Property Management Growth with DoorGrow DGS 140: How To Attract Motivated & Inspired Team Members In Your Property Management Business
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 TranscriptWelcome, 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.