DGS 249: Every Property Management Entrepreneur Needs an Assistant

Property management business owner, do you have an assistant? We’ve talked before about how important it is to build a team around you and get support as an entrepreneur.

In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull discuss why property management entrepreneurs need to hire an assistant for themselves.

[01:14] The Most Important Hire in Your PM Business

[02:41] How to Get a Really Good Assistant

[04:57] Two Types of Team Members

[06:42] When Should I Get an Assistant?

[08:17] Benefits of Having an Assistant

“I think the very first person that somebody should hire. is an assistant.”

“If you continue to build the team around the business, you will end up more and more miserable instead of helping yourself more and more, which actually makes you a lot more money.”

“Nobody's good at being two or three different types of people.” “I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves.”

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[00:00:00] Jason: I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves.

[00:00:07] That always just drives me crazy because it's so obvious that there's a problem there. 

[00:00:13] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers, love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings.

[00:00:40] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull. And let's get into the show. All right. 

[00:01:13] So today we're going to be talking about assistants, right?

[00:01:16] Sarah: Yes. Why don't you have help yet? Okay. 

[00:01:20] Jason: So one of the challenges that we've noticed with our clients and with other property managers is that a lot of times they don't have an assistant for themselves. And so they'll have some team members even, but they won't have an assistant that supports them.

[00:01:36] And I think this is a common trap entrepreneurs fall into. I think the very first person that somebody should hire. is an assistant. You start getting yourself some help instead of just helping the business. And if you continue to build the team around the business, you will end up more and more miserable instead of helping yourself more and more, which actually makes you a lot more money.

[00:01:58] That's like everything in a nutshell. 

[00:02:00] Sarah: There you go. We're done. There we go. We can wrap up. Have a great day. So get an assistant. 

[00:02:03] Jason: Goodbye. Alright. 

[00:02:04] Sarah: Madi will edit this one and she'll be like, "oh wow, that was so fast." 

[00:02:07] Jason: "Wow, that was the shortest one ever." Kidding! So let's talk about this. I have an assistant.

[00:02:12] Giselle's sort of your assistant. I think. Somewhat. Operationally? No, you don't think so? Okay. All right. 

[00:02:18] Sarah: She's really good at really anything because she asks people on the team and she's like, "Hey, is there anything you need help with this week?" She always usually messages me at the beginning of the week and she says, "Hey, is there like anything I should be aware of or any special projects that you need me to work on this week?"

[00:02:34] And sometimes I can't think of anything until later. And then I go, "Oh, you can help me with this." And she's like, "great. I'm on it."

[00:02:41] Jason: So how do we get people really good assistants? Well, we have them do one of our DoorGrow time studies to figure out which things are energetically their plus signs and which things are their minus signs.

[00:02:51] And then we build out a job description, but it needs to be one personality type, not two or three different personalities that like that human being doesn't really exist. 

[00:03:01] Sarah: And if they do, they're hard. 

[00:03:03] Jason: There's people that can do everything. 

[00:03:04] Sarah: They have like multiple personalities in one. 

[00:03:07] Jason: Yeah. 

[00:03:08] Sarah: Let's think about it if we want to hire them.

[00:03:09] Jason: No, we don't. We don't want that person. We want somebody that's good. At being one person, right? Like in, because nobody's good at being two or three different types of people. Right. You're not going to have somebody that's like, "man, I'm the salesiest person ever and super salesy. And Oh yeah, I'm a really brilliant detail oriented operator."

[00:03:27] Like it's just, for example, so we need to get you your ultimate assistant. We also then like to figure out your personality, figure out who you are. So when we get into our DoorGrow hiring, and if you need help with hiring, reach out to DoorGrow, we have a really great hiring system called DoorGrow hiring, and it's going to cost you a lot less money than working with a placement agency where they charge thousands of dollars and you'll probably get better results.

[00:03:48] Not probably. You'll get better results typically because their job is just to get somebody into your office and get paid. But we assess people, we make sure they're the right personality fit. We help you make sure you have the right culture fit and the right skill fit, which I've talked about many times, the three fits.

[00:04:06] So, I've had lots of assistants over the years. Lots. I've had some really amazing ones. I've had some okay ones. I haven't really had, well, I guess I've had a few like bad ones as well, right? So I've had lots and lots of assistants. And what I usually look for in hiring an assistant is I need somebody that I can trust their judgment and their intelligence to do things so that I don't have to do it. Right. And so my assistant Mar, she's better at several things than I would be. She has more patience. She's willing to like get frustrated at people if need be to like get things handled, whatever it takes. 

[00:04:46] I think it's really important. A lot of people think, "well, I'll go get a VA and I'll go get some low dollar, low wage, cheap sort of worker in Mexico or the Philippines, and that'll be my first assistant."

[00:04:57] So there's two types of people you're going to hire in your business. Some are people as process. People as process are basically like people you hired that function like a robot. Just do what I tell you to do. Don't get cute. Don't be clever. Just follow the checklist.

[00:05:10] That's not a great assistant. It's not really a good assistant to have because you're going to have to do all the thinking for them and then give them tasks and you, then you're gonna have to show them exactly how to do every task and that's going to be really frustrating for you. That's not the ideal assistant.

[00:05:25] So then there are people that are thinkers or decision makers that you can trust to make decisions without you and to make judgments. And so that's the type of assistant that you want. You want somebody that is intelligent. Intelligence is the big differentiator here. And you can tell when you're talking with people, are they bright?

[00:05:46] Are they quick? Would you trust them to do things over you on the things that you're going to give them to do because they're better at those things? So you want to hire people that are intelligent, not people that just can follow tasks That's not going to be a really good assistant for you. Now later on if you do have some low level work or tasks in the business that you just want to offload, you can hire some people as process we have people on our team that are people as process.

[00:06:11] They follow things. They do the same sort of work each time. They're not really involved in making a lot of decisions in the business. They don't come to our weekly meetings. They don't come to our monthly meeting, planning meetings, stuff like this. They're just doing their work and they're valuable and we appreciate them.

[00:06:28] However, if you need somebody close to you, that's going to help you double your capacity and help you get accomplished a lot more, they need to be next level. They need to be higher level from that. So anything you would add to that? 

[00:06:41] Sarah: I would say, let's talk about: when should I get an assistant?

[00:06:46] Jason: Okay. When do you think they should get an assistant. 

[00:06:48] Sarah: Like now? Now. Usually somewhere and it's different depending on your capacity, typically, it's somewhere in between the 50 and 100 door mark. It may be a little bit sooner depending on your market and is this your full time thing? Are you trying to run eight different businesses at once?

[00:07:07] Like, what is your focus like? Really how much time are you spending in the business and willing to spend in the business? All of that will be factors in when this happens, but typically it's somewhere between the 50 and 100 doormark, which is why if you're in the DoorGrow mastermind, then the belt level requirements in order to reach the orange belt, which is your hundred doormark, you need to hire an assistant. It's one of the things on there and most people skip this step and they'll hire other positions in the business. They just don't hire an assistant. And I ran my business, that was the only person I had was an assistant and she was boots on the ground. And then that way, all of the stuff I didn't want to do, I didn't have to do because I had somebody else who could just take it off my plate and do it for me. So it was great. Without her, man, I don't know how I would have been able to do it. I would have had to work probably double or more. And I would have had multiple other positions in the company going at the same time. It just would have been really hard to do everything, especially the way that I did it without somebody there boots on the ground.

[00:08:17] Jason: Yeah. So for me having an assistant has like been hugely beneficial so that I can free up my time like it's completely gotten me out of email. I don't look at my email. Do you email me? I probably won't see it, but I'll be told about it. 

[00:08:33] Sarah: We closed on a property and he didn't see any of the stuff. Yeah, we were at the closing table and he's like, "hey, I got questions on this."

[00:08:40] I'm like, yeah, that's all in your email. He's like, "oh, I don't look at my email."

[00:08:43] Jason: Yeah. So, yeah, I don't like dealing with email, right? It's not like my favorite thing in the world. So I was able to offload email. I don't have to like worry too much about my schedule. I just show up and live and do what my calendar tells me to do.

[00:08:57] So, having an assistant has just made things a lot easier so I can focus on higher level tasks and working on the stuff that I more enjoy doing and my assistant enjoys doing all those things. Those are things that drain me and my assistant loves it Like she messaged me last night saying how much she loves her job and how much she loves doing all this stuff for me And i'm like, "that's great because I would hate doing it." I just don't want to do a lot of those things that she does. So when to get an assistant? I think most property managers, yeah, certainly once you get up to 50, 60 doors, you're probably feeling a little bit overwhelmed as in that solopreneur sand trap, that's a great spot to get your first team member. They could be a part time assistant, but get somebody that can take some load off your plate.

[00:09:40] Maybe you can graduate them the full time as you add more doors, but it's going to double your capacity. Getting a really good assistant can double your capacity overnight, especially if they're taking off your minus signs because you'll have so much more energy, so much more mental capacity, so much less decision fatigue.

[00:09:57] You'll be able to get more juice out of the second half of your day if you can get those things offloaded. And so we've got some great resources for how to leverage an assistant that we can support you in at DoorGrow and how to know what an assistant should be doing, which is unique to you. And yeah, and how to make that relationship really effective.

[00:10:17] So, so reach out to us and check us out at DoorGrow.Com if you're curious about any of that, and if you don't yet have an assistant, what I think's really wild to me is I've seen business owners that have hundreds of doors, hundreds. And they have an entire team and they're stressed out and they're frustrated.

[00:10:34] And this happens a lot, especially in the two to 400 door range, they'll just be burnt out and they wonder why they can't get to the next level. They keep stopping their growth and adding doors and then focusing on trying to get their systems and processes dialed in and they don't have an assistant and they wonder why things are so stressful for them.

[00:10:51] And it's cause they're not taking care of themselves. They're not taking care of the most important person in the business. The one person that should have the most support, they're not allowing that person to get support, and it's you, the business owner, like make sure you have an assistant. I've seen business owners have team members that they've gotten assistants for and they don't have an assistant for themselves.

[00:11:12] That always just drives me crazy because it's so obvious that there's a problem there. And when I'm talking with them, they're like burnout, they're frustrated, they're hating their business, and, "oh yeah, my operator has an assistant or this person has an assistant or my property manager has an assistant property manager, but the business owner has no direct support."

[00:11:32] I'm like, "'well, everybody in my team supports me,' but you didn't build the team around you. You built the team around the business." And so they're just burning themselves out. So this is your invitation. If you're listening and you don't have an assistant right now, and you have any other team members, this is your invitation, or maybe you don't have any team members yet. This is your invitation to go get yourself an assistant. I'm giving you permission that you can go get yourself an assistant. Not that you need it, but you deserve it. Like go get yourself an assistant. You can definitely afford it because if you were able to take half of your time off your plate of the crappy stuff you don't want to be doing, you could easily make a lot more money.

[00:12:11] You can spend a lot more time doing revenue generating activities and growing the business. It's almost never an excuse that you financially can't afford an assistant. Because it just means you just have to spend the time doing the stuff that makes money, and you know how to make money and if you don't for some reason know how to add doors or know how to close more deals or know how to make money, we can help you do that dramatically and very quickly reach out to us at DoorGrow. So anything else we should say? 

[00:12:37] Sarah: I don't think so 

[00:12:38] Jason: Okay, so what's the core message? 

[00:12:41] Sarah: Go get an assistant. Do it. 

[00:12:43] Jason: All right. Do it now. That's it for today. So until next time to our mutual growth Bye everyone. Oh and get your tickets to DoorGrow live.

[00:12:51] This is gonna be an awesome event So go get those you can go to DoorGrowlive. Com. Be there. It's going to be be cool

[00:12:56] 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! 

[00:13:23] 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.