If you have made it to the 800-1200 door range as a property management entrepreneur, you have likely found strategies, essential connections, and executive team members that have helped your business grow and scale.  However, even at this stage, savvy entrepreneurs tend to find themselves dealing with problems. Join property management growth expert, Jason Hull, in the final addition to the DoorGrow Avatars Series as he details the common issues PM entrepreneurs face at 800-1200 doors. You’ll Learn… [01:19] Defining the Savvy Property Management Entrepreneur [03:46] How to Deal with Burnout and Building an Executive Team [05:00] Learning from Smaller Property Managers [07:49] Implementing the Ultimate Planning System [09:06] Transitioning to the Business of Your Dreams Tweetables “At the 800 to 1200 door range, these are savvy property management entrepreneurs. They are savvy at running a team. They're savvy in their business.” “As you come up through this DoorGrow scale that I've been talking about of these different stages in the life cycle, you gradually are being more connected to other savvy people and mentors.” “It's helpful for you to be around these smaller and more nimble property management businesses, because these businesses, they can implement stuff quickly.” “One of the best tips I can have is you need to get a really efficient operating system in place.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] This is better. This is going to allow your team to be involved in decision-making instead of you being so top down, trying to tell everybody what the goals are and what they should be doing right? Because that means you're dragging them up the mountain. They're like all sitting in a wagon and you're clearing the path ahead and trying to drag them up to the goal.  [00:00:17] We want to get the team pulling you in the wagon.  Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. [00:00:55] 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.  [00:01:19] So today we're going to be continuing on that series of these different stages in the life cycle of being a property management entrepreneur. So this might be way beyond where you can even maybe imagine your business at right now, but we've gotten to the point where we're at now that 800 to 1200 door range. So at the 800 to 1200 door range, these are savvy property management entrepreneurs. They are savvy at running a team. They're savvy in their business, so they have probably by now had mentors, coaches... they've invested in themselves, and this is something that's very unique between them and maybe a solopreneur is they've really been investing in themselves in order to get to this level. It's not really possible to get to this level without some self investment and without having really good culture defined in their business. So they have a business that has culture. They have a cohesive team. They've been in the business for a while, like a long time, maybe more than a decade, maybe more than two decades. [00:02:24] At this stage, this might be a multi-generational family business, or maybe it was part of somebody else's business and it was purchased, right. But there's some depth in this business at this stage. They're rare at this stage. There's not a lot of businesses, especially in the single family, residential or small multi space that are at 800 to 1200 doors.  [00:02:45] Likely at this stage, if you're the entrepreneur or the business owner, you likely have little to no connection to the business in some ways. Like you just might not be super focused on it. If you are, I want to talk to you because I love those business owners. They're still engaged. They're still passionate about the business and they usually love the stuff that I teach even more than people at earlier stages because they are ready for it and they can value it. You know, a lot of the things that I learn and absorb and take in by investing in my own self in high level masterminds and coaches and books and everything that I do to learn, they love this stuff because they're ready for it.  [00:03:24] They know how useful it is, and I get the best feedback from the most high functioning people, and those are my favorite people to work with. But there's a lot at this stage, they've really checked out. Some have been completely burnt out on the business. They've put somebody else in to run it. Their whole goal has been, "how do I escape from this business, this vehicle that's uncomfortable?" So they put somebody else in place.  [00:03:46] So they have an executive team, they have hiring systems, they have a defined sales process, they have a BDM most likely. Somebody else is doing sales for them a lot of the time. Their website is usually I find outdated. They're only updating it maybe once every 10 years, maybe sometimes only once every five years, so their website's probably overdue for an upgrade. I've noticed they often have acquired multiple property management companies, at least maybe two usually, at least one or two including a significant competitor. So they've eaten somebody up, and they're possibly looking for the nearest exit to see if anybody else would be willing to do the same for them because they might be burnt out. [00:04:27] So, they have built this really great executive team in which each member of this team takes complete ownership over a piece of the business, so they have somebody in place that's handling all of the maintenance stuff. They have somebody in place that's handling the management stuff. They have somebody in place that's handling the internal operations for the business. They have somebody in place that's handling the financials and the accounting and the bookkeeping and the reporting and all that. So they have key people. That's an executive team, so that they don't have to wear every hat or do all of these things in the business.  [00:05:00] What else about them? Something that's really important at this stage: they're now paying attention to the smaller businesses that are in the industry. They go to NARPM events and different things like this because they want to see what the little guys are doing and what innovations other people have, because they want to maybe apply this, but they don't want to be the guinea pig. They want to see what all the little guinea pigs are doing and experimenting with and whether or not it was hurtful or helpful for their business. And so they benefit by being around other property management entrepreneurs that are not at their level. Now, they do probably have connections, network, mastermind people that they hang out with that are at their level. You know, they've got some connections there 'cause you don't get to this stage without some connections and some relationships. Solopreneurs are heavily isolated, and as you come up through this DoorGrow scale that I've been talking about of these different stages in the life cycle, you gradually are being more connected to other savvy people and mentors, peers, heroes that you want to be connected to, or that you look up to so that you can get good ideas, good feedback, and that are not the emperor with no clothes sitting on top of your little micro kingdom.  [00:06:18] You recognize there's people out there that are doing better than you are that can give you good feedback. So it's helpful for you to be around these smaller and more nimble property management businesses, because these businesses, they can implement stuff quickly. They can adopt new technology rapidly, way faster than you can, right? Because for you, you have a really large ship. It's difficult to maneuver this thing and to turn it and to make changes because you have a lot of doors, you have a lot of team members, and there's a bit of friction there generally. But the advantage you have is that even small optimizations, small tweaks, small improvements at various stages of your pipeline, to your pricing, to your website, to all the things that we could facilitate or help with at DoorGrow...  [00:07:03] Small tweaks and improvements, for you, give you a big result. It makes a big difference. It can have a significant financial impact. It's very easy for us to save you a little bit of money on staffing costs or increase efficiency a little bit or to make small movements that will easily pay for any of our services or program and help you justify it. So and paying for something like DoorGrow and services is really a drop in the bucket. You waste way more money, probably on bad team members or team members that aren't as efficient as they could be. Staffing costs are really high for you at this stage. And so we want to find some efficiencies and some ways to improve some stuff. That is those at the 800 to 1200 doors.  [00:07:49] So one of the best tips I can have is you need to get a really efficient operating system in place. We call that DoorGrow OS. It's the most effective strategic planning system that I believe exists. A lot of people are getting caught up on Traction and EOS, and this. This is better. This is going to allow your team to be involved in decision-making and your team bottom up to be creating the goals and the growth of the business instead of you being so top down, trying to tell everybody what the goals are and what they should be doing and being a dictator, right? Because that means you're dragging them up the mountain. They're like all sitting in a wagon and you're clearing the path ahead and trying to drag them up to the goal.  [00:08:30] We want to get the team pulling you in the wagon. You just are sitting in it with your map and your strategy and your pen, and you're figuring out where we need to go, and they're clearing the jungle path. They're laying out the road. They're making it easy and they're pulling you along. And when you have that really good executive team and you have a really good strategic vision and plan in place that your team runs and that your operator really leads and is in control of, you will see your business grow rapidly significantly because you'll be able to focus on what the business needs most right now, instead of everybody just doing their day-to-day work.  [00:09:06] So that's something that we can help you with DoorGrow, so, that's basically, I think, about it at that stage that I want to touch on today. These are really, usually, cool business owners. They're either really cool or they're really burnt out. So hopefully you're not the burnt out one. If you are, let's transition you into the business of your dreams, and if you feel like you're close to having the business of your dreams, you just need some tweaks, talk to us at DoorGrow. We'll help you out. So that's it for today until next time, to our mutual growth, make sure to go to doorgrow.com. Schedule a call with our team, and join our free Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com. Bye, everyone. [00:09:43] 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!  [00:10:10] 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. 

Once an entrepreneur reaches a certain level of doors in their property management business, they often seek to quit wearing so many hats and offload as much as they can. Unfortunately, even with 600-800 doors, PM entrepreneurs struggle to build an executive team, enjoy their day-to-day, and reach their business’s full potential. In this episode, Jason shares his insight on the unique challenges that property management business owners face in the 600-800 door range.  You’ll Learn… [01:16] The Next Property Management Entrepreneur Avatar [02:00] What Entrepreneurs Have in The 600-800 Door Range [03:20] A Common Mistake Entrepreneurs Make with Ads [05:59] Expanding and Starting New Businesses [07:00] Why PM Entrepreneurs Get Stuck at 600-800 Doors [08:55] How to Get Support and Get Unstuck Tweetables “It's really difficult to outpace the market attrition with marketing.” “If the main goal is the four reasons…If you do it the right way, this could be really a fun time in the business.” “Have an executive team, trust them to implement things, paint the picture of the vision, and focus on building the right culture and investing in coaching and mentoring and supporting your team members.” “We need a framework, a planning system, so that this is done effectively, that's led by the team, that's not top down and pushed and forced by you. This is where you really start to trust your team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] We get into this temptation where we're like, "I can just throw money at things to solve a problem." Unfortunately, this usually becomes painful as the market shifts. And at this stage, you probably are losing more doors due to the owners selling than advertising can replace. [00:00:15] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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're interested in growing your business and in life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. [00:00:55] 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.  [00:01:16] All right. So today we're going to continue on this series of going through these different stages of the property management entrepreneur life cycle. So really brief recap: we've touched on some of these different stages, like being a pure startup in the startup stage, solopreneurs, creating a little bit of leverage. Today we're going to talk about the 600 to 800 door category. So last time, we talked about the 400 to 600 door category. And so, there's kind of a category of property management business owners in the 600 to 800 doors. And at this stage, they are actively seeking to escape the day-to-day and to get others into key positions.  [00:02:00] So usually, universally, you have a BDM by about the stage. You're probably no longer doing all the sales yourself. You might, if you really love that and you're really good at that, you may hold onto that. But a lot of times they're getting a BDM. They're no longer focused on doing the sales. Either that, or you've made it probably your full-time focus like that's probably your full-time focus and you now have somebody else handling all the operations. So you've picked one of those sides: you've either shifted to doing all the operations and kind of running the business, and you have a BDM that's doing the sales, or you've shifted into being the salesperson, and you have an operator in your company. [00:02:39] But either way, you're likely totally out of the actual day-to-day, boots-on-the-ground-level work of operations or fulfillment in the property management business. So at this stage, you probably now believe in pulling in outside experts. You probably believe in using coaches and mentors. You probably believe in investing in yourself and in the business to move the business forward. I don't think you generally get to this stage unless you've kind of moved past that idea that "I'm going to do it all on my own, and I'm going to do it all myself" and "I have all the answers." Right? You've evolved beyond that. Because that would have held you back or held you small, you know, prior to this. [00:03:20] So, sometimes at this stage, what I see is that they're too focused, too heavily focused or in an unhealthy way, leveraged towards doing advertising. So they're spending a lot of money on ads in order to try and get leads, to grow their business, and they lose sight of opportunities related to maybe warm leads or referrals or prospecting or networking methods that could be effective because they've gravitated towards something they feel like they can just throw money at. Cause we get into this temptation where we're like, "I can just throw money at things to solve a problem." So you might be trying to solve the problem of the lead generation by paying for ads or advertising.  [00:04:04] Unfortunately, this usually becomes painful as the market shifts. And at this stage, you probably are losing more doors due to the owners selling than advertising can replace. This happens depending on how the market is going. You'll see property managers that are highly leveraged towards advertising and are spending a lot of their money and capital towards advertising in a bad market-- or I guess I should say a hot real estate market where investors are selling. They usually find that they're losing more doors than they can replace through advertising, because it's really difficult to outpace the market attrition with marketing. Right. And so, a lot of times at this stage, I notice property managers still have branding issues, but usually at this stage, they're a little less likely to make the changes they need to. So it's really difficult. They feel pretty cemented in their name, even if it's costing them money. So sometimes, I can get them to change or fix those things and it's always worth it if there's a leak there. But they're a little bit more rigid. [00:05:07] At this stage, they've broken through some major pain and major stress points in a business to get to this level that cause most property managers to just say, "I don't want to get too big." Most property managers feel pain in the 200 to 400 door stage, and it gets really painful as they're kind of getting just beyond that, unless they finally break down and undo and redo how they do just about everything and finally let go of control and let go of doing some things and build an effective team or an executive level team. And so at this stage, you're probably building an executive level team or have team members that you trust to kind of start to own pieces of the business a little bit. So you broken through those major things, but you've likely moved on to other opportunities and are distracted by other businesses. So this is really tempting. I see this a lot.  [00:05:59] Once you get this business somewhat healthy and you get it to this stage, a lot of these business owners decide "I'm going to go start another property management business in another city," or "I'm going to go start another business like locally," or "I'm going to do some other things." So the entrepreneurial bug of startup stage that's tempting: business gets a little bit boring for them. So then they go and kind of start to screw up their focus and their attention by focusing on other things. And so they go and start to start other businesses, do other things, and then the main business doesn't really probably reach its full potential. It struggles a little bit. They might have some key people in place and they might get a little bit disconnected from reality or from what the business needs. [00:06:43] So at this stage, this leveraged property management entrepreneur-- we'll call them leveraged because they have some leverage-- they have some key people. They're not having to wear every hat and do everything. They've probably got a pretty decent team by now. And very few entrepreneurs get to this level. Usually I see it, the 600 to 800 door level, the business owner starts to check out. Usually if they can get to this and they do it in a healthy way-- it's rare, but if I see them get to this stage and they do it in a healthy way, they will continue to grow and get to higher levels. But there's a lot of property managers that get stuck or stop at the 600 to 800 door level, because they're really burnt out on the business. They didn't really build it the right way. They didn't build the team the right way. And they are now trying to figure out: "how can I put somebody in place so I can get out of this business?" and so I see a lot of business owners during this stage kind of check out.  [00:07:38] By this point, they've been through so much pain and trial and tribulation and suffering and struggle that they're burnt out and they're done. So they get people in place. They get somebody to manage and run the business. They get an operator, they get a BDM, and then they're like, "The only thing I'm going to do is maybe show up the broker on our conferences and talk about how many doors I have." And you'll see some people that do that even at higher level door amounts. But if the main goal is the four reasons as I've talked about on previous episodes-- of having a business. This is the primary goal is to have more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, more support. If you do it the right way, this could be really a fun time in the business... if you do it the right way, but for a lot, at this point, they have the option or the opportunity to step out and get somebody else running the majority of everything for them, and just be an actual business owner, which might be tempting. [00:08:34] So they might then put this business up and exit it fully, put it up for sale and find a company that is willing to acquire them. But this is a difficult stage. It can be, but I think the hardest stage is probably that 200 to 400 doors. That's really tough. That's one of the most painful stages I see companies at. So that's about all I think I have to say about that. So if you are in this stage, you probably would like some support on the operational side of things. You might want to give your team members better coaching and better support, so we would bring you into our mastermind and we would support your operator and we would support your BDMs so that they can both become really exceptional in those roles, which helps the business grow a lot more quickly, and it would help you to be able to just focus on the visionary side of things in dreaming and coming up with new ideas. And it would help put your ideas into a framework that the team can help you to build. Because now you have the team that can help you build things. We need a framework, a planning system, so that this is done effectively, that's led by the team, that's not top down and pushed and forced by you.  [00:09:47] This is where you really start to trust your team. Have an executive team, trust them to implement things, paint the picture of the vision, and focus on building the right culture and investing in coaching and mentoring and supporting your team members. We can help you do that in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. So if that sounds interesting, reach out to us. You can go to doorgrow.com, or you can join our free Facebook group, which you can get to by going to doorgrowclub.com. So that's it for today. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

At DoorGrow, we have some of the savviest property entrepreneurs on the planet in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Brannon Potts is a property management business owner in North Texas, who joined DoorGrow with only 71 doors. In only 3 months, Brannon was able to grow his business to over 100 doors with 70 more on the way! Join property management growth expert, Jason Hull, as he interviews Brannon Potts, a DoorGrow client. Brannon shares his experience with DoorGrow and how he has seen it make a beneficial impact on his business. You’ll Learn… [01:12] Meet DoorGrow client Brannon Potts [04:42] Investing in Yourself and Your Business with Coaching [07:27] What Makes Jason and DoorGrow Different? [13:09] DoorGrow’s Two Key Ideas… [20:07] Finding Fulfillment by Growing and Scaling the Business [22:49] How Brannon used DoorGrow’s Script to Add Doors [27:08] How You can Grow and Scale Your Business  Tweetables “We have these moments as coaches where we feel like-- it's similar to as being a dad and seeing your kid get an award or do something.” “As you've been building your business, it could get uglier and more painful, but we always try to make sure that the client understands that's the wrong way to do it.” “Good, coaching or good marketing or good anything that you're going to pay for should give you an ROI, right? That means it's a good investment.” “A lot of people are thinking ‘I'd rather just spend money. I'd rather just spend money because it would save me time,’ That's a cost. That's not an investment.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: For those that are on the fence, thinking about DoorGrow maybe they've heard about DoorGrow, what would you say?  [00:00:05] Brannon: You might not like this, but I think it's so good, sometimes I wouldn't want to tell anybody cause it's so good for people.  [00:00:12] Jason: All right. Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers 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're interested in growing in business and life, And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. [00:00:49] 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.  [00:01:12] And my guest today is one of my clients, Brannon Potts. Brannon, welcome to the show.  [00:01:19] Brannon: Thank you. Thank  [00:01:20] Jason: you.  [00:01:21] So it's good to have you. So Brannon, you're a client that I really enjoy working with. 1. Because you just do what I tell you to do, and it works and you're doing the right things. So I appreciate you as a client because that's always fun for me is to have clients that like, believe in what we're doing, and get it. And do it. You know, starting out, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about how you got into property management in the first place?  [00:01:47] Brannon: Sure. I think it was back-- late 2016. We were actually doing well in our sales business but had a friend give us some advice about getting into property management and you say it, even in the intro: at first, I didn't have just a great perception of property management, but I said, okay, I'm going to get into this business, learn it. I didn't know it very much. I didn't know it really much at all. And we began to grow. And over these years, we just, we grew a little bit and happened to see one of your ads and started investigating and just said, you know what? I want to join this coaching. And I did. I just said, "I really don't know very much about the property management business, and you have a background in coaching this. I'm just going to follow what he says, not question it, and just do it."  [00:02:46] And then I was going to hold your feet to the fire because you promised it and committed that if I did, you would refund my money, and I began to do that and I still have so much more to go because in your coaching, the depth of that coaching that you give, I think I'm only maybe touching on 10% of it right now. And I'm looking forward to actually many years to come of getting deeper and deeper in implementing all the things that you provide in coaching because I've been coached before. I've been actually a coach myself for the sales side. And what we've always been taught is when you teach people, typically only 10% implement what you're teaching. And I said, man, "I don't want to be that 90% that doesn't. I want to be the 10% that does. And let the chips fall where they may and begin doing exactly what you said, trying to follow it as closely as I could." [00:03:44] And what do you know? It happens. We grow, we have probably at this point, we're either from the initial investment of the coaching-- I bet you we're-- I'm trying to think-- three, four times, maybe five times now the dollars that we're generating from the coaching. So it was a great investment. [00:04:04] Jason: You mean on a monthly basis?  [00:04:06] On a monthly basis. [00:04:07] Yeah. So you've got way more residual income than what the program costs. So it's a no-brainer. And that's one of our initial goals with clients. Like we want to get them paid and make sure the program's double paid for within hopefully the first 30 to 60 days is the goal so that they can justify the expense and keep going. And then I guess you could say it's paying you now, to be part of the program.  [00:04:27] Brannon: It's-- I've made money off of this coaching and that's what everybody wants.  [00:04:32] Jason: That's what good, coaching or good marketing or good anything that you're going to pay for should give you an ROI, right? That means it's a good investment. So I'm glad that you're getting a good return on your investment. That's our goal. So you brought up something that I think it's interesting that you've worked with a lot of coaches. I've worked with a lot of coaches too. You know, I think one thing that's a little bit different from me than maybe other coaches in the industry, but there's a lot of coaches out there that don't have coaches. And they don't get coached themselves. And I think that's one of my competitive advantages, which is really simple is that I pay for really expensive coaching and masterminds and high ticket things to be involved in so that I can turn around and have value to give to my clients.  [00:05:16] Like I just came back from a mastermind, I pay a lot of money to be in it, and I shared an idea today with the group that you thought was pretty cool. We were talking about not focusing on referrals instead of referring to them, as in asking for– what did I say? I'll let you say it... [00:05:32] Brannon: an introduction. And that is an extra benefit is not just taking the wisdom you already have. You're still pouring into yourself so that you have something to pour out. [00:05:45] Cause I think a lot of people stop getting things poured into them and the great people, great leaders, and great entrepreneurs need something poured into them so that they can pour out to others. We need that relationship to continue. And that's what I appreciate of your coaching. It's your coaching, but you're still getting coached and I'm getting the benefit of your expense of coaching and you're handing extra value to us. [00:06:14] Jason: Yeah. I'm not even going to say how much I spend on coaching a year right now, but it's a lot, it's a lot. I'm in two really high-ticket masterminds, but for me, I love it because I get to hang out with the best. Like I'm talking business owners that are doing millions and millions of dollars. I was hanging out with people that are doing millions a month in business. Some are hitting a million a month or more. And these are the kind of people I get to hang out with. And I love to be able to learn. It's fun for me. And having a program in which I get to share that stuff. That's just even more fun for me. Cause I love to share what I'm learning. That's just fun for me. So...  [00:06:51] Brannon: As soon as you brought that up, I went out and shared that with my team, the ones that were here at the moment, and then I'm going to share that again on another meeting of not asking for the referral, but asking for the introduction. There's just many layers to that, of how good it is.  [00:07:09] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. And we chatted about that on our group coaching call today. And for those that are not in our group, you're missing out. So Brannon what have you noticed since joining the program? I mean, You talked about some of the concerns you had coming in and some of the challenges you were dealing with, and you mentioned that you've made your money back, you've gotten some results. How does this compare or differ or relate to all the other coaching stuff that you've been involved in the past? [00:07:34] Brannon: Jason, I don't want you to get a big head, but it has been the best coaching I've had. And I talk about it all the time. I've been through several different coaches, both in the real estate side, and just some life coaches, and the value you bring is multiple layers and genuinely appreciate that, because that's what you teach us is bringing value to people and you do. And I would share this with anyone. This is not a sales pitch. This is true value. You bring on so many different layers and that's why I've shared in the past, and I've shared it even with my wife. I said, "I see myself. I've only scratched the surface of the value you've already brought. And I see this for many years to come that I plan to be a part of this. Cause it's not a cost, it's been an investment," and yes, we're talking about growing doors, but there's many other layers to the coaching of growing the business and how you do that from operations to people who you hire, what their duties are. This was exactly what I was looking for 'cause I did not have that knowledge. Though I've succeeded it at higher levels in a lot of ways in the real estate industry, these were the parts I didn't know. And I feel like I've still got so much more to learn. [00:09:01] Jason: I really appreciate that. That's-- that means a lot to me. I appreciate it. So for me, it's interesting to me because I've been in this business-- I founded it, and we had some tough times starting this business out and like me building a team I've gone through the entrepreneurial life cycle and journey that I coach clients on. And DoorGrow, our company has made so many changes, even in the last quarter. Like the slew of things that we get done that are on our list for quarterly planning is just amazing to me that we're able to accomplish. DoorGrow's not even the same company it was a year ago. Not even close. And some clients maybe worked with us in the past or knew about us in the past, or maybe we just did a website a long time ago. And DoorGrow is not even close to the same company. Some people are probably hearing you going "operations?" And like "this?" And like "coaching." And they're like, what? And it's funny because people, I think judge me and DoorGrow sometimes by who I was maybe five years ago or two years ago, or even a year ago. [00:10:06] And my personal development aggression, I guess you could say, or my drive and the level of the team members that I have and the drive of the team and how quickly we're able to make changes and implement is I mean, I'm obviously biased, but I think it's pretty amazing. So yeah. And I think people could give us a chance that haven't been with us for a while. Our new mastermind is just really awesome and I think people are really crushing it, which is really fun to see.  [00:10:32] Brannon: And the connections you make in that coaching group. There's several people that I've made connections with that will be valuable for the future and just collaborating or, "Hey, I'm having this struggle. How have you handled it?" There's just, there's so much value and I agree it's even in-- what is it? Five months now I've been in the program it's changed and added more layers to it. But that's because of your growth. You didn't stay stagnant. You're still growing yourself and have something to pour out. [00:11:07] Jason: I'd feel guilty if I took even the majority of the credit, like my operator, Sarah, also my fiance, she's moved the needle significantly in this business, Adam, over fulfillment, Ashlee who's over a client success-- like we've got some amazing people on my team and they're moving most of the objectives forward that we have each quarter, and it's been just awesome to see. And that's part of the DoorGrow OS planning system that we've got and that sort of thing. We've got 90 members in the mastermind, so I appreciate that you brought up community cause that's a big focus of ours moving forward this quarter is we're really trying to focus on improving the community aspect. A lot of people joined for the content in DoorGrow Academy and the material that we have and the ideas, and then the people win because of the coaching. But people generally in a program will stay because of the community and the connection and the benefits of having that comradery, 'cause you know, being an entrepreneur can be a lonely journey without being connected to others, so we're really focused on that, improving that, in fact, we've got about 90 members in the mastermind, 90 businesses. We probably have on average about two people per business. So we've got probably about somewhere close to 200 people in the program I think that are actively involved. [00:12:17] We haven't really grown honestly for the last, maybe two, three months, which is weird, but we've been filtering a lot of people out. We've been really trying to make sure people are active and engaged and shaking the tree, so to speak and some of the people that weren't really engaged or active in our outreach and stuff have dropped off while we've been adding people, but we've cleaned that up. So like the program's really clean. And so I'm really excited about the community aspect because most of the people now are all pretty much engaged. And in at least on one of the calls and doing their check-ins and moving forward. So I think even though the group is still about the same size it's been for a little while, it's a lot mightier, so we're really excited about that. And now that it's cleaned out, now we're going to be adding, I think a lot of people that are going to be staying in the program a lot longer and it'll be, even we're going to be growing for sure. Yeah. So Brannon, what do you feel like are some of the most significant things that you've got out of it so far? Because a lot of people, they hear you probably saying, "Hey, DoorGrow's great. Coaching's great." And you mentioned you're making more money. What are some of the key things that really have stood out to you that you're like, "Hey, like this is different or this is interesting," or that you've really valued? [00:13:29] Brannon: I think a couple of things. There are multiple layers, so I can talk about this for a while, but the key things initially were: how to lead generate that didn't cost money. And sometimes you hear that and you think, "oh, this is just a sales pitch." It was very genuine, and it was very good. And I implemented that. So the only cost was my time and following through with what the coaching did and that added the doors very quickly. The second was helping design a pricing plan and how to put that together. I implemented one of the plans, the hybrid plan that you discuss and implemented that and began to sell that. And through selling it, I've shared this in our mastermind, how I sell that. And I'm seeing how it resonates with owners and just those two things alone, those two changes that we made alone made money. Those are just the two things initially. And then you offer other things that we're beginning to tap into and  [00:14:40] there's so much there, the content, I can only absorb so much at the moment and I'm trying to fully implement those well, but that also gives me a path for several years to come things that I'll be able to dive deeper into different sections of what all you offer and implement those. So I see a path, but those two things alone were the big key movers, which you steer people to. Doing that lead generation first and then begin some pricing and other things. So those two are the big steps that made it an investment and made us money.  [00:15:17] Jason: Yeah, if any of my competitors are listening and they want to figure out how to steal some of the magic from DoorGrow, we focus on two main things with clients and you can probably feel this. I don't think you've heard me mention this Brannon, but one of our big goals within the first 30 to 60 days is we want to make sure clients have really strong clarity on what the future holds for them, like what direction to go in. So we have our clarity assessments we take you through, so you know clearly which path. We have three different paths we take people down depending on which thing is the biggest problem in the business right now. And we focus on pain first. So we get them clarity on what they want and where the pain is and then results. So we want to get them as quickly and as effortlessly as possible to the results. So we're giving you the scripts, the language, the outreach, like all the different things to do. And you mentioned lead gen without spending money, and I know a lot of people are thinking "I'd rather just spend money. I'd rather just spend money because it would save me time," is what they think. What would you say to that?  [00:16:18] Brannon: Yeah, boy, that's a cost. That's not an investment. This is a deeper level of long-term residual lead generation so that what you teach in the coaching pays dividends, not just now, but in the future, it continues to pay residual dividends and you haven't spent any money on it because the big thing in starting a property management company or starting any company is to generate revenue before expenses and it fit with the principles of that is, is generating that revenue before you have any hard costs, which help you get profitable better and faster, then you can have money to do other things to grow it even faster.  [00:17:04] Jason: Yeah there's several things we focus on with clients. We want to decrease the expenses in the business. So we talk about how a lot of property managers, we mentioned this on today's call, right? Like a lot of property managers... it's not about what they need to do more of, or add more of in the business. It's about some of the things they need to eliminate that they are doing. And then we get into, the lead gen piece. A lot of people mistakenly think that they can generate more leads by doing advertising or paid advertising, but that actually are colder leads that take more time. So we've actually decreased your time investment into lead generation and we've zeroed out the costs. [00:17:43] Brannon: And usually it's a better quality person--  [00:17:45] Jason: --and it's an absolutely better quality lead, right? The conversion rate's way higher because we're focusing on warmer lead generation. And the other thing that I think is a secret is that you're creating market share while other property managers are fighting over the small amount of existing market share that exists. They're all in the red water. It's ugly and bloody, and there's a lot of scarcity. And I'm guessing you don't really feel much scarcity in growing your property management business?  [00:18:11] Brannon: Not at all. It's doing so well, there's moments we have to just pause for a few minutes to absorb all the new clients coming on board so that we handle them, you know? It's not from lack of business coming in now from this lead gen source, it's making sure that we handle them effectively. And we talk about this in the coaching too, of how to handle the operations when all this business comes and how to handle it effectively and efficiently. [00:18:38] Jason: That's one of my favorite problems to do is make the growth become so uncomfortable and painful. And then we shift to solving that problem. Everybody wants that problem, but we want to create that problem for our clients that they're having so much growth that it's gotten uncomfortable and they have to start hiring and scaling their systems, so. And then yeah, pricing strategy. We talk about-- like you mentioned the hybrid pricing. Initially, I got the idea from Scott Brady. He's really sharp entrepreneur. And then we've put our own nuance and spin to it to make sure that people do it effectively. So it's psychologically really effective and that's been really really great for our clients that are starting to implement that. [00:19:16] So, yeah, you're right. There's a lot more in the program. I'm excited for you to get into some of the other stuff and get through it. Because I love seeing clients get all these different pieces dialed in because the speed at which the company moves forward is rapid. Now, a lot of people, a lot of property managers are already burnt out. They're already burnt out in their business. They're not enjoying it, which I would normally say, they're just doing it wrong, but that's, I think also one of the key things that we focus on at DoorGrow is not just building a business that just gets more crazy and more hectic and moves fast, that you enjoy less and less, which is typical. Most get to 200 to 400 doors and they're burnt out. They're micromanaging their team. They hate their day-to-day.  [00:19:56] Brannon: You talk about both growing with quantity, but also growing with quality and creating a quality of life too.  [00:20:05] Jason: Yeah, it's a big deal. So our primary focus is on, I call it the four reasons. I've done a previous podcast episode on that. For those listening, you can go back and listen to that. That's our primary goal is to move people towards the four reasons of more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support. And as you've been building your business, it could get uglier and more painful, but we always try to make sure that the client understands that's the wrong way to do it. Like we can get you more support and make it more fun and you do less and less in the business.  [00:20:36] Brannon: I like to learn and listen as it scales, how to scale it, and you share this in the coaching, how to scale it properly so that you don't get burnout. So I'm aware of that and want to make sure that happens not just for me, but y'all also share how to do that for your team too. The positions and the different times to hire and how to do that effectively. So it's not just for the owner, but it's how to create quality for everyone.  [00:21:06] Jason: So you've seen some results in the program. What do you feel like your team's perspective of all this movement and change has been, and maybe even your spouse, like how is this kind of rippling out around you? Is this creating some pain and problems for people around you? Or how did they feel about all this?  [00:21:24] Brannon: Jason, you'll appreciate that I use a lot of your quotes at home. But, when you're hearing good things, you want to share it. So I would say we're growing and I think the team, I know the team is all on board and they're excited about the growth, but as any good growth, there is stretching and you have to go through that stretching process that makes you better, but you've provided several good things that help the team that I'm using to help them get through the stretching with the growth that we're having. And we'll take this problem of growth, as we all remember the great recession and we were begging to be busy. I keep mindful of that, of being grateful that we are and would not take the other side of that of not being busy. I keep that in mind and I encourage the team, and they're encouraged by the growth too. They're very excited. Even our sales team notices it and they're like, "man, maybe I should be on that side of the business." They get really excited about it.  [00:22:25] Jason: What's one thing you feel like you could share maybe with the audience, people that aren't in the program that might benefit them, that is maybe something you learned in the program or, maybe just a mindset shift or a takeaway or something that might be helpful to those that are listening? [00:22:41] Brannon: Boy. That's there's so many... [00:22:43] Jason: There are those that are struggling. What feedback or idea would you want to share with them?  [00:22:49] Brannon: I think, you know, looking for referrals from agents that are working in the multi-family or property industry that are selling investments that has helped us quite a bit, but what's been beneficial in the coaching is you've given a great template of a script of how to do it that is genuine, that really flows well and is right in line with building high trust with clients and with agents. That's been the number one benefit of the coaching is not just that idea, but then even giving a practical script that really works. We've been in coaching. We've all been in different programs where we'll see a script that is just not realistic because that person doesn't do it. Your script is genuinely realistic, and it works. I tested it. It worked. I went line by line, even had the script in front of me as I'm going through it, and it really flowed genuine and real and generated referrals that day. [00:23:58] Jason: That was actually one of those moments. We have these moments as coaches where we feel like-- it's similar to as being a dad and seeing your kid get an award or do something, but one of those moments for me was when you sent me your call recording, and you just followed the script. Because I get a lot of call recordings from clients and they don't follow the script. They either don't feel confident doing it that way, or they say it different or they think they're trying to be cute or clever. And then I'm coaching them like, "stop saying 'um' and stop saying 'kinda' and 'maybe' like show confidence." you just followed the script, and it went so beautifully, and that was just really rewarding to me to be able to hear that and go " yes! It worked." And hear that result like real-time is really cool.  [00:24:43] Brannon: I think I came into the coaching with the mindset and I thought of that 90-10 principle, and I said, "I'm going to be the 10%. Sink or swim, I'm going to be the 10% and I'm just going to follow it" and let it go where it went. But the beauty of it is, it went well. And it would for anyone that followed because we all know as we coach or teach, the ones that just say, "Hey, I'm going to be humble and I'm just going to do what you say, and let's see what happens." it generally works.  [00:25:16] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to tell clients like, "Hey, it's proven. If Brannon can do it, anybody else can do it too. Brannon's not any smarter or cooler than anybody else in our program, other than the fact that he does the work and he does what we tell them to do. And that makes you, I think, pretty smart and pretty cool. So I appreciate you, Brannon. So, um, Cool. I, appreciate you coming and taking some time out of your day to be here on the #DoorGrowShow and on the podcast. For those that are. On the fence, thinking about DoorGrow maybe they've heard about DoorGrow, a year ago or five years ago or in the past. What would you say to them now? You're on the other side of the paywall. You see what's going on in the community. What would you say?  [00:25:57] Brannon: Well, You might not like this, but I think it's so good, sometimes I wouldn't want to tell anybody 'cause it's so good for people.  [00:26:06] Jason: I've heard that. I've heard that quite a bit, which is really funny. Like "I want everyone to do it except my competition." [00:26:12] Brannon: That's it. [00:26:13] Jason: So which market are you in?  [00:26:16] Brannon: We're in north Texas.  [00:26:17] Jason: All right. So if you're in north Texas, Brannon says, do not do the DoorGrow thing. It's not going to work out for you probably, but everybody else should totally join this program. Does that sound accurate?  [00:26:30] Brannon: North Texas property managers and there's plenty of business for all of us. [00:26:35] Jason: There is. That's something, I think that we're really big on the program. You're not in the red water feeling scarcity fighting with other property managers. There's 70% are self-managing, there's tons of available potential business out there, and you've been able to tap into that tap and you're getting plenty from it and yeah, there's plenty of business out there. Very cool. Brannon appreciate you being a client. Appreciate you taking time out. And anything you wanna say before we wrap this up?  [00:27:03] Brannon: No, I think I've covered quite a bit myself.  [00:27:05] Jason: All right. Awesome. Thanks, Brannon. All right. So for those that have been listening to this and you're curious or interested in DoorGrow, you can reach out to us. And if you want to test the waters a little bit and get familiar with this, because this may be the first time you've heard about us for some reason, join our Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub.com. Videos like this get pushed into the group. I do live streams multiple times a week now. I'm sharing concepts and ideas. My goal and job is to prove to you that we have some value to offer to you. Once you get beyond the paywall, there's even more. And so join the DoorGrowClub. You can go to doorgrowclub.com to get to our Facebook group. The other thing that I would recommend is just go to doorgrow.com. [00:27:52] If you're curious and you want to set up a call and talk to my sales team, they will listen to you. I have great people on the team. They really care about our vision of helping property managers. And so if you're struggling with some issues, some challenges, bring it up to them and talk with them and they will help you see if there's a path in which we can help you deal with those challenges, whether it's you're just not enjoying your day to day, you're struggling with your team and with operations, you're struggling to figure out how to add doors and grow your business, you hate your website, you don't like your brand. Like we can help solve these problems for you and they'll help you see how we can do that. And they'll also give you access to our seven frameworks training so you can see seven different growth frameworks and really shift your mindset out of the idea that you need cold leads and you need to do advertising and you need to spend a bunch of money on marketing. [00:28:41] We'll shift you out of that and help you see why that mindset actually has been hurting your growth and will benefit you and get you moving forward. And that's it for today. So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. Reach out to DoorGrow, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye, everyone. [00:28:55] 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!  [00:29:22] 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. [00:29:43] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life. 

If you are a property management entrepreneur in the 400-600 door range, you likely experience the same issues as others in this category: company culture, strategic planning, and more. In this episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull continues the stages of the Property Management Entrepreneurial Journey series with the 400-600 door category.  You’ll Learn… [01:10] Recap of the Other Property Management Entrepreneur Types [03:29] Defining the 400-600 Door Range [04:52] Making Sure You Have Help in the Business [06:42] How to Build Your Team and Processes [08:23] Optimizing Your Business: Strategic Planning [10:09] Transitioning from Transactional to Transformational Leadership [11:20] Recap of the Other Property Management Entrepreneur Types Tweetables “So by the time you get to this 400 to 600 door stage, you are either in a massive amount of pain, it's really painful, or you finally solve some of those issues.” “So I'm hoping if you're at this stage, business is not crazy. It's not crazy at work, and things are good. And a good book recommendation is It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried.” “I believe most meetings are wasted time, but strategic planning, strategic meetings is one of the ways we really help scale and grow property management companies.” “If you don't have really clear strong culture, you probably don't have a really clear, good team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] So by the time you get to this 400 to 600 door stage, you are either in a massive amount of pain, it's really painful, or you finally solve some of those issues. [00:00:10] All right. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, 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 Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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.  [00:00:46] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and the business owner. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the 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.  [00:01:10] All right. So on previous episodes, we were doing this series of talking about all these different stages of property management entrepreneurs, and just to catch people up that have missed those, go back and watch those-- or listen. But what we talked about is we talked about pure startups, and then we talked about those that are kind of seekers and getting past that fantasy stage, and now they have a real business and seekers where they're kind of trying to figure stuff out, and these are all different door levels.  [00:01:36] And then we talked about the solo preneur property managers, and then we talked about those stuck property managers on one of the recordings. And then we talked about the transitioning property management entrepreneur, has broken the 100 door barrier, and they're leading into that next sand trap, which by default, they'll get to within a year or two, usually in the 200 to 400 door category. And we talked about that. I call it the standard property management entrepreneurs. So we talked about that group and category. And then during that last recording, I talked about the side biz, property management entrepreneur, cause some artificially break, the 100 door barrier and they really just have a side business. Real estate is maybe their main thing. And they artificially are stealing resources from that business. [00:02:19] All right. That brings you to the present and you're missing a lot of good info so that you can understand where you're at in this journey and which things you should have tackled at these various stages. We're going to talk a little bit today about. That next level. This is those that break past that 200 to 400 door sand trap. Sometimes I call it the second sand trap, maybe the third sand trap. First one is usually where just getting started. That's like the hardest hurdle for a lot. And so that could be the first, the real first sand trap once you've launched your business though is about 50, 60 doors, I see a lot. I call it the solopreneur sand trap.  [00:02:53] A lot of people get stuck there. They paint themselves into a corner. They end up trapped and that's really uncomfortable for them. So it's not like working. So the next sand trap is that 200 to 400 door stage. If you break the 100 door barrier in a healthy way within a year or two, you'll be there. And that 200 to 400 door stage I've talked about on the previous recording for the podcast. If you can break through that sand trap, and this is the team sand trap, and trying to figure out how to deal with the team, you're now going to be at this next level in the 400 to 600 door category. [00:03:29] Now, if you have achieved this level, you're at 400 to 600 doors, you may have done this through acquisition. Maybe you acquired another property management company. Maybe you got here just through grit and sheer will, and doing a lot of the sales yourself. At this stage, you probably have a pretty solid team because that 200 to 400 door stage is really painful trying to figure out your team. So now, you've got a good team. You probably like most of the people on it, and you probably aren't dealing with a ton of churn with the team. And probably at this stage, you've offloaded some of the growth oriented tasks. You may have a BDM at this stage most likely. If not, this is probably the next level for you. [00:04:15] So you might be a closer, and you want to focus on your area of genius and you have offloaded everything else. So you're still just the closer and you're closing a lot of deals, which is cool if you're good at that and you love that. If not, at this stage, I'm guessing by now you've already got some people helping you with the sales side, because you just probably wouldn't have gotten here, but if not, you need to get a BDM or at the very least a sales assistant. That you can maybe groom to be a BDM. But a sales assistant that you can offload at least the follow-up the appointment setting, stuff like that. So you need a setter basically while you act as closer.  [00:04:52] So you've probably gotten out of the day-to-day operations at 400 to 600 doors. If you're still heavily involved in day-to-day operations, I'd be surprised, at this level. I don't see that very often. However, even at this level, you still are likely your own best employee, right? You still have your hands in quite a few things. You probably have many of your processes to find 'cause usually at that 200 to 400 door stage, that's like becomes a heavy focus because it becomes so painful. You need to get these processes defined and you realize there's a lack of consistency and you realize the team aren't doing things the way that you would want, and it becomes painful. So by the time you get to this 400 to 600 door stage, you are either in a massive amount of pain, it's really painful, or you finally solve some of those issues. [00:05:40] So I'm hoping if you're at this stage, business is not crazy. It's not crazy at work, and things are good. And a good book recommendation is It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried. He's one of the founders, creators of Basecamp, CEO of Basecamp. Really, really great book. I got to hang out with Jason Fried years before he wrote that book. And he basically, during a 90 minute called taught me some of those principles and it was a game changer for my business in making the business more calm and more quiet and focusing on asynchronous communication, some other really cool ideas. So I highly recommend you check that out. One thing I'll disagree with Jason-- if you ever hear this is the idea of not having planning and not having meetings. I believe most meetings are wasted time, but strategic planning, strategic meetings is one of the ways we really help scale and grow property management companies. Game changer. And and that's using our system, DoorGrow OS, and I believe that that's more effective than EOS for those that are into rocket fuel and traction and all that kind of jazz.  [00:06:42] All right. Let's talk about this 400 to 600 door company and your team. So you probably have a good team. You like them. And if not, you might have one or two people you don't like, but you probably like most of your team. You probably, at this point have an operator in the business. You have somebody that's dealing with the operational side of things, because most of you are visionaries and visionary entrepreneurs probably need that in order to make it to this level. You probably have some systems and mechanisms in place. It's most likely that you do, you have probably some sort of maintenance process and system in place. You have a system for communication with clients that's working out really well. You have a task management system internally for the business, maybe Asana or Monday or some sort of tool that hands out tasks. We use Basecamp at DoorGrow for the little one-off tasks. And then we use Process Street for processes.  [00:07:38] So you may have something like AppFolio plus, which I heard good things about or Process Street or LeadSimple has a tool in their sales CRM for processes, checklists, that sort of thing. So you're going to have something for repeating processes that's connected to checking things off. Like it's a checklist, not just like an owner's manual that sits in the glove box of a car and no one looks at like standard operating procedures on a Google drive that nobody ever looks at. It's not going to be like that. Right. So you have some sort of process documentation checklist system as well. So that means you have a tactical task management system, you have a process system for repeatable processes, and you have some sort of communication system going with clients as well as probably several other systems. [00:08:23] So you've focused on building some systems out. Now at this stage, there's a lot of optimization. You need to optimize and figure out how to do that. And so you need to figure out what you need to do next. So you need to figure out what you need to do right now in order to control the future. You need to figure out: "how can I plan and create the future with my team?" So this is where you take your team and you need to shift them into strategic planning and build a strategic system and that would be DoorGrow OS is what I would recommend, of course. So, but you need to build a strategic system where you can get the entire team moving the business forward with you.  [00:09:05] So the 200 to 400 door primary focus is really creating culture. If you don't have really clear strong culture, you probably don't have a really clear, good team and you're not going to get to the 400 to 600 door level. So you probably have a healthier level of culture. If not, this is going to be a focus. You need to develop cohesive culture. It needs to be documented. You need to develop cohesive, strategic planning for the business, and you need to develop an internal communication system for the team that doesn't involve one to everyone communication constantly like Slack or some of these tools where you're communicating one to an entire group, and everyone thinks you need to read everything. It's about building asynchronous communication, so really you need an effective culture, effective hiring system, effective planning system for strategic planning, strategic stuff, not the tactical day-to-day stuff like I just talked about, and you need an internal communication system, which goes along with that planning and a correct cadence of meetings can reduce a lot of communication and interruptions in business. So, this is how to get to the next level.  [00:10:09] So, they have many of the processes defined and operations are running fairly smoothly in the business. Now you need to get all the team members helping you innovate in the business, not just getting stuff done that you tell them, which is transactional. Now you need to transfer and move towards transformational leadership. Transactional is I give you a task. You come back and say, you did it. I pay you a dollar, give you a task and you come back and do it, and that's the transaction. Transformational is I give you an outcome and a deadline, and then I support you in moving it forward, but you get to come up with how to get this done. And this is where you now start to have team members that think for themselves and innovate and move things forward. Instead of you having to micromanage everybody on your team, through processes and checklists. So if you're spending all your time trying to create tasks and trying to tell the team what to do and answer every question, you have a broken business that needs a strategic planning system, and that's going to free you up.  [00:11:11] But in order to do that, you need really good culture, really good team members, and now you can implement a really good planning system and you need a really good operations person or an operator if that stuff isn't fun for you. If you don't love spreadsheets and checklists and process documentation and calendars and all that kind of stuff, you're probably more of a visionary entrepreneur. You're more on the sales and marketing side of the spectrum. And you're going to enjoy that a lot more. So hopefully this is helpful for those of you. If you would like some help, if you're at this level-- I love working property managers at this level. A lot property managers at this level, some of them start to get really painful. And they, if they make it to the next level, they've checked out. I want to make this easy for you, help you implement a strategic planning system in your business. We focus on this in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. It's the "Scale" portion. Really awesome. I'd love to get you on a call with our team so we can figure out if we can help you grow your business and scale faster and get your team in better alignment. [00:12:05] And this alone can cut your staffing costs easily in half, sometimes by a third down to a third, by getting all these things really in healthy alignment and getting you in healthy alignment with your team. You're going to get way more output and that's the greatest expense in a business. So, if that's interesting to you check us out, join our Facebook group. If you're not yet ready to talk to us: doorgrowclub.com. You can go to doorgrowclub.com, join that, and we will love on you and hopefully eventually convince you to get on a call with us. Otherwise, reach out check us out at doorgrow.com and book a call. There's a little link at the top, and we'd love to talk with you and see if we can help you grow and scale your business until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth by everyone. [00:12:47] 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!  [00:13:14] 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. [00:13:35] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

A lot of property management entrepreneurs get stuck in this area between 200 and 400 doors. They’ve built the wrong team, and everything in the business feels like it’s out of alignment. These are the standard property management entrepreneurs. Property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder/CEO of DoorGrow, shares the next avatar in this series of episodes about the different types of property management entrepreneurs.  You’ll Learn… [01:15] The Next Avatar: The Standard Property Management Entrepreneur  [02:07] Have You Built the Wrong Team? How to Build the Right One [05:10] Defining Your Role in the Business [06:12] The Issues in the 200-400 Door Range [09:50] Defining Your Company’s Culture and Hiring [12:57] Inspiring vs. Controlling Your Team [14:29] The Side Business Property Management Entrepreneur Tweetables “You can't have a team that's your dream team, that's awesome, that makes you feel really well-supported if you are showing up incorrectly.” “There is nothing in the business that you have to be doing in the long run. There's nothing. You can offload any piece of the business.” “The only reason every team member should exist is because they are taking something off your plate.” “Tactical work just keeps businesses alive. Strategic is what really grows businesses.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] So they, at this stage, you probably also have all the same leaks in your business that the smaller companies do. You have leaks in your website, you have leaks in your branding, you have leaks in your reputation, you have leaks in your pricing, you have leaks and all these different areas of your business [00:00:13] All right. Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers 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 in life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:15] So we are going to continue our series this week, talking about the different avatars that we target here at DoorGrow. And so we're going to talk about a group that maybe listening to my intro were thinking, "you know, I don't know about that. manifesto, Jason. I don't know about having more freedom and that property management makes me feel good." You might be feeling really stressed out and you might have a big team helping you do this. And by big, I mean maybe you have like five to 10 people even. So we're going to talk about what I call the standard property management entrepreneur. And this is the property management entrepreneur that has built a team, but it's the wrong team. And so this is usually in the 200 to 400 door category. This is where I see-- I sometimes call this the second sand trap or the third sand trap-- this is where a lot of property management business owners get stuck. And the reason they're stuck is because they've built the wrong role for themselves, and they built the wrong team around the wrong role. So they're showing up as the wrong person. And then they built a business and a team around that wrong person to support the business. And so everybody's out of alignment.  [00:02:25] You can't have a team that's your dream team, that's awesome, that makes you feel really well-supported if you are showing up incorrectly. And so usually, that's the problem is that the entrepreneur has these myths or these misconceptions or these beliefs that they're the business owner, so they should be doing X, Y, and Z. "I'm the business owner, so I have to be the one doing the sales and selling to people. "I'm the business owner, so I have to be the one doing accounting" or "I'm the business owner. I have to be running the meetings and handling the operations." Right. I just want to let you know, I'm letting you off the hook. I'm giving you permission, not that you need it from me, but you can give yourself permission. There is nothing in the business that you have to be doing in the long run. There's nothing. You can offload any piece of the business, and the ultimate goal of the business is to get those four reasons of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. This is why we build a team. But you're probably, if you're at this stage, you're massively out of alignment with this. We talked about transitioning PM's and if you can break that a hundred door barrier, usually you're at this level within a year or two, you're in this 200 to 400 door area, and then you get stuck and it gets uncomfortable. [00:03:31] This is where a lot of people will fall prey to thinking they need to expand into a new market. Like we built it this big, maybe if we just pick another city nearby, we can start doing it there too. And that I call that premature expansion. It's a bad idea. Usually what ends up happening is they go into this new market and then their current market is starting to suffer and struggle. And then both are not doing well because you know, it starting two businesses are running two businesses and starting one while you're running another, usually means there's less focus. And focus is the most important currency related to growth. It's the most important. And so now, you're diluting your focus even more as an entrepreneur. [00:04:12] So, what we need to do is narrow your focus, even in your own business. The only reason every team member should exist is because they are taking something off your plate. But most business owners get to this point by building the team based on what the business needs. They're like "the business, we need more maintenance stuff, or we need more of this." instead of figuring out what does the business owner need? What do you need in order to move closer to the four reasons? Well, maybe you need an assistant, and you need to get rid of some of these things off your plate. Maybe you need a bookkeeping and accounting company because you don't really love doing the accounting and bookkeeping and you want it done well, and you need to offload that, right? So maybe you hate doing sales or that's uncomfortable, and lead-generation/ sales is really bad then probably in your business. And maybe you need to get a BDM or bring somebody in that's really good at that. Right? And so, If you focus on what does the business need most? And what does the entrepreneurial most? Then, you're going to bring in the right people. [00:05:10] Now, in order to do that, though, you have to be in proper alignment. You have to be doing the right things in the business. You have to know what your 'why' is, what your purpose is, what you really want out of the business. Of those four reasons, what does fulfillment and freedom and contribution and support look like for me? If I had the ultimate dream team, the ultimate business, how would I be spending my day so that you can move closer and closer to that. And then each team member you add should be helping you get closer to that. So you take everything that you do. You start shaving off and slicing off pieces to give to other people, and it should be the pieces you don't like doing. Not the pieces you don't have time to do. It should be the pieces you don't like to do and the pieces that are more tactical so that you can focus more on strategic leadership. Tactical work just keeps businesses alive. Strategic is what really grows businesses. There needs to be a general in the tent, leading the army. There needs to be a king, and the king needs to eat first, or their needs to be a queen and the queen needs to eat first. Otherwise, they'll have a starving kingdom. So let's talk about this standard property management entrepreneur at 200 to 400 doors. So this is the stage where they finally have a legit business they can live off of. It has the ability to spend money on marketing, so a lot of times they make the mistake of doing that. So they start trying out marketing channels and advertising channels and wasting a lot of money there. They're also wasting, probably too much money on their team because they don't really have team members that are giving three times the output that I'll see in healthy businesses and healthy teams that are in healthy alignment around a healthy business owner usually they'll have a third, right? They'll have a fraction of the output. The team members are frustrated. And so they're a business owner, they're likely doing still most of the sales at this stage. They have a team, but they struggle to build the team they truly want. They have consistent staffing challenges and turnover because team members really that are B players are the only ones they can attract because nobody wants to follow a starving king or starving queen. [00:07:10] They don't want to follow-- they're not inspired to have any other motivation other than to get money to follow a leader if that leader isn't really happy or enjoying their life, they're not going to be able to either. Because they're out of alignment with the four reasons. So they still feel like they're driving all the outcomes in the business as a visionary or as an entrepreneur at this stage, and they wish they could just get ahead and they're frustrated with their team. They have to answer every question, every approval. They don't have team members that can think and make decisions for themselves because this is how they've set up their business and set up the team. In the beginning, it's super tempting, right? You start bringing on people and they're asking you questions and you're like, "man, I'm so smart. It feels so good, but it wears thin pretty quick. And soon, you realize you have to drive every outcome. You have to hand out every task. You have to push everybody to do everything. And so it's not as effective.  [00:08:00] So at this stage, you probably also have all the same leaks in your business that the smaller companies do. You have leaks in your website, you have leaks in your branding, you have leaks in your reputation, you have leaks in your pricing, you have leaks and all these different areas of your business, but you're great at selling. You've probably gotten to the point where you can close deals. You're getting business on. You're getting out there, making it happen, or you found some sort of unique prospecting method that's working for you. And so you've achieved a certain level of success but, the delivery side feels frustrating because it's heavily connected to you. They often have outdated and ineffective websites. They've wasted a bunch of money on various lead sources and advertising methods. And they're usually ready to find something new that actually works, but they're gun shy and they don't believe it. Like they're scared to sign up with DoorGrow 'cause they're like, "I haven't had good experiences with this marketing firm or with this firm or with this lead gen idea or whatever." So they're cautious and they're tired of wasting money and they're wasting way too much money on their team and on resources because they just don't have the alignment they should. [00:09:12] They don't have team members that really have complete ownership of pieces of the business and are moving it forward and innovating in it. They're the only person that innovates as a visionary, and they go to conferences, come back, and have a ton of ideas they throw at their team, and it's like pulling the pin on a grenade and lobbing it into the middle of the room. And then they're freaking out. They're like, "I've already got all my day-to-day work. How are we gonna implement this cool thing you heard about at NARPM?" You know? How does that benefit me? "I'm already stressed out." Right? So you don't really have buy-in from your team. Your team are not sold on you. They don't believe in you. They're not sold on the vision of the company because you've never really made a clear and usually the big glaring problem they can't see, the blind spot at this level is you don't have culture defined. There's no culture. Really, they don't really know or care what your company core values are. They don't know or care what your why is. And your purpose is and how this business fulfills you and gives you freedom and fulfillment. They don't know or care what the customers really want. They just don't want to deal with any more garbage or complaints. Right. And so, you have some systems in place, probably at this level, this is where you start thinking, "I need to document more processes and I need more systems and I need to micromanage my team more because I need to systematize this, so what you really need at this stage is you just need to be able to get clarity on yourself. Then build the right team around you so that you have the right culture. [00:10:39] And in hiring, I talk about the three fits: you need a really good cultural fit. You need really personality fit for each role, make sure you have a good fit there. And then you need skill fit. You need to make sure that they can do the work and they have the right skill. So, usually at this stage, they have so many leaks in the business they can't see. You built a whole business around a whole bunch of blind spots. You can't see the problem with your branding or your website, your reputation, or your team members, or your own role in the business. And so I love working with these businesses because there's so much we can do, and they have the team and the capacity to move the needle very quickly. We can move things quickly and make a lot of changes and get them a lot of results really fast, and they have the money to spend to do this stuff and to invest in the business. Usually at this stage, they tend to be a bit more experimental. They're willing to try new ideas because they've dealt with a lot of frustrations and they already know what things are not working. [00:11:35] So they're open-minded to the message that I share at DoorGrow that: Hey, you could grow your business without all this other stuff. You don't need SEO or pay-per-click or content marketing or social media marketing or pay-per-lead services. Like you can grow and scale your business really rapidly adding a hundred, 200, maybe even 300 doors in a year like one of our clients did in last year without spending a dime on advertising. And I know that sounds crazy to people listening, but reach out to us and we'll share with you our seven frameworks training on how you can do that. So, anyway, this is a lot of businesses I see at NARPM in the NARPM organization. When I go to speak at local chapters, I see a lot of businesses in this 200 to 400 door range. They're stuck. They have a team that's sort of engaged that they kind of like, and they like some of their team members and some not so much and they're lacking culture. And so if this is the stage you're at, you may want to join our mastermind program and get into our scale program, which we were focused on first, so that we can figure out, assess you, assess your team, start to offload the right pieces and get the right support in place. [00:12:40] And make sure we get clarity on the company core values and client-centric mission statement and your personal 'why,' and so that we can start to build the business around you and create the right culture. Once you have the culture clear, you'll be able to see clearly whether or not your team members are buying into it or not. They're either going to have to be controlled by you, or they're going to be inspired by you. Inspired makes you a lot more money, and it's a lot more profitable, right? So the phrase that I like to repeat and say that I heard a long time ago is whenever we fail to inspire, we always by default control. Whenever we fail to inspire we always control. [00:13:18] And so make sure your team members are inspired. And if the only thing they're really inspired by is getting paid and making money off you, then they are probably people that you have to control. And they probably are what I call hiders. You either have believers. They're inspired. They believe in you, they believe in the business. [00:13:36] They believe in the vision and treating clients the way that you want to treat them. And they're excited, and they're engaged and they give you their discretionary time. They're thinking about how to be a better team member when they're in the shower and when they're at home, or you have hiders. Hiders complain about you. They live for the weekend. They really honestly would rather do as little as possible, hide, and get paid as much as possible. And that's kind of the standard American employee or standard employee maybe anywhere. So I want to shift you away from having just hiders in your business to having believers. And you'll get three times the output from believers than you will from hiders three times. Imagine how that would impact your profitability if you got three times the work ethic and output from really good team members. Right. It would be awesome. How would that affect your profitability? How would that lower your operational costs and increase your ability to have output? [00:14:29] All right. So that's all we'll chat about today about that. There's another category that tends to kind of be connected to this. It might be related to others. I'll touch on that really brief... and that's the side business property manager, and maybe that'll be a future call, but these are the ones that are often brokers of a successful real estate office. Property management's a side note. They're almost like accidental property managers. Just like in this industry, a lot of you talk about accidental investors; they're accidental property managers. They often have artificially broken past that hundred door barrier, not by fixing common problems they would have had to, but by leveraging their existing real estate revenue, and team to move past it without solving the problem. And so they're leaving a lot of money on the table. They have a lot of inefficiencies everywhere. They likely secretly hate and avoid the ugly, neglected property management arm of their business. But eventually, they start to wake up and go, Hey, this could be profitable somehow. And maybe sometimes when the real estate market shifts, they're like, "well, real estate is not doing so great. I want to hedge against this. I want my property management business finally healthy. So eventually, they wake up to the fact that it can be more profitable and they also usually need help to rebrand at least the property management side of that business, so it doesn't harm the real estate side and they can be segregated and stand healthy on their own two feet. [00:15:47] Often, these property management businesses just happen, like from natural growth from the real estate business. Like they just have investor clients. They're like, "could you manage our property?" And they're like, "okay, sure. And so they're not really even charging what they should be. It's really kind of just a service they're adding, trying to add value to keep their existing investor clients happy. But unfortunately, this growth and all the doors that they have is not effective. I had one client come to me that had 500 or 600 doors and they were making $0. They had zero profit. And this is very common with these side business property management companies, the side biz PM's. So they don't know what they don't know. They're not really focused on that business. It's kind of grown as this ugly weed and it's kind of taking over and eating resources and it's not really profitable. So it really is like a cancerous tumor on the side of a healthy real estate company. And they either should just cut that tumor off and kill it, or they need to get that thing separated, segregated, and healthy so it can stand on its own two feet, and not just be a leech of resources on your real estate company.  [00:16:54] So in order to do this, you have to shift property management, at least for a while to being the primary focus if you are the visionary. And a lot of times they want to just hand it off to somebody or give it to some operator person or some property manager or some director of property management, and they're not as big of a visionary, they're not as, you know, adaptable as the entrepreneur. And they would be able to move the needle so much faster if they just, at least for a quarter, maybe two quarters, maybe a year focused on that business and getting it really healthy. It could feed them for life. So that's all I'll say about that. So we covered standard property management entrepreneurs and the side business property manager entrepreneur, which sometimes can get up to that 200 to 400 door range as well. But they did it through kind of a back door or through a side door that wasn't as effective or efficient. And so they need to make all the changes that the early stages should have done or that others have done at earlier stages. So with that, we'll go ahead and end today. [00:17:54] Until next time to our mutual growth everybody. Check us out at doorgrow.com and I hope you have an awesome week. Bye, everyone. [00:18:02] 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!  [00:18:29] 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. [00:18:50] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

After pure startups and solopreneurs comes another type of property management entrepreneur with its own unique challenges: the transitioning property management entrepreneur. Property management growth expert Jason Hull shares his insight on the issues and problems that PM entrepreneurs face in the 100-200 door range. You’ll Learn… [01:20] The Next Avatar: the Transitioning PM Entrepreneur  [03:35] Learning to Trust Others and Building Your Team [07:41] Moving You Toward the Four Reasons for Starting a Business [09:13] Offloading the Tasks You Don’t Like  [09:41] Are You in This Stage? Keep Going!! Tweetables “If you add teammates and you're adding more expense to the business, you have to make sure you're doing it with the right people for the right things that the business needs most.” “There is nothing in the business that you have to do in the long run. If there's any piece you don't enjoy, you can get somebody else to do it.” “You can learn endlessly, but you need to be taking the right actions as quickly as possible.” “So if you're in that stage and it's uncomfortable right now, just keep going. Double down. You will graduate.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] So property management entrepreneurs, they don't stay at this level of this transitioning property management entrepreneur in the stage between zero to 200 doors. They don't stay there for very long. They either make it to the next level or they contract from struggle and attrition.  [00:00:16] All right. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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're interested in growing in your business and in life and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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.  [00:00:57] 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. [00:01:20] Now let's get into the show. So in today's episode, we're going to continue on this sort of train of thought or the series of talking about the different avatars that we target here at DoorGrow, and basically these different stages of progression in the entrepreneurial journey of property managers. So if you've missed some of the previous episodes in which we've talked about solo, preneurs, pure startups, those that are stuck, property managers transitioning is what we're talking about today. So go back and listen to previous episodes. We talked on previous episodes about pure startups and then graduating into that solopreneur stage of, you know, going from seeker to solopreneur. [00:02:04] And the next is transitioning. I call them transitioning property management entrepreneurs because they don't stay in the stage very long. So once you break that hundred door barrier, if you do it in a healthy way, you have basically graduated from that previous sort of sand trap, and you're going to graduate to the next sand trap. [00:02:27] And we'll talk about that on another call or another recording, that will be the kind of the standard property management entrepreneur, where they have a legit business at 200 to 400 doors. So you break the hundred door barrier usually within a year or two, if you do it in a healthy way, breaking that a hundred door barrier, within a year or two, you're going to be in that next sort of sand trap, typically, that next sort of challenge at 200 to 400 doors, and that's one of the most painful spots to be in. And we'll talk about that in a future episode. So let's talk a little bit about this transition. So say you break a hundred doors. You know now how to add doors. [00:03:08] Most likely you've done the work. You've did something that you can repeat. Finally, you're figuring out how to get past that first sand trap. You're figuring out how to grow and add doors. And so you've now graduated from being just at that solo preneurs sort of status. You've likely hired your first team member or two, and you're focused maybe a little bit on building processes and creating a little leverage for yourself. Maybe through assistance or other things. Going from seeker to that stage requires giving up control and trusting others, since that's really difficult for a lot of people. You probably also believe that you still are irreplaceable. You have this irreplaceable position and you probably still are lying a little bit to yourself, internally saying this sort of, kind of idea that "no one else can do what I do better than me. Nobody else could do it. It's like it's impossible. I'm so great. No one else could ever be as good as me."  [00:04:07] But you have now started to believe that at least there's other people out there that you can get and you probably are focused on some of the cheapest people. You could get, probably hiring VAs, maybe in Mexico or the Philippines. And you've started to like, let go of a little bit of that control because you're hitting a wall. Like you're hitting a limit in your capacity to focus and spend time on the business and you're maxing out. So you need some additional help and support. But if you could do it without them, you probably would 'cause you want to hold it all to yourself. Right? Because nobody's going to do it as well as you would do it because you're so great. At this stage, though, they're not good at hiring. They don't really understand how to hire. They don't understand how to build the right team. They have lots of failures when it comes to team and staffing and they sometimes wonder if they should just go back to doing it all back on their own. So you've probably thought that if you're at this stage, you've probably thought, "maybe I should just do this myself." [00:05:09] It felt easier. I hear this all the time: "if I have to tell them to do it, I might as well just do it myself." This is what this kind of category of person says, you know, "I might as well just do it myself, so it's a waste of my time." but they believe there might be this idea, they have the seed thought that there's this idea that they could have leveraged somehow. It just, they haven't experienced it fully yet. So they don't quite believe it. So property management entrepreneurs, they don't stay at this level of this transitioning property management entrepreneur in the stage between zero to 200 doors. They don't stay there for very long. They either make it to the next level or they contract from struggle and attrition. [00:05:52] Now, occasionally. You'll see somebody get to just, they might just break past that 200 door barrier and they figure out how to do it basically almost by themselves. They've got like maybe one assistant they've really gotten picky about their clients. They fired the bad stuff. They've got some processes kind of defined, and they figured out how they can almost stay a solopreneur with one boots on the ground part-time assistant and just have that. And you'll see people that have these businesses where they can do maybe 200 doors or so. It's rare to see them maybe break 300, but they'll be able to have a little portfolio like this and they'll be able to manage it. They're the one interacting almost entirely with most of the clients directly. They're still probably doing a lot of maintenance coordination stuff, but they've started to give up some pieces of the business to maybe one part-time or maybe full-time team member. And they really are pretty comfortable usually at that stage, some of them. Now, if you are like me, then you want to continue growing and you're going to get to that next level. [00:07:02] So usually they'd push through this. Once they've started into the transition, they want to fully complete that transition and they move into that next stage where they actually have a whole team. So really that transitioning property management entrepreneur at this stage, really your main goal right now is to learn how to hire, how to build a team, how to get the right people, but usually they never really learned that fully. And that's the challenge they deal with. As they build a team, they usually do it through a lot of trial and error, and then they have an okay team, but they build the wrong team-- the wrong team around themselves. And we'll talk about that in a future episode. [00:07:41] So what we do with clients early on, when they start to hire, before they hire, we have them do a time study. We figure out which things energize them and which things drain them, which things are tactical versus strategic. And then we have them offload and build out job descriptions and offload the things that are tactical and energetic drains, minus signs, so they can focus more on the strategic and the plus signs energetically. Right? So then we're getting on a team member that is taking the negatives off their plate that drain them that are not fun. So we can move them closer and closer with each new team member towards the four reasons, which is another episode we did previously. [00:08:21] The four reasons for having a business or the main goal to build a business in building a business is to have it be a vehicle for these four reasons, which is fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. And that means in order to have that, you have to have a team, and you have to have good team members. If you add teammates and you're adding more expense to the business, you have to make sure you're doing it with the right people, for the right things that the business needs most. And at the very early stages, it's really what you need most. If each team member you add is not moving you towards having greater fulfillment and greater freedom, greater contribution, and greater support. Then you are adding people incorrectly, or you're not adding the right people, or you're holding onto the wrong things. And a lot of times at the stage, you still probably believe you have to do certain things in the business. So if this is you right now, I'm letting you know there is nothing in the business that you have to do in the long run. [00:09:22] If there's any piece you don't enjoy, you can get somebody else to do it. And then will probably-- if you hire the right person-- they will be better at it than you, especially if it's something you don't enjoy and they do. They will be much better at that. And so if you do hiring right, you will build the ultimate team around you. [00:09:41] So that's kind of our topic for today is transitioning property managers. They're in this transitory sort of stage of 100 to 200 doors. I don't see very many people stay in that state for very long. It's usually maybe a year or two max, and then they're usually out of it. So if you're in that stage and it's uncomfortable right now, just keep going. Double down. You will graduate. And that graduation is building a team around you so that you are maybe in that 200 to 400 door category. And you've got maybe about five team members or more so that you can really start to hopefully graduate in fully into those four reasons. If you're like most you've done it wrong. And so we will talk about that on the next episode. [00:10:30] So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth, and if you are looking to add doors or you're looking to figure out hiring or scale operations, and you want to collapse time dramatically, the number one thing that you can do is invest in yourself and invest in knowledge. That's going to help you collapse time. If you are trying to do it all yourself and think you're the smartest person in the room. And you're trying to read books and watch videos and just learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, you can learn endlessly, but you need to be taking the right actions as quick as possible. And my goal would be as coach to help you collapse time on that. [00:11:08] So that's of interest to you. Reach out to DoorGrow we would love to help you out and support you. Our clients are getting phenomenal results really quickly, and it speeds up time dramatically and we've added some new trainings and some new material. We're constantly developing new stuff. So, and with that being said, we will talk to you in our next step. [00:11:27] So bye everyone.  [00:11:28] 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!  [00:11:55] 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. [00:12:16] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

I have noticed that property management entrepreneurs often try to do everything themselves. They think they can figure anything out on their own. This leads to frustration and wearing way too many hats as the business owner. Property management growth expert Jason Hull describes the next stage in the property management entrepreneur journey, the solopreneur. You’ll Learn… [02:02] The Property Management Solopreneur  [04:19] The Cycle of Suck and the Solopreneur Sandtrap [06:28] Fire Your Worst Doors! [08:15] $100 Earned Does not Justify $100 Spent [09:57] Don’t Undercharge [12:14] You Are Probably Limiting Your Own Business Growth [15:01] You Don’t Have to Do Everything Yourself Tweetables “It is absolutely possible to have the business of your dreams, to have the team of your dreams that supports you.” “If you have a crappy reputation and you're getting crappy reviews online guess what you attract more of? More crappy owners.” “You can't just go add another a hundred dollars expense because you're making another a hundred bucks.” “You can either be right, or you can win. You can either keep your excuses or you can start getting results, but you can't have both.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] All right. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. [00:00:42] 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.  [00:01:07] Alright, everybody. So I just got back from Mexico. My last episode was about the importance of taking a vacation and it was an awesome vacation, except for one thing. I got sick. I probably ate some food I shouldn't have, or maybe some seafood that wasn't cooked right. Or maybe I was at a bad restaurant. I don't know. Maybe-- I heard the ice sometimes, it's the ice, not what you're drinking, but it's the ice they put into it. Cause they didn't filter the ice. I don't know. So, anyway, I got sick and so I'm still feeling a little bit on the weather. I'm not feeling amazing or a hundred percent today, so you'll have to excuse me, because I am human. [00:01:47] So, but today we're getting back into talking about these different avatars that we target here at DoorGrow in property management. And so we're going to talk a little bit about today the solo preneur property management. Last time, if you missed that episode two episodes back, we talked about seekers and then a couple of episodes before that we talked about pure startups. [00:02:12] So if you miss those episodes, go back and listen to those, then there'll be very insightful for you to learn the entrepreneurial journey as he moved through various stages of property management. So today we're talking about solo preneur, property management entrepreneurs. And so these, I usually quickly categorize just based on door count. These are usually going to be people that are maybe you know, they're under a hundred doors. Usually they're stuck in the 50 to maybe 60, maybe 80 door range. A lot of times they'd been in business for two to five years. There is also a category of them that I call the stuck property management entrepreneurs. [00:02:48] And they've been in business anywhere from four to 20 years. And they're still in that five 50 to maybe a hundred door range. So let's, let's first get into kind of identifying these solopreneur property managers. The reason I call them solopreneurs is they're caught in what I call the solopreneur sandtrap. This means they've been in business usually short time, maybe three to five years before they even reach out for help. I get a lot of people at that stage that reach out for help. They don't do it in the first year, first, two years, sometimes even the third year until maybe towards the end of that. [00:03:24] Because lot of times, they think they can figure it out on their own. And they're trying. They're trying lots of different stuff. Usually they're right around 50, 60 doors, I find they might get up to maybe about 80 if they have a spouse or business partner or somebody that's kind of working for free, you know, in the business. You'll see sometimes they'll get up to maybe around 80, but that's usually about as many doors as they can handle on their own without additional team members. Or if they have a spouse or business partner. That's usually as many as they can handle dealing with, because they're caught in that cycle of suck. I've done episodes on several webinars and things over the years, I've talked about the Cycle of Suck in property management, which is you take on crappy owners, you then have crappy properties. And you take that on as well and then you have crappy tenants by default. Because they're difficult to deal with because the owner's being difficult, or the property's being difficult. And then you have a crappy reputation, and if you have a crappy reputation and you're getting crappy reviews online guess what you attract more of? More crappy owners, right. [00:04:32] So then you're caught in this property management hell, this cycle of suck So you want to escape that cycle of suck. Now, a lot of property managers or solopreneurs, they want to get on every client. They take on anybody and they move right into that cycle of suck, and they end up trapped. They're kind of-- they've painted themselves into a corner. They can't afford to hire anybody. They don't have enough money and they can't really manage any more doors. And they're usually losing about as many doors as they're getting on every year because they've taken on a lot of accidental investors, people that are only going to stick around for maybe a year, they have a lot of attrition have to replace a lot of those. I mean, often the solo preneurs that are in this stage, they often dream. They dream. Their goal is to break that hundred door barrier. And if you've already passed that a hundred door barrier, you are rare. There's not a lot that do that. There's vast majority that have a lot less than this. There's a lot that only have a handful of doors and they're dabblers, right? The seekers.  [00:05:33] And then you've got quite a few they're stuck at this first major sand trap. This solopreneur sandtrap. Often I find they're in a worse financial situation than the pure startups. The pure startups usually know that it's going to take a little money to get the business off the ground and they have some cash on hand, but these solo preneurs have tried everything, and they're investing so much into the business and they're getting such a little return or yield from that. And they have all these new expenses. They just can't seem to make it work, and they're in a lot of pain. And so they have a harder time, sometimes-- than pure startups-- in signing up with us or working with DoorGrow. I love helping all of these different groups. Solopreneurs... One of the main things that I will generally have them do to get them out of the cycle suck, is fire some bad doors. So they usually have built a portfolio up that is maxing them out in terms of time and resources. And I know property managers that by themselves have managed 200 doors and that's absolutely possible, but it's not possible if you're caught in the cycle of suck and you have bad doors and bad owners. [00:06:45] So you've got to get out of that. And so, right now, if you're caught in this sand trap and you know that your portfolio sucks, my recommendation is just fire your worst client. I guarantee if you do the math and you figure out your profit margin and you figure out the expenses that it costs you to manage that property based on profit margin, right? [00:07:06] So let's say you have a 50% profit margin, which would be amazing in most, any business, right. That would mean for every dollar of expense that you have. You need $2 to offset that in sales revenue or you collecting revenue, right? It's two to one ratio. My guess is your ratio is even worse. So it doesn't make sense for you to even keep on somebody that the expense for this owner or operating costs based on what your time is worth and effort, you are giving up a lot more than just that money. [00:07:41] And by letting go of them, it creates a lot more space. I would guarantee that these are not profitable for you to manage. The big mistake I see a lot of people in the solopreneur stage make is they don't really have a lot of financial savvy. And so you'll see people with this really unhealthy, unrealistic mindset where they'll say, "well, I'm making a hundred dollars off this door. So now that means I can now go spend a hundred dollars. That's not reality. If your profit margin were 50% that would mean you would need to make $200 in order to be able to justify a hundred dollar expense. So you can't just go add another a hundred dollars expense because you're making another a hundred bucks. [00:08:23] For most it's way worse than that in the beginning, it might be instead of a two to one ratio, it might be a 10 to one ratio, which means you need to make $10,000 in order to justify a thousand dollar expense or by cutting a thousand dollar expense, that's $10,000 in sales revenue. You don't have the pressure of generating. [00:08:43] You don't have to generate. So. They are usually in a worse financial situation. So right now, take a look at your portfolio. And if you have any owner or property, that's eating up a large portion of your time. It's not profitable. Let them go. If you dedicated that amount of time to grow your business or doing some strategies we teach at DoorGrow, you could easily offset that and create that space. And so you may also want to set a rule like maybe a three to one or five to one rule, in which you give yourself permission that if you can get on three good doors, you will fire that bad one. Or if you get on five good doors, you will fire your worst one until you get this portfolio cleaned up. A clean, healthy portfolio will make you money and be profitable and you'll have room to grow. If you don't have room to grow and you've backed yourself into a corner it's because you made some tactical errors in your business. [00:09:41] So the next thing is you want to take a look at. and I can give some examples. You know, I had one of my clients came here and his name was Sterling. He was at about 60 doors. He was charging too little. So this is another challenge I see is they think getting into the industry, they need to charge less. And I've talked about that on some previous episodes, but he was charging too little on average, maybe only charging, you know, a percentage of $500-$600 rent. So he was taking on worse properties, didn't have as much margin. And I helped him double the amount of profit in his business simply by increasing his pricing. And that also filtered out some of the worst properties. He actually pretty much doubled his gross revenue because his fees were so low, right? Like if you imagine somebody taking-- let's just throw out their number-- like 10% of 500 or $600 rent. That's only 50 or $60 a door. It's not enough. It's not enough. [00:10:40] It's certainly not enough with it doesn't give you enough space or room to grow the business or add team members. So, in six months, Sterling, after working with us and six months after we did some type of sales and did a website for him and some other stuff, he was at 300 doors and he was almost charging double. Right? So he was making a lot more money. We had a couple Will and Robin, and they built up a pretty sizeable property management business that they were focused on real estate and some other stuff. And they turned it over to a family member or somebody to run. And somehow all those doors whittled down all the way, to about 60 doors. So in about a year, we got them back up to 200 doors and they focused heavily on online reviews and some other strategies that were really effective building out a warm outreach program and some other stuff that we did with them, but they were able to build up the business really quickly and get out of that. [00:11:39] And they were stuck, partially caught in the cycle of suck. And one of the ways to mitigate that cycle suck is to focus on the reputation piece, which is that fourth step in the cycle of suck. So getting things cleaned up is a really big deal for this stage because you've probably built the wrong portfolio. Now, there are a category of property managers at this stage that have been in business longer, like four to 20 years, like a lot longer. And what that tells me is if they're still under a hundred doors and they've been doing this longer than four years or for a long time, and this wasn't just some side hustle, they were really trying to do this... it may have just been a side hustle, which is the case a lot of times, but the reality is usually these are people that are going to stay stuck probably forever. I don't even think I can help them in a lot of situations because they are ironically really smart and they're adaptive individuals, but they appear stupid others simply because they cannot see how they're limiting their own growth by trying to control everything. [00:12:45] So sometimes they are smarter than some of my other clients. And sometimes they just are too in their head. These are seekers basically that are stuck and stagnant. Their biggest challenge is their mindset that they can do it themselves. They just believe that it makes more sense to do it themselves and save money by doing it themselves, that it prevents them from being able to make more money and to grow. [00:13:11] So that's the biggest challenge is that mindset. Essentially, they focus on saving money over the speed of speeding up growth and spending money to make more money. They're cheap basically. And so they waste a lot of time and energy by seeking out stuff on YouTube and trying to read a bunch of books and trying to figure out how to do it all on their own, rather than getting expert help. They sometimes have a decent amount of ego. Sometimes, they're a bit more analytical logical, and they just feel that there's so much out there that they want to do and can do if they just had more time, "if I just had more time, I'd be able to solve all of these problems." And that is probably true, but it will take a decade to do what can be done in a year if you are really caught up in trying to do it all yourself. And if you really are that know-it-all that thinks, "I am smart enough and I can figure this out on my own. I don't need anyone else to help me do this." So unfortunately they can't see this potential. They look at the expense, the potential expense of getting new team members as insurmountable unjustifiable, because they already have this discomfort of this limited profit margin and their inability to get support and help and pay for experts really is what holds them hostage. They're now a slave to this business. So they end up trying to just do more and become more productive and get more done. [00:14:46] But everybody has a limited capacity, and they've hit their limit. And over time they build this business full of confirmation bias that relies more and more on them and reinforces the idea that no one else could possibly do what I can do. Right? They have this ego that no one else is good enough, and they view the world through this lens. So they might even try hiring a team member, and they're like, "they're so terrible." Or "they don't want to work" and they blame everybody else. And they're like, "only I can do this." And they have this ego that "I'm so amazing. I'm the guy or the gal and no one else can do what I can do." and so they make that true. It becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy because no savvy property manager would want to do things that way. And so they create this sort of prison for themselves, if you will. And in order to break out of that prison, it's a lot of work because they've built it up. They built up these walls. [00:15:44] Whether they're real or not, they built up these walls and this perception that it's insurmountable, it's difficult and they believe it. And so to destroy those walls, they fight for it. What I've noticed on calls with them is I will say, "well, you need to do this." And they're like, "well, I can't do that. I don't believe you, Jason. That doesn't mean." Or "does it make sense to do that?" Or " my owners would never go for that" or "that's how they are in my market. You don't know my market. And they always fight to keep their excuses of why they suck and why they can't grow. And it's impossible. It's really, I found it really impossible to try and squeeze a new idea into their head. And the only thing I could do is say, "look, we've got clients that were in a situation similar to you, but they're getting results. It is possible," but they are unwilling to believe it. And a lot of times, these property managers, they turn on me and they want to find flaws with me and believe that there's some sort of dirty secret about DoorGrow like we're not really in a state of integrity or we don't really do what we can do, or we're just in it to take money from people or whatever they want to believe. And they will try and find validation for this and they go hunting for it and they try and find, you know, every business that has success has a little tribe of haters, especially in coaching. [00:17:00] Right? And so they go find the other haters that all are bitter and upset that also didn't want to do the work or didn't want to make changes or thought they were smarter than me or anybody else. And weren't willing to do the work or make the changes. And they were fighting to keep their excuses. You know and I sometimes will say and I heard other coaches say, you can either be right, or you can win. You can either keep your excuses or you can start getting results, but you can't have both. You have to give something up and then if you're not willing to change your story, you're not going to be able to change your life. [00:17:37] If you're not willing to change the story about your clients or the market or all the excuses you have for why you're not winning and see something different, you will never have a different result. So if you are at this stage, you are a solopreneur property manager, you feel like you painted yourself into a corner, reach out. If you're humble enough and open-minded enough to reach out for help, we would be glad to help and support you. [00:18:02] We can help you figure out how to get to that next level. Hopefully you've gotten a few tips and ideas just from this call alone so that you can get to that next level and move forward. It is absolutely possible to have the business of your dreams, to have the team of your dreams that supports you and to find people that are better at each of the things you don't enjoy doing in your business. Is absolutely possible to find people that are better in each of those pieces that you aren't naturally inclined to do or don't love doing. It's possible to find people that will be better at it than you. They will surpass your ability in those things. I've seen it over and over and over again. My team are built as a team of people that are all better at things that they enjoy doing and love doing and that they are doing. They're all better at those things than I would be. Most entrepreneurs, we're highly adaptable. I used to do everything in the business. Right now, you might be doing everything in the business, but you don't love and enjoy everything. I have an episode. Previously, I talked about the four reasons. Go back and listen to that. [00:19:08] You are heavily out of alignment with the four reasons if you really want to hold on to everything and do everything and control everything. And there's a process to feeling safe, letting go of those things and finding people that are better at it than you and making the right hiring decisions at the right time. Otherwise you'll make a tactical mistake and you get crushed or your business fails because cashflow is king and you have to have cash in the business. So you don't want to hire the wrong person. You need to hire the right person with the right job to take off the minus signs or the things that energetically destroy your dream, and that's what you need most. [00:19:44] So I'm really good at helping business owners build the right business and the right team around them. Instead, what most do is building the business that they think that and building the team that they think the business needs instead. So, and they just build a stronger and bigger prison for themselves as they gravitate up into the 200 to 400 door range, for example. So that is solo preneur property managers and stuck property managers-- that early stage-- stuck in that early stage. So if you would like to escape that and you're, open-minded enough reach out to the DoorGrow. We'd be glad to help you. You can check us out at doorgrow.com and you can also join our Facebook group by going to doorgrowclub.com. [00:20:26] So doorgrow.com is our business, and doorgrowclub.com is our Facebook group, our community, for those that are enjoying this podcast, and we will be glad to start you on your journey of escaping being the solopreneur. And next time we get in one of these avatars, we're going to be talking about the transitioning property management entrepreneur that is moving speedily from a hundred doors-- they've broken that a hundred door barrier into the 200 to 400 door sand trap. Right. So we'll talk about that next. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. I hope to see you winning we'll talk soon. Bye everyone. [00:21:03] 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!  [00:21:30] 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. [00:21:51] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

If you want to scale your business, you have to let go of controlling everything. How? Plan a vacation. Vacations are ESSENTIAL in owning and running a business. Yes, really. Property management growth expert Jason Hull and DoorGrow Operator Sarah Hall explain why taking vacations is essential when running a property management business. You’ll Learn… [00:38] Where is Jason this Week?? [01:47] Why Should You Take a Vacation as a Property Manager? [02:53] Schedule Your Vacation in Advance [04:08] How to Prepare Your Team (p.s. You are Not as Important as You Think [06:21] Making Sure Your Business is Scalable Tweetables “Vacations are essential. You've got to be able to take a vacation and relax, otherwise you'll burn out.” “If you don't schedule time to make sure that you are healthy mentally and healthy physically and taking time to relax, the whole business will suffer.” “It forces your team to step up and level up because they can't lean on you anymore. So by taking vacations, it actually improves your team.” “I realized I'm not as important as I thought I was in my own business. Which is humbling.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: Vacations are essential. You've got to be able to take a vacation and relax, otherwise you'll burn out.  [00:00:05] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers. So today's going to be a little bit of a different episode. I'm on vacation. And where are we?  [00:00:16] Sarah: Acapulco.  [00:00:17] Jason: Acapulco. So this is going to be a little different episode. I'm doing this from my phone. So hopefully this turns out. You're not going to-- I'm not going to read my manifesto, my normal intro. Just know that if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to grow your business and you do things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker, so. And, uh, you want to do things differently, alright? That's like the short version.  [00:00:38] All right. So, we're sitting here at the Banyan tree resort in Acapulco, which is like the number one resort. It's really nice. We are by the little pool near the bay here. This is the ocean. And, uh, what are we drinking? We've got the best mojitos that I've ever had. Which really sucks because once we leave here, I will forever feel like all other mojitos are not as good because these are the best ones I've ever had, so we'll have to come back to get a good Mojito I guess, so. They're really good.  [00:01:14] Anyway, what we want to talk about on today's episode is vacations, the importance of vacations. So one of the things I've noticed in dealing with and helping and talking to thousands of property managers is that there's a general lack of taking vacations. And this is one of the things that I coach clients on doing. So I'll let Sarah talk. So I'm here with my fiance, Sarah, who's also the operator at DoorGrow. She's amazing. She's already helped us save hundreds of thousands of dollars and figuring out things and really getting operations dialed in. So why do you think managers should commit to taking vacations? Like I'm in such a state of overwhelm, I'm completely part of the day-to-day operations. I don't have the support that I need. How am I going to take vacations?  [00:02:02] Sarah: So I'm also a property manager and vacations are essential. You've got to be able to take a vacation and relax, otherwise you'll burn out. It'll just keep going, your business. You're always going to have things to do. You're always going to have your endless to-do list and your things that need to get done and you would like to get done and things that you know is gonna happen to move your business forward. So that will never end, ever. So, if you don't schedule time for yourself, then your business will suffer. If you don't schedule time to make sure that you are healthy mentally and healthy physically and taking time to relax, the whole business will suffer.  So make sure you take some time for yourself. Plan family time. Plan vacations. Plan little trips. [00:02:53] Jason: To really make sure we drive this home. I want to point out that just scheduling a vacation. Schedule it out in advance. Give yourself plenty of time to prepare. If you haven't taken one in the last two or three years, do it right now. Sit down with your partner, your spouse, whoever, especially if they're involved in the business with you and say, "let's just schedule it." Because just by scheduling it and setting that intention, you have to figure out how to make it work. Set it out 90 days out. You can pretty much change everything significant related to this in the business in the next 90 days. Schedule a vacation schedule six months out if you feel like there's no possible way you could do this. But schedule the vacation and then do everything you need to do to get ready for it. If you have a team, even better. You can start meeting with your team and say, "Hey, look, I scheduled a vacation. It's in the next 90 days. It's on this date and we need to make sure we are ready for when I'm going to be gone because I'm going to be gone." [00:03:52] And I want you to be gone during your vacation. Like, "I'm not going to be available. You can't hand me escalations. I can't put out fires for you. I'm not going to be able to take care of problems. Like I'm going to be off grid. You'll need to figure out how to handle this." So if you have any team members at all, then you can do that. [00:04:08] If you need more time, get at least one one executive assistant, one team member, an operator in your business. And if you need help with that stuff, talk to me, talk to our team at DoorGrow. We can get you in a place where you're ready for that and figure out how to build out a really good hiring system. But if you set that intention, you can figure it out. You can figure out with your team, "what processes do we need for me to be gone for a week? What systems do we need to have in place for me to be gone for a week? Who needs to know how to do what in order for me to be gone for a week? [00:04:42] And so if you set that intention to do that, what I found was when I finally just started scheduling vacations, a couple of things happened. One, I realized I'm not as important as I thought I was in my own business. Which is humbling. Like my team actually stepped up and could handle stuff without me. And it forces your team to step up and level up because they can't lean on you anymore. So by taking vacations, it actually improves your team. The other thing I noticed was that leading up to the vacation, we got a shit ton of stuff done. Like we got a massive amount of things done: processes documented, things figured out, things changed. All this stuff that was on my plate, I had to start figuring out how to give this up in order to be prepared for it. So we had massive momentum and a massive amount of changes in the weeks leading up to the vacation Because stuff got real, and they knew I wouldn't be available, and everybody started to freak out a little bit including myself. So I started making a lot of changes. So this is an intentional way of forcing yourself to get out of the business, which is what you want. You want to have more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, more support. And in order to do that, you need to be able to lean on your team, and by forcing and setting an intention of a vacation, this will allow you to have a vacation. This will allow you to create distance from the business and be able to have a business that can run without you for at least a week. Very few things can really get completely destroyed or damaged in a week, right? You aren't going to lose clients in just one week.  [00:06:10] So set the intention, schedule a vacation, especially if you haven't done it in the last year or two. All right. My phone is saying we're on low power mode, so that means it's time to get back to vacation. So anything else we should add?  [00:06:21] Sarah: Yeah. We also want to make sure you and your business are in a position to scale. If everything is on your plate and you can't offload anything and you can't trust your team and you don't have any processes or any systems or anyone you can rely on you can't scale. You can only handle so much. Every person can only handle so much. So, if you want more out of life and you want more out of your business, and most of us do, you've got to be able to figure out what to do to get yourself out of the business. [00:06:52] Jason: Yeah, you're not as important as you think you are. Like, that's one of the humbling things us CEOs or entrepreneurs need to realize and learn. And the more you are out of the business and less you're involved in it, and the more you're able to lean on your team, the better the business actually does. And I've heard this repeatedly from multiple business owners and entrepreneurs I've helped over the years that the business and the team are happier and things are better because usually us as entrepreneurs, we're not really good managers. Most of us are visionaries and we're not good operators. So anyway, that's all we're going to do for today here for those that want some FOMO and you can see here what we're hanging out and dealing with here in Acapulco. And until next time to our mutual growth, everybody. Check us out at doorgrow.com. [00:07:35] We want to help support you and grow you in your business and help you have the business and the life of your dreams. And that's what we at Doorgrow all get a thrill of doing, to support our clients. And we want you to be able to experience more of this. All right, bye everybody. Until next time, to our mutual growth. [00:07:52] 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!  [00:08:19] 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. [00:08:40] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

After getting past the pure startup phase, property management entrepreneurs begin to face new challenges. Whether you have 1 door or 50 doors, you probably experience similar problems and fall victim to common mistakes. Property management growth expert Jason Hull explains the common pitfalls and challenges that “seekers” face in the property management industry. You’ll Learn… [01:12] Seekers: the Next Phase of Being a Property Management Entrepreneur [03:14] Falling Victim to Franchises [04:34] Learning the Ropes: Product Research Interviews [07:16] Getting that First 50 Doors [08:11] Becoming an Expert in Your Field [11:47] How to Collapse Time and Avoid Wasting Tens of Thousands of Dollars [12:32] Getting the Right Kind of Leads Tweetables “One of the big challenges: you don't know yet what you don't know at this stage.” “Get educated because the more educated you are, the more of authority you are” “If you are a decent human being, you will experience imposter syndrome. Every entrepreneur goes through this state.” “Remember, nobody wants to buy property management from you. What they really want to buy from you is peace of mind or safety and certainty.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Remember, nobody wants to buy property management from you. What they really want to buy from you is peace of mind Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and your life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and the business owner. 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 am your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:12] So on a previous episode, we started talking about this journey that the entrepreneur or the property management entrepreneur business owner goes through. And we started with the pure startup. The zero door crowd. So today we're going to get into the next level. It's barely beyond that. It's like one door beyond that. Like they've actually started. And these, I call seekers. Why? Because they are seeking a lot. They're seeking a lot of knowledge. They don't know a lot. They're trying to figure out like what they need to do. They're trying to get over all sorts of challenges. So when you first start taking action, that's a big leap. It's difficult. So a lot of times these might be-- and if this is you, you're likely a realtor, maybe with a few rental investment properties of your own. Maybe you have a little bit of experience managing properties for yourself, or maybe a little bit for others. [00:02:14] These seekers are not yet even aware of how painful and tough it can be until they mature into kind of that next level we'll get into in a future episode. They are now wanting to start a property management business, and they are easy prey to making many common mistakes. They fall prey to a lot of potential pitfalls, such as selecting poor branding. Choosing poor branding that costs them a lot of leads, getting a website that doesn't convert and capture leads well, not pricing themselves effectively... like trying to be the cheapest in the market, no strategy for online review gathering and they start quickly earning a negative reputation just from their first few interactions taking on bad clients that costs them 10 times good ones. We talked about the cycle of suck on a previous episode. I recommend you review that if you're in this stage or any stage, really. And so that is a challenge. They're caught in the cycle of suck.  [00:03:14] A lot of times in this seeker stage, they fall prey to expensive franchises. And so, you know, you can check out DoorGrow, and just Google DoorGrow and "property management franchise alternative." and we have a whole page about the potential pitfalls of choosing into a property management franchise and all the limitations that that creates and why it may not be a good fit for almost anyone so. Paying for expensive and ineffective marketing channels, which franchises generally push you towards such as SEO, pay-per-click content marketing, social media marketing, pay per lead services, and you end up getting really poor results. So it's really costly, takes a lot more time, and you get way less results. A lot of times at this stage, they're seeking a broker. Uh, that's an issue with pure startups. A lot of times they're seeking a broker. They're working on getting their brokers license. They may be working underneath the broker instead of having their own brokers license, and they're just seeking a lot of tools and resources and ideas. And there's so many shiny objects, so many pieces of software, so many tools, and a lot of times they go down this rabbit hole of just playing around with all this stuff and not actually taking action and moving forward. [00:04:34] So. I've seen a lot of clients come to me that were kind of at this level and at this stage, and one of the big challenges: you don't know yet what you don't know at this stage. You haven't learned yet how difficult certain pieces of the business can be. So there's a lot of decisions that need to be made. So one of the things that I teach clients just to throw a bone out is an idea or strategy called product research interviews. And without giving away too much awesome stuff just on our free podcast-- but I want to always give value-- is product research interviews are going to be a great tool for the seeker and for the pure startups to get ideas and to learn what they need to do to please investors. It helps them learn what objections, what challenges. So do some product research interviews. If you are going to create something new, a new product or service. Such as starting a property management business and offering a suite of services for property management, my recommendation is you do some product research interviews because you may not really know. You know maybe what you need as an investor, but you're one limited avenue for information. And so my recommendation is that you talk to at least minimum 20 or 30 investors. And ask them about their concerns, why they haven't used a property manager in the past, if they have, what challenges have they had. [00:06:06] So you get connected to reality in terms of how the investor thinks, what their mindset is, what challenges they see, what their objections are. Once you've done this with about 20 or 30, you'll probably be almost as savvy as a lot of property managers that have been doing this for at least a handful of years, because they never did that, so they just waited until they had 20 or 30 solid opportunities. And then eventually they actually got wise enough to start asking really healthy questions to get feedback, which might've been, you know, a hundred people in after talking to a lot of investors. So I want to collapse time for you. Start doing some product research interviews. Real simple. Go out to some sort of real estate investor group. Start connecting and meeting people and just say, "Hey, I'm starting a property management business. It looks like you're doing some cool stuff in the industry or that you're an investor. I would love to take you out to lunch, pick your brain. I could really use some feedback on what I was looking at doing and offering to clients." And the secret that we talk about, even in more detail in our program is these are awesome leads. This is a really easy side door to get some leads for your business to get things started. [00:07:16] So getting that first 50 doors. A seeker, may be like one to 50 doors, right. And this stage you are just learning. You're just learning, like "how should I handle a lease?" And like, "how should I handle contracts?" And like, "how should I like get property management software in place?" And like, you're just focused on some really basic stuff to get the business healthy and going, and you might get caught up on stuff that you don't really need to spend a ton of time on yet. Like if it's just, you, you don't really need to be spending a ton of time documenting processes or worrying about VAs or, you know, some of this kind of stuff. That's probably once you have 50 doors, then it's time to start maybe focusing on "how can I offload a little bit?" "how can I start creating some leverage?" Maybe there's some software and some tools, and then we'll get into that on a subsequent podcast episode.  [00:08:11] So if you are a seeker and you are figuring this stuff out, I mentioned this for the pure startups, but a lot of seekers need to hear this too. Make sure you really learn the laws and the rules in landlord tenant law, and get really connected to the local real estate board and just really be aware of what you can and cannot do or should and should not do in your market. Get educated because the more educated you are, the more of authority you are and the more you're going to kill what every seeker feels, which is imposter syndrome. Seekers have stepped beyond the fantasy and they're in reality and reality is uncomfortable. And the pain you will experience, if you are a decent human being, you will experience imposter syndrome. Every entrepreneur goes through this state. You suck during this stage, you're going to experience a lot of pain and a lot of people avoid the suck. You have to just start sucking to get over it. You have to lean into the suck and you have to be willing to look stupid sometimes and ask dumb questions. [00:09:16] Cause you're not going to learn otherwise. And you need to be willing to experience that discomfort of imposter syndrome. And figure out how to overcome it, so you don't feel like a fake or phony or are worried whether or not they're going to know whether you know or don't know something. It's okay to admit that you're new. It's okay to admit that you might not know something, but that you will figure it out. You could easily say, "you know what? I don't actually-- I'm not totally clear on that, but that's a great question. Let me do a little bit more research and I will come back to you and let you know what I find out. You know, I have some connections with my lawyer. I have connections with my trade organization. I have connections with some of my investor clients. Let me ask around and find out a really solid answer for you on that." [00:10:06] You don't have to know everything immediately. They want to know that you can figure out problems and solve problems for them. And you don't have to be the expert on everything, but I want you to become the expert. Like become the expert that they can lean on and trust because that puts you in much higher category in their mind of trust. And they will want to do business with you if they feel safe with you. Remember, nobody wants to buy property management from you. What they really want to buy from you is peace of mind or safety and certainty, as I've talked about before. I talked about on a previous episode, the four reasons for entrepreneurs to start a business. The fifth reason for people in motivation of why they are involved in businesses or that you need to focus on a business. That fifth reason is safety and certainty. And so that's really what people want to buy from you. So make sure you know how to offer safety and certainty to them instead of just offering a bunch of products and services and things about managing their property that will maybe create safety and certainty. Help them become certain in you that you're going to create safety and certainty and they will care a lot less about all the details and features and benefits and trying to micromanage you and trying to ask way too many questions. That's usually a clue they're not feeling safe with you and they are uncomfortable and they don't feel like there's a high level of trust or safety and certainty. And remember, sales and deals happen at the speed of trust. So the faster you can create authentic, real trust, the faster you're going to get results, so. [00:11:47] If you are a seeker and you're struggling with some of this stuff and you're trying to figure it out and you don't want to make a ton of mistakes and you want to collapse time and you don't want to waste tens of thousands of dollars on marketing and signing contracts with marketing agencies, and you want to get some real solid wins, you want to grow your business without spending a dime on marketing and just investing time, but actually less time than it would take if you got leads through marketing-- which takes more time, by the way, than the warm lead strategies that we focus on at DoorGrow. If you want to spend less time and less money and get more doors more quickly, then reach out. One of my clients-- just had a call with him just the other day-- he's added 300 doors in the last year in working with us, about 300 doors.  [00:12:32] That would be impossible if you were focused on any lead gen channel or advertising channel, you know, if you were doing marketing or paying for SEO or pay-per-click or content marketing or social media marketing or any internet marketing, that would be impossible because those leads would have been colder. He wouldn't have had the time. He wouldn't have had the time to be closing that many deals and that many doors, but when deals come to you hot or warm and you're getting warm leads and referrals, and you've really optimized that sales pipeline for that, you built up really good partner programs and some of the stuff we talked about, this can go really, really fast because. The close rate on warm leads is super high. It's like 80, 90% typically. And the sales cycle time to close them is way shorter, so you're spending way less time selling. So if you want to get this business off the ground, build the right engine from the get-go. And then once it's built like this client, he's just injecting a little bit of fuel into this engine. He doesn't have to invest all the hours that he was putting in, and he was putting in like probably 20, 25 hours a week, I think, into this strategy. It is like a part-time job just to focus on sales and grow the business.  [00:13:45] But now, it just takes a little bit of fuel to keep that engine going now that he has really good connections, really good partners. He's built that. And there's some really easy, low hanging fruit that can get you a lot more doors than any of the really expensive cold lead marketing strategies. Some of them are so obvious, such a no brainer when I point it out to our new clients, they're just, they're just winning. It's just wins. We started doing in our mastermind, a new client call cause we had so many new clients that are in the early stage. And we started doing that on Tuesdays. And a lot of these are in this seeker category. [00:14:19] They've started the business, but they're in this difficult sort of stage and they have to build the engine. And the call that we just had, the first two calls we did on Tuesdays were just sharing strategies. Right? But this last call yesterday was just wins. It was just really awesome. It was lots of wins. Everyone's sharing wins and they just couldn't believe-- like they're batting a thousand. They're making calls and they're getting zero on some of the calls that they're doing. They're getting no one saying "no" in building up these referral relationships. And I know that sounds crazy and ridiculous, and you probably don't believe me, but join the program and then you'll be like, "oh yeah, that makes sense." and "that is so easy." And "I can't believe, I didn't think of doing that. I would never say no to that either." Right. So, anyway, if you're interested in growing your business, you are a seeker, check us out at doorgrow.com. Schedule a call with my team and let's get you into the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. [00:15:18] And our first goal with all of these seekers is to get them paid. We want to get them making double what the monthly cost of the mastermind is within the first 30 days, so that they're making enough money to justify the expense. Double the cost of the expense. They're making double that. So, and that's not too difficult to do. For most property managers, it's maybe like 10, maybe to 20 doors, depending on how much money they make per door, which later in our program, we will optimize and improve because everybody comes in with bad pricing. [00:15:50] So, all right. So that's it for today. For those of those seekers out there, keep seeking, and you will find right. This is what the Bible says anyway. So it keeps seeking, you'll find it. And hopefully in your hunt or in your seeking, you find DoorGrow. We would love to help you out. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:16:10] 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!  [00:16:37] 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. [00:16:58] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life. 

How many times have you considered going into short term rentals as a property manager? Short-term and vacation rentals are enticing, but they can also be an intimidating niche for newcomers.  Today’s guest is Alex Jarbo, short-term rental developer and manager and CEO of Sargon Investments.He is the host of the Youtube Channel called Alex Builds where he teaches the ins and outs of short-term development and management. You’ll Learn… [01:08] Starting out in the Short-Term Rental World [08:04] Useful Tools for Managing Short-Term Rentals [12:13] Virtual Guidebooks: Providing a Unique Experience to Guests [15:42] Dealing with Common Issues in Short-Term Rentals [18:32] Some Extra Tips from Pro Short-Term Rental Manager Alex [23:06] The Shifts in the Industry Since COVID [25:34] Where to go to Learn More! Tweetables “And anytime I talk to someone they're like, "I don't know where to start investing." I was like, just start in your backyard.” “It's easier to rent out these unique properties compared to, say, something like a normal condo or something.” “I like the property to be an experience in itself on top of the city that the people are visiting for the attraction.” “I talk to a couple of people a week then it's like, is it too late to invest in short term rentals? Like, no. It's not. Invest and manage both.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Alex: I talk to a couple of people a week then it's like, is it too late to invest in short term rentals? Like, no, it's not. Invest and manage both. [00:00:06] Jason: Alright, welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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're interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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.  [00:00:44] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and the business owners. 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.  [00:01:08] And today's guest is Alex, Alex Jarbo. Am I saying your last name right?  [00:01:13] Alex: Yup. [00:01:14] Jason: I did? Okay. I didn't know if it was like a soft, "h" sounding 'j' or something. So Alex, welcome to the show. You have a company called Sargon investments. You do a lot of cool Airbnb stuff. So I'm really excited to have you on as a guest. I think the Airbnb market is of interest to a lot of my clients and a lot of property managers. It's heating up. There's more interest growing. So, maybe to get started: tell us a little bit about your background and how you kind of got into dealing with rental properties. [00:01:48] Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So I was originally, I served about four and a half years in the Marine Corps. And then I had gotten to a point where I just wanted to branch out and sort of do my own thing outside of the military. So, got out, and then the day I got out of the military, I actually moved down to where I live here in Asheville. Prior to that, I spent a couple months trying to figure out like where I wanted to move. I'm originally from Detroit, Michigan. And I wanted to get into short-term rentals. That was sort of the niche that I had chosen inside real estate. So when I moved here, got my real estate license, helped some people purchase and sell properties, but I saw a lot of people purchasing short term rentals that would just come to me. [00:02:26] So I decided to purchase my first one or at least start to purchase my first one. And I originally wanted to use my VA loan and purchase like a duplex or a triplex, live in one, and rent the other couple out on Airbnb. But what I realized really quickly was that like it was just very difficult, even back then in 2017 to find good, cash flowing short-term rentals that weren't completely out of my budget at the time. So after maybe like three months of looking and getting outbid a lot, I decided to build my first short-term rental. And on top of a building I decided to take over the, uh, management. So that's where I decided to both start a development company and start a management company. And that one property turned into two, two turned into four that we're developing, and now we're developing 10 and then working on like a boutique resort. [00:03:13] But yeah, that's the sort of the short of where I'm at now is just focusing on putting together these like boutique resort developments. And then we self manage in house. [00:03:24] Jason: Awesome. So a lot of property managers listening might think "I would like to be an investor and maybe get some of my own." I know some of my clients dabble a little bit just in their own investments. Even if they manage long-term rentals, they want to get more into AirBNB. So why don't we approach that topic first? Like getting into it, you do some things that are a little bit different than the typical Airbnb investor. And one of which being cabins. So I'm really curious about this idea of: why cabins? [00:03:59] Alex: So this is prior to COVID. My whole idea was like-- right now we invest in mountain communities, but every market has their own little area. And anytime I talk to someone they're like, "I don't know where to start investing." I was like, just start in your backyard. If you live in a Metro area, like a lot of areas, you're going to be renting out, like say condos, or you're going to be renting out apartments or something just cause you're in a busy metro city. I like to ask them like "where in your city or the market that you live in-- where do people like to take weekend vacations, maybe an hour to two away from you driving wise? [00:04:29] And that's sort of the market that I recommend people sort of go into. People are fine with driving say like 15- 20 minutes away from like a Metro city up to an hour in some cases. So like a good example of that is like people in New York, like New York city are going to travel maybe two hours. They're used to traveling two hours north to vacation, same thing with, say like in California on the west coast. People in San Diego are pretty used to going up to Big Bear Lake and taking that drive. Land prices are going to be cheaper.  [00:04:59] You can also host some like, not parties, but like bigger-- you can host more people in some of these larger cabins and you have more control on the design and that's sort of the thing we really focus on is focusing on developing unique cabins, whether it be a frames, really nice log cabins... we're, we're dabbling in like tree houses. It's just difficult to find like financing on those right now. The reason we gravitated towards cabins over something like purchasing a condo in a Metro city is we have more control over the design, which just plays into the marketing. It's easier to rent out these unique properties compared to say like something like a normal condo or something where it's a little bit more difficult to differentiate yourself to like the condo next door or something. [00:05:41] Jason: So it sounds like some of the key things you look at is proximity: like pick an area that's nearby. It needs to be something kind of where people take vacations and then novelty seems to be an aspect to this. Like cabins are a novel thing in the mountain area and making it somehow unique or different or stand out.  [00:05:59] Alex: Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, what I always like to say is: say, if you're not developing the property and you're coming into it, you want something unique about the property. I like the property to be an experience in itself on top of the city that the people are visiting for the attraction. So like, if you're looking at a market that has its attractions, but at the same time, it's like you sort of get rid of the seasonality part of it a little bit when the property itself is an experience in itself,  [00:06:24] Jason: Mmm, yeah, good point. The property kind of needs to be its own event or its own thing. Yeah. Cool. So let's shift gears and talk about property managers that might want to get into this game of targeting people. Like you have a portfolio or a small portfolio of investments that they can maybe get on as clients and what that might look like. And then maybe one of the things I think you're really good at is the technology. And so we could chat maybe a little bit about that.  [00:06:55] Alex: Yeah, for managers who are looking, before this, we were talking about like a lot of long-term managers are sort of starting to dabble in the short-term rental game. It sounds intimidating, but it's not as intimidating as it sounds. There's a lot of technology out there right now, plugins and then also CRMs that make the process pretty seamless. Depending on how many properties you have in the portfolio, you really don't need boots on the ground. It might in terms of like having a property manager in an area. Again, I would focus on one market at a time.  [00:07:25] But you can get away with a part-time maintenance person. The most important part is probably going to be your cleaning crew, and that's going to be up to you. There's pros and cons to either hiring your own, like managing the cleaning in-house or teaming up with a local cleaning crew in the area that can handle the cleaning stuff. Which again, the cleaning is definitely like-- I look at my cleaning crew as almost the manager of the properties themselves, because they're there at least twice a week or at least once a week, depending on what the booking looks like. So they see what needs to be replaced, what's damaged. If anything is damaged, they send me a picture directly, which I send directly to either Airbnb, VRBO, or wherever the property's listed.  [00:08:04] So the technology piece is going to be huge. And it, again, it's all dependent on how big you are. If you have 10 cabins, you can probably get away with, there are messaging plugins where it's like, I would say 80% of your messaging is automated. And then you can hire virtual assistants to sort of take over the other 20% of the messaging where it's like specific questions that are asked or say, if they're calling or something. [00:08:26] Jason: So the cleaning crew is almost your inspection crew. Like they're doing somewhat of an inspection as well, not just coming in and cleaning. So they're identifying issues, submitting things to your maintenance team or your system for maintenance. And then you need people that are managing that. And then you've got VAs that can help facilitate some of these things happening right? [00:08:48] Alex: Right. [00:08:49] Jason: What are some of the actual technological tools that you utilize that help you to systemize the business and make things simple for yourself?  [00:08:58] Alex: The first one is-- and I'll talk about maybe four or five tools here. The first one is going to be a tool and a company called StayFi. And I've talked about this tool so much now that I've recommended it to anyone looking to get into short-term rentals. StayFi is essentially a little disk that plugs in the back of the router. And what that does, is it email captures any guests that's using your internet. That 1. Protects you from if the guest is doing anything illegal on your internet, which might happen. But 2. It captures everyone's email in the cabin.  [00:09:29] So, you're essentially taking digital marketing principles and applying it to brick and mortar business, which is the short-term rental stuff. Which is a little difficult to do, but if you can master that part, you can essentially capture your customers. So StayFi. Imagine like you're walking into a Starbucks, you walk into an airport and you have to enter in your email address to be able to get access to the wifi. It's the same idea here, but it's geared towards short-term rentals.  [00:09:52] So from there we use MailChimp to push out marketing emails, but we push out maybe seasonal emails, like three or four emails a year just saying, "Hey," like "this season's coming up" or "Valentine's day is coming up. Would you like to book with us?" [00:10:04] Originally, when you're starting off, you can just put your Airbnb link directly in there. But as a manager who wants to build a bigger short-term rental business, you can use this to sort of take people off of Airbnb, VRBO where they book initially with the short-term rental sites, but then you can build a platform on the backend to sort of capture direct bookings where you're not paying both. The guest is not paying the processing fees. And then same thing with the host. You're saving money on that end where you're sort of-- you have more control over the guests, which is what we realized is very important.  [00:10:38] Jason: Yeah. So you're shifting from just traffic that's fed to you by Airbnb and you're taking that traffic so that it doesn't always have to come back through that and creating your own traffic. It's traffic you own now.  [00:10:50] And for those emails that you capture, do you have any, like, even anecdotal data or information on how many rebook at the same property? Is that common? [00:11:00] Alex: It is pretty common. I don't have exact numbers on that. But we do see a boost in booking say like a couple days after we've pushed the email out. Right now we're still working on building out the backend platform.  [00:11:13] We're just pushing them directly back through Airbnb right now. But like, companies like Airbnb and VRBO have metrics that show like, "Hey, this person has rebooked with you this many times." And then people who are looking to get into more of an advanced system, we use Streamline, or we're going to be using Streamline. vacation, rental software is top of the line where you can syndicate all the top short-term rental sites, and then it sort of syndicates all the messaging too that comes from the different sites. So you have one platform which I really recommend doing. Like, if someone is coming up to a manager and saying, "Hey, I want to take over your property. What can you do for me?" The first thing I recommend is always: are they just on one platform? If they're just on Airbnb, if they're just on VRBO, there's already room for growth there by just putting it on a couple other platforms or putting more eyes on your property. [00:12:00] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. So Streamline for syndication is one of the things. You mentioned MailChimp for getting emails out periodically do your list or some sort of newsletter. What other tools are you using to kind of simplify the business?  [00:12:13] Alex: Right now, a digital guidebook is very effective. We like to essentially plan-- I sort of stole this idea. My wife and I had a vacation in Taloon beach on a resort. And when we arrived, the resort had practically planned our trip for us, where it's like, "Hey, if you want to do a cave diving trip, this is this. If you want it, this is what your day would look like. If you wanted to go visit the pyramids, this is what your day is going to look like. If you just want a chill day and just want to go visit restaurants, this is what your day could look like."  [00:12:43] So we did the same thing there where we plan maybe three to four days. Like here we have like over a hundred breweries in the city, so we do like a brewery day. We do a hiking day. We do a waterfall chasing day, and it's like all that's in the digital guidebook where you could put links to different things in the digital guidebook. And it's just sent out. The link is sent out with the check-in instructions. Same thing with you can get with local restaurants or local providers and be like, "Hey, can you give me like a 10% discount, and then I'll put it in my digital guide book where the guests can use almost like a QR code where you can just generate a QR code. Yeah.  [00:13:15] Jason: So for the digital guidebook, is this just like a Google document or is this like..? [00:13:21] Alex: We use a company called Hostfully. And Hostfully is specifically a short-term rental, digital guidebook. [00:13:28] Jason: Host fully?  [00:13:30] Alex: Yeah, Hostfully. Host and then F U L L Y. Yeah.  [00:13:33] Jason: Okay. Great. [00:13:34] Alex: Pretty cheap too, man. It's like, I think it's like 15, $20 a month per property.  [00:13:38] Jason: Got it. And so what advantages does Hostfully give you over just throwing it in a Google document, for example?  [00:13:45] Alex: The templates are super easy to use. You can also track like how many people are actually looking at it. I mean, I would say the templates, and then also, Hostfully does have a backend system just like Streamline. So. Streamline I believe it's a minimum of 15 properties if you're just starting off. Hostfully I believe is like $25 a month per property. Where it's the same type of syndication CRM, where it pushes out to the other short-term rental sites. So you can sync those two together.  [00:14:11] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I had a software company on one of my previous episodes. They were showcasing TripAngle. Tripangle.com. And he was talking about how they like reduce all the fees, connected Airbnb and all this stuff. So. Pretty cool. It might be worth listeners checking out that and checking out tripangle.com. I think he had mentioned something about Streamline the last time I talked to this gentleman too. So, some connections. [00:14:37] Alex: Streamline's a company standard. It's been around before Airbnb. Before VRBO blew up too. People forget like short-term rentals is not a new idea. It's just the access Airbnb has made it so much easier and VRBO too. Short-term rentals have been around for a very long time where people have to pick up a phone and book So like, I mean, people aren't missing the boat on that. I talk to a couple of people a week then it's like, is it too late to invest in short term rentals? [00:15:04] Like, no, it's not. Invest and manage both. It's continuing to grow, especially with COVID like people sort of stepped away from hotels a little bit, and they're more comfortable driving out a little further out where it's like, would you rather pay an extra $1500 to stay an actual house compared to a hotel? And same thing with like some of the larger properties that we manage. It's like we have families instead of booking, maybe two or three hotel rooms, they're just going to book one house and it almost comes out to be the same price.  [00:15:31] Jason: Nice. Yeah. For large groups it's hard to beat, you know, if you're doing a family reunion or something like that. It's pretty difficult. You're talking a whole bunch of hotel rooms or you get a 10 bedroom house. So, [00:15:42] Alex: One thing going back to the tools that just came to mind. This has helped us a lot when it comes to-- cause we are in a very strict short-term rental market in terms of like laws and zoning and everything. And one of the things that's helped us a lot. And this can help a lot of the managers who are looking to get into the space is using a company called NoiseAware and stacking that with a company called Party Squasher. And we mainly use NoiseAware compared to Party Squasher. You can combine the two but NoiseAware sort of, it hears-- it doesn't listen to everything. It doesn't listen into conversations, but it monitors the decibel level inside of the property.  [00:16:17] So if the guests are being way too loud or screaming since you get their phone number at booking, even if it's through Airbnb or VRBO, they get an immediate text message "Hey, you're being too loud. Could you please like quiet down?" Or something like that. Maybe a little bit more tactful than that. But that's been a very powerful tool for us and especially approaching the county. It's like the biggest thing neighbors think about is like, oh my God, when they think Airbnb they think like, oh my God, there's gonna be just parties next door all the time. So.  [00:16:44] Jason: Right. Destroy the neighborhood.  [00:16:46] Alex: Right.  [00:16:47] Jason: So, yeah, that's pretty interesting. So they get a text message. Do they reply to this and do you see their messages? Or like, what the hell? You know,  [00:16:55] Alex: But what we do, there's like a whole list of things. So Stayfi, what I mentioned earlier also allows you to see how many devices are connected to the wifi. So. [00:17:06] Jason: Right, so if there's like a thousand, you know there's some rager going on. [00:17:09] Alex: Granted, you might have your laptop. Like one guest will have a phone, a laptop, So two, three devices, maybe an iPad too, a tablet. But if like the property sleeps six people and there's 30 people attached to the wifi. [00:17:21] We also have like an outdoor facing camera just at the driveway too. So say if we do get a say, cause we can set it up to where we get the noise notification as well. So from there, we just look at our cameras and say, oh, okay. There's 50 cars in the parking lot, and this place sleeps six people. And then from there, we can either text "Hey, like you're not supposed to have..." or we can reach out to Airbnb directly. We've never really dealt with that issue, but the systems are in place just to make sure. [00:17:48] Jason: And it's largely probably the screening process at the outset that you have in place to prevent that. Right. So you mentioned NoiseAware you couple it sometimes with Party Squasher, is that what you said?  [00:17:59] Alex: I personally haven't used it, but some other guests have recommended it to me. I haven't-- I have almost no experience in that, but I've seen it a lot mentioned on different short term rental podcasts and some of the books that I've read too. [00:18:10] Jason: Okay. Cool.  [00:18:11] Alex: I Don't know what it does on the backend but...  [00:18:13] Jason: Yeah, I don't either. Okay, cool. But it probably prevents parties, which is probably a big concern, like, parties happening, the NoiseAware and the Party Squasher. All right. Cool. Any other tools or systems that you utilize in managing your rentals to make sure things go smoothly. [00:18:32] Alex: Going back to the cleaning crew just a good line of communication is very important. Making sure that you are choosing a cleaning crew or cleaning company that can grow with you. A lot of the time, you don't want to be teaching your cleaning crew how to clean short-term rentals because what I realized initially, and just with the labor shortage that's happening right now is a lot of people, like my cleaning crew stopped taking on new clients, not new properties, just new clients. [00:18:58] It's difficult to try to switch the mindset of approaching a cleaner that takes care of properties. Say for just cleaning people's properties like our property manager or our cleaning crew specifically deals in short-term rentals, a company that is used to turning a property two, three times a week if need be.  [00:19:17] Another thing I'd recommend is-- it might affect your bottom line a little bit, but it might outweigh the amount of time that you put on a specific property. Because of COVID, we stopped taking on one day bookings, which we were taking a lot of, one day bookings prior to COVID and that sort of just came out of my cleaning crew couldn't handle the work from the one day bookings, but what I realized is looking back, we've been doing that for four or five months since we stopped taking one day bookings, a lot of our problems, a lot of our questions, a lot of our bandwidth was taken up by one day guests. And I sorta understand it's like a lot of the times they were just coming in at like, say 8, 9, 10 PM. And they have to check in at 10:00 AM the next day. They don't really get to enjoy the property too much. You get those late night texts a lot too, from the one day guests compared to a guest staying 3, 4, 5, sometimes a week with you. [00:20:10] Sometimes those are the quietest guests where you don't hear anything from them. Maybe a couple of questions here and there. But what I saw was a lot of my issues, a lot of my people requesting refunds or whatever was coming from one day guests. So for people who are already in the short-term rental space, I'd play around to see. And what I also realized too, was like, sometimes that one day guest will book in the center of the week on the Wednesday, which blocks someone from booking that entire week. So if someone's in the short term rental space play around with seeing, maybe just do it with one property and see how the property is affected.  [00:20:42] You might get a better tenant in there which is what we saw a better tenant by booking two, three days minimum compared to a one day. And what I also saw with if you're booking on Airbnb or VRBO, is the algorithm sort of adjusts based off that request of only accepting two or three-day bookings. They'll try to play with your schedule to show it to people who are only trying to book three days and sort of, like for most of our properties are fully booked up with no one day gaps in the schedule right now, after we've switched over from not taking one day bookings. [00:21:16] Jason: Yeah, that's interesting. I would imagine that would be really effective. Plus if you're able to get two and three day bookings to fill it up for the most part, you probably rather than a bunch of one days, you're probably between a one day and a three day. For example, you probably have similar operational costs. [00:21:34] Alex: That's been huge. And that's sort of just came that we discovered that by accident. Also, one of my mentors had told me, like we were operating for the first year, we were operating at like a hundred percent occupancy and he's like, "your prices aren't high enough. You shouldn't be at a hundred percent occupancy." And that rings true for any type of real estate asset. It's like, if you're at a hundred percent occupancy or hundred percent booked... [00:21:53] Jason: yeah. You haven't hit the limit yet on what you could get. [00:21:55] Alex: Right.  [00:21:56] Jason: If you're at a hundred percent,  [00:21:57] Alex: If it's multi family, self storage, whatever. It's like, if you're at a hundred percent, you got to raise your prices. [00:22:01] Jason: Yeah what's the occupancy rate you go for now instead of aiming for a hundred percent.  [00:22:07] Alex: So we raised our rates by 30%, if we can stick to the 85%, which is, I mean, if you look at like companies that look at like what to price your property as like rdna.co is probably another good a good tool for the audience that sort of helps you price out what the short-term rental will rent for rdna.co they look at if a property is anything over 75% that's looked at, like you're in a higher percentile compared to anything below that. [00:22:35] This is getting on the development side when we develop our properties, we underwrite them as long-term rentals. Just in case, if the zoning ever changed in the city, that it's an extra fail safe, it's an exit. That's worst case scenarios. If we have to book it out, has a long-term rental. It can cover the debt service and the expenses. If we need it.  [00:22:54] Jason: Smart. Yeah. I know when COVID hit, the short-term rental game got pretty damaged in the short term, right? And there was a lot of people like trying to shift and shuffle and get their properties into the long-term space.  [00:23:06] Alex: What I saw too is I had talked to someone. I realized that this was different. We use the term vacation rental and short-term rental pretty interchangeably, but sometimes people look at that as differently. If you're looking at the definitions of what I'm about to explain right now, vacation rentals is what I'm in right now. Sometimes short-term rentals can be looked at like 30 day plus stays, but not over six months. During COVID a lot of people were renting out to traveling nurses and they're still doing that is they're renting out to traveling nurses. Say you're not in a market where you have all these properties. You might be close to a very large hospital. [00:23:40] If you're close to a large hospital, you can go. There are short-term rental sites that are specifically geared towards nurses. And that's a lot of hosts sort of pivoted towards that during, when they weren't allowed to do short-term rentals. But the 30 day plus stay is a gray area. Almost all cities and counties cannot regulate short-term rentals for 30 days plus which is interesting. A lot of people are making good money just on that route.  [00:24:06] Jason: Yeah. I've talked to some property managers. One property manager mentioned that they do a lot of that extended stay it's in the short term sort of space, but they get a lot of people from overseas that are coming over that need a place to stay in the interim or they're coming for some sort of work thing, you know, they might be maybe from India coming to work for a tech firm or some of these things, and they need an extended place to stay for a few months while they're doing some sort of training, you know, things like that. And so, yeah, that can be a very profitable business. They're getting a lot more money than the standard rate on a property.  [00:24:43] Alex: And you had mentioned COVID. It'll be interesting to-- I've seen different projections on like once international travel really starts to pick up again. Prices or occupancy might drop, but it's going to be interesting to see, every market's going to be different, how that plays out because a lot of people did start using. They picked up Airbnb and VRBO during COVID where it's like, instead of staying in a hotel, they decided to book through Airbnb and VRBO for the first time. So it'd be interesting to see if those people, if the occupancy and the rates sort of stay the same once, international travel picks back up. [00:25:16] Jason: Yeah, that will be interesting. Well, cool. This has been really insightful and I'm sure those that are kind of dabbling or just getting into the short-term rental game will have picked up some cool ideas and some cool tips. Anything else that you think they might be interested in or that we could point out to property managers? [00:25:34] Alex: Yeah. I talk a lot about this stuff on my YouTube channel too. Alex Builds it's a little logo of a blue tree house. If they want to sort of dive deeper into the management side of it and the tool side they can check that out. And then also my website, Sargoninvestments.com they can, if they can't find that YouTube channel, they could find it through there too. [00:25:51] Jason: Awesome. Cool, Alex, I appreciate you coming on the show and thanks for sharing so many of your knowledge and insights, and I wish you continued success in your short-term game.  [00:26:03] Alex: Perfect. Thanks, Jason. [00:26:04] Jason: You bet. All right. Cool. Check him out on YouTube. He's got a cool little YouTube channel you know, going over investments short-term rentals. He talks about some cool ideas. Lending loans like how to play the game of short-term rentals. So check him out on YouTube. And for those that are interested in growing their property management business, be sure to check us out at doorgrow.com we're here to support you and your growth. We're especially really good at helping you not just add a bunch of doors without spending a bunch of money on marketing. [00:26:34] And we are helping. We have short-term rental clients, you know, in our program. Long-term rental clients are our most common target audience that we're helping build out their portfolio. But we also are helping on the operational side to be able to streamline the business and to become the entrepreneur that can run and have a team that makes your life easier so that you have more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, which means you're making a difference and doing things you really feel good about, and more support. And so if you feel like you're kind of scarce on those things, I call those the four reasons and you're really frustrated and you're banging your head against the wall with your team, then reach out. We can support you and help you in that. [00:27:17] You might be a really good candidate for our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind which is really awesome. So anyway, check this out. And for those that are listening to this on iTunes or on YouTube, be sure to also join our free Facebook community, which you can get to by going to doorgrowclub.com and until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:27:42] 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!  [00:28:09] 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. [00:28:30] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

If you own a property management company, you know how difficult it is to get solid leads and add doors. It’s even harder to get started when you have no doors, no experience, and you are focused on the wrong things. Property management startups often make a lot of the same mistakes. Property management growth expert Jason Hull addresses common myths and misconceptions about starting a property management business and adding doors.  You’ll Learn… [01:14] The DoorGrow Avatars: Pure Startups [04:20] The Myth of Growing a Business by Stealing Prospects [06:57] The Myth of Being the Cheapest Option [08:36] Fantasy vs Reality in Business [10:17] Embracing the Suck [14:16] Become an Expert + Tenant Landlord Law [17:26] Get Help and Resources! [19:28] Branding and Website Mistakes [24:52] More Helpful Resources to Check Out Tweetables “The biggest hurdle to overcome is they have decided they're going to start a business, but they haven't actually started it yet.” “Every entrepreneur goes through this journey of learning through difficulty and pain.” “Going with an unknown disrupts safety and certainty, which is the number one thing that owners want to get from a property manager.” “There's no reason to charge less than what the typical or most common market rate is. You're just making your life harder.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Alright? Nobody wants to suck, but the biggest secret I can tell a pure startup... the biggest secret is: you need to get the 'suck' out of the way. You have to suck. [00:00:10] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and life. And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. [00:00:28] DoorGrow Hackers 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. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:14] So I'm thinking what I want to do with the next few episodes-- and I may change my mind-- is go over the different avatars that I recognize in the industry, or basically the different target audiences that we target as DoorGrow. So, this is something that, uh, we just brought on a new team member recently, and I was helping them to understand the property management industry. [00:01:37] And we have this document that I've created once to give to marketers to help them understand who we're targeting. We didn't have much success with outside marketing firms. So it's all in-house now, but I still have this document. So I wanted to talk a little bit today about startups and some of the challenges and what I'm talking about are pure startups. [00:02:00] Pure startups are those that have zero doors right now. They have no doors. And I think I may have talked about the idea of fantasy versus reality, but I'll touch on that again today. But pure startups are those-- when they come through our funnel, their number of doors is zero. And the number of years is zero. So we know they're a pure startup.  [00:02:19] And the biggest challenge I noticed with pure startups, the biggest hurdle to overcome is they have decided they're going to start a business, but they haven't actually started it yet. And so the biggest hurdle is just taking that first step. It's a huge step. They don't realize how huge it is. So what they usually do as a first initial step is they build this fantasy business in their mind. And some of us remember those days. We had this big "pie in the sky," huge vision and idea of how amazing our business would be and how rich we would be and how awesome things would be. I don't know, maybe. [00:02:56] This fantasy initially is how a business starts out. It's not connected to reality because there's a lot you don't know. Like those of you that have been in this industry or in business or an entrepreneur for a while, know that there is a lot that you have learned. A lot of hard lessons, a lot of well fought lessons, a lot of painful lessons that you have absorbed or figured out. And some of these things were really challenging. Some of these things kept you up at night. Some of these things required legal battles and that was the tuition you paid to learn these lessons. Some of these cost you money. Sometimes there were refunds, right? And so every entrepreneur goes through this journey of learning through difficulty and pain. [00:03:40] So pure startups: this fantasy is so seductive. It's sexy, it's delicious. And in their mind, what I hear from all the pure startups is every property manager in their market sucks. They all suck. And so they're going to start one that doesn't suck. So that's the first challenge and they think that they're going to be somehow magically different than all the other companies who have a lot more experience and a lot more knowledge. And the other weird thing I see really common with startups, pure startups is when I talked to them about their business plan, their idea, they usually have a couple of myths that they believe.  [00:04:20] One myth they believe is that they're going to win and grow their business by stealing other property managers' clients. They think that this is how they're going to grow their business. So that's one of the myths I have to destroy with them is they don't realize how difficult it is to get somebody to switch companies. Going with an unknown disrupts safety and certainty, which is the number one thing that owners want to get from a property manager. They want peace of mind, safety and certainty. They're not going to give up what little peace of mind and safety and certainty they have, even if it's not super great to go with an unknown. [00:04:53] I usually like to use the analogy of a cow. He may see that there's greener pastures over the fence, but how likely is it for that cow to jump over the fence? Not very likely. Could the cow do it? Maybe. Maybe the cow could do it ,and maybe the cow would do it if there was a raging fire or a rattlesnake coming after them or something that was really scary to the cow. It might jump into that other pasture, but it's not generally going to happen. [00:05:22] And what I've seen is people that make that their strategy and their goal and go try and reach out and target people, it doesn't work. I've even heard property managers that are more seasoned when they're meeting somebody new that's competing with them in their market, say to them, " Good luck," you know like, "go for it. If you can get any of my clients on..." you know, "good luck." [00:05:44] Why? Because they know how hard it is. They know that it's not likely to work. And it generally doesn't work. And if anybody has had really amazing success in stealing business from somebody else, hit me up. I'd be super curious to hear about how you're doing this. But in general, they have to be a really, really bad company. The only time I've heard people leaving or being able to get clients from other property managers is when they found out that property manager was stealing from them or doing something really gross or unethical, and then they were able to get them to switch companies. And if you ever talk to anybody, that's worked with lots of property management companies and talks about how bad they all are. The red flag isn't the property management companies usually. The real red flag you should be paying attention to. Is that prospective client. They're the common denominator in all of these situations. So before you just believe that all of these companies are so horrible, you may want to take a really close look at what their expectations are and make sure you're setting really healthy boundaries with this prospective client, because the likelihood is they're the actual problem or bad egg or whatever. [00:06:57] All right. So that's one of the things, the other common myth that I see with startups: they believe they're going to win business and be more successful by charging less money. This is so common. I always kill this very quickly. If I talk to a pure startup, I'm like, what's your plan? [00:07:17] They're like, "we're going to go around. And all the other companies suck, so we're going to like take those clients away from them. We're going to get their clients and we're going to do it by being cheaper." First of all by having lower prices than your competition, you're just making your own life harder. [00:07:36] There's no reason to charge less than what the typical or most common market rate is. You're just making your life harder. You're not going to make as much money. You're going to have much higher operational costs in the beginning because you're taking on worse clients and you're making a lot of mistakes in the clients you take on, and then you're going to have less revenue, so you're gonna have less profit than some of these companies. And then you're going to be the next sucky property management company that you thought you were going to be competing with and helping people avoid. So do not just come into the market, playing the game of "we're just going to be cheaper. And that's how we're going to get business on." [00:08:15] That's not a very effective strategy. Most businesses that tried to do that generally end up failing. Can you build a really big portfolio really quickly by being super dirt cheap in the market? Maybe. But you're going to be miserable and it's not going to be very effective, and you're not going to make much money and the business is gonna fail. [00:08:36] So, the next thing that I notice is that we've got to get them past this hurdle of fantasy versus reality. So they often spend, at the pure startup stage, too much time preparing, too much time planning, too much time scheming. They don't just implement and take action. They think they need a website in order to look legit and have a real business. [00:09:03] They think they need business cards. They think they need a flashy logo. They think they need a whole host of things. And there's really only one thing that you need in order to have a real property management company. You can have a business that has none of those things. It doesn't have a cool name. [00:09:22] It doesn't have a cool logo. It doesn't have a website. Like you can have a business that functions without any of that. You don't even have to have property management software. You can just do everything in spreadsheets. I've seen that done. The one thing that you do need in order to have a legitimate, real property management business though, is clients. That's it. [00:09:42] And sometimes they focus on all these trappings and getting all these ducks in a row and all these things that they think they need. Meanwhile, they've got-- sometimes they'll tell me, "oh, I've got all these investors I know. And I've got all these connections and I've got some investors are saying they're ready to work with me as soon as I'm ready." [00:09:58] And then, the property manager is spending a hundred hours building their own website on Wix or they're like trying to do something that isn't even in their skillset. Why do we tend to avoid as entrepreneurs getting started? Because the fantasy has to die. And the second we take a step into reality world, like we start saying, "Hey, I'm ready to take on your property." [00:10:21] There's so many pieces that you don't have that you realize that actually matter. You need a contract. You need to know landlord tenant law. You need to know how to onboard this property. You need to know how to get the property rented out. And these are all things in your brain, you didn't have at a really specific detail level of how to do these things. So you're going to have to figure it out. And what that means is you're going to suck.  [00:10:47] This is the next thing I want to point out is most pure startups, most property managers that are just getting started, no doors... they're afraid to suck. Nobody wants to suck, but the biggest secret I can tell a pure startup... the biggest secret is: you need to get the 'suck' out of the way. You have to suck. You need to be willing to suck. We all start at 'level suck' in anything that we do that is new, and you have to be willing to do it. If you're unwilling to suck then you're going to just get caught up in your head in mental loops. You're going to mentally just keep going over and over and over things, trying to figure things out. You're going to do tons of research. You're going to watch tons of videos and read tons of books, and you're going to waste so much time. You want to know who learns fast? Those that are willing to suck that just do the work. They just go out and do the work and they suck and they learn really fast because sucking is painful. [00:11:44] And as entrepreneurs, when we suck at something, we get good at it very quickly because we're highly adaptable creatures. We adapt very quickly. We figure out how to not suck really fast. So the analogy I like to use for those that are stuck in this loop of preparation and trying to get everything ready and trying to look really a certain way is: driving. [00:12:09] So I like to ask them, how many videos and books and things could you watch and go through to get ready to drive that would make you ultimately just be an amazing driver without driving a car? And they're like, you could watch endless videos and books, and you're not going to be a great driver. Right? You have to just drive the car. You have to start driving the car. You have to suck at driving the car.  [00:12:36] I just taught my daughter Hailey how to drive and made her learn to drive in my suburban. Right? This is what she learned in. And we just helped her buy her first car, which was an SUV, but not a suburban, not that big. But she learned it's something that was difficult and challenging. And she sucked in the beginning. She was really bad and she got better and better and better. And she was willing to suck. And I had to put pressure on her, like, "Hey, we need to go driving. We need to get your time in. We need to get all the hours that are required here in the state of Texas."  [00:13:08] And so, we got her to the point where she was ready to take her driving test and get her license, and she aced her driving test. She had to go do a driving test in a car that was not a suburban and much easier to navigate and much easier for her to drive. And she felt like she did great. And she did. She did really well. And I feel a lot safer with her driving her vehicle because she learned in a situation where it was difficult and she sucked.  [00:13:35] So don't choose out of the discomfort. Don't choose out of sucking. Don't avoid that because you need to do that. And a lot of startups just avoid that. You have to just choose into it. You have to step into sucking. You have to start sucking. And this is relevant to anybody listening to this. There's always something that we know deep down we should do, and we probably could be great at it if we were just willing to step into it and just suck for awhile. And it doesn't take very long. Sometimes even 20 hours of putting some work into one thing, you're better at it than most of the people on the planet that are avoiding doing that thing. So just start sucking. [00:14:16] The other thing that pure startups have that's a challenge is they have no real knowledge of what investors generally really need, want, what their objections are, what the challenges are... They don't know. This is where I coach clients on a strategy called product research interviews to collapse time on that without going into a whole lot of detail on this recording about that, it's basically, you need to do some market research. You need to talk to people that are the type of people you're going to be targeting. [00:14:46] You need to get familiar with what their needs and their desires are and their challenges and why they aren't working with a property manager. And that knowledge is usually earned by talking to lots of investors over time. Property managers that have been at this for 20 years, they know right away like all the challenges, all the objections. They know how to form their pitch to include all of these potential hurdles and challenges. [00:15:13] You're going to pitch, you're going to talk, if you're a pure startup, to somebody and you're going to leave out all of these things that they're concerned about internally. You're not going to hit those and target those effectively because you don't even know what they are. And so you need to do some research by talking to a lot of investors. Just ask some investors, go to some investor groups, talk to people there and just say, "Hey, I'm looking at starting a property management business. Do you work with one?" And they might say "no." and then ask them, "why haven't you worked with one yet? Like what's preventing you from doing that? Do you see that there'd be any advantages? What's your perception of property management companies? What would make you need one or think that you want one? What challenges are you dealing with with your properties currently? Right. You need to understand your audience. And the better you understand your audience, the better you're going to be able to sell.  [00:16:06] The other thing pure startups also lack that hurts their ability to sell or confidence is they don't know landlord tenant law. And that varies by location, city, state. You need to be the expert at this. So actually read the laws. Just go find all the laws. Look for tenant laws, look for things related to properties, owners, and read the actual laws and get to know this stuff. Get familiar with this so that you're aware of what the laws say. And then maybe even talk to some of the city officials, some of the people that are connected to this industry, some of the people that enforce these laws and ask, how does this actually play out in reality? [00:16:51] You need to be educated. This is some preparation that would be worth doing, because if you're going to step into this industry, nobody in this industry wants more shitty property managers. Everybody wants some really good people that really know what they're doing and are giving really real, good advice. You may want to talk to an attorney or a lawyer, somebody that deals with landlord tenant law and challenges and ask, how does the law actually play out in reality? What happens here locally? How do evictions actually work or end up happening right now with COVID and everything else that's happened? [00:17:26] Right. So figure out that, that piece. Um, another challenge that pure startups deal with is they don't get enough resources around them. They think they can figure it all out on their own. They think they're so smart. Like, "I'll figure it out on my own. Oh, this is going to be easy. I can read a book or I can watch videos..." or whatever. Get a mentor, get coaches, get connected to other property managers. That's all going to help you collapse time because there's so many things you don't know that you don't know yet. And you're going to make a lot of mistakes.  [00:18:03] Another big mistake that pure startups make is their growth strategy they think is to do SEO or some sort of internet marketing. They think this is their gateway to happiness and money and revenue and freedom. And this is a really expensive belief to have, a really expensive mistake to make. They usually think they're going to just somehow get to the top spot of Google through SEO. They're going to focus on pay-per-click and do Google ads or Facebook ads. [00:18:31] They're going to do content marketing, do a ton of social media marketing. Or they're going to find some sort of pay per lead service, like allpropertymanagement.com or managemyproperty.com and they're going to buy leads and they don't realize how difficult this game is and how it just helps you get cold leads. [00:18:53] So if you are a property management startup and you're a pure startup, and you're thinking about starting this business, or you've already started to dabble with some of this stuff and realize how difficult it is, then I highly recommend that you get into our mastermind program so we can help you collapse time dramatically, make a lot more money. The program pays for itself very quickly. That's our initial first milestone actually in the program is to make sure the program is paid for. And our goal with clients is get them to do that within 30 days. So it's a no brainer to stay in the mastermind.  [00:19:28] So the other thing that startups do is they make a lot of mistakes on their branding. The most common is they brand themselves as something generic like "properties" or brand themselves as a real estate company, the most common, which is super detrimental to word of mouth and to getting referral partners in the industry and can cause a lot of challenges.  [00:19:50] The other big mistake is they make a lot of mistakes with their website. They just go and get some sort of website maybe from their property management software company. And they do some sort of website there, and they spend way too much money on this. We include in our mastermind, by the way, a website for free. They're included as part of the program now. [00:20:12] So as long as you're a mastermind member, we will work on developing and building a website with you, however long that takes whether it's a month or two months or whatever it takes to get you to gather all the content and get everything up. We will build a website for you. We even have like 50 predesigned styles and we give you market exclusivity on that design. [00:20:33] So that means nobody else in your state in the U.S. or your province in Canada, will get to have the same design or style as you. And we're going to match the colors to it, put your brand on it. We also are the world's leading branding agency. We help you avoid all the common potential pitfalls in your brand. [00:20:53] We have training material on how to choose and pick a really effective name and branding, help you avoid common mistakes that really could cost you about 50% of the leads and deals you could or should be getting. We're gonna help you avoid that. And we've rebranded hundreds of companies over the years. Nobody else has done anything close to what we have done for clients in the branding space or at the level or the amount that we have done. [00:21:18] We've rebranded hundreds of companies. And anytime we help clients rebrand or help them redo their websites, they tend to get more flow of whatever their acquisition strategy is for getting new clients on. We also have really good strategies for you getting acquisition or acquiring new clients. So that costs $0. They just take time and they actually take less time than SEO, pay-per-click, content marketing, social media marketing, or pay per lead services. It takes less time than those because those are cold leads, and cold leads take a lot of time to nurture, a lot of time to follow up. We're going to focus on warm leads, strategies, and we're not going to fight over the existing market share, which is small and try and compete with other companies that are probably a lot larger than you spending thousands of dollars to employ those strategies. We're going to sidestep all of that. And we're going to capture people earlier in the sales cycle where there's less price sensitivity. There's a much higher close rate. They're warmer leads, and you can charge more money on average.  [00:22:22] And then you're creating new market share. We call this the blue ocean strategy. Instead of fighting in the red ugly water with every other property manager, especially the big ones that are spending two, three grand a month on all of those channels, maybe even five grand a month and already have the top spot on Google, right? [00:22:39] So we're going to get you focused on something that's more efficient, more effective. The biggest companies right now, most of them are down about 200 doors I've noticed over the last year or two, just due to sales and the sell-off. Investors are selling properties, so they're losing more doors than they're getting on, and they are spending a ton of money on marketing and it's not even helping them offset that. But we've got clients they've added 100, 200 doors easily in the last year and they didn't spend a dime on SEO, pay-per-click, content marketing, or social media marketing, or pay per lead. Nothing. No advertising costs. They did invest time into using our strategies, but they invested less time than it would have taken if they had gotten a huge pile of cold leads. And they've got a much better output.  [00:23:25] All right. So hopefully that gets you a little bit excited about talking to us at DoorGrow. A lot of people wonder if we're legit. We're legit. This has been proven. We've helped a lot of clients do this. And if you're willing to put in the work, you're going to get great results. That's the bottom line. There's no system out there that's just going to work for you and do the job for you.  [00:23:45] We're also gonna help you increase your close rate and help you be better at selling. And then the operational piece, which becomes the next big hurdle. We're going to help you solve that, how to scale your team and your business so that your life and business gets easier the bigger it gets instead of harder, which most listening, if you've had a business for a while, your business probably feels really hard and you probably feel pretty stuck and you probably recognize you're the biggest bottleneck in the company. [00:24:11] And you're probably frustrated at your team and in a state of overwhelm and wish they would all just think and make decisions for and on your behalf. We can help you solve that problem, probably within the first 90 days of working with this. We call that the scale program. And anyway. [00:24:28] So we talked today about pure startups. Just get started, start taking action, don't try to avoid sucking, and kill that fantasy as soon as possible by taking action and make sure you're educated on the legalities of your industry. And I hope that this has been really helpful for those that are looking to start a property management business. [00:24:52] The last piece is if you do not know how to manage rental properties, which is not something I personally teach anybody. If you need the nuts and bolts like the basics join. The National Association of Residential Property Managers. They have great training and resources. Check out rentlikeapro.com and Rent Like a Pro's YouTube channel. They've put out some great content. There are books about running a property management business, things like that. So check out some of those resources we do have in our Facebook group doorgrowclub.com. Just go to doorgrowclub.com. If you join that and give us your email address, you will get some really cool tools, including a list of really cool software tools and vendor tools and stuff that you can use to build your business. [00:25:40] We'll also send a gift, which is a fee Bible. So how you can make more money, which is put out by Rent Like a Pro. The fourth edition of that is given to you for free. If you join the DoorGrow Club Facebook group, you will also get a email. We have like five different gifts that you're going to get, a tool of how to grade your website in terms of getting business and some other things. So check that out. Get those free resources. We do have in the Facebook group, in the file, section a document for startups, with some of the things that I mentioned that can help you kind of get started. [00:26:12] So I hope this has been helpful. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:26:19] 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!  [00:26:46] 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. [00:27:07] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

At DoorGrow, we love highlighting client success and wins. The Schmitts are a great example of clients who put in the work and get the results. Since joining the program, they have DOUBLED their PM portfolio! In this episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull interviews Jon and Sonia Schmitt from True Patriot Property Management in Florida and gains their valuable perspective on adding doors, growing a PM business, and being a part of the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. You’ll Learn… [01:06] Today’s Guests: Jon and Sonia Schmitt of True Patriot [02:30] Discovering and Getting Started with DoorGrow [04:39] The Results and Major Lessons: What Has Changed Since DoorGrow? [07:28] Your Personal and Business ‘Why’ [12:29] Finding Clarity in Your Business [14:17] What’s Next for the Schmitts? [22:04] Where Would Jon and Sonia be Without DoorGrow? [026:55] Wrapping up: How to Grow Your PM Business like Jon and Sonia Tweetables “The business exists to serve you.” “Everything has to start with the sales and going after the right clientele that we want in our niche.” “I find entrepreneurs, we have two speeds. We feel stuck or we feel like we're in momentum, and in momentum feels like life to us.” “If you don't have the business of your dreams and the team of your dreams yet, you're not the person that can run it yet.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jon Schmitt: You definitely changed me. You definitely did. Thinking, my focus, everything. I mean the name, just everything.  [00:00:07] Jason Hull: All right. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. [00:00:27] DoorGrow Hackers 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. [00:00:46] 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. [00:01:06] Now, let's get into the show. And today's guests, I have two guests here today hanging out with me and it's the Schmitts, right? So I've got Jon and Sonia Schmitt, and they are clients in our mastermind program. And why don't I let you two kind of introduce yourself? [00:01:27] Jon Schmitt: I'm Jon.  [00:01:30] Sonia Schmitt: I'm Sonia.  [00:01:31] Jason Hull: Awesome. So why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourselves, like getting into property management and what you've got going on currently.  [00:01:39] Jon Schmitt: All right. Well, getting into property management, you know, just all started when I started buying properties back, you know, 28 years ago. Just driving around in a station wagon with my lawn mower, cutting grass, that kind of stuff. [00:01:52] And then, uh, you know, became a real estate agent a couple of years later started managing properties for some other out-of-state people 'cause the company I worked for allowed that. And I figured, you know, it's income without having to do any deals. So struggling to be a real estate agent, property management was a paycheck every single month. So that's how I got started. And then Sonia, she has been a landlord as well from way back. And once we met, I already had an established business, which was dwindling away. Then she came on board, and we kind of held steady and we weren't growing, and then here we are with you. So that's pretty much our background.  [00:02:39] Jason Hull: How'd you hear about DoorGrow?  [00:02:41] Jon Schmitt: I seen you on Facebook.  [00:02:43] Jason Hull: Okay. And so you saw some Facebook and then... what's that?  [00:02:47] Sonia Schmitt: I was saying, I think he seen you on Facebook for a long period of time.  [00:02:51] Jon Schmitt: I was stalking you. [00:02:52] Sonia Schmitt: He was a stalker.  [00:02:54] Jason Hull: Yeah. Okay, cool. I like stalkers 'cause they're like nurturing themselves over time. And then when they come to us, they're really excited. I mean, you're not just going to sign up right away, right? So you saw us on Facebook, and how many doors did you have at the time you decided to start with us and what challenges were you dealing with then? [00:03:14] Jon Schmitt: I think we had about, um, forty or so. Most of our business was from foreclosures, from homeowners associations, and condo associations. I made a contact with a couple of attorneys and they were just throwing it at me and throwing out the owners that weren't paying their fees, getting foreclosed on. [00:03:35] And then I was turning the properties around, getting them rented and collecting rents and doing the maintenance because the homeowners associations and their managers, their management companies, are not landlords. So, I established myself as a landlord. So that's what they needed. And I exploded from there. [00:03:54] But then when the banks were taking over and I was losing business, right at that time, Sonia came into the picture. We kind of stabilized, but then we needed to grow. And I said, "Hey, Sonia, look at this guy on Facebook." and here we are today.  [00:04:10] Jason Hull: What'd you think Sonia, like, who is this cat?  [00:04:13] Sonia Schmitt: Oh, I thought you were phenomenal from the-- from the moment-- from the moment I heard you first speak and I was intrigued and excited. You brought excitement back and direction.  [00:04:27] Jon Schmitt: I should leave you two alone. [00:04:29] Sonia Schmitt: He's a card. He's always a card. You never know what's going to come out of his mouth.  [00:04:39] Jason Hull: So we love having Jon on the calls because Jon is so funny. Like you just, you say the funniest things. So John, Sonia, you started at that level of doors and you had some challenges. What's changed? Like what's been happening in the business since then? [00:04:56] Jon Schmitt: Well, since we hooked up with you, you totally changed our direction. You change the way we think. You're changing the way we operate. You've changed our brand. We kind of did that immediately. I mean, you really pointed out a lot of my own personal flaws, which, you said one thing where I was beside myself. You called me low value. I couldn't believe it.  [00:05:23] Jason Hull: Did I call you low value? [00:05:24] Jon Schmitt: You called me low value! Hence the TalkRoute. And now I don't like it, but I'm going to go back to low value, but I'll figure that out at a later time.  [00:05:33] Jason Hull: I don't, I don't know that I called you low value. I want you to be high-value.  [00:05:38] Jon Schmitt: And I want to be that. And when you did my son, Alex was laughing, and he keeps teasing me. He's like, "You're low value." And you'll love that.  [00:05:49] Jason Hull: You tell him to watch it. You tell him to watch it. [00:05:51] Jon Schmitt: Oh yeah.  [00:05:52] Jason Hull: He needs to respect his elders.  [00:05:55] Jon Schmitt: You've changed our direction. You really made an impact and changed our direction, and it seems to be working. We have to do the work. You have the ideas. You tell us the ideas, we do the work, and we're starting to get results. Hence, Alex landed a deal through a realtor. And the lady went with our premium services. And that was Alex. He's very proud of himself.  [00:06:16] Sonia Schmitt: Yeah.  [00:06:17] Jason Hull: Awesome. Yeah. We revamped your pricing.  [00:06:20] Jon Schmitt: Yes, yes.  [00:06:22] Jason Hull: Right. So you're making on average more money per deal. You have more offerings that are a better fit for different types of clients. [00:06:31] So how many doors are you at right now?  [00:06:33] Jon Schmitt: What do we have? Like 80?  [00:06:35] Sonia Schmitt: 79.  [00:06:36] Jon Schmitt: 79 doors.  [00:06:39] Jason Hull: Yeah. I mean we're getting close to doubling, right? What- what'd you start with? What'd you say?  [00:06:45] Jon Schmitt: Like 40.  [00:06:46] Jason Hull: I mean, we're just right there.  [00:06:48] Jon Schmitt: Right. When we met you, we kicked a couple of sisters to the curb. You know, we were talking about firing them and then after talking to you, we said, "You know what?" Sonia said, "We're done." Fired. They were a little pissed off, you know, when we gave him 30 days notice and they couldn't believe it, but we needed to do it. And it was probably-- yeah, it was like almost 20 doors. So we took a hit, but we were okay with the hit. We're better now.  [00:07:15] Jason Hull: Yeah. So you had 40. I told you to get rid of 20. So you were at 20 and now you're at 79. You're almost at 80.  [00:07:26] Jon Schmitt: Right.  [00:07:28] Jason Hull: And so that's incredible. So that's awesome. What do you feel like for those that haven't been in the program, what do you feel like is the most significant thing that you've been getting out of this? [00:07:40] Sonia Schmitt: Oh, I mean, for me and Jon handles most of the sales as of right now, but for me it was developing your 'why.' Why are you doing this? It's the weekly meetings that we have. We get ideas from you. We get ideas from other property managers that are located throughout the United States on things that are working, things that are not working. And it's the focus. I think, you know, you talked about the "5 currencies" and focus. And I think the focus has-- it's now laser sharp versus before it was very dull. Okay. So now we have focus. We're a little bit scattered because we're trying to do multiple different things, but we're laser focused in on the how and the why. [00:08:37] And I also think accountability. Conversations. Where are you at? Tell me what you're struggling with. You know, what, what is your direction? I think that you come up with innovative ideas, which I think that is at the top of the game of different things that are gonna make us be able to succeed, make more money in collapsed time. And that's the one thing that I am working on is collapsing time so I can be more effective, more efficient. And I think with Jon, just-- gosh, it's the motivation behind it all. And like I said, being laser focused on what you're going after, why you're going after it. And you know, Alex and I went to a property and it's like, 'oh, I'm not sure. I'm not sure.' And I ended up and I liked it, but when I first seen him and I met him kind of like the location, and I didn't know what the inside looked like I just looked at him and I said, "I don't know if I'm going to take this or not." I said, "just be prepared," you know? But again, we don't want all properties. We want to know and go after our client health. And we want that to be narrowed in and focused on, which is going to give us the most bang for our buck.  [00:09:57] Jason Hull: Yeah. Yeah. Some of the stuff for people that are not in the program might sound a little fluffy and woo woo, right? Like "we figured out our 'why,' and like collapsing time... and you know, people in the program, they get it. So what would you say to those people that are not in this? Like, how has figuring out what your motivation or your 'why?' How has that shifted what happens in the business?  [00:10:21] Sonia Schmitt: We're just not going for anybody any longer. We're not taking on clients because those clients end up taking a lot of our time. You know, you don't want a homeowner, right? Or a landlord. You want a specific landlord within a certain location that takes care of their properties that cares about their tenants. So it becomes more focused. So, you know, and you then can drive your business with more focus in that direction.  [00:10:51] Jason Hull: Yeah. So you've got a lot more clarity on the avatar that you're kind of targeting and going after now. And so, surprise, you're getting more of that type of person as a client, right? [00:11:02] Sonia Schmitt: Yes. Yes. [00:11:04] Jason Hull: And really at the core, for those that are watching or listening to this now or later, understanding the 'why' may sound like fluffy sort of weird stuff, but understanding why you started as a business and the motivation behind it and what type of clients you want to be working with. [00:11:21] I mean, the business exists to serve you. And I'm sure that it's starting to feel a bit more like that, like that instead of you serving the business, which doesn't feel very fun, now you're starting to shift into "the business is serving us and our needs and desires." Does that sound accurate?  [00:11:40] Sonia Schmitt: Yeah, absolutely. [00:11:42] I think we were very scattered before all over the place. Now we are focused in on-- we have different buckets that we're going after. And we may not have everything checked off, but it brings clarity with the mastermind group of what needs to be done first. It's kind of like, yeah, I may handle the operations and the accounting, but without the sales, there is no operations or accounting. There is no maintenance. There is none of that. Everything has to start with the sales and going after the right clientele that we want in our niche.  [00:12:20] Jason Hull: Now I'm sure. Before you signed up, there was no shortage of a to-do list of things you felt needed to be done in the business, right?  [00:12:28] Jon Schmitt: Right.  [00:12:29] Jason Hull: I mean, every business we have endless to do lists. It's like a "to-die" list for us as entrepreneurs. So coming into the program, it sounds like just really helped you get clarity. And we talk about this a lot in the program, like really focusing on where's the biggest pain first and assessing things. I talk about going through the core functions of the business and figuring out which things are the weakest. Did you realize going through some of this and coming into the program, that you were focusing too much on some things that were already working well, and then maybe shifting to things that needed more attention? [00:13:05] Jon Schmitt: Yeah, we were all over the board. Okay. We still are a little bit. But the things that need attention is new business at this point. The accounting is functioning good, bookkeeping's spot on, the maintenance? We're okay with that. You know, it's the sales. So I had a couple people that were referring me business, but you know, that kind of has gone away. [00:13:29] Not that they don't like us anymore. They just won't throw us business. However, the type of business we had, the foreclosures, have dried up. So now we're just laser focused on the real estate agents, some other attorneys, CPAs, and insurance brokers. Alex and I are doing calls, you know, I have my calendar blocked from 9:00 to like 11:00-11:30. That's all I'm doing. Okay. And we do it nonstop one call after another. Some calls last 10 minutes, some calls last 30 seconds. So I want to try to make at least 30 calls a day. And Alex also, and that's our focus first thing in the morning. And then I'll take care of maintenance and everything like that afterwards, as it needs to happen. [00:14:17] Jason Hull: Yeah. Awesome. So what are you excited about in the future? Because you're in a state of momentum. You can see the things are positively changing and shifting in the business. I mean a lot of property managers right now are losing more doors than they're getting on. They're like going down because the sell off that's happening in the marketplace. The market's generally hot throughout the U.S. Lots of investors are getting out and I'm sure you felt some of that as well. I doubt your market's immune to that totally. Correct me if I'm wrong. But you're growing and outpacing that attrition that's naturally happening with growth. So what would you say to those that are like thinking about working with DoorGrow? Because I'm sure a lot of people see my social media. They see the things that we put out and they think, 'yeah, who is this guy? Like this-- another guru out there who's trying to get money from people.' So what's your perception of me since you're on the inside, behind the paywall and we've had one-on-one conversations and you've been on our group things and you've been into the material. What's your perception of me, my motivation, and DoorGrow and the team? I'm curious. And you can be as honest as possible. [00:15:32] Jon Schmitt: Oh, I'll be honest. I think you're a very interesting guy. Me personally, I'm not a woowoo type guy, but she's a woowoo girl and her friends are all woowoo. Um, you know, I think you're very interesting. You're very creative. And just your techniques that you pitched to us and your ideas and your way of doing things, I think it's spot on. I think that you know, people that aren't doing it the way you say to do it, it's kind of like they're old school and you know what? We're into like a new era, a new way of doing things. And you have to change with the times. If you don't change, you're going to die. [00:16:12] The way we used to do it, you know, I would cold call landlords, I would send out mass fly postcards and stuff like that. I mean, I tell you I'd send out 10,000. It'd be 10,000, we'd get one call. Okay. You see what I'm saying? I mean, that's just like an old school way of doing it. And before we hooked up with you, I mean, I was printing out tax records of all out of state owners and just looking them up, calling them up, "Hey, Jason, you know, I see you've got these two duplexes over here. How's your management work and start talking to him and you'd get 'click.' Right? So I'm getting away from that, so people that are not in your group, I'm sure they're just old school and the ones that are losing business, aren't keeping up with the pace and the times and changing their ways. [00:17:00] Sonia Schmitt: Hmm. I think you're very authentic. And I think that you have a lot of direction in many years of helping property managers throughout the United States. And I think what DoorGrow does is it brings focus whereas we could be all over the board trying to get new clientele from single family homes to quad quadplexes, triplexes, for sale by owners, property managers, people are getting rentals. You know, you'd go after the rentals and after all of that. But the nice thing is, is you establish relationships and trust with real estate agents. You have a big focus with that, right? Because that's your honey hole. I love that word. But anyways I think that having focus and going after certain groups. Real estate agents, CPAs... and you can take it out further and further. I mean, in Palm beach county alone, and in Florida, I believe we have the second largest or third largest real estate realtors associations. [00:18:13] So I think that you're cutting edge. You stay on top of things. You're trying new things out. What works. You've tried it. Either you like it, you don't like it. If you'd like it, you pass it onto the group and then other people explore. So I think that adds a lot of value.  [00:18:33] Jason Hull: Cool. Yeah. I'm just wired that I love to learn and I love sharing good ideas that I learn. And I guess that kind of just is what we do. Well, I really appreciate both of you being the program. Oh, I wanted to touch on your son, Alex. So as part, like in this journey, in working with you at some point, you're like, "Hey, let's bring our son in on this." [00:18:55] And by son, you know, some people might think it's some little kid. He's an adult, but he's come into the business and it's been rewarding for me to see him come in and be learning and stepping into new roles and doing things and getting success too. He shared a win on the call today. [00:19:12] Now, Jon. Jon was chiming in from the background, making sure he said some of the right things being dad.  [00:19:19] Jon Schmitt: We received these doors this week from a realtor referral. So I was saying to him, "Alex, tell 'em--  [00:19:28] Jason Hull: Give credit!  [00:19:28] Jon Schmitt: Got them from where? And then he yells at me and says, "they're not realtors." I'm like, I'm not meaning what they are. I'm meaning how you got the doors, right? So he brought one in. The lady signed up for premium. And then I brought the other one in that Sonia and Alex closed the guy. Okay. I met him through another realtor referral. And then the other appointment that I was on, I was on actually two appointments that day. [00:19:56] And they came off of people searching us and liking the new name.  [00:20:03] Sonia Schmitt: Rebranding  [00:20:04] Jon Schmitt: Right, they loved it, you know, the way we were branded. So that's why they called us.  [00:20:09] Jason Hull: Yeah. We've made a lot of changes in your business already. So in the fruit of all of those changes is going to start to really start to show up. You're just at the beginning of all of this, like the rebrand, the pricing, like all this. And as you build that brand in your market, and as you build that clout up, I'm really excited to see what you guys do. I mean, over the next year, I think you guys are going to be crushing it because once you really get into a groove with this... I mean, the sky's the limit. With the growth you've had, you could easily be adding a hundred to 200 doors a year, I would imagine.  [00:20:39] Jon Schmitt: You know, if we stay consistent, and that's what's going to happen, there's no other way to go. If we stay consistent, what we're doing and just keep doing what we're doing. I see that as well.  [00:20:50] Jason Hull: Does that sound crazy to you? Like if Jon pre-DoorGrow could listen to Jon now say that, would that sound a little crazy to that guy?  [00:21:00] Jon Schmitt: Yes.  [00:21:01] Jason Hull: Like impossible? Like there's no fricking way, you know? [00:21:05] Jon Schmitt: You definitely changed me. You definitely did. Thinking, my focus, everything. I mean the name, just everything. Calendly the TalkRoute, which I'm getting rid of. I don't like it.  [00:21:16] Jason Hull: You don't like TalkRoute. Alright.  [00:21:20] Jon Schmitt: We'll find something that works for us.  [00:21:22] Jason Hull: Yeah. Right, right. I mean, you're old school sometimes. Right. So maybe just get a second phone. Right. Just get another phone, like the private phone and the public phone. Right? I don't know, but yeah. Yeah. So, well, it's been really great having you in the program, excited to see what you guys accomplish. Anything else you think people should know about door grow or about y'all before we wrap this up? [00:21:49] Jon Schmitt: You're definitely a good coach. And we're happy with you and, um, we're looking forward to hearing about the invitation to the in-person meeting.  [00:21:58] Jason Hull: Ooh. Yeah.  [00:21:59] Jon Schmitt: We're looking forward to coming over to Texas.  [00:22:02] Jason Hull: Yeah? Alright. That'll be cool.  [00:22:04] Sonia Schmitt: We wouldn't be where we are today, if it wasn't for you and if it wasn't for DoorGrow. That I can tell you and our business is growing exponentially and we're very appreciative and grateful to be a part of your team.  [00:22:21] Jason Hull: Well, I appreciate that. Where do you think you would be? Where do you think things would be right now?  [00:22:27] Jon Schmitt: We would probably be-- we have a lot of investment properties of our own, so we would just be going off of that. And we would do some real estate sales and we would just, we'd probably get business here and there and we'd still be just old school, throwing out some mails every quarter. And you know, that's probably what we'd be doing. [00:22:47] Jason Hull: I mean, that doesn't sound so bad. So on the personal side, what do you feel like has kind of changed like in your life? ' Cause I mean, really there's a reason behind this business, right? It's so you can have the life you want. [00:22:59] Jon Schmitt: Right. My life basically changed. I've got new fire in me. I feel like I just came into the business again. So, you know, when you have something new? You're very excited about it. So I'm very excited every single day to see what I'm going to make happen. Okay. Sometimes the day before follows into the next day, but there's always something new now popping up. So that has been created again. It's like, I'm just, you know, the second week in. [00:23:30] Jason Hull: Yeah. So you feel alive again. You know, I find entrepreneurs, we have two speeds. We feel stuck or we feel like we're in momentum, and in momentum feels like life to us. We're not so worried about whether we're happy or sad. That's everybody else on the planet, but for us as entrepreneurs, it's like, "am I in momentum? Do I feel alive and on fire and inspired? Or do I feel stuck or frustrated?" So Sonia, what's it been like seeing the shift in Jon, like with this? [00:23:58] Sonia Schmitt: It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. I'll tell ya, you know, for couple of years. I think that he was burned out at work, tired. It was pretty much on my shoulders. And, um, you have made a difference in his life and like you said, he has a new spark. He has direction. He knows what he's going to do. And he has his plan. He's scheduled. There's a little bit of everything that you've spoken about and taught that he has implemented into his daily routine. And you can see a difference.  [00:24:37] He would say that he called people before, he didn't call nobody. You know, he didn't make connections if they call him that's great. He'd take it, but he was just kinda, I think he was burnt out. And you brought the spark back and we see the momentum, we see it making the bottom line difference in our lives, and we're able to expand, looking to hire somebody. So it's been a positive all around.  [00:25:04] Jason Hull: You know, property management can be a grind. It can be really hard. I mean I've never done it. Right. But, the feedback I've heard from hundreds, thousands of property managers is that this is not an easy business. It can be really difficult. It's as difficult as you allow it to be. Right. And business in general is hard. Running a business is hard. Entrepreneurs are under no illusion-- if they've run a business for even a year that it's not an easy thing. So I think every entrepreneur has gotten to that point. [00:25:35] I know I have where I'm burnt out. I'm done. I wake up and I'm like, basically "fuck it." I'm watching Netflix today. Like, that's all I'm doing. Like, I don't want to do it. Like I've had those moments and I feel like I'm living a dream right now that I get to do what I get to do, because it's in alignment with my 'why.' and that's what I want for all of my clients. I want them to have that clarity because we're all unique, and we all have a different purpose in life and a different thing we really want that gives us the maximum level of the four reasons as I've talked about on a previous episode of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support, and that's different for everybody. [00:26:13] And I get to experience that in my business and in my day-to-day. And I want all my clients to experience that because I also want their team members to experience that. And ultimately you're helping your clients to experience a taste of that as well. And so I think the ripple effect that I get to have through amazing clients, like you is really inspiring to me and it really motivates me to keep going. And just having clients that do what I tell them to do and get results is like super rewarding to me. So, you know I appreciate that greatly so. Well, I appreciate you being here on the #DoorGrowShow and I'm excited to see your continued success.  [00:26:52] Jon Schmitt: Thanks, Jason.  [00:26:53] Sonia Schmitt: Thank you very much. [00:26:55] Jason Hull: All right. So we'll go ahead and wrap up this episode. I really appreciate them taking some time out of the day to come help me plug DoorGrow so to speak. But I wanted to just share if you are property management entrepreneur that is struggling to either add doors or maybe you have hundreds of doors, but you're really struggling to dial in the operations piece. You're just banging your head against the wall. Why can't my team members just think for themselves? Why do I have to micromanage them? Why can't they just do what I need them to do? The hard truth is you are not yet the entrepreneur that can run the business of your dreams, right? If you don't have the business of your dreams and the team of your dreams yet, you're not the person that can run it yet. [00:27:34] That's what one of my mentors said to me once, and that hit me hard. And so I want to turn you into the entrepreneur that can have the business of his or her dreams and can grow it and can have that fire and have that excitement in your day to day, because you are aligned with the things you really enjoy doing. And you have direction on how to get what you really want to be doing. And you're not stuck because being stuck sucks for entrepreneurs. It's really uncomfortable. It's frustrating. So if that sounds interesting to you, that you're dealing with-- maybe your business it isn't in alignment, which is like branding is off and maybe your pricing isn't optimized and your website isn't optimized, or maybe you're just not getting the growth that you want. [00:28:20] And you want to know how to add doors without having to spend any money on advertising or doing SEO or pay-per-click or content marketing or social media marketing. And you could still outpace all the companies that are spending tons of money to do all of this. Or you want to just scale your operations, get out of the day-to-day, have more energy, more fun, more focus, more freedom, and figure out how to get a team that really supports you. [00:28:48] I want to help you build that business and I want to help you become the entrepreneur that can have that business. So reach out to us. You can find us at doorgrow.com, and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:29:00] 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!  [00:29:27] 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. [00:29:48] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your own kid work with you in your business? Here at DoorGrow, one of our team members is the founder/CEO’s daughter!  Property management growth expert Jason Hull interviews his own daughter AND team member, Madi Sleight. Madi gives a unique perspective on Jason, DoorGrow, social media, and more. If you ever wondered what Jason is really like personally, this episode is for you. You’ll Learn… [01:15] Meet today’s guest: Madilyn Sleight with DoorGrow [05:16] What does Jason even do? Madi’s perspective as a kid and as Jason’s daughter. [07:45] Joining the team at DoorGrow and Madi’s role on the team. [05:16] What does Jason even do? Madi’s perspective as a kid and as Jason’s daughter. [17:45] The program is not a miracle cure… then who is the program for? [22:15] Jason’s personality according to his daughter and how Jason’s “out there” beliefs benefit the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind [27:40] What’s next for Madi? [32:01] More about Madi and her relationship with her dad [38:25] Madi learned to mimic Jason’s voice on socials + how she does social media Tweetables “I love those clients. I love the ones that just show up to everything and they do everything that we say and they just get the best results.” “For me, it's super rewarding to see clients winning and succeeding. Like it's worth more than money and getting paid to do what I do.” “It's crazy that I get paid to just help people win, which is really awesome.”  “I think the first thing that people who are skeptical or unsure need to realize is you're not selling a magical cure.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Madi Sleight: You know, you've always kind of been out there in your beliefs or like what you're interested in. Like, And I mean this in the best way possible, you're kind of like a nutjob. [00:00:11] Jason Hull: All right, welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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're interested in growing your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:15] All right, everybody, so today's interview guest that I have with me is Madilyn Marie Hull, my daughter who goes by Madi. [00:01:28] Madi Sleight: It's also Sleight now.  [00:01:31] Jason Hull: Oh, oh, that's right. She's married now. So it's Madilyn Marie Sleight. So... no? Madi Sleight?  [00:01:40] Madi Sleight: You didn't have to put in the middle name in there, come on.  [00:01:43] Jason Hull: I know, but like I named you, and I gave you that name, so. Cool. So yeah, gosh, that's a old habit. Yeah, Madi Sleight. I got to get used to that last name. I'm still not used to it. So Madi Sleight... I wanted to have her on the show. I want to have my daughter-- she's my oldest-- and I wanted to have her on the show partially because her birthday is tomorrow. We're recording this here on February 1st and she was born February 2nd. And it's her birthday tomorrow.  [00:02:10] But Madi also has been working with me. How long have you been working with me?  [00:02:17] Madi Sleight: It'll be two years in I think July-- June or July.  [00:02:22] Jason Hull: Yeah. So she's been going to school, going to college, and doing work with DoorGrow. And so, she's become a critical part of the team. And so, I wanted to have her on the show because I think it would be really cool for those that listened to the podcast. Those that wonder who Jason Hull is and what's he really like, you know? I'm also a father, and I am a boss and Madi's gotten to experience both sides of those things the good and the bad. And I thought it'd be cool to have you on the show just to help people understand maybe a little bit more about me and that sort of thing.  [00:02:59] So Madi, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell people with the right name, since I screwed that up already and tell everybody what it is that you do at DoorGrow. [00:03:10] Madi Sleight: Okay. Well, my name is Madi Sleight. Nobody calls me Madilyn, except for you apparently. But, I am our social media manager here at DoorGrow, and I also just do a couple other little things like I video edit and I create case studies/ testimonials of our clients, showcase their wins, post those to YouTube, and I hand those over to Kyle as well, our kind of marketing guy. And he makes those into these awesome Facebook ads that are our lead gen source right now.  [00:03:40] I sit in on all the weekly calls, the weekly coaching calls with our clients and I take notes and I capture their wins, so I kind of get to know all of our clients on maybe more of a surface level, but it's still really cool. I get to know their names and faces and backgrounds of their businesses. How many doors they add each call. And it's very insightful. I've tried a lot of different things in the last year and a half of being at DoorGrow. I tried sales followup for a little bit, tried a little bit of client success here and there. I've gotten to learn a lot of things, and I am an advertising major at the university of Idaho. [00:04:17] And so it's kind of been cool learning, you know, things in lecture about advertising, SEO, sales, marketing, stuff like that. Being able to use that knowledge at DoorGrow. But then also learning things at DoorGrow and being able to put that towards my degree and use that in my classes.  [00:04:38] Jason Hull: Yeah. And I think it's really cool. [00:04:40] So, I think the most important thing that I want that you do is more testimonial videos because it's proof, it's evidence that we're getting results and you get to see this stuff firsthand. You're not just behind the paywall and seeing what goes on, but you get to see the inner workings of the business. And so, maybe you could share with people what you thought I did in the business and what you thought I did before you became a team member of the business, what your perspective was and then maybe how that shifted, because I'm sure that was quite a bit different once you got in. [00:05:16] Madi Sleight: I don't even know what I thought you did cause for a while, when I was a little kid, you were the website guy. And I thought, "oh, how cool," you know, "my dad made a website for Mr. Gas in my hometown." And I was like, "wow!" You know. [00:05:30] Jason Hull: Wow, that's a long time ago.  [00:05:32] Madi Sleight: I know! And I remember that. And so, when you started making that transition into coaching, you know-- and it was kind of a subtle, smooth transition. You started in with your brother. You've got family members who are into this kind of stuff, but it wasn't something that you necessarily shared with me and my siblings all the time. You kind of just would disappear and turn on your busy sign, your neon, sign outside your door of your office. And we were like, "Yeah, he's working," you know, "he's doing what he's doing." [00:06:02] And it was only until I think two summers before I started working at DoorGrow, when you came to me and were like, "Hey, you should try out making a couple social media posts for us." And I did 'cause I was into design stuff. Only then I was like, what is DoorGrow? What is-- what does that even mean? [00:06:22] That is such a weird term doors and growing? Is it like a plant business? I got really into it. Like I was really curious and I actually like begged him for the remainder of those two years. Like, "dude, I'll do your social media. It's a travesty. I will fix it for you" [00:06:40] Jason Hull: "Let me do it, dad." [00:06:42] Madi Sleight: Seriously! I was like begging him. And even like my sister-- I would be texting my sister and I'd be like, "man, you know, he still hasn't gotten back to me on this." And she's like, "oh, I'll go talk to him. Hailey did. Hailey and I would text behind your back and be like, man. [00:06:58] And that was one of the first things when I, was graduating high school and going off to college, your social media was still-- it was still not great. it was very inconsistent. You guys were probably posting... you posted mostly about the podcast episodes, which I still do. But other than that, you were posting maybe once a month or less, not consistently. [00:07:19] And the branding, the designs and branding were kind of off and it almost made you look sketchy from a social media standpoint, and I honestly, when I was applying to work for DoorGrow, I still wasn't completely sure what you did. I knew that you've coached businesses to like become better businesses. And that's kinda what I told people like, "yeah, he's a business guy who makes other business guys do better."  [00:07:45] But it wasn't until I actually-- I was just desperate for a job at that point, but I applied to DoorGrow and you made me jump through all these hoops, personality tests. I was like, "this is so my dad." Cause you had made me take these personality tests before. You had, you know, human design stuff. This was stuff that he would make my siblings and I do, but I took them again and I was like, "he makes his applicants do this?" [00:08:10] I was like, that is such a thing that my dad would do, but I'm going through. I do all the things. And as I was going, I just started getting more and more excited. I was like, "man, this a lot of hoops to jump through." I feel like if I get past all of this, I must be a really cool person. [00:08:27] Like it started making me more excited to work for you guys, because it was like qualifying me as someone you were hiring. And then I made the little introduction video, and I tried to have fun with it and get like my personality involved. And I remember being so nervous. I was like, "Why am I so nervous? It's my dad. I'm trying to work with my dad." But I was so nervous all of a sudden. I was so excited. And I remember-- we had different team members at the time like Jon Ray-- and you were sending me messages that you had gotten from the team. Like, "Man, I love her video!" And I got so excited, and going through the trainings that you sent me-- you sent me like the company mission statement and the core values-- I went through those and I read it and I got to learn like what you do and what you stand for. And not only was it cool' cause I got to know you a little bit better on the business side. That was something me and my siblings never really got to experience when we were little, but I also got to know the business. [00:09:25] And first of all, I learned you were not a scam because I wasn't sure. It's an expensive program. You know? Like are people getting value out of it? But people were, and the more like I dove into the client testimonials and I watched, I remember some of my family members at the time being like, "what are you doing?" [00:09:44] And they're like, "come take a break and hang out with us." I'm like, "no, I'm watching all these videos." I was like watching them in the background while doing other things. I was watching them and I really got to know the business. And then I got even more excited and I was like, "you know, this company doesn't really need me for social media right now. I mean, you did, you needed some social media help, but also you guys were doing just fine. The value was there and people noticed that even without flashy visuals or a really well set up socials page. Although, and I can get into this later, but I do think the social media is helping from what I've seen now. I can get into that later if you want, but...  [00:10:23] Jason Hull: I don't, I don't have to mess with it now, which is really nice. It just gets done. So, yeah. And I don't really have to spend time on Facebook. I don't have to spend time on Instagram. So that really did add value. My favorite thing that you do though, is get testimonial videos. I love those and you do a really great job on editing those. So you had mentioned just seeing me work from, you know, I was working from home. Right? And most people, if they have a dad that works, which I guess most people probably do, their dad usually takes off, like leaves and comes back. Like they just disappear, but I was always there and working from home. What do you think that was like for you? Is that different than you think other people's experience? Was it weird?.  [00:11:05] Madi Sleight: Yeah, it was weird. I mean, when we were really little, and I mean like second grade, eight years old, you had an office for OpenPotion downtown, you know, and even then when you would go to work sometimes-- [00:11:19] Jason Hull: I forgot about that. [00:11:21] Madi Sleight: Sometimes even then when you would go to work, you'd take me and my sister along with you. And we would like to play around-- [00:11:27] Jason Hull: Yeah, I did for a little while. In the beginning, I did have an office, yeah. [00:11:30] Madi Sleight: And we would play around in the back with your workout equipment while you were working. Even when you had an office. It wasn't like, like a day job, like a cubicle. We were around. We would play in the shop windows, you know.  [00:11:44] Jason Hull: You have such a good memory. It's really wild. [00:11:49] Madi Sleight: I really do. Well, I wasn't that young. I was like eight years old. That was when I was missing my two front teeth, you know? Yeah, no, I remember. You had the Roomba going around the office. We would tape stuff to it. Anyway, I'm getting off track. [00:12:04] Jason Hull: I had a robot cleaning for me. So coming in from the outside and then seeing-- cause you get to see-- you're on pretty much every coaching call, I think every coaching call, right? And you take show notes and then you give those to the group in the Mastermind and everybody else. How would you describe what we do now? And like, what's your perspective seeing what goes on in the business? [00:12:30] Madi Sleight: Even in just the last year and a half, and I know like we've really sped up the process of getting things organized with Sarah coming on, but even in just the last year and a half, like from when I started versus now-- The program has been polished and cleaned up the value and the coaching, modules themselves were always there, but now we're really like getting to polish and refine them and you get to work on making all the fine adjustments and tunings that you want to. [00:13:00] And it's really cool seeing that happen because as we're growing and adding more clients, I also see our clients getting more excited. When we made changes to certain documents a couple of weeks ago clients went crazy for it. They were like excited with us over this nerdy formatting change or like changing the order of the program around. The clients get excited, and I've gotten messages from clients being like, "Hey, can you send me the link to this document? I'm excited to restart it or like to do it over again. I want the newest updated version." And so, it's not just something that benefits us on like a organization level... [00:13:37] Jason Hull: You're talking about the Roadmaps roadmaps or the new scripts, or? [00:13:39] Madi Sleight: I didn't know if I was supposed to like, go into details on the podcast. [00:13:43] I don't know what I'm supposed reveal to the public.  [00:13:44] Jason Hull: Like it's a proprietary secret? Nah.  [00:13:48] Madi Sleight: It's a secret. It's for clients only. I don't know. But no, the clients love the updated grow roadmap. They really did. They found a lot more clarity. And I remember when I was reaching out, you know, "Hey, you're in this program, we updated this." [00:14:03] They're like, "man, can you send me the notes for that call? I missed it." Or I get notes all the time because I've turned into like the weekly coaching call and note taker. People will message me like, "oh man, I'm so upset. I missed today's call." You know, they'll be on every other call like, "man, what did I miss? Can you send me the summary directly so I can like study it and take notes? I'm like, wow. Some of our clients get really invested and find a lot of value in just the weekly coaching calls. And some of our clients-- like we've got a group of them that show up to every single one. [00:14:36] Jason Hull: Oh, I love those clients. I love the ones that they just, they show up to everything and they do everything that we say and they just get, they get the best results. They're like... they're the best. Like if I could just have all those kinds of clients, I would just have those and everybody would be rich. We would make tons of money. They would make tons of money. But yeah, I love clients that just do what I say.  [00:15:03] Madi Sleight: No, it's true. And it's nice to watch them, especially like from beginning to end. Sometimes they come in a little bit skeptical, like Jon Schmitt. I remember in the beginning he seemed a little stubborn. I dunno, he was intimidatingat first. But when I got on that interview with him last-- or a couple of weeks ago, he was the most excited and he was just going on and on about how much value he got out of the program and how he just decided to do what you said. And so he got the results and he's now like one of our biggest cheerleaders, he and Sonia and Alex come on the call and Alex as well, his son, Alex is always mentioning how much he's learning. He takes notes and he's learning and he wants to quit his day job and start taking over the property management business. [00:15:47] And that's really cool to watch because I've been on and I've been able to watch a lot of the clients' journeys from beginning to now. [00:15:58] Jason Hull: Yeah, you have, and you have a perspective or a lens through which you get to see the business that nobody else has because you're watching these videos over and over again, probably while you're editing them and piecing together, and you're like keeping track of different clips where they share wins on different calls, and then you're taking these together. So you get to see their entire journey in collapsed time. And so that's interesting.  [00:16:24] Madi Sleight: Well, I almost get like emotionally attached to these people that I've never met. You know, I've seen through a Zoom screen every week and I'm just quietly sitting there not talking back and I'm just recording them. Sometimes when I'm watching them and piecing together, putting music to their story and cutting out some "ums" or "and yeah"s or "and so"s and like putting together this really impactful video, sometimes I get emotional. I'm like, "wow, I'm so proud of them." You know, they came so far and it's so cool because I almost feel like I get to know these people on a personal level. [00:17:00] Jason Hull: Yeah, I mean for me, it's super rewarding to see clients winning and succeeding. Like it's worth more than money and getting paid to do what I do and to be just even a guide and seeing all the success in their journeys. It's like really, I mean, it's really amazing. I think it's really amazing that I get to have this job. It's crazy that I get paid to just help people win, which is really awesome. So we like any coach or any business, I've had haters. There's people that just don't believe like we're real or think we just, maybe could be snake oil salesman or something like that. Maybe you could share with people what are you noticing clients are doing? [00:17:44] Madi Sleight: I think the first thing that people who are skeptical or unsure need to realize is you're not selling a magical cure. You know, they're not going to go through the program and immediately they're going to have knocks on their door being like, "Here, take my properties." That's not how it works. And you know, at first I thought when I first joined the business, I was like, "How can you make that guarantee? How does this work? You know, are you helping them with SEO, helping them get referrals, but really the program benefits those who put in the work. [00:18:15] It's not for people who are just going to watch the videos and then not do anything about it. In fact, most of the program is doing the work. The videos are almost just helpful content to get you going. The program is not the videos, but I feel like some clients come in and that's what they think, but our most successful clients, our most excited, our most-- I don't know-- just our best clients, the ones that get the best wins and successes. They just come in, they dive right into the content, they keep their three commitments. They put in as many hours of prospecting they can a week. They get right into it. They just do what you say. They attend the weekly coaching calls. They ask lots of questions. That is something that I've noticed is our best, most rewarded clients. They ask a lot of questions. They come on and ask where they're stuck. They ask really good, insightful questions. [00:19:07] And sometimes they'll take up half the coaching call some of these questions, like 30 whole minutes or 40 minutes. We've been going over time a lot lately because we've been getting really good questions. And then they take what they learned from those calls and they just go implement it.  [00:19:26] Jason Hull: Yeah, it's true. Yeah, we spend a lot of time on those calls sometimes. And I love them asking questions. If they're doing the work, they always have questions. And I see my goal as mentor or as coach to just help them collapse time, point them in the right direction, give them enough information to get them moving forward in the right direction and then kind of get out of their way. So the training material in DoorGrow Academy helps them collapse time, especially because it helps them avoid doing the wrong things. Most people are just doing the wrong things or they're spending-- every business owner is spending tons of time in their business, but they're just focused on the wrong things. And so I think one of the greatest things I think that I provide is just clarity and helping them collapse time. So they don't waste so much time doing the stuff that isn't working. [00:20:15] So they actually spend less time on the phones and less time talking to people overall. In relation to the amount of doors they're acquiring than they would, if they were focused on SEO or pay-per-click or content marketing or social media marketing, or pay per lead services. This is all the stuff that people try to do. And then they come to us and we say, don't spend any money on any of that stuff. In fact, you don't even need to spend money, and we'll get you growing faster, but it takes work. All of those channels take work. They all take time.  [00:20:48] But none of them could help somebody like John Babiarz add, you know, how many doors has he added in what period?  [00:20:58] Madi Sleight: Right now, our most updated testimonial, which is already out of date because you just had a call with him. He had hit around 200 in under a year of being in the program.  [00:21:10] Jason Hull: 10 months, I think you put on the video?  [00:21:11] Madi Sleight: 10 or 11 months.  [00:21:13] Jason Hull: Yeah, that would be impossible with focusing on lead gen, typical internet based lead generation, like SEO, pay-per-click, content marketing. How many doors did he start at? I can't remember. [00:21:25] Madi Sleight: He said he started at 60 or 70. And so about six months into the program. I think he had doubled his portfolio.  [00:21:35] Jason Hull: Yeah. [00:21:36] Madi Sleight: Don't quote me on that. Those dates could be wrong.  [00:21:38] Jason Hull: I think I remember our first video used to run ads was 60. He added 60 doors in 11 weeks is what it said. And we just got lucky that he would mention how many he had added so far in the program, which inspired us to actually start tracking with clients, like keep them conscious of that. Like how many doors total, since during the program, have you added? So that we can monitor that and speed it up. [00:22:01] But yeah. So that's interesting. What else do you think people should know about. That don't know me from a perspective maybe as my kid or as boss, but how would you describe me to other people?  [00:22:15] Madi Sleight: I don't know. it's really interesting. You know, you've always kind of been out there in your beliefs or like what you're interested in. [00:22:25] Like, you tend to-- and I mean this in the best way possible, you're kind of like a nutjob. Like you go out, you love to read books and learn. You're constantly on this like self-improvement grind. You're always like learning new things and that's something that you always, you've always been that way. You've always wanted to learn and try new things to figure out like, what's the best way to do this? What's the best diet to eat? What's the best workouts? You've always kind of got that like innovative mindset in a way. You're willing to try like out there experimental things if it's working. [00:23:00] And I think that also translates into business. Like I wouldn't say that what we're doing is crazy here at DoorGrow. I think what we're doing is just something that helps businesses in general to thrive and to grow. But I don't think anyone else is really doing it like DoorGrow is. I don't think so. [00:23:19] Maybe you would know better. [00:23:20] Jason Hull: Probably not.  [00:23:20] I don't think anybody's doing anything the way that we do it. Not, not exactly. That's why all my trainings and with "secrets." We've got special, unique ways that I've come up with of doing things they're similar to what other people might do, but those little differences are where all the magic happens, I think. [00:23:38] Madi Sleight: And I think in a way, you know, those kind of out there techniques in your personal life and in business, that's something that benefits DoorGrow and is kind of what this whole thing is riding on is your unique perspective and take on these processes that help property managers add doors and scale their businesses. [00:23:59] It all kind of comes back to you being just a little bit crazy, just a little bit. [00:24:03] Jason Hull: A learning nut job. So yeah, I think one of the most common things I heard you and the kids say to me growing up is, "you're weird" to me.  [00:24:17] Madi Sleight: You are! And you were, you really were.  [00:24:21] Jason Hull: So, what else would you describe about my personality? And then we'll probably talk a little bit about you.  [00:24:26] Madi Sleight: Well, another thing that I think kind of lends itself to the program and to DoorGrow, but it's totally your personality is you're very logical in thinking. You're very like process oriented. And so you take that crazy and you mix it with this nerd. And then you get this person who can not only come up with these crazy ideas, but can implement them. Like you spend hours in AirTable, creating spreadsheets and processes and crazy like interconnected, intricate spreadsheets and databases. And I don't know. I don't know if I could do that, but you're willing to figure that out. You think it's fun and it's 'cause you've kinda got that like nerdy side as well, but you're very logical oriented and I think that helps our clients as well. [00:25:15] It's got pros and cons. You tend to think less emotionally and more logically. You don't bullshit or beat around the bush. You tell our clients what needs to get done. You push them to succeed and you're okay telling them the uncomfortable truth, even if they don't want to hear it. [00:25:33] Jason Hull: Yeah. That's true. Do you think I'm too harsh?  [00:25:36] Madi Sleight: Um, you know, there are times where it's appropriate and times where it's not. In your personal life, sometimes I'd be like, man, you're just a robot.  [00:25:45] Jason Hull: Personally, I'm probably too harsh sometimes.. [00:25:48] Madi Sleight: Sometimes you're a little too logical. Me and my siblings come to you like, "oh my gosh, I've got this emotional problem." and you're like, "it's okay. Just read a book. Here, take this book on self-improvement. And we're like, "I just needed you to listen!" But I think your clients need to hear it, so.  [00:26:09] Jason Hull: Yeah, I think I've gotten better with that over time that, I mean, I used to be really, really analytical and logical and truth was all that mattered, you know, so. But yeah, I think the challenge of that is you're constantly bombarded by emotional challenges if you're too logical. So I had to learn how to feel things and empathize more and more over the years. So I'm up there in years now, you know.  [00:26:39] Madi Sleight: How old? [00:26:39] Jason Hull: I think I turn 45 this year, so. [00:26:42] Madi Sleight: You think? You don't know? [00:26:43] Jason Hull: Yeah, no, I do. I turn 45 this year, so. All right, so that's enough about me. So let's just talk a little bit about you. So how old are you turning tomorrow?  [00:26:58] Madi Sleight: I'm turning 20.  [00:27:00] Jason Hull: 20? And your birthday's on 2/2/02. And you're turning 20 on 2/2/22.  [00:27:11] Madi Sleight: Yeah, it's also Groundhog's day.  [00:27:15] Jason Hull: Oh, okay. So what what's with the twos, Madi? [00:27:19] Madi Sleight: I don't know. It's my lucky number. I was also married and I graduated in 2020, so.  [00:27:25] Jason Hull: Yeah, a lot of people did not like that year.  [00:27:28] Madi Sleight: You know what? It was okay I guess. I also did not like that year all the time, but hey, still the twos. Two is my lucky number.  [00:27:40] Jason Hull: Yeah. So what's next for you? Like you're going to school now. You're doing a little part-time with DoorGrow. What gets you excited about the future?  [00:27:49] Madi Sleight: I don't know. I've always been very future oriented, you know, even since I was a freshman in high school, I was getting 4.0 not because I want it to, or because anyone expected me to, but because I wanted to get scholarships for college and I accidentally became valedictorian by doing that. I was willing to give it to the other girl that was salutatorian. I literally said, she's student body president. She can have it. They said it doesn't work that way. I was like, okay. But I just wanted the scholarships. I was always very future oriented. [00:28:23] And so I took a bunch of credits in high school, college credits. And so now I've kind of fast-tracked through college. It's only my second year, but I've got junior standing. And so I don't have a whole lot of college classes left to take, I don't have very many semesters left and at this point in my college career, I'm not taking any gen ed courses anymore. I'm taking all the fun, you know, journalism and mass media courses, taking a lot of graphic design, a lot of media ethics. And right now, I actually applied and I made it onto the school's national advertising competition team. So I'm working with a team of like nine or 10 other people right now, and we're working on a creative brief sent to us by Meta for the Meta Quest 2 VR headset. [00:29:13] Jason Hull: Formerly known as Facebook?.  [00:29:14] Madi Sleight: Yeah, Facebook. You know, all that good stuff. And so I get to actually come up with a whole advertising campaign with this team and I was given the producer role, which basically means I get to boss everybody around, which is something I'm good at. I have been told.  [00:29:29] Jason Hull: You are. You're good at that. You used to boss around your siblings. [00:29:32] Madi Sleight: I know, I know. And it's a little bit of a control freak. But I think this role suits me really well and I'm able to help our two presidents and I work very closely with them and they've already decided that I talk so much that I'm going to be the one presenting in person. [00:29:51] I guess I volunteered by talking a lot in our meetings. But no, I'm excited and this is something that I feel like will benefit my future, my resume. And I was very excited to be working for DoorGrow and getting relevant experience toward the field I'm going into, the digital design space or the desktop publishing, advertising sphere. [00:30:14] So I don't know. For a while, I feel like after I graduate, you know, Preston, my husband's still going to be in school, and so he'll still be going to school. So I'll just be sticking around and working with DoorGrow full-time and will stay.  [00:30:29] Jason Hull: Ooh, that'll be cool.  [00:30:30] Madi Sleight: I know you're excited. He keeps trying to get me to drop out by offering me a salary.  [00:30:39] Jason Hull: Yeah. 'Cause I'm obviously a huge fan of college. I went to college, but I feel like nowadays it's not really as useful as I don't really even look at applicants' college degrees. I really don't. I just look at experience and skills. Some people do, but yeah, I would love to have more Madi in the business because it's a good thing. [00:31:03] Madi Sleight: After I graduate, I'm just going to be sticking around here, saving up money for whatever's next. We've got a good area. We're close to Washington advertising agencies and stuff like that. There's lots of internships and possibilities. So I don't know. I'm happy, you know, with what I do at DoorGrow right now, I wouldn't mind branching out and trying new things when I go full time. But for now, I'm just excited to stay within this industry of, marketing, advertising, graphic design area and I like working from home. [00:31:34] And so that's something I've kind of gotten used to, but that's kind of what's next for me, I'm excited to keep taking classes at the university. It's a small college the journalism and mass media college, we're small. A lot of my classmates are the same in every class. A lot of my professors are the same, but they're very experienced. [00:31:52] A lot of them are experienced journalists and advertisers, marketers, PR people, know what they're talking about, at least I think so.  [00:32:01] Jason Hull: All right. So everybody's like he's throwing her some like easy, slow balls. What do you feel like is my biggest challenges or my biggest deficiencies or whatnot?  [00:32:14] Madi Sleight: In the business or in general? [00:32:17] Jason Hull: Oh, well either one. [00:32:21] Madi Sleight: Well, I mean, like I said, it's something that you've been working on and something that you've improved upon, but the emotional aspect was something that I personally had an issue with growing up, especially being the oldest, being very hard-headed and stubborn and also very emotional. All of your kids are very emotional. [00:32:39] So that's something that you're going to have... [00:32:43] Jason Hull: Yeah, I think of all of them, you're the least emotional out of all of them. [00:32:49] Madi Sleight: Which is funny because I've actually gotten more in tune with my emotions as I've gotten older, but I'm also just better at regulating, I think, than some of my siblings. [00:32:59] Jason Hull: Yeah, perhaps yeah. I mean, you are the oldest. I'm also an oldest. Right. And I think there's a sort of a personality type attributed to the oldest child. But yeah, I know that the things that I've always seen in you, the gifts that I see in you is that you have a really great memory. Like you remember like history from even when you're really young, like you bring up stories and it sparks, like it helps me remember and I'm like, oh my gosh. I can't believe she remembers that. Even when you're a really young, it's really quite weird. You remember a lot of details. I think also you would always take control. If there were a group of kids playing-- we would go, I would take you to the community swimming pool, for example. And you would immediately just start meeting people and you would organize everyone into doing a game or doing something like you would immediately, you were taking charge.  [00:33:50] And it wasn't like something you were ever pushed to do, you just did it. You're just driven to do that. You're like, this is what I want. I want to have fun. And I want to be in charge and get everybody doing things and you would just do it. And every kid would then be playing and like doing what you wanted them to do. Even with your, you know, your sister right under you Hailey, you would tell her like-- You would play games, which would be like some sort of role-play like pretending to do stuff. [00:34:15] And you would tell her what to say. You'd be like, "I will have a blah, blah, blah. And then you say blah blah blah blah..." and then she would be like, "blah blah blah blah." and she would just like, say it. Eventually, I think that wore thin. [00:34:28] Madi Sleight: Yeah, she got sick of it real quick. [00:34:31] Jason Hull: Eventually that wore thin. And she no longer tolerated that, but yeah, you would always like take charge. You were always really outgoing, like naturally, like talking to people and whatnot. And you were just, you were such a fun kid. You were just so fun. What was interesting about you growing up is you would just break out into song. You would make up songs while like, while we were driving or while we were doing things, you just sing about what you were seeing and what was going on. And it was really, really stinking cute. [00:35:04] Madi Sleight: You want to know what's funny? You want to know what's really funny? So I remember that when I first came on at DoorGrow, you pulled up my DISC assessment. And you were like, "man, this is really interesting." It's something about like your natural or your taught personalities, you know?  [00:35:19] Jason Hull: Yeah. your natural score versus your-- [00:35:22] Madi Sleight: like adapted. [00:35:24] Jason Hull: Yeah your adapted score.  [00:35:25] Madi Sleight: And you brought up something that was kind of unknown to me at the time that I was an adapted people pleaser, like my people pleasing score it was really, really high. I had been taught or expected to do that, but it was naturally pretty low. And that's, been in the back of my mind for like the last year and a half. And that's something that I've been working on. And as I've been like more myself and less worried about what people think... my poor husband. We have this inside joke. And I mentioned this when I was in Austin. The, "oh, is that your song? Is that your song?" Because I will be doing laundry or I'll be cooking and I'll be like, "it's time to do the laundry. I'm doing the laundry going to fold some socks." And like, I'll just start-- I'll just start like singing and dancing and he'll look at me and he'll go, "is that your song?" [00:36:12] I'm like, "that's my song."  [00:36:13] Jason Hull: "That's my song."  [00:36:15] Madi Sleight: So now that I'm like getting more into like my natural personality, I'm like reverting back to how I was, singing and dancing and coming up with stupid little jingles when I was a kid, So it's really funny.  [00:36:30] Jason Hull: It's kinda like that inner child work. Like you're just, you're becoming more comfortable being that authentic version of yourself. It's funny. Cause like I wrote songs, and I would make up songs all the time, like about things. Like sometimes the kids will still, like, if they're making chicken nuggets, will sing "chicken nuggets." [00:36:49] Madi Sleight: I do that! I do "the chicken nuggets."  [00:36:52] Jason Hull: "I want eat chicken nuggets, I like to eat chicken nuggets."  [00:36:57] Madi Sleight: I do that every time. I can't believe you remember that..  [00:36:59] Jason Hull: Yeah. I mean, as a parent, you've learned ways to get your kids inspired to do things because this is something that I learned a long time ago, but whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. And so it's hard to control people. if it were easy, everybody would do it. I'm going to control everybody and make the world around me, do what I want. But there's a lot less friction when you can inspire people to do it and song is sometimes a way to get kids to do things. [00:37:24] So well. All right, cool. Is there anything else people should know? About you? About me? About DoorGrow?  [00:37:33] Madi Sleight: I don't know. I'm happy where I'm at. And I think as we're growing our team, you know, we just hired Ashlee and she seems like a really good fit. And I get along with everyone on the team super well. We've got a good, fun dynamic, even Adam, you know, Adam's a little more shy than Kyle. [00:37:50] Kyle's a little rambunctious. Yeah. No, everyone like fits really well. And I get along with everybody and I like the company culture. I thought originally, you know, I kind of had this like inner fear that working with my own dad would be a nightmare. [00:38:06] Jason Hull: Yeah.  [00:38:06] Madi Sleight: Yeah. That was something that I was worried about. But honestly, I think it's been good because I don't know how often we would get to communicate otherwise, but now we talk to each other on a daily basis. Sometimes I get sick of you. Sometimes I do. sometimes I'll be in the huddle at 7:30 in the morning and I'll be like, "I'm too tired for this," but I think it's helped us like grow together personally. [00:38:28] And I also just learn a lot from you and from the business. And I think it's a really good opportunity for me.  [00:38:35] Jason Hull: Yeah. I love having you in the business because, you know, a lot of times parents-- I feel like I have a lot of stuff that I know that I would like to get into my kids, but there's not really a vehicle to do that, but getting your kid in business with you and in doing things because I want everyone on the team to grow, but of course I want my daughter to grow as well. [00:38:56] And so, you know, it's being able to see you develop and grow. Is even more rewarding, you know, for me. And it's really rewarding to be able to share some of that stuff that's in me that I would love all my kids to have, which are heavily connected to values and the things that I care about. [00:39:19] And. You know, interacting and dealing with people and what's effective and contribution and all the things that you've heard. Here's what's really genius about you that I should point out. So when you started doing social media posts, you had listened to some of my podcast and you'd listen to things. You've learned my voice, which is really weird. Like there's AI software out there now, which we now can play with a little bit that actually can learn our voice and it can speak. And it can make the sounds that sound like me, right? There's like an AI version of Joe Rogan out there. For example, it sounds exactly like them. It's like a deep fake, like, it's crazy. You can sound just like him and it's AI, people can type in words and it can spit out someone else's voice. Right.  [00:40:03] You learned to pretty much do that by just watching the videos, but in text, right. So when you're creating posts and content, every now and then I'll read something I'm like, well, that's kind of a little different than how I say it, but what's really weird is most of the time I would see posts or things that you would post and I would look at it and then I would feel like I needed to like it because I was like, that's great stuff. I love that. I mean, it's silly that I love like things you've gotten from what I say, but I didn't write it and I'm reading it going, "yeah. I resonate with this" obviously. And so it's really funny.  [00:40:40] And then I'm like, oh, that's silly. I shouldn't be liking my own stuff. That's weird, but I didn't post it, you know? So it's really awesome to see that you were able to encapsulate the voice. How are you able to do that when other people haven't? [00:40:52] Madi Sleight: Well, the weird thing is I started out making this, like this kind of like a reservoir, like a doc of all these different quotes on all these different topics. [00:41:00] So if I needed a caption for something about a topic, I'd look and I'd go, oh, and I'll just copy and paste it. So I really did just--  [00:41:08] Jason Hull: So you have a Jason's quotes database?  [00:41:11] Madi Sleight: I do, and I keep adding to it, but now I started off doing direct quotes and then I started like, "Hmm, I don't like the way he said that. I feel like that's inproper grammar" So I like tweak it a little bit. Yeah, no, "I feel that's not the right word. I think he meant to say this." And so I like put in little things that start tweaking it. And now what I do is I actually, like, I've gotten way more efficient and like more quick at getting social media posts out there. [00:41:37] 'Cause I'll go into this reservoir. and I have pages and I know exactly where everything is and I'll be like, "oh, this is a good line. I'll throw that in there. This is also a good line. I'll throw that in there." you know, make something up as well to go along with it. It's almost bad because we'll be in the coaching calls and you'll be talking about something and I'll be like, "I could regurgitate this quote on this topic because you'll be trying to say it and I'll be like, "I know exactly what he's trying to say." because you've said it before. One thing that's helpful is your views on a certain topic, like let's say SEO, or referral partners or this or that, you say mostly the same things about the same topic in most of our calls. And so I kind of picked up on that. [00:42:23] And so even if I don't have something in my beautiful reservoir, I just know what you would say. Like, I dunno.  [00:42:30] Jason Hull: You've heard me talk so much and heard me say so much, you know. I've worked with some coaches and mentors. I had one coach I worked with for like three years and it got to the point where on calls. I knew what he would say. Like, I could answer the question for people on his behalf. Yeah. So do you think you could coach clients? Do you think that's something that you could do? You'd be like, I know what Jason would say. This is like, what he would say.  [00:42:52] Madi Sleight: Well, it's funny because when I was doing like the client outreach for a little bit, you know, messaging all of our clients every week, sometimes I'd get a question and I would be able to confidently answer it. And other times, more rarely I would send them over to you but because I know your viewpoint on most of the things-- and that also helped when I was doing sales followup, because I started off and they'd ask me questions, like "how much does the program cost? What do you do?" And I couldn't confidently answer. [00:43:17] But now I can. And I don't think I'm to the point where I could take over the weekly coaching calls yet. I think I need to go through our program kind of like what Ashlee's doing right now. And like actually go through, take notes and become more familiar with the content of the program itself. But I don't think I'm too far behind that honestly because I listen to you for an hour, twice a week, plus meetings and huddles. And I post to your personal and to our business, social medias every single day. And I'm looking at your quotes every single day. Every time I'm creating social media content, I'm going through. "Hmm. You know, what's a good topic for this post."" [00:44:02] What's something we haven't, you know, put on social in a while." and I look at your podcast episodes and see what kind of content you put up there. And so there's a lot of information. If somebody wanted to impersonate you, I don't think it'd be that hard. There's enough information out there.  [00:44:20] Jason Hull: There's a lot out there.. [00:44:21] Madi Sleight: And the more that I consume just doing my daily tasks or weekly tasks, the better I get at, you know, mimicking your style, your voice on social media. [00:44:32] Jason Hull: Cool. Yeah, I think it's just really kind of weird to see when I see stuff that looks like I did it, but it's actually you, but it's like I did it, which is really strange. Cause I don't remember doing it, which is the weirdest thing I'm like, "I don't remember doing that, but that sounds exactly like something I would say." [00:44:52] Madi Sleight: Most of the time it is something you said.  [00:44:56] Jason Hull: That's why. Sometimes I don't even remember saying some things. You'll post something. I'm like, "that's really good! Did I actually say that?" Yeah. So, all right. Well, I think this has gone on long enough, and I appreciate you coming on and being willing to do this and kind of share your perspective on me. [00:45:16] And I think it's probably fun for everyone to hear a little bit about you.  [00:45:20] Madi Sleight: I think that the people listening to this podcast should go check out our socials. You know, we don't get a ton of engagement. We've been getting higher numbers. I've checked the percentages. They've gone up. We've gained more followers, but I think our social media content is pretty good. So if you could go check it out, that'd be really great. You're gonna find a lot of regurgitated quotes from my dad, but a lot of it's good information, especially for property managers. If you're like struggling to grow doors or feel like you're stuck at a roadblock or you can't scale your business, there's a lot of little tidbits of sneak peaks of what we kind of talk about in the program on our socials, lots of short paragraphs. [00:45:57] Little things, I take little gold nuggets from your podcast and put them on socials. So I think that's something that could be nice for someone to get into if they don't have a lot of time to listen to your podcast or to do a ton of research on DoorGrow,  [00:46:13] but also go check out our YouTube channel and our clients success videos. I'm going to be posting more this week as I get them refined to make some revisions and get them up there. We've got some really awesome client wins and people should expect a lot more client success videos in the coming year and in the next few months, especially because I've got a lot of content to get up there and to get out to people so we can show off how awesome our clients are. [00:46:42] Jason Hull: Yeah. I just got to get you to quit college and make videos full-time so I can get more of them out of you faster. [00:46:52] Madi Sleight: I'm too far in, at this point. I just gotta finish it. You don't have to wait that long. I promise I will work full time when I graduate.  [00:47:05] Jason Hull: Well, I'm looking forward to the time where you can go full time. Cause that'd be awesome and Madi, I love you. I adore you. A dad couldn't have had a better first kid and you were just, you've always been so fun. You always get my jokes and I really appreciate having you in the business. And thanks for coming on the podcast.  [00:47:26] Madi Sleight: Yeah. I don't know. I love working for DoorGrow and I like working with you, believe it or not.  [00:47:32] Jason Hull: I believe it. All right. And I think everybody else listening does too well, everybody else, I appreciate you hanging out with us. This is about an hour, this will be a long episode. And until next time to our mutual growth bye everyone. [00:47:47] 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!  [00:48:13] 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. [00:48:34] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

If you own a business, you are likely either a visionary or an operator. Entrepreneurs/visionary types are risk-takers. They innovate and lead a business with their ideas and vision. Operators are analytical and organized and solve problems within the business. This important dynamic between the visionary & the operator personality types keeps a business balanced and running. Property management growth expert, Jason Hull explores the relationship between visionaries and operators and their roles in a business. You’ll Learn… [01:02] Intro: Visionary vs. Operator [01:34] What is a Visionary? What Makes Them Different From an Operator? [03:22] Visionaries Must be Allowed to Lead [04:23] Giving Operators the Right Problems to Solve [06:20] What if You are Both an Operator and an Entrepreneur? [08:23] Surrounding Yourself with a Team that Supports You [10:21] Another Type of Team Member: BDMs [11:18] What to do in a Toxic Business Partnership  [12:28] The Visionary and the Operator Together: a Magical Pair Tweetables “Visionaries are big-picture oriented. They're dreamers, they're creative, risk-takers, innovators. Whereas operators-- operators are these really detail-oriented, meticulous people.” “Giving the operator correct vision gives them the right problem to solve.” “Running a business is risky. It requires innovation. It requires creativity. These are the skills of the visionary.” “The visionary will lead with vision, and the operator in a healthy state will ensure that that vision is always going to get accomplished, which is super important.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently... then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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.   [00:00:39] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the 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.    [00:01:02] So today's topic everybody. We're going to be talking about visionary versus operator. So I get a lot of clients coming to me that are visionaries. And so, I want to get into this dynamic of the visionary versus the operator, and there's some important ideas to understand around this because it's a really common partnership or relationship that exists in business. It can be very symbiotic and it can be very helpful to have this relationship in a business.    [00:01:34] And so let's talk about the visionary. So what is a visionary? Visionary is the typical entrepreneur personality type. The visionary is somebody that has, you know, vision. They have these ideas of what they want to accomplish. They are usually driven. They're usually a bit more sales-oriented.    [00:01:52] They're a bit more risk-oriented than most people on the planet. They're comfortable taking on risks. They're comfortable doing the work. They're comfortable coming up with new ideas and innovating. They change quickly. They move quickly. They want to do new things. They experiment... they're driven, risk takers. You get the idea.    [00:02:13] These are the typical, stereotypical sort of entrepreneur personality type. And the operator is very different than that. Right? So, and to contrast these: visionaries are big-picture oriented. They're dreamers, they're creative, risk-takers, innovators. Whereas operators-- operators are these really detail-oriented, meticulous people.    [00:02:35] They focus on the details instead of so much the big picture. They're grounded. They focus on keeping things grounded. They're not like theoretical and big plan, this guy dreams... They're like practical and grounded. They're meticulous. They're cautious. And they are focused on implementation rather than so much innovation.    [00:02:56] And so visionaries, you need operators, right? You know, you might have them as a personal or an executive assistant. They might then graduate to being an operations assistant-- might graduate to being an operations manager-- maybe eventually director of operations-- and then maybe the VP of operations --and maybe even the COO of your company, where they may be dealing with some financials and some other things that you wouldn't trust anybody else with. Right?    [00:03:22] It's important in understanding this relationship between these two contrasting, different personality types-- and this is really important for the operator to understand, is that the visionary must be allowed to lead. The visionary has to lead because they're going to move the business forward.    [00:03:40] Running a business is risky. It requires innovation. It requires creativity. These are the skills of the visionary. but they are a dynamic duo, right? The visionary will lead with vision and the operator in a healthy state will ensure that that vision is always going to get accomplished, which is super important.    [00:03:59] A lot of times, visionaries might be trying to do it all themselves, and they wonder why things end up staying on their to-do list forever, why they feel stuck, why they have so much frustration, why they aren't able to just get stuff done. And if there's all these things you've had on your to-do list for way too long, it's probably because you're a visionary and you need badly some sort of operator in the business.   [00:04:23] Now the operator has some inherent challenges. The operator needs vision, and it's important that you give the operator the right problem to solve because if the operator doesn't have the right problem to solve, their usual default problem that they work on is how should we do this? How can we avoid this? Is this safe? Keep the business safe and keep things comfortable and make sure everything is done perfectly before we take action. And so they're always looking for the flaw, the problem they're super critical. A lot of times and they're always looking for the flaw in whatever your vision and things are.   [00:04:55] So what's important to understand, visionaries, is you need to give operators the right problem to work on. So instead of the problem of, "should we do this?" And "what's wrong with this,? And "where's the flaw?" You need to give them a different problem to work on saying, "this is the goal. How do we get this accomplished?" [00:05:15] "How can we make this possible? How can we make this work? How can we hit this target? How can we make more money? How can we do this?" Instead of, "should we?" or "why?" Or, you know, some of these kinds of things sometimes, right?    [00:05:29] So, giving the operator correct vision gives them the right problem. ‘Cause they are really good problem solvers. They're really good at solving these problems. And if given the right problem, "how can we make this work? How could we do this?" It shifts the brain out of, "should we do this?" Or "Why?" You know-- which your goal is to get this done-- shifts them to thinking and helping you figure out how to accomplish this.   [00:05:50] Now a lot of lawyers, accountants, really detail-oriented people might have that kind of personality type. And so a lot of times you need to give them the right problem to solve, because they're going to try and keep you from doing things or tell you don't do this, or this might not be safe. And if you know that this vision and down in your intuition says, 'this is what we're going to do, this is what I want to do.' [00:06:10] You give them: this is the problem I want you to work on. I already know I want to do this. Help them figure out how to do this... very different problem to give operators.    [00:06:20] Alright, now, forcing non entrepreneurial operators. Cause there are some of you operators out there that are also the entrepreneur and you run a business. And you're kind of a unicorn, you're a little bit unique and different, but forcing a non-entrepreneurial operator to lead and to push and to have drive is often very uncomfortable for them. And it's often very ineffective. There's going to be a lot of friction. They'll experience massive resistance to doing new things, taking risks, and they shouldn't be pushed to do sales or marketing or outreach or prospecting, or to be the face of the company in the long run.   [00:07:03] So if you are the operator personality type running your property management business, you may want to attract or get around some people. So operators should not be over sales, marketing, BDM-- business development management. They should not be over that typically because they're going to focus on conservation and conserving and doing less and spending less money and not experimenting and doing things safer typically.   [00:07:29] So your head of sales and marketing would be maybe their equal, not their subordinate. You do not want to put your operations person over them. Everybody may report metrics to the operator, but the operators should not be their boss. They should not be their supervisor or superior. If you have a head of director or head of sales and marketing or a BDM.   [00:07:50] Now, what if you are that operator entrepreneur? So let's talk about that. First, you may not actually be that person. You may just enjoy creating operational systems. I enjoy that. I love creating the systems and building out operational stuff, but I don't love doing the data entry. I don't love running those systems. I don't want to run the meetings. I don't want to run the process, but I like building out sometimes those processes or the mechanics or the mechanisms 'cause that's creative work for me. That's visionary, creative work for me.    [00:08:23] Now, if you actually are this operator personality type and you run a business, you may have struggled to grow your business because of that. So you may need to surround yourself with visionaries to get ideas. This is why some of my clients that are operator personality types, work with me as a. It helps expose them to new ideas. It helps stretch them, move them into the things that they wouldn't normally think of doing. It's kind of like, I get to be the visionary for them in some regard.    [00:08:50] Or you may need to go get a business partner or somebody that can fill that role if you really feel that that's a deficiency. So getting a visionary co-mentor can help... getting somebody else. Now you may also want to-- just a tip-- is just practice feeling, right? Because usually operators are very in their head. They're very mental. They're avoiding their feelings. They're trying to avoid feelings by using logic, which doesn't really work.   [00:09:17] The only thing you can do with a feeling is to feel that feeling. So my recommendation is don't be mentally avoiding feelings, be present, get in your body and feel those feelings because once you're comfortable feeling uncomfortable feelings... Once you can deal with that, you can move to a higher level of capacity as an entrepreneur.   [00:09:39] You will also need to learn to build the right culture and attract people that you can actually trust to let go of control to. A lot of times, you want to hold onto things and control everything and you don't feel safe letting go. They don't really share your values and you're never going to trust somebody unless they really share your values.   [00:09:58] You won't trust them to do things the way you would. You won't trust them to work with people the way you would. You won't trust your clients to talk to them. You won't trust that they'll make great decisions because they don't share your values and you cannot create values in people. It's hard wired in. They get their values from their religion, their parents, their upbringing, the culture they grew up in.   [00:10:20] They have those kinds of set. They've made decisions long ago, lots of little decisions that led to their values. So you need to find people that are good at culture fit or value fit for you. You may also want to get a BDM. So a lot of the operator entrepreneurs really struggle in the sales outreach, business development sort of category. That stuff's not fun. Like making a cold call sounds really uncomfortable for a lot of them, for example, right? They just know they're not good at it. They're not a closer, they don't have the bite, the hunger, the drive. They don't feel comfortable following up on somebody three times in the same day. They're like, "that sounds mean, or uncomfortable for them. Right?   [00:11:01] So if that's you, you may need a BDM or you may want to partner with a visionary I had mentioned before. Or at the very least, at least maybe a sales assistant that you can groom to be a BDM, which I've done a podcast episode on previously, which is a great episode. You should listen to it if that's of interest to you.   [00:11:18] All right. So what if you have an operator business partner? You're the visionary. And you're both equal partners in this business? This can be a really difficult, uncomfortable dynamic. If you want to grow and you have vision and they don't trust you, then that relationship is now toxic.    [00:11:38] If the operator doesn't trust you-- if you've destroyed trust with your experiments and your risks, and they don't trust you anymore, then to, to move the business forward, either you need to rebuild that trust or the relationship needs to end, because it's toxic. You cannot grow when you have an equal partner that's able to make decisions in the business, and they're saying, "I don't want to do experiments or do something uncomfortable or hire a coach or work with DoorGrow, or do anything that feels expensive or risky or new... I'm comfortable with where things are right now.    [00:12:11] So if you have somebody that's growth oriented and somebody that's comfort oriented and wants safety and certainty, and they're equal partners, you may have to dissolve that relationship. This is why I say the visionary must be the one that leads. This is super important that the visionary must be the one that is allowed to have leadership and to lead in this organization. They have to lead. Visionary has to be allowed to lead in this organization.   [00:12:38] So the visionary plus the operator: so if everything's working out, then you will be stronger together. This is a magical relationship. Somebody's creating the vision and somebody making sure everything gets done. It takes a huge load off the visionary entrepreneur's plate. And the operator has the right problems to solve and the right things to do, and they know what to do in order to win and what to figure out. And they're in the right role. And everybody is going to be happier in that type of business.    [00:13:10] If you're in a business that doesn't have a good operator, then a lot of things will fall through the cracks. There'll be a lot of things that aren't getting done. There'll be a lot of chaos. A lot of confusion there'll be constant changes in direction. Goals will change. Goals will be too big and unattainable. You're not connected to reality in the business and a business without vision or without a visionary will feel like it's not moving forward. It won't feel like there's growth. It won't feel exciting. It won't feel like there's something to look forward to in the business.   [00:13:40] And it will feel just safe, comfortable, and you're not gonna have a lot of growth. Right? So my hope is that those of you listening have self-identified: are you more of a visionary? Or are you more of an operator? And what do you need in order to get to the next level? And I hope this is helpful for those of you that are running property management businesses.   [00:14:00] If you want to move your business forward, if you want to grow your company, if you could use a little more vision or you could use some operational systems and to learn how to attract and build the right team, the right planning system, the right meeting structures, the right, systems in order to scale your business operationally... To support your operator or the right sales-related things to support your BDM...    [00:14:27] there is nothing better out there than the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Our clients are crushing it with this stuff right now. And we have scripts for your BDMs. We have programs that are far more effective than what most people are doing to grow their business that are focused on generating more warm leads, more trust, more relationships that have like an 80- 90% close rate-- really effective.   [00:14:52] And we also have systems that are better than EOS or Traction or all these systems that exist out there we call DoorGrow OS. We also have a really brilliant hiring system called DoorGrow ATS so you can attract and retain and have A-players in your business and make sure everybody's on track, everybody's accountable and you have no hiders in your business.   [00:15:13] And so if you are interested in this, get on a call with our team, check us out at doorgrow.com and we'd love to support you. And we will also give you a free training with 7-- there's a couple bonus ones-- maybe 9 Frameworks, in which you can learn some of the secrets to growing and scaling your business and different lenses to view your business so that you can make your business even more effective. And we will give that training to you for free and explain the program and everything in it. And we would love to do that for you. So reach out to us at DoorGrow, and, until next time to our mutual growth.   [00:15:47] Bye everyone.   [00:15:48] 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!    [00:16:14] 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.   [00:16:35] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

How can you build the ultimate property management team for your business? Too many entrepreneurs build the wrong team. They have to micromanage their team, they can’t trust them, and their team members do not share the business owner’s values. Property management growth expert, Jason Hull explains why business owners might get stuck with hires that do not share their values, how to attract the right team members with clearly defined company culture, and what to look for in the ultimate executive team. You’ll Learn… [01:13] Recap on the Four Reasons for Starting a Business [02:22] Going from Solopreneur to Having the Ultimate Team [04:24] Building a Team to Give YOU Fulfillment and Freedom [6:19] The “Sandtrap” of Struggling to Grow Business [7:49] Why You Might Have the Wrong Team and Company Culture [10:26] The “Fifth Reason” for Starting a Business: Safety and Certainty [11:05] The Key Team Members for a Property Management Team [15:10] Creating a Core Executive Team of Thinkers [18:48] The First Hire You Should Make and Job Descriptions Tweetables “If every team member is coming to you and asking questions on a daily basis, throughout your day, you do not have a very good team.” “The reason you have the wrong team is because you are showing up in the business as the wrong person, and you are in the wrong role.” “The goal is we're trying to build a core executive team that you can trust to make decisions for and on behalf of you, the business owner. Which means you need people that can think, people that share your values.” “The very first hire that you get should be based on not what the business needs most.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] If every team member is coming to you and asking questions on a daily basis, throughout your day, you do not have a very good team. You've built the wrong team.    [00:00:10] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently... then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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.    [00:01:13] All right. So today, we're going to be talking about this idea of the ultimate property management team, at least the basic foundational team that you would need in order to get to that ultimate level we all want to get to where we have the highest level of the "four reasons." and if you have not listened to my episode on the "four reasons for starting a business," Then go back and check that out.    [00:01:42] So for those that have not heard that, quick recap: the four reasons for having a business are to have more fulfillment in life, to get fulfillment out of your business, to get freedom more and more freedom, and more contribution so you feel like you're making a difference, living your purpose, and support. This is why we create the vehicle of a business. So it can also give us more support and related to that, you cannot have maximum freedom, maximum fulfillment, maximum contribution, unless you have the ultimate team. So let's talk about the ultimate property management team.   [00:02:22] Now, for most business owners, you start out as a solopreneur. This is this journey you start on. The transition from solopreneur to having a team is one of the most painful and difficult transitions. I see business owners go through. This was hard for myself. It's one of the biggest challenges at even multimillion dollar companies or large companies that have been in groups or masterminds that I've been in with... it's building that team and building the right culture and the right team. In building the ultimate property management team, usually you're going to need a few key strategic ingredients, right? So the ultimate team would be basically you as a business owner-- property management business owner-- having a team that allows you to not have to do anything you don't want to do in the business.   [00:03:08] So let's say, you just want to function as a business owner and maybe just hold on to a couple of little pieces that you enjoy or love doing. So here are some of the key people. So typically you're going to need at least probably about five team members, and in order to afford that most property management businesses usually are going to need to be around 200 to 400 doors typically.    [00:03:34] I know there's this model out there. And a lot of people will bring up Steve Crossland. He's a really cool guy right here in Austin... does property management. And there is this Steve Crossland model of property management where you do everything. You do every single thing in the business.    [00:03:52] You do every single thing in the business, and if you're doing every single thing in the business, that's cool. But, you might not enjoy that. You might not enjoy every single thing. Most of us as business owners, there's certain things we're really good at, and there's a lot of things we're really bad at. There's a lot of things I'm not good at, and I don't want to do those things. I don't enjoy doing those things. Those things, those things are not fun for me. So I want other people to help me do those things. And not only that, but it becomes really difficult to try and do everything on your own.    [00:04:24] Now, is it more profitable if you can do every single thing yourself and you're willing to just dedicate all your time? Yes. You can make a lot more money maybe that way, because you have very little cost, but you have to recognize on a previous episode, I talked about the five currencies. I think I talked about that. If I didn't, I'll do it in a future episode, but these currencies are time, energy, focus, cash, and effort.   [00:04:52] So, not all of them are money, right? Cash is only one of them. You want to hold on to as much cash as possible and you're willing to give up all these other sacred currencies, like your life time, your energy, your focus, and that's fun for you? Cool. But for most that's not fun.   [00:05:10] That's not freedom. That's not fulfillment. That sounds like hell right? It's just another job. And if you want to be the guy, or gal by the way, for every maintenance request and every accounting problem and every sales call, or any leasing situation, or every showing... or every operational challenge you are not going to really--- you're not going to have freedom, you're not going to have fulfillment. You're going to be in a prison of your own creation.   [00:05:39] So what's the ultimate goal? Like, if you start this business, usually for most entrepreneurs, the ultimate goal is going to be to have a team so that you feel supported and you feel like Iron Man in that super suit. You're a normal person, but you have this team that increases your abilities, your capabilities, allows you to provide a great level of service and to do a good job and feel like you're making a difference in the world, but you don't have to do all the stuff that's uncomfortable, painful, or you don't enjoy doing.   [00:06:08] So typically, maybe about five team members in addition to yourself. And probably 200 to 400 doors so that you can afford or justify that at least minimum, somewhere in that range or more.   [00:06:19] So we need to get you to that point, and if you're having trouble with that, that's something we help clients focus on is how to get to that point. Now, most people get to this point, and I call this sometimes the "second sand trap," or maybe the third sand trap.   [00:06:33] But, there's the initial sand trap of like: "I can't get on any clients" or "I'm starting my business." That's where a lot of people get stuck. I don't know if that even counts as a sand trap because they're not even going, they have a fantasy business. Right? The next is the first real sand trap is the sand trap of the solopreneur sand trap. Just breaking that a hundred door barrier... getting stuck, maybe around between 50 to 80 doors... can't grow any more. It's too painful. You can't manage any more properties than that on your own for most people and you're struggling and you can't afford to hire anybody and you end up painted into a corner and stuck, right? First sand trap.    [00:07:09] Second sand trap is you are in that 200 to 400 door range and you have a team, but it's the wrong team. And this is where a lot of property management businesses sit stuck and stagnant. They're in that 200 to 400 door range.    [00:07:23] The business owner feels like they have to micromanage everybody on the team, which, you know you're that person if you're like, "We just need more checklists! And we need more processes!" And you're trying to control everyone. And you are the person that every single person on the team comes to and asks questions. If every team member is coming to you and asking questions on a daily basis, throughout your day, you do not have a very good team.    [00:07:49] You've built the wrong team. You don't have a team of thinkers. You don't have a team of decision makers. You have a team that you have to micromanage, and these are people as process that you have to control. And this is the initial team most people build. When they start building a team, they build a team the wrong way. They build a team that they have to micromanage and control because at first it feels really cool.    [00:08:11] There's a lot of ego and everyone's coming in asking questions and they feel like they're really smart. And they end up quickly like the Emperor or Empress with no clothes. Everybody wants to say yes to the boss. They're not giving the boss valid feedback. And so you end up with a business that is struggling.   [00:08:30] And the reason you have the wrong team is because you are showing up in the business as the wrong person. And you are in the wrong role. You've created this role, holding onto all the things that you think you have to do as a business owner. You're like, "I have to do, you know, the accounting. I have to control the finances."   [00:08:53] That's like, "I'm the business owner. That's my job." Or "I'm the only one that can do the sales. I have to do all the sales and I'm the BDM too. So I have to do all of that because nobody else is as good as me," or whatever you tell yourself. Or "I have to handle the operations because that's running the business and it's my business and I'm running it.   [00:09:11] "I have to manage the entire team and do everything." Whatever it is that you are holding on to, if it's not something you enjoy, you are showing up as the wrong person. So we want to make sure that we build the right job for you, and then we build the right team to supplement you-- the right team around you.   [00:09:31] And most business owners are stuck at the 200 to 400 door range in this industry because they have the wrong team because they've been showing up in the wrong role and they didn't understand the four reasons and they weren't moving towards that consistently. And they didn't set up the right culture.   [00:09:49] Their team has no clue really what the company's core values are. They have no clue what the company's client-centric mission is to, to benefit clients. Then, you know, none of this is clearly defined. There's a lack of culture. And the business owner has a lack of clarity on themselves and never got clear on why did they even do this? How does this give them more fulfillment and more freedom? How's this helping them be more of themselves, create more contribution. How does this help bring them more alignment towards the four reasons? That lack of clarity means you're going to have team members that also are not in alignment with those four reasons.   [00:10:26] So there's the fifth reason. And the fifth reason is safety and certainty. Your team members are just people that want safety and certainty, they just don't want to get fired. They just want to keep getting paid. They just want their job and they become hiders, not believers in your business because you haven't given them anything to believe in. There's no real culture that's clearly defined, so the culture in your business is what actually is going on in your business.    [00:10:49] So if there's office politics, if there's micro-managing, if there's laziness, if there's confusion, if there's crappy processes, that's your culture. That's the culture that you have defined by not clearly defining it.    [00:11:05] So let's talk about these key team members that you would need once you get to that 200 to 400 door range, or as you're growing and scaling, if you wanted to offload things. So in most businesses at that stage, you're going to probably need a maintenance coordinator that handles the maintenance coordination.   [00:11:23] This could be an introverted person. That's just really detail-oriented and really good at remembering stuff and can facilitate tools like Property Meld and stuff like that. That was property meld, M-E-L-D. They can facilitate tools like this for communication and nothing falls through the cracks with them because they're on top of that kind of stuff, if they're the right personality. So you have a maintenance coordinator handling maintenance, it's a big piece of the business, right?    [00:11:48] You will probably need a property manager, somebody that handles the leasing side of things, that handles the onboarding of new tenants and new owners that the salesperson hands people off to, and that is the boots-on-the-ground person that goes out into the field and does certain things related to leasing and onboarding... that sort of thing.    [00:12:08] You'll also need an operator. This is probably the most important role, second to the visionary or the entrepreneur, which would be you, those listening to this. So the operator is going to be the person that handles all the operational pieces they're going to be very different than the visionary personality type. They have all the details, make sure the team are doing what they're supposed to be doing. They make sure that meetings are being run on time.    [00:12:34] And in a certain way, they're handling the strategic planning for the company, which we have a system that we teach clients called DoorGrow OS, which I believe is better than Traction or EOS or any of that kind of stuff that most of you are dabbling with out there. There's several advantages in DoorGrow OS over that system. Maybe that'd be another podcast episode.    [00:12:55] But you have an operator and they have an operating system and they're going to make sure process documentation and systems and everything are working well and that the business runs. And they're basically the key person that's going to enact your vision and make sure your vision is coming to fruition and they will ensure that it gets done.   [00:13:12] You will probably also need a BDM. You may love doing sales. And that may be one of the last things that you give up and maybe nobody would be quite as good as you. But if that is not your personality type and you don't enjoy it, or you just have part time availability to dedicate to that, you can only really do sales and follow-up maybe 10 to 20 hours a week or less.   [00:13:34] Then you may want-- if you really want to grow and scale your business, then you will need to get a full time person. That's focused on networking, connecting, building relationships, prospecting, and growing and scaling your business... referrals... all of that kind of stuff. So that would be a BDM, which is a business development manager. Basically a sales person in your property management business.   [00:13:59] The other role that you may need is maybe you don't enjoy– or are not an expert at the financial stuff. I've worked with financial coaches and things like that, because this was something I was not naturally good at because I didn't enjoy it. But I like making money and I like winning financially. And I like knowing that the business is sound and safe financially. So I got coaches and mentors on this, but I still have people and resources and a team to help with these pieces so that it's not something I have to put a lot of time and energy into.   [00:14:33] So you'll need somebody on the accounting side or financial side, bookkeeping, accounting, that sort of thing if that's something that you are not getting a lot of freedom and fulfillment from and contribution from.   [00:14:45] Then another role that you will probably need would maybe be a receptionist, somebody to just field the onslaught of all these phone calls that you're getting from so many tenants and owners and things coming in, to triage things and get them to the right people. You'll need somebody maybe to answer the phones because those low level calls can eat up a lot of resources for these higher level team members.    [00:15:10] Now, what is the goal that we're trying to build here? The goal is we're trying to build a core executive team that you can trust to make decisions for and on behalf of you, the business owner. Which means you need people that can think, people that share your values. You will never trust your financial person to make decisions, you'll never trust your BDM to sell and bring in people the right way and attract the right clients, you'll never trust fully your operations person to do the job the right way unless you deep down know they share your values.    [00:15:48] They might be skilled and can do those jobs, and you may have a team. If you're in that 200 to 400 door range and you feel stuck it might be because you have a team of people that don't share your values, or they're not clear on your values and so there's a disconnect.    [00:16:05] So you need executive team members that are part of this executive team decision-maker/ thinkers that can run pieces of the business-- additional engines in the business-- instead of everyone just being cogs or wheels that are turned by the engine. You need other people that can take these pieces off of your plate so you don't have to make every decision. You don't have to answer every question. You don't have to do every single thing in that, and they don't have to check in with you on every single thing either-- that you're able to trust them. And the only way you'll be able to trust them is if they share your values.   [00:16:40] And if you cannot trust your team members with those things, either you haven't made your values clear to them, or you just know already, which is probably more likely they don't have the same value set as you, You cannot create enough processes and checklists and systems to force executive-level-thinker team members to be effective at implementation and taking action and taking over pieces of the business. That's impossible. There's too much going on.    [00:17:07] They need to share your values, and those values need to be clear to them and need to be related to them, and they need to buy into them and be believers in those values and believers in you and believers in the vision of the company.   [00:17:21] If they don't believe in you, and they don't believe in the values, then they're just "hiders." they're just showing up to get a paycheck. They're going to just do their job. They will do the bare minimum. They're not going to do anything extra. They're not going to think or make decisions 'cause they'll probably just make a mistake or get in trouble, so they're going to come to you and ask you to do it for them. "Make this choice for me." And then you end up just with a whole bunch of people that are eating up your time instead of taking more of your time off of your plate because they're just eating up time, asking all these questions.    [00:17:54] So that's kind of the ultimate team. Now, if you have other ideas or other team members, feel free to comment inside our Facebook group, which is the community for those that are fans of this podcast and that are fans of DoorGrow. You can go to doorgrowclub.com which is our Facebook group, and you can join that group.    [00:18:16] Let me know: what does the ultimate team look like for you? I'd be curious to see if I missed something here, but this-- these are some of the key team members that I've seen people need in their businesses in order to offload and take things off their plate. So that's that. That's about the ultimate team. So in order to have the ultimate team, you need culture, you need a lot of clarity on what you and your role should be in the business and on your purpose in life and on what your values are and what drives and motivates you so that we can build the right ultimate team around you.   [00:18:48] And the next step: the very first hire that you get should be based on not what the business needs most. It should be based on what you need most in order to get to the next level towards the four reasons. This is why I have a strategic process for clients to do a time study, to figure out: what do they need next?   [00:19:10] And then we have a specific way of doing job descriptions that I call "Rdocs" to figure out what is the ultimate job description for the next hire that I need to get in order to let go of the things that are eating up the currencies that I don't want to be giving up, which you know, things that are stealing my energy, things that are stealing my focus, things are stealing my cash, that were preventing from making more cash things. They're stealing my time.    [00:19:35] What are the things that I would want to give up most? And how can I build the right job description around that? And what is my current accurate job description? Is this what I want? Or are there things I can just highlight on that, that I could eventually put onto somebody else's job description. So these are the things we get into more in the DoorGrow OS and into the scale program that's in our mastermind.    [00:19:55] So if this stuff is interesting to you, if you got some value out of this, you might be a good fit or interested in being part of our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. So reach out to us, go to doorgrow.com, schedule a call with our team, and we will give you a free training that will help you know everything about our mastermind and help you learn some of these cool frameworks.    [00:20:20] We give this free training away that has seven-- actually, it has probably like nine or more, frameworks that are gonna help you learn how to scale and grow your business more effectively, and we hope you get really excited about that. Realize you're a great fit for it. And it will also break down why most companies are struggling to grow and why most marketing ideas and channels like SEO and pay per click, Google ads and content marketing and social media marketing and pay per lead services are BS and are not helping you grow your business.   [00:20:52] And if you've been trying this stuff and struggling, they all can work, but there's a big, massive reason why they're not working. We can reveal that to you in that training and help you do something that's not those things that cost no dollars and we'll make you a lot more money, and it takes less time than using those strategies to get on a lot of business.   [00:21:14] So anyway, check this out. Doorgrow.com and until next time, to our mutual growth. And I hope you all build the ultimate team and have the ultimate level of freedom and fulfillment in your life and contribution and support. Bye, everyone.

As a property management business owner, how many leads do you throw away? These are leads that are outside of your service area or properties that are short-term rentals when you only manage long-term rentals. Every property manager turns away potential clients and leads. Imagine if you could work with the local property managers in or outside of your area and feed each other business. Property management growth expert Jason Hull gets into strategies for connecting with other property managers and creating a referral system that is a win-win for both parties involved. You’ll Learn… [01:09] Referral Partnerships Between Property Managers [02:04] Creating Strategic, Win-Win Relationships [04:21] Most Property Management Companies Suck [6:24] A Tip from One of Our DoorGrow Mastermind Clients [7:39] Assume the Close!  [8:35] Get FREE access to the Seven Frameworks Training Tweetables “Just one strategic relationship in a neighboring city could be feeding you some doors every single month, and you could be feeding them some doors, every single month.” “I really do believe a rising tide raises all ships and it will allow you to be more connected, more aware.” “Plant those seeds that will maybe come to fruition that will lead maybe to acquisition, maybe lead to referrals, but create some relationships and get connected with other property managers in your market.” “There are a lot of people that property management is a side hustle for them. It's not their bread and butter. It's not their mainstay. It's not what they really want to be doing with their life.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Just one strategic relationship in a neighboring city could be feeding you some doors every single month, and you could be feeding them some doors, every single month.    [00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker.   [00:00:29] DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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.    [00:01:09] All right. So today we're going to be talking a little bit about local referral property management partners. So, what do I mean by that? So one of the things that I've noticed in property management is there is some very low hanging fruit and a lot of property managers are overly competitive and they look at all the other property managers in their local market as these competitors that they need to somehow beat or avoid.   [00:01:35] And a lot of property managers have this general lack of collaboration. And I really believe that the industry needs collaboration over competition. I really believe in this principle of collaboration over competition. So in taking a look at this one thing that I would recommend that you do is you start getting familiar with all the other property managers in your local market, especially those that you're not directly competing with that are right outside of your local market.   [00:02:04] Now, connect with these property managers and get familiar with them because. You know how often you're getting phone calls from people with properties that you just cannot manage. They might be too far outside of your service or coverage area. They might be different types of niches of property management that you do not service like commercial or associations or storage units or whatever, right.   [00:02:27] There may be other companies in your local market or just outside of your local market that you might be able to refer business out to, and you know how often you get contacted for things that you can't handle. So what do you do with that? You just tell them no, and you basically, essentially take that potential lead and you throw it in the garbage can, right?   [00:02:45] There's a lot that tends to go into these garbage cans in business. And so those things that are in the garbage can could be useful to other people. Well, think about all these other people, you could be connected to that they have their own garbage can full of stuff that they could have handed to you.   [00:03:02] Just one strategic relationship in a neighboring city could be feeding you some doors every single month, and you could be feeding them some doors, every single month.    [00:03:11] "Hey, do you manage in this area?"    [00:03:12] "Actually, no, but I know this gal, Susie, who's really great at that. She's just outside of our market and covers that area." Right?   [00:03:20] So you can then be referring business back and forth. This is obvious. It's low hanging fruit, but there's so many property managers, especially newer property managers that do not do this. So think about how often you're receiving stuff that you can't use or do anything with, you could give to other people.   [00:03:37] Well, other people have that, that they could give to you. So get connected to these other property managers. Call them up and start reaching out and creating these relationships. So you can join the local NARPM chapters. You can start a local group of property managers, but I really do believe a rising tide raises all ships and it will allow you to be more connected, more aware.   [00:04:00] And even if you view your competition as an enemy, for some reason, you know, the old adage, which is. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. So stay close to them and be aware of what they're doing anyway if you're that type of person, that's that competitive. So get connected to them because, you know, having these local referral partners, some of my clients are getting doors, you know, on a monthly basis, just from people that they're connected to and sending it. Now, here's where this gets even more awesome.    [00:04:30] So if you're connected with these other people that are doing property management, you're going to identify some people that do property management that don't like it. I know that's crazy. And I know you're really surprised at hearing that there might be people out there that don't enjoy property management.    [00:04:46] But There are. There are some people that do not enjoy property management. Most property managers out there suck. This is the reality. Most property management businesses suck. And that means most of the business owners probably are not happy. And most of the property management businesses aren't doing a great job.   [00:05:04] There are a lot of people that property management is a side hustle for them. It's not their bread and butter. It's not their mainstay. It's not what they really want to be doing with their life. They would rather be doing more real estate deals, or they would rather be doing something else, but they feel like they need to do it in order just to keep their existing clients happy or to maintain something or whatever.   [00:05:26] You can create a win-win with these people. And you can call up these companies or these people that are doing property management, and you can suggest if you create a relationship with them, you can plant that seed, thought that, "Hey, we would be willing to acquire or offer you X number of dollars per unit, and we would take over these portfolio, we would do a really great job doing it. And you won't have to deal with this anymore."   [00:05:48] And ask them, "do you love this? Or would you rather do more real estate?"    [00:05:52] And if they're honest with you, they would probably say, "I would love to just really do more real estate deals if I didn't have to do this, but I don't want to lose the real estate deals."   [00:05:58] "What if you could keep the real estate deals, keep the clients, but give up the property management, not have to do that. And any time you gave us property management we'd give you some sort of referral kickback or something, and I could help you turn them into maybe even more real estate deals?"   [00:06:12] So This is stuff that we talk about a bit more in our Referral Secrets training, but I wanted to share this idea with everybody: connect with other property managers. Plant those seeds that will maybe come to fruition that will lead maybe to acquisition, maybe lead to referrals, but create some relationships and get connected with other property managers in your market.   [00:06:34] So I don't know if there's a whole lot more I need to say about that. I think this is a pretty simple idea, pretty simple concept, but get connected with other property managers. If you want to be connected with some of the best property managers that are crushing it all over the U.S. we have over 80 businesses that are in our mastermind that are crushing it, sharing wins, getting on our calls, doing great stuff, adding lots of doors, they're sharing all kinds of tips.   [00:07:01] Just to give an example, what's a good tip that somebody shared today? One of the tips that was shared on the call today is they would call up other potential referral partners, and they would just say, "Hey, we just want to be an asset on your team for you to refer out to people. You know, you have a team of vendors that you probably refer out to people. We want to be on that team."   [00:07:23] I thought that was a pretty smart little idea. I shared a tip one of my clients on cold calls was asking if people would be interested in getting on a call with him so he could explain his program or his product or service or whatever. And I shared the tip of, don't ask for the call.   [00:07:39] Don't ask if they'd be interested. Assume they'd be interested. Sell them on being interested, and then assume that they're going to want to be on a call with you and then just give them times. So for example, instead of saying, "Hey, would you be interested in getting on a call where we can talk about..." like sounds really not confident, right?   [00:07:56] Saying, "Hey, I've got this really cool thing. I love to set up a time with you. When would be a good time? How's Thursday at two? Would that work for you? Right. Just assume they would want to and give them a time. So then they can say, "Yeah, that would work" or "No, that doesn't work for me."   [00:08:12] "Cool. How about this time?"    [00:08:13] That's going to be far more effective in closing people on things. Right? So anyway, there's lots of really cool tips. If you're interested in being part of something like this, join the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Reach out to us at DoorGrow.Com.    [00:08:27] We do not let everybody into this program. We have some qualifications. We have our three commitments that are required in order to be part of this program.    [00:08:35] If you would like to get free access to Seven Frameworks training in which I share seven frameworks, plus some additional ones that can be game changers for how to think about your business and how to become a better entrepreneur, and I share my top three strategies on how to grow a property management business and an overview of our program. This is basically our big sales pitch. If you want access to the Seven Frameworks training, reach out to us, we'd be happy to give you access to this for free, explain everything transparently... pricing for the program, everything's in that.   [00:09:06] And then you can apply and get on a call with our team. So just reach out to us at DoorGrow. We'd be happy to help you do that. You can find us at doorgrow.com, and that's all I have to share for today. So I hope that's helpful. And until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.   [00:09:24] 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! 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.   [00:10:12] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

As a property management entrepreneur, your cell phone number is sacred information. Not everyone should have access to it. How can you implement and utilize phone systems in your business? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about the importance of protecting your personal cell phone number and using systems like Talkroute to make and receive business calls instead. You'll Learn... [01:16] The Challenge of Dealing with Phones in the Business [04:54] The Frustrating Issue with Many Phone Systems: Latency [09:02] Why we Like to Use Talkroute here at DoorGrow [10:59] Why Should You Protect Your Cell Phone Number? [15:07] Comparing Other Examples of Phone Systems You Can Utilize Tweetables “One of the first things property managers learn really quick in starting their businesses: you don't want everybody to have your cell phone number..” “As a business owner, in order to leverage a team and have this dream of only having the four reasons, you need to have leverage.” “One of the ways to have leverage is you can't be reachable by everybody by phone immediately, you need to have protection and support.” “I recommend that you utilize those tools, protect and insulate yourself and get a really good phone system.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: So one of the first things property managers learn really quick in starting their businesses: you don't want everybody to have your cell phone number. So if every tenant and every owner has your cell phone number, your business-- you're going to be the biggest bottleneck in your business, and it's going to be a nightmare. [00:00:13] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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're interested in growing your business and life-- and you're open to doing things a bit differently-- then you are a DoorGrow Hacker.  [00:00:31] DoorGrow Hackers 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 the 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.  [00:01:16] Okay. So. This question came up on my Wednesday coaching call today with the group, with the mastermind group. And, um, it was right at the end, but this is such a common question. And this isn't even a growth-related question. Our Wednesday call's a growth call. We usually focus on adding doors. [00:01:34] We had some great wins and things shared, but at the end, one of our clients is like, “Hey, I got a question. I don't know if I should wait until Friday to ask this during your Scale call, where it's operations, even though I'm focused on growth, I've got a problem that I need to deal with. And I said, “what is it about?” [00:01:50] And it was about phones. So we're going to talk about phones today because this comes up-- I'm just surprised how often this comes up and it comes up. It's a common challenge is how do you deal with phones? Why phones are expensive. How do we do phones with our team? What phone system should we use? So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I've used in the past, what we use currently– what I recommend to property managers that could make sense. [00:02:17] So let's talk about phones. Okay. So the challenge is most people nowadays are using-- they don't have just a standard phone. They have a phone system, they have a cell phone and they might have some standard phones in their office, like normal office phone system. but all of these things can get really expensive. [00:02:39] So we used at DoorGrow-- OpenPotion-- we used RingCentral for a while. So we had this voiceover IP phone system, the challenge with systems like most phone systems nowadays, even if their voiceover IP used to be, Hey, get a voiceover IP and it could be super cheap. Right? But it's not nowadays. [00:03:01] Nowadays, it's like, you have to have a device and they sell you these devices. So you got to buy a phone, you have to have multiple phones for each desk and each person and each line. And each person usually is like $30 or sometimes $40 a seat. And so if you have a team, like, of five, you could be shelling out like $40 a person for each line then, you know, that adds up. [00:03:26] So let's say you've got a team of five-- $40. You spend 200 bucks just on your phone system. Well, in our business, we were spending. Anywhere from two to $300 a month, something like this a month on phones. And it was really costly. And we were using RingCentral, which is a popular one. It works really well. [00:03:45] It gives you tons of features, which is really nice, but we didn't-- we didn't need-- we had so many team members that needed to make phone calls, but not-- they weren't on the phone like 24 hours a day. They didn't need unlimited calling. They were making calls all the time. And what was really ridiculous is we all had cell phones. [00:04:02] We had unlimited calling on our cell phones. We all have plans where we had unlimited cell phone plans. So it's just-- it felt really weird that we have unlimited cell phones that we already have, but we just didn't want everybody to have our cell phone numbers. Cause that would have been a mess, right? [00:04:17] Having a business where everybody has their cell phone number. So one of the first things property managers learn really quick in starting their businesses: you don't want everybody to have your cell phone number. So if every tenant and every owner has your cell phone number, your business-- you're going to be the biggest bottleneck in your business, and it's going to be a nightmare. [00:04:33] So you need to get rid of that phone number, right? You need some sort of solution. So you could port that number into a phone system like RingCentral. And then if anybody calls that number, they're going into your phone system and then you can leverage your team and whatnot, right. That's one option, but here's what we switched to. [00:04:54] So we were using RingCentral and we switched to a system called TalkRoute, which you can get to by going to TalkRoute R-O-U-T-E .com. The reason I like TalkRoute is: I tested a lot of different phone systems. One of the biggest challenges with modern phone systems or voice over IP or VoIP or digitally based phone systems is latency. [00:05:18] Latency means like a lag, delay. If you've ever been on a bad phone system or bad VoIP system and experienced delay, it feels like you say, “hi,” and then two seconds later, they hear it. And so then what ends up happening because of that latency, that lag of even a second, it causes you both to speak over each other. [00:05:39] So let's say we're having a conversation. Somebody who's like, “Hey, how's it going?”And they're like, then you, if you don't hear them respond for like two seconds or a second, you're like, that's uncomfortable. It's weird. That awkwardness that's because of there's lag, there's latency, and then they're going to start talking and you might not realize they start talking. [00:05:57] So you start talking and then you're going to end up talking over each other all the time. You'll think there's a gap and you'll start talking, but they won't realize that you didn't say anything. And so they'll continue talking and then you're talking over them and then you end up stepping on each other's toes, and it's a really awkward way to have a conversation. [00:06:13] And so what I did when I was looking at phone systems is in testing them, I would do a trial, do a demo, do a test, and I would set up the phone system. So I could call my cell phone with that system or call the system with my cell phone and, and talk. And I would say,”hi,” and I listened to other one, I say, “hi” and listen to the other one. [00:06:32] And I wanted to see how quick or how long it took for me to hear what I just said. How quick was it? If it's like:”Hi.” “Hi.” “Hey.” You know, that's pretty fast. That's low latency. You can have a conversation, and it's routing through the magical internet or wires or whatever, and they're getting it quick enough that you can have a conversation and it's not going to cause that delay of stepping on each other's toes. [00:06:57] Now, very few phone systems passed what I call that delay or lag test. So that's the first thing I would recommend when you're looking at a phone system is do a test and see what the lag is. See what the delay time is. Now, sometimes their servers and your internet are gonna play a factor to this. So sometimes some phone systems were better just simply because you have better internet, you have a better router, some of these ping times or latencies or lags or whatever it could be caused simply because you have a crappy device running your internet in your office or at your home. [00:07:34] And so you need to have a really good device that can handle a lot of connections and a really good internet connection. So sometimes it's just about getting a better router and not just using your internet modem, that's like providing the service. A lot of times, internet providers nowadays will give you a modem that has a router built into it, and it's doing everything. [00:07:54] It's your wifi, it's a router. And it's your modem connecting you to the service for internet. And usually it's crappy. It's like, they're doing the cheapest thing. They can get all put together and it's a Jack of all trades and a master of none.  [00:08:11] And usually most homes nowadays, or offices have multiple Apple watches and iPhones and iPads and phones and, like, cameras and all sorts of things utilizing this network with the internet of things everything's connected and it's just a lot, my house has a ton of stuff. Even light bulbs are hooked on the wifi. So I can talk to my phone and tell things to turn on and off. Right. So. There's so many devices connected, usually routers, struggle to handle all the device connections and to deal with that. [00:08:46] So it's usually just the chipset on the router is not strong enough to handle all of these devices talking at the same time and communicating, even if they're not using very much internet bandwidth. And sometimes that's a bottleneck. So first make sure you have a really good internet connection.  [00:09:02] Now, TalkRoute. Why I liked TalkRoute-- TalkRoute is a phone system, you pay one flat fee for their entire service. And then instead of them giving you a bunch of devices, they give you an app that you can install on your phone and you can make calls through your cell phone using your cell phone minutes.  [00:09:24] So if your outbound calls, cell phone calls are good and you like how they sound and they work fine, which everybody's cell phone calls generally work really well, those are great networks. That's what you're going to be using. You're just going to be making a cell phone call and there's no latency at all. Inbound calls will route through the TalkRoute system then to your cell phone, and you can choose to accept that call... if you have them route to you, right? So you can have an auto attendant. You can have unlimited extensions, you can assign extensions to every cell phone in your office, or every person in your office.  [00:09:55] Some real estate offices, for example, will use TalkRoute. And I think they give you unlimited extensions, something like this. So you can assign an extension for every available property with, and put a little Voicemail voice message on there saying, Hey, this property is really great. You should walk around in it, blah, blah, blah. Right? So you can put record messages and then you can put these extension numbers on every single property. You can just put a number up on the yard sign or on the brochure or whatever, and people will call this number, dial this extension to hear a message about this property. [00:10:28] So you can build it out really awesome. You can port your numbers in, so if you have a cell phone that too many people have port that number in once it's ported and that number is in that system, now nobody can reach you. They can reach the system, go get yourself a better cell phone number that nobody knows, and only, only give it out to sacred, well, trusted people. Treat this number like it's sacred. Only give it out to family, maybe really good friends. Nobody else. You need to protect and insulate yourself and protect yourself from giving out your phone number to everybody.  [00:10:59] As a business owner, in order to leverage a team, and have a team, and to offload and have this dream of only having the four reasons as I've talked about on a previous episode of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support, where you get to do the things you want to enjoy and not do everything in the business you need to have leverage. And one of the ways to have leverage is you can't be reachable by everybody by phone immediately, you need to have protection and support. [00:11:28] You need to protect yourself. How do you protect yourself? when it comes to phone calls, you have to set up barriers so that people can't just reach you directly. It's cool. They should be able to reach somebody directly. That's fine. Or at very least an auto attendant and it can route to people. They should not immediately all be able-- nobody should be able to just reach you directly if you want this business to scale and business to grow. [00:11:52] So, TalkRoute has an app on your phone. You can choose a number to dial it also can-- you can get text messages at this number. You can choose which of the phone numbers you have linked to TalkRoute you want to show up on the caller ID for your outbound calling, and that's the only number they're gonna see. You initiate a phone call, it calls in via your cell phone to TalkRoute and then dials that number, initiates the call. TalkRoute knows that it's you, that you're going to be calling that number, so it just makes it all happen magically and they don't see your cell phone number, your personal cell phone number. They only see on their caller ID that they're getting a call from XYZ property management or whatever the caller ID thing that you have set up for that number. They just see that number. [00:12:35] Your main business number, or you could even assign a phone number to each of your team members, or just assign an extension and have that outbound number always be the same number. And they call in and they can hear an auto-attendant, ”push 'one' for sales, 'two' for support,” et cetera. Right. So I recommend you check out TalkRoute. [00:12:52] When I did testing, we've had no problems with latency. All of my team used that for phone calls, except for our sales side of the business and myself. We use our sales CRM, which has calling built into it. I use a CRM called Close, which is really expensive on a per seat basis. But for most of my team, we use TalkRoute and that's how we can get business and send business text messages. We can do phone calls through that. We have extensions. We have auto attendants. We have multiple 800 numbers for different businesses.  [00:13:28] So, all of that. Feeds into one system and it's very easy to manage through TalkRoute's web app. You just go to talkroute.com, I log in and then I can just customize everything. I can make sure everybody has their voicemails and voice messages recorded. And I have the tree structure mapped out and it's easy to record. It's really well thought out and it works really well, and the audio quality is fantastic. So highly recommend that you get TalkRoute.  [00:13:57] So TalkRoute... I think we spend-- I have a lot of phone numbers and a lot of things going on on that now for all the stuff that we have going on underneath all my OpenPotion companies and including DoorGrow-- I think our bill is like still under a hundred bucks a month. Like it's a fraction. And I think initially we were spending like maybe 70, 80 bucks, like it was really cheap. So we were saving you know, probably two, maybe even 300 bucks. [00:14:26] I don't know. We're saving hundreds of dollars over our previous phone set up because we had a large team and everybody had to have extensions and they were charging us 30 or 40 bucks per person. And now it's a fraction of the cost. So, and most of you operate and live off your cell phones. Anyway, you just want to protect that cell phone number, and then you can make those outbound calls, but not give out your cell phone number. And you can still receive and send text messages through the TalkRoute app, if necessary. Some of you have sales CRMs that will shield and mask your phone numbers as well, maybe like lead simple. So I recommend that you utilize those tools, protect and insulate yourself and get a really good phone system. [00:15:07] Now, there are other phones, voice-over IP systems out there. Some require more work on your end. Some are going to give you a lot more hand-holding and have really good reviews for taking care of people. There's Nextiva, which I always found had really aggressive sales tactics, but they had really high ratings. [00:15:27] There's, um, Jive, which has really great ratings for a long time. And maybe still is number one because their customer service level is top-notch. It would really hold your hand. I didn't find they had really aggressive, annoying salespeople. And so I really liked them and they would walk people through it. [00:15:45] And then there's RingCentral, which gives you a lot of features and benefits. they're, they're affordable, but still it's a lot more expensive than something like TalkRoute. And so TalkRoute is the winner for us because we're a virtual company. And I think any companies where you have a lot of team members on the go, everybody has cell phones, they're on the move. TalkRoute would be a great system for most property management businesses. So that is my recommendation. So nobody has to ask me about phone systems anymore. I can say, watch my episode on phone systems and protecting your cell phone number as a property manager. That is this episode.  [00:16:21] So, anyway, if you're struggling to grow your business, you are wanting to implement best practices. [00:16:27] You're wanting to set up a business that's scalable. You want to be adding doors quickly and easily. Instead of losing doors right now, due to the sell-off that's happening, our clients are adding doors. Clients are showing up on Wednesday calls and they’re– our growth call and they're celebrating, sharing their wins. [00:16:43] And a lot of them are only investing a part-time level of hours a week towards growth. That's it, like, my bare minimum requirement if you want to join this program is you have to be willing to block out at least 10 hours to grow your business. That's basically two hours a day. It'll take you less time doing the strategies I give you than it would take to follow up if I gave you a bunch of leads. If I gave you a bunch of leads, that would be terrible because it takes a lot of time. These are cold. You'd have to nurture them and you'll spend far more than just 10 hours a week. If I even gave you 10 leads, a follow-up in time to nurture and you probably only get one deal a week. [00:17:21] My clients are adding multiple doors very quickly. And the bare minimum that I tell them is just do two hours a day. It's 10 hours a week using the strategies that give you to grow. And it's really effective. yeah. So anyway, reach out. If you're interested in growing and scaling your business, if you're a larger company, I love working with those. [00:17:42] If you are in the two to 400 door range, what I call the “second sand trap.” You're trapped. You're stuck. You feel like you're the biggest bottleneck in the business. You wish just everybody would just be smart enough to do everything on your team and you're frustrated. You are the problem. I know that's the sad news. [00:17:58] So let me help you figure out how you can become the entrepreneur that has the business of your dreams and the team of your dreams so that you can trust them. You probably have a cultural mismatch. You probably have, maybe people that know how to do a job and follow a task, but you don't trust them. You don't trust them because you don't have the right cultural foundation in your business. You don't have believers. You don't have people that you can trust to do things the way that you would do them, which is why you haven't given them more or handed things off to them or relegated or delegated or given up your decision-making in certain areas of the business. And you're holding onto it too tightly. [00:18:33] I will teach you how you can offload those pieces, let go of those things and trust people to run your business-- pieces of your business for you, especially the areas that they would be better at than you. Because you don't really enjoy those pieces. And then we can get you closer and closer in alignment towards those four reasons so you really love your business. So  [00:18:51] if you're dealing with that, we can also help you with that in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. And so reach out, chat with us. I'd love to help you grow your business. And we're making some big changes right now. DoorGrow is just really exciting and we're going to be, we're improving our programs that we're constantly improving, but we're making some big changes to them. [00:19:13] And clients are getting even faster momentum. And if you'd love to be part of that, you want to have a coach in your corner, you want to feel like you're not all on your own, you want to feel like it's not just you against the world and trying to get your business going, and you feel stuck. If you want some support, reach out, we'd be happy to help you. This is what we do. We love helping our clients succeed and win here at DoorGrow. So reach out and you can find us at doorgrow.com or reach out to us on any social media. Just search for DoorGrow. You'll find us. Anyway, that's it for today. So make sure you get a really good phone system in place to insulate and protect yourself and present a very presentable professional image. [00:19:53] And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. [00:19:57] 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! 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 at 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.

Take a look at your portfolio, investors, who you're targeting, and methods used to find out how they line up with the 4 Ds to revenue in property management—deals, doors, duration, and dollars. The 4 Ds is a framework/concept that helps you figure out how to grow your business and improve it. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about the 4 doors (or numbers) that equal the gross revenue of your company when multiplied by each other. You’ll Learn... [02:19] Why the 4 Ds are so important in your property management business.  [02:43] 4 Ds to Revenue: What are they? [02:47] Deals: How many deals are you getting on? [03:15] Doors per deal: How many investors are you getting that have 2 or more doors? [04:20] Duration: How long can you keep them as a client? Connects to lifetime value. [05:45] Dollars: Money is needed to generate revenue. Revamp pricing structure/model. [08:00] Identify Ideal Prospects: What would their situation look like regarding the 4 Ds? Tweetables “We need some money in this equation. Otherwise, it's not going to equal revenue.” “You want to make sure you're getting paid really well.” “Price sensitivity is created artificially by my clients. They don't realize they're creating it and how.” “Colder leads are going to have a much higher price sensitivity than warmer leads.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and business owners. 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. I had a hard time coming up with what to talk about today. We just had Christmas and New Year's is coming up. We're sort of in this time period where I think for a lot of business owners, we tend to start focusing on our business because we've got a little bit of downtime, a little bit of free time, and some quiet moments maybe. Then we're also spending a lot of time focused on family and spending time with family. One of the things I wanted to talk about today is what I call the Four Ds to Revenue in Property Management. I also sometimes call this the Four Doors to Revenue and sometimes visually, we'll showcase four doors when I'm explaining this, or coaching clients on this, or teaching this. The Four Ds to Revenue is really four numbers that when multiplied by each other, equal the gross revenue of your company. Just to drive this home with multiplication, each number is so important that if any one of these four numbers—metrics-wise—in your business is zero, you make $0. That's how important they are. If you move any one of these numbers, if they're a one, for example, and you move it to a two and you double it, you double your revenue. That's how important multiplication can be in generating revenue in your business. Let's go through these Four Ds to Revenue. The first D is Deals. In looking at the revenue of your company and trying to grow your business, you want to get on clients that are bringing to the table multiple deals or deals on the regular, and you need to calculate how many deals we're getting on roughly right now. That would be some sort of number. You're getting on a certain number of deals. The next number, the next D would be Doors per deal. The reason I separate this is a lot of clients, especially in single-family residential property management, equate these things to the same thing. They're like I get on a deal, it's a door. Now that second D, to separate that out is important. That second deal of doors means doors per deal. If you move the needle on this just from like a one to a two, you double your revenue. For example, this could mean that you're getting on more investors that have two or more doors on average. Maybe your average moves from a one to a two, or maybe to a four. That can be a significant multiplier in your business. If you're getting on clients that are bringing on lots of deals or doing lots of real estate deals, they have multiple doors, and maybe each of their doors or each of their deals has multiple doors, then these numbers tend to add up quickly. The third D is Duration. This is how long can you keep them as a client. This connects heavily to lifetime value. There is a 10 times difference, for example, between an accidental investor that's only going to stick with you for a year and a 10-year buy and hold. There's a 10 times difference. If somebody is going to keep their deals and the rental properties in place for a decade, that's massive. Where I see a lot of property managers really struggling in terms of growth is that they have so much attrition that they have to replace almost every door that they get on every year, or at least half. If half of your portfolio are accidental investors, for example, or one-year shorter term that they're not going to stick with you, then you're going to have trouble growing your business because you have to replace all of those doors every year. I've seen clients have is a majority of their portfolio when they came to us, were these accidental investors that couldn't just sell the property and they decided to rent it out just for a year until they could get it sold. Or they might have half their portfolio as this, but even still, usually the number of doors they're adding every year equates the number of doors they're losing every year and, so they end up not growing. The last D is Dollars. We need some money in this equation, otherwise, it's not going to equal revenue. The last D is dollars and what's important to note there is you want to make sure you're getting paid really well. One of the things I do with every client that comes through our program at some point or another, usually is to revamp their entire pricing structure and their pricing model. Most property managers only have one major fee that they charge, it's one sort of percentage, something typically like 10% or something like that in lower-end markets. In higher-end markets, it might be maybe 6%, or something along these lines, 7%, 8%, whatever. Or they'll have a flat fee like $99 or $79 in really low rent areas where it's really tight. They'll just have one major fee though. They might also have a lease-up fee for when getting the property rented out. That's pretty typical as well, but that's about it. If that is the case for your business and you only have one option that clients can choose from when signing up, then you're leaving a lot of money on the table. There are probably a lot of other leaks in relation to pricing as well and then there are a lot of psychological hacks to decrease price sensitivity. If you've ever been frustrated and dealt with a potential prospect that came to you and pushed back on the price—I'm sure this has happened to you—or they ask for a discount, a lot of times that price sensitivity is created artificially by my clients. They don't realize they're creating it and how. A lot of times it's created artificially by their acquisition source, so how they're getting these leads. Colder leads are going to have a much higher price sensitivity than warmer leads. If you want to reduce the number of people that are asking for discounts, or eliminate your temptation to fold on your pricing, cave on your pricing, and give in order to get business, my clients don't have to do that. You need to be more effective with your pricing. Dollars is really significant as well. If we take all four of these things together—this is a secret, this is one of the secrets in property management that I teach—if you work this backward, this will help you identify your ideal prospects. It takes just as much work to get on crappy clients, maybe more, than it does to get on good clients. If you want to sit down and figure out what's my ideal client, look at these Four Ds. What would their situation look like in relation to these? Well, ideal client, right? If they're helping you maximize deals, that means they're probably bringing multiple deals to the table, they're doing real estate deals on the regular, they are an investor, they want to do more deals in the future. Doors, they probably have multiple doors, maybe each deal they do has multiple doors, multiple doors per deal. The doors metric is high. Duration. They are in it for the long game. They want to invest. They want to grow a portfolio, so their duration is lengthy or high. That's a high metric. Then dollars. That means they're willing to spend money with you to make sure things are taken care of. They're not the cheapos that exist out there. They're not so price-sensitive. They want a better experience and maybe they're more of a premium type of buyer. These would be your ideal prospects. This is one of the tools I go over with clients to help them recognize who are your ideal customers. What would they look like? Then we can work backward and figure out how do we connect with these people? What resources do they currently have? Who would be good referral partners that connect us to these people? That might already get some wheels turning. Take a look at your portfolio, take a look at your investors, and take a look at who you're targeting and the methods you're using to target new clientele and get new business on, and see how it lines up with the Four Ds to Revenue—deals, doors, duration, and dollars. These are the four doors that you need to open to make the magic happen in order to grow your business and identify and attract really great clientele. If you have any questions about this, feel free to comment or hit us up inside our Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com or reach out to us by going to doorgrow.com. We'd be happy to help you grow your business and maybe sit down with your team, as you're planning out things here at the end of the year. It's almost New Year’s here as I'm recording this. I just want to let everybody know I really am grateful for our clients and grateful this holiday season for those that spend their money with us, that have allowed us to help them increase the amount of money that they're making. It's really exciting for me to show up each week on the group coaching calls that we do as a mastermind group and see clients winning and sharing their success, talking about the doors they're adding, talking about how they're closing more deals at a higher price point, talk about how they're no longer offering discounts and how they're establishing themselves as an authority and as an expert and that these clients are willing to spend and pay more money. I love this. This is so rewarding for me. I really enjoy getting into what I do and I'm really honored and grateful that I get to do this. Those of my clients who are listening, I really appreciate you and I'm grateful for you. Anyway, for everybody else, I appreciate you listening to this show as well and I hope that the Four Ds to Revenue is a helpful framework or concept to help you figure out how to grow your business and improve it. And that's it for today. Happy New Year, everybody. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everybody.

What can property managers, entrepreneurs, and business owners say or do when leaving a voicemail to ultimately get somebody to return their call?  Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about doing and saying less to add more doors. Property managers need to work at finding opportunities and setting effective boundaries to get referrals and grow results. You’ll Learn... [01:46] Onboarding: Revamping roadmap help clients add more doors. [02:06] No Distractions: Stay focused and do the most important actions to add doors. [02:41] Check-ins: Clients are still getting amazing results by setting more boundaries. [03:03] Deciding Factor: Outbound referral partner program is a competitive advantage. [05:29] Promotions/Opportunities: Follow criteria, attend trainings, show up, rebrand. [06:11] Nextdoor: Pay attention to hub as a review channel and lead generation source. [07:08] Sales Assistant/BDM Role: Hire person who will speed up the amount of deals. [09:13] Existing Customers: Now—in real time—is the right time to target your clientele. [09:35] Vanity Metrics: Make numbers as big as possible to highlight benefits/results. [11:21] Voicemail: How to leave ultimate message to get somebody to return your call. [13:09] Most Effective Messages: Leave only name/number and be emotionally honest. Tweetables “Doing less is more.” “There is a link that you can publicly access through the web, where somebody can go to leave your review on Nextdoor, then yes, we can put that link into GatherKudos.” “Anything that's been sitting on your to do list for too long is an indicator that you're not the person that should be doing that thing.” “Sometimes, a little bit of mystery is more enticing and more attractive.” Resources Sign up for Talkroute DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive GatherKudos Nextdoor Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, the 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 businesses and their owners 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. I was on my coaching call today. It was a great call. I love these calls. It ran longer than the normal call because I give a little bit of leeway of about a half hour after our coaching group call to just make sure that I'm taking care of clients, anybody else that wants to check in, anyone that's stuck or has questions as we go through. We have a pretty good group on our Wednesday call. I love hearing clients that are doing the work, doing stuff. We're starting to revamp our onboarding. We just revamped our Grow program, our roadmap for how we help clients add more doors to make it even more effective. One of the things I'm noticing from that is doing less is more. We're actually taking things out of that program so that property managers will stay more focused. These entrepreneurs will stay more focused on doing the most important actions that they need to do in order to add doors. Removing any rabbit holes or tangents out of the program that might distract them or get them focused on the wrong things, which is very tempting for business owners. We've made it even more effective and I'm really excited about it. I went over the changes with everybody. That being said, clients—even with the old roadmap—are still getting amazing results, and we had some great check-ins today. Clients that are setting more effective boundaries, with potential clients being willing to walk away, they're actually attracting more business because of that. Clients that are focusing on our referral programs so they're creating more referrals, and how other real estate agents that also did property management, were not able to get the deals. One of our clients said that they were one of four or five companies that a potential client was vetting. He told this client like, hey, basically set some boundaries and told them, I'm not going to do things your way and if you're interested in doing things our way, then we're here for you and you can work with us. Surprisingly, they chose him and I want to ask, what was then the deciding factor why they chose you out of four or five different companies? He said the one big competitive advantage that he had is that he had this outbound referral partner program with the agent, and this person's agent was kind of the deciding factor. People trust the real estate agent. These investors trust the real estate agent. They're not going to want to connect to you or talk well or make a relationship happen between themselves, their client, and a property manager that also does real estate because it doesn't feel safe. My client also does real estate, but we've recently rebranded his company as a property management company, new logo, new website. This new perception allows people like this real estate agent that wants to protect her relationship with a client allowed her to feel safe, and allowed him to be the one that the client and the real estate agent both felt safe with, and he was selected. So because of that and because of setting boundaries. Another cool thing is this client got an opportunity. Because he is no longer branded as a real estate company, which is one of the key things we do with a lot of clients is help rebrand and get them so they don't look like a real estate company so they can get more referrals, he with his new brand and his new website, a friend of his who runs the entire real estate association in the greater metro area that he covers, said that you are going to be our preferred partner for his business. He's going to be their preferred partner. He's going to announce this at this black tie event at a real estate event. He's going to promote him, allow him to have a table there, and he's going to push this property management company of my clients as they go to that everybody, every real estate broker agent should be using for referring out to for property management. That is a massive opportunity and that opportunity wouldn't have been available unless he had built out a really effective partner program based on the criteria that I teach in our referral secrets training, and been showing up to the calls, and gone through our C program process of rebranding. Awesome, awesome wins for that client. John, you know who you are, when you listen to this, kudos to you and all that you've done. I appreciate you. That's super awesome. Another thing that came up during today's coaching call, there were other clients sharing wins, which was awesome, but one little tidbit that was really interesting is one of our clients pointed out that he's getting some decent results from next door. I wanted to point this out to listeners of podcasts. You may want to start paying attention to next door as a review channel and as a lead generation source. He just goes on next door monitors and every now and then, he sees people on next door, the social network, posting in the neighborhoods and communities that he's active on saying, does anybody know of a property manager? Does anybody have a property manager? He then is responsive to those in that's getting him some business. We then talked about adding next door to his review funnel, which is gatherkudos.com, which is a service we provide, and whether or not that was possible. Basically, the answer was if there is a link that you can publicly access through the web, where somebody can go to leave your review next door, then yes, we can put that link into GatherKudos. Another client just hired somebody to step into almost a BDM role, but first, initially, as a sales assistant. This gal was very outgoing, showed up on the call, and charismatic. My client that I'm working with is not that personality type, so this is going to be a really awesome game for her. I told them to just get a sales assistant in place. This is going to speed up the amount of deals and opportunities. Maybe eventually, this client will graduate this new sales assistant to a full-fledged BDM role, which would be fantastic. I think they would be able to add a lot more doors because the client I'm working with is more of an operations and operator personality–type, more of an introvert. The comfort level of this team member that she brought on, came on the call and she was just introducing herself, and chatting, and most people are quiet and waiting until it's their turn. She was really comfortable checking in and communicating, and she'll be great in this sales assistant/BDM role, which is exciting. It goes back to what I've said several times in the past. If you're not the person that should be doing or anything that's been sitting on your to-do list for too long, is an indicator that you're not the person that should be doing that thing. If you're avoiding it, there's too much friction. If you have so many questions about it and you're not just taking action on something, you might not be the person that should do it. A lot of business owners think I have to do this, I've got to learn this. I've got to figure out how to do this, even though it's really uncomfortable. As a business owner, you don't really have to be the one that does the things you really don't enjoy doing, at least not in the long run. So those were some wins. The other cool thing we talked about on today's call was about targeting your existing clients. It's the holiday season right now. It's Christmas. I don't know when this will actually be released as an episode, but for those that are watching the live recordings or the live calls that I'm doing—I'm doing this in real time—now is a great time to target your existing clientele. There's always some low-hanging fruit. There's definitely some gold inside your portfolio of people that would be willing to get into an additional investment, or additional properties, or maybe have some referrals they can offer you, know some friends that are investors that they're retired. You could reach out to them and point out all of the vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are where you take numbers and you make them as big as possible by coupling them all together. For example, you can reach out to an owner and say, hey, owner, I wanted to check in with you, just let you know how things are going. Over the last year, we've collected X number of dollars in rent for payouts to you. We have done X number of maintenance requests. We've been doing all these vanity metrics, these big metrics. We've done this many in aggregate over the years of you being with us. This is how much rent we've collected. This is how much we paid out to you. This is how many maintenance requests we've dealt with that you didn't have to. It helps the invisible to become visible, so they can see what you've been doing for them, to see that there's been a benefit and there's a result, and you're highlighting this and pointing it out. That's a great time to then say, hey, would you be willing to give us a review and ask for feedback? How do you think we've been doing as you pointed out? Then they'd be likely to give you a review if you ask, you might be able to get a referral, you might be able to ask, hey, what are your long term goals? Are you wanting to get into another investment? Cool, let's get you connected to a real estate agent and get this going. If you're a real estate agent, then cool, you have another deal (maybe) in the works. Capture that low-hanging fruit, reach out to people, and show a little care. You have an excuse. Hey, it's the end of the year. I wanted to assess things and where they're at. Or it's Merry Christmas or whatever you want to do. These are some awesome opportunities that we were chatting about on our call today. Now, the point of today's call. One question that I keep getting asked—I want to put this out on the podcast; this is that the point of today's episode—is voicemails. I get asked this a lot. My clients are making calls to potential clients, potential referral partners doing outreach. One of the things they get is they get voicemails a lot of times. How do you deal with voicemail? What am I supposed to do with a voicemail? What's the most effective thing? What should I say? I don't know if what I'm saying is right. When I'm working, a lot of times we tend to overthink it. Here's my response on how to leave the ultimate voicemail that's going to do the primary goal and get somebody to call you back. This is not what you might expect. Let's talk about what could be effective. You could call up and say, hey, this is so and so, and I'm interested in managing property or I'm interested in creating a referral relationship with you. If you're going to go that really obvious direct route, then you might want to mention a story or a result really quickly. For example, in my business, we would reach out. We did some calling and we said, hey, we helped one of our clients in the last year to add 200 doors. If that's something you might want as a result, give me a call back, I'd love to chat about that with you and see if we might be able to help you do something similar. Mention some sort of result that they might be interested in, depending on the target of who you're going after. If it's an investor, mention something you've done for an investor that's pretty impressive, that they might be interested in. If you want to offload this property and no longer be dealing with maintenance and stuff through the holidays, give us a call back. Give me a call back, this is my number. That's obvious and can be effective. Now, here's what I find to be the most effective way to get people to call you back. You just don't tell them anything except your name and your phone number. I know. It's really simple. Here's how that might sound and then I'll tell you how to make this even more effective. Hey, this is Jason. Hi, Fred. Give me a call back at blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, and you hang up. They're not going to know what it's about. They're going to be a little curious to give you a call back. Leaving voicemails is frustrating and you're just trying to sound so nice. So here's my plus one on this. Here's how to really maximize getting a return call on a voicemail. Be very emotionally honest. Voicemails are frustrating for you. This is how I would leave voicemails, and I found I would get a high rate of callback. First thing you do is you sigh. You get the beep, and it's annoying, and you hate it, and you leave a bit, you let out a big sigh of frustration. Or even a groan or a moan. I know. This is what this might sound like. We leave a message at the beep. Beep. Hey, Fred. This is Jason. Give me a call back. My number is da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Click. They're going to listen to this and be like, oh, my gosh, obviously this person's a little frustrated. What's going on? Who is this? I don't even know what this is regarding. They're going to call up and they're like, hi, yeah, is Jason there? We got your voicemail. Oh, hey, Fred, man, thanks for giving me a call back, man. I hate voicemails. You don't have to say that, but then you can start a conversation. Yeah, I was reaching out to see if we could build a referral program. I've got this really cool program going, blah-blah-blah or whatever you're trying to do with this person, and then you go into it. Now you have a real person you can communicate with and you've got them on the phone. So there has to be a little bit of mystery. Sometimes, a little bit of mystery is more enticing and more attractive. Rather than giving them all the details, please leave me a message with the nature of your call, and the best times to reach you at, and blah-blah-blah. Sometimes, less is far more effective. You're getting them to play your game instead of playing the game they are telling you to leave. Do it their way in the voicemail. Sometimes that works really, really well. Sometimes it doesn't. I've left voicemails and I'm like, hey, Fred, I'm trying to reach you. I've had a hard time getting a hold of you. Here's my number. Please give me a call back. Maybe I've called him three or four times. I can't reach this person. Sometimes I might even say, hey, I don't know if you're still alive. We've talked in the past. I'm having trouble reaching you. Hopefully, you're doing okay. I know you're busy, but give me a call back as soon as you get this. These are honest voicemails. They say honesty is the best policy. I think when it comes to reaching out to clients and connecting with people, being really real and really honest sometimes inspires or creates a lot more curiosity, a lot more engagement, and helps you stand out from all the people that are all shiny, fluffy, and always trying to be so nice and smiley when they're making a phone call. When you're not being nice, which is a pleasing trait, when you're not trying to please people, you're often shifting into a state of power and they see you in a position of power. Like, oh, my gosh, this is the person I need to talk to. Anyway, that is my real simple hack for leaving a really effective voicemail. Again, I had mentioned you can mention some results, you can mention a benefit of why, you could talk about something they might be able to give you back or that you might be able to give them, something you might be able to give them. If they call you, I'll help you with this or could do this or this. Potentially, a good thing could happen. You could pre-frame them. Hey, give me a call back. Another effective strategy would be to say, give me a call back, I think you're really going to be excited about something I have to share with you. Just give me a call back, here's my number. Try those out, try those strategies out. Let us know how it goes. You can comment inside the DoorGrow Club. Go to doorgrowclub.com, which is our Facebook group. If you're running into some issues or you're having some success with this, I'd love to hear about it from you guys. When I say guys, that's guys and gals, all y'all. Just say it like a Texan. I appreciate everybody hanging out with me and listening to the show. Until next time to our mutual growth. I hope everybody, if you're watching this live, has a Merry Christmas, which is just coming up in a few days, and I hope you have a Happy New Year. If you want to kick off your business this coming year, and you want to get out of that rut you've been in for the last two, three years, you want this next year not to look like last year, that's your default future. Your default future is this coming year is going to be similar, so the results you got in the last year, or the year before that, or the year before that. You know what your future looks like. You can pretty well guess. If you want to create a different future with me, and with my team, and with DoorGrow, and have success like the clients I'm seeing on my coaching calls, and the clients that I'm working with, the 80+ businesses that we have in our mastermind, I want to help support you. I would be honored to be your trusted coach, mentor, advisor to help you scale and grow this thing. I love doing this. It's a lot of fun for me to reach out. We would love to help you. Hopefully we're talking soon and you're my next great success story. Maybe I'm talking about you here on this podcast soon. All right. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everybody.

What unscalable things are you doing, but none of your competitors are doing, to scale your property management business? Do the unscalable things because that’s the strategy that scales companies. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about doing the unscalable to help your business grow. If you want to scale your business, do the unscalable things that nobody else is willing to do but what the customers want. You’ll Learn... [02:25] Secret to Scale: Grow your business by doing the unscalable things. [03:00] Real World Examples: Blanketing adverstising strategies, such as PPC, SEO. [04:06] Top Strategies: Do unscalable things to grow and add doors via referrals. [06:25] What is unscalable? Personal one-on-one interactions to make more money. [06:50] Referral Results: Online reviews grow your business, reputation, retention rates. [08:25] Opposite Direction: Build relationships and scale systems to get revenue results. [13:15] Unscalable Things: What’s the least scalable thing you can do to add doors? Tweetables “The problem is that everybody is looking for the scalable solution.” “It’s all about creating more depth and connection on a one-on-one individual basis with potential referral partners.” “If you do warm, personal outreach, you’re going to create a lot more reviews.” “Do the unscalable things, and that’s what scales companies.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive GatherKudos BirdEye Mailchimp Calendly Grant Cardone Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. For today's topic, what I wanted to talk with you about is doing the unscalable. A lot of times in businesses, everybody's looking for what's the scalable option, which means what's the shortcut? What's the hack? What's the fast way to do this so we can just do as little work as possible? How can we just hit a whole bunch of people? Here's how that tends to look. We do that in our advertising, we do that in marketing a lot of times. A lot of people are trying to figure out, how can they create some sort of shortcut? Let's direct mail everybody. Let's see if we can just blanket text message everybody. Let's set up automation. A lot of people come to me and they're like, what's the secret? How are you helping your clients add 100, 200, or more doors in a year? How are they growing right now because our company is down about 200 doors over previous years because all the owners are selling because the market's hot right now? They want to get out of these properties and cash out of their investment. But the problem is that everybody's looking for a scalable solution, and here's the secret. If you want to scale your business, do the unscalable things that nobody is doing. If you want to stand out in the marketplace, do what nobody else is willing to do that the customers really want. If you want to scale your business in sales and improve sales, do the unscalable things that nobody else is willing to do. Instead of automation, go in the complete opposite direction. How can we have more depth and connection? Let's throw out some practical, real-world examples of this. One example that I refer to a lot is a lot of people will try to grow their business through these blanketing strategies of advertising. They want to blanket the world and just spray and pray. So they'll use strategies like let's focus on pay per click, content marketing, or SEO. Why? Because these are the things they can throw money at and have somebody else maybe do for them, they hope. The challenge is when you try and create a system where you think you're going to have a lot of leverage, hey, we'll just throw money at this problem, the challenge is, usually, you get more work in exchange. For example, those are all cold leads. Cold leads take a lot more time to deal with. They take more nurture, they take more follow up time, there's less trust involved. If there's less trust involved and there's more follow-up time involved, then it's actually going to take more work. It's going to take more time. Advertising is expensive, so it costs more money. One of the things that our clients do, our top strategies for growing and adding doors is to do the unscalable things. For example, something that usually people try to do to grow the business is they go and get referrals from other people, from real estate agents, for example. They try and just say, hey, if you ever run into somebody that needs property management, refer them to me. Here's the problem. The best prospects, the people that actually might need property management, most of them are not looking for property management. They're not going to go up to a real estate agent and say, hey, I need a property manager. That just doesn't happen. Usually, by the time they do think they need a property manager, they're in a world of hurt, they’re in a crappy situation, something you won't even want to take on. Then you're getting the garbage, so then they're connecting you to the garbage that exists in the marketplace and the biggest problems. The best clients are people that don't even yet know they need property management, capturing them way earlier in the sales cycle before they become price-sensitive, and you're the first person they've heard of or talked to related to property management. Maybe that's a better idea. You're closer, it's going to be a lot higher. There's a lot more trust in that relationship, and that's going to be more effective than doing cold leads and spending time prospecting directly to potential investors, for example, where the close rate is typically really low like maybe 1 out of 10 or worse. Why not create an outbound prospecting program towards real estate agents? This is one of the things that we share in our program of how to make that really effective and how to create the right incentives so that people are actually referring business to you. Without going into too much detail, it's all about creating more depth and connection on a one-on-one individual basis with potential referral partners. Other people are like, hey, I'm going to go present to a whole real estate morning office meeting, high leverage, lots of people, and you're going to talk to all these people in pitch, and then guess what happens? They're all looking at their phones, nobody thinks about you, and you never get a referral. But hey, you got to talk to a lot of people. It sounds very scalable, high leverage. We want to focus on what is unscalable. That would be the personal one-on-one interactions with each of those agents. That would be the goal. I would love to meet with each of you individually, let's set up a time, and connect with them and create a deep, personal, and more intimate relationship and connection, that's where you make more money because it's the thing people are not willing to do. Let's talk about online reviews, for example, a great strategy for growing your business. A lot of people will just use something like tools like our GatherKudos tool, they'll use something like Birdeye, or some sort of system where their goal is like, hey, we'll just send out emails, text messages, or whatever. What I teach in our program, in our Training Reputation Secrets is if you do warm personal outreach, you're going to create a lot more reviews. It's not scalable, but you get a much bigger result. Is it worth the time investment? Is it worth the additional staff and resources you might need to implement that strategy? Absolutely. And you will crush your competition. There's a lot of other stuff that I talk about in Referral Secrets of how to make that really effective, how you can set it up so it increases retention rates with your clients, et cetera. The general principle in each of our most effective growth strategies is to do the unscalable things, and that's what scales companies. If you want to grow your business right now, take a look at what are you trying to do right now that is a scalable version, a scalable solution? Like you're trying to hit a lot of people through some sort of email newsletter where you got a list of thousands of people. Or are you trying to just go and throw out an advertisement on Facebook or Google ads where you're trying to just hit tons and tons of people and get lots of eyeballs? What if you went in the complete opposite direction and you did something that was the most personal, the most intimate, the most connecting way of reaching out and creating relationships with people in order to achieve the same result? What if you went the complete opposite direction and then you started to build and scale your systems related to doing more of that? Which means hiring more people instead of more technology and automation. I have a friend, one of my mentors. He has a business that does a lot in revenue—really, really big company. I believe they do like $100 million a year in their business. It's ridiculous. He has really savvy skills, is a really great marketer, great with technology, and yet, he could automate his whole sales process. He can't have a funnel, have videos, and all this stuff, yet he has a really large sales team. Why? Because that's what's most effective to get to that level of revenue. He has a large sales team of setters and a large sales team of closers because it's the most effective. It's more effective than having a funnel, a video webinar, and trying to automate all this stuff. And you'll hear lots of people saying you're just one funnel away, you just need this marketing piece, if you just do a newsletter, or just do social media. These are all scalable solutions. They're scalable. You can get people in place, you can hit a lot of people really quickly. Scalable solutions can be effective. Some of them can be effective. But in general, if your business isn't growing, I'm guessing you're already doing some of these "scalable things", but you're not doing the unscalable things. What are the unscalable things that none of your competitors are doing? Are they doing warm personal outreach with every new tenant and every new owner to get a review? Are you doing warm personal outreach with every real estate agent, lender, handyman, attorney, lawyer, anyone that helps investors in your market to create a referral relationship and partnership with them? Probably not. That's not scalable. We don't want to do that. Let's go do advertising. And yet the companies that are doing advertising right now, they're usually spending about $300–-$5000 a month, and they're probably down about 200 doors over previous years. If you have between 600–1000 doors, my guess is you've lost maybe about 200 over the last year because you're not doing the unscalable actions that are more intimate. So focus on greater depth and greater connection. That's really what property management is. It's a business of connection, depth, and relationships. People are trying to turn it into a business of automation, technology, and tools. I do like technology, don't get me wrong. I do recommend that you use and create leverage where you can technologically, however, if you want the biggest result when it comes to getting referrals, with getting reviews, with getting on more deals, the more personal approach and the more depth is going to be the most effective strategy, and nobody else is doing it. This allows you to create market share while everybody else is fighting over this red bloody water where everybody's trying to spray and pray and hope they're going to get some sort of return on their advertising dollars. Stop falling prey to marketers that are just selling advertising. What I teach is to do the right actions and you will spend less time than you would dealing with cold leads, and it costs you $0. I had a client today on our coaching call, a really cool guy, Michael Sullivan. He was talking about how he added eight properties in the last 24 hours. His phone is ringing, he said, constantly. And I said, how are you doing? He's just doing the strategy that I told him to do and doing this outbound method. I said, how many thousands of dollars in marketing have you spent to get on all these doors that you're adding right now? He looked really confused because it was a loaded question. But he looked really confused and he was like, I don't understand what you're saying. And I said, you've spent $0 in advertising, correct? And he said, oh, yeah, $0. How many of you are spending $0 and you've added eight properties just in the last 24 hours and your business is growing really fast? Another client showed up, he had added 13 doors. Another client showed up and said he added eight doors on that call. This is a weekly call, weekly check-in. How many doors have you added this week? If you're not adding doors as quickly as you want to, and you don't trust me enough to come into my program and let us help you, that's cool, but start just focusing on what's the least scalable thing I could do. It's probably that thing you're avoiding. Maybe it's too personal, maybe it's uncomfortable, go do that thing. What you'll find is your business will start to grow really rapidly. Anyway, if I can help you go faster, focus on the unscalable things in business. The reason I want to talk about this today is it keeps coming up for me. I get questions all the time. Even a client today is like, how do I leverage this list I have of 4000 emails. I've got this other list of this. Again, what I taught him was to figure out what's the least scalable thing you could do. What everybody else would do is do a newsletter. He says, I'm doing a newsletter. How often? Every week. Cool, are you using a system to do that? Yes, MailChimp. Okay, cool. In MailChimp, what are your stats on the open rate? 10%. That's email, right? It's scalable, but it's really [...] results, 10% open rate? That means 90% are not even opening the email. The challenge there is I said, cool, what if you took all of those email addresses of different either investors or real estate agents on your list and you send out a personal email to each individual one? You did like maybe 50 a day or whatever your email system, but you do it from your personal email account, not from an email system, and just reached out to them and said, hey, how are things going with your rental properties? Hey, do you need anything from me today? Or hey, would you be interested in getting a call to find out how I could get you some more real estate commission because I have this cool new program? These kinds of things, like if it was to a potential referral partner. Give them a Calendly link or something to schedule with you and that sort of thing. That's the kind of conversation. How can you take this thing you're trying to do that's not really working, but it's very scalable and do the unscalable thing? Even if it's a little bit of that, you're going to get a much bigger return on that time investment, and you don't have to spend a whole bunch of time drafting up a big newsletter. Just do a little bit of outreach with a really short one-sentence email and you may start getting some real responses and initiate some conversations. It keeps going back to this. My own mentors, every method that I tend to hear or see that works, it's always going back to what's the least scalable thing. It's not, how can I do this with less people? It's, how can I do this with more? You can sometimes double your close rate like I talked about on a previous podcast episode, just by getting a setter involved. That's adding more people. Having a setter and a closer increases the conversion rates and increases the close rates, even though it's more people and you're spending more money on staff. But a lot of people are looking for a way, how can I decrease the need to talk to people or how can I systemize this or how can I automate it or leverage technology? I hope this was a helpful conversation. Do the unscalable things. The unscalable things are where you show care. It's where you invest in people. It's where you're human. It's where you love people. This is where you build relationships. I think it was Grant Cardone, he said, "The difference between a contract and a contact is the R, and that's relationships." Focus on making relationships and you're going to get a lot more contracts. This is what most business owners and businesses are unwilling to do. If you do it, you're going to have results that other businesses are unable to achieve. That's my message for today. I hope this is helpful for those of you. If you want a little bit more help, if you want some accountability, if you want some new ideas, if you want to inject some life into your business, reach out to DoorGrow. We'd be glad to help you. This is my passion. This is what I love to do. I love coaching and supporting clients and helping them grow their companies. My goal is to turn you into the entrepreneur that can have the business of your dreams. If you don't have the business of your dreams right now, one of my mentors would say, you're not yet the person that can run it yet. So let's turn you into that person. Reach out to us, check us out at doorgrow.com, or join our Facebook group doorgrowclub.com. We'll get you to our community and that's it. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Business owners and entrepreneurs make mistakes and take risks that other people are unwilling to do. However, they learn from them because nobody’s perfect! Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about one of the biggest mistakes he made in his business. He calls it his $2 million mistake, although it was probably even bigger. You’ll Learn... [01:37] Validation: Everyone makes mistakes, even entrepreneurs are human. [02:20] Growing Company: Be super cautious and picky when selecting clients. [03:23] Start Small, Not Big: Conference idea requires everything a business requires. [06:54] Lesson Learned: Big deal turned out to be a $2-million or more mistake. [08:27] Results: Clients got the best results, but a lot of team members left business. [09:08] Change to Grow: Focus on clients, not sales, marketing, website, or branding. [11:00] Dilemma: What should I do? Something new? Expand? Go after shiny objects? [11:30] Premature Problems: Why expand business into new niches, markets, or areas? [12:29] Hand Holding: Some people are not willing to put in the effort or do the work. [15:16] 3 Commitments: 1 hour for strategy, 2 hours to implement tactics, and show up. [17:45] Coaching Calls: Clients access calendar to work through problems, challenges. Tweetables “I recommend you to be very picky about the clients that you take on.” “We weren't able to focus on the main thing, which is our customer and which is our product.” “I have fired clients. I have just refunded clients. We've let clients go. Some just quit.” “The lessons end up always being worth the risk. So, take a risk, invest in yourself, invest in your business.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and business owners. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. For today's show, I wanted to talk with all of you about what's been going on at DoorGrow. Over the years, I've made some big mistakes in business like most business owners, this is part of how we learn. We take risks that other people are unwilling to take. One of the biggest mistakes that I made in my business was, I sometimes call my $2 million mistake, but it was probably even bigger of a mistake. A lot of people probably would not tell you their mistakes in business. But one thing that I think is super validating as an entrepreneur is to hear about some of my mentors’ challenges and some of the mistakes that others that I have worked with that they have made, it makes me feel safe. It makes me feel like they're human, I'm human. It helps entrepreneurs also to see that you're not supposed to be perfect all the time. It's not always going to be great or perfect in business. One of the big mistakes that I made is I had really great growth in my business. Things were going really well. We were bringing out a lot of clients. We had some clients getting great results. We had some clients not getting great results. Usually, in most coaching programs, what I've learned is that about 20% will be bad clients. They're not going to do it, they're not going to take action, they're not going to get results. No matter how hard you try or how good you do, that's generally going to be the case if you're a growing company. If you're not a growing company, then you can be super cautious, super picky, and that sort of thing. But we are in high paced growth. One challenging factor is we had some clients that were a bad fit, and over time, we were always trying to filter, be more careful, raise our pricing, and be pickier about the clients that we take on, which is what I recommend to all of you. I recommend you to be very picky about the clients that you take on. But we had great growth. I started working with the coach. We had 300% growth in a year. We were really moving. Things were going really fast. Things were really good. There was a lot of momentum. I built out a really awesome team, it felt really exciting, and then I had this great idea that I thought would be a great idea. I had always had this dream of doing a conference. So I came up with this idea to do this big conference. I didn't want it to be small. I was looking at all the other conferences that were going on. I saw what they did and this has to be next level. It's got to be as good as this. Even my coach at the time was like, hey, do something small, just start small. I'm like, no way, I'm going big, I'm going to make this awesome. We're going to have the best food, Paleo food, and gluten-free options. Even the food was going to be really nice. We're going to do this really ritzy venue. We did it at this really nice hotel. This conference cost us well over six figures. It was, I think, $150,000 or something like that all in we spent on this conference. That's not that bad if you're a business that's doing about a million in revenue, I guess that's okay as long as you make revenue from it, if you're just doing simple math. Anybody that's done a significant event knows how challenging these are to put together. But here's the caveat to this or the challenge is we had 300% growth in the year. Then the year we decided to do a conference, we then had to shift all of our attention towards this conference. The thing that you don't realize when you launch a conference or you get on the hook for a conference is you have to get this venue and you're on the hook with the venue, which means you owe them money. You have a contract with them. If you don't sell enough tickets and you don't sell enough people getting there, you're not going to get enough people into rooms, you're responsible for a certain group rate and amount of people, and there's this big expense. The other thing is they usually want that money upfront, a lot of it or in big chunks, and then there's this whole racket hotel. They are a monopoly on food. They don't allow outside food vendors or outside food to be brought in. You have to pay thousands. I think we spent like $8000 or $9000 just for coffee—it's crazy—for two days, I think it was, three days. It just gets really crazy, and then they do things like some of these venues will charge by the plate. Say it's like $50, $60, $80 a plate, but what they do is they go around. They pick up the plates, and then people go and get another plate to get another item or another food and they're charging you per plate. There are just little things that are a little bit shady in how that industry can work sometimes. I was completely blind to a lot of this stuff. I was really nervous about putting it together, but here's the real problem. Launching a conference like this required sales. It required marketing, it required organization. It requires everything that a business requires. It's like starting a business. We have this business that's doing really well. We're moving really fast. It's going really rapid, 300% growth in the year, hitting about a million in revenue. We hit a million in revenue and things were moving really fast. We probably could have continued that trajectory. Things were really good. We had a really good team in place and everything and then decided to do this conference. That year, we had no growth. We stayed flat at about a million in revenue because we did the conference. So that's why I call it my $2 million mistake because we easily could generate probably $2 million more in revenue just that year. But we also stayed flat the year after and the year after as a result. As a result, things got really crazy because we did this crazy conference, it took a massive amount of work. All of our time and attention had to shift towards that as a team, sales, marketing, everything because we were on the hook to make this work. The conference went well and we had some great speakers. I got great feedback, but to me, it was massively stressful. I wasn't really able to enjoy it. I have kind of an introverted side to me. It wasn't quite the dream that I thought it would be, but I'm glad that I did it as a learning experience. It was $2 million tuition for this learning opportunity. Maybe, if I really did some math, maybe it was a $10 million mistake, hindsight being 2020. Not only that, but by shifting our focus towards this conference and so much attention having to be placed on it, we weren't able to focus on the main thing, which is our customer and which is our product. So I had to shift out of some of the coaching stuff that I was doing. We tried to go more towards just getting people to move through the program and follow the material. We had people that weren't getting as good of results. Really, that's the piece that I enjoy the most, the one-on-one personal depth and interactions and coaching clients. Those are always the clients that get the best results. We realized that. Now, we lost a lot of team members as a result. It took a while for us to get back in momentum. I was working with a coach at the time. I got a lot of personal growth through that time period, so it was a good time period. It caused me to wake up to a lot of things in my life that were really challenging or frustrating. I ended up ending my marriage of 13 years also. This is in the last several years and becoming single again after like two decades. There was just a lot, a lot of change, a lot of growth. Now we're getting back into a nice growth mode in the business and I've got some really good team members building up our team back up. My focus is really just on clients. I'm not even doing sales anymore. I'm not having to do the marketing stuff. I'm not doing any of the website stuff, branding stuff. I really just get to focus on coaching clients, which is really what I enjoy. It's the fun part for me. So I built this awesome team. What's interesting is due to these painful situations, the COVID, and all these things which were causing cash crunches or constraints, it forced us to tighten the business up. My team is smaller than it's ever been. We're more effective than we've ever been, and our product offering is better than it's ever been. We're able to deliver more value than we've ever been able to deliver at a much lower price point. Overall, these things made us, these difficult situations, these problems, and these challenges like a conference and team members quitting and leaving as a result of, then financial challenges in the business, and divorce. These kinds of things are the refiner’s fire that improves us as human beings if we allow it, and improves our businesses if we allow it. Now, I'm not saying you're going to go jump into problems. I'm not saying that that's a good idea either. But I am grateful for the lessons and I'm grateful to have learned those things that I've learned. I wouldn't give up those lessons in hindsight. It enables me to have conversations with clients. This is a common entrepreneurial dilemma. Should I do this new thing? Should I expand into this thing? Should I do this cool, new idea? Should I go after the shiny object? I have this really powerful story that I get to share with clients and say, look, let me tell you about my $2 million mistake, why the main thing always needs to stay being the main thing, why focus equals power in your business, and why your attention shouldn't be diluted. Some of the concepts that I teach and some of the ideas like premature expansion, a lot of property managers prematurely want to expand their business into new niches, new markets, or new areas. They do that prematurely, they're not really ready to do that, and they just dilute their focus, which dilutes their potency and their ability to grow and scale, for example. There's a lot of lessons that came out of this. Personally, business-wise, that came as a result of that. There were clients that went through our processes and came on board as clients during some of these challenging time periods. We had some that got phenomenal results. We had some great success stories, clients that just did what we told them to do, but not every client is like that. Not every client will just watch all your videos, show up to every call, invest all the time that you tell them to do, and do the work. Most need a lot more hand-holding, I've realized. We weren't able to really hold people's hands very effectively during that. So there were people that sort of fell through the cracks, and I felt bad about that. Some became very vocal about me and my business online. But the most vocal people, ironically, that are negative about DoorGrow and about me are people that have never worked with me in a lot of instances. They love hearing that the decision they made to never work with me is so validated by the few [...] clients that really don't like us, that didn't get a good result, or didn't put in the effort and didn't do the work. As a property manager, you're going to have these situations too. You're going to have an owner that you shouldn't have taken on. You didn't realize it. Maybe you had pretty good qualifications and you qualified them during the sales process, but they still made their way into your business. Unbeknownst to you, maybe they're wolves in sheep's clothing or whatever, but you realized it and you fired them. I have fired clients. I have just refunded clients. We've let clients go. Some just quit. That is a situation that comes up, and so we've gotten much better over the years at qualifying clients. We have an application people fill out just to work with us to make sure that we can help them. We're looking for certain qualities and we make them jump through some serious hoops. We give out. We give away a two-hour training currently called The Seven Frameworks for Growth or DoorGrow Secrets that we give out of free material teaching a lot of my frameworks and the secrets that I love to share with clients. I just give that away because I know if the right people will go through this and they'll see value in it, and the wrong people will go through this and they won't find it valuable. So they sell filters, or they just won't even invest the time to do that because it's kind of a prerequisite. If they're not willing to watch all that and do that, they're not going to really watch all the material, take action, and do the things that we tell them to do in the program either because they're lazy, so they're not going to get the result. There have been zero clients that I've had that have actually done what I've told them to do that have not won and gotten results and benefited from the program. The one quality or one characteristic that I have to have in a client if they're going to get a result is that they're willing to do the work and take action. So now, in our program, just to become a client, not only do they have to watch a two-hour training, they have to fill out an application. We also have a requirement I call the three commitments. This is something that I would recommend that you implement in your own business. But we have this framework we call the three commitments. The three things they have to commit to in order for us to guarantee that they're going to get results, and we offer a guarantee. If you are willing to spend one hour being a business owner of your business, this is the first commitment. One hour of strategic time means you actually operate like a business owner. Not doing all the tactical stuff, which a team member or an employee could do—emailing, calling, or whatever. Strategic stuff: planning, scheming, watching the material that we have in DoorGrow Academy. This needs to be done early in the morning before work, before you start your day, before kids, before pets, and before your day runs away from you. You need some quiet time for strategic time, the best time, after you've had a good night's rest and your brain is full of all the brain decision-making chemicals that it needs to think strategic time. Give you the best time. The king or queen needs it first. Otherwise, you'll always have a starving kingdom, I like to say. The second commitment that's required is to be willing to dedicate at least two hours each workday, five days a week towards implementing tactically the strategies and tactics that I give you. Doing the work, making the calls, outreach, dialing in operations, or whatever is the big challenge that we're solving or working on. Really, that just means, for people that want to grow that are on the growth path, because we have three different paths in our program, that means that just being a part-time salesperson for 10 hours a week. I mean, that's really a [...] salesperson. That's it. Just at least do that. Ten hours minimum a week. Track your time, be accountable, check in on our weekly check-in, and let us know how many hours you've done and at least do 10. That's it. Third commitment is to show up to the weekly coaching call. I find that clients that don't show up to the call don't have any pressure, they're not accountable. I can't coach them. I can't check in with them on how they're doing. I can't redirect them away from some of the things they might be thinking, doing, or that are holding them back. I can't really coach them if they're not reachable by me. Those are the three commitments. Now we give them even more support than that. We have a Telegram group. I give all my clients access to my calendar to schedule one-on-one calls. This is all I do now is coach. They can schedule one-on-one calls with me. We work through problems, challenges, objections, things they're dealing with, or whatever, to make sure that they're in momentum and moving forward. How does that apply to your business? Could you have maybe three commitments and could you also keep your focus as I talked about on your main thing a little bit more? These are just some things that I wanted to share just in my struggles as a business owner and in my journey in developing my business. If you are one of those clients that struggled in the past, you worked with us, you didn't get a great result, I'm perfectly willing to coach you for free. We'll do a 30-day trial between the two of us. If you're willing to commit to taking action, I'll coach you for free. We'll get you a result, and then at the end of that 30 days, we'll both have a conversation and it will be, yes, I want to do your program and I'll pay for your mastermind. I've been getting great results and I've been keeping the three commitments. Or if you're not keeping those three commitments, then we'll part ways and I'll kick you out, but you'll probably choose that. You'll realize, hey, this isn't for me, I'm not really going to do this stuff. We've got clients that are adding hundreds of doors to this program, and they're not spending any money on advertising. They're not having to deal with cold [...] leads, they're able to charge more money, the potential clients are less price-sensitive because we're capturing them earlier in the sales cycle. So I'm going to teach you how to do the unscalable things that actually scale your business. It's all about more depth, more personal connection, and creating more relationships, and we'll scale your business. Most property management companies are losing doors right now. They're down. Mostly, the larger ones are down about 200 doors. A significant chunk of their portfolio is selling because the markets are high, investors are getting the itch, and they want to get out, sell, and make some money. They're cashing out. Our clients are growing and they're adding doors. They're net positive. They're making money and building up residual income. They're not even spending money on advertising. That's my client. That's pretty powerful and it's true. It's working really well. I'm going to teach you how to do unscalable things. SEO, Google ads, all that kind of stuff, that's scalable. It's something you can hand money and whatever. I'm going to teach you how to do the unscalable things that actually are really working in the marketplace right now to help you grow your business, so you can capture more businesses that are less price-sensitive, that are captured earlier in the sales cycle, and your close rate is infinitely higher with those warmer leads, and it is with cold leads through those other strategies. We'll give you that free training that you can watch—our Seven Frameworks training. Just reach out, we're happy to give that to you and get you hopefully on as a client in our process. I don't know if there's anything else I should say about my $2 million mistake. All of us as entrepreneurs are going to have experiences and challenges that we make a bad decision or business. Maybe you've never had one, but that probably means you're playing a game that's too small or you’re being too cautious. The lessons end up always being worth the risk. So take a risk, invest in yourself, invest in your business, reach out if we can help you, and keep your business focused on your main thing, which is your property management business. Grow that thing and keep the focus tight. It's so tempting as an entrepreneur to be distracted and to go towards other things. Let's start a roofing company. Let's start a pool cleaning company. Let's start a carpet cleaning company. Let's start a maintenance company. There may be a place for these and maybe it will help you add some revenue. But in a lot of instances, adding more to the business ends up actually taking away from the main thing. So you have to get to the place where you've got a solid team that you can trust to make sure everything's running smoothly before you start to add additional pieces and start additional companies. Anyway, that's it. I've had this on my agenda for a while to share my $2 million mistake. I just had other topics that were a lot more exciting for me to share, but I wanted to share this. If you have any questions, if you are a client that went through some of that stuff with us and you felt like you didn't get results, reach out to me. I want to make sure that we take care of you. If you're bitter and upset and you're not open to that, then that's cool. Don't reach out. I know there's always some of those out there. The more successful we are, the more we attract. We build up a little group of haters because we've worked with thousands of clients, and I've talked to thousands of property managers. We've got hundreds of clients right now. We've got 80 businesses in our mastermind right now, which is just crazy to me. It's really awesome. People are getting great results. Today's call was a really good call since I'm just kind of riffing and chatting here. I love hearing our clients get results. Yeah, it was a good call today. Anyway, each week we start by sharing wins on our Grow call. Anyway, that's all I have today to share. Feel free to hit me up on social media if you want to check in with me. My username is @kingjasonhull. Happy to have a conversation because this is all I do. I love coaching my clients. I really enjoy helping people grow and win in their businesses. If you want to know if I'm the real deal, set up a call with me. Let's chat. I will say I'll point out that I'm in every property management group and every real estate group probably that exists on Facebook. There's a property management group that has a kind of a culture of negativity towards me and they don't like me, which is cool. It's not my group. I chime in every now and then to try and be helpful. I'll admit, as a business owner, it hurts, just like it probably hurts you when you see an owner bad mouth your business or whatever. But when I see a past client maybe that really I didn't even know or they didn't really talk to me, they didn't show up to the calls, they didn't really work with me, they didn't really take action, they just signed up with us and hope the website would magically do the work for them for some reason, something like that, yeah, it hurts. It hurts to see people complain. Especially, it's frustrating to see people that have never worked with me tell other people to work with businesses. I saw one guy mention like, somebody said, hey, should I work with DoorGrow? One of my past clients was like, yeah, we had a good experience, but he knows the culture there and was afraid of really saying too much like talking to them directly. Then there were a bunch of people that were negative. One guy was like, hey, you, don't use them, use this other company. So I reached out to this guy directly and I said, hey, what was your experience with that other company? I'm always looking for ways to benefit my clients and they're like, oh, I've never worked with them, but the people seemed cool there. I was like, okay, so you've never worked with me. You've never worked with this other company either, but you're telling people not to work with me and to work with this other company. To me, that is a massive lack of integrity. I'm not going to recommend somebody go do something or work with something unless they've done that themselves or gotten a lot of feedback from other clients or people that have done this so that I can share that, but that's just me. Anyway, that made me sad. That's part of the challenge we have to deal with as business owners. You're going to have some haters and you just do what you can. That sort of inspired this episode. I hope this was helpful. I hope hearing my situation was helpful. I hope you stay focused on the main thing and you win in business and life. If I can support you in any way, reach out. Anyway, until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

What is the secret code to powerful communication? Be real, get raw, and stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to get results. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about how to deal with uncomfortable conversations In property management. You’ll Learn... [02:10] Qualifying Questions: Do you feel uncomfortable and taken advantage of? [03:05] Communication Code: Practice the four Rs - real, raw, relevant, and results. [04:57] Step 1 - Real: Be honest. Tell the truth. Just don’t lie. [06:02] Step 2 - Raw: Be vulnerable, which is powerful and not a weakness. [07:35] Step 3 - Relevant: What matters to others, not what matters to you. [08:49] Step 4 - Results: Know your and your communication targets’ wants and needs. [12:41] Built-in Liar: Your brain tries to protect you from pain and problems. Tweetables “You have to tell the truth. Be honest.” “There’s power in being vulnerable.” “Stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to results.” “What is your desired outcome?” “We all have a built-in liar and that’s our brain. It’s always trying to help us avoid pain.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive OpenPotion Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown Calendly Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and business owners. 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. Today's topic, friends, we're going to be talking about a code of communication. During my weekly coaching call with clients today, a client got vulnerable and asked, how do you deal with an uncomfortable conversation? The situation was this particular client of mine has a potential client that keeps calling him up and asking how they should do things. He really wants this person's doors. He really wants to get them on as a client. He's being nice. But now they're starting to say, hey, I really need a concrete vendor to do this and I need somebody. He's being helpful and he's giving out some info. I know a lot of you listening are like, do not give out your vendors. I'm freaking out, but he doesn't want to give out anymore and he feels like he's being taken advantage of. Now I asked some qualifying questions. I said, how do you feel about this to get clarity on that? I'm guessing by bringing this up, did you feel taken advantage of? Do you feel like it's uncomfortable? His question was, how do I have this uncomfortable conversation, or how do I move them forward towards maybe becoming a client? It was kind of the question. My feedback to my client is that you need to get really honest. When we get really vulnerable and honest, it allows other people to see that we're human beings, it allows us to have much more effective communications. As I said, rather than tell you exactly what to say, let me share with you the principles because this is generally how I like to work. Because how he says it might be unique to him, but I said what you need to do is practice a code. I learned this years ago from a coach named Setema Gali Jr. He was part of a coaching program that I was part of. He was my coach. I believe he's the first person that explained this to me. I've heard lots of coaches share this idea. I'm not sure where it originally got its start, but the idea is this code of communication called real, raw, relevant, and results. This is also connected to Wake Up Warrior and Garrett J. White. That's who Setema was working for at the time. Setema, just let me tell you about this guy, a 300-pound Polynesian. He played for the New England Patriots. He has a Super Bowl ring, I believe, won a Super Bowl. He is a really big guy and a really powerful speaker. I really enjoyed working with him. This concept I'm going to share with you is this code of communication that will improve your communication in your relationships personally. It'll improve communication between you and your potential clients. It helps you with challenging situations, challenging communication. This is the mode of how you should always approach communication. In general, this is a code for life. It's four R’s, four R words: real, raw, relevant, and results. Let me explain this code of communication and we'll go through each of these four items. When you're communicating with somebody, the challenge is you need to be honest, and this particular client of mine had not yet been really honest with this potential client that he was speaking with about how he was feeling and what he was experiencing. The very first thing is you have to tell the truth, be honest. That's a factual truth. This is the mental logical side of things. What you say should be factual, it should be truthful in your communication with somebody. That's step one. Just don't lie. If you're saying, oh, it's okay and it's not okay, you're lying. The very first thing is to honestly communicate, and that's just telling the truth. The first is real, be real. Be real with people. Just be real with people. Tell the truth. Now the second is closely related. But not only is there logical, honest communication. There needs to be emotionally honest communication. This is where a lot of people fail in their communication. It's not fully honest because you're not really sharing how you feel about things. Logically, what you're saying may be true, but we're being dishonest if we're not honestly expressing how we feel about something emotionally. The second R is raw. So be real, get raw. Most people don't want to get raw. This is what we call being vulnerable. There's power in being vulnerable. There are books written on this subject like Brene Brown, I believe, is her name. The Power of Vulnerability was a big TED Talk, YouTube videos, and whatever. Getting vulnerable is a source of power. A lot of people see it as a weakness. But the most powerful person is the person who has the confidence to get the most raw with people and to be the most emotionally honest. It allows other people to feel safe being honest with you as well because it's at a deeper level. The real thing is that they felt taken advantage of. That's factual, but expressing how that makes them feel would deepen that conversation like, hey, I feel uncomfortable. We've had lots of conversations, facts. I've helped given you some freebies and given you some access to some vendors that I use, facts. I'm feeling though, that I'm being taken advantage of. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I run a business. I care about my clients. I want to take care of them. But then when I have somebody that is not paying me, asking for this information, and I'm helping them out, it makes me feel like whatever you feel. That's getting raw and expressing the honest emotional side of things. The next is to stay relevant. Be real, get raw, stay relevant. Keeping things relevant is important. It's easy to start whining and sharing all your feelings about whatever's going on in your life, but they don't care about that. Whatever the conversation you're having—whether it's kids, spouse, potential clients, existing clients, tenants, whatever—it should be relevant to them. If they don't care and it's irrelevant to them, they're not going to pay attention to it anyway. You're wasting your breath, you're wasting your time, and you're probably gossiping or emotionally manipulating. It's not relevant, so make sure it's relevant. The communication should be relevant to what the real situation is. It should be relevant to the feelings and thoughts that you're having around that thing that you're currently talking about, not other stuff. It's one thing to just get really real and honest and go up to some random person or even a potential client and say, oh, yeah, how are things going? And you start blabbing your whole life story and problems to them. They don't care about that, it's not relevant. So make sure your communication is relevant. Now the next is results. It's real, raw, relevant, and results. So be real, get raw, stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to results. If you are committed to results, that means you need to know what your communication targets, wants, and desires. You need to know what you want. You have to have that clarity. Otherwise, it's not going to be relevant. What you want are results. So if it's relevant, it's going to be focused ruthlessly on getting towards the result. What's the outcome? What is your desired outcome? This is why on my Calendly link, it always asks the question, for appointment scheduling with me, what is your desired outcome? What's the outcome you're hoping for during this conversation? Maybe I can move towards that. What is your desired outcome? If you're going into a conversation that's going to be uncomfortable, you need to be clear on what is true, what factually happened, what do you know for sure, how do you feel about that? You need to have that clarity of how you feel. You need to know what's relevant to them, what's relevant to the conversation, and what's relevant to you. You need to know what you want. What results or outcomes are you hoping for? To honestly express, in this instance, this example, it would be very honest, real, and raw to express. Let's say this potential client was named Suzie. We're talking to this potential client. Hey, Suzie, I've helped you with this, I've done this, and I'm starting to honestly feel like I'm being taken advantage of in this relationship. I want to be honest with you, my goal and being helpful in talking to you, all these multiple times we've had calls is because I want to get your business. I want to get you on as a client. So I need to know, that's what I want, is that going to happen? Is that a reality? Do you see that you potentially will become a client, or are you just taking advantage of the fact that you know that I know some of the things you might need? If so, then maybe we need to have a different conversation. But are you interested in becoming a client or working with me for property management or letting me take over your units? This is expressing what you want and that you might be able to express what Suzie wants. You can say, Suzie, what is it that you are wanting? My understanding is you want this property to be taken care of. You probably don't really want or enjoy dealing with finding contractors and dealing with these challenging and difficult situations. I would love to take that off your plate. I want to do that for you. That would be much more effective communication and it'd be far more honest because the reality of the situation is this communication leading up to this point, this client of mine had not yet been honest with Suzie or whatever their name is. Had not yet been fully honest with them and hadn’t lived according to this code of communication. Everything gets better and easier if you're willing to live. It's uncomfortable sometimes to have this communication, but it's less uncomfortable, I believe, than dealing with feeling taken advantage of, feeling misaligned internally, feeling frustrated, feeling annoyed by people. Honestly, express. There's a really good book I'm listening to right now. I really love this book so far. It's called Radical Honesty. This guy is really refreshing to listen to. I appreciate it. It really made me take a look. I've always prided myself on being a very honest, open person. That's always how I've wanted to run my business. One of the core facets is transparency that we subscribe to in our core values. That's why I created my original business, it was called OpenPotion. We all have a built-in liar and that's our brain. It's always trying to help us avoid pain. So if our brain is saying, well, it'll be an uncomfortable conversation that our brain lies and comes up with stories around this. Maybe they know or maybe I shouldn't bring this up. Maybe that'd be uncomfortable if I brought this up or set it this way. Maybe I need to be nicer, more diplomatic. That's our brain lying. We have this built-in liar that is always there in the background creating stories and filtering our perspective and our view from past pain and past history trying to protect us from future pain and creating more problems in our life. We have to confront that, and we have to deal with that and get even more honest. This is something that I remind myself of and that I hope is helpful to you is to be real, get raw, stay relevant with a ruthless commitment to results. If you focus on this mode of communication with family members, potential clients, or anybody that you care to communicate with, you're going to have a much better result. You're more likely to get the results out of this that you want because you're communicating honestly. You're going to create more safety. You're going to create more trust, sales, and deals happen at the speed of trust. Relationships, the foundation is trust. This is going to help you build more relationships and improve your close rate. I hope this has been helpful to those listening. That is all I have to share today. If you would like to have an objective perspective in your business because you're too close to the fire as all of us business owners are and you want a mentor, coach, or somebody that can help you move your business forward, I would be honored and happy to help you grow your business. We have clients getting fantastic results in our Mastermind program. You can check us out at doorgrow.com and set up a call with us to learn more about our DoorGrow and Scale mastermind, how we are helping grow and scale companies. That is what I will leave you with today. I hope this has been helpful to those listening. If it has, please give us some positive feedback on the various channels in which you may be listening to this, whether it's YouTube, iTunes, or wherever, we appreciate that. It helps us get the message out to others and benefit more people in the industry, which is our mission at DoorGrow. That's it. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Do you need a business development manager (BDM) to double the close rate and double the amount of deals and business you get in the property management space? Maybe you can’t afford or find a BDM. Maybe you like doing it yourself or want to double the amount of deals faster. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about how to get help closing deals for your property management business and selling people on using you for property management. You’ll Learn... [03:22] Simple Secret: Get a sales assistant to help with follow-up to close more deals. [04:10] What would an assistant do? Schedule appointments and make calls. [05:00] Sales Assistant Requirements: Must love making phone calls. Must enjoy talking to people. Must enjoy connecting with people. Must be somewhat driven. [06:12] Onboard and Train: What are they going to do for you? Help you qualify people. [06:24] Qualifying Questions/Criteria: Where’s the property? What’s the address? [08:26] Preframe: Creates future emotional state, positive sales call/pitch experience. [10:25] CRM Follow-up: An assistant can take notes, make calls, and enter updates. [11:03] CRM Requirements: Needs to sort and track deals, opportunities, leads, sales. [11:55] LeadSimple: Initial follow-up for texts, emails, campaigns, workflows, and drips. [12:54] Process Street: Facilitates tenant and owner onboarding processes, checklists. [13:10] Calendly: Scheduling tool handles calendars, appointment settings, scheduling. [14:28] Zoom: Face-to-face sales is far more effective and video sales calls create trust. [15:37] Prospecting: Give good sales assistant scripts to start functioning in a BDM role. [16:34] Double-Barrel Close: Someone who does both sides of deals - finds and closes. Tweetables “It’s nurturing these leads and opportunities to get them warm enough, to where they trust you, know you, and like you enough that you can get the deal closed.” “Having somebody that can help to nurture these along, follow-up, and get appointments scheduled can be really powerful and effective.” “Nobody wants to buy low value, so having an assistant can establish you as high value.” “This can eliminate the biggest time-suck in sales, which is all of the follow-up they can do. All of that follow-up for you.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DiSC LeadSimple Process Street Calendly Zoom Alex Hormozi Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 doing it 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. Today’s topic came up on my group coaching call today. We were talking a little bit about sales, and I don’t mean real estate sales. When I talk about sales, I’m talking about closing deals for your property management business, selling people on using you for property management, just to eliminate any confusion. My topic today is going to be how can you double your property management close rate without a BDM. A lot of people think, gosh I would need a BDM or I need a business development manager. I need somebody that’s out there hustling and acquiring business. I’m going to assume you’re doing the sales in the business or you already have a BDM or you have somebody, but you want to speed things up. You want to go a little bit faster. You want to double the close rate, double the amount of deals and business you’re getting. I’m going to share with you a secret today, really simple. A lot of clients come to me and they’re like, gosh. I just need somebody doing sales all the time, but I can’t afford a BDM or I can’t find one. Now, there is sort of this waystation in-between, getting a full-time BDM, offloading it completely off of your plate, and doing it yourself. If you’re doing it yourself, you’re probably doing it part-time. You’re maybe dedicating two hours a day, maybe less. But you should at least be doing two hours, five days a week, which means 10 hours a week. Somebody is doing sales or focused on that side of the business. It’s the lifeblood of the business. That means, you’re at least a [...] part-time salesperson for at least 10 hours a week in your business. You’ve got at least that going on. Now, if you have that, this waystation in-between, really simple, you can’t afford a BDM, maybe you can’t find one, maybe you like doing it, you just want to go a little bit faster, and you want to double the amount of deals. One of the things I did when I got overwhelmed in my own business, back when I was doing all the sales, is I got an assistant. And they were like, what do you need? Well, I could use some help with the sales follow-up. Getting a sales assistant is this secret, this little waystation in-between, that can help you double your close rate. It can help you double the amount of deals that you’re getting on. The most challenging thing in sales a lot of times time-wise is just follow-up. It’s nurturing these leads and opportunities to get them warm enough, to where they trust you, know you, and like you enough that you can get the deal closed. Having somebody that can help to nurture these along, follow-up, and get appointments scheduled can be really powerful and effective. What would you have this person do? A good sales assistant, really, is just an appointment setter. They’re calling these people up saying, hey, this is Jason Hull’s assistant. He just wanted to get back together. When would be a good time? Do you have some time on Wednesday at two o’clock, or would Thursday maybe at three o’clock be better? What works for you? That would be really effective. Me, getting a sales assistant or an assistant that was facilitating this at the time back when I needed it really badly, helped me double the amount of business that I was able to acquire. My revenue doubled, my gross revenue in the business. So this could be very effective. The thing you’re going to have is a really good sales assistant. Let’s talk about the requirements. They need to be somebody that really loves making phone calls. This is a challenge nowadays because a lot of millennials and younger do not like talking on the phone. They don’t like talking to people. There’s a lot. They opt for text messaging, they rather send an email, so they’re always trying to shift away from having a conversation, as if that’s uncomfortable. You have to find somebody that actually enjoys talking to people. On a DiSC profile, they’re going to show up as probably a high I, they’re going to have a lot of conversational skills, they’re going to like to talk or feel comfortable talking about themselves and with other people. They enjoy connecting with people. They probably also need a certain amount of D in the DiSC profile, which means they’re somewhat driven. This is the stereotypical sales profile as a DI. Now, they can have other attributes. They might have some S for stabilizing, which means they want to take care of people. They don’t have to be an aggressive, natural salesperson. They just need to be somebody who’s comfortable making phone calls. If you find this person, now you need to onboard and train them. You want to make sure that this person, what are they going to do for you? They’re going to help you. One, they’re going to help you a little bit with qualifying people. They can ask qualifying questions. Hey, I’d love to get you on a call with Jason. In order to do that, he’s really careful about his time. I’ve got a couple of qualifying questions just to make sure you’re going to be a good fit. Does that sound fair? Then you say, yeah sure. Then you have some qualifying questions that they can ask. For example, if it’s for property management instead of my business model, you would say maybe, are you current on all your house payments? Where is the property located? What’s the address? What are your long-term goals? Okay, cool. I really appreciate you giving me all this info. I think this will be a really good fit. Give them some criteria so they can help with the prequalification question. What that does is it places you—who is going to be the closer—in a position of being kind of the sexy girl or guy at the bar. You’re the one that gets to make a choice. Instead of them being the prize, it shifts. It’s them realizing that hey, this person that I’m going to talk to—which is the business owner—is the prize. They don’t work with everybody. They’re careful about who they take on, which suggests they’re high value. Nobody wants to buy low value, so having an assistant establish you as high value. Not only that, but assistants get a pass when it comes to follow-up because they’re not the salesperson. Just by them being able to reach out and say, hey, this is Jason’s assistant. He wanted me to reach out, it sets me on sort of a level of value that’s higher because I’m an assistant. It will make you look even more valuable. Back when I got my first assistant helping with sales, that was almost my only team member. It was just me and I had an assistant, and I was doing pretty much everything. But people perceived me differently and they treated me differently when I would get on the phone with them. The other thing that your sales assistant can do is to preframe. Preframing or some might call this future pacing, but is really effective, like you having a better sales call or sales pitch experience. Preframe might look like this. Hi, this is Suzy, calling to get an appointment scheduled for Jason. I’m his assistant over at DoorGrow. He was really wanting to meet with you again to chat about X, Y, and Z. I think you’re really going to love talking to Jason. That’s a little preframe. Now, if you schedule a time, when’s a good time? Thursday at 2:00 PM or would 3:00 PM be better? He has some time then. Which would work for you? Oh, not that? Okay, how about Friday? Giving them time is going to be more effective. Once you book a time, cool. You schedule that time, then you can use a preframe. They’re going to say something like, Fred, you’re really going to love talking to Jason. It’s going to be an awesome experience for you. Bring your questions if you have some problems with your rental property, or in my case, your property management business. I think you’ll really love what you’re going to hear during that call. That’s a preframe. It creates this future emotional state, they’re imagining this while you’re saying it, and they’re far more likely to experience that one when they talk to you. Make sure that they’re educated and trained in this art of preframing the call. Some sort of positive experience or outcome. They might even let them know future pacing. Yeah, he’s going to get on a call, he’ll talk with you about this and about this, and he’ll talk all about our pricing, how things work, and what we’ll do for you. I think you’ll really be excited to hear what he has to say and how we’re different from other companies. That’s a really powerful, effective thing to do as a preframe. Now, they also can handle all of the follow-up in your CRM. But keep your CRM tight. Make sure all the deals have good notes, follow-up with people, making text and email as you if you want them to do that. Or they can reach out and say, hey, this is the assistant, and they can follow-up. They can feed all this data into the CRM. They can keep notes. If somebody says they’re not interested, they can update that so you don’t waste time. This can eliminate the biggest time-suck in sales, which is all of the follow-up they can do. All of that follow-up for you. Let’s talk about some requirements to really make this work. What do you need? You already have somebody else helping you do sales, assuming you’re doing this all by yourself. At the very basic level, you’re going to need a CRM. You need some sort of sales CRM to keep track of the deals, opportunities, leads, and sales. Each of you can keep notes so that you’re not stepping on each other’s toes. You can see what communication has occurred, and you need to use it. You need to put in your notes from your calls and conversations. You need to mark this deal or opportunity at a certain stage. They know what the next stage is that they need to help move this towards, so that they can call and get an appointment scheduled, to move it to that next level. You want to be able to use this with your assistant and yourself. You need separate logins for this so that you could see who did what. The most common recommendation in the industry is LeadSimple. You can check that out at leadsimple.com. They really should be giving me some sort of affiliate, commission, or something. I’ve sent so much business over to them, but I don’t get paid. But anyway, check out leadsimple.com. And tell them they should send me a kickback. I’m just kidding. Check out LeadSimple. I get really positive feedback. It’s a cool CRM. It can initiate a phone call once a lead comes in to you, which makes it look like you followed it up right away, like you’re just on top of things. Leads are only good for maybe the first 10–15 minutes, and then conversion rates can drop dramatically, maybe even 80% on a lead. It helps you with that initial follow-up, and then you can build out text message, email, nurturing, campaigns, workflows, and drips. LeadSimple also has kind of a process street, sort of clone that can facilitate some of the onboarding tenant and owner onboarding processes and checklists that you want to build in your business. So you’re going to need a sales CRM. Another tool that I would recommend is that you have some sort of scheduling link. This makes it a lot easier to handle calendars, appointment settings, and scheduling, so get something like Calendly. I really like Calendly. You can check it out at calendly.com. They do have a free version, I believe, but you want to get Calendly set up. You can have some different appointment times. You can have separate links for these. I have a 15-minute, 30-minute, and 1-hour appointment link. My assistant knows initial things will be 15 minutes, maybe a lengthier call after that will be 30 or an hour, depending. They know at various stages in the sales pipeline to skip the scheduled, what kind of timeframe. You can also assign follow-up tasks in your CRM to your assistant instead of to yourself as a reminder. And it can be for the same day to (say) get them booked for a 30-minute call, or follow-up and see if they’re ready to schedule another call with me for an hour or whatever. You can book that in using a follow-up task you can assign VA your CRM. So get the Calendly link. The other thing that I would recommend is face-to-face sales is far more effective. I would rather be on a call face-to-face on Zoom, so I would get a Zoom account set up. I believe Calendly has free Zoom integration during COVID. They set this up. I don’t know if it’s still available. You may have to have a paid account in order to connect Calendly to Zoom. Get Zoom. I believe there is a free version of that as well. I have a paid version because I like to be able to record calls to the cloud using Zoom, for coaching, and stuff that I do for later. You can integrate Calendly and Zoom, so they can book a call. They’ll get the Zoom call details and they can show up. People are pretty used to face-to-face. It allows you to read and see their body language. It allows them to see yours. It creates trust and relationships a lot easier by using video, so recommend you try to have video calls, if at all, possible. That could be part of the preframe and the expectation set by your sales assistant. If you want to be able to leverage your sales assistant, somebody has to be dedicating some time through prospecting and growing the business at least 10 hours a week. A really good sales assistant, if they’re not just doing inbound and follow-up, they might be able to do some outbound. If they are a bit more driven and they’re comfortable kind of interrupting people and doing the prospecting side, you could also give them some scripts and have them start to function in a BDM role, and they can graduate to that. You can come up with a commission structure and you can give them half of the commission. You can give them half commission if they initiate or find somebody and then you close them. Later, you can graduate them to a full commission if they do both sides of the deal. Finding them and they close them. This allows you to use a strategy that I learned from one of my mentors, Alex Hormozi, which he called the double barrel close, where you have a setter and a closer, and it can be really effective. Anyway, that is my tip for today. Get yourself a sales assistant. Even if you want a BDM or you’re hiring somebody as a BDM, it’s a great way for them to start to learn your sales process, to start with the follow-up, to just help you go a little bit faster initially. And eventually they can graduate to being a full-fledged BDM. So, starting them as a sales assistant. That can be very affordable, even somebody just stepping in part-time to assist for an hour or two a day can do a lot of follow-up and probably double the amount of deals (at least) you’re getting right now. If you need some help learning how to prospect effectively, you want us to help onboard or help you figure out your sales process, you want to help your BDM or sales assistant figure out how to prospect and help you grow your business, reach out to us. This is the stuff that we do in the DoorGrow & Scale Mastermind. I’m your host, Jason Hull. I hope this has been helpful. And reach out to us if there’s anything that we can do for you. Let us know in doorgrowclub.com, which is our Facebook group. If you’ve gotten yourself a sales assistant and be curious, leave in the comments. As always on our iTunes, please leave us a review if these podcast episodes are effective for you. We would really appreciate it. That’s it. Until next time, to our mutual growth. And I’m out. Bye, everyone.

What is the most important currency when assessing whether or not we’re doing the right things or making really good decisions in the business? Time, energy, focus, cash, or effort? It’s not money, but time that is limited and scarce. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about the five currencies for property management entrepreneurs. It is a concept that he was taught by his mentor, Alex Charfen. You’ll Learn... [01:50] Five Currencies: Time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. [02:58] #1 Currency: Time - most important commodity. [04:44] #2 Currency: Energy - some things give us energy and others drain us. [06:19] #3 Currency: Focus/attention - whatever you focus on tends to grow. [08:10] #4 Currency: Cash/money - Buy back more of your time and other currencies. [08:41] Four Reasons: Fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. [09:15] Six Core Functions of business. Which function is your weakest? [09:48] #5 Currency: Effort - put in more than anyone else; your results are assured. [11:20] Currencies: Assess and evaluate yourself related to the five currencies. Tweetables “We trade money in order to get back some of our own time.” “Do less and less of the things that drain you and do more of things that give you energy. You only have so much energy in a day.” Focused Equals Power: “The more focus you have, the more power you’ll have, which means you can go faster.” “If we have enough cash, we can buy other people’s time and get more of our time back.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Alex Charfen 10X by Grant Cardone Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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. My topic today is we’re going to chat about the five currencies. This is a concept that I was taught by one of my mentors, Alex Charvin. He would probably explain it differently and he has a great podcast, by the way, for entrepreneurs. It’s (I think) really validating for us as entrepreneurs. I really look up to Alex. He’s a mentor that really helped me take my life and business to another level, which is a goal I aspire to do with all my clients. This is something that I was taught by Alex. These currencies—write them down; these are one through five—I like them in this order. This is just how I’ve always set them and how I like them. This is probably not his order but time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. Let’s get into each of these. Let me just give you an overview. We have five different currencies that we can invest into our personal life and into our business. When assessing whether or not we’re doing the right things or making really good decisions in the business, we want to take a look at it. If I’m investing, you should be getting a return if it’s a good investment. But a lot of business owners are not making a very good decision, they are not investing correctly or well, so they’re not getting a return. If you’re not making enough money in your business, you’re not having enough growth, you’re probably not doing the right things in investing these currencies correctly. Let’s go through each of these. Time. Time, in my opinion, is the most important commodity, is the most important currency, hands down. Why? None of us know when we’re going to die but we’re all going to die. Time is a scarce, limited resource. It’s the most important, your personal time. Now, what’s cool is you can buy the time of others. This is why we have team members, pay employees, pay people to do certain services for us and stuff like that. We trade money in order to get back some of our own time. That is the most important commodity. When we’re young, we do crazy stuff. We work at a job, trading our time, giving up our life, chunks of our life for money. We don’t realize how valuable it is. Eventually, hopefully you’ve realized or starting to realize right now that money is not the most important currency. It’s time. You’ll realize that as you recognize that it’s the one that’s truly limited and scarce. Related to time, you want to take a look at where’s my time going? Is it towards the things that feed me more life, or make me feel joy, or are the things that I really find fun or enjoyable? This goes back to my podcast episode about the four reasons. Make sure you check that out if you haven’t listened to that. I want to make sure that if you’re investing your time, it’s towards those things; you getting more and more of those. When it comes to time, this is why I have clients do things like time studies, and we have a very strategic way of looking at your time so you can assess that. The next is energy. We all have things to give us energy and things that drain us. Me coaching clients energizes me. It’s fun. I woke up like 3:00 in the morning, I was super tired and just before this I got off a coaching call, and I feel bit pumped up. It just gives me life. I enjoy being able to teach. I enjoy being able to share cool stuff. I learn. That’s my why, is to inspire others to love true principles. I love being able to learn cool stuff, share with other people, and see them get it. That’s just so fulfilling for me. It gives me energy. But there are things that drain my energy. I also run a web design agency designing logos and building websites that’s not super energizing for me. It used to be kind of fun for me, but I really did it to make money. That was a job when I was a solopreneur. All of you are doing and wearing hats that you don’t want to wear and doing things you don’t want to do. Over time, moving towards the four reasons, I want you to do less and less of the things that drain you and do more of things that give you energy. You only have so much energy in a day. That’s a currency you can protect, you can work to be healthy, you can do some self care, you can protect yourself enough load things, but you want to pay attention to your energy levels and the things that are energizing you or the things that are draining you. Next is focus or attention. Whatever you focus on tends to grow. Those that are into the law of attraction stuff, recognize this, but wherever they say energy flows where attention goes. If you want more of your energy to go towards more positive things, you need to place more attention on those things. Focus is also one of the greatest secrets in business. So many business owners get diluted in their focus and their attention, and they wonder why they can’t go as fast. A good analogy is to look at light. You can have a flashlight. It’s helpful. It’s more helpful than maybe a candle in some instances, or maybe something’s really dim like a fire. And you can move it around. A flashlight’s really cool. But if you really want to have something really powerful, and you focus that light, you then end up having a laser. A laser can cut through things. It can do really cool stuff.  It can cut machinery, it can do some really powerful stuff. It can do dangerous stuff. Focused equals power. This is a principle in the universe. The more focus you have, the more power you’ll have, which means you can go faster. In the property management business, for example, if you are diluted in your focus—you’re doing lots of different types of management while you’re small—you’re not going to be able to grow as effectively in any of them. It’s like trying to run multiple races at a time. You’re scattered, you’re diluted. A lot of entrepreneurs lose focus and get distracted by opportunity. You want to make sure that you can determine, where’s my focus going and is it giving me more of the things that I want? More all of the other currencies maybe or more towards the four reasons? Currency number four is cash. Cash also, like all of these, is a limited resource. But if we invest our currencies correctly, we can get more of it and we can turn that cash into more of these other currencies if we’re investing correctly. If we have enough cash, we can buy other people’s time and get more of our time back, and then we can do more of the things that energize us. A lot of business owners, as I said on a previous podcast when I talked about the four reasons, make more and more money and they have less and less of the four reasons. Just to recap, just real quick, fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. These are the things we want to get from our business. We want to make sure focus is tight. A lot of business owners, the reason you’re not growing right now is because you are focused on the things that the business is already doing well and you’re not putting the majority of your focus as a leader and as a business owner on the things the business is struggling with currently. So go back and listen to my episode about the six core functions of business. That’s where you can determine where should our focus be as a company right now. Which function is our weakest. Cash. It’s also important to recognize cash. You’ll need cash flow. You need some space and some padding there that’s going to give you a lot more ability to focus and have attention. Cash can affect all of these other functions. The next is effort. This is the last one, number five, effort. We only have so much physical energy, physical strength that we can do. After that we can put into something. But if you’re willing to put in more effort than anyone else is willing to put in, your results are assured. A great book on this is Grant Cardone’s book, 10X. I like the audio book because you get to hear him talk about it and share these principles. The basic principle is if you do 10 times the effort—it’s very focused on the effort attribute—you put 10 times the effort towards something, you’re going to get the result. And it’s 10 times more than what you’d typically think you’ll need, and the results are assured. There’s no way you’re not going to hit that goal. Now, all of these five currencies will show up on a time study, except cash, really. Time study will reveal to you where your time, your energy, your focus, and your efforts are going currently, so that you can figure out how to reinvest it. It’s a cheat code to having greater productivity. But my goal for you is not to become just more productive. I don’t need you to do more stuff if you want your company to grow. You don’t really have to do more. In fact, the ultimate goal is for you to do less things but spend more time and attention doing the things that you really enjoy doing, that give you energy. Take a look at yourself through the lens of these five currencies—time, energy, focus, cash, and effort—and figure out where is this going. If you want to work with me as a coach, go through my proprietary time study process, to identify your plus and minus signs energetically, figure out how to reinvest and eliminate the interruptions in your business that are stealing money, focus, time, and effort, and improving that. This is something that I coach clients and doing once a quarter. So reach out and let’s connect. We’d be glad to help you. This (I believe) is the greatest secret to offloading, figuring out how you can get out of being the biggest bottleneck in your own business, is just starting with assessing your time and seeing where these currencies are going. Take a look at your currencies, assess yourself, evaluate yourself related to these currencies, and figure out how am I doing in each of these? Give yourself a rating. Am I deficient? Where am I weak? Am I weak on cash? Am I weak on time? Am I weak on energy? Am I weak on focus or attention? Am I weak on effort? And then start to dedicate a little bit more of those currencies towards what’s weak so that you can improve that. If you’re weak on time, maybe you’ve got good cash. So invest some of that cash towards time. Maybe you’re weak on effort. You’re like, I’ve kind of floating and coasting right now, and I really would like some more of these other currencies. Cool, invest more time and put in some more effort towards it. More attention and focus, that if you want more cash, certainly a way to do that is invest more of those. All right. That's what I'm going to say about the five currencies. If anybody has questions about these, feel free to hit us up in our Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com which is our free community. Make sure to apply. We don’t let everybody in. Once you’re inside, you can ask questions related to these things. Or send me a message on Facebook or through any other social media platform. I might see it. I try to monitor them all. We’d be happy to help you move your business forward. So take a look at your currencies. That’s it for today. Until next time, to our mutual growth. I hope everybody has an awesome week and success. Bye, everyone.

Most property management businesses suck because they have miserable business owners, but it's not because of the industry. There are unhappy business owners in any business, in any industry, or in any business category. What would you do differently now that you run a property management business? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about 13 common mistakes made and tips on how to avoid them when starting a property management business. These are things that you should know or wish you had known. Some are really practical and some are a bit more high-level recommendations. You’ll Learn... [02:23] Out of Alignment: You’re in the wrong role, doing wrong things in the business. [04:00] Mistake #1: Not using or choosing cheapest property management software. [05:49] Mistake #2: Don't give out your real direct cell phone number to tenants, owners. [07:03] Mistake #3: Learn how to win the online reviews game before starting to play it. [08:17] Mistake #4: Do not be the cheapest in your market. Price yourself at the top. [09:51] Mistake #5: Your business name should always end with property management. [10:50] Mistake #6: Save time and money - grow a business without paid advertising. [12:39] Mistake #7: Cycle of Suck - don't take on shady clients or properties. [13:57] Mistake #8: Do not hire until you’re clear on what matters - culture, values. [16:36] Mistake #9: Everybody has a fantasy when starting a business. Kill the fantasy. [19:20] Mistake #10: Make property management the focus, especially in startup stage. [21:24] Mistake #11: Protect your time; offload emergency/after-hours calls, eventually. [22:27] Mistake #12: Distraction of Opportunity - reduce variations and focus on niche. [24:48] Mistake #13: Don’t be a know-it-all; collapse time by getting a coach, mentor. Tweetables “Choose property management software that you can live with forever.” “You need to insulate, protect yourself, and not be reachable all the time by cell phone.” “It's better to be the most expensive than the cheapest, in my opinion.” “There's one thing that without it you don't have a business—clients.” “When you start to value yourself and value your time, other people will start to value you and value your time.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Rent Manager Talkroute Burner Abodia Latchel EZ Repair Hotline Property Meld OpenPotion The Myers and Briggs Foundation Telegram Messenger National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) Transcript All right, we are live. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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. Okay. Today, what we are going to be talking about—this was prompted by a question that I saw posted on Facebook. Somebody asked a question like, what do you wish you could do differently now that you run a property management business? If you could go back in time, what would you do differently? There were lots of jokes, hahaha, from people saying I would start a pizza company or pizza place, or I'd do something else like I wouldn't do it. It is a common joke. There's pain underneath those statements because there are a lot of property management businesses that a) suck, and that b) because they have miserable business owners. They're not happy. I just want to point out that I don't believe it's because of the industry. There are miserable business owners in any business, in any industry, or in any business category. I think the challenge is that the business owners that are not happy out there, which there's a lot in a lot of industries, there's a lot in the property management industry. But the ones that are not happy are the ones that are not in alignment with the four reasons, which I talked about in an earlier episode. Go back and check that out. If you're out of alignment with that, the real issue is that you are doing the wrong things in the business. You are in the wrong role. So that's the challenge. I want to talk about 13 tips that you should know if you're a startup property manager. These are probably 13 things you wish you had known or should know if you're starting a property management business. Some of these are really practical and some of these are a little bit more high level, mindset, or whatever. I just made a list of the 13 most common mistakes that I see people make starting property management companies. I've made a pretty decent living in helping property managers either start up their businesses or most of the time, helping clean up the mistakes they made during the startup process. It's a lot of what I do at DoorGrow. So I've talked to thousands of property managers. I've gotten to see inside a lot of businesses. I get to hear what actually goes on behind the scenes—the pain, the sorrow, the sadness, and the joy when we get things figured out and dialed in. So let's get into these. These are in no particular order or priority. These are just how they came into my head. One of the biggest mistakes that I see, number one, is choosing property management software based on what's cheapest. That's a mistake. A lot of times, property managers either don't use the software in the beginning or choose something cheap or less expensive. My recommendation is to choose property management software that you can live with forever. The reason being, if you can choose software that you can live with forever, that software is going to save you a lot more money in the long run. You're going to end up spending a lot of money on staffing costs instead. So if you go cheap on software in the beginning because you're like, hey, this is a lower price, those costs get translated and pushed on to staff. Don't pick it based on what's cheapest and the same, get the most expensive software but get the software that can do the most, that's going to give you the most leverage. I typically like to recommend Rent Manager simply because I hear the most positive feedback on it. It's not an investor-backed company where their primary goal, if they're honest, is to please their financial backers. That's not their goal, some software out there. It's not owned by some bigger conglomerate or company, as far as I know. They have one of the best property management conferences I've heard in the industry. But clients seem to just really love Rent Manager. They love that software. I've seen it used by really large enterprises that have thousands of doors in multiple markets. I've seen it used by startups. It seems to work for a variety of different types of management. It has an open API. It connects and integrates with everything is what that means, generally. So that would be my recommendation. Don't push the cost on the staff because staff are far more expensive. All right. Number two, don't give out your direct real cell phone number to tenants and owners. It's so easy to do early on. Real estate agents are absolute horrors with their cell phone numbers, that happens all the time. Every guy or gal in real estate just gives it out to everybody, puts it on park benches, puts it up on yard signs. For property management, that's a whole different game. You need to insulate, protect yourself, and not be reachable all the time by cell phone. So you need to get some other service or you might get something like Talkroute, which works great with cell phones, low latency, voice over IP system that allows you to use your cell phones. It works really well and it's low cost. You can build out a phone tree, protect yourself, and route it to different services that you bring on later. You can even go and just get some sort of phone app in the App store to get a second phone number that can allow you to do text messaging, phone calls. I've heard of some people using an app called Burner and some of these. Have a different phone number than your real cell phone number and just save that for those that you really want to be able to reach you—family, friends, not clients and customers. Number three, learn how to win the online reviews game before you start to play it and are losing, which is the default. If you're a restaurant in the restaurant industry, this is critical. You start up a business, you're hoping that it's going to make money, you put on some investment into it, you start getting some bad reviews initially because you make some mistakes, and suddenly, it just compounds, piles on, you just get more and more bad reviews, and you're not getting good reviews. The business could die. Now in property management, the default also is that you're going to get bad reviews from tenants and owners. They're going to be frustrated, tenants especially, if they don't get their deposit back or whatever. You need to know how to play this game. In DoorGrow Academy, we have a training called Reputation Secrets and then teach clients how to win at this game, but you need to have a strategy for this before the reviews just start to happen. Because the default is you will lose and that is a significant impact. A lot of people mistakenly assume they'll just get good reviews if they just do good service, and that is not the case. That's not how the review game works. So before you start to play that game, you need to know how to win that game, and it's not a hard game to win. Number four, one of the biggest mistakes I see, my really big tip here is do not price yourself as the cheapest. Do not be the cheapest in your market. Do not price yourself at the low end of the market or at the bottom. There's already a race to the bottom. This is a fast track to building a business. It's not sustainable, that's painful, that's uncomfortable. It helps you attract more and more of the bottom of the barrel, the worst clients, and residents. That's not the type of business that you want to get caught up in. Price yourself at the top of the market. It's better to be the most expensive than the cheapest, in my opinion. There's a lot more nuance to that and pricing psychology and strategy that we get into in our Mastermind program that I love to coach clients on because I have not yet had a property manager come to me that had really effective pricing. It's always something we can optimize, improve, and then they can close more deals at a higher price point more easily. That price sensitivity, that sense of scarcity that they're getting pushed back on, that price sensitivity and pain that they're dealing with with owners, there are lots of ways to mitigate that, remove it, or capture better prospects that are not like that, like the cheapos of the world. That's the default. That's what most property managers do. They try to be the cheapest or they try to charge what everybody else is charging in their market. They're all making similar mistakes. Number five, make sure your business name ends with property management. It's one of the most common mistakes. Almost every startup seems to have real estate or realty in the name, or they choose something generic so they can do it from multiple industries like properties. They might even put rentals, which is weird. So real simple, when it comes to branding, we've helped rebrand hundreds of companies—redoing their names, redoing their logos, hundreds. We are the world's leading property management branding and design agency. Nobody's done more rebrands than us in the property management space. The most common mistake that we see is just not ending your name with property management. Just end your name with property management and be a property management company. Be a master of one trade instead of a jack of all trades and a master of none. All right, number six. Learn to create a business without paid advertising and you'll never struggle with growth, and you will save a [...] ton of time and money. Cold lead advertising takes a lot of money. It wastes a lot of time because you have to nurture these leads. There are far better strategies for growth. What do I mean by cold leads? I'm talking about SEO, pay-per-click like Google ads, content marketing, social media marketing, and pay-per-lead services. You do not have to do these things in order to grow your business. In fact, there are faster and better ways. I'm not saying don't do those. All of those can be effective if you do the right things, but they can be costly, and that's not where you should start spending your time and energy. The number one way that almost every business owner I've talked to ever in property management, I asked, where have you gotten the majority of the doors you have now? It's always word of mouth. So figure out how to play that game, figure out a way to create it. to intentionally make it, and to be outbound about it instead of just inbound, which means waiting for stuff to just come to you. So we have an outbound partner prospecting program that we teach in DoorGrow Academy and in Referral Secrets in our Mastermind program. This has helped some of our clients to have hundreds of doors in a year's time without spending any money on advertising. It just takes time, but it takes less time than it would be if they were just being spoon-fed a bunch of cold leads. It takes less time and they get more doors. It's a no-brainer. The next item, number seven, don't take on shady clients or properties. I've talked over and over again about what I call the cycle of suck. Take on a shitty owner, you have a shitty property, you have a shitty tenant, you're going to get a shitty reputation in the marketplace. This is the cycle of suck. Escape the cycle of suck, filter at each stage, and the most important is be careful about the types of owners that you take on. This is the most important thing because this starts the entire cycle. Be careful about the properties that you take on. Of course, screen the tenants—you all do that, and have a strategy in place. We've already talked about reviews. Have a strategy in place to get more good reviews and to mitigate, filter, or prevent negative reviews. If you are able to do this, you will have significantly lower operational costs than most property management companies, which means you'll be more profitable and you'll be able to invest more into growth, into your team, and into scaling your operations. So don't take on shitty clients and properties. Really simple. In the beginning, a lot of people think they need to take on everybody. This is one of the most common mistakes and they do it at too low of a price point. They're needy, needy is creepy, and it prevents you from getting on a better business. All right, the next item. The next tip for startup or starting a property management business is do not hire until you are clear on your culture, which means your values, what matters to you, and you've created that in a tangible way, which means it's written, it's documented, and you are clear on what you should be doing in the business. Meaning, you are clear on the things that bring you those four reasons. You know what gives you more fulfillment, more freedom, and more contribution so that you can get more support. You need to understand yourself. Because if you don't understand yourself, you're going to do the wrong things as a business owner. You're going to wear every hat in the beginning. The hats you need to get rid of are the ones that are minus signs for you. They are not energetic plus signs. They do not give you life and energy. You need to strategically focus on that. I talked about time studies and things like that in our program, ways of figuring out which things energize you versus draining you. I talked about the five currencies of time, energy, effort, focus, and cash. Figuring out what is going to give me the most fulfillment and freedom. What's going to bring me more joy? You need to understand what that role is that you're going to be moving towards. You don't have to do anything in the business in the long run. You could offload everything, but there are certain things that are going to bring you joy and fulfillment and that's why we have businesses. That's one of the main reasons. So you need to figure out what is that for you so that you can build the right team around the right person. If you're showing up as the wrong person, you start to build a team, and you don't have the culture, and you only have yourself clear, you're going to build the wrong team. You're going to be frustrated with them, and you're going to be like most of the 200–400 door companies that the business owner is in a state of constant burnout and frustration. Just frustrated that they cannot get their team members to think and make decisions because they've set up their business the wrong way, they are annoyed, and they are micromanaging everybody even though they don't want to admit it. So make sure you get clear on that. That's something that we help clients with. Clients give me feedback. They dial this stuff in that that was the most important training and material they went through in our Mastermind program, which is what I call Purpose Secrets and getting that clarity. It helps them build their dream team so they can have their dream business. If you don't have the business of your dreams, as one of my coaches and mentors would say, then you are not yet the person that can run it yet. That means you just don't have clarity on yourself. All right, the next thing is number nine. Tip, starting a business. When we start a business, we all have a fantasy. It is so sexy, it is so seductive that we're willing to take a risk against the advice sometimes of family and friends, and we start a business. We spend money, we spend massive amounts of time and energy to do this, to go towards this fantasy. Everybody has a fantasy when they start up a business. You have to be willing to kill the fantasy. So this tip is to kill the fantasy early. You know that you're delaying this death of the fantasy. What I mean by killing the fantasy is if you want a reality, if you want a real business that actually pays you, because fantasies are sexy, nice, and they make you feel good, but they don't pay you. They don't actually give you a real-life result. The fantasy just makes your brain feel good and gives you some chemicals. But if you want to have a real business, you have to get a reality business, you have to kill the fantasy if you want that. You have to let it die. So kill it early. What I mean by this is some business owners delay this. They mentally masturbate as one of my mentors or coaches would say. They don't take the right action and they spend a lot of time doing all the action that's safe. I'm going to work on my branding, my business card, my logo, or my website for 100 hours. They're doing all this stuff, and they're not getting clients and they're not getting paid. You don't need any of that stuff. The only thing that you need in order to have a property management business. There's one thing that without it you don't have a business—clients. That's the one thing and you can just get clients. I've seen people have hundreds of doors without a website, without a good brand name, without a logo. Certainly, these things can help improve things and make things go faster. But you don't need t-shirts printed, you don't need a cool brick and mortar building. You just need some tenacity, some work ethic, and to take the right action. That's the first thing I start clients on if they're in a startup stage or they want to grow their business, we start them down to what I call the Grow Program First. It lets you add doors. Then we can clean up branding, website, and your sales pipeline, and then it'll go faster. But there's no point having something that's going to help you go faster if you're not even moving yet. Let's get you moving and making some money first. Kill the fantasy early, do the uncomfortable hard stuff first. If it's uncomfortable, if you're avoiding it, if you don't want to do it, it's probably a sign that that's where you should go. Lean into the pain early in the business and the business will be less painful forever. All right. What is next? Number 10, make property management the focus. At least during the startup stage. I've seen so many that have it as a side hustle. It's a side hustle for years where they sometimes come into my program, it's a side hustle, and they don't even choose to focus on it. Then after about three or four months, they realize they finally get honest and connect to reality, they're not going to do the work. Because they don't really want to invest in that business or focus on it, and then they just give up, quit, stop the business, or just leave it where it is, and they don't make it a focus or priority. So if you want just to succeed and go fast, give it a real chance of success. If you have a baby that's born, you need to take really good care of that baby, at least for the first little while, first few years. Because otherwise, that baby is not going to be able to feed itself, change itself, take care of itself. That's your business. Your business is this baby. You need to take care of it in the beginning. Eventually, you can build a team, you can build systems, you can offload things, you can focus on other passions or other businesses if you want to, but it needs to be a focus if you want this to work. One of the biggest challenges I see is they don't make it a focus and they artificially keep feeding into this business from the resources, revenue, and staff in their existing healthy business. So then you end up with this cancerous tumor on the side of a healthy real estate company, for example, that's a property management business, and it's not profitable. I had one client that had 600 doors when he first came to me and was making $0 in his business. That's painful. Too many expenses, too much staff, too many resources, and a cycle of suck. All these things were going on, lack of technology, et cetera because a healthy company would have had to make significant changes at about 100 doors or so or earlier just to break the 100 door barrier. They were able to artificially skip past that in terms of door count because they had another business they could siphon resources from. Make sure your business can stand on its own two feet and make it the focus. Number 11, protect your time and offload as early as possible emergency or after-hours maintenance calls. You need to value yourself and protect yourself. You could get a service like Abodia, Latchel, or EZ Repair Hotline I've heard good things about. You could sign up, eventually, once you get maybe 50–100 doors. It might make sense to get a service like Property Meld and they work really nicely, I guess with EZ Repair Hotline under their full-service plan. I've heard great things about Property Meld service over and over again from clients. But as soon as possible, offload emergency or after our mains maintenance calls. You're the business owner and protect yourself, protect your time, and protect your time with your family. When you start to value yourself and value your time, other people will start to value you and value your time. That means they’ll want to pay you, they’ll want to give you money because you're valuable. You have something to offer them. Don't be low value. All right, so the next thing is the number 12 tip when starting a property management business. One of the biggest problems I see with entrepreneurs is this distraction of opportunity. We see opportunities everywhere as entrepreneurs. So my big tip is to reduce variations as soon as possible. Variation, what do I mean by that? I mean shift your focus towards simplicity and doing as little as possible, like one thing, one main business. You will go faster. Reducing variation means having less types of management that you offer. Don't try to do commercial, residential, multifamily, trailer parks, and storage units. Pick a niche and really focus on it, reduce variation. Don't have custom contracts that you're trying to negotiate every time. Get a lawyer, get your contract tight, determine this is what it's going to be, and improve it over time. Don't fold on it. They're looking for an expert that they can trust. Be that expert that they can trust. Don't fold. Don't cave in. Reduce variation in the business. The more variation you have, the more side hustles you have, the more random things that you're trying to do, the more service you think might be a good idea that you're trying to incorporate, if you do those at the wrong time, it just creates speed bumps. It slows you down, so try to reduce variation. My business, we basically have one product, one service, one sales pipeline. Our growth has skyrocketed as a result. In the beginning, I had this company called OpenPotion. It was OpenPotion Website Design and Business Solutions. I was like, I'm going to set up computer networks, set up businesses' phones. I could do their websites, I can help with logos. I was going to do everything because I thought I could do all this stuff. Overtime, we've done less and less and less and made ourselves more and more focused. Even focusing on a niche in becoming DoorGrow so that we can become more effective and reduce the amount of variation in the business. It allows us to go deeper, help our clients even more, and reduces the complexity so that we can service more clients more quickly and provide better service. Number 13, do not be a know-it-all and collapse time by getting a coach. Now I know you're like Jason, you're a coach, come on. This is biased. Transparency time here. I was that guy. I tried to do everything myself in the beginning. I tried to watch the YouTube videos and read every book. I thought, I'm so smart, I can figure anything out. I am smart enough to probably eventually figure everything out, but it takes a decade to go that route when you could collapse time in a year if you worked with somebody that already has invested a decade into this. I started this business in 2008. I've been helping property managers since then. It's over a decade. I've also been able to incorporate knowledge, wisdom, and ideas from hundreds of clients, thousands of property managers that I've talked to, and being able to pull in the best ideas. I'm really good at piecing together various pieces, ideas, and creating new things. It's just kind of my area of genius. As an ENTP, if you're familiar with Myers Briggs, I'm always looking for truth and looking for what works. That's kind of my skill set, but the trap in that is I always thought I could figure it out. But when I got coaches, I started actually go fast. Nothing helps you collapse more time than getting mentors or coaches that know what they're doing. They can help you move forward a lot faster. When I started getting coaches and mentors, and I'm very careful about who I choose as mentors or coaches nowadays because I'm at a level to where a bad coach or a bad mentor could do a lot of damage. One of the things I look at is, do I want to be more like that person? Do they have a lifestyle that I would like to have more of in my life? Do I feel like they're a good person? Do they have values? That's important to me. Do they have knowledge that they can share? Are they sharp? Get a coach, get resources around you, get mentors. It's going to help you collapse time far faster. This takes humility. It's hard for us as business owners, especially early on because we think we know a lot. Over the years, a lot of pain, failures, and mistakes helps us learn we really have no clue. We're all just winging it. There's a lot of people that are far beyond where I'm at that I could learn from. Don't be a know-it-all. Get a coach and collapse time. If you feel like I might be able to be that coach and might be able to help you grow and scale your business, we have over 80 businesses in our Mastermind, which means over a hundred people in our Mastermind program that we are coaching, mentoring, and helping move their business forward. You'll get access to me with one-on-ones. You'll get access to me through video, voice, text message through Telegram messenger. We do two weekly calls each week, and we have a repository of training material I built out in doorgrowacademy.com that you get access to as well. Then you get the support and help from my team. We included a website in the program and branding. All this is just part of this mastermind experience. My goal is to keep clients forever so that I'm adding value. It's very easy for me to help a client offset the cost of this program by double, so that this program feels like it's now paying you. Very easy, no brainer. So if you're interested in the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, reach out to us, reach out to us, reach out to my team, check us out at doorgrow.com. Join our Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com. We would love to talk with you and see if you might be a good fit for our culture, for our program, and for the types of clients we want to help and service. There's nothing I enjoy more really in my business than helping coach the clients. It's super fun. It's Wednesday. I got to do one of those calls today. It's super rewarding being able to hear all the wins, people adding doors, hear the questions, and be able to support these people in growing their businesses. I'd be honored to be able to support you. It's my passion. It's what I love doing. With that, those are the 13 tips for those that aren't in the startup stage. If I were to add a bonus one here, I would say, get around other people doing what you want to be doing. Join NARPM, get around other property managers, get to know your local competition. It's a friendly space. Create some relationships and be connected. Don't be an island in your business. Our mastermind can be a support or channel for that as well, but make sure you're connected to people. I'll leave it at that and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about three dominos that you need to knock over to close more property management deals. Jason discovered the three dominos concept in sales from Russell Brunson, a New York Times bestselling author that popularized sales funnels and co-founded ClickFunnels to help entrepreneurs get their message out to the marketplace quickly. You’ll Learn... [01:25] Three Dominos Concept: How to pitch property management services. [02:19] The three dominos are the vehicle, internal beliefs, and external beliefs. [02:39] Domino #1: The vehicle is your service to get to what people want. [03:29] Competition: What are all the alternative vehicles for property management? [04:55] Lead Gen: Cold leads are costly and warm leads cost time but less money. [06:33] DIY Option: Takes much longer to do everything and get the same results. [07:12] Domino #2: Tackle all of the customer’s internal beliefs by offering support. [09:58] Domino #3: Deal with all external and false beliefs that concern customers. [11:05] Logical Conclusion: Only thing left is to sign up with you and your service. [13:45] What is sales? Helps people get what they want, and what you desire, as well. Tweetables “There’s three dominoes that you need to knock over in order to get somebody to buy your services and to sign up with you as a client.” “If you knock over all three dominos, the magic that happens is the only logical conclusion they have left and decision they have left is to work with you.” “Safety and certainty is really what these people want.” “I’m building trust, creating relationships, and I’m helping them see reality, and really, I think that’s what sales is all about.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Russell Brunson Trello Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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. So today's topic, I was hanging out with my coaching clients today. We had a great call, lots of people, and we had a brand new client. He was asking about, how do I pitch? Basically, the question was, how to pitch property management services? One concept or principle that I related that I would like to relate to everybody listening today is the concept of the three dominoes. I don't think I've chatted about this before. If I have, then you can hear it again. Anyway, the three dominoes concept in sales, I got that idea from Russell Brunson. I've heard him talk about it. I just grabbed one of his books off the shelf here. In this book, he mentions it. He probably mentions it in his others, but there are three dominoes that you need to knock over in order to get somebody to buy your services and to sign up with you as a client. These three dominoes are the vehicle, internal beliefs, and external beliefs. If you can knock over all three dominoes, the magic that happens is the only logical conclusion they have left and the decision they have left is to work with you. Let me explain these. So the vehicle is the first domino. This is important. The vehicle is your service. Your service is the vehicle for them to get to what they want. If you're selling property management, the vehicle that you're selling or offering is your business doing their management. For me, the vehicle is our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, that's the vehicle that we offer. Now when looking at vehicles, if you want to knock this domino over and accomplish the goal of them recognizing it, your vehicle is the best vehicle for them to get into. You have to throw stones at all the other vehicles. You have to destroy all the other vehicles in their mind so that the only logical vehicle left standing is your vehicle. So if you want them to use your business for property management, you have to look at what are all the alternative vehicles? Write these down, figure out what are all the alternatives. They can self-manage. They could go to a real estate agent and ask them to do it. They could go to the big box company and franchise company down the street. They could go to the small mom and pop company that competes with you that's down the street. There are lots of different vehicles. After you've looked at what are all the possible vehicles that exist for management and you make a list of these, you have to figure out, how can I throw stones at these? Why is my vehicle better than them self-managing, than them using the big box company down the street, the small mom and pop shop down the street that I compete with, or whatever? If you don't have a good answer to that question, then you don't have maybe the best vehicle. How can you make your vehicle better? Sometimes you just need to work on your product and improve it. So you need to have the best vehicle. With my vehicle, the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind and the coaching program that we offer, the alternative vehicles people have for growing their management companies could be hiring some other coach, it could be doing SEO, it could be doing pay-per-click, it could be doing content marketing, it could be doing social media marketing, or it could be pay-per-lead services. In my training that convinces people to sign up with us and work with us, I go through and explain why all of these vehicles generally are all cold lead advertising, and why cold leads are not as effective as warm leads. Why the close rate is typically 10%, or worse for most property managers with cold leads. Why cold leads are really expensive. You have to pay for these marketing services. You have to pay agencies, then you have to pay for ad spend, and it's really costly. I contrast that to our opportunity, our vehicle, which is based on warm lead generation, which is based on things that don't really cost you money. It does cost time, but it actually takes less time than dealing with cold [...] leads and prospects that are just time wasters and tire kickers, that are at the end of the sales cycle, that are searching on Google, that are super price-sensitive, and are the worst. They're the scraps that fall off the warm lead or word-of-mouth table that my clients get to eat at. This is how I attack the vehicle. For me, that's easy because it's true and it's obvious, I feel like. So I explain it, and then when people get it, they go, wow, that vehicle does sound better than these other vehicles and you might have written in some of these other vehicles. You might have tried them and you know from experience, they're not working really well. In fact, most of the companies that are trying to do those other vehicles to grow their business are losing more doors than they're getting on right now due to the sell-off that's happening in the marketplace. A lot of the larger companies are down at least 200 doors over the last couple of years. That might be you. So the vehicle, so you have to know how to attack all the other vehicles. I also have the alternate vehicle that is challenging or that I deal with, that clients will focus on which is DIY, just like you as property managers. We have people that are like, I can just read business books or I can just watch a bunch of videos on YouTube, I'll do it all myself. Awesome, I used to be that guy too. You could do that. And it will take you 10 years longer to get the same result. I've seen it and I've been that guy. I've been that guy that thought I knew everything and could do it all on my own. Until I started getting coaches and mentors that collapsed time. So I'm attacking that vehicle. You have to figure out how do I destroy and attack all the other vehicles. Once your vehicle is the only vehicle left standing, the next domino that needs to be knocked over in order for them to work with you is the internal beliefs. These are beliefs about their own internal self, beliefs about their own abilities to execute on this opportunity, beliefs about their concerns internally. You need to figure out what are all the internal beliefs and concerns that might prevent them from becoming a customer and from working with you, becoming a client, and signing the contract. Any internal beliefs like, well, I don't know, maybe they have a need for price anchoring. They don't know what the price should be for property management, you've told them your pricing, and they don't feel safe. So you need to solve that challenge. Maybe they don't know what your values are or things like this, and they're nervous that they might be blind to something or missing something. You have to figure out, what are all the internal beliefs that come up for your prospects? Make a list of these and you have to figure out, how can I throw stones and knock all of these internal beliefs down during my pitch? You've already knocked down all the external, third-party, and alternate vehicles. Now you need to deal with all those internal beliefs. A lot of times, internal beliefs have to do with levels of support. In our program, we deal with the internal belief, concern, or challenge like maybe I can't do it. Maybe this works for others, but maybe I'm not good enough, maybe I'm not charismatic enough, maybe I'm not cool enough, maybe I'm not smart enough, or maybe I'm lazy. We have to figure out how can we attack those internal beliefs. One of the ways is we focus on support. You get direct access to Jason. You can schedule a one on one with Jason as part of the mastermind. You're going to get telegram access to Jason so you can send him messages through Telegram—video, voice, and text throughout the week. If you get stuck or have questions, we also have Adam, Maddie, and others on my team that are supporting you as you move through certain processes like branding, web design, or some of the things that we help clean up in a business. They're there to support you as well. What other internal beliefs? Maybe I need to learn more. Awesome, we have DoorGrow Academy. We have a repository of training material we built up over the last decade of stuff that you can learn if you need to learn more in order to get the results. Cool, what about action? We have accountability and we have weekly check-ins that you're filling out each week to figure out whether you're doing it. We've taken a look at all the internal beliefs that we could think of that clients had challenges with or that were preventing clients from getting results, and we figure out, how do we tackle that and how do we deal with that? We're always looking to improve in that area. Once internal beliefs are handled, there are no internal beliefs left, then people tend to go external. So now the last domino that we need to knock over are all of their external beliefs. These are all the false beliefs they have about outside forces that could keep them from having success, things beyond their control. This could have to do with time, which keeps rolling on. It could have to do with the economy, which could be shifting. It could have to do with the real estate market at large. It could have to do with local laws and municipalities. It could have to do with the federal government. All of these are external beliefs, COVID hitting. What if this happens? What if that? All these external things that they might have concerns about, how will this be dealt with? What will happen here? If you can tackle all the external beliefs that this investor might have and knock all of those down, you make a list, like I said, of the previous two dominoes. Make a list, figure out what all of them are, and figure out how am I going to deal with these so that I can make them feel safe. Once you've eliminated all the external beliefs, you've thrown stones at all of those, the only logical conclusion left. They know that there's only one vehicle that makes the most sense. You've dealt with all their internal beliefs and concerns. You've dealt with all the external beliefs that they might have. The only logical conclusion left once those three dominoes are knocked over is to sign up with you, is to use you. There's nothing else that would make as much sense. So if you build trust through this process, safety and certainty are really what these people want. This is a big secret for sales and property management. Nobody gives a shit about property management. This is not what they want. They do not want to buy property management. They don't wake up in the morning and say property management is sexy and awesome. They don't read blogs about it and follow social media accounts about it. Unless they're property managers, they want safety and certainty. They want peace of mind. That's important for them. So having the best vehicle, having dealt with all their internal beliefs, and dealing with all their external beliefs, they're going to have a high level of trust, safety, and certainty in you and in their ability to work with you. They know that you're going to be able to deal with all the external factors that they were concerned about. So there's nothing left to really prevent them from signing up. Then you just say, if I can deal with all your concerns—internal beliefs and external beliefs—and I can explain why our vehicle is the best, would it be fair to say that you'd be wanting to sign up today? Is that fair? They'd say, yeah, probably. If I can help you see how we're the best company in the market for you, how we can make sure that you feel safe and taken care of, that we can make sure that all of your external concerns are dealt with, and we have answers to those, would you be willing to sign up today? Is that fair? Then you say, yeah, that makes sense. That's basically it. So put together your pitch. Go to the drawing board, you could write out each belief on a post-it note and get a whole list of all the internal, whole list of all the external, and figure out where all these vehicles—internal, external. Get clear on this. You could build it out on a Trello board on trello.com and have each of these. This is how I put together my framework and my training for DoorGrow Secrets or the Seven Frameworks training that we give to potential clients for free that sells them on signing up. Some watch that training and then they just sign up. It's like two hours long and I'm teaching a bunch of concepts, frameworks, and ideas for free, and adding value. I'm building trust, creating a relationship, and I'm helping them see reality. Really, I think that's what sales is really about. Sales isn't about manipulation. It isn't about control. It's about helping people see the real issue, the real problem, and helping them see the real path and how you can help them get what they want. Sales really isn't about you getting what you want. It's about them being able to get what they want and you get what you want. This is that mutual thing. Your business is this magic bridge between your desires being fulfilled and their desires being fulfilled. Hopefully this is helpful if you want to compound this. Once you have your pitch put together, add some images to it to drag this home. Don't fill it up with a lot of text, but some people have a hard time digesting all of this. So you'll notice in my training, I have slides and I have images to help people see and get these concepts quickly. So making a visual can help them understand these things quickly. Have an image for each vehicle, have an image for each internal belief, each external belief, and you can crank right through these, explain them, and they'll get it. By the end, they'll feel like they have a lot more clarity than if you had no visual imagery. So you can put together a little slide deck or pitch based on these three dominoes. Then, of course, you can end it with a close or a call to action to solicit that. Hopefully, this has been helpful for those listening. If you're wanting to take things to the next level, you want to become a badass at sales, you want to feel like you could close anybody that you talk to if you want them, and you want to shift from being the person that's trying to get everybody on to being the sexy guy or girl at the bar that does not feel the need to get with everybody, but you're a high value and people want to be with you. If you want to shift that, then reach out to us at DoorGrow, and let's get you that Seven Frameworks training and our DoorGrow Secrets training and get you moving into our program hopefully. You'll be learning how to be really effective at closing more deals more quickly and doing things that are far more efficient than all those other vehicles. I'm Jason Hull. I hope this was really helpful for those of you that are struggling during your pitch, losing deals. If you're dealing with anybody that is not a hot, warm lead, and your close rate is lower than you want it to be, then try applying this three dominoes principle to point them towards your ultimate opportunity or vehicle to help solve their problem. That's why businesses exist, to solve a real problem in the marketplace. What if they don't have a problem? Then they don't need you. So you don't even need to pitch to them or sell to them. So identify the problem and then go into this pitch with your three dominoes. Knock them over and get some doors. I'm Jason Hull and I'm out. Bye, everybody. Until next time to our mutual growth. You just listened to the DoorGrow show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. 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. 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 at doorgrow.com. 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.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull explains the cycle of suck in property management. It’s incredibly costly, stressful, and competitive. The “cycle of suck” is a phrase and concept inspired by one of Jason’s clients that noticed as he got rid of bad doors and bad properties, he actually became more profitable. The cycle of suck concept is true, powerful, and effective. What are the four steps of the cycle of suck in property management, and how can you avoid, escape, and reverse it? You’ll Learn... [02:32] Step 1: You take on any client/owner or you take on a crappy client/owner. [03:05] Step 2: You take on crappy properties, which means you have difficult tenants. [03:37] Step 3: You have crappy tenants to manage if you have pushy property owners. [04:44] Step 4: You have crappy reviews and a bad reputation in the marketplace. [06:26] Don't get with everybody. Attract people you want because you are the prize. [07:25] Protect Yourself/Team: Set standards, boundaries, limits when selecting clients. [08:24] Sense of Scarcity: When competing based on price, it creates artificial industry. [09:21] Reverse Cycle of Suck: Qualify clients, properties, tenants/owners, and reviews.  Tweetables “The reality is, you don't want every client or you shouldn't want every client.” “The owner is causing you to have more problems, more drama, more stress, and more challenges that are unnecessary simply because they're making things difficult.” “You're going to have crappy tenants that are difficult, frustrated, and unhappy.” “The best way to ensure that you're going to have really great tenants is to take on really great properties and really great owners.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz Transcript All right, we are live. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and business owners. 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. It was tough for me to read that intro this time for some silly reasons. I have a bunch of things going on in the background on my computer and it distracted me. All right, so let's get into this. I was trying to think about what to talk about today. I want to go back to a concept that I've talked about for a long time now. I've mentioned it in several episodes, but I don't have an episode dedicated to it that I can push people towards, and that is the cycle of suck. This is a phrase and the concept that I put together after talking to some clients. It was inspired by one of my clients who had mentioned that he noticed that as he got rid of bad doors and bad properties that he actually became more profitable. I had clients tell me about when I started to relate this idea of the cycle of suck. People would tell me about this book called The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz, which is a good book, and an author that's been on the podcast before. This concept is true. It's powerful. It's really effective. Let me explain to everyone the cycle of suck in property management. If you google cycle of suck, it tends to be that my old DoorGrow article about it comes up. Let's talk about this. The cycle of suck is pretty simple. It's four steps. The first step is you take on any client or you take on a crappy client. That's one of the big challenges. If you take on any client, the challenge then is that you're going to end up with a door. You're going to end up with bad clients. The reality is you don't want every client or you shouldn't want every client. If you're taking on every client, your operational costs are going to be a lot higher. So the very first step in the cycle of suck is crappy owners. You take on crappy owners. The second step is that you take on crappy properties. If you take on crappy properties, you're going to have a much more difficult time. That means you're going to have much more difficult tenants. You're going to have a difficult situation. If the owner’s pushing back on things, even if the property is a nice looking property or a nice property, that property becomes a crappy property in your portfolio. If you have crappy owners and crappy properties, which is the second step, third step in the cycle of suck is you're going to have crappy tenants. It doesn't matter how much tenant screening you do if the tenants have A-grade credit. If those owners that you are representing are pushing back on things, delaying things, and making things difficult for maintenance, coordination, and getting things taken care of in the property, these tenants are going to become bad tenants for you to be managing. These residents will be super frustrated at you. You then end up becoming basically a [...] show for a slumlord, which means now you are in between the tenant and the owner. But the owner is causing you to have more problems, more drama, more stress, and more challenges that are unnecessary simply because they're making things difficult. At this stage, you're in the cycle of suck. You're going to have upset and frustrated owners and difficult and challenging owners. You're going to have difficult properties, challenging properties, and sometimes just actually crappy looking and crappy maintained properties. You're going to have crappy tenants that are difficult, frustrated, and unhappy. The fourth step is you're going to have crappy reviews. You're going to have a bad reputation in the marketplace. This kind of sums up the entire property management industry in aggregate, as a whole. There's a lot of property managers that are just taking on any client. They're trying to get on any property they can. Most people know that most property managers suck. Most come to me and they say, I'm going to start a property management business and all the other management companies in my market suck, which is why I'm going to start a property management business. The challenge is this is the default for the industry. A lot of people fall prey or fall into this cycle of suck. The temptation is, they feel a sense of scarcity, and they feel like they need to take on every client. How do you escape this? How do you escape the cycle of suck? To consider, the cycle suck is incredibly costly. Your operational costs on a bad property and a bad owner could take how much more time? Ten times the amount of time. Can one of your bad owners and one of your bad properties easily take 10? Maybe even it's 100 times more stressful, or 100 times more effort. I don't know if it gets that extreme, but it can be significant. It adds up if you have multiple doors, multiple properties, and multiple owners that are part of the cycle of suck, that are not really what you deserve, what you should be managing, and what you should be dealing with. If you had the business that you wanted and the business of your dreams and types of clients you really wanted to be with and work with. You have to recognize that you are the prize. I want all of my clients to recognize that they are the sexy girl at the bar or the sexy guy at the bar, meaning they don't get with everybody. Here's the reality. Let's compare this to dating. If you get with everybody, you're low value. You're not going to attract the type of people that you want or the type of clients that you want in business. So don't get with everybody. Don't be that type of person. You know what they call somebody that gets with everybody, right? You don't want to be that. That's not interesting to the really great people that you want to be working with. The cycle of suck is stressful. It's really stressful. It means you are forcing and subjecting your team—if you have a team—to really difficult people and really difficult situations. It’s a display or it's you showcasing to your team that you don't care about your team. If you really cared about your team and you protected your team, you would have standards. You would have boundaries. You would have limits. You would not take on every client. If your team members aren't protected, if your team members don't feel supported, they're not going to stay. You will keep some team members, but they will not be the kind of team members that really can help you grow and scale your business. The type of team members that you really want to be around, these are going to be people that are willing to be walked all over or willing to take garbage and deal with difficult situations constantly. I get that property management can be difficult, and I get that there are going to be difficult situations. But if you are artificially inflating that by taking on situations that you know deep down you shouldn't be, you're not going to be able to keep and retain team members as well. The next thing I want to point out is how the cycle of suck is competitive. If you have a reputation online, then you compete with all the other such property management companies rather than being the standout. Because the good ones are all taking all the best clients and you're stuck getting everything at the bottom of the barrel. Then at that stage, you compete based on price. If you're competing based on price, that's not really a great place to be. This is what drives the entire industry to feel artificial like there's a sense of scarcity. You don't want to be in a situation in which it feels like there is scarcity. Scarcity is what causes the entire industry to have pretty not great pricing, and property managers are not getting compensated well enough. It causes the entire industry to have a bad reputation. Most of the property management businesses in your market, it's why they suck. How do you escape? If we reverse the cycle of suck, if we take this in reverse, and add each of the four stages, that means that you're going to qualify your clients. In the sales process, you're going to determine what are you willing to take on and what you’re not willing to take on. What do you really want? How do I build the business that I want to have instead of the business that I can build? Those are two very different businesses. The second thing, the next step is you need to qualify the properties. What type of properties am I willing to take on? What situations are we willing to take on? What do I want our portfolio to look like? You need to be the sexy guy or girl at the bar that does not get with every property. The next is qualifying tenants, so step three. Everybody tends to screen tenants. You know that even if you do all the tenant screening in the world, you're going to run into some issues, but you need to qualify tenants. The best way to ensure that you're going to have really great tenants is to take on really great properties and really great owners. Even if the property is amazing, if you put a tenant into it that has A-grade credit, you've done all the screening in the world, and they are not able to get taken care of the way that they want. The owner’s pushing back on things. They’re dragging their heels, things are difficult, it takes two weeks to get a water heater replaced. It takes over a week for the heater in the winter to get fixed. They're going to be upset and you're going to deal with a lot more stress and a lot more phone calls. Your team is going to be battered by this. It's going to be frustrating. Then the fourth thing is you need to figure out how to play the game of reputation or reviews. You need a strategy in place for filtering. Each of these is filtering—filtering clients, filtering properties, and filtering tenants. You need a strategy for filtering out the negative reviews and getting more good reviews, which means capturing feedback proactively and preemptively before they get to the heightened state where they go nuclear and want to destroy your business online. Also, by taking on really good clients, really good properties, and really good tenants, you're going to end up with a lot better reviews, by having a process in place to consistently get good positive reviews, which we talked about in our reputation secrets training that we have in DoorGrow Academy for our clients. We talk about how to implement a strategy of warm outreach to facilitate that and make sure that you're getting good reviews. Good reviews can be more effective than having the top spot on Google because it's going to feed you warm leads that have a really high close rate. Then guess what happens. If you're getting really great reviews, and you have a good reputation in the marketplace because clients are happy with you and telling people about you, tenants are happy and telling people about you, and you have great properties, then you have a good reputation. You're going to attract more quality clients. You're going to attract more quality tenants. You're going to attract more quality properties to deal with in your portfolio. I remember when I was living in Santa Clarita, there were two major property management companies that seemed to have all the doors there. It was very clear in talking with people in the community, they knew one company. They were talking about being really bad, and another company they were talking about being really great. They had very different experiences. I talked to people that had dealt with one company for maintenance versus the other when they moved into a new property and how dramatically different it was for them as a resident. These kinds of things get around to owners and show up on their reputation as well. Moving forward, if you want to get free from the cycle of suck, which means you need to come into your business and your sales process with a lot more confidence with recognizing that you have value, with recognizing that you are the prize that solves their problem, and you want to be more effective at sales, reach out to us at DoorGrow. This is one of the foundational mindset things that I like to push into clients' heads to get them to recognize that you can have the business that you want. But you have to become the person with the right mindset, with the right thoughts, and with the right sales process that can have the business of your dreams. If you don't yet have the business of your dreams, as one of my mentors would say, then you're not the person that can run it yet. My goal as a coach in this industry, in property management, is to help you become the entrepreneur that can have the business of your dreams. If we can support you in any way, if you would like some help with your business, reach out. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye, everyone. Until next time, to our mutual growth.

Generating revenue must outpace expenses and the gap between the two is cash flow. Where are you at and what function do you need to focus on most to grow and scale your business, right now? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about the six core functions of a business. It’s a concept he has expanded based upon what he learned from his mentors, Alex Charfen and Tim Francis. You’ll Learn... [01:22] Core Functions: Jason took what he learned, applied it to property management. [02:14] Rate and Rank 1-5: Assess your business through the lens of core functions. [03:16] Function #1: Lead Generation - get contact info from potential prospects. [03:39] Function #2: Nurture - take and follow-up on lead opportunities to build trust. [04:30] Function #3: Conversion/Sales - deal w/ objections, convince others, close deal. [06:36] Function #4: Delivery/Fulfillment - do property management work promised. [10:03] Function #5: Customer Lifetime Value - increase long-term retention. [11:08] Function #6: Finances - internal cash flow, revenue, expenses, and profits. Tweetables “Finances was the additional function.” “You cannot have all of these areas be great at the same time.” “Your ability to convert and convince people during the sales process is a skill that develops over time and gets better and better and better the more you do it.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Alex Charfen Tim Francis LeadSimple Profit First by Mike Michalowicz Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 and their business owners. 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. Today, I wanted to talk about what I would call the core functions. This is a concept that I built upon that I learned from one of my mentors, Alex Scharffen, and he had what he would call the five core functions of the business. To me, it felt a little bit incomplete for myself and so eventually in working with Tim Francis, another mentor and coach and friend of mine here in Austin, I realized there was something else missing because I was focusing on those five core functions, but still, financially, I had some challenges. That's why I was working with Tim. He's a really good financial coach. He's one of the financial mentors that I've worked with. Finance was the additional function. I'm going to take you through these core functions and this is a way you can assess your business. As you're listening along, feel free to assess your business through the lens of the core functions, take notes, and identify each of these core functions of the business, and rate them on a scale of one to five. One being the worst, five being it's amazing. The most important thing I think to know about the core functions of the business and recognize is that it's impossible for all six of these core functions and the six core functions to be a level five at the same time. It's impossible. You cannot have all of these areas be great at the same time. As you grow and level up the business, you're going to notice deficiencies or you're going to want to level these areas up. There are levels to each of these six areas in which you can get better and better and better over time. That being said, when something is doing really well, other things are going to feel constrained and be a challenge. The first function that we'll chat about is lead generation. I call it lead gen for short. With lead gen, this is getting contact info and there are lots of different ways you can get contact info of potential people that might be interested in property management or potential prospects. In general, that's lead generation, so go ahead and rate that. The next function that you want to focus on is nurture. This is where you take these leads, these opportunities, and you nurture them, which means you warm them up or inject more trust. You create more of a relationship to warm up these leads to move them towards the next function, so go ahead and rate your nurture. Nurture relates to follow up, it relates to your ability to warm up these leads to build trust, to build relationships, and it could relate in your business the systems and processes related to this like whether you have a sales CRM like LeadSimple or something. Whether you've got the processes built out, you've got a good sales pipeline, you've got workflow you've got follow up, maybe having a follow up assistant, or needing one relates to the nurture category. The next category is where nurture leads them to, which is conversion or sales. This is where you're closing the deal. Number three, conversion or sales. Go ahead and rate your ability in conversion or sales. This is to deal with objections, close the deal, convince them to work with you instead of the other company they're maybe talking to or the other companies they're vetting. Your ability to convert and convince people during the sales process is a skill that develops over time and gets better and better and better the more you do it. Go ahead and rate yourself there. These first three relate basically to the front end of the business or sales. What I will hear a lot is people say, oh, my close rate, I'm like 90%. I'm a badass at sales, but then you ask them, where are you getting your leads? And they're like, they're mostly referrals, they’re referrals. Cool. If you have a close rate less than 90% probably and they’re warm hot referrals, you probably have a problem. That's the cool thing. If you get the right type of lead generation, nurture almost becomes unnecessary. You don't really have to warm them up. Then conversion also is largely dealt with because you're going to get the deal, you just don't screw it up. Now, when you start dealing with colder leads and colder prospects, my goal with clients is to make sure that you are a badass at conversion or sales and that you notice if that function feels weak right now because you've started maybe focusing on colder leads, or you're just not closing as many of the conversations that you've been prospecting or working with as you want. Maybe that function is weak. We can improve that significantly. One of the easiest ways to collapse time on these first three functions is to just focus on warmer lead opportunities instead of advertising or cold lead opportunities. Cold leads would be like SEO, PayPerClick, content marketing, social media marketing, pay per lead services like [...] et cetera. Those take a lot more time and I've talked about that in other trainings and other podcasts, I'm sure many times. Number four, this is more shifting into the back end of the business or behind the paywall. Once they've converted into a customer, they've signed the contract, they're now a client. The next step, item four, would be delivery or fulfillment. Delivery, fulfillment largely is connected to operations. This is everything that you said you were going to do during the sales process. This is screening tenants, working to find tenants and tenant placement. This is maintenance, coordination, everything. All the work of doing property management. That is what is included in delivery fulfillment—dealing with tenants, all that kind of stuff. Generate reports, owner payouts, all of this that's all under delivery fulfillment operations. What I'll notice a lot in the industry—for those that are struggling to grow—is they won't have operations delivery fulfillment. They'll have number four out of five or a really high level and yet then lead gen is like a one. If lead gen is one and delivery and fulfillment is like a five, you're making a big mistake in the business because what that tells me is you consistently keep focusing on the wrong things in your business. You're doing the wrong things. Any function that you're focused on of these six functions, which we'll finish and go through in a second, any function you’re focused on primarily and trying to maintain it to five, that is not your weakest function. That's where your time, energy, focus, attention, cash, effort, et cetera are going, you are making a mistake. That means you are distracted. Those are distractions because what the business needs most right now is whichever of these functions is weakest, that's where your five currencies I talked about time, energy, focus, cash, and effort should be focused on. This is where all that should be going so that you can get a return and you can level that up. The goal is to level up the weakest function, and then if that's now a strength, now your other functions will appear to be weaker in relation. Now those you’re going to rate at a lower level and you're going to want to level those up. This is the juggle of running a company and running a business is figuring out what do I need to focus on most right now. If you are at the helm, you are the entrepreneur, you are the leader, you are the business owner, you need to provide this leadership to the business to your team. You need to help them figure out what is our weakest function to focus on. Too often, the business owners continue to focus on the function that they're already good at, that the business already has at a five, and they try to keep it as a five. You have to be willing to let a five slip in order to get something from a one or a two, and that's okay. Get those up to a three, a four, or maybe even a five. If delivery or fulfillment, for example, operation slips to maybe a three in relation because now you're getting so much business, it's uncomfortable, you can't onboard everybody, and things are starting to slip, cool. Now it's time to shift your attention and focus to that function. If you assess this regularly on a quarterly basis and brainstorm with your team through these functions, you will be able to make really good decision-making. The next function after delivery fulfillment or operations, number five, is the customer’s lifetime value. The customer lifetime value or CLV includes retention, it includes resell, it includes upsell, and it includes your pricing. You want to make sure that your fee structure is good. That you've got really good fees in place so you're getting paid really well for what you do. That you're maximizing the lifetime value of these clients in that way. Also, you're able to focus on the right types of clients in your lead generation and in closing that are going to have a lengthy retention rate. You're able to retain clients long term, or you're able to convert short term property management clients, not sure short term rentals, but accidental investors, for example, into long term buy and hold investors. You have some process maybe for that. You want to increase the customer lifetime value. If you're losing a lot of customers due to sales right now, then that's the area to focus on right now. There's a weakness maybe on your CLV, for example, or maybe you just need to increase lead generation in order to counteract that. Number six is finances. The financial area of the business means the internal finances for you as the business owner and for the business. This means cash flow, revenue, expenses, profit, reporting, financial decision making. If you do not feel like this is your strength or this is a weakness in the business, this is something that you will need to work on. One of the initial baby steps I like to recommend is usually implementing profit first. You can check out my previous episode with the author of the book Profit First, Mike Michalowicz. You can just search for Profit First DoorGrowShow on YouTube if you want to pull that up or on iTunes, podcast app, or whatever. I'm a big fan of Profit First. We operate with the Profit First system. We've taken things financially beyond that to another level in working with some of the financial coaches and financial books that I've gone through. I think that's a really fantastic starting place. It gets you out of the feast and famine of cash flow cycles getting scarce, then trying to make money, and the hunt and the chase constantly of trying to escape. The way I like to compare finances is, the analogy I like to use is Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones running from the boulder. Everybody remembers this iconic scene in Indiana Jones and I believe the Temple of Doom and he's running from the boulder. He's just taken the statue, it set some sort of booby trap off, and now this boulder is chasing after him. He's running for his life. Indiana Jones running is generating revenue, that's revenue. Revenue has to outpace that big boulder, which is expenses. The gap in between Indiana Jones running and the boulder coming after him, that gap, is cash flow. Some of that cash is already spent so there's really just free cash is the real gap. Some of that cash is already going to be spent, you know expenses are coming due, you have to have it set aside. Profit first is going to help you kind of get this in alignment a little bit more. It's going to help you get better cash flow and it's basic. Some of you are basically borderline accountants, so this isn't maybe as big of an issue. Maybe the finances are tight. A lot of entrepreneurs are more visionary-oriented, they're dreamers. Sometimes they're hiring staff too quickly. They're starting to focus on some of the other functions, building up operations maybe, and they're spending more money. All of these things go hand in hand. Finances also relate to the type of lead generation that you can do, all of these things interplay with each other. My goal for those listening to this episode is to take a look through these six lenses of your business to figure out what does the business need most right now? What does the business need most? For those that are like why does he add the six functions of finances? One of the things that's absolutely possible in some businesses is to generate enough deals, enough sales, and enough business to where you can't deliver quick enough on it to get the return or get paid on it and you can actually run out of money by doing too much sales. Just focusing on revenue all the time in a top-down just revenue focus goal is not always the most effective financial goal in a business. It's the most typical, but that's not always the most effective. You can actually go too fast and grow too quickly if you're not taking into account the financial aspect in relation to the other core functions. Take a look at your business, chat with your team, go through and assess your core functions. We have a more formal brainstorming methodology that will take clients through these functions to really assess their business. At a quick easy glance at your business, you can look through and just ask yourself, where are we at in relation to these functions. You can ask your team as well to get a perspective, and you will then have some pretty good eye feedback and a pretty good idea of which function you need to focus on most in your business. If you find that operations are a big constraint for you right now, what you'll find then is lead gen and conversion will be heavily impacted because you won't really have confidence in your product, in your service, in your offering because you lack integrity. If you are delivering fulfillment of three or less, and you're trying to go out and create new business, you probably feel like you're lying to people by saying, hey, we're really awesome. We're the best property managers. We do a great job. When deep down you're like a two in doing a great job on a scale of one to five. All of these impact each other. Let's figure out what's your weakest function that you need to focus on right now and where does your attention needs to go. If you could use some coaching or some help, we'd love to get you into our DoorGrow & Scale Mastermind. Reach out to us, you can check us out at doorgrow.com. You can also join our free Facebook group by going to doorgrowclub.com. Facebook's getting a little weird lately with censorship and craziness, so we're seriously considering exploring, shifting out of the DoorGrow Club to maybe Telegram or something else. Let me know your feedback on that if that sounds interesting because I think there's going to be more outages with Facebook, more censorship, and more challenges. I'm less and less of a fan of Facebook every day. Let us know, but currently, our internal groups are in Telegram so we're solid there because it seems to be really reliable. Anyway, reach out to us. We're happy to help you figure out how to grow your business and scale your business. We can help you with getting things in alignment on the operation side. DoorGrow OS, building these systems, building a planning cadence, helping to get operators in the business, helping to get people to take stuff off your plate and to offload. There are solutions for each of these functions that we can point you towards as we coach you and as we help you scale and level up your business, so please reach out. That's it for today. As always, my goal is for everybody to grow. To our mutual growth, everybody. Until next time, bye.

Do you enjoy sales? If you feel like you don’t, then you’re not good at doing business development. Why not just hire someone to do it for you? You have to get good at sales to be a business owner. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about and answers: When are you ready to get a property management business development manager (BDM)? You’ll Learn... [01:19] When are you ready to hire a BDM? Wait until you are ready. [01:58] How to know when you are ready to have a BDM to gain freedom and success. [03:08] Business Owner: Learn how to sell, close to train your BDM to be successful. [04:04] Partnership: If you’re not willing to do it, bring in experienced and proven BDM. [05:33] Exception: Clients with BDM invested in and values business to get results. [07:24] Sales can be fun, once you learn how to do specific actions and get good at it. [08:47] Level Suck: You have to do the work. You have to suck. That’s where you start. [10:34] 4 Reasons: Live your purpose to get fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. [11:16] Right Type of Person: Give them your knowledge, experience to surpass you. [12:18] Jason’s Recommendation: Do the work because there are no shortcuts. [14:45] Sales Challenge: Figure out how to make it easy and not painful, uncomfortable. Tweetables “Sales is the lifeblood of the business. This is where money and revenue flow into the business.” “Usually, we don’t want to do it because we aren’t good at it. When we’re not good at something, it’s not very fun.” “You have to do the work, and you have to suck, and that’s where we all start.” “I know what good looks like, and I know what great looks like, and great is better than me.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and business owners. 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. One of the things I wanted to talk about is a common question I get asked and a common situation is when are you ready to hire a BDM? This question came up this week. One of my clients thinks they want to get a BDM. I've heard lots of people hire BDMs and fail. This is more common than hiring BDMs and having success. This is the default. Anytime I hear somebody excited, they hire a BDM. BDM either quits, it doesn't work out. You may have tried to do this yourself. The challenge with this is that a lot of people tried to do this, but they weren't ready. Let's chat a little bit about how to be ready to have a BDM and how you know when you're ready to have a BDM. If you feel like you don't enjoy sales, you're not good at doing business development. BDM stands for business development manager. It's basically a salesperson in a property management business. If you feel like you don't like doing sales, you want to bring somebody in to do this, and you're thinking, well, I suck at this. I don't want to do this. This is uncomfortable so I should just hire somebody. The challenge is sales is the lifeblood of the business. This is where money and revenue flow into the business. If you are making that mistake, you need to realize you are not ready to get a BDM because you cannot train them. You cannot onboard them. You don't have the scripts. You don't have the ability to bring them into the business in a way that they will be successful. I probably touched on this before, even recently, but I want to reiterate that if you feel like you're not good at sales and you don't know how to do it, then your only option is to bring somebody in that is already really good and proven at this or you have to learn to do this. For most of you, that means you need to learn how to sell. You need to learn how to close. I know a lot of times there's resistance. Maybe it's that you feel like it's uncomfortable for some reason. That discomfort is something as a business owner and entrepreneur, really, almost everything is sales in some way, shape, or form, which is just convincing people to do what's in their best interest, which is helping people and benefiting people, getting your kids to eat their food, getting your kids to do their homework. That's all sales. You have to get good at sales to be a business owner. It doesn't mean you have to be the salesperson. But if you're not willing to do it, then you need to bring in another business owner. You're going to need to share some sort of relationship or create some sort of partnership with somebody who is a proven BDM that's added hundreds of doors to a property management business. They will come in, but this is not going to be a cheap person that's a brand new first-time BDM who's never done this, that you can just go find somebody that knows how to do sales, bring them into the business, and they'll have success. That's not reality. You need to create a partnership. If you're really not the person to do this, you need to go find somebody that's at your level. They may want half your business if you're just starting out. If you are experienced and you have a good sizable portfolio, maybe you can bring them in some sort of percentage of the revenue or percentage of the business. It would need to be a pretty tempting situation for them to come in. There needs to be an incentive. These are people that could probably build their own business up. I know BDMs that have added 700 doors to a business and then gone on to another business and did something similar again. These are rare unicorn people that have had the experience that has done this. If you don't know how to do this, you're not going to be able to bring somebody in that's starting from scratch and really be able to support them and convince them and tell them what to do. Now, the only exceptions that I've seen to this, I have seen some clients come to me with a BDM. This BDM showed up and was invested in the business value, the success of the business, showed up to all coaching calls with me, got involved in the content in DoorGrow Academy, and they learned as if they were the business owner. They wanted to become good at selling, good at promoting the business, good at prospecting, good at driving revenue, and good at their job. They were invested in it so they put in the work and the time to do it. They followed my advice and they were able to get great results. One client had, in just a short period of time, three maybe four months or less, had 300 doors, largely through creating a really good partnership with one owner that had a lot of doors, which is a dangerous situation normally. Normally, I probably wouldn't recommend doing that. They were aggressive and they were able to start adding doors. Then they landed a partner that is going to bring to the table hundreds of doors in the long run. That's a really high level of investor. Like I said, that can be dangerous, right? I'm sure many of you can guess why. You're putting too many eggs in one basket. That owner has a little bit too much power over you. Then later, they had to have a conversation about setting some boundaries and some clear expectations to really determine this relationship and to be willing to walk away from that relationship. They're in a position of power to be able to be a business owner instead of this person, this investor’s employee. It's possible and I've seen BDMs come in and do really great work, but it's rare. It's rare to find somebody that's willing to do and that wants to do that. If you are wanting to go the more typical route, which means you need to learn how to sell. Usually, we don't want to do it because we aren't good at it. When we're not good at something, it's not very fun. It sucks to go play a sport like basketball if you suck at basketball. Once you get good at basketball, basketball is a lot of fun for people that play basketball. Golf, maybe you sucked at golf, initially. If you're a golfer, once you got somewhat good at it, it'd be a lot more fun. Maybe you found a way to make it fun even though you just still suck. Here's the thing, you need to get to the place where you have put in the reps, you've done the work initially, to get good at sales, to figure out what works, what scripts to say, you have to get past that pain and that discomfort. Otherwise, you're always going to project that onto your team members. You're never going to be able to guide them in the right way. You're never going to be able to know if they're doing a good job or not because you don't even know what a good job looks like because you haven't been able to do it. If you're expecting to push just results on them like get these results and I'll give you a commission. You're setting them up for failure because they need specific actions. They need the scripts. They need the language. They need to understand the target audience. They need to know the objections and how to deal with those. These are the things you learn by sucking and doing the work. You have to do the work and you have to suck. That's where we all start. We all start at level suck. If you are willing to suck, you don't suck for very long because something's uncomfortable. There's pain and you change. You change quickly. You learn and adapt. That's why you're an entrepreneur. You are an entrepreneur because you are highly adaptable. You can change quickly. You can pivot. You can learn. You may have been rejected at some point in the past. Maybe when you were young, you got your feelings hurt, somebody rejected you or made you feel small or whatever. Now, approaching people, starting things, or initiating seems threatening and dangerous to your brain. But your brain is a liar. Your brain is lying because it's trying to protect you. But if you actually do the work, and if you do the prospecting tactics and methods that I share in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind and you do the work, then you're going to get results. It's inevitable. I’ve seen clients come in over and over and over again that were terrible at sales. They’re not good at it and didn't think they liked it. They learned. They learned how to be good at it. The common phrasing I hear is, it's become like a game to me. It's become fun. It's fun when you have the skill and the knowledge to be able to be good at it and then it becomes fun. It's like playing. You realize it's not about being pushy or whatever beliefs you have about sales. It's not about manipulating people. It's not about bothering people, prospecting, it's not. You are offering them some benefit. You're solving people's problems. You are making a difference in the world. That's really what sales look like. Sales become fun because it allows you to live your purpose and to make a difference and get those four reasons I've talked about before. You're getting more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and you're making a difference and more support. Then eventually, if you have other things that are more fun for you—they give you more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, more support in the business. What you really love and want to be doing, maybe it's on the operation side, maybe it's on the accounting side, or maybe it's just not sales. Once you are marginally good at it, a little bit good at it, you can bring in somebody else, get them probably to your point. If they're the right personality type, the right type of person that can be good at this, you can give them your knowledge, help share with them what's working, give them your experience, and they will then surpass you. They will supersede you. I have team members on my team and I've done every role that exists in my business. But I have team members now that are all better at what they do than me. I've done it so I know. I know what good looks like and I know what great looks like, and great is better than me. I bring in people that are better than me at doing these things. I'm actually in this situation now that I have somebody over sales and marketing on my team. Now he is offloading and bringing on and we're training two new salespeople. I'm rebuilding my sales team, so to speak, and I'm no longer doing the sales. I've been doing the sales for the last little while as we launched a new product and service, this mastermind that we've had for the last year. My recommendation is to put in your reps, do the work, there are really no shortcuts to this. If you're willing to experience that pain, challenge, or whatever your brain is telling you a story, I think you'll realize it's never as bad as your brain makes it out to be. I've seen entrepreneurs in property management with hundreds of doors that are down about 200 doors due to sales over previous years, which is very typical of the larger companies right now. They’re feeling pain and worried that they're not going to be able to pay team members. They’re going to have to lay some people off and try to hire a BDM through a BDM placement company. Then that person spends time and money trying to get them into the situation, expecting another company to be able to train them, bring them in and it didn't work. I've seen small companies hire BDMs and bring them in, and it didn't work. You have to do this. My recommendation is to tell your brain to shut up. It's trying to lie to you and protect you. Sometimes you have to do the thing that's uncomfortable, even though it feels like you don't want to. You need to be willing to say, [...] to your feelings and do it deep down, you know you should do. If this is resonating with you, you deep down know that you need to figure this out. You have to eventually figure this out. You don't have to do it forever. You don't have to be the best at it. If you're going to run a business, you have to be able to sell your business or services. You have to be able to figure out how to do that. A lot of you are the salesperson, you are the BDM for your business. If you're doing great, awesome. If I can help pour a little gasoline on that fire, that'd be even better. I love being able to do that. I love being able to double a client's close rate, increase the amount of deals they’re closing, help them figure out how to get more deals at a higher price point to eliminate the scarcity that exists in the industry, and eliminate the race to the bottom in terms of price. I can help you do that. If you are not that personality type and you are avoiding sales, you find it uncomfortable. You don't want to do it. My challenge to you is let's figure out how to make it easy, and it doesn't have to be uncomfortable. I'm really good at helping people figure out how can we make this easy, not painful, and help destroy those lies that your brain’s telling you that people are going to be mean to you, people are going to feel uncomfortable, people are going to reject you, or whatever it is your brains trying to scare you and tell you that's true. Those are stories. You can either keep those stories, or you can get results, but you can't have both. You can't keep these stories that are holding you back from doing sales or being successful at sales. Then also try and offload the sales. Train somebody else that doesn't know how to do it when you aren't in a state of integrity or know how to do it yourself. Let's get you great at it. It's not that hard to do. I really believe sales is all about creating trust. It's being real with people. It's caring about other people that have been so caught up in your own head, worried about what you think, what you sound like and look like, how they're perceiving you, and/ all that uncomfortable stuff. You really just need to start getting out of yourself, focusing on other people, and caring about other people. I can help you make that shift. Hopefully this is helpful for those of you that are considering getting a BDM, thinking it's some gateway to freedom and success. You aren't ready for that gateway of freedom or success until you have all the ducks in a row to be able to really support this person so that if they are good, they're actually going to stay. Because if they're good and you don't give them the support they need, they're going to be out of there. I hear a lot of people complain about BDMs and fire BDMs. When I really dig deeper and ask questions, it wasn't probably the BDM’s fault. They sounded like a typical effective, probably good salesperson who just wasn't given the proper support, wasn't given the leads, wasn't given the attention, wasn't given the scripts, and wasn't given the knowledge of how to go out and create a business. They were expected to just magically figure it all out without any real guidance. Property management is a different industry than a lot of industries. Just because somebody was successful in sales in another industry doesn't mean they'll necessarily be successful in this. It means they have the capacity, but they also need guidance. If you don't have the guidance to give, reach out, and let's get this figured out for you. Anyway, I hope this is helpful for those that have BDMs that aren't really performing up to speed or you haven't really gotten up to speed in your own role as a BDM. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

When you're competing for a sale or deal to close, to get a property management contract, or to get a referral partner, whatever it is you're trying to do, you need to take things to a deeper level than your competition. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about three magic questions to ask during a sales conversation. When you ask these questions, potential clients will know that you care and want to help them, and you're going to close more deals far more easily. You’ll Learn... [01:50] Pendulum Principle: There are two extremes when it comes to salespeople. [02:21] Middle Ground: Find the middle to be much more effective and productive. [04:16] Question #1: Why now, what's changed? Client identifies, explains pain point. [06:54] Question #2: What’s the biggest challenge with your rental property right now? [08:42] Question #3: What result would you hope to see to know this was a success? [11:02] Default vs. Creative Future Close: Depends on what challenges clients want. [15:39] Primary Goal: Most people seek safety and certainty as their higher priority. Tweetables “You have to figure out where the middle is. The middle is the greatest place of power. It's where you should be. It's the point of truth.” “Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust.” “A business exists to solve a problem. If they don't have a problem for you to solve, they don't need you. There's no point.” “You are selling safety and certainty, not property management.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript All right, we are live. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 and their owners. 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. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about three magic questions. I was doing my coaching call today, and yes it's a Tuesday. It's a day early because I'm going on vacation tomorrow. We did our group call a day early and one of my clients, he was talking about sales, and had some questions related to sales, and was having some challenges going into the conversation and being confident. I talked about a principle called the Pendulum Principle which basically—a quick version of it, we could do a future episode on this maybe—if you recognize that there are two extremes. On one extreme you could be hyper-confident, maybe pushy as a salesperson, and a little bit too much. Then on the other side you could be a little bit not aggressive enough, too docile, not ask for the sale, and not try to close them that sort of thing. You have to figure out where the middle is. The middle is the greatest place of power. It's where you should be. It's the point of truth. You need to figure out where you are and he was on the side of being a little bit too maybe nice, friendly, but not aggressive enough. He recognized it so I said, take the step into what feels like the complete opposite, being a little bit too aggressive, because if you aim for that, you'll actually hit middle and you'll be much more effective and productive. We talked about how it doesn't have to be mean, or you don't have to be pushy or aggressive to go for the close. One of the things that he then got into were these three magic questions. I'm going to share these and we can talk about some other cool stuff related to sales maybe in a future episode. These are three magic questions that I find to be very powerful that I use during a sales conversation to take things a bit deeper. If you want to beat out your competition, when you're competing for a sale or a deal to close a client, to get a property management contract, to get a referral partner, whatever it is you're trying to do, you need to be able to take things to a deeper level than your competition. Things need to get a little bit more intimate, a little bit more relationship-oriented. There needs to be a little bit more connection because that's where trust exists. Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust, I often say. Here are three questions that I use in order to deepen the conversation and take things to a more real or more raw level. Question number one that you should ask that I brought up is, why now? If somebody comes to you and they're like, hey, I've been looking to getting a property manager. I've had this property for many years, or hey, I got one of your mailers and it's from a year or two ago. A really great question to ask in the sales process. For example, if you've been listening to my podcast for many years now, and then you get on a sales conversation, you're like, hey, now I'm interested. A great question to ask is, why now? Why now? What's changed is kind of the additional part of that. Why now, what's changed? You've been looking at doing this for a while, or you've obviously had this property for a lengthy amount of time. What's changed recently that's caused you to be interested in property management? Or why now are you looking at getting a property manager? What's changed? Help me understand that. That's where really deep stuff tends to come out. I've heard crazy why now responses from potential clients. I've heard things. I had one potential client say, I'm dying, I have this health issue, and I need to get this business healthy and ready quickly for other people to take ownership of it. I've had people say that they just recently got divorced, so now they're looking to make a move, change things, and improve the business. You never know what's going to come out, but when you give them the opportunity to tell you, well, hey, something must have happened recently because things have changed. Why now? Even just saying, why is now the time for you to do this? They shift into trying to explain, well, this is why it's important to do this now. Just understanding that is going to reveal some pain. In sales, to close deals, you need to know what pain or discomfort they want to move away from and what pleasure they want to move towards? Where's paradise for them? If you know those two things, that's really the crux of all you need to know in order to close the deal. Can I then help move them away from that pain? Can I help them move them towards that paradise that they want, that pleasure that they want? If I can do those two things, then all I have to do is future pace them and paint this roadmap for the future in which they can do that. The next question I love to ask that is relevant to uncovering the pain is the biggest challenge. What is your biggest challenge in dealing with this rental property that you're experiencing right now? I would usually ask, what is the biggest challenge you're experiencing in your property management business right now? Cool, I can help you with that. I've heard it before. I've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of property management businesses, gotten to see on the inside. It's rare that I ever hear a problem that's new. You probably have heard of all the same things in property management, all the similar problems. You're probably not going to hear anything too new from an investor, so can you solve that problem? Yeah, you probably can. That's why a business exists to solve a problem. If they don't have a problem for you to solve, they don't need you. There's no point. If I have somebody come to me and I say, well, what's the biggest challenge in your business? And they say, well, honestly, our business is really great right now and I don't have any problems. I say, cool. I'm totally open to that. I don't know how I can help you then. Then I might ask a follow-up question, well, why are we talking? How do you think I might be able to help you? Well, I was thinking maybe you could do this and help me do this. Okay, cool. Maybe I can, depending on what they say. You need to figure out what the challenge is, the pain, or the problem. What's the biggest challenge you're dealing with right now with this rental property with your tenant, or with your investment portfolio? That's a really powerful question to ask. The third question that can be incredibly powerful is what I call the crystal ball question. This is a question that is helpful for creating a potential future and future pacing a client that includes you. The crystal ball question usually looks something like this, usually, you're going to use the one-year timeframe. Maybe you even use three or five years, depending. The crystal ball question would look like this, hey, Mr. Owner, let me ask you a question. Just thinking about the future, if we were to work together a year from now, looking back on this moment, if you signed up with us a year from now looking back, what would have had to have happened for you to realize this was a great decision? Or what result would you be hoping to see to know that this was a success? Then they start to use their imagination, which is powerful. They start to imagine a future. They're imagining they signed up with you because you brought that into the conversation, and they're imagining this potential future timeline a year from now that exists with some great result. There's enough time to get to a result. They're imagining that you were a contributor to that, and so they're creating all of this in their head. The brain's super powerful. It's an amazing supercomputer at doing this kind of thing, so they're going to imagine this and then they're going to tell you what this is, what this looks like. Which is basically saying—you're just asking—how do we know that we can help you? What does winning look like if we were to work together? What does that look like? They might say, we're getting all of our rent collected, finally. We've got great tenants in place. The properties are all updated. Everything's going great, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can then say, that sounds awesome. I'm confident we can help you do that. Let me share some stories or examples that are similar to that we've already done so you can see this can be a reality for you. We've created this reality for other clients. I usually call that close the default future close versus the creative future close. The default future, this is what you're going to continue to get more of—more challenging tenants, more situations like you've dealt with. You mentioned these things that are challenging. If you do not work with us, this is probably what will happen or maybe they've had bad experiences with another property manager because there's a lot of sucky property managers out there. If they mentioned a bad experience when you're asking these questions like, why now, and what's your biggest challenge. You say, hey, well, you can continue to go down that path and choose another bad property manager and another bad one, or you could work with us, and here's how this would work out differently. First of all, we're not going to do custom reports for you and we're not going to let you micromanage us, so we're not going to do things the way these other companies worked with you because you're trying to run them from the back seat. We are going to be in control and in the driver's seat in helping take care of this property, and that will allow you to trust us more. We're going to take ownership of this and we're going to be really good at this. This is what we do for clients that are in your situation. They're going to go, cool, and they'll say, but I want this. You'll say, we are not going to do that custom report for you and here's why. We're not going to do that for you and here's why. Or there's a fee for this, or there's a fee for that. Once you explain why they're going to go, oh, this person is on top of stuff. They know what they're doing. I can finally relinquish control and give up all that safety and certainty I'm trying to force to create in them. They're going to just provide it for me. I can trust them, and I can lean into their frame that they're going to do a great job and provide good service. If you know why now, their biggest challenge, and the crystal ball, you've asked those questions, you've got those answers, if you know that, you should have a pretty deep conversation with them and really understand how you can best help them. If you connect that to other tactics I have like the golden bridge formula and other things to create trust beforehand, you ask really great qualifying questions, this should be very easy for you to create a relationship with these people, if you want it. Anyway, that's my tip for today is to ask those three big questions. Start asking, well, why now? Very easy to ask. Why are you doing this now? Why didn't you do this a year ago? You’ve had this property for a while, why are you doing it now instead of later this year? Why is now the time to do this? Why now? You'll get really interesting answers. Ask what's the biggest challenge that you're dealing with right now because that's going to help you understand their current immediate pain. Maybe there isn't anything really major or really immediate, but help them that you could go deeper and say, well, what challenges have you dealt with that you don't want to deal with in the future? Then the future pacing question is a crystal ball question. Looking forward, if I had a crystal ball or you had it and you could see a year from now and you would sign up with us. We're working together and we've done a really great job, what would that look like to you? Where would you be a year from now? What would your life look like? How would that be different with us having been a part of it? Hopefully that's helpful to all of you listening. I hope that you find those questions as useful as I've found them to be in the sales process. These were born just out of a real desire to care and take care of my clients, to really understand what they were going through, and figure out how can I help them, what do they need, and can I help them. When you start to ask really good questions like that, they will know that you care, especially if you're coming from a space of wanting to help them and you're going to close more deals far more easily. Because a lot of companies are spending way too much time trying to sell property management and they don't give a [...] about property management. They don't care about you or your business, they care about what they need, they care about their pain, their challenges, what they want, and outcomes they want. If you can help them see that you can help them get out of the pain and get the things that they want, they're going to want to work with you, they're going to want to sign up with you, they're going to feel safe with you, and trust you. Remember, their primary goal usually is safety and certainty. That's more important than the four reasons, which I talked about in a previous episode of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. They want safety and certainty. After that, then they would like those things. But for most people, safety and certainty is a higher priority. That's why they want and get a property manager. You are selling safety and certainty, not property management. Just make sure you get that. That's it. Hopefully this has been helpful, and until next time, to our mutual growth. I'm Jason Hull of DoorGrow. Reach out if you would like some help growing and scaling your property management business. Quickly, just got off the phone with a past client, he was like, are people losing properties like doors due to sales right now? I said yes, everywhere, but not the clients that are in my mastermind, which you should join. The clients that are in my mastermind, one of our clients has added over 200 doors since joining in November. That would be impossible by spending money, doing advertising, doing SEO, doing pay per click, doing content marketing, doing social media marketing. We would get you doing things that actually work that are far more effective and it costs him nothing. It actually took him less time to get those doors on than it would take if you spent a whole bunch of money on cold lead marketing because then those cold leads take more time than warm leads and you get less results. If you would like some great results and you would like to start adding doors, scaling your business, getting out of the day-to-day operations, having more fulfillment, more freedom, more fun in your business, reach out. I love helping clients get that. That's what I live for. That's what I get to do every day. I love doing it, and we would love to help you grow your property management business. All right. Bye, everyone.

Does it feel like your property management business is crazy, overwhelming, or maybe too much? It doesn't matter how big or small the property management business, it can be crazy or calm. It’s your choice to make. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about his goal to eliminate the crazy. Business owners need to be calm for their team to feel that sense of calm in the workplace. You’ll Learn... [02:41] Basecamp: CEO runs calm workplace by eliminating and reducing interruptions. [04:03] Entrepreneurial Myth: Crazy work is a badge of honor, not a badge of failures. [04:31] Adrenaline Addiction: Workplace doesn’t have to be crazy or stressful. [05:20] Planning: Communication in business focused on high-paced growth is critical. [06:15] Tactical vs. Strategic Leadership Role: Who has enough vision, clarity on goals? [08:14] Don’t be involved in everything. Stay in your area of genius and offload the rest. [10:08] Key Ingredient: Create synchronous communication system to write, think, post. [11:24] Four Reasons: Build great team to get fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. Tweetables “All this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures.” “Good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity.” “The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary.” “Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Basecamp Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, 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 your business and your life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. 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. In today's episode, we're going to be chatting a little bit about fun. I asked in my mastermind group today—we had a pretty good group turnout today—and I asked by show of hands, how many of you feel your business is crazy right now? You would categorize it as crazy, overwhelming, maybe too much, whatever. At least half the hands went up, which I can't say I'm surprised, but my goal is to get people out of crazy. One of the things I wanted to talk about today—what I chatted about with them—is eliminating crazy in the business. One of the things to realize is that it doesn't matter how big the business is, it doesn't matter how small the business is. Your business can be crazy or it can be calm, and this really is just a choice. Is it possible to have a calm business even if it's really large? For your experience as a business owner to be calm in the business and for your team to feel that sense of calm from you and it to be a calm workplace, yes it is. I had a business once upon a time. Same business but it used to feel a bit crazy. I hung out with the CEO of Basecamp, Jason Fried. I won't go into how we got on a call, but basically we were in some sort of chat. I was watching some live stream and I made some comments. He said he wanted to do a call with me, so we did a call together and I hung out with him. This guy is what I perceived as a high-functioning CEO of a multimillion dollar company. He's written books on remote teams. He's got a book called Remote Work, virtual teams, software, and running companies. He hung out with me for probably about 90 minutes. He just showed me how he ran his business, how he basically ran a calm workplace, and how it was quiet. It shifted my perspective so dramatically. The biggest perspective shift I had was eliminating and reducing interruptions. Years later, he came out with a book kind of recent. His book is called, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. For those watching the video you can see this here, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It's got this on the cover. It's got crossed out 80-hour work weeks, packed schedule, super busy, endless meetings, overflowing inbox, unrealistic deadlines, can't sleep, Sunday afternoon emails, no time to think, stuck in the office, all-nighters, and chat blowing up. There's this entrepreneurial sort of myth that it's the hustle, the grind, hard work, tenaciousness, tenacity, and all this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures. It’s really what that is. It's showing that you are creating a stressful environment for your team, and you're running a stressful workplace. You probably—if you're honest—are addicted like a lot of entrepreneurs to the adrenaline and the stress. Our body gets accustomed to things we crave and want more of whatever emotion we tend to feel a lot. We get better and better at craving it and feeling it. Our brain actually wires differently over time to experience more of that chemical reaction of whatever emotion that we're experiencing, whether it's anger, fear, stress, or whatever. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. This is a really great book. He came out later talking about some of the stuff that he taught me on that call. Now, I don't agree with everything in this book. The one thing I really don't agree with is eliminating meetings and what he talks about not having planning or something like that. I believe that having really good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity. Planning, I believe, is critical in a business, especially one that's focused on high-paced growth, has a lot of moving parts, and communication is really important. It actually significantly decreases your communication. If you have an annual planning meeting, quarterly planning meeting, a monthly planning meeting where you're breaking down these things into smaller and smaller bite-sized chunks, weekly planning meeting, or maybe a 15-minute daily huddle, these are the things we talked about in DoorGrow OS. If these things, the ultimate operating system for a business, especially for a property management business, if you have these meetings, you can run your entire company in a small number of hours a year. That's all you have to do. Anything outside of that, you are really stepping into more of a tactical role overall or you're being more like an employee in the business and doing work. But in a strategic position of leadership, if you have a really good executive team, that's all the time you would really need to be involved in. You may not even have to do that if you have really good executive team members to run things for you, and they have enough vision and clarity on the goals. They can move this business forward. A lot of times, we have a lot of ego as entrepreneurs. We think it's all up to me. Everybody else isn't as smart as me and my team members need me to tell them what to do and to guide them. I'm so brilliant. We don't really know because we don't really involve them in the planning and communication process. I want to point out that business should be fun, and it should be calm. One of my mentors that I'm working with currently that's a coach of mine, he talks about work being boring. He talks about how, when you have a multimillion dollar business and your business is scaling, you then eventually get to a state where you no longer have any major trauma or major glaring problems. You're insulated from these things if you built your team and systems the right way. Now you're just doing the boring work and you need to be willing to do the boring work. His wife who really runs their company and his brilliant and brilliant operator also talks about how if you're doing the boring work and the business gets boring, that's a good sign that you're doing things right. Then it's time to just maybe get a hobby. What most business owners do is they make the mistake and go start something new, or create more drama, either in their personal life. Sometimes they're cheating on a spouse or they're starting a company, or they're burning their existing company to the ground. They create some more drama. One of the things that we have to do is wean ourselves off the addictiveness of having to be so involved in everything, having to have so much connection to everything, thinking that we're so important in the business, and to be willing to allow calm to happen. It doesn't matter if you're just a small company with a small number of doors and you have one assistant. Your business could be calm. Or you could have a really large team and tons and tons of doors, and your business still could be calm. If you have the support at the level that you need, you have the systems that you need, and you allow yourself to be protected from the things that create crazy, you really are able to stay in your lane and in your area of genius and offload the rest. I do recommend this book. It's a really good book. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It just is kind of a manifesto for the future of business. Businesses are often connected to analogies of war in competition and fighting, and these massively stressful situations, but calm companies are very efficient companies. They're companies in which people are able to get in the flow work state. They're able to be calm, things get really quiet. My business is very calm now. It's very calm, especially for me. It's very calm. It's very quiet. We don't have a lot of communication that has to happen among our team. Most of our team members are in the flow of doing what they love to do each day. There are little things that pop up here and there but we tackle them maybe in our 15-minute morning huddle. Usually I just ask where they are stuck. Those things all get dealt with then and there might be a little bit of communication in our messaging app that we use each day. We don't have situations, in general, that are immediate or that are urgent. One of the key ingredients is to create a synchronous communication system in the business, which means people can write stuff out, think about it, and post it for the rest of the team to look at later. We can send a voice message to a team member or multiple team members for them to listen to later. Unless something's immediate and urgent, we don't call the team member. We don't walk into their office. We're virtual, so we can't do that. The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary. As a business owner, you really want to get to the place where you don't have immediacy and urgency ever bombarding you, attacking you, or disrupting your day. You should be insulated from emergency maintenance requests at three in the morning. You should be insulated and protected from an angry or upset owner as the first round. Maybe you deal with those things after somebody else but your goal eventually is to be the owner of the business, not the property manager. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun. Like I talked about in one of my previous episodes, four reasons. You want to get more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business. You need to build a really good team. It's a lot easier to get to the place of having a calm workplace in a property management business once you're in that category where you can afford to have a team, and that's usually in the 200–400 door range. Usually at that stage, you'll see business owners by then they have a team. If you do this correctly, this can be one of the calmest stages ever in your entire business. Most do not do this correctly. I call this the second sand trap because they built their business the opposite way. They built the business around the wrong person because they are the wrong person, which means they're showing up doing the wrong things in the business. They are spending their time doing things that really are not their greatest strength or their greatest area of genius, or give them the greatest peace and calm, or the most fulfillment, freedom, joy, contribution, and support in their day to day. So they're building the wrong team around the wrong role, the wrong person, building a support system and mechanism around the wrong center, sort of the nucleus of this business, which is yourself. They have a false perception of you that is overwhelmed, overworked, stressed, and doing the wrong things, then you're building a team to work with that person. You then have the wrong team which adds more stress, anxiety, and challenge to you. You have the wrong business that's built around them. It all starts with you getting really strong clarity in yourself, which I'm really good at helping clients get clarity on, focus on themselves, and figure out what really brings them the most joy or stresses them out, which things are they doing that are tactical versus strategic, or which things are energetic plus signs versus minus signs. If that is a challenge for you, and you feel like your business is crazy. Maybe you're getting enough doors, maybe you're not. We can help you but maybe you're getting enough doors. Maybe your business feels crazy, and your team feels stressed and crazy. You feel stressed and crazy, and you're not having fun. You're not enjoying your day to day. That's a strong clue that you're out of alignment with those four reasons. You're doing the wrong things. You probably could use an objective perspective and get some support. If that is the case, we will be glad to help you over at DoorGrow. Reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. If you feel like it's crazy at work, maybe you need to be honest and recognize there's a part of you that enjoys that. There's a part of us that tends to like the drama and the challenges that we deal with. If the majority of you don't, you don't have to live with it. I've seen businesses dramatically change in a very short period of time. Even in a single quarter, we can have you in a very different role, very different position, way less stress. The right team members, we can reassess your team or redeploy your team in different positions. We can get you your first assistant or whatever. We can help you get into that state to where you are in a place of calm. Just remember, it doesn't have to be crazy to work. Hopefully that's beneficial to everybody. I'm Jason Hull, and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Do you wish that you could travel more often, but it’s just too expensive to find a place to stay? Investors and property managers are eager to get into the short-term and long-term rental market in popular vacation destinations. How can they grow their rental businesses and lower the cost of vacations? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks to Rick Bennett about BookingWithEase and TripAngle, which puts control back into the hands of property owners. You’ll Learn... [02:14] Business Plan: Why Rick wanted to make vacations more affordable for all. [02:56] Thought Process: Lower the cost of vacations by eliminating overhead costs. [03:08] TripAngle: Tools for owners to efficiently, easily rent properties, lower overhead. [03:44] Systems and Services: Grow organically, save money, gain exposure for rentals. [05:04] Differentiator: Only site that guarantees no double bookings; easy to use. [07:10] Property Management: Fully automated, 100% customizable with parameters. [09:42] Plug-n-Play Integrations: Change anything, anywhere with the TripAngle system. [14:13] Why Rick prefers property management companies more than property owners. [17:08] Software Learning Curve/Support: People know how to list their properties. [19:22] DoorGrowShow Listeners: Try TripAngle by using representative ID code - 2167. Tweetables “How do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly.” “We built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently.” “We’re the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It’s just much easier to use.” “We’re just growing everybody’s company. That’s all we care about is growing the owners’ rentals.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive BookingWithEase TripAngle Breckenridge Lodging Mountain Ski Trips Mailchimp Airbnb VRBO Home Away Authorize.net RemoteLock BookingPal Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. My guest today, I am hanging out with Rick Bennett. Rick, welcome. Rick: How are you today? Jason: I'm doing fantastic so I'm really excited to have you here. We haven't had a lot of guests talking about the short-term rental space and the vacation rental space. A lot of property managers are getting into this. It's becoming really hot. We've got shows on Netflix about it now. Everybody is abuzz with this market. Lots of investors want to get into this space. Property managers, even in the long-term space—if they are in coastal areas or have really popular destinations—have vacation rentals they are also managing and dealing with. You've been an expert in that industry for a while. Why don't you give us a little bit of background on you, how you got started with this, and then we can hear more about Booking With Ease, TripAngle, and all these cool things that you've got going on. Rick: The reason we started this whole business plan is because my mom passed away when I was younger. One of the last things she told me was that she wishes she could have traveled more often, but it was so expensive. The reason she mentioned that is she had a really good job, and they flew her everywhere. But to include me, her son, who she wanted to bring me to several places—she took me to Philadelphia, Boston, you name it—it would cost her the full price to bring me. Her company paid for her. I remember pretty much every time she would tell me man, I would love to take you to Charleston. I just can't. She was very apologetic. That's one of the last things she tells me. She wishes she could have travelled more often. Our thought process was how do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly. We came up with TripAngle. TripAngle actually merged with a company called Keys to the House that's been around for over 25 years. We've been in the industry forever. We built it from the ground up. We have our own MailChimp, and we built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently, and once again, lower their overhead big time. When you rent through some of the big boys online with the vacation rental listing sites, it can be quite costly. The reason being is they keep outbidding each other to buy the top spots. What we do is we grow organically. We spread by word of mouth because everybody loves to tell everybody the money that they're saving. We work in conjunction with everybody else. It's a way to just gain more exposure for their short-term rentals. Some of our customers use our features, some don't. We offer free accounting and scheduling for cleanings. We even have where instead of putting our business on all the receipts, you can upload your logo, and all emails sent to your customers have your logo on them. It looks more professional. It's to grow your rental business. We just grow by word of mouth, and we love saving all of our owners' and customers' money Jason: People can white-label this. People can use your tools and services. They're going to save a lot of money versus using these systems that have been a monopoly (it seems like) to some degree. You've got Vrbo. You've got the HomeAway things. You've got Airbnb, of course. How do you stand out in this market of all these big guns? Why would property managers be inclined to leverage and use your system instead of these big networks? Rick: They can use them in conjunction with it. It works well. It keeps the calendars in tune. We're the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It's just much easier to use. What happens is people will sign up with us. They'll use other people mainly. They'll use us a small percentage, but they'll use us. Once they start seeing how much money their customers have saved and how easy it does everything for them, they start transferring everything over to us. We just had a lady sign up with us. Vrbo upped her booking fee to $470. Using our system, on average, her booking fees are about $100. What's neat about that is she makes $20 extra, meaning it's 100% customizable per property. She added the dollar amount. Some people add a percentage amount. Jason: So you can add your own markup. Rick: To the processing fee, right. Her customers went from Vrbo paying $470, and now, they're paying $100–$120 and she makes $20 every booking on top of that in addition to saving the customers $300 a pop. Not to mention that Vrbo also charges her to rent it out. They charge a percentage and things of that nature. Most of our owners collect their own income, their own credit cards. If they collect, our services are 100% free. Jason: Okay. For those listening that are property managers, they can do this and act as the owner for and on behalf of their owner-clients and do the same thing. Rick: Absolutely. Property managers, condo complexes. We've helped a lot of people basically get out of the restraints of property management. I spoke to a town in Texas just recently. They just signed up with us, but the woman told me that they only have the same three property management companies. They've gone through that list about five times because they'll pop somebody, get tired of it, fire them, and go to the next guy, but that's all they have access to. Now, with our system, it does everything for them. It's fully automated. Once you set up your parameters, it's 100% customizable, meaning some of our owners collect $1 amount at the time of reservation. You can set it up per listing. Others collect a percentage of the rental. Some of them charge the remaining balance—which it does automatically through our system once you set that parameter—two days prior to a guest's arrival. Others have it 60 days prior to the guests' arrival. Just whatever it is, it'll run automatically. Somebody lists with us. They say, put $20 down, they'll make $20 extra every reservation, and their customers are saving quite a bit of money. Another thing that they save money on is through Vrbo and Airbnb, they charge $60–$65 for $1500 worth of damage protection on their property. We sell $39 for $3000 worth of coverage. We make sure that all of our owners are covered. We built this to grow the owners' companies. They can add as many fields as they wish. The way it works is let's say they put it in there and say, run the remaining amount 10 days prior to the arrival. Let's say they put 50% down at the time of reservation. When somebody books that, that amount will charge for 50% down. It will shoot them a receipt with their logo on the top and check-in instructions with their logo on the top. Nothing to do with us. Ten days prior to the arrival—if that's the parameter they set—it'll run it in full, it'll schedule it to be cleaned, and it'll alert the cleaners. The cleaners even have it color-coded, knowing if there's an out and in that day. They can make notes. All those notes are sent back to the owners once they're cleaned. Whenever it runs it in full, it'll send them all that info. Two days prior to their arrival, it will send them again that receipt showing paid and check-in instructions because some people make a booking a year ahead of time. Then, a couple of days before, they'll get reminded, this is how you check-in. Our customers can do anything they need. Sometimes, somebody will say, hey, can you send me that receipt again? All they have to do is log in to our website and send it back to them. Another great feature is if they collect their own credit cards, more than likely, they use a company called Authorize.Net. All Authorized.Net is just an online credit card machine. That's it. Whenever people go to log in Authorize.Net, they make you change your login all the time. It can be somewhat frustrating. Through our system, they never have to log in to Authorize.Net. They can refund, they can charge extra, they can do everything through our system. We're integrated with RemoteLock. We're integrated with Authorized.Net. We just helped integrate BookingPal, Vacasa. We've got some big tentacles out there, and we're just growing everybody's company. That's all we care about is growing the owners' rentals. Jason: Awesome. For those listening, a lot of property managers who hear this will go, wow, that sounds really great. Maybe it'll replace me. Maybe you could touch on that. Is this something that the property managers listening to this could use for and on behalf of their owners to be really effective, have better tools, better pricing, and maybe be a better profit center for them? Rick: We have a ton of property managers that use us. What it's done is it helped them eliminate more than half of their staff. It really helps do that. We do hate that a lot of people are getting let go, but it helps make the owners more money. That's what it's all about. Jason: Business owners, I don't think, would be sad to hear that they can't. They don't need as much staff. Staffing is always the most expensive resource in a business generally, so every business owner would be happy to hear that they can operate with less staff. That doesn't mean they're just going to fire everybody, but maybe it means they now can afford to spend more on acquiring more properties to manage, doing more marketing, and shifting their team members' efforts towards building the business up instead of just trying to deal with what's coming in. Rick: We just talked to an owner in Texas that signed up with us not that long ago. This was about a year ago. I remember her specifically saying—and it blew me away—how her property management company at the time used software, meaning that if anybody made a change to a reservation or anything, she would have to go to the office to make everything. From our system, you can change it from your cell phone, tablet, or computer—you can change it from anywhere. We've taken as much out of the owner's hands as possible. Let's say they have it where it charges 10 days prior to their arrival. It'll schedule it to be cleaned. It'll do all that stuff. Let's say somebody calls and says, hey, I want to change my dates or change my condo or home. You can change it in our system with just one click of a mouse. It'll change the cleaning for them. It'll change the calendars on both their properties. It does absolutely everything for them. It's really a simple tool to use. Another great feature is we have search by availability for owners' websites where it will only go through their rentals. We offer rate tables, calendars, custom-built widgets for owners' websites to more efficiently run their rentals, and tape charts. Jason: Rick, let me clarify some of this for those listening. Most of my property management clients and property management business owners refer to their clients as owners. I just want to make sure for those listening, it sounds like what you're saying is when you're saying owners, you're talking about the business owners really. It could be the property manager or the direct owner of the property, but you're talking about the business owner. These business owners have these tools available for them to integrate your system with their website for bookings, to manage their business, to send out white-label emails with their own branding on it—all this stuff. Rick: Yeah. Mailchimp can send specials to everybody they've been with, but as far as the clients go, property management companies love using us. They've been able to grow their businesses and like I said, cut their costs. It's a very simple tool to just plug and play. We've helped a lot of property management companies really get over the hill, so to speak. Jason: You showed me around a bit and had me take a look at stuff. My feedback was initially, it's not the sexiest, prettiest thing, but it sounds like it does everything. It has lots of bells and whistles. You guys have put a lot more attention on the backend, on integrations, on features, and really, it's very client-centric. It sounds like your business is really taking care of your customers and making sure you're building the best product that can do a lot of cool stuff. My feedback to those who are listening to this is give it a check out, take a look at it, and don't judge the book by its cover. Really get into the features and the benefits that could be really beneficial for your business. Rick, what are some of the biggest questions that a property manager who has never used your system? You're selling to them, what are some of the biggest questions that they’re concerned about or they want to know? Rick: We prefer property management companies as opposed to individual owners. We serve everybody. We have tons of different clients. But if an individual owner comes to us, they have one property, two properties, we answer those questions. Once they've asked those questions, they know how to use the system so we don't ever have to hear from them again. We prefer a property management company with 500 properties asking those 1 or 2 questions and then learning the whole system. They're off and running 500 properties as opposed to 1 or 2. It's fully accountable. It's 100% customizable per property. If you put 10 properties on our website and you wanted all 10 properties' money to go to a different account for each rental, we have that option available to you. You can set it up per rental. We have it to where some you charge tax, some you don't. We even have features in Florida, if they stay 180 days or longer, it's considered a homestead. If you book a rental for four months, you have to pay taxes on those four months. Those taxes are usually about 17%, 18%, 19%. In Texas, it's 30 days. If they stay 30 days or longer, it's a homestead, so there are no taxes. Whenever they set it up with us, they could say, I want to set up city tax at 7%, hotel tax at 6%, convention center at 2%, and only charge if they stay 29 days or less. If they stay 30 days or more, don't charge taxes. It automatically does the calculation for them. It does it all right there. They book it, they get sent their receipts, and it really helps our owners out because they see where the taxes need to go. It's all itemized right there. They can edit their spreadsheets on our system. Some pay for extra cable, and some like to add in their homeowners' dues. It's just got every feature you could think about. Another great tool for our property management companies—I'd say 70% use the tool this way, whereas 30% use it this way. Some of them, the 30%, make it to where their owners can change things. I have an owner in Virginia that has a property in Florida. They may want to change some pictures on their listing or they may want to change the cost of the property. They can log in themselves through TripAngle, edit that one property, and it will change it on the property management company. That's about 30% of our property managers. The 70% don't like them being able to touch anything, and that's understandable. They could show everything through there. But once again, we made our entire system 100% customizable for whatever their requests are. Jason: Usually, with software that has so many options, features, levers, and buttons, it gets a little bit confusing. How steep is the learning curve? What's the support process like in terms of getting onboarded? Rick: The support is we will hold your hand and walk you through everything. People know how to list their properties. They've done it on Vrbo and on Airbnb so they know how to do all these things. We get very few questions. We should probably get more questions, but people seem to figure it out pretty easily. But people will cancel their reservation. They will change. Our system would be 100% automated if it wasn't for this, but since people do change and they'll call, we'll show them how to click a button or two on our website, and they've got it. You've got a section for all active listings. We even have a feature if you want to set it up to approve the booking. Some people have their property listed on so many different websites. They don't even really know how much they have it listed on so they don't like to take the instant booking, which I understand because it could have already been booked and you just didn't think to put it on there. Our calendars will stay booked. If you have it synced with Airbnb or Vrbo, it will stay in tune. But a lot of people don't like to use calendars on any of them, and they like to approve a booking. A booking will come in, and they have 24 hours to approve it. I'd say 90% of the bookings that come in are approved by our owners. Once again, they can just make it as customizable as they want, but it's really easy to use. It's really simple. It's all about keeping it simple, stupid. We learned that a long time ago and man did we not make it easy getting to that point through professionalism and luck. We have some partners that can do anything. Our team has really been on top of the ball in just putting everything together. If there are ever any questions or any problems, we fix it within hours. We don't have any. Jason: This sounds really great. How can people get started with this? How can they find out more? What would be the next step for those that are curious of taking this for a test drive or maybe taking a look at it? Rick: What they can do is they can go to either one of our websites, bookingwithease.com. You can look at our features. It just answers some of your questions, the general information of every company. It gives you links to be able to click on where it'll divert you over to TripAngle and you could sign up. It's free to sign up. Once you sign up, we recommend putting a RepID number. You had a RepID number for us because I wanted to have a RepID number in there to make sure that the people from DoorGrow get taken care of. What was that RepID number again? Jason: Rick, had me set up an affiliate code or a RepID number. My representative number is 2167. I guess if they go in once they're going through the registration on tripangle.com, towards the bottom, there'll be a representative number. If you put in 2167, Rick's going to do some special for you, some discount or something like that. Rick: Absolutely, yeah. We take care of all of our customers. We'd be happy to reach out to them once they put in that representative ID number. That's how we've grown our business is word of mouth. Most people like to tell others of the great deal that they found. Once they realize what they make on it, they love it. We pay 10% of what we earn. We're doing strength by numbers. The reason our numbers are so low compared to everybody else is because they're trying to compete with each other. We're doing it organically through each other's websites and spreading by word of mouth. As people sign up with us—let's say somebody enters in the 2167 under you, what that will do is on your dashboard, you'll be able to see who's signing up, what bookings are coming through, and all that good stuff. When you have a customer sign up through DoorGrow, they go in there, they sign up, they can agree to our affiliate program—just like you did—they'll be assigned a number, they can tell their neighbor to go sign up, and they'll get 10% of every bit of our earnings per property. Jason: Very cool. They can go to bookingwithease.com which also links to tripangle.com where they would register. They can also just go to tripangle.com to check that out. Cool. Rick, before we wrap this up, is there anything else you feel like a property manager should know regarding TripAngle? Rick: They're in the process of uploading all of them, but we just signed about 3000 properties in Colorado where I know for a fact that they're offering it through an affiliate either breckenridgelodging.com or mountainskitrips.com. If you go to those websites, it'll have our link to be able to book their rentals. You can pick out their rentals, but they're offering 15% off right now for the first month. They just signed up with us. Any properties you find in Colorado on our website should be through those companies—Breckenridge Lodging or Mountain Ski Trips. They're offering 15% off right now on top of their already lower rate. Just to give a quick example, I spoke with a lady the other day from Airbnb. She was a traveling nurse. She asked if she could book one of our rentals. She said she could only afford $1400. If she would have booked directly through TripAngle, it was $1275. She would have booked for less. But through Airbnb, you can't really discuss information until after the reservation's made. I went in there and I adjusted it to where she should have been at the $1400 range. I told her. I said we did the $1400. I don't know what they charge. She looked at it and she said, I'll never use them again. She wanted to book it for four months. They were charging her $2350 a month, meaning they were making $950 a month to use our system when I'm the owner and I'm only making $1400. That doesn't seem like it's the right thing there. If they would have charged (say) $950 upfront, maybe a one-time fee, even that is too high if you ask me. But that's the point. The cost of vacations has definitely skyrocketed since Airbnb has been introduced. We're here to get owners more exposure. They use us in conjunction with Airbnb. The one woman I just told you about from Vrbo for $470, she stopped using them quite some time ago. Airbnb can be fun. Let me tell you that. That can be exhausting at times. I feel that Airbnb has taken a lot of control out of the owners' hands—a lot of it. Our system gives owners 100% control over their listings. If they want to go in and do anything through our system, they can do it. I had a woman who, through Airbnb, booked for September 20th because I had somebody checking out on September 20th. She let me know just now that she actually has to be here on October 18th. She thought she booked it on the 18th, so I went to the Airbnb to switch it out. It wouldn't let me change anything. It was the most difficult process to get her. What I finally did was she agreed to pay me cash when she shows up. There shouldn't be anything like that on Airbnb. With our system, you can adjust the rate. You can adjust everything. You can offer percentages for discounts. One thing that a customer of ours just brought to our attention that they absolutely loved is they have over 2000 rentals. They use another website, but they have to go through on all 2000 rentals to add a discount for that rental. We offer—where you can do that—a master discount so it goes immediately on all 2000 of their rentals. That's so much easier. Jason: Yeah. Rick, I'm sure you could probably tell us features. You just spout these off the top of your head, but you could probably go on for an hour just telling us all the features and benefits of this. It sounds really awesome. Again, I recommend everybody to check it out. Go to tripangle.com or bookingwithease.com, and take a look at that. Rick, I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us. I think it's cool. I'm excited to expose my audience to this. They're always looking for some cool hack or something that might keep more money in their pocket. I hope your continued success against these companies. Rick: One quick thing I do want to say—and this is all thanks to you—is I do love how you're a straight shooter. Love it. You told us that our logo on TripAngle was awful. I don't know if you know this, but I worked with your team, and they developed it. My business partners and I were cramming, collaborating, and all over the place. What logo that we came up with doesn't even hold a candle to what you all came up with. I even gave your team specific instructions envisioning in a certain way. What they did was 100 times better. I'm so glad they really didn't listen to me because I was wrong. If you go to TripAngle right now, you can see that new logo. There's one at the top and at the bottom. Jason: I like it. Rick: That came from you guys. Jason: Yeah. My team does good work. That's really cool. Rick: They do great work. Jason: I appreciate you being open to feedback. I'm a little rough but hey, if I see a business owner that has something cool but there's something on the surface that would be super easy to fix that would make business easier, I'm going to call it out. That's what I do. Kudos for taking some advice from me. Sometimes it's not comfortable to be told your kid's ugly, so to speak. They need plastic surgery. Rick: Right. That's why they have braces. Jason: Awesome. Cool. I appreciate the little plug for my brand-new team. Rick, I'll let you go. I appreciate you coming on the show. I'm excited to see what you do. Rick: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I look forward to growing with you guys. Jason: Awesome. If you have a crappy logo, you're not really proud of your brand or how things look, you are being perceived falsely as mainly a real estate company, but you do property management, or there's something off with your branding, let us teach you how to clean that up. Let us help you clean that up. We've rebranded hundreds of companies. We are the world's leading property management, branding, and web design agency in existence. Nobody else has probably rebranded more companies in the property management space than us. Nobody else has designed more property management logos than we have. We've done hundreds and hundreds. Reach out to us. We'd love to help you out. We're always excited to help clean up businesses. The level of growth they see before and after we rebrand, clean up their website, and get their pricing and everything in alignment are always far more profitable and the business comes far more easily. You don't realize what leaks you have until they're no longer there sometimes. Reach out. Check us out at doorgrow.com. As always, if you want to join our community, it's free online. Go to doorgrowclub.com and join our Facebook community. We'd love to have you there. If you're interested in growing your business, reach out. We have an awesome mastermind program. We've got over 70 businesses in it, and they are having phenomenal results. We're really enjoying coaching and mentoring these clients, and helping them move their business forward. We have three paths we focus on: we focus on growth and adding doors, we focus on scaling it and figuring out operations, processes, hiring, systems, all that, and then we also have our seed program which is all about the ultimate foundation, branding, website—everything on the frontend sales pipeline of the business. Once you have all three of these things dialed in, you'll have a very profitable company. You'll be outpacing your competition, you will look like the best in your market, and you'll probably be the best. Anyway, that's it. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

What is a BDM? How do I pay a BDM? Why call them a BDM and not a salesperson in a property management business? Why do I need to make sure a BDM has the right personality type and how do I onboard them correctly? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks all about BDMs. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge is supporting and training them to be successful. You’ll Learn... [01:42] What is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager. [01:46] Why a BDM and not a salesperson? Sales gets convoluted or confused. [02:00] Why? Most of you do real estate and have a brokerage side to the business. [02:50] Mistakes: Feedback from companies that help you find/place a BDM isn’t good. [03:24] A business owner not good at sales or onboarding doesn’t give the right support. [05:24] How can you properly support a BDM or salesperson? Know what works. [06:02] How to pay BDMs: If you pay on commission, offer an initial bonus structure. [08:17] How to onboard BDMs: Start them as a sales assistant to double capacity. [10:00] Motivate BDMs: Driven salespeople like money, give them part of commission. [13:32] What sales is/isn’t: Once you start winning deals, sales becomes fun, not pushy. Tweetables “BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales.” “If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business.” “I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much anybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales.” “It doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DiSC Profile Myers and Briggs Calendly Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 and their owners. 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. What are we chatting about today? In continuing my series of doing this every Wednesday, we're going to be chatting today about BDMs. What is a BDM and how to pay them? This is a really common question I get, how do I pay a BDM? How should I pay them? So that I don't have to answer this question anymore, I'm going to make a podcast episode about it. Here we go. First, what is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager. Why do we use that term instead of a sales person in a property management business? Because a salesperson, or sales, or anything connected to that usually gets convoluted, or confused, or mixed up with brokerage because a lot of you also do real estate and have the brokerage side of your business. I think what's happened over time is the industry has sort of adapted that a property management sales person is called a BDM. And we get that from the Australians. They seem to call them BDMs or Business Development Managers, and I think it's just so we don't get them mixed up with the real estate sales people or people that just do sales. On the real estate side, anything related to sales tends to be considered real estate. In the real estate industry, even if it's property management, it gets mixed up. BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales. There are a lot of mistakes I see people make. I have not heard good feedback on companies that help you find a BDM and place a BDM. I don't think it's those companies' fault, I don't think that it's their fault. They probably do find people with the right personality type, maybe they're on a DiSC profile, they're high D, high I, maybe they have an economic score on a value index on a DiSC, maybe they love doing sales, maybe they're good at sales. I think what really ends up happening a lot of times is that a business owner is not good at sales which is why they're hiring them, or the business owner is not good at onboarding a sales person, which if you're not good at sales you're not going to be good on onboarding a sales person and giving them the right support that they need anyway. Let's touch on that first. If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business. If you cannot generate revenue on demand, you cannot figure out how to bring in business, you need to figure that out. You don't have to do it forever, otherwise you need to bring in a partner into the business that is already an expert. Not just hiring some salesperson you're going to try to convert into a BDM. You're going to have to find somebody that successfully added hundreds of doors as a BDM into the business and partner with them or bring them in into your business. Otherwise, just getting a sales person, trying to turn them into a property management BDM is not going to be effective unless you know how to do it yourself. My recommendation is put in the reps, take the time, become an expert at this and figure it out. If you struggle with that, I'm really good at helping people improve that area, get really good with that, and we do that in our program. It's awesome to see the transition of people going from, well, I'm not really super great at sales or my close rate isn't really high, to them saying what I typically hear is, I feel like I can get anybody on that I want so now I'm picky and I don't want everybody. That's a huge shift. I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much everybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales. I won't go into sales in detail on this podcast. We're not going to go into this episode into sales, but you need to make sure that you can properly support a BDM or sales person coming in. What does that mean? That means you know what works. You have successfully proven that you can bring on business, you have scripts, you have language, you have recordings of calls, you have examples to give them. They can shadow you. You know how to deal with all the different objections and challenges that tend to come up. If you have that, then maybe it's time to bring somebody else in. There's another challenge. The other challenge is a lot of BDMs are expected to just get paid on commission. A lot of people say, how do you pay them? If you're expecting them to just get paid on commission, the challenge with that is you're basically expecting them to starve for the first onboarding period of the first 30, 60, 90 days if they're just purely commissioned. You can have some sort of initial bonus structure that you're going to give them that they have to pay back maybe, but that puts them in the hole from the get-go and that can help them get over that hump initially. What I find is it doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big. In real estate, it's pretty big for the amount of work that you do. That becomes really big. You have a big payout so it's worth it to do all that work and stuff like that. In property management, commission is going to be smaller and if you're expecting the BDM to not just close, but you're expecting them to do the follow-up, the prospecting, the nurturing, and all this work, it doesn't get them paid on the front end. They only get paid when they close the deal. Then you're expecting them to just do all of this work that they don't get paid for when they really want to spend their time doing what they really get paid for. You need to have a couple of options. If you're going to do commission only, my recommendation is they're just closers. That means you have lead generation, follow up, all that handled by somebody else. Or you bring them in and pay them a base that's based on them doing all of that follow-up, prospecting, and everything else based on that. Then there's a bonus or commissions structure, maybe a little less than if they are commission-only that's attached to the winning of a contract or getting on a client. That is probably more ideal in most situations because then they're getting paid to do all of this work, to build up the sales pipeline, and then they do have that reward that they can get once they start getting business on and they're closing deals. That's going to be, generally in my opinion, a far more effective structure, is to have base plus salary. Now how do you onboard them, how do you start them out, my recommendation is you take this BDM and you start them initially as a sales assistant. Just getting a sales assistant if you're currently the business owner and you're closing the deals, could double your close rate. It could double the amount of capacity that you have. They're going to operate more like an appointment setter, then you're going to be the closer. Setter and closer allows you also to use an effective strategy that one of my mentors calls the double barrel close—which can be really effective—in which they comprise the closer, make them more important in the mind of the prospect, and help you increase the close rate. You're really going to love what Jason has to say once you get on a call with him. He'll be able to answer all the other questions, but first I need to make sure that you qualify to talk to Jason. That's what a setter can do for you and it significantly increases your close rate, it increases your value in the mind of the prospect if they do that effectively and they can preframe some of these sales tactics; future pays, preframing, stuff like that. Now, you start them as an appointment setter and that means they're just learning the CRM, they're doing all the follow up, they're helping you to schedule appointments, they're booking things on your Calendly, or whatever scheduling thing you do, then you can show up and close, close, close. It's going to increase your close rate. This helps them learn how the sales process works and they can eventually start shadowing you and listening in on those sales calls that they booked, being part of those, they can learn how you're doing it and they can get to the point where they then want to take those calls directly. How do you motivate that? If they're a driven sales person and they like money, then the way that you do that is you're going to take your commission. My recommendation is you figure out a flat fee commission structure. Flat fee is generally better than a percentage for sales people, in my opinion, because it gives them something concrete. They know each door I get, I'm going to get X number of dollars. Then you're going to take that commission structure and you're going to cut it in half maybe or even a third depending on how big that fee is going to be that you're going to pay them that commission. If you're going to pay them a half commission, for example, let's say you do 50%, they get 50% if they set and they get the other 50% if they close it. If they're just setting, they will start out just getting a half commission. If they set them up really nicely and you're able to close the deal, then they get it. This gets them the incentive. Once they start to taste that and they get these commissions, if they are the right personality type to drip in, they like money, they're motivated by this, very quickly they will be pushing to get that second half of the commission. What do I need to do to get that? What else do I have to learn? They're going to start asking questions. They're going to be very curious. You want them to be pulling to get more money from you and wanting to step into that. That shows that they're driven and they're the right personality type. If you find that you're trying to push them into it and trying to move them along, hey, when are you going to be ready? It's been a few months now. You're ready to do the calls on your own? They're probably not the right personality type so maybe you didn't vet them correctly during the hiring process and looking at the DiSC profile, Myers Briggs, some of the things you might use to figure out if they're going to be the good fit naturally for this. That's some of the stuff we chat on today's call with clients that are in my program. If you have questions about BDMs or things like that, join our program, happy to chat with you more or feel free to ask questions inside the DoorGrow Club. I'm sure a lot of people have experience in there at doorgrowclub.com about BDMs. In general, make sure they have the right personality type, make sure you are onboarding them correctly. Now to point out, I had a client which I met today who fired a couple of his BDMs, but these were probably the first two he had hired. Usually, if a BDM isn't working out, most of the time it is because they weren't supported right. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge usually is because they weren't supported right. They didn't have scripts. They didn't have proven things that work. You weren't able to showcase that you knew how to do it and teach them how to close deals, be successful, deal with objections, and everything else. They didn't really have a chance. They didn't have the right support plus the pay structure may not have been the way I described and may have not incentivized them correctly so they weren't really on boarded or supported correctly. That's what I've seen a lot of times with companies that go and hire a company to get them a BDM as the challenge. Figure out how to do it, don't avoid it. It's something that once you get comfortable with that feels great, it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore because once you start winning deals and getting on business, sales becomes fun. Then you realize sales is not anything pushy. It's not anything unethical, whatever sort of mindsets you have around sales. Sales really is just about helping people see their problems accurately and then helping them see how you can help them. That's it. It's not about getting people to buy something they don't need or want. It's about getting them to buy the exact thing that they really need to help them solve their problem, and that's you. You're the solution to that. Hopefully that's helpful. This will be a short episod today. Check out doorgrowclub.com if you want to join our Facebook free community and there are a lot of great property managers in there. They're willing to help out and answer questions. If you want to take your business to the next level, start growing, start adding a lot of doors, having success, and you're ready to be challenged and take things to the next level, then reach out to us and we will give you access to a free training, my seven frameworks on how you can grow your property management business, and the things that are holding you back, why most companies suck in the industry, so that you are not the next sucky company, and you can be great too. Hopefully this is helpful, and until next time to our mutual growth, everyone. Bye, everybody.

The most important part of hiring is to filter out and bring in the people that you truly want to attract to your business. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about how to attract motivated and inspired team members in your property management business. You’ll Learn... [01:33] How do you motivate people to get them to do what you want? [02:04] Finding Good People: It takes more than a job posting and interviews. [02:55] Time Study: Start by figuring out where your time goes. [03:06] Job Description: What you want somebody to take on that drains your energy. [03:52] R Document: Responsibilities, resonate, and results. [04:31] Cultural Fit: Bad hires don't share your values, ethics, morals, or how you care. [05:44] Purpose Secrets: What’s your personal and business ‘why’ that motivates? [09:34] Myers & Briggs, DiSC: Know different attributes of profiles and personality types. [12:00] Micromanagers: Whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. [15:17] Pleasure vs. Pain: Most people are motivated by money or recognition. Tweetables “A big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they assume that if they just put up a job posting with the job requirements and they do a bunch of interviews, they're going to find good people.” “You need a much better filter because what that formula means is you're going to end up with a lot of turnovers, a lot of team members, and have to kiss a lot of frogs.” “You can teach people skills. You can teach people processes. You can teach people tactical things. But you cannot generally teach your team members values.” “The result is what gets you paid. The result is what grows the business. The result is what makes it worth it for you to shell out money to have this team member. Results are the most important thing.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Myers & Briggs DiSC Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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. We're continuing my weekly series of just saying whatever I want to talk about today. So today, I got a question about motivating people. We had somebody in our group that was really struggling to hire and find good people in their market. Also, we had another team member that was asking how do you motivate people to get them to do what you want. So we're going to chat about teams a little bit today and about motivating people. What I told the lovely lady that asked the question on our group call today about finding really good people is, a big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they assume that if they just put up a job posting with the job requirements and they do a bunch of interviews, they're going to find good people. I have found from my own experience and being connected to a lot of entrepreneurs that that is not the case. You need a much better filter because what that formula means is you're going to end up with a lot of turnovers, a lot of team members, and have to kiss a lot of frogs by bringing them into your business, training them, wasting time, and they're going to be terrible, not really show up to work all the time. They're not going to do a great job. You're going to have to start over again. Let's talk about the hiring process just a little bit so that you can have great people, and then we'll get into maybe some stuff related to that. If you want to bring really great people onto your team, we usually start in the DoorGrow & Scale mastermind. I usually start by having clients do a time study to really figure out where the time is going. Based on that, we build a job description for somebody to take the minus signs, the things that are energetically draining them. They don't enjoy the things that are tactical, which are maybe more like lower-level work, or things that are just not strategic in general where you're not functioning as a business owner. You're functioning and doing the employee-level type of tasks—emailing, calling work, et cetera. We want to shift and take the tactical minus signs off your plate, so we build a job description. What would be the ultimate next hire for you? So you can free up your time, energy, attention, focus, et cetera so you make more cash. What would it take to do that? You build out the ultimate job description. I call that an R document. I got the original idea from one of my coaches and mentors, Alex Scharffen. He had what was called a four R’s document. For me, I found that there were some R’s missing. I'm not going to go into total detail explaining an R document, but I will say three of the R’s. Most job descriptions have one of the R's in a document, which is they have the responsibilities. This is a typical job description. They'll just have the responsibilities listed and they think, well, people will look at this and go, I could do that job. What's the pay? Okay, I could get paid to do that job. That does not mean they're going to be a cultural fit. Usually, if you have bad hires, it's not because they can't do the job. It's usually because they don't share your values, your ethics, your morals, what you really care about, and how you care about your customer. If you bring on the wrong people, they're not going to share your values. Even if they can do the job, you're never going to trust them. They’re not going to show up, be, and act the way that you want so that you feel safe with them and safe giving up these things off of your plate and giving them to somebody else on your team. You need them to share your values. This is more important than them having the skill to do the job. You can teach people skills. You can teach people processes. You can teach people tactical things. But you cannot generally teach your team members’ values. Those come hard-wired in. They got those from their parents. They got those from society, from their upbringing, from their religion, and from the culture they've been a part of, but they have those values. So you need to find people that are a value match for you and your business. Your business needs to have the right cultural foundation. In our program, we have a training called Purpose Secrets. In that, we get into figuring out your personal why—what really drives and motivates you, your business why—what really motivates the business? What is your client-centric mission? This mission that you have for the business really gets you inspired and excited, and can inspire and excite your team and your potential customers. We get into company core values. Making sure those are clear and defined, and some other stuff. This allows you to create culture. You cannot have a healthy culture in a business, bring people in, and expect them to fit your culture if you don't make that really transparent from the beginning, from the get-go. We have—on our job application at DoorGrow—our cultural values, client-central mission statement, and these sorts of things so that people can go through this if they care, and we can attract the right fit. Otherwise, you're really playing Russian roulette, you're just gambling. Then you have to have a really good R document. You have to have a really good job description. This goes far beyond just the responsibilities. Here's the most important part of a job description. It’s the portion in an R document, the first portion I call resonate. This is the portion where it's copywriting or sales-related language to convince people and to discuss the position in a way that they will read it and self-identify. Does it resonate as being them? As an example, if I were hiring an executive assistant, I know the personality type that I would generally want for that. They're going to be very detail-oriented, et cetera. It could say, are you our next executive assistant with COO potential? Do you color-coordinate your closet? Are you the type of person that makes sure everything is tidy on your desk and in your house? Are you the person that really is critical of others when they get things wrong, but you really are also really critical of yourself if you make a mistake? Then you might be our next executive assistant. You're going to describe the personality in a way that they're going to read then go, oh my gosh, that's totally me. That is me, me, me, me, me. Not oh, I could probably do that, and you could pay me to do that. You want people that read this and they go, oh my gosh, this is me. I would love to be part of that. The second part of a job description—that's the most important part, I believe when hiring because it helps filter out people and it helps you bring the people that you really want to attract that are going to be excited about the job. They are the ones that are willing to jump through all the hoops you might put in their application or interview process that will filter out the majority of people. So you don't get a bunch of garbage applicants that are like oh, I’m applying to 10 different jobs. You want somebody that reads this and goes, that's the job I want. I want to be part of that kind of team. They're going to read that on your application, your values and your culture. Then you'd be like, I want to be part of something like this, something bigger. You want to attract believers, not hiders. The standard American employee that you hear about that complains about their boss, and they think it's funny and culture. These people live for the weekend. They just want to make fun of their boss and their job and be miserable. Those are hiders. Those are not believers. They do not believe in that boss. They do not believe in that company's mission. They haven't been given, sometimes often, anything to believe in. You want to make sure that you attract believers, not hiders. It needs to be the role that they know, this is me. So you have to understand the personality type. You need to know the Myers-Briggs type. You need to know the DiSC Profile type. You need to know different attributes about what this person is really like that would be naturally inclined to do this job and that would be really good at it. Now, here's the R in the R docs. It's the most important once you hire somebody. Once somebody is hired, the most important part is the results portion. The results portion is the portion where it talks about what they are responsible to accomplish? What are they expected to accomplish and get done? Because if they're not getting the results, it doesn't matter if they're fulfilling all of the responsibilities that you might have, which are also important to have in there. But if they're not getting the end result, it doesn't matter if they're doing all the other responsibilities if the result isn't achieved. The result is what gets you paid. The result is what grows the business. The result is what makes it worth it for you to shell out money to have this team member. Results are the most important thing. I don't care what else is in there unless they're getting the results done. That's the most important thing in the job description once somebody is a team member. They need to make sure they're achieving those results. Otherwise, they're not going to stay on the team. That way they know, these are the results I'm expected to accomplish on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and on a yearly basis. These are the results. Results don't lie, right? Results reveal the truth. Results are reality and reality is god. Reality, always is what is. It's the truth. That's kind of the beginning. If you do that, just those things alone, you will be far less likely to have difficult, crappy, and bad team members. They're going to share your values. They're going to enjoy being part of your culture. They're going to believe in you as a boss. They're going to want to please you. They're going to know how to please you because they know the results that you're looking to get. It'll be very obvious having this yardstick by which to measure their performance on a regular basis as you meet with them, and say, hey, how are the results going? A lot of times, a business tries to micromanage and control their team members through KPIs. I'm not as big of a fan of that. I don't see that as necessary. When people really are the right role for the job, you don't have to force them. You don't have to coerce them. You don't have to micromanage them. They want to do a good job. They want to do those things if they're the right personality for that position. If they're an A-player that believes in your values, they believe in your company, they believe in you, and they're inspired to work with you, you don't have to control them. One of my favorite adages is basically whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. If you are focused on lots of metrics, KPIs, and these sorts of things, you’ll feel that you always have to follow up with team members to find out and get information. You've built a system in your business in which you are micromanaging. You are a micromanager. That is what a micromanager is. Most people say, well, I'm not a micromanager. I don't want to micromanage my team. I hate micromanaging and I hate micromanagers. Most people are micromanagers that say that. If you have a performance-based culture—a culture in which people are doing what they really enjoy doing—they are inspired, they want to get great results, they are going to just do it. You don't have to push them or motivate them because they're going to want to do it. That's fun for them and it feels good. They get a sense of respect and value out of doing this and a sense of status maybe. They feel recognized for doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. They love their job. They love their life. They love your business. They get better and better at it. If the focus is on results, it doesn't matter how they go about doing to get those results as long as they do it within your values, your ethics, your morals. If they follow your values and they believe in your values, then you can trust them to get to the result in the right way. It doesn't matter if it's different from how you would do it. It doesn't matter if it's unique. You're going to find that if they know to focus on the result, they're going to get innovative, creative, and they're going to figure out clever ways to do it in less time to get it done faster. But they're going to do it as long as they're doing it with your values at heart and they're getting those results, you're going to be very happy. This relieves you from having that burden to think for them and make decisions for them, where you get tons of questions from them constantly. Like how do you do it? Should I do this with this person or that? Follow the values and you'll start to trust them more and more. They'll start to learn to trust themselves and their own decision-making. Then you're going to have leaders, not just followers and sheep in your business. The other question that popped up today was, how do I motivate people? The gentleman in the group was like, how do I motivate people on the team? One of the things that I really like is DiSC assessments. I like the values index that are in some of the more detailed DiSC assessments. The values index has different values like political score, economic score, aesthetic score, charitable score, and stuff like that. The one you want to look at when it comes to motivating people is the economic score. Now, that sounds a little weird. But all of these will help you understand somewhat what their values are and what they value. The goal to motivate somebody is you either need to know what they want to move away from or what they want to move towards, which is, what pain do they want to avoid and what pleasure do they want to experience? Most entrepreneurs mistakenly assume most people are motivated by money. Here's why—entrepreneurs tend to have a high economic score, which means they value money. Most people on the planet though, most of our team members, do not have a high economic score. It's going to be a low economic score. That means they value recognition. Recognition is more important than just getting bonuses. Entrepreneurs and typically salespeople tend to have a high economic score. If you see somebody having a low economic score and they have a high charitable score, actually paying them more money, excessive amounts of money, too much money, or even sometimes more money than they would normally be paid because they did better performance, a lot of times, those people will feel guilty. Some of these people feel guilty about getting more money. They have a high charitable score. They want to help people and they care about the poor. They want to volunteer and do this sort of thing. You just throwing money at them makes them feel like you just care about money. That actually hurts performance. One way to not motivate people is to pay them more money, give them bonuses, or incentivize things financially when their economic score is low. You need to be careful of that. If they’re motivated by money, then this is why those types of team members (salespeople) generally have part of their pay connected to performance, bonuses, commission structures, and stuff like that. If the economic score is low, they are recognition-motivated. Just having a really good culture of accountability and a really good strategic planning system in the business. We have what we call DoorGrow OS, which I believe is better than EOS, which has some fundamental flaws I've talked about before. A lot of entrepreneurs are into us, traction, and this sort of thing. In DoorGrow OS, it’s really an entrepreneur-centric system where it's built around you instead of built around the idea of an integrator, et cetera. I could go on talking about the flaws of EOS. But generally, our clients that come from the EOS system and implement DoorGrow OS have seen much better results. They feel a lot more calm and quiet in their business. Things get a lot less noisy. They have team members that are far more accountable. The team is part of the communication and culture and the planning process, and buy-in instead of it being very top-down. They're a lot more motivated especially because B-players—instead of A-players—that are hiders, they do not want to be in a situation or a system in which they are accountable and everybody gets to see them. But A-players—people that are not hiders, the believers—love to be recognized and they love to be seen. They want recognition. That's more important than them getting more money. They want to be recognized. This allows them to be seen, allows them to experience status, allows them to feel recognized, and does a good job. That kind of culture is a performance culture and it will filter out the riff-raff. It will prevent you from having bad team members. The other thing you want to recognize when trying to figure out how to motivate people is you need to understand your team. This is why before we even interview somebody, we have them—in our application process—jump through a bunch of hoops to get them to do a bunch of different assessments. I won't go into all of the different assessments that I often do, but I usually have people do at least three assessments just to go through our application process. If you have a really good R doc that really resonates with them, gets them really excited about the job, and really they get excited about the culture and your company, they'll be willing to do all of the work in your application, and jump through all those hoops. Most people won’t. If they're just tire kickers, time wasters, people applying to lots and lots of different jobs, and they don't look at your job and go, I want that job. That's the job I want. I want to work for them. Then they won't go through and fill out everything on the application. I like the DiSC. I like Myers-Briggs. I understand those systems. I've taken time to learn those. I know what sort of roles will do well, which sort of personality types will do well based on those in certain positions. I would recommend those. Then there are others that I'm into or that I like to use. Having them do assessments, you're going to know beforehand, just by looking at all applicants, that person would likely be good at this. That person may not. You may still want to interview some people based on their past experiences. Maybe there were mistypes. Maybe they filled it out wrong or tried to answer it the way they thought you wanted them to be or to look. But that'll be really helpful for you to have assessments to be able to know these team members and to talk with these potential team members about themselves to figure out, does this resonate with you? Is this accurate about you what it says on your DiSC, what it says on your Myers-Briggs, and what it says on these other assessments? They can then chime in. A lot of times, you'll find they're like, wow, yeah, it's really spot on. Or they might say that part, no, I'm a little different than that. This helps you to understand whether or not that personality and that person would be a good fit and really enjoy that role. That's going to prevent you from wasting a lot of time, a lot of money training, onboarding, and bringing in somebody that's a bad fit. You won't have to motivate that person because they will naturally be inclined to do that and do a good job. That's a little bit of what we chatted about on today's call. If you're interested in joining about 70 entrepreneurs that we have in this mastermind, then reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com. If you are enjoying this podcast and you want to be part of our free community that we have online, feel free to join the Facebook group, which is doorgrowclub.com. You can join our social media group there where you can ask questions of other property managers. There are lots of really helpful people. That's all I have to share with all of you today. Until next time, to our mutual growth, and I hope you have a lot of success. Bye, everyone.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about being the best prize to your potential clients. A lot of times clients have this perception that you need or want to get them on as a client. Needy is creepy. Don’t fail to see and show them that you are the prize. You’ll Learn... [03:00] Who is the prize? You or your prospective client? You are! [03:06] Why? If you have a legitimate business, you solve their problems. [03:52] Three biggest complaints? Tenants, landlords, and rental properties. [04:18] Why most property managers and property management businesses suck. [04:48] If you do a good job, you make better tenants, landlords, and rental properties. [05:10] Real Estate Investing: It's easy until your first challenge with a tenant. [07:17] Cycle of Suck: Crappy clients lead to crappy properties, tenants, and reputation. [08:01] Mike’s Pumpkin Plan: Allegory of what it takes to have prize-winning pumpkins. [08:43] Be Picky: Get clients you want to be with, enjoy working with, and value you. [10:10] What’s for sale? People want to buy safety, certainty, and peace of mind. [11:45] Ideal Clients: Qualify them by figuring out - what do you really want? [12:37] Rules of Engagement: Value self, maintain confidence, realize you’re the prize. Tweetables “You need to realize this—you are the prize. That means they are not the prize.” “If you aren't able to maintain a frame of confidence, you then hurt the number one thing that people want to buy from you, which is safety and certainty.” “The best clients are not the ones that are the cheapos.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Mike Michalowicz Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, 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 your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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, this continues these episodes where it's just me talking. I'm certainly going to be doing some interviews in the future. But this episode today, I'm going to start blocking out time each Wednesday so that I can consistently get these episodes out. I have a consistent call with clients each Wednesday and Friday currently that I enjoy doing. I'm just going to block out time every Wednesday to do a live call and talk about whatever my heart desires that day. Something that came up on today's call with my coaching clients is just a little passing phrase that somebody had mentioned, but they had said they were talking about the week and the wins. Everybody was sharing their wins and one client mentioned they were going to be meeting with some people that are prospective clients. They said they're going to see if we will be a good fit. I wanted to touch on this because I think there's this mindset challenge that I noticed a lot of times with clients and I say this multiple times. I've said it multiple times on my calls with clients. But a lot of times clients have this perception that they are needing or wanting to get the client on and they fail to see that you are the prize. That is what I'm titling today's episode, You are the prize. I would normally swear when I say this, but I want to make sure I get the widest reach possible, but you are the blankety blank prize. You're the prize. You're the freaking prize. You need to realize this—you are the prize. That means they are not the prize. Your prospective client is not the prize, you're the prize. Why is that? Because if you have a legitimate business, you are the one that solves their problem. You're not trying to get them on to solve your problem of making money or because you need more clients. Needy is creepy. You have to have the mindset and recognize that you are the prize, that you solve their problem, that they're the one with the challenges. Look at this, you solve three of the biggest problems in real estate as a property manager. You are absolute super superheroes. Nobody seems to realize this, but nobody else does this. What am I talking about? Let's talk about what are the three most complained about things in real estate? Most likely, possibly these three things—tenants, landlords, and rental properties. Three of the most complained about things in real estate and you solve all three of those challenges as a good property manager. I know you and I both know that most property managers suck. Most property management businesses suck. You know this. I hear this from everybody. Everybody comes to me and they're like, well, we're starting a property management business. Why? Because everybody else in my market sucks. I hear this all the time. I'm sure you're listening right now and you're thinking, yeah, my competitors do all suck, but I'm great. Let's just agree that most property management businesses suck and we should change that because it hurts the entire industry as a whole. But if you're doing a good job, you make tenants better, you make landlords better, you make the rental properties better. You are improving the world. You really are the superheroes of the real estate investing industry. A lot of real estate investors get into real estate investing. They hear everybody's talking about this buzz of real estate investing. It's a great place to put your money. It's so turnkey and so easy. Until they have their first challenge with a tenant, until they realize how much time it takes to place a tenant, until they realize maintenance coordination is a part-time job, even for a small portfolio. You take all of this off their plate. On average, you get them more rent. Even if you just get them a certain percentage more rent and you're collecting rent a certain percentage more often, your fees are well covered. During the pandemic, the feedback I was getting from a lot of people that were self-managing is that their rent collection was down like 50%. I heard from some investors, only half of my tenants are paying rent. Property management clients though, I was asking them, they were maybe down like 2%, 3%, maybe 5% of the rent. They really didn't see much change. The ones that were really smart about how they dealt with it really didn't see much change at all. It was the same people that weren't paying rent before that weren't paying rent, so they didn't really see a shift. The smart ones were the ones that didn't proactively assume that people are going to have a hard time paying rent and put out a message to that effect. They just assumed people would keep paying rent and they didn't put out some preemptive strike to say, hey, I know you probably have problems, here are some resources. Usually, those property managers had a harder time because then those tenants thought, well, yeah, maybe it's tough and maybe I don't need to pay rent because of the pandemic. Anyway, you solve these three big challenges. You are the prize, you're the prize. When you recognize this, you can shift your mindset in sales, in closing a property management contractor deal, and you're going to look at them, do I want this client? Do I want this property? You're going to be picky. Many of you have heard me talk about the cycle of suck. If you want to know what that is, you can just google cycle of suck, and maybe even at DoorGrow, it should usually come up right at the top. The cycle of suck basically means you're taking on crappy clients. So you have crappy properties, then you have crappy tenants, and then you're going to have a crappy reputation. This sums up the entire industry in aggregate. If property managers recognize that they are the prize and were pickier about the clients they take on, they would have a better business. They would have much more profit in their business. They'd be far more profitable. Their operational costs would be a lot lower. They'd be able to do a better job servicing clients. I had Mike Michalowicz come speak at a conference that we threw and he talked about The Pumpkin Plan. He's an entrepreneur. He's been on the podcast multiple times. If you check out his book, The Pumpkin Plan, he talks about this allegory of prizewinning pumpkins and what it takes. You have to lay the right foundation. You have to have the right seed for this business. But you also have to get rid of all the rotting pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. Otherwise, the whole patch will go bad. That means you also need to not let certain things grow, fester, or come into the pumpkin patch that are going to cause problems. That's these crappy clients. When you recognize you're the prize, another analogy I like to use with clients to really drive this home is the idea of the sexy girl at the bar or the sexy guy at the bar. Whatever you're into or whatever you want to be, either one. If you're the sexy girl at the bar, you have options, you have choices. Guys are hitting on you, people are coming and approaching you, but you get to be picky. You don't get with every guy. You don't get with everybody. Nobody wants that person. We'll reverse this in case anybody thinks that's sexist. I want to be the sexy guy at the bar. Let's say you're the sexy guy at the bar, you're not going to get with every girl. If women know that you're getting with every girl, you're not the sexy guy at the bar. You're the garbage. Don't be the garbage that gets with every client. You want to make sure that you're getting with just the clients that you really want to be with, that you really enjoy working with, that you really feel like they value you. When you do that, it puts out a different message in the marketplace and puts out a different perception about you and your business. Not just that, even if they don't know anybody else, your air, your demeanor, how people perceive you, and how you come across during the sales process is going to be like the sexy guy or the sexy girl at the bar. You're going to be able to maintain a frame of confidence. If you aren't able to maintain a frame of confidence, you then hurt the number one thing that people want to buy from you, which is safety and certainty. This is really what's for sale. Nobody wants to buy property management. That's not sexy. That's not interesting. They don't care about property management. Your clients don't give a [...] about property management. They're not interested in property management. What they really want is safety and certainty. They want peace of mind. For most people on the planet, safety and certainty are one of their highest priorities. For most entrepreneurs, I've talked about the four reasons in a previous episode, but they want fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. But for most of your clients, most people, and your team members, they're going to want safety and certainty. That's more important. If you recognize that, then that’s what you're selling is safety and certainty. Guess one of the easiest ways to destroy safety and certainty during your sales process. That's to fold on your pricing, to cave in, to not maintain a masculine or dominant frame in which you are the trusted authority (whether or not you're male or female). They're coming to you looking for guidance, they're looking for authority, and they're looking for leadership. You have to maintain that frame that you are the sexy guy or girl at the bar. You are the prize. That means you are going to have a conversation with them to see if they will be a good fit for your business. I want to see if your property and you would be a good fit for our portfolio, Mr. Owner or Mrs. Owner. That's the idea. You have to shift the conversation that you're qualifying. This is one of the biggest things in sales, the biggest mistakes in sales, but also the biggest factors you'll hear sales trainers or salespeople talk about. You have to qualify the prospect, which means you don't want every prospect. You don't want every client. If you start actually qualifying them, sit down and figure out, what do I really want? What is my ideal client? Look at them through that filter. Ask them some questions. Make them qualify. Have some requirements that are essential in order for them to be allowed into your portfolio. Hey, Mr. Owner, let's have a conversation to see if you and your property would be a good fit for us to manage. When you shift that and you turn the tables that way, it changes their perspective too. You're setting the rules of the engagement or the game to be, I'm going to see if you're a good fit. You're welcome to see if you like me as well. But I get to be picky because I recognize that I'm one of the most attractive people at the bar. I'm one of the most attractive businesses that do property management. They're going to perceive you as such because you value yourself as such. The second you fold on your frame, which means you cave on your pricing, you come down, you use language that's not confident, or you make concessions, you shift immediately out of being the authority and the expert in their mind, which is who they want to feel safe and certain into being basically in their mind, somebody they're going to have to micromanage. You become an employee or a child to them in their mind. They're like, oh, I'm going to have to tell this property manager how to do their job. Then they're going to want custom reports, they're going to want custom concessions, and they want you to fold in your pricing and change things. They're going to want you to customize your contract. When you maintain a frame that says, this is what we expect and you can take it or leave it. You can do things our way or you can go find another company. We're good because there's plenty of business for us out there, then you are the sexy guy or girl at the bar. You recognize you are the prize. Help your potential clients make that decision. Make the right decision by having that safety and certainty by being certain in what you are, and that you are the best. If you lack that confidence deep down because deep down you aren't really sure if you're good, you aren't really sure if you're really providing value, then you have to start taking care of that. That's stuff that we get into in our mastermind a bit as well is talking about how to actually be the company and know that you're the company that does a really great job. That you get to be the sexy guy or girl at the bar. That's going to give you a lot more confidence. If you are having trouble or challenges with any of this, you know you're showing up with a lack of confidence. You don't have confidence or certainty in your language. You are not able to maintain a frame that you're the expert, that you're getting a lot of really price-sensitive people or cheapos in the marketplace, you're doing something wrong. My clients are not doing these things wrong after they've been working with me for a while. If you're struggling with these things, you may be interested in joining some of the most badass entrepreneurs in property management on the planet, which are in our mastermind. We have about 70 businesses in this mastermind. It's relatively new. We have 70 businesses in this mastermind, which is awesome. It's amazing to hear their wins and the results each week. In fact, the ones that are having the most wins, they're not even able to show up to the calls because they're so busy, which is just awesome. There is no scarcity in the industry right now. There's plenty of business available. There's plenty of opportunities. The best clients are not the ones that are the cheapos, that are at the end of the sales cycle, that are searching on Google trying to price shop you. Those are the worst. We don't want to build portfolios based on the worst and set your pricing in the industry. Throughout the industry, it's usually based on the worst, the cheapos of the industry, the cheapo investors. We want you to capture people earlier in the sales cycle that are better, that you really enjoy working with where you can be a lot pickier. Cool. All right, if you're interested in that, check us out at doorgrow.com, reach out, and let's get you on a call with my team and see if we can help you grow your business. That's all I have to share today. A short little episode to share with you that you are the prize. Take some action and pay attention in your interactions throughout today and throughout the week recognizing that you are the prize. Establish yourself as the prize and maintain the frame that you are the prize and you will find that people will treat you very differently. Just like that dating analogy, if we apply this to a real-life situation, it starts to become really obvious. Nobody wants to go get with the person that gets with everybody. Don't be that person. That's all I'm going to say for today. I am out. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Why should you start a company or have a business? Making money should not be an entrepreneur’s primary goal or only reason. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about four reasons for starting a company or having a business. Many entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit and retire early. However, if you follow my four reasons, you won't want to leave because you’ll be giving up something that's really important to you. You’ll Learn... [02:20] Money: Doesn’t always make a successful business owner happy but miserable. [03:09] Four things are probably more important than money for having a business. [03:19] Side Effects: Being a big bottleneck or cutting operational costs. [04:36] Jason’s four reasons for starting a company. [04:47] Reason #1: Fulfillment: It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life. [05:30] Reason #2: Freedom: It’s what you achieve, why you want to be entrepreneurs. [08:04] Reason #3: Contribution: Businesses should solve real marketplace problems. [10:31] Reason #4: Support: It's a vehicle to create contributions and change the world. [10:55] Business Model: Resources, money, staff create contributions, make difference. [12:17] Why not start a business? For most people, it’s safety and certainty. Tweetables “There's something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money.” “If you have these four things and you're in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love.” “The reality is there's nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There's nothing. You can offload any pieces of the business that you don't enjoy.” “Entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute. We want to feel like we're adding value.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Welcome, DoorGrow hackers, 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 your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses 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. I'm going to do something a little bit different. Usually, I interview people, first of all, because that makes me feel a bit more secure. It's just a comfort thing. It feels a little bit weird to just sit here and talk all by myself, but my team has been pushing me to do this for years. You need to create your own episodes just you talking, sharing some of your ideas. That's really what people want to hear, and so here it goes. This episode may be one of the most important pieces of content or information that I've put out into the marketplace. We're going to be talking today about what I call the four reasons. These are Jason Hull's four reasons for starting a company or for having a business. This is something that is just formulated in my mind over the last decade of running a company and coaching business owners, just realizing and seeing that there's something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money. There's something more that's important because I've had so many. I've talked to thousands of property managers, I have hundreds of clients, I've spoken to a lot of business owners, I've been in a lot of different masterminds and programs. One of the things that I've realized is that there's something a bit deeper that a business owner needs in order to have a successful business than just making money. At some point, money is no longer really an issue, but they could still be miserable. One of the things that I've noticed is that instead of money being the primary goal, there are four things that are probably more important than money. These are the four reasons for having a business. What I've noticed is if you have these four things and you're in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love. If you're out of alignment with these four things, then you have a job that makes you somewhat miserable or maybe very miserable. You then are basically the biggest bottleneck in your business, you are the most critical employee in your business, you will be more and more frustrated, and you'll want to escape. A lot of entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit, the goal is retirement. Here's the thing, if you have these four reasons, you don't really want to retire because then you give up something that's really important to you. The other side effect of having these four reasons is that your operational costs when it comes to staffing is usually cut into a fraction. Usually cut maybe down to a third of what most property management companies or most businesses spend on staffing costs, which means you'll be able to get about three times the output from team members because you'll be in alignment with these four reasons. That means that they can be in alignment with these four reasons. Let's get into the four reasons for starting a company. Reason number one, the primary reason, the most important reason to start a business has to be fulfillment. Fulfillment is the primary goal or reason for a business to exist. It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life. You're going to be giving up the majority of your life on this thing. Probably the largest portion of your day goes to your business or towards your work. Probably the largest portion of your week goes towards your business or towards work. You should be getting something in return, besides just trading your life and giving your life away in exchange for dollars. You should be getting life, you should be enjoying your life, and you should be getting fulfillment. That's primary goal number one. Primary goal number two, the second reason for having a business needs to be freedom. This is why we become entrepreneurs. We want to achieve and get more freedom. You can make more and more money as your business grows. Most businesses do, but most business owners have less freedom and less fulfillment in their day-to-day. They become more and more a slave to their own business, and the business is then their master. As entrepreneurs, we want more freedom. That's usually why we want more money. We think, man, if I had more money, I would have more options in life and that should be true. If you have more money, it should give you more options in life, and you should then have more freedom. Most business owners usually within the first year of their business, a very short period of time, they have very little freedom and very little fulfillment. The thing is with fulfillment, reason number one, if you're doing everything in the business wearing every hat in the business, you can't really be in a state of fulfillment. You also can't really feel like you're free because you're doing things that you really don't enjoy doing. I find a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners mistakenly think that there are certain things they have to do because they're business owners. What's really odd is this is different for each person, but it's some sort of conditioning. Maybe it's things they learned growing up, learned their jobs, or they've just decided they can never hand off certain pieces. A lot of business owners hold on to things that they don't have to do. For example, if you hate accounting, but you feel like I have to do all the accounting in my business. Maybe you hate sales but you're like, I have to do all the sales in my business, or I hate talking to people and connecting with people, but you are talking and connecting with people constantly. Really, the reality is there's nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There's nothing. You can offload any pieces of the business that you don't enjoy. The problem is a lot of times, entrepreneurs will offload the things they do enjoy, which give them fulfillment and a sense of freedom. Then they hold on to the things that take that away, that are really minus signs in their day instead of plus signs energetically. The third reason for having a business is contribution. The goal of a business should be that it solves a real problem in the marketplace. That's a contribution. If a business doesn't solve a real problem in the marketplace, then it's basically bullshit. It's snake oil, it's stealing people's money. I find entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute, we want to feel like we're adding value. One of the reasons I'm inspired to work with property management entrepreneurs is you have a real impact. Most property management businesses suck. I'm sure you're like, yeah, that's true. If you look at your market, you know it. You know that this is true. Most property management businesses suck. It's not because these business owners woke up in the morning and said, man, I want to have a shitty company today. I want to start a business and have it suck. We'll get back to why so many suck at least one part. Good property management business owners, their business solves three of the biggest challenges in real estate. What are three of the most complained about things in real estate probably? Probably number one, landlords. You just hear lots of people complaining about landlords. They get a bad rep. Number two, a lot of people complain about tenants. All these renters, they're the worst and you hear people complain about them. You also hear people complain about rental properties. Good property managers are the superheroes of the entire real estate investing industry and they make all three of those things better. Nobody else does that. DoorGrow hacker, property management entrepreneur, you deserve to get paid well if you're one of the good ones. That's a real contribution. That's why businesses exist to solve a real problem in the marketplace, and you deserve to be compensated well for that. That's reason number three. Entrepreneurs, we want to contribute and make a difference. We feel like we're doing something good in the world, and that feels like fulfillment to us to be contributing and benefiting other people. The business is a vehicle for fulfillment, it's a vehicle for freedom, and it's a vehicle for contribution for the entrepreneur. The fourth reason is so important that if you don't have it, you can't really have the first three, at least not fully. The fourth reason for having a business is support. Having a business, it's a vehicle to create contributions and change the world. There's probably no better vehicle that could exist. Charities aren't even as effective or as efficient. Entrepreneurs have figured out a model, which is a business, which allows them the resources, money, the staff in which they can create contributions and make a difference. In order to do this and have more freedom and have more fulfillment, you can't be wearing every hat as I talked about earlier. You need support. Having support in the business means that you have an awesome team. It means that you are able to offload all the things and the hats that you don't want to wear. You find people that enjoy doing those things, that will be better at it than you, that you can trust, that share your values. When you're supported, then you're going to feel like Iron Man in your super suit. You're a normal person, but you have this magical increased super capability because you have a team, which gives you more time, gives you more ability. You need support. Here's the cool thing. If you have these four reasons—you have fulfillment, you have freedom, you have a contribution, you have support—then that means that you can have team members that also have those four reasons. Looking at these four things, what's interesting to note is that most people on the planet do not care about these four things more than they care about a higher priority. A higher priority than these four things for most people is safety and certainty. This is important to recognize, especially as a property manager. Safety and certainty are the highest priority for most people on the planet. They want to feel safe and certain. This is why they don't go start businesses. This is why they're willing to give up and not have fulfillment, freedom, a sense of contribution, or even a lack of support in their day job. This is why the standard American employee often just complains about their boss, lives for the weekend, and wants to go out and drink. They're just trying to escape their life. If you are in alignment with these four reasons then you can build the right team around you. When I see those, a lot of entrepreneurs are not in alignment with these four things. As they expand and break past the first sand trap of maybe about 50, 60 doors, and then they get into the next sand trap of maybe 200–400 doors, where they have a team, usually they have the wrong team. Why? Because they are not in alignment with these four reasons. They're doing the wrong things. They're showing up as the wrong person that's less happy, has less fulfillment, less freedom, less contribution. They are not going to feel supported because they're doing the wrong things. They're going to build a team of people around them that supplement their miserableness, and so these people around them are also not going to have a sense of freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support. The operational cost on those types of team members is usually going to be three times higher. What I mean is if you have a team member that has a sense of fulfillment in the business, they feel fulfilled in their day-to-day, they feel like they have autonomy and freedom, they feel like they're making a difference in benefiting people, they feel supported by you, and they feel like they get to support you as the entrepreneur, they are going to give you three times the output I find. A-player team members, really great team members, will give you three times the output of a typical employee, which means that's going to significantly decrease your operational costs. This is the most expensive thing in business is staffing. That resource is the most expensive. If you want to be a profitable company, you want to be one of the good property management businesses, and not be one of the sucky ones, a lot of times the reason they're sucky is because their operational costs are too high. They don't have a really good team because they aren't really showing up as a really great boss. They are miserable and their team is not very happy. Their customer service levels drop because they can't really support people as well because their operational costs are too expensive so they're not able to get as much done. One of the most common questions I get is, how many staff members should I have per the number of doors? Is there a ratio that's right? There are so many variables that come into this that it's an impossible thing to answer. You need a lot less staff per door if you are in alignment with these four reasons and your team members are in alignment with these four reasons. Hopefully, this concept of the four reasons is helpful. This is the foundation of my philosophy as a property management business coach. With my clients, this is my primary goal. I reiterate this on our coaching calls that we have each week. I reiterate this in my one-on-one with clients. My goal is to get you more and more in alignment with these four reasons. I have processes and ways of helping people do that, that maybe we'll get into on a future call. Basically, we want to see what are the plus signs in your day-to-day, what are the minus signs? How can we become really conscious of that? I usually use time studies to do that. I have a specific process for taking clients through to identify that, how to figure out how to feel safe to offload. In order to do that, you're going to have to create the right culture so that you have people that share the values that you can trust with people, trust with your clientele, and not just people that know how to do the job. Cultural fit is more important. We can get into that more, maybe in another conversation. Anyway, if you want to get in alignment with these four reasons, you feel like you're out of alignment with them right now, reach out to me and reach out to my team at doorgrow.com. Check us out, join our Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com. You can go to doorgrowclub.com. Apply and join our Facebook group if you are a property management entrepreneur. Let's see if we can get you more in alignment with those four reasons. Life's too short. You should be enjoying your day-to-day life. I want you to have a job and a business that you don't want to escape and retire from. Because if you did, you would be giving up one of your main vehicles for fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support in life. You want to keep that. You then can choose how much you want to do in that business. I want you to always be able to hold on to the things that give you freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support. Anyway, with that, I'm out. Until next time. To our mutual growth everybody. I'm Jason Hull, and I hope that you found this beneficial. If so, leave comments, give us a review, and some feedback. I would appreciate it. Thanks. You've just listened to the DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. 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. 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 at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subsribe. Until next time. Take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Looking for a system that will help you automate the entire residential leasing process? Today’s guest is Abi Wasserman from ShowMojo, a complete leasing automation platform that handles scheduling coordination and showings. Abi explains ShowMojo as automating everything that happens in the pre-leasing experience, from the moment a property is available and hits the market to the moment a prospective renter is moving forward with an application. You’ll Learn... [02:24] ShowMojo: What it is, what it does, and how it's different from other options. [04:14] Touch Points: Automated communication confirms, follows up leasing process.  [05:22] Property managers fit business needs and leasing processes into one platform.  [05:50] Other Options: Some companies do showings or open houses differently. [06:29] Independent Experience: Know calendar availability for each team member.  [07:58] COVID Pandemic Hold: Starting to get back to first normal, busy leasing season.  [08:48] Walk the Talk: What to do when renting property to somebody site unseen.  [10:21] With so many property management tools, why choose ShowMojo? [13:30] FAQ: Focus on syndication, customers, security, and platform comparisons. [17:00] Determining Factor: ShowMojo’s success is because of relationships.  [18:40] Pros and cons of occupant, self, and accompanied showings. [23:54] Common Problems: Time wasting calls? Use the automated ShowMojo phone. Tweetables “Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time, and take that into account in between showings.” “That's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property.” “The first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience.” “That prospective renter experience is important for them, but it's also important for you.” Resources ShowMojo Abi Wasserman’s Email Abi Wasserman on LinkedIn Rently Tenant Turner TurboTenant Apartments.com Zillow Rentals.com Zumper DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. My guest today is Abi Wasserman. Welcome, Abi. Abi: Hey Jason. How are you? Jason: I'm fantastic. I'm doing really well. How are you? Abi: I am good. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Jason: I've been wanting to get ShowMojo on the show forever. They've been on my hit list for a long time and I finally just gave up. Then suddenly, you showed up on my calendar, which is awesome. I’m glad you came. Abi: I have a magic touch. It's like we have mojo or something, I don't know. It might be in our name. Jason: Yeah, maybe. Some ShowMojo. Abi, maybe give us a little bit of background on ShowMojo, if you could. Then maybe we can chat about what it is, what it does, and how it's different from the other options on the market. Abi: ShowMojo is the leasing automation platform. We have been around for over 10 years. My understanding of how DoorGrow got started originated out of this need for the property management industry, started from an entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial mindset. Our founder and his wife who owned property management units saw this need for automation to exist in their life. To stop them from taking away from their day-to-day life and what time was getting spent with the kids or at family dinners, those tasks, those phone calls, those emails, that coordination that typically comes with the leasing process, that pre-leasing process. What was bothering them and not conducive to that family time, it ended up turning into ShowMojo and this scheduling coordination. Eventually, self show as well but the entire leasing automation platform that is ShowMojo. Jason: Got it. I think ShowMojo really pioneered on the market the scheduling sort of aspect. Then it looks like Rently copied that. They had the lock boxes and now ShowMojo’s got the lock boxes, too. Then you've got Tenant Turner and they seem to have a similar product. Why don't you explain for people that have no idea what ShowMojo is? They aren't aware of these. What it is and then maybe we can get into the differences. Abi: I like to explain ShowMojo as thinking about automating everything that happens in that pre-leasing experience, from the moment that a property is available and hits the market, to the moment that that prospective renter is moving forward with an application. What our platform and what ShowMojo does is it empowers that prospective renter to really self-drive their way through a prospect-driven leasing process. It allows them to really empower that process from start to finish, giving them that immediate touch, that immediate response that they crave when they're trying to schedule a showing. Giving them that automated communication throughout the process. Making sure that they have confirmed the showings or giving them the ability to automatically reschedule a showing. Giving them automated communication on the back end of that. Following-up after a showing. Following-up with the application process after the showing. Really making sure that there are just all of those touch points, and giving property managers that customizable platform in it where they can fit it their business needs, their processes, how they do leasing and not making a property management company have to fix their processes to a platform mix, if that makes sense. Jason: Yes. Could you give us some examples of how companies might do it a bit differently maybe? Abi: Some property management companies, for instance, will do great showings especially as we move more out of this pandemic, there are property management companies that will do great showings or open houses. Maybe they'll do clustered individual showings where you only want to go out to a property maybe once a day and you want to cluster your showings together where you've got five back-to-back showings. Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time and take that into account in between showings. Know what calendar availability is there for each one of your team members, crosscheck maybe a third-party calendar like Google or Outlook, be able to send those invites back and forth between those calendars easily, and make sure that each one of your team members can also have that independent experience. If you and I were working together and you were showing a few of the properties and I was showing a few of the properties, we have independent schedules. Maybe we even both show one property and our times overlap, but the platform can still take that into account. Jason: I love the idea of group showings because it really would collapse time for the property manager. It could put so much work on their plate, but the tenants are often willing to move around your schedule and to do things that you want them to do because they're really trying to get into a place. If you can get 10 or 20 people to show up to a particular unit, even if you're just having them—if they're pandemic-scared—go through one at a time and they're waiting outside, that allows you to increase the perception of demand, it allows you to just get a bunch of applicants right away, and then you can go through screen and figure out who we should put into this place. I know property managers that they do one open house, one showing. They get plenty of applicants and then they get the thing rented out. Abi: And that is the case. I think one of the things that I've seen most recently as we've come out of this pandemic hold, which I think we've been in for a good 16 months of this, I don't know what's going to happen with my vacancy because of the pandemic. Now, we're coming out of that holding pattern where moratoriums are lifting and things are starting to get back to our first normal leasing season, busy leasing season. Now, what property managers are seen all over the country (I think) is that they're putting a property on the market and they are getting immediate applications, site unseen, where they will put a property on the market and they’ll get 10 applications for it. I also have those conversations with property managers who want somebody to walk that property. You don't often want to rent to somebody that hasn't looked at that property because that's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property. I didn't know that this was here. I didn't know you expected me to change my filter. I don't know where to change my filter. I never saw that. There's so many things that come up. Even with the market being the way that it is where you've got 10 applications coming through, then how do you set up the showings so that at least you're getting your top five applicants through that property and down the line through your application process? Jason: Right. It's Russian roulette, you're playing a dangerous game if you don't have people view the property. How does the ShowMojo compare, because I know there's a lot of tools out there. I see this question pop up in the DoorGrowClub, our Facebook group constantly. People are asking it on our mastermind all the time. Which tool are you using and why? Everybody has different opinions. How can you help people make the decision to choose ShowMojo over something like TurboTenant, Tenant Turner, Rently, all these different tools that exist out there? Abi: You know me and you know I've been around a really long time. I've got friends that work at other companies. Whenever I'm asked these questions, whenever I’ve been asked at a different company and against a competitive company there, my goal is never to sling mud. My goal is always to just talk about the differences or where I feel we have an advantage or how we do it and I like the way you do it. I will say that the first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience. With ShowMojo, when a prospective renter goes to schedule a showing, the experience for them whether it's on a desktop, whether it's on their mobile phone, it is all happening on one screen. They don't have to sign up for an account with ShowMojo. They don't have to pay a fee. Even if they're validating their identity with a credit or debit card, we're not charging them a fee for an account with us. They don't have to remember a username or password. I don't say this because I think that it's a bad user experience to do that. There are a lot of sites that I will sign up for recurring business. But when I'm renting, I don't really want to do that until I’m filling out an application and logging into a portal. I don't want to give anybody but that property manager my contact, like login details. I'll give you my contact details, but I don't want to do that. That's my preference as a renter because I have been one for too long because I can't do the math right now. As I get closer to my 35th birthday, I can't do math on the spot. I know you and I both have one coming up, if I remember that correctly about us both, we have one in I think the same week. But that prospective renter experience is important. Making it as easy for them to actually schedule that showing is critical. You also, for the property manager, if I'm a property manager, I want to own that rental lead. I don't want them signing up for an account with the service that I'm working with and then owning that data. I want to own that rental lead. I want them to be my rental lead. I don't want them seeing properties for somebody else's company. I want them being cross marketed properties that I have on the market. If something changes within my portfolio, I want them to be notified of it. I don't want them being dripped with other properties from other property management companies. I worked very hard to get those people over to my website or to get them to my listing. I want to own that data. That prospective renter experience is important for them but it's also important for you. Jason: I'm curious about what are some of the questions that prospective users of ShowMojo tend to have when they're coming to you during the sales conversation? Abi: A lot of the questions will circle around the syndication network that we have, whether if they are new customers, will it compare to what I'm doing with my software provider? If they are switching over from a different platform, does it compare or does it exceed what I already have? Oftentimes, it exceeds what they already have or it is an even match for. Jason: Let’s explain syndication for those that don't know what it means. Abi: When we have listings through ShowMojo, what we do is we will push them out to internet listing sites. Things like apartments.com, Zillow if a customer is paying for it, rentals.com same thing as Zillow, realtor.com, Zumper, those kinds of ILS or the listing sites to get additional visibility and rental leads back in for our customers. With ShowMojo, we automatically respond to those leads pushing them over to get them to schedule a showing, but it's typically the same as or greater visibility than wherever they may have been coming from before. Jason: Got it. One of the strengths of ShowMojo is really good syndication. Abi: Yes and the email response and the communication afterwards. Jason: What are some of the other questions that people have when they're curious and vetting ShowMojo as a provider for them? Abi: I would say it probably will come in where the lock boxes and self-show is concerned and how do we handle security, how do we handle preparing for fraud because it doesn't happen frequently. It's going to happen in the property management industry. It's a factor of doing self-show and doing lock box showings. It's more of those questions of how do we prepare for it, so outside of the normal tech things that our team does by searching and preparing and preventing known scammers from being able to schedule, we don't advertise any of our listings as self-show or lock box showings. We don't distribute codes until the showing has been confirmed with that prospect or we have the additional step where they have to actually confirm their location is at the property. They have to use location enablement on their cell phones. We also follow up after every showing to make sure that that prospective renter has locked up and left the keys at the property. If they don't then we notify our customer of that. We have multiple different checkpoints in place for our customers on that side. Jason: Got it. Now, is that different from other providers when it comes to lock boxes? Abi: There are some providers that are very forthright about how much self-show they do, even advertising through video the entire self-show process on their customers’ websites. I'm not sure where that checkpoints are in terms of checking back up with a prospective renter, so I'm not sure where the follow up process is necessarily with other companies. Jason: What do you think is the determining factor for people to go with ShowMojo then? How are you closing these deals, Abi? Abi: I would say number one, because of relationships, like I always do. At the end of the day, it is a more customizable platform to fit property managers’ needs. It is cost effective, and we have a lot more bells and whistles to really be able to, so it ties back in with that customization but we have more bells and whistles to really fit it to the existing process. Customizing it from that first moment that they interact with the listing to the moment before moving forward with an application. Without going through a full demo, it's everything from cost to benefit and that value and between. Jason: Cool. ShowMojo sounds like a really awesome tool for property managers. Some are a little bit nervous about the lock boxes and self-showings, so what's your perception on who decides to do that and who decides not to? Because it seems like there's two solid camps there. I could never do that. It's too risky, and I love it and it's amazing. It seems very polarizing, I notice, whether or not to do lock boxes. Abi: I would say we are definitely fans of in-person showings because there are questions that you're not going to be able to… Number one, the first thing is that you're not going to be able to show occupied units. You're never going to be able to show occupied units on a lock box showing. The obvious benefit to doing a company showing says that you can stay pre-leased, and show occupied units, get them leased before they even go vacant. You can also answer questions that you're not going to be able to answer during a self-show. You can get a feel for those prospective renters. There are a lot of benefits to an accompanied showing. Jason: I'm curious about the pre-lease situation, how to ShowMojo handle the existing residents of the property and make sure that's communicated, because that's usually seems to be one of the most difficult sticking points with trying to do showing. Sometimes they're really resistant to having people come into their place. The communication back and forth. Then you're trying to negotiate times with them and with prospective renters. That communication gets a little cumbersome. Does ShowMojo try to facilitate that? Abi: A couple of things. One and I've had this conversation recently, so that's why I say a couple of things. I would have ordinarily just started with showing acceptance, which is where you can put in the residence information and they have to accept the show times or reject them. But the reason I say a couple is because I've had this conversation twice in the last couple of weeks. The response from the property manager was the same. That won't work. They will reject it every time. I said okay. Then in my brain, the way that I creatively think about this, is it goes back to the way that calendars are set up and ShowMojo. There is a way to set up a specific time window for each property. That is the only time that that property can be shown. I said, okay, well then, great. If they will reject every time, then you don't necessarily need to do showing acceptance with them. What you need to do is you need to say I will be showing your property, because you've given notice. Tell me what day of the week and what time frame will work for you for the next 60 days or 30 days or whatever notice they’ve had to give. Block it out for that recurring week notice. Maybe it's Friday from 2:00–5:00 are their window that you are allowed to show their unit. Then that way that is the only time that the showings will get booked for that property. Either way there is an option in ShowMojo. Chances are there's a way to accommodate it. There's the showing acceptance where you can put in the residence information or the owners, if its owner occupied. You can put in the owner acceptance too. You can put in there showing acceptance or you can block out the certain time windows for the property, so either way. Jason: Sometimes it's easier to tell people that it’s going to happen, instead of asking for permission. Abi: Exactly. Jason: I like that. But the showing acceptance thing, that's pretty cool. This software has been around for a while. It really was I believe the first on the market that really did the scheduled showings model. It sounds like they've been optimizing and innovating since then and adding features. I think that is the niche that it's quite customizable which I think is appealing to property managers. It sounds like you have really good syndication. You also have the lock boxes thing. Anything else anybody should know about ShowMojo? Abi: If you've got questions, if you're thinking that it could do something, I wonder if it does this, odds are it does. We've worked with real estate listings. There's ways to do maintenance checkups. We use ShowMojo for our own demo scheduling platform. When somebody comes on our website to schedule a demo, we use ShowMojo for that. The way that it can be customized to fit whatever needs you have, it is endless. We just rolled out occupant-led showings. If you're actually having a tenant do a showing for you, a renter, with some of the people that may have been under more lock down restrictions. I know that sometimes you move towards the things that you have to do. I can sit here and rant and rave about ShowMojo for a while. Jason: That occupant-led showing is an interesting idea. I talked to the property manager and he had (I think) 1000 tours or more at a conference. He said that his company never did showings. He said, we just pay the occupants to show the property and we give them some sort of kickback if it gets rented. They’re incentivized to sell the place. Abi: That's a great idea. Jason: The biggest complaint or challenge that you hear in leasing is just the time wasting phone calls. This is just such a time suck for property managers. You have people calling up and saying what's the square footage on this listing that I'm looking at right now, that has the square footage on it. Stuff like that. Does ShowMojo facilitate phone calls or work well with the solution that does? Abi: We do. We have our ShowMojo phone which is automated, that's included with all of the way that we do things which allows prospective renters to always get schedule a showing link or view all of the available listings and a gallery. It also will determine if somebody's running late for a showing and cancel it if they're running too late and follow up to reschedule. But we also have live answers available to our customers that are additional, but very affordable, very cost-effective. They can turn it on or off at any time but it's with our call team and they will answer basic questions just like you mentioned if it’s something that they missed in the listing detail, they can schedule showings. If somebody calls to follow up on an application, they can answer that question. If it’s a potential owner, they can answer those questions. They can take messages and forward them over to the team. It’s something that they can turn on outside of office hours if they want to have their team handle it during office hours and have somebody else answer outside of office hours. We do have the ability to help with that. Jason: Where's the call center team based out of? Abi: We have virtual call centers, but they're both US and out of the US space. Odds are, if you call during daylight/evening hours, you're going to get somebody in the US and then outside of that, 2:00 AM, you may not get somebody in California. Jason: It’s a 24-hour thing. Abi: Yeah. Jason: All right, any questions I missed? Abi: I don't think so. I don't like to control the flow. I feel like we had a good chat. I feel like it was good. Jason: Cool. How can people find out more about ShowMojo? Abi: You can always come to showmojo.com and connect with us there. If you want to send me an email, you can also always reach me at [email protected]. You can reach us on our website. Find us on LinkedIn and all that fun stuff. Jason: Cool. Well Abi, I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrowShow. We finally got ShowMojo in the books. Abi: Thanks for having us. Jason: Now I can point people to a podcast episode when they ask me about ShowMojo. Abi; There we go. Jason: All right. I appreciate you being on and I'll let you go. Abi: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Jason: All right. Property managers, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to add doors, you're wanting to grow your business, reach out to DoorGrow. We've got this new mastermind that we started towards the end of last year, which has been really awesome. That's probably why you're wondering why I haven’t been doing very many podcast episodes. I've been really enjoying coaching clients and helping them grow. It's what I'm passionate about. We've got about 54 businesses in our mastermind as of today. Our goal was to hit 50 by the end of June, so we hit our target and we've got some really awesome clients, really awesome businesses in the program. One of our clients, a really hard worker, put in 3–5 hours a day using one of the strategies that I gave them. It cost them zero dollars, it’s just time, and he's added 125 doors in six months. He was stuck at about 80 units before coming to us. He tried SEO and some other things. We've got clients that are showing up. One of our clients in the last weekly checking call said that they're adding 100 doors from one owner. The week before that, 21 doors. We’ve got another client that's been with us in the mastermind for coming up on maybe about a year, but at a previous call checked in adding a 25-unit complex, a 35-unit complex and these are by doing zero dollars in advertising. One thing I want to point out is if you want to grow your business fast, right now, the largest companies in property management are losing more doors than they're getting on. They're spending thousands of dollars a month on internet marketing. If you want to shift away from internet marketing, which isn't even working for the biggest companies, and getting cold leads that are time-wasters, tire-kickers, and have a low close rate, let me share with you and teach you how to grow your business rapidly by going after the blue ocean using that strategy. The 70% that are self-managing, creating warmer lead opportunities. Warm leads have a 90% close rate or higher typically for most property managers. I'm going to teach you how to facilitate that, how to make that work really well in your favor. You have other people feeding you more business, you're getting more from online reviews, and you're able to target groups, things that are high leverage that will feed you warm leads. Check us out at DoorGrow, schedule a call with us, and chat with us about the new DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Our guarantee in the mastermind is that within the first 30 days, the very latest by the end of the first 60, we will have double offset the monthly cost of the masterminds. You're making twice as much money in residual income. Otherwise, I'll continue to coach you for free. We've not yet had to have anybody use that guarantee. That's if you're willing to keep our three commitments, which means one hour strategic time in the morning, being a business owner instead of saying I’ll work on my business tonight or on the weekend like a lot of business owners tend to do which doesn't generally happen. That's the garbage scraps of your time. Second commitment that's required is two hours a day, a tactical time to work on growing the business and implementing the strategies that I give you. That's less time than it would take to deal with cold leads. You're going to get a much bigger return and result. Then the third commitment is to show up to one of our two weekly group coaching calls that we have on Zoom. Those are on Wednesdays at 11:00 Central Time, noon Eastern. 9:00 Pacific, 10:00 Mountain. Those are on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays, we focus on adding doors, growth, sales, referrals, reputation, prospecting methods. We talk about websites, et cetera. On Fridays, we get into operations DoorGrow OS, which is better than EOS retraction. We've had several come from that sort of camp. It's the ultimate operating system for property management business. We get into DoorGrow ATS—applicant tracking system and hiring system. My goal is to build rapidly companies that can handle rapid growth, quickly hiring, off-loading in making sure that the business gets more and more in alignment for you, giving you the business owner more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support so that it becomes more fun the bigger your business get. I'm really good at helping business ownership towards that. If you're frustrated, stuck in the operation side or in the growth side, talk to my team and let's get you maybe on board with the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. I appreciate everybody that's tuned into this or that's been paying attention to us on iTunes or on YouTube. Be sure to like, subscribe, give us positive reviews. We love all that kind of stuff if you got value from this. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.

Are short-term rental businesses coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and being resurrected? Do owners love the return on investment (ROI) and income, but tired of the turnover, logistics, and moving parts? If you’re doing it all on your own, hand it over. Today’s guest is Andrew LeBaron with BuyMoreTime, a flat-rate property management solution for short-term rentals. Andrew began his real estate journey by being the marketing director and a guest on Joe Fairless’s Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show. Then, Andrew started buying, selling, wholesaling, fixing, and flipping properties and got licensed to go even further. You’ll Learn... [02:13] How Andrew went from greeting big-name podcast guests to becoming one. [05:15] Hoteling 101: Managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. [05:54] Team Effort: If you don’t have a team, you will not thrive (or sleep). [09:23] COVID: Great for short-term rentals, not for property managers or owners. [12:40] Questions: How much could my property rent for? What needs to be inside it? [16:23] Mistakes: Give gifts and leave notes for guests to make a big difference.  Tweetables “Shorter rental management is big bucks.” Hoteling 101: Owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. “There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then, there’s guest responses. It's literally 24/7.” “When you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling an experience.” Resources The Best Short-Term Rental Management Andrew LeBaron on Facebook Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show with Joe Fairless BiggerPockets Grant Cardone Gary Keller Barbara Corcoran Airbnb VRBO The Giftology Stay Here on Netflix JF1896: How To Grow Your Property Management Company with Jason Hull DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers 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 your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. Today's guest, I'm hanging out here with Andrew LeBaron. Andrew, welcome to the show. Andrew: Thank you. Jason: Andrew, you're with an organization company called BuyMoreTime. Andrew: That’s it. We are a short-term rental property management solution. Jason: Cool. Andrew, we don't have a lot of vendors and people on the show typically related to the short-term rental industry. This will be interesting because I have been getting a lot more calls related to that lately. Maybe a lot of people are starting to resurrect these short-term rental businesses coming out of the pandemic, where there's a black swan event that squashed the industry temporarily. Let's first get into a little bit of background about you and how you got into this industry. Andrew: Yeah, sure. It's funny. We're on a podcast right now. I actually started a long time ago as a marketing director for a podcast. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Show with Joe Fairless. He buys multi-family apartments. That's his main gig. Jason: I think I was on that show. I've been on a lot of podcasts back in the day. Andrew: I wouldn’t be surprised. Heck, maybe, I reached out to you some years ago, who knows? It's the world's longest daily real estate podcast. I mean his work ethic is insane. Years ago, I got into real estate. I jumped into (of course) Bigger Pockets. I jumped into Joe Fairless’s podcast. On one of the podcast episodes he said, I am looking for a marketing director. Someone that can help connect me with more guests. If that's you, send me an email. I'm like, I want to try that. I sent him an email. I'm like, I don't care if he pays me. If he pays me, great. If he doesn't, so what? I was his marketing director and I got to meet some of the coolest people—Grant Cardone, Gary Keller, some really big names. I didn't get to speak to Barbara Corcoran, but I got to send an email. There were some pretty big names on that podcast and I was actually able to be a guest. I was starting my real estate journey and from there I started buying and selling properties, wholesaling, buying, fixing, and flipping. I started buying small apartments, 6 units, 10 units and so on and so forth. Then I got licensed because I wanted to take it a little bit further. I thought, okay, if I'm not going to buy these, I'm going to either manage them, and so on and so forth. Then I realized about 3½–4 years ago from an accident, actually, that shorter rental management is big bucks. In fact, we bought a house that we couldn’t sell. We tried everything we could to move, the property just wouldn't move for some reason; it was just a weird property. I told my partner, whatever. Let's furnish it. We went to goodwill. We got these truckloads of just random furniture and we loaded up into this house—we’re such rookies—and we put it up or lease or we set it up for Airbnb. I kid you not, this lady wanted to rent it for a week for $250 a night. I was like, it’s got to be a joke. There's no way. She's like, no, I’d love to stay here, me and my family. From there, I thought, the short-term rental space is where it's at. We started buying more, furnishing more. Then all of our friends said, can you help us manage ours? We're like, okay, we can help you. It's hoteling 101, but that's how we became BuyMoreTime. We noticed that owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. Jason: Right. I don't think there's any industry that takes more time and more customer interaction than the hospitality industry. I think that's rated at the top. Property management is second to that, they say, so it's right there. Andrew: It's pretty insane. There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then there’s guest responses. It's literally 24/7. There is no sleep. If you don’t have a team, you will not thrive. Jason: Right. Tell us a little bit about BuyMoreTime. What is it exactly that you do? Andrew: BuyMoreTime is a flat rate management service for short-term rentals. We are a service-first company. If you have a property on a short-term rental platform, say, Airbnb, VRBO, if you have a motel, small apartment building, you want to do a couple of apartments and you want to maximize your ROI by leveraging the short-term rental platforms and its traffic, then you can hire us. We will manage that for you. We’ll set it up. Most of the time we're looking for clients that already had it built, but we can set it up. We will set your teams—you're cleaning team, your maintenance team. We’ll handle messaging 24/7. We will take over your hotel. That's what we do. Jason: Okay, the hotel. Awesome. Cool and I checked my inbox. I was on the Joe Fairless podcast back in May of 2019. It's been some years, but I was there at one point. Andrew: That’s so cool. Jason: But I didn't even know it was that big of a deal. I guess that was pretty cool for me in hindsight. Andrew: That is really cool. Jason: Awesome. What would you say to people that might be tuning into this on the short-term rental side that are doing this themselves currently? Why would they want to get in partnership with you? Andrew: Well, just like our name prescribes, if you are tired of wasting or you're trading your time for money and you love the ROI, you love the income, 2–3 times than average rents across the nation is what you can expect from a short-term rental. If you're getting $700 rent in the south, you could get double that. You can get triple that. Depending on where you are. There are many variables. But if you're tired of handling that yourself, you can literally hand it over to our company. Our sales team will answer all your questions. We’ll link you up into our software. We will hit the green button and you sit back and simply watch the interaction between your guest and our team and obviously your bank account. There is no touching it. I mean we literally set it up in the beginning so you don't have to manage it all. We have your team. We have your inventory. We would restock your toilet paper, paper towels. Sheets. There's just so much to say. It'll hurt your head if you think about it. Inventory management and supply chain, that's what we do. We handle all that. That's what your listeners can glean from our company. That's what we can do for them. Jason: Now, you had mentioned a little bit of info about how appealing it might be to get into the short-term rental game, 2–3 times the amount of income coming in. But what about those that have been burned by Covid? They said this was too painful. We weren't prepared for this. Money just stopped. Vacation rental market was just decimated. They're just afraid to get back into the game. Andrew: You know what's funny? Covid actually was great. I think that's the only thing I'll say about Covid as far as short-term rentals go. For a property manager or for an apartment owner, for property owners, Covid was not great because you have the moratorium. There's a lot of struggles there. For us, for the short-term rental gamers, it was wonderful. People couldn't leave. No one could go anywhere. We saw a decline in March of 2020. We saw a slight decline in occupancy. Our typical occupancy is hovering around 92%. Occupancy inside the short-term rental game is very different. You got 30 nights out of a month, depending how many nights you booked, that's your occupancy rate. It dipped I think just 70% flat, 70% or 73% flat. After March, we started exploding. It was quite the opposite. People couldn’t go to Europe. People couldn’t go to other countries, so they had staycations. In the beginning, this whole journey there's kind of like this Airbnb belief that when you have a guest that wants to go from one side of the city to stay in your place, that’s a big red flag because it’s probably going to be a party, probably going to be a kid. But at this moment, with Covid, it was like, look, I'm a tired mother. My husband and I would just want to get away. We got a babysitter. Covid shut us down, can we come stay? We haven’t changed our [...], yeah sure. We don't discriminate, but at the same time, we would stop asking all the prying questions. Are you in college or not? College parties are the worst. But we would allow them to. We actually exploded really well during Covid. Jason: Interesting. I would have thought it would have been the opposite. Now, is BuyMoreTime location-specific? Is this all over the US? Is it beyond? Where do you guys do this at? Andrew: We’re in five states right now and two countries. We’re in Canada, in here, and five states. We can do this anywhere. We could pick up anywhere. Obviously, you need to qualify. We have a qualifying call. It's called a discovery call where we discuss what your property is like, its condition, your needs, and so on and so forth. See if we’re a good fit. Not everybody's a good fit, obviously. Not every property is a good fit. Not every area is a good fit. We just want to make sure that it's going to be a win-win situation for everybody. Jason: Are you wanting listeners that are listening to the DoorGrowShow, to this episode, regardless of where they're at to just reach out, or are you looking for specific areas? Andrew: Regardless of where they're at to reach out, absolutely. Jason: Cool. What are some of the biggest questions that potential clients want to know when talking with you? Andrew: Number one question, how much could my property go for? How much could my property rent for if I was to work with BuyMoreTime? My answer is, when you come to BuyMoreTime, you should already be established. We're not a coaching company. We're not a let's boost your traffic. You should already be established, description, photos, 5-star reviews and you say, look, I got this in the bag. I just need to hand over the reins. That's all I want to do. For the costs, less than paying a VA every month, you're going to hire our team and we’re going to run all of your operations. Jason: So this is for those that are just tired of the turnover, tired of the logistics, tired of making sure all the moving parts are happening. You'll handle all of that. Andrew: Correct. Jason: It sounds like you do it quite affordably. Andrew: Yup. $349 a month is our price and it doesn't fluctuate. The good news is we built this to service our property, to scratch our own itch. We're investors first. We have short-term rentals. We buy property. I'm sitting in one right now, up north. I've only been here for a couple months, brought my family into it. This will eventually be a short-term rental up in the pines. We wanted something where I didn't have to pay 20%, 25%, 15% of my profits. There's a lot of other companies out there like us where they have this really cool software and service—services, in my opinion, are subpar—but you pay out 20% of your profits on your highest month. It's like you're being penalized for using their service. To me, I would want some sort of program that I know what I'm paying for every single month. Every single month is the same rate, no matter what. In that way, I can easily predict my income for my highest months. Everybody’s got the highest months. Austin's got a high season. Arizona, all over the place, they have a high season and low season. Florida, they have a high season. For us in AZ for example, it's going to be March and April. From other places, it is that same month or those months. These companies rob you 20% of your total proceeds. I thought that's not cool. Let's give the profits back to the owners and we’ll just take a small fee for managing their property. Jason: All right, so the first the main question everyone wants to know is how much could they get and probably what is the cost. What else are they curious about, usually? Andrew: They usually want what I need in my property? What should be inside it? Especially, if you haven't done this before. Let's say you manage apartments, or you own a building, or whatever it may be, and you're talking to some partners or your client about setting up an Airbnb. That's probably one of the biggest questions is what goes inside of it? The one thing I need to tell people is when you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling experience. I don’t know, Jason, if you've ever stayed in a property on Airbnb before, but I just… Jason: I have. Andrew: You have? Just scrolling, you're looking for beautiful photos. You're looking for awesome amenities. You're looking for 5-star reviews. You're not looking 4-star, you're not looking for 3-stars, you want the best. You're looking for a very awesome experience. I think the biggest mistake that a lot of short-term rental managers go through is they're just trying to just fill it with stuff. That's not the case. If you have the ability to stock the fridge, stock the fridge. If you can leave a note for your guest, leave a note. If you could set up a system to leave nice things for your guests or send an extra message saying, we're so glad you're here, do it because that's what it's about. Jason: Yeah. There’s a really great book called The Giftology, and in this book he talks about how just little gifts and little things actually make a big difference. And that makes a big difference giving something because that just makes it novel. It makes it stand out. It makes it different. I really enjoyed the show on Netflix called Stay Here. I don't know if you've seen that. Andrew: Yes. Jason: They're making these properties ready to be really amazing experiences, and that was a big part of the show is all about this experience. People are coming to Austin and have a certain type of experience. There needs to be a barbecue and some of these things. People are going to different areas in order to have the experience of that area and kind of tying that in. They made it really hyper relevant. Any other questions people tend to ask? Andrew: I think one other question they ask is how do I stand out? How do I be different? Everybody has got a condo on Airbnb. If you go to airbnb.com right now, looking at Austin, look in your zip code, you'll see thousands. How do I stand out? I think the biggest tip I have for those people that want to know how to stand out is, what is something that is going to make your place so memorable that people will be talking about it and they’ll come back? There's a really easy way to do this by asking yourself what do people not offer that I can offer? What do they not have that I have? Some people have this huge TV, surround sound, just crazy entertainment, amazing sofa. That's good, but what is extra? I've seen some people add movie tickets or tickets to some amusement parks. I don't know how cost-effective that is, obviously, but depending on your budget versus how you can stand out, that's going to predict how you stand out. Jason: Interesting, cool. Well, how can people get a hold of you that might be interested? Andrew: This question always comes up in podcasts. I sometimes tell my cell phone number, but there's a link that actually you have, Jason, where you can get a hold of us. I'll just let you add that to the show notes. I'm going to just defer that back to you. Other than that, you could reach out to me on Facebook. Jason: Awesome. Yeah. He gave me an affiliate link, everybody, which is cool. I appreciate that. We'll put that link in the show notes. We’ll link that on the podcast episode, online on our blog as well. It's been great getting familiar with you here a little bit. I really enjoyed the different perspective on Covid about the short-term rental industry. I know that I had lots of clients in the long-term game that were able to convert several into long-term during that time period in areas that they had challenges, but that was interesting. I didn't consider the staycation part, but I think a lot of people got really anxious, cooped up inside, and were looking for just a change of scenery, even if it was nearby. That makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you coming on the show, and until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and tune into the DoorGrowShow on YouTube as well. And if you are interested in growing your property management business, we're having some really great success with our new DoorGrow and scale mastermind. We have one of our clients John [...] join in November, in the middle of the winter months, during the pandemic, in Boston. He added 125 doors in the last six months just using one of my strategies, and it cost him $0. He didn't spend any money on advertising. Anyway, reach out if you're interested. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye everyone. Andrew: See you.

Do you want to become a better investor? Appreciate and understand property managers—the unsung heroes that make better tenants and owners. Good property managers can change the world. Today’s guest is Bobby Sharma from BetterCapital, a portfolio measurement and management tool for real estate investors. Bobby started his real estate career in Riverside, California, and his first foray into real estate was through house hacking.  You’ll Learn... [02:14] House Hacking: Buy a house, but get roommates to pay most of your mortgage. [03:58] Bobby’s Background: Software developer that wanted to be in Silicon Valley. [04:47] 2010 Market Collapse: Bobby bought some homes that needed some work. [05:03] Meetup Group: Bobby started a real estate meetup group in the East Bay Area. [05:40] Becoming a landlord, buying out of state, and working with property managers. [06:18] BetterCapital: Management/measurement portfolio tool for real estate investors. [07:47] Measurement: Tracks deposits, loan balances, ROI, and equity growth. [09:00] Management: Stores documents, adds reminders, and runs math formulas.  [09:53] Real Estate Results: One of the best ways to invest, grow wealth, plan for future.  [10:35] Preferential Partners: Property managers/realtors project property performance.  [15:00] API/bank integration? Scrape data into systems or pool data w/API connection. [19:41] Three Ts: Tracking, training, and transaction.  [24:13] Education: Property managers should explain challenges to investors. [25:48] Property Managers: Unsung heroes that make better tenants and owners. Tweetables “I love my property managers. Without them, I wouldn't be successful. I totally get the importance of property management.” “We want people to see how much wealth they have created, or how much equity they've created because we want to encourage them to purchase real estate assets.” “If you look at it across a long period of time, it turns out that it's one of the best ways to invest, to grow your wealth, and to plan for your future.” “We want to provide education to make them a better investor. They will appreciate the role of the property manager a little bit more.” Resources Bobby Sharma’s Email BetterCapital AppFolio Cozy TenantCloud Rent Manager Buildium Propertyware Schwab Etrade Robinhood Redfin Yardi 1031 Exchange DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their business owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the 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. My guest today is Bobby Sharma. Welcome, Bobby Sharma. Bobby: Thank you, Jason. Jason: Bobby is with a company called BetterCapital. Bobby, you have quite an extensive real estate experience. I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, Alta Loma, California. We were touching bases for the show. You got your start in real estate somewhere in the Inland Empire. Bobby: In the Inland Empire, yeah. Riverside, California. I did what's called house hacking. Back then, there was no such term. I was 24 years old, worked in Corona, California, and lived in Riverside, California. That's how I got my start in the real estate world. Jason: Define house hacking for those that are not house hackers. Bobby: I was single. I ended up buying a house—three bedrooms, two baths—with the intention of maybe I'll get a couple of roommates, and they'll help me with the mortgage. I put an ad in the Riverside Enterprise, I don't know if you recall that newspaper. This is the late 1980s, early ‘90s. I got two roommates, great guys. They were my roommates for a long time, also single. One was a plumber, one was an X-ray tech. Long story short, they helped me pay for most of my mortgage. Not quite 100%, but most of my mortgage. Jason: Nice. All right. And that was your first foray into real estate investing. This sparks something for you. You thought of it, but your roommates, apparently, didn't. They're willing to pay rent. I lovingly refer to the Inland Empire as the armpit of California. Bobby: Absolutely. Jason: I had a good childhood growing up there. Now, I'm in Austin, Texas which I'm really enjoying. I got out just before the craziness of the pandemic, and California's gone insane. It's gone insane with all the stuff that's going on right now. Bobby, give us a little bit of history since that first experiment and give us a little background—qualify yourself. Help the audience understand your experience in real estate or surrounding the property management rental industry. Bobby: Absolutely. Thank you, Jason. Since then, I was 24 back then. Then, I had to take a break. I got married. I didn't do much in real estate. But about 10 years ago, when I saw the market really collapse—that was in 2010—I moved up to Silicon Valley. I was a software developer back in Southern California. But I always wanted to be in Silicon Valley, work for one of these technology companies that Silicon Valley is famous for. Sure enough, I worked for one of them. In 2010, I just saw the market collapse here in the Bay Area as well. I said you know what? I have some savings, so I started going out and picking up some homes that needed a little bit of work. Long story short, I also started a real estate meetup group in the Bay Area, in the East Bay. We call it the East Bay Meetup near Oakland. There weren't a lot of meetups going on, but most of them were in San Jose or San Francisco, and the people were fighting the commute. Long story short, I ended up starting a meetup in the Oakland area. Fortunately, that meetup has now become the largest real estate meetup in the Bay Area. I've got about 5000 members. We used to meet up every month. Out of that, I ended up becoming a landlord, buying out of state, and working with property managers. I love my property managers. Without them, I wouldn't be successful. I totally get the importance of property management. We own a bunch of rental properties—a lot of single-family, a lot of multifamily, but a lot of it is out of state for cash flow reasons as in cash flow in California. We ended up with several hundred doors out in the Midwest, mainly. Jason: How did BetterCapital come about, and what is it? Bobby: Just like a lot of people in my meetup group, we're active real estate investors. I have rental properties. I'm a private money lender. I have syndications. In a couple of properties out in Ohio, I do what's called seller financing. We own a bunch of rental properties, a bunch of real estate assets. I was tracking everything through Excel, but that was just not cutting it for me. You can't store documents inside of Excel. Things were scattered all over my computer, in my Gmail, and in my Dropbox—leases, insurance, tax bills, reminders, and everything. What I did was I worked with a technology partner of mine, and we put all the essential tools to track your portfolio. We're not AppFolio. We're not Cozy. We're not TenantCloud. We're not a property management software, but we talk to a bunch of property management systems. We are like a portfolio measurement and portfolio management tool for real estate investors. Jason: Explain the measurement part. Bobby: Yeah. What we do there, Jason, is if you bought a property five years ago, you're getting your checks every now and then. Your property manager is depositing the checks in your bank account. Sometimes it's not what you expected because there was a repair, or you don't know what your loan balance is on the property. What we do is we track the actual deposits in your account. We track your loan balances. We track the equity in your properties across the board, and then we give you a return on investment. What did you invest in that property, and what's your annual return on investment? What's your equity growth? The analogy I like to draw is if you log in to your Schwab, E-Trade, or Robinhood account, you can see the equity of your stocks. How much did you gain in your stock if you bought Apple five years ago? Or you bought Amazon 10 years ago, how much have you gained? We didn't have something like that for real estate investors. What we built was a tool. It has the ability to store documents. It has the ability to put reminders to track your equity growth, to see in a graphical manner how this property performed over the past year, this year, over the past five years, and then since you bought it. We have a lot of mathematical formulas that run in the background and then you can track. We want people to see how much wealth they have created, or how much equity they've created because we want to encourage them to purchase real estate assets. Jason: I would be curious if they can measure this better, and they can see the performance, do they tend to invest more? Bobby: Exactly. That's the whole idea, right? Real estate over time has so many benefits. Sometimes, especially property managers, they are so busy with day to day operations that they forget to remind the investors, the landlords, about the benefits of owning real estate. Yes, there are bumps in the road. There's going to be a turnover here and there. There's going to be an eviction here and there. But if you look at it across a long period of time, it turns out that it's one of the best ways to invest, to grow your wealth, and to plan for your future. What we want to do is we want to help property managers and realtors—those are our partners. Property management, which is your audience, as well. If we could help your current set of landlords grow their doors, maybe you bring a portfolio of new assets that they can purchase. But you can demonstrate that, look, if you bought this property with us in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in Dallas, Texas, or El Paso, Texas. If you've owned this property, here's how much equity you've gained. Here's how much your cash flow was last year. Here's how the property performed. Then, you can then have a really strong case to go back to them and say, listen, here's another similar property that is available on the market. Would you like to maybe consider adding a door or a couple of doors to your portfolio? Jason: It sounds like this is a largely effective tool for the investor. You have a way that investors can see and manage their entire portfolio. They have, say, 100 properties, or maybe they have like 20, 30 doors or something. They can see this portfolio. Then there's a way they can invite their property manager in to also see this portfolio, keep this updated, or to connect to it? Bobby: Absolutely. The property managers and realtors play a very important role. The owner can always invite their property manager to see the property in the system or communicate with that property manager. The other is that the property manager can invite the landlords to the system as well. When they upload a list of their landlords, we create what's called a preferential relationship and the exclusive preferential relationship between the property manager that loaded up the landlords in the system. That way, if you have a new portfolio that you want to maybe broadcast to your existing landlords, you can broadcast it to our platform. You can also let them know that, hey, listen. Here's a similar property that gives you the same kind of returns. It's in the same area. You may want to consider looking at purchasing this one. We want to help the property managers and the realtors have that exclusive kind of relationship with the landlords. Jason: There's this performance side of it. Maybe if an investor is looking at getting into a property, is there any forecasting that's similar? Is there a forecast inside? Like, here's a possible future roadmap of what this investment could do. Bobby: Very good question, Jason. That's on our roadmap. One of the things we want to do is forecasting or projecting the performance of a property that may be on the MLS or it may be in the portfolio of the property manager. Maybe somebody's looking to sell that portfolio. In the future, we will have what's called a forecasting calculator. You can submit that property. You can punch in all the numbers, and then the system will forecast. Within our platform, they'll be able to see the projections. We also have a way for the user to say, okay, if the application is forecasted at 3%, they can adjust that. They can say, what if it only appreciated 2%? Or if the rent appreciation was 5%, what if it was only 3%? And so on. We will give them that tool, but yes, that is on the road map. Jason: Very cool. Now, does this have an API integration? Because a lot of property managers, they are not going to want to go in and up the second system. They've got their property management back office. They're using Rent Manager, AppFolio, Buildium, or Propertyware typically. Is there a way of either scraping that data into those systems or maybe through an API connection pooling all that data in? Bobby: Very much so. We talk to the most popular property management applications out there. Most of them have APIs. If they don't have APIs, we allow the user to import an Excel file. Very easy to do. It takes about less than two minutes to set up a property in the system. Once they get really good at importing data, it takes about five minutes to import the data if they're new. But once the property is set up in the system, then it literally takes 30 seconds to update a property every month. Once a month, what are the main items that you're looking at? It's once a month, typically. Maybe sometimes twice a month. You're looking at, did your rent come in? Did you pay your mortgage? Did you pay your insurance and taxes? Did you pay your property management fees? But it's really very simple to bring that data in. We have bank integration. You can also pull the data from a bank. By the way, the property manager doesn't have to do this. The landlord can do this. The only thing the property manager has to do is load up the client list the first time and then reestablish that. The first property manager to load that landlord into the system gets the exclusive relationship. That's the first-come, first-served relationship that they have. But after that, the landlord should be able to go in and update the system. And it's very easy to do that. It's in their best interest to see the performance of their assets, right? So they do a bulk of the data entry. Jason: That exclusivity sounds really exciting (I'm sure) to the property management business owners that are listening. Because this could be something that they could upsell as a feature for their more invested investors, those that have lots of doors. It can be an upsell or a premium price point on their premium plan that they offer for the more savvy investor clients. Now, related to that—and I don't know if this is a possible future feature request or idea—but a lot of property managers love owning their brand. Would it be possible to white label this service that it's their thing if they have that? Bobby: A very good question. Our service is free to the landlords. As long as they're not over 15 or so doors, it's free. But to answer your question, we do plan for the larger property managers to have their own white-label co-branded service. Not a problem. It's available. Jason: Okay, very cool. What else can this do? Bobby: We built this platform for investors like myself. Look, I'm a big champion of real estate agents and property managers. Their jobs are often thankless. We forget how much work they do behind the scenes. Managing properties, not an easy task by any means. We are big cheerleaders and supporters of property managers, of real estate agents. At the same time, the landlords need to be able to track their system a little bit better. Our goal is, we call it the three T's. Tracking. To my meet up for the past 10 years, I've been providing education. I've been an evangelist for better real estate investing. We bring in experts on whether it's fix-and-flip, buying remote properties remotely, syndications, private money lending, asset protection for real estate investors—just about any topic that has to do with real estate. We've been teaching that in our meetup. We're going to embed that into the system. If the landlords, the property managers, and real estate agents want to become better at something, we're going to have an expert present once a month. Tracking, training, that's our second key. The third T is the transaction. If the property managers, realtors, have a deal that is what I call investor-grade that they want to send out to their members, then we want to enable transactions. We're not Redfin. We're not one of those sites. But we allow them to communicate about it. It could be a pocket listing. It could be a property manager where the landlord is retiring or doing a 1031, but he wants to sell off his portfolio without putting it on the MLS, for example. Let's figure out how to communicate within the system to the potential buyers because the people that are in the system who are happy with their performance and their relationship with their property manager, they will want to acquire more doors. Those are our three Ts—tracking, training, and transactions. Jason: It's almost like a trading platform. Is this essentially like the E-Trade for real estate investments instead of the stock portfolio? Bobby: It is. That's very much our vision. The training is there. The transaction piece is not there. But that's what we're building right now. Jason, in a nutshell, it is E-Trade for real estate because we don't compete with the AppFolios, the YardEase, the Buildiums of the world, but we partner with them. We don't want the property managers to change what they're doing. Whatever they're doing is fine. We will learn to live alongside the systems they have in place. Jason: This seems to be just such a missing piece to give investors a real tool. Most property managers are just so caught up on just at least, at the very bare minimum of giving their investors a statement or a report at the end of the month. But there's a big difference between managing as a real estate investment and just looking at the expenses for the month, the rent, and whatnot, and seeing a report. Seeing it as an actual investment, and maybe even seeing a chart to see what's actually going on. You get a sense of whether you're losing or gaining. It seems like such a simple, brilliant, missing puzzle piece in the ecosystem. Kudos to you for coming up with this. Now, are there other things like this out on the market? Bobby: I think people are finally realizing that a similar tool is needed. There are a couple of players out there. What we have done is we have taken a comprehensive approach to real estate investing. What are people interested in? They're interested, obviously, in tracking, like the performance of their assets. That's done in Excel, and it's done on a very ad hoc basis. It's not real-time, and it's a lot of keystrokes. What we want to do is we want to automate a lot of that so that once you put the property into the system, then a lot of the updates are done automatically. The other piece is nobody's providing education. I truly believe that as property managers, it's equally important to educate the investors about the challenges, right? If there are evictions, if there are turnovers, let there be some transparency. What we want to do is we want to prepare our users to become better investors. Part of that is understanding the challenges or the opportunities that property management companies and realtors face. A property manager's job is not easy at all. You have to be really thick-skinned to be a property manager. Well, let's appreciate that so that when your rent is a little bit lower than expected, or you have a turnover that's taking a little bit longer. If the investor, the landlord is better educated, maybe they won't get upset as much. They will understand, okay, you know what? This is winter in Michigan, and it's going to take a little bit longer to put a tenant into the house or the property. We want to provide education to make them a better investor. They will appreciate the role of the property manager a little bit more. Jason: That's the role of the property manager. I mean, property managers are the unsung heroes of the real estate investing category or industry. They make tenants better. They make the owners better. They hold everyone to a higher standard, and they make properties better all around. Good property managers really do change the world. I love what you're talking about how the education piece is going to improve the quality of clients. It's going to take their client from where they are now, give them a greater understanding, which most likely increases their logical need to use a property manager. They understand, oh, this is a bit more complicated than these home TV shows and reality shows made it out to be flipping a house or renting it out. This is worth touching on because I think there are some small-minded, scarcity-minded property managers. Maybe they're newer to the industry, but they're thinking, oh, no. The only reason people will need me is if they're not educated. But I think the reverse is true. The more educated a client becomes, the more they can see clearly the liabilities involved, the dangers, the potential pitfalls, the time, and they don't want to touch it. They want to let go of that piece. They want to be an investor. They don't want to be a shitty part-time property manager. Bobby: Exactly. Jason: They do that full time. Bobby: You nailed it, Jason. Your perception is right on. The better-educated, the better-informed, the landlord, the investor is, the easier it'll be to work with them versus a total newbie who thinks it's just very simple to hire a property manager. That every month, magic, a check will show up. It just doesn't work that way, especially now in the pandemic era that we're living in, it's even more challenging. This is the time when property managers need to communicate more, not less, about what's going on in the court systems, the eviction process, and so on and so forth. You're right. The members in my real estate meetup group, the ones that are well-educated about investing are the ones that are buying more rental properties. The ones that are not educated, they just bought their primary home, and they never buy a rental property. The extent of their real estate investment is their primary home. Sometimes, they outgrow that primary home. Then, they buy another home, and they keep the old one as a rental. They're not proactive in going out there and learning about rental properties and the benefits of rental properties with the tax advantages and so on. That's where our partners, real estate property managers, realtors, and educators can really come in and help out. Jason: I think the tempting mistake that a lot of software people coming into this industry is that they try to cut out the property manager. I've seen this over and over and over again. They think, well, we could replace this critical relationship and negotiation piece with software. That can't be done in the hospitality industry, it certainly can't be done in the property management industry, and it also can't really be done in the real estate industry significantly because these are relationship things. There are negotiations, there are people involved, there are feelings, there are humans, and there's a lot that software can do. But software really should be enabling and facilitating those things. Not trying to replace those things. I love that you're incorporating property managers. I think this a wise move as you're moving forward. It allows you to connect with a lot of people that have investment portfolios. And it doesn't try to cut the property manager out of that in which we end up with a whole bunch of [...] then we end up with a bunch of crappy property managers, which are just people DIY-ing their management, and not really doing a great job. Then they have software tools that are supposed to say that it makes it easy, but things have fallen through the cracks. Laws are getting broken, tenants aren't protected, owners aren't protected, and silly stuff is being done. Very cool stuff. Is there anything else you'd like the audience to know about BetterCapital before they go? If so or if not, how can they get ahold of you? And how can they try this thing out? Bobby: Thank you, Jason. First of all, it's a pleasure to be on your show. I really enjoyed it. I've watched your videos, so thank you for doing what you're doing for your community, which is your audience of property managers. You're doing a fabulous job. Thank you for that. Look, our goal is very simple. We want to serve the real estate community in general. From newbies to seasoned investors, we want to give them tools. I'll be the first one at any of my meetups. If they're buying a property remotely, they need to engage with a good property manager because it's literally a marriage between you and the property manager for the next 10, 20 years. However long you hold that asset, that's how long that relationship needs to last. It's very easy to get a hold of me. It's [email protected]. We couldn't get the dot-com, so we got the dot-us. It's bettercapital.us. Look, we're in what's called a beta version right now. We're coming out of the beta version. We'll go live very soon. But we'd love to get your feedback. We'd love to incorporate your feedback into our product. We'd love to make you a partner. We'd love to see the property management companies that choose to work with us, we want to see them succeed. We'll highlight them, we'll showcase them, and we'll work with them. Jason: Awesome. Property managers, if you're listening, this is your chance to help shape this tool to be something you really want. You can be the ultimate beta tester, and then you'll have the ultimate product that would really serve your needs. Take him up on that offer. Well, Bobby, I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you for your gracious words. I hope you have some success with this. Bobby: Thank you, Jason, and likewise. Hopefully, we'll stay connected. I'll keep you posted on our progress. Jason: Awesome. All right, check them out at bettercapital.us. For those that are somehow new to this show because you just stumbled upon it. I was going to say, it was interesting hearing, thank you for doing the podcast. I was thinking, sometimes it's a thankless job. But I'm like, wait a second, he's thanking me. But sometimes, it is a thankless job. I'm putting out free content. We pay a good chunk of change to have this podcast produced and to put out there. My team does social media marketing to get it out there as well. We do make money, don't get me wrong. We get paid really well to help property management businesses get paid really well. But if you want to do something to reciprocate—besides becoming one of our clients—make sure to like our stuff. Follow us. You can subscribe on YouTube and follow. Leave us a review on iTunes. We'd really appreciate it. If you're looking to grow your property management business, you are struggling or trapped in one of these growth sand traps, maybe around 50 or 60 doors. The solar [...] sand trap. You can't figure out how to get ahead. You don't have the revenue to hire your next person. You can't seem to get more doors than you're losing and you just stay stuck there. Or maybe you're in the second sand trap, 200-400 doors, and you just can't figure out how to get the right people to do what you want them to do. You're getting overwhelmed because your team is always asking you all the time, all the questions. You're feeling overwhelmed, and you realize you are the biggest bottleneck in your business. There is a roadmap out of that. Very easy to get out of. You can listen to some of the previous episodes. But reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to have a conversation and see if you'd be a fit, see if we could help you grow your business and be the property managers making a difference out there in the world. Until next time, everyone. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody.

As a property manager, have you considered investing in mobile home parks? Not interested? Not your thing? Some people won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. Today’s guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew’s here to convince you otherwise. He talks all about mobile home park investing as an attractive and appealing asset class. You’ll Learn... [02:00] Sticker Shock Stigma: Why investing in mobile home parks is a good idea. [02:48] Longing to be a Landlord: Leverage other people’s money to buy properties. [03:30] Yellow Letter: Knew nothing about mobile homes, but knew it was a great deal. [04:00] Shoutout to Lonnie Scruggs: Learned how to make money with mobile homes. [05:10] Temp to Forever Cashflow: Use capital to buy and manage mobile home parks. [07:07] Three reasons why to invest in mobile home parks: Highest returns out of any form of real estate. Demand for affordable housing is off the charts. Supply is limited. [12:40] Bottleneck in Business: Finding good quality deals big enough to move on. [14:54] Boots on the Ground: Third-party property management for mobile home parks. [18:58] Utility Infrastructure: Most important aspect and most expensive to replace. [20:12] Tax Shelter: Mobile home park business of depreciation and improvements. [20:57] Models: Community owners own homes vs. every home is park-owned rental.  Tweetables “Some people won't even touch it with a 10-foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class.” Andrew Keel “I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money.” Andrew Keel “The demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts.” Andrew Keel “The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country.” Andrew Keel “We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent.” Andrew Keel Resources Keel Team Deals on Wheels: How to buy, sell, and finance used mobile homes for big profits and cash flow by Lonnie Scruggs Mobile Home University (MHU) Boot Camp HUD NARPM DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the 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. Today's show is going to be all about Mobile Home Park Investing. My expert guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew, welcome. Andrew: Thank you. Jason: Andrew, before we get into this idea of Mobile Home Park Investing which, I'm guessing a lot of property managers right now are like not my thing, I'm not even going to listen to this one. I'm going to skip this episode. Before you do that, Andrew's going to convince you that it might be a good idea. Andrew: I'll give them my best shot. I think one of the reasons why I like the asset class so much is because of that stigma that a lot of people see. That initial sticker shock of the asset class. That's a huge part of why the industry is so attractive, some people won't even touch it with a 10 foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class. Jason: Right. Just a little protection built in, okay. Some of them were thinking that's kind of like having a trash heap around the property. Nobody wants to come in. Maybe it doesn't look very appealing. Before we get into that, Andrew, tell everyone about you. You've got a lot of things going on. Give us a little background of how you got into real estate investing, property management, how did all this start for you? Andrew: Yeah, sure. I started flipping houses around Central Florida and wholesaling residential contracts. I did that for about two years. I was trying to become a landlord but I started with nothing. My parents went bankrupt when I was in college, lost the house I grew up in. I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money. I initially thought, hey, I need to have a lot of money to be a landlord because I can't afford to buy these properties. That was before I learned how to use other people's money and leverage other tools. I started flipping houses and I got a deal through a yellow letter that I mailed out on two mobile homes in Ocala, Florida. That's just a couple of hours north of where I live in Orlando. These were nice, vinyl-sided, single roof homes that were manufactured in the mid-1990s. I could buy both of these for $2200 cash. I was like I don't know anything about mobile homes but this is a great deal. I just knew it. I had two titles, I left that day. I gave them the cash. I came home and got on YouTube. I typed in how to make money with mobile homes? I was like I don't know, there's got to be a way to make some cash off these things. I came across a guy named Lonnie Scruggs. He used to teach this class, and he has a book called Deals on Wheels. It talked about buying mobile homes, fixing them up, and selling them on contract to an end buyer. That's exactly what I did with those two mobile homes. I was able to fix them up, just clean them up basically. Some new paint and some new flooring. I sold them for $3000 down and $250 a month for five years. I did that on both of them and I only paid $2200 cash for both. I was like wow! This is a great model. It's not forever cash—that was my end goal—but this is great, temporary cash. I ended up doing that 19 more times and bought individual mobile homes through various parks throughout Central Florida. I sold them on contract. After doing that, I met some mobile home park owners. Again, I had this idea in my head that you need to be extremely wealthy to buy mobile home parks—the whole community. Through talking with them, they gave me that epiphany of using other people's money. I could be the sweat equity that would manage the properties. That was a huge Aha! moment for me. I immediately became glued to the asset class, read every book, went to every seminar, went to the MHU Bootcamp a few times, and just became a sponge for the asset class. That was a defining moment for me—getting into that industry. After I went to one of the bootcamps, I met a passive investor there that was just looking to invest and didn't want anything to do with the operations. He happened to be in the finance industry and worked really long hours but had a ton of cash that he wanted to deploy into this asset class. He partnered with me, and we bought the first mobile home park. It ended up being a really huge success. After that, we ended up buying four more communities since that one went so well. Since then, I have brought on more investors from friends and family to others outside of that. We do syndications now. We aggregate money from a pool of investors and then purchase these assets into a single purpose LLC. It's been a very awesome ride. It's been exciting. It's been blood, sweat, and tears into this at this point. Now, we're at 23 communities which is amazing and a blessing. We have a ton of people that work for us now and are awesome members of our team. That's a little about how I got into where I am today. Jason: You never just woke up when you were a kid and said I want to grow up to do mobile home park investing. Andrew: No, that's not how it went at all. I just kind of fell into this but I believe mobile home parks are a mode of investment for a few reasons. One of those that's really important is it has the highest returns out of any form of real estate. Right away, I was attracted to it. Number two, that makes it that much better, the demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts. I think you can talk to any real estate expert and they would tell you that. Number three which is the main reason, number one, put it on the top of your list of why mobile home parks are a great asset class to invest in is because the supply is limited. Any other asset class whether it's self storage, multifamily, whatever, it's easier to develop those and get those approved. Where mobile home parks have this stigma, there's this not in my backyard initiative where people don't want a mobile home park built right next to their subdivision. It's very hard to get zoning approved for a new mobile home park development. Number two, from an economic standpoint, mobile home parks are loss leaders for municipalities. On average, they cost around $11,000 a year to put a child through public schooling with the cost of the school, the teachers, et cetera. In mobile homes, the owners of the mobile homes, they only pay maybe $50-$100 a year in their personal property taxes on their mobile home that they pay at the DMV just like you would pay taxes on your vehicle, or both, or so forth. The taxes are very low, but say a family of four that has two kids in elementary school, that would be a huge loss to the local municipality every year for having that family in their municipality. That's a big reason, the supply is shrinking. On average, there's 10 mobile home parks across the country that are torn down every year. It's continuing, it's getting more than that. More and more, they're torn down and put into better land uses for multifamily and whatnot. It's very rare, if any at all, are being developed from the ground up. It's very interesting from a supply standpoint. Jason: Are you involved in getting them developed? Andrew: I'm not. There's lower hanging fruit in communities that are already established, to be honest. It's less expensive to go in and fix the existing infrastructure. The majority of mobile home parks, I think 80% of them, are owned by my mom and pop owners. It's not an institutionalized asset class like multifamily and self storage. With that, you're able to come in and increase value very quickly through increasing that operating income, whether that's through modest rent increases, billing back utilities, increasing the occupancy. A lot of these communities have been owned by a mom and pop for 30-40 years. They have a lot of equity. A lot of these are paid off pretty clear. With that, we've been able to acquire five communities with stellar financing because they're able to be more flexible since they don't have some of the restrictions that a bank would have on a mortgage. It's a very exciting asset class. It's new to a lot of people but it's definitely a mode of investment. It's not something that you want to go to the country club and brag to your friends about. It is also very unique in that aspect because that stigma does keep some investors out of it and keeps cap rates significantly higher. Jason: Okay, okay. The first thing you mentioned is it has the highest returns. Qualify that a little bit, compare it maybe just a little bit, let's back this up. Some people listening, maybe their ears perked up when they heard that. Andrew: Yeah. If you're familiar with commercial real estate, properties are valued off of their income, there's the income model. Cap rates for mobile home communities are typically between 8% or 12%. If you compare that to multifamily, you're not able to get as big of a spread between the interest rate you're paying on your loan and the cap rate that you're purchasing the property for. The cap rate is the net operating income divided by the purchase price, for those of you who aren't familiar with that. Basically, we aim to get at least a 3.0 spread between our interest rate that our loan we have in the community, and the cap rate that we're paying. If we're able to create that Delta, we can offer our investors 20% cash on cash return annually. Jason: All right, okay. I’m taking notes. If you can offer investors that, it's not too difficult to get investors you're funding? Andrew: Yeah. We've been very fortunate to have a lot of people reaching out to invest with us. At this point, I would say the bottleneck in our business is finding good quality deals that are big enough to move the needle. There's a lot of communities that are between 50 and 100 lots that are a good place to play in. The communities that are bigger than that offer even more economies of scale in terms of expenses versus income. Those are the ones that are getting eaten up by institutional buyers at this point. Some of the REITs, some of the large private equity firms, are now playing in this space because they've seen high returns. They know supply is limited and demand is off the charts. They're going after those larger properties. Those are harder for us to compete with because those cap rates are getting compressed. Jason: This is just in your local market that you're willing to work and target? Is that correct? Andrew: We have communities all the way from Georgia to North Dakota, all the way down to Tennessee, and all the way across Pennsylvania. We're right in the center for the most part—the center of the United States. We did that for a couple of reasons, it was mainly strategy. Hurricanes primarily don't go across the midwest. However, there was a polar vortex last year, that was absolutely crazy. Hurricanes, it's protected against those. The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country. For the most part, we aim to purchase communities in the middle of the United States. Jason: Got it. How difficult is it for somebody that's currently focused on single family residential, or maybe they're doing commercial, or maybe they're doing multifamily, to add this in as another business—basically another arm of their business and to work on this? Andrew: That's a great question. First off, I think we should say that third party property management for mobile homes communities, that's like across the nation, it's basically unheard of. There's like two or three companies that do it and they're not doing it at a high level. It's very tough because it is management intensive. Even though a lot of these communities don't own the mobile homes themselves, they just own the dirt underneath them, your maintenance costs less. There's just other reasons why it's a little bit difficult to manage these communities on a large scale because of the turnover and things like that that do happen. Jason: You're managing just the parks, you're not managing individual rental properties. Andrew: Correct. We get a lot of rent off the ground. Now, as a necessary evil of the business, when a home goes up for sale or say we come to own one of these homes, we have to then sell it to the tenant for them to become a tenant-owned resident and rent out the land to them. There's probably about 20% of our total units that are homes that we've sold to the tenant on contract. They're still responsible for maintenance but it's sold to them like a rent credit program, is what we call it, where they're making payments monthly to then pay off the home. Then, eventually, they will just pay lot rent. Jason: We didn't say this at the beginning, we probably should qualify you a little bit more by saying how many units are you over right now? How many are under management? Andrew: We are at 1497 units right now. That's across 23 parks. Jason: All right. How critical it is to have boots on the ground in all of these 23 locations? Andrew: It's paramount, in my opinion. We have an onsite manager at every single location. That's typically a resident that had the nicest home, we converted them into an onsite manager. All they are is just basically an eyes and ears person that communicates with our corporate office. It keeps us abreast of what's going on in the community. That has been really important for us to just be able to understand what's going on. Typically, we go after someone that has a fixed income like Social Security and they have one of the nicest homes in the communities. They're retired and they're home. They're like the community watchdog. They keep us up to date on what's going on. Then, our corporate office which we have 14 corporate offices, offsite management employees, handles everything from the financials, to the project management, to collections, to bookkeeping, et cetera. Jason: Got it. These are all parks that you have some sort of an ownership in, correct? Andrew: Correct. We only manage parks that we have ownership in right now. Jason: Got it, okay. For those listening, if somebody has a property management business, maybe they're a real estate investor and they're wanting to get into this, what advice would you give as the first initial step? They're looking around. They notice there's a mobile home park or two that probably could use a little love. Maybe the mom and pop owners would be willing to have a conversation. What's the first step that you think they need to be aware of? What knowledge do they need to gain first? Andrew: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say you need to go and get educated. You need to go to the MHU Bootcamp that's offered by Frank and Dave. That's like the industry leading educational platform that teaches everything from how to find deals, how to value them, and how to manage them. Within that class, you'll learn about the utility infrastructure. The utility infrastructure is by far the most important aspect of these communities because that's the most expensive to replace. For example, a community that's on the city water or the city sewer is more attractive because there's less risk on that half. Versus a community that's on a well and septic. A well and septic, there's a lot more testing involved. Now, you're servicing a community that is using that water supply. You have to make sure that there's certain chlorine, certain tests done on a consistent basis, to manage that water system. The same thing if you're on a septic or waste water treatment plant. Wastewater treatment plant can cause $500,000 to replace. You have to make sure that they're maintained on a high level. If they're not, you could be front of the bill for a very expensive project. Jason: A lot of what makes a mobile home park work is underground is what you're saying? Andrew: Correct. Jason: Okay. It's not just land, there's infrastructure that's really critical underneath. Andrew: Very, very, critical. Those are all items you're able to depreciate and we love that part of the business because mobile home parks are also a known tax shelter because of those improvements. Jason: Interesting. You said that Frank and Dave over MHU? Andrew: M as in Mary, H as in Harry. Mobile Home University. Jason: Got it, all right. I thought I would make sure. Cool. What else should they know about mobile home park investing that we haven't covered so far? Andrew: I'll just give a vague overview of it. There's a model where the community owners will own all of the homes and basically operate it as a flat apartment community where every home is a park-owned rental. That is not the model that we follow. We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent. There's a couple of reasons. Obviously, repairs and maintenance would be a lot less. Your expenses will be a lot less. Also, your turnover on a tenant-owned home unit is approximately 4%-5% annually where the turnover on a park owned home unit is closer to 50% annually. From a management side of things, if you have a tenant-owned home community, you're going to spend less time dealing with turnover compared to a park owned home community. There's communities out there that have done both ways but we prefer the tenant-owned home model. In regards to mobile home park investing, it is affordable housing. If you're familiar with affordable housing in multifamily, HUD housing, or things like that, you can deal with a lot of the same residence but there's also different classes just like in any asset class where there's very high end mobile home communities that have swimming pools, community centers, three golf courses. Then, there's communities on the lower end that are just not taken care of very well. The homes are really close together, there's a lot of older homes. We try to aim right at the middle. We're looking at the C class parks that maybe we can bump up into a B. That's typically where we play. Jason: Got it. All right. For those that heard all of this and still thought there's no way I'm going to touch this. There's no way I'm going to go to MHU. I don't want to do any of this stuff, but those returns sound pretty sweet. Maybe I should talk to Andrew. Maybe there's a mom and pop that's listening, they're like you know what? I'm tired of this garbage. I'm tired of dealing with this place. I want out. It's time we retire from running this mobile home park. They're like maybe we can have a conversation with Andrew. Who are the people that you're wanting to get in touch with you? Whether it's investors, whether it's potential people that can create a deal with you? What are you interested in? Andrew: All of the above. If there's a wholesaler that comes across a mobile home park and they want to assign it, or it's a property manager, or maybe it's someone that wants to partner on their first deal because they want to learn the operations before just jumping in with two feet. All of them should reach out to me. My website is keelteam.com. I'd be happy to chat with you. I love talking about mobile home parks, you won't have to pull my leg too hard to go on the phone with me. Jason: I could tell. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on and sharing a little bit about mobile home park investing, helping open my audience’s eyes to that just a little bit. Maybe you'll get a few phone calls, maybe some people will get into this. Who knows? Maybe there'll be some sort of a hybrid where deals even workout. Are you looking at expanding outside the midwest at all? Andrew: Yeah, we've looked at some deals in many different areas. Not in California but outside of that state we've looked at several deals. You have to hit a certain number of units for it to make sense for it to go to a new market. You don't just want to go after a 40 lot mobile home park in Idaho when the rest of your communities are all in Ohio or Pennsylvania. We definitely looked at other places. I've JV'ed with people that brought me a deal that they didn't have any money but they just found this great deal. I found things like that and I'm totally open to sharing what I know on the operation side to others that bring a deal to the table. Jason: Awesome. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on the show. I wish you continued success. Andrew: Jason. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you having me on the DoorGrow Show. Jason: All right, cool. Make sure you reach out to Andrew if any of this sounds interesting, you are curious about this in working with him, or getting into it yourself. That was keelteam.com. If you're looking at figuring out how to grow your property management business, I had so many calls this week from new clients that have come onboard with us. There's this common challenge that property managers tend to deal with at various stages. I've noticed that you've got that first sandtrap at about 50, 60 doors in the single family residential space where you're dealing with how do I start to get ahead? How do I create some leverage in this business so I'm not just trapped as a solopreneur here forever? How do I start getting more doors than I'm losing so I'm not just breaking even every year in terms of growth? If you're dealing with any of those kinds of challenges, we're really going to help you break through that initial barrier. Then, there's that second sandtrap which is usually if you can break in a healthy way past 100 doors, if you haven't done that yet, talk to us. If you break past 100 doors in a healthy fashion, which means you're not just a real estate broker. That's really healthy and you've got this unhealthy property management business on the side, we can help you with that too. You do it in a healthy fashion. Then, you'll end up usually in the 200-400 door category and then you get stuck. This is where I see a lot of property managers stuck in NARPM. A lot of property managers are struggling. There are specific things that you need to break free from that sandtrap. Usually, the challenge is they're not getting the right thing members. They're not able to retain team members for a long time. They're trying to build and systemize the business, build a team. They just don't have a business that's scalable. Even if it were fed a lot of potential business, or a lot of deals, or a lot of leads, once they approach that 400 or maybe up to 500 units space, the business owners feel really stressed out. They built a team usually the way a solopreneur thinks. They built a business based on what the business needs, not on what the business owner needs to lower their pressure noises through the roof. Every person that they have on their team is coming to them for everything and asking questions. First, it feels really exciting when you're small. As you scale and as you build, it feels really suffocating. You become the biggest bottleneck in the business. If you're experiencing that, then reach out. We would love to have a conversation so that we can help you break past that second sandtrap as well. Anyway, I'm Jason Hull over at DoorGrow. Make sure you also check us out. We've been really pumping up Instagram and getting going. Follow us on Instagram, it's just @doorgrow. Make sure you get into our community at the DoorGrow Club Facebook group. You can go to the DoorGrow Club. Just go to doorgrowclub.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

The next time you play golf on company time make sure insights into how you spend your time on the job out in the field is not being tracked. Today’s guest is Barima Kwarteng from Timeero, a GPS app that reduces overhead costs and streamlines time tracking. Basically, Timeero started to prevent golf (at least on company time) because it’s expensive!  You’ll Learn... [01:52] Barima’s Background: Originally from Ghana in West Africa, but attended BYU. [02:35] Timeero: Some employees work in the field. How do they spend their time? [03:01] Drunk Coworker Confesses: On company time, they play golf on Fridays. [03:35] Software not from Scratch: Acquired cold base from Texas cop and rebuilt it. [05:00] Theft Prevention: Timeero tracks time, location, mileage, and much more. [06:10] Screenshot Safety: Pressure to prove work is being done to get paid. [06:58] Big Brother? Find out if employees are being accountable or taking advantage. [07:22] Bottom Line: Companies save 5-15% payroll costs by tracking employees’ time. [08:16] COVID Cash Crunch: Tighten belt to offload employees not pulling their weight. [10:00] Technology and Time Management: Paper timecards/sheets take too much time. [12:07] Timeero: How the Web application works after downloading app on smartphone. [15:06] Geofence: Reminder to clock in and clock out as soon as you arrive/leave work. [16:36] Better Culture within Business: Nobody likes to be micromanaged. Trust me. [20:49] More Money? Most are more motivated by recognition than monetary benefits. [22:05] Simplicity vs. Tech-Savvy: Get people to use new things or do things differently. [24:10] Why is Timeero different from other apps? Gives outside team more insights. [30:42] ROI: Timeero is $5 per user per month, plus $10 base fee for business account. Tweetables “If golf is helping the bottom line and helping you get revenue, great, but otherwise…” Jason Hull “People right off the bat think, ‘Oh, it has a little big brother feel to it. What we're seeing is, it's actually helping the bottom line in terms of payroll.” Barima Kwarteng “Technology saves you a lot of time. As a business owner, you can dedicate those hours or time to something more beneficial.” Barima Kwarteng “The app only tracks time and movement while you're clocked in. The moment you clock out, it stops tracking you because we really value privacy.” Barima Kwarteng “It helps people track time more efficiently and more accurately.” Barima Kwarteng Resources Timeero Brigham Young University (BYU) DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and the owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the 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. My guest today, I'm hanging out with Barima Kwarteng. Did I say it right? Barima: I think you got that right more than most people. Jason: Okay, awesome. Barima has a company called Timeero. Before we get into that, I'm excited to hear a little bit about this. I was checking out your landing page for your software. It looks like it's kind of unique with the GPS stuff and some of those kinds of things. Before we get into that, why don't you introduce yourself to those listening or watching this later? Just help them understand what brought you to Timeero, and share a little bit about your entrepreneurial background here. Barima: Yeah, absolutely. I'm originally from Ghana, a country in West Africa. I'm not sure if many of you listeners know where that is. I originally came to school out here in the US at BYU. At BYU, I was able to learn a little bit more about entrepreneurship and starting businesses. It's something I've always wanted to be able to do. That opportunity presented itself with Timeero. The whole idea behind Timeero was that many businesses out there have employees out in the field. They have teams out in the field. They want to have a little bit more insight into how their employees or team members spend their time. Timeero provides you that opportunity to be able to have more insights into how your outsight spends their time. One of the events that really triggered this was I have a friend who owns a construction company. His employees, every Friday, they would bring their golf clubs and check it in their truck. On company time, they will play golf on Friday. The company didn't know about this. They only found out during a company party that they were playing golf on company time. One of the employees was drunk and finally spilled out the secret about what they were doing. He needed a solution to be able to track again and have insights into where his employees were spending their time. Working with him, that was how the whole idea was born. I initially did not build it from scratch. There was a company out in Texas that the owner of the company wanted to sell his software. I remember thinking to myself, you know what, this is what Brad wants. This is the kind of solution he needs. I actually ended up acquiring the initial cold base from this guy out in Texas. He was a cop. He just wanted to get rid of it and focus on something else. What we ended up doing was rebuilding the whole system again and making them much better. That's a little bit about how we got started on Timeero. Jason: Timeero started to prevent golf, basically. Barima: I have a problem with people playing golf. When you're doing it on company time or when you're playing when you're not supposed to be playing, it gets pretty expensive. We’re on company time. Jason: Yeah. If golf is helping the bottom line and helping you get revenue, great, but otherwise... Barima: If it's helping the bottom line, yeah. Exactly. Jason: Okay. Barima: Sometimes, it feels like it has a big brother feel to it, but you'll be surprised in many ways that people use it. It tracks time, location, mileage, and a whole lot of things. Jason: My company's virtual. One of the challenges I’ve noticed over the last decade or so that I've been running a virtual team is you sometimes get people that are not full of integrity. They come into the business, you think they're going to do a good job. If there isn't a level of accountability that needs to be in the business, people sometimes will take advantage of that. The challenge is that I've had people stealing time from me in the past. Eventually, you find out. Eventually, you figure out they're not getting stuff done and you're paying for that time. That's a challenge people deal with. It's theft in the business. It sounds like we're talking about preventing theft. One of the side effects I've noticed in having time tracking and time software for some of the team members, contractors, or people that I hire, some of these do screenshots, some of these do things like that. It's created safety for my team members or as contractors as well. One of the challenges a lot of contractors deal with is they have to prove that they're doing something and they feel that pressure. It could very easily be somebody that hired them to say I don't think you did anything, or I don't think you did enough. I don't want to pay you. There's also the issue of if there are interactions or dealings with customers, so having accurate records protects the customer, it protects the employer, the team member, and it protects entrepreneurs, the CEO, or the boss of the company. I think people forget that and they sometimes like to focus on it feels so big brother. I generally found that I only get that feedback from people that want to not have accountability. Barima: I think you hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what we're seeing as well. There are a whole lot of uses for it. Generally, people right off the bat think, oh, it has a little big brother feel to it. What we're seeing is it's actually helping the bottom line in terms of payroll as well. One of the things I haven't really mentioned is just with time theft, it's natural for us to have our times. I may come up to you and say I work from 8:00 AM-5:00 PM. The reality is I probably worked 8:13 AM until 4:42 PM. Five minutes, 10 minutes here and there start to add up all the time. It starts to affect the bottom line. We're seeing companies saving anywhere from 5%-15% payroll cost by just having a system in place to help them accurately track more time and also have more insights as to where the employees are spending their time. That's one of the few statements that we're giving businesses that you’d also have to [...]. Jason: I think one positive advantage that has come from the whole coronavirus, COVID-19 epidemic is in March, everybody sort of experienced the significant cash crunch—most businesses did—and they had to tighten their belt. What we saw is a lot of businesses laying people off, a lot of property managers were tightening the belt because they worried rent wasn't going to come in. That created this massive mass cleanse of wait, bloat, and fluff inside of companies. There was just this offloading of that. That makes people really conscious. I think people, more so now than ever, are really conscious of the fact that a 5%-15% reduction in payroll cost is significant because that's typically the largest expense in a business. That could be a significant reduction in expenses, which means you have a lot more cash flow health. If cash flow goes into the business, the business is dead. The second cash flow is gone, the business is done, unless you get loans or something to squeeze out and get a little free cash available. Cash flow is king in a business, and payroll is going to directly impact that. Barima: Right. I think you're spot-on on about that. What the coronavirus and everything going on, as a business owner, your natural instinct is to try to cut down costs. Like you mentioned, most people may be looking to lay off people. A lot of times, as business owners, we’re so focused on bringing in more business. How do I increase my revenue? It also makes sense to look at your bottom line and figure out, how do I cut down costs using technology? I think it's easily forgotten by a lot of team leaders or business owners. In figuring out how to cut down on costs using technology, you can dramatically cut down on costs and help improve your bottom line. In terms of time management, let's just focus on time management. There are a lot of companies out there who still use paper timesheets, they're having their employees to text in their time, or using some form of [...] system. What we're not even talking about is the amount of time that's involved in processing your payroll. First of all, your employees may not be turning in their timecards on time. Depending on how often you’re running payroll, you may be finding out two weeks later how many hours they may have spent on a job. They may not have the greatest handwriting and you're spending a lot of time trying to figure that out. Or you may have to open a call and try to get everyone to turn in their time card in a timely fashion. Today is Friday. The last thing you wanted to do is to spend your Friday afternoon or evening trying to chase people for their timecards. If you're using a system like Timeero, you don't have to sit around and wait for any of that. We're talking about cutting the amount of hours anywhere from 30 minutes to even 5 hours for some companies or more to minutes or even seconds. You can just pull up a report of how many hours have been worked, how much mileage, and have insights to where they've been. Technology saves you a lot of time. As a business owner, you can dedicate those hours or time to something more beneficial. It might be spending more time with your family or other areas of your business. It definitely does help save you a lot of time and money as well. Jason: Okay. We talked about some of the benefits of saving time. Let's talk a little bit about how it works. Say, a property management business owner has some boots on the ground, has an agent or a person at the field, a property manager, and they're doing showings. They're going to open up a property for somebody in getting a lease handle. They're moving around and doing stuff. But they're not sure if this person is going and just picking up the gates in school, hanging out and watching Netflix for an hour here. They want to verify this, how does this software work? Barima: The way it works is that you have your web application, which you can run on an iPad or a normal desktop machine. Your employees are going to have their smartphone. We have mobile apps that they can download on their smartphones. Once they have the app on their smartphone, they can log in using the credentials that they’ve been assigned. Whenever you're ready to start with it, let's say we'll start at 8:00 AM for me. I come in, I punch in, and it starts tracking my time, my location, and my mileage. Whenever I travel around it logs my positions. Let's say I clock in and decide to drive off to go play golf. Now Jason is going to come in and see that I'm at a golf course. That's probably where I'm not supposed to be—at a golf course. You're going to see a trail path of where every single employee has been while they're on the clock. Managers can review that and ask questions. Why were you at the golf course? Or were you supposed to be there in the first place? Jason: For the manager that's looking in the app—managing their staff that is tracking their time—they will see a map for this? Barima: They will see a map, exactly. There's a Google map. For every time entry, there's a Google map that shows your trail path of where you’ve been while you were on the clock. Again, the app only tracks time and movement while you're clocked in. The moment you clock out, it stops tracking you because we really value privacy. We're not interested in knowing what you were doing off the clock. It's only while you're in the clock that it tracks your trail path, where you've been, and any information that’s needed Jason: Great. If they have a maintenance person going around doing maintenance in some properties, they can say, hey, this tenant called me. They said you haven't shown up yet. Where are you at? Oh, yeah, I'm on my way. You check and they're at the golf course. I know that's not the case. It creates some accountability, which I think lessens the temptation for people to lie, steal, and do things. It also creates more accuracy because they know that their location is being entered in. Now, say somebody forgets to clock out. They go do an errand at the grocery store. They're like, oh, I forgot to do that. Are they able to edit their time entry to remove that portion and eliminate that pin from the map? Barima: Absolutely. You're able to go edit your time entries and change all of that. One of the things we're doing or some of the few things we've got is to make sure we can remind people to clock out as well. Not just clock in, but also to clock out. You can set a reminder. For instance, we use a technology called geofence. We can set a geofence around your work area. The moment you leave your work area, it notifies you to clock out because you probably may have forgotten to clock out, you're leaving off for lunch, or leaving off. The other thing we're coming out with is an automatic clock in and clock out. Whenever you arrive at the job site, it automatically clocks you in. When you leave, it also automatically clocks you out. These are optional settings you can turn on and off. Again, it helps people track time more efficiently and more accurately. Now, you don't have to worry about forgetting to clock in and out. It just handles that for you if you turn on those options. Jason: Yes. I'm a big fan of creating or implementing systems that can do the job of managing certain pieces rather than micromanaging your team. I love when information's pushed to me instead of me having to go and ask them, and get it, or find out, or that sort of thing is. You may want to know, as a boss, what were you [...]. What were you doing this time? If you go and ask them all the time, if they are doing the right thing, they're going to feel invaded. They're going to feel like you're not trusting them. Having a system like this, I can see the advantage in being able to check and say okay. It can alleviate those fears you have in the back of your mind. Oh, they were on the job site. They were doing this job at this property. They were in the office this time while I was on vacation when I checked. It just allows you to lower that pressure, those noises, those fears, and those doubts. And it allows you to facilitate greater trust in your team. Barima: Absolutely. Speaking of micromanaging, I'm not a micromanager at all. I don't like environments where people feel micromanaged. Sometimes using the software may come off as micromanaging. One of the things we do is we like to train our users to have a better culture within your businesses, within your companies. Foster an environment where people feel trusted. And also, using tools like this to foster more accountability. You can have a great accountability system without micromanaging people. Sometimes, people don't think those two things go together. You can have good technology in place, make sure people are held accountable, but then also avoid micromanaging people. Jason: Yeah. This is an ironic thing in business or some people think these things don't go together. But really, when you create really good accountability systems inside your business, first of all, it's going to prevent the hiders or the people that aren't real believers in you or in your business from being able to get away with theft, stealing time, or being lazy. These are the team members we sometimes have in business that just want to leave for the weekend, complain about their boss, and they hate their job. None of us want those people on our team. Ultimately, we want people that are believers, people that buy into our vision, that want to enact the change that our business' mission is focused on. Those are the people that we want working for us—people that are inspired rather than controlled. What I found is that those types of people love accountability systems because they get recognized. They want recognition. But when you're hiding, when you're trying to steal, when you're trying to do as little work as possible, and just get a paycheck, you don't want accountability or recognition. You just want to fly below the radar. For my team members, we have a weekly commitment meeting. We show up and everybody says what they got done that week based on what they committed to doing in the previous week and what they didn't. My team members love being able to say, I got these things done. Everybody can see it. Great job you got these things done. Nobody wants to be the person that has a bunch of things that are in the red that they didn't accomplish, that are nos on the to-do list and want to feel like the weakest link. It creates a performance culture in which there's positive peer pressure. I could see how some people would resent this system and some people would respond well to it. Ultimately, as entrepreneurs, we want those that respond well to accountability and they love the recognition. The big mistake we make a lot as entrepreneurs is we think that they just want more money. We think they want bonuses. That's going to incentivize their behavior. Most people, besides entrepreneurs and salespeople, are more motivated by recognition than they are by increasing monetary benefits. Barima: I totally agree with that. It's very easy to think money motivates. Not everyone is solely motivated by money. Money helps but there are so many other ways to motivate people. It comes down to figuring out what each person on your team values. Recognition is one of them. It really, really, helps to help people feel recognized. It helps them feel that a good job is very important. There are many ways to motivate people outside of money. I've seen it go both ways where money motivates people. Actually, I've also seen it not motivate people. You just never know. It's up to you, as the leader, to figure out what motivates each and every single person. Also, like you've mentioned, there are some people who just are not ready to work. They will be the ones complaining about accountability systems, and they will be trying to figure out ways to beat the system. With those people who fall in that bucket, you have to forego different ways to work with them. Jason: Now, when it comes to technology, the biggest challenge with the team is adoption, which means getting them to use it. This is usually the biggest challenge with software is getting people to use a new thing or do things in a new way. What's your experience with people being onboarded into Timeero and getting their team members to use this? Barima: It's been on a wide spectrum. Overall, one of the big reasons why people go with us is because of simplicity. We put a lot of effort into making sure that our software is very easy and very simple to use. We know that not everyone is very tech-savvy. We really invest a lot into the design. Simplicity is always at the very top of what really shapes the design. When it comes to onboarding, it's very simple. We try to make the process extremely simple so that with a few clicks or a few taps you’re in the system and you're starting to log hours without very much help. We also invest in a lot of our customer support. You can get on the phone with us and talk with us. You can get on live chat. We’re happy to do a video call and help anyone get onboarded. There are few players out in the space. In software in general, it's a well-known fact that it's not that easy to get support when you need it. Sometimes, people will put you through an email system and you may hear back from them several days after. With us, we really invested a lot in our customer support, so you can get on the phone with us in the live chat. I can tell you, Jason, once you put out your request, you can expect to hear from us within 10 minutes. That's it if you're within our core hours of the business. We really take that. It's a high priority for us in giving people the support they need. Jason: You mentioned that there's a lot of other apps in the time tracking space. Customer service and being intuitive are two areas in which you stand out. What are some other features or benefits we haven't touched on yet? Or is there anything else that leans people to using your software to do this rather than whatever they're comfortable already or that they're using currently? Barima: When it comes to time tracking, time tracking has been around for a long time. You have companies that have been doing this for over 30 years or probably even longer. It's a very saturated space. There are so many time tracking apps out there. Some of them are free and some of them are paid as well. Where we separate ourselves from the gazillion apps out there we are mostly focused on helping you give your outside team more insights, having more insights into how your outside team is spending their time. We have a lot of property management companies that use us. Also, we help you track mileage. There are few apps out there. I can only probably count two apps I know that probably do that—track your mileage and track your time. Many companies will want to track your mileage. Perhaps you reimburse employees for mileage driven as well. They may probably be paying also for a separate time tracking app with GPS tracking capabilities. What we've done is we’ve matched those two. You don't even have to pay for two separate apps. You get time tracking, your mileage tracking. You're also getting scheduling and your host of other things we want to come up with like expense tracking as well. We've been able to mash all of these different technologies. It's very appealing to a lot of property management companies, businesses, and even property managers with one or two employees will use us. It just saves them a ton of time. As a business owner, you're focused on trying to grow your business. The last thing you want to be doing is trying to chase paper timecards, figuring out mileage, and whatnot. With technology, you're able to do all of these very, very quickly, and much more easily. Your time can be focused on what's supposed to be important. There are several things we do: time tracking, mileage, GPS tracking, scheduling, and a few other things. Again, with our software, you have a lot more insight into how your outside team is spending their time. Jason: Awesome, that's great. There's a lot of property management business owners that have property managers that are spending some time in the office, some time out in the field. They'll be able to assess whether they're out, in, or not. They'll be able to see how much time they’re spending at the office. They'll be able to see that they are going to the properties at the times they're supposed to. I'm sure every property management business owner has heard, I showed up for the showing and nobody was there. Usually, the assumption is this tenant is totally out there. But it may be the case that you have team members that are not really measuring up, being fully honest, or doing the things that you need them to do. That level of accountability is going to keep them at that high level. Barima: Right, exactly. You probably end up getting a bad review from a customer that says, They never showed up. As a business owner, you can go to their system and say, Where was John at 3:00 PM on this day? It will pull up that system and tell you. Jason: Yeah. If they were there, then that could be your comment on that review online. We use GPS technology to track. That's a selling point. That's a feature. We use GPS technology to track each of our team members that are out in the field, and this team member showed up at 2:58 PM—two minutes before and was there. We have this verified. You have facts and data. This will protect you legally in certain legal disputes. You'll be able to verify the things where people were in certain places when they were supposed to be. If you were supposed to be there to deal with a constable, an eviction, or a policeman. Any of these things, there'll be a record that somebody was there at that time stated and you'll have history. If you end up in a courtroom, some sort of a challenge, or a discrepancy with an owner or a tenant, you've got verification. You've got validation from a third party showing that there is a GPS time tracking being done. Barima: Absolutely. Jason, it's very interesting with my experience just talking with different business owners. What I'm seeing is the businesses that are investing in technology are the ones starting to get ahead. Over time, they'll start to get ahead because it just gives you such a huge advantage. It's tremendous the amount of advantage that technology just gives you. Sometimes, you have some business owners that just want to stick with the old way of doing things because that's what they're used to and it works. Yes, it might work, but your competition is just getting ahead, miles ahead of you just because you're investing in the right technology. The ROI that you're getting from using technology is so much bigger than what you're paying for. Jason: Yeah. You're saying that this can save people on average between 5%-15% in payroll? Barima: Exactly. 5%-15% of payroll. That's just the payroll side of it. Now, there's the human. We're not even talking about your time spent trying to do payroll and capture people's times. We haven't also talked about the errors that happen from getting the payroll log. The last thing you want to do is overcompensating people or under-compensating them. Again, you use technology that takes care of that. You don't have to spend your time worrying about, did I end up overpaying this person or did I underpay them? We're talking about tremendous time-saving costs as well. Jason: Okay. I'm looking at your website. The pricing looks really affordable. Let's just do some quick math for property managers here. Say, you've got one team member. They’re maybe between $15-$20 an hour. They're full time. You've got one team member full time. That could be anywhere from $3000-$4000 a month that they're spending on this person. 5% of $3000 is $150. Your software is not going to cost them $150 a month. Not even close. Even if it just helps them a little bit, it sounds like it can easily pay for itself right out the gate just by reducing a little bit of extra fat that people are padding accidentally on to their timesheets. Barima: Absolutely. It pays for itself right out of the gate. Again, looking at the ROI, you were paying this amount of money and you're saving this amount of money by using our system. It pays itself off right away. In a lot of ways, you can say it's a no-brainer to use that. Jason: All right. Is there anything else we're missing? Barima: Our pricing is very simple. It's $5 per user per month. It doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. In the future, we'll eventually introduce extra pricing tiers as we add more technology as well. We do have a $10 base fee for your accounts. The $10 base fee just covers your whole company account. Let's say you have 10 employees in your company. You're going to pay 10 times your $5, so that puts you up at $50. Then, there's the $10 account base fee that you pay every month. In total, you're paying $60 a month to manage your 10 employees—whereabouts, the time entries, the mileage, the scheduling, and a whole bunch of things—only for $60 a month. Like you mentioned, you can look at how much you're saving in payroll costs by using that. Purely just for payroll cost, you can— Jason: If it only helps them save 1%, even just a single percentage in staffing cost, it would be a no-brainer. Barima: Yes. It is a no-brainer, but you'll also be surprised not everyone finds it to be a no-brainer. You get it, but not everyone might get it that way. Yeah, it's very interesting. Jason: Very cool. Barima, it's been great having you on the show. We haven't had anybody on the show yet talk about anything like reducing or tracking time with GPS out in the field. I think this is a common issue that property managers run into, or it's a blind spot they just have they've just not been paying attention to. Something like this would probably create a little bit more safety and certainty for them. It sounds like it would also lower some of the effort, pressure, noise, work involved with timesheets, payroll, and dealing with people that are out in the field or in-house vendors. People that they have maintenance, people inhouse, property managers that they have out in the field, people doing showings. I think there are a lot of benefits here for property managers. I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing this with us. How can people find out more about Timeero? Get in touch with you? Plug your stuff. Barima: Yeah. You can visit our website at timeero.com. Visit our website. Use our live chat. You can also call into our office. If we’re in, we will answer it. If we're not, we'll respond back to you. Please do visit our website and use our live chat. Get on with one of our support agents or a customer sales agent who will get in touch with you and help you solve problems. We're here to solve problems. Get on and talk to us. We'll figure out if we'll be a good fit for you or not. If we're not, we’re happy to recommend any other solutions that might be a better fit for you as well. We look forward to hearing from you. Jason: Awesome, Barima. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow Show. Barima: Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Jason. Jason: All right. We'll wrap this up. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, you want to make a difference, all the things we talked about in the beginning, in the intro, be sure to reach out to DoorGrow. We've been having great success helping clients, coaching clients, helping them clean up their business, clean up their branding, clean up everything that's preventing them from getting the deals, and the leads that they really believe they should or could be getting. The reality is that SEO won't save you. Can SEO help your business? Absolutely, but there is not a lot of search volume for property management for this industry. The best deals and leads are snatched up before they start searching on Google. You need a game plan, you need a system in place that you can grow your business, and not be waiting and relying on having the top spot on Google in order to grow. We want to help you get there. We want to help the best property manager succeed. Reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com. And be sure to check out Timeero. You can check it out at timeero.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

It’s that time of year as college students start or return to school. They may think they know it all, but really know nothing. How many students does it take to change a lightbulb or turn the heat on? It’s time to grow up in the real world! Today’s guest is Peter Tverdov of Tverdov Housing. Although student rentals are management intensive, Peter actually enjoys dealing with students. It’s prepared him to take on other types of tenants to diversify and grow his business.  You’ll Learn... [02:18] Rutgers University: Becoming a landlord in New Brunswick and loving it. [02:53] Student Housing Side Hustle: Accumulate more and manage them for others. [03:24] Hindsight is 20/20 in 2020: Bad timing to start business and quit day job to grow. [04:41] Decision to deal with students and student housing led to diverse tenant groups. [06:15] Peter’s Portfolio: 65-70% student rentals, 15-20% low-income families, 5-10% middle-class/workforce housing. [08:10] Onboarding Students: Educate and set expectations to limit excuses later on. [11:00] Happy Tenant, Happy Owner: Second largest lead generator is tenant referrals. [12:57] Broken Windows Theory: Dumpy/dilapidated areas attract crime and trouble. [13:45] Tverdov Renovation Consultants: Improve properties to attract better tenants. [14:47] Avoid or Acquired Taste? Riches are in the niches as a student rentals landlord. [16:33] Other Options? Rules/laws for room rentals, individual leases, boarding houses. [20:55] Responsibility: How to be landlords and hold each other accountable. [23:35] What’s next for Tverdov Housing? Track KPIs, achieve goals, and grow doors. Tweetables Landlord Business: Slowly and discreetly acquire more properties, get your hands dirty, and deal with people. “In business, it’s good to diversify.” “Managing student rentals, it really gets you battle-tested for managing other tenants.” “We’re not for everybody. We’re fair, but firm.” Resources Tverdov Housing Tverdov Housing on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the 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, today's guests, I'm hanging out with Pete. I’m going to see if I can say your last name right, Tverdov. And I'm going to unmute you so you can actually respond to that. Did I say it right? Pete: That was awesome. Pete Tverdov of Tverdov Housing. Pete, before we get into the topic, I want to introduce you, have you introduce yourself a little bit, but we’re going to be talking about student rental properties and the title is The Cash flow and Chaos of managing student rental properties. That sounds kind of fun. Let's get into the cash flow and chaos after we hear a little bit about your background, how did you get into this, and tell everybody who's listening about Pete. Pete: Sure. Happy to be on the show, thanks for having me. I got into it, my wife and I moved back to the Central Jersey area about six years ago and in the process of moving back we were looking to buy a multi-family, live in one unit, and it brought us to New Brunswick, where Rutgers University is. We both went to school there, we both played sports there, became a landlord, and really enjoyed the process of becoming a landlord. As I wanted to try to accumulate more rentals, I had the idea to begin managing for the people as it's something I really enjoyed doing. I enjoyed just getting your hands dirty and dealing with people. I started to do that on the side a little bit in that neighborhood, very slowly, very discreetly, and then little by little, I was just nibbling and getting more people under management because I was doing a pretty good job. About a year ago, it grew into a large enough business where I was at a crossroads with my regular job. I said you know what? I feel pretty good about this. I'm just going to dive in and really try to grow my business. That has been a bit rocky because I did that officially in January. I say rocky because of Coronavirus. The business has been good. It's been fun. I enjoy being an entrepreneur. I enjoy trying to grow the business each day and I'm happy to be here. Jason: Yes. Looking back, hindsight being 20/20, pun intended, so here in 2020, would you have chosen, if knowing that this would all happen to start your business, would you still have done it? Pete: It's such a hard question to answer because I had grown a business enough to that point where there was really no turning back. I just had a breaking point because I was working 24 hours a day. I was working in New York City. So it's just really challenging to try and juggle both really and I couldn't at that point. So was the timing the best? Definitely not. Jason: Okay, so you started getting into doing this yourself. Then you started doing it for others. At what point did you start deciding it would be a good idea to deal with students? I mean, this is your college hometown, right? It's a college town, your wife's college town, there is a college there, and it seems probably pretty obvious that you should be dealing with student housing. Were you already dealing with students with your own rentals? Pete: Yeah, that's exactly right. Every rental we owned was student housing and something I had a lot of familiarity with. For a while, I didn't want to do anything else but student rentals. About a year ago, I started to diversify that and try to pick up other tenant groups to manage, which we have, thank God, because in business it's good to diversify. But for me, anything with investing or my advice to anybody with investing is to go with what you know or the areas you know and then you branch out from there, which is what we did with the business. Again, student rentals are something we're super familiar with, super comfortable with and now we're at the point where we're happy with how much we have in the business and we're actively looking. We don't really even market too heavily to student rental landlords just because we have a sizable amount and because we know what chaos comes with managing them and how management-intensive they could be. As I said, we're trying to diversify the business. In addition to being well-known for student rentals, we want to [...] things as well. Jason: Give listeners a little bit of idea of what your portfolio looks like right now. Pete: Of our business, 65%–70% is student rentals. Another 15%–20% is lower-income families, and then the remainder is middle-class housing, workforce housing, yuppies. What's funny is managing student rentals really gets you battle-tested for managing other tenants because the other tenant groups really are a breeze. Student rentals are very management-intensive because they're 18- to 21-year-olds, so young adults. Most of them know nothing and what's worse is they think they know something which compounds the problem sometimes. I was the same way and maybe you were as well. You don't really know much when you're that age. They don't understand that they're responsible for changing light bulbs or if the heat's not working in the house, maybe it's because no one checked to see if the thermostat was even on. Stuff like that is really low hanging fruit. Jason: Yeah. Like you're saying, before anybody has kids or business or any of that, we're all experts on parenting, business, and how the world should work. I love it when my teenagers tell me how to be a better parent. I love that. That's always a really fun conversation. Everyone's an expert until they do it and then they realize they're like everybody else winging it and trying to figure out what's next. You started with the most difficult type of housing. It sounds like it was more difficult renters and tenants than anything else. It felt like it was just downhill. From there it was easier. Pete: That's right. As I said, it's just a very management-intensive group. What do I mean by that? They never signed a lease before. Some of them have never paid rent before. They've never written a check before or they don't know how to pay rent online. They don't really know what a security deposit is. They don't really know the process of getting it back. I think our business grew because we really tried to help the tenants understand the process and how it works. With students, for example—I would recommend this to anyone managing students—we usually sit down with them for 20–30 minutes and go over the lease with them, go over all the points in the lease, and set expectations upfront. We try to really limit the excuses for a tenant, like I didn't know that. What do you mean? We sat with you in person and went over that. That's one of the things. Some of the management items that I was talking about beat the properties up a little bit more so the repairs are higher and things always just mysteriously break. It was never their fault like something happens and nobody wants to admit it. I got a taste for managing other tenant groups. I realize how intense the students are and it's not a bad business to be in because, for people who own the rentals, the cash flows are higher, but with higher cash flows comes a set of their own problems. Jason: Aren't these things just common in property management in general? Like the advantage of you having a business like this is that you're almost educating these people through the process. That would work well for any new client because even if they've rented multiple places before, you have your way of doing things, they still may not want to follow things, have misinterpreted things, or they may claim they read the lease and understand it. All of these things sound like a really good baseline for how to onboard all of your renters. Pete: What I realized early on with the way I conduct business is we're not for everybody and that's because we believe in holding people accountable. One of the gentlemen who help me out hits me on the head. We're fair but firm. We're very fair. We don't try to nickel and dime people, but we're firm. The lease is the lease or the code is the code and this is what we have to do in order to ensure that the property is running smoothly, to ensure you're happy as a tenant, and to ensure the owner’s happy as a client. As a property manager, you're getting hit from both sides a lot of the time, but that's what I try to do to tenants. Honestly, we try to give as good of an effort as we can to make sure that they have a good experience because what's pretty cool about our business is the second-largest lead generator for us is tenant referrals which is awesome. That's free. That costs nothing. For that to be number two, it tells me we're doing something right, even though it feels like we're not sometimes and I want to continue that. Jason: So tenant referrals, meaning the tenants are referring the owners to your company? Pete: They're referring other tenants to our company. It makes the amount of advertising we have to spend on finding tenants less. Jason: Right. Do you feel like that's a challenge and student housing is finding people to rent the place? Pete: I must say it depends on the demographic. What's unique about Rutgers is it's split between two towns in New Jersey, New Brunswick, which has a population of 55,000 and Piscataway, which (I couldn't tell you) maybe it's 30,000 or 50,000. It's not a small town either, but it’s very old homes, especially in New Brunswick. What a lot of landlords in that area are realizing is people don't want to live in a dump anymore. They're willing to pay a little bit more. The house needs to be nicer. That's what we've done with stuff that we own. Most of the clients we have take a little bit of convincing, but after a while, they trust us to spend some money on their property because it makes it easier to rent. I went out to Rutgers, I majored in Criminal Justice. There's this thing called Broken Windows Theory and for people who don't know that it is, it's what it sounds like. When you have a dilapidated area with a bunch of broken windows, it attracts crime and attracts people looking to get into trouble. When you have that same place and it's all cleaned up, all the windows are fixed, the outsides painted, and the sidewalks are redone, the crime statistically usually has gone away. We took that same theory with housing. So if you have a dump, you're likely going to attract tenants who don't care about the place. They're just going to beat it up even more. If you have a nice place, you usually attract nice tenants, and even with the students being as management-intensive as they are, we've found that to be true. What's interesting is within the property management business—I did this right in the middle of the pandemic—I said screw it. I’m going to start another business. So we created what's called Tverdov Renovation Consultants. We basically do project management for our clients. We tell them, listen, we could help you rehab, bathrooms, kitchens, additions, roof siding, blah-blah-blah. We have a whole portfolio of the work we've done on Instagram. That's been good for the owners because it makes their property easier to rent. They get more rent and make our property worth more. We're happy because we've found a better tenant. The town's happy because we've improved the property and it's really a win and win across the board. It's just a matter of convincing other owners who are stuck in having lipstick on a pig or they don't want to spend a lot of money on properties and now we're at the point where I don't really want clients like that. I want clients who want to have a well-run property. Jason: Got it. Do you feel like tenants are an acquired taste in property management? My perception as other property managers avoid dealing with student housing, with those types of tenants. They feel like they're more difficult to manage unless they feel like in their market they need to. Do you feel like you would maybe in general convince these property managers in some way that there is a benefit or an upside to focusing on a tenant or better student housing? Pete: I think if you know it and you know the area, you could do very well and we have done very well. If you don't know it, it's pretty obvious to people who don't know it. You get beat up because you don't know what you're doing. The challenging part is every school is different across the country. When tenants begin to look when the lease is run and there are a plethora of questions to answer. If I was going to invest in another state, it's a whole different set of rules if you're going to try to be a student rental landlord in that state. For me, the riches are in the niches. Again, that's what I knew and I grew it. Now we're looking at expanding into more residential options. Still single family, two to four families, small apartment buildings. That's our bread and butter. That's all we want to do. We don't do commercial. We don't do HOAs or anything like that. That's what we focus on and that's what we're trying to grow. Jason: Now, the financial upside that I've heard from some people that get into this is some have convinced owners to take a property and to rent it out the room instead of renting out the entire property to a family. They're renting it out by the room in these sorts of situations and they're able to get a lot more rent at the property by doing such. That seems to be that there would be a potential financial upside, especially if your fee structure is based on percentages or each renter rather than being just connected to a flat fee per unit, for example. Pete: Maybe it's a little off-topic. We charge a percentage base and we'll always do that. I really don't know how property managers make money doing a flat fee. I think it's tough so we'll always be a percentage-based company. Renting by the room is, you're correct, that is the way to make more money. Again, I keep saying this phrase, but management-intensive, renting by the room is even tougher for students where we put groups together. We put a bunch together last year. We had a kid from Singapore, a kid from India, a kid from New Jersey, a kid from Pennsylvania and they don't know each other. When you're renting by the room, it's even worse because now you almost have four tenants, not one tenant, or six tenants, or however many people you're putting in a house. That creates its own set of problems. Again, this is based on jurisdiction. You cannot do individual leases because that would be considered a boarding house unless it's a licensed boarding house, you really shouldn't be doing that. We don't do that, so we had to rent by the room. We put them all on one lease. We say, listen, you're all legally responsible for damage in the common areas, and so on and so forth. It's challenging. What's funny, though, is I actually want to try to add a boarding house to manage because we get a lot of people just looking for a room. Just looking for a place to live, not just an apartment or a studio. We get a lot of inquiries like, hey, do you have a room? Jason: Is this boarding house law something that is common in just your state? I haven't heard from this, but it makes sense. Is this in other states as well? Pete: I'm just speaking about New Jersey. Jason: Interesting. It's something to those listening if they haven't dabbled in student housing or they're thinking of renting by the room or something like that, they probably should check with their local laws to make sure whether or not there's any sort of rules against doing such. In New Jersey, what does it take to become a boarding house then or to set one of those up? Is it on an individual property basis or is it a licensing sort of deal as a property manager? Pete: You need to have (they call it) a rooming house or a boarding house, but you need to have a license displayed in the property. I've been in enough of them. It's pretty obvious if it's a boarding house or rooming house because there'll be a kitchen with a bunch of labels on each cabinet. Like, this is John's cabinet, this is Max's cabinet, this is Pete's cabinet, and there's a common bathroom or two. Then all the other doors are just shut with locks on it. If you can imagine, that's what they look like and then they'll have a big license in the hallway or stairwell that'll say this is a New Jersey-licensed rooming house or boarding house. That's how they work. But again, those are challenging. Jason: Do you find in those situations you end up sort of having to play parent between roommates? Pete: Yes and no. We had to do it last year with a group of girls we put together. It was a little aggravating and a lot of girl drama. I stepped in and I spoke with them and tried to give them some words of wisdom. Most of the time, what we do with student rentals, I don't care how many kids are living in the house. It's one tenant and I explain to them you're all jointly responsible for rent and all the lease obligations. So it doesn't matter how many people are in the house. At the end of the day, you guys are all responsible. The other thing is we manage nearly 400 students. Some of these are very nice people, but we can't talk to 400 people. It's just not possible. What we do is we make a house manager or captain, or house mom, dad, whatever you want to call it and that's the person we speak with now regarding any tenant issues. We usually recommend somebody else in the house be responsible for submitting rent. So rent is submitted in one payment. Someone else is responsible for utilities. What it teaches these guys is responsibility, how to be accountable, and hold their roommates accountable. In theory, what's cool is we are actually teaching them how to be landlords because they have to make sure rent is collected. Something's broken, they have to find out who did this. Now, I have to tell Pete or for repairs to be made, coordinate with them to schedule it. That's why I said earlier, we're not for everybody because somebody who needs their hands held or mommy and daddy to wipe their mouth, we're not for you and that's okay. Our system usually winds up attracting tenants who are a bit more mature, a bit more independent and if they're not, they get there by the time that they're done with us. Jason: Right, I like it. You’re part of their educational process of the real world. That might be a good selling point for getting tenants. We'll make your kid actually grow up. I hope you're excited about that. I'm serious. I'd be like, I'm going to send my kids into one of those properties, right? Pete: I might try that. Jason: It's worth a shot. Pete, I think this is really interesting. I'd be interested in those that are doing student housing when you see this posted or see this inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com. I'd be interested to see other people's comments on what you're doing, what's working, and what's not working in student housing. This started as a side hustle. It's evolved into a business doing it for other people. It's now growing. What do you feel like is next for you and your business moving forward? Pete: What I start to do from watching podcasts like this is to track our KPIs, which is really cool. I love that side of the business. It's like a quarterly visit if people think of it. It helps me to understand where we should be spending money, what's working, what's not, and tweaking things. Because we're in the growth stage right now, 100 doors is cool, but there are people who are 500, 800. Those are huge, huge companies. We won't get there overnight, I understand that. The goal of my business is we want to cover three counties in New Jersey. So we're based in Central New Jersey. If anybody from New Jersey is listening to this, Central New Jersey really doesn't exist. That's the inside joke. But the three counties we cover probably have about 2.6–3 million people in them. Those are within a 30-minute radius of our office, so we're very comfortable being within a 30-minute radius of home base. The goal is just to continue to add doors under management. Single-family, 2–4 families, small apartment buildings in those areas. There are certain towns that are rental towns and certain towns that are not. What we've been doing on the marketing side, we've been working on SEO, we have our own website, we blog, we're very active on Instagram, then we do mailers, which maybe not a lot of people do. We do some cold calling, too, and just constantly trying to tweak and figure out what's working, what's not, and how we could generate more leads. On top of the property management, because in New Jersey you have to have your real estate license. So right now, me and a few people, my team are realtors. Eventually, I would like to have my own brokerage. Really rural housing is three companies, so it's realty services—we can help you buy and sell investment properties; that's all we do—we could help you manage the property, or we could help you rehab the property. We have some clients where we help them buy the property, we help them rehab the property, and then we manage the property. Then, one day when they want to sell it, we'll sell the property. That's about creating multiple income streams for our business within the same business, which I think is pretty cool. Jason: Makes sense. Cool. Pete, it's been great having you on the show. I wish you success at Tverdov Housing and for those that are listening, if you have questions about student housing or getting this, or if people listening are interested in getting a place from you or whatever your goal is, how can they get a hold of you? Pete: My website is tvdhousing.com and also my Instagram, Tverdov Housing. You could look at the last name on the DoorGrow Show. It's Tverdov Housing. We're constantly posting what we're doing on Instagram, so it's usually properties we're rehabbing, or some crazy management story, about just some crazy stuff that's happened and probably will happen in the future, stuff that we're selling, so we're very active on there. Jason: Cool. All right. Pete, thanks for coming on the show. Pete: Pleasure being on. Jason: All right. Those of you that are interested in getting into student housing or that have been dealing with student housing, I'd be really curious, like I mentioned, to see your feedback inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group so inside the DoorGrow Club. Let us know what you find is working or not working. It sounds like a challenging thing. I think any of us that have gone to college and remember some of the crazy stuff that either we did or that we saw other people doing, recognize that could be a really challenging thing, but it's necessary. Like their student housing is a need. It'll be interesting to see how things go moving forward with COVID-19 and Coronavirus, and things shifting to online. It will be interesting. Check out the Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com. If you are interested in growing your business and your property management company, making some changes there, if you are feeling stuck, struggling, whatever, reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com We'd love to help you out. Until next time. To our mutual growth, Bye everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. 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. 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 at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

As some freedom returns to society following COVID-19, don’t miss out on potential opportunities to implement property management growth strategies. Today’s guests are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs). Mark and Anne are broker-owners that manage almost 200 doors in Atlanta. You’ll Learn... [03:47] Trends: Property management pivots and changes during economic downturns. [07:10] Hire Virtually: Save money, get better employees, and increase productivity. [08:22] Wake Up: Don’t resist remote work; realize office space may be unnecessary. [11:14] DIY vs. Professionally Managed: Ramp up sales/funnels to serve customers. [15:26] Problems are always opportunities to grow business by offering solutions. [21:11] Customer Service: Don’t disconnect. Focus/follow up for retention/satisfaction. [27:02] Professionalism: Set expectations. Don’t badmouth landlords via vendors. [28:29] BDM: Do you need a business development manager? [31:33] Time, Energy, and Effort: Resources required to rent properties to tenants. {32:28] Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represents customer care problem. [35:29] Gamechanger: Save time and money to get things done or do more yourself?. [38:30] Wrong Person, Role, Tool, Time, and Money: Hire based on owner’s needs. [40:57] Off-the-Shelf vs. Customization: How to hire and build teams takes time. [46:50] Remote Challenges: Communication, operations, and management problems. [48:22] Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Get work done based on expectations. [50:15] Think, Invest, HireSmart: Know avatar to grow property management business. Tweetables Opportunities are available to make sales and buy, manage, and invest in more properties. You don’t have to have your employees in an office. You don’t even have to have an office anymore. Property managers are immune to guilt and the heroes of the rental industry. Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represent customer care problems. Resources HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs) DGS 69: HireSmart Virtual Assistants with Anne Lackey NARPM Lehman Brothers Airbnb DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the 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. My guests today are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart. Welcome you two. Anne: Hey, good to see you. It's been a while. Mark: Hey, it's good to see you. Jason: It's good to have you back. I noticed you're displaying that beautiful logo in the background. Mark: Isn't that wonderful? Anne: Yes, that is of course a DoorGrow special. They helped us with that on our website. Mark: The logo, the renaming, all of that was a DoorGrow impression that was right for us and is great for our clients. Jason: Yeah, I like it. Cool. We're going to be talking about property management growth strategies after COVID-19. This Coronavirus is just starting to clean itself up. I just rode a road trip from Pennsylvania to Austin over the course of multiple days. People were not wearing masks anymore. We were eating at restaurants. It was awesome. It was like we are back to having freedom again. Most places are open here in Austin. I went to the hardware store yesterday, though. Everyone was wearing masks and I felt like I was in trouble. I thought we were over this already, but apparently not at Home Depot. Anne: Some places are, some places aren’t. Jason: I think the national chains and the national stores have to accommodate the lowest common denominator nationally. They got rules in place for everything. What are we chatting about today? Anne: First of all, I want to make sure everybody understands we are broker-owners ourselves. We manage doors in Atlanta. Mike: Nearly 200 doors in Atlanta since 2005 for other people and for ourselves, since 2001. Anne: We've been talking a lot to our friends who are in the property management business. We are, of course, NARPM members, affiliates, and affinity partners with them. We hear a lot around the nation of different things. Just like your trip from Pennsylvania. You saw different parts of the country where things were more open than others, so we want to talk about a couple of different things as we see them. For property managers that are thinking what's the next thing. I want to back up just a little bit and talk a little bit about historical trends and changes. Mark, why don't you get us started on that? Mark: This will show my age. That's one thing if I've mentioned this. In the 70s, we had lines to get gas. Not everybody out there remembers that, but there was an oil shortage. There was a gas shortage and at that point, everybody said we're going to run out of oil in a couple of years. It was a crisis, so out of that came what? We got into solar energy, more on to hydroelectric. Things pivoted, things changed. In the 80s, the savings and loans went down. Things pivoted on how we got mortgages. The dot-com buzz, the 90s, the tech blow up. All those things and what most everybody remembers is the meltdown that we had in the economy and mortgage market that occurred just 10–12 years ago. At that point, it required pivoting and Anne and I are really good at our business about looking to see what the trends are going to be. What's going to change and how to pivot. That's what we want to talk about today. It's not the end of the world like everybody said, March 15th or whatever date it was when everybody went to hibernation. It's like, it's the end of the world. Anne: Nobody's going to pay their rent. Mark: We thought that 12 years ago when Lehman Brothers shut their doors. It all seems like it's the end of the world, but it's not. It's an opportunity. It's learning to pivot. Look at where the puck is going. Anne: We wanted to talk about some of the trends that we see and the opportunities that property managers should be looking at in their business. You obviously don't hop on every trend and everything that comes along, but it is always good to put it in perspective. Mark, let's talk about some of the trends that we've seen in real estate in general. We're going to talk about how you can take advantage of that. Mark: In the last few months, we had property managers and friends that were investors that had Airbnb. They were making 5–10 times the amount of rent I was off of a property. Suddenly, they made nothing because all the bookings shut down. They’re looking. A lot of them said hey, let's sell. Let's go long term. A lot of things changed there. Through them and through those changes of people not having as much disposable income at this point because there's a slow down in jobs, second homes aren’t popular right now. Two, with all the laws that are coming about with the changes to protect the renters that are coming out of state legislators and the national, there's a lot of change and as property managers, we keep apprise to that. But these DIY (do-it-yourself) landlords don't. So, we're going to talk about some opportunities to make sales, to get some additional properties, to manage some opportunities for investing, too, if you're into that area. Jason: When COVID hit and it was March, March was brutal for us at DoorGrow. Sales stopped. Every property manager just tightens their purse strings, freaking out, there's this cash crunch. We experienced a serious cash crunch so we had to get lean. I think a lot of businesses had to get lean and in the long run, that is a really healthy thing for business. Everyone was trimming the fat and [...] was effective. Anne: We saw that in HireSmart because now everybody is a virtual employee. This is a perfect time to write stuff. People that have been hesitant to hire virtually have been in our doors now because they are like, wow, we can save some money. We can have better employees. We can have different strategies and approaches. Now, it was no longer important because it wasn't allowed to have people come into the office. Actually for us on HireSmart, it actually expanded our business. Mark: There was resistance before from property managers that wanted to walk down the hall and lean over Joe or Joan's shoulder and see what they’re doing, see what they're working on—literally, not figuratively—to be there, to have that conversation face-to-face. They were very hesitant about working and they didn't have the resources to figure out how to work remotely. With what’s come out of COVID-19 has become the realization that you don't have to have your employees at an office. You don't even have an office anymore. Jason: I've known this for well over a decade. Interesting to see that mass transition of people realizing they can use tools like Zoom and move away from having somebody right there in their office. I did some polls online asking people during this. I asked how many people would renew their business lease at the end of the term and a lot of them said they're going to, at the very least, downsize, maybe to a smaller office base, or they may even not renew. I also did some polling on what people have noticed as a result of people working from home. Some of my clients were saying that they've noticed that they were surprised that their team members became more productive. They're getting more done. I guess because there are fewer interruptions they were saying. There are fewer distractions. Maybe they're more comfortable. But some of my team members are doing better. I have heard some people say I hate it. My kids are there all the time. I'm going crazy. But in general, I think the world has to wake up and realize when you have to get work done, you can try this. Then they tried this and they're like, hey, this works. Why are we spending so much money on this brick and mortar location that is outrageously expensive to have all these people in it when we can eliminate that crazy expense and it's unnecessary. Mike: Yeah. It was shocking, like you, we immediately drew into our shell in March, and let's save. We don't know what's going to happen. People are going to let people go. But in April and May, we had the most requests for information about our services. The most orders we've had in five years. Jason: I'll bet. Anne: Without any [...]. That's the funny part for us [...] Mike: We’re not traveling. Anne: It's been interesting and we do a lot of community teaching and speaking even online. We always have to help people understand what opportunities are there. A lot of things that we're promoting or that we're seeing right now, specifically in property management, is now’s a great time to ramp up your sales and funnels. Again, because the DIY's are so lost. We already know that there are so many DIY landlords compared to professionally managed. Mike: Eighty percent of the US are do-it-yourself landlords. That's a lot of opportunity. Anne: That's a lot of opportunity. I know you talk a lot about that, but how do you reach them? How do you engage with them? How do you attract them? Of course, they outgrow a platform, obviously, as a key component to that, which is wonderful, but you have to have the human-to-human or human automation to back it up. I think where we're coming to as a society is if you don't have a physical office where people can walk in anymore because you're closing your doors. We've had a closed-door policy for 19 years. I think people are very surprised that we've never let anybody in our office ever. Mike: We have a small office of three. Anne: We've never let anybody in our office even when we had seven people in our office, we didn't have people in our office because it's a distraction, that interruption. What happens is you need to serve your customers. You need to be talking to them. You need to be serving them. Now, the residents and owners don't just want to be served 9–5. We're seeing that they want answers seven o'clock at night, eight o'clock at night when they're online. When they have questions they would like to have some interactions with someone from your office. How do you do that cost-effectively? Of course, we have the solution. A full-time dedicated virtual employee that works as the second shift or the split shift is there to take care of chat. They're there to answer the questions and help people guide them on applications. Mike: Then guide the people that are coming in to bring you properties to manage. Anne: Right, and to talk to owners about how I work with you. Because here's what's going on in the marketplace. Again, in a lot of places, you do have people that aren't able to pay their rent right now because they have lost their jobs. Do you have owners that are concerned about what I do? How do I do this? We've had an increase in our inquiries for property management recently as well because they just don't know the rules. They don't know the laws. Mike: It's not the time to withdraw. We're all sheltered in our business in place, too, and when we withdrew that opportunity to find new business went away. The companies, the far-sighted future thunking property managers, business owners, and the brokers that are now looking at making some investments. Not just sitting on their dollars, but actually making some investments in the right people, the right tools, business development people to help grow the business, doing outreaches. One thing we were talking about just the other day was—we haven't done this yet—we should have a seminar that we invite all the DIY landlords to share with them all the fears of all the new laws that have come out. [...]. We have that seminar and some of them are going to come out and say, okay, now I can do things differently because I have information on what I can and can't do. A lot of them are going to come out and say I just can't do this anymore. I'm tired of doing it. I'm going to hire—in case—us because we've been in that seminar. Making those types of investments, and granted that those seminars aren't always live, they're maybe at this point virtual but reaching out to those. Those are the ways now to grow your business for tomorrow because over the next six months until we get to the end of this year, there's opportunity abound for forward-thinking. Jason: That's what problems do. Problems are always opportunities. Let's talk about the problem. Here are some of the things I noticed. I won't say who it is, but I got a call from one of my business coaches and he has rental properties. He was like, what do you see in the market place right now because I got a small portfolio of properties and only 50% of them are paying rent. I said at least 98% of most of the rent is being collected by my clients. That's what I'm hearing. Also, what I noticed happening is my clients are saying that their owners were calling them and saying if tenants don't want to pay rent this month, we'll let them not pay rent. They're like no, they're going to pay rent. The thing is people felt guilty. They're almost ashamed but feel guilty, but property managers, you guys are over that [...]. You guys are completely over. You've heard all the excuses. You've heard all the stories. Some residents right now, due to the unemployment benefits and stuff that are going around, are making more money, especially the low rent markets. They're making more money than when they were working. But some of them are still trying to use the excuse that they need to not pay rent or whatever. The news kind of made it look like that. It made it look like people trying to collect rent are evil, bad, sick, or wrong. A lot of homeowners are just feeling guilty. Property managers are immune to guilt. Anne: That's because we've heard it all. Jason: We've heard it all. We heard all the stories, the excuses. You know how to help people. You know what programs are available because you guys are on top of this stuff. You guys aren't having trouble collecting the rent. In general, I haven't heard anyone in the single-family residential space or even multi-family having real trouble collecting rent. Rents have gone down just a little bit. You got people that most would have heard it's the same people that we're always troubled paying rent. We just couldn't evict them, but that's coming. Mike: Your coach needs to reach out to a professional manager. You see that, but he doesn't. Seminars, webinars, something. Jason: They don’t see the problem. That's the challenge I've always experienced in DoorGrow. I'm selling a solution to a problem that most people can't see. They can't see the leaks on their website. They can't see the challenges that their branding is hurting word of mouth. I have to educate people to see the problem. The same thing is what you're talking about. If you can create the gap and show the contrast between what challenges and problems they're dealing with and what they could be experiencing, what successes your clients are having, they're going to see this gap and that gap is what creates pain. People want to solve pain. People want a pain killer, not a vitamin. People will pay even more money to get out of pain. They want a solution, but they don't know a lot of them that there's a solution out there. I do think there is a massive opportunity. There's no scarcity in property management. There's no shortage of people that are in pain or have problems or challenges they are dealing with. Not only that, but I think property managers can hold their heads up high because good property managers, I really do believe as I said before, can change the world. There are millions of renters. Even here on my own property, I'm renting (I just moved to Austin), my kids were without a water heater for two weeks. The landlord sent out two different plumbers because he didn't like the feedback that the 13-year-old water heater should be replaced even though the pilot kept going out. I didn't even know my kids were taking cold showers because they got it before me and they can't get on Xbox until they take their showers, so they 're just doing it. All they're thinking about is can I get on the Xbox now? I'm like, yes, go ahead. But then my daughter's like, I haven't taken a shower in four days because the shower's freezing. I didn't know this and the younger ones, I went to them. That doesn't make sense because they've been taking their baths and their showers. I went to my son, Hudson, and I'm like, how's the shower been lately? He's like, cold. I'm like, what? Why didn't you tell me? Mike: It’s virtually a summer, right? Jason: Then I said to my daughter, she likes taking baths, you've been taking baths? She's like, Yeah. How are your baths been? She's like, they're really cold. I'm like, what? But you guys protect families. You guys also protect owners. You guys are like the middle person that makes everything okay and you take care of people. It lowers the pressure and noise. Property managers even do things like increasing the number of pets that families are able to have because you guys recognize that usually, it’s the kids that are causing more damage than the animals. [...] to get more rent because of pets. There are so many benefits to property management that positively impact families, homes, and lives. You guys are really the heroes of the rental industry. Property managers are the heroes of the rental industry. Mike: And unlike your property manager there that evidently has trouble with customer service. Jason: He's not the property manager, technically. He's just a landlord who doesn't want to do anything. Anne: You got a DIYer. Mike: Yeah, a DIYer. Anne: Sounds like a great lead. Mike: But that gets into the consideration of customer service. As property managers, we worried over the years about customer service to our owners but we haven't worried as much about customer service to our tenants. For retention and to continue to have tenants that want to refer people in, raising your level of customer service at this time specifically because I know I ordered something that didn't come and it was then delivered to Valentine, Nebraska instead of here where I am in Georgia, so I sent a response online and I got an auto-reply that says call this number. I call the number and it says we're too busy. We're not answering phones now. Just send an email. Customer service has failed specifically right now. Anne: I'll actually tell you something that we did on our property manager which I think has really impacted our renewals and we are getting increases in rent even now. Mike: On everyone. Anne: Let's just talk about it. Again, people pay for when they feel taken care of. One of the biggest gaps that we saw, this is probably two years ago, in our business was exactly what you're talking about. Tenant isn't taken care of, it's taking too long, the contractor is giving all kinds of excuses as to why they can't get there, tenant's going here, contractors going here. There's this big disconnect. Our virtual employee, Bonnie, is charged literally with every day every work order that comes in, she's calling the vendor and saying vendor, did you get it? Because we want to make sure it didn't get— Mike: Lost. You know how emails are. Anne: That's the first thing. Then the next day, she's calling the resident and saying resident, we assigned your work order to contractor B. Have you heard from him? Well, no. What happened? Jason: That's better than being ghosted and then eventually not having your calls answered, then eventually maybe getting a text or response half a week later. Anne: She says okay, you haven't heard from contractor B. Here's contractor B's information. We have already approved them to go out. Then she calls contractor B and she says contractor B, I heard that you haven't connected. Why haven't you connected? Oh, they haven't returned my call. Okay, I just got off the phone with them. They are available. Call them and they are expecting your call. She closes that loop, that hand-off because we assume contractor B is doing his job and we assume tenants are never wrong, they never change their phone numbers or anything else. Mike: Then the contractor goes out like he did to you and assesses the work. Many times there's not a follow-up, so what does Bonnie do then? Anne: Bonnie, as soon as she gets the date it was supposed to be scheduled from either the tenant or the contractor B, she follows up the next day and says my understanding is that contractor B was supposed to be there yesterday. Did they show up? Mike: Jason, did they take care of the water heater for you. Anne: Are you satisfied with the repair. Mike: And Jason says no. Anne: No, I still have… Now, we have another feedback loop. This is a maintenance process that we never could have done without having a virtual employee do this. It's too time-intensive and we have other work to be done. Mike: Then the flag goes up to tell the owner, owner, you got to provide hot water. You want an ACH or do you want us to loan you the money at an 18% rate? Anne: Yeah, put it on a credit card, however you want to do it. The reality for us is our tenant satisfaction has gone through the roof because we showed that we care, we're not letting it go, and literally, I as the broker get the list of not only what the outstanding work orders but where they are in the process and what she's done to move it forward. If we have a resident that we haven't been able to get in touch with, the contractor hasn't been able to, we have an escalation process. I don't manage, Bonnie manages. Again, total game-changer. Mike: The benefit out of all of that, we don't get pushed back when we're raising the rent. We started with our process in the middle of March. We do it in the middle of every month with notification of our rent increases and property. Most property managers that we know said you're crazy. We're either going to hold it. We'll tell them they don't have to pay an increase. We went out there and we got resistance from one tenant over the last, March, April, May, June. We got four months into our belt of increases and we have one pushback. Anne: Of course when you have rent increases, that increases our profitability, too. The owner makes a little bit more money, we make a little bit more money. It's still very reasonable. One of the things I'll say about rental rates is we don't do it arbitrarily. We do a full competitive market analysis. We make sure it's on the market. We don't raise all the way up to market if it's a significant jump, we'll do it at the average appreciation rate. Mike: We want to stay just below the top of the market. Anne: Correct because we don't want to give them a reason to leave. Mike: But we got happy tenants that don't want to leave. They go oh, I can't rent down the street for what I'm paying here because we always stay right below that. Jason: There's another hidden killer, too, I noticed in the scenario because when these vendors came to my property here and talked to me, they were basically bad-mouthing the landlord. They were like this guy is cheap. I've told them he needs to do this. In your scenario, the vendor is going to feel like they are getting taken care of. They are going to feel like they are on your team and on your side, and they are working with you, whereas these vendors feel more loyalty to me because they know the landlord isn't' doing the right thing. Anne: That goes back to having a contract with our contractor of standards of professionalism. Our vendors actually sign a document that says these are our expectations to be a vendor for us, and one of them is to not bad mouth as part of that. Mike: All these things combined, give us opportunities to shine. We get referrals every week. People come to us and say we hear great things about you as a property manager, and we're forward-thinking. We have opportunities there where we reach out to try to bring in business. Like what we're talking about earlier, a lot of the property managers are just sitting back. They are scared. They are afraid to do anything. That's the wrong thing to do. Anne: A lot of them are looking to bring on a BDM. Remember last year was the year of the BDM. Do you need a business development manager? Okay, maybe you do, maybe you don't. We tend to be our own. Mike: We are our BDMs. Anne: But again, we are high salary people like if you are paying somebody. Our time is very valuable, but we are seeing the smart property managers are supporting that sales effort through follow-up with the virtual employee, a virtual assistant that is literally a full-time doing this grinder follow-ups because we all know in sales—I don't care what industry you're in—you have to reach out seven, eight, ten times. Sometimes, property management specifically, it's pain point-related and some of the pain points only come up once a month. Some of the pain points come up once a year. Some of the pain points only come up periodically, so if you don't have a system to reach out to them, again it can't just be an email anymore. I think people are tired of tech, tech, tech. You need to have tech. You need to have a chatbox on your thing that's manned by a live person, in my opinion, but you also need that human-to-human automation. You need somebody that actually shows that they care a little bit about not only your company but the people involved. Having that sales support, a virtual employee to do that, really allows your BDM to be their most successful self and to do the things that they like to do. People don't realize that. BDMs don't want to do a whole lot of phone calling. They want to be in relationship management. If you can get them in front of the customer more times, if you can keep prospects warm and in the hopper so that when the prospect is ripe and ready, and your BDM can come and close, you are maximizing your ROI for that person. Mark: Yeah. They actually go to our website and ask for some of our tools or some of our information. It auto delivers but then they get a phone call, I want to make sure you got 21 questions or our technical information, and when they get that phone call, they're shocked. Anne: I'll tell you one other thing where people are going to have some issues. We all know about the Zillow. Zillow and they're charging for leads. That’s always been a hot topic. Zillow is rerouting leads. They're rerouting them to their call center in some areas, not to all areas, but into some. You don't have somebody actually calling those leads proactively when you get the email because even if you syndicate them, specifically if you syndicate them, you still get the email that says so and so is interested and they give you the phone number. But if the person proactively calls, Zillow is going to try to give them to people that are paying them, not necessarily to those of us who are syndications. If we're not actually outbound calling those leads as they come in, we are missing opportunities for tenants. This has been a big change probably in the last three weeks. This is fresh information that again if you don't have somebody in your office that has the time, energy, and effort to be calling in addition to responding back via email, you are missing an opportunity to get your properties rented. Again, we have literally five properties come on the market on June 5th, all but one are occupied now. That's how quick we are to get these things done because we have a dedicated resource and our virtual assistant. Literally, that is her only job to focus on. Jason: I want to touch on a couple of things you mentioned that you threw out that I think are important. One, you were talking about referrals. This is one of the number one ways to grow any business generally. I talked to a client I think yesterday, I was coaching a client and they were like our business is so great. We’re great. We got all this process dialed in and they said, but we're not getting any referrals. If a business is not getting any referrals, it's probably not as great as you think it is. Property managers have blind spots. We all do. For those listening, if you're not getting referrals, you got some customer care problems that are likely going on. You should be getting referrals. You should be getting referrals from your vendors. You should be getting referrals from your real estate friends. You should be getting referrals from your property management clients. You should be getting, maybe referrals from some of the vendors, but people should be talking about you. If they're not, there's some sort of blind spot that needs to be shored up. The other thing you mentioned (I think) is really smart. A lot of people, yes, they're like, I need a BDM. I need somebody to do sales, but they can't afford it. A lot of people can't just go out and afford to get some high-grade wonderful salesperson. But most business owners are not willing to also acknowledge that they are a part-time shitty salesperson. The time they're willing to dedicate or have sometimes is maybe an hour or two a day. That’s part-time. it's 10, maybe 15 hours a week, maybe they can dedicate up to 20 hours, but if you really want to grow and scale your business, there probably needs to be a little bit more time or you need just business being referred to you all the time, so it's super easy. One of the easiest hacks I implemented when I was a solopreneur and was doing all the sales, the web design, branding stuff, and everything myself, I got an assistant. I had that person operate as a sales assistant and an appointment setter. It immediately multiplied, not just doubled probably, but it multiplied my capacity to close deals. All I did was show up for appointments. I just met with people and sold. I wasn't doing any of the follow-ups. I was a solopreneur and my assistant was calling—she had a British accent—and saying hello, this is Helen, the assistant to the CEO Jason Hull of DoorGrow. He was wanting to get back together with you. It also set me in the mind of the prospect as something higher than maybe I actually looked like at the time being a solopreneur, sitting at home, trying to work in my living room. There's power in having a team. A lot of people say I can't afford to hire anybody. Maybe you just need somebody to start, just somebody that you can start with and they could be full-time or part-time, but they can start doing a piece of that thing that you need help with. They don't have to be able to do everything. Maybe it's the piece that you least enjoy. Maybe doing the follow-up, the cold calls, and whatnot. Anne: That's the great thing about virtual assistants and personal employees. You're looking at less than $20,000 a year for full-time dedicated help. That's a game-changer. You can't afford not to do that. I think that that's where people get sideways. Where we really help our clients in helping them define their staffing needs, and what's the best ROI for them to bring on board first. We’re talking about trends and the things that we see, but that's one of the services that we provide, helping them figure that out because sometimes it's like you said, sometimes this is a generalist. Somebody that can do a little bit of everything. Sometimes it's a sales support person. I know I need leads. Sometimes it’s accounting, sometimes it's leasing line, sometimes it's in marketing. A virtual assistant through HireSmart, because we're full-time, dedicated, and we specifically recruit for our clients. We don't have a room full of VAs that we go, here you go. I actually go and curate the contacts for you, and then I personally work with them for 40 hours afterward like that one-week job interview to make sure that they're amazing. Anybody that has hired and day two you're like, ugh, they just aren’t amazing. I take care of that for the clients. Mark: It frees up so much time. If it frees up 10 hours a week, how many deals can you close, how many new properties can you bring on in 10 hours? You invest maybe two hours where somebody else is making all the calls, set the appointments, you got that two hours invested. Your return on that is tremendous because you're going to make an offer that’s equivalent to $100, $200, $300 an hour for your investment of time. It goes back to, you've got to make those investments. You can't not hire now, you can't put your head in the sand or pull back in your shell and say, I'm going to do it myself. Especially if you're not happy doing it because if you're not happy, you're not going to get it done. Jason: Therefore, a lot of people that have been shifting to doing more themselves. I have to lay off team members now, I'm doing everything myself. Now I'm doing stuff that I don't even want to do. Let's touch on one thing that you just mentioned. I think this is really important for everybody listening to understand. I've seen this in hundreds of property management businesses and businesses in general, but one of the most painful or dangerous things I think a business owner can do is hiring the wrong person, the wrong role, spending the wrong money at the wrong time. A lot of people hire based on what they think the business needs instead of what they need in order to create more space and eliminate the number one bottleneck in the company, which is you the business owner, it's the entrepreneur. You taking the time to figure out what they actually need to get the best ROI is huge for them because they've seen lots of people, they hire the wrong person they didn't need. Now they're spending this money, or they just hired a bad person in general which not just cost them the money they spent on that person and the time they spent to get that person, but they're now losing money in secret places. I've had team members that stole from me. I've had team members that stole time. I've had team members delete and stuff after I fired them. These are problems that entrepreneurs learn painfully over time trying to build a team. A lot of property managers are in that first trap. They're the 50–60 door mark, they don't know how they can afford to hire that first person, and this is a solution for that. This is a very obvious solution for that. You can help them figure out who they really need right now and to take the next step forward, because if they spend the money on the right person, they make more money. It makes it easier. They then can reinvest. If they spend it on the wrong person, or the wrong tool, at the wrong time, it could be the right tool but it's at the right time, or they're getting software prematurely that they didn't really have to have at that point, or whatever it might be. If you spend money at the wrong time even though it might be the right tool for the future, you're hurting your ability to get to that future. Anne: I totally agree with that. Jason: Cash flow. If you run out of cash flow, the business dies. It’s like the Indiana Jones boulder rolling after you is the cash monster trying to get to you. If the boulder catches you, the business is game over. You’ve run out of money, run out of cash, you're dead. People started to feel that in March. You have to always be outpacing that boulder. If you spend, the boulder gets bigger and faster, but you can get faster if you spend it on the right people. Anne: One of the things I tell a lot of prospects that I'm talking to is most property managers (specifically) were never trained on how to hire or how to build teams. That’s not something we learn at school, it's only by trial and fire. A lot of property managers have fallen into it. Mark: There's not a hiring 301 class in college. Anne: One of the things that I tell them is, just like you're the expert in finding the right tenant for an owner because you've seen enough applications, you've gone through the process, you've done all that, you are the expert there, we’re the experts in hiring. I know I have a profile for hiring, I know what's successful, I know what's not successful. I save my clients from hundreds of hiring mistakes because it's not that they can't do it, a DIY landlord can do it, but they can't do it as well as a property manager. I say the same thing. You can hire. It’s going to take you more time, you don't have a process, you don't do it enough, I have done thousands. Just in the last six months alone, I have evaluated over 9000 applications. You say that gave me some data points. Jason: You know the BS, you know how to spot the scammers, you know which people are gaming the system, you know which people are feeding you a story, you know what questions need to be asked. In the Philippines, you got to ask about their internet connection. You got to, you can't just trust that they have one. You got to ask about where they're working. Where are you working at? Where are you working from? That was part of the thing that I really enjoyed working with you guys. I always look at everything through a certain filter, and I'm skeptical, and I want to see how I can help people. As I went through your process, I'm like, they do this. They already do this. This is stuff I've learned over a decade in my own painful experiences hiring in India, Bangladesh, Russia, the Philippines, Bolivia, and of course the US, which ultimately most of my team are in the US now. But I have Filipino team members. I can personally vouch for your hiring process making a lot of sense. It’s solid and it works really because it's very similar to my own. There are so many similarities. Okay, they've got this down, but you have some advantages. We talked about this in the previous episode. You guys should go listen to that where we talked about their processes and some stuff they do, but you have vetting, background checks, and stuff that people don't just have access to if they're just trying to DIY this. Mark: It’s like the difference, if you're getting married, you got the bride and the groom, and the bride wants a custom-made dress, not one off the rack. The groom really wants a tux that fits them. We are the custom dress, we are the custom tux for that couple versus walking into Neiman and pulling one off the shelves, this looks good, or getting a dress off the hanger and putting it on like, this almost fits, let's go get married. Jason: It looks like your dad handed you down a suit or something. Mark: Right. That’s the difference in what we do. We are custom for our client. We are not off the rack. Anne: Right, and outside of that is it takes time. It takes us 3–4 weeks to literally curate the right people. I always say if you need to hire somebody just the first person off the street, good luck. Jason: You guys are bespoke. It’s bespoke hiring. Anne: We have a guarantee and all of those things, and we can back up what we're saying. But again, if you're trying to grow your property management business right now, you need to look at your staff. Here’s the other thing. Not all staff members are coming back. You may think they're coming back. They're not coming back. You’ve got to look at who are your top liners? Who are the ones that you’ve got to keep? You need to be investing in a relationship with those people first of all. If you're not talking to them on a regular basis, if you're not feeding them, if you're not taking care of them, you need to take care of them now. Who’s part of your med tier? The kind of people that are like, if they come back, great. If they don’t, what's the impact that’s going to happen? What are the people that you really know you just need to not have come back, and you need to deal with that pretty quickly. Mark: For our best person, we got a VA to assist that person so that they can do even better at the best that they were. That’s the important thing that people need to take away from changes that are coming out of COVID. It’s supporting your staff and letting them work at the highest and best use. Maybe that's taking away some of those phone calls and emails by hiring an assistant for them and to give you the opportunity to grow. It’s an assistant to you for the business development to make those calls and to set up those appointments, so that you can just close. Doing those things is the job that Anne enjoys so much is finding the individual to match. What does Jason need exactly? Even though Jason doesn't know exactly, she'll draw that out of you, and I'm just picking on you on that. Anne: That’s a puzzle for me. There's nothing better than when I see my clients six months in, years in, we have our clients for five years now and seeing them and they’d say, Mitch has been the best thing ever in my company. She's really allowed me to be amazing and do what I want to do. Literally, these are comments that we get when we survey our clients. It has been a game-changer. If you're open and able to change. I don't know how much time we have, but there are a couple of things that you need to look at, regardless of whether you use virtual assistants, employees, or whether you are looking at that which are some of the challenges that come from working with a remote team, because remember, even if you're planning to go back to an office, your staff is going to want to have more flexibility. Let’s just call it what it is. Not everybody wants to commute anymore. There are some that miss being in that environment, there's a lot of guys that are like… Mark: We’re happier. Jason: Yeah, why should I spend time commuting? Why should I spend time driving to this? I think there are a lot fewer people doing face-to-face appointments, and they'll just do it through Zoom or they'll do it through Google Hangouts, Meet, or whatever. Anne: Whatever works. What we're finding is it is truly illuminating management problems. It’s illuminating communication problems. If you had a communication problem in the office, now you have a tremendous communication breakdown outside of the office. Mark: If you have an operations failure in the office, boy, the failures are even bigger. Anne: As managers, we need to look at what tools do we have on our tool belt. We help our clients with some of that because we understand years ago that we needed to equip our people to be good at this so that they would keep our people. Mark: It is in software, it’s tools, it’s technology. There's a lot of different pieces that go into that. Anne: Looking at your management style and we like to manage personally using key performance indicators (KPIs) because that takes [...] work out of it. I don’t have to worry if they're working eight hours as long as the KPIs are done and they can get their job done in six, I'm happy to pay them for eight and let them do what they want to do, as long as my stuff’s getting done to a level that I expected. That's the easy button for management, if you don't know about key performance indicators, I certainly encourage you to learn what that is, and how to do that, but it’s one of the things that we teach our clients to do very easily. There are some easy methodologies to do that, but we are seeing some communication breakdowns from people that don't use us. We’re seeing some issues with management. The manager that was the nice guy, that was able to get people rah-rah-rah in the office because she was able to see them, that’s now changed. Now, work is starting to do great. Mark: They can't hide behind the curtain. Anne: They can't hide behind that personality anymore because work’s not getting done. That’s one cautionary tale that I will throw out to your listeners. Jason: Results don’t lie. Anne: They don’t, but it’s difficult to have conversations if you don't have data, and a lot of times, people don't want to track data because they think it's too difficult. We teach our clients how to do it very simply, very easily, and very quickly. That's the other thing. You’ve got to be able to get feedback daily to keep on top of it. If you wait for weeks or months, you are now in this huge hole of garbage that is very difficult to get out of. Make sense? Jason: Makes sense. It's been awesome having you here on the show. Maybe we can take just a few minutes, let's talk about some opportunities right now and ways you think property managers have an opportunity to grow after COVID. We’ve touched on maybe doing webinars, I think you threw out there, the Airbnb. I think I have one client that added 24 doors in a month just from former Airbnbs by cold calling them and reaching out. Obviously, you got to convince them probably to get the furniture out of the place, and make sure that these are good opportunities to manage, and that it’s going to rent effectively compared to what they're paying because some of them were making a lot of money. Mark: They were. You can offer a turnkey for that. I know you've got furniture and all, I'll take care of making the donation, or I'll get the local company that buys furniture and resells it. I don't know if there's a market for that right now, but I'll get it picked up by Salvation Army or the kidney people, and you'll get the receipt. I'll take care of all of that and make it easy for you to let me manage your property long-term. The property managers that think that way are the ones that will be successful. We’ve been seeing that happen in Airbnb and a lot of them are coming back out of service. Anne: One of the things we always recommend when we're consulting with clients just in general is know your avatar. If you're a short-term rental person and that’s your avatar, then you need to create a different marketing strategy around that, like how are you going to deal with that. If your avatar is long-term rentals and you want to gain business by going after short-term to convert them to long-term like Mark said, have a package, have a system, get your relationships put together. Right now interestingly enough, we have investors that are scared to death and are selling, and we have investors that are super excited and are buying. Mark: [...] sales transaction. Though the property manager doesn't have a sales component in their business, they need to have an alignment with the referral program to somebody that does sales. I mean I'm selling two houses a month this year. Anne: Without trying, without marketing. Mark: Yeah, these are my investors. They just say I want to sell, and I’ll say I want to make the commission. No problem. Anne: It's about having a strategy, being able to implement that strategy. and figuring out what are the resources that you need to create that strategy. We think using virtual employees and virtual assistants is a great way to maximize all of that because right now, it is kind of intense. If you're going to do research for short-term rentals, there's not a database you can necessarily easily pull from. You’ve got to go search for them, talk to them. Having that marketing strategy based on what it is that you want to do, having a value proposition that speaks to the pain that the person is dealing with, all are very important. Having a website that actually can capture those leads and make you look professional which is what you guys do is also part of that. You have this well-rounded marketing plan. Mark: We have our VA do all the research. Maybe it’s calling everybody that's on Craigslist or ads out there and saying, you may be tired of being a manager, you should go to this webinar we have coming up. It’s how to be a better manager and how to deal with the current [...]. We can do all those invitations to get people into our webinars that are going to show them they don't need to be doing this anymore. There's a lot of different ways that property managers can grow their business right now, but they need to think smart and make those investments. Anne: And HireSmart. Jason: And they need to HireSmart. Awesome. It's great to see you guys again. I'm glad you guys are doing well there over near Atlanta. Keep me apprised as to your next idea. Anne: We always have them. Jason: You always have them. That’s as crazy entrepreneurs. We always are coming up with new stuff. I'll let you guys go and I appreciate you guys coming on. Your website is? Anne: www.hiresmartvas.com Jason: All right. Thanks, Mark, thanks, Anne. Mark: Thank you very much. Anne: Welcome. Thank you, Jason. We appreciate you. Jason: Awesome to have them on. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, and you're wanting to build a business that you actually enjoy, that you love, that is built around you, this is what we do at DoorGrow. Reach out, I guarantee that we’re going to make your business better in some way, shape, or form, and you're going to love it. Even if you feel like you hate it now, maybe you're thinking you want out of it, you're feeling like it’s uncomfortable, you're probably just doing the wrong things in that business, and you may need some VAs that might be a solution for sure. We can help clean up the frontend of your business and help you get the business in alignment with you. Reach out, check us out at doorgrow.com, and make sure you join our Facebook group. We've got an awesome community there, and people that are helpers, that are givers, and you can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com. Mark and Anne are in that group. We've got lots of other really cool property management entrepreneurs that are willing to contribute and help you out. Until next time everyone. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. 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. 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 at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life. April Fools Day is coming. Prank your friends opening a never ending fake update screen on their computer. Sit back and watch their reaction.

What can you do to be more productive, efficient, effective, and get stuff done while working from home during the COVID-19 crisis? No matter how much work you do or get done, there’s always more to do. Today’s guest is Thanh Pham from Asian Efficiency, which has helped more than 15,000 clients worldwide. Also, Thanh hosts a growing and flourishing podcast called, The Productivity Show. You’ll Learn... [01:53] Asian Efficiency: Positive stereotype and memorable name for company. [02:55] Thanh turns hobby of documenting productivity processes into a business. [03:47] Groundhog Day: Businesses operating from home lose time and progress. [05:06] Work/Life Balance: Nothing going on, no way to work, long days, and no variety. [06:33] Planning: Take it to the next level via different dimensions, contingency options. [07:23] Productive vs. Interruptive: Seek clarity to set one goal a day to accomplish. [09:10] Sense of Momentum: What you want and why it matters should drive your life. [12:15] Structure/Strategy: Create own schedule, design ideal day, and set cutoff time. [14:57] Five Whys: Identify root cause and motivation. Money, freedom, flexibility? [17:55] Energy vs. Time: Don’t do everything, do what you like and others do the rest. [25:44] Ideal Day: Map it out the night before to start the next day right away. [27:08] Do’s and Don’ts: Don't eat at your desk; do step away from your office or home. [32:05] What keeps you up at night? Entrepreneurs are known for worrying too much. [34:40] Chinese Proverb: The palest ink is better than the best memory. [35:41] Analog vs. Digital: What’s the difference? Depends on personal preference. Tweetables Restore order in your life to gain a sense of relief and energy to help you recover. “Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process.” “Set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day.” “If we don't have energy, if we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive.” Resources Asian Efficiency The Productivity Show The ONE Thing by Gary Keller Oura Ring Evernote OmniFocus Jira Mont Blanc Pens DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. I have a special guest with me today. Just down the street in Austin hanging out. This is Thanh Pham. What's up, Thanh? Thanh: Hey, Jason. Good to be here. Thanks for having me and I'm super excited to chat with you here today about productivity and anything that we can do to be more productive. Jason: All right. Did I say your name right? Thanh: Yeah, you did. First time, first attempt, 100% correct. Jason: I thought I did, but I thought I would make sure. I'm really excited to have you. You have a great sense of humor. We're chatting it up before the show and your company is called Asian Efficiency, right? Is this correct? Asian Efficiency? Thanh: That is correct. That is a positive stereotype that we have going on here in most of America and the Western world so I thought, “You know what? That's such a funny name. Such a name that sticks out and is memorable.” So we started off as a joke in a way because I just want to document my journey of being more productive. I remember one time I was staying at a house in Miami with some friends, all fellow entrepreneurs. We went out for one night, then we had a few drinks. We had a great time, then the next morning I was being productive in getting stuff done; waking up really early. By the time it was noon, I was done with my day and everyone else was waking up really late. I said, “Oh my gosh, Thanh. You're so productive. That's some Asian efficiency right there,” and that's when the name was born. Jason: So this almost became a theme around you or a nickname attached to you before it was a business. Thanh: Yeah. Honestly, it just started as a hobby. I just wanted to document how I did things as I was learning about productivity and how to be efficient, be effective, managing my time better, and I just started to blog about this back in the day in 2011. After a while, it just started to grow and took a life of its own after about six months. Then people kept asking me, “Thanh, this is so helpful. I'm learning so much. I would love to hire you. Do you have any courses or products?” And I said, “Actually I don't. But that's a great idea.” I accidentally turned this into a business, and now, almost nine years later, we helped over 15,000 clients all over the world. We have a podcast that's growing and flourishing, and just continuously impacting people, people that are listening here today as well. Jason: Awesome. Our topic today is productivity while working from home, which a lot of people are doing right now. Due to the Coronavirus, COVID-19, a lot of people are on lockdown. A lot of people have been stuck at home. Businesses are operating, some are still operating, but they're doing it from home, and a lot of people are joking right now. The big joke is it's all one big day that's been running forever. Everybody feels like there's no difference between one week to the next. The month has gone on for three months now. We're kind of losing a sense of time, it seems to be the theme, and things just keep repeating so we lose a sense of because everything seems so similar each day and we're lacking variety in our day to day, it feels like we're not making any progress I think, maybe subconsciously as well. What are you doing to stay out of that Groundhog’s Day sort of movie type of scenario in your own mind, cognitively? Thanh: I think one of the interesting things that are happening now is some of those are working more than others and some of those are going the complete opposite route. We don't have a job. There's nothing going on and there's no way for us to work. In either spectrum, it feels like days are so long as a result because as you said there's no variety. It's nice to be able to go to work and then come home relax and do nothing. When we miss one or the other, it feels like we're completely out of balance or some of us are just working all the time. If you've been working from home for a while, then you're just working more now because there's nothing else to do. You can't leave your home. You can't go anywhere so you just work more. For those who don't have a job right now, or not working as much, or can't work, you are stuck as well. You can't do anything else but stay at home and relax and do relaxing activities. Jason: And binge Netflix. Thanh: And binge Netflix, yeah. I've watched so many shows. Money Heist was one of my favorite ones that I just finished. A great show, watch that one. Jason: I just went through that too. My girlfriend and I were watching that one and it was good. Thanh: Oh my gosh. Season Four, that really got me. But that's a whole completely different podcast. Jason: I wasn’t mad at the cliff hanger left at the ending though. My girlfriend was upset and I was like, “No, that makes me excited about the next season.” Thanh: [...], you just have to watch it whenever you have time. Jason: I'm sure the character, the professor, you'll get excited about. He's got everything planned out. He's incredibly efficient and he always finds a way to make things work. It seems like when nothing else seems like it'll be possible, he finds some [...] Thanh: I thought I was a planner until I saw this character. Then this guy takes planning to a whole nother level because I thought planning a vacation was great, fun, and easy, then this guy takes planning of the robbery to five different dimensions, so you go whoa, this is crazy. Jason: Right. He's got all the contingency plans. He's got names for all of them and something happens, he's like, “No problem. We're just going to bust out plan C,” and they just pop it out and everybody knows what to do. Thanh: That's a beautiful thing and when we're working from home we can take the same approach. Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process. If you're listening to this and you feel like most of your days are unstructured or you go about your day and you feel like, “Man, I wish I was more productive,” or, “I wish I had that one particular thing done.” I know many of you who are listening probably find it very challenging to schedule stuff. You want to say, “You know what? I want to work on this particular task, or call this particular tenant or client at 11,” and then something comes up. A fire, someone calls you, you got an important email, you're on call the whole time, you have an email client open, interruptions coming all the time, you feel like you're on edge, and it makes it very difficult to focus. It makes it very difficult to concentrate and have focus blocks where you're actually working and doing stuff. When you're in that kind of situation, one thing I've found is when you're trying to work with people who have that interrupt-driven day, one of the best ways you can approach that is to set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day because the rest of your day is typically driven by interruptions and things you have to deal with anyway. But if you can make progress on one goal, or one big outcome, or one big task, that's a really productive day, so let's aim for that. Jason: That reminds me of Gary Keller's The ONE Thing. He's got his one thing question which is, “What's the one thing that, by doing it, everything else will become irrelevant or easier?” That one thing question, so maybe that's something the listeners can ask themselves. What's that one thing that if I do this, it's going to get me a sense of momentum today? It's going to make me feel like I've done something. I've accomplished something. I moved the needle just slightly on my goals. Thanh: I think a great reframe to add on top of that to help people because one of the things I see people struggle with is, “Jason, I have five million things I have to do and they all have to be done. How do I pick one thing to work on?” Oftentimes, we ask ourselves that question. It's a sign that you don't have any clarity about your goal or the destination you want to go towards. So, when you don't have that, everything feels equally important and whenever you get that sense when everything is equally important, that's a sure sign that you don't have clarity about what your goal is or what your destination is. I want to challenge you as a listener to say, “Hey, what is the goal that I'm trying to accomplish?” Because once you know what that is, prioritizing or finding the one thing or the few things you have to do becomes so much easier. As an example, if you're publishing a book, that is your big goal for the year, then if you have a to-do list that says I need to redo my finances, organize my closet and write chapter two. One of those three sounds more appealing because it's aligned to a goal which is just writing chapter two. That doesn't mean redoing your finances and organizing the closet is not important, they are important, but they're not, in relationship to the goal, important enough for you to prioritize over something else. Once you have absolute clarity about the goal, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, you start to notice that certain tasks on your to-do list stand out because they will help you get you closer to your goal. That makes prioritizing them really easy and that makes it easy for you to say, “Okay, this is the one thing or maybe the two things I have to do today, and if I do that then I had a really productive day.” Jason: I love that. I think some of the coaches I've worked with in the past, one of their big questions would always be to ask what do you want? What do you want? That first gut reaction deep down that we're going to respond to that. What do you want in your business? What do you want I think is really important because it's very easy I think for us to just end up becoming a slave to our business or doing things for other people. I think a simple question of what do you want, then the follow-up question was always why does that matter? Because if it doesn't matter, we're not really going to do it. There has to be a why behind it especially if that’s work, if it's painful, if it's difficult. So what do you want and why does it matter. Really, that ultimately should be driving our business. It should be driving our life. All these things are vehicles to serve as. They're all vehicles to make us happier, or more fulfilled, or give us a sense of momentum. Let's get into some specifics. People are listening and are like, “Thanh, I've got my one goal but how do I create this structure for my day that you've talked about? How do I do this?” Thanh: If you're working from home, one of the best things you can do is to create a schedule for yourself because after working from home since 2009, I've consulted so many clients over the years. There's a lot of different strategies out there when it comes to being productive and trying to be efficient working from home, but the one strategy that I see that is most effective for most people is creating your own schedule. You want to design your ideal day and one of the biggest things that you want to pay attention to is that again, one, you want to have one big goal for today especially for people who are listening to this who are interrupt-driven schedule, you want to create that. Then the second thing is you want to make sure that you have the cutoff time for when you stop working as well. I know that's going to sound crazy for a lot of property managers and you go, “Thanh, I can't do that. I'm on call 24/7 and I need to be reachable whenever people contact me.” I totally get that, but if you want to have some sense of balance in your life or if you feel like you're always on call, you're tired of being that way, you want to then start creating some systematic solution around that so that if people do call you after a certain time, it's still being handled. When I'm working with a lot of owners and operators, their main fear is, “Man, if I stop working after six. I'm going to lose a lot of business. I'm going to get a lot of complaints.” Those are rightfully so in the beginning, I would say, but what if you could hire someone to be able to work even part-time to deal with stuff outside of your normal office hours? To be able to handle that request and things that people need so that you don't have to do that. You can pay someone else to be able to do the things that need to be done while you have time for yourself. As you're growing your business and have specific boundaries for yourself, it makes it easier for you to have that work-life balance because most of us who are entrepreneurs and are working all the time, after a while we get so tired. One of the main reasons businesses stop existing or quit is because the owner is tired. They're just like, I'm so done with— Jason: They’re burned out. Thanh: Yeah, they have this burnout. So we want to create boundaries. We want to create systems in place so that we don't have to work all the time. When we do work, we can work on the things we have passion about or we're really good about, that are in alignment with what you were talking about earlier which I love is the whole why thing. If you've never done that exercise, it's called the five whys. Basically you ask yourself why five times, you start to come down to the root cause, the root motivation for you why you started this business. Oftentimes it's not because you wanted to make more money even though that was I'm sure a strong motivator for a lot of people. Oftentimes, it comes down to having your own freedom in your life. Having a flexible schedule. Having quality time with your family and friends. Once you really connect with that, you start to realize I don't have to work 18 hours a day. I can accomplish everything I need in six, or seven, or eight, and the rest of the time I can spend it with my family because that's why I started my business. To be able to spend time with them, not necessarily work more until midnight fixing stuff or trying to attend to tenants, even though that is important. Someone else can do that as well and get paid for it. You employ someone and that's a beautiful thing too. Jason: I think ultimately when we boil anything down, it comes down to usually a feeling that we want to have. Somebody just says I really want a Tesla, or I want to drive. I want this car. When you really boil it down, people always want what we think we will feel when we have that. How would it feel to have a business that runs itself or I had the freedom, the time? Ultimately, it boils down to some sort of feeling that we want to have. Then if you work it backward, once you figure it out, once you get to that bedrock why, then the question is can I have this why without that? Or is there a faster vehicle or a way to get to that in that? If I just want to feel powerful, are there other things I can do to feel powerful besides what I was thinking about how to look this one certain way? One coaching or program that I went through, this phrase they always drove into us was, “It doesn't have to look a certain way.” They recognize it. Everybody always gets so attached to things looking a certain way. We want a specific outcome and we want to get there in a specific way. It has to look this way. No, no, no. It has to be like this. Sometimes we end up becoming control freaks and I'm sure sometimes productivity can become a control freakish mode for people to get into. They're micromanaging every second. They're doing too much. Planning everything out in so much detail that they kill all the life and spirit of their life, fun. Ultimately, that could lead the burnout, unless people really just thrive on that situation. I'm a big fan of energy management over time management. Spending your time doing the things you really enjoy like you're talking about and that's going to help you avoid getting burnout because if I'm doing the things that I love, I can work crazy amounts of hours in a week because I love it. I'm not getting burned out on it. I'm far less likely to get tired. People aren't going to annoy me or frustrate me in those situations because I feel alive. I feel like I'm doing something that brings me joy, life, and momentum. I think ultimately everybody needs to find that in their business because I think the great secret that nobody talks about is that as a business owner, you don't have to do all the stuff people say a business owner has to do. You can do whatever you want. If you want to be the receptionist in your company, you can be the receptionist. It's your choice. It's your company. If you want to do accounting and you love that, you can do the accounting. If you want to do customer service, you can do that being the business owner. Let's go to the cutoff time. I really like this idea. I like this idea because there are so many beliefs that prevent us from stopping and cutting it off. I had a job working for an internet service provider and I started managing their support department after being there for a short period of time, then I was moving up and then I was just underneath the two owners. I was working really crazy long hours. I had to commute sometimes during that job, like two hours because I was driving into LA (Los Angeles), and traffic was crazy. And then driving out. S.o I would just stay even later and I was working, working, working. The thing I realized is that no matter how much work I did there was always more. There's never an end to finishing all work that could or possibly will be done. There's no exact stopping point that you'll eventually find that all the work you need to do as a business owner or even just as an employee is done. But creating a healthy stopping point when it hits this time, I'm going to stop my day and pick it up again tomorrow. It's always going to be there waiting for you. It's still there and what I find is, is it the Pareto principle? It is the idea that if you constraint your time to a certain limit, “I'm going to be done by five o'clock. Five o'clock I'm cutting it off.” What happens is you start to become more productive because you start to innovate. You start to be creative. You're forced to constraint and because of that constraint, you have now to innovate. Without a constraint, it could be endless. You give somebody in your team an endless amount of time to do something, they can take weeks. You're like, “No, I need this done by Friday.” Then they start to innovate. “It's not possible the way I currently do it to get done by Friday. Okay, what can we do to change that?” Every week you can have this done. Then, you start to get innovative. I think there are secret benefits to doing that cutoff time that psychologically feel backward but we're going to become more productive as a result of creating that cutoff time. Do you agree? Thanh: I one hundred percent agree because there are actually multiple benefits to setting that cutoff time. You mentioned one [...] of them right there which is like setting a deadline first. We know that there's nothing better than having a really good deadline that forces you to get a lot of things done in a shorter period of time. Having that cutoff time every single day is like having a deadline every day for yourself to say, “Okay, I need to get all of these work done before a specific time,” and if we don't have that, then we take up the whole day and even more than that to get the things done that we need to get done. That goes back to what you're saying early like Parkinson's Law. Something takes up as much time as we give it to. If we say, “I want to have this done in two weeks,” it can be done and if you tell yourself it can be done in one year, it will be done in one year. It's just a matter of how much time we give ourselves to get something done. By having a daily cutoff time, by forcing ourselves to do the things that need to be done, especially if you focus on one or two major things like the one thing or the two smaller things and say, “Okay, I need to have this done before five,” then you will find ways like you said to get it done. The other big benefit of that is that when you have that balance to say, “Okay, after five I'm going to stop working,” you can then go to bed earlier. You can enjoy time with your family. You can spend time with your kids or you can do some personal hobbies. You can run some errands. You can do all these different things that restore order in your life. They give you a sense of relief. They give you a sense of energy to help you recover. Guess what? You're going to show up as a better owner, as a better property manager the next day because if you're sleeping well, you're eating right, you have the time to do all the things you need to do, you're going to show up the next day feeling refreshed and having more energy. Like we talked about and like you mentioned earlier, energy is such an important factor. It's such an important currency for productivity and when we have the energy to focus and do the things we need to do, we are so much more productive than without it. It's like if you have really nice sports cars sitting in your garage, you're the perfect driver. You know exactly how to drive it. You know every single feature, but the car has no gas. Guess what? You're not going to go anywhere even if you have the right tools, you know exactly what you need to do, you have no gas? Guess what? You're not going to drive that thing anywhere. It's the same thing for us. If we don't have energy. If we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive. Then we have to caffeinate. We have to drink more coffee or tea getting ourselves ready. That's not a success [...] for us to be able to focus and be productive for the rest of our lives. We want to be able to start our day, get things done that need to be done, and have the energy to focus and do the best work that we're paid to do, essentially. By introducing that cutoff time, it has so many benefits that come with that. Just think about all the benefits that come with having more energy. Sleeping better, running the errands you need to get done. Having that sense of order in place because you can do all these different things. It makes it so much easier and makes you so much happier as well. That's going to be reflected in your work you do the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Jason: I think ultimately what all of these creates is presence. It allows us to be more present or more there when we need to be there. If a property manager is communicating with a tenant, they need to be on when things get difficult or sticky. They need to be on with an owner and they need to cognitively have the ability to make decisions, and move quickly, and think. All of this gives us power. It gives us power when we're able to be more present because if you're tired, you're not present, not nearly. If you're cognitively burned out, then you're almost in a situation that is painful that you're forcing yourself to do something. Forcing your body to do something that is uncomfortable. You're done and you keep going. Let's go back to the idea of this ideal day. How do we create a map for our ideal day? When do you do this? Thanh: Ideally, you want to plan your ideal day the night before. That's something that is such a simple habit that I teach and very few people actually do. But once they do it and follow through with it, they start to know this huge productivity jumps because it allows you to start your day right away, as soon as you're done with your morning routine or you're sitting down on your desk instead of just starting your day where you're scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. Also, the other benefit that comes with planning your day the night before is that you can go to bed knowing that everything is being addressed and is going to be addressed the next day as well. You can feel relaxed and not stressed out as much because you know anything that needs to be addressed needs to be done the next day, so you can sleep a lot better. It has so many energy benefits as we talked about earlier. Planning your day the night before is one of the first things I would recommend people do. The second thing is to have one big goal. One big win for the day, then the third thing is the cutoff time. You have those three pieces in place, plan it the night before, one big goal, and having a cutoff time. You will have an ideal day figured out for yourself. If you're working from home, one of the things I would also recommend that you don't eat at your desk. Actually leave your office or your home. This applies also if you're working on an office because most of us are just sitting at our office or desk the whole day and we get so burned out by just looking at a screen, being on Zoom meetings, or being on the phone the whole time that it's actually nice to be able to step away. Go for lunch for an hour and go for a walk. By the time you come back, get outside. Get some sunlight, some vitamin D and you feel so much better. Your mood is elevated. You have a new sense of urgency, a new sense of energy. Stepping away from your desk to have lunch, as simple as that sounds, will make a big difference. I was working with this coaching client. He had all these big goals and we were committed for a three-month engagement. The only thing we did is I told him to go for an hour-and-a-half every single day because he was working at a big bank. He was super busy. He felt like he just had to work 80 hours a week. The only difference that we truly implemented was just going out for lunch because it's like a mid-day reset for him. I gave him a new sense of energy, a resurgence of focus. He was able to work from going to 80 hours to 55 hours, which was a huge improvement for him. The only change was because he had a longer lunch and is going outside. Going out for lunch away from his office. As a result, he was just more focused, had more energy, and knew exactly what he needed to do. He had more time to think about stuff. So, instead of just sitting there all day at his desk feeling lethargic and just sitting there for the sake of sitting there, he wasn't actually truly productive. Again, plan your day the night before, have one big win, set a cutoff time, then definitely go out for lunch outside of your home and office. Jason: I love it. It's like breaking up your day into two chunks to tackle. It's a lot easier than doing an eight-hour chunk. The night before, why not do planning in the morning? Maybe you can touch on that. Some people do this. They get up in the morning. They sit down. They're like, “I'm going to plan out my day,” and they do it in the morning. Advantages? Disadvantages? What are your thoughts? I'm sure you've had clients doing that. Thanh: Yeah, I've done both for many years. Planned the night before and I also planned the morning of. One thing I found is if you're somebody who is a morning person, you have the energy you have in the morning, then planning the night before gives you the most benefit because you can just start your day right away and just use your energy and focus on the important task that needs to be done. You just get started right away. You're not wasting time or energy planning something. You already did that the night before. If you're a morning person, then I would say that's the way to go. I would say for a majority of people that applies too, even if you're not a morning person. Even if you're somebody who starts a little bit later, let's say 10, 11, or 12. It's still beneficial to plan the night before because you can go to bed knowing that, "Okay, I have an idea what to do." Also, there's the sense that once we know what we need to do the next day when we go to bed we can just feel assured that we're going to do this, but also, our brain will start thinking about how do we solve this particular task or problem or knowing exactly what we need to do the next day. That's very powerful as well whereas if you plan the day off or the morning of, often it's easy to get distracted, or to have an excuse for something, or just continue to lay on the bed a little bit longer because we wanted to. Because there's no sense of urgency or clarity about, "Okay. I need to do this today," because that planning process still hasn't come up. I think for many reasons and for many people planning the night before is more of a preference, ideal, something that you will make a habit of because I do think it has much more impact. But if you're somebody who doesn't' really get started until two or three o'clock in the afternoon, then I'd say it's okay to do it in the morning because you're not going to be as focused anyway. Those are some of the pros and cons, but if I were to work with a client, I would always recommend doing it the night before. Jason: I like the idea you touched on there that if you do your planning the night before, you're then allowing your subconscious to work out a lot of the details. A lot of entrepreneurs operate based on their gut, their intuition. It's things that they're subconscious, or deep down are coming up for them, or they’re figuring out. I think that gives them more of an opportunity to use that supercomputer that our subconscious mind is. That makes a lot of sense. I'm going to play around on that. That sounds cool. You always hear the phrase, “What keeps you up at night?” Entrepreneurs are notoriously known for being kept up at night because they're worried about something or working on something. Maybe just the act of offloading everything at the end of the day and saying this is going to be a plan for tomorrow, instead of leaving it there feeling like you need to work on it, that's going to allow your subconscious to work on it, but also create the space so that you can get good rest and you aren't kept up worrying about things. It'll allow you to lower that anxiety or that pressure, noise, or that stress that every entrepreneur tends to carry. Thanh: Yeah, that's why I always recommend that people journal at night as well because when we have so many thoughts before we go to bed, it's just so hard to fall asleep. I've been really geeking out on this even further because I have an Oura ring, one of those fitness trackers, and one thing I've [...] is that when I journal and I put all my thoughts away, my REM sleep goes up significantly. REM sleep is when [...] frustration for our brain, for our mental health, and when I don’t journal, the number of minutes of REM sleep goes down quite a bit. I think it's really because when our brain is occupied with all these different things, it cannot actually relax as much because there's just so much going on. But when we journal and put it on paper, put it away from our head and actually put it on paper, our brain can relax knowing that we don't' have to use this as memory or store anything. It's on paper. It's there. If we need it, we can access it. We don't have to worry or stress about it. You can actually focus on recovery while we're sleeping. It also helps you to sleep better. You feel less stressed when you do that. It's a nice winding down routine for you as well to decompress and just destress. I like to journal in the morning as well just to reflect and think. Also at night before I go to bed just to honestly put my stray thoughts away. If I wanted to do something, or I had a particular task, or I had an idea that I don't want to lose, just write it down real quick. It's out of your head and as you know, our memories are terrible. I've had so many ideas and then go, “Oh, what was the thing I was thinking about? That was such a brilliant idea.” Or I had a catchphrase and I was like, “Oh, I should use that on my podcast or marketing copy. Oh my gosh. I forgot what that was. I wish I had written that down.” Our memory is as not strong so it's always a good idea to write stuff down as quickly as possible especially before you— Jason: [...] about the palest ink? Thanh: That I don't know. Jason: It's the palest ink. I'm being Asian Efficiency now. It's my turn. There's this Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory, or something like that. Thanh: Oh, I've never heard of that. I might have to borrow that from you. Jason: You could look it up. I don't know who said it, maybe it was Confucious, he says everything. But anyway the faintest ink is better than even the best memory because it's there, it’s tangible, it can't be forgotten, We know our brains are not really great at accuracy or remember things, so I love that idea. Related to that, Mr. Asian Efficiency, how do you feel about typing versus writing? Because what you're saying is writing in my journal, writing in my journal. Are you actually writing or it sounds like it can be more digital, nerdy, tech, whatever way of typing everything. A lot of people are, “Type it all. Type this note. I'll type it on my phone. Type, type, type.” Do you find there is any difference? Are the things you feel like writing is better suited for? Do you write anything? How does this work for you? Thanh: I think this whole analog versus digital is an interesting conversation for many people. What I have seen in my own personal life and amongst thousands of our clients is that there's no one best way to do something. It's really a personal preference. You can have a paper to-do list, or a physical planner where you write your to-do list, or you can have a digital one. I tend to prefer to use a digital planner myself, but when I'm writing notes down or journal, I usually like to do it on paper. There are scientific studies that show if you write something down, you tend to remember better. Your retention is a little bit better. There's some value in that as well. You also need to look at the functionality, utility value that comes with that because you leave a piece of paper at home, you can't really access it anywhere whereas if it's something in the Cloud or Evernote. If I write it down on my computer or write it down on my phone, I always have it with me whenever I need to. I like to have a combination of both so for example my to-do list is digital, I use OmniFocus as an app for that. Then in my company we use something like Jira, a project management tool. For notes and just storing ideas and just random stuff I use Evernote. That's on my phone and also on my computer and available on the web. That's an easy way to access stuff very quickly too. But when it comes to journaling, I like to have a physical planner. I use something like a five-minute planner or just a self journal which is a physical planner. I use it every single night and every morning to either plan my day, to think about stuff, or to just write down and just put some thoughts down or ideas that I have. Whenever I am traveling, I'm also carrying one with me. If I don't have it with me, then I'll store it in Evernote real quick. Most of the time, I like to use something physical because it allows me to disconnect from my computer. I'm sitting behind my computer most of the days and when I'm sitting there, I'm just not as creative because I'm associating computers and screens with work. Sometimes, if I want to be creative, I have to actually step away from that to be able to go to my whiteboard. That's another tool that I use which is physical or pen and paper-ish. Just go to my whiteboard and start mind mapping, brainstorming ideas, or creating a quick list of things I need to do or want to remember because I can be so much more creative when I'm away from my computer. The same thing with pen and paper. Sometimes, if I'm doing thinking questions for myself then I say, “Thanh, what will it take to double my business over the next six months?” That’s a simple question that I ask myself. If I do that behind my computer, I get easily distracted. There's notification popping up. “Oh, let me just quickly check this email. Someone's messaging me on Slack or Microsoft Teams. Oh my gosh, I'm getting so distracted,” whereas if I'm away and I have my favorite beverage. I'm sitting at a nice coffee shop or something, I see beautiful people walking around, there's a nice atmosphere, and I'm just sitting there and thinking, there's a different level of engagement, commitment, and clarity that I get from doing that. I like to use a combination of both. Again, there's no perfect solution for everyone. There's no one-size-fits-all, and a lot of times people have to figure out on their own what they prefer and also depending on their lifestyle, but I think everyone can benefit from digital and paper. Jason: Yeah. Like every podcast episode, I'm writing down notes. This is just this episode, that's page one. I'm already on page two. Thoughts as they come to me, things I need to do, like I just wrote down I need a cool box for my mic like you have because I don't have that. That's kind of cool. I'm always thinking and the brain is always going, so writing things down (for me) is a big deal. I use all kinds of digital stuff to keep track of things. Keep track of tasks, keep track of what my team is doing, tons of software and my business so I get it. Then even on my iPad, I have an iPad with an Apple pencil so I can write on that and it's digital. There are a whole plethora of different ways. I guess ultimately it's what works for you. What's going to actually help you feel creative, feel the momentum, and get your thoughts out. I do think there's magic in writing. As nerdy, as digital, and tech-savvy as I am, I think there's magic in writing. They found that even when you write stuff out, if you lose your main writing limb and you start writing with your other hand, your handwriting will eventually be exactly the same once you get used to it again. Handwriting analysis, if you geek out on some of those stuff, is actually like brainwriting. It's like a brain to paper. I think there's some magic in writing that I think there's also something therapeutic about writing for me that I just don't get by typing something. Thanh: Absolutely. I have a beautiful pen that was gifted to me. Someone gifted me a Mont Blanc pen and the really funny story about that is like four or five years ago when I got this gift. Someone gave me this pen and when I got this pen, back in the day I didn't know anything about pens so I'm like, “Wow. Okay, this is a nice gesture.” So I put that pen away. I didn't really think much of it and a few months later, one of my employees comes here and says, “Thanh, is that a Mont Blanc pen?” and I go, “I have no idea. What does that even mean?” He says, “Oh my gosh, this pen is like $700, Thanh. Did you not realize that?” I was like, “No, but let me use it because it's so expensive.” That's when I started using my pen and that's when I realized wow this is really actually a beautiful pen. The weight of the pen, the way you hold it, then I actually started writing down stuff a lot more as a result of that. As you said, it's kind of a therapeutic thing. It's a beautiful tool that I have that I like to use. It's really smooth and sits nicely in my hand. Because I'm away from my computer, there's no crazy stuff going on. There's a lot to that. If you make it really enjoyable for yourself where it's a therapeutic fun thing for you, you have tools that you use that you enjoy, then it makes it really easy and fun. Something that I always talk about in my podcast is called minimalist luxury. How can you have very few things, but the thing you do own or the best quality that you can afford is absolutely the best thing that you want to own and have? For example, having one really nice pen allows you to do so many cool things with that. Writing a contract, or agreement, or journaling every single day. It's a fun process for you because you love to use that pen or maybe it's a really nice jacket that you love to wear and anytime you wear it, you feel so much more confident. Going back to that feeling that you want, that you're looking for, it's like if you want to feel powerful you wear that particular jacket. There's one jacket that I have, anytime I wear it I feel so powerful. It's my favorite jacket and every time I go to speak, that's the one I always like to wear because I associate it with being powerful. Jason: I think I saw the post on your Instagram or your Facebook. Your power jacket, does it have a little shield on it? Thanh: Exactly, yeah. All these different things that we can buy and there's not many things that we need, but the few things that we need or want to make sure it's the best one that you can afford because oftentimes it will last longer. It's better quality. You'll enjoy using it more. That's something I learned from using that pen because I don't want to use any other pen, that's the one pen I want to use and every time I want to use it I feel so happy using it. Jason: Yeah. Thanh, we can probably talk about this stuff for hours. We can go on and on and I'm sure there's lots of stuff that you can share and teach people. Maybe we should wrap this up. How can people learn more and what things do you teach or share at your company? Thanh: Absolutely. Thank you first and foremost for serving your listeners and audience. If people want to find out more about me and what we do at Asian Efficiency, we have a podcast called The Productivity Show; it’s the number one podcast on iTunes. Also, you can go to asianefficiency.com. You can find anything there about productivity, being efficient, automation, what kind of tools to use. There's so much free content there that I would love to share with people, so just go to asianefficiency.com and we'll take care of you there. Jason: Awesome, alright. Thanh, it's been great having you here on the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you being here. Thanh: Thank you. Jason: All right. We will let Thanh go. Check his stuff out. Really cool guy. Anybody that is focused on something as much as he has, has some really cool ideas to share and it's fun to have people like that on. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, you are wanting a better website, a better presence, you are wanting branding that makes you feel confident to look good when you go showcase your business to other people, helps you improve your sales, whatever you're looking to do for your property management business so that you can improve your growth, we can help over DoorGrow. Check us out. Go to doorgrow.com and we look forward to having you as a client and supporting you in your growth. We love our clients. We have some amazing, awesome clients. Check us out at doorgrow.com and be sure to join our community at doorgrowclub.com and that's it for today. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. 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. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge in 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 at doorgrow.com. 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.

What’s an easier way for realtors to get referrals to property managers? A free mobile tool, rather than just another app on your smartphone. Today’s guest is Vitaliy Merkulov from Renter Inc., a company that builds software for realtors and property management businesses to be relevant, knowledgeable, and engaging. You’ll Learn... [03:05] What’s next? Building mobile app to generate leads. [03:50] #1 Source: Property management businesses grow via referrals. [04:57] Purpose and Point of Development: Mobile app gives you more realtor referrals. [05:47] Features and Benefits: Realtors request free rent analysis, receive push notifications, provide referrals, and view referral status. [08:10] Rent Analysis: Property manager is first to know who’s leased property, what property should lease for, and what the market suggests for time it takes to lease it. [11:40] Relationships: Get customers when they’re hot. Provide a tool that gets them there, gets them faster for more chances to turn them into leads. [14:09] Resource: App also offers latest trends, news, and events in specific areas. [15:18] Fear and Future Opportunities: Evictions and moratoriums will be lifted, and the real estate/property management industry tends to do well in these situations. [17:37] Open Rates: App is opened more than email; provides easy access to people. [19:44] Installation and Onboarding: Enable permission to receive push notifications. [21:30] Transactional and Global: Two types of notifications. [22:45] Status of App: In development phase, planning to be released mid-June 2020, and four beta testers in place. Tweetables #1 Source: Property management businesses grow via referrals. People shift from buying to renting. People transition to being accidental investors. The property management industry may have a season of significant growth. To get people to give you referrals, you have to show them value. All the features have been defined, they're ready, and they’re in the development phase. Resources Renter Inc. [email protected] DGS 71: Automate Giving Landlord References with Vitaliy Merkulov of Renter, Inc. Propertyware AppFolio Drip RentWerx Mynd Property Management RentPros Real Property Management Preferred DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. My guest today is Vitaliy. Vitaliy, welcome to the show. Vitaliy: Thank you. Jason: You’ve been on the show before. Your company is Renter, Inc. For those that aren’t familiar with you, why don’t you give us a quick background of you are, and then maybe give us an update on Renter, Inc., and then let’s get into this new thing that you’re here to talk about today, which is how realtors can start getting referrals to property managers in a more easy way. Vitaliy: All right. Thank you for having me here again. Last time I was here I believe it was about a year ago. Renter, Inc. is a software company that builds multiple software. One of the ones that I was here for last time is called Rental Verification software. What that does is it automates the process of giving rental verifications to your tenants that are leaving your property. You have tenants that are there, they’re getting ready to leave. That new prospective landlord contacts you, asks you for references. Usually, it takes 10-15 minutes to do that, and then you have to chase—make sure that they give you consent forms and all that stuff. With our software, Rental Verifications, you’re able to integrate with Propertyware and AppFolio, and it automatically generates their rental verifications for them so you don’t have to spend your time on that. The last time I was here, I was saying hey, we need some beta testers for AppFolio, and we were able to get them because of this show. Right now, it’s up and running. Everything is good. What I want to talk about today is this mobile app that we’re building. This came from talking to property managers, asking them what their real problems are. Some of them came back and said our biggest problem is not really automation right now. Our biggest problem is getting more leads. That’s where this app idea was born. I’d love to talk to you guys about that. Jason: Let’s get into it. The number one source for most property management businesses in growing businesses, if they have a healthy property management business, is always word of mouth—it’s referrals. If you build up a business that has lots of doors, it’s a machine that builds itself. It just naturally starts to grow as you have more tenants and more owners, and you’re doing a good job, and providing good service, more and more people are referring. It kind of takes on a life of its own. For a lot of property managers, this is a real problem. It’s a struggle to get this machine going, to get that engine going. Then even for the larger ones, they’re always like how can I pour more gasoline in this fire that is our biggest fire? How do we make this work? You and I have been talking about this software quite a bit, right? We’ve gone back and forth, and I guess you could say I have consulted and given you a bunch of ideas on this as well. Where are you at with this, and what have you come up with? Let’s tell people about it. Vitaliy: Let’s try to get into what is the point of this app first, and then I’ll tell you where we are in the development of this app. The main point of this app is it will give you more referral apps—realtor referrals. The way it works is instead of you going to realtor events, meeting realtors, and giving them your business card and beg for referrals, you would simply give them your own app with your own logo, which will have very good tools in it that you would provide to these realtors. That they would simply go to either App Store or Android store and download your own app. This app will have capabilities such as realtors will be able to request free rent analysis directly from you, and you would be able to respond back inside your own app with your own rent analysis. They will receive push notifications, you will receive push notifications, and everything is done through the app. The other feature is going to be referrals. Realtors will be able to give you a referral from the app. You will see and get a push notification saying that there is a referral coming in. The big part here, the realtor will be able to see the status of the referral. For example, is the referral converted, has it been dropped? All of that will be able to be seen in the app. The other benefit that this app has is it’s not only an app that is useful for you, the property manager, it’s also a tool for a realtor to be basically an expert in investors’ type of world. You will be able to push important information to them. For example, local laws and regulations that these realtors need to know when they’re working with an investor in the area. It makes you relevant, it makes you more advanced in knowledge, and it gives them this free tool rather than just another app on their phone. It also gives you push notifications, which is a much, much more chance of them interacting with you. The other biggest thing out of them all is the fact that it’s a mobile app, it’s on their phone and you can send them push notifications. They will be on top of your mind compared to all of those property managers who gave them their business cards and begged them to follow up with them. Jason: Let’s touch on some of this real quick because I’m sure we’re going to lose people if we’re just throwing out all the features and benefits. When you first came to me with this app, I was really negative about it. I mean, let’s be honest. I was like nobody wants another app on their phone. Realtors aren’t going to want to just download some app and give referrals. The missing piece, which you just threw out there like it was not that big of a deal, but I want to point out it’s a big deal—that rent analysis. Realtors really do want to be able to say to their investor clients here is an expert analysis, but they have no idea. They have no idea they could go to Zillow, they could go to these places, but they’re inaccurate, and they have problems. Nobody knows better than a property manager who’s leased out two or three properties in that neighborhood what that property should realistically lease for, or what they could get, or what the market is suggesting based on the time it takes to lease a property. All this kind of stuff. They have all these anecdotal data in their head that you’re just not going to be able to pull in sometimes because they’re the boots on the ground. They see this. This gives agents a resource that they can come to you, provide, basically, a lead to you like here’s this property. Here’s the owner’s detail. Here’s the stuff. You’ll be able to provide that service. They’re going to feel safe that you’re going to give this person back to them when it comes time to sell because you’re going to be, as a property manager, the first to know when this person wants to sell. Why? Because they’re going to reach out, and they’re going to want to know what the property may be could sell for. They’re going to have this need, so you can then refer them back to the agent. The idea, once we figured that out, there’s an incentive, there’s some benefit for the agent to look like an expert, to keep the client, to receive that, and then I was like all right. Now, this is starting to make sense, Vitaliy. This is something I could sell people on. I could say hey, you should do this. This will be a good idea. The idea that agents can see the transparency, they can see where a lead is at, almost like a CRM. They can see where it’s at in the step in the process. Because this is one of the concerns, if I send somebody a referral, I want to know if they’re being taken care of, I want to know how it’s going. I want a little bit of feedback. Did you get them on as a client? Are you going to pay me a kickback for this? Is there like this? That’s what the property manager and the real estate agent, they want to see all of this stuff. This app facilitates all of that. The agent’s going to want to keep this app on their phone because they’re going to have this easy resource they can go to. It’s a tangible anchor. Psychologically, anytime they’re stuck on anything, they’re like oh, well, this person is a real estate investor and they want to turn this into an investment property. The next step is we need to figure out what could this property rent for if they buy this property? You can start building that, connect that relationship. It allows the agent to look even better, to look like they have a team of resources, to look like they’ve got things at their disposal, and you get to be that resource as a property manager. Did I sum that up, somewhat? Is that okay? Vitaliy: Yeah, of course. Let’s imagine this. The realtor is out there showing the property to investors. They look at this property, 123 Main Street, and the investor says how much can I get rent for? Instead of you waiting, going to your office, and then reaching out to your favorite property manager, the realtor can take out their phone, and go to your own property management app, and request a rent analysis right there and then, and forget about it. It depends on how fast you are, you’ll get a notification or a push notification into your own app, and you’ll be able to provide a rent analysis within seconds or minutes. Jason: This rent analysis is going to have the property owner’s info on it, right? You request that from the agent. If the agent wants to request this info, they’re submitting their client’s info like here’s the client’s name, here are their details, so that you get a lead as a property manager. Then you can communicate with the agent and with the owner. Vitaliy: Yeah. Much faster and you always got to get your customers right when they’re hot, and this is when they’re hot. They’re looking at this property, they want to know what is it going to rent for, and if you can provide them with the tool that is able to get them there, get them faster, there are more chances it’s going to turn into your own lead. Jason: You start building that relationship, and at that point, you’re just being helpful. Ultimately, you don’t have to be salesy, you’re just providing value, you’re being helpful. Here’s the rent analysis. Here’s what you might want to do. Then if you’d like us to come out and check out this property and give you an idea of what changes need to be made, we’d be happy to do that in order to get it ready. You can start to build this and start this relationship without having to start selling. The agent is saying this is a trusted resource, I’m going to connect you with this company. They’ll give you a rent analysis, they’re going to do all of this, and they come with that authority already established. Vitaliy: Most property managers do offer this free tool on their website, but once the realtor is on the field, they're not going to pull up their phone, and try to go on your website, and request rent analysis there. It might be harder to do. If it's on their phone, there are more chances they're going to do it through your app rather than finding and looking for a website of another property management company. Hoping that that website is accessible through their phone. Knowing that it is a resource because this app will not just have rent analysis and referrals, it will have latest trends, latest news, and events that are happening in specifically your area, there are more chances that they're going to already know about your app because you've been pushing push notifications to them about the latest events. They will have you on top of mind, and they will know to go to you rather than to another property management company. Jason: Right now, with coronavirus COVID-19, all the drama that's going on, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's going to be a lot of shifts—evictions, moratoriums are happening. Once these things start to lift, there's still going to be a lot of questions. People are looking for answers, and there's a massive opportunity here coming in the future. If the real estate market doesn't recover quickly from all this complete pause that's happened, then maybe a real estate industry may suffer and struggle, and then the property management industry, usually by default, tends to do well in those situations. People shift from buying to renting, that people transition to being accidental investors. They can't get places sold as the market tanks. The property management industry may have a season of significant growth coming here in the next several months or next several years. This would be a tool that would allow you to get that info out like here's the update. Here's what's going on. We even see the president of the United States. He has an opportunity right now to do daily briefings, and his ratings are higher than anything else going on right now, from what I understand. Everybody wants to know what's coming from the top. You're the expert in your market, you're the expert when it comes to rentals, and so the agents—maybe even landlords might start tuning into this if they’re another audience added into this app. Am I jumping the gun there? Vitaliy: No. That’s perfect. The main point here is in order to get people to give you referrals, you have to show them value. If you're just going out there and giving everyone business cards and begging for referrals, you're not going to get them. You have to give them something back first. With this app, you are giving them a resource that is specific to that specific market. Once you show them that you've given them resources, and you've given them information that has been valuable, for example, the latest news, and trends, and eviction laws specifically for your area, they will most likely go to you because they've heard from you, they've seen you. This app will be opened up much more than an email would. That seems to be the trend, and that is one of the biggest reasons why mobile apps are being developed by larger corporations—is to have that easy access to people. Once a push notification goes out, the open rate is 95%. People will open up that little ding on their iPhone or their Android phone, and they'll see that red one next to the app, and they will want to open it and make sure that they see what's going on. The technology has been proven that the fact that the mobile apps do get opened up much better, and they do bring a top of mind much better than anything else out there. Jason: Let's compare it to other things. Email open rates are pretty low. We use a software called Drip currently for our newsletter, for example. We have, actually, what's considered a really high open rate on our emails, but even still, a really good open rate on email maybe is 30% on a bulk email. Maybe, right? If you get 20%, some people still consider that pretty decent. That means the vast majority, if you're looking at the 80-20 rule, are not looking at the emails. The way inboxes are now set up, they go into weird folders, or categorizations, or spam. Email deliverability is just not a great way to maintain communication or a relationship. Text messages have really high open rates, push notifications really high open rates. That's what you're talking about. There's a big difference if you can do push notifications versus that. Is there a challenge with getting people to opt into the push notifications, or is this just something they'll need to educate each realtor they're bringing into this like make sure you say yes to the push notifications as you enable this app. Vitaliy: That's a good point. When the realtor does install this app, it goes through what we call an onboarding. A few pages where we explain to them the point of push notifications first before we give them a pop-up and say hey, allow push notifications, so they will know to enable it rather than just pushing it to them, and most people just say no, I don't want push notifications. We do think that there is going to be more people enabling those notifications. I haven't thought about this, but in the future, what we could do is if there is a notification that comes in, we will display some message saying hey, be sure to enable your push notifications. But if they do open the app, they'll still see that notification, it just won't be a push notification. It's still a much better open rate in that. Does that make any sense? Jason: Yeah, it does. You're going to constantly solicit or get them to open permission to do the push notifications if they haven't done it yet. That makes sense. It will be one of those annoying little red icons probably on the phone app set with a number like oh, man. I got to look at this. What's going on here? Vitaliy: I wanted to say that there are two types of notifications there. One is when it's transactional, so for example, there's a new rent analysis available. You have given them a new rent analysis, and then they get a push notification saying hey, 123 Main Street has responded with their rent analysis. That's one type of push notification. The second type is what we call a global notification, and that is what a property manager of this app is able to send out to everyone. It could be something like hey, if you give us a referral this month, we'll give you double the price, or something like that. It's more like a promotional push notification just to get into on top of mind of people. That is where you have the potential to send it to everyone who has their push notifications enabled, and it will also show up in their notifications screen on the app even if they don't have the push notifications enabled. They'll still see it next time they open the app. People are able to use that as a promotional also. There are those two types. Jason: Perfect. Okay. Where are you at with this app? How far along is development? Do you have people using it? Beta testing? Where is it at? Those that are listening, what would be the next step? If they're interested, which I'm expecting people to be pretty interested in this, why don't you give people a state of the union on this app. Vitaliy: Currently, the app is in the development phase. It's planned to be released mid-June 2020. Right now, all the features have been defined, they're ready, and they’re in the development phase. We have currently a few beta testers. RentWerx, which Brad Larsen as one of the beta testers. We have Mynd Property Management as one of the testers. We have another property manager called RentPros. They manage about 1000 doors, they’re a beta tester. Then we have one of the Real Property Management Preferred, beta testers. Currently, we have four beta testers, and the majority of them are in over 1000 doors. Currently, they're working on expanding in their referral program, and that's why we were excited about this. Those who are interested in becoming beta testers, we are only going to offer the beta to 10 beta testers. After that, the beta program will close until it's available for everyone else. The beta users will get 20% off and then will not get that if you sign up after the beta is over. The benefit of being a beta user is that you obviously get the discount, and also, you're the one who will determine which features will be developed in the next phase. That's a really good benefit there. It will be out mid-June, and then we'll probably test it for about a month or so, and then July or so, it's going to be available for everyone. Jason: I don't think you'll have any trouble getting some beta testers with all the people that listen to the show. You'll get 10, so that's not going to be an issue. Vitaliy: Whoever gets in there first is going to get it. We're not going to allow more than 10 beta testers because we want [...]. Jason: Then make sure they're good ones. Find some really tech-savvy guys because they'll give you some good feature requests, or gals. Guys or gals, right? All right. Awesome. Vitaliy, this sounds really great. I know I've got several clients that would be interested in this. Hopefully, they're listening to this. On some of my calls that I do with my clients, some of the gals and guys there were keenly interested in something like this. We're going to throw this out. By the time this makes it to the podcast, they'll already be filled, I'm sure. How do they get in touch with you to get on the beta program? For those that aren't going to make it into that, how can people find out more about this, and where you're at with this, and maybe even sign up? How do people communicate with you? Vitaliy: The best thing to do is go to our website renterinc.com, and then there's a tab on top that says Other Products. Once you go to that, there's a Realtor Referral App. It'll take you to a specific page where it doesn't talk a lot about the app but allows you to schedule a call with us. That will tell us that you're interested in specifically the Realtor Referral App. We'll get on the call to see if you're a good candidate for a beta tester. If you are, you'll join, we’ll get your logo and your company information, and you'll have your own app mid-June. If you don't make it to the beta test, we will still be able to get you on the call, get you set up, and then once the beta program is over, we'll get you set up with your own app, hopefully somewhere middle of July. You can either go to renterin.com, or you could just email [email protected], and then just tell us you're interested in the Realtor Referral Program. I'd encourage everyone else to also take a look at our other software that we have. We also have an integration with AppFolio that allows you to request rental verifications and get them back in 24 hours or so. We do that through our Chrome extension that we’ve just built. Take a look at that. We’re excited about the referral app, but our other tools are pretty good too. Jason: You’re a humble promoter of your products and services. I appreciate that. Vitaliy, thanks for coming on the show. Keep us updated on how this goes. Vitaliy: All right. Thank you so much. Talk to you later. Jason: Awesome. We’ve had lots of conversations about this. He’s been picking my brain. Anyway, check that out. If you are a property management business owner, and you are struggling, you’re having difficulty, you want to feel like you have somebody in your corner, we’ve got some great coaching programs available. We also are launching websites. Every week, we’re launching a new website for clients, so check us out. At DoorGrow, I believe we build the best websites in the property management industry, hands down. If you are feeling even a little bit confident or insecure about your website, go to doorgrow.com/quiz and test it. Grade your website, and see where it’s at. If you get an A, then I guess you need to have a conversation with me or my team. But if you don’t, if you get a B, or what’s common—a C, or even more common—a D, or you fail outright on this quiz, then you owe it to yourself and your business to make sure you’re not missing out on website leads and deals every single month. One deal is probably worth $6000 lifetime value. That’s maybe $2000 a year on the door. Maybe you’re making $2000 a year, and you can keep going for maybe three years, maybe $6000 lifetime value. If you’re missing out on just two or three of those every month, that could be $18,000 in future ROI that you’re missing out on every single month. That can be a very expensive thing if you multiply that by 12 months over the course of a year. Websites are not that expensive. They’re just not. One door would cover it, so reach out to us. Anyway, I’m Jason Hull with the DoorGrow Show. Thanks for hanging out with me. Until next time. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. This document has been edited with the instant web content composer which can be found at htmleditor.tools - give it a try.

Are you a business owner who wants to get good at financial decision making and CEO-level accounting? How can you build a runway to opportunities? By navigating mindset, expenses, and cash.  Today’s guest is Tim Francis from Great Assistant and Profit Factory. Tim’s training, Know Your Numbers, shows how businesses can deal with cash crunch and cash flow. You’ll Learn... [02:48] Free Upcoming Event: Navigate the Cash Crunch. [03:20] Entrepreneurs: Like Indiana Jones, running as fast as possible from expenses. [06:00] Pre-built Spreadsheet: Adding and subtracting, red boxes and green boxes. [06:40] Beyond Profit First: In motion and cutting expenses when DoorGrow sales stop. [10:23] 3-Step Method: Navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash. [11:29] Mistakes of sloth, and mistakes of ambition. [12:19] Step 1 - Navigating Mindset: Be good to your body, protect personal and professional relationships, and early action is crucial. [22:51] Step 2 - Navigating Expenses: Business's profit margin and bloat factor involves how many dollars to be sold at top line for $1 at bottom line to spend/buy something. [30:08] Survive and Thrive: When sales go down, create a situation where you don't have to sell as much. You can meet it at a lower sales level and still get by. [31:52] Step 3 - Navigating Cash: The Cash Flow Forecast figures out how much cash can you touch now? There's a big difference between cash and free cash. [45:38] Opportunities for Growth: If your business doesn't cash flow, it will fail. Cash flow first, then focus on growth. Cash comes from different places. Tweetables Entrepreneurs confuse revenue, sales, top line, or top of the P&L statement with cash. There's actually a way to navigate the cash crunch, even if revenue is going down. Property management industry has a massive opportunity due to big shift in the market. Panic isn't productive. It's important to be urgent, not anxious. There's a big difference between cash and free cash. Resources Navigate the Cash Crunch with Jason Hull and Timothy Francis Tim Francis on LinkedIn Great Assistant Profit Factory Know Your Numbers Keith Cunningham Verne Harnish DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. I am hanging out here with Tim Francis. Tim, welcome to the show again. Tim: Good to see you Jason, again. Jason: Tim and I just started trying to do this on Crowdcast the normal platform. It didn't work out. The internet gods were not kind to us for some reason so we're starting it over. I wanted to introduce Tim to this audience again. Tim has been on the show before because he was talking about his company, Great Assistant, a fantastic company. I've hired assistants through it for US based assistants. His parent corporation, or company, or whatever you want to call it is Profit Factory. I recently went through training with him called Know Your Numbers. One of my goals for this year was to get really good at this learning financial decision making, maybe more business owner, CEO level accounting. Tim is the go to guy for this. He has a program on this that I went through. He had a really cool thing that he showed us how to deal with cash crunch and cash flow. He reached out to me and is putting this out to audiences trying to help businesses out right now. I'm excited to expose my audience to this idea of how they can navigate the cash crunch. Tim, welcome. Tim: Thank you so much for having me. Jason: We're going to do an event here in about a week. I'll just plug that now up front, just get that out of the way. It's for free and we're going to go into greater detail about these things. You're going to be sharing your screen, showing spreadsheets, helping them figure this out. But let's start with talking about the problem. What's going on with the market right now, the cash crunch, and why is this relevant? Tim: Yeah, you bet. If you think of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, there's this amazing boulder scene. Jason, I have to give you credit for giving me this visual of this boulder rolling behind us as entrepreneurs. We're running as fast as we possibly can, and that boulder, that's expenses. Jason, full credit to you, every time I use this analogy now I'm giving you credit. A bit of the secret here is that there's actually a simple three step method that we can actually turn this into a different Indiana Jones scene. In the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones, there's this like leap of faith scene where he's standing on the very edge and he's looking at this massive chasm between him and where he needs to go. It looks impossible, it looks impossible that he’ll possibly be able to cross this chasm, but then he gets this idea. He takes some sand, and he throws it out and it covers, and there's this hidden balance beam, it's invisible, this invisible balance beam to walk across. That's exactly the three step method that I teach as a passion to entrepreneurs. I think a lot of entrepreneurs confuse revenue, sales, top line, or just that top of the P&L statement with cash. The thing is that they’re two extremely different ideas. Yes, one can lead to the other, however they're not necessary. There's actually a way to navigate the cash crunch, even if revenue is going down. I've helped many, many companies, I think I’ve had 139 board meetings now. I've helped over 70 companies, and at least 7 of them I've helped to escape bankruptcy, including that with them following the exact process that I'm going to teach today. Whether someone despises accounting and numbers, feels pretty good about them but maybe not a pro, or even if someone's an absolute pro at numbers, I think the perspectives that we share today are going to be really, really powerful. Also just in case anyone's afraid of like oh, my god, here we go, numbers and accounting. I hate that topic. I avoid my accountant like the plague. I'll tell you what, I was rejected from Business School three times. I couldn't finish calculus. I don't know my brain wasn't wired that way, and the good news is you don't need any of that to be able to navigate the cash crunch. If you know how to add and subtract, in fact Jason, you don't even need to be able to add, subtract. If you know how to use a calculator to add, subtract, we can make this happen. The tool that I'll go more in depth with you on our webinar coming in about a week from now, everyone will actually get access to a prebuilt spreadsheet. All you got to do, it takes maybe 20 to 30 minutes to put your own info in. Literally where you see a red box is a crisis line, and where you see a green box, you're good to go. That's it. It's adding and subtracting, and red boxes and green boxes, that help you to navigate. To build your very own—personalized to your business—path to navigate the cash crunch. Jason: Before we get into this, I want to touch on and create a little transparency in this. A lot of entrepreneurs are fearful. There's a lot of shame around admitting that something doesn't look perfectly successful. There's a lot of shame around finances and money. Like oh, no, I've got debt or I've got this. I'm going to share what we're experiencing at DoorGrow. Leading up to this, one of my goals for this year was to get control of finances, really understand and get into financials, which is why I did a training with you, Tim, and I'm working with you on different things, because that's a step beyond the Profit First. I've got my Profit First coach and accountant that I work with as well. I've been doing lots of calls with her getting all these different loans that are coming out, getting everything going. I'm glad that I was already working on this stuff prior. We started cutting expenses dramatically, we started doing shifts. As I was getting control of things, I was like why are we paying for that? If we weren't in momentum already—you used the analogy of the airplane flying over the trees—we probably would have hit some trees. We probably would have crashed. We were already in motion. Sales, March just stopped. Property managers stopped buying products and services from DoorGrow because they were holding their wallets tight, they were scared, and that's about half of our revenue. We had to tighten our belt really quickly. We weren't really ready for that, we haven’t budgeted the beginning of our month to do that, so we had to get really creative. Using some of these strategies helped us to keep that plane above the tree level, navigating the cash crunch, or in my Indiana Jones analogy, outpaced the boulder so that we were able to make it through the end of the month. I'm really excited to share this property management. I'll point out that I believe the property management industry has a massive opportunity right now. There are property management companies, especially in California, Florida, and Hawaii, that they are growing. March was one of their biggest growth months in adding new doors, in acquisitions, period, simply because there is a whole big shift in the market. A lot of people are going to be needing property managers. We won't get really into that now but there's a lot of opportunity right now. Property management is a really safe place to be hedging against the market right now. Most property managers will probably have pretty good cash flow. It's only the third and we're already seeing most people are paying rent on single family residential. They're not noticing much of a difference. They've had a few people reach out for payment arrangements, but all things, I'm saying is that it's basically normal. They're a little concerned about May, so this May become even more hyper relevant in the next month or beyond. I want everyone to pay attention to this. Property managers, you guys are blessed right now, while a lot of businesses are just done. They're failing, their revenue is cut to zero, especially luxury markets, vacation markets, restaurants in a lot of situations. Businesses are closing, failing. This also is the perfect excuse for entrepreneurs that are not really committed to their business to get out, perfect excuse. A lot of people are going to take it. If you are not one of those people, and you're committed to making this work and you want to grow, reach out to DoorGrow, I want to make sure we help you capitalize on all this. Tim, let's get into these three things that we need to pay attention to. Tim: There are three things to navigate, navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash. I don't normally share this piece, but because of what you just so wisely shared just around the shame that sometimes entrepreneurs feel around money or like oh, I'm a failure or whatnot. I'll tell you what. I think that being a leader is a lot of responsibility. Even if you're a leader of 1 or 100, it doesn't matter. It's that classic man in the arena story. It's not the critic who counts. I think that there's actually something incredibly skilled when an entrepreneur sees that things have changed, and they're ready to change with it. I think that that's actually a sign of prescience is the word, when we can see things that are coming and to act accordingly. I also think that Verne Harnish has a great expression, he says, "Growth sucks cash." If you've been spending a lot of money to grow your company, and that's why you don't have a lot of cash to show for it, there's no shame in being ambitious either. There are mistakes of sloths, and there are mistakes of ambition. Mistakes of sloths are when we make mistakes because we're sitting on the couch not going for it and life passes us by. Mistake of ambition is when we were really going for it and things didn't work out. Mistakes of ambition, it's even arguable to say that it's even a mistake at all. I just think if you're in a position where you’re a little tight on cash, or maybe a lot tight on cash, I get that the shame narrative is available and I don't know that I'd go there. First of all, it's not accurate, and secondly, it's not productive. This leads us into our whole first of our three steps mindset, navigating mindset. Before anyone decides to tune out and say mindset is going to be the secret or some law of attraction, maybe more airy type topic. I assure you, it is not. I assure you that it is not. In 2008 I had a real estate portfolio of my own, not a big portfolio, just four houses, but I ended up losing around $100,000 mostly of other people's money. Around that time, I also had a mentor who ended up being one of the two leaders of a $12 million Ponzi scheme. Didn't start as a Ponzi scheme but it became a Ponzi scheme, that's typically the way they go. His business partner is convicted in court, barred folding securities for 25 years, and ended up actually leaving the country. This is in Canada, where I'm from. It was extremely exhausting and stressful to go through all that and to see everything that was happening around me. It led to me developing an illness called Erythema nodosum. Erythema nodosum is something there's no real cure for. You just have to wait it out. It's just bed rest. Your body really swells up and becomes so painful to walk that you can't, then it becomes so painful that you stand that you can't, and you end up just lying in bed every single day. 50% of cases are stress related. There's no way to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure mine was stress related. If you think an economic collapse like 2008 is bad, or an economic collapse like 2020 is bad... I'll tell you what's even worse is having economic collapse and also having a health collapse, where you actually can't do anything about your situation because you're in bed. Thankfully, at the time, I had very, very, very few dependents, I had no teammates and so the impact, the blast radius was small, it was just on me. Had my mom not paid my mortgage for me for three months, I would have gone double bankrupt, my personal finance, my business finance. Talk about an eye opener, and I was only 28. I was only 28 at the time. When I talk about the importance of managing mindset, this is absolutely crucial that we manage stress. I'll tell you, I've been not just through economic collapse, economic plus physical collapse, and it is not a pretty situation. You do not want to go through that. Along the lines of how do we go about managing mindset, I think that there are a few important perspectives in addition to some of the obvious practices. I'll just start the obvious because it's pretty straightforward. Make sure you're getting some exercise even if it's just a walk on a treadmill, or a peloton bike, or something like that in your living room, whatever the case may be. Get some sunshine if you can, even though we're all locked indoors, that sunshine is super important. Diet, take care of that. Make sure you’re getting lots of water, maybe ease off on the booze a little bit too if you're someone who enjoys to imbibe a little bit. Be good to your body. Probably the biggest of all, for most people, is actually sleep. Sleep is something that we can lose very quickly in times of turmoil and stress. You might need to turn to things like small meditation, reading, journaling, or something before bed to help take your mind off of some of the challenges of the day. I'm telling you that it's absolutely crucial. When I look back at my sleep habits and actually have been keeping track of my sleep for years and years and years. Jason, I'd sleep for four hours and lay on the floor next to my computer, sleep. I'd work till 5:00 in the morning, I'd sleep four hours on the floor next to the computer and I would stand up, go pee, and go back to the computer and start working again. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures, but there is such a thing as too high a price to pay. Remember that this too shall pass. September 11th came, the world changed, and we got back to business in a new normal way. The housing crisis came, the world changed, and we got back to business in a new normal way. Jason: Tim, I'm going to touch on what you just said real quick, interject. These are really basic things but they're showing some significant correlations between COVID-19 and melatonin, and nitric oxide in your blood, vitamin D. These are the basic principles of health. I have training for our clients called health secrets and it's these basics. We talk about getting sleep, that's when melatonin starts to get produced in your brain. It's much higher in children, it gets less. You may want to supplement with that but getting good sleep, getting some sunlight, finding a way to get sunshine and sunlight on your body is going to be a big deal that releases nitric oxide from your skin into your blood, if vitamin D gets produced, these are basic. Sleep, nutrition, some physical activity, exercise, some sunshine, water and hydrate. This and all of that lowers your stress levels and it lowers our pressure and noise significantly. I love that you're sharing that. Keep your stress levels as low as possible and start physiologically. Tim: I think along with stress is this idea of engagement. I don't know if I need to share this part, but I'll say it just to be responsible. If someone is not engaged enough right now, you're not paying attention to what's going on in the world. If you're only at about a 6 or 7 out of 10 engagements, goodness gracious, it might be time to pick it up a bit. If you're also to 9 or 10 engagements it's probably too high, you're over stimulated, you're over engaged. We need that 8 out of 10 where we're focused, pupils dilated just a little bit. Eye on the prize. I always say that panic isn't productive. It's important to be urgent, not anxious, to be urgent, not anxious. Jason: I'm too Agilent right now. I'm excited and that's where I'm at. I love chaos, let's be honest. Maybe there are other entrepreneurs like that but when chaos happens, that's opportunity. That's where we get to be a light and we get to stand out, so I'm enjoying this even though it's uncomfortable. Tim: Very nice, very nice. I think that two other mindset pieces, one is that it's important to actually protect relationships. Yes, I mean the personal relationships that we have in our life because they can be such a source of security, joy, and comfort. I also mean business relationships. We're going to get to the other side of this, and unlike other past catastrophes that were measured in years, I think, yes, our economic catastrophe is going to be measured in years on this one for sure. I think that in terms of months, I think this pandemic is going to be measured in months, not years and years and years. One of my questions at each point is what is the state of the relationships of suppliers, vendors in the case of property managers, tenants, if you're managing on behalf of other people like your clients, your investors, and owners. What's the state of those relationships going to look like in three months from now, or six months from now when we're on the other side of this. You might make it through, but do you still have people that respect you? I heard a story the other day of an entrepreneur that just cancelled all their credit cards and said well, everything's just going to fail in terms of expenses and I'm going to add back one by one the few things that make sense. It's a shortcut to just cutting expenses. That's a way to go about it, but are you going to just supremely piss off everyone in the process? I think that protecting relationships is important to keep in mind. That doesn't mean that you're always bringing good news to everyone along the way, especially in the cutting expenses part of our presentation today. I think to be respected for being accountable, navigating agreements that you have with people rather than just abandoning them. My other mindset piece is that early action is crucial. If you discover that you need to get alone, act now before more businesses are closing, and possibly soaking up some lending capacity, or even just work capacity that bankers have to fill out applications and whatnot. If you discover you need to reduce a teammate's hours, tell them as early as possible so they can start making plans of their own personal and family finances. So that if a dip comes for them income-wise, they're prepared for it. If you can help them find a new opportunity elsewhere, do what you can to manage those relationships. I got an interesting perspective from someone who used to have a business helping individuals, not businesses, but individuals navigate bankruptcy. He said one of the most common patterns he saw with people going through bankruptcy is they didn't cut expenses deep enough or soon enough, deep enough or soon enough. I think that that's a very interesting perspective and maybe a usable guideline would be to say anything that's not going to help increase the profitability, and specifically cash coming into your business in the coming six months, I'd probably delay it. If you're thinking of a new website, if that's not going to immediately give you a bump in cash in the next six months, then let's put that on pause. We'll see if we can renegotiate it, put it on hold, delay it, or even cancel it. I think that's a really powerful way and maybe for you, the number isn't six months, maybe it's three months or eight months, whatever. But if we can keep an eye on what's going to bring cash in, in that timeframe, that really makes decision making a lot easier around what expenses you can continue with and which do not. This leads us to our second of the three steps of what we need to navigate and that is expenses. I think that something I'd say in my path of learning accounting and I even went and took night classes at the University of Alberta. I finally did go and take University accounting classes. It was not for credit though, they wouldn't let me into the for credit version, but they'd let me still sit in the classes and study. You know what, Jason, I got 100% of my midterm. I wanted to throw up my middle fingers as I walked into the room. I can't complete calculus, I can't get into business school, but here I'm getting 100% of my midterm. How about that? How do you like them apples? One of the big ahas that I had is that in my brain, because we all grow up thinking about personal finance. I think in personal finance, we think if I make $1, I can spend $1, and $1 in is $1 out. If I want to go buy a car, a pair of jeans, or a pair of shoes, I just need to get that amount of income to be able to pay for the shoes, the jeans, or the car. When it comes to business finance though it's a little bit different. To be able to buy $1 of expenses, we can't just make $1. It's because there's other expenses in the business. That's why we always talk about profit margin. If I have $100,000 in revenue, and I've got $50,000 in expenses, then I have $50,000 in profit. My profit margin is 50%. What that means is at the end of that year, or quarter, that month, for me to have an extra dollar to go buy something the next month, quarter or year, I don't need to make $1, I actually need to make $2 because my profit margin is only 50%. I have to make the $2 at the top, 50% gets stripped away by expenses. I'm left with $1 to now go and spend in the next month, quarter, or year. There's this idea, I invented it, it's called bloat factor. How many dollars do I have to sell at the top line to have $1 at the bottom line to be able to use and go and spend and buy something else in the coming month, quarter, or year? It's very simple math. If you're at 50% profit margin, which very few businesses are—very, very, very, very, very few businesses are—then you'd have to earn $2 to have $1 at the bottom to be able to go and spend in the coming period. If I've got a 25% profit margin, I have to make $4 at the top to have $1 to go and spend. If I'm at a 10% profit margin, which a lot of businesses around that 10% margin mark, I have to go make $10 to be able to have one at the bottom. Jason: This is super important for people to realize. A lot of us entrepreneurs, we look at our bank accounts and we think well, I've got $1 that we made. Now I can go buy this thing for $1. They think it's a one to one relationship. That's a huge mistake. Tim: Whatever your business's profit margin is, you got to figure out the bloat factor. Let's just say for example, you're at a 10% profit margin, that means you have to make $10 to keep $1, your bloat factor is 10X. If you cut $1 of expense, you now don't have to sell 10X that in revenue to be in the exact same place. For example, this is actually an extraordinary story Jason, this going to blow your mind. I talked to one of my private consulting clients here. He and I had like uh-oh, the crisis is coming call like three weeks ago. He cut $9,000 a month in recurring revenue. Does that mean that he doesn't need to sell $9,000 in the coming year? Well, of course not, because it's recurring expenses. Jason: I was going to say he lost them? Tim: No, no, no. He cut $9,000 per month of expenses. At his profit margin, his bloat factor is 8.7. $9,000 times 12 months in a year times 8.7, he does not have to sell $944,882 in the coming year. He cut the need to sell a million dollars just by cutting $9,000 a month in expenses. That is mind expanding. Jason: We have pretty healthy profit margins at DoorGrow, we’re pretty tight. We're a virtual team but we cut a ton of expenses. Maybe if we have time, I could list some of the crazy actions that we took to help make sure that we cash flowed. It makes a ton of sense to me. Tim: Big time. I'll just take a super simple example. I actually set up a calculator which we'll play with in the free webinar you and I will do. We'll play with the bloat calculator a little bit. If I have a profit margin of 10%—not uncommon for businesses—my bloat factor would be 10. If all I removed was $250 a month, that's it, $250 a month of recurring expenses, canceling subscriptions, canceling unused services, access to different websites and whatnot, I would not have to sell $30,000 in the coming year. $250 a month does not sound like that much to cut, and yet a 10X bloat factor, that's $30,000 you do not have to sell anymore. You tell me what's easier, finding $250 a month and cutting it, or going out and generating $30,000 in new revenue in the coming year? Jason: Especially right now for us. My accountant was really impressed with me. We cut $10,000 in monthly expenses, depending on what our profit margin is. That can be pretty significant for us as well in terms of how much sales we don't have to do to make it each month. That's made it breathable for us significantly. Tim: When you talk about being able to survive and thrive even when sales go down, you just created a situation for yourself where you don't have to sell as much. Even if sales go down, you can still meet it at a lower sales level and still get by which is really incredible. Jason: I met with my accountant last night and we mapped out the month with all the recurring revenue that we have coming in. If we do no sales this month, we will make it. Tim: I love that. Jason: We’ve pivoted quickly and reduced the expenses, but right now it’s a great opportunity for property managers to grow and we're offering some crazy deals. Hopefully, we'll also be doing some sales this month and making a big difference. Tim: I love that. I think you were sharing offline about how all these Airbnbs are now switching to long term rental. They got smoked out of the market and now they just want to go back to traditional long term rentals. So there's all this flood towards property managers. For a property manager that knows how to convert an Airbnb into a standard long term rental, ready to rock, and knows how to find those deals, goodness gracious, this could be a really revolutionary time. Jason: There are several channels right now for growth and each one is going to get bigger. Property managers right now, they can capitalize on it. We're pushing our clients aggressively to start taking action on these things right now. Tim: That's so exciting. There's another way that we can navigate the cash crunch even if sales go down. It's not just by managing expenses but it's also by navigating cash. Let's get into the third and final step in navigating the cash crunch. The free webinar that we're gonna do in approximately a week from now, we're actually going to do live exercises. We're actually going to share screens and you're actually going to see this spreadsheet in action. It's super simple. Anyone can do it. It can be a game changer. Of the multi-million dollar companies that I've helped save, some of them I didn't even do private consulting with. They just came, they know your numbers, or they heard me talk about just this one tool, The Cash Flow Forecast. They use it religiously when they're in a tough spot and it helps them get through. It's very exciting. There's actually two parts to this. The very first is actually understanding how much cash can I actually touch right now? There's a big difference between cash and free cash. Cash is the amount of money that's in the bank if you add up your checking and savings accounts. That's cash. Free cash on the other hand, we have to deduct some money out of that total cash to get the free cash to know what we can actually work with. From our total cash amount, we need to set aside committed costs. Committed cost is any amount of money you've promised that you're going to pay. Let's say for example a website, I've signed a legal agreement to get a new website done. If I don't manage that agreement to delay the project, I'm on the hook for it. If that's a $10,000 cash outflow that's coming up in two weeks from now, that is a committed cost. I haven't received the service yet but I've committed to receiving the service or the product for that matter. Jason: It's money that's earmarked. It's money that is going to disappear. If you can't pay it, it could cause some serious problems. Tim: Big time, getting all the way back to that whole topic about managing relationships even through the tough times. The second category that we need to earmark some cash is payables. Let's say that you already had the website built. It was finished last week. You've enjoyed the service. You've received the service or the product for that matter. You're on net 30 terms or net 60 terms and now you got to pay that person. That's a payable. Now, one of the biggest payables that is unavoidable is death is taxes. Thankfully, the payment deadline in the United States has been extended, which allows for some cash flow breathing room for entrepreneurs, which is very important right now. I would do my best to get clear and make sure that I've got a separate account for tax. I actually have a separate bank account. It's a little profit first esque or Richest Man in Babylon esque that there's a separate account for income tax and that's where I would hold my income tax. Jason: I have that too. The idea is to have it at a bank that is difficult to get into. That's completely a normal thing. Tim: You don't know the pin. You give it to someone else. Two keys to authenticate and turn to open the vault. Jason: The worst online bank ever or something like that. Tim: Or the brick and mortar bank that has no online, something like that. After committed costs and payables including income tax, we also need to remove or set aside any deposits that we've got. This is huge in property management because we have deposits from tenants. You can't really spend that money, it's not money that you've earned. It's just money that you're holding as a deposit so we got to park that on the sidelines. Then from there, whatever amount that you've got to pay in credit card debt or any other very short term, high interest debt. Most credit cards are 10% more. If you've got all kinds of rewards on your card, you probably are facing 19.99% or 21.95% interest. We really want to make sure that we're getting that paid off at the end of each month or else we're facing colossal interest rates. I would earmark that money to hold to the side as well. Then from there, there's two more. The next one is ultra-short term debt that you need to pay. Short term debt in accounting refers to any debt that's due this year. A Tim Francisism ultra-short term is in the next 30 days. If there's any portion of debt that you need to pay down in the next 30 days, I would earmark that cash as well because if you don't pay it, a lot of small business loans have liens or guarantees against your house. You might lose your house if you don't pay it, or you don't renegotiate that payment because there are some circumstances now where banks and different lenders are allowing you to skip the payment right now because of what's going on. Our last category where we need to earmark and subtract cash, I actually have a whole separate account in my bank for this particular category, is what's called Unearned Revenue. I don't think that's as big in property management candidly. For example, for someone who's offering other services, unearned revenue can be the difference between life and death to know what is earned and what's not. For example, if someone hires me for a year of consulting and they pay in a block amount of money at the start of the year, they pay the whole year in advance, I can only touch 1/12th of that with each month that goes by because it's unearned revenue until I've delivered that guidance for the year. Understanding our starting point of actual free cash is the first part of managing cash, and then the second part is to build out what we call a cash flow forecast. It's very simple. It's 13 weeks which is 90 days, just three months. We simply plot into the cash flow forecast where we've got cash coming in and cash going out. Jason, would it be appropriate for me to just show a screenshot of a cash flow forecast or should we wait until the webinar? Jason: The podcast listeners won't see it so let's get that, we’ll show it on the webinar. They'll just be listeners but it's pretty cool. I'll give you a testimonial related to this. I met with my accountant. We're mapping out all the recurring revenue that we have at DoorGrow and figuring out what expenses. We basically went through this. She started doing this manually in a spreadsheet real time, basically doing exactly what your spreadsheet does. She was figuring out which things are going to hit, what are the due dates for these. We're figuring it all out. I was like that's so funny because Tim has a thing that does this. She took me through it manually to make sure that our cash flow situation is going to be good because it's not just hey, this month we're going to make X number of dollars. We're going to have X number of expenses and we're okay. It's maybe at the beginning of the month, you have a whole bunch of things that are running and you're making that revenue later in the month or however it might work. You need to make sure it's all going to be timed perfectly. That's the brilliance of your cash flow thing because if it ever dips below zero, you're dead. It goes into the red, that's death. You have to make sure that you always know when things are going to hit and this is what your spreadsheet does, which is pretty brilliant. Tim: I agree. I totally agree. I'll tell you, when people are calling you every single day to collect money, 29 days is an extremely long time. It is an eternity. Being clear about when money is arriving, not just by the month to your point, but to the week. To be very clear about when cash is leaving to the week, and making sure that not you or anyone in your team is sending cash out the door too soon especially without other people like a bookkeeper helping or an executive assistant helping to pay different bills, if you don't direct your team on when to pay bills, people in your office or on your team, they might just pay the bills when they come in. They just might pay it exactly the same day that they open the envelope or they get the statement online. They're like oh, well, I was just doing my job. I was just paying this because it came in. You got to give your teammates leadership, guidance, vision, and direction on items like this especially in a cash crunch. People oftentimes ask me Tim, this tool is brilliant. How often should I be looking at it? I say that you look at the tool as often as you need to, relative to two factors. Number one, how low is your plane flying relative to the treetops? This is just the analogy we talked about earlier. If your wheels are clipping the tree tops and those trees might take your plane down, then you're looking at that cash flow forecast possibly every single week to make absolutely damn sure that you're getting the money in that you're expecting on that week, and you're not sending money out any earlier than you're supposed to on that week. Jason: Even daily. Tim: A hundred percent. The clients that I have that weren't had multimillion dollar businesses which can have a lot of complexity, moving parts, people, teammates, products, clients, and all the rest, they would literally have it open every single day just to make sure things were coming and going, that all the trains are running on time because there was no margin for error. The other reason why you'd want to have your cash flow forecast updated in front of mine regularly is if there's a lot of turbulence in the air. Whether you're flying close to the trees or not close to trees. If you got a lot of altitude, that's great. But if there's a lot of turbulence, that can do a lot of damage to your plane as well. Maybe you're not looking at it every single day, maybe not even every single week, but at least once a month. I hate making absolute statements because there's always an exception to the rule, but more or less 100% of entrepreneurs are in turbulence right now because of the climate that we're operating in. This is not a situation, it's limited to a city, a state, or even a country. This is worldwide. The cash flow forecast is how you make sure that you've got oxygen in your tank and that you can keep moving. Without that oxygen in the tank, doesn't matter how big and fast your flippers are to generate revenue. You got to have the cash in the oxygen tank. If you do hit any spots where you've got red on your cash flow forecast and you need to manage that crisis line, there are a lot of different strategies. Some of the more obvious strategies would be applying for some of the SBA loans. The only downside to that is we don't know when they're going to arrive. Secondly, bank lines of credit or if you've got access to them already and they're just sitting unused, that becomes an option. There's raising money from family and friends or an investor. If you wanted to, this is maybe less attractive for most entrepreneurs, we can actually sell shares in your company to raise money. There's also just the simple renegotiating if you need to pay something. Let's say it's $5,000, it's in three weeks from now, and that's when your first red square hits on the cash flow forecast, that's your crisis line. If you're going to be short just $1,000 or something, maybe you could call that person that you owe the money and say can I make it in two payments? I'll pay you in three weeks half, and then one week after that the other half. Lo and behold, just by splitting to 2 payments over 14 days instead of once, all of a sudden you've made up the difference and now all your squares are green. Now you've got not three weeks of safety, but five weeks of safety. Jason: The plane can fly through all of those and knock at the trees. Tim: Hundred percent. The thing is there's a lot of conversation out there about how we have to pivot our businesses and how we have to change our sales and our marketing. I think that is all extremely important conversation to have, absolutely crucial conversation to have. Inevitably, if we're going to pivot our offerings in any way, shape, or form, it's going to take time to roll them out. If it's going to take, say, four weeks to come up with a new offering of some special for an Airbnb owners that want to convert into long term rental, if you need to create a marketing campaign to identify those people, if you need to train up your staff to call certain Airbnb to see if they're distressed. Whether it's people, projects, processes, offers that you're rolling out, it's going to take some time. Even if you do it really quickly, it will probably still take at least a month, if not a few months, to be able to make that pivot and to make that implementation. It doesn't matter if you've got the best idea. It takes four weeks to roll out, but you only have two weeks of cash. That's like building a brand new airplane that's the world's fastest, sexiest, coolest, most comfortable, smoothest plane in the world, but if you only give it 100 yards of runway, it's not going to take off. It's just not. Jason: To boil this down real simple for those listening, all these opportunities for growth, it does not matter if your business doesn't cash flow. It's going to fail. Cash flow first and then let's get you focused on growth. Tim: Cash can come from different places. It can come from loans and other places, not just from revenue. To your point, Jason, I just think there are so many opportunities on the other side of this. We just have to make sure we have enough runway. Surprisingly, amidst this entire thing, I'd say the thesis of all of this is that the most important factors in navigating a cash crunch is actually not cash itself. It's actually time. Time is what we're playing for and cash gets us time. By getting time, we can now get out of panic. We can get back to being calm, clear because we've got a cash flow forecast. You can see what's coming down the pipe. We're confident because you know the exact steps you need to take and because we're clear, confident, and calm, now we can be creative to take advantage of the opportunities that are coming down the pipe. That is the name of the game. Those three steps, navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash are how we build the runway that we then can launch off whatever the new opportunities are to take us into the new economy. Jason: I had Michael McCalla on the show. I've worked with Al Sharpton as a coach. One of the things Al would say is if you lower the pressure noise for an entrepreneur, that's where their brilliance and genius comes out. One of the things Michael Mccalla talked about is that when we have constraints or limitations which this market is creating, it's going to create innovation. If you give somebody the Pareto principle, if you give somebody an endless amount of time to do whatever, they don't have to innovate. We're innovating crazy inside DoorGrow. My team members are getting new ideas. We release some contractors. Our salaried staff are figuring out new ways of doing things, ways to save money, ways that are more efficient, ways that are faster. These are big opportunities right now for you and your team to give them some constraints, have them work with you on lowering expenses, solving the cash crunch crisis that you may be experiencing, and allowing innovation creativity to happen. If you can keep your presence calm, your team will be there as well. This is a step towards that. Tim: Did you want to share with folks maybe a little bit about our presentation we're doing next week? We're actually walking people through building a cash flow forecast. Jason: Yeah. Let's just touch on the details. It's going to be on Thursday, what day is that? Tim: April the 9th. Jason: It's going to be on April 9th. It's going to be 11:00. Our time, we're both in Austin, Central, which is 9:00 AM Pacific noon Eastern. What are we going to be sharing during this? What are you going to be sharing with everyone? Tim: You bet. First of all, folks, go to navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. I know podcast listeners won't be able to see this, but Jason, I'll just share my screen so you can see it. We've got Navigate the Cash Crunch with Tim Francis and Jason Hull. It's happening Thursday, April 9th, 2020 at 11:00 AM Central, which is Chicago time just like Jason just shared. In it, we'll be sharing the three step process we've talked about today. We're not going to go into as much detail into mindset because we talked about it here today already. We'll cover a few tools around expense management. The real star of the show is building your very own cash flow forecast. You can register for that webinar at navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. What you'll get is access to the training. You also get the cash flow forecast template as well, which you can just drop into your very own computer and get to work with seeing where your crisis line is. Hopefully, it's not too close and from there, seeing the exact path to navigating safely. If you happen to be listening to this podcast episode of the DoorGrow Show after the webinars already happened, so after April the 9th, 2020, no problem. You can still go back to the exact same URL. You can see the resources and the replays there so that you are not left in the dark. Jason: navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. Tim: Yes, indeed. Absolutely. Maybe you guys can throw that in the show notes or something like that for anyone listening to the podcast. Jason: Absolutely. Tim: That's that. I think that somewhat as a final thought on my end over here. It's just that deep down inside, we as entrepreneurs, we take on a lot to be great leaders. I do view property managers as entrepreneurs. I hope they do too, because they are there. They're doing the courageous things of entrepreneurs every single day. Sometimes leadership isn't easy. Sometimes it has uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes it has uncomfortable moments. I think that there's something really beautiful about getting clear on where we are. Oftentimes we talk about our goals and what's the most important to us, but we also have to be very clear about where we are. Getting to Austin, Texas is very different if you're starting in Chicago versus Waikiki. Knowing where we are right now with free cash, and then from there being able to map the path with our cash flow forecast, it really creates calm, it really creates clarity. Therefore, it really creates confidence which then creates creativity that we can now take on this new economy. Something I am very sure about is not anyone including myself could have specific data around this. I just know my gut, Jason, that the economy that we had two months ago, it's over. It's gone. I don't just mean bull versus bear. What I mean is the way we did business once upon a time is forever changed. I'm very nervous for what kind of discomfort is coming for anyone who thinks that how we used to do things is coming back to what it used to be. As we chart into these new territories, I think being able to be calm, clear, confident, and creative is the path. It takes courage and just a couple simple tools to be able to have that. I think that if we're operating from clear facts and confidence, we become lighthouses that can attract what we need to attract into our worlds, and also fend away what we need to fend away. We're not left making super emotional decisions. One of my mentors, his name is Keith Cunningham, he talks about emotion and intelligence often working inverse of one another. The more emotional we are, which is really saying the more that we're in our amygdala, the less that we're in the frontal lobe of our brain, the less our executive functioning is there and the less that we're able to make intelligent, clear, confident decisions. On the flip side, the more that we can make calm, clear, confident decisions, the less that we become really emotional about what's going on. That's not to say we're not passionate. We are so passionate about our businesses. Yes, emotion has its right place. We just don't want to get stuck making decisions or taking action that we may regret down the road. Jason: Absolutely. Tim, thanks for coming on the show. Everybody else, make sure you tune in when we do our presentation. For those listening, watch the replay. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. Never forget to use the Div - Table style generator and the online HTML editor to compose perfect articles for your website!

The COVID-19 craziness has caused people to stress out and scramble to work remotely. This crisis is pushing everything forward technologically. Why not hire a virtual assistant (VA) to scale your property management business? Today’s guest is Daniel Ramsey of MyOutDesk. Daniel is a real estate investor/broker who loves doing deals, and property management is a way to connect with others and create communities. But he also wants time to take a vacation with his family! You’ll Learn... [02:52] MyOutDesk: Property managers find talent to inexpensively scale their business. [04:05] MLS Porn: Scrolling through new investment properties on the market. [05:05] Remote Reality: In 2018, 5% of America worked remotely, now it’s 50%. [07:58] Work Culture: Maintain good team, quality interaction, and customer service; and reduce operational/overhead costs. [15:00] Steps to Scale: Assess business, compound leverage, develop plan, craft outcome, start interviewing, launch, and training.  [25:48] Match Values, Not Personalities: Define who you are as a person and company. [33:15] Go Remote Guide: Tips for working remotely with new technology. [35:08] Push vs. Pull Leadership: Communicate, don’t micromanage. [44:15] MyOutDesk Mission: VAs need to be indispensable and irreplaceable. [46:15] Pricing vs. Cash Crunch: Do you need help? Can you afford MyOutDesk? [53:52] Care ROI Concept: Emotion is what creates memories. Tweetables I had a need in my own real estate practice. I hired a virtual assistant. I was like, ‘Wow, this works.’ Leverage is compound interest and entrepreneurs’ biggest swing. When I hire somebody, I'm hiring them to grow my revenue. I'm hiring them to save money. I'm hiring them to own an entire process for my business. The biggest cure for the economy is businesses and entrepreneurs staying productive. Resources MyOutDesk Go Remote Guide (text MOD to 31996) MLS Mark Spain Bluefishing by Steve Sims Upwork OpenPotion DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers 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 your business and life and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. Today, we have a really cool guest. He is Daniel Ramsey, over at MyOutDesk. Daniel, welcome to the show. Daniel: Thanks for having me, Jason. I'm so glad to be here. Jason: Daniel and I were talking a little bit in the green room chatting up a little bit about what's going on. It's a little bit crazy right now, with COVID-19 and Coronavirus, and all this stuff, the real estate market looks scary. We may get into that a little bit in the show, but our topic today is using a virtual assistant to scale your property management business with MyOutDesk. Before we get into that, Daniel, what I want to hear about your background, your entrepreneurial journey and that should lead us right into the inception of MyOutDesk. Daniel: Yes, sure, man. I love the show. I'm really grateful to be here. I agree, I'm a real estate guy. I love doing deals and property management is just such a great way to connect and create community, and also, it's a great place for deal flow if you're a buyer and want long-term wealth. I love being here. I'm a real estate investor, myself, real estate broker, contractor, mortgage guy, developer, broker, this is my world. I love it. In fact, you'll love this story. My wife and I, we've got two little girls who will drive in the neighborhood and I'm like, "baby, baby, open house, I gotta go look at it," and she's like, "fine, just go." I'm a real estate guy, I love what I do. We help property managers basically find talent and inexpensively scale their business. The topic is timely. Our business was started because I had a need in my own real estate practice. I hired a virtual assistant. I was like, wow, this works. My wife and I went on our honeymoon, and as many entrepreneurs, I brought my laptop on my honeymoon. I'm in Guatemala in a rainforest, and I'm at the bar at like 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and the bartender in Spanish is making fun of me. He's basically saying things like dumb Gringo, his wife's here, beautiful woman just married, why is he still working? At that moment, I knew something had to shift in my world, and that's when we started to scale and really use leverage at a high level. Jason: I would imagine that most of our partners as entrepreneurs go through quite a bit, and they don't always appreciate us doing things like that. Daniel: My wife calls it MLS porn for me, because at night, I'm scrolling through all the new investment properties that came on the market. I'm really lucky to marry her, and she's understanding. But at the same time I wanted to stay married, and I wanted to have a kid, and a family, and I knew I needed leverage in my business. I wanted to be able to take a vacation. Jason: I'm sure you have kids at home right now. Daniel: That's right. Jason: Me too, it's crazy. One of them just came in to hand me an Xbox controller so I could give them access because I control that, crazy. I'm on air, they don't care. They're like, dad, this is important. Daniel: This is the deal. This is what we're in, and it's crazy timing because we have this call like a month ago, and we're in a crazy place. In 2018, 5% of America worked remotely, 5%. Last week, that number went to 50%, in one week. Jason: The rest are probably not even working. Daniel: Yeah. Here's the thing, as a company, one of the things that we've been doing is we've been remote for 13 years, 100%. We're about 1300 people. If you're listening right now, we figured out how to scale a business remotely with 1300 people, and serve clients like property managers, real estate brokers, investors, flippers, that's what we do. In the last couple of weeks, we've helped more companies just understand the tools required, what systems you have to put in place, how to communicate with your people when they're not physically in your office. We put together a whole like go remote guide that we're going to give away in the show, basically, just to help things like what you just said. We were just on a conference call with our largest client and his two and a half year old son just, hey, daddy, I need more Cheerios. This is just how it is now. Jason: Yeah, that is what it is. There's all these funny videos you'll see online where you've got like some guy on the news and his kid walks in, in a diaper, and then the wife's crawling on the floor because she thinks she's not on camera trying to pull it out, these things. The world we live in, we're fathers, we run companies, there are moms that run companies, and I don't think there's anything that needs to be hidden. It's not like there's something shameful that you have kids or that you have a personal life. For those that are watching this or listening, just own that. It's totally okay, everybody likes to see that you're a real person anyway, instead of just a suit and a tie stuck behind a desk all the time. It's a lot more relatable I would imagine. I've got four kids. I'm slightly insane, I think, and it's crazy, and they need to be quieter, hey guys be quieter. Daniel: That's awesome. Jason: I started my company Open Potion the corporation back in 2008 right around the time everything was falling apart then. I've just worked from home. I've been virtual, my team members are in Toronto, New York, wherever. We've got some in the Philippines. A while ago, there's always a stigma connected to those that were remote, especially if they were not in America. I think that we're going to see some crazy shifts that are going to be happening. One, every company that’s like, “We can’t have people working from home, how will we know that they're actually going to do work?” These things, these concerns, now you have to. If you want them to work, they're working from home. Your office is shut down, you're not doing business. Everybody's figuring out in this new environment, and they're scrambling. I'm sure companies like Zoom are just going to go gangbusters, but this is the new world that we live in. I think it's going to push everything forward technologically which is exciting, and it's going to cut out a lot of bullshit. All the fluff that was just bloated in companies is just eating up resources, like people are just going to realize after this why do we need this $20,000 a month office space for this big corporate building? All these things are going to be shifting, and we're going to have this new culture as a result of everybody being forced to stay indoors and work from home. I think that's going to open people up to the idea that, hey, I can have team members and they don't have to be right geographically near me. I can find the best that are anywhere, and find people that are lower costs, and figure this out. People are going to be a lot more open that have been closed to it before. I imagine this will be really good for companies like yours, to be able to help people out and help people see that you can still maintain a really good team, and quality interaction, and customer service, and you can lower your operational costs, or at least make a more healthy cash flowing business by reducing some of these overhead expenses that you have in the company. I was hanging out on a really great course with training over the last few days with a financial coach. One of the phrases, I don't know who said it but he made this joking comment that overhead walks on two legs. Basically saying people are the biggest piece of overhead a lot of times that we might have in a company. I want to point out, that was a really humble intro you gave, but in the written intro I have here you've got 10 years of experience serving more than 5000 clients, including over half of the real trends, top 10 Real Estate teams. Daniel: Right. Jason: Your company has already got a who's who list of clientele as far as real estate businesses go. Daniel: Yup. Jason: You've built real estates' number one staffing company, and it says you've worked with some of the top clients in the industry from sales organizations like the Mark Spain team to tech providers, like the Zillow Group, Keller Williams, and RE/MAX, and so you sound like you're a pretty cool connected guy as well. Daniel: Maybe connected. I don't know about cool, though. What we do, and I love this. We have a property manager who's in Austin, and I really love this guy. Jason: That's where I'm at. Daniel: Okay, cool. You guys are neighbors. He manages half a billion dollars of commercial real estate, and he's like one of these guys that's just freaking brilliant. I'm like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, I'm sitting with my son and looking at deals. He's middle age, and he's really had a lot of success, but he called us because he had four property managers, a bookkeeper, and an office manager. Five people running half a billion of real estate, and he's like, hey, my people are overworked. I'm worried that nobody's taking vacations. Everybody works on Saturdays and Sundays, and our systems aren't tight. Jason: Burnout is coming. Daniel: Exactly. They had a system that didn't have all the information in it. They had basic terms, but every lease is different. Some tenants are paying for maintaining their HVAC, some are not. He had all of these leases that nobody had actually put into the system. Every time somebody called and said my roof is leaking, he'd be like, okay, we'll call you back, and then they have to dig up the lease, and we have the lease and say, who do we call? Is it our responsibility, or is it their responsibility? Five hours later, they're responding to what could be a really big deal like damage everywhere for the tenants. We started working with him about two years ago, and we started helping him with SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures. We started helping them take their leases and get him into the system, which is any basic scale a business grows, a business scenario. We gave him a book like an AP, AR person, so now his really talented bookkeeper who's managed his whole financial world for his entire career has time in her day to think strategically, and save money for the company. What we did is all the property managers got in the system. We basically gave them somebody to run their system so that there was a person who could enter data and just make sure the system was clean. The bookkeeper got an assistant, and now all of a sudden he's poised for what are some phenomenal growth years that he's had in the last couple of years. It didn't change his world. It really didn't, because we're $21,000 a year for a full-time employee. If you think about that, half a billion dollars making all the rents, literally for almost $100,000 now he's not going to lose his team. That's our story. That's what we do for really big companies like Zillow, and all the way down to small investors who own 5 or 10 properties and just need somebody to help the day to day, keep things running. Jason: Let's get into how this process works. Let's take a typical listener of the show, they're probably maybe a property manager, entrepreneur. Maybe they've got about 200 to 400 doors that they're managing, largely single family residential. They might have a property manager by now or two. They've got maybe somebody having maintenance coordination, and everybody on their team is telling them that they're maxed out on time, because that's what always happens. Every team member is maxed out on time, and they feel like I can't afford to hire anybody right now. Every appointment back on time, and then they call you up. Let's go through the process here of what it would look like maybe for one of these clients to start a conversation and work with you. Daniel: Sure, Jason. I don't want this to be a commercial for us. What I want to do is if you're listening right now, like what the steps that I'm going to go through are the steps to determine how to scale your business. Even though these are our steps, you can actually write these things down and go through the step by step process. Whether you hire us or not, this is the process that we know works, because we've done it 5000 times. The first step is just really assess your business. We do a strategy call with all of our clients where we do a one on one video conference, just like you and I are right now on video, and we go through things like who's on your team, what are your systems. When I say systems, like where are you putting all the information? Do you have a voice phone system so that when people call, you can transfer that number around. A lot of property managers do but some actually don't, and you can imagine during this Coronavirus what happens if you're a property manager and you had regular phones tied to an office that you can't go to anymore. What do you do? We're looking at who's on your team. We're looking at what your systems are, what tech do you have right now to operate, and then we're looking at what your processes are. Talk to me about what happens when you have to turn a tenant over, talk to me about what happens when you put a property out to lease, what's the step by step process. Who owns that process, and so we'll go through those three things in our first strategy call and really identify what's your highest value leverage, and we have this process and I liked it. I love thinking like this. Leverage can be just like compound interest. You can have compound leverage, meaning you as the business owner, or your managers, or the people on your staff can offload some of the not very valuable process based day to day repetitive stuff that you just don't need to do, and then you get two or four hours back of your day, and then you can take those hours and help build your business, and then you get a compounding effect with leverage. That's the next step is what do we need to do to start taking advantage of compound leverage? If you or your team gave up some stuff, how would you then drive revenue for your business or increase your value for your customers? What would you do to really scale and grow if you got half your day back? Jason: You do the strategy call. You figure out team systems attack, you're going over their processes. You're identifying the highest value leverage, I think it's a cool idea of compound leverage. And then what would you do next? What would you recommend next? Daniel: It's developing your plan. From that guy that owns half a billion dollars in property to the person who's got 100 homes, every single person has opportunity. It's standard blocking and tackling in business. We're doing a needs analysis for you. We're saying, okay, what do you need to do now, or who do you need to hire on your team now? It's always been developed with the plan moving forward. Any company like ours who says, oh, we'll just hire somebody for you tomorrow, be scared. Just be scared, because as an entrepreneur, leverage is your biggest swing, it's where you can get the most value for your dollars, you really have to be strategic about it. Step two is what's my plan? What systems do I need in order to do this virtual thing like what we're talking about going remote? Who do I need? What do I need? What conversations need to happen for my internal team? What planning do I need to make? Let's create an outcome statement. You could call step three crafting an outcome. Another thing that's unique about our businesses is we don't do job descriptions, areas of responsibility. I don't say anything wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, but what we do is we create outcomes. For instance, when I hire somebody, I'm hiring them to grow my revenue, I'm hiring them to save money, I'm hiring them to own an entire process for my business. We will help you craft and create a plan that really adds value to your business, so that you're getting a 3 or 4 times return on the $21,000 that you're going to pay us. Jason: You're crafting an outcome, you've developed the plan. You've done the strategy call, you develop the plan. You've crafted this outcome, and then what's the next step? Daniel: At that point, we know exactly what you want to accomplish. As a company, what we'll do is we'll take that outcome, we'll craft a series of interviews with somebody who has experience doing that thing. One challenge that we have in the outsourcing virtual assistant world is you can go on Upwork and hire somebody from India for $3 an hour, and that's what most people think about when they think of outcomes, or outsourcing, or virtual assistants. The thing is we're a virtual professional company. We are very strategic, we hire people who've done it before, who've been there before, who have served that outcome in the past. If you need somebody to answer the phones and be a prospector for you, or handle like client calls or tenant calls. We're going to find somebody who they've been 10 years doing that. They may not be property management, but they've been 10 years on the phone handling concerns and being a support mechanism for businesses similar or very like yours. The next step is to get three to five people right in front of you, so you can interview them, and you can choose somebody who is a great cultural fit plus an expertise and experience. Jason: I love the idea because I think cultural fit is the most important piece to look at first. A lot of people, well, they're great for this job. They look great on paper, they know how to do this job, but if it's not a good cultural fit, and I find as an entrepreneur if you don't feel comfortable around them… There's a great book by a really cool guy called Steve Sims called Bluefishing, and he talks about it in it. He calls it The Chug Test. He's like, what I want to go chug a beer with this person, if the answer's no, like then there's a disconnect, there's a problem. He uses the chug test with clients and different things. I think on our team, it's really important that everybody on our team exists to lower our pressure and noise. They exist to help move the business forward towards our outcomes. If there's resistance there, or discomfort there, and you're adding more and more team members like that, you're building a business you don't even feel like being involved in. It's very important, I think, for us as entrepreneurs to be really conscious of how we feel around our team members. Daniel: I can tell you I've hired people before and you have it too. If you're listening right now, it's interesting because I think this is a mistake that we make as entrepreneurs, we either hire people that we really like, or we hire people who know the job, and have expertise or experience doing the job. The reality is you need both. You've got to enjoy them, or at least feel like there's a fit in who you are and what you think, but they also have to be an expert at what they do, or a professional in our world. I can always tell when I'm talking to somebody who understands growing and scaling a business because they say what you just said, Jason. I appreciate it. Jason: I'll add, I think one of the biggest mistakes I've seen entrepreneurs make in trying to grow, or scale their business, or hire in their team is that the biggest mistake we make is that we try to hire somebody like our self a lot of times. We have a natural rapport for people that are like us. In NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, they teach if you mirror or communicate at the same pace of these sorts of things, then you can build artificial rapport, or build real rapport perhaps really quickly. But, the challenge is we also tend to have a blind spot and hire people that are like us. A lot of times, the people that we need to do a certain job, or not the entrepreneurial, visionary, cowboy personality type, or whatever personality type you are as an entrepreneur. You might need a different personality type for that role, and sometimes we're trying to get people like us, which we don't even want to do those things, and we're trying to put them into that role. We need to find people that love and enjoy doing that particular thing that we don't want to do. Somewhat, they need to be different from us, but we need to be able to have a relationship with them that feels comfortable and feels good and that we value. We enjoy being around them or having them on our team. Daniel: Some things I'm going to add because I'm a nerd. I love people, I love growing and scaling. I think there's another possibility which is when values match. If you're very clear about what your values are as a human and a business, then you can be with somebody who maybe doesn't match up with your personality, because you feel like you at least have that commonality and value. Jason: You guys trust them. Daniel: Yeah, exactly. One of our values as a family is we take care of our people. I teach my kids, we don't give up. I naturally gravitate to people who care about people, and who have a bit of grit. Defining who you are as a person and defining who you are as a company, and having those values can help you in selecting somebody who you may not love hanging out with, but there's a value match, and they have an expertise match. Things just jive as a company. Jason: I find that's one of the biggest flaws that I see in property management businesses, probably any business. As entrepreneurs go from the stage of solopreneur to building a team, they build a team around them but they're operating like a solopreneur. They're trying to micromanage them. They're viewing these people as people that are supposed to be extensions of them in some way, and instead of building a team around them, of people that are taking things off of their plate and their jobs to lower their pressure and noise, they're hiring people for jobs, people for roles they think the business needs instead of what they need. In order to hire a team and build a team around you that is what you need as an entrepreneur, there needs to be clear values. Those need to be defined. That's one of the foundational things we coach clients through is getting clear on their business, why we get entrepreneurs personal why, how those connect, creating, figuring out their core values. If they don't have that, they don't have culture. Culture comes from the entrepreneur, and it's the business that is supposed to exist to serve the entrepreneurs needs in some way, and it's also supposed to exist to solve a problem in the marketplace. If they have those things in alignment, it significantly affects their ability to close deals and create trust. That speeds up rapidly. If they don't have that, then not only are they having challenges with that, but they also have a team around them that they have to micromanage, that they always feel like they have to tell what to do, and that are not believers in them or in the business because they've never given them anything you believe in. Having a team of believers feels great. You feel like you're Iron Man. You feel like you've got the super suit, you've got all these people supporting you. We had an issue this morning, there was a client that had a product or something and they were frustrated or upset because they didn't do any of the work and they didn't get the results, obviously. They didn't do some things that needed to be done, didn't show up any calls, that didn't do anything. We want this client to get a result. One of my team members is brilliant at coaching and helping clients just feel the negative energy and transform it. He's just a brilliant coach in that, and he talked to this client for like 60 minutes. The client was like, okay, I'm excited to work with you guys, I'm not going to sue you now. My approach probably would have been a little bit more hardline and hard nosed. I've got another team member, and he deals with the clients directly. He's super diplomatic, and I'd be like just do it this way. But he's like, why don't we say it like this? I'm like, that's better. Our team members protect us. They protect the business, especially if they believe in you. You always feel like you're being supported. God, it is so stressful. It's worse having a team than being a solopreneur if you have a team that isn't there to believe in you, to support you, and lower your pressure and noise, it's worse. Daniel: Agreed. Agreed. Jason: You want to talk about the next step? You've got this outcome crafted. I love that idea because ultimately what matters is results, the outcome is what matters. A lot of people will hire just to fill a wall. They're like, "We need this." They think that's the outcome, we solved it, we got this person. The real outcome is them helping the business achieve a goal, achieve the outcome, that's involved. I like the idea of crafting outcomes. What's next? Daniel: You know what? I have to follow it up with the outcome. I want clarity for your audience around why we do that, it's really important. When you have a person coming into it and you give him a job, they could do a job and not get a result. Jason: Absolutely. Daniel: That's the challenge. When you craft an outcome and there's massive clarity between you and the employee about what the outcome is, how to do the job is well informed. It's like, "Look, we are going to need you to book X, Y, and Z so that the clients have this result." They're like, "Well, I booked it." Yeah, you booked it but the client didn't get this result. This is a challenge. Outcomes just align the interests of the entrepreneur business owner and the employee so that the coaching conversations and the interactions are super, super, clean. There is some responsibility on the entrepreneur because I can't say, "Look, I want to fly to Pluto one day. I'm going to hire you to help me do that." That's just not a possibility right now. We have a lot of clients here who are like, "I don't know how to do that. I need to hire somebody. Daniel, can your virtual professionals help me?" I'm like, "Absolutely not, we can't help you. You don't even know how to do it. How would we know if you don't know?" The military has this great concept, "You can't give one unless you have one." They don't promote from outside. You're not going to get a two star General who used to work at Coca-Cola, they're not just going to make him the general. They have a process of rising through the ranks because that experience is so important. When our clients say, "Hey, I want to try this thing out." We're like, "Hey, we can't help you because we're not a try-it-out company. We're a professional organization that helps entrepreneurs get time freedom in their life and high caliber leverage." We're not going to experiment something with you, we're not going to try to create the shift that's going to go to pluto. We just don't know how to do that. That's some clarity on the outcome. Our next step after an outcome, we start interviewing. Then, it just moves into the launch which is why we have the Go Remote gift for your audience which is really timely because 50% of the world is now working at home. How do you do that? What are some of the technologies? How do I communicate? Jason, you're going to love this one. You and I, we've been working remote for a while. Most people would be on a chat platform, "Hey, I got to go to the bathroom." Nobody wants to see that, but we're all humans. What do you say? In our Go Remote guide we're going to give out, you type ‘bio.be right back.’ It's just a little bit better to see that on a chat platform in your corporate office, maybe 100 people. We've got a lot of tips, tricks, what's the right etiquette, and all that. After you interview, which is about a launch, that's probably where all the magic happens—the first 90 days. Jason: Yeah. I just saw on Facebook, it went viral, that all these people are working from home now. People are doing Zoom meetings and stuff. Some lady in her team of 20 or 30 people on a Zoom call forgot that her camera and her mic was still active while she was going to the bathroom. She said, "I'll just go to the bathroom," and took things with her. How awkward would that be? They need to understand some basic etiquette dealing with this new technology. Daniel: Sure. The fun thing about it, we're all humans. We all have kids, we all go to the bathroom, we all need a lunch break, and the rules are different now working at home. If you find yourself as a manager or an employee, you have to hyper communicate now because nobody can see if you're actually working. If you find yourself as a leader, you have to give people the benefit of the doubt, and really communicate, communicate, communicate. This is a time unprecedented in history. Nobody can plan for needing to take your entire team remote in a matter of seven days. It just can't be planned for. Having a little bit of grace as a leader, and also increasing your communication for your employees as a leader is really super important right now. Jason: Yeah. One of my coaches, Al Sharpton, gave me the idea that the best way was push communication rather than pull in which as a leader, you don't have to go to hold them, stand over their shoulder, and ask them, "Hey, did you do this? Are you doing this? Where's this at?" That's pull communication. You're always trying to get things from them but you set up systems in which the system, they're reporting, submitting things, and providing the information to you so you'll feel comfortable, and you don't feel the need to micromanage them that way. Daniel: That's a great point. Part of our onboarding is helping people understand what a start of the day report looks like and the end of the day report looks like. Each of our folks, 1300-ish, 1200 or 1300 people, are doing a start of day report where they're like, "Hey, these are the seven things I'm going to accomplish today." And an end of the day report, "Hey, those seven things I knocked out five of the seven. I did three others and these two are pushed to the next day." Again, if you've got those communication systems well-oiled, one of the things because we've been virtual for so long, we have a tech platform where all of our virtual professionals enter their time. They start their day and they do their start of the day report in our system. At the end of the day, they report in our system. It keeps tabs and track of our virtual professionals so that we have a system of knowing, "Hey, they took a break." They enter into a system, "I'm taking my lunch break," or, "I'm taking my 15 minute break." We have a system that reports to our clients everything they do throughout the day. Our clients can login to that portal and just see it. We've been doing that because that's normal. Now, everybody's like, "Hey, how do I do that?" That's another example. You just have a start and end of day report so your managers and your people have a clear way of communicating what their day looks like. Jason: Yeah. That same coach I mentioned, I once asked, "How do you know if somebody in your team is a believer?" He just said, "They're getting their work done. You've got the outcomes and the things they're supposed to be doing. They're reporting that they're getting these things done. The performance is there and you're getting the results that you want. You don't have to micromanage them, you don't have to live in fear. They're getting things done.” That's ultimately what you want. You want to pay money, you want them to help you make more of it. You want them to get it done. Strategic call, development plan, crafting an outcome, interviewing, and you said launch. The launch is then setting, you've got these systems in place. For your clients, they can login, they can see what the team members are doing. Clarifying question. There's two types, I've noticed, of assistant companies or outsourcing companies where they're like, "Hey, we'll answer your phones and we've got 50-100 people here in a call center. Some random ones are going to answer the call." Or, you've got Raymond who's assigned to your phone and he's going to do this, he's going to do this job for you. Maybe you could help the listeners understand what MyOutDesk and this relationship looks like. Daniel: Yeah, make sense. The first example is for major corporations. Our business is designed for SMBs—Small and Medium Sized Businesses. We think of us like an extension of your business. You get to interview them, you get to onboard them. They report everyday to you. It's like, "Hey, Jason. I'm here. Daniel's here. I'm ready to login. I'm going to rock it. Do you need anything today? Here's my start of the day report." Every single day, they login. We typically do Monday to Friday. Some of our clients will have multiple schedules depending on coverage needs. LIke over the weekend, late night calls, or emergency phone numbers. Just think of us like an extension of your business. We're giving you leverage. We're a real estate staffing company that is specific to property managers, brokers, busters, mortgage companies. Our whole world is around helping you grow and scale. After the launch, it goes through training. Most entrepreneurs who ever hired somebody realizes that in the beginning, I liked this X. If you've been watching us on video right now, I'm doing an X. In the beginning, it's low value because they're brandnew to your business. They don't know your culture, they don't know your customers, they don't know your value proposition. There's just not a lot of value in the first two weeks. At some point, the value goes up. The amount of time you have to spend with somebody is high in the beginning because you need to tell them everything that's in your brain. That all of this tribal knowledge that you need to impart and give to them. You might already have it documented, you might not. The first 90 days is really teaching them how you want them to serve the business. Communicating, giving around like, "Hey, here's how to use our system. Here's the training platform. Here's all the team members. Here's all the systems you need to learn." The first 90 days, it's just getting them up to speed. After that, typically our clients are recording a 60% or 70% savings with the exact same result they were getting prior. It's pretty awesome. Jason: Now, these team members, is it hourly or are you dedicating a monthly? Fulltime? How does this tend to work? Daniel: There's a couple of things. We're different. Obviously, they're virtual professionals so they're working full time. We're a subscription based business. You pay us, we pay them. We also carry their healthcare, their vacation time, and all their benefits. Most companies, they're making a very razor thin margin. Honestly, 90% of what you guys pay us, what our clients pay us, actually goes to benefits for their virtual professionals—benefits, vacation, health plan, we do conferences. We have an entire support system, team, tech, and all that kind of craziness. The point is they're our people. We're helping you get up to speed so they can help you grow and scale your business. At some point, we all become a team. Meaning, the company is here to support the virtual assistant, support the client, and everybody wins. That's what I love about working here. I'm going to help people find jobs in the Philippines, that's where we operate. I get to help businesses scale and grow. It's like the coolest place to be especially because we’ve helped over 5000 clients. I’ve gotten to see growth plans, org charts, systems. It's just so exciting every day to see so many Small and Medium Sized Businesses really see under the hood—profitability, who's on your team, what are some of your struggles. It's just really awesome for me and my team because every day, we're just serving our community. Jason: Love it. What are some of the frequently asked questions that people have that maybe we haven't covered? That somebody might be asking during the process? Daniel: A lot of people are like, "What does my commitment look like? How long do I have to stay in contract?" I'm a real estate guy and very firmly believed in value. We don't lock our people into any long term contracts. Every two weeks, every single one of my clients is voting with their credit card, honestly. Imagine if your business, 100%, runs on adding value for others. That’s how our business works. One of the missions that we've embraced at a really high level is our virtual assistants or virtual professionals need to be indispensable to your business. That's the guiding light, it has been from the beginning. If they come in and they take things off of your plate, you have all this time freedom, all of these opportunities to crack, and grow your business, then we just created an indispensability, it is irreplaceable. That's our whole mission as a company. We're really excited. Jason: Very cool. Do we talk about pricing? What is it going to cost? Typically, I know that the people listening, that's the big question. They're like, "Can I afford this? Would this make sense for me?" Most of them are thinking, "I can barely afford the team I have now. Is this something I can do to get to that next level? Maybe this will help me bridge that gap." For example, in property management, what I call the first sandtrap is the property manager that's maybe broken about 50 doors, they broke that barrier there. They're between 50-100 doors, they can't break the 100-door barrier. They're operating as a solopreneur, they can't afford to hire their first team member. Their pricing is too low, they've taken on too many crappy properties to manage. They've got a lot of leaks. They're trying to figure out, "How do I get ahead?" They can change some of these other things but one of the things is, "I need another person." Maybe you can touch on that and give people an idea of what they should budget for and make this work. Daniel: Step one, three, or five, is 100% free. If you're listening right now and you're like, "I need support," or, "I need help," I just want you to jump on our website, myoutdesk.com. Just go and schedule a consultation, go through the process. Worst case scenario, we walk away as buds. We high five each other, say, "Congratulations," and we walk away. Best case scenario, we find a way to make it a win-win where you're getting time freedom back into your world and you're able to focus on growing and scaling your business. If you decide to move forward with us, I always like to say, "Look, it's $400 a week. It's $400 and some change." It's not a super expensive value proposition in our world. It's $1747 a month, all in—benefits, vacation time. Like an entire team supporting you. All the systems and processes that we’ve developed over the years will help you. This Go Remote guide we're going to give out is 12 pages and 5000 clients later worth of really good this-is-how-you-run-a-remote-team guide. We're going to give everything away for free because that's what we do. Including our time, energy, and effort. We were just on the news last week. We basically gave out consultations to help business leaders, C-suite people, and entrepreneurs figure out how to go remote. There's this bottleneck in California. Everybody got shelter in place. California went down, people were scrambling. We helped our insurance broker, we helped our attorneys. We were just helping people figure this out and give them some confidence in this. If you're listening right now and you think this might be an avenue, I would just encourage you to reach out because it costs you nothing but your time. You'll walk away with a lot of value. Jason: Another major issue right now is the cash crunch. Every business is feeling a cash crunch. Cash is just shortened, people are laying people off. Companies are furloughing people, their team members can collect their employment insurance. This is a painful time period. They're having to figure out how to cut expenses. Some businesses will not be the same after this. This might be another option if they're having to layoff staff and they're not able to fund or keep cash flow positive. The big challenge then is how do we keep some sort of level of service? How do we still deliver to our clients if we cannot afford that overhead anymore, and we need to lower the overhead. For those listening, that's what you need to do right now, to cash crunch, and solve that problem. If you can be healthy there, then you can get on some higher level problems to deal with like how do we keep the [...] economy or what not. You've got to solve the immediate cash crunch issue. That might be an SBA loan, that might be some of these things coming out. Maybe having a conversation with your team might help facilitate that. Daniel: We have a good friend of mine who owns a recruiting firm. One of her right hand women has a 1 year old and a 3 year old. They're all at home. She needs support now, not tomorrow, because she's contractually obligated to add value to her clients. If she doesn't, they have the opportunity to walk away and cancel. We're seeing a big uptake in people who are like, "Hey, we're having staffing issues right now. I'm not sure. We need support in X, Y, and Z.” We're happy to go through that process with somebody and say, "We can help you here," or, "No, this isn't what we specialize in but these people are your best option." There's a lot of companies like ours. There's lots of resources out there where the SBA thing, that's one of our free gifts in the Go Remote right now. When we give that away, we have a guide to getting the SBA disaster loan there. We have a guide for what's happening with the taxes right now. We have a guide for what you are saying to your clients right now in this weird, uncertain time. You can't say you want to buy or sell, this is an odd time to be a sales person but it's a great time to have conversations, ask questions, and connect people on a human to human basis. We put together a little guide for people in that space. We should give it away. What do you think, Jason? Jason: Let's do it. How do we get it? Daniel: All you have to do is text MOD—MyOutDesk—MOD to 31996. Anybody that wants it can go there. You'll get a link to our Go Remote stuff, all those free guides are down there. Here's the other thing, normally, you understand marketing, we date our content. Normally, we help people register and do a bunch of stuff so that we know who they are. Because of this disaster and because of everything that's happening in the world, when you text MOD to 31996, we're giving that stuff in a Word format. Meaning, you can take the Go Remote guide, put your logo on it, and give it away to your customers and clients. You can put your logo on our disaster recovery plan. We have a CEO mindset conversation. It's time to adapt your value proposition for your customers because we're in a new world right now. All that stuff is given away free because we're all in this together. The biggest cure for the economy right now is businesses and entrepreneurs staying productive. Jason: Right. I'm texting it right now so I can check it out. It's 31996 and I just do MOD. Daniel: That's right. I can't wait to see Jason from across my phone. It's going to be awesome. There we go. Boom! "MyOutDesk is your partner in going remote!" That's exactly it, brother. Right there. Here's the thing, we were on TV. I think it's an important message. I think we can wrap it up with your audience with this one thing. As entrepreneurs, as business leaders, it is our job to stay productive. It's our civic duty right now. Our economy is going to be challenged. The people at the bottom who have the normal middle class jobs, they're going to go through pain. As a leader in my community, my job is to help everybody I can stay as productive as possible. That's what's going to shift, that's what's going to change this world. That's why we put together a guide. That's why we're giving it up free. I hope it's valuable to you guys, your audience, and Jason—even you guys. Jason: Awesome. I just did a training just last week. Property management and property managers are going to be even more critical during this time than ever before. This is an opportunity for property managers to plant seeds for the future. I taught a concept called Care ROI. Right now may not be the time to focus on financial ROI but Care ROI will lead to that in the future as things shift. In turn, people will remember. Because emotions are heightened right now, anything that we do, and it actually takes a communication that we do as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, will be magnified times 10 in the mind of our customers or consumers because emotion is what creates memory. It's the difference between what you were doing the day before 9/11 or the day on 9/11. People's memories are very different because of the emotions attached. Right now, you have the opportunity to get a 10x ROI on positive things that you do out to your customers, to your audience, and your potential clients. That is massive.  Everyone listening, make sure you checkout the training that I did and leverage that Care ROI. I want to thank you for coming on and doing this even though it's crazy right now. I honor you for putting out this awesome guide to help people out. That's awesome. I look forward to having some more conversations with you in the future, Daniel. Daniel: Jason, thanks for your time, man. We really appreciate you today. Jason: I'll say one more thing, Everybody, businesses exist to solve a problem. That's why businesses exist. If the business is not solving a problem, it's taking people's money and not delivering results. There's no higher purpose or cause that entrepreneurs can do right now than to solve people's problems and to also make money. Making money helps you help the economy, it helps everybody. It helps you help your team. Find ways to help people solve their problems and to make money. I don't think there's anything wrong. Some people try to guilt and shame right now. They're the people that are just taking from the system, don't worry about them. The other thing I'll point out is if you're an entrepreneur, you don't like your business, you've been looking for your out. You're an entrepreneur, this is your perfect out. This is the perfect opportunity to choose out of your business and just not do it anymore. You have the perfect excuse. For the rest of us that are driven, that we’re passionate about what we do, if you are a property management entrepreneur, you're still wanting to grow, still wanting to be part of the community, check us out at doorgrowclub.com. Get inside our Facebook group community there. There's lots of helpful things going around, property management trying to solve problems for each other, and figure out what to do with things. Make sure to have a conversation with us at DoorGrow. Our goal right now is to plant those Care seeds, ROI as well, and help you out in any way that we can. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Daniel, thanks again for coming and hanging out. Daniel: It's been my pleasure. Jason: All right. We'll let you go. Everyone check out his website. It is myoutdesk.com. Make sure to do the text message thing. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. 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. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge in 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 at doorgrow.com. 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. Always use the JS Compressor to shrink before you publish a website.

Are you a property manager who spends too much time struggling with leasing requirements? It may be time to automate rental property management and focus more on how to grow your business. Today’s guest is Faizan Khan from LetHub, an AI leasing assistant service for property management businesses. LetHub utilizes AI to interact with renters, resolve their problems, and get them to the doors.  You’ll Learn... [03:40] Why LetHub? Opportunity to use AI to automate rental property management. [04:21] Myth: AI is a simple chatbot with multiple threads of what needs to be done. [05:00] Reality: AI goes beyond basics by understanding how the human brain works.  [05:26] Good vs. Genius AI: What’s the difference? Ability to learn and fix mistakes. [06:39] How to build an AI: Data scientist, algorithms, machine learning (ML), and supervised learning approach are needed to get started.  [07:29] LetHub’s Goal: Make experience for renters and landlords very easy.  [07:55] Property Management Problem: Difficult to get a rental apartment. Demand is high. Everyone is looking. AI can help. [09:05] Why LetHub uses AI? AI is not going to replace humans, but it’s a substitute. [09:19] Retention Rate: Property managers want to get the best tenants and keep them.  [10:25] LetHub’s AI: Replies to questions, books tours, provides CRM, handles emails. [12:15] LetHub’s Automated System: Requires less staff and time to generate results. [15:35] Pre-call Process: Top four questions focus on pets, moving date, student or employed, and tell me about yourself.  [17:25] API and Integrations: Connect to Buildium, Yardi, or other account. [20:00] LetHub Listings: All channels have Web link; connect email with Web platform.  Tweetables LetHub’s goal is to make the experience for renters and landlords very easy. Get people to the door. A good AI understands; a genius AI learns from its mistakes. AI won’t replace humans, but be a substitute for property managers to focus on growth. People like to chat. They don't want to call. They want instant replies.  Resources Faizan Khan’s Email LetHub Buildium Yardi Rent Manager RealPage DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers 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 businesses and their owners. 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. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with Faizan Khan. Faizan, how are you today? Faizan: I'm good. How are you? Jason: Welcome to the DoorGrow Show. I'm doing great. Faizan Khan has one of the coolest names that we’ve ever had on the DoorGrow Show. We were joking in green room that it sounds like he’s a gangster rapper, just cool. Actually, you made that joke, because I’m a nerd I said it sounds like some badass [...]. Faizan: That’s right, yeah. It’s a different name. I haven’t heard this name myself before. Faizan, I'm really excited to have you. You have a service that we're going to be talking about today called LetHub. I know nothing about it. I'm excited to ask you a lot of questions. I get curious. Before we get into that, let's talk about you. Where this guy with this cool name came from, what your background is, and why people should listen. Faizan: As a child, I had been involved in entrepreneurship stuff and starting businesses small or big. I'm originally born and brought up in Dubai and Pakistan, considered like a mixture. Then I moved to the UK for a bit and after that I have been living in Canada. I've lived in five different countries throughout my life. I love traveling. Whenever I get a chance, I try to go to any other spot that I can go to, provided there's no Coronavirus over there. I'm really interested in real estate. I've had a bunch of start-ups before. I saw this opportunity of using AI to automate rental property management, so I started this company called LetHub. We are in our start-up phase but we're doing pretty well working with a few clients in Canada and States. We're trying to help people to automate all of their leasing requirements so they could sit down and focus more on how to grow. Right now, we're using a very sophisticated AI to interact with renters, resolve their problems, get them to the doors, and all that stuff. We can get deeper into that. That's my background of why I started and who I am. Jason: This sounds really interesting. A lot of people talk about AI and you hear that thrown around. I think the term can sometimes be used very loosely. Their version of an AI is they're creating a chatbot with multiple threads of what they need to be done. Faizan: That’s a very good question. I think a lot of people are sort of sold on the idea that AI is basically just like a pre-made thread of questions or a pre-scripted bot. But the truth here is that it understands something in a similar way as a human would, like the sentences or words I'm saying to you, your brain is breaking them down, understanding the context of that, processing it, and then replying. That's how our brain works. A good AI would understand that, even a better or a genius AI would really learn. If it creates a mistake, you can teach it what to do or it could teach itself what to do next. An example would be if someone says hey, do you allow pets, or hey, do you love furry friends? The AI would respond saying that, hey, we do. This is our pet policy. The renter would say, hey, is a small dog or cat okay? The third thing that the renter says is context. The context is do you allow any pets. Truly, I would not understand that, but an actual AI would understand the context. Jason: How does one go about starting to build an AI thing? Is there an AI system that you are leveraging to build? Is that how this works? Faizan: Yeah, that's a good question. You need a data scientist, number one, and you need to build some algorithms. You need to understand how machine learning works. It's a lot of techy-techy stuff to get data, to train the AI from an infant to a child to an adult. It's a simple process like any other human would be trained, how we grow up, we learn a few words, and then we're taught a few things. Pretty much like that. We use a supervised learning approach. It's a very sophisticated machine learning approach. Our goal is to make the experience for renters and landlords very easy. From our tests, we see that a lot of people ask the same questions. We cut that down, get people to the door rather than them giving you a call or sending you hundreds of emails. Jason: Let's talk about the problem first. What problem have you seen to the property managers you're dealing with that you thought maybe AI can help with this? Faizan: First and foremost in a very dense city where I was living in Vancouver, it's very hard to get a rental apartment. The demand is high. Everyone is looking. For us as renters, it was getting impossible. It would take two months to get something, that's how I started. I was like, why is this process not solved? If I send an email to a landlord, why am I not getting a reply? If I show up there are 20, 30 other people, I need to fill out a new rental application every time. If you go into 10 units or 10 different spots or places, it will be 10 different applications and that's all while you're working 9:00 to 5:00 as a professional. That's how I started. Why do we use AI? AI is not going to replace humans, but it's going to substitute a lot of their work that they do so they can focus on other stuff. A lot of the problems that property managers face are mostly around getting the best tenants and then keeping them. What's the retention rate? That's one of the bigger problems in multifamily and also single family.  I believe that you can cut that whole process down to finding someone from a listing, to getting them to the door, and to sign the lease. You can cut the time down by around 60 to 70%. If you're spending four to five hours a day, if you have a lot of vacancies or spending a lot of time just on replying to people with the same questions and it gets monotonous, you might lose focus. You're not that happy talking to people. That's where an automated system comes in.  People like to chat, especially millennials. They don't want to call. They want instant replies. Our product comes in there and solves this problem. It replies to everyone's questions and books you a tour right away into the leasing team's calendar. It provides a nice CRM for property managers just to have a look at who's coming when, weather details, do they qualify, all that good stuff. It also handles emails coming through. We see that 50 to 60% of property managers get emails than calls. Emails and texts are the king right now in terms of communicating. We deal with that as well. Jason: LetHub is handling emails? Faizan: Yes. Jason: It's dealing with text messaging too? Faizan: Yeah. Apart from calling, everything. Our AI assistant is dealing with all the online web chat. You can put it on your website or you can just post it on ours. It would reply to your emails. It would reply to the text. It will send reminders, all that good stuff. Honestly, there's a lot of companies that have already built this, but the automation piece is missing. There's always some manual work. We built it in a way where you can just click a button and start using it. There's no need for a three week training. I hate that. Jason: What are you seeing in terms of how this is impacting the clients that you brought on some of your initial prospects? What are you seeing? What are they noticing? What's different for now? Faizan: I don't want to jump the gun on this one, but I think it's helping people not to hire more which is scary. An example is one of our clients, they used to hire interns who would take calls, reply to emails, and then give the lead to a leasing agent who would go out there and show the unit, do a tour and then sign the lease and all that stuff. They stopped hiring an intern because now the system’s so automated, they’re getting good results. From a leasing agent’s perspective, they’re leasing faster. Those hundreds of emails they get, because it’s automated, they can filter through renters faster and get signed leases faster. The rate of listing to lease, the timeline has decreased. We've been measuring that very specifically. Minutely looking at is that the USP, is that actually the time spent by a leasing agent, but it's both. If someone spends on these activities, that goes down and the time to lease goes down as well. Jason: Let's go through the lifecycle then. I want to understand which pieces of the lifecycle of dealing with prospective tenants, showing the property, getting the lease, then on boarding, how much of this is LetHub connecting with and helping with? Faizan: Our goal is to get people to the door. Jason: It's getting people to the showings and getting showings scheduled and that sort of thing? Faizan: Yeah. It's answering our questions, dealing with increased, pre-qualifying people, and getting them to the door according to your schedule. Just get them to the door and then after that you could do the rental application or whatever you'd want to do, but also we get feedback as well. We're getting them to the door. If they don't like the property, we're getting some feedback as to why they didn't like the property or something like that. The goal is to get them to the door fastest with good pre-qualification, answering all their questions that they might have, and booking tours in a smart way. If you manage more than 400 units, 1000 units, or even 2000 in our case, then your time is money in that sense. There'll be no shows. There'll be people who are not that qualified. You'll always be dealing with not a higher quality of tenant like prospective renters. Jason: Give listeners an idea of the pre-call process, like some of the questions you might ask or what property management might have connected or built out in that piece. Faizan: I've built the algorithm myself with the help of my CTO. It's highly customizable. Obviously staying within human rights, there's some questions you cannot ask but it's customizable. You put your criteria and river our AI. We'll make sure she gets those answers from people. Jason: What are some of the questions that it's asking? You had mentioned earlier like maybe pets, maybe if they've had an eviction before. Faizan: You could ask anything from if you had an eviction, do you smoke, do you have any pets, how many people are moving in, why are you moving, are you a student. A lot of people ask this. We suggest people not to ask more than four questions, otherwise, that drives renters away. The top four I'm telling you is number one is pets, what's your moving date, when do you want to move in, are you a student or do you have a job, that sort of thing, and then the fourth is please tell me a bit about yourself. Generally, tell us whatever you would want. Though you can keep the criteria strict. If they don't fall under your criteria, they don't actually book a tour. We'd show them other properties. Jason: I understand the idea of decreasing the amount of time wasting type of calls where they're just asking details about the property. Will this be able to pull in some of the data on some of the properties through API or connect, because most property managers have all this in their property management software? If somebody's getting into your chat tool or the system and asking what's the square footage on this property or where is this located, how many of these things can it feel? Faizan: All we ask people to do is connect their Buildium or Yardi account and then go from there. We are constantly working on improving the integration and it will have enhanced integration with time. Right now if you as a property manager want to have a taste of LetHub, just let us know and we'll add a few of your properties. You can have an experience and then we can attach your integration and all that stuff. But we're not really partners with any of these companies, we just want to be clear. These are one off requests from property managers where they say this software, can you integrate so that we help them integrate. There's some softwares that do not have APIs. Jason: What manager has a full API, I guess property now has an API? Faizan: Yeah, probably Rent Manager. I was talking to the folks at Rent Manager as well. We're in moving talks with them soon. We'll meet with them at the conference as well. With Buildium, they don't really have an open API, same way as bigger companies like Yardi or RealPage. They have a paid API so they have this whole program. But we're happy to work with anyone. The key is to cut down the time it would take to on board anyone if they are using a very sophisticated software. We're happy to work with them and help them set that up while not changing anything. That's the important part. They keep doing what they're doing, we're just going to be working on the side getting them into leads. Jason: LetHub can operate as a chat tool on their website for people that are coming there. How does it help them via their listings that are out on the internet on various channels? Faizan: All the channels, email, text, and just having a web link, when you list your property, all you do is you just connect your email with our web platform. When you list your property just in the description and say, hey, click here to book a tour, or you can just redirect users to your own website. If you spent a lot of money on branding and making your website amazing, which a lot of people have, just redirect them to your own website and the river would just pop up and guide the user to book a tour or answer any questions. Jason: What questions are property managers asking you that are a little bit curious or wary or whatever? What are some of the most common questions they're asking about LetHub before they're willing to take it for a full spin and utilize it? Faizan: That's a good question. I think it depends on the size of the company. We were in talks with Aimco which has 10,000 units, bigger company, and multifamily. Their number one problem is integration so they would want integration with their current software which is totally fine. Make sense, bigger companies, got more complex. With the smaller property managers, I think their major concern is that will people be okay chatting with an AI versus a human. I want to be clear on this that nobody's replacing nobody over here. We're just helping people and we've got the tests to show you that that's the future. There's a lot of banks using this technology and you can order a pizza. I don't know how smart it is, but you can order a piece of pizza through an AI assistant. Jason: Anything else you want to let people know about LetHub before we wrap this up and how can people get in touch and maybe check this out? Faizan: Yeah, for sure. I think if you're a property manager who is looking to automate things so you don't have to run after renters and if you're looking to really use the latest and greatest tech, then please get in touch with us. Our website is lethub.co. You can email me at [email protected], I'll be happy to do a demo myself or one of my team members would do it for you. Happy to chat about your problems and see if we can build a more customized solution for you. Yeah, that's about it. Keep growing I guess. Jason: Faizan Khan, really great having you on the show. I appreciate you hanging out with me today and we'll let you go. Faizan: Awesome. Thank you so much. Jason: Awesome to have him on. Check out LetHub and let us know inside the DoorGrowClub Facebook group what your experiences are if you decide to try them out, what you think. We'd be really curious to hear about your feedback. Go post an update inside the DoorGrowClub. Get to that on doorgrowclub.com. That's our community for this property management podcast. If you are wanting to figure out how to grow your business, you're struggling to grow, you're running into issues, reach out to our team. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.