Property Management Growth with DoorGrow DGS 259: I Just Turned 47: Business and Life Update with Jason Hull
I recently turned 47 years old. The last year has been full of challenges in the business and in my personal life, but things are starting to shift.
In today’s episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull discusses his personal and business growth recently and his hopes for the coming business year.
You’ll Learn[01:17] Business Challenges and Revelations
[08:35] Personal Challenges and Revelations
[11:32] Learning Empathy
[18:25] Don’t Give Up
Tweetables“There's what people think they need and what they want, and there's what they actually need.”
“A lot of you don't even realize you have a garbage product.”
“Your business is one of the greatest personal development tools that you have.”
“I think God may trick us into starting a business to make money and eventually, he uses it to turn us into better human beings.”
Resources Transcript[00:00:00] I think God may trick us into starting a business to make money and eventually, he uses it to turn us into better human beings. Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager.
[00:00:30] Jason: DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:00:52] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show.
[00:01:17] I just had on the 30th, and today is July 2nd this may come out at a later date, you might hear it a month later depending on which channel you listen to this on. So my birthday is June 30th. This is also the end of our planning year.
[00:01:32] So we offset our planning by two quarters because it really sucks to try and hit your end of the year goals in December when everybody is kind of focused on holidays and family and to try and get them to put their attention on business, it isn't super effective. And I like that to be the middle of our planning year.
[00:01:51] And we do our beginning of our year is July 1st. So not only is my birthday, it's also the end of our sort of a planning year for our business. And so I've had a lot of introspection. I mean, this has been a tough previous year for me in a lot of ways mostly on the personal side, you know, business has been a little tough as well to be transparent. And so the challenge in business is that we've developed this really amazing coaching program and I really enjoy doing that piece. So we've shied away from doing websites and focusing on other stuff, even though I still have a whole web development team and they just haven't had a whole lot of work to do.
[00:02:30] But we've really put our focus into coaching and improving our programs and decreasing churn, which is a difficult challenge in a coaching business. And we've gotten it down, like half of our clients have been in our program for over a year, which is amazing because when I first even learned the word churn several years back our average retention rate was like five months, like it was super low.
[00:02:52] And so we were kind of addicted to sales. And this is the advantage in a property management business is that you're not super addicted to the next big deal, right? You've got residual income. And so I learned when the pandemic hit, I learned I want more residuals coming in so that I'm not beholden to sales because sales stopped that month of May, I believe it was, there was no sales.
[00:03:15] Every property manager, they were holding their breath. "Our tenant is going to pay rent? What's going to happen? is this scary?" And so they were like, "I'm not going to spend any money. I'm going to be careful here." So that was interesting and so we had to tighten our belt as a team.
[00:03:27] We had to like, cut out expenses. We got a leaner and I think I let some people go on the team as well that were just, you know, maybe not as essential. And we had to tighten our belts to, to survive as a business because we were so focused on sales and we're at a good click.
[00:03:46] Like we're a decent sized company. Like we make a good amount of money, but when you continue to have expenses every month and suddenly sales stops and that's the majority of our revenue, that's a bad thing. And those of you that have shifted from real estate sales and hunting and chasing to doing property management and building a residual income business model, you get it.
[00:04:05] And I've seen so many of my clients have these great subscription sort of service, right? So I wanted to emulate that and we switched to doing it that way, and making sure we focused on residual income. So we built that up, we built it up really well. We've got a great coaching business.
[00:04:20] We've got a great back end. We're really good at helping our clients grow and scale their companies. The weird and ironic thing though, that presented a challenge is that people don't want coaching, right? People don't like wake up in the morning, go, you know what? You know my business needs? I want to get a coach.
[00:04:36] This is not generally people's first thought. There's what people think they need and what they want, and there's what they actually need. And so people would come to us and what they thought they needed was leads. I call it the leads myth. And what they thought they needed in order to get their business growing was maybe a better website or SEO or something like this.
[00:04:57] And so they would come to us kind of thinking this is the stuff they needed. And then we could help them. Like reeducate them and help them see this is why you've been struggling to grow is because you believe these false beliefs And I would then point out like that like leads from the internet are not the best leads And there's better sources of getting business than just cold leads or cold lead advertising. And maybe having a website is nice, but you can grow a business without even having a website or without even having the top spot on google. And so we would get a lot of clients historically coming to us for a website and that was one major leak in their sales pipeline, but they had, you know, at least ,five major other leaks in their sales pipeline that needed to be shored up.
[00:05:41] And they thought, "all I need to do is turn on the leads." So they would turn on the leads full blast, like turning on a hose. And there's all these leaks in the hose, right? One of them's a website. One of them was their pricing. One of them was branding. One of them was reputation. One of them was their sales pitch and their sales process.
[00:05:58] One of them was what I call purpose, lack of culture in their team. So their whole product was just like garbage. A lot of you don't even realize you have a garbage product. It doesn't create trust and it has lots of leaks in the hose or in the pipeline. And you're just trying to shove more leads, like spend more money, time, energy, focus, cash, and effort.
[00:06:17] And so it wasn't hard to take people that came to us for a website. "Hey, I need a website. I'm starting a business where I'm trying to figure this out, or we're struggling to grow and we think we need a new website. " And then convert them into giving them what they actually needed in order to grow and then help them crush it.
[00:06:33] Yeah. But since shifting our focus towards coaching and changing our homepage, "let's focus on coaching." Because I just was so excited about coaching, it actually made it more difficult to get customers. So we spent a lot more money on advertising, doing a lot more marketing to attract people and to like reeducate the market, but that's a much more difficult challenge.
[00:06:54] And so we've struggled to really grow our business. And we're at a good size. We're a good size. Like, you know, we're over a million in revenue, but DoorGrow easily the back end of our business, our systems it's better than $ 10 million companies that I've been around.
[00:07:10] And we've got great systems. We've got great mechanisms. Our big challenge has just been client acquisition, ironically, right, and we're DoorGrow. And so we're going back to what has been working, which is focusing again on websites, especially in downturn markets like this, or where the real estate market isn't doing well,
[00:07:29] lots of people start property management companies. So we did create a startup training for them. So they'd stopped like coming into the industry and screwing it up and making it worse. So we created the ultimate property management startup course material called DoorGrow Foundations. And this is a great tool, and we give it away for like really cheap. It's like 95 bucks flat fee. That's it. We created it just so we could send people somewhere that just couldn't afford to join our programs or do stuff with us, and they can pay extra to get a website and some other things we can give them as well. we're shifting our focus now back to what the market needs. And so I'll be putting out a survey. This is how I get the data and what are they actually wanting to learn? What training are they wanting? What do they want to be exposed to? And we're going to go back to focusing on websites and leads and, you know, those sort of gateway drugs that like bring people to you.
[00:08:21] Right? And we'll see how that works. And I think It's historically worked really well for us. So I imagine we'll have our mastermind will get really nice and full and we'll have a ton of people in it. So I'm excited about that.
[00:08:35] The other thing over the last year on the personal side I've just been going through a lot of growth and, you know, when you're put into trials, tribulations, difficult situations, you're going to have a lot of growth.
[00:08:45] And one of the challenges has been my relationship with my ex wife, which has affected the custody situation with my kids.
[00:08:54] And they were dealing with a lot. It was just a really big mess. And it was a huge amount of stress on me. Huge amount of stress on our business. I don't think my clients realized it, you know, we take good care of our clients, but for me I wasn't able to put as much attention into moving DoorGrow forward, innovating and creating new stuff because I was inundated with dealing with custody situation, trying to get full control of the kids.
[00:09:18] She took off to California for like four months and, you know, the kids were with me full time, which I wasn't used to. That you know, created some stress for Sarah and I. And you know, in the beginning when Sarah came into my life, you know, the kids were going through a lot of pain.
[00:09:34] Because there was a messy divorce. There was a lot of problems in the relationship. It was just a mess. It was hard for the kids because, you know, I really tried to conceal all the challenges and stuff from them, but they didn't realize all what was going on. I have four kids and at least half of them still have no clue of all the stuff, the dark stuff that went on and the challenges that I dealt with.
[00:09:55] But you know, they've had to go through a lot of stuff, and so they weren't very nice, like, to Sarah in the beginning. Any of you that have been a step parent, or in a step, sort of, role, you know, it's the hardest parenting role ever. Period. There's nothing harder. Can you discipline them?
[00:10:10] Can you not? Like, there's not hardwired built in love. You know, it's a difficult thing, and they were hurting, and it was just ugly, right. And it was painful. They were really hard on her and they were disrespectful to me.
[00:10:23] And so it just, you know, it created a difficult scenario. And so it just made things even more difficult coming into this sort of custody situation and trying to get everything handled. The good news, the light at the end of the tunnel is, you know, God always takes care of me and good things have happened.
[00:10:39] She came back to Texas and now we can split time with the kids And she's wanting to get back, you know, and connect with them and get back in their life. And then that takes pressure off me. So I have the kids every other week and can focus on work and takes pressure off my marriage with Sarah and like, so that everything can work out better. So there's this light at the end of the tunnel. So things have shifted. In a way, I didn't even expect it would get this good. Like, and I got all this stuff legally handled the way I wanted.
[00:11:04] So there's a little bit of accountability in place now. And I'm really optimistic and hopeful for the future. And you know, for my ex wife, like she is a great mother, loving mother, and can be a really great, caring person. And so I think that's what the kids need.
[00:11:21] That'd be really good for them. I can give them the tough dad love, the kids need mom's love too. So this is some of the stuff I've been dealing with. And you know, this has caused a lot of growth for me also in the last last several weeks.
[00:11:32] Recently I went to this seminar put on by a group called SATVATOVE, S A T V A T O V E. A guy named David Wolfe he has a really great relationship book and I read the book and it it has some great content in it. It reminded me of this large group awareness training that I did in the past called the impact trainings out of Utah, which really has, you know, shifted my life.
[00:11:53] It was really positive. I think it was born out of est or landmark or some of these sort of large group awareness trainings, but it was a little bit more on the spiritual side. I think, I don't know, but his is more on the emotional side of things. And I went to this seminar and you know, to learn empathy and it's been a really effective thing for my life.
[00:12:12] Like it's really shifted how I communicate even with clients, with my family. I'm just able to connect with people more and my basic need, like in Tony Robbins, like five basic needs love and belonging or love and connection is like my primary, ironically because I don't generally have a lot of friends, I don't have a lot of relationships and you know, I've had a difficult time, you know, even communicating sometimes with my kids, and I just come across as very analytical, very logical in a lot of instances, I'm sure a lot of guys could resonate.
[00:12:42] But I really connected with some of these tools to be able to empathize and to communicate and to reflect back emotion instead of just reflect back what they're saying to really have them be heard. And there's some real power in that. And in going through that, I also got reflected back to me from you know, I was partnered up with somebody at the event to do the exercises.
[00:13:05] And the feedback I got from him was basically that in him hearing my story and some of the stuff I just shared with you all that he's like, "wow, you really care about your family. Like, you know, deeply and you try really hard to take care of everybody." And I just started crying because it wasn't what I was expecting but he was reflecting back the feeling and it really helped me connect with it because I didn't I wasn't seeing it. And I was like, "yeah, that's super true."
[00:13:30] Like I just felt it and I broke down and then he said, "And you don't feel that you're worthy of it in return." And that just gutted me. I started crying like full on just... and I'm trying to keep it together. It's a seminar. There's a group of people. We're doing an exercise.
[00:13:45] Everyone's talking in the room and here I am like, right. So I've really been thinking about that a lot the last several weeks is " What sort of self talk do I have? How am I making myself feel not worthy? Why am I allowing that to be in you know in my space internally? And what does that motivate or drive me to do?" And I realize that event like I'm always in group scenarios, even with clients or with anybody, I'm always wanting to showcase and give so much value. And a lot of it's born out of this insecurity that I'm not going to be loved or I'm not enough.
[00:14:14] And I need to like show them, I need to show them I have some great ideas and there's some important things here. And it's been a real roadblock to me listening and hearing people in some instances, you know, a lot of clients value me giving them ideas, giving them feedback, sharing things with them.
[00:14:30] So it works out okay in some business scenarios, but I've noticed since kind of letting go of that need for self importance in order to kind of be loved or for them to see me as valuable and just recognize I inherently have value and really putting my attention on them and connecting with them and reflecting their feelings and their emotion.
[00:14:50] It's such a richer experience for me to get inside of other people's world and to connect with them. And that empathy has really allowed me to get more of what I actually was craving, which is more of that love and connection. Like I feel so connected to everybody now and I'm really enjoying this. Right. I mean, you can hear the excitement of my voice.
[00:15:08] I'm really enjoying... it's made things deeper in my marriage with Sarah. It's made things deeper in my connection with my kids and helping them feel understood and heard and to allow them to feel. It's been with clients. I just feel like, you know, people don't care what you know, until they know that you care.
[00:15:25] And they, I feel like clients can tell even more that I care. I've always cared, but I'm able to show it in a way that they get it, you know, a lot better. And so I'm really enjoying the results of you know, reflecting back this empathetic communication where I'm showcasing more warmth, empathy, and genuineness.
[00:15:45] And then another part of his book and the seminar was about the difference between these three different types of communication, which are passive, aggressive, and then assertive. And really, there's passive, assertive, and aggressive, is probably how it really should be. Because passive is one extreme, aggressive is another extreme, assertive is the more true path.
[00:16:06] And the difference in passive is it's indirect. There's some pain involved usually. There's some fears involved, there's not direct communication. And we're not really clear in our communication. And aggressive is hurtful and abrasive and doesn't really allow people the space to absorb or hear and comes across too strong, and so we don't get really what we want and we don't communicate effectively what we're trying to communicate. And assertive is you know a much more effective mode of communication.
[00:16:33] So i'm focusing also on avoiding any sort of passive or aggressive communication I'm seeking to be more assertive in my communication and more direct and that also allows me to get more of what I want, you know, from my relationships and from the people I'm talking with in that. And especially if I'm coming from the space of care and I've showcased care.
[00:16:52] So this is kind of my journey and I'm 47 years old as of June 30th. I'm just a couple of days into this 47 years old. And what's wild about that to me is I'm three years away from 50. And if you're watching me on video, I know you're thinking, this guy doesn't look like he's almost 50. I've heard that so much around my birthday.
[00:17:13] Like I hear it every year. And so I don't know, good genes? Maybe it's my mom. I don't know. Maybe it's I'm an optimist eternally and I'm just trying to be positive all the time. I have no idea. But people are always like, "what doctor are you going to? What's your secret?" I don't know. I don't have a secret. But I've really been enjoying connecting with people emotionally, and so I'm grateful. My friend, Tim Francis, here in Austin set up the SATVATOVE event. He's been involved in it for a long time, and I just noticed how he would communicate, especially in difficult situations.
[00:17:43] And he was just so masterful at handling difficult situations with grace and with diplomacy. And, I mean, to the point where I even said, "Tim, where the hell did you learn to talk like this? Like, where did you learn to talk like this?" Like, it's just, it's so impressive to me. And he was like, "Oh, SATVATOVE whatever," I'm like, "whatever that is."
[00:18:02] Right. So eventually he put together a seminar here and said, "this is going to be awesome. Like, come do it." And I'm like, "okay I'm in." And it was amazing things. So I'm grateful to Tim, for my buddy, Tim for doing that. And yeah, we, it allowed us to connect even more and develop a better friendship at the event as well.
[00:18:19] So I appreciate Tim. Appreciate you a lot. Yeah, so I just feel like my relationships have really been deepening. And so, if there's a message to take away from this is that I know that life can be tough. I know you're dealing with stuff and running your business, your business is one of the greatest personal development tools that you have.
[00:18:39] It forces you to recognize some of your shortcomings because the marketplace will reveal it. And it forces you to make changes and you're always having to learn and to evolve. And so you start a business. I think God may trick us into starting a business to make money and eventually, he uses it to turn us into better human beings because he's clever like that. And so, you know, you can't in the long run build a sustainable business in which you are not focused on positive things. Like you have to benefit people in the marketplace. You have to take care of people.
[00:19:11] You have to care about people. Otherwise, if there's a lack of care and a lack of empathy, which " show care" is one of our core values at DoorGrow, then people will recognize that people won't feel it. And I've had past clients that didn't feel care.
[00:19:24] They didn't feel it. Like maybe I was too in my stuff or maybe I was you know, too focused on what I need to do or too stressed or whatever. And I'm sure that I've fallen short in some instances, but that's really why I have my business is I legitimately really enjoy being able to help move people's lives forward.
[00:19:40] And there's nothing more rewarding than that. And that's why I just, I'm so tempted to just lean into the coaching and do the coaching, even though the marketplace wants something else. If I give the market what they're asking for. and help all of you in the way that you think you need initially, then I will get a lot more people that I can help in the way that you really need, which is a passion of mine. And yeah, lot of introspection lately. I also went through a really great book recently called inner work and it to the basic principle of it was that how your consciousness level or your focus or area of consciousness. Whether it's a low level, which is like focused on wounds and hurts from your past and stuff like this, or whether it's very positive and like love and acceptance or somewhere in between your level of consciousness dictates your entire view of the world.
[00:20:27] And it. Makes the whole world seem different, but really it's just you. And so depending and a great example in the book, it was like, you know, related to like debt or loans. Some people's perception of that is like Dave Ramsey style, like it's always evil, it's horrible, whatever. And then there's people that are making millions of dollars because they know how to leverage debt and to get into real estate and to do things effectively, which is smarter than just using their own cash.
[00:20:52] Right. And so. It's just a difference in your perspective and your belief about that. And so by changing your consciousness, it changes everything around you. And so I've really been focused on how can I be in a state of love, be in a state of happiness, be in a state of joy, regardless of what is going on externally and not allow the external to control me or to dictate? Who I am? And so that's been a really interesting perspective as well. And so yeah, i'm excited for this coming year because I think this is going to be a good year for DoorGrow I think it's going to be a good year for our clients. I think it's going to be a good year for my marriage. I think it's going to be good year for the kids.
[00:21:31] I think there's going to be a lot of healing this year. And a lot of positive things moving forward. And so If you've had a tough year, maybe it's been a little tough, or you're in the middle of it right now. It's tough right now. Don't stay there. Like, don't stop. Don't quit. Don't give up. Keep going. You know, there's people counting on you. No one's coming to save you. There are people that if you open up your consciousness, if you change your perspective, there are people that can help you. I would be honored to help you. There's plenty of people out there that are willing to help and willing to serve, especially in property management.
[00:22:04] Go into the DoorGrow club Facebook group, or join any property management, Facebook group. There's tons of people willing to help. You can get to our Facebook group by going to doorgrowclub. com. If for some reason you're listening to this podcast and you're not yet in there, go join the group. We reject 60 to 70 percent of the people that apply to join the group.
[00:22:21] You got to be a business owner. You got to have a property management company or be starting one. If you're a property management entrepreneur, that group's for you. There's other groups that are just for property managers or employees or people in industry or vendors. Like, there's other groups you can go join.
[00:22:35] But for those that are my people, you know, you're entrepreneurs, you're weird like me. You value fulfillment and freedom and contribution and support more than safety and certainty like the rest of the world it's more important to you, then you're an entrepreneur than you're my tribe and come hang out with us in the DoorGrowClub group. For those of you that you're like, "man, I haven't redone my website. He's talking about a website I haven't redone that or taken a fresh look at it in like five years. Your website is ugly, and your website sucks." It's pretty much guaranteed by about the five year mark, it's time trends have changed. It's like fashion. Like it's like wearing, you know, I don't know what's an outdated fashion. It's like wearing bell bottoms or something. I don't know what's out. Maybe that's back and cool, but it's like wearing something that's out of style. And people just look at your business, go, "Oh, they're kind of old. They're kind of outdated. Oh, look at this modern company. They look fresh." And then it's also about whether or not it's focused on conversions. Like, is it focused on helping people get their questions answered and and capturing leads so that you're getting, making money, not just looking pretty. And so if you want to test your website out to see if it's effective in making you money, regardless of how pretty it is, go to DoorGrow, go to a DoorGrow.com/quiz, and you can take our website quiz. And most websites, even brand new ones, usually get a low grade, like a D or an F. So take that quiz and see how good of a grade your website gets. And if it's low, recognize that's a big leak because everything drives towards your website typically, at least online, and people always check out your website when they're trying to get more info about you, even from offline.
[00:24:16] And so that's a big leak. And if you have that leak, I can pretty much guarantee you have probably all the other major leaks that we see in businesses. You might have pricing similar to everybody else, 10 percent some sort of flat fee like 99 bucks, whatever you're priced like all the shittiest companies focused on the shittiest prospects on the internet.
[00:24:37] And so that can be improved. We're able to help clients close more deals more easily at a higher price point using our three tier hybrid pricing model. That we've innovated and I got the original idea shout out to Scott Brady on hybrid. And then I put my own tweak on it based on pricing psychology that I knew.
[00:24:54] And so, adding the three tiers, applying the Goldilocks principle, you know, some of these tactics and it's been really effective for our clients. Your branding might be off. You might be branded as a real estate company. You're like, why would that affect property management? Well, they're different target audiences and there's several other issues.
[00:25:10] And so, take the website quiz, doorgrow.com/quiz, get your website grade, and then you'll be able to set up a call with us and then we can go through and showcase some of the other leaks you might not be seeing. And if we get all these leaks shored up, growth is a lot easier. Like we've had clients just by showing up, those leaks are adding doors.
[00:25:30] And that's it. And they don't need to pay for leads anymore. They like cut off all their cold lead advertising. And then we do have like, six, seven major growth engines that can be installed in your business that are organic and that cost you nothing. And they actually take less time than cold leads would take to follow up on because you have to nurture them and it takes a lot of time to warm them up.
[00:25:49] So we focus on warmer leads. and organic leads. And that's how we're able to help clients grow faster by eliminating the cold lead advertising. So we're cutting down their marketing budgets and then they're spending less money and they're spending less time and they're adding more doors. So we'll help you figure all this out.
[00:26:05] Set up a call to talk with me or somebody on my team, and we'll help you figure this out. And you know, business can be tough. Business can be hard. One of the things that's made it a lot easier for me is I have mentors. I've got people I can reach out to. I just went to an event. It was awesome.
[00:26:20] I went up to Charleston and met with some awesome entrepreneurs and people that are ahead of me. And I just, I love being able to deliver and bring that value back to my clients. And so I'm always investing. And so there's plenty of mentors ideas out there. Just keep learning.
[00:26:35] Don't give up. Don't stop. Keep moving forward. And if I or my team could help you collapse time on your journey and entrepreneurism, just even a little bit, like if we could help you collapse time, even a little bit, you know, towards making more money, more revenue, having more impact, adding more doors, like anything we do will be very worth it.
[00:26:55] That's basically it for today. I hope that all of you maybe found yourself a little bit in my story, in my journey, as me reflecting on my 47 years of life and where I'm at now. And you know, what the future is for DoorGrow. And I'll be honored to help you in your journey as you grow and scale your business.
[00:27:12] And so reach out to us, you can check us out at doorgrow. com and that's it for today until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone
[00:27:19] 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!
[00:27:46] 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. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.