right. [00:01:10] So today, we're going to be... [00:01:12] Sarah: It's new year's eve! [00:01:13] Jason: It's new year's eve as we're recording this episode. So those of you watching us live, happy new year's. And those of you that are not, then I hope you had a happy new year, and you didn't like drink too much and you are like ready to go for the new year. [00:01:28] So we're going to be talking about the new year. What are we going to chat about today? [00:01:33] Sarah: I thought we were going to talk about where we want to go. [00:01:36] Jason: Yeah. So we're going to tell you a little bit about what's up with DoorGrow. We do our annual planning in the middle of the year. We offset it by two quarters. [00:01:45] We find that to be a lot more effective. So we actually coach our clients to do the same. Why? Because this time of year, everybody's a little bit too focused on other stuff, holidays, family, all good things, right? And not as focused, maybe, on the business. [00:02:00] Sarah: Can you imagine if today was the deadline for all of your big annual goals? [00:02:05] Like, man, we gotta do that one thing! Today's the last day. Hard push, guys! Everyone's like, "..." [00:02:10] Jason: Or just even this whole month of December or even like Thanksgiving time. Like just trying to push your end of the year goals and trying to achieve as a team, your team are like, "cool. I'm glad you are motivated, Mr. Business Owner, but..." [00:02:24] Sarah: "I'm taking two weeks off for Christmas, and I'm off for Thanksgiving, I'm taking time off for Christmas, I'm taking time off for New Year's." [00:02:31] Jason: "That's cool, you want to hit that end of the year revenue goal, or sales goal, or whatever your goals are, but I need to figure out what to get my Aunt Susie for Christmas, and who's bringing what for Thanksgiving." [00:02:43] Sarah: "I'm cooking, and I'm cleaning." [00:02:44] Jason: And, "what party am I going to for New Year's? Who am I going to kiss at midnight?" Like, it's hard stuff. That being said, some of the goals we have for 2025 I think one of the things we've really put a lot of attention into over the last three, four years, maybe even longer is just making our program better and better. [00:03:05] We've just added a lot to the program, like focusing on decreasing churn, keeping our coaching clients longterm improving systems. We just rolled out some cool stuff, our client workbooks. What are some of the things we've done in the last year? We rolled out this new Accountability Sales Tracker. [00:03:19] We rolled out, you know... [00:03:20] Sarah: all kinds of client workbooks content... [00:03:23] Jason: new courses, [00:03:23] Sarah: operations revamp. [00:03:25] Jason: DoorGrow, we get a lot done. Part of that is because of DoorGrow OS and our planning process. It allows us to really focus on Goals and outcomes, strategic growth of the business instead of just tactical day to day work. [00:03:38] And strategic time invested in the business is what actually grows businesses. Most of y'all, because I've talked to thousands of property managers, most of y'all are focused so heavily on the tactical, the day to day tasks that just come at you and the business isn't moving forward. So our goal for this year, because we've got a really good program, we're getting great results. [00:03:59] We're keeping clients for a decent time now. You know, we even got rid of over the last several years, we got rid of any sort of annual contract. A lot of vendors like DoorGrow have annual agreements or whatever. We got rid of those because we could keep clients longer than a year. And so we didn't need that. [00:04:16] Like it increases the risk of people wanting to like get on board with us. So we're like, let's lower the risk to come on board with us, prove ourselves and just keep them. So the next goal for us really at DoorGrow is to focus on lead generation. That game has changed so much over the last decade plus that we've been in business. [00:04:37] We've used LinkedIn to get business for a while through automation. We used our Facebook group and we've used organic stuff through SEO. Like we've used a lot of different strategies and we still have several things going at a time, but the game always changes. And so lead gen is something where we're shifting our focus. [00:04:57] As you focus on the business, we've got our six core functions, lead gen, nurture, conversion, delivery, lifetime value, pricing, retention, et cetera. And then financial finances. And so we're shifting our focus every year towards what's weakest. Where does our attention... yeah. [00:05:17] Sarah: Every quarter, we're like, "okay, Hey, we solved that problem. Now we have this whole other problem. [00:05:22] Jason: So our weakest thing right now is probably lead generation. Like we've got a lot of tools for nurture. This podcast or newsletter. We've got lots of content on YouTube. Yeah. Nurture's strong. [00:05:35] Sarah: Yeah. [00:05:36] Jason: Delivery and fulfillment is strong. Conversion, like we're pretty good at conversion. [00:05:40] Sarah: Hassan follows up with people like crazy. He's just on top of it. He's done everything. [00:05:45] Jason: So lead gen, we've been getting a lot of leads, you know, through Facebook ads and through our Facebook group where we funnel people to, but we're getting a lot of unqualified leads. [00:05:54] Like basically there's a lot of startup property managers that are broke and don't have money and we can help them with that stuff if they're willing to invest. But broke people often have a broke mindset. So if you're listening and you're not growing, you're probably not investing any money towards growth. [00:06:10] Like who are you paying to coach you or teach you or help you figure out how to grow? If you're not paying somebody, you're selling yourself short. And we eat our own dog food. How many masterminds am I in right now? I don't know, two, three? [00:06:22] Sarah: I don't know. You just added another one. [00:06:24] Jason: Yeah, but they're for different areas of the business. [00:06:26] And and we leverage them and allow the team to leverage them and to make sure that we're always innovating or getting new ideas and moving things forward. [00:06:35] Sarah: Think the answer is four. [00:06:36] Jason: I think I'm in four different masterminds right now. Yeah. We're in plenty. So, yeah. So, and yeah we've got two online programs that we're in right now related to just leads. [00:06:49] Oh, I wasn't counting those. [00:06:50] Ads. So we've got access to at least, you know, at least two focused on lead gen. So we're going to be putting our attention and focus this year on lead generation. Like how do we attract more property managers that are struggling, that want to grow, or that are struggling with being able to scale their operations and adding doors is causing a problem for them? [00:07:14] These are problems we solve and we're really good at solving it. So we're going to be shifting our lead gen from just like, "Hey, are you a property manager? Join our free Facebook group and then we'll give you free stuff." We're going to shift it more towards, "Hey, do you have these particular challenges we want to help?" [00:07:28] So that's going to be our focus this year. [00:07:30] Sarah: I also want to focus on doing some cool events this year. [00:07:33] Jason: Yeah. [00:07:33] Sarah: Those are so fun for me. I love that. Like even our jumpstart events. [00:07:37] Jason: Yeah. [00:07:38] Sarah: It's a whole day, so it's a lot. Like I am tired afterwards, but I walk away feeling really fulfilled I walk away... [00:07:45] Explain what a jumpstart event is [00:07:46] ...and I just feel like we just changed the trajectory of people's lives and businesses. [00:07:52] Jason: Yeah, they're powerful. Explain what a jumpstart is for those that are like, what's that? Yeah. [00:07:56] Sarah: What's a jumpstart session? So the jumpstart session is available for our mastermind clients. They're held here in the North Austin, Texas area, and they're a one day deep dive into the business. So, there's no pre selected topics. [00:08:08] Sometimes I get, "well, what are we going to talk about?" I don't know, what do you need in your business? What are the problems? What are your challenges? What are you working on? What has not been working for you? You know, what questions might you have that you're like, "man, I just, I know I can do this better. I just don't know how." That's what we're going to talk about. So whatever it is. We've done a couple of them we've done pricing. Some of them have been focused on sales. Some of them have been focused more on the back end, like delivery and team operations. [00:08:37] Jason: Yeah. [00:08:38] Sarah: So they're different every single time and we never know what we're going to talk about really until we get there and we start diving in and we start asking questions. [00:08:48] So, they're usually smaller events. I like to keep them small because if they get too big, it's hard to go really deep into a business if there's like 20 businesses in the room. Now it's not a deep dive. Now it's just, we're going to talk about some stuff. So we keep them generally pretty small. [00:09:03] There are usually about like three, maybe four businesses there. And it's like a one day deep dive. We do break, we get some really good tacos. We go for lunch and then we dive right back into it. But every single time people walk away with an action plan, they walk away knowing what to do. We update our client workbooks. [00:09:22] So they get a lot of clarity and then we wanted to mimic that, but build on it and do this a little bit in a more robust way. So we're actually hosting an event. This is open to anyone who wants to join. It will be called Thrive 2025 because as we're talking with people, we're realizing we're at the end of the year. [00:09:44] The clock is about to reset. Some people, they have an idea of what they want to do, but they don't know how the hell they're actually going to get there. So, we're going to get into the nitty gritty and help them figure out, well, what is your plan? What are your goals? And then, how are you going to get there? [00:10:01] What are the things that you need to do? And by what time frame do you actually need to do them? So that you can hit this goal that you're trying to hit in all of 2025. So at this event, we're not just planning for like, "Hey, here's what you're going to do for maybe the next month or the next couple of weeks." [00:10:18] "Here's what your 2025 is going to look like, and here's the entire roadmap for your 2025." So that you can be on track and hit the goals that you're looking to hit so that you don't have another year where you're like, "man, it just didn't happen again. I just don't know what's going on. Maybe I'll just never do it." [00:10:38] You can do it. You just need a really good plan. You need a solid plan put together. So we're going to spend the day with a room of property managers. We're going to brainstorm. We're going to create some goals, figure out what is it that you really want for your business? Why do you want it? [00:10:53] And then, what are the action steps that you need to take so that you can get there? So this essentially is going to write the business plan for your business for 2025. And we're going to do that in a really cool place. It's going to be in Nashville. [00:11:07] Jason: Yeah, we're going to take you through a bit of our planning process the way we do this at DoorGrow I really think this is the technology that has allowed us to surpass any other coaches in the space it's our planning and it's the planning process gets our team in alignment It gets them out of that transactional sort of leadership system. [00:11:28] It gets them focusing on objectives. It gets them functioning more like like intrapreneurs, instead of just waiting to be told what to do. And if you're frustrated and always having to tell your team what to do and always having to answer all their questions, you have a transactional leadership system because that's the least risky thing for them to do is to let you do all the thinking and decision making. [00:11:48] So when we start focusing on a team, figuring out what is the business need? What are the objectives to like brainstorm as a team? And you're the last to speak as a visionary or the people that are running the business and you get feedback, real feedback from your team who are on the front lines, who know what challenges they're running into, then we can start to innovate as a company. [00:12:09] Then they start to focus on those outcomes and they start to move things forward. And so we're going to take you through that process. And come up with a plan. So we're going to spend a day and just dig in. And this will be a game changer for you and your business. So we're going to have a small group. [00:12:24] How many are we allowing to come to this? [00:12:26] Sarah: There's going to be eight spots total. And some of them are already spoken for. [00:12:30] Jason: Okay. Eight businesses. [00:12:32] Sarah: Eight spots. [00:12:33] Jason: Eight people. [00:12:34] Sarah: Eight. Yep. Eight human beings. So, a business might just have one person. [00:12:39] Jason: Or bring a plus one. It can bring a plus one. Yeah. Okay. [00:12:43] Sarah: Two, two max. [00:12:44] Because if someone goes, Oh, I have three people. So it might only be four businesses. Four people. Like now that's really. [00:12:49] Jason: Okay. [00:12:50] Sarah: It's hard then, because it takes up so many spots. [00:12:52] Jason: So we're going to be doing events as another goal for the year. [00:12:56] Sarah: Yep. Yeah, so we're going to kick it off with right in January Thrive 2025. [00:12:59] Jason: If you're listening this podcast later on like iTunes or something then you probably missed it, but we'll have other stuff. [00:13:05] Sarah: But don't worry because we have our DoorGrow live event coming up. [00:13:08] Jason: Okay, that's another event So we've got DoorGrow live coming up. You want to talk about DoorGrow Live? [00:13:13] Sarah: Yeah, let's talk about DoorGrow Live. So that is going to be a Friday and Saturday. It's May 16th and 17th. And you'll want to make sure that you come in on the 15th because that Thursday, the day before from 7pm to 9pm, we're doing a mixer. [00:13:27] So we're doing some networking. You'll meet the DoorGrow team. You'll meet a lot of other business owners and property managers, and we're going to have some live entertainment. So you're going to get to see some dancers. We're going to have a singer. It's going to be a good time. So make sure that you travel in the day before, attend the mixer. [00:13:46] And then this year we're talking about innovating the future of property management. So we want to talk about where is this whole industry going? Because things change really quickly, especially with all of the developments in AI. So things can change really quickly. So we're going to have some great speakers there. [00:14:07] You can go actually right now. You can go to doorgrowlive.Com and you can get all of the event details. You can book your rooms at the discounted room rate that we've negotiated with the venue for you. It's at Kalahari Resorts in Round Rock, Texas. And you can check out some of the speakers that are going to be there at the event. Every year we do one of these we always try to make it a little bigger a little better, and this year is no exception We've got some great stuff planned. [00:14:39] Jason: You know, I think a lot of people are burnt out on conferences. A lot of you maybe have gone to a lot of events and conferences. But there's something special and different about DoorGrow Live. [00:14:49] I've been to a lot of different events as well. And there's just something special and different about DoorGrow Live. And one, we're creating a lot of momentum for property managers too. I think we're a lot more holistic in our approach. We're not just focused on property management. All of y'all know plenty about property management, but what I find is usually what's holding you back in business is not even related to business, it's everything else going on. And that's why we take a much more holistic approach. And so we're going to benefit you in a lot of different ways. Like people walk away from these events and become better people. That's our goal. And so, and better people have better businesses and better families and make more money and more contribution and make a bigger difference. [00:15:33] So, so get your tickets to DoorGrow Live. That's coming up as well. And any other events? [00:15:39] Sarah: Well, there's this secret one that we haven't talked about yet. When we were in Mexico, we were talking about it. [00:15:45] Jason: Okay, well I guess we're not talking about today 'cause it's a secret . So, so sorry, everybody. [00:15:51] All right. So something cool is coming. All right, so we've got events coming up and then so what other goals do we have for DoorGrow? Those are kind of the key ones for us internally. It's lead gen. Yeah. Yeah. It is going to be our focus, so. [00:16:04] Sarah: I want to just find it to help more people and [00:16:07] Yeah. [00:16:07] I don't care what that looks like. [00:16:08] Jason: It doesn't [00:16:09] Sarah: even matter what it looks like, really, so. Oh, and then my, I have some personal goals, too, I'm going...
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DGS 280: Rebranding and Remotivating a Property Management Business and Business Owner with DoorGrow Client Kelly Rafuse
01/23/2025
DGS 280: Rebranding and Remotivating a Property Management Business and Business Owner with DoorGrow Client Kelly Rafuse
Many property management business owners out there struggle with having a bad brand, bad pricing, cheapo clients, a lack of confidence, and more. In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down in-person with property manager and DoorGrow client, Kelly Rafuse, to talk about her journey with property management. You’ll Learn [04:53] How to Be Picky with the Clients You Bring on [10:59] Overcoming the “Hustler” Mindset [15:04] Choosing an Effective Brand [21:07] Cheapos, Normals, and Premium Buyers Tweetables  ”As you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't.” “ The more confident you are, the more some of these… difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them.” “ It's better to be at the top than to be competing with the garbage at the bottom.” “ Need is scarcity, need is starving, and need is survival.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Kelly: You know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way. [00:00:07] Jason: But you learned it. [00:00:08] Kelly: Yes. [00:00:10] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you're interested in growing in business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. [00:00:37] You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull, founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, the co owner and COO of DoorGrow. And now let's get into the show. [00:01:13] So our guest today, we're hanging out with Kelly. Kelly, introduce yourself. [00:01:17] Kelly: Hi there, my name is Kelly Rafuse with Crimson Cape Property Management in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. [00:01:22] Jason: And you have a really nice logo. Where'd you get that really nice logo? [00:01:25] Kelly: It's this little mastermind I joined called DoorGrow helped me with that. [00:01:29] Jason: And it's, I was saying, I think it's cool because it's like you are flying right there. [00:01:33] It's like, it like reminds me of you. [00:01:37] Kelly: Well, yeah. I had this Marvel Comics stud fetish, so. [00:01:41] Jason: Yes. Okay. You're the Marvel comic gal. All right. So really excited to be hanging out. We're actually in Pennsylvania because this is kind of the neck of the woods Sarah grew up in and managed properties nearby and you manage properties in a neighboring market and so. [00:01:59] The same market. The same market. She, yeah. Exact same market. [00:02:02] Sarah: I left and she has the market. [00:02:05] Kelly: While you were here, I was just managing my own portfolio. [00:02:08] Jason: Oh, okay. [00:02:09] Kelly: And people were coming to me to manage theirs, and that's how I got into this mess. [00:02:15] Jason: Yeah. Well, give us a little more background on you, Kelly. [00:02:18] How'd you get into property management? [00:02:20] Kelly: Oh, well, I started off as a real estate investor. You know, buying homes out here in Northeast PA. It's a very good place to invest in property. Cash flow is, I mean, I think cap rates were like 12 percent when I got in. So, I mean, it was huge, and honestly, I was trying to replace my income because I'd gotten as far as I could go in my former career, you know, hit a huge glass ceiling, and realized that, you know, real estate was probably my ticket to freedom. [00:02:45] Jason: What was your former career? [00:02:47] Kelly: I was on the radio. [00:02:48] Jason: Yeah, okay, you've got a great voice for it, so. [00:02:51] Thank you very much. [00:02:53] Yeah, so you were doing the radio. [00:02:54] Kelly: Yeah, so I actually got into this market, and I liked it here. I actually, I did my two years and then moved to a bigger market. I was in Hartford, Connecticut for a while. [00:03:03] And then an opportunity to come back presented itself. And I came back because I genuinely like the area. And you know, the inexpensive real estate was an attraction. And then My husband and I got into investing in properties. We built up quite a portfolio. We had 25 units of our own at one point. [00:03:20] We're down to 14 now. We sold a few off that, you know, really weren't moneymakers for us. But, you know, as you live and you grow in this business, you learn what makes money and what doesn't. And I learned how to manage property the hard way. [00:03:33] Jason: But you learned it. [00:03:34] Kelly: Yes. I made all the mistakes. [00:03:37] Jason: Yeah. And that's sometimes learning through mistakes and pain. [00:03:41] I sometimes joke that DoorGrow was built on thousands of mistakes. [00:03:45] Kelly: You're telling me. And I will introduce My biggest pain point in just a second here. So what caused me to join DoorGrow is my husband's a real estate broker. And so people were banging on his door. "Can you manage my property? Can you manage my property?" It's like, "well, I don't do that, but my wife does." [00:04:03] Jason: Yeah. [00:04:04] Kelly: And I'm like, well, I can't manage their property. I don't have a real estate license. And so it was a whole year of, "come on! Just get the license. Just do it! Just do it. Come on!" So I got the license. And I took on one of his investor clients, and I joined DoorGrow, like all in the same day. [00:04:23] And what I found out when I joined DoorGrow was I never should have taken on that client. [00:04:27] Jason: That was the price of tuition. It's one of the key lessons that defines you in business, which is you learn those lessons and not take on bad clients. Well, I mean, for us, it's been really inspiring and exciting to see your journey as an entrepreneur and see you kind of get all this ready and get things developed and start to grow. [00:04:46] And so, we were talking about it, like, what should we talk about on the podcast today with Kelly? And you had mentioned. [00:04:53] Sarah: Yeah, I had said, I think for me, one of the biggest shifts that I've seen in Kelly again and again and again is shifts in mindset because it was just even a few weeks ago where maybe a month ago or something, was relatively recent, where you were saying like, "oh, I read this book and it changed my life I'm waking up at like 4:30 in the morning and structuring my day different" and it was just again and again. But you've had these little shifts that end up leading to these huge changes for you and how you run things and how you structure your day and like just even your, your energy levels seem to be more protected now. [00:05:32] Kelly: Yeah, I'm not getting up at 4:30 in the morning anymore. Although I just learned yesterday I might have to start again because my daughter wants to join the swim team. Oh. And they practice it. 5 a. m. sometimes, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a struggle because I'm not only a real estate entrepreneur. [00:05:48] I am also, you know, a wife of a whirlwind. I mean, my husband is a broker. He's into wholesaling. He's into flipping. And I go to manage him. [00:05:58] Jason: The whirlwind broker. [00:06:00] Kelly: Yeah, and, [00:06:02] Jason: yeah. [00:06:02] Kelly: No, we'll say no more about that. [00:06:04] Sarah: There's a lot going on. [00:06:05] Lots of moving pieces. [00:06:06] Kelly: He's a genius. He's like a Bill Gates level genius. [00:06:09] I'm just waiting for the ship to come in. Yeah, nice. It's been 30 years, but it's coming. [00:06:13] Jason: So what do you feel like maybe was the first mindset thing that you noticed in Kelly, kind of overcoming? Or what do you feel like was your first? [00:06:22] Sarah: I don't know if I can think of a first, but I know that there's been several that I'd like to highlight. [00:06:27] Jason: Okay. [00:06:27] Sarah: So I think one of the things is being much more picky with what clients you take on and what properties you take on and how you kind of screen and vet people. [00:06:41] Jason: Maybe that first client helped you learn that lesson. [00:06:44] Sarah: Yes. [00:06:45] Jason: Yeah. So what, what was the lesson there? Like, what did you figure out? [00:06:48] Kelly: Oh, wow. You know, the, the first thing is I have to see if our philosophies match. [00:06:53] Jason: You and the client. [00:06:54] Kelly: Yes. And when I got into real estate investing, I admit I'm a bit of an idealist. I know you're into personality types. [00:07:01] Jason: Yeah. [00:07:01] Kelly: And I test as an INFP. [00:07:03] Jason: Okay. [00:07:03] Kelly: So I probably have no business being in any business at all, but yet here I am. But I'm a dreamer. I'm a visionary. And so my first company was, and still is called Good People, Good Homes, LLC. [00:07:15] And I own property in that LLC. I'm not really doing business in it. It just holds property for me. But when I started it, it was supposed to be the company and it was: you buy these distressed properties in these neighborhoods and you fix them up and you put great people in them and it brings up the whole neighborhood and then everybody loves you and we hold hands and sing Kumbaya and that didn't really happen. [00:07:36] Jason: Yeah. [00:07:36] Kelly: But I did improve a lot of properties. [00:07:39] Jason: Okay. [00:07:39] Kelly: Right. Yeah. [00:07:41] Sarah: I think arguably in this market, you are outdoing anything that I've ever seen because the befores and afters are just wild. And the rent rates before and after are wild. And this area, yes, you can absolutely get a great deal, a great bargain on real estate, and that doesn't come without its challenges and its problems. [00:08:06] But one of the things that I think is just so great in this area that you do is you take these distressed properties and you make them beautiful and livable and safe. And you provide a wonderful home now on something before that was dilapidated. [00:08:25] Kelly: And the market's full of C class properties. You know, I hear a lot of property managers say, "Why are you even bothering with those?" [00:08:31] Well, honestly, there isn't anything else. Yeah, that's what we hear. You work with what you got. And I probably wouldn't be a real estate investor if the market wasn't like this. Because that's how I got in. I didn't make a ton of money in radio. I didn't. But I made enough to get in, you know, with a C class property. [00:08:48] And now those C class properties are paying for my life, and my daughter's life, and it's beautiful. The property management company? That's just icing on the cake, but I think it might even eclipse what I've been able to do with my rentals. [00:09:00] Jason: Oh, I'm sure. [00:09:01] Kelly: And there's a need for it. [00:09:02] Jason: Yeah. Big need. [00:09:04] Kelly: Yeah. So the biggest thing I learned, back to your question about how to vet clients, does their philosophy match mine? Do they believe their C class property could be turned into a desirable place to live? And yes, you will be charging market rent for that, which is a lot more than maybe you thought you could charge. And you'll get a better class tenant that way. Or are they just happy not doing anything to the property, just letting it be what it is and getting whoever they can get into it and, you know, getting whatever money they can for it. I don't really want to work with those people. [00:09:38] Jason: Do you find part of this though is just selling? [00:09:41] It's like convincing them to align with your vision? Because it sounds like you have a better vision than a lot of the people that might come to you. [00:09:48] Kelly: Sometimes when I show them the spreadsheet, of, you know, what I've done for some of my other clients, including the first one that I told you about. I mean, I really turned some of his properties around. [00:09:59] And I've tried to fire him twice. Yeah. [00:10:01] He won't go and, you know, he's also a third of my income, so I'm going to keep him on. And, but the thing is, he's kind of listening to me now. Kind of. [00:10:11] Sarah: He's open. Well, I think. It's like a walnut shell. We've just cracked it open. Maybe some of the good ideas are seeping through. [00:10:18] Jason: I've talked about this before, but I think also part of it is, as we've seen, you come into your own in more confidence in what you're doing and the more confident you are, the more some of these A personality types or these difficult personality types will kind of abdicate and allow you to lead them. [00:10:36] And I talk about metaphorically punching people in the face sometimes. So you probably maybe punched them in the face metaphorically a couple of times since then. And so setting those healthier boundaries. Is something we naturally do when we start to believe in ourselves more. And so what other shifts do you feel like you've noticed in Kelly? [00:10:55] Or what are some of the things that DoorGrow's helped you with? Are you making changes too? [00:10:59] Kelly: Well, like Sarah said, a lot of the mindset stuff, I mean, a big revelation came to me when I was at DoorGrow live. [00:11:05] Jason: Yeah, what was that? [00:11:07] Kelly: Well, first of all, getting to DoorGrow Live was a challenge because I was in the midst of my survival mode. [00:11:13] I'm a solopreneur still. I do everything myself. My husband's my broker of record, but, like, he's off doing his thing. Sure. So. [00:11:21] Jason: You were doing everything, you're really busy, and you're like, how do I take a break to even just go to DoorGrow Live? [00:11:26] Kelly: Yeah, and, you know, then I've got this mindset that, you know, how can I afford it? [00:11:30] But the thing is, I did have the money to go. That's another thing. I've got a poverty mindset I need to get past. And when I went to DoorGrow Live, that was really thrown in my face. Because I was talking about the challenges of being a solopreneur. And one of the pieces of advice that I was given by one of the speakers is, "What's your time worth?" [00:11:49] You know, you can't be doing all of these things when you pay somebody. Yeah, and I thought, well, what's my time worth? And then this little voice in the back of my head said, well, not a whole heck of a lot. [00:12:00] Jason: You told everybody that. You said, "not a whole heck of a lot." [00:12:04] Kelly: Yeah. [00:12:04] Jason: And we're like, "oh, okay." [00:12:06] Kelly: Yeah. [00:12:07] Jason: Yeah. [00:12:07] Kelly: Well, I mean, that comes from, you know, my background. I grew up without a lot. [00:12:11] Jason: Yeah. You know, [00:12:12] Kelly: I saw my parents struggle. They're working class people. You know, I got into an industry that was on its, you know, downslide when I, I started on the radio in you know, the early nineties, you know, probably right after it started to slide down and, you know, there've been multiple layoffs and, you know, voice tracking and automation and, you know, I survived, but I think one of the reasons I survived was I was willing to work really hard for not a whole lot of compensation. [00:12:40] Jason: Sure. [00:12:40] Kelly: \You know, as people were let go and reductions in force, I was given more duties, but not more money. [00:12:47] Jason: Sure. [00:12:48] Kelly: And, you know, you do that long enough, you start getting the message that, oh, well, your time really isn't worth a whole heck of a lot. [00:12:54] Jason: Yeah. [00:12:55] Kelly: Yeah. [00:12:56] Jason: Who decides what your time's worth? [00:12:57] Kelly: I do. [00:12:58] Jason: Yeah. I do. [00:12:59] Yes. [00:12:59] Kelly: I do. [00:13:00] Yeah! [00:13:01] And, you know, that's... [00:13:02] you do now. Yes. [00:13:03] Jason: How has that shifted for you then? What's your perception of your time and the value of it? of your time now? [00:13:09] Kelly: My perception of my time is, you know, first of all, I don't need to be tied to the Henry Ford 40 hour work week or even the 50-60-70-80 hour work week that I hear people say you "should" do when you're running a business because, you know, it's impractical. [00:13:24] I have a daughter. She's a teenager. She's just started high school this year. She's a field hockey athlete and now she wants to be on the swim team and she's got needs. Mhm. Right? I've got a husband who does not have a cushy job I can fall back on while I do my entrepreneurial thing. [00:13:40] Jason: Right. Right. [00:13:41] Kelly: He's also an entrepreneur. [00:13:43] We are living off self employment income. So it is a constant, you know, point of stress. So, you know, I need to find out my key productivity time, and that's when I work. And sometimes I get four or five hours a day, and that's it, of key productivity time. But then I find myself, you know, when I'm walking the dog, having all these great ideas. [00:14:06] You know, I do things like I listen to your podcast you know, some great audio books that have been recommended to me. I devoured The One Thing by Gary Keller, the Profit First book. And I'm starting to implement these ideas. And it's just sort of like they're ladder steps. [00:14:23] Jason: So basically, little by little, you've been investing in yourself by leveraging reading, getting coaching, doing this stuff. [00:14:31] And that's translated into you valuing yourself a little bit more. [00:14:35] Yeah. [00:14:35] Awesome. [00:14:36] Kelly: Absolutely. And I've learned to turn things over, like maintenance, you know, I hired one of the vendors that you recommended, Vendoroo and they're, you know, the tenants still text me with maintenance issues. [00:14:47] Sure. And I text back, "put it in the portal." Right. "If you can't put it in the portal, call this number and they'll teach you how to put it in the portal." [00:14:55] Jason: But yeah, probably less willing to take phone calls than you were before. [00:14:58] Kelly: Yeah, I've never really taken phone calls. [00:15:00] Jason: That's good, that's good. [00:15:02] Kelly: Thanks me. Get it all in writing. [00:15:04] Jason: So you went through our whole rapid revamp process as well, like with the branding and like getting everything kind of dialed in, pricing. You've implemented a lot of things. And so, has that impacted your confidence level as well? [00:15:20] Kelly: Oh, absolutely. I really feel like, you know, I'm marketing a real brand now with Crimson Cape. [00:15:25] Jason: Yeah. What, what was it before that? [00:15:26] Kelly: GPGH Management Company. [00:15:29] Jason: Oh, the acronym. [00:15:30] Kelly: Yep. Good People, Good Homes. [00:15:32] Jason: Yeah. [00:15:32] Kelly: You know, just to take off of that and, you...
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DGS 279: User-Friendly Maintenance Solution for Property Managers and Vendors Alike with Walkthroo
01/16/2025
DGS 279: User-Friendly Maintenance Solution for Property Managers and Vendors Alike with Walkthroo
Even with all of the property management software and tools breaking onto the scene lately, it seems that some entrepreneurs are still identifying gaps they could potentially fill… In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Eric Nelsen of Walkthroo to talk about a new maintenance solution in development for property managers and vendors. You’ll Learn [03:36] What is Walkthroo? [08:43] Developing Software and Utilizing AI [16:52] Getting Time Back with User-Friendly Tools [23:02] Get in Touch with Walkthroo Tweetables  ” It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way.” “ Time is probably the biggest benefit we provide.” “ Vendors in a lot of situations end up being the eyes, ears and hands for the property manager.” “ User experience is a big deal when designing software.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way. Once it turns into a giant beast and it's old, then it's really difficult. [00:00:11] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:52] At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:12] Now let's get into the show. And today I'm hanging out with Eric Nelson of Walkthroo. Eric, welcome to the DoorGrow Show. [00:01:21] Eric: Thanks, Jason. Glad to be here. [00:01:23] Jason: So Eric I would love to first get into your background. And my wife's chiming in saying I need to remember to promote DoorGrow live today, so I'll just do that right now real quick, and then we'll get to you, Eric. So if you are a property manager and you're watching this make sure you get tickets to DoorGrow Live like this is the most contribution focused, holistic property management conference in the industry. [00:01:44] We do things very differently. "There's heart" is kind of the feedback we get from others. People cry at our events. Like it's really awesome. It's going to be at the Kalahari resort here in Round Rock, Texas. And get your tickets right now. They go up in price over time. So head on over to DoorGrowLive.Com and get your tickets and be there. We've got sponsors. We've got cool speakers. It's going to be awesome. And DoorGrow magic is there. You're going to learn about growing your business from Sarah and myself and we'll help you out. All right, cool. Shameless plug inserted. [00:02:20] Now, Eric, I would love to get into your background. [00:02:23] You know, we hung out briefly in in Austin you came out and got to know each other a little bit, but I want my audience to get to know you share a little bit about How you kind of got into entrepreneurism, how you got into this. So tell us a little bit about your background. [00:02:37] Eric: Yeah, sure. Sure. I grew up in Houston, Texas kind of came up through the finance world. So I spent about 10, 15 years in finance, went to grad school at Rice in Houston, and I just couldn't walk down the finance hallway. I saw the entrepreneurial professors down a different hallway, really wanted to kind of do my own thing. [00:02:55] So you know, stayed in finance for a couple more years and got into the pharmacy business. And through that business, I got exposed to IT technology and building software to kind of run our pharmacies and improve our ops and, and run those companies. And then a good friend of mine in Shreveport Springs, Texas was is a general contractor and said he works with these property managers and they, he does a lot of maintenance for rentals. [00:03:20] And he said, "yeah, Eric, I want to take on more business, but I can't keep track. There's so many little jobs. There's so much communication going on, text, emails, phone calls. You've got a software background. Can you help me?" And so that's, what's really exposed me to the property management industry and kind of started me on this path. [00:03:36] Got it. All right. So let's get into talking a little bit about Walkthroo and what it is. And it's, it's "walk T-H-R-O-O. So tell us a little bit about Walkthroo and what is it? What does it do? [00:03:52] Yeah. So Walkthroo is, it's a really kind of a mindset and approach to the business and the underlying core is as much as accounting and tenant screening and even inspections, that software, those tools have grown, you know, with technological advances and whatnot. [00:04:13] If you really look at what we think is one of the four main pillars of property management is the maintenance, that hasn't grown. I mean, if you look back 10 years ago you really couldn't get multiple bids to do any work. If you look back 10 years ago, you couldn't pull up on your screen and compare two different bids. [00:04:29] 10 years ago, you couldn't split charges on an invoice between a tenant and owner. And you look today, fast forward 10 years, and I would say You know, 90- 95 percent of the platforms, you still cannot do those things. Well, when my partner brought me into this, you know, first he wanted me to help him with his, you know, just his construction company, but we quickly realized the problem wasn't him. [00:04:52] It was the property managers he was working with and the inefficiencies that came with the way they handle maintenance. So right out of the gate within a month. We switched that mantra. We're going to work to help property managers. And so that's really been what Walkthroo's focus has been the last three years. [00:05:09] And we really just, again, within the first three months we can get multiple bidders, we can split charges. And so it just showed me right away that it's not for a lack of technology or, you know, lack of know how even. It's just when you look at these software platforms and these operating systems, they just have bigger fish to fry. [00:05:27] They, you know, they all agree we should be able to hire multiple bidders with a couple clicks, but we're going to spend time doing X. So I can't explain it, but again, within the first six months, we had all these features built. And so now we're coming up on three years. We're really looking to round out the platform and keep growing. [00:05:45] Jason: Okay. So besides doing multiple bids and splitting charges, what would you say Walkthroo is? Like, what is, what does it accomplish? [00:05:53] Eric: So we're going to be a full operating system for property managers. We started backwards. I spoke with the former CEO of Buildium post sale to real page. [00:06:03] And he told me flat out, "we did a lot of great things." I think they were in 19 countries at the time. He's like, "but I'll be honest here. We never figured out maintenance. And so if that's where you're starting, you know, good on you. Good luck." And so we started with maintenance and we built our platform around maintenance. [00:06:18] We've recently added inspections. And so we'll keep growing. So Walkthroo will be A full suite of operating suite for property managers. Currently, we're not there yet, I'm going to go through a couple of rounds of raising money. Currently, we're a maintenance tool. People can use our platform. And we also provide maintenance services still. [00:06:39] So that's, that's, that's kind of what we do today. And the third leg, which just launched, is, and this is probably the most unique feature of what we're building, every other maintenance tool or platform or operating platform out there has property manager and they invite people in and the people have to learn how to use your system and whatnot. We actually sell our software straight to contractors. [00:07:02] So they're using it independent of property management They're using it to paint houses, do handyman jobs around around their cities, and so we're building this network where property managers will be on Walkthroo, the contractors are on Walkthroo, and it's just a simple connection and you don't have, you know, the training and, you know, as a vendor ourselves the last few years, I've been through some trainings to use different systems and I can imagine. It's can like a painter, you know, in downtown Austin that has two employees trying to figure out all these platforms and how to work with these clients. So we're, our goal is to really simplify all that for all the stakeholders. [00:07:39] Jason: Got it. So it sounds like Walkthroo, you're building this from the ground up. [00:07:43] You're building it as a tool to support and help based on what business owners actually need in property management. You started with one of the biggest challenges, which is maintenance. You're now adding inspections, you're adding other things. And the goal, the roadmap is to make it a full suite that helps maybe a better property management back office or software solution. [00:08:05] So the next big piece is then I'm sure on the roadmap somewhere is accounting and, tenant portals, owner portals, so they can see statements and submit the maintenance request, maybe like all of this kind of stuff. And so yeah, and I don't, I think that there's, there hasn't been a lot of innovation. [00:08:23] We've seen Rentvine come out recently. And it was born kind of out of a lot of complaints people were having about Appfolio. Appfolio was kind of born out of a lot of complaints people were having about maybe Buildium and Propertyware. Right. Right. And so, you know, when software is born out of complaints, you know, of different tools, yeah, it's going to be better than that tool, but it is interesting to start from the ground up building around the needs of and supporting the property manager and the work that they're doing. It'll be very interesting to see where you guys end up and what's kind of the timeline for all of this? [00:08:55] Eric: Well, you know, it depends on fundraising, right? So it's expensive, especially, you get into the accounting engines and a lot of that. There's a lot of costs involved. So we're hoping in the next You know, 12 to 18 months, we'd have a product out of, you know, for small property managers to run their business off our platform. [00:09:12] Jason: That's pretty fast. That's really the goal right now. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And it sounds like you guys move quickly. You know. It's a lot easier to make changes to software when you're smaller and you're getting things started and you're doing it in the right way. Once it turns into a giant beast and it's old, then it's really difficult. [00:09:30] Like some of the older maintenance software companies I'm sure they're toying with the idea. Like, should we just rebuild from scratch or throw all this away? Or do we just work this until this horse dies, you know? And so that's always the challenge with software. [00:09:46] And then adoption is always a big challenge. So getting people to use something new or to change to something else. And a lot of times it's easier to get the smaller guys and the smaller companies to make changes. And the big companies are usually watching the little guys make all the mistakes or test stuff out or see. [00:10:04] And then they stand back to wait to see who the winners are. So... [00:10:08] Eric: yeah, yeah. And thankfully I've got some experience on our side. My partner, Travis, he before he got into construction, him and his dad ran a small microscope specialized software company they sell it to universities. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but they could like take a laser and look into this, you know, the elemental makeup of a molecule. [00:10:26] It was really, really specialized, but that was exactly where he came from. He's like, yeah, you could go with Hitachi or a big Japanese brand, but you can't get them on the phone. You know, like you said, they've, they've done good. They've built so big, but now that's a hindrance. And we're in the same path. [00:10:40] You know, we didn't have splitting the owner and tenant charges, but you know, after talking to a few clients and a few property managers, that was just a common, very common thing. And I said, "well, let's just build it." Well, we're small or nimble, you know, we can, we can get away with that. [00:10:53] So we're going to take that same approach as we go through the accounting side of things, you know, and just interviewing property managers and listening to the industry and saying, Hey, my background is finance and operations. And so, you know, when I met you, something you brought up a lot was transforming lives and, you know, kind of making people enjoy their work and that's something I don't see. When we launched this tool. We decided to launch it internally two years ago. So we haven't really been selling Walkthroo, we've been using it ourselves. We currently manage Over 250 jobs in nine states. And so I talked to more maintenance coordinators and property managers every day and a lot of them could be happier. [00:11:35] So as we build this out, we want these tools to allow some sort of automation and allow people to focus on growing doors and, you know, and doing other things that are more beneficial versus banging their head against walls. [00:11:49] Jason: Sure. Yeah. I know property management business owners would much rather spend their time focusing on scaling their business than dealing with all the the nitty gritty day to day challenges and difficulty in all the tools that they're dealing with. [00:12:04] So Eric, we're in the middle of this AI revolution and you're like right in the middle of building this tool as we're coming into this new AI revolution where there's just tons of software just coming out. And people can create tools and software a lot more easily and their AI is helping them. [00:12:22] And then everyone's trying to integrate AI. And then you see all these companies that are dinosaurs. They're trying to strap chat GPT on the side of their crazy rollercoaster. And like, you know, say now we have AI. And so how's AI kind of tie into you guys, you know, getting Walkthroo built out? [00:12:43] Eric: Yeah, great question. We've got a roadmap for it. We don't have anything integrated yet. I think it's, it's too early, but you know, my background is really improving operations efficiencies. And so once we have this tool built out, then we will again, deploy AI where it makes sense. Like you said, it's a buzzword. [00:13:03] People will say everything is aI generated. It's like, no, that's just a search function, but call it AI. And so we, you know, we know most of the data. I'm not well tuned on the accounting yet, but definitely on the maintenance side, we know what data and what decisions are being made every day because again, we've lived that life and we're living it now we're doing jobs. [00:13:24] And so we will bring in AI kind of as we roll out the full suite, you know, I'm not sure to be perfectly honest. I don't know if it's going to be a heavy lift. I mean, again, it really comes down to the operations of the business and work and we see efficiencies and you know, there's some decisions you want eyes on, you know, you want, you want human interaction and others are a little more mundane task. [00:13:45] And so we, we are definitely have that in the playbook but I, at this point, you know, our plan is not to have this fully automated AI, you know, software, it's going to be just a much cleaner, easier tool to use and AI will be obviously just a natural component of that. [00:14:01] Jason: Got it. I mean, I think that makes sense. A lot of people start, you know, thinking, Oh, let's make AI do everything. But I think, I think it probably does make a lot more sense to make sure that the tools and systems are working for humans and they're working the right way first. And then AI create some leverage now that this is working well. [00:14:21] And I think that goes for how business owners should implement technology in general is you first do the process manually, and then you start to look for points of leverage and where can I leverage tech, where could a tool like Walkthroo facilitate what I'm doing now or help move things forward? So who's your current target audience? [00:14:39] Like, who are the people listening to this podcast that you think should reach out to Walkthroo to get an assessment on their current maintenance situation? [00:14:49] Eric: Yeah. I mean, we've talked to everyone from PMI to sole proprietors to self managers. So I would say our sweet spot is probably property managers with, you know, 200 to 500 doors. [00:15:02] Seems to be small enough where the data is not overwhelming. They're doing a lot of work, I feel from what I've seen personally, and so working with Walkthroo helps some of that. And people can work with us in different ways. We some people just use our software. You know, we, If we can, if we can manage jobs across nine states, truly, you know, we know people can manage jobs in their own town or their own state and some of them just hire us as a, they just have us on their preferred vendor list, you know, we obviously I don't have staff in nine states, so I use my tool to manage jobs and manage vendors and the third way people can access and partner with us Is we come on as your maintenance coordinator, you know, we'll use their vendors, their top vendors, let us manage it. [00:15:43] One question I always ask property managers, not surprisingly, the answer is usually similar is, you know, "have you ever logged in as a vendor to whatever system are you using?" [00:15:51] " Well, why would I do that?" It's like, well, yeah, you probably wouldn't think of it, but I recommend it because you know, it's, it's one of those tasks. It's important, but it's also been done since the dawn of property management, I give someone a job, they go do it. But if you, if you're using tools, I recommend logging in as that contractor and seeing what they're seeing. And, oh, this is why it's hard to communicate because I can't upload anything or I can't text or, you know, whatever, whatever it may be. [00:16:20] So the maintenance coordinator role is something we've been taking on more and more where it's like, yeah, you give us your favorite painters and handyman, and we'll either API into your system, or you just send your tenants our way. You know, we structured any way that works best for our clients and the, let us do the dispatching, you know, all the status checks. [00:16:39] I mean, you know, it's just a constant barrage of phone calls every Monday morning on where we're at. And of course, Sunday night we send out reports so we don't have to get those calls. Those are the three ways that property managers can work with us currently. [00:16:52] Jason: What, what are the results that people that start working will Walkthroo tend to notice or what sort of the changes that you're creating for these...
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DGS 278: Unlocking Team Potential: The Keys to Engagement, Resilience, and High Performance
01/08/2025
DGS 278: Unlocking Team Potential: The Keys to Engagement, Resilience, and High Performance
When moving from being a solopreneur to having a team, a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with hiring high-quality team members, creating accountability, and streamlining processes. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with award-winning coach and author Kon Apostolopoulos to talk all about unlocking your team’s potential. You’ll Learn [04:16] Hiring for Competance [12:48] Leadership and Building a Team [29:19] Developing Team Members [49:42] Tough Love as a Business Owner Tweetables  ”They say the two most important days in your life are the day you come into this world and the day you figure out why.” “They all have their strategies, their business plans, but one thing for sure is that if they don't have the right people in place to execute those plans, they're not even worth the paper they're written on.” “If they're hiring for competence, it's probably a step up, because in most cases, people are hiring for a pulse.” “You can teach people the technical skills. You can't teach attitude. You can't teach certain behaviors. You can't teach integrity.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Kon: When we are appreciated, we always give more than what is expected of us. So when you are looking at it, build your team around that principle. Show people that you value them. Don't just say, you know what, you get a paycheck, don't you? This is why I brought you on. Do your damn job. [00:00:16] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager DoorGrow property managers, love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:18] Now let's get into the show. [00:01:21] All right. I, my guest today is coach Kon. So Kon, how do you say your last name? I want to make sure I don't mess it up. [00:01:29] Kon: Wow. Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Jason. Last name is Apostolopoulos. It's as simple as it looks. [00:01:37] Jason: Man, that is fun to say. Apostolopoulos. [00:01:39] Kon: It rolls off the tongue. [00:01:40] Jason: Yeah. The closest thing that might be as fun was the Snuffleupagus. [00:01:45] Kon: It's inspired from that. [00:01:47] Jason: Okay. All right. We'll go, you know, all great ideas have an origin. All right. So Kon, we're going to be chatting a little bit today about the keys to engagement, resilience, high performance, unlocking team potential. [00:02:02] So before we get into that, I'd love to get a little bit of background on you. How did you get into doing coaching and you know, kind of share your origin story. [00:02:12] Kon: Wow. Okay. So let's kind of take a look at this. First of all, I'll start with one of my favorite sayings. Because I do feel blessed. [00:02:19] It is the season for that kind of a feeling. You know, they say the two most important days in your life are the day you come into this world and the day you figure out why. And so to me, I have always gravitated towards being a coach, being a teacher, being a leader, stepping up and taking responsibility. [00:02:38] And so that's kind of shaped my life. Being the firstborn in a Greek household and the firstborn male at that. It's one of those situations where, Inevitably, you're thrust into that role, but I gravitated towards it, and I found myself, regardless of which industry I've been working in, everything from the military to cruise ships, from restaurants to call centers, from construction to coaching little kids' soccer, I've always been in a situation where I found myself in the role of coach, teacher, leader. You know, I've worked for large corporations. I've had my share of corporate where I've cut my teeth and I've learned a lot of the business secrets and the things that I needed to get. And in the last 12 years, I've hung my own single shingle and been in a situation where I've been able to help clients and transfer three decades of knowledge of managing talent, of being able to build engaged and resilient teams and helping them now achieve their goals. [00:03:34] And the way I do that is I explained to people that most of the companies that I work with have their business plans very much like the audience that we have here. They all have their strategies their business plans. But one thing for sure is that if they don't have the right people in place to execute those plans, they're not even worth the paper they're written on. And so to me, that's where I come in and sometimes that involves providing workshops to build competence. Sometimes that involves individual or group coaching to build commitment. Sometimes that's speaking at events for them to be able to get everybody on the same page. And ultimately that may involve helping them build the systems that they need so every dollar that they spend on their people is a dollar well spent. [00:04:14] Jason: Got it. Okay. Now I think a lot of times that the challenge I see in a lot of companies is they're bringing in, it's often people are hiring just based on skill. That's the thing they're looking at is like, are they willing to do this job for this pay? Instead of looking for people that fit their values, fit the culture, have the right personality fit to actually be able to succeed in the role. [00:04:38] And so I call those things, the three fits. What have you seen related to this? [00:04:42] Kon: When people go out and start hiring Jason, they typically do it out of need, and a lot of times they've let it go for so long that it becomes a desperation. If they're hiring for competence, it's probably a step up, because in most cases, people are hiring for a pulse. [00:04:56] They're trying to throw a body at a spot, and that's a desperate place to be in, unfortunately. Hiring process, the selection process, should be an ongoing thing. When you're looking at making sure that you have the right people on your team. That's an ongoing process to me. That's tending to your garden year round, to making sure that you have the right people in place year round. [00:05:17] The mantra that I teach my people is a three part piece, just like you were mentioning earlier. It's hire hard, train smart, manage easy. And to me that means basically being very picky about who I bring on my team. It's easy for people or it's easier for people to look at, do they have the skills? Because that's an yes or no answer most of the time, especially if you do it right. But what they don't realize is that you can teach people the technical skills. You can't teach attitude. You can't teach certain behaviors. You can't teach integrity. You're bringing somebody in your team in their thirties. [00:05:50] If you have to teach them how to be honest, that's too late in the game. [00:05:54] Jason: Yes. [00:05:55] Kon: So hire for the attitude, like you were talking about the things that are harder to teach, and then you can teach them smartly about the business that you want. If you have a right person in the right spot, they can do wonders. [00:06:09] Jason: Yeah, I've noticed this. I've noticed this as well. One of the things I've noticed is I call it the process myth. I see a lot of businesses, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs go through this journey of graduating from solopreneur to having a team, right? And that's usually one of the most painful transitions they go through. [00:06:25] It's because they have no clue how to do the hiring correctly. And they're hiring the way a solopreneur sort of thinks. And they're usually hiring based on what they think the business needs. Like you said, out of need, maybe they graduate to desperation. Maybe they graduate to competence, as you said, but at that stage, they usually believe the process myth. [00:06:43] I've run into this a lot where they think they just need better processes. If they just had better processes, their team would actually perform well. Like, I just need to micromanage them more. I need more KPIs. I need more metrics. And what I've noticed is, this weird dichotomy, I've noticed that in companies that have great culture and they have a great team, they have great people, but they even have shitty processes, they still perform well, even without great process documentation, but I've seen companies that have like process documentation, like crazy, and they focus on this heavily, but they don't have the right people. And they're never able to perform well. There's no amount of process documentation or micromanaging or controls that can make a mediocre team with maybe the wrong attitude or wrong culture fit or wrong values to perform well. [00:07:35] Kon: No, I agree with you there. When you look at why people try to heavily process things, it's because they don't feel confident in people's decision making and abilities. They tried to legislate everything. They tried to create a way. We used to have a saying that, you know, every time you think you idiot proof something with a process, they come up with better idiots. [00:07:55] And that's a situation where you have to be very careful. You put a good person in a bad process, the process is going to win. So you have to be very careful because when we evolve this piece and we take it to its natural conclusion, which is why do we hire good people or try to find good people? [00:08:12] Why do we try to create processes that can produce results? It's to get performance. It's to increase performance, to become more predictably good. That's ultimately what we're doing. Performance is about results. When you look at your metrics that you were talking about, you're a pro, you do this and you know exactly what you're trying to do. [00:08:31] You have a methodology, you have a way of doing things, you have a philosophy about how you go about things because you know it works and you know it works well enough for you and for others that you're comfortable going out and sharing that message with others. Well, when you talk about performance, performance happens at three different dimensions. [00:08:50] Think about it like a Venn diagram, three overlapping circles. One is organizationally. How are we set up? How are we set up? Our culture our vision, our messages, our values, all of those things that we want to set ourselves up with. And then you have the process. How do things hand off from one person to the next? [00:09:10] What does the customer journey look like? What does the experience with us look like? How do we engage with each other? And then ultimately, it's the individual level. Do we have the right people on the right seat on the bus going in the right direction? Do they have the skills, knowledge, ability, attitudes that we're looking for to get things done? [00:09:29] So when people say, we're struggling to improve our performance, they automatically Only look at one, maybe two of those areas, not realizing that you need all three of those to hit in order to be at optimal level, when you've reached your peak in your performance, all three of those things are in place. [00:09:47] You've organized the team. Well, you've got your systems in place and you've hired the right people. [00:09:52] Jason: Yeah, I love this. You know, they say all truth gravitates towards itself, you know, so to speak. And so I actually draw a Venn diagram for clients and they teach them a framework called the three fits and your organization, I would just call culture, this is, do they share your values? Is there alignment there? Because otherwise you'll never be able to trust them. So you want one offload to them and then you always want to micromanage them. And then for process, I usually call that a skill fit. And the question there is, do they have the intellectual capacity to be able to develop the skill or do they already possess it? And that's the one that maybe the needle can be moved on right like you had mentioned they could maybe be trained, but some people are untrainable. They just don't have the intellectual capacity for that particular role. They just won't get there. [00:10:38] You can train and you'll just demoralize yourself, right? And then as then when you mentioned kind of people this is where I look at the personality fit. Are they the right personality for the role? Not everybody can be great or enjoy doing cold calling. Not everybody could be great or enjoy doing accounting, right? [00:10:57] And that means that they would love doing the role if they're the right personality fit, which means you don't have to motivate them. You don't have to try and push them to do it. And they, if they don't have that, they'll just never be great. And so I love this. Like it's always validating to see alignment when somebody's kind of graduated to this knowledge set on their own and see that, Hey, we both kind of arrived at a similar conclusion. [00:11:22] Kon: So, well, the truth is pretty universal and that's how we get there. We each discovered in our own way and application, but even with my company is called Fresh Biz Solutions and the the origin of the name and the philosophy behind that name is that I've worked, as I mentioned, in very diverse industries across continents, across countries, across boundaries. [00:11:45] And what I found is people are people. The needs are fairly universal. And so something, a process, an idea, a solution that works well in one industry, when you take it, look at it, dust it off, repurpose it, repackage it, it can work just as well in another industry. Why? Because you're dealing with people. [00:12:05] You're dealing with principles that are universal. And so, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. There is a need for us to find what works and continue to apply it. In different situations. [00:12:17] Jason: Absolutely. And you know, my personal sort of mission statement is to inspire others to love true principles. I love figuring out what works and sharing it with other people. [00:12:25] That's just fun for me. I would do that for free for fun. And yeah, so, so I get that. And yeah, there's, you know, a whole business book might be just written about one principle, you know, and there's that one nugget that you can pull out of it. But yeah if, you know, as I'm always seeking for those principles and those ideas, I'm then able to share and benefit others and it can be applied to a variety of different situations. [00:12:48] Yeah. Love that. So how do people go about doing this? It's like, usually entrepreneurs are very, you know, focused on just hiring based on as you said, need, desperation, competence. How do you graduate them through this? [00:13:03] Kon: So when we look at the process, I mean, we, when solopreneurs graduate, like you said, when you have, when you've been working on your own for a long time and you decide to bring on team members, one of the mistakes that we make is that we think that everybody is motivated the same way we are. Everybody sees the same vision that we do. [00:13:20] And that's just not the case. Yeah. We don't have that luxury. There's not enough people there that automatically will instinctively know what you're working on and really align themselves. Most of the time you have to do some connection of the dots for them. You have to explain to them why you're doing what you're doing and how they fit into this. [00:13:39] This is part of my engagement model that I talk about in my new book, The Engagement Blueprint. And the principles here are universal, whether it's one person or 1000 on your team. You can look at it and say the same thing. The way to understand this is that when you are leading a team, you're bringing people onto your team. [00:13:57] You're developing them. You're aligning them. What are you trying to do? You're trying to amplify the reach that you have as an individual. You're trying to get more done through your team, but through your team is the key because you need the voluntary contribution of these people. They need to want to do this. [00:14:13] Otherwise, it's a slog. It's a heavy lift to constantly micromanage people That's where the heavy processing comes in. You're chasing them around and the property trying to figure out where are they on where they supposed to? Be are they on their computer? Are they? responding to the needs? [00:14:29] How are they dealing with my clients? You're constantly living on edge and you're in fear and uncertainty all the time. My methodology is all about taking the uncertainty out of that and making sure that when you invest in your people, you know you're going to get a return on that investment. You know that basically they are an extension of you. [00:14:49] Now, the way to go about it is to understand that there are four key drivers of engagement for people. I mean, I've done my homework, I've spent almost two years researching the topic, talked to some pretty smart people across the globe, and pulled together 30 years of experience looking at this. And the four drivers start, first and foremost, with the need that we all have to feel valued. [00:15:10] When we are appreciated, we always give more than what is expected of us. So when you are looking at it, build your team around that principle. Show people that you value them. Don't just say, you know what, you get a paycheck, don't you? This is why I brought you on. Do your damn job. It's easy to say that. [00:15:28] Jason: Yeah, there's a lot of bosses that think because they grew up sort of in that culture and they, it's kind of the dinosaur boss that says, "well, I pay you, so just do your work," like it's very transactional. [00:15:40] Kon: Correct. And when it's transactional, you lose so much because people will only do up to a certain point and then you have to keep telling them what is part of that transaction. [00:15:49] So. When people are appreciated though, they will continue to find ways to support and help you and do more. When you realize that it's all about that discretionary effort, engagement is about discretionary effort, giving that little bit extra because you feel first and foremost valued. And the way you do that, I mean, here are some ideas that Our audience can go out and do right now. [00:16:13] First and foremost, think about how you can create an environment that is safe for your people. Physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically. I mean, if you're in a situation where you have people out there physically doing work, they're climbing up to clear gutters to do certain things, make sure the environment is safe. [00:16:32] Set a protocol so people can feel safe. Emotionally, if you're in a meeting, make sure that people feel comfortable telling you the ugly truth sometimes, the information that you need to make decisions. If people feel like there'll be chastised or reprimanded for telling you the truth, those stops sharing that information with you, and you will lose opportunities there. [00:16:52] Make sure that people feel that you appreciate them or that they can bring their whole self to work...
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DGS 277: Unlocking Team Potential: The Keys to Engagement, Resilience, and High Performance
12/18/2024
DGS 277: Unlocking Team Potential: The Keys to Engagement, Resilience, and High Performance
These days, you aren’t limited to the area your business is located when looking for great team members. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Laith Masarweh from Assistantly to talk about how hiring VAs can help you scale your business. You’ll Learn [01:34] Creating an Offshore Talent Acquisition Company [09:38] Importance of a People Process [16:11] Virtual Executive Assistants and Operators [24:57] Finding Your Unicorn Tweetables  ” Having community and good compensation definitely is going to allow you to attract and have the best people.” “ If you are operating your business, you are not growing your business.” “ When you have good people, they help other good people grow.” “ The bottleneck is you.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Laith: When you have good people, they help other good people grow. [00:00:03] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:23] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management, growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:04] Now let's get into the show. [00:01:07] All right. So my guest today is Laith. Laith, tell me how to say your last name. So I don't butcher it. [00:01:13] Laith: It's all good, man. It's Masarweh. [00:01:15] Jason: Masarweh. All right. Laith Masarweh. And awesome to have you here on the show. So in this episode, we're going to dive into the power of offshore talent, explore how businesses from startups to fortune 500s can unlock exponential growth. [00:01:31] And you run a company called Assistantly. Which I've heard great things about. You came highly recommended by one of my mentors, Sharran Srivatsa a, who runs a multi billion dollar real estate company called Real. And so tell me like a little bit about your background. [00:01:48] How'd you get into this? How did you get into entrepreneurism? [00:01:51] Yeah. [00:01:54] Laith: I mean, I think I always had the entrepreneur inspiration since I was a kid. My dad always had like a small business that he was running and, you know, it made me want to be an entrepreneur from a young age. [00:02:03] He used to have me working in the grocery store shop since I was eight years old and it was cool to kind of develop, I guess, my like interpersonal and just learning more about the business at a, you know, such a young age and, you know, I knew I wanted to start my own business. I didn't know what I wanted to start it in. [00:02:18] Of course, you know, I attended Chapman University. I went to the business school. I thought I was into like virtual reality and tech. Didn't really know what my fit was. Got into corporate after college. I knew that wasn't a fit, even though I tried it. Didn't really work very well and then I started a real estate marketing company here in Orange County, California where we help agents, brokers whether you're residential, commercial, property management you know, we just have done what's like real estate marketing needs and during the pandemic, we got extremely busy and You know, we couldn't, there's too much demand and our team was super small and somebody was like, Hey, you should hire a virtual assistant. [00:02:53] And I thought that was like an AI robot and I didn't understand what that was. And I never learned about offshoring in college or any of that kind of stuff. And I got introduced to somebody thought she was local. She ended up being in the Philippines. I was like blown out of my mind because I've actually been working with her for years thinking she was in Irvine, California, but she was actually in the Philippines the entire time. [00:03:12] Our time I had, you could not tell any difference. And then I kind of got the spark in my head and I go, man, I work with so many real estate professionals, you know, and they're always asking me for help, whether it's administrative or operations or marketing. And I, you know, when I asked this girl, Hey, how many people are highly skilled, great communication skills, you know, looking for employment, like you? And she goes, I don't know, maybe like hundreds of thousands. And I said, hundreds of thousands, there's hundreds of thousands of talented people like you? And she goes, Oh yeah. And it kind of just clicked in my head. I'm like, Oh, People need this and it can't just be me. [00:03:45] And I pretty much started Assistantly 45 minutes after learning what offshoring was didn't know anything about it. And I'm just like, let me go, you know, I'll send it and kind of see kind of test it out, pilot it with a couple of my, you know, people in my network. And four years later, here we are. [00:03:58] And we started this obviously real estate, property management, law, tech, healthcare, finance, a little bit of everything. [00:04:04] Jason: Yeah. All right. Awesome. So, so let's get into this. I mean, there's a lot of challenges that people have with this and everybody's had, I mean, a lot of property managers have tested the waters of working with, you know, VAs in the Philippines or maybe Mexico and there's kind of mixed feelings about how that's gone. If you've done this at all, you've had some bad experiences and maybe some good ones. And so it can be really difficult. And so you're kind of at the mercy, if you're using a company like yours or some third party company, you're kind of at the mercy of their hiring process to some degree. [00:04:43] And some of these vendors that provide VAs have better hiring processes than others. Some of them, you know, they all claim, Hey, we've got amazing talent or they all might sound American, you know, but then you end up kind of getting somebody that has a heavy accent. They aren't showing up, you know, on time or they just disappear and ghost you because they're non confrontational sometimes in the Philippines or some of these sort of issues, and I'm sure you see, you see some of this, right. [00:05:13] How do you kind of do things you think maybe differently at Assistantly versus some of these other players in the marketplace [00:05:22] Laith: Yes, it's a great question, you know, obviously I started off, you know, really when I got into the industry I started hiring these people on my own whether they're from like people going to the upworks or the fivers of the world or like job boards and to like Interview a whole bunch of candidates to understand where they're located in the Philippines. [00:05:38] Like what type of equipment do they have? You Internet connection speeds. Do they really have that much experience? You know, because people obviously, whether you're US, Philippines, anywhere, they will always oversell on an interview or a resume. There's a lot of things that we do on like on our end. [00:05:52] So like, number one you taught me this and I think we had a conversation when we were, when I met you in Franklin about like that job description is so important when sourcing somebody, right? You know, everybody obviously wants a job, but you want to essentially attract people that are like, you know, that's their zone of genius, and they're passionate about it. [00:06:10] That's why we actually follow the four R's that Jason taught us a long time ago. And it's something that we actually, it's really important. The first step is crafting the job description to compel to candidates. So they're actually passionate and interested about it. So that's number one, filling that top of the funnel. [00:06:25] Number two, there's, you know, there's obviously a series of interviews. You can't just have one interview. We did multiple interviews. But like, I think obviously experience matters, of course. Like I want people that are mid to senior level that know what they're doing. If they're in property management, you know, I want, you know, helping with like property admin stuff, tenant communication daily operations through Appfolio. [00:06:42] Like I look for those types of things, of course. But also like, what's really important to me is like, when working with the client, like, you know, your personality and your culture is very different than my other, you know, than client Jamie or client James. Right. And I think that's very important when finding the right match. [00:06:58] And we do like a personality culture assessment that we built ourself to essentially line them up with like whatever role, whether it's an admin operations or marketing role to really understand what type of person they are, but like beyond just their experience. We also verify references like, right. [00:07:12] You know, because again, people could say, Hey, I worked somewhere for seven years. How do you know that? Right. You know, I put, I see people put like they went to Harvard on there. I mean, how do I know they went to Harvard? And it's those things that you've got to cross check, call references. I think that's super important. [00:07:27] But then we also vet out like equipment. Do they have 2020 and newer equipment? Because that's a big slowdown in the Philippines and like Mexico and a lot of these countries. When people go, my team member is so slow. Well, their equipment is from 2002. Like, of course, it's very slow, you know, or their internet connection is very slow. [00:07:44] Like, we vet out those types of things, which I think are very important. You know, so between like the job description, the interviews, the proprietary personality assessment, the reference checks you know, we've obviously sourced for these positions thousands of times, so like, we really know what makes an A level player slash we call them unicorns here at Assistantly. Unicorn meaning they're rare, not meaning they can do everything, you know, in the kitchen sink. But like those are things that we go kind of, you know, beyond our measures. Plus, like also one really important thing, whether you hire from us or you hire offshore is it's not just compensation that matters. [00:08:14] Like we, we give the highest compensation in the industry. But people really want a sense of community. That's what we built out a system where they feel supported, they feel loved, they feel cared for, we give really good benefits. And that's why like our retention is like, I think I've maybe what in four years, there's been like two people who leave. [00:08:31] And you know, and that was just for family emergency, not because they didn't like their job. So, but a couple of things to know. [00:08:37] Jason: Yeah, I think that's really powerful. Having community and good compensation definitely is going to allow you to attract and have the best people. Yeah, and you mentioned like R docs like for us. Yeah. I got the four R's concept I got from one of my mentors Alex Charfen and then I started adding more R's to it because I was like this is I like And like, like the most significant, I've talked about this before on the show for those listening when hiring to attract the right personality type is this resonate section at the beginning where we describe the personality that would naturally love doing this. So that they can resonate with this, they read and go, Oh my gosh, that's me, which is way better than somebody going I would be willing to do this if you pay me enough, like, you know, that's a very different type of team member. And I think this goes back to regardless for those listening, I think anyone that is going to use any sort of company to collapse time on hiring, eventually every business needs their own hiring process internally. Even if I use Assistantly or other companies to get a team member, I'm still going to put them through my stuff, my process because I trust my process. And this is one of the things we do at DoorGrow is help our clients install a really good hiring mechanism. We just had a client come on board who was a past client. We'd helped clean up their branding, website, and now he's like at 200, 300 doors or something. And he just had total team turnover twice in the last six months. [00:10:06] He's on his third team in a six month period. And before that he said, life was amazing. He had this great virtual team. He had this person that was like trained or educated as a lawyer that was running everything. And then he lost that person. They went and found an actual law job. And then chaos started to ensue because he realized that person was so great. [00:10:25] They were carrying the entire team. And then he had no mechanism for knowing how to effectively hire or replace a team quickly. He had no real hiring machine. And what I've noticed, even in the largest companies, I've talked to people I talked to a guy the other day with 800 units, loves his business, doesn't want to change anything super comfortable. [00:10:45] And then I asked him questions about, you know, people, planning, and process, you know, what we call our super system. And he realized he didn't have a hiring mechanism and I could tell he got scared, like, and you know, people don't realize they're vulnerable when it comes to this, but they've built their team usually through a decade of Russian roulette. [00:11:04] And they finally have a great team, great culture. He's like, I've got great team. I trust them. Great culture. I'm like, cool. If you lost one of those key people, what would you do? You could see like panic sets in, right? He's like, well, yeah, I don't know, I guess. And so, I feel confident in my own business. [00:11:19] Even though everybody on my team, I feel like is like really great culture of it. I really care about them and they're really important. Some of them I've had a long time. If I lost any one of them because I have good process documentation, I know that I could get somebody else in to do that work pretty well pretty quickly to do the job. [00:11:40] But I know even more than that, I have way more safety and security and confidence as an entrepreneur. With the business because I know because of my hiring process I could get the right person relatively fast like within at least 30 days. I could have somebody else in play to be doing that may be as good at their role or better because usually if I lose a team member, it's because they kind of either the business outgrows them or they've outgrown the business, but there's like, they're no longer that culture fit maybe. [00:12:11] And then they leave, which is cool. Then I can go find somebody that's even better. And I, over time at DoorGrow, either my team members have leveled up, like I've had Adam for over a decade or I level up the team members like by getting new ones. Yeah. [00:12:27] Laith: Well, there's different people for different phases of growth, right? [00:12:30] You know, you get to the zero 1 to 5 million, you get to the 10 million, you know, we've changed our team and it's evolved. I mean, I've had people that have been with me since I started instantly, but then there have been people like client success I think we should upload this position maybe with somebody with an ops background because they understand the client a little bit more. [00:12:47] And I just did that recently and I'm like, Oh my God, game changer. Like, you know, client success, having an ops brain, they can go and help our clients and say, Hey, you should think of things very differently. I also think like a misconception, like talking about the your example, because like one. [00:13:00] You know, one person left the whole team crumbles. If that ever happens and you have the wrong team, right? Because people, you know, I have people that will say, you know, like 20 percent of your team members make 80 percent of the work. I go, maybe at your company, not mine. I go a hundred percent of my team members make a hundred percent of the work. [00:13:16] Why would I have 20? And you know, the magic, I tell my team, Hey, just 20 percent of you guys are making pretty much all the work very consistently. Everybody's like, what the F am I doing here? Then if those 20 percent are taking over the work, like that's not. That's a misconception. Of course you have A level players, but, you know, and I always talk to our internal team about it. [00:13:32] I'm like, Why do we have an A level department here, but a B level department here, but then a C level department here? Like, why can't we all be A level and working towards the same goals and help each other, you know, collaborate. And I think like finding A plus players, they're not easy to find. But like A level players can also help those, let's say B level players become A level players. [00:13:50] Like that's like, that's part of it. When you have good people, they help other good people grow. And I think that's like a huge misconception. It's like, I have this really good person, but then like, I was here, but like the rest of my team is like, okay. I'm like, then you got to switch out your team, you know, keep your A level player, but then you need other A level players. [00:14:05] Cause like, if you're at 3 million in revenue, like you should be at seven and a half million with the right team, you know, and I see that even with my own thing is like when I switch out somebody, whether it's ops or client success or recruitment, I do this all the time. And I up level, Oh dude, like, I'm like, man, this is what heaven and unicorns and rainbows look like. [00:14:23] You know, I don't even have to worry about any of this stuff. They're just taking care of it. They own it. And that's where like the zone of genius comes in. Yeah. Yeah, because you want with that resonate section, right? You want people to be like, that's me. I want to work there so bad. Like, that's exactly what I want to do all day. [00:14:39] And people are like, really, you want to go through Appfolio all day? Like, that's what you want to do? And people were like, yes, I love Appfolio. I want to go through leases. I want to go, you know, coordinate with maintenance requests. Like there are people like that, that just because you don't enjoy it, which I don't blame you, you're an entrepreneur, owner, founder, whatever you are. [00:14:56] There are people that are like, that's my bread and butter. I got it. It's easy for me and I like to do it. And like that zone of genius, like if you could find people that go, I'm passionate about it, it energizes me, it makes me feel good. That's how you get A level players. Not somebody that's like, I'm good at it, but it's like a vampire sucked in my tongue. [00:15:13] Jason: Yeah, I call that them being a personality fit. Like if they're the, they resonate, they're the right personality fit for it. If they're the right culture fit, they'll believe in you and be inspired and want to support you and work for you. And then there's the skill fit, which really is, do they have the intellectual capacity to develop the skill or do they already possess it? [00:15:31] Right. Not everybody can have all three, you know, and if they can't have all three, they're not really going...
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DGS 276: Navigating Success: Faith, Real Estate, and Entrepreneurship
12/11/2024
DGS 276: Navigating Success: Faith, Real Estate, and Entrepreneurship
As entrepreneurs, we have the ability to make a difference in the world and in those we serve by aligning our In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Ryan Pineda, real estate investing expert and author of The Wealthy Way to talk about real estate, business, and faith. You’ll Learn [01:34] Getting Started in Entrepreneurship [08:07] Faith and Business [17:16] Having Impact as a Business Owner [29:50] You are What You Consume [45:35] Don’t Wait to do the Work Tweetables  ”There's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business.” “ When you start becoming process-driven more than results-driven, your life changes.” “ We should expect things to be hard and worth it.” “ You are what you consume in all areas of life.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: There's so much wisdom in there and if you can at least just be willing to extract wisdom wherever you can find it, then you're not an idiot And so at least start there, everybody listening, just look for wisdom, be a seeker of wisdom and look for the things that are better and higher. [00:00:16] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:34] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:54] At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:13] Now let's get into the show. [00:01:17] So my guest today, I am honored to hang out with Ryan Pineda. Ryan, welcome to the show. [00:01:22] Ryan: Hey, happy to be here. Good to see you. [00:01:25] Jason: So Ryan, I'd love to kick things off by getting into your background of how you kind of got into this journey of entrepreneurship. But before we do that, your company's called Wealthy Investor, right? [00:01:36] Yep. And you've worked with a lot of real estate investors. My target audience listening to the show are usually the vehicle or the support mechanism for a lot of investors. I think the audience would be interested in hearing a little bit about how you got kind of started into entrepreneurism first of all, and then maybe how you got into real estate. [00:01:57] Ryan: Yeah, I'll give the quick story. You know, I never wanted to get into real estate or entrepreneurship. I was a baseball player growing up and that was all I wanted to do. I was grateful and thankful that I was able to actually do that. You know, I ended up getting drafted by the Oakland A's and got to play professional baseball for eight years. [00:02:15] But, I didn't get paid much in the minor leagues. I never made it to the bigs. I was making 1200 bucks a month. And so I had to make money elsewhere. And that's what led me in entrepreneurship. You know, I got my real estate license in 2010. Yep. And, you know, so I've been in the game for about 15 years now. [00:02:32] And, you know, I've seen a lot. You know, started as an agent and hated it. My mom was actually a property manager. I didn't tell you that. So, I watched her do that for a little bit while being an agent as well. So she was an agent herself, but you know, watching her, I had no desire to be an agent or do anything in real estate because when I got in in 2010, she had just lost everything. [00:02:53] You know, and she's like, you need to get like a safe job. You need to get something that has a salary and a pension. That was literally her advice. Well, and I was like, yeah, maybe, I don't know. Hopefully this baseball thing works out. But while I'm playing, I can't get that. So I'm going to have to do something. [00:03:11] So anyways, I become an agent. Hate it. Do it for a few years. Ended up getting into other weird things. I started flipping couches. I was a substitute teacher. I was just doing anything that could make a buck on the side. And then eventually that led to flipping houses in 2015. [00:03:27] And that was when I, for the first time, started to make some real money. And yeah, I mean, by my third year, I had made, you know, I became a millionaire after year three, flipping houses. And it was just like, wow, this is crazy. And since then I flipped, you know, I think almost 600, 700 homes. And. You know, I've bought rentals. [00:03:47] I own apartment buildings through our syndication. You know, we've coached people, like you said, with wealthy investor. We've coached thousands of students and held really big events. You know, I've started another subsidiary businesses for real estate investors. You know, we have a lead generation company called Lead Kitchen where we help them get leads for sellers. [00:04:05] We have, you know, I had a tax firm, you know, I've kind of done almost everything you can imagine in the real estate world, but [00:04:10] Jason: Yeah, that's a lot. So I'm curious you said your mom was a property manager and she gave you the advice It was kind of like maybe steer clear of this stuff. [00:04:19] What does your mom think now about everything? [00:04:22] Ryan: You know what? She's still always hyper cautious so, you know, I retired my parents in 2019 I bought him a house bought him all the cars and everything and my dad actually started working for me in 2018 as a project manager. So he would oversee a lot of our flips and even to this day, he still does it. [00:04:42] Not cause he has to, because he's just like, well, if you're going to, you know, pay for us, I might as well like earn it, you know, and he just wants to support and whatever. So, You know, my dad understands the game. My mom though, obviously she's seen the results, but she's still always hyper cautious. [00:04:57] And so, she doesn't think I need to get a job now, but she does think a lot of times the big risk I take, I shouldn't be taking. [00:05:05] Jason: Yeah. Looking back, when do you see in hindsight that there were clues that you were maybe destined to be an entrepreneur? Maybe even doing baseball. [00:05:16] Ryan: Yeah. I look back in hindsight, even as a kid and I was always buying and selling and thinking about money. Like I started an eBay account when I was like 12 years old. I remember. You know, buying stuff and bidding on stuff and getting good deals on eBay. And then I remember I was selling Pokemon cards and Yu Gi Oh cards, you know, in middle school and stuff. [00:05:37] And it's just like, You know, the signs were always there. And then even I was always attracted to just making money myself. So like I was good at poker, you know, I won poker tournaments and I played online and I made money that way. And so in hindsight, it was always very clear. I was never going to have a job. [00:05:53] Really the only true job I ever had was playing baseball. And even then it's like, yeah, there's not really a way to be an entrepreneur. I mean, you kind of are you're in charge of your career and how well you want to do and like how well you want to train and. And so, yeah, even in that sense, baseball is kind of in that same vein. [00:06:12] Jason: Yeah. So I'm sure even to get as far as you got in baseball, there was a lot of drive involved and a lot of effort involved, even though there wasn't a lot of pay, it sounds like. [00:06:25] Ryan: Yeah, I think yeah, for me, like, I had to learn how to like win, you know, at the end of the day, losing is not an option, right? [00:06:33] It's a zero sum game in sports. One person wins, one person loses, you know, for the pitcher to succeed, you must get out. And so, dude, I'm like, I'm going to just figure out how to win. I'm competitive. And so I think competitiveness has always fueled me. It's different in business now because I understand the games that we play. [00:06:52] It's like, you know, We both can have good podcasts. We both can win in business. You don't need to lose for me to win. But that doesn't mean I'm still not competitive. [00:07:00] Jason: Sure. Yeah. I'm sure in the different industries that you have businesses that you focus on, you have competitors and you probably want to win. [00:07:09] Ryan: I don't want to lose. [00:07:11] Jason: Right. I want to be the best. I think that's true of most entrepreneurs. There's this drive or, this bite to win. You know, I remember early on, I think some of my first clues as to that I might be an entrepreneur is I was into music. And I remember in college, I was going around door to door pre selling CDs so that I could fund doing an album. [00:07:31] And yet I still at the time was thinking I've got to get a degree to get some sort of job to rise the corporate ladder. And I had no clue that entrepreneurism was like a path at the time. So it's interesting and Entrepreneurism sort of found me In that I needed a way to not be doing a nine to five job to be able to take care of kids because I ended up as a single father right and divorced and like went through all this stuff. [00:07:57] And so I was like, all right, what can I do? And so I sometimes joke that my kids turned me into an entrepreneur. It was just what needed to be done, but there were always clues before, right? So you know, one of the things that you've talked about a lot, I've noticed on your social media, on podcasts is you're very faith forward. [00:08:15] Like you're very comfortable talking about your faith and like the things that kind of motivate you and drive you. And you're involved in some charitable sort of, you know, businesses or charitable entities or organizations as well. How does faith sort of play into all of this when it comes to business for you? [00:08:33] Ryan: Well, you know, I grew up in the church. So, you know, for those who don't know, I'm a Christian. And you know, I grew up in a baptist church and you know, faith was always a part of my life. And I felt like for the most part, I did things the way God wanted me to. You know, I didn't really rebel and go crazy in college, got married young. [00:08:51] You know, I've always tried to put God first and everything. And You know, I think in the last couple of years, God was just pushing me to get even more deep in faith and more bold and to really embrace the spiritual and supernatural side of faith because I was always a very theologically sound person. [00:09:11] And you know, I've read the Bible many times, and, you know, I spent a lot of time, like I said, in church and serving and other things, but you just realize in everything in life, especially with faith, that there's so little that you actually know, and you know, as I've grown in my faith, I've learned to hear from God better. [00:09:29] And tune out all the noise of everything else going out in life, right? I mean, there's so many distractions in life. There's your business, there's social media, there's your kids, your family, you know, the recession, the election, it's like distraction. I think that's Satan's biggest, yeah, that's Satan's biggest tool is to distract you from the truth. [00:09:49] And so the truth was God wanted me to get more bold and to really use my platform for him, not for me. And, you know, with that, I became convicted to just really go all in because I mean, one thing I guess people would notice about my career too, is like, there's no really lukewarmness, you know, when I go all in on something. [00:10:09] It's like, yo, if we're going to throw an event, it's going to be crazy. If we're going to start this, we're going on a blitz. And so I said, you know what, we need to start something for Christian entrepreneurs and Christian business people. And so, you know, I created Wealthy Kingdom last year and you know, we're a nonprofit and, you know, we have three goals. [00:10:27] Well, I shouldn't say three goals. The one goal, the mission is to bring the kingdom to the marketplace. And what I mean by that is so many entrepreneurs just think it's the church's job to, you know, go get people saved and to go disciple people. And it's like, yeah, you know, just invite them to church on Sunday. [00:10:44] It's like, no, our job, every Christian has this goal or mission. You know, Jesus tells us right before he left, he said that the mission here is you need to go make disciples of all nations. We all have that same mission. And it's like, it's not to make the most money. It's not to do the thing that you love. [00:11:05] Like, Jesus never said do the thing that you love. Like that's another big lie that, you know, people have been told. [00:11:12] Jason: Jesus didn't even do what he loved necessarily. Like to a degree, he said, I don't even do my own will. Yeah. He does the will of him who sent me. Right. He's like, I'm not even doing my own will. [00:11:22] And so if that's a model, then maybe it's not about just selfishly doing our own will all the time. [00:11:29] Ryan: Absolutely should not. Our will, as we grow should be more aligned with the father's will. And that's what sanctification is. So anyways, to, to long story short. God called us to go be disciples where we're at. [00:11:42] We don't like, we need to go make disciples of all nations right now. That's in our job, in our career, in our business, at an event, whatever. And so I took that to heart. So we started you know, looking at everything that we currently do. And we said, well, let's do it for the King. And so I said, all right, well, let's get a kingdom based community. [00:12:01] And so, you know, we started an online community because that's something we currently do in business. It's like, well, let's get one kingdom based. And so we have that it's completely free. Anyone can join it. Then I said, let's throw events. We throw a lot of events. Why are we not throwing kingdom events? [00:12:14] And so we started throwing big events for the kingdom. And in fact, in my secular events, I just started throwing worship services and pastors in the middle of the event without even telling anyone. Because I'm like, look, this might be the only time they ever hear the good news in their entire life. [00:12:31] And, you know, whatever they might like it, they might not like it, but I don't really care. They need to hear it. And so we started incorporating faith into our events. You know, and then the last thing was really just discipling the current believers because I'm all about the lost. I want to get the lost at the events. [00:12:50] With our content, with our community, but also too, what about the people who are already saved? Well, we need to disciple them and make them better. And so we started running Bible studies all across the country. And I think we're close to a hundred, actually across the world right now, that meet every single week in people's offices, in their homes. [00:13:07] And we all go through the same studies together in these Bible studies, across as a body. And it's really cool. So, yeah, we're trying to attack it from a lot of different angles. [00:13:18] Jason: It's a lot to organize. [00:13:20] Ryan: Oh, yeah. But here's the thing, right? It's weird because I just said, Hey, don't do your will. Do God's will. [00:13:26] Right. But on the same hand, God gave us all talents, abilities and different life experiences. And so, you know, he calls us to use those to do his will and it's like all right god gave me a lot of influence online. Why am I not making videos and content, you know helping people understand what that means? [00:13:47] God gave me the ability to throw massive events. We threw wealth con every quarter a thousand plus people every quarter for years. Why am I not throwing massive events for the kingdom? God gave me the ability to organize communities and groups and all these things. Why am I not organizing and using my administrative gifts to do that? And it's like it's all the same thing, and they're all the same gifts and they're all the same skill sets, but on one hand you're putting him first and on the other hand you're putting yourself first [00:14:16] Jason: Yeah, I love the idea of you know positively impacting the world I think business a lot of people don't realize I think business really there's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business, right? [00:14:31] I don't think charities don't function as well like businesses. There's an exchange of value And if there's value like behind it and there's a mission and a purpose behind it Then even the team members the employees everybody Are more lit up and excited and so business is a very efficient business model and you know, one of my past mentors, Alex Charfen, and he would say something to the effect of like entrepreneurs are the people that have changed the world throughout history. [00:14:57] They're the people that kind of think differently. And you know, you mentioned the word disciple like several times and I love the scripture where it's like, how do you know who's a disciple, right? And it's by this shall men know, right? You're my disciple. If you have loved one towards another and I think you know this spreading this message of like sharing true principles Which I think is what makes scripture, right? [00:15:20] It's that there's true principles that can be applied to things that are useful and I think a really good business book will have maybe one key principle it teaches, but then you take a book like the bible and it's just full of lots of different instances of principles that these levers that you can apply to various situations in your life or in decision making. [00:15:39] And you know, that's always been sort of my purpose, I feel is to bring principles to people and to share principles of truth to others, because I feel like that's the easiest lever to impact people's mindset or change their lives is to bring some truth or light or some true principles that they can apply, especially if it's facilitating more love or more kindness. [00:16:01] And there's so many different things different principles that apply in business in order to figure things out like related hiring related to you know running an efficient business [00:16:11] Ryan: How do you know like a non profit is a business right? I mean, it's a non profit. [00:16:15] Jason: Yeah, it is. It is a business. Yeah. [00:16:17] Ryan: A church is a business technically based on its designation, Wealthy Kingdom is a business. [00:16:22] It's a nonprofit, right? I mean, in many cases, well, I shouldn't say this because every nonprofit's different, but like for me, I make literally nothing from it. You know, I do it out of a, you know, I just want to do it. Now we have employees, we have staff, we have marketing, we have event costs, we got to pay for all this stuff. [00:16:38] Right. And so we got to figure out, man, how do we use the resources we have in the best way possible? Well, it's the same thing we ask ourself every day in business. We have a limited amount of labor, a limited amount of capital, a limited amount of time. What do we do, you know, to make the most of it? So it's all the same. [00:16:57] And I think too, right, you don't even have...
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DGS 275: Tough Love: Hiring in your Property Management Business
12/04/2024
DGS 275: Tough Love: Hiring in your Property Management Business
Many of our property management business owner clients are focused on hiring or restructuring their teams right now. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the most important parts of the hiring process and offer a little bit of “tough love.” You’ll Learn [04:39] 1. Finding the right person for the role [11:04] 2. The importance of training your new hire [24:41] 3. Implementing accountability for your team [30:20] Review: what does the initial training period look like? Tweetables “We need to be clear on what results we're expecting.” “Any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes.” “You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet.” “If you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet. [00:00:09] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners, and their businesses. [00:00:53] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:11] Sarah: All right. [00:01:11] Let's do it. Before we do anything, we have an announcement for those of you that have not yet heard. Our foster dog Hans has been officially adopted. So we didn't do a podcast since he was adopted. So this is our first podcast that we don't have Hans kind of hanging out in the background. And I miss his little face, but he has an amazing family. [00:01:32] Jason: I miss Hans. I don't- [00:01:35] Sarah: love him so much. [00:01:37] Jason: I don't miss him chewing my stuff in my office, but I do miss his little face as well. All right. Yes. Yeah, so he's adopted All right So the topic today and if you want to check that out, you can go to doorgrow.Com right at the top. There's dogs click on that see all our stories. Maynard got adopted. [00:01:55] Sarah: Maynard is adopted. Yeah, he now lives in California. [00:01:59] Jason: This dog was like on death's door multiple times. Well, many times. Now he's living it up with a wealthy dude. [00:02:06] Sarah: Who just fell in love with him. [00:02:07] Jason: Guy in California. [00:02:08] Sarah: Maynard just captured his heart, loved him so much and wanted to provide him an amazing life, so. [00:02:15] Jason: He's got a new name. [00:02:16] Sarah: He's Bodhi. [00:02:17] Jason: Bodhi. [00:02:18] Sarah: Bodhi. So he's now driving around in a convertible in California. That's one of the pictures they put on there. Oh! [00:02:25] Jason: All right. So [00:02:25] Sarah: Maynard has a great life now, too. [00:02:27] Jason: So you can check that out at doorgrow.com/dogs. All right. So our topic today that we're going to be chatting about you said that it came up a few times in You know this week with some of our clients dealing with some new team members We've got we're doing helping a lot of people with hiring right now. [00:02:45] Sarah: Oh my goodness so many. I built so many DoorGrow Hiring accounts in the last week. [00:02:49] Jason: Yeah, so we're setting up this hiring mechanism and machine and system so that people can have some consistently good hires. But that brings us to kind of the next challenge. So what have you been hearing? [00:03:00] Sarah: Okay, so one client asked me, he's about to hire. [00:03:05] He's going through the hiring process. So he doesn't have anybody lined up yet, but he's It's about to start this whole process. And he had asked me, "Hey, what about expectations for when they start when they come on?" And specifically this is a BDM. The second instance of this happening this week is a client who has already hired and his BDM is now about 60 days in. [00:03:31] And he sent me a message yesterday and he said, "Hey, listen, I really need to talk with you before the end of the month. I need to make a decision on my team." So I said, okay, let's. Let's figure out what's going on? And he said "yeah, I'm kind of pissed because my BDM is like 60 days in, and last month he didn't do anything at all. And then this month he started like he hasn't closed anything yet," and by he didn't do anything at all, what he means is he didn't close anything. [00:04:00] Jason: Okay. Not that he wasn't working. No deals yet. [00:04:01] Sarah: Yeah. Okay. Not that he wasn't working. He was working. And this month now is his 60 day mark and he hasn't closed anything, but he's, you know, making calls and he's starting to, you know, get some things kind of ready and warmed up in the pipeline. [00:04:16] He, he said, "man, should I just let him go? Like, is he just not the right person? I feel like it's 60 days, like, I should see some results at this point." [00:04:26] Jason: Okay. [00:04:26] Sarah: So I'd like to, I'd really like to talk about that. And this is going to be, whatever episode this is "Sarah's Tough Love episode." So here it is. [00:04:35] Jason: Got it. Okay, I mean, let's get the basic stuff out of the way, right? First, we need to know that we have the right person. So, we need to know what those expectations are. So, that's where we define that. Usually, we call them R docs, but in this ultimate job description. So, we need to be clear on what we're looking for. [00:04:51] We need to be clear on what results we're expecting. We need to be clear on, you know, what outcomes we're hoping for and they need to be clear on this, right? Like if we're bringing somebody in, they need that clarity. So if there's anyone listening and there's any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes. [00:05:09] And those aren't good, right? And so there needs to be at least, and you need to be on the same page. Literally, the way we do that is with a page called an RDoc. And so you make sure you're on the same page. And all those young Gen Z people, notice how I used the word literally, correctly like it's an actual page. [00:05:28] Sarah: I was just thinking that. [00:05:29] Jason: Stop saying the word literally. It drives me fucking nuts. So, all right. [00:05:33] Sarah: Literally. [00:05:34] Jason: I literally, like if, yeah, nobody's confused about it being figurative, then don't, you don't need to say the word. [00:05:41] Sarah: I literally died yesterday when I read that text. [00:05:43] Jason: No, you would be dead. [00:05:45] You would actually be dead. All right. So, Now the next piece is we need to make sure we've got a person that fits that job description, right? They actually are the right personality. Well, let's talk about the three fits real quick. They have to match all three or they're not going to be a good BDM. [00:06:01] Sarah: Or it's never going to work out. And it doesn't matter if it's a BDM, an operator, a property manager, an assistant, a maintenance coordinator. It doesn't, name the role, doesn't matter. [00:06:10] Jason: So, first, they have to be the right personality for the job or they'll never be great at it. They'll never be motivated to do it. [00:06:18] You bring in somebody to be a BDM, for example, and they're not the right personality to go out and want to talk to people and connect with people and network and that's not fun for them, they're always going to resist it. They're going to avoid it. They're going to do a bunch of time wasting stupid activities They're going to train everything else other than what really should be done, which is to go connect with people and have conversations. So they're going to be like "well I'm trying some marketing thing and i'm trying this thing and like and-" [00:06:47] Sarah: "I sent 5,000 emails I don't know why none of them came back." [00:06:51] Jason: "We did direct mail to, like, 7,000 owners." [00:06:56] Sarah: I've heard that and it's because this is a true example. "I sent 5,000 emails." [00:07:00] Jason: Yeah. [00:07:01] Sarah: So essentially you did nothing. That's great. Right. Good to know. [00:07:05] Jason: Yeah. [00:07:05] Sarah: Thank you. [00:07:06] Jason: Lots of emails, right? So. So, [00:07:09] Sarah: you know how many junk emails we get in a day? What happens when you get junk email? [00:07:13] Do you open it? Do you read it? Do you respond to it? No. That's what you just did to somebody else. [00:07:19] Jason: Yeah. It lacks depth. All right. So we can get into tactics later, but they need to match the personality for the role. Which means they would love succeeding at this. They would love doing it. They would enjoy it. [00:07:32] They get some fulfillment out of it. And so that's personality fit. They need to be the right the right culture fit, which means they need to actually believe in your business and in you and in the product. They have to believe in this. You cannot sell effectively if you lack belief. And that goes for everybody on the team. [00:07:53] Like, if your operator isn't a believer in you or the business, they're not going to want or care to make sure that it runs well for you. If your executive assistant isn't, you know, a believer in you or shares your values, they're never going to do things in a way that makes you feel safe or that you trust them. [00:08:09] Cultural fit means they do it the way that you would want it done, that they share your values. The big clue we talked about this at our last jumpstart event where we had clients and somebody had a team member. And I just asked, I said, well, do you feel better when they're around? [00:08:25] Do you feel calmer when they're around? And they were like, no, I'm like, yeah, then they got to go. [00:08:30] Sarah: He said, oh, well, a lot of our communication we do over the phone because that's better. [00:08:36] Jason: Because there's such a high degree of conflict. [00:08:37] Sarah: Jason says, better than what? Awful? [00:08:40] Jason: Yeah, and then he laughed. [00:08:41] Everybody laughed in the group and he was like, well, yeah. [00:08:44] Sarah: Well, I can't talk to this person in person. I can't be around them. Because when we're around each other, there's too much conflict. It's just too, it gets, yeah, it gets too feisty. Well, that's not good. [00:08:55] Jason: Yeah, that means that person's not a good fit for that person for that particular client. [00:09:00] Sarah: And let's be clear. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with this particular person. No, it doesn't make them a bad person It doesn't mean, you know, all the they'll never succeed No, it just means that they are better suited in a different environment That's all. It means not everybody like when you're dating, you don't want to date everybody. You want to date people that you like generally and there are certain people that you like and there are certain people that you just don't mesh well. The businesses work the same way. [00:09:31] Jason: Yeah. They've got to match your values. Because regardless you get somebody that's amazing BDM, for example, or an amazing operator for your business, they don't share your values, you'll never trust them. Like you just can't. And then the third fit is skill fit. So they have to have the skill or the ability or the intellectual capacity to learn and develop this skill quickly. And so if they don't, then you'll invest a bunch of energy into trying to train them and they're just too stupid to get it. [00:10:01] Or they just can't figure it out or maybe you hire somebody and they've got bad habits or they can't adapt. So they need to have that skill fit. They got to be all three or they're not going to be a good fit. So let's assume if we've helped them with DoorGrow Hiring, we focus on these three fits. [00:10:18] We have a whole hiring mechanism. Make sure these generally go well. [00:10:22] Sarah: Yeah. So I can tell you, I don't think that's any of those are the problem. [00:10:26] Jason: This person. Yeah. So in these situations, the person is the right fit. Yeah, usually that's the problem is they're not even getting the right person. [00:10:33] Most of y'all doing hiring, you're playing Russian roulette hiring and you don't have good fits. [00:10:38] Sarah: Or it's, oh, this person had the experience and they came from such and such a Yeah, we hear that all the time. [00:10:43] Jason: Yeah. Well, they're so experienced, and you feel uncomfortable around them and you don't trust them. [00:10:50] Yeah. So let's assume that, you know, with our clients, we've helped them find people that match the three fits. So now we're past that hurdle, that's very typical for most people, well, now, if it's not them, then who is it? [00:11:04] Sarah: Okay. So here's where the tough love comes is. This is always my question. [00:11:08] And I'm very, very particular about what happens when you hire someone. You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet. I know it feels like you've gotten through it and now things are better and you should just be able to rely on that person. You're not there yet. [00:11:33] You will be. But you're just not, you're getting closer. You're just not fully there yet. And this is what happens a lot of times and they go, "Oh, okay, so I know I need to train this person and then I'll probably train them for like a week or two and then they'll just be good." [00:11:48] Absolutely not. So especially with a new person and it doesn't matter. Here's the other thing that I hear all the time, especially when somebody has the experience. Oh, well, you know, they have a sales background. They know how to sell. Great. They don't know how to sell for you. They don't know how to sell what you've got. [00:12:05] They don't know how to sell your values and your mission. They don't know how to sell that yet. They don't quite know. So you can take any salesperson in the universe and plug them into your business. Do they have the skill? Yes. Do they have the experience? Of course, but they still have to be trained. So having the experience does not mean "Oh, I don't have to train them," or, "oh, I don't have to train them as much." [00:12:32] You still have to train them a lot. There is a lot of training. And I hate to break it to you, but your life when you hire gets worse. So your life is bad, you know you need to hire, then you hire somebody, your life is now worse for a short period of time. The reason being is everything that you were doing, you still have to do it, and in addition, you now have to train somebody. So nothing has changed except that you just added another responsibility for yourself for the next 30 to 90 days. And there is no way around that with hiring. So if you hire and you fail the train, it is probably not going to work out. They will not get the results. [00:13:16] They will be frustrated. You will be frustrated. And at some point, you will get back into the cycle of, "Oh, well, now I guess I have to hire again." And then you live in hell forever. And it's not a good place to be. [00:13:31] Jason: Yeah, so unless you hire somebody that is an amazing 'who,' right? There's a book called Who Not How it's a great book. [00:13:40] Unless you hire an amazing 'who,' like you bring in somebody, they're a sales trainer and an expert closer, and they've had tons of success and they can teach other people's sales, then I think, in any role, you have to assume you need an assumption that they're going to do it wrong. You have to start with that foundational assumption that they're going to do everything wrong. [00:14:01] If I hired an operator cold, they're doing it wrong, that I need them to install my operational system. If they are coming in as a salesperson in the business, I know they've been trained poorly because most sales training out there doesn't work anymore. There's a new model and a new way of selling and all the old stuff. [00:14:20] All the salesy guys that are sales trainers and sales coaches largely out there that push. Doesn't work anymore. It's outdated. And we don't push that stuff at DoorGrow. We've had to shift how we sell and we teach clients differently, even in the last year. And so my assumption is that they're going to do it wrong, but. [00:14:40] What I do assume is if they've done it well before, they have the ability to learn it. They have the ability to be a good operator. They have the ability to be a good BDM. But there needs to, you can't assume because they have done it before, that you're just going to rely on them to do it. [00:14:56] Sarah: It's not plug and play. [00:14:58] "I hired them now they're just going to go do it and they're going to sell a bunch of stuff for me." No. [00:15:02] Jason: Right. You're always going to be disappointed with most everybody if you come in with this assumption and they're going to feel unsupported and untrained and frustrated. [00:15:13] Sarah: And they will inevitably either quit or get fired. [00:15:16] Jason: Yeah, they'll go find a better situation. [00:15:18] Sarah: No matter what, it will not work out. So here's a good moment to talk about Vendoroo. [00:15:25] Jason: We'll talk in just a minute. We're going to talk about the onboarding and then some of the next steps that are really important. But quick word from our sponsor. If you're tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish. Triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations, where every dollar is accounted for, and every task is handled with unmatched reliability Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at vendoroo.ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. Okay. So check them out. [00:16:10] Sarah: Speaking of doing things right, let's talk about what happens after you hire somebody. [00:16:15] Jason: So the next step after you hire it, it has to be onboarding. There needs to be a good transition of bringing somebody out from the wild, this untrained wild creature, getting them to be something that is going to work inside of your business and fit you and fit what you want. [00:16:33] It's onboarding. [00:16:34] Sarah: And if you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction because I'm sure that you can think back to a previous job that you've had back when we all had job jobs, right? Have you ever just been hired and then kind of just, it's almost like train yourself or figure it out...
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DGS 274: List Smarter, Lease Faster with RentFinder.AI
11/26/2024
DGS 274: List Smarter, Lease Faster with RentFinder.AI
How do you figure out the most accurate market prices for rents on your properties? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Nathan Jackson from RentFinder.ai to talk about how you can level up your listing game. You’ll Learn [01:24] The creation of RentFinder.ai [05:06] An AI tool for finding rent prices [09:17] Making the switch from one tool to another [13:00] Customizability and integration Tweetables “You come up with something cool and you show it to your friends, then other people are going to want it.” “You can either have it done accurate, cheap, fast, but you can't have all three.” “I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise.” “Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise. Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge. [00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:32] DoorGrow Property Managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not. Because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:14] Now let's get into the show. So today I'm hanging out with Nathan Jackson. Welcome Nathan. [00:01:22] Nathan: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. [00:01:24] Jason: So Nathan, is with RentFinder.ai and so Nathan, before we get into talking about RentFinder, which I think is a super cool tool. I've gotten to take a look at it, play with it a bit. [00:01:36] I want to get into the audience hearing a little bit about your background. How did you get into playing around with property management related stuff. What's your history here. [00:01:47] Nathan: Yeah. so my background is really you know, kind of growing up as a kid, technology was kind of my life, the most important thing to me. [00:01:52] But as I got towards that age for college, I was more interested in the finance side of things. So I went to school to get a degree in finance and investments. I lived in Manhattan for a little while, and then I also ended up starting my workout for a property management firm doing data analytics. [00:02:07] That was kind of the first thing I started doing. And when I got in the door, it was one of those things where I just slowly started gravitating more towards the data analytics and technology at the same time. And as the company I was with called ONEprop got acquired ultimately by a company that rolled up into HRG, I kept being more on that analyst side role, but then also doing more with automation technology. [00:02:28] And that entire side of the business you know, obviously the space, even five, six years ago was very immature from a tech side. And so I saw all sorts of opportunities to kind of get into that space. And then after being with the company that was acquired by HRG I came over to a company called Specialized Property Management and that's where I've been for about five years. [00:02:47] And then I've been leading all of our technology efforts here at Specialized Property Management. So even with the background in finance, I kind of gravitated back towards my roots, which is tech and all that space. So that's what I've been doing here. We've been building software internally, building sort of, integration type stuff and all sorts of cool tools here at Specialized. [00:03:04] And then RentFinder was born out of Specialized. So it's kind of where we are today. [00:03:08] Jason: Got it. And so I know Chuck Thompson and he's, is he CEO of Specialized or? Yes. Yeah. He's CEO. Yeah. So He used to be part of the RPM franchise and he was a client of mine and helped him with websites and, you know, some other things early on. [00:03:28] And he's got some other like former RPM people that are part of his his organization as well. And that are connected to this like Rod Schifferdecker past client as well. So, I mean, it's really cool to see, like, I've got clients creating stuff now that can benefit my clients. Like, that's really awesome. [00:03:45] Nathan: It's great, great circle of life there. Yeah. [00:03:47] Jason: Yeah, it's really cool. So, RentFinder.ai was developed to solve what problem? What was the problem that Specialized was having with all the other rental tools? Because there's a bunch of them out there. [00:03:59] Nathan: Yeah, so fundamentally that's a great question. [00:04:01] We built this solely as an internal tool to begin with. We had no intention of launching this as a product whatsoever. We were just going to all the different sort of rental evaluation tools that were out there, whether it was a Zillow, whether it was a Rentometer, whether it was a RentRange, a RentFax, there was just fundamental problems with every one of them. [00:04:18] And with a lot of my work that I've been working on with Specialized, we got really heavy into the, you know, AI statistical modeling and deeper science behind how to do some stuff with data. And I said, Hey, I think I can build a better tool, build a better mousetrap to do this. And it was one of those things where just kind of organically, we started building out internal models to price out for our own agents. [00:04:37] We started sharing it with some key clients and one day we had a key client say, Hey, you know what? I would love to share this with my investment partner. Can we go ahead and get an account for them set up? And all of a sudden we went from checking five, 10 a day to, you know, within a few months of just building internally, running hundreds and hundreds. [00:04:53] And it's just sort of been off to the race ever since then scaling the same space. So. [00:04:57] Jason: I mean, you come up with something cool and you show it to your friends, then other people are going to want it. Yeah, that's true. And so you guys have built the better mousetrap. You guys have built this cool tool. [00:05:06] So tell everybody, like, what is RentFinder.ai. Let's start there. [00:05:10] Nathan: So fundamentally, if you know those tools like RentRange or rentometer we're fundamentally providing a very similar service. The key differentiators of what we do specifically versus them is that we are taking in just say a monstrous amount of data, the price out of home. [00:05:23] You know, we're not looking at just like the recent comp, plus the beds, bathroom square footage. We're looking at hundreds of data points per property, all the little things that you don't necessarily think about on any sort of listing that you see, we're looking at photos of the property. We're doing an analysis of what exactly the inside of the home looks like if we have them as well as a virtual tour scan. [00:05:41] We're basically trying to look at the nitty gritty about what really makes a home rentable. And when you find what makes a home rentable. You can really hone in on that price because it's pretty easy to look at two homes on paper, a 3, 000 square foot, three, two next to a 3, 000 square foot, three, two and say, Oh, they're the same. [00:05:56] But we all know that's not the case when you walk in the door, right? One home is a lot prettier and a lot better than the other. And fundamentally that was the aspect that's been missing. So we've added that into our analysis. And we've been able to really hone in on very, you know, precision rents by going that route and just going way beyond the limited amounts of data the other tools use. [00:06:14] Jason: So you said there's like hundreds of different data points. Can you give us an example of what maybe some of the other tools might not be looking at? [00:06:22] Nathan: Sure, like, we'll be looking at like, how recently were the new wood floors installed in the kitchen, right? What color are the wood floors? How are the wood floor colors in this area of the neighborhood renting compared to this over here? [00:06:32] Because we're looking at all the other homes, like little tiny details like that. We're looking at, you know, do you have a pool? If you have a condo, are you facing the north or the south side of the building? Just all the How are you getting all [00:06:41] Jason: this data though? Where does all this data come from? [00:06:44] Nathan: So generally, I joke with my team that we're kind of like a data vacuum. We get data from anywhere and everywhere that we can. We buy data from sources. We find data online in publicly available places. And if we can't find it or buy it, we generate it. We do things where we're taking data sources like photos, for example. [00:06:59] Photos are a very rich source of information. They're just not really normally easily extractable, right? But if you look at photos and analyze them in a smart way, you can get data out of those photos to be able to do an analysis from there. That's kind of what we're doing. [00:07:12] Jason: And you're leveraging the AI to do this? [00:07:14] Like AI is looking at photos and going, "Oh, they have hardwood floors." [00:07:18] Nathan: Yes. Yeah. We have some trained AI models that we've done. You can do visual analysis on the photos and it'll basically take a look at a photo and say, you know, here's the types of floors. Here's what's going on in the kitchen. Here's what we think it was most recently updated. [00:07:30] How up to spec is it? How is it spec wise compared to the rest of the neighborhood? Things like that. [00:07:34] Jason: Okay, that's pretty cool. So I know when I was using the tool, I tried it on my property. And so I was curious and then what's cool about your tool is you can chat with the tool, so then I can ask it, like I'm talking to the AI, I can ask it to make some changes. [00:07:52] Like I told it, I said, "well, some of these in the comps that you've got listed below are don't have a golf course view of the backyard like my property." So I was like, "can you only show ones that have a golf course view," and then it adjusted it, right? And so yeah, so if somebody's like my property special because of whatever or this property special they can ask the ai to just show the properties that like where that criteria fits And then it was like, yeah, no problem. [00:08:19] I'll do this and then it changed it. [00:08:20] Nathan: Yeah, I know that's one of the features that we've been baiting right now that we've had a lot of great feedback from our customers is that ability to kind of give the really holistic analysis that we provide to the client, but then give them the interactive ability, whether they want to be changing something on the analysis or asking the question about it, you know, being able to take that data. [00:08:36] It just makes it much more personal, more real experience to understand how we got to that number. It's not just a black box that you can only see. Here's the number, take it or leave it. You can give your input. You can say, hey, a lot of customers like to say we're going to add in a new bedroom to this home, or we're going to convert the garage, or we're going to change the kitchen over to fully update it. [00:08:53] How much do you think that'll impact the rents based on everything else in the area? So you can use it as kind of an analysis and evaluation tool to understand, you know, what really is worth doing or not. So we've had a lot of customers that have really enjoyed doing that. Got it. [00:09:05] Jason: So they can sit there and play around with it and try and figure out, oh, how do we get the most rent? [00:09:10] Would it make sense to convert the office into a room or like, yeah. Okay. Got it. That's very cool. So, everybody listening they might already be comfortable cause they've been using some sort of tool like the several that you mentioned they're already using, they're like, it's all, it's already doing an okay job what would you say to them? [00:09:30] I think the things they would be like concerned about would be price, one of the things that I notice is your tool seems to be a lot more affordable to do a lot more reports than the others, probably because the leverage of AI. [00:09:42] Nathan: So when we launched the tool, my idea behind it was I wanted to be the best, I wanted to be the most accurate, I wanted to be the cheapest, and I wanted to be the most user friendly. I said, I want to give no one any reason to stick around to the older tools to make it to where it's very easy to switch. [00:09:55] So from a price perspective, you know, even if you're getting a really sweetheart deal with some of the biggest competitors on the market, we're almost always going to be way cheaper, right? We can get down to, you know, about a dollar per report, depending on the volume that you're doing. And we have packages that kind of range anywhere the highest price you can possibly pay for a report is 3. 50 per report. And that is still way below, you know, like the rent range, for example but they market as well for their advertised price. Okay. And then also the biggest thing that matters most is accuracy. That is why you come to us first and foremost, is that when you look at a large section of a portfolio, when you look at what this home actually rented for, you look at a rent range report, you look at a RentFinder report, you look at a rent fax report and a rentometer. [00:10:31] We're going to be the closest every single time. We have a lot of data sets to validate this. We work with very large firms that have done large analyses on thousands of properties to say, Hey, you know, definitively RentFinder is the best rental tool for pricing on the market. And so if you want accuracy, that's why people come to us. [00:10:47] Jason: You know, they usually say it's kind of a joke. You can either have it done accurate, cheap, fast, but you can't have all three or, you know, stuff like this. And you're like, yeah, but we figured it out. [00:11:00] Nathan: You know what? It's funny you mentioned that. I've said that a few times myself. That's, that was one of our goals. [00:11:03] I wanted to make it that easy and that quick and it makes it a no brainer, right? When it does meet all those goals, it makes it easy to switch. So you're exactly right. [00:11:10] Jason: And you know, it's really AI that's kind of allowed all that to happen. Right? Like AI, we're in the middle of this AI revolution right now. [00:11:17] And I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise. Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge. But property managers right now that adopt some of these AI tools, like we've had some really cool new tools that are coming to the market like, Vendoroo. [00:11:40] Which is one of our podcast sponsors. They're doing the maintenance coordination, AI maintenance coordinator, which is just super cool. We've got tools like RentFinder.ai. There's all these different AI tools that are coming out right now. There's Super hiresuper. com I think is the website that does like an AI inbox for property managers. [00:11:59] Like there's all these tools right now that where there's this innovation that's being able to happen that just. Wasn't possible earlier, and it really cuts the cost down for property managers. And so if you're able to decrease costs and increase output and do things faster and better, then that gives property managers more margin. [00:12:20] Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. Right. I definitely agree with you. I think the landscape of the AI tools, especially is fascinating. You're able to see a lot of new things come to market that really were not possible before, right? Like you said earlier, you know, we're gonna find, we're gonna find there's only possible because of the AI set of things, right? [00:12:34] You know, what we would do today. Would not have been possible whatsoever, you know, 10 years ago, by any means. And so I really do think it's interesting when you can get these tools off the ground and into people's hands sooner, it allows PMs to be able to move a lot more quickly. And as I mentioned before, you know, we started, I still am a PM myself, right? [00:12:50] So I understand the industry very well. And I always, I'm looking for new tools to be able to bring into that side of the business as well. And it's a very interesting landscape right. [00:12:58] Jason: Now. What else should people know about RentFinder.ai? [00:13:04] Nathan: So the big thing is that what we do fundamentally is provide that price but we provide you that price in however many ways you need it, right? [00:13:10] We can connect to you through Zapier. We've got a fully built out rest API for companies that are needing large amounts of reports and have their own technical integrations. We've got systems built out to allow you to do bulk uploads of reports and things from like default Appfolio and property reports. [00:13:24] We made it very simple. So whatever your workflow, you can fall into what we do for you. You know, we have full white labeling as well. We love people to put their brand and logo and colors on that report. And then also share that really nice interactive report with their end user, whoever that client may be, just to make it to where it's very easy to switch. [00:13:39] And there is no barrier from going from like a rent range or rentometer and making it to where you can immediately start day one using our tool and integrating it into your current workflow. And a lot of people also love the. Biz dev integration. We've got like the, you know, get my free rental analysis widget that you plug into your website and you can take those leads and pump them right into lead simple right into HubSpot and have them just go directly to your email. [00:14:01] And then your client can get that nice report while you also get that this dev side of the things as well. So all of our clients that have integrated that have had very great success and it's something that people really like. [00:14:11] Jason: Yeah, I like the rent analysis website, which that's cool. So, you mentioned api for those that are not as nerdy as maybe you and they can't figure out what to do with an API, but they like things connecting. [00:14:26] Do you guys have in the works, is that Zapier connection or make or anything like this? [00:14:31] Nathan: Yep. We do have a Zapier connections invite only right now, but if anyone is interested if you sign ,up we can invite you to be able to start using it. Make you something as well that we're also in the works with. [00:14:40] I've been working with them pretty closely to get that online. And then if you don't...
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DGS 273: How are Your Capital Raising Efforts Going in Today’s Market?
11/21/2024
DGS 273: How are Your Capital Raising Efforts Going in Today’s Market?
Those who listen to this show likely either manage or invest in rental properties. There are several different types of real estate to choose from, but have you ever considered self-storage units? In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with the “OG” of self-storage real estate investing, Scott Meyers to talk about an opportunity to invest in real estate without the common challenges of residential properties. You’ll Learn [01:22] Switching from residential investment properties to storage units [08:35] Investing in self-storage without the management [12:15] Pros and cons of self-storage [14:51] Self-storage education Tweetables “When you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” “Be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe.” “Once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again.” “The more valuable you are to your property management business the less valuable your property management business is to everybody else.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Scott: Self-storage really found me instead of me finding self-storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor. [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:28] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:09] Now let's get into the show. All right. So. I'm hanging out here with Scott Meyers. Welcome Scott. [00:01:18] Scott: Thanks. And so good to see you again. How are you? [00:01:20] Jason: Good. Good. It's good to have you. So, why don't we get into your background, how you kind of into this, but Scott, you're a self storage investment expert. Is that fair to say? [00:01:33] Scott: That's fair to say. They call me the OG in self storage now. And I guess I can step into that role. [00:01:38] Jason: All right. The OG, the original gangsta. All right. So tell us a little bit how you got into this. [00:01:44] Scott: So like many people got into real estate by buying one single family rental house. Of course, this is a back a little ways now back in 1993, I bought a single family house. with an assumable VA mortgage on it. So I took out a home equity loan from my own home and bought this one, no money down, just like Carleton Sheets, the other OG in the real estate space taught me how to do. And so I bought that house, we rehabbed it to refinance it, rented it out. [00:02:11] So the BRRRR method before everybody called it the BRRRR method. And then we went out and bought two more. And then that turned into four, six, eight, and my wife and I got married along the way and brought my wife into this hobby. I was working for a fortune 500 company at the time, and this was really just to supplement retirement until it kind of took on a life of its own. [00:02:29] And that was because in 1999 with the dot com crash, when all of our tenants were then able to buy a house shortly after that, because the presidential administration at the time reinstituted the Community Reinvestment Act and allowed anybody who could basically fog a mirror to buy a house while all our tenants left and they were doing so. [00:02:49] And so at that time, we were now rehabbing a second time so that we could sell our houses just to be able to keep up with what the market trend was at the time. Well that just about broke us. And so we decided then to get into multifamily and all we needed to do was get some economies of scale, work a little harder, work a little smarter, and we'll make this all happen. [00:03:08] But really what I found is that we just had more doors, we had more tenants, we had more toilets. And to be honest with you, Jason you know, we made a lot of money in residential real estate and growing that side of the business. I mean, we were very big, we got up to just shy of 450 doors. But I realized that I don't think I was cut out for this. [00:03:24] I understood the math, you know, the real estate math and everything that went into it. But I found even though we had property managers and property management companies, I was finding that I was becoming less loving of my fellow man and women, because they were destroying our properties and stealing from us, as well as our contractors and some of our staff. [00:03:40] And so at that point, I began to look around the landscape and, you know, we love real estate because of all the reasons to love real estate. It appreciates, we can depreciate it. We can borrow money to buy it. And then our clients pay down our basis. I mean, there's no other investment like that. So as I looked at the landscape and real estate, that really only left parking lots and self storage if I really didn't like the tenant and toilet business. [00:04:01] So. I looked into storage and loved what we saw in terms of the fundamentals of the historical, the track record of performance of the asset class. And it was right under my nose all the time. It's just this ugly, you know, stepchild of commercial real estate that nobody was really talking about. So I researched it and spent a lot of time understanding the nuances bought my first self storage facility in a partnership. [00:04:22] And then yeah, the light bulb went off and recognize after owning it from the operation standpoint, that It was truly what everybody had said that it was. And what we found is it was all the benefits of real estate without the hassles of tenants and toilets and trash. And so we began simultaneously selling off our houses and our apartments and then going forward into self storage. [00:04:41] And here we are today at about just shy of 5 million square feet of self storage, 28, 000 doors nationwide and growing. And then along the way, also built a sizable education and consulting and mentoring and coaching and event business that only not only teaches people how to get into the business, but also became a funnel, a conduit for a lot of partnerships and a lot of deal flow into our organization. [00:05:01] So that's either the long winded version on a podcast or the short winded version however you want to look at how we got started in the business. [00:05:07] Jason: Yeah, love it and qualify yourself help everybody understand like where are you at right now with storage and rentals. I mean you got some impressive numbers. [00:05:17] Scott: Yeah, so we're sitting at about we've done over 5 million square feet We're sitting at about three and a half just maybe three and three quarters million square feet right now assets under management So we're right now jason, we're basically a syndication company where we're a financial services company that raises capital and layers that on top of debt and then deploys it in nothing but self storage. [00:05:37] And so many of these projects, these partnerships, these joint ventures in our funds, they have a shelf life and they expire in four to five years because that's when we can capitalize and pull our chips off the table, if you will. And we have a capital event by way of sometimes a refinance, but usually a sale of the property or properties within that fund. [00:05:55] And then we just go out and buy more. So it ebbs and flows when some are going out the door, we have more projects coming in the door as well. I only own two residential properties. One of them is an Airbnb and the other one is the one that I live in. And that's it. Everything else is 100 percent self storage at this point. [00:06:10] Jason: Got it. How many units of storage do you represent then? [00:06:14] Scott: Yeah, so 28 to 29, 000 overall is what we've invested in and we're sitting at about 20, between 20, 000, 21, 000 right now in asset center management. Awesome. [00:06:25] Jason: Wow. Okay. So for those listening that are in residential property management, and they're listening to you what would you say to them? [00:06:34] Like, maybe there's some of them that they're like, "man, I don't want to deal with toilets, tenants and trash anymore." And, you know, "I'm starting to love humans less. And I love real estate," but what's kind of your message? [00:06:49] Scott: You know, in the education side of our business, Jason, of course, when there's a room full of folks interested in self storage, it's really easy to say that you know, I think everybody should have a self storage facility, one in their portfolio, if you're in real estate and, you know, all roads lead to self storage eventually, because I think everybody gets to that place where they do get frustrated and it could be just a day. [00:07:06] It could be, you know, in terms of, "wow, that was a whole lot coming at us." But it doesn't mean that, you know, my recipe is the catch all, you know, when you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I'm not saying that anybody should go out and do what I have done because we made a lot of money you know, on the residential side and commercial multifamily. [00:07:21] I just found for me, that this self storage really found me instead of me finding self storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor. And so for a knucklehead like me, I think it was the perfect fit to be able to go out and just master this practice and that business model and the standard operating procedures. And then just at scale and at speed go out and just make a go of it. And we grew really fast and never really get over our skis. It was just it's a manageable model as well. And so it just fit for myself. But I would say Jason, when business gets so difficult that it's just absolutely no fun anymore, and it's drudgery... I see many people doing it right now, they're just throwing good money after bad. Well, you know, be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe. And if they find that is the recipe is your business model or just your business in general, then get help. [00:08:13] Or, you know, maybe it's time to take a look at some of their asset classes like self storage. [00:08:17] Jason: So if somebody's an investor and they're wanting to get into this, there's probably a learning curve. There's probably potential pitfalls. So like, yeah, I've tried my Airbnb. That was kind of difficult. I didn't like having to mess with pricing constantly. Like maybe I should try self storage. I'm curious about what you would say to them and then, you know, if somebody's just an investor and they're just looking to just invest, but they're not wanting to really actually manage storage units, then what path would you recommend? [00:08:45] Scott: So sure. Two paths, but also some folks just take a one and end up achieving the same result. So if this is something that you're looking to do actively you know, of course, Jason, I own, you know, I run an education company. And so we're always going to tell you to get education because the cost of not, you know, you pay the dump tax. [00:09:03] And sometimes we've seen people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the dump tax. And that just means that they've gone out and they've watched a couple of videos read a book and all of a sudden they're experts in masters and this is commercial real estate. There's a lot of nuances to it, no matter what the asset class you pick within commercial real estate, but also because it's commercial real estate, there's lots of commas and zeros to profit from it, which is fantastic. [00:09:23] But also if you make a mistake. Those mistakes in underwriting and in other areas also come with commas and zeros behind them as well. And we've seen many a good investor that maybe it was a little prideful or maybe thought that, "Hey, this is an easy asset class compared to what I've been doing. You know, I can do this with one hand tied behind my back." And then they find out that this is an operating business on top of real estate. And there's more nuances to this and they need to dig in and understand what that looks like, because as you know, once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again, and if that goes on for a quarter, sometimes people just can't recover. So, you know, we can go into all the reasons why and the mistakes that people have made, but I think just understanding you need to educate yourself. Now, if you're looking to do this passively, in other words, you don't want to take on the credit risk, you don't want to take on, say, the construction risk or a lease up risk of a turnaround or a development project then you can invest passively. [00:10:20] There's a number of REITs out there and we have funds and individual syndications and joint ventures that we do with folks where they come in as a limited partner. They still get equity. They still have ownership. They have a piece of ownership of this property. So they get the depreciation, they get a share of the cash flow, and then the profits upon the sale. [00:10:38] But they don't take on the lease up risk, the development risk, the risk of a project going south no matter what, and or have to go out and create a business, you know, and a team to be able to do so. And along the way, many folks, Jason, they start as passive investors either with one of our projects or others, and by, by just following along, you know, you get that education. [00:10:59] You know, we hold webinars once a quarter and we send out monthly reports and we send out updates as to what's happening with our projects. And so by def facto, our passive investors are getting an education and they earn while they learn the business. [00:11:11] Jason: Got it. Earn while they learn. Like it. [00:11:15] And that's probably a better path to start out as is to first explore doing it passively to figure out should they jump in and do it more actively. [00:11:24] Scott: I don't know better. That's not my decision to make. I think some folks, if they have a team in place, you know, they can make that pivot just by learning the business, but it just really depends on where they're at. [00:11:34] I would say that it's It's certainly the safest. And if you have a small amount of capital to set aside to invest in a project, that's the best way about doing it. Because once it comes time to do your own, it's going to take a larger chunk of capital to be able to do so unless you're raising private equity. [00:11:49] So you know I can say that is the best and probably is for most people, but not everybody. [00:11:54] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, a lot of people listening already have some sort of business, a lot of them, they won't just throw it in, jump right into storage units, maybe. But I think a lot of them, it would resonate with them. [00:12:06] "Hey, then maybe this is another way to diversify my portfolio, another way to invest. I would love to do, try it out passively, and then maybe even get some education." for those that maybe heard the beginning of this and they're like, "Man, I don't have to deal with toilets, tenants, trash, and it's real estate. And it sounds so easy." What are some of the things that maybe they have a blind spot to? That somebody, you know, they would learn once they start doing this, it's not all, you know, stars and rainbows and roses with this as well. [00:12:38] Scott: Right. So, you know, outside of the front end and the due diligence that needs to be done just to make sure that you've bought a solid property from an operational standpoint, which is what you're referring to, you know, what we found is that, you know, a million bucks, 5 million bucks goes a lot further, meaning you buy more doors you buy more square footage and it allows us more doors because these are metal boxes on concrete slabs and they're not, you know, multifamily that has drywall and plumbing and, you know, a lot of HVC, it just goes further. [00:13:03] So that means that there are more units to be able to keep track of. You know, the good news is there's software and we do have property management companies and property managers to handle that and a lot of it is automated, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a large amount of units and a large amount of rental tracking that needs to be done to make sure that the dollars come in the door. On the flip side of that, just because I am a bright side up, kind of guy, you know, we have the ability with our leasing structure within self storage that, you know, it's a 30 day lease automatically renewable. And so anytime that we want to raise the rates, we don't have to wait. It's not an anniversary. It's not an annual lease. It is a month. And so that means on month seven, if we see that the market is changing and the demand is higher and there's a whole lot of development going on, then we can raise the rates in seven months. [00:13:46] We can do it in four months. We can do some nuisance increases in between, you know, either way, and we're very flexible when it comes to that. But then also, the good news is even if people do fall behind in the rent, you know, we have the ability to, or we have the power behind us of the lien laws instead of habitational or versus habitational real estate in which you have tenant and toilet courts. And so when I used to walk out of there, I had a pink piece of paper and very little ability to be able to get my money back and to be able to you know, execute on getting that the money back in the door. [00:14:18] But with self storage and the lien laws. We can put a lock on their unit, lock them out and we don't have to go to court within 60 or 90 days depending upon the state, my manager or an auction company will cut the lock off and open it up for bids on the date that we have an auction and I can recoup my back rent to my late fees and, you know, we are the judge and jury so we don't have to wait. [00:14:36] I know you asked for the pitfalls but, you know, the good side is that you know, even though there's a lot of units to manage the, just because of the nature of the industry and the safeguards that we have in place, it's much, much easier and simpler to handle. [00:14:48] Jason: Awesome. Cool. Well, yeah, this is very informative. [00:14:51] Tell us a little bit about your education company, what you do there and and maybe how people can get in touch if they're curious. [00:14:58] Scott: So on the education side, you know, when I got into business, you know, there wasn't an education company out there. There wasn't anybody that I could go to to learn the, you know, the A to Z to the nuts and bolts of the business. [00:15:10] I could certainly go...
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DGS 272: The 3 Systems You Need in Your Property Management Business
11/15/2024
DGS 272: The 3 Systems You Need in Your Property Management Business
F You’ll Learn [02:01] The Team Sandtrap + Cycle of Suck [12:20] Why You Might Have the Wrong Team [20:54] Building the Business Around You [29:40] How to Escape the Cycle and Level Up Tweetables “If your business isn't healthy and growing, it's dying.” “Here's the reality: it takes 10 people to clone yourself in a business.” “How did you build it the wrong way? You built it around what you thought the business needed, and you didn't build it around what you needed.” “If you have capacity less than a hundred doors, then the odds of you getting another a hundred doors in the near future is slim than none.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Healthy business owners have healthy businesses have healthy team members and feel very well supported. And the only reason you're not there is you just don't know yet what healthy business owners know. [00:00:11] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. [00:00:38] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:56] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS. Build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, Jason Hull, the ceo and founder of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right, so before we get started I wanted to just mention our sponsor Vendoroo. We've seen some great results with these guys. [00:01:22] So if you're tired of constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting vendor selection and coordination. Built by property managers. for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. [00:01:47] Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo.ai/DoorGrow and experience maintenance done right. All right, so let's get into the show. So what has been going on in the DoorGrow universe or in DoorGrow world? So, one, we are raising our rates, our fees, because we are taking better and better care of our clients and getting them better and better results. [00:02:17] And so this is something that we coach clients on all the time. Are you taking your business to another level? Are you confident in raising your fees? Or have you kept them small or competitive, or even worse, low in your market? Are you striving to provide and deliver more value? Are you taking things to that next level in your business? [00:02:40] We meet regularly with business owners in this industry. So in the last week or two, I've met with several businesses that are stuck in what I call the second sand trap. This is where maybe they were a client a long time ago in the past. We helped them figure out how to get growth. They've gotten to maybe the 200, maybe somewhere 200- 300 door range, maybe even up into the 400 doors range. [00:03:05] And they are now experiencing the second sand trap of constraint. And so some experience this even earlier. I have had people come to us, people that have joined our program recently, that are having these second sand trap problems around just over a hundred doors, like 150. And they're already in this painful spot. [00:03:26] And there's a few reasons for this. One, they could be caught in the cycle of suck, which means they've taken on too many shitty clients that are You know, too high of operational costs. And so they have too many difficult properties to be dealing with which makes the tenants more difficult, and so they've kind of created this mess in which their entire portfolio that they're managing and dealing with are a lot more difficult than most of my clients' situations. [00:03:53] And so their operational costs are really high and they're making a lot less money because of that, their profit is down. And then what that means is it's a lot more difficult to deliver customer service and be effective. So I have a partner with me today, which is a dog we're fostering named Hans. [00:04:12] And he is trying to chew a toy right at my feet. So what's up Hans. And if you haven't seen our previous dog episode that we did go to DoorGrow. com Click on "Dogs" up at the top. We've got a little dog emoji on our website. Check that out and learn a little bit about Sarah and my passion in helping dogs. And this is to be fair, mostly Sarah's passion. I like dogs definitely more than cats. I like dogs, but Sarah loves dogs. She really loves dogs. [00:04:40] And so this is more her thing. So check that out. And that lets, you know, a little peek into the our reality here in our home with DoorGrow. So you can also check out our funny videos at the top right there as well. That'll give you a perspective on how goofy we are and we try to incorporate our dogs in these videos. [00:04:58] Hans made it into one of our recent ones that will be released. You'll see it. So this second sand trap, the challenge here at the second sand trap is that these property managers have figured out how to grow. They know they could probably double in size. Most of you that are at the stage, you know, you could probably double in size door wise. [00:05:16] You could easily go get more doors. You could attract more owners if you felt comfortable. So here's a question you need to ask yourself. This is something I love asking people that are at the stage so I can see how bad is it? How bad is the problem? So some of them get at this stage, business owners get really burnt out, like really stressed. [00:05:38] We're talking like I had a lady say to me, "I fucking hate my business. Can I be real with you?" That's what she said. "I fucking hate my business." And she's having a ton of health issues and stress. I don't know if it's all related directly to this, but stress can eat you alive, right? Basically every health situation gets worse if there's high stress. And so she's dealing with a whole mess of stuff, right? And this is a challenge. This is a challenge in business. We deal with a lot of stress as business owners, but property management can be especially stressful. You're dealing with sometimes really upset angry people and a lot of that stress doesn't have to exist If you're not in that cycle of suck the other challenge at this stage besides maybe being caught in the cycle of suck Is not being paid well enough. [00:06:28] And so Not only is your operational costs high because of the cycle of suck, but then also your pricing may not be optimized or very effective. You may not have a premium offering for premium buyers that may exist in your portfolio. And so they just go with your cheaper option, which is the only option that you have. [00:06:45] And then there's also this weird race to the bottom in terms of price where everybody's priced like similarly, like 10 percent in most markets in higher rent markets, maybe like 8%. And then in some markets, it's like really grotesque with flat fee, you know, property management and stuff like this. [00:07:01] And so the challenge then there's kind of this race to the bottom in terms of pricing. And so you may not be getting paid as much as well. And so sometimes if you can just increase the amount of money that you're bringing in and decrease the amount of operational costs in the business, you could easily double your profit margins. [00:07:22] We've had clients go from 25 percent margin, which is good to 50 percent profit margin by getting some pieces dialed in. Now, the three biggest profit levers we find at this stage are people planning and process. Why? Because they're all connected to the biggest expense, which is. People, right? Which is staff and whatnot. [00:07:43] So we need a really good people system, which means a hiring system and a really good existing team so that we can always maintain really good personnel and team members. Then we have a healthy team that buy into our culture, that have the skill and intelligence to do the job and have the personality type that is a fit for the role. [00:08:01] I call those the three fits culture, personality, and skill. You need all three in order to be a good team member. If you have team members right now that don't match all three, you are spending too much money on this person and you're getting too little output. If you're caught in the cycle of suck, you are spending too much money on all of your people and getting too little output. [00:08:22] If you don't have a good hiring system, you can't replace, confidently, the people on your team to get good people. And so you don't have a system or mechanism to do this. And so most businesses at this stage usually spend five to 10 years playing Russian roulette to get a decent team so they can finally break 600 doors. [00:08:42] A lot of them by that time, even before they hit that, just give up, they sell the business, they exit. And so the time can be collapsed on this significantly. So here's the question that I ask. I asked people that are caught in the second sand trap, "what is your current capacity for adding more doors on that you believe right now? How many more doors do you think you can handle with your existing team before things start to get uncomfortable, maybe fall apart, or maybe break?" A healthy response would be, "we could double in size," which means they are not concerned like, "we could easily add another 200 doors, and it doesn't break. It's not an issue." Okay response would maybe be "I think we could add another hundred." That means they're already experiencing some challenges and constraints. They think they could squeeze to another hundred units or so and there might be an issue. Really bad is if you're like, "we could probably handle 50 more units and then I would have to change something dramatically, get a key team member, change something significant or that would really max out my stress." [00:09:42] So if the capacity is 50 doors right now, if your future capacity that you can envision is 50 doors or less right now, it's even worse, like 25 units or something like that, you are already in a dangerous and uncomfortable spot. You need to get out of that dangerous, uncomfortable spot. If you have capacity less than a hundred doors, then the odds of you getting another a hundred doors in the near future is slim than none. [00:10:09] Like you're just not going to do it. Even if people were throwing business at you, you would start to lose doors because things would start to fall apart. Clients would lose trust and you would lose business. You need to create the capacity, the space to be able to easily handle another couple of hundred doors or double in size, or no confidently we can get higher people very quickly and get people up to speed without making a bunch of mistakes, without thinking that the, that all people are crappy and it's difficult to hire, and there's no good people out there. There aren't good people in my market, or I have to have people that have property management experience. Then you need to have the confidence to be able to get them up to speed quickly, which means you have a really good process system. You have processes, you have a mechanism for getting them up to speed and in place, into position quickly, and that you know you've got the right people. [00:11:03] So that they, and they now have the right processes and tools and resources that they can get training and get up to speed rapidly, which is your process system. And then you need a really good planning system to get the entire team moving in the same direction to rowing together as a business, as a team, to use a rowboat analogy, that they are all moving and headed in the same direction instead of in conflict or at odds or just focus on their tasks. [00:11:34] We need a strategic planning system so that there are goals and planning to move the business forward so that you have a solid annual plan broken down into quarterly plan and quarterly goals and then you have your monthly goals and plan which are broken down into your weekly goals and commitments that each team member are taking on that are to move the business forward strategically so that the business is moving towards strategic growth instead of just transactional leadership where you're giving them a task and waiting for them to come back and say they've done it. So transactional leadership is this leadership style that demotivates your team and gets them to perform worse. Many of you live in a very transactional process system. [00:12:20] So the other challenge at this stage is what I call the process myth. Everybody that's stuck at this stage believes they have a pretty good team. [00:12:29] Because you have a team, you've built some sort of team, but you built it the wrong way. How did you build it the wrong way? You built it around what you thought the business needed, and you didn't build it around what you needed to get to the next level and having more fulfillment in your day, more freedom, and less stress. [00:12:45] Each team member you've added has built more stress and added more questions to your day and you're involved in every single role. And so you have not built the team based on what you needed. You built the team based on what the business needed, which means the business now is evolving and becoming a monster that is like a high chair tyrant flinging food in your face and it's in control. [00:13:06] Instead of building the team and the business around what you need. So you have more calm, more freedom, more fulfillment, more support. And so we need to shift this. So you built this entire team the wrong way, and you think you have a good team, but if you are showing up, if you have an entire team and you are showing up in this business, not in a role in not doing the things that you love doing, not in a role and a position of fulfillment and enjoyment, in your own business, you are in charge of, you created, and you are miserable in your own business, then by default, you have the wrong team. [00:13:44] Zero question. This is as if you started with the wrong puzzle piece and went and found puzzle pieces to attach around your business to build out your team. You were showing up as the wrong square puzzle piece when you really are probably a beautiful round peg or round piece. And so you've built the wrong puzzle pieces around you, the wrong team. And I guarantee you're getting probably half to maybe a third, the output of a mediocre team like that, then you would, if you had a rockstar team and you may think "my team's pretty good," but if this is all you've experienced so far, you have no idea how amazing a team could be if they were really motivated and really performing well, and they loved doing what they got to do and they believed in you instead of just believed in getting paid as a transaction for work done. Here's the thing, entrepreneurs need to realize this. Entrepreneurs are money motivated naturally. Most of us are motivated and we love money. We don't hate money, right? You probably don't hate money. If you look on a disc assessment, there's usually a section called the values index or something like this, and there's a score called the economic score, this index and the economic index or economic score for most people is low. [00:15:00] It's below average. Which means they're not motivated economically, they're not motivated by money. They don't love money, right? It's not that big of a deal to them, which means once their basic needs are met, throwing money at them does not increase performance It doesn't motivate them giving them bonuses giving them pay just in exchange for doing tasks does not motivate them to perform well or better. Money's not a motivator really for them so If you have a high economic score and you view everyone else through that lens, and the only people that generally have a high economics score are entrepreneurs and salespeople. Well, good salespeople should like money because you want to reward them and incentivize them to want to bring in more money and they get paid if they bring in more money So that your interests are in alignment. So you need salespeople that are in alignment with compensation like commission structures, stuff like this that are motivated to make you more money and if they're not making you more money, then you're not having to spend as much money on them, right? There needs to be proper alignment incentive wise. Everybody else on your team though, are not going to be motivated by bonuses and money. And the mistake entrepreneurs make is they try to reward bonus them, compensate them for money. "Hey, if you get us some more positive reviews, we'll give you this bonus." [00:16:13] "Okay." [00:16:14] Right stuff like this and if you hire people that are- I want you to really listen to this if you hire people that are not money motivated, and their only motivation for working for you really is to get paid by you, then you have hired a dangerous person in your business. Let me make this clear I'm going to say this again, maybe in a little bit different way if you hire people and the exchange you're giving them is, their whole motivation to work for you is largely they just want to get money. That's the only reason they're really working for you. And you might be thinking, "what else would it be?" I'll explain that in a second. But their only motivation is to work for you to get money from you because they want money, but they're not money motivated necessarily, then they become dangerous to your business. [00:17:05] These are the people that steal. They steal time. Maybe they have ethics and they have some values and they're not going to actually steal money. But I've seen property managers repeatedly have their trust accounts depleted by people on their team before coming to us. I've seen people that handle their accounting and finances, steal money from them. [00:17:28] These are people that are not as money motivated. But their only motive is money. And so they are bringing people that maybe don't have the same value system as them, and they're not good fit for their business, et cetera. Okay. [00:17:42] If you bring in people that believe in you, let's talk about the opposite. [00:17:46] If people believe in you. They believe in your culture that you've established for the business. They believe in your company core values. They are inspired and they want to work for a business that has a greater purpose than just extracting money from tenants and owners. They want a mentor, A business owner that they can believe in that they feel like is going to help them grow and become even better person. [00:18:08] They want to be part of a business that is having a positive impact in people's lives and in the community. Then if they're not money motivated, it's okay. If their economic score is low, that means they're recognition motivated. So they also are motivated by being part of a team that has a positive culture of wins and recognition, which is part of the planning system that we would install, which is an accountability and recognition system that increases motivation...
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DGS 271: Evolution of Short Term Rental Platforms
11/09/2024
DGS 271: Evolution of Short Term Rental Platforms
For those who manage short-term rentals, which tools and pieces of software do you use to keep things organized and running smoothly? In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull brings on Jacob Mueller, founder of Renjoy to talk about using technology to help manage short-term rentals. You’ll Learn [01:36] The creation of Renjoy [16:55] Software and systems for STR [25:38] Building out systems using Airtable [34:20] Strategic planning systems Tweetables “One of the things that's different about short term rentals is that it's constantly changing.” “You have to be on top of your game. You can't just do the same thing you've been doing.” “It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality.” “The only thing I want to share with all the property managers out there is keep on doing the hard work.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality. [00:00:08] Jacob: That's exactly right. To be able to have like specific specialized tools, you then have to know what you're doing to accumulate those tools and have them all talking and speaking to each other, but if you do it right, very powerful. [00:00:21] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:22] Now, let's get into the show. All right. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with Jacob Mueller from Renjoy. Jacob, welcome to the DoorGrow show. [00:01:33] Jacob: Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Jason. [00:01:36] Jason: Glad to have you. So Jacob, give us a little bit of your background in maybe entrepreneurism and how you eventually got connected maybe to rentals, property management, and and then we can get into Renjoy. [00:01:51] Jacob: Sure. Well, I won't give you the full backstory. It goes all the way back to a college class I took, but I really started getting into real estate right at the perfect time, beginning of ZIRP, zero interest rate era. And I was actually a commercial broker for a little while. I did about six months of leasing and realized I did not enjoy that. [00:02:09] And so then I transitioned to a residential property management firm based out of Denver that focused on investors. When I joined them, Atlas Real Estate, they're in, I don't know, five or six states now. But when I joined them, they were only in Colorado. They managed maybe 2, 500 doors and I was kind of their regional broker in Colorado Springs, which is where I am. [00:02:30] And they are now, I think north of 10, 000 units under management and have grown tremendously on the management side. But I learned a ton from these folks. I learned how to flip property. I learned to invest in real estate. I learned a lot. And so that's kind of where my real estate investing career started. [00:02:46] That was about four or five years ago. And since then I've acquired single family homes some small multi units. And then I've also diversified in my income streams from just long term tenants to also short term tenants. And that's kind of where the story of Renjoy begins. One of my clients and I worked with, as a broker, happened to have quite a few Airbnbs, short term rentals. [00:03:09] And he was buying properties like every six months. And I was trying to figure out how is this guy, he's my age, how's this, you know, 28 year old buying so many properties so quickly back to back? So I started learning about his process and his insights into the industry. And I thought, man, this guy's got, a peg on this industry. [00:03:25] And of course, during ZIRP, Airbnbs were easy, making money was easy, everybody was doing it. And so I saw this interesting opportunity, decided to partner with this client of mine, and another client actually. And we formed Renjoy together with our own portfolio to start. [00:03:40] Jason: Nice. Okay. So what is Renjoy? [00:03:45] Jacob: Yeah, so Renjoy is kind of an unintended consequence. [00:03:48] It was not our plan. It's a short term rental property management business. But when we first started the company, it was just to manage our own portfolios. And people started asking us to manage theirs because short term rentals and long term rentals are complex and difficult and a lot of work. And so owners are constantly looking to handover management for these things. [00:04:09] Jason: Yeah. And that can be a challenge. You know, with those short term rentals. I mean, everything has to move quick, right? You're having to check and adjust prices every day to make sure you're getting the, you know, the best rate possible. You need to communicate like immediately all the time with all the guests and then, you know, then like you're trying to figure out how to make sure you're getting as many people through this property as possible But not getting it damaged and then maintenance stuff hasn't dealt with like super fast Or people get really frustrated and upset and so it's a difficult game and then for you know for people managing short term rentals It's almost like a cleaning talent acquisition business more than it is a property management business And so, how does Renjoy help with this stuff? [00:05:02] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. There's so many ways we can go with this, Jason. A lot of what you were saying, you know, resonates with me. I think there's an increased complexity on the stakeholder relationships that we have as a manager. All property managers have this complexity where they have their tenant who is a stakeholder. [00:05:18] They need a tenant to pay rent. And they also need to have properties with which to have a tenant pay rent on. And so all of the property managers have this balance they have to walk between these stakeholders. They have to serve their tenants and they have to serve their landlords, their property owners. We're the same, but one of the challenges is our tenants leave us reviews. [00:05:38] Every single time they stay and so there's this increased out of, shall we say, accountability almost on how we manage our relationship with this key stakeholder, the guests that are coming to the properties, the tenants, but also the owners too. And then this all leads to the same challenges all property managers have, which is balancing meeting your tenant's requests for service, for maintenance, kind of meeting their expectations while also keeping costs as low as possible and trying to meet the owner's expectations. And you have to constantly balance that when you're thinking about maintenance and your service level agreements and how they can get impacted by the occupant versus the owner. [00:06:16] So that's one thing that's really complex. But there's a lot of things we can get into with short term rentals. We are a full service short term rental management company. This is another pretty big distinction between long term rental property managers and short term is that the suite of services provided varies quite a bit from one short term rental manager to another. [00:06:36] Not to say that long term rental managers are all the same, but generally speaking, there's a pretty similar core group of services that all long term property managers provide for their clients. [00:06:47] Jason: Got it. So, Is Renjoy a service that those that listening that are running a property management business are you their competitor or is there a way that they can work with you or how does that work? [00:07:00] Jacob: Great question. I do not believe we're competitors. We don't do long term rental property management and we refer out for that. And so we actually kind of have a lot of good relationships with our property managers, mutual referring relationships, actually, in the markets in which we serve. [00:07:16] Jason: So what you're saying is long term residential property managers, if they're not wanting to deal with the complexity of short term property management, is there a way they can sort of partner with you and maybe get paid? [00:07:28] Jacob: Absolutely. Yeah. We have a referral program. And for everybody who signs a contract with us, it's a thousand bucks. Easy peasy. And if the property manager happens to also be a practicing broker, we actually do work to execute exclusive right to lists in our property management agreements, which is assignable. [00:07:46] And so we just assign, should that client that you've referred to us choose to list their property, we can actually reassign that exclusive right to list back to you as the property manager slash broker. [00:07:56] Jason: Got it. Okay. So that's an additional benefit. They can keep the real estate deals. [00:08:00] Jacob: That's right. [00:08:01] Jason: Got it. [00:08:03] Okay. So for those that are investors listening and, you know, we have a lot of property managers and they should be investors as well if they believe in real estate investing, right. And they're servicing people doing it. So they're probably investors as well. If their primary focus is longterm residential management, but they're wanting to, you know, get a couple of short term properties in their market, but they don't want to do short term management. And they're buying these properties. Why should they choose you to do it instead of having the side job or why do investors tend to choose you instead of doing it themselves? [00:08:38] Jacob: Yeah. That's a good question. In general, actually, Jason, what I would say is if you are depending on your life and what all you have going on in your life, generally speaking, I recommend folks who are buying their first Airbnb to run it themselves because there's just a lot of things you need to learn and understand. [00:08:55] And I actually would say the same thing about long term rentals. I would say you as the homeowner or the property owner should try to manage it yourself. Because then you understand the challenges that, you know, your property manager might face and you know what to look for in a good property manager. [00:09:09] Same thing applies for short term rental management as well. So if your listeners are looking at acquiring their first one, my recommendation is do it first of all. And then second of all, learn the ropes, do it yourself, understand the challenges and the complexities, and then go and shop around for a manager because it's expensive to switch. [00:09:28] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. So my wife and I, we got a short term rental so that we can do client events at it and stuff like this. And, and so we'll bring clients in and we'll use that and then in the like in between we'll just we'll use short term rental it and send it out for other people to use right and so, but even with this one property like to make this to manage it well, we've got a whole suite of tools in order to like make this efficient and, you know, sarah my wife she runs it and she went through a whole university and a course and like all this stuff to like, learn how, learn the game and learn how to do photos different than typical real estate photos and like all this stuff. [00:10:11] And so, you know, to figure everything out to get this working and it's working really well, but. It just seems like a lot. It seems like a lot of stuff. So what competitive advantage do you feel like Renjoy like affords over people that eventually they figure out how to do all this stuff. They've got all these tools, but it still takes a bunch of time and they don't want to do it. [00:10:30] Jacob: Yeah, I know. That's right. It is actually very complex. It's also not static. One of the things that's different about short term rentals is that it's constantly changing. For acquiring the guests, meeting the demand out there, capturing the existing demand for short term lodging, you have to be on top of your game. [00:10:47] You can't just do the same thing you've been doing. In fact, we see quite a few property owners now who are kind of getting off that ZIRP high, you know, 2020, 2021, 2022, when people were spending like crazy, and now their properties aren't cash flowing very well. They're not capturing the demand that's in their market nearly as well because the game has changed. [00:11:04] They're saying, Hey, I'm doing everything the same I did before, but my revenue is going down. I don't understand why. [00:11:10] The reality is, you have to compete you're competing with actually folks like us who have this professionalization of the industry, which I think is going on right now in short term rentals. [00:11:20] And one of the big challenges with an individual owner operator is not only do you have to message your guests promptly, you have to make sure they check in, check out okay. You have to check for damages after the stay, you have to organize the cleaning, you have to organize the house or the maintenance, you have to do all that. [00:11:35] But on top of that, the big thing that I see people miss is that you have to be on your pricing every day. I mean, you have to not just use algorithmic based pricing with some of these tools like Price Labs or Wheelhouse or something like that. You have to be doing it every day. And when you're looking at your pricing every day, you can't just look at your property. [00:11:53] You have to compare it to all your comp sets and see, hey, who's booked on these, you know, next 10 days and at what rates and where do I sit in that comp set and what do I need to do to my prices today to capture the existing demand before somebody else in my comp set captures that, that guest or that demand. [00:12:11] And it's very hands on. And so one of the big advantages of a property manager like us is we have, you know, two people full time looking at pricing for every property. [00:12:20] Jason: So, and how many properties do you guys over right now? [00:12:24] Jacob: We manage about 165. [00:12:27] Jason: Yeah. And so with 165, you, two people are able to handle all the pricing checks and updates on a daily basis. [00:12:34] Jacob: That's right. Because not every property is unique, right? We have comp sets. So if you have Let's say 15 two bedroom, one bath units that are all, let's say, basements or, you know, attached ADUs, and they're all in the same geographical area, we could do a lot of pricing at the same time for all 15 of those units because we're trying to capture that segment of the demand. [00:12:56] Jason: Got it. Got it. Okay. So, so for those that are listening, they're managing short term rentals. And maybe they're not doing that, that one missing piece very effectively. What would you recommend that they do? [00:13:11] Jacob: You have to, I mean, I think you have to do that, right? I mean, big part of the value proposition of a property manager for short term rentals. [00:13:18] This is key for all your listeners who are thinking about buying a short term rental too. Short term rental property managers are expensive. And so, you want to ensure whichever manager you choose to hire is going to exceed or excel or expand beyond what you might otherwise earn in revenue to offset that cost. [00:13:35] And so, if there's a property manager out there doing short term rentals and they don't have a sophisticated pricing strategy, I would say your value proposition is very weak because you're going to charge, you know, a large percentage of commission on what's already coming in without necessarily increasing the amount of revenue coming in to offset that cost for your property owners. [00:13:53] And I think you're going to end up in a tight spot when your owners aren't making enough money. And another manager can increase or boost their earnings. So I would say get on it. There's no reason not to. There's a lot of access to global talent who knows how to do this kind of stuff. So it's not a lack of talent or even that they're terribly expensive. [00:14:11] You can get a pretty good program implemented. Okay. [00:14:15] Jason: Well then let's allow you to poison the well a little bit against any of your competitors. So let's talk about then what, how do you find and vet a good short term rental management company? I mean, everybody, when they hear what I do, if I'm at a cocktail party or an event or anything, I hear people all the time. [00:14:34] Oh, I had some rental properties, but man, it was a nightmare. And I got rid of them. And I'm like, maybe you should've just got a property manager, but in short term, like if they're not cash flowing, or it's not making money, or it's not working out it could sometimes be the property manager. [00:14:50] Especially based on what you're saying. So what would be the biggest initial filter? Would it be that? Would it be, Hey, how often are you checking the pricing on the property? And what's your pricing strategy? [00:14:59] Jacob: You know, it's tough because you can, you know, with anybody, they can tell you whatever they want. [00:15:03] You have to like verify. And so I would always say there are a lot of like basic ground rules, questions similar to what you're saying, Jason, where, Hey, tell me about your pricing strategy. Tell me about how you will price my property. Tell me about how you'll handle work orders when things come up. Like tell me about your communication strategy with guests. [00:15:22] Tell me about your philosophy on refunding for issues or how you handle cancellations or how do you handle damages? Like all of these like key components, you'll weed out a lot of crummy property managers that way. Actually, if you just go through, Hey, here's the 15 core things you got to do just to be a worthwhile candidate for property management for me. Here's the 15 main things, but to go beyond that's when you have to start doing things like show me your Airbnb account that has all your reviews and going through that list and pick, you know, out of the last three months, find a bunch of reviews and ask them to explain what happened on those poor reviews. [00:15:59] Hey, this guest said this thing happened. What all what happened on your end? And just literally do your due diligence on guest reviews to see how the guest stakeholders are impacted by this manager. And then furthermore, try to find another owner. There's kind of a reputation game here where you need to understand, Hey, has this owner been with you a long time? [00:16:19] Why are they with you? Are they happy with you? Have they considered transitioning to another manager? Kind of a lot of stuff you would expect. And it is a lot of due diligence, I will say, but I think it has a very large impact on the performance of your property. [00:16:32] Jason: Yeah, no, I think that's significant. [00:16:35] So you've kind of built a platform for your business, correct? With Renjoy. And so tell us a...
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DGS 270: Relationships and Owning a Property Management Business
11/01/2024
DGS 270: Relationships and Owning a Property Management Business
Owning a business of any kind impacts your life and relationships. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts talk about marriage, relationships, and how these things correlate with having a property management business. You’ll Learn [02:03] Owning a business impacts your relationships [07:45] You have to be selfish sometimes [11:10] Why people pleasing is harmful [14:13] Masculine and Feminine frames [24:51] Leveling up in business and your relationships Tweetables “In business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner.” “I think as a business owner, you, there is part of you that has to be selfish and you have to be comfortable with being selfish because there is a time and a place for it.” “If you do not take care of yourself, you are not going to have energy to then continue to take care of other people.” “Ironically, the more you are trying to please somebody, the less they value you.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: In business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner. [00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:29] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:11] Now Let's get into the show. [00:01:14] All right, so today's topic, we're going to chat a little bit about marriage. So let's talk about it. We're going to tell a little bit about marriage. Those that have followed my journey over the years have probably seen that I've been divorced. I've gone through struggles in marriage. I've learned things the hard way. Some of y'all probably been married forever like my parents. I have amazing parents and they were a great example of just loving each other from the beginning forever. [00:01:44] They've been married for, I don't know, like 50 years or something. [00:01:48] Sarah: Almost. 49. [00:01:50] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think [00:01:52] Sarah: this year is going to be 47. So they're like going to be 50. [00:01:55] Jason: I think they got married two years before they had me. So yeah. [00:01:58] Sarah: They celebrate it though, but they're still in Australia. [00:02:01] Jason: Yeah. So my parents, they just love each other. [00:02:03] But one of the things that I think it's been coming up a lot, I've been noticing a lot of clients as I go deeper with them and they kind of open up especially the guys like relationships are a struggle. It's a challenge. I think it's difficult. It can be difficult for entrepreneurs. I think it's difficult for the women entrepreneurs because in a lot of ways you have to kind of step into sort of a masculine frame to run a business. And that creates an interesting dynamic in a relationship. And this is in general. Some women out there, maybe you don't want a masculine guy. Maybe you don't want a guy that leads. Maybe you don't want a guy that initiates stuff. Maybe you don't want to be able to let your hair down after work and like have him kind of take the reins and like plan something and take you on a date. I think a lot of women do. A lot of women appreciate that. Even the ones that are running businesses and showing up in a masculine sort of frame and being kind of dominant in leadership and displaying these things, they would like to have somebody else take the lead. Is this accurate do you think or no? [00:03:03] Sarah: Yeah, well. You think it's different. [00:03:05] Jason: You've run your own business. [00:03:06] You've been kind of in that frame. [00:03:08] Sarah: I'm a very masculine woman. [00:03:11] Jason: Yeah, in some ways I think you've consistently since we've been together. [00:03:15] Sarah: I look very feminine. I do it's deceiving. Yeah. [00:03:19] Jason: Yeah, I think since we've been together, you've consistently stepped more and more into your feminine and I've stepped more and more into my masculine I think has kind of been a trend. [00:03:29] Would you say that's accurate? [00:03:30] Sarah: It could be. I don't know. I think you've probably more recently been focused on that. I can't say, I really cannot say, oh, I've ever been focused on. [00:03:41] Jason: I don't think you've been focused on it. I just think. [00:03:44] Sarah: I'm just living life. [00:03:45] Jason: Yeah, you're just living life and this is the thing. [00:03:48] Sarah: I'm just going about shit, doing my thing. [00:03:50] Jason: She's not as conscious of it probably because I think this is something that men, if you are the leader and leading, you should be conscious of this. And women, when men are kind of taking that leadership role, women respond to that, and it's natural. Like, I've noticed it in Sarah, she's not even probably super aware of it, but there's behaviors and things that have kind of shifted. [00:04:15] And so, the way it'll show up for a woman in this, in a relationship like that, as a man stepping more into leadership and into his masculine role, she will generally, over time, feel calmer. There'll be probably less fights, probably less explosions, you know, things like this. And the guy will be like letting go of some of the needy, whiny, pleasy, weak behavior that's kind of gross to women. [00:04:39] Does this sound accurate? [00:04:40] Sarah: That is, yeah, that is gross. [00:04:42] Jason: Yeah. [00:04:42] Sarah: To me, anyway, I cannot speak for all women. [00:04:45] Jason: Yeah. [00:04:45] Sarah: To me, it's gross. [00:04:47] Jason: Ironically, when women are showing up kind of more in a masculine frame, they sometimes bring that out in guys. Like the guys think, Oh no, there's a problem. I got to please more. [00:04:57] And so it kind of creates this weird, gross spiral in relationship. And so, which I've experienced in past relationships. Right. And so the man needs to kind of. shift and lead out of that. And so I've been noticing this in clients. And so, this is something that I've been paying a lot of attention to. [00:05:14] A lot of guys show up in a feminine frame because we've been raised by our moms. Maybe you had a loving mom. She took care of you. Maybe she didn't. And she wasn't really a great mom, maybe but either way, that feminine influence towards pleasing has a strong impact on the male psyche, which puts us into kind of a growing up with kind of a feminine frame. If we don't have a really strong sort of masculine walled stoic father, you know, and there's really great book I would recommend for men that want to kind of eliminate that feminine frame that they're carrying around. [00:05:49] It's called shattering the feminine frame by Jerr, J E R R. It's really hard to find, so you may have to search for it on Google, because if you search for it on Amazon, even though it's there, Amazon won't let you see it. I don't know why. It's super weird. You may not be able to find it. Sometimes searches on some of the books by Jerr don't show up when I search for them. [00:06:11] His main book that he puts out there, I can find, and then I have to go to the author, click on the author name, and then find his other books to find some of these books. I don't, it's really weird, but you might be able to find it through Google. [00:06:23] Sarah: Maybe it's just you. It could be just you. It'd be an interesting test. [00:06:27] Maybe everybody else, even though. [00:06:30] Jason: I bought multiple copies of the book and sent them to guys. So Jason gets blocked on everything. He gets himself blocked. I'm a little controversial. I get shadow banned all the time. It was something. I was definitely shadow banned on Twitter. My accounts aren't working, your whole Instagram account. [00:06:45] I have a political account on Instagram that's totally blocked and shut down. Like, I log into it, it blocks everything. I can't do anything. I can't even go to settings to, like, request help to support. Nothing. So, yeah. So, which probably might be why I can't find which probably means my ideas are actually correct. [00:07:04] So since we live in a world of control and censorship nowadays, all right, so that aside, so I think you know, to kill that needy sort of pleasing behavior, I think guys, this is really important. And it's important in business too, because in business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner. [00:07:30] And that was something you were very good at not doing in your property management [00:07:34] Sarah: business. I don't give a shit about that at all. I [00:07:37] Jason: think you're like, what do I want my business to look like? How do I want to show? Yeah. Yeah. [00:07:42] Sarah: Right. And I think it's, It, part of it is very selfish. And I think as a business owner, you, there is part of you that has to be selfish and you have to be comfortable with being selfish because there is a time and a place for it. [00:07:54] Now I am not sitting here telling you, be only selfish and only think about yourself all the time. No matter what, prioritize you and forget everything else, right? That is not what I'm saying, but there is a time and a place to be selfish and to really think about you. And if you think about it this way, there's a lot of people, like one of my, one of my very good friends in Pennsylvania she will just give and give and give and give to everybody. [00:08:21] She worries about her kids and she worries about her friends and she worries about her family and she worries about, it's like, she's like, so giving and like, I mean, she would literally give you the coat off of her back in the middle of winter if you needed it. I have watched her do it. And that is great. [00:08:42] However, if you do not take care of yourself, you are not going to have energy to then continue to take care of other people. And I tell her that all the time because she's just in this constant exhaustion. Like now it's manifesting physically. Now she's had like, she had health issues. She had like a heart problem. [00:09:02] She had all kinds of issues and it's because she's not prioritizing herself. She will go to do something for herself, but then something else pops up and needs her attention. And she's like, Oh, well, I can't worry about me. Now, I have to worry about this other thing. So there is a time and a place to be selfish, and you must take care of yourself first in order to then serve and take care of other people. [00:09:22] It's like, put on your own oxygen mask before helping other people. Because if you die trying to help your family, well now your family doesn't have you. When you could have just put on your own oxygen mask first. Yes? So there is a time and a place to be selfish. I think in my later years, especially after my, like, my divorce when I was, what was I, 28? [00:09:48] Yeah, I was 28. So, 28, I flipped my entire life upside down. All of it. Everything. I pretty much scrapped it all. Anything that wasn't serving me, anything that was toxic, anything that wasn't good for me, anything that didn't make me feel happy or bring me joy or make me feel loved and cared for, I said, fuck it. [00:10:10] Gone. Gone. So I cut off relationships with my biological father. I ended my marriage. I cut off a lot of friendships. I quit my job. I did all kinds of things. I was like, yeah, this isn't working like, and that was the end of it. But that was very much about, that was for me. I did that for me. [00:10:30] And up until that point, I wasn't really living for me. Yes, I was concerned about myself. I was always trying to take care of myself. But I was also always worried, Oh, well, who needs this? And who needs that? And, oh, you know, this person, you know, is kind of, it's always like in the back of your brain. [00:10:48] And after, after that, I made that change and that after that point was when I started my business, when I started my business, I'm glad that I didn't do this before I had that shift in my life because when I started my business, number one has to be me. If the business makes me miserable, then I'm doing something wrong. [00:11:07] So why do it like that? [00:11:10] Jason: A lot of people are miserable in their businesses. They like, we see a lot of them. That's why a lot of people come to us. We can turn that around. Ironically, the more you are trying to please somebody, the less they value you. And so if you're like just bending over backwards trying to please tenants, they're going to treat you even more and more like garbage because you're showcasing and demonstrating in your language your behavior everything, "I'm low value." [00:11:37] I'm a doormat. Walk all over me. You might do that with owners. You might be displaying, Hey, I'm low value. I'm available whenever you need me. Your time is so much more important than my time. Interrupt me anytime. Here's my cell phone number. Right? And so by displaying that you're low value, you actually end up being treated worse and being perceived as worse. [00:11:58] And people respect business owners that are leaders and then are able to display strong behavior that they can lean into and that they can trust. You need to have a stronger frame or a more masculine frame if you are the leader of a business. Otherwise, people are not going to really trust, respect, or feel safe with you. [00:12:18] And so I think that Also, when we're in relationship and we're with somebody and I think that this is probably more true of women, a lot of women might throw me some shade for saying this, but as guys, I don't know what the major difference is. Maybe it's testosterone levels, whatever. Maybe it's just in our DNA, but we do not grow up feeling fear. [00:12:41] We just, we don't generally feel afraid of a whole lot of things. Like, most guys would never even think, like, am I safe if I go walk out on the street? Unless they're in a really shitty area, you know? But if I go out for a walk, I'm not concerned about my safety at all. I could roll down my windows and take a nap in my car, parked by the side of the road, and wouldn't even worry. [00:13:03] Women, I didn't realize this until later years, but women from. [00:13:08] Sarah: Even going like for a walk by myself, no way, I'm taking my pitbull, like [00:13:12] Jason: Yes. [00:13:13] Sarah: Or I'm carrying. [00:13:15] Jason: Right. Or some combination. [00:13:18] Sarah: Something. There's no, there's no chance. Yeah, [00:13:21] Jason: I mean even if I'm out of town, for example You'd like you get a little bit more concerned about things and your safety and stuff like that, right? [00:13:30] Sarah: See, I'm the type of person I'm like, I want like a fortress. I want like reinforced concrete like five inch, you know, like, maybe even 11 inch thick, like, walls, I want, like, a moat, I also like some sharks that we don't feed, like, ever, and then, you know, somebody might accidentally fall down. [00:13:49] I've been getting in, like, this is how I'm like, that would make me feel safe. I want like bulletproof glass. Give me the Cybertruck glass just everywhere. Like, that's like, this is what I need. I need like laser beams, like you see in museums. Like motion sensor laser beams that trigger like the SWAT team. [00:14:06] That's what I need, but I've watched way too many horror movies, admittedly, way too many for my own good. [00:14:13] Jason: So regardless of your gender, masculine and feminine energy is always at play. And, Feminine energy generally is not going to feel safe without masculine energy nearby. [00:14:24] That's just generally how it works. Masculine energy creates that protection and safety. This will be true of your clients. So you'll need to show up somewhat in a masculine frame so that your clients can feel safe. feel safe with you. And that's what they want to buy. They don't want to buy property management, but they want to buy a safety and certainty. [00:14:40] They want to buy peace of mind. And so that certainty that you can display is more of a masculine energy or masculine frame. This is true of women that are in relationships. If they're not getting that from the man that they're with or around them, That sort of masculine frame, they're going to become, a lot of times, they become more nervous, more neurotic. [00:14:59] They're more concerned about things and more fearful. And especially if they have to then step into the masculine frame to take care of the guy that they're with because he's even more needy and pleasy and whatever and feminine than she is, then it's like, it creates this gross sort of I'm your mother type of dynamic, right? [00:15:17] And you don't want to be my mother, right? You don't want to be cleaning up after me and telling me what to do all the time. [00:15:22] Sarah: I don't want to be anybody's mom. [00:15:24] Jason: Yeah, exactly. [00:15:24] Sarah: I am not cut out to be a mom, let's be honest. I'm just not, I'm just not good. Like my mom is the best mom in the world and then like, how do I measure up to that? [00:15:34] Like I can't compete with that. [00:15:35] Jason: Well, I don't think it's a competition. [00:15:37] Sarah: Everything is a competition. [00:15:39] Jason: It's not really. [00:15:39] Sarah: You know nothing about me. [00:15:41] Jason: It's not really competition. You don't need to compete with your mom, but you can take, you know, some of the good that you've got from her and the stuff that you don't want to apply or we learn from our parents. [00:15:51] We don't want to be like. We don't have to take that. Right. So, you know, I guess the takeaway from this episode maybe is men, check out that book, like step into a little bit more masculine role in your relationships, your wife will be calmer, she'll be more loving, you will definitely get more respect and you'll get more sex if you're showing up in a masculine frame. And it's your responsibility. Stop trying to change her. Stop trying to get her to be something different. Stop wishing she was nicer to you. Stop trying to focus on I need love and I need to please her and do things like that like Show up in a confident leadership position, like plan stuff, plan dates. [00:16:35] We're going on a date this weekend, right? We went on a date last weekend. [00:16:40] Sarah: Round two. [00:16:40] Jason: I messed up last weekend. I planned a date. I was so excited and took her out to eat. We went to go to where the date was, we were supposed to go watch a show. And it was closed, like, there was nothing there. And I was like, what? [00:16:54] And I checked and I had the date...
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DGS 269: Learning Resilience From Rescue Dogs as a Property Management Entrepreneur
10/18/2024
DGS 269: Learning Resilience From Rescue Dogs as a Property Management Entrepreneur
Man can learn valuable lessons from man’s best friend… In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about their passion project of fostering dogs and how business owners can learn about resilience from these adorable rescue pups. You’ll Learn [02:56] The story of Chance the dog [11:09] What does this have to do with running a business? [18:39] Jason and Sarah’s foster dogs Tweetables “You will look back on this as being such an easy thing for you to deal with in the present moment.” “If you're going to go through tough stuff, it's a lot better to have the right support around you.” “You're going to make mistakes, but that's the price of tuition in business.” “We're all doing the best we can with our current limited capacity and knowledge that we possessed in that moment.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: If this dog can go through everything that he went through and still push through, whatever is happening in your business, whatever is happening in your life, whatever is happening in your marriage, in your friendships, in your relationships, you can push through it. [00:00:14] Jason: Yeah, just tell yourself you're not yet at Maynard level. [00:00:17] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:35] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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 we're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, founder, [00:01:16] cOO of DoorGrow. [00:01:18] And now let's get into the show. All right So we were thinking what we should talk about today and one of Sarah's strong passions Is dogs. I think Sarah likes dogs more than people. Is that fair? [00:01:34] Sarah: That's accurate. [00:01:35] Jason: Okay, she's an intj. Any of you that are familiar with myers briggs intjs typically like animals more than people. I don't know why, and I like dogs too, so not a fan of cats I'm allergic to them and I think they're smelly. [00:01:51] Sorry, all you cat lovers out there, but I'm more of a dog person. You can see in the background here is. Hey buddy, who's smelling around. This is a dog that we're fostering right now. And the working title for this dog is Hans. That's they give them names, but this is a dog we're fostering and it's such a sweet dog. [00:02:13] And so I wanted, this is a passion of Sarah's. We've been fostering some dogs and we've had, had some difficult times fostering dogs and we've had some good times, you know, let's, should we talk about our first foster? [00:02:27] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. If that didn't turn us off to fostering... [00:02:31] it was like worst case scenario, I would say. [00:02:35] Jason: So Sarah's dog, one of our dogs, he's a large dog and he's a Pitbull. American. [00:02:44] Sarah: He's an American Pitbull. American Pitbull. [00:02:45] Jason: Terrier. 100%. We got him DNA tested, purebred. And then we have another little mutt that we can talk about that we got. [00:02:53] Sarah: That we adopted. Well, that one was after the whole Chance thing. [00:02:56] Jason: Yeah, totally. So we decided to, like foster, we brought a dog in and this dog's name was Chance and he was a pit bull. We thought maybe they'd get along but we didn't know Chance's background. We didn't know Chance's history. The previous people made it sound like he was a good dog sort of, but they really, I think we're kind of keeping secrets from us and gave us a bunch of rules. [00:03:21] Like, be careful with other dogs and like separate for a while and we did everything [00:03:25] Sarah: that's always the rule. [00:03:26] Jason: Sure. [00:03:26] Sarah: Careful with other dogs be separate for a while. Slow introductions. Never feed together. That's yeah, those are always the rules. You say that as if that was like a red flag. [00:03:35] That was not a red flag. [00:03:36] Jason: Okay. [00:03:37] Sarah: They tell you that with every dog. [00:03:38] Jason: They had to have known that this dog had some violent tendencies or some history. So long story short, this dog bit Sarah. They gaslit us and blamed, it bit her arm. And they were like, "oh, well, there was food involved" or something like this. [00:03:53] We're like, okay, maybe it was us. We'll be more careful. So we still kept the dog. And we had the dog for like a month. [00:04:00] Sarah: We struggled with that too. Because we really, we, right then and there, we thought, okay. I think we're done. I think he's got to go back. Someone else can foster him. [00:04:08] Yeah. And they kind of talked us into it. Like, "oh, well, can you just hang on to him until I find another place for him to go? Because like, nobody can take him right now." [00:04:18] Jason: I don't think there's any safe place for them to go. So later. At this point later, it had been a month, we had integrated the dogs, they were hanging out, they're on the couch together, like it didn't seem to be a problem. [00:04:31] It was kind of, but I think really was like a working truce or something. I think this dog had a history of maybe being involved in dog fights, something like this would be my guess. Because some dogs will usually get together. And they'll do a little bit of have a little tiff, but they're not trying to kill each other, right? [00:04:48] They'll, like, bite, they'll do something, they'll give a warning, and they'll be done with it. So, I had come home from a walk, Parker came up to me, I played with him a little bit, he did a little playful sort of growl with a toy or whatever, the other dog gets off the couch. This dog had no expression. He's just headed towards Parker. [00:05:07] Parker saw him and it was like, it was on and saw him coming towards me. And they just locked up and they got into this horrible dog fight. Like, and we have a long entryway into our home, like a big hallway, like entryway that runs kind of all the way to the back of the house almost. [00:05:26] Right. And this was. in our family room towards the back of the house and the fight continued all the way to the front door. Like it was just, it was a disaster. This dog Chance and Parker were fighting and we were trying to break it up. Sarah was on with Parker trying to pull him and I was trying to get Chance off and Sarah, you were freaking out if you don't mind me saying. [00:05:51] [00:05:51] Sarah: I mean, yeah. Like, rightfully so. [00:05:54] Jason: Yeah. She's freaking out. And so it, yeah it was interesting. So there's blood everywhere. Blood flying all over the place, dogs are locked up and fighting, biting at each other and so then I, yeah. You know, if I had my gun or knife on me, dog probably would be dead. [00:06:09] I couldn't figure out what else to do. And we weren't going to let him kill our dog. And he was much stronger than Parker. So, we didn't want Parker to die. Right. So, but what I did in that moment is I was like, I had done a little bit of jujitsu training in the past. So I was like, Oh, I'm going to choke him out. [00:06:26] I was trying to, I first tried to lift the legs up. Cause that's what people say. I didn't, that wasn't really a great idea because I lift his back legs up and to try and pull him off. And he just turned and latched onto my leg. He turned really quickly, latched onto my leg, bit my leg through my pants. I have permanent bite mark on my right leg and had latched on my leg. [00:06:49] through my pants and was biting me. Then Parker was coming at him. So he turned back to Parker. And then I use that moment when he came at my leg towards me to get my arm underneath his neck and then to choke him out, just like in martial arts. So I did a blood choke and I figured he's probably got veins going through his neck to his brain, just like all of us humans. [00:07:13] And it choked him out. And then He passed out. I was holding him in my arm and I picked him up and was choking him out because he eventually released Parker and I was choking him out. I'm holding this limp dog in my arm. And then his Parker was latched onto one of his legs or something. And Sarah was like, "what do I do? What do I do? He won't let go!" And I was like, Sarah has a martial arts background, so I figured you knew how to do a choke. So I was like, "choke him out. You got to choke him out!" So she had to grab Parker and get him to release. And and he did. Parker really was trying to protect us. That was obvious. [00:07:52] But Parker was losing, like it wasn't going well for him. Parker, the other dog had some bites on him, but he was okay. But Parker had to go to the hospital. Like he was really messed up. He had to get surgery. His ear was like torn in half. Yeah, his [00:08:09] Sarah: ear was torn and then he had a chunk ripped out of his neck. [00:08:13] Like the back of his neck. Yeah, it was ugly. Yeah, it was not good. [00:08:16] Jason: So, while I had Chance in the choke hold and limp, I carried him through the house to the backyard and put him into the backyard. And shut the door so we could just keep them separate. And then, yeah, we were just, I was totally scared of that dog after that. [00:08:33] But that's what we did. And eventually I think we just got him into a crate or something. So he wasn't in the backyard. [00:08:39] Sarah: Yeah. No, I had to go get him. [00:08:41] Jason: Yeah. [00:08:42] Sarah: Into the crate. Because he was like, I don't think he's going to want to see me. I just choked him out. No. No, that's probably a good call. [00:08:48] Jason: He probably wouldn't want to attack me. Yeah. Because I was pretty rough with him. So, that's my adventure in choking out a pit bull. Yeah. [00:08:58] Sarah: So I think you never really know what you're going to do until you're like in the moment. [00:09:02] Jason: Yeah. [00:09:03] Sarah: And then your adrenaline kicks in and sometimes you know what you're going to do or you think you know what you're going to do ahead of time and you find out there's no plan. [00:09:12] There's no plan. And the they do tell you like, oh, lift the dog's hind legs over its head and it will release. Yes, and [00:09:20] two out of two times it released and then latched on to. [00:09:25] Jason: Yeah, they don't like that it's being lifted up. [00:09:27] Sarah: No. [00:09:27] Jason: So, I mean, that was an interesting moment because I went into tunnel vision. [00:09:31] This is how guys brains work. We're generally singular focused. This is why they send us to war, right? We can just focus on one thing. So I wasn't really particularly traumatized by the event. I mean, it was, but I was like, okay, I'm in mission mode. I'm doing what I need to do with the dog and that's it. [00:09:47] Yeah. And then we got to clean up because there's blood everywhere, all through our home. Yeah, it was like a freaking emergency. Walls, everywhere. It was awful. There's blood everywhere. [00:09:53] Sarah: Everywhere. And then I was covered in it. Because I was holding [00:09:57] Jason: Parker and I had a white t shirt and then [00:09:59] Sarah: when we like I got Parker in the office and Chance was outside because Jason put him out there and Jason looked at me and I'm literally like from here down I was just drenched. [00:10:12] Jason: You were holding Parker and he was the more wounded. Drenched. Yeah. [00:10:15] Sarah: And he's going "oh my god. Oh my god." He's like, "Sarah, there's freaking blood" It's not mine. It's not mine. Like, I'm okay. I lost my pinky nail. That got ripped off. So for a while I had no pinky nail that, that was not fun. [00:10:27] Jason: Like your actual nail. [00:10:28] Sarah: Like my actual, everybody says, okay. [00:10:30] Let me clear something up. Everybody says, Oh, those aren't real nails. These are real. These are actually attached to my real nails on my finger. So like underneath you can kind of see, [00:10:41] Jason: yeah, there's like, [00:10:42] Sarah: there are real nails here. And then yes, I make them longer, but it's not just a tip. Like if you pull off one of these nails, it is attached to your real nail and your real nail will come off with it. [00:10:55] Jason: You had a flesh pinky, like there was no nail for a while. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of odd. [00:11:00] Sarah: Yeah, it was horrible. Yeah that, that was awful. [00:11:03] Jason: Yeah, and it took a while for my bite mark to heal. So, yeah. So, so that was our first adventure. [00:11:09] Sarah: Let me pause here and say, cause I know some of you guys are going, "why the freaking hell are they talking about any of this? It sounds awful. And it's like, oh my God, I don't even want to keep listening to the episode." Keep listening. Because I think one of the things that I would say about particularly about this situation that we had to go through is sometimes in life, sometimes also in business, you gotta go through some shit. [00:11:34] And you're going to be in some situations that you definitely did not plan for, that you've never been in before, and that Maybe you don't know what to do, and in the moment, the only thing you can do is whatever comes to your mind, whatever you can think of, and then, it's afterwards, then there's the PTSD, so then you just have to heal from the PTSD, but I also would say it's fair that every entrepreneur has a little PTSD from their business. [00:12:07] Jason: Yeah, for sure. [00:12:08] Sarah: Yeah [00:12:09] Jason: Well, because entrepreneurs we take bigger risks. We get to experience you know issues like cash flow problems or staffing issues or team members that losing faith in us and leaving or team members stealing from us, right? [00:12:24] Sarah: Having to fire somebody. [00:12:25] Jason: If you're working for a boss you don't generally have to experience a lot of this stuff that you experience as a business owner. We're choosing into a higher level of stress, trauma, difficulty, which is why it's not for everybody when not everybody starts a business. And but yeah, it's important to heal from these things and to level up from these things and learn from these things so that you can get to that next level of capacity to be able to deal with that next level of stress that exists in business. And I tell clients this all the time. [00:12:55] They're currently dealing with some problem they think is so hard and they're at kind of a lower level and I tell them, someday, you will look back on this as being such an easy thing for you to deal with in the present moment, you'll be like, Oh man, I can't believe that was so hard for me then. I'm dealing with such bigger challenges and bigger level, higher level things now. And that's encouraging for them. They're like, Oh, that's good news. They're like, and they know they're like, yeah, someday this will be easy. I'm like, someday, this hiring stuff will be easy. Someday this, you know, process stuff that you're dealing with will be easy. [00:13:29] Because you're going to increase your capacity. You're going to learn, you're going to level up. It's the price of tuition and business. So let me take a quick break. I'm going to share our sponsor for this episode, which is Vendoroo. So if you are dealing with constant stress, the hassle of maintenance coordination, and that's an issue for you, check out Vendoroo. They're your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection and coordination. It's built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. [00:14:08] Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo, V E N D O R O O dot AI slash doorGrow and experience maintenance done right. I was actually, we were hanging out with the Vendoroo guys and I was telling them the story. Because we were telling them how we were fostering a dog and we had to get home, you know, from dinner. [00:14:29] And then they were, we somehow shifted in that story and they were just like, so interested. So, but yeah, so if you want to check out DoorGrow. com, we actually just put this up yesterday because we've been fostering and taking care of dogs and our team are really excited about this. I had the idea with one of my team members, we did a secret project. [00:14:51] Yeah, because we knew Sarah would probably like it. So we put up a dog page. So you can see the dogs that we've like, fostered. I don't think we put Chance on the page. Did we? I don't think we put Chance on the page. [00:15:03] Sarah: No, we didn't. No. Chance was not a great story. But Parker isn't on there either. And Parker is the OG. [00:15:09] Jason: Parker's the OG. We can add Parker. [00:15:11] Sarah: Parker's like the mascot of everything. [00:15:14] Jason: So, anyway, check that out right at the top, you'll see a little dog emoji and it says dogs on our website. And you can see, you know, a little bit of the passion we have for helping out dogs. All right. So we told the story of Chance. [00:15:27] And you would think after that we would be done. And I think we were for a little while. It was like, yeah, kind of free, especially for you to like, get past the PTSD of that. You beat yourself up quite a bit about it, which you can be good at times, right? [00:15:43] Sarah: I'm really, yeah. Yeah. Because on the DISC profile, I'm a DC, so I'm super critical of everything and everyone, including myself. [00:15:54] Yeah. [00:15:54] So yeah. [00:15:56] Jason: Which good operators are hard time. [00:15:58] Sarah: And hard time with that. And I, like I, I internalized a lot of that. I took blame for a lot of that and I had to just kind of work, work my way through that. And it kind of goes back to anytime that you deal with a hard situation, it might be in business or otherwise, you know, you're going to reflect on the situation and some people are really good at externalizing and saying like, none of that was my fault. [00:16:25] You know, I have like no ownership in that whatsoever. Some of people, they take all of the ownership and are really bad at externalizing. So I think you have to kind of find the middle ground. Like what am I responsible for? What am I accountable for? You know, how can I learn? I'm going to learn from that. [00:16:43] And for me it was the, it hands down, it was the scariest moment of my life. Most terrifying moment of my entire life. And I've been in some pretty scary situations back when I did property management. This puts it to shame, absolute shame. But I think it's really just, it's finding the middle ground and figuring out what am I responsible for and how can I learn. [00:17:06] Jason: I think also, I think that some people are kinder to themselves and have more grace for themselves. And I think it's important...
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DGS 268: Humility and Hospitality as an Entrepreneur
10/11/2024
DGS 268: Humility and Hospitality as an Entrepreneur
In the world of entrepreneurship, there is a lot of conflicting advice on how to make it and become successful. Property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull recently came back from a masterminding event. In this episode, they sit down to debrief and share how humility, hospitality, and transparency can be more effective than trying to be “cool.” You’ll Learn [01:10] Masterminding with fellow entrepreneurs [04:04] Humility as a business owner/visionary [10:41] Example of hospitality and care [15:37] Humility comes from being grateful Tweetables “Transparency kills the cool vibes, but creates followers like you wouldn't believe.” “By building that goodwill out in front of you, it helps everything in the business go better.” “I think really humility is born or created out of gratitude and being grateful.” “It's not all you. And because it's not all you, that doesn't mean you're not great. It just means that part of what makes you great is that you're able to work with others.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's not all you. Other people believe in you. Other people are supporting you. With others and with God you can do amazing and great things. [00:00:09] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow, property manager. DoorGrow property managers, love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:07] Now, let's get into the show. [00:01:10] All right. So we were talking about what we should talk about this morning, and we recently just got back from a mastermind event. We're in a mastermind with some kind of a mastermind put on by coaches, I guess for coaches. Is that accurate? [00:01:27] Sarah: It's not only for coaches. [00:01:28] It's a mix of entrepreneurs that do different things. A lot of them do happen to be coaches, but not all of them are coaches. There's like the people that run the like the tree house Airbnb's and I was like, that's not a tree house. That's really cool. [00:01:44] Jason: Yeah. [00:01:44] Sarah: So there's people like that. [00:01:46] He's also, I guess, a musician. He's like a rock star. I learned that this time. So there's a mix of people. Some of them happen to be coaches and some of them are not, they're just entrepreneurs, but these are high level entrepreneurs that are focused on investing in themselves and learning and growing and being better all the time. [00:02:07] Jason: Okay. [00:02:08] Sarah: So quarterly, we meet, we go out to Tennessee, which is where one of the hosts live. So it's like right outside of Nashville, which to me is like a second home. Like I just, I love it there so much. And it was a really great event. I mean, it's always a really great event. I don't think we've ever gone and then said, oh, that wasn't so great. [00:02:33] It's good every time. Because you never know, and this is what I personally like about it, is you don't know what you're going to get out of it all the time ahead of time. So sometimes, you know, if there's like an event or a conference or something like that, and they go, Oh, and we're going to talk about this one topic. [00:02:51] Well, what if I don't need this one topic? So what I like is I don't know what people are going to share. I don't know what the topics are going to be ahead of time. So we always get something out of it. And we rarely know what that will be. [00:03:08] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It was really helpful. And you know, the two gentlemen leading This particular mastermind that we're in, we're in several different things, but this particular one is Sharran Srivatsaa. He's the CEO of Real which is a multi billion dollar real estate company and Aaron Stokes runs a multi million dollar coaching business, coaching auto repair shops called Shop Fix Academy. So it's really cool to hang out with both of them and they're just really wise, lots of insight, great people, you know, and they attract great people around them. So it's just a high caliber group. There's kind of a, at least from Aaron Stokes' side, a very Christian sort of focus. [00:03:51] But Sharran also a very moral person. I don't know. He doesn't seem to focus on that as much, but it's not a religious thing, you know, but we're learning from these two men that have really strong values and really care about the people that they serve. [00:04:04] So I think one of the biggest things that stood out to me was the conversation that they had that related to just who we are. As a coach, I thought was really interesting, and I can touch on that a little bit. [00:04:21] So I think for me that the thing that I really liked is, one of the phrases I wrote down, I take a bunch of notes. And one of the notes I wrote down is "boastful people are exposing their insecurity. Honor is positive things being said behind my back." [00:04:37] And "hospitality builds goodwill out in front of you" and "master the ability to have confrontational conversations." So there's kind of a conversation a lot about hiring and team, but I really enjoyed the conversation about you know, this idea that when we try to look cool in front of other people, we're not being as transparent and transparency kills the cool vibes. [00:04:58] So we don't maybe look as cool, but he said it creates followers. Like you wouldn't believe. You know, increase trust. And so I think in the past I was very much focused on trying to look cool. And it was, it definitely was born out of insecurity. And it was like, I need to appear great at all times. I need to look like a leader because I just felt maybe insecure. [00:05:23] I wasn't really confident in my ability to perform or to do stuff. Sarah's giving me the nudge to stay further back. So, I'm not too close to the camera. [00:05:34] Sarah: On what episode does Jason remember to stay behind a lot. I need to put like a... [00:05:39] Jason: I want to get in your faces! Get excited! All right. [00:05:42] Sarah: What episode does that happen? [00:05:45] I've got a hundred dollars on none of them. [00:05:47] Jason: Yeah, i'm going to stay back here. Okay, so Yeah, so in the past I was very focused on that and it was kind of a blind spot I had I didn't realize that I was trying to be cool, but part of it was you know, I had some insecurity that i'd never even had a property management business yet somehow, I ended up coaching hundreds of property management business owners. [00:06:08] So there was a bit of imposter syndrome and there was a bit of insecurity and it took coaches to prompt me and push me to like, Hey, you should make some changes to this industry. You can benefit people because I cared, but I was like, it should be somebody else. And so maybe somebody that has thousands of doors or something like that. [00:06:28] And, you know, I did a lot of things trying to look cool, trying to look cool online and stuff like that. And and maybe it's just that I'm getting old I don't know, or maybe I'm getting wiser or I'm learning, but you know, some of the things I've been through recently in life, I'm like, I'm less and less attached that I need to look cool or interesting or special or something, or to try and get some people that perceive me as important. [00:06:54] And I think it's because I'm starting to just value myself more. Right. And And so, you know, transparency kills the cool vibes, but creates followers like you wouldn't believe. So that's, that was one of the key things that stood out to me. So, I, [00:07:10] Sarah: on that note, something that he was talking a lot about and he's, he has said this before. [00:07:15] It wasn't like, this is not the first time I've heard him say this. And in fact, we've asked him specifically about like some of our events. Like, what can we do to just like blow this thing up? Like, we want to have a conference with like, you know, a hundred people there, 250, 500, a thousand at some point. [00:07:33] So like, how do we do that, Aaron? And, you know, Like the conferences he runs and he did not start large at all. He had 19 people at his first conference and then 19 people at a second conference. So we have more than that, but it's not hundreds yet. And now he's at the thousands. Thousands, multiple thousands of people. [00:07:57] So I had asked him, we were like in our little like van and Jason and I were sitting in the front row and he was driving. So I peeked up and I was like, I think Jason asked him about events and I said, okay, but Aaron, before you answer, I was like, what did you do when you were our size? [00:08:15] Because him telling me what he does now doesn't help me. I don't have a million dollar budget for a conference. Like I wish I did. At some point I might. I don't. I can't pay freaking Jay Leto $500, 000 to come and speak. Like not unless we're going to go bankrupt. So it doesn't work. But the one thing that he talked about, I think he just said it differently or maybe it hit differently this time is like the hospitality aspect of it. [00:08:46] Jason: Yeah. [00:08:47] Sarah: Like, don't just run an event and have people like show up and do whatever. It's like, if you were attending this event, what would you want it to look like from start to finish? So this coming DoorGrow Live in 2025, which we're already starting to plan, it's going to be very different. [00:09:04] Like all of our events that we do, any in person events, whether they're small or large, they're going to be very different. So we're going to incorporate some like fun, cool things into it. I mean, we live in Austin. Like there are so many fun, cool things here. We don't, there is no lack. So we can build some of that into. [00:09:24] Our events and give a like a much better experience overall, and that I think will help actually create more connections and networking. amongst the people. So that's, that was something that I kind of on that note. It just hit me different this time, you know? [00:09:44] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Aaron puts a lot of focus in his events hospitality for his auto repair shop owners. [00:09:51] Yeah. So, let's take a quick time out to go over our sponsors here. So, if you are tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination. Built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations, where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. Vendoroo takes care of the details. So you can focus on growth, schedule a demo today at Vendoroo V E N D O R O O dot AI slash DoorGrow and experience maintenance done right. And we've got clients getting some great results with them. We just got to hang out with them here in Austin. [00:10:43] Yeah. Came out for a conference or event and we went out to dinner and they're great guys. Like there's a lot of fun. They're great. [00:10:50] Sarah: And you know what I liked? Yeah. When I, when we met up with him, so oddly enough, we were also running a very small event that day. Yeah, we were. And one of the people who attended the event was new with Vendoroo. [00:11:02] Yeah. We're trying to figure out, there was like a gap somewhere in like their portal or the system or something. And he had our client voice that to us. And I said, well, this actually happens to be. Perfect. Because we are meeting almost like their whole team later tonight for dinner. So when we were waiting for them for dinner, one of them walks in, David. [00:11:26] So David walks in and he says, Oh guys, like, I'm so sorry. I'm late. Cause he was late, but it's not a big deal. He's like, Oh guys, I'm so sorry. I'm late. I was actually on the phone with Ron. I was like, wait, like my Ron? And he's like, yeah. Ron, and I was like, Oh good, because I was going to talk to you about Ron. [00:11:44] He's like, it's already done. It's already handled. He's like, we are on top of it. And I'm like, that's amazing. So like, there's not a lot of companies that focus that much on like customer service so much so that at seven o'clock at night, they're going to be on the phone with you. Yeah, but that's what David did. [00:12:03] He's like you need me. I'm going to handle it right now. I don't know. Oh, it's seven o'clock at night. I'm not working. Don't call me. I won't get back to it tomorrow. He was like, I'm doing it right now. And if I'm late meeting Sarah and Jason, I'm late meeting Sarah and Jason. [00:12:15] Jason: Yeah. [00:12:16] Sarah: And that to me was really cool. [00:12:17] Jason: Yeah, it goes right along with the totality. [00:12:20] Sarah: Like, we were sharing, like, the feedback and they were like, oh my god, we all have to fix this, like, right now. It wasn't like, oh, that sucks, like, oh, that, oh well, what do we do about that? Oh, give it to the other team. No. All of them were like, we need to fix this right now, like, call him now, like, what can we do? [00:12:35] I'm going to talk to him tomorrow, I'm going to look at his portal like, as soon as I get done with this. It was awesome. [00:12:39] Jason: Yeah. [00:12:39] Sarah: So I will say that. [00:12:40] Jason: Yeah, and part of it was, I think the Vendoroo team, were wanting to maintain relationship, healthy relationship with us as well. Right. They're like, we're going to take care of our mutual clients. [00:12:50] And that's that hospitality aspect, you know, where we're focused on their comfort and that's a way you can stand out really more cost is what Aaron had talked about. He says it doesn't really cost anything extra to just show a little bit more care, to be a little bit kinder, to like focus on hospitality. [00:13:11] If you've already got team members that you're paying a salary, there's some costs, get them to focus on more hospitality and that's way you can stand out. And it. It builds goodwill out in front of you. And by building that goodwill out in front of you, it helps everything in the business go better. [00:13:26] So let me mention our next sponsor True Submeter. Attention, multifamily property owners and managers discover True Submeter, the number one water and sub metering company in the U S say goodbye water use abuse by your tenants and hello to billing for exact water consumption with no unit minimum. Enjoy smart cost effective solutions designed to optimize your property's operations and save you money. Plus get an exclusive 10 percent discount with the code DoorGrow 10. [00:13:58] That's DoorGrow 1 0 visit truesubmeter. com today for intelligent utility solutions and substantial savings. That's truesubmeter.Com. All right. [00:14:09] Sarah: So everybody in the multifamily space. [00:14:13] Jason: Yeah. [00:14:13] Sarah: Where you've got your tenants. Like I literally had a tenant one time, she was so mad, she, and she was a little bit off. [00:14:20] She was just really mad. She would run her sinks just for fun. She would turn on water in the sink, turn on water in the bathtub. She would overflow her bathtub, and it's like, well, we're paying for the water. Well, like the owner was. When we, like, a 1, 300 water bill. [00:14:36] Jason: Now you can figure out which units, even which state for a device is causing the water issue. [00:14:42] Yeah, and bill accordingly. [00:14:43] Sarah: And you can help your clients be more profitable, because that's something that they have to eat the cost of. And if you are a real estate investor, because I know there's some of you listening that aren't property managers, you're real estate investors yourselves. [00:14:57] If you've got multifamily and the water meters are not separate and in larger multifamily, they're usually not. Maybe if you have a duplex or maybe a triplex, Sometimes like a little bit bigger, but not normal. It's usually like one water meter for the entire building. So this, I mean, this will help you make more money and actually more profitable. [00:15:24] That would have been great for me. Like I had so many small multis that the water was just included. So we had to then try to like raise the rent to compensate for that. It was just messy. [00:15:37] Jason: So I guess today's topic was humility and you know, hospitality, you know, or just hospitality and kind of revealing yourself or transparency. [00:15:49] So, you know, the last bit I'll touch on is Aaron talked a little bit about humility and I've always believed humility is recognizing. Humility it's not debasing yourself. It's not putting yourself down. And I think a lot of people think that. And I think Aaron, even though he's got wealth and you know, a lot of things and stuff like this. [00:16:06] He's doing very well as well Sharran, they have this they have humility about them And I think what humility really is created by or what true humility is instead of putting yourself down and saying Oh, i'm like not so great. I don't think that's it at all. What I believe humility is recognizing God and others' hand In your results, that's it. [00:16:28] I think it's just not it's not attributing everything beneficial in your life to yourself It's recognizing that other people around you are having a positive impact and That's why you're able to get results. And so I think really humility is born or created out of gratitude and being grateful And so that's what i'll leave the listeners with if you are feeling really prideful and you deep down don't really feel good about yourself or insecure, then just start to recognize where have others or God or the universe or whatever you're into, where have these things impacted your results and helped you get positive results and start to recognize and, you know, gratitude. [00:17:12] And you'll start to recognize that, Hey, it's not all you. And because it's not all you, that doesn't mean you're not great. It just means that part of what makes you great is that you're able to work with others. Other people believe in you. Other people are supporting you. With others and with God you can do amazing and great things. There's no limit and you know being around other people in programs and masterminds and things like this that are playing a high level game that are maybe ahead of you that are doing really well is one of the main reasons to be in these sort of programs and this is the environment that we, you know, aspire to create and facilitate for our clients is to give them something better to look forward to and to look up to and to be a part of and to be around. [00:18:02] And this is why I think a lot of clients are able to get such great results. If you are struggling in your property management business or you're doing well, but you just know it could be better, you know, your day to day in your life could be better. It's not quite where you want to be. Like...
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DGS 267: 3 Things to Increase Your Close Rate in Property Management
09/27/2024
DGS 267: 3 Things to Increase Your Close Rate in Property Management
Recently, Jason and Sarah hosted a few momentum coaching calls where they taught DoorGrow Mastermind members ways to grow and scale their businesses. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull go over 3 strategies property managers can use to increase their close rate. You’ll Learn [01:53] Sales in a post-trust era [07:16] Objection-handling with a newer sales strategy [09:59] Proof bomb testimonials [13:55] One of the most effective selling tools Tweetables “A lot of you are trying to sell the way you learned maybe in real estate or the way that things happen in the past and you're probably finding it harder and harder as well.” “My agenda is to figure out simply, do they need what we have?” “If they can't find a consequence to not starting now, then they won't start now.” “People's trust levels are at an all-time low. And so in selling, I've had to really change things up.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: If you have any leads, deals, opportunities in the pipeline right now, and you would love to maybe double your close rate or double the deal count that you're getting out of your existing lead flow, I think these three elements combined would easily do that. [00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:31] DoorGrow Property Managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:50] At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management, growth experts, Jason, and Sarah Hull the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:10] Now let's get into the show. [00:01:13] So today we're going to talk a little bit, this is going to be a quick episode. We've got camera malfunctions. I don't know. I don't know what's going on, but I had a coaching call with clients recently, just the other day. We do these momentum coaching calls with some of our clients in the mastermind to get them back in momentum. [00:01:31] Like if they've maybe been disengaged a little for a little bit, or they've been focused on other things, or they're kind of unclear on what they should be doing next, we want to get them back in the state of momentum, which is where entrepreneurs want to be. And so, on that call, I was sharing with them some of the new stuff cause some of them have been a little bit unplugged and we're always adding new, innovative ideas. [00:01:53] So one of the things that I've noticed recently is that sales, we're kind of in this post trust era. I've noticed over the last three, four years, sales has become really difficult. It's become harder to sell using older sales tactics or typical sales tactics. And so I had to change up how it was selling. [00:02:14] And I did a lot of research, a lot of study. I took an empathy course and a communication thing, like seminar thing, and just a bunch of other stuff. And the old school sales, methodology just isn't working here in this post trust sort of era, like nobody believes anything anymore. The news, you can't really trust it. [00:02:37] We all know now the news is fake, right? Voting has been fake. Food's been fake, right? A lot of the medical stuff shoved on us, fake, right? Just saw something about the conspiracy theory or scam of like C sections being pushed on people, which is like ridiculous amounts, like everything's fake. [00:02:56] And so we don't know who or what we can trust. But we trust ourselves and so what I've noticed is people's trust levels are an all time low And so in selling I've had to really change things up and transparently sales was not going really well for us for a while, right? [00:03:13] Sarah: Yeah. [00:03:13] Jason: Like we had a lot of clients that stayed in our program, but closing deals was hard. [00:03:17] Sarah: Yeah, and we didn't focus on sales. [00:03:20] Jason: Yeah, it wasn't really a focus for us. At all. We focused a lot on the product. Yeah. [00:03:24] Sarah: For like a year and a half maybe almost two years and then by the time we needed to focus on sales, it wasn't as easy to like, just flip a switch as we thought. We were like, "okay, we're ready now. Like, let's amp up sales." And they were like, "oh, that isn't happening the way we thought." [00:03:43] Like, we just thought, you know, like, just pick it right back up where you left off. [00:03:47] Jason: Yeah. I thought, because I hadn't been doing sales for years. Like I had sales team members, people. So then I was like I'll go back to doing sales. And and the game has changed. Like, and a lot of you are trying to sell the way you learned maybe in real estate or the way that things happen in the past and you're probably finding it harder and harder as well. [00:04:08] I would imagine. So what I've noticed is that we need to shift to a different model. So I shifted to a more question based empathetic model of selling. And I went through and coached our clients on this and they're already starting to get some different results, which is awesome. My close rate using this different methodology has gone through the roof. [00:04:32] So what I've noticed, my close rate has gone through the roof, but what I've noticed is by just being super curious and not trying to sell something. [00:04:40] And I know that sounds wild, like I'm closing way more deals by not trying to sell. I'm just being curious and I'm just being helpful and I'm asking a lot of questions. If I'm on an hour call, I'm spending like almost the entire call just asking questions and letting them talk. If I ask questions in a strategic order, what I'm noticing is that if I ask the right questions, it helps them figure out what their problem is. It helps them figure out what their sort of ideal solution is. It helps them figure out what the consequence is if they don't change this, or if they continue doing what they're doing. [00:05:14] And then at the very end, like, I'll get into the pitch a little bit. But what I'm noticing is people don't know, we assume people know what their problem is. Like somebody comes to you for property management and you're like "they're already dealing with the problem. They're aware." They might be superficially, but they're not aware of the problem. They're not aware of how they feel about the problem. They're not aware fully about what the impact of that problem is. And they're not really even aware of what they want or what the ideal solution is to some degree. They become aware of all of this stuff when you ask them, like in that moment. [00:05:47] And so when I start asking clients these questions, they start, these potential clients, they start formulating this real time. I know NLP stuff. I can see their eyes moving around the right way. I know they're now creating this in their head. They're figuring it out. And if they don't know that they have a problem or where their pain is and what they want and what paradise looks like and the ideal outcomes and if they haven't formulate all this, it's really difficult to close the deal. It's really difficult to get them to move forward towards what they want. And I've also given up focusing on trying to you know, having any sort of agenda. My agenda is to figure out simply do they need what we have? I can see this, but they need to figure this out. So I need to ask questions to help them see that they might benefit from this or that they need something. And they, if they do identify that they need something different or they need help, then the next question I need to figure out is, do they want what we have? And that's it! i'm no longer trying to pitch and spending the majority of the call telling them how awesome our program is and all the cool stuff that we have. I go through and I just ask some questions and then at the very end My pitch is like I just picked three things because there's so much in our program. It was overwhelming people. [00:07:02] I spent the whole call like "we have this call! We do this! We have this! And we have all this content in DoorGrow Academy and Telegram messenger access and blah blah blah," and like they were just like "oh, well, I need to think about it." And if you overwhelm them with features and benefits, you're going to get that objection every time. What I'm finding is with this new methodology of selling that I've been coaching clients on there's a very few objections. [00:07:22] There's not really anything to object to because you've gotten clear on what their problem is. They've gotten clear on what the problem is that you've gotten them clear on what the, you know the positive future outcome would look like and they're clear on that now, and so that creates this pain gap in between and then you're able to create urgency and one of my big challenges is I wasn't able to create urgency because I didn't get them clear on their problem or what they wanted and what that gap felt like and if the if that was really an issue And then I didn't ask some questions to help them get clear on why does this matter now? [00:07:58] Does this why would it matter to get this going now? Why not change it? Why not keep it the same and by asking that it helps them to identify also urgency and so then adding urgency was one of the big things I was missing because everybody would go through, listen to me pitch. And they'd be like, "this sounds amazing. It sounds like it's solved my problems. It sounds really great, but I'm onboarding a new assistant right now and I'll do it later." Or "I'm dealing with this challenge right now," or "I've got this problem in my business right now," or "it's summer and things really busy," right? And so there was no urgency. [00:08:30] And so if you're running into that with clients, the lack of urgency is caused by a lack of identifying this pain gap and then a lack of helping them identify what's going on. Why does it matter to do this now? Is there any consequence? And if they can't find a consequence to not starting now, then they won't start now. [00:08:47] They may never start. And so, my close rate is ridiculously high lately. And I'm not really doing anything other than asking questions to help them figure out what they want rather than trying to push my really cool ideas like, shove it, cram it down their throat, you know, like old style sales. [00:09:06] So I don't have to deal with objections. I don't have to use manipulative things like, "do you want the red one or the blue one?" And they're like, "I didn't even say I wanted one." You know, you don't have to use any of these old school. Pushy, icky sales tactics. And so what I'm also noticing is it doesn't create sales resistance or ick, this gross feeling in them that they feel like you're like disgusting or they feel awkward. [00:09:30] And a lot of you that have problems doing sales or you have problems with salespeople or you have problems feeling comfortable being a sales person or identifying with that, it's because of that gross feeling that you get when selling, when you're being pushy or manipulative instead of helpful. So I'm actually really enjoying doing sales because to me this feels more like what I love to do, which is coaching so that's one of the things I talked about with our coaching clients. Other thing I talked about with proof. [00:10:00] Sarah: The other thing that you're gonna do right now is take a break. [00:10:03] Jason: Oh, we're going to take a break and then I'll tell you about proof bombs. One of our sponsors for this episode is Vendoroo. We're hearing great things and getting great feedback. So if you're tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, check out Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection and coordination. Built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability, Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today by going to vendoroo.ai. vendoroo.ai/DoorGrow and experience maintenance done right. And go to that page, you get a special little perk or benefit. So, check out Vendoroo. We're hearing great feedback. And this is part of the AI revolution right now. If you're not doing stuff like this, you're getting left behind. [00:11:00] So, we're hearing some amazing things. True Submeter. Let me tell you about True Submeter. If you are a property owner or manager, check out True Submeter, the number one water Submetering company in the U. S. Say goodbye to water use abuse by your tenants, and hello to billing for exact water consumption. [00:11:21] With no unit minimum, enjoy smart, cost effective solutions designed to optimize your properties operations and save you money. Plus get an exclusive 10 percent discount with the code DoorGrow10. That's DoorGrow one zero. Visit True Submeter today for intelligent utility solutions and substantial savings. [00:11:43] That's truesubmeter. com. Okay. Proof bombs. The other cool thing I shared, it was an idea I learned from one of my mentors, which is Sharran Srivatsaa. Do you want to mention, tell them about Sharran? [00:11:54] Sarah: Yeah. So, if you guys are in real estate there's a publicly traded real estate company. [00:12:02] Which is insane. Like it's on the stock market. Crazy. It's real. R E A L. Real. He's the CEO. Yeah. Of Real. They're A multi billion, billion with a B, yeah, multi billion dollar company. And they're growing really rapidly. They do some really cool stuff. Thanks to Sharran's leadership. Yeah. [00:12:26] Sharran's a really cool dude. His story's just so interesting. And he like, I mean, he literally came here with like 150 in his pocket and he got robbed on the street. So then he had zero dollars in his pocket and he's just so Well, wait such a cool dude. [00:12:41] Jason: I want to share this story. So he got robbed He had a certain amount of money and then he negotiated with the thief to allow him to just have enough money so he could like do a train ride or get on the train. So he negotiated with the thief, like, and he was able to [00:12:56] Sarah: "...take all of my money." [00:12:57] Jason: Yeah. "Just leave me this much and you can have the rest." And they did that, like, he's negotiating. This just like, he's just a brilliant guy. And so he shared this idea with proof bombs and he was sharing how he had basically taught this to Alex Hormozi if you've heard of Alex Hormozi or followed his stuff, Sharran's kind of one of the mentors behind the content that Alex Hormozi shares. [00:13:20] And Alex Hormozi used this proof bomb concept in his book launch that went amazingly well. And proof bombs are basically this idea of showing a visual testimonial that you can just see without having to watch the video which uses like a photo and bullet points and some data as evidence and stuff like this. [00:13:39] So I trained my clients on how to create proof bombs, which we have in our pitch deck that I'll pull up sometimes or that we use because it helps get an idea across very quickly using images basically. And so, we shared the idea of proof bombs. And the other, the third idea I shared on these calls was I coached clients on an offer doc because the question came up, "well, what if I don't have a really effective website or I don't have a website yet? I need to wait until you guys help me with that before I can really sell effectively." And then I shared with them what's more effective, even if you have a website or what we call offer documents. If you have conversations with us, we will share one of our offer documents with you at some point, because this gives you everything you need to know or understand about our offer, our program, or what you might be interested in. So we have offer documents for just about everything in our DoorGrow all our different programs our different one day things events stuff like this we have offer documents. So I shared, I coached clients on how to build out these offer documents real effective. [00:14:44] And so those three elements alone will dramatically increase somebody's close rate, like significantly. So if you have any leads, deals, opportunities in the pipeline right now, and you would love to maybe double your close rate or double the deal count that you're getting out of your existing lead flow, these, I think these three elements combined would easily do that. [00:15:06] It'd be significant. Yeah. Very significant. My close rate is just through the roof right now. And if you want to experience some of the sales magic and not even feel like you're being sold to or sold on anything because nobody wants to be sold really, set up a call with our team and we'll help you grow. [00:15:24] We'll help you figure out if we can help you. So, that's basically what I've been up to lately. Is there anything else we should share? [00:15:30] Sarah: I don't know if I told you this. On the scale call on Friday, Portia actually mentioned that they created offer docs and she's like, "these work so well." She's like, "these are so cool." [00:15:39] She's like, "this is such an awesome tool." So, you're not, you don't run that call, I run that call. So, I wanted to... yeah. [00:15:47] We've got clients, super excited. [00:15:49] Jason: We've got clients creating offer documents, proof bombs, and and using that new sales model and they're seeing results. So, just some of the latest stuff just to kind of open up the I don't know, the curtain a little bit and let you know what are some of the things that we're helping people at DoorGrow accomplish and do. Always innovating, always learning and getting new ideas. So that's the advantage of having coaches and mentors, which we have, and we recommend you have. So if you're interested in getting coach, it doesn't have to be us. Go get one. [00:16:23] If you are interested in it being us, then you can check us out at DoorGrow. com. And until next time, to our mutual growth. [00:16:31] Sarah: Oh, and check out our Facebook group. [00:16:33] Jason: DoorGrow club. com Join our free facebook community. And that's it until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone [00:16:41] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow! [00:17:08] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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DGS 266: Automated Workflows in Property Management
09/20/2024
DGS 266: Automated Workflows in Property Management
As business owners, we often mistakenly assume that micromanaging our teams will make them more effective and efficient. In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with award-winning real estate coach and industry influencer, Jo Oliveri to discuss how implementing automated workflows can revolutionize your property management business. You’ll Learn [03:14] USA vs Australia for property management [07:03] Property management is stuck in the past [17:38] What is automation? [21:11] The importance of having good policy [31:24] Why your business needs a set of values [40:23] Implementing automated workflows and processes Tweetables “In some respects, we're struggling as an industry to change our mindset and have a fear of moving forward.” “When we use something manual, it's not logical. It becomes part of what a person feels like doing at that time.” “If you don't have your business founded on a very strong policy, then you're going to struggle when things go wrong.” “Out of policy becomes the promise that we can make, and we know that we can deliver on it.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jo: They say every leader is present even when they're not present. So you need to have that. And the only way to have it in property management is through your automated workflows that are built upon the logic that you created through your process. [00:00:18] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:38] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust, gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:59] At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, founder and CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull. [00:01:18] Now let's get into the show. And my lovely guest today is Jo Oliveri. Welcome, Jo. [00:01:25] Jo: Hello, Jason. How are you? [00:01:28] Jason: Good. What time is it over there right now? [00:01:30] Jo: I think it's about 7am in the morning. So we're a little ahead of you. It's Wednesday. We're in the future here. [00:01:37] Jason: Yeah you're in the future. How's the future look? [00:01:39] Jo: The future in Brisbane is actually very bleak. It's a very wet day, which is unusual for Brisbane, but we need the rain so. [00:01:46] Jason: Got it. Well, we're going to be chatting a little bit about about automation, about automating your team and processes a bit, but why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself? [00:02:01] And how you kind of got into this. [00:02:04] Jo: Yeah. Okay. Well, I've been around the industry in property management, I chose property management for 30 years, which seems like a long time when I say it, but I've been through the process of when they first introduced property management programs through to where we are today in technology. [00:02:22] And I've worked as a property manager right through to being the kind of like the creator of property management for one of the big international franchise groups until I was ready to launch my own business 15 years ago as a property management business coach and consultant and yeah, just feel blessed to be doing what I do every day because it's a great industry to be involved in. [00:02:49] Jason: Awesome. So where do we start? [00:02:52] What do you think? [00:02:53] Jo: Oh, well it's interesting when I say I started 30 years ago, I feel like we're still back in, you know, what we were doing 30 years ago, in some respects we're struggling as an industry to change our mindset and have a fear of moving forward. So it's quite interesting. [00:03:14] Jason: So. You've been back and forth between the United States and Australia involved in property management conferences, events. I've actually just for kicks been reading on my morning walks, the LPMA manuals or doc like books or whatever because I'm like, what do they got going on over there? And it seems like there are some notable differences. [00:03:35] It seems it's really interesting. I'm like, Oh, that's really weird. Why did they do stuff that way over there? So, but what have you noticed between the two countries, like what's kind of different in property management. [00:03:46] Jo: It's an interesting question, because a lot of people think there is a big difference, but there's really not a lot of difference. [00:03:55] And I say that because I worked in the USA as vice president of a very large company over there in company management. [00:04:03] Jason: Yeah. [00:04:04] Jo: And I really believe that in a lot of respects, the USA is way ahead of where we are here in Australia. But I think that probably the subtle difference is team structures. [00:04:18] We seem to focus more on property managers doing everything over here. And when I say here, I'm in Australia at the moment. Whereas in the U. S. they like to have like the breakaway roles, I call them. You know, someone focused on maintenance, someone focused on leasing. And yeah, a little bit more task orientated in the U. S. [00:04:41] Jason: Got it. Okay. What I've noticed in my perception is that property management over there is almost always connected to a brokerage. That's the perception. Is that accurate? Or is it often that there are property management businesses that do not do real estate? [00:05:00] Jo: Yes. I would say going back two decades, that was probably the case here. [00:05:05] But we are seeing a lot more entrepreneurial type business owners who start up as property management companies and as they grow, then what they're doing, they're losing management's to people selling. So as they grow, they're now adding in you know, like a sales service, which obviously makes sense. So yeah it has changed in the way they're doing it, but certainly when I started property management did belong to an brokerage. But you know, the, when I first started, I worked for a property management only company, which was very unusual back then. [00:05:45] Jason: Yeah. I was particularly surprised by the growth strategies that I was reading the book. To me, it felt like they were a bit, I don't know, old school and I was like, man, why, but maybe there's just a lot more opportunity in the U S. One of the things that we have a big opportunity here is there's a lot of rental properties that are just not professionally managed. [00:06:07] Whereas it sounds like there's quite a high percentage are professionally managed in Australia. [00:06:12] Jo: Yeah, I would say, you know, in Australia, we don't see the people who own big property portfolios, like personal property portfolios who become their own managers. So, you know, in the USA you see a lot of people who might own, you know, ten or more doors and they end up starting their own property management company, their own LLCs. [00:06:35] We don't see that In Australia you know, there's not a lot of people in Australia compared to the U. S. that have vast property, you know, holdings. We see more of the mom and dad or the mom and pop, as you would say over there, type investors in Australia that, you know, own one, maybe two properties. [00:06:57] So of course, most of those are managed through you know, a professional property management company. [00:07:03] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, cool. Let's talk a little bit about the topic at hand. So we're going to talk about automated workflows in property management. And I did a webinar in the past talking about three levels of process documentation or of a process system in a property management business. [00:07:21] And my level one was just documentation. It was like google docs or something like that. Level two was checklist It was like Process St. or LeadSimple or some of these kind of tools and then level three was something like DoorGrow flow or Flussos which is It's basically the same thing. It's just Flussos, which is visual workflow. And we use that system and we've upgraded from checklist, which I've had a huge level, right? [00:07:54] First level is kind of like a Google, intranet back in the day when sites and then basically Google docs pretty much. And then and then we had some processes like in Basecamp and eventually we upgraded to Process St. And had that, and that was nice. I liked the software, but I had to do everything. [00:08:14] Like I had to always create the processes. Nobody else understood how the process were created, especially if they were complicated and now using visual workflow and using Flussos, it's been very intuitive. I don't have to create the processes. My team members all can figure it out and it's really like I jokingly say it's like Visio or flowchart software and something like Process St., like had a baby. [00:08:41] And so it really incorporates the best pieces of checklist and of documentation, but with visual workflow and it starts as a visual workflow, which is how everybody generally wants to create processes from the beginning. It's how we think process wise is like we create the boxes with the lines connecting things. [00:09:00] And so I found it to be very intuitive. So what have you noticed in companies in the U. S. and in Australia with their current process system and challenges that they're experiencing and then I'm curious about the contrast when they're switching to something like visual workflow. [00:09:18] Jo: Yes. Yeah. And you know, there's a massive difference, but I think as a whole, the industry is still a little bit stuck in the old kind of like manual system. Whereas with automated workflow like DoorGrow Flow or Flussos, which, you know, is one in the same thing and it is the best system for property management, you create the logic in everything that we do. You know, when we use something manual, it's not logical. [00:09:46] It becomes part of what a person feels like doing at that time, or, you know, they might be focused on a task because someone is screaming the loudest to get something done. So, as a result, We're not working or focused working on the items within a task that we need to be working on at any given time. [00:10:08] So, you know, like the other thing with automated workflows is we see 24, 7, 365, all the tasks that we need to focus on exactly when we need to focus on. Whereas when you've got those paper checklists or even online checklists, we can move things around. You know, we can say, I don't feel like working on this at the moment. I'm going to go to this part of the flow. I'm going to look at that and your flow becomes illogical. Yes. So it's you know, it's interesting, the mindset that we're dealing with at the moment in the industry, because people like to do what they want to do. And they kind of like wanting to step past other steps because they don't like doing certain steps. [00:10:52] And a lot of the other workflow programs, you know, they allow people to bypass certain steps. And if you're doing that, it's not a proper workflow program. So, I think the industry is just struggling with understanding when they do a task, there is a lot of elements, a lot of actions and steps within every task. [00:11:15] And now we're seeing it. In front of us and people think, "I don't want to do that" or "I never do that," hence why we've had problems in the past [00:11:24] Jason: Yeah, so steps get skipped, you know a lot of times in checklist systems or just project management type of systems where it's check boxes processes like the other challenges with those systems, it's always very linear it's like step one step two step three, but a lot of processes are more like: Step one, make a decision and based on the decision, go different ways and then maybe even split. So concurrently, one team is working on this and another person's working on this at the same time for efficiency is how we work in real life. [00:11:58] But in the linear checklist, we're waiting until somebody does the first steps and then it gets moves on to the next person. Or you have two people trying to attack the same checklist at the same time. So it just gets really messy. Using checklist and we would run into those issues, so then I had to create controls in my system so that my team would not skip steps. [00:12:18] So then they had to do things. And so then you have to create logic and then you have to make things show or hide based on whether it clicked. And like, there's all these, and so I had to get really nerdy to make things work really well in a checklist system. And it's still, once it got that complicated, if anything broke or was unclear, or somebody needed to alter the process. [00:12:39] I was the only person that could do it. I was the only person that understood what the process was supposed to be doing, because I built it. And if the process is old enough, I might even forget why I was doing things a certain way. So then I have to go back and kind of figure out, what was I trying to create? [00:12:57] Unless I actually created a visual map, or, you know, Visual flow chart in like Lucidchart or Visio or something and did that. And so I've loved being in Flussos. I love being able to even just create visual flows, and even if I'm not going to use them as a process, just creating the map. And i've mapped out my different growth engines for my business so I can pull it up and say, "this is how we get a customer. Here's what we do. Here's the steps. Here's one of our engines Here's another growth engine how we get customers" and so i've used it for other things as well because creating visual flows and everybody being able to see it and understand it creates a lot of clarity. And Sarah, my wife, she honestly believes technology is out to get her. [00:13:44] I don't know if there's anybody else listening to this podcast that like. She thinks technology is like trying to cause problems for her. It's confirmation bias, I'm sure. She's like, "see, look at this! The wifi is not working on my computer or this is not happening. And it's like being mean to me." [00:13:57] But she loves working inside of Flussos, like she loves being able to just drag and drop, move stuff around. She's our operator. She messes with all the processes, even though she's not generally fond of technology. That says a lot because the most difficult factor I've noticed when trying to implement or roll out new tools and things in our business or in any business with clients is adoption. Like it's really difficult to get people to adopt new tech unless it's really easy to use and really intuitive. And so that's one of the things i've really noticed is it's taken the burden off my shoulders. I create no processes. I don't do it! And I just tell my team members. They're like, "Hey, we noticed this. We need to change something". And I'm like, "cool, update the process." And they just do it. I don't have to be involved anymore, which is taking a big load off of my shoulders where I used to kind of think maybe I'm the smartest guy in the room and I'm the only guy that can do process, which is not the case. [00:14:54] I'm just nerdier than most of the people on my team, but having a tool where everybody else can create it makes it a lot easier and it's taken a big, big weight off my shoulders and it gives me that safety and certainty or security that I know because we have all of our processes in there, that if I lose somebody, we can put somebody in place right away, change the role of that person and they can start to use that process and just go through it and do it. And so it creates a lot of safety because we've had things like we've had team members like go on maternity leave. We have team members come back from maternity leave and then quit right away, you know and stuff like this and so it's nice to be able to have anybody on the team like be able to step in and just follow the flow and go through that and then while going through the flow they can see where they are In the process. [00:15:44] Jo: Yeah exactly. And, you know, like team members don't just leave, they could be away for the day. And if they're away for the day in property management, we've got timelines on everything and you create those timelines within Flussos or DoorGrow Flow. You put the timeline on when that particular action or step should be completed. [00:16:05] So, so what it means is it gives the business owner the opportunity to reassign that particular act or step to someone else, always completing the task within the given timeline and delivering on the promise that you made to your clients. There's no excuses of, "I'm sorry, Jo wasn't in this afternoon, so we didn't get it done." [00:16:28] You know? The company has a responsibility and an obligation to the clients to deliver on task as and when due, not on a person, on the company. So, yeah, you know, like when we look at checklists, I like to think of them as, you know, the old school signs and guardrails on the road, whereas our automation is like the magnificent satellite navigation that we have now. [00:16:54] It just guides you. It takes you there in the most you know, fastest, efficient way that you can get there. It gives you the opportunity as your business grows and you restructure roles that you can split those tasks and assign it to the relevant person. So there's no impact on growth as you scale up and grow the business. [00:17:17] It's just, it's the most logical thing for property management because what we do in property management is built on tasks. It's just task after task. So, you know, to me, it's the industry that, you know, really should have automated workflows. That's for sure. [00:17:36] Jason: And by automation, there's a lot of buzzwords around this right now. [00:17:39] A lot of people think automation means that a robot's doing all the work. And so, but there's I think what we're talking about here is automating or making it so that your team members can follow the processes. And so the machine of the business becomes automated so that the team are more automated instead of doing it manually as you were talking about before. There's this myth kind of in the industry. There's maybe two myths. One I call the process myth. I've noticed this that a lot of businesses that are maybe You know 200 door +, they a lot of times fall prey to this myth that it doesn't matter what their team looks like, they can just go get the cheapest, most mediocre team members as long as they're dumb enough to follow a process, and I feel like that's not accurate like and so there's this process myth. [00:18:31] They think "I just need better processes," and a lot of times when i've dug into their businesses, I've also noticed though that companies that have amazing people and have really good teams, even if they have a lack of processes, there are processes in their heads and they care enough to make sure it's working And things work and the business works well, but i've yet to see businesses Is that are able to grow quickly, have a lot of success that overly micromanage and create endless amounts of processes and try to hire low dollar wage people to just do everything. [00:19:06] And the challenge...
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DGS 265: The Recent Economic Shifts and Property Management
09/13/2024
DGS 265: The Recent Economic Shifts and Property Management
There was a recent event where the stock market plunged. Some are speculating about an impending recession. We’re seeing the real estate market downturn in real time… In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about the impact the current real estate market and economic downturn will have on property management businesses. You’ll Learn [02:10] The current state of the economy [10:00] The real estate market and leasing challenges [21:07] Having empathy in property management [25:03] Real estate investing in a recession Tweetables “In every single recession, new millionaires are made and this is an opportunity for that to happen.” “Those that have built that ark so to speak, like Noah did, are prepared for the storm. They're ready. They're just going to float through it instead of drown.” “We always have to remember that property management is a relationship business.” “One of the most magical, impactful ingredients that you wouldn't think has an impact in getting people to move or do things or to take action is empathy.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: If you want to be in doom and gloom and "the sky's falling and I'm never going to make any money" then you're absolutely right. But if you want to look at the opportunity that is staring you in the face and say, "what can I do with this and how can I capitalize on this?" that is where millions are made. [00:00:16] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives. And you are interested in growing in business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:22] Now let's get into the show. All right. [00:01:27] Sarah: That was good multitasking there. [00:01:29] Jason: You saw that? See. [00:01:30] Sarah: I saw that. That was one time of you multitasking. So you are capable of it. [00:01:35] Jason: That was hard, but I had that part of the intro memorized. I was putting my phone on do not disturb as I was reading and she decided to call it out. It's hard, right guys? It's hard for us to multitask. Women have us beat in this area. [00:01:49] Sarah: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we dominate you here. [00:01:52] Jason: Yeah, your brains are just wired differently, but we have that singular focus advantage. We can just cut everything else out and focus on one thing at a time. [00:02:01] Sarah: Well, speaking of focusing on one thing at a time, let's get into the show. [00:02:07] Jason: Yeah. [00:02:07] Sarah: So we were going to talk about some doom and gloom today. [00:02:10] Jason: Yeah. So we just saw the stock market tank, like a thousand points, right. Pretty wild. And friend of mine who runs a company, Jeremy Pound, he had mentioned, I saw his post online. [00:02:23] Shout out to Jeremy. He said, "now's the time to reach out to your real estate investor clients and say, 'Hey, look, your property didn't go down by a thousand points and never will,'" you know, something like that. So I thought that was clever. But yeah, real estate, probably a better investment right now than long term but a lot of investors are still in general freaking out. There's a recession that seems to be looming and coming or is already here depending on who you listen to. And so yeah, the sky is falling and chicken little's been shouting which is the news media and like everything bad is coming and so is this going to be how's this going to impact property management? [00:02:59] Might be a good question to start with. [00:03:01] Sarah: Yeah, I think one of the things that we're already seeing is we have been seeing in many markets at least a decline in prices if you are trying to purchase a property right now. And we are no longer, no matter what market you're in, because some markets have still held pretty steady, no matter what market you're in, we're no longer in the days in which you list the property on a Monday, you get multiple offers and it's accepted for well over the list price the same day. [00:03:40] We're not in that situation any longer. So how does that affect property management? Well, on the real estate side, investors right now should be, if they're not, but they should be looking. Because things are on sale right now. [00:04:00] Jason: Steals. [00:04:01] Sarah: So as you think about what is your favorite store of all time? [00:04:06] Let's ask you, what's your favorite store ever? [00:04:10] Jason: Amazon. Amazon. Okay, cool. I spend a lot of money there. [00:04:12] Sarah: That's great. That's actually, you know, I wouldn't have thought of that. Because I don't, for my brain doesn't equate it to a store, but I guess it is. [00:04:18] Jason: Okay. [00:04:19] Sarah: I love it. I love Amazon. Okay, cool. Amazon. So if Amazon had a sale where everything was 30 percent off, would you probably buy some stuff? [00:04:29] Jason: Oh yeah, I'd buy a ton of stuff. [00:04:31] Sarah: What if it was 55 percent off? 60. Oh. 70. [00:04:36] Jason: No brainer. I would stock up on so much stuff. [00:04:39] Sarah: You'd be like, "I don't even need this, but what if I do?" [00:04:41] Jason: A million supplements. I would like. [00:04:43] Sarah: Right. [00:04:44] Jason: I'd be healthy set for the next year. [00:04:46] Sarah: You'd be buying everything. So investors, this is your call. [00:04:48] Hello, real estate is on sale right now. So the savvy investors, they already know this. They're super excited right now. The savvy investors are not freaking out. The savvy investors. They know. This is where millions of dollars can be made and in fact in every single recession new millionaires are made and this is an opportunity for that to happen. [00:05:18] So people who are like the accidental investors and they've got that property they've been hanging on to and they're just waiting until the market gets hot enough and then they'll probably sell it. But in the meantime, I guess I'll hang on to it and rent it out. They're going to freak out right now. [00:05:36] They're going, "Oh my God, what if rents dip even more? What if vacancy rates are longer? So I can't fill a property or my property manager can't fill a property in a week like they used to be able to?" It was just churn them out and hurry up, get another one in there, find a warm body, put them in. They're like coming in droves. [00:05:54] That's not the situation anymore. And they will freak out. But the investors that understand the situation that we're in and the market at where it stands. Oh man, they are excited. Yeah, I'm excited right now. I'm like great tank, baby. Let's go . [00:06:12] Jason: So the big news out there like right now is Warren Buffett decided to sell off a ton of stock like half of his stake in Apple like some major things and he doesn't make very many moves, right? [00:06:24] He's like this minimalist in making Purchases or selling he's like he's the he's got the diamond hands, right? And He's now sitting on a cash stock pile 277 billion [00:06:39] Sarah: billion with a b [00:06:40] Jason: he's just hanging out with cash He's waiting for the bottom to hit because he knows he must know that things are going to get worse. [00:06:47] Sarah: Because he's gonna go shopping. [00:06:50] Jason: Yeah, he's gonna he's definitely waiting to go shopping is my guess And so there's going to be some deals to be had And that may mean the real estate market could be getting worse. Could be getting a lot worse, perhaps. So, and if that's the case, then savvy investors right now should be stacking cash, right? [00:07:09] Property managers, you should be stacking cash because you should be a savvy investor. And looking for these deals. Now we've been through a recession before here at DoorGrow. Historically, what I've seen happen whenever there's a recession, the real estate market kind of dries up. Things get tough for real estate agents. [00:07:26] So a lot of real estate agents get squeezed out. So they find other jobs. And there's quite a few of them that think, "well, why don't I do property management?" And a lot of you listening, maybe during the last recession, that's what you did. You started a property management business. Maybe that's why you're now listening to this podcast and you have a property management business that you've probably, hopefully grown by since the last recession to at least 200 units or something, but maybe you haven't put enough focus on it. [00:07:53] Who knows. Those that have built that ark so to speak like Noah did are prepared for the storm. They're ready. They're just gonna float through it instead of drown. And you're going to see a lot of people scrambling to start property management businesses. That being said if you are a real estate agent, you're struggling you're like, "you know what? I don't really like the hunt and the chase of real estate buying and selling I would be really interested in property management," check out our foundations program. It's pretty great And it's super affordable. Hit us up, learn about DoorGrow Foundations. It's going to help you avoid thousands of dollars in costly mistakes and stupidity in getting started. [00:08:33] Sarah: Since we're talking about avoiding costly mistakes, it would be a great time to talk about our sponsor. [00:08:39] Jason: Cool. So, let's talk about Vendoroo. All right. Awesome new tech. Are you tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination? Meet Vendoroo, your AI driven, in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection and coordination. Built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. Vendoroo takes care of the details. So you can focus on growth schedule demo today at Vendoroo that's a vendor, V E N D O R O O like a kangaroo, get it? Dot AI. vendoroo.ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. We've got some clients getting great results with that. [00:09:33] Yeah. So check that out. We're in an AI revolution right now. [00:09:37] Sarah: Get in. [00:09:38] Jason: We're hearing great things from our clients about this so far. I mean, it's been programmed for the last 12 years and has over half a million work orders already in it and never forgets any detail you tell it about the property and is intelligent. [00:09:53] And they put a human layer between that. So it's really cool. All right. Yeah. Back to the topic at hand. [00:10:00] Sarah: Let's also talk about how things look right now in the property management world because you're like, "yeah, Sarah, things are on sale right now. Cool. But, man, it's just tough being a property manager right now. It's harder than it normally is." And a lot of times what we're seeing is again in certain markets right now is well rents are lower and that means property managers typically make less especially on that percentage part that you're charging so if the rent is 5, 000 versus if the rent is 1, 000, simple math will tell you, yes, you'll make less when the rents dip. [00:10:40] The other part of that is occupancy. So just like we used to be, what, two years ago, three years ago, we used to be able to list a property for sale and we would have multiple offers very quickly and it was no problem getting it sold. And the rental market has shifted a little bit as well. So we used to go, "Oh, we have a vacant property. Well, let's market it. And then we're going to have multiple applications and we'll get it filled really quick. It could be in a day. It could be in a week, but we know it's going to happen and we're not really worried." And now we're seeing that cycle take a little bit longer. So the rents are lower and the renting cycle of getting the applications and finding someone who's qualified, that is taking a little longer, so now it might take a few weeks. And if things are really bad, that might take a few months. [00:11:38] Jason: So in some markets, vacancies are up right now, rents are lower, the rent cycle's taking longer, so leasing in general can be a bit more of a challenge. [00:11:47] And to be fair, a lot of property managers in the longterm rental management game, I've had it pretty easy, right? When you look at like multifamily stuff like this, 2020, [00:11:58] Sarah: 2021, like none of y'all were complaining then, right? Super easy then. [00:12:03] Jason: When you look at the multifamily industry, like getting tenants in place has always been a challenge in a lot of these multi family places And so they focus on this. [00:12:12] They're more aggressive. They put a lot more attention on this and so It may mean that you're going to need to put some greater attention on the leasing side of things to be a bit more competitive and a bit more aggressive to get these properties seen to get these properties like showed, to get these properties rented out. [00:12:33] So what are some things that they can do to kind of deal with this challenge with leasing right now? [00:12:37] Sarah: Well, number one, I think the most important thing that you can do here is you may need to look at changing your processes depending on what they are in the leasing process, specifically regarding showings, right? [00:12:52] So if you're like, "well, we do two showings a week." This is how I used to do things. "I do two showings a week and one is at this day, this time. The other one is at this day, this time. This is when you can come and look at the property." Well, if we consistently aren't having anyone show up and then now all of a sudden we have someone who's interested and they can't make any of those showings, you may need to change your processes, right? So now we might need to look at "how can I offer more flexibility for someone who is qualified and interested? How can I offer more flexibility?" And that doesn't mean, "oh, I'm just going to be on call 24 hours a day as a leasing agent, and I'm just going to jump when somebody says, 'hey, I want to look at this property.'" [00:13:34] That is not what you're going to do. So, can we do self showings? Can we use electronic lock boxes? Can we have a team member just go to the property, unlock the door, stand and wait, and then lock it up? Because that's what I used to do, right? "Well, they have to be licensed." No one has to be licensed to unlock a door. [00:13:56] Unlock the door, stand there and wait, and lock up when they're gone. That does not require a license, right? So how can we offer more flexibility so that people who are interested are now able to go see the property when it's convenient for them? Because they might work 9 to 5. So 5:30 might be impossible because at 5:30 I'm stuck in traffic. Right. So I might need a 7 o'clock showing or a 7:30 showing, or I might need to do something on the weekend. But on the weekend, you know, I have all my kids stuff and soccer camp and all this stuff. So like finding those little spots that do work for them. "Well, great. What day and time would be good for you because I can see if I can fit you in" and, or if you have the electronic lock boxes that opens a whole host of availability. I think they shut off at a certain time. So you can't go at like midnight. Right? But, then you have a whole bunch of available slots. And they get to choose what's convenient. [00:14:57] Jason: So, maybe even a step earlier, which I love the idea, like, you can start to be more flexible. [00:15:04] And maybe that could be helpful is just to get more eyeballs on properties maybe optimizing the listings and so there's several ways to optimize listings and a lot of property managers probably been a little bit lazy about this. Some companies put a lot of detail on this but this is a competitive advantage if you have better photos. We've had companies on like box brownie and others where they will improve or edit the photos there's so many ai tools now as well for photos and so if you can get your photos optimized and improved without lying without like, "Hey, look, the carpet and the walls are all perfect." And AI made it that way. And it looks like garbage, right? That is not going to like bode well for you. But yeah, if you are getting better photography, Improving and optimizing the listings, making sure the descriptions are really clear, adding video tours to these. One of the big things I would look at I loved seeing on any listings when we were looking to buy a rental property to rent out or anything. I love seeing the floor plans [00:16:05] Sarah: That's so easy. [00:16:06] Jason: Just I love seeing the floor plans like then I could go "oh, this is how it all fits together. This is how it works," you know and all these photos that are taken from the corner with a wide angle lens and make everything look giant. That stuff's probably not serving you. It's not showcasing reality And so I think there's going to be a greater push with ai and fake humans and all this stuff, there's going to be a greater desire for humans to get reality. Everything's been fake news, fake everything, fake voting, fake food, right? Everybody's waking up to this So we need to stop trying to make everything look better than it is. We need to start showcasing reality. And so it might mean photos instead of wide angle from the corner, maybe more like we've done with our airbnb taking photos straight on. [00:16:52] Sarah: I think with Airbnb, that works really well. The types of photos I've put on our Airbnb, I would not. [00:16:58] Jason: You wouldn't do on real estate? [00:17:00] Sarah: What I would do though is I don't want to use the wide angle lens. That's going to make a little tiny closet look triple its size. [00:17:08] Jason: Sure. [00:17:08] Sarah: So that I think is something. [00:17:10] But still maybe from the corners. Yeah. And I would because when you're trying to either sell or rent a home, you are looking like, "Hey, imagine your family in here. Look how big the space is. Look how great it is. It's beautiful. Lots of light." But don't advertise there's lots of light if there's not lots of light, right? [00:17:27] So be realistic in it, but still do things to make it look attractive. That being said, a step even before the listing is really do some research in the market. What's available? "So, okay, this property, I can rent it out. I know what it looks like because I'm familiar with it, but this property is competing against other properties. What do the other properties in my market look like?" If all of the other properties have a swimming pool and you're the one without a swimming pool, you may have a problem, right? So if all of the other properties, they have certain amenities. You may need to look to see, "Hey, is...
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DGS 264: How a Mindset Shift can Impact Your Property Management Business
09/04/2024
DGS 264: How a Mindset Shift can Impact Your Property Management Business
In over a decade of coaching and working with property management entrepreneurs, we have realized that the mindset stuff is often more impactful than the tactics and strategy. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss some of their favorite mindset hacks for property management business owners. You’ll Learn [03:09] Having a Bad Mindset [11:15] Hiring and the Process Myth [13:28] Limiting Your Own Growth [16:18] Shifting Your Mindset [21:59] The Myth of Needing to be Happy Tweetables “If you really want to grow your business, you have to get off of this high horse of you being special.” “Whatever you believe is going to be true.” “You can either have excuses or you can have wins and results.” “A lot of times we can't see the future. We know our current past and the past doesn't always equal the future.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: If you believe that you're special and nothing applies to you and nothing will work in your market, you're going to be right. [00:00:07] But if I get the right client that has an open mind in your market, I can help them crush you. [00:00:13] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:33] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income at DoorGrow. [00:00:56] 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull. [00:01:17] Now let's get into the show. All right. [00:01:20] So today we're going to be talking about mindset. This is this distinguishing, determining factor between clients having success or business owners having success and business owners that don't, even if you know all the tactics. And a lot of times people come to us for the tactics and they think, "Oh man, if I could just learn the right things to do, I'll suddenly have success." [00:01:43] But in the end, when I asked clients, "what really made the difference? What did you really get from us, from DoorGrow?" The usual answer historically has been, "you've shifted how I think about things. You've shifted my mindset." And mindset is probably what's holding you back more than just tactics. [00:02:00] Now, this is what we're going to talk about. Before we get. Into this, I want to share a sponsor that we have for this episode. Vendoroo really cool tech company. If you are tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI- driven, in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting vendor selection and coordination. Built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today by going to Vendoroo. ai So that's V E N D O R like vendor and then O O. Vendoroo.ai/ DoorGrow and experience maintenance done right. And we've got clients already getting great results with them. I think this is like the next awesome big thing. So go check them out. Okay. So let's talk about mindset and let's first, let's show some contrast, right? Sometimes we get some clients and they don't have good mindset. What do you notice with those clients? [00:03:13] Sarah: They always get stuck. They overthink everything. Everything just seems hard or harder than it has to be. A lot of times these are the clients that are like, "this isn't possible." It's like, "yeah, Sarah, I know that's how you ran your business, but like, I just can't do it that way. It's not possible in my market." So there's been a lot of I feel like it's justification. "Well, why isn't this possible for me? Like if Sarah can run her business that way, if like Jeff Garner can run his business that way, like if other people can run businesses the way that I would like to, but it just doesn't seem to be happening for me. There must be a reason, right?" So then there's a lot of justification. That's what I see. [00:03:55] Jason: Yeah. So they'll be like, "this won't work for me or this won't work in my market." [00:03:59] Sarah: "My clients would never..." [00:04:01] Jason: "my clients would never go for that." Yeah. [00:04:03] Sarah: "They would never do it that well." [00:04:05] Jason: There's kind of this attitude of superiority that they just know more than everybody else. "There's no way, even though it's worked for countless others in a variety of different markets, there's no way it would work for me because I am so special and my market is so special." Let me tell you, you're not that special. Nobody's that special that things are not going to work for you that have been proven and time tested to work. That's the case. And so if you really want to grow your business, you have to get off of this high horse of you being special. "Well, I'm so special. My situation is so special. I'm so unique." And as long as people hold on to this myth that they're so special, that means nothing else applies to them. Nothing else can work for them. And so they stay stuck in their dysfunction and bottom line, the thing I think that's really important for people to look at when evaluating their current situation and whether their mindset might be off or not is just look at reality. [00:05:05] Look at your results. Results do not lie. If you have not grown significantly over the last year, your results are shit. Your results suck. Bottom line. [00:05:16] Sarah: Did we trade places today? Are you the bad guy today? [00:05:19] Jason: Maybe. [00:05:20] Sarah: That means I have to play good guy? I can't play good cop. [00:05:22] Jason: We can both be bad cop today. [00:05:24] Sarah: I don't know how to play bad or good cop. I can only be bad cop. [00:05:26] Jason: We're both bad cops against bad mindset. I mean Here's the thing, like whatever you believe is going to be true. That's what I think. So if you believe it's tough, you're right. If you believe that you're special and nothing applies to you and nothing will work in your market, you're going to be right. [00:05:46] But if I get the right client that has an open mind in your market, I can help them crush you. I can help them like totally destroy you. Like your business. They could acquire you. They could eat your business for lunch because they're willing to believe something different. And so take a look at your beliefs because your beliefs create your results. [00:06:07] And if you don't like your results, your beliefs are garbage. Bottom line, and this is the tough love dad and me coming out. Like if you don't like your current results in life, you don't like the clients you're dealing with. You don't like the tenants you're dealing with. You don't like your business. [00:06:23] You probably have a crappy belief system, which means you are not setting healthy boundaries. You're tolerating too much abuse. Maybe you've got some past trauma that led to this. I don't know, but you need to change your thinking and you need to change your story because your story creates your results and you cannot change your results dramatically and keep your old shitty story and your old excuses. [00:06:45] You can either have excuses or you can have wins and results. You can't have both. You've got to change the story. And so really healthy mindset is a process where people are continually evaluating their own beliefs and their own story to, to just decide and ask the question, "is this serving me? Is this getting me what I want?" [00:07:08] "If not, then I can choose to change it. I can choose to believe differently about that situation that happened to me in the past. I can choose to believe differently about my market. I can choose to believe differently and find evidence to the contrary or figure out what works." [00:07:22] And if you're trying to do it all on your own, it's kind of like trying to look at the back of your own head. This is the challenge is if you don't have good mindset, you need to go be around somebody that can install a healthier belief system into your brain. This is what we do at DoorGrow. In every training that we have, I'm not so secretly injecting new mindset into your brain because in order for you to take action on the things I need you to take action on, I've got to get you to understand it and believe something different or you won't do it. And I think this is one of my areas of genius, I think, historically, is I've been pretty good at persuading people to actually believe in themselves. [00:08:02] I've been pretty good at persuading people to actually think a little bit differently about a subject so that I can get them to do crazy stuff, like completely overhaul their pricing with their existing clients. They're like, "no, it'll hurt them, they'll be upset," you know, "they'll all cancel," whatever. And then they're making more money, right? [00:08:19] Or getting them to change their business name. "No, this is my baby. You called it ugly and said it needs plastic surgery." No, right? So their branding or whatever it is, we get them to think differently, which, gets them to take different actions. And you are the person creating your current results with your actions because of your current mindset. [00:08:40] All right, that's my soapbox rant. This is a good place for me to share our next sponsor. And then we'll get into how to install healthy mindset [00:08:47] Sarah: and yell at you some more [00:08:49] Jason: Do it! Get good mindset. What's wrong with you people? All right, cool And we're going to talk about some healthy mindset things And maybe challenge some of the beliefs you have we'll do that and this won't take too long. [00:08:59] Our next sponsor for this episode is True Submeter. This is some cool technology. Attention, multi family property owners and managers! Discover True Submeter, the number one water submetering company in the US. Say goodbye to water use abuse by your tenants and hello to billing for exact water consumption with no unit minimum, enjoy smart, cost effective solutions designed to optimize your property's operations and save you money. Plus get an exclusive 10 percent discount with the code doorgrow10. DoorGrow 1 0, use that code. Visit truesubmeter. com today for intelligent utility solutions and substantial savings. That's truesubmeter. com. So this is a cool tech actually for small plexes and yeah. [00:09:50] Sarah: I would have loved that on my multifamily because that was so irritating. You have to try to like increase the rent to offset the water cost, but how much is the water cost going to be? And then sometimes you price yourself out with the rent being too high and You can't track. [00:10:04] You just can't. And then every once in a while, you get the tenant like I had, you know who you are, who just ran the sink for fun because she was pissed. Yeah, that was great. Oh, man. Oh, I hated her so much. Yeah, you, like, man, I wish I had that true submeter device on her, like a bill for that. [00:10:23] Yeah, she would just run the sink, she would turn on the water, she would walk away, it would flood the apartment downstairs and it would jerk up the water bill. [00:10:30] Yeah oh, yeah, it was great market I was in guys. It was so fun. I miss it every day [00:10:35] Jason: Wow Okay. You good? [00:10:37] Sarah: I think so. All right. [00:10:38] Jason: Can we move on? Yeah. All right. We're going to talk about healthy mindset. [00:10:42] Sarah: This is a great episode. You're cute. [00:10:44] Jason's yelling at people. I'm yelling at people. This is a good one. [00:10:47] Jason: Okay. Healthy mindset. I'll give you some examples. I actually, because I kept having clients say, like I would say, what was the best part of our program? Or, you know, things like this. And they would say mindset. [00:10:58] And I was like, what? I don't even have anything about mindset I didn't think. It's just kind of what I do. It's built in, but I actually then created a training. I'm like, "I'm going to create a training that's legitimately mindset stuff." So I have a training called mindset secrets. So let me share some mindset ideas. [00:11:15] One of the things that I've noticed in negative mindset is one really unhealthy mindset that would shift everything for property management business owners I see happen, especially between the stage of going from a hundred to 200 doors is this mindset that "I need to hire and build the team around the business" and it's so unconscious. [00:11:37] It's just so wired. "Oh, like the business is getting stressful. I need to get a team member" and we just hire based on what the business needs instead of what we need. And so this is where I see business owners end up in two to 400 door range and they're more miserable than they've ever been and they stop focusing on growth and getting doors or they can't because adding more doors makes their life painful and they are more miserable in their business than they've ever been. [00:12:03] I talk to people every week that are in this situation there and we've signed like how many businesses in the last two weeks did we sign up in our mastermind? Like seven. Yeah. Something like this. The majority of them are in our super system tier of our mastermind because they're dealing with this problem. [00:12:21] This problem. And they're not happy. They don't have a rockstar team. They have sometimes an okay team, or they have a terrible team where they've really struggled with hiring. And they think they have a good team, but then they think, "well, we just need better processes." Let me tell you, if you think your biggest problem is you just need more processes so you can handle growth, you don't have a good team. Your team is not the team that you need. A good team can still perform amazingly without process documentation. They will figure it out. [00:12:52] I call this the process myth. [00:12:53] This is really unhealthy mindset. You cannot out process bad team members. And you cannot build the right team around the wrong person. So if you are showing up in the business still wearing hats you don't enjoy wearing, still doing things you don't enjoy doing, you then are building the wrong team by default. [00:13:09] If you still wear a bunch of different hats you don't enjoy wearing and you have an entire team, you have the wrong team. Period. This is bad mindset because you haven't been taking care of yourself. You haven't been building the business around you because you're probably not even clear on you and what you really want. [00:13:24] And so that's caused this problem. So that's mindset. Another mindset issue. People come to me and I'm like, "what do you want?" They're like, "I want to grow, but maybe only to about 250 units or 300 units. I hear this all the time. It's like they, they have a cap." What would you say about that? [00:13:39] You've heard me talk. [00:13:40] Sarah: So that's one of the things that I think it really holds people back. And if you're limiting yourself right out of the gate, then you're not, first of all, you're not living up to your full potential clearly. But in addition to that you're creating the glass ceiling. That we're all, like, pissed and fighting about. [00:14:01] It's like, you know when you get a job and they're like, "Oh yeah, but this role, it maxes out at this salary. Like, you can't make any more. This is, like, the top. Okay? So, no matter how great of a job I do, I can't just make more?" Well, no. That's, like, you would have to get promoted, or move laterally to a different role, and that's how you would make more money. Oh, well, you're creating that for yourself now. You're putting a limitation on yourself and your business. And then what happens is it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And that's where you get stuck. And sometimes you can't even reach that because you know that it's the end. So sometimes you're like, "okay, I want to get to like 250, 250 would be like really good. Then you can't even get to 250 because your brain already knows it's done at 250. Especially if you're Power and Achievement. If you're Power and Achievement and you say, "Okay, 250 and then I'm going to stop." Your brain will literally never let you stop. Because you have to keep winning if you're Power and Achievement. [00:15:03] And once you hit 250 and then you're done, then you're done winning. Your brain is going to go, Nope, not for me. Not doing that. I'll play in that game. [00:15:11] Jason: So what I've noticed is our brains were really good at kind of creating and predicting the future. I mean, if I asked you right now, imagine what you could be at in a year and what you could be doing. [00:15:22] Like you can instantly come up with something. And so the problem is when I ask people what their goals are, instead of just thinking of the ultimate amazing possibility, they think of the pain. There's part of us that always focuses on, "well, I want this great outcome, but I also know there's going to be some pain involved. [00:15:42] And so they have this false mindset that adding more doors is also going to be, which is, can be true, which is true for people that end up in the second stand trap. And so they're a little bit like magical and seeing the future. They can see their future that somewhere between two to 400 units, life's not going to be as good for them. [00:16:01] And it's going to get hard. And so part of healthy mindset is being exposed to a different possibility. So here's a different possibility for everybody that thinks that would be the max level pain that they could tolerate would be maybe 250 units, 300 units or whatever. I want you to ask yourself this question. [00:16:18] Do you think it could be possible that if you do it the right way, that the more doors you add. Every door you add, the more doors you add, the more money you could have and the better the team members you could get and the easier your business could get over time. Could you see a possibility in which a thousand doors, managing a thousand door business could be easier for you as a CEO than managing a hundred? [00:16:44] I think most of us can see that's possible, but if you don't know how, then that's why you would maybe come to DoorGrow. Like, we would help you see that future. We would help paint how that's going to map out and how that's going to work so that it can become a reality. But a lot of times we can't see the future. [00:16:59] We know our current past and the past doesn't always equal the future. It does if you don't get some sort of injection of something new, you don't bring something new into your space, some new ideas, a new mindset. And this is why it's very important to be around people that have health mindset. I think that's one of the best benefits of our mastermind is that it's full of people that are around Growers, full of people that are believers....
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DGS 263: PM Software to Collect Payments, Advertise Properties, and Screen Potential Tenants
08/29/2024
DGS 263: PM Software to Collect Payments, Advertise Properties, and Screen Potential Tenants
It’s been 6 years since we’ve had TenantCloud join us on the podcast, and a lot has changed since then! In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull welcomes Mark DeHaan from TenantCloud to talk about how it can help property managers collect payments, advertise properties, and screen potential tenants. You’ll Learn [03:03] TenantCloud update! [06:46] How does TenantCloud compare? [09:34] TenantCloud integrations [12:20] Scaling with your software [15:56] Starting strong with Rentler Tweetables “A lot of times when you get into rental real estate… you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming like I can't figure this out.” “A lot of property managers have all of these different tools. They kind of build their own Swiss army knife or stack of different tools and software.” “A lot of property managers have a challenge with financials and accounting.” “We love the rental real estate industry and helping people grow and make passive income and that's what we're all about.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Mark: A lot of times when you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming, like I can't figure this out." [00:00:07] And that's, I think the differentiator that we tried to solve. [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:29] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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 I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:10] Now, let's get into the show. And my guest today is Mark DeHaan of TenantCloud. So Mark, welcome to the show. Good to have you. [00:01:19] Mark: Yeah. Thanks Jason. Nice to meet you. Appreciate it. [00:01:22] Jason: So we haven't had TenantCloud on the show for like six years. Back then, Joe Edgar was CEO. I had to look it up because I'm like, "I know, that they've been on the show before." [00:01:32] So I'm guessing a little bit's changed since then. So why don't we start by getting into a little bit about Mark. Tell us, tell everybody like, who are you and how'd you get into your entrepreneurial journey and then what led you to being at TenantCloud? [00:01:46] Mark: Yeah, great. Yeah. So I'm based here just outside of Salt Lake city, Utah. [00:01:50] And I was a co founder of Rentler. And we partnered with TenantCloud, merged with them about five years ago with Joe. And when he exited, I ended up taking over as a CEO and running both Rentler and TenantCloud. And it's been a big journey by then, but yeah, my history was rental real estate. [00:02:13] And being an entrepreneur and really sacrificing and so forth. And it's been really exciting, and I love your audience because I think they can relate to, you know, being an entrepreneur and trying to grow in the real estate business. [00:02:25] Jason: So for sure. I'm looking up Rentler right now, cause I don't know what it is. [00:02:30] What's Rentler? [00:02:31] Mark: So Rentler primarily focuses on listings and filling vacancies for landlords, small mom and pop landlords. Yeah. It does some payments and screenings and a few other tools and syndicates out your leads. And then TenantCloud is a lot more robust. It does the accounting, the maintenance, a ton of things that you can track with service professionals and your owners and reporting. [00:02:53] And so they came, they come together really nicely. And we just try to really focus on. landlords and property managers and using technology to make their lives easier. [00:03:03] Jason: Got it. So what's what's been going on at TenantCloud since in the last six years? Like what what are you guys doing lately? [00:03:12] And you know, why should people use TenantCloud? Like, let's get into it. [00:03:17] Mark: Yeah. So the last bit we've been growing tremendously. We're processing over a billion dollars in rent payments a year. Well over that. And TenantCloud really as its core is to help the rental life cycle and help owners, service professionals, tenants, and landlords really come together and leverage technology to run the business and the way we built it was with that in mind to really make things seamless and easy. And you can pay your rent with, you know, ACH, credit, debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay. We have a lot of things that we're working on to just make life easier there. We do screenings, have a ton of different bundles, options for you to do screenings and to protect your investment. And that's been really good to help people with income verification and criminal and background checks and of that nature. [00:04:11] Yeah and we do a lot of accounting. We will even file your Schedule E for you automatically. So the cool thing about TenantCloud is you don't have to have a degree in accounting. You can really log into our software and we're, we'll lead you along that process. And we'll do a lot of the tax reporting team management and you know... [00:04:33] Jason: Can you explain what a schedule E is for those that might not be familiar with it. [00:04:38] Mark: Yeah, absolutely. So schedule E is you know, to report income or loss on your rental real estate. And that's one thing that you'll have to do. You'll get a 1040 form and, you know, the government will want you to file that. And sometimes that can be tough to do, but with our system we will track all of your expenses and all your income and so forth and help you file that form on your behalf. [00:05:05] Jason: So for property managers, they're doing this third party for owners, this then becomes a resource for the owners that they're managing properties for. It will do it for them as well? [00:05:15] Mark: Yes, and we do have like an owner portal. So what's great is you can have your owners log in instead of having that back and forth. [00:05:24] We give them a login where they can have some view access to see their portfolio as well. So it just makes it easy for those property managers to work with their owners. [00:05:35] Jason: Got it. Okay. Now what's different between a property manager using this tool or like owners just going direct and getting TenantCloud and bypassing the property manager? [00:05:46] Mark: Well, yeah, I mean, some owners can do that, but I mean, then they have to deal with a lot of the heavy lifting with the maintenance and managing all the units. And so with the property manager using our system, we make it easy for the owners to have access and you can send your distributions to them and so forth. [00:06:05] But it really comes down to the ease of use and being able to manage all your leads. Manage, you know, all your contracts, all your communications with your tenants and with it, it's such a affordable option. Like our lowest plan is 17 bucks a month and we don't do a lot of unit restrictions like other competitors where you can add a bunch of units on the system. And really make it affordable for you as a property manager. So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question there. [00:06:36] Jason: Got it. Okay. So you would say TenantCloud's probably a lot more affordable than some of the competition that exists for property managers out there. So how would you say TenantCloud kind of compares to some of the big names in the industry like Appfolio, Propertyware, there's a bunch of these You know, and then I know Bodia just came out with RentVine and then Rent Manager, you know, these tools. So we've got clients using all these different tools. [00:07:03] So how does TenantCloud sort of fit into the mix and how do you kind of stand out among all these different tools because there's so many of them now. [00:07:11] Mark: Yeah. So we started with the end user in mind where it was more of a business to consumer platform where you didn't have to do a heavy integration and you could just quickly create an account and more of a self service where it would be really intuitive. [00:07:28] If you were, you know, if you had one property up to, you know, 50 units, you could easily log in. And it was way more affordable than those bigger players. They have monthly minimums, and you'd have to spend months to integrate your stuff. Everything we built was to make it so, boom, within a couple days, you could get set up, and we would help you add your accounts, add your units, add your tenants data. And so we really tried to make it cutting edge where we used a lot of the technology to help you get set up a lot quicker. And so one thing that people really, they come over to us is. You know, they're like, "man, your platform is a lot easier to use because of the way you built it. It's just really quick to get it. I don't have to hire an accountant or get an implementation manager to help me use your software" because a lot of times when you get into rental real estate, you're an entrepreneur or you have a day job and then you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming, like I can't figure this out." [00:08:35] And that's, I think the differentiator that we tried to solve is that you don't have to have a professional help you use our software. You can just go ahead and get started and it will help you from day one. [00:08:46] Jason: So basically, you're kind of one of your unique differentiators is since you started with the consumer in mind, instead of maybe a property manager in mind, you focus really on maybe the tenant and the property owner's experience being you know, really great, which once you started focusing on property managers, probably made a lot easier for the property managers. They're probably getting less questions. Maybe the reports are a little more clear. It's a little bit easier for them to figure out what they need, which has been a frustration. I've heard from a lot of software, you know, the owners find it confusing. They find their statements confusing. The tenants are like feeling things are confusing. Now a lot of property managers have all of these different tools. They kind of build their own Swiss army knife or stack of different tools and software. [00:09:34] How are integrations with TenantCloud or which things do you guys do really well that they might not need? You know, some of our clients might, for example, be using TenantTurner, even though they use Appfolio in order to get properties leased out and, or they might be, or to do self showings, or they might be using we've got a lot of clients getting going on this new AI maintenance coordinator called Vendoroo, or in the past, they might use PropertyMeld, you know, for maintenance coordination. [00:10:01] So they're stacking all these different tools because usually there's better stuff than what the property management software has internally. How does TenantCloud sort of go with this? [00:10:11] Mark: Yeah, that's a great question. So TenantTurner is an awesome company and we have an integration with them. [00:10:18] Jason: Okay. [00:10:18] Mark: And so we feel like we're a platform and we're doing more and more integrations with companies like you mentioned with maintenance. There's others out there that solve that problem. I mean, we have a maintenance portal, but we love to integrate other tools and make it so it's seamless and easy that you can do a show in coordination like a TenantTurner and so forth. [00:10:39] And so, yeah, that's a big thing for our users and we love to work nicely with other companies that will help benefit them. [00:10:47] Jason: Great. So, TenantCloud has an open API that some of these companies can connect with? Yeah. Okay. Awesome. [00:10:54] Mark: Absolutely. I mean, we have a partnerships team and they can reach out and we can, you know, when our users request certain things, we say, you know, that makes sense. [00:11:04] So absolutely. We love that. [00:11:06] Jason: Is there a scenario or a situation in which you think. TenantCloud' s maybe not a good fit for certain property managers or certain types of management. [00:11:18] Mark: Yeah, that is sometimes like multifamily or you're getting really a ton of units. You're going to probably need something a little bit more robust. [00:11:27] Now, we just launched reconciliation and some other features more reporting tools to help as we move up market because primarily we were focused on ones that, you know, had under 10 units and then we started growing. Now we have people that use us that have a few hundred doors and they love it. [00:11:46] They love the ease of use. They love the cost. They love that it's not restrictive, but some of that trade off is like, "Hey, you don't have some of these other customizations that you know, maybe a Yardi or some of these bigger players have." And so I would say if that's the case, you know, you'd have to wait a little bit as we continue to add more of those robust features for the upmarket bigger players. [00:12:08] Jason: It sounds like TenantCloud is a great place for a property manager. And it's small to start, especially when they're getting pushed back from places like Appfolio or Buildium, saying you have to have a 200 door minimum stuff like this. Is TenantCloud something that can scale with them up to maybe a thousand doors? Are they going to run into some capacity issue or some challenges if they continue? Because switching software is hard. [00:12:31] Mark: Yeah, it is. And we do have some that have a thousand doors and some bigger ones and they love it. And I think it's just the way you approach your business and how you can adapt. [00:12:41] I mean, you'd save a ton of money and the way that every property manager is different. You know, I wish there was a standard in how accounting worked in the industry and how things did with money in, money out and so forth. But so sometimes people say, "well, I'm just so used to how these older systems work," and that's fine. [00:12:59] But if you want to be more innovative and more customer facing and adopt, you know, the latest technologies on how payments are being transferred and so forth, then I think you'll fit in really good, you know, with what we have going on. [00:13:13] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I know that's been an industry issue for a long time is they're not being sort of a standard in accounting and NARPM then released the NARPM sort of chart of accounts and the NARPM accounting standard that hopefully is starting to get people a little more on the same page. [00:13:30] It has kind of been an adoption challenge, I think, and some people are starting to get going on it. And then there's definitely some businesses that have been capitalizing on it financially to like help businesses get that dialed in and get their QuickBooks like mapped out. Related to that, a lot of property managers have a challenge with financials and accounting. [00:13:51] They've got the accounting they've got to do for the client, right? Which is usually done by their property management software. But then there's their internal accounting, their own books. And some of them try to run that through their software, which I think is a little crazy. Or some of them tried, like, will have QuickBooks or something else. [00:14:07] I've noticed this it is a common problem in the industry is like people having this accounting mess and not being focused on it. Some outsource it and I've had clients come to me that say they found out their bookkeeper or accountant wasn't doing things right for like three years. And then one of my clients was suing their accountant and won and like, but it's still a mess that has to be cleaned up. [00:14:31] And so, maybe you could touch on TenantCloud. I know you help with the owners and their properties and the accounting. I'm sure. How do they help with their business accounting? Is there any connection to like maybe quickBooks, or is this something that the tool helps with or how would this work? [00:14:50] Mark: Yeah. So we have an integration with QuickBooks and that helps. And then everything we do with the reporting and with all your financials, we just try to make it really easy between the owners and the property managers so that, you know, it's seamless, but I do feel like, you know, QuickBooks could help. [00:15:09] And, you know, primarily we're trying to do property management software. But you know, personal finance is a big part of that. We just are launching a cool product with our banking partner where we can now loan some capital to folks that want to grow some doors. And so with our payment system and our banking partner, people can quickly get a loan directly through our system and they could use it to then go buy their next rental property. So we're looking at more innovative ways. That just kind of reminded me on the personal finance, like, "Hey, I really want to go buy this next door, but I don't have some money." We can help loan that money to help you grow your business. [00:15:51] And that's going to be coming out here at the end of this year. [00:15:54] Jason: Cool. Very cool. So how does how does this relationship with Rentler and TenantCloud benefit, maybe property managers that are looking to use your software. And this, your shirt has on it. So then you've got this relationship going there. [00:16:08] So how did these kind of work together? I'm curious. [00:16:11] Mark: Yeah. So Rentler doesn't have a subscription. It's free to use. And so if you're just like one unit. And you're just barely getting in. Let's say you're moving and you just need to rent out your basement apartment or you just have one property, you can use our payment system, do screenings and you can list your property, syndicate, get your leads, fill vacancies. And it's like super light. I mean, it would probably be very similar to like a Cozy back in the day, or like a Zillow Rent Manager just something there to just boom, do that. And then as you graduate, as you go, "Hey, I really want to do more accounting or actually property management software." [00:16:51] Then you graduate up to TenantCloud and when you list with TenantCloud, it will post on Rentler, but Rentler was primarily, you know, a listings and filling vacancy. So that's how that works. [00:17:02] Jason: Is there an easy upgrade path from Rentler to TenantCloud or? [00:17:06] Mark: Absolutely. Yeah, there is. [00:17:07] Yeah, we have a fantastic support system. Pretty much 24 seven support. We have chat, we have people you can call and we'll help you. Most all of our support have been in property management and ran their own property management companies. And so they're really helpful to. to guide you and what you need for your business. [00:17:26] Jason: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So, well, this is very helpful. Anything else that people should know about TenantCloud if they're working on making this decision right now between all these different software that exist out...
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DGS 262: How To Make High Status Friends And Attend VIP Events
08/23/2024
DGS 262: How To Make High Status Friends And Attend VIP Events
As business owners, we often feel imposter syndrome or worry about our status. Have you ever wanted to elevate your image and be more relevant? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Michael Sartain, CEO of Men of Action Mentoring to talk about how to make high-status friends and attend VIP events. You’ll Learn [03:27] How to Utilize Networking [19:03] Becoming High-Status Using Social Media [26:54] How to be Relevant [38:58] Social Media is Fake [53:21] Authenticity vs Effective Content Tweetables “You need to be the person who always solves problems for other people and ask for nothing in return.” “You're building a brand. Status is status.” “A lot of our beliefs that we're holding on to that are holding us back.” “You make millions of dollars from solving other people's problems, not by doing what you love.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Michael: Your ability to grow is based on your perceived status, your perceived trustworthiness, your perceived know how. Not your actual know how. [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing a business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:30] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:10] Now let's get into the show. [00:01:13] So I have an awesome guest today. I actually joined his program just for kicks. This is Michael Sartain. Michael, welcome to the DoorGrow show. [00:01:22] Michael: Hey, what's going on, man? Hey, I gotta be honest with you. Two years ago, I didn't know what doors meant and then I started hanging out with Justin Waller and he's like, "yeah, man, I have 300 doors." [00:01:29] I was like, "bro, what are you talking about?" [00:01:31] And then he's like, now he's got 400 doors. And I was like, "oh, it's like all these different properties." And then my buddy Myron he's got 17 homes that he owns up in Connecticut. He told me about, and I didn't understand how this whole thing worked. And then the property management side of it, like "my company, we're like, we're buying properties because we want to use the depreciation. And we need someone to keep, you know, these places rented, blah, blah, blah." And then the property management, I don't know that much about it. So that's why I was really excited to come on here and check this out. [00:01:57] Jason: Cool. Well, yeah. And I didn't know very much about like maintaining a presence. [00:02:03] Looking cool, like actually looking cool on social media instead of just trying to look cool. And and so I've learned some good things by being in your program. So let's get into a little bit of background about you for those that are like, who's this Michael guy? And maybe how you kind of got into entrepreneurism and I think that'd be relevant to anybody listening. [00:02:25] Michael: So I'm originally from East Dallas. I grew up on the good side of the tracks and went to high school on the bad side of the tracks. And graduated from my high school, barely like did anything. It was not a very good experience. And I got into UT Austin because I was in top 10 percent of my class. [00:02:39] Went there four years, studied astronomy and business and then got out of there. And then I ended up managing a nightclub for a while, for a couple of years because MCI Worldcom and Enron had gone out of business. So if you know, UT Austin, Enron was like a huge supply of jobs once you graduated you know, as a Longhorn. [00:02:56] Once they go out of business, none of us can find jobs. I ended up working at a strip club for like several years as a DJ. And this is the first point in my life where I'm like, "okay, there's something going on here. There's things that I've been taught growing up, but there's something different now." Of course, I want to preface this. [00:03:10] By no means am I saying that people who go to a strip club or people who work in a strip club are indicative of the median of society. They clearly aren't, clearly are not. What I am saying though is that you can see the extremes in society when you go to places like that and from those extremes, you can see overt reactions. [00:03:27] One of the things that I do in my course is I teach how people can network, get invited where the cool kids sit like that phenomenon of where the cool guys are and the not cool guys, the hot club versus the not club that the club people don't want to go to, or the party everyone's trying to get into. [00:03:42] What is it that causes that phenomenon of popularity and status? There has to be something that can explain it. And so what I've been trying to do for the last 15 years is use evolutionary studies in order to figure out a way in order to do that. And so a lot of times when you do that, you know, you can see subcommunication between a man and a woman and you don't really know what's going on. [00:04:02] They have the internal focus of what's going on, but when you see it in like a nightclub or a festival or someplace like that, you see very overt communication. And from that, you can learn a lot of cool stuff. It's like watching, you know, crows you know, pick at a carcass versus watching a giant white tiger go kill a gazelle. [00:04:18] Like that is overt examples of predation that you can see and be like, okay, this is how biology works. This is how natural selection works, et cetera. And I know for your audience, you're like, "where the fuck's he going with all this?" Yeah. The reason why, just to explain. I got fascinated. I did seven years in the military after 9 -11. [00:04:33] I joined and I flew a KC 135 as an instructor navigator. And then I was I did counterintelligence for about the last two years I was there. And then, so, in that time period, I learned how a very structured business could work and like how accountability works. Accountability and leadership, I learned very much during that time period. [00:04:49] But at that same time period, I was also going out a lot and I was like very interested to me in like, what is it that caused certain men to be phenomenally good with women and get a lot of people to show up to an event and then what caused other men to just not get it. And I always, I also noticed that there was a very small group of men that got it. [00:05:05] And then a very large group of men that didn't understand this concept whatsoever. So I became fascinated with that idea of 2011. I ended up retiring from the military and I ended up moving to Las Vegas and this is the first time when I started going out to some of these nightclubs and these venues here in Las Vegas. [00:05:19] And I meet a lot of real estate agents. I meet a lot of accountants. I meet plastic surgeons, doctors. And it was very clear to me like that some of them got it and some of them didn't get it. I threw a real estate event recently where we took a blue heron home. And then we had a charity event for animals. [00:05:33] And while we're there, I invited every single female influencer in the city to show up. Well, these, some of these girls were interested in getting into real estate, but I just want you to imagine it was just like a regular real estate event that you have, except you're doing it for animal rescue. [00:05:47] So now all these people who are in real estate, mortgage brokers, et cetera, property managers like yourself, they would show up to this beautiful three story house. It was catered. It was beautiful. And then every pretty girl in the city in Las Vegas who wasn't working that night showed up to this thing. [00:06:01] So now you're drinking champagne. There's three times as many girls as guys. Some of you guys are listening to this and you're like, "okay, now I understand. I'm starting to understand what he does." You're able to create these incredible environments and in doing so, just imagine, everyone... I try to teach networking through events. [00:06:17] That's basically how I try to teach networking through small events at your house or large events, you know, like a CES conference. I try to teach networking through those mechanisms. And then I try to show how evolution created humans throughout history. Dr. David Buss writes in his book the evolution of desire throughout history. [00:06:34] The men who have worked in groups and in tandem with one another always had access to more resources and always had access to more women. And so that's the reason why, you know, I teach these concepts. And so what happens is that blue Heron thing that we did, the guy who ran it, he's at the forefront and he goes, "I want to just thank you guys for coming out here and helping me, blah, blah, blah." [00:06:52] He had endeared so much goodwill with every mortgage broker, real estate agent. It was really crazy. All these other real estate agents wanted to train under him. People started sending him business. His business blew up. Another example I give, that's Jeremy Green's name. I have another example of my buddy, Mark Pearlberg, who's one of those also in my program. [00:07:09] Mark is an accountant. Mark started to see the way that I would use zoom calls and on the zoom calls, Mark would go on and show. How he understood accounting backwards and forwards better than everyone else who was listening, he showed himself to be a subject matter expert in the zoom calls. He was hosting in doing so, just imagine Jason, like, you know, I don't believe accounting is your specialty, but if you listen to accountant at first, it's interesting, but after like an hour and a half, you get to the realization, like, "this is interesting, but I don't want to do this." [00:07:37] And then at about the two hour mark, you're like, "This is interesting. I don't want to do this. How much do I have to pay you to do this?" And so because what we did and he started hosting a podcast and because he started hosting these zoom calls with other professionals, now he tells me, he's like, "I actually had to slow down the podcast because I can't handle all the business that I have. [00:07:55] There's not enough of me. In order for me to be able to do this." And he works from home. He just, an incredible lifestyle that he's created. So when we go back to what we're saying before, you know, I learned initially, "okay, what are the mechanisms that cause people to be cool or not cool, to be popular, not popular, to be low status or high status?" [00:08:13] I learned that when I was working in Austin, you know, nightclub, I learned that when I was in the U S military, like what good leadership and bad leadership was. And then I learned it in the last 13 years here living in Las Vegas. And I took all those lessons and I, from the last say, 25 years, and I put them into a course called the men of action course and try to concisely take this 25 years of knowledge and put it into one space so that everyone can learn how to do these kinds of things. [00:08:35] Now, here's where it might be confusing for some of your audience, the mechanisms that men use in order to show status with women in order to date them and the mechanisms that men and women use in order to pitch an idea or to sell a product are the same mechanisms. They are the same. This is difficult. A lot of people don't grasp this. if you guys ever want to see a great example of this, great book you should all read is Oren Klaff's book called pitch anything. Listen to some of the words he uses. Jason, you remember eliminate neediness. [00:09:06] Do you remember that? Eliminate neediness. Where does that come from? Where does that come from? It didn't come from self help. Eliminate neediness is a dating concept. Okay? Avoid beta behavior. Do you remember? Oren Klaff says this in his book. He goes, "avoid beta behavior." Where does that come from, Jason? [00:09:21] That is a dating concept. So where do these things come from? At the highest level Jordan Belfort, he calls it goal oriented communication. So goal oriented communication is, "will you go on a date with me?" Goal oriented communication is, "Ken, will you invest in my project?" Goal oriented communication is, "will you come work for me?" [00:09:36] Goal oriented communication. I'm doing this because this is like the apex of community of goal oriented communication. All these places meet at the apex, and that is the understanding of basically Dale Carnegie's how to win friends and influence people, get people to talk about themselves. You can find common interests, figure out ways to break rapport, all these different things. [00:09:53] And like what I teach my clients, Jason, the number one thing I teach my clients when it comes to high stats networking is you need to be the person who always solves problems for other people and ask for nothing in return. A great example is, do you remember Harvey Keitel in the movie Pulp Fiction? [00:10:08] You remember he's the wolf? Do you remember Pulp Fiction? I haven't seen Pulp Fiction. Okay, so tonight you're going to watch Pulp Fiction. Every single other person watching this has watched Pulp Fiction. [00:10:17] Jason: I know, everybody else has watched it but me, so. [00:10:19] Michael: There's a point, there's a point where they have to clean up a dead body and they have to call this guy named the wolf and he just, he fixes things. [00:10:25] He's a cleaner. The wolf shows up in his Acura NSX, it's Harvey Keitel and he just fixes things. He goes, "are you going to listen to me or do you want to go to jail?" And he does, he just fixes everything. That's what I become. I'm the guy who fixes things for other people. I have a bunch of friends. I help them find people for their sales team. Most of my friends have met their boyfriends or girlfriends through me. I help people find their employees. I'm the hub. I'm the hub of the social wheel. And that's what I teach you to do in my course. If you cannot replace your social circle, your girlfriend, or your job in 15 minutes, you don't have enough abundance and I need to teach you how to have more abundance. [00:10:56] And so how do you do that? There's just certain mechanisms that people who have an abundance mentality and understand networking have, and when they use those techniques, then they can have anything they want. They get into any door. So another example, Jason is like the guy who goes to the Tai Lopez conference or the Taylor Welch conference or goes to see Cole Gordon or goes to see Wes Watson or goes to see whoever. [00:11:17] The guy who is like, "Hey man, thank you for your time." The one who like goes and pays Patrick bed David for his counseling. And then there's the guy who Patrick Bet David who goes to see Patrick David for his counseling. And then Patrick David was like, "Hey man, can I come visit you and hang out? Come meet my wife. Let me take you out to dinner." Does that make sense? There's a mechanism you'll see, like with a lot of people have asked me this before. Why is it that, you know, other people are like paying to listen to Justin Waller speak, but like Justin Waller and I are like close friends? [00:11:42] Why is it that other people like buy Rollo's book, but Rollo is one of my best friends? Why is it like all these other people call me and I'm not trying to say this to brag, but the reason why I'm trying to say this is there's a status line that you get to where you're a customer, and then you're his friend. [00:11:56] How do you cross that status line? This is such a key for those of you who are like, trying to get into sales or trying to understand networking. It's just like, I'm paying this guy, like how much, like I'm paying Tony Robbins. I'm a customer. I'm customer. Now Tony's like sending me messages on my birthday. [00:12:09] What is that status line? Some people's like, "well, you just need to have more money." And I'm telling you that is not what the case is. That's definitely not what the case is. [00:12:15] Jason: Who would want to connect with people that they're only connecting with you because of money? I mean, that'd be a really shitty reason to be connecting with somebody. [00:12:22] Michael: In the beginning, you will. But after a while you learn, whenever I go up and talk to my favorite influencer, let's say I paid for his coaching program is my voice cracking or my eyes getting big is my vocal tonality changing because I see this person as high status. [00:12:38] Am I dressing too fancy to try to show off? Am I doing too much or am I just like just the normal dude? I am. Oren Klaff, one of my favorite YouTube content creators. I don't know if you are not Oren Klaff. I'm sorry, Orion Terriban. All right. His name is Psych Hacks. Well, I had him on my show a couple of days ago. [00:12:54] He kind of converges behavioral economics with evolutionary psychology. And he basically talks about the sexual marketplace as far as economics is concerned. Okay. Really great person. Have him on my show. Ask him a bunch of stuff during the show. One of the things I talk about is like, "Hey, Orion, I know that you do some sales stuff, some coaching stuff. If you want my help, I'll help you how to, you know, put out a low ticket offer, high ticket offer, how you can like buy back your time." he's like, "yeah, you know, I can't scale myself that much." I was like, "okay, so you're going to read buy back your time by Dan Martell." [00:13:21] And then I gave him a bunch of books, you know, that would probably help him. And then at the end, I was like, bro, anytime you want to call me and you ask me about any of this stuff, I'll help you. The guy who has the world, you guys look it up. The guy with the world record in the high jump on planet earth is a guy named Darius Clark. He went to Texas A& M. He's the leading scorer in slam ball. Have you ever seen slam ball, Jason? Remember the trampolines and the basketball, they go dunk on each other. Anyways, I bumped into Darius at a slam ball game. We started talking and I'm, and then Darius is like, "Hey man, I want to level up my social media." [00:13:50] And I'm like, "Darius, let me figure out ways that I can help you level up your social media." So it's like one guys are like a professional athlete. Another guy's an accountant. You might be saying like, "why is it you're able to do all these different things?" And the reason why is because these are evolutionary problems. [00:14:04] These are evolutionary challenges that all men we're looking for. There are three things that really differentiate men from women. Three massive things. There's more than three, but these are the three biggest ones. Jason here. Number one, this is the most obvious one. It's upper body strength. Men are about two standard deviations stronger than women as far as upper body strength, meaning the medium grip strength for a man it puts them in the top, you know, 98 percent and top 2 percent of women. Makes sense. [00:14:27] Jason: Yeah. Which also throws off our balance is higher. Yeah. [00:14:31] Michael: Correct. Also....
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DGS 261: How to Escape Property Management Hell
08/15/2024
DGS 261: How to Escape Property Management Hell
If you are existing in your property management business but you aren’t enjoying it, you might be in property management hell. In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull explain how to escape property management hell. You’ll Learn [01:19] How do you know if you are in property management hell? [05:40] How to escape property management hell [07:33] How do you know if you are in property management hell? [10:32] What does an operator do in a property management business? Tweetables “So if you are existing, living in your business and you're not enjoying it and it's frustrating… then you might be in property management hell.” “There's definitely something to be said about working hard. There's definitely a time and a season for this.” “We have to get to the next level, and what got you to where you are now is not going to help you move forward.” “You can still be miserable and have an entire team.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: You will have more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business as it grows. [00:00:05] And this is the right way to do it. This will change your life. [00:00:09] [00:00:10] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, and unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the founder and CEO and the COO of DoorGrow. [00:01:15] Now let's get into the show. [00:01:18] Welcome everybody. So we were thinking about what to talk about today, and one of the things that I coached clients on this week in depth was this idea of how to escape property management hell. So let's talk about how to escape property management hell. So if you are existing, living in your business and you're not enjoying it and it's frustrating, you've got an entire team and you're wondering 'why won't they just think for themselves?' And you're stressed out and you're tired of dealing with all the escalated situations where your team couldn't handle it like tenants and owners, and you're still wearing a whole bunch of hats that you don't enjoy wearing, you're still doing a lot of stuff in the business that you really don't wake up in the morning and go, "man, I'm excited to do that thing today," then you might be in property management hell. This is not property management heaven. This is not the place you're supposed to stay. And so if you're not enjoying that we're going to talk about how to get out of that. And it's not that complicated of a process. We're not going to go into a ton of detail cause we don't have a ton of time. [00:02:20] Not as in depth as we would in coaching our clients, but we're going to give you the high level overview so you can understand that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. All right. So what do you notice with clients that they're doing and what's going on when they are in hell? What sort of frustrations and challenges are you hearing? [00:02:40] Sarah: Overwhelmed. They're overworked. They're crazy busy. Most of it is just busy work. [00:02:46] It needs to be done, but it's not high level things that a business owner would need to do. They're working lots and lots of hours. Sometimes it might be eight, 10, 12, 15 hours a day. Sometimes it's seven days a week. Usually it's at least six and then they do a little bit on the seventh day, but they don't really fully get time off and they're just responding to everything as it comes in and they're trying to handle everything and they're frustrated and they're just very stressed out. [00:03:23] Jason: Yeah, I was talking with a past client who may end up, probably end up joining our mastermind program. I think we'd worked together four or five years ago, helped him with his website and some different stuff. And he's been using some of the stuff he learned and he was really excited to tell me how far he's come and he's like at 700 units and I think he was small when he came to me, I don't remember, maybe 50 or something, and so he's really excited about the progress he has. [00:03:50] Then he was telling me he's working 17 hour days, some days, like he's working these crazy hours and he's going through these cycles of growth and like working crazy hard and then stopping the growth so that he can focus on building up the business and operations and doing a lot of the onboarding of the properties and then he goes back into this cycle and he hasn't taken a legit vacation since he started the business. [00:04:17] And he goes on vacations, but he's on his phone the whole time. He's not totally available. And this is not a sustainable thing. Now he's just done it through sheer drive and will. To his credit, he's like, "nobody will outwork me." This is like a badge of honor for him. And he works incredibly hard and he's like, that's why he's had more success than any of his competitors is he's just willing to outwork all of them. [00:04:43] And there's definitely something to be said about working hard. There's definitely a time and a season for this. And if all of you or any of you are being lazy, work a little harder. Like do some hard work for a little while to get to that next level. But we want more fulfillment and more freedom. And I wasn't getting a sense from this gentleman that he was experiencing fulfillment and freedom. [00:05:03] To me, that sounds like hell. It's like a treadmill that you feel like you've created and you have to keep running on to keep the business going. And he's going to burn out. And you know, he even mentioned like it's affecting his health, it's affecting his body, you know, and it's probably impacting his relationships, you know? [00:05:21] And so a lot of guys get into this stage and I think women do it as well. Everybody does this in business where they get into this mode of growth and work and hustle. And that's how we get businesses going. We have to get to the next level, and what got you to where you are now is not going to help you moving forward. [00:05:38] You have to start to get out of the way. And so the way to escape this property management hell, this cycle of endless work and torment is we need to figure out what help do we need in the business? A lot of people go, "well, just offload stuff." Yeah, but how do you know what you actually should offload? [00:05:58] Because the big mistake people make is they go hire what they think the business needs and they keep helping the business. And this gentleman and many others I've talked to have an entire team and they're still stressing themselves out. You can still be miserable and have an entire team. Some of you listening are like, "yeah that's me. I've got an entire team and I'm miserable," right? So, how do we escape that? Here's how we figure out what you need. Because if we instead shift it to figuring out what you need, then this will be a game changer. So, the first thing we do is, we have our clients do a time study. [00:06:30] We have a sponsor and our sponsor is Venderoo, which we're getting some great feedback on from clients. Tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination. Meet Venderoo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish. Triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo, VENDOROO dot ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. And I'll just add one of our clients had 80 work orders in his first day of turning Vendoroo, the AI thing on, he had 80 work orders closed out. Another client had 54 work orders closed out in their first day as well. [00:07:29] Like we're in this AI revolution. So I highly recommend you check these guys out. It's very cool. [00:07:33] Okay, so back to what I was saying is here's the strategy. You do a time study. This time study will help you figure out what you're doing every 15 minutes and you're going to categorize your time based on whether it's tactical or strategic and you're going to figure out which things are your plus signs or your minus signs. [00:07:50] We have a whole process for this and a training on how to do this and you want to do this once a quarter. This will move the business forward more than most anything else that you could do. And it'll help you get out of the way. You do the time study, figure out plus and minus signs. Then you create a job description. [00:08:04] We call those R docs because each section starts with an R, ultimate Rdoc job description for yourself and your team members creates a ton of clarity. And so you get these Rdocs created, you create one for yourself, and then you highlight the things that you no longer want to be doing, or that are your tactical minus signs that are the things you're working in the business instead of on the business, which is strategic. And so then you take that and build out a new Rdoc for your ideal candidate and hire. And this needs to be a single personality type, not like, "Oh, I need somebody to do some sales stuff and some accounting stuff and some operations stuff." [00:08:41] No, those are weird people called entrepreneurs. Don't do that. Pick one realistic human being that's not entrepreneurial like a specialist. So that might be a really good executive assistant. And then you'll have a really good job description, move all the things on that job description that would be for that person. [00:08:58] And then you put that out to the marketplace. Now, if you want to do this correctly, DoorGrow hiring is the game changer. This is where you stop playing Russian roulette and you attract the right personality type for the role. So they will actually be good at it and the right cultural fit so that you will actually trust them. [00:09:15] It's not just about finding somebody willing to do the work or that has the skill, but you also need to find somebody that's intelligent enough to be able to learn and adapt to you and to be able to do this. And then if you start building your team this way, you will have a team built around the right person would because you're adjusting yourself every quarter, you're improving yourself every quarter, you're moving closer and closer to your plus signs and more of what energizes you, and then you're going to do this with all of your team members. You're going to have them do time studies and identify their strengths and what they enjoy doing, and your team will get better and better. And you will have more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business as it grows. [00:09:51] And this is the right way to do it. This will change your life. This is going to make you have a business that you actually enjoy being in that you're less and less involved in over time and that you're the only pieces you're still holding on to are the pieces you love. And so this is a business that is built to sell if you do want to exit because you're systematically exiting from the right pieces of the business. [00:10:15] And there's the right accountability. And then you need to get a really good operating system like DoorGrow OS, where you have a good planning system and you need to get a good operator to run this system and to run the business. And that will legitimately change your life. Having Sarah as an operator, changes my life. [00:10:31] Anything you'll add to this? [00:10:32] Sarah: I think aside from the fact that people don't know what an operator is because everyone goes, "Oh yeah, I'm going to hire somebody for operations. And these are all the things they're going to do." They are not handling tactical work. [00:10:42] Your operator is not talking with tenants. Your operator is not talking with your clients. They are not involved in maintenance, rent collection, evictions, owner statements. They don't do any of those things. That is all front end, front line work. And your operator, no one will even know who your operator is because they don't talk to anybody in the business except for you and your team. [00:11:03] They're all back end. So they're very strategically involved in the business, which is very different. So they are responsible for the inner workings of your business and how things are progressing and moving forward. And are you guys running your strategic planning meetings? Are we on track for our weekly goals and our monthly goals, our quarterly goals, and most importantly, our big annual goal? Are we doing daily huddles? Are we attracting the right team members? Do we have the right team members? Do we have the right people in the right seats and the right roles in the business? If not, we need to make some adjustments. Do we have Rdocs and job descriptions for every single person? [00:11:47] Are they up to date? Are our processes documented? Are they up to date and are they actually being used? Or do we just have this library of processes that nobody ever looks at? And then we spent hours and hours wasting time because now nobody ever uses them or looks at them. Right? So hiring, firing, strategic planning, daily huddles, your team check ins... how are things going with your team? [00:12:11] If you don't know, and you're not regularly having these meetings, then you are missing out. Because your team will know things that you don't know, as soon as you get out of that role, and have somebody else fully in it. They're now going to know things that you don't know. So you have to rely on communication with your team to understand, "hey, is there some sort of cog that we don't know about now because I don't handle leasing anymore? But is there a big problem with leasing that we can probably shore up somewhere?" So, these are the things that your operator does. The operator and the CEO, they go together very well. They're like yin and yang. [00:12:51] One will balance the other out, but they work hand in hand, and your operator does all of the things back end in the business to make sure that the business is growing and running well, and that you have the right team. So, your operator, just so you know, has absolutely nothing to do with front end work. [00:13:09] They just kind of look over the people who do. [00:13:12] Jason: They're not your property manager. They're not your maintenance coordinator. They're not your accountant. [00:13:17] Sarah: No. [00:13:18] Jason: They're not a lot of things. They're not your executive assistant. [00:13:21] Sarah: They don't do move ins. They don't do move outs. They don't talk to tenants ever. And they don't talk to clients. [00:13:28] Jason: No. They will run your business and they will change your life, right? And this will free you up to be more of a visionary entrepreneur in your business, which is what the business needs. It needs somebody leading not working. Cool. Preach! Preach, Sarah. I'm like I'm going to let her cook. [00:13:44] She's going! [00:13:45] Sarah: I hear it because I hear it all the time, "Oh, I need an operator. Great. What are the things they're going to do?" [00:13:50] "Oh, they're going to handle my admin work. They're going to do my leasing." Not an operator. Right. Great, fantastic, that's the role that you need. [00:13:57] It's not an operator. [00:13:58] Jason: Operator is not a worker. They're like, "I need a worker. I need a worker to do work." There's a little confusion there. Okay, cool. So, in short, operator is going to help with people, planning, and process in the business. We call those three systems that are key part of the super system. [00:14:15] So if this is of interest to any of you listening and you would like to get things flowing and working really well in your business and find these game changing people to build out your team so that you've got the right people to help you grow it, the right people to help you scale it, the right people to help you run it, then reach out to DoorGrow. [00:14:33] We would love to coach and support you and help you get your business to the next level. And that's it for today. [00:14:40] Sarah: Oh, and if you're not yet in our facebook group, you should check that out! [00:14:44] Jason: Oh, yeah DoorGrowclub.Com. Join our facebook group. All right until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:14:52] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow! [00:15:18] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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DGS 260: Your Property Management Hire Doesn't Need "Experience"
08/09/2024
DGS 260: Your Property Management Hire Doesn't Need "Experience"
When hiring a new team member in your property management business, one common mistake can cause you to lose out on potentially the best candidates. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss why having experience in property management is not a necessary qualification for the people you hire. You’ll Learn [01:11] The Myth of Needing Experience [04:19] More Important Than Experience: Culture Fit [13:59] You Need a Better Hiring System [19:17] What to do if You Struggle with Hiring Tweetables “If you don't even know what your culture is, how are you going to figure out if they match that?” “If they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming, either way, you're overpaying.” “Even if you hire based off of experience, you still have to train that person. That does not forego the training.” “If people are only loyal to a dollar, then yeah, you're at risk of losing those people pretty easily.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: If they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming or either way you're overpaying. [00:00:06] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:45] At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and Sarah Hull, co owner and COO of DoorGrow. [00:01:06] Now let's get Into the show. [00:01:08] All right. What are we talking about today, Sarah? [00:01:11] Sarah: I wanted to talk about this thing that keeps coming up and I've seen it two times in the last week is hiring on experience. [00:01:21] Jason: Oh. [00:01:22] Sarah: Everyone goes, "Oh yeah, I would love somebody who's experienced and they already know the industry and they already know my systems and they know how to do things. And that would be fantastic." [00:01:32] Jason: People listening are going to go, "well, yeah, of course you want people with experience. It would be dumb to have people with zero experience, right?" [00:01:38] Sarah: Wrong! [00:01:39] Jason: Okay. Okay. So let's explain this. What are you talking about? [00:01:43] Sarah: All right, so the first thing that I'm going to say, as soon as I say it, it'll click right? If we are lucky to hire someone who's already familiar with the industry, who's working in the industry. Maybe they understand some of your tools, your software, perhaps some of your processes. You're narrowing your candidate pool to such a tiny little minutiae of a candidate pool. How many people do you think there are that have experience in property management that are now in the job market?. Right? Like, "Oh, I'm only going to hire somebody if they have experience in property management, or I'm only going to hire somebody if they understand how to use Appfolio." All right. So we went from here to here, tiny little segment of the market. [00:02:33] The other thing I'll say about this is if you find someone who has experience in the property management industry, and perhaps even in your software and your processes. Why is it that they're looking for a job? If they were so great, would someone not have snatched them up already? [00:02:49] Jason: What if they get them to come from another company? [00:02:52] Like they convinced them? [00:02:53] Sarah: Let's talk about that. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm so glad. It was like this morning, we were having a conversation and I had mentioned this to one of our clients who's currently trying to hire people based off of experience. So here's the other problem, and we've seen this a couple of times, businesses stealing other businesses' team members and employees. There's one case that I'm thinking of in particular that kind of getting a little nasty. The two competitors are trying to take what they can, clients, team members, whatever they can, market share. They're just trying to take anything that they can from the other one. And one of them snatched the operator, which is really. [00:03:33] Not a good person to lose in your business. [00:03:36] Jason: Yeah. No. [00:03:36] Sarah: Why was that able to happen though? She had experience, right? So the new company is like, "Oh, this is perfect. She understands property management. She's got experience. She knows how to do this." [00:03:46] Jason: I mean, most entrepreneurs would think it's just about money because entrepreneurs always look through the lens of money. So they'll think, "well, she probably just got a better offer." [00:03:54] Sarah: And in this case, I bet she did. [00:03:56] Jason: Okay. [00:03:56] Sarah: And the problem that we're overlooking here is we're skipping the most important part, which is looking to see if they're a culture fit. [00:04:06] And then the second most important part is looking to see, are they the right personality fit for the role. And then and only then do we want to look at their skill set and experience and do they have the intelligence level to be able to learn that particular task. [00:04:18] Jason: Right? This is one of our frameworks, the three fits, culture fit, skill fit, personality fit, and culture fit, most important. [00:04:26] So, yeah, I agree. If people are not the right culture fit, then by default, you're overpaying for your team members, period. Because either they're underperforming because they don't really believe in your business or buy in. So their secret goal really is just to get paid as much as possible and probably do as little work as possible would be their ideal, right? [00:04:48] And so that's if they're not a culture fit. If they're a culture fit, they buy into the vision, they believe in you, they're excited to work for you. They want to have an impact. They have a motive besides just getting paid. And so, yeah, they're not a culture fit, it's guaranteed you're overpaying for that team member. [00:05:03] Because either they're crappy or you're having to like compensate them a bunch of money in order to keep them on board at your business because they really don't enjoy being there. So then you end up overpaying in order to keep them. And if people are only loyal to a dollar, then yeah, you're at risk of losing those people pretty easily. [00:05:22] Sarah: Absolutely. And that is why this particular operator was able to be swayed. So if you've got people who are a culture fit, if you've got people who really believe in the company, in you as the business owner, in the vision and the mission, where you are wanting to go and what you are wanting to build, if people are truly bought in and on board with that, that makes all the difference in everything that they do. [00:05:52] So can you hire somebody with experience who understands how to use Buildium or Propertyware or your phone system, whatever it is, and your ticket system? Yeah. And they can come in and they can do the job and it would be a night and day difference If you had somebody who truly believed in your company and you had to just train them to do those things and then they were able to do that, they're going to outperform the person who only has the experience every day of the week. [00:06:22] Jason: Okay. So can you share an example? Because you, you mentioned some clients were having issues with this. So like, let's tie this in with maybe a story. [00:06:31] Sarah: Yeah. So it was just last week I was talking with Andrew and he had recently hired a couple of team members. I think he hired a BDM and an admin and there was maybe someone for maintenance. [00:06:43] I don't remember who the third one was. So he had recently hired these people. Already he's looking to replace them because either they're not working out or they're moving on. So his BDM, she is a real estate agent as well. And she's like, "Oh, well, I'm just actually going to go focus on real estate. I don't think I'm going to do all of this." [00:07:02] And it's been under maybe two months, maybe three months. So not a very long time. And he had mentioned to me, "yeah, so I've got this one person in mind and their experience." And as soon as he said experience, I went, "uh oh, okay. He's hiring the wrong way. He's hiring completely the wrong way." [00:07:20] So I had asked him, I said, "all right, so just out of curiosity, when you're talking with people, when you're looking at resumes and your screening candidates, what are the things that you're looking at? Like, what do you look at first?" And he's like, "well, I look to see, do they have experience in the industry? [00:07:35] And specifically, do they already know how to use my tools?" [00:07:37] Jason: Yeah. So that's first. Yeah. That's a big red flag. And a lot of people listening might not get that, but that's a red flag. [00:07:43] Sarah: Huge. [00:07:44] Jason: Okay. [00:07:44] Sarah: So aside from the fact that, like I said, your Canada pool is so tiny. I mean, if there is a person I would love to meet you, who, when you were in, you know, kindergarten and elementary who said, "Oh! When I grew up, I want to be a property manager. When I grew up, I want to be a leasing agent for a property management company. I would love to do that. That's my dream job." [00:08:06] Jason: Right? [00:08:07] Sarah: Who? That doesn't happen. Right? So people kind of work their way into property management, but it's not the dream that you typically have when you're a child trying to choose your career path. [00:08:20] Jason: Yeah. And that's because the industry as a whole has an awareness problem. There's not a lot of people aware of property management and there's plenty of roles in property management that different personality types would enjoy doing or would thrive in. But people are not thinking of the industry. [00:08:36] And so, yeah, looking for people with experience, I think would be really limiting, [00:08:40] Sarah: yes, very challenging. So you need to find somebody who has experience in the industry that already will be hard. And then, even if they have experience in the industry, then you're going to say, "Oh, and they need to have experience with my specific tools and software that I use." [00:08:57] That becomes harder. [00:08:58] Jason: Right. [00:08:59] Sarah: So I had said to him, I said, "well, all right, I have experience as a leasing agent. Would you hire me?" Because I might know how to do leasing. I do. I do know how to do leasing, right? But I know how to do leasing my way because when I was running my company, I knew how I did leasing. [00:09:17] But that doesn't mean I know how to do leasing your way. So even if you hire based off of experience, you still have to train that person. That does not forego the training. And a lot of times I think this is what happens is people go, "Oh, I would love to make my life easier and hire somebody, and then maybe I don't have to spend a whole lot of time training them on a tool or a system or how we do things because they already know how to do it." Even if they know the tool, they still don't know your processes. They don't know your way of doing things. So you will still have to train them. Now, it is possible that the training is easier if you don't have to explain how to use the tool, if they already know how to do it. [00:10:04] use it and they're familiar with it. Yes, that part of training becomes easier. It does not mean though that training will not still be a one to three month process, experience or not. [00:10:17] Jason: Right. So, yeah, so you're saying a lot of people will try and hire somebody based on experience because they're trying to avoid having to take the time to train somebody. [00:10:27] Sarah: You can hire me. I can come into your business. And I can screw it up just as well as somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can. Why? Because even if I know how to use that tool, I know how to do it the way that I did it. I don't know how to do it the way that you do it yet. [00:10:45] I don't know your processes. I only know how I did leasing, and how I did leasing might be very different than how you do leasing. I know how I did sales, but that might be very different from how you do sales. I know how I onboarded clients, but that might be very different. I might do your leasing and you would go, "Sarah, what the hell? Why did this happen?" [00:11:09] "Well, I don't know. That's just how I used to do it." So if you hire someone who has the experience and has the knowledge, you still have to train them. [00:11:18] Jason: Yeah. [00:11:18] Sarah: And training is the most important thing that you can do when hiring. If you hire anybody and you completely forget or just choose not to train them. [00:11:30] It is going to be a train wreck. [00:11:32] Jason: I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs we're in the mode of like doing things quickly and we're impatient. And so we get lazy sometimes when it comes to onboarding team members. We're like, "yeah, just, here you go. We throw them to the wolves." [00:11:45] Sarah: Baptism by fire. Yeah, figure it out. [00:11:47] Jason: Yeah. And lazy onboarding is not, a great strategy, right? It's going to take work regardless of the person that you bring on. And there's advantages when they don't have the skill or the experience in that you can make sure that they're doing it the way that you value and the way that you like. [00:12:05] So there can be a benefit. [00:12:07] I think for sure if they're not the right culture fit for sure you're overpaying or they're underperforming or either way you're overpaying. If they're not the right personality fit for that particular role you'll just constantly be frustrated and training them and trying to onboard them will just be a demoralizing experience for you because it's impossible. [00:12:26] Like you'll be trying so hard to get them up to speed. And I think this is where people have experienced this and they're like, "well, I just need to go find someone with experience." But the real problem is they're not the right personality to do the job well. If somebody is the right personality, they would naturally be good at it. [00:12:41] They would be inclined towards doing it. You wouldn't have to motivate them or inspire them to do it. They would want to because they love doing it. It's aligned with who they are. And otherwise there's always going to be some serious friction. Culture and personality are off, there's going to be lots of friction. [00:12:57] And then even related to skill fit, if they're not intelligent enough to do the job, because some jobs require a little bit more Intelligence, right? You know, like the best team members are usually the best at problem solving. That's an intelligence challenge. You can give them all the skill, like here's the processes, et cetera. [00:13:15] But if they can't problem solve because they're an idiot, like then it becomes a real problem because you have to then do all the thinking. You need intelligent people. And so that's part of the skill fit. So you need all three. What's interesting about this. And we've talked about the three fits before on the podcast is you can't create culture, personality, or skill and intelligence. [00:13:37] Like you can't really create those. You have to go find it. You have to find somebody that has all three and just finding somebody that has one of the three is not going to be a fit. They have to be all three, or they can't be in your business. Or they're just going to be screwing things up and there's going to be so much friction so much waste. You're going to be spending way too much money. You're going to be spending way too much time trying to onboard them and it's going to be a mess. [00:13:59] Sarah: I agree. [00:13:59] Jason: Cool So, in seeing these clients and people dealing with hiring, how do we solve that? How do we solve [00:14:05] Sarah: this? [00:14:05] You have to take the hiring process and flip it backwards. So the first thing you have to do is you have to determine if they're a culture fit for your business. But in order for that to happen, you have to know what your culture is and it has to be defined, which is why, and this is where people fight me, is when they want to implement DoorGrow hiring, they're like, "I desperately need to hire somebody. I need somebody like, please help me with hiring." Right. [00:14:29] "Send me your cultural documents." [00:14:32] " Oh, I don't have those." [00:14:33] Sarah: "Then I can't help you find a good hire. I can't do it because it's Russian roulette." So if you don't have your culture defined, meaning I need your company core values. I need a decision making guide. [00:14:47] I need a client centric mission statement. I need your personal why, and I need your business why. Without those things, I cannot help you find someone who's going to be great because I will never know, nor will you, are they a good culture fit? If you don't even know what your culture is, how are you going to figure out if they match that? [00:15:06] Jason: So what you're saying is people need a better system. They need a hiring system. And most don't really have a good system. I guess everybody has a hiring system, it's just usually a pretty crappy one. Building intentionally a really intelligently designed hiring system, which is what we do with DoorGrow hiring is a game changer for a business because hiring is one of the biggest challenges I've seen even in multimillion dollar companies with friends. And this is something we've gotten really well dialed in a DoorGrow, but this is a constant challenge for most businesses. And until they figure it out... I was talking with one of our clients yesterday ,and he added like 114 doors in like the last month or so. And so he's just like, his business is growing crazily. [00:15:49] And he's this amazing client because he does everything we tell him to do. He's got an operator. Now they're using DoorGrow OS, like they're crushing it. And I was talking with him and his big challenge right now is maintenance technicians. He had four, he lost two. So he's now trying to hire and In having a conversation with him, I had to shift his mindset that he's no longer right now, a property management company. [00:16:14] That's the business he thinks he's in. And because he thinks he's a property management company, he doesn't want to focus as much on the hiring piece. That's not the business that he's in, but I had to help him see right now, the business that he's in, is in order to scale, this is his biggest constraint is he's going to consistently need to be bringing in more maintenance techs into his business. [00:16:36] And so I said to him, I said, "your business for right now, until you get this solved, your business is not a property management company. Your business is a maintenance technician talent acquisition company. That's the business you're in." And until...
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DGS 259: I Just Turned 47: Business and Life Update with Jason Hull
08/02/2024
DGS 259: I Just Turned 47: Business and Life Update with Jason Hull
I recently turned 47 years old. The last year has been full of challenges in the business and in my personal life, but things are starting to shift. In today’s episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull discusses his personal and business growth recently and his hopes for the coming business year. You’ll Learn [01:17] Business Challenges and Revelations [08:35] Personal Challenges and Revelations [11:32] Learning Empathy [18:25] Don’t Give Up Tweetables “There's what people think they need and what they want, and there's what they actually need.” “A lot of you don't even realize you have a garbage product.” “Your business is one of the greatest personal development tools that you have.” “I think God may trick us into starting a business to make money and eventually, he uses it to turn us into better human beings.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] I think God may trick us into starting a business to make money and eventually, he uses it to turn us into better human beings. Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:30] Jason: DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:52] At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show. [00:01:17] I just had on the 30th, and today is July 2nd this may come out at a later date, you might hear it a month later depending on which channel you listen to this on. So my birthday is June 30th. This is also the end of our planning year. [00:01:32] So we offset our planning by two quarters because it really sucks to try and hit your end of the year goals in December when everybody is kind of focused on holidays and family and to try and get them to put their attention on business, it isn't super effective. And I like that to be the middle of our planning year. [00:01:51] And we do our beginning of our year is July 1st. So not only is my birthday, it's also the end of our sort of a planning year for our business. And so I've had a lot of introspection. I mean, this has been a tough previous year for me in a lot of ways mostly on the personal side, you know, business has been a little tough as well to be transparent. And so the challenge in business is that we've developed this really amazing coaching program and I really enjoy doing that piece. So we've shied away from doing websites and focusing on other stuff, even though I still have a whole web development team and they just haven't had a whole lot of work to do. [00:02:30] But we've really put our focus into coaching and improving our programs and decreasing churn, which is a difficult challenge in a coaching business. And we've gotten it down, like half of our clients have been in our program for over a year, which is amazing because when I first even learned the word churn several years back our average retention rate was like five months, like it was super low. [00:02:52] And so we were kind of addicted to sales. And this is the advantage in a property management business is that you're not super addicted to the next big deal, right? You've got residual income. And so I learned when the pandemic hit, I learned I want more residuals coming in so that I'm not beholden to sales because sales stopped that month of May, I believe it was, there was no sales. [00:03:15] Every property manager, they were holding their breath. "Our tenant is going to pay rent? What's going to happen? is this scary?" And so they were like, "I'm not going to spend any money. I'm going to be careful here." So that was interesting and so we had to tighten our belt as a team. [00:03:27] We had to like, cut out expenses. We got a leaner and I think I let some people go on the team as well that were just, you know, maybe not as essential. And we had to tighten our belts to, to survive as a business because we were so focused on sales and we're at a good click. [00:03:46] Like we're a decent sized company. Like we make a good amount of money, but when you continue to have expenses every month and suddenly sales stops and that's the majority of our revenue, that's a bad thing. And those of you that have shifted from real estate sales and hunting and chasing to doing property management and building a residual income business model, you get it. [00:04:05] And I've seen so many of my clients have these great subscription sort of service, right? So I wanted to emulate that and we switched to doing it that way, and making sure we focused on residual income. So we built that up, we built it up really well. We've got a great coaching business. [00:04:20] We've got a great back end. We're really good at helping our clients grow and scale their companies. The weird and ironic thing though, that presented a challenge is that people don't want coaching, right? People don't like wake up in the morning, go, you know what? You know my business needs? I want to get a coach. [00:04:36] This is not generally people's first thought. There's what people think they need and what they want, and there's what they actually need. And so people would come to us and what they thought they needed was leads. I call it the leads myth. And what they thought they needed in order to get their business growing was maybe a better website or SEO or something like this. [00:04:57] And so they would come to us kind of thinking this is the stuff they needed. And then we could help them. Like reeducate them and help them see this is why you've been struggling to grow is because you believe these false beliefs And I would then point out like that like leads from the internet are not the best leads And there's better sources of getting business than just cold leads or cold lead advertising. And maybe having a website is nice, but you can grow a business without even having a website or without even having the top spot on google. And so we would get a lot of clients historically coming to us for a website and that was one major leak in their sales pipeline, but they had, you know, at least ,five major other leaks in their sales pipeline that needed to be shored up. [00:05:41] And they thought, "all I need to do is turn on the leads." So they would turn on the leads full blast, like turning on a hose. And there's all these leaks in the hose, right? One of them's a website. One of them was their pricing. One of them was branding. One of them was reputation. One of them was their sales pitch and their sales process. [00:05:58] One of them was what I call purpose, lack of culture in their team. So their whole product was just like garbage. A lot of you don't even realize you have a garbage product. It doesn't create trust and it has lots of leaks in the hose or in the pipeline. And you're just trying to shove more leads, like spend more money, time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. [00:06:17] And so it wasn't hard to take people that came to us for a website. "Hey, I need a website. I'm starting a business where I'm trying to figure this out, or we're struggling to grow and we think we need a new website. " And then convert them into giving them what they actually needed in order to grow and then help them crush it. [00:06:33] Yeah. But since shifting our focus towards coaching and changing our homepage, "let's focus on coaching." Because I just was so excited about coaching, it actually made it more difficult to get customers. So we spent a lot more money on advertising, doing a lot more marketing to attract people and to like reeducate the market, but that's a much more difficult challenge. [00:06:54] And so we've struggled to really grow our business. And we're at a good size. We're a good size. Like, you know, we're over a million in revenue, but DoorGrow easily the back end of our business, our systems it's better than $ 10 million companies that I've been around. [00:07:10] And we've got great systems. We've got great mechanisms. Our big challenge has just been client acquisition, ironically, right, and we're DoorGrow. And so we're going back to what has been working, which is focusing again on websites, especially in downturn markets like this, or where the real estate market isn't doing well, [00:07:29] lots of people start property management companies. So we did create a startup training for them. So they'd stopped like coming into the industry and screwing it up and making it worse. So we created the ultimate property management startup course material called DoorGrow Foundations. And this is a great tool, and we give it away for like really cheap. It's like 95 bucks flat fee. That's it. We created it just so we could send people somewhere that just couldn't afford to join our programs or do stuff with us, and they can pay extra to get a website and some other things we can give them as well. we're shifting our focus now back to what the market needs. And so I'll be putting out a survey. This is how I get the data and what are they actually wanting to learn? What training are they wanting? What do they want to be exposed to? And we're going to go back to focusing on websites and leads and, you know, those sort of gateway drugs that like bring people to you. [00:08:21] Right? And we'll see how that works. And I think It's historically worked really well for us. So I imagine we'll have our mastermind will get really nice and full and we'll have a ton of people in it. So I'm excited about that. [00:08:35] The other thing over the last year on the personal side I've just been going through a lot of growth and, you know, when you're put into trials, tribulations, difficult situations, you're going to have a lot of growth. [00:08:45] And one of the challenges has been my relationship with my ex wife, which has affected the custody situation with my kids. [00:08:54] And they were dealing with a lot. It was just a really big mess. And it was a huge amount of stress on me. Huge amount of stress on our business. I don't think my clients realized it, you know, we take good care of our clients, but for me I wasn't able to put as much attention into moving DoorGrow forward, innovating and creating new stuff because I was inundated with dealing with custody situation, trying to get full control of the kids. [00:09:18] She took off to California for like four months and, you know, the kids were with me full time, which I wasn't used to. That you know, created some stress for Sarah and I. And you know, in the beginning when Sarah came into my life, you know, the kids were going through a lot of pain. [00:09:34] Because there was a messy divorce. There was a lot of problems in the relationship. It was just a mess. It was hard for the kids because, you know, I really tried to conceal all the challenges and stuff from them, but they didn't realize all what was going on. I have four kids and at least half of them still have no clue of all the stuff, the dark stuff that went on and the challenges that I dealt with. [00:09:55] But you know, they've had to go through a lot of stuff, and so they weren't very nice, like, to Sarah in the beginning. Any of you that have been a step parent, or in a step, sort of, role, you know, it's the hardest parenting role ever. Period. There's nothing harder. Can you discipline them? [00:10:10] Can you not? Like, there's not hardwired built in love. You know, it's a difficult thing, and they were hurting, and it was just ugly, right. And it was painful. They were really hard on her and they were disrespectful to me. [00:10:23] And so it just, you know, it created a difficult scenario. And so it just made things even more difficult coming into this sort of custody situation and trying to get everything handled. The good news, the light at the end of the tunnel is, you know, God always takes care of me and good things have happened. [00:10:39] She came back to Texas and now we can split time with the kids And she's wanting to get back, you know, and connect with them and get back in their life. And then that takes pressure off me. So I have the kids every other week and can focus on work and takes pressure off my marriage with Sarah and like, so that everything can work out better. So there's this light at the end of the tunnel. So things have shifted. In a way, I didn't even expect it would get this good. Like, and I got all this stuff legally handled the way I wanted. [00:11:04] So there's a little bit of accountability in place now. And I'm really optimistic and hopeful for the future. And you know, for my ex wife, like she is a great mother, loving mother, and can be a really great, caring person. And so I think that's what the kids need. [00:11:21] That'd be really good for them. I can give them the tough dad love, the kids need mom's love too. So this is some of the stuff I've been dealing with. And you know, this has caused a lot of growth for me also in the last last several weeks. [00:11:32] Recently I went to this seminar put on by a group called SATVATOVE, S A T V A T O V E. A guy named David Wolfe he has a really great relationship book and I read the book and it it has some great content in it. It reminded me of this large group awareness training that I did in the past called the impact trainings out of Utah, which really has, you know, shifted my life. [00:11:53] It was really positive. I think it was born out of est or landmark or some of these sort of large group awareness trainings, but it was a little bit more on the spiritual side. I think, I don't know, but his is more on the emotional side of things. And I went to this seminar and you know, to learn empathy and it's been a really effective thing for my life. [00:12:12] Like it's really shifted how I communicate even with clients, with my family. I'm just able to connect with people more and my basic need, like in Tony Robbins, like five basic needs love and belonging or love and connection is like my primary, ironically because I don't generally have a lot of friends, I don't have a lot of relationships and you know, I've had a difficult time, you know, even communicating sometimes with my kids, and I just come across as very analytical, very logical in a lot of instances, I'm sure a lot of guys could resonate. [00:12:42] But I really connected with some of these tools to be able to empathize and to communicate and to reflect back emotion instead of just reflect back what they're saying to really have them be heard. And there's some real power in that. And in going through that, I also got reflected back to me from you know, I was partnered up with somebody at the event to do the exercises. [00:13:05] And the feedback I got from him was basically that in him hearing my story and some of the stuff I just shared with you all that he's like, "wow, you really care about your family. Like, you know, deeply and you try really hard to take care of everybody." And I just started crying because it wasn't what I was expecting but he was reflecting back the feeling and it really helped me connect with it because I didn't I wasn't seeing it. And I was like, "yeah, that's super true." [00:13:30] Like I just felt it and I broke down and then he said, "And you don't feel that you're worthy of it in return." And that just gutted me. I started crying like full on just... and I'm trying to keep it together. It's a seminar. There's a group of people. We're doing an exercise. [00:13:45] Everyone's talking in the room and here I am like, right. So I've really been thinking about that a lot the last several weeks is " What sort of self talk do I have? How am I making myself feel not worthy? Why am I allowing that to be in you know in my space internally? And what does that motivate or drive me to do?" And I realize that event like I'm always in group scenarios, even with clients or with anybody, I'm always wanting to showcase and give so much value. And a lot of it's born out of this insecurity that I'm not going to be loved or I'm not enough. [00:14:14] And I need to like show them, I need to show them I have some great ideas and there's some important things here. And it's been a real roadblock to me listening and hearing people in some instances, you know, a lot of clients value me giving them ideas, giving them feedback, sharing things with them. [00:14:30] So it works out okay in some business scenarios, but I've noticed since kind of letting go of that need for self importance in order to kind of be loved or for them to see me as valuable and just recognize I inherently have value and really putting my attention on them and connecting with them and reflecting their feelings and their emotion. [00:14:50] It's such a richer experience for me to get inside of other people's world and to connect with them. And that empathy has really allowed me to get more of what I actually was craving, which is more of that love and connection. Like I feel so connected to everybody now and I'm really enjoying this. Right. I mean, you can hear the excitement of my voice. [00:15:08] I'm really enjoying... it's made things deeper in my marriage with Sarah. It's made things deeper in my connection with my kids and helping them feel understood and heard and to allow them to feel. It's been with clients. I just feel like, you know, people don't care what you know, until they know that you care. [00:15:25] And they, I feel like clients can tell even more that I care. I've always cared, but I'm able to show it in a way that they get it, you know, a lot better. And so I'm really enjoying the results of you know, reflecting back this empathetic communication where I'm showcasing more warmth, empathy, and genuineness. [00:15:45] And then another part of his book and the seminar was about the difference between these three different types of communication, which are passive, aggressive, and then assertive. And really, there's passive, assertive, and aggressive, is probably how it really should be. Because passive is one extreme, aggressive is another extreme, assertive is the more true path. [00:16:06] And the difference in passive is it's indirect. There's some pain involved usually. There's some fears involved, there's not direct communication. And we're not really clear in our communication. And aggressive is hurtful and abrasive and doesn't really allow people the space to absorb or hear and comes across too strong, and so we don't get really what we want and we don't communicate effectively what we're trying to communicate. And assertive is you know a much more effective mode of communication. [00:16:33] So i'm focusing also on avoiding any sort of passive or aggressive communication I'm seeking to be more assertive in my communication and more direct and that also allows me to get more of what I want, you know, from my relationships and from the people I'm talking with in that. And especially if I'm coming from the space of care and I've showcased care. [00:16:52] So this is kind of my journey and I'm 47 years old as of June 30th. I'm just a couple of days into this 47 years old. And what's wild about that to me is I'm three years away from 50. And...
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DGS 258: New Property Management Clients Through Raving Referrals
07/31/2024
DGS 258: New Property Management Clients Through Raving Referrals
At DoorGrow, we teach property management business owners to build referral engines to feed them new owners and doors. In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert sits down with Brandon Barnum, CEO of hoa.com to talk about how property managers can bring on new clients through Raving Referrals. You’ll Learn [03:21] The 3 Steps to Getting Referrals [09:52] Automate the Ask [13:43] Hyper-Local Social Farming [22:24] Become the Expert [30:41] Incentivizing Referrals Tweetables “Most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals.” “The more you ask, the more you get, that's just how it works.” “By having that team of people that you're recommending, they'll recommend you back as well.” “Coaching is the breakfast of champions.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Brandon: Most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals. [00:00:04] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:26] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:48] At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show. [00:01:13] What's up DoorGrow property managers. A quick disclaimer for this podcast episode. Unfortunately, the first few minutes were cut off by our streaming software. That means we will be jumping right into the meat of the episode, but quick intro for our guest today. Chatting with me in this episode is Brandon Barnum, CEO of HOA.com, the king of referrals, and he is here to talk with me about getting new clients through raving referrals. Enjoy the show. [00:01:42] I was young, I was in my twenties, and I had two daughters and I was like, "how am I going to take care of them or have time with them if I'm working a standard nine to five job?" Like there's no space for that. And so I was like, "I need something with more flexibility and freedom." And it's funny, you know, they say that this need or maybe pain is the mother of all invention. [00:02:03] I don't know. But yeah, so I had to figure something out. I can definitely resonate with that. And with daughters, it can be a little tough because I'm like trying to go through airports or take them places and I can't take them into the normal like my bathroom, but I don't want to go in to use the bathroom like without taking them, so I'm like, "do I take them in the men's bathroom with me so I can use the bathroom?" [00:02:23] Like things have gotten a little bit more easier nowadays, but it was difficult back then. So, Awesome. [00:02:28] So you exited refer.com and would you still recommend that tool? Are you allowed to say? [00:02:35] Brandon: You know, it honestly, it has pivoted and the people, the company that bought us out completely shifted. [00:02:41] So we were a B2B platform to help people build their referral business. And the private equity firm that bought us really bought us for the database. So they've shifted. So it's no longer referral based. In fact, you can't even find refer.com anymore. [00:02:55] Jason: That's wild. Okay. [00:02:56] Brandon: Well, they bought it for the community. They bought it for 5 million members and 46 million people in the database. And so they chose a completely different path. They're about, I believe, to exit in their new venture. So. Wow. I wish I could say the tool exists, but it gave us the opportunity to build something similar here at HOA.com. [00:03:17] Jason: Yeah. Well, okay. [00:03:19] So we're going to learn the magic trick to get current clients and vendors to refer like clockwork, right? That's the claim. So let's get into this. How does this work? [00:03:30] Brandon: Well, there's a number of different ways that you can boost your business by referral. And one of the things that we teach is called the art of the ask, right? [00:03:38] Because one of the things that we know is most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals. But there's an easy way, and it's three steps to ask for more referrals and get more referrals. And it's step one is setting the stage. Step two is listening for the referral triggers, and then step three is to A-S-K to G-E-T. [00:04:00] Okay, so let's unpack that a little bit, Jason. So, when you first have a new client that signs up for your service, what you want to do is at the end of that conversation, before you let them off the phone, off of Zoom, or in person, what you want to do is just say, "Hey, before I let you go. Can I ask you for a favor?" [00:04:18] Everyone's either going to say "yes," or "maybe tell me more." And then what you want to do is just say, "Hey, we're so committed to giving you a five star experience. And once we do, and you experience our service and we take care of everything for you, and it just runs like clockwork, would it be okay to ask you for referrals?" [00:04:38] Everybody's going to say yes, because you're not putting them on the spot right now. You're basically saying, "I'll do a great job for you and give you amazing service." Right? So that's step one is setting the stage. Now you're going to get some referrals right then because they're going to be like, "well, now that you mentioned it, I'm in this real estate investor group and I've got three other guys. We were just having this conversation about needing a new property management firm. So let me introduce you to Tom, Bobby and Susie." Right?" [00:05:04] Jason: Okay. So you ask the step one, you ask for a favor, you express that you're committed to five stars. So that's a nice pre frame, you know, experience, and then you're getting permission to hit them up for that later, basically. [00:05:19] Brandon: At a later date, right? [00:05:20] And that's the key because you're not putting them on the spot now, everybody's totally comfortable. You're basically just saying, "I'm going to do a great job." [00:05:27] Jason: Sure. Yeah, of course. "If you do a good job yeah. I'd be happy to do that for you." [00:05:32] Brandon: So it's the easy "yes," and you'll pretty much get 100 percent buy in on that, right? [00:05:36] So that's setting the stage. Now you go into step two, you start serving them and you're listening for the referral triggers. And that's something like, "Oh, thank you so much. You guys did such a great job, right? I just, I love working with you guys." You're listening. For those expressions of appreciation, right? [00:05:55] And when you hear that, that means that somebody is in a peak referral state because they just recognize that you're doing a great job and they've expressed their appreciation for you. And that's when it's time to ask for referrals. And the way you do that is say, "I'm so glad to hear that. We love helping investors like you manage their properties and we're looking to take on a few more clients. So remember at the beginning we started working together, I told you we were going to deliver five star service. Well now that you know what our service is like, I'd love to see if there's any other investors you know that we can help." [00:06:31] Jason: Yeah, this is really funny. It's like eerily odd to me because we use a very similar framework at DoorGrow for getting reviews from clients. And I like the idea though of the pre frame and setting the stage early on. So our formula for getting reviews is we like, identify peak happiness, which usually in property management is like when the tenant is placed. And then we reach out at peak happiness and then we first showcase the invisible. [00:07:00] So we highlight everything we've done for them. So, "Oh, we've got your tenant placed. We got the rent check collected. It should be hitting your bank account right about now." Like all this kind of stuff. Then asking, "how do you feel we've done?" Which is a loaded question because you've just pointed out all the good that they couldn't see. [00:07:15] And so, and then they're like, "Oh, you're great." So we're kind of intentionally making them say that, right? And so they're like, "Oh yeah, you guys have been amazing." "Oh, we love hearing that. Would you be willing to share that feedback online?" So brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. So very similar. I've never even thought about just applying it to referrals, so this is great. I love this. [00:07:34] Brandon: And Jason also you can ask the question too, "how would you rate us on a scale of one to 10?" Oh yeah. "How good are we doing for you right now?" Yeah, right. And the net promoter score says if you get an eight, nine or 10, then it's time to ask, we always recommend if it's less than a 10, you want to ask, "well, what would make it a 10?" [00:07:52] Right? If it's a nine or an eight, "how can we get to a 10 for you? We're so committed to delivering exceptional service and excellence to you. What would get us there?" And if they say an eight or a nine, "I'm so glad to hear that. We love helping people like you manage your doors." Yeah. So there you go. [00:08:08] Jason: Very clever. I like that. Okay. So what was your step three? It was some sort of acronym? [00:08:14] Brandon: Step three is A-S-K to G-E-T. Now that's how it was taught to me. It's ask to get, it's a little different way of remembering it. And like my kids know. A-S-K to G-E-T. I pounded it in their heads and they're not afraid to ask for what they want. [00:08:30] But it was taught to me by my mentor, Mark Victor Hansen. He wrote those chicken soup for the soul books, and that's the way he taught me the art of the ask years ago, 20 years ago. [00:08:39] Yeah. [00:08:40] Jason: Okay. Got it. Okay. So it's not an acronym. It's just spelling it out. So you can remember it. Cool. I'm like, "this is going to be something really clever!" [00:08:49] It's just like ask to get, yeah, it's so simple. We don't ask often enough. Right. Okay. [00:08:54] Brandon: So the more you ask, the more you get, that's just how it works. [00:08:57] Jason: Now, this is kind of a system that you can build into the business, right? Like that's what we teach referrals, like build this mechanism. And so we create this open loop, like "would you be willing to give us feedback online?" [00:09:09] "Yes. Oh, I'd be happy to do that. Awesome. We would really appreciate that. Let me send you a link to make this easier for you. And I know you're really busy, but would it be cool if I followed up in a week if I don't see something come through? Would that be okay?" And they're like, "yeah." So then they're in this endless loop where you continually follow up. [00:09:26] "Hey, you know, you had mentioned that you'd maybe take some time to do this and notice, hadn't seen anything come through. I know you're really busy. Would you be willing to give us feedback online?" And we just keep this and we work at like a sales process. Like it's a pipeline until we get them to either do it or give them an out and say, "you know what, if you don't want to do it, it's totally cool. We appreciate your business." "No, I'll do it." Takeaway. So anyway, there's got to be more to it than this. Is that, or is it just simple? [00:09:51] Brandon: That's one of the strategies. So the next thing we want to do is we want to automate the ask, right? So first we talk about how to get more referrals just in your regular conversations, and we give people a framework to make it easy for them and comfortable for the clients. [00:10:06] Now let's take that same strategy and let's automate the ask. How do we do that? We integrate similar types of questions into our invoices, our email signature. If you're doing a newsletter, you can incorporate a section around that. I recommend that one of the things you consider doing is to incentivize people. [00:10:27] The best way to motivate is to compensate. Well, you don't necessarily have to pay out cash like in an affiliate program or what we call referral rewards, but you may choose to. At the very least, what you want to do is have some sort of way to incentivize and reward those that send you business. So maybe it is for every new client you refer us, we're going to give you one free months of service or three months of service, whatever's right for your business model. You got to understand your lifetime client value. You need to understand your customer acquisition costs. And Jason, I'm sure these are things that you're teaching your guys. So I don't think we have to dig deep into those, but it's really about creating the mechanism so that your system is doing the asking for you, right? [00:11:15] All of your automations have integrated referrals. If you're doing mailers and statements, you can simply put those requests as a footer, if you will, in your statements, and that way your system is constantly doing the asking and reminding people that you appreciate their referrals. [00:11:33] Jason: So, what would be an example of what might be at the bottom of an invoice or at the bottom of an email? [00:11:38] Like, like something like, "we don't hate referrals, do you know anyone?" I'm joking, but what would you typically put? [00:11:45] Brandon: Yeah. I mean, you can do something as simple as "we love referrals," right? "The greatest gift you can give us is to refer someone who cares." It's really about your personality and your brand, right? [00:11:56] So there's some standard language that you can use. "We love referrals. If you know anyone who is a fit for us, an investor looking for us to take over and provide five star service, we're here for them." And then again, if you're rewarding them, then you integrate your incentive into the ask. [00:12:15] Jason: Okay. I love this. [00:12:17] Again with our reputation secrets for reviews we also teach like identify all the touch points that you have with your customer And figure out where you can add in some sort of link or direction to get reviews. So I'm starting to think maybe I should take a look at everything that I teach for reviews and figure out how do I turn this into referrals? [00:12:37] Brandon: It sounds like it's the same, Jason. I mean, everything that you're teaching is right on point. Now, just add that referral request into what you're doing. Now you've got the ratings, reviews and the referrals. You've got two different ways to ask for similar things that are both going to add to more business. [00:12:53] Jason: Wow. Yeah, definitely. But the referral thing is a lot more direct, right? Let's get an actual lead. Let's get connected. And instead of, you know, looking good online and waiting for traffic flow in. It's definitely more direct. So I'm liking this. So, okay. Automate the ask. [00:13:08] I'm guessing you have more points. [00:13:10] Brandon: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So many different things that you can do. One of the things that we teach is to become the expert, right? Become recognized as an expert. Now, many of your guys are probably already going to real estate investor groups. What are they teaching and training at real estate investor groups, right? [00:13:27] Yeah, part of the reason that you are where you are is because you are establishing your expert authority by having this call this group, right? You have elevated your status in the industry and that's what everybody that's listening should be doing too. We teach a concept called hyper local social farming, right? [00:13:47] If you think about the best realtors out there, they farm local communities. That's what they call it. They call it farming. And what that means is they're sending postcards to every homeowner in a specific neighborhood or HOA, and they do it regularly consistently because that consistency creates comfort and trust, right? So they become known as that top agent in that area. Well, we do that at HOA.com. It's part of our marketing platform that we've built, but we teach the strategy and I think it applies even to property managers, right? Number one, you can farm lists and I'm sure your guys are getting lists of non owner occupied properties and then doing direct mail and outreach. [00:14:34] to the investors, especially if you see that they have multiple properties that they own. Right? We have all that homeowner data at hoa.com. And so that's one of the things that we do too. But if you farm the communities and work specific areas, then what happens is you start to get the referrals from all the people that know each other in that area. [00:14:55] Or in that, that market, right? Because sometimes you're doing it down to the local area and other times you're working spheres of influence, if you will. Right. And so one of the other things that we teach is to teach others. When you establish that expert authority by teaching real estate investor groups, right? [00:15:15] Go partner with not only the real estate investor groups, but also the realtors in the area offer a course for investors into the specific real estate branch. We've just done this actually with raving referrals. So we created a raving referrals CE course, continuing education course for realtors. And now what we're doing is we're having different mortgage lenders, business coaches, and other professionals are becoming the certified trainer. And the beauty is, like I was just talking to the partner manager for REMAX yesterday. She manages all of North America. They've got about 80, 000 agents. Well, I thought we were primarily having an HOA conversation, which we were. [00:15:58] But when she found out that we had this CE course, her eyes and ears just lit up because their agents always need great content to grow their business. So somebody that is standing on stage and we help fill the audience, but somebody that's standing on stage delivering that content elevates their expert authority. [00:16:18] And now everybody wants to do business with them because they're seen as the expert they are. [00:16:23] Jason: This is funny. So one of the strategies we give our clients, we have a course called the 411 on leasing that one of my clients I coached in the past kind of shared with us and we've kind of cleaned it up and we have our clients go and get this approved as a CE credit and here's this course on leasing that scares the shit out of real estate agents in handling leases because the number one source of complaints at any real estate office or any board of realtors, I mean, is usually property management related, not real estate related. And so they teach this class that basically scares the shit out of them and handling their own leases. And so then they just start referring the business to the teacher of class. So I love this idea. So they're teaching the CE course for realtors related to referrals. [00:17:07] Brandon: Yeah. And what we teach is for the trainer, whoever it is, typically we focus on mortgage lenders and business coaches because they want to be in front of rooms full of realtors, but it works for a property...
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DGS 257: The 6 Leaks in Your Property Management Sales Pipeline
07/19/2024
DGS 257: The 6 Leaks in Your Property Management Sales Pipeline
A lot of the property managers we talk to who want to grow say the same thing, “I just need more leads.” In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the 6 major leaks that property managers can have in their sales pipeline and why they don’t just “need more leads.” You’ll Learn [06:22] 1. Positioning [10:14] 2. Perception [11:19] 3. Presence [15:30] 4. Pricing [18:18] 5. Purpose [20:24] 6. Pitch Tweetables “Does it make sense to turn on the hose full blast if there's all these leaks?” “People want to work with a specialist. They don't want to turn over their biggest assets ever and their financial future to somebody that's dabbling in property management.” “If your reviews are good, it backs up everything that you say in your sales pitch.” “Are you clear on your personal motivations for why you have this business beyond just getting money?” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Get these things dialed in and shored up and what you'll find is: you may not need nearly as many leads. [00:00:05] You won't have to spend nearly as much money on advertising or any money. [00:00:12] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:32] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:54] At DoorGrow, 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. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show. [00:01:19] Sarah: We wore DoorGrow colors today. [00:01:20] Jason: Oh, we did. For those [00:01:22] that can see us. We're wearing DoorGrow colors. It's not on purpose. Yeah. Green and blue. All right. [00:01:27] Sarah: I wanted something easy. It was like, let me get a comfortable dress that looks nice, but it's comfortable. Ladies know what I'm talking about. [00:01:34] They're like, "yeah, those are awesome. That's this." [00:01:37] Jason: Okay. It's good to know. So we were talking about what we should talk about today. And one of the things that I've been doing on sales calls in conversations with potential clients is taking them through a diagnosis and diagnosing the front end sales pipeline of their business. [00:01:56] The challenge is a lot of people come to us that want to grow. We're called DoorGrow. So we certainly can help with that. We've been doing that for a long time. One of the things we've noticed though, is that a lot of times people think, "I just need more leads." They just think they need more leads. And some of you are just going to be listening to this, so I'm not going to do a drawing, I'm going to explain what I would usually draw, but I usually draw like a spigot, or a faucet, or whatever you call it, and a hose attached to this, and this long hose, and then a like a plant pot at the end of this hose that you're trying to water a little tree or something. [00:02:30] And I usually put fruit on it because that's your business and you want to get something from it. Like you want it to bear fruit, like make you money or something. Right. And so we've got this tree we want to grow and we've got this pipeline. This is our sales pipeline, this hose. And we think we just need to turn on more water. [00:02:46] Right. It seems to make sense. What I've realized though, over time is we used to do lead generation for property managers. Like that was like a offering that we had, a core offering that we had for our clients. So we would help them just turn on the hose, like full blast. We'd help them turn that on and they wouldn't be able to get business. [00:03:05] They wouldn't be able to get enough water to grow their business. Like it wasn't working and it wasn't the leads. It wasn't the lead generation necessarily. It was the hose. They had like all these major leaks that were preventing it. So over time, I started to see like, they'd be like, "well, it's not working." [00:03:19] I'm like, "well, you're not even answering your phone," or "you're waiting 24 hours before responding to a lead. And it's only good for like 15 minutes." And there was just all these leaks and problems. And there were some bigger, more macro level problems in their sales pipeline. [00:03:32] Like their pricing was terrible, so it was off. Or their branding was off. And so people were like, "well, yeah, but they look like a real estate company," or their website was awful and it would send traffic to their website and it was just leaking money. And so the fluid, if you will, that flows through the pipeline. [00:03:51] Is five currencies, time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. These are what you have to invest. And if you're shelling out a bunch of money, time, energy, focus, all of these things, right into the pipeline because you're just turning it on full blast, it's just going to leak out and you're just wasting all of that. [00:04:09] You're wasting time. You're wasting money. You're wasting your energy. Right. And it, and a lot of businesses are like, "I just need more leads." So I call this the leads myth. And so we found it to be effective is to start looking at the business and if they come to us saying, "Hey, we want to grow." [00:04:24] "Okay. How would you like us to help?" They're like, "we need more leads." [00:04:27] "okay, you may need more leads, but first, does it make sense to turn on the hose full blast if there's all these leaks?" [00:04:34] "What leaks?" Right? [00:04:35] "Okay, well, let's take a look at your business and see if you have any of these." So we thought today we would get into some of these leaks so you can self assess and figure out, all right, how's my business doing? [00:04:43] We're going to do the quick, super fast version of this. And I recommend you set up a longer call with our team so we can go through this. Okay? [00:04:52] Sarah: Oh, or if you want the short, shorter version and you're like, "Hey, I want to see it. It's visual." then go to YouTube on our YouTube channel. We have a video that we created about this and our hose just died and like, I think it froze over the winter and we went to go turn it on and everything was leaking. So then we were like, "Oh, Well, before we throw the hose away let's make a video because this is what we talk about all the time." [00:05:16] Yeah. So we did make a video. So if you want to visually see this and watch Jason get water everywhere and make a big mess, then watch a video. [00:05:25] Jason: It's pretty goofy. So if you wanna laugh at me or make fun of me, that'd be a good one to watch. So just go to youtube.com/doorgrow and go to the playlists that we have and then go to funny videos and I'm sure you'll enjoy laughing at me and Sarah laugh at ourselves, especially. [00:05:44] All right. So let's chat about this, these leaks. So these are some of the things that may be preventing you from closing as many deals, and you may have plenty of leads, but you may not be closing as many as you could be. And so these are some of the leaks. So, there's six major leaks that we focus on in our Rapid Revamp class, and if you're interested in this class where we help you shore up all of these leaks so that you can more easily grow more quickly without even changing whatever lead generation stuff that you're already doing or what's working, this will increase the output of what makes it through the hose and to grow your business Okay, so the first leak at the very beginning, and these are all blind spots the most businesses have is Positioning and so in positioning, we focus on the brand branding And so what are some of the things related to branding? [00:06:37] Sarah: Well, the big one that we see a lot, and we did a video about this too is what is the name of your company? Is it something "real estate, realty, properties, investments, assets, solutions," things like that. So if any of those is how your brand name ends. then that could be a very potential big issue in your branding. [00:07:05] And you could be turning people off before they even decide to have a conversation with you. [00:07:10] Jason: Yeah. People want to work with a specialist. They don't want to turn over their biggest assets ever and their financial future to somebody that's dabbling in property management but is primarily focused on real estate. [00:07:21] So if you have realty real estate in your name, for example, you have a significant leak here. So if a hundred percent flow through would be the ideal, you have maybe a 50% right at this stage. There's this there's loss. Is your name generic to the location? For example, you're Phoenix Property Management in Phoenix. [00:07:39] Or is it generic to the industry like property management inc? Sorry guys. Or real property management, right? These things are really difficult to remember right generic names. And that hurts word of mouth and it hurts people telling people about your business and all that kind of stuff, right? [00:07:55] So is it unclear that it's property management? Like Sarah mentioned, like maybe we're "Prestige Properties or Radiant Rentals." Radient Rentals, "oh, do you do bouncy houses and like chairs and stuff for weddings?" Right. So there might be confusion there in the marketplace, or do you have a overly common name? Could be a problem. Like lighthouse, just Google lighthouse property management, and there's like a bazillion companies all over the place that want to be a lighthouse. [00:08:19] And so they all get mixed up and confused, right? Because property management is a kind of a global competition. Even if it's only focused on a local market, right? You're getting investors from overseas sometimes you're getting investors from out of state. And so if they're trying to find you, "Oh, well, they said their name's light- oh man. There's a lot of lighthouse. I don't know." Right. And these are just some of the challenges with branding that we teach in our branding secrets and helping clean that up. [00:08:45] Sarah: Yeah. And one of the worst things is if they're looking for you and then they find a competitor instead, or they find the same or a very similar named company, but they're nowhere near your market. [00:08:59] Because then what happens is you're now connected to this other company. Even if you're like, "well, I'm in Tennessee and this other company, yeah, but they're in like Nevada." Well, Oh, okay. You would think the distance alone would be enough to separate the two, however, we have to remember that sometimes people make mistakes and sometimes people don't read, right? [00:09:22] So if an angry tenant from that other company is like so fuming and they get on and they're like, "I am leaving a horrible review" and it hits your company just because you have a similar name and they didn't bother to read. Now we have issues. [00:09:36] Jason: And there's lots of other challenges. You could have your name, like some clever misspelled name, like a barbershop called haircutz with a Z. [00:09:43] Sarah: Like my biggest pet peeve. [00:09:44] Jason: Like there's lots of ways you can screw up branding. [00:09:47] Sarah: Spell things correctly. Don't get cute. [00:09:49] Jason: Or acronyms. Acronyms aren't super effective. Like PMI. Sorry guys. All right. So let's go to the second leak. So give yourself a rating on that. Like just a quick judgment, like on a scale of zero to a hundred, how effective is your brand in being memorable and in word of mouth and whatnot? [00:10:07] So maybe it's 50%. Maybe it's totally off in the category. Maybe it's worse. Maybe it's like 20, 30%. Next perception. This is reputation. How are you perceived online? What are your ratings maybe on Yelp, on Google, on Facebook? How many reviews do you have in relation to your competition? And what is your rating? So quantity diversity, do you have reviews on lots of channels? How do you compare to your competition in your local market? Because people are going to check you out. They're going to judge you. And if your reviews are bad, even if everything else you do is amazing, this can put, be a significant clamp in the hose. [00:10:45] And if your reviews are good, it backs up everything that you say in your sales pitch. [00:10:50] Sarah: And if you have no reviews at all, this is also an issue. Yeah. So sometimes people go, "Oh, well, like I'm brand new. I don't have any reviews, so I don't have that problem yet." It's still a problem. It's just a problem in a different way. [00:11:02] Jason: So let's go to number three. So give yourself a rating on that. Zero to a hundred. Where are you at in relation to your competition? Are you the best reviewed company in your market? Are you like somewhere in the middle? Are you the worst, right? Or do you have no reputation, right? How are you perceived? [00:11:17] All right. So you have a number there. All right. Number three, presence. This is the website, right? Your online presence. So there's a lot of different roles related to the website. I'll, I can throw out a couple, a few real quick. If you really want to grade your website, and not just like how much does Google like it? [00:11:36] Not that if you want to grade your website, how much people like it, how effective it is for capturing business, right? How big of a leak do you have in the hose? Go to doorgrow.com/quiz and take our website quiz and grade your website. Do this, you might have a brand new, beautiful, amazing website and it's like just hemorrhaging and leaking money. [00:11:59] All traffic feeds to the website, right? Your reviews feed to the website. Everything goes there. Your ads feed to the website. Take a look at this leak and get your grade and see what it is. And we're happy to then get on a call with you and tell you why your website sucks, help you figure out like how to make it better. [00:12:16] So, couple of quick things. It should answer three core questions like above the fold when they first land on the page, what you visibly can see in on the screen should answer that there are three core questions, which is, "do you do what I need in the place I need it? What do you do and where?" And second, "why should I choose you to do it over your competition?" And then third is "what do you want me to do?" There should be some sort of call to action. Most websites don't even have those three really basic things, three basic questions that people have. So that's a great starting point And then there's other things like how many menu items do you have? [00:12:54] If you have too many menu items, it actually decreases conversion rates. Do you have like distractions like social media icons and different things trying to send people away from your website which can decrease conversion rates and getting business and leads. Do you have trust symbols and social proof and testimonials and things that increase conversion rates? [00:13:14] Do you have a lead capture form on the page? We've studied this for well over a decade. We've studied this the top website companies that target and focus on property management try to copy our stuff without understanding the psychology behind it and try and copy our designs. [00:13:33] I believe we build the most effective and the most beautiful websites in the industry. And so if this is an issue, DoorGrow can help you with this. So, talk to us and get a new website. [00:13:44] Sarah: Before we move on, I just learned this yesterday, I think yesterday or the day before. So if your website was once amazing. [00:13:51] And you're like, "no, my website is great. It's so awesome." But it's old. Then it's not doing you the good that you think it is. And maybe at one point it was, maybe it was so fantastic. But now all of a sudden, if things seem like they dried up a little bit, it could be that it needs a little bit of a refresh. [00:14:10] And apparently the shelf life on a website is about two to three years and then it needs. To be redone. [00:14:17] Jason: Yeah, this is true. I've forgotten about this. I'm totally aware of this, but I just, I forgot that other people don't realize this. And so websites have a shelf life just like fashion does, just like anything else does. [00:14:30] And so websites start to look stale or out of date or old and create the perception of being old too. So a lot of people don't perceive that their website is actually looking stale and looking old and causing issues for them, right? [00:14:45] And people will perceive you, "Oh, this company's more modern and we're up to date or fresh or is with it or gets it, and this company it looks like they've been in business forever, maybe. They're using old techniques and they don't know what they're doing, right? So make sure your business is no older than maybe two to three years. [00:15:03] It's probably time. [00:15:04] Sarah: Not your business. Your website. [00:15:05] Jason: Yeah, sorry. [00:15:06] Sarah: If your business is three years... [00:15:09] Jason: just get rid of it. So if your website, usually people will go until about five years. By five years, it's usually visibly painful, and this is usually where business owners reach out to us for a new website. [00:15:22] If your website is five years old or older, it's due. And you know it, like you can look at it and go, "this doesn't look fresh." All right. So good point. All right, next is pricing. [00:15:32] Sarah: I love the pricing calls that we do. They're so good. [00:15:35] Jason: It's such a magic trick. [00:15:35] Sarah: And also people get stuck here for a really long time. [00:15:39] Jason: Yeah, so most pricing, just to be clear, is set by companies focusing on the worst people in the market. They're focused on the cheapos and they're focused on what they can capture through internet marketing, which are the worst leads. And so the cheapos are really price sensitive. [00:15:56] So it creates this sort of downward race to the bottom in terms of price. So, most people typically do a 10 percent in most markets. Maybe a little less than that in really high rent markets, or they'll do some sort of flat fee. So, Most pricing is not good and it's probably similar to what everyone else in your market is doing, and so you look the same as everybody else. [00:16:17] So there's unique methodology in doing pricing. And so we focus on our unique blend of what we call a three tier hybrid pricing model, which focuses on three different types of buyers psychologically and creates a proper incentive to get more high rent properties, less lower end properties and it lowers your operational costs, right? [00:16:41] Because the higher rent properties generally have a lower operational costs and they make you more money. Right. And so your pricing model is probably unknowingly incentivizing you getting on some of the worst clients and the worst properties and not helping you to set yourself apart from the competition. [00:16:58] So we've never had anyone really come to us with good pricing, never. And so we've always helped people clean this up. And then they close more...
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DGS 256: Mindset Hack: You Don't Have a Property Management Business
07/12/2024
DGS 256: Mindset Hack: You Don't Have a Property Management Business
If you have a property management business, and you struggle in a particular area, you might benefit from a small mindset tweak. In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull talks briefly about figuring out what you need to focus on in your business. You’ll Learn [02:25] You might not actually have a PM business [05:48] Getting clarity on the 6 core functions [09:35] What should you be focused on in your business? [12:18] Figure out what you have been neglecting Tweetables “If you're doing long-term management, I want you to ask yourself the question, "What business am I really in?" “You have to do what the business needs most, regardless of the customer.” “If you don't have a good planning system… you will always be focused somewhat on the wrong things.” “If you understand the game of business, it's always changing.” Resources Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: So you need to realize what business are you actually in right now? And a lot of times it's not the one you're focused on in this moment. [00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:53] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hall, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:12] So today you may notice in the background, I'm in a little bit different of a place. I am at an Airbnb. This is my Airbnb. So this is a rental property. And so we got an Airbnb at DoorGrow so that we could have client events. And bring clients in and do some little, small group things, masterminding things. [00:01:33] And so I'm now experiencing what it's like to have a short term rental. And some of the challenges with that and the challenges with getting a management company to manage it and making sure our concerns are met. So i'm seeing all the different sides of this which is interesting. And some of you are old hats at this like you have way more experience than me at this stuff. So if you have tips, cool. [00:01:56] Send me a DM and say, "here are the best tips about short term rentals." So what I've learned is it's primarily a cleaning game. Like this is one of the big things. It's about cleaning. It's about making sure you have a good cleaner. You have a good inventory. I want to point this out. [00:02:13] So what I think is really interesting is that a lot of times we think we're in a particular business and we think that the goal of this business is a particular thing, but if we're smart, we eventually figure out we're in a different business. And shout out to Alex Hormozi. I watched one of his videos the other day and we were in mastermind together before, and he's a brilliant guy. Like I love learning from him. One of the things that that I learned recently that I thought it was really interesting is that a lot of times we think we're in a particular business, but we're actually, if we learn the game, we're in a different business. So he shared an example where there was a business owner that was focused on a particular business and they had plenty of sales, plenty of leads coming in. It was easy for them to get business. And he was like, "well, then what's your biggest challenge?" [00:03:01] And he said, it's talent. It's like getting the right people. And I think this is very related to short term rentals. I think short term rentals are very much like this. I think the idea is most think that you're in a rental property business if you manage short term rentals, and you may need to get rental properties to manage for sure. [00:03:20] That could be a little bit of a challenge, but I think there's a lot of short term rentals out there and a lot of them do not enjoy the high pace of turnover, doing all the laundry, having to get good cleaners. The challenge, really the biggest challenge I think from my perspective so far is this is really largely a cleaning business. [00:03:43] It's about the cleaners and it's not just about cleaning or a cleaning business. It's largely about good talent and getting talent. So it's really a talent acquisition business. It's a hiring business. Being able to get really good team members and build out a cleaning business because you need control over it. When you're doing a third party, there's gonna be a lot of markup. [00:04:05] You can't control the outcomes or the output, then you're like having to switch companies all the time I talked to a guy the other day with 50 short term rentals and they said they've got one company. It's really good. They do everything well, and the other company sucks and they said they have gone through five different companies already just to find the one that's okay and somewhat mediocre and they have one good one. [00:04:27] And so I said, "you have that many rentals and that much cleaning going on. You really need to start your own cleaning company." And so one, they don't realize they think they're a property management company, but really what they need to become, what's holding them back in progress right now is because they feel they could get more rentals. Like that's not an issue. It's cleaning. They really are in the cleaning business. And then once you build this cleaning business, you realize, "well, I'm not really in the cleaning business." Once you have a cleaning business, "what business I'm really in is talent acquisition. I'm in the talent acquisition business." [00:05:02] I have to find the right talent or the right people, so I'm really a hiring or an HR organization is the bigger challenge. And so that's really the business that you're in. Right. And so we need to pay attention. So if you're doing long term management, I want you to ask yourself the question, "what business am I really in?" [00:05:20] And it might be the thing that is the most difficult for you right now. It might be your team. You think you're in the property management business, but you're lacking leads. That's the weakest area of your business right now is getting more leads. So that means your business really, if you really get honest, your business needs to be a lead generation business. That's really what your business is. It's all about lead generation and you're distracted by keeping it a property management business. So if you imagine these six core functions I've talked about before search six core functions and DoorGrow on YouTube, you can find one of my podcast episodes about it. [00:05:57] If you look at these and the six core functions real quick are lead gen, nurture, conversion, delivery, lifetime value, and financials. What I see a lot is people will be like, "man, I need more leads, I need more leads." And if we were to rank all these different functions on a scale of one to five, then usually what they'll see is that delivery and fulfillment is a four or a five. You're like really focused on property management, like doing delivery, making sure you're doing leasing and maintenance and inspections, all this, and you're doing a great job. But lead gen, then you would rate as a one like being worst, right? And you're not getting leads. [00:06:34] I see this a lot. And so you're so focused, "I have a property management business, so I always need to be perfect in property management, but I'm starving and I'm not getting more business because lead generation really is weak." I want you to imagine each of these functions as if it's one of your children, and what you're doing is stupidly feeding and keeping this one child super fat while your other one is emaciated and like starving and looks like a skeleton and is begging for food from you. [00:07:05] And you're like, "well, I gotta keep giving this one the food, because they're my favorite. They're the one I'm focused on right now." That's not healthy decision making is a business owner. You have to do what the business needs most, regardless of the customer. You have to do what the business needs most. [00:07:21] And if you do a better job at doing what the business needs most, yes, the delivery may slip down to a four, maybe even to a three temporarily, but that's better than having a one in the business, where things are terrible because you need all six of these functions. If your financials are really weak, right? [00:07:41] Your sixth function, then maybe you need to work more on generating revenue, or you need to increase the lifetime value, which is one of the functions and charge your customers more. Like you've got to figure out what does the business need most right now? And you need to focus on that. So if right now you think you have a property management business, you might really have a lead generation business and you're avoiding that fact. [00:08:04] And so you need to pay attention to lead generation. If you have plenty of leads and business coming in, but delivery and fulfillment's maybe like a three and you're not doing a great job there. So you don't really have integrity and you feel like you're like trying to sell something that deep down is not great. [00:08:20] Then really, you have a delivery and fulfillment business. You need to focus on the property management aspect. So if financials are not healthy and you're not clear on your financials and you don't look at your bookkeeping and you don't look at your P and L and you don't even know what a P and L is, or you don't look at your balance sheet or you don't understand how you're doing financially in your business, then maybe that's what's holding you back. It's the thing that you are not focused on. That's holding the business back. And so you really have a financial and accounting business. That's really the business you are in. And until you wake up and realize that you will always have financial and accounting problems constantly. You'll be taken advantage of. You'll have people embezzle funds maybe even. You will like lose money. Like you will not be clear on your financials unless you really own up to the fact that this is a financial business. What do people pay you for? They pay you for an owner statement. [00:09:17] That's accounting. They want to look at the numbers. And if you can't do that in your own business, then you're going to have problems with all of your clients financially, maybe as well. They're not going to want to stick around. So you need to realize what business are you actually in right now? And a lot of times it's not the one you're focused on in this moment. [00:09:35] So I hope this has maybe created an epiphany for you. So for example, for me right now, we've got a decent amount of leads coming in and I've been heavily focused on sales. But the big frog that I've not been wanting to eat is really focusing on lead generation. Like we've done really great on social media. [00:09:53] I've made millions off of social media. We've done really great in our little conferences we've done recently, but really we are a lead generation business. I need to really learn lead generation and learning ads and probably turn around and start learning how to do ads and that for my customers. [00:10:17] It would be another growth channel that a growth engine besides all the organic stuff that we do that's really effective. And so I really right now DoorGrow is a lead generation business and I need to focus on lead generation, right? That's where my focus needs to be. We spent the last several years focused on delivery and fulfillment and being a coaching business because before that we didn't really realize we were a coaching business. [00:10:43] We were doing website projects and cleaning up branding. And so we thought we are a branding business or a website business, but we are a coaching business and so we put a lot of energy and effort into really developing that side of the business that was not as strong. And so now we are a phenomenal coaching business. [00:11:03] We're great. We have more client results than any other coach or consultant in the industry. We need to now feed that more. We need, now we're shifting and the business is not coaching business, at least not to me. It is a lead generation business. I need to focus on generating leads to get more businesses, more property managers into our programs so they can experience the awesome results. [00:11:26] Once we have enough leads, then we'll be a sales business. It'll be all about sales. So that's also been a focus of onboarding a new sales person right now. And we just had a new sales person that came in. There was a great culture fit, but they weren't the right personality fit. [00:11:39] They're like, I don't really like doing this. And I was like, "Dang it." We thought you'd be great. And so we had two that we're onboarding. Now we're onboarding one. Now I need to go back to hiring. Okay, so this is the game of business. And if you understand the game of business, it's always changing and you can't keep feeding the one fat child that is already fed. You need to feed the starving ones in the business. And you always focus "where's the biggest constraint?" It's the hungriest child in those six core functions. Lead gen, Nurture, follow up, nurture, conversion, closing the deals, right? Sales, delivery, and fulfillment, lifetime value, and then financials, right? [00:12:18] So figure out where your attention needs to be. What business are you actually in? What have you been avoiding and ignoring, thinking mistakenly that you're a property management business? Or that you're in an owner pleasing business or that you're in a tenant pleasing business. What business are you actually in? [00:12:37] And until you figure that out, your business will stay stuck indefinitely and it will be a grind and it will be difficult. This is why at DoorGrow, we are constantly innovating. We are constantly doing our core functions. We do this every quarter in depth, in detail. This is part of our planning system. If you don't have a good planning system like this, you will always be focused somewhat on the wrong things. [00:13:01] And so that's why the business isn't progressing and moving forward. So hopefully this gives you a different lens at which to look at where you're putting your time, energy, and focus in your business. And if you would like some help with this, and you would like to go a lot faster, and you would like to collapse time, and you would like to feel like a success, And you would like to like, make your business fun to be in for you and enjoy your life. [00:13:26] Then reach out to me and my team at DoorGrow. Let us assess your business and figure out where the leaks right now, where are you at on all this? And can we help you? And we'll show you a roadmap to paradise, like to a better place. I just got off a call with a client that I worked with eight years ago. [00:13:46] And he said, "I want to thank you because you've changed like everything in my business. I still think about like the things that you taught me and all this." And I said, "man, we've done so much since then." And hopefully he'll become reengaged as an active client. But we helped him with his brand and he's like gotten a good team now. [00:14:06] And he's been focused on a lot of things based on conversations that we had a long time ago. And we've gotten even better since then. So I'm really excited for them, but this is the impact that you can have with your clients if you are doing the right things in your business and you're focused on what the business needs most and at DoorGrow, we are constantly innovating because we're not always staying stuck focused on one thing. [00:14:28] We have multiple things that we're like shifting towards based on what we as a team can see the business needs based on those core functions. And so we're a different business every quarter like and so our focus shifts every quarter towards what the business needs most and then we're different business, right? [00:14:48] Then we're going to be in the lead gen business. Then we'll be in the sales business and then maybe we'll be back into the coaching and delivery business and that will be the focus. So what business are you in right now? Figure that out. And if you would like some help, reach out to us at DoorGrow, we can help you go faster by putting systems in place that make that your entire team work in the right way. [00:15:08] And hopefully that's motivation enough. Reach out to us doorgrow.Com, join our free Facebook group. If you want to get around and get a little bit more nurture from DoorGrow, get a little bit more familiar with us, see a little bit more of our podcasts episodes, see join that free community. [00:15:23] You can get to that by going to DoorGrowClub.Com. And you can throw up questions there. You can get support from other property managers. We have somewhere between two to three thousand members. I can't remember the last time I looked. On our Facebook group, we reject like 60 to 70 percent of the people that apply to join it. And so we only want to let business owners in. It says 2. 9k members right now. That's what it says on the Facebook group. We're almost 3k. So we're going to hit 3k eventually. These are business owners. [00:15:55] These are property management business owners and maybe a few vendors. Like we try to filter everybody else out. We're really careful about who we let in. And so we want to make sure that the right people come in so that you can get support. You can talk about the challenges with your team. You can't do that in other groups. [00:16:10] Your team members will see it, right? So we just want the business owners in there. And so join our free Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub.Com and get nurtured by us until you're ready. Listen to more podcast episodes until you're ready to finally work with us and get the results. And the constant thing that I hear, the consistent feedback I hear is, "I wish, I've been listening to you for a year, Jason. [00:16:33] I wish I had reached out sooner." Like once we start working with you, you start getting the results, you start getting into our content, you're going to feel the same way. You're going to be like, "I wish I had just not been stubborn or whatever. I wish I just done this sooner and worked with you guys sooner so I could get these results." [00:16:51] And so if you are somebody that's sitting on the fence right now, you've been listening to DoorGrow for a while and you're like, "man, it sounds really nice. It must be nice to have all this magic and like to be able to grow the business and I've heard about these business owners. I've seen some of their testimonials. It would be nice." You can have this too. There's nothing magical or amazing about any of the clients that I have worked with that you've seen in any of our case studies or testimonials. If they can do it, you can do it too. We are looking for the right people though. And if you're the right person, you're the person that you will join a program and you will make sure it works. [00:17:27] You won't be looking for the finding fault. You won't be trying to...
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