Property Management Growth with DoorGrow DGS 168: Transitioning Property Management Entrepreneurs Between 100-200 Doors
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 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.
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[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.