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#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth

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Dec 18, 2024 • 32min

DGS 277: Unlocking Team Potential: The Keys to Engagement, Resilience, and High Performance

These days, you aren’t limited to the area your business is located when looking for great team members. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Laith Masarweh from Assistantly to talk about how hiring VAs can help you scale your business. You’ll Learn [01:34] Creating an Offshore Talent Acquisition Company  [09:38] Importance of a People Process  [16:11] Virtual Executive Assistants and Operators [24:57] Finding Your Unicorn Tweetables  ” Having community and good compensation definitely is going to allow you to attract and have the best people.” “ If you are operating your business, you are not growing your business.” “ When you have good people, they help other good people grow.” “ The bottleneck is you.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Laith: When you have good people, they help other good people grow.  [00:00:03] 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 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. [00:00:23] 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. 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. [00:01:04] Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:07] All right. So my guest today is Laith. Laith, tell me how to say your last name. So I don't butcher it.  [00:01:13] Laith: It's all good, man. It's Masarweh.  [00:01:15] Jason: Masarweh. All right. Laith Masarweh. And awesome to have you here on the show. So in this episode, we're going to dive into the power of offshore talent, explore how businesses from startups to fortune 500s can unlock exponential growth. [00:01:31] And you run a company called Assistantly. Which I've heard great things about. You came highly recommended by one of my mentors, Sharran Srivatsa a, who runs a multi billion dollar real estate company called Real. And so tell me like a little bit about your background. [00:01:48] How'd you get into this? How did you get into entrepreneurism? [00:01:51] Yeah.  [00:01:54] Laith: I mean, I think I always had the entrepreneur inspiration since I was a kid. My dad always had like a small business that he was running and, you know, it made me want to be an entrepreneur from a young age. [00:02:03] He used to have me working in the grocery store shop since I was eight years old and it was cool to kind of develop, I guess, my like interpersonal and just learning more about the business at a, you know, such a young age and, you know, I knew I wanted to start my own business. I didn't know what I wanted to start it in. [00:02:18] Of course, you know, I attended Chapman University. I went to the business school. I thought I was into like virtual reality and tech. Didn't really know what my fit was. Got into corporate after college. I knew that wasn't a fit, even though I tried it. Didn't really work very well and then I started a real estate marketing company here in Orange County, California where we help agents, brokers whether you're residential, commercial, property management you know, we just have done what's like real estate marketing needs and during the pandemic, we got extremely busy and You know, we couldn't, there's too much demand and our team was super small and somebody was like, Hey, you should hire a virtual assistant. [00:02:53] And I thought that was like an AI robot and I didn't understand what that was. And I never learned about offshoring in college or any of that kind of stuff. And I got introduced to somebody thought she was local. She ended up being in the Philippines. I was like blown out of my mind because I've actually been working with her for years thinking she was in Irvine, California, but she was actually in the Philippines the entire time. [00:03:12] Our time I had, you could not tell any difference. And then I kind of got the spark in my head and I go, man, I work with so many real estate professionals, you know, and they're always asking me for help, whether it's administrative or operations or marketing. And I, you know, when I asked this girl, Hey, how many people are highly skilled, great communication skills, you know, looking for employment, like you? And she goes, I don't know, maybe like hundreds of thousands. And I said, hundreds of thousands, there's hundreds of thousands of talented people like you? And she goes, Oh yeah. And it kind of just clicked in my head. I'm like, Oh, People need this and it can't just be me. [00:03:45] And I pretty much started Assistantly 45 minutes after learning what offshoring was didn't know anything about it. And I'm just like, let me go, you know, I'll send it and kind of see kind of test it out, pilot it with a couple of my, you know, people in my network. And four years later, here we are. [00:03:58] And we started this obviously real estate, property management, law, tech, healthcare, finance, a little bit of everything.  [00:04:04] Jason: Yeah. All right. Awesome. So, so let's get into this. I mean, there's a lot of challenges that people have with this and everybody's had, I mean, a lot of property managers have tested the waters of working with, you know, VAs in the Philippines or maybe Mexico and there's kind of mixed feelings about how that's gone. If you've done this at all, you've had some bad experiences and maybe some good ones. And so it can be really difficult. And so you're kind of at the mercy, if you're using a company like yours or some third party company, you're kind of at the mercy of their hiring process to some degree. [00:04:43] And some of these vendors that provide VAs have better hiring processes than others. Some of them, you know, they all claim, Hey, we've got amazing talent or they all might sound American, you know, but then you end up kind of getting somebody that has a heavy accent. They aren't showing up, you know, on time or they just disappear and ghost you because they're non confrontational sometimes in the Philippines or some of these sort of issues, and I'm sure you see, you see some of this, right. [00:05:13] How do you kind of do things you think maybe differently at Assistantly versus some of these other players in the marketplace  [00:05:22] Laith: Yes, it's a great question, you know, obviously I started off, you know, really when I got into the industry I started hiring these people on my own whether they're from like people going to the upworks or the fivers of the world or like job boards and to like Interview a whole bunch of candidates to understand where they're located in the Philippines. [00:05:38] Like what type of equipment do they have? You Internet connection speeds. Do they really have that much experience? You know, because people obviously, whether you're US, Philippines, anywhere, they will always oversell on an interview or a resume. There's a lot of things that we do on like on our end. [00:05:52] So like, number one you taught me this and I think we had a conversation when we were, when I met you in Franklin about like that job description is so important when sourcing somebody, right? You know, everybody obviously wants a job, but you want to essentially attract people that are like, you know, that's their zone of genius, and they're passionate about it. [00:06:10] That's why we actually follow the four R's that Jason taught us a long time ago. And it's something that we actually, it's really important. The first step is crafting the job description to compel to candidates. So they're actually passionate and interested about it. So that's number one, filling that top of the funnel. [00:06:25] Number two, there's, you know, there's obviously a series of interviews. You can't just have one interview. We did multiple interviews. But like, I think obviously experience matters, of course. Like I want people that are mid to senior level that know what they're doing. If they're in property management, you know, I want, you know, helping with like property admin stuff, tenant communication daily operations through Appfolio. [00:06:42] Like I look for those types of things, of course. But also like, what's really important to me is like, when working with the client, like, you know, your personality and your culture is very different than my other, you know, than client Jamie or client James. Right. And I think that's very important when finding the right match. [00:06:58] And we do like a personality culture assessment that we built ourself to essentially line them up with like whatever role, whether it's an admin operations or marketing role to really understand what type of person they are, but like beyond just their experience. We also verify references like, right. [00:07:12] You know, because again, people could say, Hey, I worked somewhere for seven years. How do you know that? Right. You know, I put, I see people put like they went to Harvard on there. I mean, how do I know they went to Harvard? And it's those things that you've got to cross check, call references. I think that's super important. [00:07:27] But then we also vet out like equipment. Do they have 2020 and newer equipment? Because that's a big slowdown in the Philippines and like Mexico and a lot of these countries. When people go, my team member is so slow. Well, their equipment is from 2002. Like, of course, it's very slow, you know, or their internet connection is very slow. [00:07:44] Like, we vet out those types of things, which I think are very important. You know, so between like the job description, the interviews, the proprietary personality assessment, the reference checks you know, we've obviously sourced for these positions thousands of times, so like, we really know what makes an A level player slash we call them unicorns here at Assistantly. Unicorn meaning they're rare, not meaning they can do everything, you know, in the kitchen sink. But like those are things that we go kind of, you know, beyond our measures. Plus, like also one really important thing, whether you hire from us or you hire offshore is it's not just compensation that matters. [00:08:14] Like we, we give the highest compensation in the industry. But people really want a sense of community. That's what we built out a system where they feel supported, they feel loved, they feel cared for, we give really good benefits. And that's why like our retention is like, I think I've maybe what in four years, there's been like two people who leave. [00:08:31] And you know, and that was just for family emergency, not because they didn't like their job. So, but a couple of things to know.  [00:08:37] Jason: Yeah, I think that's really powerful. Having community and good compensation definitely is going to allow you to attract and have the best people. Yeah, and you mentioned like R docs like for us. Yeah. I got the four R's concept I got from one of my mentors Alex Charfen and then I started adding more R's to it because I was like this is I like And like, like the most significant, I've talked about this before on the show for those listening when hiring to attract the right personality type is this resonate section at the beginning where we describe the personality that would naturally love doing this. So that they can resonate with this, they read and go, Oh my gosh, that's me, which is way better than somebody going I would be willing to do this if you pay me enough, like, you know, that's a very different type of team member. And I think this goes back to regardless for those listening, I think anyone that is going to use any sort of company to collapse time on hiring, eventually every business needs their own hiring process internally. Even if I use Assistantly or other companies to get a team member, I'm still going to put them through my stuff, my process because I trust my process. And this is one of the things we do at DoorGrow is help our clients install a really good hiring mechanism. We just had a client come on board who was a past client. We'd helped clean up their branding, website, and now he's like at 200, 300 doors or something. And he just had total team turnover twice in the last six months. [00:10:06] He's on his third team in a six month period. And before that he said, life was amazing. He had this great virtual team. He had this person that was like trained or educated as a lawyer that was running everything. And then he lost that person. They went and found an actual law job. And then chaos started to ensue because he realized that person was so great. [00:10:25] They were carrying the entire team. And then he had no mechanism for knowing how to effectively hire or replace a team quickly. He had no real hiring machine. And what I've noticed, even in the largest companies, I've talked to people I talked to a guy the other day with 800 units, loves his business, doesn't want to change anything super comfortable. [00:10:45] And then I asked him questions about, you know, people, planning, and process, you know, what we call our super system. And he realized he didn't have a hiring mechanism and I could tell he got scared, like, and you know, people don't realize they're vulnerable when it comes to this, but they've built their team usually through a decade of Russian roulette. [00:11:04] And they finally have a great team, great culture. He's like, I've got great team. I trust them. Great culture. I'm like, cool. If you lost one of those key people, what would you do? You could see like panic sets in, right? He's like, well, yeah, I don't know, I guess. And so, I feel confident in my own business. [00:11:19] Even though everybody on my team, I feel like is like really great culture of it. I really care about them and they're really important. Some of them I've had a long time. If I lost any one of them because I have good process documentation, I know that I could get somebody else in to do that work pretty well pretty quickly to do the job. [00:11:40] But I know even more than that, I have way more safety and security and confidence as an entrepreneur. With the business because I know because of my hiring process I could get the right person relatively fast like within at least 30 days. I could have somebody else in play to be doing that may be as good at their role or better because usually if I lose a team member, it's because they kind of either the business outgrows them or they've outgrown the business, but there's like, they're no longer that culture fit maybe. [00:12:11] And then they leave, which is cool. Then I can go find somebody that's even better. And I, over time at DoorGrow, either my team members have leveled up, like I've had Adam for over a decade or I level up the team members like by getting new ones. Yeah.  [00:12:27] Laith: Well, there's different people for different phases of growth, right? [00:12:30] You know, you get to the zero 1 to 5 million, you get to the 10 million, you know, we've changed our team and it's evolved. I mean, I've had people that have been with me since I started instantly, but then there have been people like client success I think we should upload this position maybe with somebody with an ops background because they understand the client a little bit more. [00:12:47] And I just did that recently and I'm like, Oh my God, game changer. Like, you know, client success, having an ops brain, they can go and help our clients and say, Hey, you should think of things very differently. I also think like a misconception, like talking about the your example, because like one. [00:13:00] You know, one person left the whole team crumbles. If that ever happens and you have the wrong team, right? Because people, you know, I have people that will say, you know, like 20 percent of your team members make 80 percent of the work. I go, maybe at your company, not mine. I go a hundred percent of my team members make a hundred percent of the work. [00:13:16] Why would I have 20? And you know, the magic, I tell my team, Hey, just 20 percent of you guys are making pretty much all the work very consistently. Everybody's like, what the F am I doing here? Then if those 20 percent are taking over the work, like that's not. That's a misconception. Of course you have A level players, but, you know, and I always talk to our internal team about it. [00:13:32] I'm like, Why do we have an A level department here, but a B level department here, but then a C level department here? Like, why can't we all be A level and working towards the same goals and help each other, you know, collaborate. And I think like finding A plus players, they're not easy to find. But like A level players can also help those, let's say B level players become A level players. [00:13:50] Like that's like, that's part of it. When you have good people, they help other good people grow. And I think that's like a huge misconception. It's like, I have this really good person, but then like, I was here, but like the rest of my team is like, okay. I'm like, then you got to switch out your team, you know, keep your A level player, but then you need other A level players. [00:14:05] Cause like, if you're at 3 million in revenue, like you should be at seven and a half million with the right team, you know, and I see that even with my own thing is like when I switch out somebody, whether it's ops or client success or recruitment, I do this all the time. And I up level, Oh dude, like, I'm like, man, this is what heaven and unicorns and rainbows look like. [00:14:23] You know, I don't even have to worry about any of this stuff. They're just taking care of it. They own it. And that's where like the zone of genius comes in. Yeah. Yeah, because you want with that resonate section, right? You want people to be like, that's me. I want to work there so bad. Like, that's exactly what I want to do all day. [00:14:39] And people are like, really, you want to go through Appfolio all day? Like, that's what you want to do? And people were like, yes, I love Appfolio. I want to go through leases. I want to go, you know, coordinate with maintenance requests. Like there are people like that, that just because you don't enjoy it, which I don't blame you, you're an entrepreneur, owner, founder, whatever you are. [00:14:56] There are people that are like, that's my bread and butter. I got it. It's easy for me and I like to do it. And like that zone of genius, like if you could find people that go, I'm passionate about it, it energizes me, it makes me feel good. That's how you get A level players. Not somebody that's like, I'm good at it, but it's like a vampire sucked in my tongue. [00:15:13] Jason: Yeah, I call that them being a personality fit. Like if they're the, they resonate, they're the right personality fit for it. If they're the right culture fit, they'll believe in you and be inspired and want to support you and work for you. And then there's the skill fit, which really is, do they have the intellectual capacity to develop the skill or do they already possess it? [00:15:31] Right. Not everybody can have all three, you know, and if they can't have all three, they're not really going to be a great executive level team member that you can trust to think or make decisions. So then they become, maybe they could be people as process. Like they're like a robot, just do what I tell you to do. [00:15:46] So, and this may be a perception. Is everybody is Assistantly, is it all Filipino hiring? Where is talent sourced from this? [00:15:54] I guess my question.  [00:15:54] Laith: I got you. So externally, it's Philippines and Latin America, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and then the Philippines is our talent pool. I've also sourced from like Eastern Europe and different countries, but the Philippines and Latin America are typically the two talent pools in which we pick from. [00:16:11] Jason: So one of the things I've noticed that's a challenge in the property management space for those that are listening, I think there's one of the things I've noticed is that it's really common for entrepreneurs to be miserable in their own businesses, have an entire team, and not have an assistant for themselves. [00:16:28] And it's really mind boggling to me that they build an entire team around themselves and they don't support themselves and they don't have an assistant. So my usual recommendation is their first hire should probably be an assistant. It doubles their capacity immediately and allows them to be more effective at whatever they're doing. [00:16:47] And so that's kind of that first little bridge. I think a lot need to build in order to get to the next levels. They just need an assistant. Maybe around 50 units or something, they need an assistant and that allows them to get to another level. And then the next major, the most important hire that any of these property managers that are visionaries or entrepreneurs could bring into their business would be an operator because this is kind of an opposite personality type to the business owner. [00:17:13] Business owners like to create operational systems, but they don't like to run it. They don't like doing the details they don't like running the planning meetings or you know running the hiring system or building out process documentation. That's not usually the most fun For the entrepreneurs and it's usually that's all the stuff on their to do list that they've been avoiding for like months It's been on their to do list. [00:17:35] I got to do this. I need to do this And what they really need is an operator or an operational person now It can be challenging to find good operators, especially when you're trying to You offshore and stuff like this because you're needing somebody that's a high level of intelligence. They're not going to be this person is process that's just going to follow a to do item list. They need to think they need to make decisions. Is this something that is possible through Assistantly or through offshoring? Is this something you've been able to do even in your own business?  [00:18:05] Laith: Yeah, I mean, I'd say our three highest requested positions are executive assistants, operators, and marketers, right? [00:18:11] And that's typically what I see. And I say, don't get an EA confused with an operator. And I think a lot of people try to, like, kind of intertwine those roles. They're completely different. You know, so when somebody goes, well, I want an EA that has ops background. I'm like, no, what you need is an operator, and then you need, you know, you need an EA. [00:18:25] So EA, then operator. That's how I recommend, very similar. Talking about the EA, and then I'll get into the operators. So. EA, by far, is the number one hire for you, because like you said, it opens up time capacity. It's funny, I've been pitching EAs for four years, it took me three years, I hired an EA not too long ago, even though that's like, you know, what I pitch. [00:18:44] And I'm like, holy shit, dude. I go, I've been pitching this. Why haven't I had an EA? Oh man. I mean, like I've added to her plate for the last, who knows how long, but I mean, from like, if my email inbox every day is at zero, my calendar is always organized, you know, I have research on all my prospects. [00:18:59] I have research on all my meetings before like all prepped ready to go before I get into for the day. All the follow ups for me when, you know, when I talk to a client and I'm trying to close a client on a strategy call, for example, they think it comes from me, it comes from Angie. I don't do any of that stuff. [00:19:14] She creates the portal, she follows up with the client, she nurtures 'em, they close. I don't do anything. She, you know, engages with my LinkedIn for a couple hours a day. She helps with my post writing. She helps with the blogs. She helps with the case studies. She helps with the reviews. She's unbelievable. [00:19:28] And these are all the things that I used to do on my plate, especially that like sales component of like client communication. Dude, that used to take me hours a day, like at least two to three hours a day. Like for me to free up two to three hours a day in my own capacity to go focus on strategy and vision, infinite ROI for me. [00:19:44] Right. So like EAs, like, you know, email calendar management, you know, client prospect communication, CRM management, you know, obviously some light marketing, like light marketing tasks. And then also helping with your personal stuff. Like I go to a lot of conferences, I'm sure you do too. Masterminds, all that kind of jazz, like booking flights, itineraries, hotels, like, All that stuff's taken care of for me. [00:20:05] I don't ever have to worry about it. I check in. I'm in like the first 10, like I check in right at the time. I'm like always in a good seat. I, you know, so that always works out super well. So like, those are just some things in EA can do.  [00:20:16] Jason: Yeah.  [00:20:17] Laith: That I think like number one hire for like both personal and business get like EA, it will change your life. [00:20:22] It's a highest requested position, probably like in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia at the moment is an EA. Like if you don't have an EA, I don't know how, like you're just doing everything on your own and then you're just going to throw it out.  [00:20:35] Jason: Yeah. I love not having to ever look at my email. [00:20:39] It's like my favorite. I like email is the email and having to like calendars and checklists and like these things are the bane of my existence. I love building things, creating things and being able to like coach and support people. And so for me to be able to stay in my area of genius and not have to do the stuff that I don't enjoy, I think it, I think as business owners, we often make the mistake early in the entrepreneur journey of believing that because we're the business owner, we have to be miserable or we have to do certain things like, Oh, well, I'm the business owner. [00:21:15] I have to do my own email or I have to do the accounting piece or I have to do sales or whatever it is you might not enjoy doing. And the reality is you don't have to do anything if you're king or queen of your business. You really don't have to do anything that you don't want to do If once you build the business up to a size where you can build an entire team around you But we usually build the wrong team because we're showing up consistently as the wrong person in the business  [00:21:42] Laith: Well, I always say, the bottleneck is you. [00:21:44] If you really look at it you're the one, you know, you're the one controlling everything. I mean, like you're saying that I got to respond to emails. They don't have my tone of voice. You know how people are going to not think it's me. Really? What? Why is that? I mean, do you look a couple of responses? [00:21:56] I mean, I even had my EA use Claude AI, she mapped, she got my tone dialed in. So if it's emails or blogs, or any of the social media posts, even my LinkedIn and comments and engagement, like people think it's me, she matched it through ai, like she's AI enhanced, like, and I have all that training I give to people on for EAs. [00:22:15] Hey, you want your EA to sound like you? I have it like, here it is. Make it easy for you. Yeah. There's no there, there's no excuses there. Getting into operators, 'cause like that's like, well, okay, ea I get it, they're an assistant level, but like operators, that's a high level role. What does that look like in the Philippines or you know, Latin America? [00:22:32] You can find a good operators, right? But again, operators are different than EAs in the fact we're like, they think of things very macro. They look at the business as a whole and see like where they can streamline things, where they can fill in gaps, where they can like stop the leaking of the holes. They love implementation of systems, implementation of processes, like they like to tweak that kind of stuff and especially property management, you can find really good, you know, operators, like even, I know, again, I'm going to use Appfolio as an example, or whatever, you know, there's a ton of tools out there like you should never be in your tools and platforms. [00:23:04] You should have your operator managing the day to day tasks in your, you know, because that's the whole idea when you hire somebody in offices and manage those day to day things in your business so that you don't have to deal with it. If there's a fire should be your operator that, you know, it should be that type of person to like, Hey I'm taking care of this. [00:23:19] I'm working on the day-to-day type of things. This is kind of high priority. This is medium priority, this is low priority. You know, because when you're operating, if you are operating your business, you are not growing your business 'cause you're the one operating it, right? Like, there's no way you can grow from 50 doors to a hundred doors to 300 doors. [00:23:35] I talked to the guy in Baltimore who just, he's a property management client. But he just came on and he is like, dude, I'm at like 800, 900 doors. But I can't get past a thousand. And I'm like, why? And he goes, well, I'm like working like 18 hours a day. I'm like, why are you working 18 hours a day? [00:23:50] Right? Because he's like, yeah, he's like, well, I'm pretty much the property management of a lot of these things. Yeah. And I'm like why don't you just hire somebody ? He's like naming the tasks, right? Of like, I'm like looking at it like, you know, pre qualifying leads and day to day operations with, you know, interactions with tenants and helping with the maintenance and responding to those maintenance tickets and scheduling the payments and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, you're doing those for your clients? Why are you doing those for your clients?  [00:24:16] Jason: Yeah, that's like frontline level work. That's like the first exit to make in your business is to exit the frontline work. [00:24:22] Yeah.  [00:24:22] Laith: 100 percent and I'm like, just have somebody like, and that's what I'm saying with the whole operator. Cause like an EA is for you, an operator for your business. That's the difference, right? Like that's, you know, EA for you, operator for your business. And if you have yourself taken care of and you have your business taken care of, are you telling me you don't have capacity to grow your doors and scale and, you know, get to the revenue targets? [00:24:42] Like that's obviously like, once you have those two dialed in, you got time back, you know, you're looking at things, just you know, plugging in where you, you know, you need to, but it's not so much the day to day anymore, which is that's where you feel actually a sense of freedom. [00:24:56] Jason: Yeah, no, I love it. I want all of my clients to get an EA. We surveyed them and we were really surprised how few of them have an assistant. I was like, this is what we teach, but it's hard for them to justify. And they also are their control freaks in the beginning. And it's difficult for them to trust. [00:25:13] But once you have somebody that is a good culture fit, a good personality fit, a good skill fit, it's easy to start to let go of things, it's easy to start to trust. But before that, you shouldn't trust and that's the mistake, they've probably been burned, they brought in the wrong person and they tried to maybe trust and you can't, like, you're not, that's stupid, you're not supposed to trust people that you shouldn't trust. [00:25:36] Laith: And it takes, I mean, look, like I'm a full, honest and transparent person. Like sometimes it takes a couple of people to find your unicorn, right? Like I always say, you go through a couple of donkeys and zebras to get to your unicorn, right? Like it happens like, you know, is your first hire, like when you, whether it's local or offshore going to be your ultimate 10 year hire? I don't know, maybe, you know, hopefully, but maybe not. [00:25:56] And then you hire somebody else. Like I've been burned. Of course. Like I've hired you a Filipino and you've been burnt, but then you find like an Adam, and you're like, dude, this guy is like Lord and Savior to me. I can't function without this guy. And you have to go through the process, you know, because like, again, you being the bottleneck, if you don't just, you got to, it's like rep, you got to keep doing it until you find the right person. [00:26:16] Then you, when you find the right person, you're like, this is it. We're going to grow. There's no way we don't.  [00:26:21] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So, what should people know about, well, what can they, what should they expect to spend to have a really good operator? I mean in the U. S. you're looking at like 60 to 80k minimum, right? [00:26:37] Minimum to have a decent operator by a year. What if they're using maybe Assistantly or going, you know, to these other countries, what? What's sort of the cost savings for those that are like, man, the operator sounds like a dream. How can I get one?  [00:26:51] Laith: Yeah. And it operator obviously depends on where you're located. [00:26:53] Of course. Let's say like I even like you find an operator in California, you're spending like probably six figures you know, depending obviously where you're located, but like, you know, let's say the average is. Let's just give an example. 75 grand, right? You know, like with us, and it's that 75 grand, you got to take care of HR, payroll, taxes, benefits, typically. [00:27:12] With us, you're typically spending between 30 to 36, 000 for the year. So it's pretty much half. And then we take care of all the HR, payroll, benefits. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. Taxes, compliance, all that jazz. And then it's a write off for your business. It's like a software write off, which makes it even super attractive. [00:27:28] So, the fact that we will source, really great candidates for you. We will help you obviously interview because I think that's super important. Like, again, like Jason mentioned, everybody has a different process. You want to ask them questions according to you and make sure it's the right fit. [00:27:41] Then we will onboard you, but then we also manage them on a day to day as well. You know, making sure the clock in it. highest level, keeping them accountable. And we keep track of all that stuff on the backend. So that performance success on the talent side and the client side is, you know, part of our managed solution. [00:27:55] You know, and if anything doesn't ever, you know, for example, you hire Kate, after eight months, you're like, Hey, you know, I want to try somebody else. It's we offer a free replacement guarantee. We can switch out people as easy in 48 hours as possible. So, The cost savings, it's half. That's why people do it. [00:28:09] So, you know, even the guy from Baltimore, he goes, so you're telling me I can hire two people for the price of one?  [00:28:14] Jason: Yeah.  [00:28:14] Laith: I'm like yeah. You can hire essentially two virtual property managers for the price of one. That's exactly what I'm saying. And then I, and then we take care of all this stuff on our backend. [00:28:22] And so now his team can double the way he wants to, and he still gets that stuff taken care of on his plate.  [00:28:28] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. All right. Well, Laith, awesome having you here. I think everybody listening should reach out to Assistantly if they don't have an assistant yet, and get an assistant. I think we have a special DoorGrow code or something's set up with you guys I believe that they can use. Let me see if I can find it here in our vendor database. But yeah, I've heard great things about you guys from others. And I think it's, you guys would be a great company for people to go with. Yeah, so our clients get a 10 percent recurring discount on their subscription if they use our links. [00:29:03] So we'll make sure and throw that link out to the marketplace if people are looking for it. On our podcast episode, when we post this and yeah, and check out Assistantly. Well, what's the easiest way for people to get in touch with you besides that?  [00:29:17] Laith: Yeah, I mean, I mean, my email is Laith@assistantly.Com if you want to reach out to me. It's LAITH@assistantly.Com if you want to reach out to me directly. Otherwise, our website assistantly. com you can book a call. It typically gets routed to me or my team members. It's a great way for us to kind of have a good 30 minute strategy session where we're going to outline the role, the responsibilities. [00:29:37] Take all your blame dump of like, this is making me frustrated. I don't want to do this. I need help with this. Like, we take all, like, just, you literally come. You don't got to come with anything. You come, you just vent, we take it, we organize it, and we say, hey, how does this look, you know, for the job description? [00:29:51] According to the RDoc, essentially, right, template, how does this look? They go, great. And then, We can go head on accordingly. So we make it super easy for you. I mean, from you just brain dumping to us putting the JD to getting candidates to onboarding, like you sit back, relax, you take care of all that stuff off your plate. [00:30:06] So, any way I can help, I'm just here to support.  [00:30:09] Jason: Awesome. All right, Laith, appreciate you coming and hanging out with us here on the DoorGrow show and excited to do more stuff with you in the future.  [00:30:17] Laith: Awesome, Jason. Appreciate you, my man.  [00:30:20] Jason: All right. So, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to grow your business ,add doors, you're struggling with operational stuff, you want some systems and some processes and mechanisms and an operating system, planning, people, process systems installed in your business.by an operator, you want some help getting these things in place, reach out to us at DoorGrow. We can help you with that and then you can leverage, you know Assistantly to get the bodies get the people that can really make the difference but you need to give good people good systems and good training and this is stuff that we can help you with here DoorGrow supporting your operators, we've got a call just for operators that we do every friday and we have a call every Wednesday for BDMs. [00:31:02] And this is how we're helping grow and scale companies rapidly. And if you want to be part of that rapid growth and be around other cool entrepreneurs talk to us about joining our mastermind and we'll see if you're the right fit for the group. So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. [00:31:17] 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!  [00:31:44] 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.
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Dec 11, 2024 • 56min

DGS 276: Navigating Success: Faith, Real Estate, and Entrepreneurship

As entrepreneurs, we have the ability to make a difference in the world and in those we serve by aligning our  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Ryan Pineda, real estate investing expert and author of The Wealthy Way to talk about real estate, business, and faith. You’ll Learn [01:34] Getting Started in Entrepreneurship [08:07] Faith and Business [17:16] Having Impact as a Business Owner [29:50] You are What You Consume [45:35] Don’t Wait to do the Work Tweetables  ”There's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business.” “ When you start becoming process-driven more than results-driven, your life changes.” “ We should expect things to be hard and worth it.” “ You are what you consume in all areas of life.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: There's so much wisdom in there and if you can at least just be willing to extract wisdom wherever you can find it, then you're not an idiot And so at least start there, everybody listening, just look for wisdom, be a seeker of wisdom and look for the things that are better and higher.  [00:00:16] 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. [00:00:34] 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. [00:00:54] 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. [00:01:13] Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:17] So my guest today, I am honored to hang out with Ryan Pineda. Ryan, welcome to the show.  [00:01:22] Ryan: Hey, happy to be here. Good to see you.  [00:01:25] Jason: So Ryan, I'd love to kick things off by getting into your background of how you kind of got into this journey of entrepreneurship. But before we do that, your company's called Wealthy Investor, right? [00:01:36] Yep. And you've worked with a lot of real estate investors. My target audience listening to the show are usually the vehicle or the support mechanism for a lot of investors. I think the audience would be interested in hearing a little bit about how you got kind of started into entrepreneurism first of all, and then maybe how you got into real estate. [00:01:57] Ryan: Yeah, I'll give the quick story. You know, I never wanted to get into real estate or entrepreneurship. I was a baseball player growing up and that was all I wanted to do. I was grateful and thankful that I was able to actually do that. You know, I ended up getting drafted by the Oakland A's and got to play professional baseball for eight years. [00:02:15] But, I didn't get paid much in the minor leagues. I never made it to the bigs. I was making 1200 bucks a month. And so I had to make money elsewhere. And that's what led me in entrepreneurship. You know, I got my real estate license in 2010. Yep. And, you know, so I've been in the game for about 15 years now. [00:02:32] And, you know, I've seen a lot. You know, started as an agent and hated it. My mom was actually a property manager. I didn't tell you that. So, I watched her do that for a little bit while being an agent as well. So she was an agent herself, but you know, watching her, I had no desire to be an agent or do anything in real estate because when I got in in 2010, she had just lost everything. [00:02:53] You know, and she's like, you need to get like a safe job. You need to get something that has a salary and a pension. That was literally her advice. Well, and I was like, yeah, maybe, I don't know. Hopefully this baseball thing works out. But while I'm playing, I can't get that. So I'm going to have to do something. [00:03:11] So anyways, I become an agent. Hate it. Do it for a few years. Ended up getting into other weird things. I started flipping couches. I was a substitute teacher. I was just doing anything that could make a buck on the side. And then eventually that led to flipping houses in 2015. [00:03:27] And that was when I, for the first time, started to make some real money. And yeah, I mean, by my third year, I had made, you know, I became a millionaire after year three, flipping houses. And it was just like, wow, this is crazy. And since then I flipped, you know, I think almost 600, 700 homes. And. You know, I've bought rentals. [00:03:47] I own apartment buildings through our syndication. You know, we've coached people, like you said, with wealthy investor. We've coached thousands of students and held really big events. You know, I've started another subsidiary businesses for real estate investors. You know, we have a lead generation company called Lead Kitchen where we help them get leads for sellers. [00:04:05] We have, you know, I had a tax firm, you know, I've kind of done almost everything you can imagine in the real estate world, but  [00:04:10] Jason: Yeah, that's a lot. So I'm curious you said your mom was a property manager and she gave you the advice It was kind of like maybe steer clear of this stuff. [00:04:19] What does your mom think now about everything?  [00:04:22] Ryan: You know what? She's still always hyper cautious so, you know, I retired my parents in 2019 I bought him a house bought him all the cars and everything and my dad actually started working for me in 2018 as a project manager. So he would oversee a lot of our flips and even to this day, he still does it. [00:04:42] Not cause he has to, because he's just like, well, if you're going to, you know, pay for us, I might as well like earn it, you know, and he just wants to support and whatever. So, You know, my dad understands the game. My mom though, obviously she's seen the results, but she's still always hyper cautious. [00:04:57] And so, she doesn't think I need to get a job now, but she does think a lot of times the big risk I take, I shouldn't be taking.  [00:05:05] Jason: Yeah. Looking back, when do you see in hindsight that there were clues that you were maybe destined to be an entrepreneur? Maybe even doing baseball. [00:05:16] Ryan: Yeah. I look back in hindsight, even as a kid and I was always buying and selling and thinking about money. Like I started an eBay account when I was like 12 years old. I remember. You know, buying stuff and bidding on stuff and getting good deals on eBay. And then I remember I was selling Pokemon cards and Yu Gi Oh cards, you know, in middle school and stuff. [00:05:37] And it's just like, You know, the signs were always there. And then even I was always attracted to just making money myself. So like I was good at poker, you know, I won poker tournaments and I played online and I made money that way. And so in hindsight, it was always very clear. I was never going to have a job. [00:05:53] Really the only true job I ever had was playing baseball. And even then it's like, yeah, there's not really a way to be an entrepreneur. I mean, you kind of are you're in charge of your career and how well you want to do and like how well you want to train and. And so, yeah, even in that sense, baseball is kind of in that same vein. [00:06:12] Jason: Yeah. So I'm sure even to get as far as you got in baseball, there was a lot of drive involved and a lot of effort involved, even though there wasn't a lot of pay, it sounds like.  [00:06:25] Ryan: Yeah, I think yeah, for me, like, I had to learn how to like win, you know, at the end of the day, losing is not an option, right? [00:06:33] It's a zero sum game in sports. One person wins, one person loses, you know, for the pitcher to succeed, you must get out. And so, dude, I'm like, I'm going to just figure out how to win. I'm competitive. And so I think competitiveness has always fueled me. It's different in business now because I understand the games that we play. [00:06:52] It's like, you know, We both can have good podcasts. We both can win in business. You don't need to lose for me to win. But that doesn't mean I'm still not competitive.  [00:07:00] Jason: Sure. Yeah. I'm sure in the different industries that you have businesses that you focus on, you have competitors and you probably want to win. [00:07:09] Ryan: I don't want to lose.  [00:07:11] Jason: Right. I want to be the best. I think that's true of most entrepreneurs. There's this drive or, this bite to win. You know, I remember early on, I think some of my first clues as to that I might be an entrepreneur is I was into music. And I remember in college, I was going around door to door pre selling CDs so that I could fund doing an album. [00:07:31] And yet I still at the time was thinking I've got to get a degree to get some sort of job to rise the corporate ladder. And I had no clue that entrepreneurism was like a path at the time. So it's interesting and Entrepreneurism sort of found me In that I needed a way to not be doing a nine to five job to be able to take care of kids because I ended up as a single father right and divorced and like went through all this stuff. [00:07:57] And so I was like, all right, what can I do? And so I sometimes joke that my kids turned me into an entrepreneur. It was just what needed to be done, but there were always clues before, right? So you know, one of the things that you've talked about a lot, I've noticed on your social media, on podcasts is you're very faith forward. [00:08:15] Like you're very comfortable talking about your faith and like the things that kind of motivate you and drive you. And you're involved in some charitable sort of, you know, businesses or charitable entities or organizations as well. How does faith sort of play into all of this when it comes to business for you? [00:08:33] Ryan: Well, you know, I grew up in the church. So, you know, for those who don't know, I'm a Christian. And you know, I grew up in a baptist church and you know, faith was always a part of my life. And I felt like for the most part, I did things the way God wanted me to. You know, I didn't really rebel and go crazy in college, got married young. [00:08:51] You know, I've always tried to put God first and everything. And You know, I think in the last couple of years, God was just pushing me to get even more deep in faith and more bold and to really embrace the spiritual and supernatural side of faith because I was always a very theologically sound person. [00:09:11] And you know, I've read the Bible many times, and, you know, I spent a lot of time, like I said, in church and serving and other things, but you just realize in everything in life, especially with faith, that there's so little that you actually know, and you know, as I've grown in my faith, I've learned to hear from God better. [00:09:29] And tune out all the noise of everything else going out in life, right? I mean, there's so many distractions in life. There's your business, there's social media, there's your kids, your family, you know, the recession, the election, it's like distraction. I think that's Satan's biggest, yeah, that's Satan's biggest tool is to distract you from the truth. [00:09:49] And so the truth was God wanted me to get more bold and to really use my platform for him, not for me. And, you know, with that, I became convicted to just really go all in because I mean, one thing I guess people would notice about my career too, is like, there's no really lukewarmness, you know, when I go all in on something. [00:10:09] It's like, yo, if we're going to throw an event, it's going to be crazy. If we're going to start this, we're going on a blitz. And so I said, you know what, we need to start something for Christian entrepreneurs and Christian business people. And so, you know, I created Wealthy Kingdom last year and you know, we're a nonprofit and, you know, we have three goals. [00:10:27] Well, I shouldn't say three goals. The one goal, the mission is to bring the kingdom to the marketplace. And what I mean by that is so many entrepreneurs just think it's the church's job to, you know, go get people saved and to go disciple people. And it's like, yeah, you know, just invite them to church on Sunday. [00:10:44] It's like, no, our job, every Christian has this goal or mission. You know, Jesus tells us right before he left, he said that the mission here is you need to go make disciples of all nations. We all have that same mission. And it's like, it's not to make the most money. It's not to do the thing that you love. [00:11:05] Like, Jesus never said do the thing that you love. Like that's another big lie that, you know, people have been told.  [00:11:12] Jason: Jesus didn't even do what he loved necessarily. Like to a degree, he said, I don't even do my own will. Yeah. He does the will of him who sent me. Right. He's like, I'm not even doing my own will. [00:11:22] And so if that's a model, then maybe it's not about just selfishly doing our own will all the time.  [00:11:29] Ryan: Absolutely should not. Our will, as we grow should be more aligned with the father's will. And that's what sanctification is. So anyways, to, to long story short. God called us to go be disciples where we're at. [00:11:42] We don't like, we need to go make disciples of all nations right now. That's in our job, in our career, in our business, at an event, whatever. And so I took that to heart. So we started you know, looking at everything that we currently do. And we said, well, let's do it for the King. And so I said, all right, well, let's get a kingdom based community. [00:12:01] And so, you know, we started an online community because that's something we currently do in business. It's like, well, let's get one kingdom based. And so we have that it's completely free. Anyone can join it. Then I said, let's throw events. We throw a lot of events. Why are we not throwing kingdom events? [00:12:14] And so we started throwing big events for the kingdom. And in fact, in my secular events, I just started throwing worship services and pastors in the middle of the event without even telling anyone. Because I'm like, look, this might be the only time they ever hear the good news in their entire life. [00:12:31] And, you know, whatever they might like it, they might not like it, but I don't really care. They need to hear it. And so we started incorporating faith into our events. You know, and then the last thing was really just discipling the current believers because I'm all about the lost. I want to get the lost at the events. [00:12:50] With our content, with our community, but also too, what about the people who are already saved? Well, we need to disciple them and make them better. And so we started running Bible studies all across the country. And I think we're close to a hundred, actually across the world right now, that meet every single week in people's offices, in their homes. [00:13:07] And we all go through the same studies together in these Bible studies, across as a body. And it's really cool. So, yeah, we're trying to attack it from a lot of different angles.  [00:13:18] Jason: It's a lot to organize.  [00:13:20] Ryan: Oh, yeah. But here's the thing, right? It's weird because I just said, Hey, don't do your will. Do God's will. [00:13:26] Right. But on the same hand, God gave us all talents, abilities and different life experiences. And so, you know, he calls us to use those to do his will and it's like all right god gave me a lot of influence online. Why am I not making videos and content, you know helping people understand what that means? [00:13:47] God gave me the ability to throw massive events. We threw wealth con every quarter a thousand plus people every quarter for years. Why am I not throwing massive events for the kingdom? God gave me the ability to organize communities and groups and all these things. Why am I not organizing and using my administrative gifts to do that? And it's like it's all the same thing, and they're all the same gifts and they're all the same skill sets, but on one hand you're putting him first and on the other hand you're putting yourself first  [00:14:16] Jason: Yeah, I love the idea of you know positively impacting the world I think business a lot of people don't realize I think business really there's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business, right? [00:14:31] I don't think charities don't function as well like businesses. There's an exchange of value And if there's value like behind it and there's a mission and a purpose behind it Then even the team members the employees everybody Are more lit up and excited and so business is a very efficient business model and you know, one of my past mentors, Alex Charfen, and he would say something to the effect of like entrepreneurs are the people that have changed the world throughout history. [00:14:57] They're the people that kind of think differently. And you know, you mentioned the word disciple like several times and I love the scripture where it's like, how do you know who's a disciple, right? And it's by this shall men know, right? You're my disciple. If you have loved one towards another and I think you know this spreading this message of like sharing true principles Which I think is what makes scripture, right? [00:15:20] It's that there's true principles that can be applied to things that are useful and I think a really good business book will have maybe one key principle it teaches, but then you take a book like the bible and it's just full of lots of different instances of principles that these levers that you can apply to various situations in your life or in decision making. [00:15:39] And you know, that's always been sort of my purpose, I feel is to bring principles to people and to share principles of truth to others, because I feel like that's the easiest lever to impact people's mindset or change their lives is to bring some truth or light or some true principles that they can apply, especially if it's facilitating more love or more kindness. [00:16:01] And there's so many different things different principles that apply in business in order to figure things out like related hiring related to you know running an efficient business  [00:16:11] Ryan: How do you know like a non profit is a business right? I mean, it's a non profit.  [00:16:15] Jason: Yeah, it is. It is a business. Yeah. [00:16:17] Ryan: A church is a business technically based on its designation, Wealthy Kingdom is a business. [00:16:22] It's a nonprofit, right? I mean, in many cases, well, I shouldn't say this because every nonprofit's different, but like for me, I make literally nothing from it. You know, I do it out of a, you know, I just want to do it. Now we have employees, we have staff, we have marketing, we have event costs, we got to pay for all this stuff. [00:16:38] Right. And so we got to figure out, man, how do we use the resources we have in the best way possible? Well, it's the same thing we ask ourself every day in business. We have a limited amount of labor, a limited amount of capital, a limited amount of time. What do we do, you know, to make the most of it? So it's all the same. [00:16:57] And I think too, right, you don't even have to have a nonprofit for this to be the example, right? This is just simply the idea of stewardship. You know, God talks a lot about stewardship and it's like, well. I've given y'all different varying degrees of talent. I've put y'all in different places. Y'all are going to be judged accordingly based on how you used your talent. [00:17:16] And I think that, well, I know that 1, 000, and a lot of Christians don't realize this. A lot of Christians, so, for all the Christians on the show, this is going to hopefully convict you, okay? A lot of people think that when you get saved, that's the end of the journey. Yeah, when literally that is like they've arrived they're done. [00:17:39] You just started! Great! [00:17:41] Jason: Yeah.  [00:17:41] Ryan: Now guess what you your whole rest of your life now actually begins and so many people like, God tells us that hey, guess what? Once you're saved, you know, there's a new judgment now. Because before it was like, all right, what happens in eternity, right? You're going to be in heaven. [00:17:58] You're going to be in hell. That's like the salvation question, but then there's this next question about judgment and stewardship and what you did with what he gave you because Somebody like myself and you will be judged more harshly than other christians and people are like, what does that mean? [00:18:18] Well, it means that if he gave you more resource and he even says if you're a teacher and you cause other people to stumble, you are going to be judged significantly more harshly than others. And so I take that super serious because I'm like, all right, yeah, I'm saved. I'm not worried about that, but man, I better do everything in my power to be a great steward and to understand if I have influence and I'm teaching people, I know exactly what I'm saying. [00:18:44] Jason: Yeah, it's much like the Parable of the Talents, you know, the worst was like to try and bury it and hide it, hide the money. The person that did the best with the money that he trusted with the most money, like, made twice as much money, like, he increased it significantly, right?  [00:19:00] Ryan: And he was also given the person's talent that, who buried his talent. [00:19:04] Jason: Exactly. He's like, I'm going to take it away from you because you don't know how to use this or how to deal with it. And so I think there's a nice summation of business in that for us, like where much is given, much is required and yeah, I've got a little bit of an audience. [00:19:18] You've got a little bit of an audience as well, right? We've got these audiences and people are listening, people pay attention to what we're doing And you know, we have a ripple effect. And I have a ripple effect through my clients who have a ripple effect through all the families that they support, the investors, the team members that they have. And that's significant and to me, that's exciting. Like, that's what motivates me to do what I do. [00:19:43] That's inspiring. But yeah, I could see that some people would maybe it would convict them. Maybe they would feel maybe they feel a little ashamed if they thought about it, man, you know, the energy I'm putting out into the world and in the universe here, isn't the ripple that I really feel is the best ripple I could create. [00:19:59] Ryan: Well, the other part, too, is obviously we have ripples here on Earth, but, you know, there are ripples for eternity based on our decisions for the people we help and everything else, and, you know, the Bible talks about how, you know, you store up your treasures in heaven, and if you read, you know, a lot of Christians also don't know this, they think that Heaven is this place where everybody's equal and, you know, we're all in the same thing. [00:20:25] No, it's actually not like there's hierarchies in heaven there. Like it's clear when the disciples are talking to Jesus and they're like, man, dude, I want to sit on your right hand. He's like, you don't even know what you're asking for. And. you know, they're clearly trying to be in that inner circle after this too. [00:20:43] And, you know, you could read all about it. There's hierarchy with demons. There's hierarchy with angels. Hierarchy is going to be in heaven. It's already there. And it's like, you know, you got a lot of investors on this podcast who are like, Oh man, I got to invest for the future. I got to get my net worth here. [00:21:01] I got to get my cashflow here. I got to. And it's like, we're investing trying to build for the future of this life. And once you truly understand that this life is so short in the span of eternity, you start thinking very differently. And you're like, well, I would rather invest for eternity. And actually, we just read this book in our Wealthy Kingdom group. [00:21:21] It's called Driven by Eternity by John Bevere. It's a great, one of the most convicting books I've ever read. But, he goes, alright. He's like, I learned this in math. Anything divided by infinity is infinity. And it's like, eternity is infinity, right? But if you were to try and even just, finitely say it with our brains, let's just say the next 24 hours, we're going to dictate the next thousand years of your reward here on earth, right? [00:21:48] How you spent the next 24 hours would dictate what reward you got for the next thousand years. You'd be like, that's insane, right? That doesn't seem right. That, you know, this is going to be  [00:22:00] Jason: proportionately skewed. To this moment. Yeah, it's- [00:22:04] Ryan: that's not even close to infinity.  [00:22:07] Jason: Yeah.  [00:22:08] Ryan: We spend 100 years here on this earth thinking we have all this time. In the scheme of infinity, it's worse than way where it could be 24 hours to 10, 000 years to a million years, a billion years. It's still not infinity. And yeah, people just don't, they don't think about it because it's so hard to grasp. But it's like I wish and this is why god has you know kind of got me more vocal about it. [00:22:33] So we're talking about it now But it's like I want investors because I'm an investor right now, you know, like I'm always looking for the best investment I'm always looking for the best use of my time, but I want people to start thinking about man, Invest for eternity. That's way longer than this! Your retirement is way shorter than infinity and eternity. [00:22:54] Jason: Though, could Jesus be a house flipper in the eternities? Because he says in my father's house, there's many mansions, right? And he said, I'm going to prepare something for you guys. And so I think what you're talking about is maybe we should be paying a little less attention maybe to just our real estate assets and our investing here and maybe do some heavenly real estate investing. [00:23:17] Ryan: I'm being 1, 000, that's 1, 000 percent what I'm saying. And it's changed my mindset so much in the last year that I could care less about my net worth. I could care less about how many properties I own. I could care less about any of it. Because eternity is so much greater.  [00:23:36] Jason: So some people might be saying, Ryan, come on. [00:23:38] You're wealthy now. You run Wealthy Investor. You've got money. So it's easy for you to say that. What would you say to the naysayers?  [00:23:46] Ryan: I would say that I've had a certain level of contentness, no matter how much money I had. I made 1200 bucks my entire 20s a month. Okay. So like, I understand what it is to have nothing. [00:23:57] And you know, people always make an excuse, right? It's like, I got three kids and a wife, five, five and under, man, I got a special needs son. I spend a lot of time with my kids. And it's like, well, you know, that's cause you, everybody's default is that's cause you have money or this or that. [00:24:14] It's like, no, all these things were built with nothing. They were all built simultaneously. It wasn't that, oh, this came after that. It's like, no, they were all built in the same construct. So people just need to realize it's just an excuse. It's a cop out. Right. And the other part too, is it's just a fact of not trusting what the Bible says. [00:24:33] So if you're not Christian- [00:24:34] Jason: which essentially is just not trusting God,  [00:24:37] Ryan: Yeah, and if you're not Christian and you don't believe it, that's one thing. But if you are a Christian, you cannot say that you are a Christian and then claim that. It is a lie. And it's like, if you read Matthew 6:33, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, then everything else will be added to you. [00:24:54] And so this is where it comes into play of like, if I'm seeking those eternal rewards, everything else will be added to me. Now, does that mean I'm going to be a hundred millionaire billionaire own all these prop-? No, but I do know I'm going to be just fine here on earth. Like, I don't have to worry about that. [00:25:11] Like I'll be taken care of. It'll be added to me. So I just trust that promise.  [00:25:17] Jason: Yeah. I think I've always just trusted, even when money was tight, I've always trusted in my ability to figure things out and that God's going to take care of me. I just, I bought  [00:25:27] Ryan: money's been tight for me many times after I've been rich. [00:25:30] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:25:31] Ryan: Like so many times every business owner every you know, Elon Musk, dude I mean the richest man in the world, right? This guy struggles with money like, you know Yeah, dude, he had to buy Twitter for 50 billion dollars he didn't have 50 billion dollars just laying around It was like the last hour to figure out how to go buy that thing. You know, they tell the story of how he invested all of his, like, 300 million he got from PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX and they were going to both go bankrupt and not make it. [00:26:01] Yeah. So, you know, I guess it all just is, like, it comes back to this idea that people think that there's a certain amount of wealth that prevents you from, you know, ever having to work again. And that's not true. It's just not true. Like, it can all be taken from you instantly.  [00:26:16] Jason: So, here's a thought I have that I think might convict, as you say, you know, Christians or just other people that claim to believe in God. [00:26:24] Is one thing I've noticed is you know, especially among, I guess, poor christians or people that have money issues is that I've noticed this action of cursing reality while claiming to love god. It's like oh well this sucks and this and they're kind of they're negative about everything showing up in reality and my favorite name for God in a lot of instances is reality because he says I am what is I am the truth he's the ultimate and reality always wins God always ultimately wins and I don't think it's fair for a christian to claim, I'm like so like faithful to god yet I'm going to curse my reality and complain about reality and complain about how everything is and complain about my family and my spouse and my job and the world and everything else. And there's such a difference I think in people that are at odds with reality which reality will always win. Reality doesn't lie reality is what is and those that are actually in alignment with reality, and align their will to god. [00:27:29] What do you think of that?  [00:27:30] Ryan: Yeah, I mean look god has been here way before us and here's another thing. I tell people I'm just like, all right, look, you know Even if you're not a Christian, right? I think majority of people believe there is something after this life. People believe there is, you know, some supernatural thing. [00:27:47] Most people would believe in the afterlife and whatever. And then, you know, almost everyone agrees there was nothing and then there was something right. And we would call this the creation of the world. But you know, my belief is, you know, It's based on the Bible, and the Bible tells us that there was a supernatural world well before this physical world you know, God talks about there was angels, there was all these things happening well before he created the earth, and the earth is going to pass away, and then, you know, You know, it's going to be back to how it was. [00:28:16] And you know, it's like, and you know, there's going to be a new heaven, new earth, all these things, but my point with that is God was always, that's just the best he has always been. He will always will be. He will always like he's past, present, future. He's just all present. And you know, The other part I struggle with a lot of Christians is they just don't understand the power that they have. [00:28:44] You know, they walk in weakness. And in reality, it's like, Do you realize, an axe, Jesus said or not an axe, but in the Gospels, and then it happened, an axe. He said, look it's good that I'm leaving you, because you're going to get something far better than just me being here with you physically. You're going to get the Helper, and then an axe, they receive the Holy Spirit, literally God living within them, inside of them. [00:29:08] And it's like, you have literally the same God that has always been here, that created you, that created this world living inside of you, and you're worried? What would you ever be worried about? You know, just think like back to just metaphors, you know, would you ever be worried if like, you know financially if you had just like all this money just with you at all times? [00:29:31] No, you wouldn't be worried financially. Would you be worried for your physical safety if you had the most elite killers as bodyguards around you at all times? No, you wouldn't be worried about your safety. You know, like, we have something so much better than all of those things, and we're worried. [00:29:46] We think we can't do things. We don't trust.  [00:29:50] Jason: So this is a good question. Let's bring this back to entrepreneurism. How can people, maybe they don't believe in God, maybe they, they do, but how do they bring themselves, do you feel, and how do you do this? How do you bring yourself in alignment with this greater power for those that maybe can just believe that or towards the universe or the God that created it? [00:30:12] How do we start to get ourselves in alignment? So we know we're on the right path.  [00:30:15] Ryan: Well, this doesn't apply to just God. But this is just everything in life, right? You are what you consume. So if I consume junk food and crap, then, you know, I'm going to be fat and my energy will suck and all those things, right? [00:30:30] Or like for another example, right? If I consume the news all day, 24 seven, right? I'm probably going to be a very skeptical, not trusting person. I'm going to have biases, all these things. Yeah. If I consume entrepreneur content all day and I watch all these guys I'm probably just going to be thinking about making money 24 seven, right? [00:30:48] You are what you consume in all areas of life and you know, you are the average of the five people you hang around with all of these things are a form of just what you consume And so if you want to become more like jesus you have to consume and get around people that are like Jesus. And so, you know, what does that look like? [00:31:05] Well, it looks like reading your Bible every day. It looks like praying every day. It looks like hanging around, you know, other Christians who are walking the walk. It looks like going to church on Sundays. It looks like listening to sermons, listening to worship music. You know, you just have to immerse yourself in it and consume it. And that's how you're going to become more aligned. It's crazy because like, I'll tell you this, and this could sound extreme to people, but it's like, you start to realize the rest of the things in the world that are deception, right? It's like, I used to not think rap music and things were like bad. [00:31:38] You know, I used to listen to gangster rap all the time, man. I love Tupac and all these guys. And then you start to just like, you know, they call me little Ryan. You know, you look, you listen to the lyrics, you know, from a different point of view and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is not good. This is crazy that I listened to this when I was a kid, I should not have been listening to this. [00:31:59] Right. Because you start to get convicted if you watch porn, it's like you're going to start looking at your wife a different way because you're just you're consuming the wrong things. Yeah. Yeah, and even little things start to convict you too. It's like, for the first time ever, we didn't celebrate Halloween this year. [00:32:15] Because I just became convicted that you know, its origins are demonic. And it's like, you just watch all of this stuff with it. And it's like, yeah, definitely none of this glorifies God. If it doesn't glorify God, why would I do it? You know? And it's like it glorifies demons and, you know, all of these dark things, it's like, that doesn't seem proper. [00:32:39] Jason: Yeah, like, you know, it's kind of that balance of how to be in the world, but not of the world, right? Like Jesus was hanging out with publicans and sinners and he was around people, but he also wasn't like just doing everything that they were doing. And so, yeah, I think that's an interesting concept. [00:32:53] I like, though, what you said about. And that wasn't even where my head was going, when I asked the question, but I love that you said like look at the people that you're choosing to be around. There's a consumption there and There's this book called the Dark Side of the Light Chasers it's by Debbie Ford and it's interesting because she talks about in it that we each have this golden side and we also have this dark side to us and the golden side Is the side of ourselves that we see reflected in others that we of the people that we look up to. And there's different people that kind of trigger that in us. [00:33:25] Some people, for example, like look at Donald Trump, very polarizing figure. Some people look at him and are very triggered and their dark side is triggered. They see a narcissist, they see all these negative attributes and then there's some that look at him and they're like, Oh, he's an entrepreneur or he's strong or he's masculine or whatever. [00:33:42] Right? And they look at the golden side. And I think what we see in other people and the people we choose to be around, we want to choose to be around people that we perceive as having a light. Somebody that has something that we want and attributes that we want to become more like. And I think choosing to do that, especially in choosing mentors, is important. [00:34:01] Because you're going to ultimately become a little bit more like them. And that doesn't mean every mentor that I choose is, like, ahead of me in every key area of life. But if they're at least in the area a little bit ahead of me in success in the area I'm getting coaching from then I'm going to absorb that but I'm careful not to take on everything else and to be discerning and to use discernment. [00:34:23] I think it's important like you said to be around people that you perceive as being a high caliber or people that you believe are moving towards greater light.  [00:34:33] Ryan: I agree with all of it.  [00:34:36] Jason: Love that. All right. So Ryan, what if somebody is listening to this and we talked a lot about like kind of faith, God, religion, stuff like this, and somebody who's like, okay, maybe I'm willing to entertain the idea that God exists. [00:34:54] Maybe Jesus is somebody I should like figure out, what would you say is a good first step for those people?  [00:35:02] Ryan: Well, you know, obviously like the Bible is the truth, right? That's God's revelation to us. And so a lot of people are like, well, I don't even know where to start with the Bible. I would say step one buy a study Bible. [00:35:13] So I would just go on Amazon. I would just, I would get an IV study Bible. It's very simple. So that way it has you know, just notes on the side for you to help you understand what it's saying and different questions. And so, you know, I have a study Bible right here. So this is, you know, maybe you can find this one on Amazon. [00:35:31] This is called the Quest Study Bible. Now, this Bible is like 15 years old. So maybe this one, they don't make this one anymore. But actually, I know they do make a version of it. It's not called the Quest Study Bible anymore, but just look at the NIV Study Bible. And I would start in Matthew. [00:35:44] That is the very beginning of the New Testament. I would just start in Matthew and read it all the way through. So, unlike other books where you start at the very beginning. You're going to start about two thirds of the way through in Matthew and just trust me, it'll make sense. So that would be step one. [00:35:58] Step two, I would say, you know, obviously you want to get plugged into a local church. That, that's a lot harder for somebody who doesn't know anything. So here's what I would advise is join us at Wealthy Kingdom. So it's wealthykingdom.Com. Everything's free. You can be a part of the community and you can get plugged into a Bible study with other entrepreneurs in your area or virtually. So that's going to be your best place to really build connections because you're going to also be around other people who understand the actual life that you live right now. And they're open. We have lots of non believers in our Bible studies who are there to learn, man. [00:36:34] They're like, look, I'm here to learn. I don't know. I don't believe. I don't even know what you believe, but I'm here to learn. And so we, we love those types of people. So I would, those would be the two steps I do because I don't know everybody here listening is listening to different things. So I don't know what local church you should go to or anything. [00:36:52] So come join us virtually. And then you're probably going to meet people in Wealthy Kingdom that are in your area, especially the local Bible study. And they're going to know what local church for you to go to.  [00:37:02] Jason: Got it. You know, this is maybe a controversial hot take of, mine But I feel like a lot of people get so caught up in trying even among christians or non christians trying to prove whether the bible and everything in it is factual history or not It's like facts and data. [00:37:19] They're trying to prove it and I think both sides miss sight of the most important elements, which is are there true principles that are applicable? Can you apply these things to your life? Are they useful tools? And I think that's the real measure of a principle, whether it's true or not, is you try it out. [00:37:38] You test this, try this on in your life and see if the fruit is good. See if it gives you positive results. Does it give you positive results to believe these things? Or does it cause, you know, does it take you in the opposite direction? Do you feel like you're moving towards something higher? Or is it taking you backwards? [00:37:57] Ryan: Yeah, there's biblical truth to that. You know, there was a reason Jesus performed miracles, you know, like a lot of people, a lot of people are like, well, why? Right? He could have just said all the things he said, hey, you know, don't steal. You know, follow the Ten Commandments. Love your neighbor. [00:38:13] Everybody can agree with those things. But it's like, yo. I'm going to make this person the lord of my life, which he was asking them to do, to believe that he's the son of God, to believe and give their entire life to him. It's like, well, dude, you better show me something else if you want me to commit to that degree. [00:38:31] And you know, that's why he performed signs and wonders to show them that, hey, look, I am the one. And You know, it's true, right? Like, that's why he did it. And that's why all of the disciples you know, were killed for preaching it well after he was gone, because they saw it, they believed, and they knew that the reward, you know, was going to be great eternally, right? [00:38:52] Look, Jesus says it to Doubting Thomas too, when he returns, right? A lot of the disciples believe, they're like, Oh dude, like he's back. And then Thomas is like, I ain't believing until I see him. Until I see the holes in his body. And so Jesus comes back and he's like, Look, Thomas, feel the hole, right? [00:39:08] Shows him the hole in his hands. And he's like, blessed are those who believe without seeing.  [00:39:12] Their faith is stronger, but still, it's all good that you needed to see to believe. Like, it's all good. And so. There are going to be people who listen to this and they're like, I believe all this makes sense. [00:39:26] And then there are going to be those who say no, I need to see the fruit. I need to see why I should believe. And in fact, I still believe miracles happen today. I've seen them with my own hands. I've prayed for miracles that cannot be explained other than they were miraculous. And you know, with that, it's like both happen. [00:39:43] Jason: I think that I think if we're really created in the image of God,. Then I think that is a clue that we might be a lot more powerful than we realize and you know there's even evidence that the placebo effect is getting stronger as time goes on. So like as they do drug testing and stuff like this drugs have to pass a certain test that they're stronger than placebo. The challenge is drugs are having a harder and harder time showing that they're stronger than placebo because the placebo effect is actually getting stronger. And I think that humanity worked our consciousness is raising a bit. [00:40:19] I think that people are realizing that we are creators, that we are more powerful than we give ourselves credit. And, you know, Jesus says, if you have faith, like a grain of a mustard seed, you could like move a mountain or something. Right. And so I think that I think there is something to, you know, this idea that we can create this positive future or alter our reality or alter things real time, like people's physical health or blessing people or different things. I do think that miracles can occur and there's evidence of it happening all the time. And I think in religion, see, I grew up Mormon. And I'm a very ultra conservative. [00:41:00] I was a Mormon missionary for two years and then eventually left it. I didn't even try alcohol until I was over 30. And I'm the only one in my family that, that left. I'm the black sheep and I'm the oldest of five boys. So, sorry mom, sorry dad.  [00:41:14] Ryan: I'm not happy with you.  [00:41:15] Jason: They still love me, but I think one of the things that I, and I'm grateful for all that I learned, like we, we did, I did a lot of religious study growing up and I was the one that just kept digging until I took my way out of it, I guess. [00:41:26] Ryan: Mormon apologetics is a tough thing to defend.  [00:41:30] Jason: Yeah. So I think you know, there's a lot of people think that they need to sell some sort of gospel or good news of, Jesus or the christian church by convincing people their life is going to suddenly be magical or better and that's not always true, and I don't think that's the whole point is that you don't magically make everything about your external circumstances in your life better, but I think being more in alignment with god and being more connected allows you this greater strength to weather what's happening. [00:42:02] I mean if you look at what happened to Peter or any of the apostles, like they suffered horrible deaths. I don't know that their life magically became more amazing because they followed Jesus, but they had that conviction and they knew truth. And I think in a lot of instances, becoming Christian or believing in Jesus or following his principles may make your life in some instances, more challenging, you know, maybe there's more fiery darts thrown at you by the adversary, for example, but I do believe that there's some sort of there's some sort of power and confidence that comes with knowing that your personal life and will is in alignment with God wants for you. [00:42:45] Like you're following that calling and that knowing within, and there's a strength that comes from that, that nobody else can shake. It doesn't matter like what your parents are saying to you. It doesn't matter what your spouse maybe is concerned about. It doesn't matter if you know, you're doing what is right, then you're willing to just let the consequences follow. [00:43:03] And that's different than just looking for this better life or a mansion here on earth instead of a mansion in heaven.  [00:43:10] Ryan: Yeah, and you know, Jesus said hey you got to pick up your cross and follow me. It's like picking up your cross literally means dying to your old self and giving your all to Jesus And you know somebody's like oh, but like I got to say bye and to my dad and I gotta bury and he's no. [00:43:27] No, this has nothing to do with your current family. This is about you and me You know, whether or not you're going to follow. And you know, I've met many Mormon, ex Mormons, Jews, Muslims, people who have given their life to Jesus. And you know, it's tough because there's so many family dynamics that go on to it. [00:43:46] And it's like, it ain't easy. And I feel for those people, cause that, that's very hard. But I also am a believer that, you know, through your faith and through, you know, those who make that commitment, they have the chance to impact their families. So much more and they can be sanctified through them. [00:44:02] Jason: Yeah, I mean I had a meeting with the mastermind this morning and we were talking about distractions And we were all these they're all men and we're all sharing like what's distracting us and what's holding us you know back from the things we should be doing and you know and I was thinking about you know, just how can I be a better father? [00:44:21] How can I be a better partner, a better spouse? How can it be a better business leader? And at the stage I'm at now, it's just more discipline. It's less distractions. And it's all like cutting out all of the fat and the little things that are so easily taking us. And that's kind of what you led us into here in the beginning. [00:44:39] You know, what do you, what would you say to those that are just, they're trying to run their business, they're dealing with a lot of distractions, which is common for entrepreneurs. We see shiny objects everywhere. How do they get focused and how they start, how did they start listening to that inner voice that connects them with the divine so they can start making the right moves? [00:45:00] Ryan: Well, I think it's very simple, right? You just make God the focus. You just have to trust that if you make him the focus. Everything else will fall into place. And then it goes back to Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will be added to you. And that's faith. [00:45:18] That's faith in a nutshell, because you'll be like, well, don't understand the fires that I have, Ryan. You don't understand the drama and the problems. My kids are doing this, my relationship with my wife sucks. Like I got to focus over there in order to fix. You know, well, before I can go worry about God. [00:45:35] I mean, that's like the biggest thing I hear all the time too. It's like, well, I. Once I get my life right, then I'll start going to church. I'm like, no, you can't get your life right. That's why Jesus paid the price, because you can't. It's the same funny thing I hear when people are like-  [00:45:49] Jason: it's like saying once I get abs, I'll stop eating candy bars. [00:45:53] Ryan: Yeah, well, I was going to use a health example too where I hear this actually from people because I was in sports for so long Hey, I'm going to get in shape first, then I'm going to go get a trainer and start you know, because I'm not ready to go train with them like, that's too hard. I got to like get in shape first and I'm like, dude. [00:46:09] No, that's why you need a trainer like no, And yeah, it's the same thing with faith. It's like if you follow god and you seek his ways I mean just like you've been saying from a practical standpoint. If you follow what the Bible says, your relationship with your wife will get better. Like, you're just going to be a better leader, you're going to serve her, you're going to be different. [00:46:27] Your relationship with your kids will get better. The relationship with your employees will get better. The way you act in business will be better. You know? And it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. I didn't say it was going to be easy. I just said, it's going to get better. And you know, I've had, yeah. And I had, I've had so many difficult situations in business, you know, lost millions, investors pissed, customers pissed, lawsuits. [00:46:53] I've dealt with everything you could imagine in business. And guess what? Every time I've been able to get through it and it's because of my faith and I didn't know how I would get through it. I didn't know what the outcome would be. I didn't know how I would solve it. But I can tell you I slept pretty good throughout all of it because I just knew God would take care of it some way somehow. [00:47:16] Jason: You knew it would be figured out and you felt like you had somebody on your side that's pretty powerful.  [00:47:21] Ryan: I mean, God promises to be on my side.  [00:47:23] Jason: Yeah.  [00:47:24] Ryan: You know, Romans 8, 28 says that, you know, he works all things for my good, for those who believe.  [00:47:30] Jason: Even the tough stuff.  [00:47:32] Ryan: All things, not some things.  [00:47:34] Jason: Whom God loves, he chastens. Despise not the chastening of the Lord, right? So may not necessarily be easy, but yeah, it'll be worth it.  [00:47:41] Ryan: Don't expect anything to be easy.  [00:47:43] Jason: Right. I think we go into it, we should expect things to be hard and worth it. And I think when we're, it's kind of like the old stoic adage, you know, hard choices, easy life. [00:47:53] Easy choices, hard life. We all know people that they're focused on ease. They're focused on trying to have comfort They're focused on how do I how do I avoid doing stuff? I just want to relax. I just want my weekend I just want time and I think as i've grown into adulthood and you know focus more on stepping more into my masculinity. [00:48:13] I've realized that you know, nobody's coming to save us, except maybe Jesus, right? Nobody's coming to do it for us. There's a level of work that's expected and we need to get beyond always seeking comfort because comfort is a deceptive and alluring sort of drug and we need to be willing to put in the work put in the effort and focus and put in that discipline and then life gets a lot easier overall Like life gets a lot better overall when we're disciplined. Disciplined people don't cheat on their spouses. [00:48:47] Disciplined people like, you know, take care of their kids and spend time with them on the weekend. Disciplined people you know, focus and take care of their health so they have less health issues. They're putting their own oxygen mask on first, so to speak, so they can take care of others, right? [00:49:02] And that's it. That's discipline. And I think that's important. Well, Ryan we're about out of time. I really appreciate you coming on the show. This has been I think inspiring conversation. It's got my brain sort of running in a bunch of different directions thinking about, you know, how can I be better and how can I evolve as a human? [00:49:19] What would you like to say in your final words to those listening to this podcast and maybe how they can get in touch with you or your various businesses.  [00:49:30] Ryan: Yeah, I think you know, as far as getting in touch with me, that's easy. You can just go on social media, search Ryan Pineda, wherever. [00:49:37] So that part's easy. I would say the final thing to leave him with, I mean, we've talked a lot about faith and eternity and everything else. And that's usually the final thing I leave on podcasts because I don't depending on where the conversation goes, right? You know, I'll always draw it back to faith. [00:49:51] So I would just say that, man, I mean, like, look there's a common theme for what we're saying. It's like, life's going to be hard one way or the other, you know, you're going to go through tough times. You are going to have uncertainty. You're not going to know if things are going to work out or not the way that you're hoping. [00:50:08] You know, One thing I know for sure is, and this will apply for both ways, not just faith, but also business and faith. When you start becoming process driven more than results driven, your life changes. Because you're never going to be up and down with the result. You're always just trusting the process. [00:50:28] And so, you know, baseball, we had to learn this every day. It's like, I don't know who's pitching tomorrow. I don't know. Like, I just got to trust my routine, my process, and then I'm doing the right things every day. And if I follow that, I know I'm going to get the best result that I possibly can get. In the long run, and I think you were referencing that when it comes to, Hey, you know what? [00:50:46] Even if you don't believe these biblical principles are going to change your life, that's a form of trusting the process. And if you do, you know, you'll end up getting better results just overall, whether you believe or not, and you just follow that process. And then, you know, I would say even to take it a step further, it's like, man, if you trust that he is the creator of this world and he has promised to take care of you then that's a process to choose to have faith and trust that's the case, to trust that his plan is better than your plan. And it's not easy because we all want control. We all want certainty. That's, you know, that's our human nature. [00:51:21] That's why we're trying to get financially free. That's why we're trying to you know, get enough cash flow and I teach on these things like I get it. But there's a better plan. And you know, if you just trust the process every day of following him, he will make your path straight, you know? And so I've seen that in my own life. [00:51:42] I'll tell you this. I never thought I'd be a podcaster, an events guy, a social media guy. I never thought that was going to be the thing, but. I felt like God was calling me down that path, and here we are. And I don't know where he's going to call me the next 10 years. I don't have a 10 year plan. I don't have any of that, and I don't care. [00:51:59] All I'm trying to do is whatever God's calling me to do at this moment, and I want to be flexible to his will, and be very careful not to just insert my will. And that's it, right?  [00:52:10] Jason: Yeah, appreciate it. You know, appreciate you coming on the show. I think, I agree. I think you know, even if you, For some reason don't want to be christian you don't you don't you're opposed for some reason. [00:52:23] Some people are just like opposed to the bible, just look at the bible through the lens of what are the principles that have made this book one of the greatest books of all time? Why has it stood out? Why has it stood the test of time? Why do so many people look to it for wisdom and for insight? There's so much wisdom in there and if you can at least just be willing to extract wisdom wherever you can find it, then you're not an idiot And so at least start there, everybody listening, just look for wisdom, be a seeker of wisdom and look for the things that are better and higher. [00:52:53] And that's going to eventually lead you to better and higher things and help you to weather the storm. And you can tell Ryan has, you know, he has this confidence that comes from knowing it's not all reliant on him. He trusts that there's something greater than him that's going to give him a source of power or ideas or decision making or guide his paths and to not have that for those of you listening must be terrifying. It must feel a little bit scary to just not have nothing else above you to reach up to. And so there is a god. There's somebody reach up to, go ahead and test it out. [00:53:29] My way of aligning towards God is to sit, read things that I feel like lead me closer to something better and higher. That could be scripture, whatever, or to meditate on something, but then to think, how can I align my will with that? What is that voice inside? What is that calling telling me to do and take those actions and do it. [00:53:47] If you don't take those actions, listen to it, that voice will get quieter. But if you start to listen to that voice and take those actions, it's going to get more and more clear to the point where you have that confidence to go out and make decisions. So I think that's a good ending note here. [00:54:01] So Ryan this is a very different podcast episode than we've ever done here on the DoorGrow show. So there we go. I like it. The most impactful one though. I appreciate you inspiring us to get into faith and chat about that. All right. And And that'll be it for today's show until next time everybody to our mutual growth If you are struggling within your property management business to figure out how to figure out what you need to do next in your business operationally or how to add doors, reach out to us. We'd love to support you. Check us out at doorgrow. com and that's it. Bye everyone. [00:54:33] 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!  [00:54:59] 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.
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Dec 4, 2024 • 40min

DGS 275: Tough Love: Hiring in your Property Management Business

Many of our property management business owner clients are focused on hiring or restructuring their teams right now. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the most important parts of the hiring process and offer a little bit of “tough love.” You’ll Learn [04:39] 1. Finding the right person for the role [11:04] 2. The importance of training your new hire [24:41] 3. Implementing accountability for your team [30:20] Review: what does the initial training period look like? Tweetables “We need to be clear on what results we're expecting.” “Any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes.” “You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet.” “If you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet.  [00:00:09] 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 are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager. 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. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners, and their businesses. [00:00:53] 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 DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:11] Sarah: All right. [00:01:11] Let's do it. Before we do anything, we have an announcement for those of you that have not yet heard. Our foster dog Hans has been officially adopted. So we didn't do a podcast since he was adopted. So this is our first podcast that we don't have Hans kind of hanging out in the background. And I miss his little face, but he has an amazing family. [00:01:32] Jason: I miss Hans. I don't- [00:01:35] Sarah: love him so much.  [00:01:37] Jason: I don't miss him chewing my stuff in my office, but I do miss his little face as well. All right. Yes. Yeah, so he's adopted All right So the topic today and if you want to check that out, you can go to doorgrow.Com right at the top. There's dogs click on that see all our stories. Maynard got adopted. [00:01:55] Sarah: Maynard is adopted. Yeah, he now lives in California.  [00:01:59] Jason: This dog was like on death's door multiple times. Well, many times. Now he's living it up with a wealthy dude.  [00:02:06] Sarah: Who just fell in love with him.  [00:02:07] Jason: Guy in California.  [00:02:08] Sarah: Maynard just captured his heart, loved him so much and wanted to provide him an amazing life, so. [00:02:15] Jason: He's got a new name.  [00:02:16] Sarah: He's Bodhi.  [00:02:17] Jason: Bodhi.  [00:02:18] Sarah: Bodhi. So he's now driving around in a convertible in California. That's one of the pictures they put on there. Oh!  [00:02:25] Jason: All right. So  [00:02:25] Sarah: Maynard has a great life now, too.  [00:02:27] Jason: So you can check that out at doorgrow.com/dogs. All right. So our topic today that we're going to be chatting about you said that it came up a few times in You know this week with some of our clients dealing with some new team members We've got we're doing helping a lot of people with hiring right now. [00:02:45] Sarah: Oh my goodness so many. I built so many DoorGrow Hiring accounts in the last week.  [00:02:49] Jason: Yeah, so we're setting up this hiring mechanism and machine and system so that people can have some consistently good hires. But that brings us to kind of the next challenge. So what have you been hearing?  [00:03:00] Sarah: Okay, so one client asked me, he's about to hire. [00:03:05] He's going through the hiring process. So he doesn't have anybody lined up yet, but he's It's about to start this whole process. And he had asked me, "Hey, what about expectations for when they start when they come on?" And specifically this is a BDM. The second instance of this happening this week is a client who has already hired and his BDM is now about 60 days in. [00:03:31] And he sent me a message yesterday and he said, "Hey, listen, I really need to talk with you before the end of the month. I need to make a decision on my team." So I said, okay, let's. Let's figure out what's going on? And he said "yeah, I'm kind of pissed because my BDM is like 60 days in, and last month he didn't do anything at all. And then this month he started like he hasn't closed anything yet," and by he didn't do anything at all, what he means is he didn't close anything.  [00:04:00] Jason: Okay. Not that he wasn't working. No deals yet.  [00:04:01] Sarah: Yeah. Okay. Not that he wasn't working. He was working. And this month now is his 60 day mark and he hasn't closed anything, but he's, you know, making calls and he's starting to, you know, get some things kind of ready and warmed up in the pipeline. [00:04:16] He, he said, "man, should I just let him go? Like, is he just not the right person? I feel like it's 60 days, like, I should see some results at this point."  [00:04:26] Jason: Okay.  [00:04:26] Sarah: So I'd like to, I'd really like to talk about that. And this is going to be, whatever episode this is "Sarah's Tough Love episode." So here it is. [00:04:35] Jason: Got it. Okay, I mean, let's get the basic stuff out of the way, right? First, we need to know that we have the right person. So, we need to know what those expectations are. So, that's where we define that. Usually, we call them R docs, but in this ultimate job description. So, we need to be clear on what we're looking for. [00:04:51] We need to be clear on what results we're expecting. We need to be clear on, you know, what outcomes we're hoping for and they need to be clear on this, right? Like if we're bringing somebody in, they need that clarity. So if there's anyone listening and there's any ambiguity or fuzziness, then you're going to get fuzzy outcomes. [00:05:09] And those aren't good, right? And so there needs to be at least, and you need to be on the same page. Literally, the way we do that is with a page called an RDoc. And so you make sure you're on the same page. And all those young Gen Z people, notice how I used the word literally, correctly like it's an actual page. [00:05:28] Sarah: I was just thinking that.  [00:05:29] Jason: Stop saying the word literally. It drives me fucking nuts. So, all right.  [00:05:33] Sarah: Literally.  [00:05:34] Jason: I literally, like if, yeah, nobody's confused about it being figurative, then don't, you don't need to say the word.  [00:05:41] Sarah: I literally died yesterday when I read that text.  [00:05:43] Jason: No, you would be dead. [00:05:45] You would actually be dead. All right. So, Now the next piece is we need to make sure we've got a person that fits that job description, right? They actually are the right personality. Well, let's talk about the three fits real quick. They have to match all three or they're not going to be a good BDM. [00:06:01] Sarah: Or it's never going to work out. And it doesn't matter if it's a BDM, an operator, a property manager, an assistant, a maintenance coordinator. It doesn't, name the role, doesn't matter.  [00:06:10] Jason: So, first, they have to be the right personality for the job or they'll never be great at it. They'll never be motivated to do it. [00:06:18] You bring in somebody to be a BDM, for example, and they're not the right personality to go out and want to talk to people and connect with people and network and that's not fun for them, they're always going to resist it. They're going to avoid it. They're going to do a bunch of time wasting stupid activities They're going to train everything else other than what really should be done, which is to go connect with people and have conversations. So they're going to be like "well I'm trying some marketing thing and i'm trying this thing and like and-"  [00:06:47] Sarah: "I sent 5,000 emails I don't know why none of them came back." [00:06:51] Jason: "We did direct mail to, like, 7,000 owners." [00:06:56] Sarah: I've heard that and it's because this is a true example. "I sent 5,000 emails." [00:07:00] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:01] Sarah: So essentially you did nothing. That's great. Right. Good to know.  [00:07:05] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:05] Sarah: Thank you.  [00:07:06] Jason: Lots of emails, right? So. So,  [00:07:09] Sarah: you know how many junk emails we get in a day? What happens when you get junk email? [00:07:13] Do you open it? Do you read it? Do you respond to it? No. That's what you just did to somebody else.  [00:07:19] Jason: Yeah. It lacks depth. All right. So we can get into tactics later, but they need to match the personality for the role. Which means they would love succeeding at this. They would love doing it. They would enjoy it. [00:07:32] They get some fulfillment out of it. And so that's personality fit. They need to be the right the right culture fit, which means they need to actually believe in your business and in you and in the product. They have to believe in this. You cannot sell effectively if you lack belief. And that goes for everybody on the team. [00:07:53] Like, if your operator isn't a believer in you or the business, they're not going to want or care to make sure that it runs well for you. If your executive assistant isn't, you know, a believer in you or shares your values, they're never going to do things in a way that makes you feel safe or that you trust them. [00:08:09] Cultural fit means they do it the way that you would want it done, that they share your values. The big clue we talked about this at our last jumpstart event where we had clients and somebody had a team member. And I just asked, I said, well, do you feel better when they're around? [00:08:25] Do you feel calmer when they're around? And they were like, no, I'm like, yeah, then they got to go.  [00:08:30] Sarah: He said, oh, well, a lot of our communication we do over the phone because that's better.  [00:08:36] Jason: Because there's such a high degree of conflict.  [00:08:37] Sarah: Jason says, better than what? Awful?  [00:08:40] Jason: Yeah, and then he laughed. [00:08:41] Everybody laughed in the group and he was like, well, yeah.  [00:08:44] Sarah: Well, I can't talk to this person in person. I can't be around them. Because when we're around each other, there's too much conflict. It's just too, it gets, yeah, it gets too feisty. Well, that's not good.  [00:08:55] Jason: Yeah, that means that person's not a good fit for that person for that particular client. [00:09:00] Sarah: And let's be clear. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with this particular person. No, it doesn't make them a bad person It doesn't mean, you know, all the they'll never succeed No, it just means that they are better suited in a different environment That's all. It means not everybody like when you're dating, you don't want to date everybody. You want to date people that you like generally and there are certain people that you like and there are certain people that you just don't mesh well. The businesses work the same way.  [00:09:31] Jason: Yeah. They've got to match your values. Because regardless you get somebody that's amazing BDM, for example, or an amazing operator for your business, they don't share your values, you'll never trust them. Like you just can't. And then the third fit is skill fit. So they have to have the skill or the ability or the intellectual capacity to learn and develop this skill quickly. And so if they don't, then you'll invest a bunch of energy into trying to train them and they're just too stupid to get it. [00:10:01] Or they just can't figure it out or maybe you hire somebody and they've got bad habits or they can't adapt. So they need to have that skill fit. They got to be all three or they're not going to be a good fit. So let's assume if we've helped them with DoorGrow Hiring, we focus on these three fits. [00:10:18] We have a whole hiring mechanism. Make sure these generally go well.  [00:10:22] Sarah: Yeah. So I can tell you, I don't think that's any of those are the problem.  [00:10:26] Jason: This person. Yeah. So in these situations, the person is the right fit. Yeah, usually that's the problem is they're not even getting the right person. [00:10:33] Most of y'all doing hiring, you're playing Russian roulette hiring and you don't have good fits.  [00:10:38] Sarah: Or it's, oh, this person had the experience and they came from such and such a Yeah, we hear that all the time.  [00:10:43] Jason: Yeah. Well, they're so experienced, and you feel uncomfortable around them and you don't trust them. [00:10:50] Yeah. So let's assume that, you know, with our clients, we've helped them find people that match the three fits. So now we're past that hurdle, that's very typical for most people, well, now, if it's not them, then who is it?  [00:11:04] Sarah: Okay. So here's where the tough love comes is. This is always my question. [00:11:08] And I'm very, very particular about what happens when you hire someone. You cannot ever hire somebody and just say, "now my problems are solved." They're not solved yet. I know it feels like you've gotten through it and now things are better and you should just be able to rely on that person. You're not there yet. [00:11:33] You will be. But you're just not, you're getting closer. You're just not fully there yet. And this is what happens a lot of times and they go, "Oh, okay, so I know I need to train this person and then I'll probably train them for like a week or two and then they'll just be good." [00:11:48] Absolutely not. So especially with a new person and it doesn't matter. Here's the other thing that I hear all the time, especially when somebody has the experience. Oh, well, you know, they have a sales background. They know how to sell. Great. They don't know how to sell for you. They don't know how to sell what you've got. [00:12:05] They don't know how to sell your values and your mission. They don't know how to sell that yet. They don't quite know. So you can take any salesperson in the universe and plug them into your business. Do they have the skill? Yes. Do they have the experience? Of course, but they still have to be trained. So having the experience does not mean "Oh, I don't have to train them," or, "oh, I don't have to train them as much." [00:12:32] You still have to train them a lot. There is a lot of training. And I hate to break it to you, but your life when you hire gets worse. So your life is bad, you know you need to hire, then you hire somebody, your life is now worse for a short period of time. The reason being is everything that you were doing, you still have to do it, and in addition, you now have to train somebody. So nothing has changed except that you just added another responsibility for yourself for the next 30 to 90 days. And there is no way around that with hiring. So if you hire and you fail the train, it is probably not going to work out. They will not get the results. [00:13:16] They will be frustrated. You will be frustrated. And at some point, you will get back into the cycle of, "Oh, well, now I guess I have to hire again." And then you live in hell forever. And it's not a good place to be.  [00:13:31] Jason: Yeah, so unless you hire somebody that is an amazing 'who,' right? There's a book called Who Not How it's a great book. [00:13:40] Unless you hire an amazing 'who,' like you bring in somebody, they're a sales trainer and an expert closer, and they've had tons of success and they can teach other people's sales, then I think, in any role, you have to assume you need an assumption that they're going to do it wrong. You have to start with that foundational assumption that they're going to do everything wrong. [00:14:01] If I hired an operator cold, they're doing it wrong, that I need them to install my operational system. If they are coming in as a salesperson in the business, I know they've been trained poorly because most sales training out there doesn't work anymore. There's a new model and a new way of selling and all the old stuff. [00:14:20] All the salesy guys that are sales trainers and sales coaches largely out there that push. Doesn't work anymore. It's outdated. And we don't push that stuff at DoorGrow. We've had to shift how we sell and we teach clients differently, even in the last year. And so my assumption is that they're going to do it wrong, but. [00:14:40] What I do assume is if they've done it well before, they have the ability to learn it. They have the ability to be a good operator. They have the ability to be a good BDM. But there needs to, you can't assume because they have done it before, that you're just going to rely on them to do it.  [00:14:56] Sarah: It's not plug and play. [00:14:58] "I hired them now they're just going to go do it and they're going to sell a bunch of stuff for me." No.  [00:15:02] Jason: Right. You're always going to be disappointed with most everybody if you come in with this assumption and they're going to feel unsupported and untrained and frustrated.  [00:15:13] Sarah: And they will inevitably either quit or get fired.  [00:15:16] Jason: Yeah, they'll go find a better situation.  [00:15:18] Sarah: No matter what, it will not work out. So here's a good moment to talk about Vendoroo.  [00:15:25] Jason: We'll talk in just a minute. We're going to talk about the onboarding and then some of the next steps that are really important. But quick word from our sponsor. If you're tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish. Triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations, where every dollar is accounted for, and every task is handled with unmatched reliability Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at vendoroo.ai/doorgrow and experience maintenance done right. Okay. So check them out.  [00:16:10] Sarah: Speaking of doing things right, let's talk about what happens after you hire somebody.  [00:16:15] Jason: So the next step after you hire it, it has to be onboarding. There needs to be a good transition of bringing somebody out from the wild, this untrained wild creature, getting them to be something that is going to work inside of your business and fit you and fit what you want. [00:16:33] It's onboarding.  [00:16:34] Sarah: And if you skip onboarding or if you don't have a very solid onboarding and training process, it's going to cause just so much friction because I'm sure that you can think back to a previous job that you've had back when we all had job jobs, right? Have you ever just been hired and then kind of just, it's almost like train yourself or figure it out or, well, "I'm going to train you a little bit and then the rest is up to you. Well, what do you mean? I trained you for a whole day. Now I'm done." [00:17:06] "Oh, okay. So that's it. That's all the support I'm going to get. All right."  [00:17:10] have you ever been hired and then you don't even truly know what you're supposed to do? I don't know. I'm supposed to sell stuff.  [00:17:16] Jason: So here's the challenge. Here's the challenge with this with entrepreneurs, I've been thrown into job situations where there was terrible onboarding, terrible training, but I'm an entrepreneur personality type. [00:17:27] I then innovated, figured it out. And in some situations where at a job I then quickly was put into leadership and sort of managing others. But I had initiative. I had drive, like I had adaptability and I find entrepreneurs are incredibly adaptable and they make the mistake of assuming that everybody else is like them and they're not, they're like, "well, I would just figure it out and I would just ask enough questions. And if I didn't know something, I would just like, and so you can't assume that everybody is like you, if they were like you, they wouldn't work for you. How many of you would go work for somebody now? Like, you're unemployable. Like, let's be real. You would suck as an employee, probably, right? I'm unemployable at this point. [00:18:10] I'm not going to like sit around and let somebody just tell me what to do all the time and whatever. Right. But they're not the same as you. And if they were, then they might just, you know, start a business and leave your business. Right. So they're willing, if they're willing to work for you, you need to assume that they are not the same as you and that they need to be guided. They need support. Now that doesn't mean they can't learn or they're not adaptable. That's the skill fit Don't make the assumption that they'll just wing it and figure it all out unless they're just incredibly driven and incredibly patient And they're really a strong believer in you. [00:18:45] Some of them may do that, but you don't want to lose a good person simply because they feel like you don't care or you're not invested.  [00:18:52] Sarah: So this is There's so much time that goes into hiring and this is why I say don't waste the time that you've spent trying to find the right person and screening applications and interviewing and you put a whole bunch of time and probably effort into this and now you found the person, don't waste that opportunity. [00:19:18] So you need to onboard them properly. And what does that mean? We need to make sure that they have access to all of the systems that they're going to need. And that they know all of the systems that they're going to need. So, oh, what are the tools that I use? And then, do I know how to access it? And, do I know how to use it? [00:19:36] Right? Don't just assume that they'll figure out, Oh, well, this is how I use this phone system. Train them on it. Just show them that. So, there's got to be training for those sorts of things. If they're in sales, then, well, How do I sell? How do I reach people? What am I doing? Am I just doing the fit call, figuring that out? [00:20:00] Am I doing the full pitch? Am I closing? Am I setting them up for you and then you're going to close? What exactly am I doing? So train them on every single thing that they need to know. And I know this sounds so silly, but most people do not do this. So, what do I say? What do I do? Do I have a script? Do I just make it up? [00:20:22] Where do I find people? Am I in the office? Am I driving around? Am I, like, meeting people at events? What am I supposed to be doing all day? Because I'm brand new and I know nothing. So I'm completely reliant upon you to tell me what to do. So if they don't know, don't assume that they're just going to go and figure it out for you. [00:20:44] You have to show them and they have to shadow you. So for the first 90 days, this is all training. So when you hire any person, now some of them will pick it up a little bit quicker and some of them will take the full 90 days and either way it's all right. But just in your head, tell yourself it's going to take the full 90 days, right? [00:21:07] So in that 90 days. With any position, but especially in sales, don't expect them to come in and then just start selling. Oh, wow, they closed a bunch of deals. That was awesome. That's so cool. So there's kind of a ramp up period in every position, but certainly in sales. So shadowing is very important here. [00:21:31] They need to be all over you. All the time. So you need to meet with them every day.  [00:21:40] Jason: Or whoever is the person they're learning from. Sometimes it's not going to be you, eventually. In the beginning, it's always you, right? Which leads us to, like, availability and access is huge in the beginning. Like, if a team member doesn't have access to you, or you are unavailable because you're so busy. [00:21:58] They're going to feel stuck. They're going to feel unsupported. They're going to feel fearful in what they're doing. And so they need to have availability. This morning, I got a phone call. Like a call came in through Telegram. She called me and she's like, "Hey, I'm supposed to do a triage call right now? I have a scheduled appointment, and I'm trying to load Zoom and it's saying, it's waiting for the host. And I'm supposed to be the host." And I said, Then just call them, like pick up the phone, just call them. It's a quick call anyway, but it probably has to do with maybe you're not logged in or you click the link somewhere else and it doesn't realize you're logged in. [00:22:31] It happens to me sometimes. And she said, okay, yeah, I'll just call them. You know, if she were in that situation, this is her first triage call and she's like totally stuck and I'm like unavailable and she's freaking out, then she's going to feel, you know, people go through all sorts of emotions like anger, shame, guilt, fear, like, you know, stuff like this. And so we don't want to put our team members on this emotional rollercoaster of discomfort when everything's uncertain in the beginning. So that's important. Once we get through and the onboarding period, my general rule for onboarding is 90 days, like you said, then the first the first 30, I'm usually meeting with them maybe for an hour a day and I'm highly available.  [00:23:12] Sarah: Every day. [00:23:13] Jason: Yeah. [00:23:14] Sarah: Every day.  [00:23:15] Jason: That's usually the goal. And then after that, I might the next month, maybe it's a shorter time period every day if I'm over like consistently training them like a BDM especially. But otherwise, it might be that we start backing it off to maybe meeting weekly. And then depending on the role of whether or not I'm their supervisor directly, or if they're kind of owning a piece of the business, I then might back it off in the last month or eventually for the future to meet with them monthly to support them or whatnot. Like you kind of gradually step it down and it'll be obvious because you'll be getting on calls with them and like, Hey, what else should we talk about? What else do you need to know? What other questions you have or hey, I want to make sure you know this and you're going to start to run out of ideas. And they're going to start to not need you as much. And so then it's pretty obvious. Well, okay, then I guess we'll end this early. And that's a clue. Well, maybe we don't need to meet as often now. And they'll let you know. You know, do you think we need to keep meeting all the time like this? Like, well, it is helpful, but I don't know that we need an hour, maybe 30 minutes. Okay, cool. If we could just meet 15 minutes each day so I can get unstuck on a few things. Awesome. Right. So I meet with my assistant every day for a short amount of time. [00:24:26] But they're directly responsible to help and support me on things as an operator, like you run our weekly meeting and our daily huddles. Right? And so there's different things like there's sort of a cadence of structure, even regardless. So. I think after we get through onboarding and you've got good access, good availability, they feel supported and they're succeeding, they need to be getting results. [00:24:50] So I think the next step in my mind is there needs to be accountability. So if you're letting somebody just run and it's 60 days in and they are not succeeding or getting results, like cool, how many calls has the BDM made? "I don't know." Okay. How, like, how often have you met with them? "Well, you know, not often." If there's no part of meeting with them is to create accountability. [00:25:13] Like, Hey, what are you working on today? What do you feel like is next? What are you going to be doing? And to make sure that you're guiding them towards what they should be working on. So accountability means, you know, metrics if they're a bDM.  [00:25:26] Sarah: You need to know the metrics.  [00:25:28] Jason: How many networking events have they gone to in the last week? [00:25:31] How many phone calls and outreach have they made to potential referral partners or real estate agents? How many investors have they reached out or called? Are they on top of all of the follow up tasks and deals that are in the CRM? Do you have a CRM, right? Like there needs to be accountability. So there's a record. [00:25:50] Are they keeping notes? Are they, are the calls recorded? Can you listen to their calls to help them improve? Like if there's no transparency or accountability, there's almost no likelihood that they're going to succeed. Like it's because they're not being watched. So, basically, you're sending the signal, it doesn't matter. [00:26:08] You might get somebody that's an amazing self starter.  [00:26:11] Sarah: Go figure it out. Well, shit, I don't know. I guess I'll just make it up. But then when they make a decision and now their decision is different than your decision, now, you didn't tell them what to do. They just made something up and now you're not happy with the results. [00:26:28] Jason: Yeah, and they're lacking leadership and if they're lacking in your jobs to be the leader and they're lacking leadership, then they have no accountability and they have no, there's no transparency or visibility in what they're doing. You won't know. If what they're doing is working or not working. And so they'll just keep doing what's not working. [00:26:48] Because if they still get paid either way, that's a bad situation for most team members. Most team members will continue to get paid whether or not they're really performing at an exceptional level or a decent level. And with a BDM, their compensation should be directly connected to getting results, so they should really want it. [00:27:06] But if there's no accountability or transparency in the beginning, They're probably going to do a lot of stuff that isn't working and they're going to be frustrated and they  [00:27:15] Sarah: know why it's not working  [00:27:17] Jason: Yeah,  [00:27:18] Sarah: they'll come to you and say hey like I'm doing what you told me to do. You told me to make all these calls I mean all these calls. It's not working.  [00:27:26] Jason: And this is one of the ways in which DoorGrow can assist. [00:27:29] We can assist with this, right? Like they can show up to our Wednesday coaching call if they're a BDM focusing on growth. And the BDM can come to the call and say, Hey, I'm trying to do this and I'm getting this result. It's not the outcome I'm looking for. It's not working. Cool. Maybe you need to change this. [00:27:44] Or how are you saying it? Or what are you doing? Or could you send us a call recording? So all of these things that we teach, we know work. They can work. If it's not working, then it's obvious that it must be what they're doing. They're not doing it correct. They're doing it maybe in the wrong way or maybe they're not saying the right things or maybe their tone is off or maybe They are turning people off and they sound like a telemarketer or they're creating the sales ick or the sales resistance in people by how they're approaching people and these are easy changes These are little things that are very easy to tweak or change. [00:28:22] I mean just listening to one sales call from somebody, I can give them a lot of feedback and it's like they grow so much faster and quicker. And that's one way to add some visibility or accountability into the equation. But as a business owner, you need to know their metrics. They need to have metrics and be accountable for that, right? [00:28:40] They need to know what are the leading actions that I need to be taking that are going to get the business development results? What are the daily activities that I need to be doing in order to succeed? So that's my take  [00:28:53] Sarah: for sure. And I love listening to the call recordings because then sometimes when you're in the moment and this happens to all of us, sometimes when you're in the moment, you have a certain perception of how things went and then when you go back and you listen to it later, you'll catch something that you weren't aware of in that moment. [00:29:14] So maybe it's something that they said, maybe it's something that you said, maybe you. Didn't explain something the way that they understood it, but you'll hear things that you may have missed in the moment and Especially with salespeople, this is a training opportunity. So a lot of times people go "what am I supposed to train them on? Like they know how to use the CRM? they know how to use the phone system. They know what to do. They got to just go do it." Okay? Well Are we honing in skills? Are we improving things? Or are we just saying like, "Go do it! Go make a thousand calls this week!: Okay, well, if I make a thousand shitty calls  [00:29:53] Jason: Yeah, you're just wasting energy and you're wasting your leads or your opportunities. [00:29:58] Sarah: So there's always this fine tuning that we have to do. And very rarely are people able to do it for themselves. Sometimes they can go back and listen to a call recording and then go, Oh, you know what? I'm going to improve that. But a lot of times it's really good to have two people listening to the call recording for that reason. [00:30:20] And then the last thing that I do want to talk about is what does the 30, 60, 90 day period look like? So I always tell people in their first 30 days, this is nothing but training. This is deep training, you really do need to be meeting with them every day, not when it's convenient, not when you have time, not, "oh, well, I skipped that day because this happened." [00:30:42] Every single day, every day, they need to have the correct resources, the correct knowledge, the right support, the questions need to be answered, you need to be available to them. They need to have all of this because they're brand new. So a lot of times what happens is people hire somebody and it's like a little baby bird and then they push the baby bird out of the nest. [00:31:08] The bird can't fly yet because you didn't even teach it what its wings are, right? So we can't do that yet. So in the first 30 days, really expect nothing. Really, they just need to be training. If they close something in their first 30 days, that's awesome. Great! I mean, they should be doing the activities. [00:31:27] Jason: I expect work.  [00:31:28] Sarah: Yes,  [00:31:29] Jason: I expect to actually and work like if it's to make calls, I expect them in like a BDM should be making some outbound outreach and calls right away.  [00:31:39] Sarah: Absolutely.  [00:31:40] Jason: Otherwise, how are you going to know that  [00:31:41] Sarah: if it's going to, yeah,  [00:31:43] Jason: they shouldn't just be like, just learning. So it's like, I want to get them on the phone and get them making calls. [00:31:47] Sarah: No, but in sales, let's be really clear here. Training. This is hands on training. This is like trying to say, "Hey, I need to go learn how to drive a car. But I'm never actually going to get in the car. I'm going to meet with you on Zoom or I'm going to sit with you and you're going to tell me about how to drive a car." [00:32:03] No, honey, you gotta go get in the car. So, yes, you have to actually be doing it, doing the activities.  [00:32:09] That is training.  [00:32:10] Jason: There's no amount of manuals or videos you could read or watch that would teach you how to drive a car. You have to drive the car.  [00:32:17] Sarah: Yes. So, if they close something in their first 30 days, that's awesome, that's gravy, that's a bonus. [00:32:23] But sometimes people go, "oh man, it's been 30 days and I haven't closed anything. Like, man, they must suck." They're new. They're learning so much and when you implement a new thing, you're probably not going to be very good at it. Especially a new strategy or a new way of doing sales because the way that we teach our clients to sell is different. [00:32:43] It's different. We're not hardcore closing everybody. We're not doing that. So it's, everything is different. They don't have their bearings yet. They don't even have their footing and their foundations, right? So 30 days, if they close something, that's great. But I still, I want them to be training and I want them to be doing some sort of, you know, whatever it's going to be. [00:33:04] If you have them doing events or presentations or calls or a mixture of all of them, great.  [00:33:10] Jason: There should be progress. You'll see progress. And if that's the thing you don't want to tolerate somebody being in the business for 60 days, 90 days, and you're not seeing progress or action, and you're trying to push them. [00:33:23] If you're having to push somebody to do something. Probably they're not the right personality fit. If you feel unsafe with them doing things, and it makes you uncomfortable, how they're doing things, probably not a culture fit. They're not doing it according to your values. [00:33:36] The "how" they go about doing it is different than you. If they're just not doing the right things, then that's a training issue. Or they're just not intelligent enough to learn the skill. So that's a skill fit. Okay,  [00:33:48] Sarah: so then 60 days I do want to see some progress. They might close something. [00:33:55] They still might not it depends. I can't say yes or no Oh, they should definitely close. I can't you can't say that because everybody has their own time frame, right? And investors sometimes they work on their own time frames. You can't control that but I do want to see I want to feel like things are happening, and I want to feel like, Hey, we've got some stuff in the pipeline, we've got some stuff that I feel like might close. [00:34:20] If you say, Hey, what do you have that's about to close? Do you feel like anybody's close? And they go not really. Oh... [00:34:27] Jason: are they getting appointments? Are there relationships being built? Are there deals now kind of get in the pipeline at some of the earlier stages? Like you should start to see the sales pipeline mature and build. [00:34:37] Sarah: So then 90 days they've been doing that. Now they understand everything. They know what to do. They know how to do it. They've gotten their feet wet. They've now tested things and then also made some improvements. They're like, Oh, well, when I say it like this, it doesn't work. It doesn't resonate. [00:34:53] But if I say it like this, it's better. Oh I have to switch this and this, right? Now you're making those little tweaks, those little improvements. So 90 days, they should be able to close something at this point. And same thing with the pipeline. I need to see the pipeline moving forward. I need to see more being added in the pipeline. [00:35:11] I need to see them further along in different stages in the pipeline. Things need to start kind of really moving forward at this point. And then after the 90 days, Now, you get to push the bird out of the nest, right? Now, you're a baby bird, go push him. You should now have everything that you need to be able to soar, as long as we did our job. [00:35:34] But a lot of times, I get it, it's hard, because you're running a business, and you're an entrepreneur, and you're busy, and it's crazy. And now you want me to train somebody? Yep. Yeah. Because once they are able to do it for you, now you can relax into it. But if we skip the training, what's going to happen is you're going to go, man, they're just not getting me the results. [00:35:55] Or they might get frustrated and go, man, my boss sucks. Like they don't train me on. Anything, and it's just not, it's not a good place here. I know, I'm going to leave because I know that if I don't, then I'll eventually get fired. So regardless, they're going to leave. And then you're going to have to go, God, well now I have to go hire somebody. [00:36:11] And then you're going to hire somebody. And then you're going to be in this whole hiring cycle of hell for the rest of eternity. And that's not a fun place to be. It's not. It's really painful.  [00:36:21] Jason: Yeah, a lot of people wait until they're in pain to hire instead of hiring strategically with a plan or, you know, in advance. [00:36:29] And so once you get to the place where you need a new team member, and then you hire, and now you're going to have to, you're kind of shot in the foot, and you're going to have to like go backwards time wise, like then you're in a worse spot, like that's not the ideal place to be hiring. And then later you'll create more freedom you know, eventually, but yeah, you want to make sure that you are kind of aware of your capacity and starting to like get your hiring systems, get your new hires in place in advance before you need it. [00:37:01] And this is why it's super important to make sure you're making the right decisions in the business. So we have frameworks for how to decide what you need most in the business and frameworks for how to decide what the business needs most. So you're making healthy. financial hiring decisions because making wrong decisions that way can really hurt cash flow and can, you know, especially early in the business can really be dangerous. [00:37:22] So, well, is there anything else you'd say to maybe some of our clients or people that they've gotten a new hire. It's probably a good hire and they need to make sure they're doing their onboarding and taking care of this new hire correctly.  [00:37:36] Sarah: Yeah, get it on your calendar. Don't just say you're going to do it. [00:37:40] It has to be scheduled time where it's dedicated. And also, don't half ass it. Don't be like, oh yeah, I'm going to be on the phone with Joe while I'm like over here. They know. That's not dedicated. That does not feel good. We've all been on the receiving end of something like that. So, don't make people guess. [00:37:59] Don't make them figure it out. It's not going to work out well.  [00:38:03] Jason: Alright. That's our episode for today. So I think that this should be pretty helpful for some of our clients that are getting into new hires And hopefully it was helpful for a lot of you listening if you're struggling with hiring or building your team or systems or profit, all this relates to the people system in your business. You need people, planning, and process and that's our super system. If you're needing some help with this, reach out to DoorGrow and we can take you to a whole nother level by getting helping you get these systems installed and you'll have a business that you actually enjoy being in. So until next time to our mutual growth. [00:38:42] Bye everyone. [00:38:43] 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!  [00:39:10] 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.
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Nov 26, 2024 • 20min

DGS 274: List Smarter, Lease Faster with RentFinder.AI

How do you figure out the most accurate market prices for rents on your properties?  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Nathan Jackson from RentFinder.ai to talk about how you can level up your listing game. You’ll Learn [01:24] The creation of RentFinder.ai [05:06] An AI tool for finding rent prices [09:17] Making the switch from one tool to another [13:00] Customizability and integration Tweetables “You come up with something cool and you show it to your friends, then other people are going to want it.” “You can either have it done accurate,  cheap, fast, but you can't have all three.” “I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise.” “Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise. Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge.  [00:00:14] 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. [00:00:32] 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. 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. [00:01:14] Now let's get into the show. So today I'm hanging out with Nathan Jackson. Welcome Nathan.  [00:01:22] Nathan: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.  [00:01:24] Jason: So Nathan, is with RentFinder.ai and so Nathan, before we get into talking about RentFinder, which I think is a super cool tool. I've gotten to take a look at it, play with it a bit. [00:01:36] I want to get into the audience hearing a little bit about your background. How did you get into playing around with property management related stuff. What's your history here.  [00:01:47] Nathan: Yeah. so my background is really you know, kind of growing up as a kid, technology was kind of my life, the most important thing to me. [00:01:52] But as I got towards that age for college, I was more interested in the finance side of things. So I went to school to get a degree in finance and investments. I lived in Manhattan for a little while, and then I also ended up starting my workout for a property management firm doing data analytics. [00:02:07] That was kind of the first thing I started doing. And when I got in the door, it was one of those things where I just slowly started gravitating more towards the data analytics and technology at the same time. And as the company I was with called ONEprop got acquired ultimately by a company that rolled up into HRG, I kept being more on that analyst side role, but then also doing more with automation technology. [00:02:28] And that entire side of the business you know, obviously the space, even five, six years ago was very immature from a tech side. And so I saw all sorts of opportunities to kind of get into that space. And then after being with the company that was acquired by HRG I came over to a company called Specialized Property Management and that's where I've been for about five years. [00:02:47] And then I've been leading all of our technology efforts here at Specialized Property Management. So even with the background in finance, I kind of gravitated back towards my roots, which is tech and all that space. So that's what I've been doing here. We've been building software internally, building sort of, integration type stuff and all sorts of cool tools here at Specialized. [00:03:04] And then RentFinder was born out of Specialized. So it's kind of where we are today.  [00:03:08] Jason: Got it. And so I know Chuck Thompson and he's, is he CEO of Specialized or? Yes. Yeah. He's CEO. Yeah. So He used to be part of the RPM franchise and he was a client of mine and helped him with websites and, you know, some other things early on. [00:03:28] And he's got some other like former RPM people that are part of his his organization as well. And that are connected to this like Rod Schifferdecker past client as well. So, I mean, it's really cool to see, like, I've got clients creating stuff now that can benefit my clients. Like, that's really awesome.  [00:03:45] Nathan: It's great, great circle of life there. Yeah.  [00:03:47] Jason: Yeah, it's really cool. So, RentFinder.ai was developed to solve what problem? What was the problem that Specialized was having with all the other rental tools? Because there's a bunch of them out there.  [00:03:59] Nathan: Yeah, so fundamentally that's a great question. [00:04:01] We built this solely as an internal tool to begin with. We had no intention of launching this as a product whatsoever. We were just going to all the different sort of rental evaluation tools that were out there, whether it was a Zillow, whether it was a Rentometer, whether it was a RentRange, a RentFax, there was just fundamental problems with every one of them. [00:04:18] And with a lot of my work that I've been working on with Specialized, we got really heavy into the, you know, AI statistical modeling and deeper science behind how to do some stuff with data. And I said, Hey, I think I can build a better tool, build a better mousetrap to do this. And it was one of those things where just kind of organically, we started building out internal models to price out for our own agents. [00:04:37] We started sharing it with some key clients and one day we had a key client say, Hey, you know what? I would love to share this with my investment partner. Can we go ahead and get an account for them set up? And all of a sudden we went from checking five, 10 a day to, you know, within a few months of just building internally, running hundreds and hundreds. [00:04:53] And it's just sort of been off to the race ever since then scaling the same space. So.  [00:04:57] Jason: I mean, you come up with something cool and you show it to your friends, then other people are going to want it. Yeah, that's true. And so you guys have built the better mousetrap. You guys have built this cool tool. [00:05:06] So tell everybody, like, what is RentFinder.ai. Let's start there.  [00:05:10] Nathan: So fundamentally, if you know those tools like RentRange or rentometer we're fundamentally providing a very similar service. The key differentiators of what we do specifically versus them is that we are taking in just say a monstrous amount of data, the price out of home. [00:05:23] You know, we're not looking at just like the recent comp, plus the beds, bathroom square footage. We're looking at hundreds of data points per property, all the little things that you don't necessarily think about on any sort of listing that you see, we're looking at photos of the property. We're doing an analysis of what exactly the inside of the home looks like if we have them as well as a virtual tour scan. [00:05:41] We're basically trying to look at the nitty gritty about what really makes a home rentable. And when you find what makes a home rentable. You can really hone in on that price because it's pretty easy to look at two homes on paper, a 3, 000 square foot, three, two next to a 3, 000 square foot, three, two and say, Oh, they're the same. [00:05:56] But we all know that's not the case when you walk in the door, right? One home is a lot prettier and a lot better than the other. And fundamentally that was the aspect that's been missing. So we've added that into our analysis. And we've been able to really hone in on very, you know, precision rents by going that route and just going way beyond the limited amounts of data the other tools use. [00:06:14] Jason: So you said there's like hundreds of different data points. Can you give us an example of what maybe some of the other tools might not be looking at?  [00:06:22] Nathan: Sure, like, we'll be looking at like, how recently were the new wood floors installed in the kitchen, right? What color are the wood floors? How are the wood floor colors in this area of the neighborhood renting compared to this over here? [00:06:32] Because we're looking at all the other homes, like little tiny details like that. We're looking at, you know, do you have a pool? If you have a condo, are you facing the north or the south side of the building? Just all the How are you getting all  [00:06:41] Jason: this data though? Where does all this data come from? [00:06:44] Nathan: So generally, I joke with my team that we're kind of like a data vacuum. We get data from anywhere and everywhere that we can. We buy data from sources. We find data online in publicly available places. And if we can't find it or buy it, we generate it. We do things where we're taking data sources like photos, for example. [00:06:59] Photos are a very rich source of information. They're just not really normally easily extractable, right? But if you look at photos and analyze them in a smart way, you can get data out of those photos to be able to do an analysis from there. That's kind of what we're doing.  [00:07:12] Jason: And you're leveraging the AI to do this? [00:07:14] Like AI is looking at photos and going, "Oh, they have hardwood floors."  [00:07:18] Nathan: Yes. Yeah. We have some trained AI models that we've done. You can do visual analysis on the photos and it'll basically take a look at a photo and say, you know, here's the types of floors. Here's what's going on in the kitchen. Here's what we think it was most recently updated. [00:07:30] How up to spec is it? How is it spec wise compared to the rest of the neighborhood? Things like that.  [00:07:34] Jason: Okay, that's pretty cool. So I know when I was using the tool, I tried it on my property. And so I was curious and then what's cool about your tool is you can chat with the tool, so then I can ask it, like I'm talking to the AI, I can ask it to make some changes. [00:07:52] Like I told it, I said, "well, some of these in the comps that you've got listed below are don't have a golf course view of the backyard like my property." So I was like, "can you only show ones that have a golf course view," and then it adjusted it, right? And so yeah, so if somebody's like my property special because of whatever or this property special they can ask the ai to just show the properties that like where that criteria fits And then it was like, yeah, no problem. [00:08:19] I'll do this and then it changed it. [00:08:20] Nathan: Yeah, I know that's one of the features that we've been baiting right now that we've had a lot of great feedback from our customers is that ability to kind of give the really holistic analysis that we provide to the client, but then give them the interactive ability, whether they want to be changing something on the analysis or asking the question about it, you know, being able to take that data. [00:08:36] It just makes it much more personal, more real experience to understand how we got to that number. It's not just a black box that you can only see. Here's the number, take it or leave it. You can give your input. You can say, hey, a lot of customers like to say we're going to add in a new bedroom to this home, or we're going to convert the garage, or we're going to change the kitchen over to fully update it. [00:08:53] How much do you think that'll impact the rents based on everything else in the area? So you can use it as kind of an analysis and evaluation tool to understand, you know, what really is worth doing or not. So we've had a lot of customers that have really enjoyed doing that. Got it.  [00:09:05] Jason: So they can sit there and play around with it and try and figure out, oh, how do we get the most rent? [00:09:10] Would it make sense to convert the office into a room or like, yeah. Okay. Got it. That's very cool. So, everybody listening they might already be comfortable cause they've been using some sort of tool like the several that you mentioned they're already using, they're like, it's all, it's already doing an okay job what would you say to them? [00:09:30] I think the things they would be like concerned about would be price, one of the things that I notice is your tool seems to be a lot more affordable to do a lot more reports than the others, probably because the leverage of AI. [00:09:42] Nathan: So when we launched the tool, my idea behind it was I wanted to be the best, I wanted to be the most accurate, I wanted to be the cheapest, and I wanted to be the most user friendly. I said, I want to give no one any reason to stick around to the older tools to make it to where it's very easy to switch. [00:09:55] So from a price perspective, you know, even if you're getting a really sweetheart deal with some of the biggest competitors on the market, we're almost always going to be way cheaper, right? We can get down to, you know, about a dollar per report, depending on the volume that you're doing. And we have packages that kind of range anywhere the highest price you can possibly pay for a report is 3. 50 per report. And that is still way below, you know, like the rent range, for example but they market as well for their advertised price. Okay. And then also the biggest thing that matters most is accuracy. That is why you come to us first and foremost, is that when you look at a large section of a portfolio, when you look at what this home actually rented for, you look at a rent range report, you look at a RentFinder report, you look at a rent fax report and a rentometer. [00:10:31] We're going to be the closest every single time. We have a lot of data sets to validate this. We work with very large firms that have done large analyses on thousands of properties to say, Hey, you know, definitively RentFinder is the best rental tool for pricing on the market. And so if you want accuracy, that's why people come to us. [00:10:47] Jason: You know, they usually say it's kind of a joke. You can either have it done accurate, cheap, fast, but you can't have all three or, you know, stuff like this. And you're like, yeah, but we figured it out.  [00:11:00] Nathan: You know what? It's funny you mentioned that. I've said that a few times myself. That's, that was one of our goals. [00:11:03] I wanted to make it that easy and that quick and it makes it a no brainer, right? When it does meet all those goals, it makes it easy to switch. So you're exactly right.  [00:11:10] Jason: And you know, it's really AI that's kind of allowed all that to happen. Right? Like AI, we're in the middle of this AI revolution right now. [00:11:17] And I think early adopters to it are going to reap a lot of rewards and a lot of benefits financially and otherwise. Once the entire world catches up, you know, and adopts these things, then it can be a bit more competitive, a bit more of a challenge. But property managers right now that adopt some of these AI tools, like we've had some really cool new tools that are coming to the market like, Vendoroo. [00:11:40] Which is one of our podcast sponsors. They're doing the maintenance coordination, AI maintenance coordinator, which is just super cool. We've got tools like RentFinder.ai. There's all these different AI tools that are coming out right now. There's Super hiresuper. com I think is the website that does like an AI inbox for property managers. [00:11:59] Like there's all these tools right now that where there's this innovation that's being able to happen that just. Wasn't possible earlier, and it really cuts the cost down for property managers. And so if you're able to decrease costs and increase output and do things faster and better, then that gives property managers more margin. [00:12:20] Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. Right. I definitely agree with you. I think the landscape of the AI tools, especially is fascinating. You're able to see a lot of new things come to market that really were not possible before, right? Like you said earlier, you know, we're gonna find, we're gonna find there's only possible because of the AI set of things, right? [00:12:34] You know, what we would do today. Would not have been possible whatsoever, you know, 10 years ago, by any means. And so I really do think it's interesting when you can get these tools off the ground and into people's hands sooner, it allows PMs to be able to move a lot more quickly. And as I mentioned before, you know, we started, I still am a PM myself, right? [00:12:50] So I understand the industry very well. And I always, I'm looking for new tools to be able to bring into that side of the business as well. And it's a very interesting landscape right. [00:12:58] Jason: Now. What else should people know about RentFinder.ai?  [00:13:04] Nathan: So the big thing is that what we do fundamentally is provide that price but we provide you that price in however many ways you need it, right? [00:13:10] We can connect to you through Zapier. We've got a fully built out rest API for companies that are needing large amounts of reports and have their own technical integrations. We've got systems built out to allow you to do bulk uploads of reports and things from like default Appfolio and property reports. [00:13:24] We made it very simple. So whatever your workflow, you can fall into what we do for you. You know, we have full white labeling as well. We love people to put their brand and logo and colors on that report. And then also share that really nice interactive report with their end user, whoever that client may be, just to make it to where it's very easy to switch. [00:13:39] And there is no barrier from going from like a rent range or rentometer and making it to where you can immediately start day one using our tool and integrating it into your current workflow. And a lot of people also love the. Biz dev integration. We've got like the, you know, get my free rental analysis widget that you plug into your website and you can take those leads and pump them right into lead simple right into HubSpot and have them just go directly to your email. [00:14:01] And then your client can get that nice report while you also get that this dev side of the things as well. So all of our clients that have integrated that have had very great success and it's something that people really like.  [00:14:11] Jason: Yeah, I like the rent analysis website, which that's cool. So, you mentioned api for those that are not as nerdy as maybe you and they can't figure out what to do with an API, but they like things connecting. [00:14:26] Do you guys have in the works, is that Zapier connection or make or anything like this?  [00:14:31] Nathan: Yep. We do have a Zapier connections invite only right now, but if anyone is interested if you sign ,up we can invite you to be able to start using it. Make you something as well that we're also in the works with. [00:14:40] I've been working with them pretty closely to get that online. And then if you don't have any one of those that you want to go down, Our API is very simple. We try to make it to where it's very plug and play to where you can just start up with, you get your API key and you can just submit just the single line address and we'll do everything in the background. [00:14:56] You don't need to give us 12 other data points to determine what property your property is. You can just very quickly, one button, one address, and then it'll work via the API. So very quick and easy.  [00:15:06] Jason: That, yeah, that is really cool. This is largely for long term. Could this also apply to short term? [00:15:12] Nathan: Right now, we don't do short term. We focus solely on long term SFR as well as basically we don't price apartment homes, right? We don't price large. 400 unit apartments. We'll price condos, townhomes, mobile homes, basically needs to be SFR of some sort. And you're like, even like a 10 or 20 spot apartment complex will price, but there be honest with you that there are better tools in the market for the large apartment pricing, that's just not what we do. [00:15:34] So yeah, we're SFR focused. Got it. All right, that's largely our target audience that of this podcast.  [00:15:42] Jason: So very cool. Well, I thought the tool was really cool. I love that. It's cheap and that it shows you all the properties that are connected to that particular report. I mean, it makes it really easy to show to your potential client or your existing client. [00:15:59] Hey, this is what your property probably could easily or should rent for and with some serious accuracy and at a level that the other tools just wouldn't be able to do. Yeah, so very cool. How can people, Nathan, get in touch with or find RentFinder and what's the best way?  [00:16:19] Nathan: Yeah, sure. [00:16:20] So if you go on Google and search RentFinder.ai, you can type that in and you'll see, we'll be the first result on Google, or you can visit us at home. RentFinder.ai directly and just click the login or sign up button. And if you click that, you'll get free reports just to start out and play with the tool. [00:16:34] You know, I like to put my money where my mouth is. You don't have to give us a credit card or anything just to start trying it. You can go in right now. Start running reports for free to see how you like us compared to what you're doing today. And so you can do that and just see how you like it. And then from when you're in there, you can hit the contact us button and reach out to me, or you can email me directly by you'll see my contact information on our page as well. [00:16:53] Reach out there. But most of it's all very self service. You should be able to just get using it today right away. And we've worked out a deal with you and your team for those who want a discount, if you use the code DOORGROW15, DoorGrow one five, you can get 15 percent discount off the publish rates. [00:17:09] Jason: So, yeah. So check that out. Really excited about this. So Nathan, appreciate you coming and hanging out here on the DoorGrow show. And I hope you guys have a lot of success with this.  [00:17:21] Nathan: I really appreciate it. No, thanks for having me. It's been a great time talking to you. All right. Awesome. We'll let you go. [00:17:26] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, you're struggling, you're finding things difficult or maybe you're just struggling with the operational side. You're like, I can add doors, but adding more doors is not making my life better anymore right now. It's making my life more stressed. [00:17:42] Then you need a really good operating system in your business and that's something DoorGrow can help you with as well to make your business what I call infinitely scalable. You just need to get that Super S ystem of systems in place. And so reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to help your bdms scale and grow your business. We would love to help you as a business owner function like a bdm and scale and grow your business. And we would love to help you be able to you Have the ops and the backend and the support that you need in order to comfortably scale your business without it making your life worse. [00:18:13] So reach out to us, check us out at doorgrow.Com and you can learn more about us there, or make sure if you're a fan of the podcast, you're enjoying this, join our free community for the podcast, which is our Facebook group, the DoorGrow club. It is the best property management Facebook group, hands down. [00:18:32] We reject 60 to 70 percent of the people that apply to join this group. We only let in property management business owners. Check out this group. It's an awesome group. Great resource. If you are wanting to be around others that are growth minded, that are crushing it and be more connected to DoorGrow, go to DoorGrow club. com and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:18:55] 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!  [00:19:22] 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. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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Nov 21, 2024 • 21min

DGS 273: How are Your Capital Raising Efforts Going in Today’s Market?

Those who listen to this show likely either manage or invest in rental properties. There are several different types of real estate to choose from, but have you ever considered self-storage units? In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with the “OG” of self-storage real estate investing, Scott Meyers to talk about an opportunity to invest in real estate without the common challenges of residential properties. You’ll Learn [01:22] Switching from residential investment properties to storage units [08:35] Investing in self-storage without the management [12:15] Pros and cons of self-storage [14:51] Self-storage education Tweetables “When you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” “Be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe.” “Once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again.” “The more valuable you are to your property management business the less valuable your property management business is to everybody else.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Scott: Self-storage really found me instead of me finding self-storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor.  [00:00:11] 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. [00:00:28] 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. 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. [00:01:09] Now let's get into the show. All right. So. I'm hanging out here with Scott Meyers. Welcome Scott.  [00:01:18] Scott: Thanks. And so good to see you again. How are you?  [00:01:20] Jason: Good. Good. It's good to have you. So, why don't we get into your background, how you kind of into this, but Scott, you're a self storage investment expert. Is that fair to say? [00:01:33] Scott: That's fair to say. They call me the OG in self storage now. And I guess I can step into that role.  [00:01:38] Jason: All right. The OG, the original gangsta. All right. So tell us a little bit how you got into this.  [00:01:44] Scott: So like many people got into real estate by buying one single family rental house. Of course, this is a back a little ways now back in 1993, I bought a single family house. with an assumable VA mortgage on it. So I took out a home equity loan from my own home and bought this one, no money down, just like Carleton Sheets, the other OG in the real estate space taught me how to do. And so I bought that house, we rehabbed it to refinance it, rented it out. [00:02:11] So the BRRRR method before everybody called it the BRRRR method. And then we went out and bought two more. And then that turned into four, six, eight, and my wife and I got married along the way and brought my wife into this hobby. I was working for a fortune 500 company at the time, and this was really just to supplement retirement until it kind of took on a life of its own. [00:02:29] And that was because in 1999 with the dot com crash, when all of our tenants were then able to buy a house shortly after that, because the presidential administration at the time reinstituted the Community Reinvestment Act and allowed anybody who could basically fog a mirror to buy a house while all our tenants left and they were doing so. [00:02:49] And so at that time, we were now rehabbing a second time so that we could sell our houses just to be able to keep up with what the market trend was at the time. Well that just about broke us. And so we decided then to get into multifamily and all we needed to do was get some economies of scale, work a little harder, work a little smarter, and we'll make this all happen. [00:03:08] But really what I found is that we just had more doors, we had more tenants, we had more toilets. And to be honest with you, Jason you know, we made a lot of money in residential real estate and growing that side of the business. I mean, we were very big, we got up to just shy of 450 doors. But I realized that I don't think I was cut out for this. [00:03:24] I understood the math, you know, the real estate math and everything that went into it. But I found even though we had property managers and property management companies, I was finding that I was becoming less loving of my fellow man and women, because they were destroying our properties and stealing from us, as well as our contractors and some of our staff. [00:03:40] And so at that point, I began to look around the landscape and, you know, we love real estate because of all the reasons to love real estate. It appreciates, we can depreciate it. We can borrow money to buy it. And then our clients pay down our basis. I mean, there's no other investment like that. So as I looked at the landscape and real estate, that really only left parking lots and self storage if I really didn't like the tenant and toilet business. [00:04:01] So. I looked into storage and loved what we saw in terms of the fundamentals of the historical, the track record of performance of the asset class. And it was right under my nose all the time. It's just this ugly, you know, stepchild of commercial real estate that nobody was really talking about. So I researched it and spent a lot of time understanding the nuances bought my first self storage facility in a partnership. [00:04:22] And then yeah, the light bulb went off and recognize after owning it from the operation standpoint, that It was truly what everybody had said that it was. And what we found is it was all the benefits of real estate without the hassles of tenants and toilets and trash. And so we began simultaneously selling off our houses and our apartments and then going forward into self storage. [00:04:41] And here we are today at about just shy of 5 million square feet of self storage, 28, 000 doors nationwide and growing. And then along the way, also built a sizable education and consulting and mentoring and coaching and event business that only not only teaches people how to get into the business, but also became a funnel, a conduit for a lot of partnerships and a lot of deal flow into our organization. [00:05:01] So that's either the long winded version on a podcast or the short winded version however you want to look at how we got started in the business.  [00:05:07] Jason: Yeah, love it and qualify yourself help everybody understand like where are you at right now with storage and rentals. I mean you got some impressive numbers. [00:05:17] Scott: Yeah, so we're sitting at about we've done over 5 million square feet We're sitting at about three and a half just maybe three and three quarters million square feet right now assets under management So we're right now jason, we're basically a syndication company where we're a financial services company that raises capital and layers that on top of debt and then deploys it in nothing but self storage. [00:05:37] And so many of these projects, these partnerships, these joint ventures in our funds, they have a shelf life and they expire in four to five years because that's when we can capitalize and pull our chips off the table, if you will. And we have a capital event by way of sometimes a refinance, but usually a sale of the property or properties within that fund. [00:05:55] And then we just go out and buy more. So it ebbs and flows when some are going out the door, we have more projects coming in the door as well. I only own two residential properties. One of them is an Airbnb and the other one is the one that I live in. And that's it. Everything else is 100 percent self storage at this point. [00:06:10] Jason: Got it. How many units of storage do you represent then?  [00:06:14] Scott: Yeah, so 28 to 29, 000 overall is what we've invested in and we're sitting at about 20, between 20, 000, 21, 000 right now in asset center management. Awesome.  [00:06:25] Jason: Wow. Okay. So for those listening that are in residential property management, and they're listening to you what would you say to them? [00:06:34] Like, maybe there's some of them that they're like, "man, I don't want to deal with toilets, tenants and trash anymore." And, you know, "I'm starting to love humans less. And I love real estate," but what's kind of your message?  [00:06:49] Scott: You know, in the education side of our business, Jason, of course, when there's a room full of folks interested in self storage, it's really easy to say that you know, I think everybody should have a self storage facility, one in their portfolio, if you're in real estate and, you know, all roads lead to self storage eventually, because I think everybody gets to that place where they do get frustrated and it could be just a day. [00:07:06] It could be, you know, in terms of, "wow, that was a whole lot coming at us." But it doesn't mean that, you know, my recipe is the catch all, you know, when you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I'm not saying that anybody should go out and do what I have done because we made a lot of money you know, on the residential side and commercial multifamily. [00:07:21] I just found for me, that this self storage really found me instead of me finding self storage. Which I just felt it's a simple, predictable business model that you can replicate over and over again without as many moving parts and that human factor. And so for a knucklehead like me, I think it was the perfect fit to be able to go out and just master this practice and that business model and the standard operating procedures. And then just at scale and at speed go out and just make a go of it. And we grew really fast and never really get over our skis. It was just it's a manageable model as well. And so it just fit for myself. But I would say Jason, when business gets so difficult that it's just absolutely no fun anymore, and it's drudgery... I see many people doing it right now, they're just throwing good money after bad. Well, you know, be honest with yourself, and sometimes the best cook in the world can't fix a broken recipe. And if they find that is the recipe is your business model or just your business in general, then get help. [00:08:13] Or, you know, maybe it's time to take a look at some of their asset classes like self storage.  [00:08:17] Jason: So if somebody's an investor and they're wanting to get into this, there's probably a learning curve. There's probably potential pitfalls. So like, yeah, I've tried my Airbnb. That was kind of difficult. I didn't like having to mess with pricing constantly. Like maybe I should try self storage. I'm curious about what you would say to them and then, you know, if somebody's just an investor and they're just looking to just invest, but they're not wanting to really actually manage storage units, then what path would you recommend? [00:08:45] Scott: So sure. Two paths, but also some folks just take a one and end up achieving the same result. So if this is something that you're looking to do actively you know, of course, Jason, I own, you know, I run an education company. And so we're always going to tell you to get education because the cost of not, you know, you pay the dump tax. [00:09:03] And sometimes we've seen people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the dump tax. And that just means that they've gone out and they've watched a couple of videos read a book and all of a sudden they're experts in masters and this is commercial real estate. There's a lot of nuances to it, no matter what the asset class you pick within commercial real estate, but also because it's commercial real estate, there's lots of commas and zeros to profit from it, which is fantastic. [00:09:23] But also if you make a mistake. Those mistakes in underwriting and in other areas also come with commas and zeros behind them as well. And we've seen many a good investor that maybe it was a little prideful or maybe thought that, "Hey, this is an easy asset class compared to what I've been doing. You know, I can do this with one hand tied behind my back." And then they find out that this is an operating business on top of real estate. And there's more nuances to this and they need to dig in and understand what that looks like, because as you know, once you get behind in habitational real estate and rental real estate in general, you know, it takes double the effort to get caught back up again, and if that goes on for a quarter, sometimes people just can't recover. So, you know, we can go into all the reasons why and the mistakes that people have made, but I think just understanding you need to educate yourself. Now, if you're looking to do this passively, in other words, you don't want to take on the credit risk, you don't want to take on, say, the construction risk or a lease up risk of a turnaround or a development project then you can invest passively. [00:10:20] There's a number of REITs out there and we have funds and individual syndications and joint ventures that we do with folks where they come in as a limited partner. They still get equity. They still have ownership. They have a piece of ownership of this property. So they get the depreciation, they get a share of the cash flow, and then the profits upon the sale. [00:10:38] But they don't take on the lease up risk, the development risk, the risk of a project going south no matter what, and or have to go out and create a business, you know, and a team to be able to do so. And along the way, many folks, Jason, they start as passive investors either with one of our projects or others, and by, by just following along, you know, you get that education. [00:10:59] You know, we hold webinars once a quarter and we send out monthly reports and we send out updates as to what's happening with our projects. And so by def facto, our passive investors are getting an education and they earn while they learn the business.  [00:11:11] Jason: Got it. Earn while they learn. Like it. [00:11:15] And that's probably a better path to start out as is to first explore doing it passively to figure out should they jump in and do it more actively.  [00:11:24] Scott: I don't know better. That's not my decision to make. I think some folks, if they have a team in place, you know, they can make that pivot just by learning the business, but it just really depends on where they're at. [00:11:34] I would say that it's It's certainly the safest. And if you have a small amount of capital to set aside to invest in a project, that's the best way about doing it. Because once it comes time to do your own, it's going to take a larger chunk of capital to be able to do so unless you're raising private equity. [00:11:49] So you know I can say that is the best and probably is for most people, but not everybody.  [00:11:54] Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, a lot of people listening already have some sort of business, a lot of them, they won't just throw it in, jump right into storage units, maybe. But I think a lot of them, it would resonate with them. [00:12:06] "Hey, then maybe this is another way to diversify my portfolio, another way to invest. I would love to do, try it out passively, and then maybe even get some education." for those that maybe heard the beginning of this and they're like, "Man, I don't have to deal with toilets, tenants, trash, and it's real estate. And it sounds so easy." What are some of the things that maybe they have a blind spot to? That somebody, you know, they would learn once they start doing this, it's not all, you know, stars and rainbows and roses with this as well.  [00:12:38] Scott: Right. So, you know, outside of the front end and the due diligence that needs to be done just to make sure that you've bought a solid property from an operational standpoint, which is what you're referring to, you know, what we found is that, you know, a million bucks, 5 million bucks goes a lot further, meaning you buy more doors you buy more square footage and it allows us more doors because these are metal boxes on concrete slabs and they're not, you know, multifamily that has drywall and plumbing and, you know, a lot of HVC, it just goes further. [00:13:03] So that means that there are more units to be able to keep track of. You know, the good news is there's software and we do have property management companies and property managers to handle that and a lot of it is automated, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a large amount of units and a large amount of rental tracking that needs to be done to make sure that the dollars come in the door. On the flip side of that, just because I am a bright side up, kind of guy, you know, we have the ability with our leasing structure within self storage that, you know, it's a 30 day lease automatically renewable. And so anytime that we want to raise the rates, we don't have to wait. It's not an anniversary. It's not an annual lease. It is a month. And so that means on month seven, if we see that the market is changing and the demand is higher and there's a whole lot of development going on, then we can raise the rates in seven months. [00:13:46] We can do it in four months. We can do some nuisance increases in between, you know, either way, and we're very flexible when it comes to that. But then also, the good news is even if people do fall behind in the rent, you know, we have the ability to, or we have the power behind us of the lien laws instead of habitational or versus habitational real estate in which you have tenant and toilet courts. And so when I used to walk out of there, I had a pink piece of paper and very little ability to be able to get my money back and to be able to you know, execute on getting that the money back in the door. [00:14:18] But with self storage and the lien laws. We can put a lock on their unit, lock them out and we don't have to go to court within 60 or 90 days depending upon the state, my manager or an auction company will cut the lock off and open it up for bids on the date that we have an auction and I can recoup my back rent to my late fees and, you know, we are the judge and jury so we don't have to wait. [00:14:36] I know you asked for the pitfalls but, you know, the good side is that you know, even though there's a lot of units to manage the, just because of the nature of the industry and the safeguards that we have in place, it's much, much easier and simpler to handle.  [00:14:48] Jason: Awesome. Cool. Well, yeah, this is very informative. [00:14:51] Tell us a little bit about your education company, what you do there and and maybe how people can get in touch if they're curious.  [00:14:58] Scott: So on the education side, you know, when I got into business, you know, there wasn't an education company out there. There wasn't anybody that I could go to to learn the, you know, the A to Z to the nuts and bolts of the business. [00:15:10] I could certainly go to the trade shows and some of the industry events and I can learn about doors and how to build these facilities and some of the, you know, the bolt on property management software. But there wasn't anybody teaching about the investment side of the business. And so, you know, we scraped as much as we could, you know, leaning on and building on the foundation that we had in commercial real estate already by owning multifamily and office buildings and warehouses. [00:15:30] But just digging into this business and talking to as many people as possible. And I hired a consultant to fill in the gaps and spend a day with him touring his facilities and others that he managed for other investors. And, you know, that's how we grew our you know, bank of knowledge and created our standard operating procedures, at least the foundation of it. [00:15:48] But then after we got into the business a little further down the path and buying facilities I used to run the Real Estate Investor Association here in Indianapolis. And we had 600 folks in the association. And about 300 of them wanted to know about self storage after they saw what we were doing. [00:16:04] And so we started holding workshops and then some of the agents that represent the national speakers in the industry, again, there wasn't a person speaking and experts on the industry. And so they contacted me and one of them assisted me in setting up presentations, the ability to sell tools and resources for folks, and then helped us to create a live events, and thus, our education industry was born. It was really just out of a, I guess, like any good entrepreneur, you see an opportunity in the marketplace and a hole to be filled, and we stepped in and filled that. And so it's evolved from just a home study system, which is, you know, that's such a guru, you know, term to use that what we developed, what we put together was a very extensive business plan with all the tools, the resources and links and software, you know, and everything you need to find, manage, purchase a self storage facility. And that is the name of our home study system. And then that evolved into live events, three day events, which is an immersive workshop and then also for folks that are looking for either one on one or a group coaching and mentoring, you know, begin offering that. And to this day, still offer that. And so we have you know, we're the nation's leading education company in the space. [00:17:14] We've taught more people how to get into the business and grow and scale the business and than anybody else out there in any other organization out there and still going strong at this is what we'd love to do is, you know, we love to take people from zero to 55 miles an hour in storage. [00:17:26] And then in our mastermind and in our other areas, we like to take them from 55 to a hundred and build partnerships and do syndications with them as well. Awesome.  [00:17:35] Jason: Yeah. Sounds very much like our goal here at DoorGrow for the residential space. So what's the name of your education company?  [00:17:44] Scott: Self Storage Profits is the name of the education company. [00:17:46] SelfStorageInvesting.com is the website for all the tools and the resources, a ton of free information, pull downs, white papers, a whole lot to not only just dip your toe in the water, but really to help you get started, and then anything else that you would want or need with regards to coaching, mentoring, attending our live events, it's all located on that page as well, including access to our passive investments as well. [00:18:11] Jason: Very cool. Awesome. Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, hanging out with us here on the DoorGrow show. It sounds really interesting. I think there's a lot of our clients that are involved in different types of management. And so this may be another one that everybody should maybe take a look at that could be interesting. I think it's fantastic. Or as to do management, you know directly so very cool. Scott, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate you.  [00:18:39] Scott: My pleasure, Jason. Good to see you again  [00:18:41] Jason: Good to see you. All right So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're dealing with frustrations, you can go start a storage unit business as well. So appreciate Scott for being on the show. If you would like our help in cleaning up your business so that you don't hate it and getting you out of that first level of exit of doing the frontline work and getting out of the next exit and the next exit until maybe eventually you decide to sell that business, we can help you with that because the more valuable you are to your property management business the less valuable your property management business is to everybody else. And what I find with clients is as we ascend them through these levels of exit, It becomes more and more business that they would enjoy keeping perhaps And so let's see if we can ascend you and get you past that first exit at least, maybe the next exit where you're out of managing the people in the team and you've got an operator and things are really smooth and so if you would like our help here DoorGrow reach out to us at DoorGrow.com And until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:19:45] 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!  [00:20:11] 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.
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Nov 15, 2024 • 40min

DGS 272: The 3 Systems You Need in Your Property Management Business

F You’ll Learn [02:01] The Team Sandtrap + Cycle of Suck [12:20] Why You Might Have the Wrong Team [20:54] Building the Business Around You [29:40] How to Escape the Cycle and Level Up Tweetables “If your business isn't healthy and growing, it's dying.” “Here's the reality: it takes 10 people to clone yourself in a business.” “How did you build it the wrong way? You built it around what you thought the business needed, and you didn't build it around what you needed.” “If you have capacity less than a hundred doors, then the odds of you getting another a hundred doors in the near future is slim than none.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Healthy business owners have healthy businesses have healthy team members and feel very well supported. And the only reason you're not there is you just don't know yet what healthy business owners know.  [00:00:11] 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. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. [00:00:38] 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. [00:00:56] 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, Jason Hull, the ceo and founder of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right, so before we get started I wanted to just mention our sponsor Vendoroo. We've seen some great results with these guys. [00:01:22] So if you're tired of constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting vendor selection and coordination. Built by property managers. for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. [00:01:47] Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo.ai/DoorGrow and experience maintenance done right. All right, so let's get into the show. So what has been going on in the DoorGrow universe or in DoorGrow world? So, one, we are raising our rates, our fees, because we are taking better and better care of our clients and getting them better and better results. [00:02:17] And so this is something that we coach clients on all the time. Are you taking your business to another level? Are you confident in raising your fees? Or have you kept them small or competitive, or even worse, low in your market? Are you striving to provide and deliver more value? Are you taking things to that next level in your business? [00:02:40] We meet regularly with business owners in this industry. So in the last week or two, I've met with several businesses that are stuck in what I call the second sand trap. This is where maybe they were a client a long time ago in the past. We helped them figure out how to get growth. They've gotten to maybe the 200, maybe somewhere 200- 300 door range, maybe even up into the 400 doors range. [00:03:05] And they are now experiencing the second sand trap of constraint. And so some experience this even earlier. I have had people come to us, people that have joined our program recently, that are having these second sand trap problems around just over a hundred doors, like 150. And they're already in this painful spot. [00:03:26] And there's a few reasons for this. One, they could be caught in the cycle of suck, which means they've taken on too many shitty clients that are You know, too high of operational costs. And so they have too many difficult properties to be dealing with which makes the tenants more difficult, and so they've kind of created this mess in which their entire portfolio that they're managing and dealing with are a lot more difficult than most of my clients' situations. [00:03:53] And so their operational costs are really high and they're making a lot less money because of that, their profit is down. And then what that means is it's a lot more difficult to deliver customer service and be effective. So I have a partner with me today, which is a dog we're fostering named Hans. [00:04:12] And he is trying to chew a toy right at my feet. So what's up Hans. And if you haven't seen our previous dog episode that we did go to DoorGrow. com Click on "Dogs" up at the top. We've got a little dog emoji on our website. Check that out and learn a little bit about Sarah and my passion in helping dogs. And this is to be fair, mostly Sarah's passion. I like dogs definitely more than cats. I like dogs, but Sarah loves dogs. She really loves dogs. [00:04:40] And so this is more her thing. So check that out. And that lets, you know, a little peek into the our reality here in our home with DoorGrow. So you can also check out our funny videos at the top right there as well. That'll give you a perspective on how goofy we are and we try to incorporate our dogs in these videos. [00:04:58] Hans made it into one of our recent ones that will be released. You'll see it. So this second sand trap, the challenge here at the second sand trap is that these property managers have figured out how to grow. They know they could probably double in size. Most of you that are at the stage, you know, you could probably double in size door wise. [00:05:16] You could easily go get more doors. You could attract more owners if you felt comfortable. So here's a question you need to ask yourself. This is something I love asking people that are at the stage so I can see how bad is it? How bad is the problem? So some of them get at this stage, business owners get really burnt out, like really stressed. [00:05:38] We're talking like I had a lady say to me, "I fucking hate my business. Can I be real with you?" That's what she said. "I fucking hate my business." And she's having a ton of health issues and stress. I don't know if it's all related directly to this, but stress can eat you alive, right? Basically every health situation gets worse if there's high stress. And so she's dealing with a whole mess of stuff, right? And this is a challenge. This is a challenge in business. We deal with a lot of stress as business owners, but property management can be especially stressful. You're dealing with sometimes really upset angry people and a lot of that stress doesn't have to exist If you're not in that cycle of suck the other challenge at this stage besides maybe being caught in the cycle of suck Is not being paid well enough. [00:06:28] And so Not only is your operational costs high because of the cycle of suck, but then also your pricing may not be optimized or very effective. You may not have a premium offering for premium buyers that may exist in your portfolio. And so they just go with your cheaper option, which is the only option that you have. [00:06:45] And then there's also this weird race to the bottom in terms of price where everybody's priced like similarly, like 10 percent in most markets in higher rent markets, maybe like 8%. And then in some markets, it's like really grotesque with flat fee, you know, property management and stuff like this. [00:07:01] And so the challenge then there's kind of this race to the bottom in terms of pricing. And so you may not be getting paid as much as well. And so sometimes if you can just increase the amount of money that you're bringing in and decrease the amount of operational costs in the business, you could easily double your profit margins. [00:07:22] We've had clients go from 25 percent margin, which is good to 50 percent profit margin by getting some pieces dialed in. Now, the three biggest profit levers we find at this stage are people planning and process. Why? Because they're all connected to the biggest expense, which is. People, right? Which is staff and whatnot. [00:07:43] So we need a really good people system, which means a hiring system and a really good existing team so that we can always maintain really good personnel and team members. Then we have a healthy team that buy into our culture, that have the skill and intelligence to do the job and have the personality type that is a fit for the role. [00:08:01] I call those the three fits culture, personality, and skill. You need all three in order to be a good team member. If you have team members right now that don't match all three, you are spending too much money on this person and you're getting too little output. If you're caught in the cycle of suck, you are spending too much money on all of your people and getting too little output. [00:08:22] If you don't have a good hiring system, you can't replace, confidently, the people on your team to get good people. And so you don't have a system or mechanism to do this. And so most businesses at this stage usually spend five to 10 years playing Russian roulette to get a decent team so they can finally break 600 doors. [00:08:42] A lot of them by that time, even before they hit that, just give up, they sell the business, they exit. And so the time can be collapsed on this significantly. So here's the question that I ask. I asked people that are caught in the second sand trap, "what is your current capacity for adding more doors on that you believe right now? How many more doors do you think you can handle with your existing team before things start to get uncomfortable, maybe fall apart, or maybe break?" A healthy response would be, "we could double in size," which means they are not concerned like, "we could easily add another 200 doors, and it doesn't break. It's not an issue." Okay response would maybe be "I think we could add another hundred." That means they're already experiencing some challenges and constraints. They think they could squeeze to another hundred units or so and there might be an issue. Really bad is if you're like, "we could probably handle 50 more units and then I would have to change something dramatically, get a key team member, change something significant or that would really max out my stress." [00:09:42] So if the capacity is 50 doors right now, if your future capacity that you can envision is 50 doors or less right now, it's even worse, like 25 units or something like that, you are already in a dangerous and uncomfortable spot. You need to get out of that dangerous, uncomfortable spot. If you have capacity less than a hundred doors, then the odds of you getting another a hundred doors in the near future is slim than none. [00:10:09] Like you're just not going to do it. Even if people were throwing business at you, you would start to lose doors because things would start to fall apart. Clients would lose trust and you would lose business. You need to create the capacity, the space to be able to easily handle another couple of hundred doors or double in size, or no confidently we can get higher people very quickly and get people up to speed without making a bunch of mistakes, without thinking that the, that all people are crappy and it's difficult to hire, and there's no good people out there. There aren't good people in my market, or I have to have people that have property management experience. Then you need to have the confidence to be able to get them up to speed quickly, which means you have a really good process system. You have processes, you have a mechanism for getting them up to speed and in place, into position quickly, and that you know you've got the right people. [00:11:03] So that they, and they now have the right processes and tools and resources that they can get training and get up to speed rapidly, which is your process system. And then you need a really good planning system to get the entire team moving in the same direction to rowing together as a business, as a team, to use a rowboat analogy, that they are all moving and headed in the same direction instead of in conflict or at odds or just focus on their tasks. [00:11:34] We need a strategic planning system so that there are goals and planning to move the business forward so that you have a solid annual plan broken down into quarterly plan and quarterly goals and then you have your monthly goals and plan which are broken down into your weekly goals and commitments that each team member are taking on that are to move the business forward strategically so that the business is moving towards strategic growth instead of just transactional leadership where you're giving them a task and waiting for them to come back and say they've done it. So transactional leadership is this leadership style that demotivates your team and gets them to perform worse. Many of you live in a very transactional process system.  [00:12:20] So the other challenge at this stage is what I call the process myth. Everybody that's stuck at this stage believes they have a pretty good team. [00:12:29] Because you have a team, you've built some sort of team, but you built it the wrong way. How did you build it the wrong way? You built it around what you thought the business needed, and you didn't build it around what you needed to get to the next level and having more fulfillment in your day, more freedom, and less stress. [00:12:45] Each team member you've added has built more stress and added more questions to your day and you're involved in every single role. And so you have not built the team based on what you needed. You built the team based on what the business needed, which means the business now is evolving and becoming a monster that is like a high chair tyrant flinging food in your face and it's in control. [00:13:06] Instead of building the team and the business around what you need. So you have more calm, more freedom, more fulfillment, more support. And so we need to shift this. So you built this entire team the wrong way, and you think you have a good team, but if you are showing up, if you have an entire team and you are showing up in this business, not in a role in not doing the things that you love doing, not in a role and a position of fulfillment and enjoyment, in your own business, you are in charge of, you created, and you are miserable in your own business, then by default, you have the wrong team. [00:13:44] Zero question. This is as if you started with the wrong puzzle piece and went and found puzzle pieces to attach around your business to build out your team. You were showing up as the wrong square puzzle piece when you really are probably a beautiful round peg or round piece. And so you've built the wrong puzzle pieces around you, the wrong team. And I guarantee you're getting probably half to maybe a third, the output of a mediocre team like that, then you would, if you had a rockstar team and you may think "my team's pretty good," but if this is all you've experienced so far, you have no idea how amazing a team could be if they were really motivated and really performing well, and they loved doing what they got to do and they believed in you instead of just believed in getting paid as a transaction for work done. Here's the thing, entrepreneurs need to realize this. Entrepreneurs are money motivated naturally. Most of us are motivated and we love money. We don't hate money, right? You probably don't hate money. If you look on a disc assessment, there's usually a section called the values index or something like this, and there's a score called the economic score, this index and the economic index or economic score for most people is low. [00:15:00] It's below average. Which means they're not motivated economically, they're not motivated by money. They don't love money, right? It's not that big of a deal to them, which means once their basic needs are met, throwing money at them does not increase performance It doesn't motivate them giving them bonuses giving them pay just in exchange for doing tasks does not motivate them to perform well or better. Money's not a motivator really for them so If you have a high economic score and you view everyone else through that lens, and the only people that generally have a high economics score are entrepreneurs and salespeople. Well, good salespeople should like money because you want to reward them and incentivize them to want to bring in more money and they get paid if they bring in more money So that your interests are in alignment. So you need salespeople that are in alignment with compensation like commission structures, stuff like this that are motivated to make you more money and if they're not making you more money, then you're not having to spend as much money on them, right? There needs to be proper alignment incentive wise. Everybody else on your team though, are not going to be motivated by bonuses and money. And the mistake entrepreneurs make is they try to reward bonus them, compensate them for money. "Hey, if you get us some more positive reviews, we'll give you this bonus." [00:16:13] "Okay." [00:16:14] Right stuff like this and if you hire people that are- I want you to really listen to this if you hire people that are not money motivated, and their only motivation for working for you really is to get paid by you, then you have hired a dangerous person in your business. Let me make this clear I'm going to say this again, maybe in a little bit different way if you hire people and the exchange you're giving them is, their whole motivation to work for you is largely they just want to get money. That's the only reason they're really working for you. And you might be thinking, "what else would it be?" I'll explain that in a second. But their only motivation is to work for you to get money from you because they want money, but they're not money motivated necessarily, then they become dangerous to your business. [00:17:05] These are the people that steal. They steal time. Maybe they have ethics and they have some values and they're not going to actually steal money. But I've seen property managers repeatedly have their trust accounts depleted by people on their team before coming to us. I've seen people that handle their accounting and finances, steal money from them. [00:17:28] These are people that are not as money motivated. But their only motive is money. And so they are bringing people that maybe don't have the same value system as them, and they're not good fit for their business, et cetera. Okay. [00:17:42] If you bring in people that believe in you, let's talk about the opposite. [00:17:46] If people believe in you. They believe in your culture that you've established for the business. They believe in your company core values. They are inspired and they want to work for a business that has a greater purpose than just extracting money from tenants and owners. They want a mentor, A business owner that they can believe in that they feel like is going to help them grow and become even better person. [00:18:08] They want to be part of a business that is having a positive impact in people's lives and in the community. Then if they're not money motivated, it's okay. If their economic score is low, that means they're recognition motivated. So they also are motivated by being part of a team that has a positive culture of wins and recognition, which is part of the planning system that we would install, which is an accountability and recognition system that increases motivation among the team. [00:18:37] It inspires creativity, inspires innovation, inspires motivation among the team, especially team members that are not financially or economically motivated. Then you will get three times the output from these team members. You get way more output from these team members. They are willing to work for you because they're getting so much value in other ways. [00:19:00] They feel like they have a greater sense of the four reasons, as I've talked about on this podcast before of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. They feel like they get more of these four things because they're working for somebody that has these four things. Then they also get that fifth reason of safety and certainty because they're working for a business that is safe. [00:19:17] It's stable. It isn't crazy. It's a calm workplace because the leadership is calm. The leadership is in control. There is leadership there where they are leading from a space of having fulfillment and having freedom and having contribution and feeling like they're contributing, making a difference in the world and where they are supported. [00:19:39] And if you don't feel those four things in your business, you've built your business incorrectly. You may have taken good care of the tenants. Maybe you've taken good care of the owners, but you gave yourself a shit deal. You weren't taking care of yourself. And the whole reason the business exists for you is to provide you with fulfillment in your day to day. [00:19:59] You enjoy doing what you're doing. You're having more and more freedom and autonomy to make the choices and do the things you want to do in life. And that means you're making more and more money. And if you're making more and more money, you should have more and more freedom and fulfillment. [00:20:13] But most of you, if you're caught in the second sand trap are as a business are making more money than the business has ever made. But a lot of instances you're making less per unit or door than you've ever made, you know, profitability wise, and you don't really have more fulfillment and freedom. You are losing it. [00:20:32] Every door you add in every team member you add steals fulfillment and freedom from you steals a sense that you're making a difference and contributing in the world and makes you feel less supported and makes you feel like you have to support more. And so you're building your team and your business the wrong way. [00:20:49] And so this is the mess that DoorGrow helps businesses climb out of.  [00:20:54] How do we escape this? We need to do things like have you do a time study, have you figure out energetically, which things are bringing you more freedom and fulfillment, which things are your plus signs, which things are your minus signs. Then building out your job description. Like what is your actual job description and what do you want it to be? And then figuring out, all right, what role do we need to hire or bring in or get to build the team around you to make sure you're supported. Usually this means the first person you hire should be an assistant that just helps you. [00:21:24] Not a clone, not somebody that has all the same attributes as you, but somebody that's opposite and complimentary to you. To help you with all those minus signs that fits that personality. A big mistake, a lot of entrepreneurs make in building their team initially is they try to first go follow the clone myth and go hire somebody like them. [00:21:43] Here's the reality: it takes 10 people to clone yourself in a business. Just roughly, it takes about 10 people to match all of the skills and things that you do when you're wearing all the different hats in a business. It takes 10 different personalities. Because you don't enjoy wearing every one of those hats. [00:21:59] You need to find people that enjoy wearing each individual hat as you build that out. So just get that idea in your head. It's going to take about 10 people to clone you. So kill that clone myth and don't go try and find a mini me or somebody like yourself. That's a huge red flag and mistake when you hire somebody that's like you. [00:22:15] These are usually the people that have the same skill set, capacity, intelligence level as you and an entrepreneurial drive as you. That go and steal portfolios, steal clients and go start their own property management business. Because really be honest with yourself as an entrepreneur, you are probably now unemployable. [00:22:35] You probably couldn't just go work for somebody else. You probably wouldn't want to. So you're not going to do that, right? They don't want to work for somebody either if they are entrepreneurial. They eventually start seeing flaws in how you think and how you do things. They're like, "I could do this better. I want to do this differently. I can see all these different things I would be good at I could change," and they go and start their own business and then steal whoever's loyal to them if at all possible, because that's the easiest thing for some of these people to do. Right? "Well, yeah, that guy's, or gal's a bad boss. You should come with me. We're going to do things differently." And they're like, "yeah!" And that's like people that are not a good culture fit. They're not loyal to you. All right, if they're not a good culture fit if they're not a right personality fit, they're not they don't really love the role or position and if they're not the right skill fit or intelligence level, they don't have the capacity to do the job or they don't have the training to do the job Right, so you need all three. [00:23:32] All right so If you want to escape this second sand trap and escape having this business that is frustrating and difficult, just recognize you can do this. Like you can have the business of your dreams and you don't have to change the industry. You don't have to give up on property management in order to do that. [00:23:53] You just need to align the business with what you most enjoy doing in it. So let's say you love doing sales. You could be the bdm in your own business. You could do sales. A lot of business owners do that Let's say you hate sales, but you love the accounting. You would just love to spend more time doing that you could do that It's your business Let's say, you love doing the operational pieces and the tech and geeking out on systems you could just focus on that and you could bring somebody else in to be the bdm and to make everything like grow, right? There's nothing you have to do you could even get to the point where you do nothing in your business if you wanted to, and you wanted to get to that level of exit where you exit or leadership, and you're no longer involved in the business. [00:24:35] That's possible, too. But then, for most entrepreneurs, you would probably be bored, right? This is another factor that I think is important. If you're stuck in this next sand trap, a lot of times the reason people end up really frustrated, really demoralized, really stressed is because they don't understand these different levels of exit that exist. [00:24:56] And so this is a concept that I got from a gentleman named Roland Frasier. He's an interesting dude. He's an attorney and he's a couple of different things if I remember correctly, but what he generally teaches is about buying and selling businesses and stuff like this. And one of the things I picked up from him and from Ryan Deiss, who are both connected to a program that we were in called Scalable, is the more valuable you are to your company, the less valuable your company is. [00:25:27] So if you're ever looking to exit or sell this, that's important to recognize. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is this five levels of exit that I learned from Roland Frasier. So the first exit is exit the line. This is where you go from worker to manager. In property management frontline work is handling tenants doing all the property management stuff. [00:25:48] That's difficult And if you can't exit level exit one. You can't exit one and you think the only way to escape that is to sell the business, then you have a really unhealthy mindset and you're probably super miserable in your own business So you need to be able to exit level one. If any property management business owner that doesn't exit level one, they're still a property manager and they're not the entrepreneur or the business owner. [00:26:11] They're not truly an owner of the business. They're the, they're an employee in it, right? Number two is to exit the staff. This is where you go from manager to CEO. So you're no longer doing like the frontline lowest level work. Then you're exiting the staff, which is maybe the managerial sort of level work. [00:26:28] And now you're a CEO where you have managers. You have people you trust to oversee departments. Like you have a head of maybe maintenance coordination and you have a head of property management, you know, whatever. Right. The next is to exit the org chart. So you go from CEO to maybe being an advisor, being on a board, you're on the board of advisors. [00:26:48] And now you have a business, it, you're an owner, it pays you and you've exited the org chart. The next would be to exit the board. You're no longer like really having to like steer the business, you know, from behind the scenes, you're no longer involved. You trust that there's a whole group of people that make this work and there's a board and you just own it. [00:27:11] You're just taking cash, like you're just getting paid. And then the fifth level of exit is to exit ownership. It's to leave the business. So one of the things that's super important is for you to recognize where is your best level of exit you want to be at right now? If you've been in pain a while, you're probably thinking "exit five. Like I want to sell this thing. I hate it. It's awful." I talk to a lot of people that are like that and I'm like "you're just doing it wrong let's get this fixed" because The myth that people believe is that if you're at this stage of misery in your business It's "I should go start another business, something else I'll do something else." I guarantee if you go start something else, you're going to start with less knowledge, less skill. You're going to have to go through the pain and the lessons and everything. And you're going to get to the same stage in the video game where you have the same boss to beat. He's just got a different outfit on but it's that same giant gorilla that you got to fight or whatever it is in Donkey Kong and you've got to beat this beast of a gorilla and it is building the right hiring system, the people system, the right planning system and the right process system. [00:28:16] And you still have never figured this out. And so you're going to end up miserable building the wrong team around you again. You're going to end up in the same place, just in a different industry. You have to learn how to solve this boss. And that's what we do at DoorGrow. We help you figure out how to beat this level boss. [00:28:35] We've helped lots of people do it. We've replaced entire teams. We've helped install hiring systems. Hiring is a problem at any level of business. I've seen multi million dollar very wealthy business owners In lots of different industries and masterminds have been in hiring is still consistently a problem for these individuals and so we want to make sure that you're able to let go of that. That you're able to not have to deal with that. [00:29:01] So figure out the level of exit that you most desire to be at. If you're in a healthy state, most of you would probably not want to just be out of the business and retired. Most of you would be bored. You enjoy maybe dealing with certain things in the business and you enjoy maybe running the business. [00:29:19] If it were healthy and you had a good team, so we need to restructure the business around you. So it's giving you what you want. Then it can start to give the team members more of what they want. And you'll have better team members that will stick around because they're not working for somebody that is making bad decision making and making bad choices and running the business in a state of chaos and misery. [00:29:39] Right? Healthy business owners have healthy businesses have healthy team members and feel very well supported. And the only reason you're not there is you just don't know yet what healthy business owners know there's just a little gap in knowledge and maybe a gap in some systems that could easily be given to you, learned and installed rather than having to play Russian roulette, take lots of risks, spend tons of time through trial and error and reading books and watching YouTube videos, wasting time and money and focus and energy and all the other currencies. [00:30:15] Our goal at DoorGrow is to help you collapse time and figure out what works. I've made all these mistakes. I've done all the mistakes that we've talked about. I've done it. And I've worked and I've shelled out a lot of money to operational coaches, to relationship coaches, to fitness coaches, to, I mean, you name it, sales coaches. [00:30:35] Like I've spent. I'm still always learning and I've invested so much into figuring these problems out. My goal is to help you not have to waste all that time, energy, money, to collapse time and just help you go faster. I believe everyone listening to this, if you really are an entrepreneur, you can figure all of this out on your own. I like I have no question. You can absolutely do this. I did it, and I was super clueless in a lot of areas I was super clueless in financials, super clueless in sales like I've had to get coaches and mentors in all of this stuff, super clueless in relationships. I'm on my third marriage. Like I've studied relationships in an insane amount, right? [00:31:17] There's nothing like pain to cause you to learn right? My goal is to help you collapse time on all this because all of these things affect your business All these things affect your revenue all these things affect your team All these affect your ability to lead and if I can help you collapse time on this, just with some clarity and some direction and some systems, you will go so much more fast, so much more quickly, add so many more doors, so much more revenue, have so much more space, so much more freedom, so much more happiness and joy in your business. [00:31:51] It doesn't have to be this hard. And our program in my opinion, even though we raised our pricing is so much cheaper, so much less expensive than the cost of tuition of learning that I've paid to get to the point that I'm at in business. And it's so much cheaper than the price of tuition and stress and money you're going to have to pay in challenges and mistakes in order to get to that level and learn. [00:32:17] I'm going to help you collapse time. Our programs, even if they cost thousands of dollars a month on some of our most expensive ones, are easily offset. They're so easily offset. Like sometimes we offset that in our first jumpstart session that we do in person with new clients. We offset that. That expense right away you have enough doors we can easily find another couple grand or a few grand in the business monthly just because of some of the challenges that exist, and then our program is paid for then even if you a lot of you if you add 10 20 or 30 new doors, which is not hard to do. There's no scarcity out there in the marketplace. It is so easy once you get things in alignment to bring a new business and to attract new business without spending any dollars on advertising, we can usually eliminate two to three grand a month, just in expenses in advertising that larger companies are doing that doesn't even need to exist. [00:33:14] Just that alone would like pay for the program and it would be easily offset. And then you'll actually grow faster using the strategies that we give you. So there's so many ways in which making the decision to work with DoorGrow is not an expense. It makes you money. Otherwise clients don't stay with us. We don't have any sort of term limit or contract where you have to stay with us, like even over a month, like you don't have to, you can quit and cancel at any time. [00:33:42] And the reason we don't have agreements and contracts, like a lot of the vendors you work with like in property management space or tools that you use or software or whatever, you've got contracts and agreements with a lot of different people. We don't need it because clients stay with us longer. [00:33:56] They stay with us for years. So we've eliminated that. We knew if we could just keep people for a year in the past, we could get them great results. And so we had agreements in place. We don't even need that anymore. We are super low risk. We have more testimonials and case studies than any other coach or consultant in the industry. [00:34:13] They can't keep up with us. And we have such a great system because we have our planning system and we have a great team and these systems in place that I'm speaking of on this call. Nobody can keep pace with DoorGrow's level of innovation and what we're adding to our program consistently. We just rolled out these new client workbooks. [00:34:31] We just rolled out recently in the recent years, we rolled out a new martial art style belt system for clients to level up going from a white belt with zero doors. Well, one door up to a black belt with a thousand doors quickly. And we've consistently keep rolling out new and better systems and resources. [00:34:50] And so nobody can catch us. That's why I'm confident in saying DoorGrow is the best, most comprehensive coaching and consulting program for property managers in the space. Period. If you are, especially if you're doing third party property management, but even if you're like, you know, an owner operator, if you're at that next level, we've got operational challenges we can help you be able to increase your capacity and get to the next level. So this is all I wanted to say today. This is my, a bit of a rant, but I want you to understand there's hope. You can do this and you could do it on your own. Doing things on your own is the stupidest path to growth. I've been that idiot. [00:35:31] I have done that. It was slow. It was grueling. It was frustrating and it was demoralizing. And when I started getting coaches and mentors, every decent coach I had because I had the belief that I was going to get something out of that program, come hell or high water. I was positive active in my mindset. [00:35:50] I was positive. Like focus on what's the positive outcomes I can get from this and I was taking action and being active I always made my money back on anything that I did or any program that I did I was making even more money than what that program cost me and that's what we want to help you do. We can easily offset the cost of our program. [00:36:08] So I don't believe DoorGrow is an expense. DoorGrow has legit roi. DoorGrow is a value add to your business so. If you're not an idiot and you're intelligent and you want to collapse time and you want to work with DoorGrow reach out to us we can help you do this. It doesn't have to be so painful. It doesn't have to be so hard We have proven this over and over again that our systems, our growth strategies, our ops stuff all works. We've proven this. We use our own op stuff internally. [00:36:41] We have proven that this stuff works and we know it can work for you. We've done this with multiple clients. The only question I have is, are you going to do the work? That's it. I can't do it all for you. I can't do it for you. You've got to do it, but you're already working hard. If you would like to work less hard in the future and more smart, reach out to DoorGrow. [00:37:02] You can reach us at DoorGrow. com or make sure to join our free Facebook group doorgrowclub.com where we will nurture you, give you some value until you're ready to work with us to grow your business and get it to the next level. And if you're comfortable, it's time to get uncomfortable because when you're comfortable, you're at risk. [00:37:22] There's risk. There's challenge. If your business isn't healthy and growing, it's dying. If your business doesn't have the right systems in place and you lose a key team member, it's at risk and it's in danger. You need to get these systems installed, regardless of how healthy your business feels right now. [00:37:38] If you do not have a people system, a planning system and a process system. Then your business is at risk. You are in a dangerous position and you're acting like the ostrich with its head in the sand, hoping that if you ignore the problem. You will always be good. And that's not going to be the case. You will get hit with something. [00:37:56] This happens. I want you to have a safe business. I want you to take care of your team, take care of your family and set some protective barriers in place. You need these systems installed in your business so that you have a healthy business continually. And you become what I call infinitely scalable, which means your capacity is no longer a hundred doors, 200 doors, you know, you could get to a thousand doors and nothing's going to break or fall apart because you'll be able to handle it because you've got the support of an expert team DoorGrow. [00:38:25] And you've got systems like people planning a process, the super system, and you're able to continually scale and get to that next level. We've helped clients do it. We want to help you and it gets easier and better the more doors you have if you do it in the right way, not worse and not harder and not more stressful because you get better team members, you have better systems, you have more money and revenue. You can take more vacations. You'll have more freedom. Let's make that happen for you. Reach out to us. Check us out at DoorGrow. com until next time to our mutual growth Bye everyone, and I'm out. [00:39:00] 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!  [00:39:27] 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. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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Nov 9, 2024 • 46min

DGS 271: Evolution of Short Term Rental Platforms

For those who manage short-term rentals, which tools and pieces of software do you use to keep things organized and running smoothly? In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull brings on Jacob Mueller, founder of Renjoy to talk about using technology to help manage short-term rentals. You’ll Learn [01:36] The creation of Renjoy [16:55] Software and systems for STR [25:38] Building out systems using Airtable [34:20] Strategic planning systems Tweetables “One of the things that's different about short term rentals is that it's constantly changing.” “You have to be on top of your game. You can't just do the same thing you've been doing.” “It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality.” “The only thing I want to share with all the property managers out there is keep on doing the hard work.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality. [00:00:08] Jacob: That's exactly right. To be able to have like specific specialized tools, you then have to know what you're doing to accumulate those tools and have them all talking and speaking to each other, but if you do it right, very powerful.  [00:00:21] 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 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. 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. 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. [00:01:22] Now, let's get into the show. All right. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with Jacob Mueller from Renjoy. Jacob, welcome to the DoorGrow show.  [00:01:33] Jacob: Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Jason.  [00:01:36] Jason: Glad to have you. So Jacob, give us a little bit of your background in maybe entrepreneurism and how you eventually got connected maybe to rentals, property management, and and then we can get into Renjoy. [00:01:51] Jacob: Sure. Well, I won't give you the full backstory. It goes all the way back to a college class I took, but I really started getting into real estate right at the perfect time, beginning of ZIRP, zero interest rate era. And I was actually a commercial broker for a little while. I did about six months of leasing and realized I did not enjoy that. [00:02:09] And so then I transitioned to a residential property management firm based out of Denver that focused on investors. When I joined them, Atlas Real Estate, they're in, I don't know, five or six states now. But when I joined them, they were only in Colorado. They managed maybe 2, 500 doors and I was kind of their regional broker in Colorado Springs, which is where I am. [00:02:30] And they are now, I think north of 10, 000 units under management and have grown tremendously on the management side. But I learned a ton from these folks. I learned how to flip property. I learned to invest in real estate. I learned a lot. And so that's kind of where my real estate investing career started. [00:02:46] That was about four or five years ago. And since then I've acquired single family homes some small multi units. And then I've also diversified in my income streams from just long term tenants to also short term tenants. And that's kind of where the story of Renjoy begins. One of my clients and I worked with, as a broker, happened to have quite a few Airbnbs, short term rentals. [00:03:09] And he was buying properties like every six months. And I was trying to figure out how is this guy, he's my age, how's this, you know, 28 year old buying so many properties so quickly back to back? So I started learning about his process and his insights into the industry. And I thought, man, this guy's got, a peg on this industry. [00:03:25] And of course, during ZIRP, Airbnbs were easy, making money was easy, everybody was doing it. And so I saw this interesting opportunity, decided to partner with this client of mine, and another client actually. And we formed Renjoy together with our own portfolio to start.  [00:03:40] Jason: Nice. Okay. So what is Renjoy?  [00:03:45] Jacob: Yeah, so Renjoy is kind of an unintended consequence. [00:03:48] It was not our plan. It's a short term rental property management business. But when we first started the company, it was just to manage our own portfolios. And people started asking us to manage theirs because short term rentals and long term rentals are complex and difficult and a lot of work. And so owners are constantly looking to handover management for these things. [00:04:09] Jason: Yeah. And that can be a challenge. You know, with those short term rentals. I mean, everything has to move quick, right? You're having to check and adjust prices every day to make sure you're getting the, you know, the best rate possible. You need to communicate like immediately all the time with all the guests and then, you know, then like you're trying to figure out how to make sure you're getting as many people through this property as possible But not getting it damaged and then maintenance stuff hasn't dealt with like super fast Or people get really frustrated and upset and so it's a difficult game and then for you know for people managing short term rentals It's almost like a cleaning talent acquisition business more than it is a property management business And so, how does Renjoy help with this stuff? [00:05:02] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. There's so many ways we can go with this, Jason. A lot of what you were saying, you know, resonates with me. I think there's an increased complexity on the stakeholder relationships that we have as a manager. All property managers have this complexity where they have their tenant who is a stakeholder. [00:05:18] They need a tenant to pay rent. And they also need to have properties with which to have a tenant pay rent on. And so all of the property managers have this balance they have to walk between these stakeholders. They have to serve their tenants and they have to serve their landlords, their property owners. We're the same, but one of the challenges is our tenants leave us reviews. [00:05:38] Every single time they stay and so there's this increased out of, shall we say, accountability almost on how we manage our relationship with this key stakeholder, the guests that are coming to the properties, the tenants, but also the owners too. And then this all leads to the same challenges all property managers have, which is balancing meeting your tenant's requests for service, for maintenance, kind of meeting their expectations while also keeping costs as low as possible and trying to meet the owner's expectations. And you have to constantly balance that when you're thinking about maintenance and your service level agreements and how they can get impacted by the occupant versus the owner. [00:06:16] So that's one thing that's really complex. But there's a lot of things we can get into with short term rentals. We are a full service short term rental management company. This is another pretty big distinction between long term rental property managers and short term is that the suite of services provided varies quite a bit from one short term rental manager to another. [00:06:36] Not to say that long term rental managers are all the same, but generally speaking, there's a pretty similar core group of services that all long term property managers provide for their clients.  [00:06:47] Jason: Got it. So, Is Renjoy a service that those that listening that are running a property management business are you their competitor or is there a way that they can work with you or how does that work? [00:07:00] Jacob: Great question. I do not believe we're competitors. We don't do long term rental property management and we refer out for that. And so we actually kind of have a lot of good relationships with our property managers, mutual referring relationships, actually, in the markets in which we serve.  [00:07:16] Jason: So what you're saying is long term residential property managers, if they're not wanting to deal with the complexity of short term property management, is there a way they can sort of partner with you and maybe get paid? [00:07:28] Jacob: Absolutely. Yeah. We have a referral program. And for everybody who signs a contract with us, it's a thousand bucks. Easy peasy. And if the property manager happens to also be a practicing broker, we actually do work to execute exclusive right to lists in our property management agreements, which is assignable. [00:07:46] And so we just assign, should that client that you've referred to us choose to list their property, we can actually reassign that exclusive right to list back to you as the property manager slash broker.  [00:07:56] Jason: Got it. Okay. So that's an additional benefit. They can keep the real estate deals.  [00:08:00] Jacob: That's right.  [00:08:01] Jason: Got it. [00:08:03] Okay. So for those that are investors listening and, you know, we have a lot of property managers and they should be investors as well if they believe in real estate investing, right. And they're servicing people doing it. So they're probably investors as well. If their primary focus is longterm residential management, but they're wanting to, you know, get a couple of short term properties in their market, but they don't want to do short term management. And they're buying these properties. Why should they choose you to do it instead of having the side job or why do investors tend to choose you instead of doing it themselves? [00:08:38] Jacob: Yeah. That's a good question. In general, actually, Jason, what I would say is if you are depending on your life and what all you have going on in your life, generally speaking, I recommend folks who are buying their first Airbnb to run it themselves because there's just a lot of things you need to learn and understand. [00:08:55] And I actually would say the same thing about long term rentals. I would say you as the homeowner or the property owner should try to manage it yourself. Because then you understand the challenges that, you know, your property manager might face and you know what to look for in a good property manager. [00:09:09] Same thing applies for short term rental management as well. So if your listeners are looking at acquiring their first one, my recommendation is do it first of all. And then second of all, learn the ropes, do it yourself, understand the challenges and the complexities, and then go and shop around for a manager because it's expensive to switch. [00:09:28] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. So my wife and I, we got a short term rental so that we can do client events at it and stuff like this. And, and so we'll bring clients in and we'll use that and then in the like in between we'll just we'll use short term rental it and send it out for other people to use right and so, but even with this one property like to make this to manage it well, we've got a whole suite of tools in order to like make this efficient and, you know, sarah my wife she runs it and she went through a whole university and a course and like all this stuff to like, learn how, learn the game and learn how to do photos different than typical real estate photos and like all this stuff. [00:10:11] And so, you know, to figure everything out to get this working and it's working really well, but. It just seems like a lot. It seems like a lot of stuff. So what competitive advantage do you feel like Renjoy like affords over people that eventually they figure out how to do all this stuff. They've got all these tools, but it still takes a bunch of time and they don't want to do it. [00:10:30] Jacob: Yeah, I know. That's right. It is actually very complex. It's also not static. One of the things that's different about short term rentals is that it's constantly changing. For acquiring the guests, meeting the demand out there, capturing the existing demand for short term lodging, you have to be on top of your game. [00:10:47] You can't just do the same thing you've been doing. In fact, we see quite a few property owners now who are kind of getting off that ZIRP high, you know, 2020, 2021, 2022, when people were spending like crazy, and now their properties aren't cash flowing very well. They're not capturing the demand that's in their market nearly as well because the game has changed. [00:11:04] They're saying, Hey, I'm doing everything the same I did before, but my revenue is going down. I don't understand why.  [00:11:10] The reality is, you have to compete you're competing with actually folks like us who have this professionalization of the industry, which I think is going on right now in short term rentals. [00:11:20] And one of the big challenges with an individual owner operator is not only do you have to message your guests promptly, you have to make sure they check in, check out okay. You have to check for damages after the stay, you have to organize the cleaning, you have to organize the house or the maintenance, you have to do all that. [00:11:35] But on top of that, the big thing that I see people miss is that you have to be on your pricing every day. I mean, you have to not just use algorithmic based pricing with some of these tools like Price Labs or Wheelhouse or something like that. You have to be doing it every day. And when you're looking at your pricing every day, you can't just look at your property. [00:11:53] You have to compare it to all your comp sets and see, hey, who's booked on these, you know, next 10 days and at what rates and where do I sit in that comp set and what do I need to do to my prices today to capture the existing demand before somebody else in my comp set captures that, that guest or that demand. [00:12:11] And it's very hands on. And so one of the big advantages of a property manager like us is we have, you know, two people full time looking at pricing for every property.  [00:12:20] Jason: So, and how many properties do you guys over right now?  [00:12:24] Jacob: We manage about 165.  [00:12:27] Jason: Yeah. And so with 165, you, two people are able to handle all the pricing checks and updates on a daily basis. [00:12:34] Jacob: That's right. Because not every property is unique, right? We have comp sets. So if you have Let's say 15 two bedroom, one bath units that are all, let's say, basements or, you know, attached ADUs, and they're all in the same geographical area, we could do a lot of pricing at the same time for all 15 of those units because we're trying to capture that segment of the demand. [00:12:56] Jason: Got it. Got it. Okay. So, so for those that are listening, they're managing short term rentals. And maybe they're not doing that, that one missing piece very effectively. What would you recommend that they do?  [00:13:11] Jacob: You have to, I mean, I think you have to do that, right? I mean, big part of the value proposition of a property manager for short term rentals. [00:13:18] This is key for all your listeners who are thinking about buying a short term rental too. Short term rental property managers are expensive. And so, you want to ensure whichever manager you choose to hire is going to exceed or excel or expand beyond what you might otherwise earn in revenue to offset that cost. [00:13:35] And so, if there's a property manager out there doing short term rentals and they don't have a sophisticated pricing strategy, I would say your value proposition is very weak because you're going to charge, you know, a large percentage of commission on what's already coming in without necessarily increasing the amount of revenue coming in to offset that cost for your property owners. [00:13:53] And I think you're going to end up in a tight spot when your owners aren't making enough money. And another manager can increase or boost their earnings. So I would say get on it. There's no reason not to. There's a lot of access to global talent who knows how to do this kind of stuff. So it's not a lack of talent or even that they're terribly expensive. [00:14:11] You can get a pretty good program implemented. Okay.  [00:14:15] Jason: Well then let's allow you to poison the well a little bit against any of your competitors. So let's talk about then what, how do you find and vet a good short term rental management company? I mean, everybody, when they hear what I do, if I'm at a cocktail party or an event or anything, I hear people all the time. [00:14:34] Oh, I had some rental properties, but man, it was a nightmare. And I got rid of them. And I'm like, maybe you should've just got a property manager, but in short term, like if they're not cash flowing, or it's not making money, or it's not working out it could sometimes be the property manager. [00:14:50] Especially based on what you're saying. So what would be the biggest initial filter? Would it be that? Would it be, Hey, how often are you checking the pricing on the property? And what's your pricing strategy?  [00:14:59] Jacob: You know, it's tough because you can, you know, with anybody, they can tell you whatever they want. [00:15:03] You have to like verify. And so I would always say there are a lot of like basic ground rules, questions similar to what you're saying, Jason, where, Hey, tell me about your pricing strategy. Tell me about how you will price my property. Tell me about how you'll handle work orders when things come up. Like tell me about your communication strategy with guests. [00:15:22] Tell me about your philosophy on refunding for issues or how you handle cancellations or how do you handle damages? Like all of these like key components, you'll weed out a lot of crummy property managers that way. Actually, if you just go through, Hey, here's the 15 core things you got to do just to be a worthwhile candidate for property management for me. Here's the 15 main things, but to go beyond that's when you have to start doing things like show me your Airbnb account that has all your reviews and going through that list and pick, you know, out of the last three months, find a bunch of reviews and ask them to explain what happened on those poor reviews. [00:15:59] Hey, this guest said this thing happened. What all what happened on your end? And just literally do your due diligence on guest reviews to see how the guest stakeholders are impacted by this manager. And then furthermore, try to find another owner. There's kind of a reputation game here where you need to understand, Hey, has this owner been with you a long time? [00:16:19] Why are they with you? Are they happy with you? Have they considered transitioning to another manager? Kind of a lot of stuff you would expect. And it is a lot of due diligence, I will say, but I think it has a very large impact on the performance of your property.  [00:16:32] Jason: Yeah, no, I think that's significant. [00:16:35] So you've kind of built a platform for your business, correct? With Renjoy. And so tell us a little bit about that. How is that unique? Maybe some others listening might get inspired if they're doing short term management, but explain how what kind of your, maybe that's your competitive advantage. [00:16:55] Jacob: I would say it is. And this actually, I think Jason would apply for all of your audience, even long term rental property managers. One of the things that we've been thinking really carefully about with our business as we're growing is who owns our data our property data, our guest data, our owner data, like where's that data being held. [00:17:16] And if it's being held by a third party, like our property management software provider, in our case, guesty, in your case, you know, at folio or whatever, when you think carefully about where that data is going, you have to ask yourself, am I okay with this third party data provider being the one who's going to initiate, you know, improvements to how we interact with our data? [00:17:39] Am I okay with them developing all those features and all that kind of stuff? Or do I want to have control over that based off of my needs and what I see in the market?  [00:17:46] Jason: Yeah.  [00:17:47] Jacob: And I'm not saying this is for everybody, but because we are more, I would say, tech focused and tech forward as a company, we've decided to keep that data in house. [00:17:56] And so, we use a third party tool called Airtable. I'm sure some of your audience members will be familiar with this tool. All right.  [00:18:02] Jason: Airtable geek.  [00:18:03] Jacob: Oh yeah, we love it.  [00:18:04] Jason: We run our business off of it.  [00:18:05] Jacob: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. We do too. And so, we use our property management software because you need it. [00:18:12] Right. We use it to handle our reservation data, all the calendars kind of, it's where we actually push all of our listings to market them to acquire the guests and all of our reservation data flows through there as well. But it all flows from our property management software tool into airtable. And some of it flows back and forth. But what it allows us to do is we can pull in all of our work orders from another software. We can pull in all of our accounting from another software. We can pull in whatever kind of data we want into Airtable. And we can relate the data in ways that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do, if you're using a single tool. [00:18:46] For example, Guesty, our property management software has work orders in it. It has review management in it. It has accounting in it. It has everything in it. But the problem is If you use the full suite of services within your main software provider, your property management software provider, typically, each of those ancillary services are not best in class. [00:19:08] And so, you're constrained on what you can do with the tool that you have. And we very much want to be constrained with, you know, our own kind of creativity and our own ability to create efficiency in our business  [00:19:20] Jason: It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality. [00:19:28] Jacob: That's exactly right. Yeah, but it's complicated and it's costly I mean you have to be able to have like specific specialized tools. You then have to know what you're doing to accumulate those tools and have them all talking and speaking to each other, but if you do it right, very powerful. [00:19:44] Jason: Got it. Okay. So, and you're using guest CSPM software and then you've paired it up sort of with Airtable, it's feeding data into Airtable and then because you have it in Airtable, you're able to probably notice patterns more, run reports with the data. You then can create automations and things that happen from, you know, Airtable, maybe, are you using Zapier? [00:20:08] Jacob: Oh, of course. Yeah. We use Zapier and make as well for certain things. We also do have a little bit of Python scripting, but that's, it's very powerful.  [00:20:17] Jason: That's getting really nerdy.  [00:20:19] Jacob: So yeah, it's not me. Let's put it that way. It's not me doing it.  [00:20:23] Jason: Right.  [00:20:24] Jacob: But let me give you an example, Jason, of how these things work together and are really powerful. [00:20:28] So we have a lot of our housekeepers are actually in house now. They're W 2s. They're paid hourly. One of the big challenges is You can't have a manager inspect every single turnover. I mean, we've had like 72 cleans in a single day on Labor Day weekend. So there's no way you can cost effectively have somebody inspect every single clean. [00:20:49] Like it's just not possible.  [00:20:51] Jason: Right.  [00:20:51] Jacob: And so how do you hold cleaners accountable? How do you actually rank them? How do you know whether they're doing a good job or not? Other than after the fact, the next guest says, "Hey, this place is terrible."  [00:21:00] Jason: Right.  [00:21:01] Jacob: What we actually do is we do that. When the review is generated. [00:21:05] From a guest stay. Okay, now if that review mentions any kind of cleanliness issue or whatever, the review is an object in Airtable, then gets linked to the person, that is the cleaner, who is also in Airtable, and we can say, hey, who cleaned before this review? And we can actually tag that review and tie it to the cleaner, the person, and we can rank them. [00:21:26] And so we can say this person has an overall ranking of 4. 9 out of 5 on their cleanings over the last however many cleans. We can actually go back and look at every single turnover they did and what was the guest report afterwards. And by that, we can eliminate cleaners who are not doing a good job. [00:21:43] Anybody below 4. 9, you just eliminate and then you refill that pipeline. And Yeah, by having that connection, it's really powerful. That accountability happens way faster. That's what you're trying to do. If you're trying to speed it up,  [00:21:55] Jason: right? Because you have the data, you've got the timestamp of the review. [00:21:59] You can then check who was the cleaner before this review and, you know, and. You know, figure that out and then you can link to the cleaner and then you've got a database of all your cleaners I'm sure in air table and all the cleaners in Airtable. You've got these Cross links to all their reviews that are affiliated with them And then you've got a rating that you can see and so each cleaner is rated in your system yeah. [00:22:24] Yeah, so you're connecting the reviews to the cleaners  [00:22:27] So you with that data you're able to make much faster decisions as to whether, and it's not just like, you know, the really noisy, greasy, squeaky wheels that you're kind of paying attention to. Wow. This cleaner is really horrible. Who did this? [00:22:42] You know, you're able to just look at it almost like a spreadsheet and see, all right, these cleaners are performing at the top. These are not so much. We're going to send more work to these ones, maybe less than these ones are gone.  [00:22:53] Jacob: Yeah, that's right. You gamify it too. They enjoy it. I mean, it's a little bit of a friendly competition too. [00:22:58] Cause what we do is we display with a dashboard. Hey, who are the top 10 cleaners this month? Or like, it's actually live dashboard. So like, Hey, who are the top 10 cleaners? You know, we have 35 or 40 cleaners. And so, you know, if you're not on the top 10, you know, you're not on the top 10, but those who are on the top 10 are constantly competing with each other to be the best. [00:23:17] And there's a lot of shuffling going on. So yeah,  [00:23:20] Jason: I love that. That's great.  [00:23:22] Jacob: That's just one example. There's a lot of things where if you own the data, you can connect it and gain insights in ways you would not otherwise gain from a lot of tools because the people who build the software are not managing property. [00:23:35] So, they don't know what you're trying to understand about your property. They just say, Oh, you need accounting? Here's some accounting. It's like, well, but they don't understand the complexities around trust accounting and how I'm spending money on behalf of the owner. So, they don't make it easy for me to send and receive invoices within their accounting software. [00:23:50] I have to do that outside. Then I have to reconcile it with their trust accounting module. It's like, they just don't understand what you're doing. And so, their tools are often pretty, pretty weak.  [00:23:59] Jason: Okay, cool. Yeah, I love Airtable, man. We geek out on it. We use it for our client success database. We use it for our planning system. [00:24:09] We built DoorGrowOS in it. We built our applicant tracking system and hiring system in it. And built a bunch of stuff in it. So if you're a property manager and you're using Airtable, then let me know, like reach out to me. I'd be curious to see what kind of things other property managers are doing in order to you know, leverage Airtable. [00:24:30] And how they're using this in their business. I know there's some out there doing it. I've seen it in some of the groups and they're leveraging Airtable to keep track of things. So. All right airtable is really cool. Basically for those that aren't familiar with Airtable, it on the surface, it looks like a Google sheet sort of, but the difference is It's beyond just spreadsheets. It's a database software and really it's now considered no code software because to have software, you need input, you need data storage, and then you need output and so you can build in air table forms or things to entry under data or you can even connect it to zapier or other automation softwares or tools to feed data into it so you have input and then you have data storage and you can build really complicated databases of stuff where things are cross linked and then based on that then you can create dashboards or extensions or output or feed data to other systems based on that data. [00:25:32] And so, yeah, so there's some really cool stuff that you can do with Airtable. So, yeah, so give me another example of something cool that you do in Airtable that you think is may be relevant to property managers.  [00:25:44] Jacob: Yeah, we actually incorporated our CRM into Airtable and the main reason for that is because Oh,  [00:25:52] Jason: Airtable is your CRM? [00:25:54] Yeah.  [00:25:55] Okay, got it.  [00:25:57] Jacob: There are some limitations with it, of course, but because we're not doing like mass, we're not doing like really mass marketing, we have really good lists. So we're not targeting like a ton of people because it's very B2B.  [00:26:07] Jason: Yeah.  [00:26:07] Jacob: And we don't necessarily want everybody short term rental. [00:26:09] Like we're very particular on which properties we want to manage. So anyway, one of the benefits of it is when you're going through the sales process, right? A lot of that process is discovery of property data. Not just owner data, owner problems, whatever. It's also property data. And so, we noticed this huge inefficiency in a lot of sales processes where the salespeople learn all about the property, they get them signed, and then they hand them off and they don't communicate all of the things that they learned about the property. [00:26:38] And then you have to relearn and the owner's like, I already told you this. Like, now I have to tell you about this furnace again, and this AC unit again, and this hot water heater, and this thing about the backyard, and this thing about the sprinkler. This thing about the neighbor, this thing about the, like, there's just on and on. [00:26:49] It's a lot of work for the owner. And so what we've done is we've built that data intake to your whole point about what software is for that data intake that the sales person is collecting through the whole process gets built into the system. So that when that lead converts, that opportunity converts into a client. [00:27:07] All of that data goes straight into the property data, and the onboarding team just has to fill in the gaps. And so it really smooths the transition of data from sales to operations.  [00:27:18] Jason: Yeah we sync and merge our CRM, our sales CRM, which is our tool for communication and our text, email, phone, everything fees through our CRM with our existing clients with perspective clients, all that, but we have it sync to our client success database for our existing clients that are in our mastermind and our coaching programs. [00:27:42] And it feeds data across. So for example, we'd like to track how many doors our clients have. We have them complete a weekly check in form. The air table and they're providing their monthly revenue, their door counts. We capture this data and we use this to build what we call proof bombs later that are like visual testimonials that people can absorb seconds, which is an idea I learned from Sharran Srivatsaa, which is the CEO of real and brilliant guy and he taught this to Alex Hormozi. [00:28:13] Alex Hormozi used it in his book launch. As they're showing all these people getting results And so we have the data to prove that our clients are getting results over time and we can show the time period so it just feels more credible. And that data syncs over to our crm and updates their door count updates these things So when we're talking with them in the crm We can communicate with them. [00:28:36] And so we've we're always geeking out and optimizing our system, our client success database, everything so that we can better take care of our clients. Like we have a photo of every client's face in our database. We can learn who they are and know who they are and know their names. So when they show up, Recognize them and yeah, so we stalk them a little bit to get a photo or we capture their face on one of the Zoom calls that they show up on or something, but my team are responsible to make sure Every client has we have a photo. [00:29:06] We have the name. We know their current door count. We know what they're working on and and then yeah, we've got some other really cool things that we've done recently as well so we're always improving this and. Because our key system we run our entire business on is called DoorGrow OS. [00:29:21] It's a planning system that we've built out in Airtable. We coach clients on how to do this as well. And it really, I believe, is our greatest competitive advantage.  [00:29:30] Jacob: So do you, like, white label an Airtable instance for those clients?  [00:29:33] Jason: So what we do with our clients is we have an enterprise Airtable account and then we give them, we create or duplicate some of our proprietary Airtables that we built for clients and give them access to these. [00:29:47] Jacob: I think this is brilliant. I actually think if there's any property managers out there who are thinking about this, the value that Jason's offering actually through pre building or pre packaging an Airtable setup on how your processes should flow accordingly. That's actually extremely valuable. It's fascinating that you're doing that, Jason, because we've been thinking about it ourselves for a short time. [00:30:07] Jason: So we never really built the process system, because we partner with Flussos, another company that has this brilliant flowchart process software,  [00:30:16] Because I think there's three levels of process I've talked about, but the level one is process documentation, which is really shitty because people don't really read processes. [00:30:26] It's like the owner's manual in the glove box of your car, right? Then there's the next level is checklist and that's okay. We've used process street stuff like that in the past. Some will use lead simple. Checklist has its own inherent flaws that the more complicated the process the more only one person understands how to change it or edit it or make it work and then there's like the next the third level which is is visual workflow and this is where everybody understands it and they're clear on it. So visual workflow, what that's done is it's allowed me the nerd to not have to do processes anymore. My team all understand them. They can see them and they can be crazy complicated because it's like playing with flow chart, Visio. [00:31:06] And that's where the processes are built. So that's been a game changer for us, but everything else, like our planning system, and our hiring system, this is where I think Airtable really magically shines because we can custom tailor their hiring system for particular needs. Like we have a client who's adding like 114 doors in like, like a month or two, or like he's just has this ridiculous. [00:31:30] And so his biggest constraint is hiring maintenance technicians. And he lost two he had four. So now he's down. He was down to two He got on a call with me and he was using our DoorGrow ats our applicant tracking system and we talked with him about cloning the application form reducing it to get more maintenance text to flow through, reducing the difficulty and then giving them working interviews and my coaching for him was you need to be probably hiring four techs a month and firing two or three. [00:32:01] That's right. That's exactly right. Which is very different. And so I explained to him, I was like, you are no longer property management business because your business now, your biggest constraint, your business now is, and you need to swallow this pill that your business now is a maintenance talent acquisition company. [00:32:19] And once he's like owns that, then he'll move on to another level boss in the video game of business, you know, but that's the business he's in now. It was originally, it was like, Oh, we're in the business of trying to get clients. And then he was in the business of trying to deal with getting on clients. [00:32:34] And now it's maintenance, right, technician. And hiring and keeping that going. So just like short-term rentals is largely a game of cleaning, and hiring. Yeah. No, I mean, we have a recruiter managing cleaners.  [00:32:48] Jacob: Yeah. We have a full-time recruiter. I mean, yeah, we have a constant pipeline of cleaners. Same with maintenance techs. [00:32:53] I mean, yeah, it is. It is. And you have to be shedding them, just like you shed property owners too sometimes.  [00:32:59] Jason: Yeah, we also built a rental property analysis tool that our clients use with real estate agents in air table We had some programmers do some custom coding to do some of the more complex formulas that you can't do an air table like amortization schedules and stuff like this And so they're able to create these really cool one page reports for a rental property that are branded with their branding and have their pricing built into it as a property manager, that they can get the real estate agents that are working with investors, they're working on deals, or trying to attract investors, that they can then put on their rental listings to show how that property could either cashflow or in the long run would be a better investment than maybe investing in the stock market. [00:33:41] Jacob: So it's a great idea. We do something similar. Again, part of our sales process is we, when a lead converts to an opportunity, we basically have this template pro forma that gets generated from fields within air table, but it's a Google sheet template. So it allows us to do more is what we want in the Google sheet because it's not just a single page. [00:34:00] It's, you know, there's quite a few pages because short term rentals are very complex in terms of setting them up. Your setup costs, your startup costs are quite large and having a reliable, accurate number for startup costs is actually remarkably difficult. With Airbnb, so similar process, you end up with kind of the same result. [00:34:18] Here's an accurate projection.  [00:34:20] Jason: Awesome. Well, cool. Well, maybe we'll have to hang out off out and geek out on some air table stuff. So, but yeah, this has been our competitive advantage. Largely is our planning system and cadence of annual planning, quarterly planning, monthly planning, and have a database where it's all late cross linked. [00:34:37] And so we In our system team members, and clients that use this their team members show up and there's we're keeping track of all the wins. So there's this culture of winning and Nobody wants to show up getting a red no on their weekly commitments. They're getting they want to get a green Yes, and so this is outside of our daily tactical stuff, this is our strategic goals. [00:35:00] And so it gets my entire team focused on innovation on moving towards goals and outcomes moving forward instead of just their daily tactical work, which we're using DoorGrow Flow or Flussos that visual workflow tool. And so that's allowed us to I think that's our strongest competitive advantage is that [00:35:19] other businesses, usually the entrepreneur comes in, throws out a bunch of goals and ideas and it's like a pulling the pin on a grenade. If they get back from a conference to their team and their team trying to do their tactical daily work and they're like, how are we going to do all this? And there's no real plan or clarity and they rarely achieve any of their goals or outcomes that they're aiming for. [00:35:41] And we, on a weekly basis, our goal is we have sometimes four somewhere between 30 to 50 commitments between everyone on my executive team And they've committed to that week that are going towards our 30 day goals And we get at least our goal is to hit 80 percent and we do that with consistency. Now, years and 80 percent of our goals. [00:36:03] And which means our 30 day goals are largely almost always achieved. And which means our quarterly goals are almost always achieved and annually hit our goals. And so we move really fast. We get a lot of stuff done and we innovate a lot in our coaching business. And I don't think there's. And I work with some of the best coaches in the industry. [00:36:23] So we've really built something. I think that's pretty amazing. And we just, we roll out new things like every month. And that innovation has, that system has allowed it us to innovate. And I'm the way we've set up DoorGrow OS and Sarah runs this, my, she's our operator and my wife, she's always like, we vote on things. [00:36:43] We get feedback on things. And she's like, not you, Jason, you're last. Like I'm always last to speak. So I don't end up as the emperor with no clothes in my own business. So anyway, yeah, Airtable is pretty cool. So, yeah, that'd be interesting to see if there's some other ways in which our clients could leverage or use Airtable for keeping track of their own clients because that's not something we played around much with, but.  [00:37:06] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.  [00:37:08] Jason: Cool. Well, Jacob, for those that are interested in getting their property managed by you, what, which markets do you cover and how do they get ahold?  [00:37:18] Jacob: Yeah. So we do have full service management in Colorado, kind of, Southern Colorado, so South of Denver, Colorado Springs, and then further West. [00:37:27] And we also manage in Gulf coast, Florida between Tampa Bay and Fort Myers. So, we're in these two geographic areas for full service, but going back to the pricing thing, we've realized that there are a lot of property owners who love the hospitality side of the Airbnbs, but not the pricing side. That's not why they got into it. [00:37:46] We actually do have a pricing service. Where we market and distribute your listing on a bunch of different booking channels. So a lot of people are seeing your listing and we do the daily pricing for your property. So you don't have to do that. And then you do the cleaning, the maintenance, and the interaction with the guests. [00:38:03] You take care of the property. It's your account. They're your reviews. They're your guests. We don't interact with them. And that is global, a global service.  [00:38:11] Jason: Oh, so that's a service that property managers could use, self managers could use. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Great. In fact,  [00:38:17] Jacob: we do have some small property managers using it. [00:38:19] .  [00:38:19] Jason: Alright, cool. So, how does that work?  [00:38:23] Jacob: Yeah, so it really depends on the client. Like with a property manager and some property managers are for their own portfolios. Some, you know, are managing for others. It really depends on the property situation and the setup that's currently in place. But the most common thing is there's an owner operator who says, Hey, I don't want to do the pricing. [00:38:40] I'm getting crushed by my competitors because I'm not doing this algorithmic based pricing and I'm not reviewing it daily. So we come in and we say, okay, great. I see you're on Airbnb or I see you're on VRBO or I see you're just on Airbnb and VRBO. What we do is we come in and we create a bunch more booking channels for you and we aggregate it into a white labeled property management software. [00:39:00] It's not guesty actually. It's a different software tool. So the owner only has one place to go for their calendar, for their messaging. It's all in one place. They don't have to do anything. And then we create those listings and then we market them and then we continue to price them on an ongoing basis and to reset their prices. [00:39:16] to compete whichever market they're in.  [00:39:18] Jason: Got it. And is this a fairly affordable service? It is.  [00:39:22] Jacob: Yes, it's very low cost compared to full service short term rental management. And it also doesn't have any, like, contracts or anything. It's just day to day.  [00:39:29] Jason: Okay, devil's advocate, what if, some listening might be like, well, why would I trust them to price my property when they might have properties in my market? [00:39:38] Like, if they're in a market that you're in, like Colorado, what if they're going to Price there's better or more competitively than my own.  [00:39:45] Jacob: That's a great question. Yeah. No, it's a great question. And actually it's related to kind of one of the things that we set out strategically for our market. [00:39:53] Like Colorado Springs, we manage about 120 properties in Colorado Springs out of about 3000 Airbnbs. And we kind of set our market cap at about, or sorry, as large, our market saturation at about 200 units in the Springs. So, we actually won't go above managing 200 properties in Colorado Springs for this very reason. [00:40:10] The cannibalizing of market share. Now, that gets even more detailed where it's not just properties total, but also comp sets. So, if we have more than, let's say, 10 percent of the two bedroom properties in Colorado Springs, we're going to start cannibalizing our own market. And so, we actually have limits on the sizes of properties within our specific markets. [00:40:30] So, right now we actually are pretty, we're pretty darn close to being capped out at one bedrooms and two bedrooms. So, we don't really take on those units anymore.  [00:40:38] Jason: Got it. Just 10 bedrooms now.  [00:40:41] Jacob: Yeah, that's right. 3, 4, 5, 6. We don't have any 10s. We have a 9, but that's the biggest.  [00:40:48] Jason: Yeah. You're not in some giant family reunion markets? [00:40:52] Jacob: No, we are. We're in Two Springs. I mean, that place sleeps, I'm talking to a lady now. She's got a place that sleeps 60. So, that'll be That would be a family reunion for sure.  [00:41:02] Jason: Well, cool. So that sounds like an interesting service. Maybe I'll have Sarah check it out. So, cause I know she's checking the pricing every day. [00:41:09] I think she kind of enjoys it though.  [00:41:11] Jacob: Yeah, that's totally fine. Yeah. If you enjoy it, then we are not, you know, like it's for people who is like pulling teeth, right? Like I hate doing this. I don't, or I'm not like really into the whole game theory around pricing. Like that doesn't interest me. That kind of thing. [00:41:25] Jason: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it'd be interesting to have her do a demo with you guys and see how it compares to what she's doing and whether she would trust it or not. Yeah. That'd be interesting. I mean, she's checking  [00:41:35] Jacob: it every day, Jason, she's probably doing, you know, she's already like 85 percent of the way there. [00:41:40] Yeah.  [00:41:41] Jason: Yeah. I don't know, but I think it's interesting. There's you know, there's a lot of property managers that do short term rentals that they're not doing anything like this. And they just not, and they basically set it sort of at a rate that's similar and maybe occasionally they'll adjust it, but they're trying to just let it happen and yeah. [00:42:02] And then the owners get frustrated because they're like, why isn't this renting out as often? Or, you know, it's renting out a lot, but why am I not getting paid very much? You know?  [00:42:11] Jacob: Yeah. It's this passive versus active approach, right? I always tell owners like, Hey, there's two kinds of demands. There's existing demand for short term lodging. [00:42:20] These are people who are coming to your market no matter what. They're already coming, now they're looking for lodging. But there's a second kind of demand that's really important, which is the generated demand. These are people who aren't coming to your market and wouldn't otherwise come to your market if you hadn't reached out to them first. [00:42:34] So you're generating demand by marketing, essentially. And so we have a pretty sophisticated system for marketing to very specific or very likely customers to then book and come and stay because of your property that they wouldn't otherwise have come. And so that's a really big distinction with a lot of property managers. [00:42:52] They just look at existing demand and try to capture their share of existing demand versus generating net new demand. So as an example of how we do this. We require our owners to have our tech package in their property. And part of what is included in that tech package is a commercial wifi router system. [00:43:10] So every guest, not just the one who books the property, but every guest who comes to the property and wants to access the internet has to give us their phone and email. And so we build a massive database for marketing towards for guests, direct guest marketing.  [00:43:23] Jason: Wow. Okay.  [00:43:24] Jacob: A lot of managers don't do that. [00:43:26] Jason: So, the managers out there that would, these pieces, they don't even enjoy doing it. Like the advanced pricing service. And maybe there's some other little things you can help them with as well. They can reach out to you and get this and you said you mentioned white label does that mean they're able to still maintain their brand and people aren't in your business name. [00:43:46] And yeah.  [00:43:46] Jacob: Yeah, absolutely  [00:43:48] Jason: Okay, very cool. Yeah, cool. Anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?  [00:43:54] Jacob: The only thing I want to share with all the property managers out there is keep on doing the hard work. For those who are outside the industry, they don't understand the challenge of the beat down that can be property management. So just keep it up and do the good work that it is. [00:44:07] Jason: Yeah, it can be challenging. Well, All right. Thanks for Somebody jump on I don't know who that was All right. Thanks for hanging out with us until next time everybody to you know until next time to our mutual growth if you're interested in getting connected with Jacob. How do they reach you? [00:44:24] Jacob: Just go to www. renjoy. com and just fill out a form and you'll get ahold of me.  [00:44:30] Jason: Okay. Awesome. Well then, if reach out to them and then if you are interested in growing your property management business and scaling it and getting some support in how to reach out and attract more owners to do third party management, check doorgrow. [00:44:46] com and make sure to join our free Facebook group at doorgrowclub. com. All right. Thanks, Jacob. And bye everyone. Thanks, Jason. Bye  [00:44:53] Jacob: everyone. Bye. [00:44:54] 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!  [00:45:21] 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.  
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Nov 1, 2024 • 28min

DGS 270: Relationships and Owning a Property Management Business

Owning a business of any kind impacts your life and relationships. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts talk about marriage, relationships, and how these things correlate with having a property management business. You’ll Learn [02:03] Owning a business impacts your relationships [07:45] You have to be selfish sometimes [11:10] Why people pleasing is harmful [14:13] Masculine and Feminine frames [24:51] Leveling up in business and your relationships Tweetables “In business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner.” “I think as a business owner, you, there is part of you that has to be selfish and you have to be comfortable with being selfish because there is a time and a place for it.” “If you do not take care of yourself, you are not going to have energy to then continue to take care of other people.” “Ironically, the more you are trying to please somebody,  the less they value you.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: In business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner.  [00:00:08] 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 are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:29] 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. 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 DoorGrow.  [00:01:11] Now Let's get into the show.  [00:01:14] All right, so today's topic, we're going to chat a little bit about marriage. So let's talk about it. We're going to tell a little bit about marriage. Those that have followed my journey over the years have probably seen that I've been divorced. I've gone through struggles in marriage. I've learned things the hard way. Some of y'all probably been married forever like my parents. I have amazing parents and they were a great example of just loving each other from the beginning forever. [00:01:44] They've been married for, I don't know, like 50 years or something.  [00:01:48] Sarah: Almost. 49.  [00:01:50] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think  [00:01:52] Sarah: this year is going to be 47. So they're like going to be 50.  [00:01:55] Jason: I think they got married two years before they had me. So yeah.  [00:01:58] Sarah: They celebrate it though, but they're still in Australia.  [00:02:01] Jason: Yeah. So my parents, they just love each other. [00:02:03] But one of the things that I think it's been coming up a lot, I've been noticing a lot of clients as I go deeper with them and they kind of open up especially the guys like relationships are a struggle. It's a challenge. I think it's difficult. It can be difficult for entrepreneurs. I think it's difficult for the women entrepreneurs because in a lot of ways you have to kind of step into sort of a masculine frame to run a business. And that creates an interesting dynamic in a relationship. And this is in general. Some women out there, maybe you don't want a masculine guy. Maybe you don't want a guy that leads. Maybe you don't want a guy that initiates stuff. Maybe you don't want to be able to let your hair down after work and like have him kind of take the reins and like plan something and take you on a date. I think a lot of women do. A lot of women appreciate that. Even the ones that are running businesses and showing up in a masculine sort of frame and being kind of dominant in leadership and displaying these things, they would like to have somebody else take the lead. Is this accurate do you think or no?  [00:03:03] Sarah: Yeah, well. You think it's different.  [00:03:05] Jason: You've run your own business. [00:03:06] You've been kind of in that frame.  [00:03:08] Sarah: I'm a very masculine woman.  [00:03:11] Jason: Yeah, in some ways I think you've consistently since we've been together.  [00:03:15] Sarah: I look very feminine. I do it's deceiving. Yeah.  [00:03:19] Jason: Yeah, I think since we've been together, you've consistently stepped more and more into your feminine and I've stepped more and more into my masculine I think has kind of been a trend. [00:03:29] Would you say that's accurate?  [00:03:30] Sarah: It could be. I don't know. I think you've probably more recently been focused on that. I can't say, I really cannot say, oh, I've ever been focused on.  [00:03:41] Jason: I don't think you've been focused on it. I just think.  [00:03:44] Sarah: I'm just living life.  [00:03:45] Jason: Yeah, you're just living life and this is the thing. [00:03:48] Sarah: I'm just going about shit, doing my thing.  [00:03:50] Jason: She's not as conscious of it probably because I think this is something that men, if you are the leader and leading, you should be conscious of this. And women, when men are kind of taking that leadership role, women respond to that, and it's natural. Like, I've noticed it in Sarah, she's not even probably super aware of it, but there's behaviors and things that have kind of shifted. [00:04:15] And so, the way it'll show up for a woman in this, in a relationship like that, as a man stepping more into leadership and into his masculine role, she will generally, over time, feel calmer. There'll be probably less fights, probably less explosions, you know, things like this. And the guy will be like letting go of some of the needy, whiny, pleasy, weak behavior that's kind of gross to women. [00:04:39] Does this sound accurate?  [00:04:40] Sarah: That is, yeah, that is gross.  [00:04:42] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:42] Sarah: To me, anyway, I cannot speak for all women.  [00:04:45] Jason: Yeah.  [00:04:45] Sarah: To me, it's gross.  [00:04:47] Jason: Ironically, when women are showing up kind of more in a masculine frame, they sometimes bring that out in guys. Like the guys think, Oh no, there's a problem. I got to please more. [00:04:57] And so it kind of creates this weird, gross spiral in relationship. And so, which I've experienced in past relationships. Right. And so the man needs to kind of. shift and lead out of that. And so I've been noticing this in clients. And so, this is something that I've been paying a lot of attention to. [00:05:14] A lot of guys show up in a feminine frame because we've been raised by our moms. Maybe you had a loving mom. She took care of you. Maybe she didn't. And she wasn't really a great mom, maybe but either way, that feminine influence towards pleasing has a strong impact on the male psyche, which puts us into kind of a growing up with kind of a feminine frame. If we don't have a really strong sort of masculine walled stoic father, you know, and there's really great book I would recommend for men that want to kind of eliminate that feminine frame that they're carrying around. [00:05:49] It's called shattering the feminine frame by Jerr, J E R R. It's really hard to find, so you may have to search for it on Google, because if you search for it on Amazon, even though it's there, Amazon won't let you see it. I don't know why. It's super weird. You may not be able to find it. Sometimes searches on some of the books by Jerr don't show up when I search for them. [00:06:11] His main book that he puts out there, I can find, and then I have to go to the author, click on the author name, and then find his other books to find some of these books. I don't, it's really weird, but you might be able to find it through Google.  [00:06:23] Sarah: Maybe it's just you. It could be just you. It'd be an interesting test. [00:06:27] Maybe everybody else, even though.  [00:06:30] Jason: I bought multiple copies of the book and sent them to guys. So Jason gets blocked on everything. He gets himself blocked. I'm a little controversial. I get shadow banned all the time. It was something. I was definitely shadow banned on Twitter. My accounts aren't working, your whole Instagram account. [00:06:45] I have a political account on Instagram that's totally blocked and shut down. Like, I log into it, it blocks everything. I can't do anything. I can't even go to settings to, like, request help to support. Nothing. So, yeah. So, which probably might be why I can't find which probably means my ideas are actually correct. [00:07:04] So since we live in a world of control and censorship nowadays, all right, so that aside, so I think you know, to kill that needy sort of pleasing behavior, I think guys, this is really important. And it's important in business too, because in business, you don't want to be the needy, pleasy guy running a property management business, trying to please every tenant, trying to please every business owner. [00:07:30] And that was something you were very good at not doing in your property management  [00:07:34] Sarah: business. I don't give a shit about that at all. I [00:07:37] Jason: think you're like, what do I want my business to look like? How do I want to show? Yeah. Yeah.  [00:07:42] Sarah: Right. And I think it's, It, part of it is very selfish. And I think as a business owner, you, there is part of you that has to be selfish and you have to be comfortable with being selfish because there is a time and a place for it. [00:07:54] Now I am not sitting here telling you, be only selfish and only think about yourself all the time. No matter what, prioritize you and forget everything else, right? That is not what I'm saying, but there is a time and a place to be selfish and to really think about you. And if you think about it this way, there's a lot of people, like one of my, one of my very good friends in Pennsylvania she will just give and give and give and give to everybody. [00:08:21] She worries about her kids and she worries about her friends and she worries about her family and she worries about, it's like, she's like, so giving and like, I mean, she would literally give you the coat off of her back in the middle of winter if you needed it. I have watched her do it. And that is great. [00:08:42] However, if you do not take care of yourself, you are not going to have energy to then continue to take care of other people. And I tell her that all the time because she's just in this constant exhaustion. Like now it's manifesting physically. Now she's had like, she had health issues. She had like a heart problem. [00:09:02] She had all kinds of issues and it's because she's not prioritizing herself. She will go to do something for herself, but then something else pops up and needs her attention. And she's like, Oh, well, I can't worry about me. Now, I have to worry about this other thing. So there is a time and a place to be selfish, and you must take care of yourself first in order to then serve and take care of other people. [00:09:22] It's like, put on your own oxygen mask before helping other people. Because if you die trying to help your family, well now your family doesn't have you. When you could have just put on your own oxygen mask first. Yes? So there is a time and a place to be selfish. I think in my later years, especially after my, like, my divorce when I was, what was I, 28? [00:09:48] Yeah, I was 28. So, 28, I flipped my entire life upside down. All of it. Everything. I pretty much scrapped it all. Anything that wasn't serving me, anything that was toxic, anything that wasn't good for me, anything that didn't make me feel happy or bring me joy or make me feel loved and cared for, I said, fuck it. [00:10:10] Gone. Gone. So I cut off relationships with my biological father. I ended my marriage. I cut off a lot of friendships. I quit my job. I did all kinds of things. I was like, yeah, this isn't working like, and that was the end of it. But that was very much about, that was for me. I did that for me. [00:10:30] And up until that point, I wasn't really living for me. Yes, I was concerned about myself. I was always trying to take care of myself. But I was also always worried, Oh, well, who needs this? And who needs that? And, oh, you know, this person, you know, is kind of, it's always like in the back of your brain. [00:10:48] And after, after that, I made that change and that after that point was when I started my business, when I started my business, I'm glad that I didn't do this before I had that shift in my life because when I started my business, number one has to be me. If the business makes me miserable, then I'm doing something wrong. [00:11:07] So why do it like that?  [00:11:10] Jason: A lot of people are miserable in their businesses. They like, we see a lot of them. That's why a lot of people come to us. We can turn that around. Ironically, the more you are trying to please somebody, the less they value you. And so if you're like just bending over backwards trying to please tenants, they're going to treat you even more and more like garbage because you're showcasing and demonstrating in your language your behavior everything, "I'm low value." [00:11:37] I'm a doormat. Walk all over me. You might do that with owners. You might be displaying, Hey, I'm low value. I'm available whenever you need me. Your time is so much more important than my time. Interrupt me anytime. Here's my cell phone number. Right? And so by displaying that you're low value, you actually end up being treated worse and being perceived as worse. [00:11:58] And people respect business owners that are leaders and then are able to display strong behavior that they can lean into and that they can trust. You need to have a stronger frame or a more masculine frame if you are the leader of a business. Otherwise, people are not going to really trust, respect, or feel safe with you. [00:12:18] And so I think that Also, when we're in relationship and we're with somebody and I think that this is probably more true of women, a lot of women might throw me some shade for saying this, but as guys, I don't know what the major difference is. Maybe it's testosterone levels, whatever. Maybe it's just in our DNA, but we do not grow up feeling fear. [00:12:41] We just, we don't generally feel afraid of a whole lot of things. Like, most guys would never even think, like, am I safe if I go walk out on the street? Unless they're in a really shitty area, you know? But if I go out for a walk, I'm not concerned about my safety at all. I could roll down my windows and take a nap in my car, parked by the side of the road, and wouldn't even worry. [00:13:03] Women, I didn't realize this until later years, but women from.  [00:13:08] Sarah: Even going like for a walk by myself, no way, I'm taking my pitbull, like  [00:13:12] Jason: Yes.  [00:13:13] Sarah: Or I'm carrying.  [00:13:15] Jason: Right. Or some combination.  [00:13:18] Sarah: Something. There's no, there's no chance. Yeah,  [00:13:21] Jason: I mean even if I'm out of town, for example You'd like you get a little bit more concerned about things and your safety and stuff like that, right? [00:13:30] Sarah: See, I'm the type of person I'm like, I want like a fortress. I want like reinforced concrete like five inch, you know, like, maybe even 11 inch thick, like, walls, I want, like, a moat, I also like some sharks that we don't feed, like, ever, and then, you know, somebody might accidentally fall down. [00:13:49] I've been getting in, like, this is how I'm like, that would make me feel safe. I want like bulletproof glass. Give me the Cybertruck glass just everywhere. Like, that's like, this is what I need. I need like laser beams, like you see in museums. Like motion sensor laser beams that trigger like the SWAT team. [00:14:06] That's what I need, but I've watched way too many horror movies, admittedly, way too many for my own good.  [00:14:13] Jason: So regardless of your gender, masculine and feminine energy is always at play. And, Feminine energy generally is not going to feel safe without masculine energy nearby. [00:14:24] That's just generally how it works. Masculine energy creates that protection and safety. This will be true of your clients. So you'll need to show up somewhat in a masculine frame so that your clients can feel safe. feel safe with you. And that's what they want to buy. They don't want to buy property management, but they want to buy a safety and certainty. [00:14:40] They want to buy peace of mind. And so that certainty that you can display is more of a masculine energy or masculine frame. This is true of women that are in relationships. If they're not getting that from the man that they're with or around them, That sort of masculine frame, they're going to become, a lot of times, they become more nervous, more neurotic. [00:14:59] They're more concerned about things and more fearful. And especially if they have to then step into the masculine frame to take care of the guy that they're with because he's even more needy and pleasy and whatever and feminine than she is, then it's like, it creates this gross sort of I'm your mother type of dynamic, right? [00:15:17] And you don't want to be my mother, right? You don't want to be cleaning up after me and telling me what to do all the time.  [00:15:22] Sarah: I don't want to be anybody's mom.  [00:15:24] Jason: Yeah, exactly.  [00:15:24] Sarah: I am not cut out to be a mom, let's be honest. I'm just not, I'm just not good. Like my mom is the best mom in the world and then like, how do I measure up to that? [00:15:34] Like I can't compete with that.  [00:15:35] Jason: Well, I don't think it's a competition.  [00:15:37] Sarah: Everything is a competition.  [00:15:39] Jason: It's not really. [00:15:39] Sarah: You know nothing about me.  [00:15:41] Jason: It's not really competition. You don't need to compete with your mom, but you can take, you know, some of the good that you've got from her and the stuff that you don't want to apply or we learn from our parents. [00:15:51] We don't want to be like. We don't have to take that. Right. So, you know, I guess the takeaway from this episode maybe is men, check out that book, like step into a little bit more masculine role in your relationships, your wife will be calmer, she'll be more loving, you will definitely get more respect and you'll get more sex if you're showing up in a masculine frame. And it's your responsibility. Stop trying to change her. Stop trying to get her to be something different. Stop wishing she was nicer to you. Stop trying to focus on I need love and I need to please her and do things like that like Show up in a confident leadership position, like plan stuff, plan dates. [00:16:35] We're going on a date this weekend, right? We went on a date last weekend.  [00:16:40] Sarah: Round two.  [00:16:40] Jason: I messed up last weekend. I planned a date. I was so excited and took her out to eat. We went to go to where the date was, we were supposed to go watch a show. And it was closed, like, there was nothing there. And I was like, what? [00:16:54] And I checked and I had the date wrong. I had the date wrong. So what did I do as a leader? I found another date. So I quickly booked tickets, found tickets to a comedy show that was right there, downtown Austin. And then we went to that and we had a good time, right?  [00:17:08] Sarah: Well, that was when I rescued the bird. [00:17:09] Jason: Yes.  [00:17:10] Sarah: So here, let's talk about this. This is how crazy my life is. Jump out of a moving car because my husband wouldn't stop the car.  [00:17:16] Jason: Let's, let me explain this. I'm driving into a parking lot, there is a bird that has landed on my hood and it's just staying on there so I'm like, this is weird and I'm turning into a parking structure and I was barely moving. [00:17:30] I was slowed down or you would have hurt yourself but I'm like, she's like, I'm going to get out and I'm going to take care of the bird and because it had jumped off. And I was like, No.  [00:17:37] Sarah: It didn't. It tried to fly, like, it was on the hood. And it tried to fly a little bit and it, like, barely cleared, like, the roof of the car and I went, Jason, that bird is injured, I'm telling you, it's injured and he's like, okay. [00:17:51] And I'm like, stop the car, and he's like, what? I'm like, no, stop the car. I was like, I am not stopping the car. Yeah, he's like, I'm not stopping.  [00:17:57] Jason: There were, like, homeless people on the street, like, right outside there. Yeah, I know. Ghettos, they probably were all high on drugs, like, it was not a great area. [00:18:06] And she jumps out of the car and I have to then find a parking space because there's nowhere to park and I had to go up seven floors in this parking structure. I'm like, my wife is probably going to be dead by now, right? So I eventually get to the top floor, then I come down, I'm, like, so anxious because I'm, like, I need to protect this woman from her crazy bird saving, like, whatever. [00:18:27] Sarah: And actually, I had this dress on. And my high heels, and I'm running around trying to, like, scoop up. I'm like, it's okay, try to scoop the bird. And the bird, like, it can't really fly. It flew a little bit for, like, a couple feet, and then it, like, sank back down. And I'm like, oh no, it's injured. So I'm, like, chasing the bird, and the bird, like, hops around. [00:18:45] Like, it comes out of the parking garage, and it hops around to the corner. I don't know what's back there. So I'm just following, I'm like, come here, bird. And there's a man in the corner. who I can only think, my guess is, like, coke, I don't know. I don't know what he's doing, it's, I don't know, crack, whatever crack is, it's probably that. [00:19:03] So, I don't know, I'm not a drug expert, I've never been in narcotics, I don't know. But he's, like, in the corner and he's, like, doing, I was, like, okay, I'm just going to, like, not look at what's happening, cause I don't care, I'm just, Hi, I'm just getting the bird, I'm, like, don't, like, sorry don't mind me. [00:19:19] And yeah, he didn't like that. But I did get the bird, and then I didn't know what to do with the bird. So I have the bird now, I'm like, oh, what do I do now? So I was going to walk back to my husband and tell him to get in the car.  [00:19:33] Jason: Yeah, we were seven floors up. You had no idea where I was.  [00:19:36] Sarah: No, I didn't. I was just going to walk around until I found you. [00:19:39] But I had the bird in my hands. And I was going to go back to my husband and then say, like, I guess we have to figure out what to do with this bird. We have a bird now. But this woman, she was on the street and she's like, Oh, hi. She was like, excuse me, do you need help? And I said, I don't know. [00:19:54] Can, do you know what to do with an injured bird? And she said, actually, yes I do. And I said, Oh my God, thank God. Because I didn't know what I was going to do with this bird. And she said, Oh, you have to take it to whatever on earth she said. And she's like, I can do that because I guess she works there or something. [00:20:11] So she's like, oh, I'll take it in tomorrow. She's like if you give me the bird So then she had this whole bird probably ate  [00:20:18] Jason: the bird. She's probably some homeless person that ate the bird.  [00:20:21] Sarah: He was not a homeless person. It was a couple.  [00:20:23] Jason: Okay.  [00:20:24] Sarah: There was a couple they had a dog.  [00:20:26] Jason: Okay, meanwhile, I'm coming down an elevator. [00:20:30] It lets me out on the first floor of this parking structure, does not let me into the parking structure. There's no, like, it just exits the building. So I exit the parking building and it locks me out of the building. So I can't even go back in and I'm like trying to find her. I have no idea where she is. [00:20:49] And so I'm calling her and yeah  [00:20:53] we ended up talking, didn't we?  [00:20:54] Sarah: No, I called you.  [00:20:55] Jason: Yeah, you called me.  [00:20:56] Sarah: Then so the lady takes the bird and now I have no bird, which is great and the bird is safe. And now I'm thinking, okay, let me just, I didn't realize it was as tall. I really did not know that the building was that tall. [00:21:08] So I figured, Oh, there's probably like three levels, whatever. I'll just walk around and find the car. It won't be hard. Well, I'm walking around and I'm realizing, Oh, okay. Well, this just keeps going. Yeah. And you  [00:21:18] Jason: were wearing the worst shoes on the planet.  [00:21:19] Sarah: Worst shoes. I was wearing a  [00:21:21] Jason: Okay. Let me explain this. [00:21:23] They can't see your outfit right now. Sarah looks like sex on wheels. Like, her outfit is hot. Like, this is a hot dress. This is like a form fitting store dress. I bought this for her. She looks really good in this. Sorry. And she's wearing these high heels. [00:21:39] She's wearing these high heels like Louboutin, whatever they're called. And they're like, did I buy you those?  [00:21:46] Sarah: That pair? Yes.  [00:21:48] Jason: Okay. Yeah, I bought her these shoes and they're wicked uncomfortable.  [00:21:51] Sarah: They're so uncomfortable.  [00:21:52] Jason: Like whenever she wears them on a date.  [00:21:53] Sarah: Christian Louboutin, I have to say something about him. [00:21:55] He either hates women or he has no idea what women's feet are like.  [00:21:59] Jason: I don't know, but he's laughing. Or both. He's laughing all the way to the bank, whatever. Because they're not cheap. So, she's wearing these shoes that she can't even walk around in. And you're going to, there's no way she's going to go up seven floors of parking. [00:22:12] Sarah: I was on the third floor.  [00:22:14] Jason: Yeah.  [00:22:15] Sarah: Yeah, I got to the third floor and then I realized, oh, okay, so then I called you.  [00:22:19] Jason: Yeah, and then she eventually finds me. We get. You need to go back up to the car because I didn't grab your purse. Because  [00:22:26] Sarah: he left my purse in the car.  [00:22:28] Jason: Because I should have been psychic and known that she needed me to grab her purse. [00:22:32] Right guys. And so we go back up, but he had to let me back into the building because I was locked out and their thing wouldn't work to let me back in with my parking pass thing. So she comes down to the first floor, opens it up, lets me in. We begin in the elevator, we go back up the top floor. [00:22:47] I'm like, what were you thinking? And she's like, what were you thinking? You didn't grab my purse. You left my purse. I'm like, you're way more important than the purse, woman. And you're like going around crazy homeless people and like trying to save a bird.  [00:23:03] Sarah: It was saved.  [00:23:04] Jason: So  [00:23:05] Sarah: It was saved.  [00:23:06] Jason: Okay, good job. You did it. [00:23:08] Good job. You're like  [00:23:09] Sarah: We've been saving lots of animals.  [00:23:11] Jason: I think there's a Bible verse where Jesus says something or God says something about like your life is worth more than many sparrows or something like that. Yeah. So I don't know. Some of you don't know what the verse is.  [00:23:24] Sarah: I must've missed class that day. [00:23:26] Jason: Yeah, exactly. So anyway, we go up to the car, get this, come back down, we exit that same exit down on the first floor and I'm looking around, I'm like, this is not a great area. No, it was not.  [00:23:37] Sarah: It was bad.  [00:23:37] Jason: There's some rough characters and like, they're walking around and like,  [00:23:41] Sarah: bleh. In fact, we went to the comedy club and one of the comedians, he said, so now I have a bully and he's a homeless man and the same homeless man, he like, hangs out right outside the comedy club and he said, I'm here all the time. [00:23:52] And now the homeless man is like harassing me every single time. And he's like, so now I have a bully who's a homeless man. He's like, what do I do about that?  [00:24:01] Jason: Yeah, this is great. This is great. So  [00:24:05] Sarah: yeah.  [00:24:06] Jason: Yeah. So I may be able to keep Sarah safe from her bird rescuing adventures in the future. We'll see.  [00:24:13] Sarah: Stop the car. [00:24:15] When I tell you to stop, just stop the car.  [00:24:16] Jason: You still would have gotten out. I didn't want you to get out. We could have come back.  [00:24:20] Sarah: Oh, no. It could have died in the meantime. What if it went in the street? It tried to go in the street. I had to stop it.  [00:24:27] Jason: All right. I would rather a little bird die than my wife. [00:24:31] Sarah: So that's okay. Yeah. But I don't feel like I feel like there's a third option.  [00:24:36] Jason: Men, you know what I'm thinking right now? You know.  [00:24:40] Sarah: They're like, what is wrong with her?  [00:24:42] Jason: They don't think what's wrong with it. They just go, that's what women do. Like, and yeah, and guys understand. So.  [00:24:49] Sarah: We have to save things. [00:24:51] Jason: Okay, so, should we wrap this up? Anything else we should have? I didn't know we were going into this whole date, but I have a date planned for this weekend. It's the one that I thought had been the previous weekend. So we're, I'm taking her out again, but men plan some dates, show some leadership. Don't wait till she asks you to do things. [00:25:10] Try and Be proactive and find ways to do things before she asks you right. And if she's asked you to do things multiple times, you probably are being a lazy bum. Comfort ease and that's feminine, right? Everybody loves to see a woman in comfort in with her pillows and cushions laying out attractively but guys. They love to see guys at work, like they, man, you do the work. [00:25:34] If you are just sitting around watching football games all day and being a bum, then you are actually in your feminine as a guy and men are men of action. Get some stuff done, do some things, be proactive, improve yourself. So that's all I'll say about that. All right. So yeah. And join our program and get, join our program. [00:25:56] Get a coach like me. That's going to call you out on your BS and help you step into a mass more masculine frame. We will crush it more in business. And I guarantee that you will be getting more respect, more love, more sex, more, all the good stuff. If you show up and if you like show up and be the person you were meant to be. [00:26:16] So, we, I will challenge you to do that. I've worked with relationship coaches. I've got a coach for a marriage coach right now. I've got we've had business coaches like you need to be constantly improving yourself. So, I will make sure that you're doing that if you join our program. All right. [00:26:33] That's it for today, right? All right. Until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. If you would like to be part of the adventure with door, grow, Go to doorgrow. com. Check us out. Book a call with us. We'll find out if we can help you. And if you are wanting to be a little bit more connected to our free community, you can go to doorgrowclub. com and join our free Facebook group. And that's it. Bye everyone. [00:27:01] 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!  [00:27:27] 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. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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Oct 18, 2024 • 41min

DGS 269: Learning Resilience From Rescue Dogs as a Property Management Entrepreneur

Man can learn valuable lessons from man’s best friend…  In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about their passion project of fostering dogs and how business owners can learn about resilience from these adorable rescue pups. You’ll Learn [02:56] The story of Chance the dog [11:09] What does this have to do with running a business? [18:39] Jason and Sarah’s foster dogs Tweetables “You will look back on this as being such an easy thing for you to deal with in the present moment.” “If you're going to go through tough stuff, it's a lot better to have the right support around you.” “You're going to make mistakes, but that's the price of tuition in business.” “We're all doing the best we can with our current limited capacity and knowledge that we possessed in that moment.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Sarah: If this dog can go through everything that he went through and still push through, whatever is happening in your business, whatever is happening in your life, whatever is happening in your marriage, in your friendships, in your relationships, you can push through it.  [00:00:14] Jason: Yeah, just tell yourself you're not yet at Maynard level. [00:00:17] 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. [00:00:35] 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. 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, founder, [00:01:16] cOO of DoorGrow. [00:01:18] And now let's get into the show. All right So we were thinking what we should talk about today and one of Sarah's strong passions Is dogs. I think Sarah likes dogs more than people. Is that fair?  [00:01:34] Sarah: That's accurate.  [00:01:35] Jason: Okay, she's an intj. Any of you that are familiar with myers briggs intjs typically like animals more than people. I don't know why, and I like dogs too, so not a fan of cats I'm allergic to them and I think they're smelly. [00:01:51] Sorry, all you cat lovers out there, but I'm more of a dog person. You can see in the background here is. Hey buddy, who's smelling around. This is a dog that we're fostering right now. And the working title for this dog is Hans. That's they give them names, but this is a dog we're fostering and it's such a sweet dog. [00:02:13] And so I wanted, this is a passion of Sarah's. We've been fostering some dogs and we've had, had some difficult times fostering dogs and we've had some good times, you know, let's, should we talk about our first foster?  [00:02:27] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. If that didn't turn us off to fostering...  [00:02:31] it was like worst case scenario, I would say. [00:02:35] Jason: So Sarah's dog, one of our dogs, he's a large dog and he's a Pitbull. American.  [00:02:44] Sarah: He's an American Pitbull. American Pitbull.  [00:02:45] Jason: Terrier. 100%. We got him DNA tested, purebred. And then we have another little mutt that we can talk about that we got.  [00:02:53] Sarah: That we adopted. Well, that one was after the whole Chance thing. [00:02:56] Jason: Yeah, totally. So we decided to, like foster, we brought a dog in and this dog's name was Chance and he was a pit bull. We thought maybe they'd get along but we didn't know Chance's background. We didn't know Chance's history. The previous people made it sound like he was a good dog sort of, but they really, I think we're kind of keeping secrets from us and gave us a bunch of rules. [00:03:21] Like, be careful with other dogs and like separate for a while and we did everything  [00:03:25] Sarah: that's always the rule.  [00:03:26] Jason: Sure.  [00:03:26] Sarah: Careful with other dogs be separate for a while. Slow introductions. Never feed together. That's yeah, those are always the rules. You say that as if that was like a red flag. [00:03:35] That was not a red flag.  [00:03:36] Jason: Okay. [00:03:37] Sarah: They tell you that with every dog.  [00:03:38] Jason: They had to have known that this dog had some violent tendencies or some history. So long story short, this dog bit Sarah. They gaslit us and blamed, it bit her arm. And they were like, "oh, well, there was food involved" or something like this. [00:03:53] We're like, okay, maybe it was us. We'll be more careful. So we still kept the dog. And we had the dog for like a month.  [00:04:00] Sarah: We struggled with that too. Because we really, we, right then and there, we thought, okay. I think we're done. I think he's got to go back. Someone else can foster him. [00:04:08] Yeah. And they kind of talked us into it. Like, "oh, well, can you just hang on to him until I find another place for him to go? Because like, nobody can take him right now."  [00:04:18] Jason: I don't think there's any safe place for them to go. So later. At this point later, it had been a month, we had integrated the dogs, they were hanging out, they're on the couch together, like it didn't seem to be a problem. [00:04:31] It was kind of, but I think really was like a working truce or something. I think this dog had a history of maybe being involved in dog fights, something like this would be my guess. Because some dogs will usually get together. And they'll do a little bit of have a little tiff, but they're not trying to kill each other, right? [00:04:48] They'll, like, bite, they'll do something, they'll give a warning, and they'll be done with it. So, I had come home from a walk, Parker came up to me, I played with him a little bit, he did a little playful sort of growl with a toy or whatever, the other dog gets off the couch. This dog had no expression. He's just headed towards Parker. [00:05:07] Parker saw him and it was like, it was on and saw him coming towards me. And they just locked up and they got into this horrible dog fight. Like, and we have a long entryway into our home, like a big hallway, like entryway that runs kind of all the way to the back of the house almost. [00:05:26] Right. And this was. in our family room towards the back of the house and the fight continued all the way to the front door. Like it was just, it was a disaster. This dog Chance and Parker were fighting and we were trying to break it up. Sarah was on with Parker trying to pull him and I was trying to get Chance off and Sarah, you were freaking out if you don't mind me saying. [00:05:51]  [00:05:51] Sarah: I mean, yeah. Like, rightfully so.  [00:05:54] Jason: Yeah. She's freaking out. And so it, yeah it was interesting. So there's blood everywhere. Blood flying all over the place, dogs are locked up and fighting, biting at each other and so then I, yeah. You know, if I had my gun or knife on me, dog probably would be dead. [00:06:09] I couldn't figure out what else to do. And we weren't going to let him kill our dog. And he was much stronger than Parker. So, we didn't want Parker to die. Right. So, but what I did in that moment is I was like, I had done a little bit of jujitsu training in the past. So I was like, Oh, I'm going to choke him out. [00:06:26] I was trying to, I first tried to lift the legs up. Cause that's what people say. I didn't, that wasn't really a great idea because I lift his back legs up and to try and pull him off. And he just turned and latched onto my leg. He turned really quickly, latched onto my leg, bit my leg through my pants. I have permanent bite mark on my right leg and had latched on my leg. [00:06:49] through my pants and was biting me. Then Parker was coming at him. So he turned back to Parker. And then I use that moment when he came at my leg towards me to get my arm underneath his neck and then to choke him out, just like in martial arts. So I did a blood choke and I figured he's probably got veins going through his neck to his brain, just like all of us humans. [00:07:13] And it choked him out. And then He passed out. I was holding him in my arm and I picked him up and was choking him out because he eventually released Parker and I was choking him out. I'm holding this limp dog in my arm. And then his Parker was latched onto one of his legs or something. And Sarah was like, "what do I do? What do I do? He won't let go!" And I was like, Sarah has a martial arts background, so I figured you knew how to do a choke. So I was like, "choke him out. You got to choke him out!" So she had to grab Parker and get him to release. And and he did. Parker really was trying to protect us. That was obvious. [00:07:52] But Parker was losing, like it wasn't going well for him. Parker, the other dog had some bites on him, but he was okay. But Parker had to go to the hospital. Like he was really messed up. He had to get surgery. His ear was like torn in half. Yeah, his  [00:08:09] Sarah: ear was torn and then he had a chunk ripped out of his neck. [00:08:13] Like the back of his neck. Yeah, it was ugly. Yeah, it was not good.  [00:08:16] Jason: So, while I had Chance in the choke hold and limp, I carried him through the house to the backyard and put him into the backyard. And shut the door so we could just keep them separate. And then, yeah, we were just, I was totally scared of that dog after that. [00:08:33] But that's what we did. And eventually I think we just got him into a crate or something. So he wasn't in the backyard.  [00:08:39] Sarah: Yeah. No, I had to go get him.  [00:08:41] Jason: Yeah.  [00:08:42] Sarah: Into the crate. Because he was like, I don't think he's going to want to see me. I just choked him out. No. No, that's probably a good call. [00:08:48] Jason: He probably wouldn't want to attack me. Yeah. Because I was pretty rough with him. So, that's my adventure in choking out a pit bull. Yeah.  [00:08:58] Sarah: So I think you never really know what you're going to do until you're like in the moment.  [00:09:02] Jason: Yeah.  [00:09:03] Sarah: And then your adrenaline kicks in and sometimes you know what you're going to do or you think you know what you're going to do ahead of time and you find out there's no plan. [00:09:12] There's no plan. And the they do tell you like, oh, lift the dog's hind legs over its head and it will release. Yes, and  [00:09:20] two out of two times it released and then latched on to.  [00:09:25] Jason: Yeah, they don't like that it's being lifted up.  [00:09:27] Sarah: No.  [00:09:27] Jason: So, I mean, that was an interesting moment because I went into tunnel vision. [00:09:31] This is how guys brains work. We're generally singular focused. This is why they send us to war, right? We can just focus on one thing. So I wasn't really particularly traumatized by the event. I mean, it was, but I was like, okay, I'm in mission mode. I'm doing what I need to do with the dog and that's it. [00:09:47] Yeah. And then we got to clean up because there's blood everywhere, all through our home. Yeah, it was like a freaking emergency. Walls, everywhere. It was awful. There's blood everywhere.  [00:09:53] Sarah: Everywhere. And then I was covered in it. Because I was holding  [00:09:57] Jason: Parker and I had a white t shirt and then  [00:09:59] Sarah: when we like I got Parker in the office and Chance was outside because Jason put him out there and Jason looked at me and I'm literally like from here down I was just drenched. [00:10:12] Jason: You were holding Parker and he was the more wounded. Drenched. Yeah. [00:10:15] Sarah: And he's going "oh my god. Oh my god." He's like, "Sarah, there's freaking blood" It's not mine. It's not mine. Like, I'm okay. I lost my pinky nail. That got ripped off. So for a while I had no pinky nail that, that was not fun.  [00:10:27] Jason: Like your actual nail.  [00:10:28] Sarah: Like my actual, everybody says, okay. [00:10:30] Let me clear something up. Everybody says, Oh, those aren't real nails. These are real. These are actually attached to my real nails on my finger. So like underneath you can kind of see,  [00:10:41] Jason: yeah, there's like,  [00:10:42] Sarah: there are real nails here. And then yes, I make them longer, but it's not just a tip. Like if you pull off one of these nails, it is attached to your real nail and your real nail will come off with it. [00:10:55] Jason: You had a flesh pinky, like there was no nail for a while. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of odd.  [00:11:00] Sarah: Yeah, it was horrible. Yeah that, that was awful.  [00:11:03] Jason: Yeah, and it took a while for my bite mark to heal. So, yeah. So, so that was our first adventure.  [00:11:09] Sarah: Let me pause here and say, cause I know some of you guys are going, "why the freaking hell are they talking about any of this? It sounds awful. And it's like, oh my God, I don't even want to keep listening to the episode." Keep listening. Because I think one of the things that I would say about particularly about this situation that we had to go through is sometimes in life, sometimes also in business, you gotta go through some shit. [00:11:34] And you're going to be in some situations that you definitely did not plan for, that you've never been in before, and that Maybe you don't know what to do, and in the moment, the only thing you can do is whatever comes to your mind, whatever you can think of, and then, it's afterwards, then there's the PTSD, so then you just have to heal from the PTSD, but I also would say it's fair that every entrepreneur has a little PTSD from their business.  [00:12:07] Jason: Yeah, for sure.  [00:12:08] Sarah: Yeah  [00:12:09] Jason: Well, because entrepreneurs we take bigger risks. We get to experience you know issues like cash flow problems or staffing issues or team members that losing faith in us and leaving or team members stealing from us, right? [00:12:24] Sarah: Having to fire somebody.  [00:12:25] Jason: If you're working for a boss you don't generally have to experience a lot of this stuff that you experience as a business owner. We're choosing into a higher level of stress, trauma, difficulty, which is why it's not for everybody when not everybody starts a business. And but yeah, it's important to heal from these things and to level up from these things and learn from these things so that you can get to that next level of capacity to be able to deal with that next level of stress that exists in business. And I tell clients this all the time. [00:12:55] They're currently dealing with some problem they think is so hard and they're at kind of a lower level and I tell them, someday, you will look back on this as being such an easy thing for you to deal with in the present moment, you'll be like, Oh man, I can't believe that was so hard for me then. I'm dealing with such bigger challenges and bigger level, higher level things now. And that's encouraging for them. They're like, Oh, that's good news. They're like, and they know they're like, yeah, someday this will be easy. I'm like, someday, this hiring stuff will be easy. Someday this, you know, process stuff that you're dealing with will be easy. [00:13:29] Because you're going to increase your capacity. You're going to learn, you're going to level up. It's the price of tuition and business. So let me take a quick break. I'm going to share our sponsor for this episode, which is Vendoroo. So if you are dealing with constant stress, the hassle of maintenance coordination, and that's an issue for you, check out Vendoroo. They're your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection and coordination. It's built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. [00:14:08] Vendoroo takes care of the details so you can focus on growth. Schedule a demo today at Vendoroo, V E N D O R O O dot AI slash doorGrow and experience maintenance done right. I was actually, we were hanging out with the Vendoroo guys and I was telling them the story. Because we were telling them how we were fostering a dog and we had to get home, you know, from dinner. [00:14:29] And then they were, we somehow shifted in that story and they were just like, so interested. So, but yeah, so if you want to check out DoorGrow. com, we actually just put this up yesterday because we've been fostering and taking care of dogs and our team are really excited about this. I had the idea with one of my team members, we did a secret project. [00:14:51] Yeah, because we knew Sarah would probably like it. So we put up a dog page. So you can see the dogs that we've like, fostered. I don't think we put Chance on the page. Did we? I don't think we put Chance on the page.  [00:15:03] Sarah: No, we didn't. No. Chance was not a great story. But Parker isn't on there either. And Parker is the OG. [00:15:09] Jason: Parker's the OG. We can add Parker.  [00:15:11] Sarah: Parker's like the mascot of everything.  [00:15:14] Jason: So, anyway, check that out right at the top, you'll see a little dog emoji and it says dogs on our website. And you can see, you know, a little bit of the passion we have for helping out dogs. All right. So we told the story of Chance. [00:15:27] And you would think after that we would be done. And I think we were for a little while. It was like, yeah, kind of free, especially for you to like, get past the PTSD of that. You beat yourself up quite a bit about it, which you can be good at times, right?  [00:15:43] Sarah: I'm really, yeah. Yeah. Because on the DISC profile, I'm a DC, so I'm super critical of everything and everyone, including myself. [00:15:54] Yeah.  [00:15:54] So yeah.  [00:15:56] Jason: Which good operators are hard time.  [00:15:58] Sarah: And hard time with that. And I, like I, I internalized a lot of that. I took blame for a lot of that and I had to just kind of work, work my way through that. And it kind of goes back to anytime that you deal with a hard situation, it might be in business or otherwise, you know, you're going to reflect on the situation and some people are really good at externalizing and saying like, none of that was my fault. [00:16:25] You know, I have like no ownership in that whatsoever. Some of people, they take all of the ownership and are really bad at externalizing. So I think you have to kind of find the middle ground. Like what am I responsible for? What am I accountable for? You know, how can I learn? I'm going to learn from that. [00:16:43] And for me it was the, it hands down, it was the scariest moment of my life. Most terrifying moment of my entire life. And I've been in some pretty scary situations back when I did property management. This puts it to shame, absolute shame. But I think it's really just, it's finding the middle ground and figuring out what am I responsible for and how can I learn. [00:17:06] Jason: I think also, I think that some people are kinder to themselves and have more grace for themselves. And I think it's important to remember, like all of us have been through tough stuff and we may beat ourselves up for it, but beating ourselves up doesn't really have any saving power. It doesn't make us better to beat ourselves up. [00:17:26] What we can do though, is we can recognize, you know, in that moment. And based on the decisions we made we were making the best decisions we knew to make at that time And I think you know, we can all afford ourselves a little bit of grace. You're going to make mistakes and screw things up in business. [00:17:41] You're going to fuck up and you're going to make bad choices. I've made some big mistakes like in business. You know, I did a whole episode on my two million dollar mistake or whatever you're going to make mistakes, but that's the price of tuition in business and you keep going. But I think also we need to be willing to afford ourselves some grace and recognize we're all doing the best we can with our current limited capacity and knowledge that we possessed in that moment. [00:18:08] And so if you knew better, you would do better, right? We are definitely going to behave differently having had that lesson with Chance with other dogs, right? We're a little bit more attuned to their behavior. their temperament, like how to integrate them. Like we're paying more attention. [00:18:25] Like we just, we have a different level of awareness and that's what happens in business. If you can move past the trauma and the difficulty and you go right back at it, you pick yourself back up. You dust yourself off. You're going to learn from the experience. So should we talk about some other dogs real quick? [00:18:42] All right. Who else? Well, let's first, let's go to the OG, right? So Parker's my baby. Parker is the best dog I've ever had. And I don't know if there's ever going to be a dog that is better than Parker. I just don't, I said that about my first pit bull and then Parker, I love him so much more than my first pit bull. [00:19:01] . So Parker, I got him 2016, so he's like eight now. And he his mom was a family pet who got out of the yard one day and got herself pregnant. So she went, had a good old time. Her owner found out that she was pregnant and decided to drop her off at the pound because he didn't want a pregnant dog. [00:19:25] Sarah: So, you know, instead of like spay, neuter, that whole thing, he's like, yeah, I'll just take her to the pound.  [00:19:29] Jason: Let's get rid of her.  [00:19:30] Like, while pregnant.  [00:19:32] Sarah: Still going to find you, bud. Like you're out there, I'll get you one day. So dropped her off at the pound. Pregnant dogs should not be at the pound. They will, you know. [00:19:40] Get very sick. So, they moved her to a foster. She had a bunch of puppies and Parker was one of those puppies. So I saved him and he's my baby. He's fiercely loyal and protective of me, even when he probably shouldn't be. Sometimes with Jason, he's protective of me. Like you'll smack my butt, and Parker does not like that.  [00:20:04] Jason: I do smack Sarah's butt butt, everybody. Honest confessions. Husbands, if you are not smacking your wife's butt occasionally, something's wrong. Letting you know. So.  [00:20:15] Sarah: Yeah. But Parker doesn't know. He doesn't know that. He doesn't know it's friendly and playful and loving. No. He knows hitting is bad. [00:20:21] I [00:20:22] Jason: have to do it when he's not nearby.  [00:20:24] Sarah: Yeah. To be fair, I can't hit myself either, so, like, if a bug lands on me or something, I hit myself.  [00:20:30] Jason: Yeah, he starts getting around you and, like, trying to, like, climb on you and, like, protect you from yourself, yeah.  [00:20:36] Sarah: He does.  [00:20:37] Jason: And he'll get, try and get in between us and, like, prevent me from getting near her, yeah. [00:20:41] He does.  [00:20:42] Sarah: He does. So Parker was the first dog that I had ever rescued.  [00:20:45] Jason: He's like a nanny dog.  [00:20:46] Sarah: He is a nanny dog. We call him the nanny dog. He is. And we say, when he's doing his thing, I'm like, oh, he's nanny dogging again. Yeah. So, Parker, we've got Parker. And then after the whole Chance thing, we took a break for about eight months. [00:21:01] And then I thought, okay, well, what if we do a smaller dog? Because after that, Parker was more selective with bigger dogs. Rightfully so. That's his version of PTSD. So I thought, okay, well, maybe a smaller dog could work. And that is where Captain came in. So Captain just for reference, size reference, Parker varies between 80 and 85 pounds. [00:21:24] Jason: Big dog.  [00:21:24] Sarah: Captain is 14, 14 pounds.  [00:21:27] Jason: Yeah, Parker's tall like a lab, but built like a pit bull.  [00:21:30] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, so Captain is only 14 pounds. He's a little baby. He's about  [00:21:36] Jason: tiny  [00:21:37] Sarah: three or four ish He was we got him from a shelter about like an hour and a half away an hour 45 minutes away and Someone had him and his two brothers and decided they were done with him So they shoved them in a crate and they dropped them off at an animal shelter overnight  [00:21:56] Jason: Yeah, because it says you're not allowed to leave animals here. [00:21:59] So they secretly did it in the middle of the night, left the crate there.  [00:22:03] Sarah: On the doorstep. So the staff came in at 7 a. m. and found three dogs shoved in the crate. Huh. Super, super, don't be like these people, be better, okay? So, then him and Parker actually worked really well together and Like Captain just loves Parker so much. [00:22:21] He just loves him so much. Like I take Parker to the chiropractor and Captain stays here. And when I come back with Parker, Captain is way more excited to see Parker than he is to see me. He loves me so much, but he's like, just  [00:22:35] Jason: he's jumping all  [00:22:36] Sarah: over the moon about Parker. So Captain's our second rescue. [00:22:40] Jason: And Captain's, he's kind of a mutt. He, we did a DNA test on him.  [00:22:43] Sarah: Oh, no, he's a he's absolutely a mutt.  [00:22:45] Jason: Yeah, he's got Rat Terrier. He's got...  [00:22:48] Sarah: I think if you could do him in order, probably not.  [00:22:50] Jason: I don't know. Rat Terrier was probably the largest.  [00:22:52] Sarah: Rat Terrier is the largest. What's next? Then American Pit Bull Terrier, which is why he's brindle on the top. [00:22:57] Jason: Oh, yeah.  [00:22:58] Sarah: Huh. Yeah. Okay. Yep. American Pit Bull Terrier. Then Super Mutt.  [00:23:03] Jason: Yeah, that's what the That's a breed. Super Mutt.  [00:23:05] Sarah: I'm like, oh, wow. They call it a Super Mutt. Okay. Okay. It's like 14 percent Super Mutt. Huh. I think. Boston Terrier, Yorkshire Terrier, And then Dachshund, which is what we're told he was. [00:23:19] Jason: Yeah, and he's little. He's really little. He'll get in our face. All the time. Alright, so, next dog.  [00:23:27] Sarah: Yeah, so, we've had Captain for a little over a year now, and then I thought, okay let's foster. We won't adopt another one, but like, we'll foster, we'll, you know, help train it, kinda get it back on its feet, do something good, get it ready for a family. [00:23:42] And that's where Maynard came in.  [00:23:44] Jason: Mmm. Maynard.  [00:23:45] Sarah: That one, that, he's heartbreaking. So if any of you guys had followed us on social media, like, a lot of people I guess were checking in with you, like, how's Maynard? How's Maynard?  [00:23:55] Jason: Yeah it was hard to even look at him and not get emotional. This dog was so emaciated, so starving. [00:24:03] It was a bulldog. They found him in the, in San Antonio, on the street. And this is like in the height of summer. In 104 degree Texas heat, which, if you know anything about bulldogs, they can't breathe because their face is smushed. He was basically a skeleton with fur. If you see pictures or any of our, if you see it, you'll be like, Oh my gosh, like, how's this dog alive? [00:24:27] Yeah, he was covered in like over a hundred ticks. Yeah and he had all sorts of diseases and problems related to that.  [00:24:36] Sarah: Like lesions and wounds. Yeah, he had wounds.  [00:24:38] Jason: Burns it looked like all over his body? [00:24:40] Sarah: He may have hidden under a car that was hot and like burned himself on the hot car trying to find some shade. [00:24:47] Jason: Yeah. [00:24:47] Sarah: And cool himself down. Yeah  [00:24:49] Jason: It's super sad.  [00:24:51] Sarah: This dog was in bad shape. He was 25 pounds and he's supposed to be probably at least 50 or 60.  [00:24:57] Jason: Yeah, they spent And a whole evening trying to pull all the ticks off of him, like they had to give him a blood transfusion or he would have died. Like he was just, he was in bad shape,  [00:25:07] Sarah: He had two tick borne illnesses. [00:25:10] He had pneumonia. He needed a blood transfusion just to survive this. He was obviously severely emaciated and severely dehydrated. And eating, you can't just take a dog like that and shove a bunch of food like Edla, she was like, oh, we could just feed him a lot. And I'm like, you'll kill him. [00:25:29] He'll die. Yeah. So your body, very what happens when you're that far along is muscle atrophy. So your body will eat the muscle. So he had literally no muscle left on him anywhere.  [00:25:42] Jason: He didn't hardly walk  [00:25:42] Sarah: at all.  [00:25:43] Jason: He would just crumple over like he would like, yeah, he would try to walk. [00:25:46] You fall the time, man.  [00:25:47] Sarah: But he would try. He was really like, he tried. You'd think that a dog like this with this many problems would just say like, fuck it, I'm out. Like, I probably would. If I was up for it, I'd be like, alright, just, like, where's the plug? Pull it. Let's do it. But he did not. He did not want to give up. [00:26:04] He did not want to die.  [00:26:06] Jason: We had him for about a week?  [00:26:07] Sarah: We had him for a week. Yeah, we had him for a week.  [00:26:09] Jason: And then, like, he was in bad shape. I don't even think they should have let him come to us, but they didn't know all the stuff that was wrong with them. They  [00:26:15] Sarah: didn't, yeah, they didn't know everything because they didn't do the full like, scan. [00:26:19] Jason: So we had him for a week and took care of him, but we started to notice he was like, he was getting worse. So then we we reached out to the foster organization and then they took Maynard to the doctors and they were, like, he was in bad shape. His whole esophagus had been destroyed so he couldn't, like, move food down. [00:26:38] They've, we've, later they figured out, well, he just needs to sit upright, and like, gravity, and maybe that'll heal over time, I don't know, but he had a whole bunch of issues, but before they figured that out, they were like, this dog is in such bad shape. He's not really getting food down.  [00:26:53] Sarah: He's. Well, they didn't know what exactly. [00:26:54] Yeah, so they were about to put him down. When I brought him back to the vet. So they started doing some tests on him. They said he actually lost weight and I'm like that doesn't make sense. Like he's been with me for a week. He's eaten every day and he wants his food. Like he wants it, desperately wants his food. [00:27:11] And that doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. How did he lose weight? And they're like, I don't know. So then they found out that he had. A very rare parasitic infection that attacked his liver. He has heart disease. His pneumonia has gotten worse. And then they were trying to figure out the whole, why did he lose weight type situation? [00:27:38] And they ended up doing a scan. They did not think he was going to make it. They just, they didn't know. There was so much going on with him. Like issues as long as my arm, the list was as long as my arm and they didn't think he was going to make it. So the president of the organization, she let me know, she's like, I have to make a really tough decision right now. [00:27:59] Jason: And they put a lot of money towards this dog. The whole, like, a lot, thousands of dollars.  [00:28:03] Sarah: It was, I think his treatment was somewhere, All of it was like over like 7, 000 so far.  [00:28:09] Jason: Yeah, they were really doing everything they could to take care of this dog. But she was at the point where she was like, I think we're going to have to... yeah. [00:28:16] Sarah: Oh, and he was anemic on top of all of that. So he couldn't keep heat in.  [00:28:19] Jason: Okay.  [00:28:20] Sarah: Poor guy.  [00:28:20] Jason: So like, they were about to put him down. Right.  [00:28:25] Sarah: Yeah they decided like it doesn't seem like there's anything like he's too like he's just too far gone and The vet came in the room like with the shot and they said all right, let's give him like one last really awesome meal So they gave him mac and cheese and he Scarfed it down like you wouldn't even believe and that whole day and the whole day before he wasn't moving. [00:28:49] He wasn't walking. He wasn't really interested in anything. He was just very lethargic, very tired. He didn't, he did not care. Mac and cheese, he was like, what is that? Give me all of it. Perked right up for the mac and cheese. So the mac and cheese literally saved his life because he was minutes from being put down. [00:29:08] Said that she has never been that close to putting a dog down and then didn't do it.  [00:29:13] Jason: Yeah.  [00:29:14] Yeah, but that gave her hope that, Hey, there's something here. There's some life in him. And he's, You know, he's motivated for some reason.  [00:29:22] Sarah: Yeah. And the vet who was going to euthanize him then, she said, there is something weird with this dog. [00:29:30] Like, it's just, there's something off. We don't know, like, is it okay if we do like the full scan? And she's like, if you think it'll help him, like, if you think that we can figure this out and save him so that he has some quality of life. So  [00:29:45] Jason: because of the mac and cheese, and seeing something that seemed a little bit off, because that like, he was so excited about that and he was eating it, they then did and he perked up, they did the scan and they found what? [00:29:59] Sarah: So in dogs, they call it a mega esophagus. So essentially, his esophagus doesn't work. They think that he may have, back like when he was dumped on the side of the road, and also, I should, we should have said this, he was intact, so we think that he was used for breeding. And then when he got too far along, these fuckers dumped him on the side of the road. [00:30:21] So they're number two on the hit list. I will find them and they're not even far from me. I will go get them. So they dumped him on the side of the road. When he was on the side of the road they think that he either ate something or drank something that was toxic and messed up his whole esophagus. [00:30:38] Yeah. [00:30:39] So that's why he was eating food, but it was all impacted in his esophagus. Hardly any of it was actually getting through to his stomach.  [00:30:47] Jason: Yeah,  [00:30:48] Sarah: so they found that out and Bruni the president of the organization said well wait a second when he was with his fosters like he had a bowel movement So something had to have gotten through like what can we do? [00:30:59] She's like, what if we like prop them up. They have like a little Bailey chair, but they didn't have one there. So they made a makeshift one out of like blankets and cardboard.  [00:31:07] They're like, what if we do like a makeshift Bailey chair, test it for 24 hours, see if any food actually gets through into the stomach because that is a treatable condition. [00:31:17] Now, if they're born with it and then that's really hard. But he wasn't born with it. Something destroyed his esophagus. So they said, oh, that's like, it's a treatable condition. So what if we try this, give him 24 hours, and then he's got to show us that he can get some food and medication down into his stomach because all the medication for all of the problems, it wasn't even getting into his system. [00:31:46] Jason: Medicine, food, nothing was making it.  [00:31:48] Sarah: Nothing. No water. Like he had a couple bowel movements with us. So like Something must have, but not. Not the way he should have been. So after a 24 hour hold, he had a full stomach of food.  [00:32:02] Jason: Yeah, they figured out he just needed gravity. Like they just had to prop him up. [00:32:06] So he's sitting up like a human eating, you know, and he was perfectly happy to eat. Like he was a hungry dog. So then he went to be taken care of full time by the foster organization. Yeah [00:32:18] Sarah: He has multiple medications he has to eat like a very small strict  [00:32:23] Jason: And she has a lot of dogs at her place that she's taking care of so she asked if she had another foster. She said could you take this dog Silver? Yeah So then we got Silver was the next...  [00:32:33] Sarah: oh, wait. The thing I want to say about Maynard is that he had every reason to give up and he had every reason, multiple reasons. [00:32:43] Like he had like literally so many health problems.  [00:32:46] Jason: Yeah. And everybody around him had multiple reasons to give up on him. .  [00:32:48] Sarah: He had every reason to not trust humans and every reason to be like a nasty, vicious dog. And he just wasn't he was not he was so sweet and he loved to like just shove his little smush face into me And just nuzzle it and when it was in there, he still wasn't close enough He was still like pushing trying to get closer Because I think that was the first time he ever experienced love and even though he had every single reason stacked up against him. [00:33:19] Like the odds were not at all in his favor. There's no reason that this dog should technically be alive. It's only because he's so freaking stubborn. He did not want to give up on himself. Even through all of that, even through all of that, he didn't want to give up on himself. So when we were going through all of that, like with him, I was telling people like when I would run my scale calls on Fridays, my our operations call, I was telling people like. [00:33:45] If this dog can go through everything that he went through and still push through whatever is happening in your business, whatever is happening in your life, whatever is happening in your marriage, in your friendships, in your relationships, you can push through it. Because every single time that they thought they had the issue figured out, there were like five more issues that popped up with him. [00:34:08] Jason: Yeah, just tell yourself you're not yet at Maynard level. You can handle it though. He also had a really good support mechanism around him eventually, right? And I think that's also there's a little lesson in that is that you need If you're going to go through tough stuff, it's a lot better to have the right support around you and to have people that believe in you, even when you might feel like giving up, and that, you know, can see that you can be better. [00:34:36] And we need those. We need those people around us. And so if you don't have that in your business, it's probably feeling pretty hard because you're doing, you feel like it's all up to you and you're all on your own. And that's a dumb way to grow business. It just is. All right. Next dog.  [00:34:54] Sarah: Okay. So the medical foster that took Maynard after his second, third ER stint she said, Hey, like I, I cannot take another foster, but I have to take Maynard. [00:35:05] Can you take Silver? And then that gives me room to take Maynard. And I said, so Silver, like this is Austin Bulldog Rescue. They largely work with bulldogs. It's not only bulldogs, but most of them are bulldogs. Silver is not a bulldog. He looks like some sort of terrier. I think he had very terrier fur. But he was little, like 30 pounds. [00:35:28] Very high energy. He was probably like in his teenage phase. They also found him on the side of the road in San Antonio. The sad thing about him, though, is he had like, he was house trained. He had like house manners. So he lived in a house at one point. And Either escaped or was dumped, but he was hanging out with a pack of dogs and the bulldogs He was like, these are my friends and the rescue were saving all the dogs and they were like, okay There's like this other dog like what do we do? [00:35:58] And she's like, well, you can't leave him like come on he's an honorary bulldog now. So so they They fostered him, took him in, and then we had him. We had him for about a week, and he already had some applications coming in on him, and he got rehomed to a family that I think is a great fit for him. [00:36:17] Jason: Yeah.  [00:36:18] Sarah: They're such a good fit.  [00:36:19] Jason: Silver had a lot of energy. Yes. He was like doggy teenager. He had a ton of energy, super excited, loved running around. Yeah. Yeah.  [00:36:30] Sarah: And they're like, we want to go for a walk every day. And we like to go on hikes and we like to go camping and we'll bring the dogs. And I was like, Oh, he would like,  [00:36:37] Jason: he'll love that. [00:36:38] Sarah: He would love that. He would love that. And every dog that Silver saw, he wanted to play with every single one of them. And then they have another dog. So it was just figuring out, are those two going to be nice to each other? And they're great. He was very like respectful of her boundaries, which none of us had seen previous to that. [00:36:57] So that was really good. And they're doing great so far. And then. The woman that adopted him, she sends me pictures of him. Like, she's like, just so you know, he's doing great. I'm like, oh, thank you. Thanks for sending that.  [00:37:09] Jason: All right. Next.  [00:37:11] Sarah: Next is this guy behind me.  [00:37:13] Jason: Yeah.  [00:37:14] Sarah: Baby. [00:37:15] So we wanted to do another foster. Bulldogs are a lot of work, like so much work. And we went to a shelter that's local and we were looking, I was looking online for a dog that was not small, but also not large. So he's like 44 pounds ish. He's  [00:37:37] Jason: got a bit of a cough right now.  [00:37:39] Sarah: Yeah, he had kennel cough. [00:37:41] So we're. working on clearing that up with him and they don't know a whole lot about him. They found him as a stray in Round Rock but that's also so sad because he's so sweet and like he's house trained and he's got manners and I'm like, oh, Jason keeps saying he's like this somebody's like some family's dog like they must be missing their dog and I'm like, it was in the shelter for over a month. [00:38:06] So yeah, like Parker goes missing. I'm not sleeping until I find him.  [00:38:11] Jason: Sure. [00:38:11] Sarah: You know, I would there would be a bolo out on it everything like I would call the SWAT team like Everybody would be involved. So now we are fostering Hans and We're looking for a forever family for him. Although we might foster fail and keep them ourselves. [00:38:30] We'll see but we're That's what it called. It's foster fail.  [00:38:33] Jason: Oh. Yeah. This one's hard to not  [00:38:37] Sarah: The first day we got him, the two kids and Jason were already pushing me. They're like, we could just keep him.  [00:38:44] Jason: He's a special dog.  [00:38:45] Sarah: It didn't take long. They're like, we could just, and I thought I was going to be the one who was weak. [00:38:49] I thought I was going to be the one who says like, oh, we should keep him. Like, let's just keep him.  [00:38:54] Jason: Yeah.  [00:38:55] Sarah: And shockingly enough, I was the one that was like, yes, but like, we're fostering so we can help more dogs. And the three of them, they're like, but we can just keep him. He's so perfect. Aren't you perfect? [00:39:07] So if he gets along with our other two, then. I think we might keep them. We'll see. See what happens. So. All right. So there's our dog story. That's the current. That's what Jason wanted to talk about dog thing  [00:39:20] Jason: today. So, you know, gives you a little glimpse into, I guess, what? Our personal lives a little bit. [00:39:27] Some of the things that Sarah cares about that we care about. And yeah, so. Dogs. So if you like dogs, then maybe you enjoyed this episode and maybe you learned something. I don't know. All right. Well, I think that's it for today. Until next time to our mutual growth, everybody, if you're wanting to grow your property management business, you can use some extra support, then reach out to us. [00:39:50] You can check us out at doorgrow. com and be sure to join our free Facebook group. If you are a property management business owner or planning on starting a property management business in the near future, go to doorgrowclub.Com and join our free community and that's it. Bye everybody. [00:40:09] 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!  [00:40:35] 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.
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Oct 11, 2024 • 20min

DGS 268: Humility and Hospitality as an Entrepreneur

In the world of entrepreneurship, there is a lot of conflicting advice on how to make it and become successful.  Property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull recently came back from a masterminding event. In this episode, they sit down to debrief and share how humility, hospitality, and transparency can be more effective than trying to be “cool.” You’ll Learn [01:10] Masterminding with fellow entrepreneurs [04:04] Humility as a business owner/visionary  [10:41] Example of hospitality and care [15:37] Humility comes from being grateful  Tweetables “Transparency kills the cool vibes, but creates followers like you wouldn't believe.” “By building that goodwill out in front of you, it helps everything in the business go better.” “I think really humility is born or created out of gratitude and being grateful.” “It's not all you. And because it's not all you,  that doesn't mean you're not great. It just means that part of what makes you great is that you're able to work with others.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: It's not all you. Other people believe in you. Other people are supporting you. With others and with God you can do amazing and great things.  [00:00:09] 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 are 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. 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, the owners of DoorGrow. [00:01:07] Now, let's get into the show.  [00:01:10] All right. So we were talking about what we should talk about this morning, and we recently just got back from a mastermind event. We're in a mastermind with some kind of a mastermind put on by coaches, I guess for coaches. Is that accurate?  [00:01:27] Sarah: It's not only for coaches. [00:01:28] It's a mix of entrepreneurs that do different things. A lot of them do happen to be coaches, but not all of them are coaches. There's like the people that run the like the tree house Airbnb's and I was like, that's not a tree house. That's really cool.  [00:01:44] Jason: Yeah.  [00:01:44] Sarah: So there's people like that. [00:01:46] He's also, I guess, a musician. He's like a rock star. I learned that this time. So there's a mix of people. Some of them happen to be coaches and some of them are not, they're just entrepreneurs, but these are high level entrepreneurs that are focused on investing in themselves and learning and growing and being better all the time. [00:02:07] Jason: Okay.  [00:02:08] Sarah: So quarterly, we meet, we go out to Tennessee, which is where one of the hosts live. So it's like right outside of Nashville, which to me is like a second home. Like I just, I love it there so much. And it was a really great event. I mean, it's always a really great event. I don't think we've ever gone and then said, oh, that wasn't so great. [00:02:33] It's good every time. Because you never know, and this is what I personally like about it, is you don't know what you're going to get out of it all the time ahead of time. So sometimes, you know, if there's like an event or a conference or something like that, and they go, Oh, and we're going to talk about this one topic. [00:02:51] Well, what if I don't need this one topic? So what I like is I don't know what people are going to share. I don't know what the topics are going to be ahead of time. So we always get something out of it. And we rarely know what that will be.  [00:03:08] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It was really helpful. And you know, the two gentlemen leading This particular mastermind that we're in, we're in several different things, but this particular one is Sharran Srivatsaa. He's the CEO of Real which is a multi billion dollar real estate company and Aaron Stokes runs a multi million dollar coaching business, coaching auto repair shops called Shop Fix Academy. So it's really cool to hang out with both of them and they're just really wise, lots of insight, great people, you know, and they attract great people around them. So it's just a high caliber group. There's kind of a, at least from Aaron Stokes' side, a very Christian sort of focus. [00:03:51] But Sharran also a very moral person. I don't know. He doesn't seem to focus on that as much, but it's not a religious thing, you know, but we're learning from these two men that have really strong values and really care about the people that they serve. [00:04:04] So I think one of the biggest things that stood out to me was the conversation that they had that related to just who we are. As a coach, I thought was really interesting, and I can touch on that a little bit.  [00:04:21] So I think for me that the thing that I really liked is, one of the phrases I wrote down, I take a bunch of notes. And one of the notes I wrote down is "boastful people are exposing their insecurity. Honor is positive things being said behind my back." [00:04:37] And "hospitality builds goodwill out in front of you" and "master the ability to have confrontational conversations." So there's kind of a conversation a lot about hiring and team, but I really enjoyed the conversation about you know, this idea that when we try to look cool in front of other people, we're not being as transparent and transparency kills the cool vibes. [00:04:58] So we don't maybe look as cool, but he said it creates followers. Like you wouldn't believe. You know, increase trust. And so I think in the past I was very much focused on trying to look cool. And it was, it definitely was born out of insecurity. And it was like, I need to appear great at all times. I need to look like a leader because I just felt maybe insecure. [00:05:23] I wasn't really confident in my ability to perform or to do stuff. Sarah's giving me the nudge to stay further back. So, I'm not too close to the camera.  [00:05:34] Sarah: On what episode does Jason remember to stay behind a lot. I need to put like a... [00:05:39] Jason: I want to get in your faces! Get excited! All right.  [00:05:42] Sarah: What episode does that happen? [00:05:45] I've got a hundred dollars on none of them.  [00:05:47] Jason: Yeah, i'm going to stay back here. Okay, so Yeah, so in the past I was very focused on that and it was kind of a blind spot I had I didn't realize that I was trying to be cool, but part of it was you know, I had some insecurity that i'd never even had a property management business yet somehow, I ended up coaching hundreds of property management business owners. [00:06:08] So there was a bit of imposter syndrome and there was a bit of insecurity and it took coaches to prompt me and push me to like, Hey, you should make some changes to this industry. You can benefit people because I cared, but I was like, it should be somebody else. And so maybe somebody that has thousands of doors or something like that. [00:06:28] And, you know, I did a lot of things trying to look cool, trying to look cool online and stuff like that. And and maybe it's just that I'm getting old I don't know, or maybe I'm getting wiser or I'm learning, but you know, some of the things I've been through recently in life, I'm like, I'm less and less attached that I need to look cool or interesting or special or something, or to try and get some people that perceive me as important. [00:06:54] And I think it's because I'm starting to just value myself more. Right. And And so, you know, transparency kills the cool vibes, but creates followers like you wouldn't believe. So that's, that was one of the key things that stood out to me. So, I,  [00:07:10] Sarah: on that note, something that he was talking a lot about and he's, he has said this before. [00:07:15] It wasn't like, this is not the first time I've heard him say this. And in fact, we've asked him specifically about like some of our events. Like, what can we do to just like blow this thing up? Like, we want to have a conference with like, you know, a hundred people there, 250, 500, a thousand at some point. [00:07:33] So like, how do we do that, Aaron? And, you know, Like the conferences he runs and he did not start large at all. He had 19 people at his first conference and then 19 people at a second conference. So we have more than that, but it's not hundreds yet. And now he's at the thousands. Thousands, multiple thousands of people. [00:07:57] So I had asked him, we were like in our little like van and Jason and I were sitting in the front row and he was driving. So I peeked up and I was like, I think Jason asked him about events and I said, okay, but Aaron, before you answer, I was like, what did you do when you were our size? [00:08:15] Because him telling me what he does now doesn't help me. I don't have a million dollar budget for a conference. Like I wish I did. At some point I might. I don't. I can't pay freaking Jay Leto $500, 000 to come and speak. Like not unless we're going to go bankrupt. So it doesn't work. But the one thing that he talked about, I think he just said it differently or maybe it hit differently this time is like the hospitality aspect of it.  [00:08:46] Jason: Yeah.  [00:08:47] Sarah: Like, don't just run an event and have people like show up and do whatever. It's like, if you were attending this event, what would you want it to look like from start to finish? So this coming DoorGrow Live in 2025, which we're already starting to plan, it's going to be very different. [00:09:04] Like all of our events that we do, any in person events, whether they're small or large, they're going to be very different. So we're going to incorporate some like fun, cool things into it. I mean, we live in Austin. Like there are so many fun, cool things here. We don't, there is no lack. So we can build some of that into. [00:09:24] Our events and give a like a much better experience overall, and that I think will help actually create more connections and networking. amongst the people. So that's, that was something that I kind of on that note. It just hit me different this time, you know?  [00:09:44] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Aaron puts a lot of focus in his events hospitality for his auto repair shop owners. [00:09:51] Yeah. So, let's take a quick time out to go over our sponsors here. So, if you are tired of the constant stress and hassle of maintenance coordination, meet Vendoroo, your AI driven in house maintenance expert that handles work orders from start to finish, triaging, troubleshooting, vendor selection, and coordination. Built by property managers for property managers to provide cost effective and accountable maintenance operations, where every dollar is accounted for and every task is handled with unmatched reliability. Vendoroo takes care of the details. So you can focus on growth, schedule a demo today at Vendoroo V E N D O R O O dot AI slash DoorGrow and experience maintenance done right. And we've got clients getting some great results with them. We just got to hang out with them here in Austin. [00:10:43] Yeah. Came out for a conference or event and we went out to dinner and they're great guys. Like there's a lot of fun. They're great.  [00:10:50] Sarah: And you know what I liked? Yeah. When I, when we met up with him, so oddly enough, we were also running a very small event that day. Yeah, we were. And one of the people who attended the event was new with Vendoroo. [00:11:02] Yeah. We're trying to figure out, there was like a gap somewhere in like their portal or the system or something. And he had our client voice that to us. And I said, well, this actually happens to be. Perfect. Because we are meeting almost like their whole team later tonight for dinner. So when we were waiting for them for dinner, one of them walks in, David. [00:11:26] So David walks in and he says, Oh guys, like, I'm so sorry. I'm late. Cause he was late, but it's not a big deal. He's like, Oh guys, I'm so sorry. I'm late. I was actually on the phone with Ron. I was like, wait, like my Ron? And he's like, yeah. Ron, and I was like, Oh good, because I was going to talk to you about Ron. [00:11:44] He's like, it's already done. It's already handled. He's like, we are on top of it. And I'm like, that's amazing. So like, there's not a lot of companies that focus that much on like customer service so much so that at seven o'clock at night, they're going to be on the phone with you. Yeah, but that's what David did. [00:12:03] He's like you need me. I'm going to handle it right now. I don't know. Oh, it's seven o'clock at night. I'm not working. Don't call me. I won't get back to it tomorrow. He was like, I'm doing it right now. And if I'm late meeting Sarah and Jason, I'm late meeting Sarah and Jason.  [00:12:15] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:16] Sarah: And that to me was really cool. [00:12:17] Jason: Yeah, it goes right along with the totality. [00:12:20] Sarah: Like, we were sharing, like, the feedback and they were like, oh my god, we all have to fix this, like, right now. It wasn't like, oh, that sucks, like, oh, that, oh well, what do we do about that? Oh, give it to the other team. No. All of them were like, we need to fix this right now, like, call him now, like, what can we do? [00:12:35] I'm going to talk to him tomorrow, I'm going to look at his portal like, as soon as I get done with this. It was awesome.  [00:12:39] Jason: Yeah.  [00:12:39] Sarah: So I will say that.  [00:12:40] Jason: Yeah, and part of it was, I think the Vendoroo team, were wanting to maintain relationship, healthy relationship with us as well. Right. They're like, we're going to take care of our mutual clients. [00:12:50] And that's that hospitality aspect, you know, where we're focused on their comfort and that's a way you can stand out really more cost is what Aaron had talked about. He says it doesn't really cost anything extra to just show a little bit more care, to be a little bit kinder, to like focus on hospitality. [00:13:11] If you've already got team members that you're paying a salary, there's some costs, get them to focus on more hospitality and that's way you can stand out. And it. It builds goodwill out in front of you. And by building that goodwill out in front of you, it helps everything in the business go better. [00:13:26] So let me mention our next sponsor True Submeter. Attention, multifamily property owners and managers discover True Submeter, the number one water and sub metering company in the U S say goodbye water use abuse by your tenants and hello to billing for exact water consumption with no unit minimum. Enjoy smart cost effective solutions designed to optimize your property's operations and save you money. Plus get an exclusive 10 percent discount with the code DoorGrow 10. [00:13:58] That's DoorGrow 1 0 visit truesubmeter. com today for intelligent utility solutions and substantial savings. That's truesubmeter.Com. All right.  [00:14:09] Sarah: So everybody in the multifamily space.  [00:14:13] Jason: Yeah.  [00:14:13] Sarah: Where you've got your tenants. Like I literally had a tenant one time, she was so mad, she, and she was a little bit off. [00:14:20] She was just really mad. She would run her sinks just for fun. She would turn on water in the sink, turn on water in the bathtub. She would overflow her bathtub, and it's like, well, we're paying for the water. Well, like the owner was. When we, like, a 1, 300 water bill.  [00:14:36] Jason: Now you can figure out which units, even which state for a device is causing the water issue. [00:14:42] Yeah, and bill accordingly.  [00:14:43] Sarah: And you can help your clients be more profitable, because that's something that they have to eat the cost of. And if you are a real estate investor, because I know there's some of you listening that aren't property managers, you're real estate investors yourselves. [00:14:57] If you've got multifamily and the water meters are not separate and in larger multifamily, they're usually not. Maybe if you have a duplex or maybe a triplex, Sometimes like a little bit bigger, but not normal. It's usually like one water meter for the entire building. So this, I mean, this will help you make more money and actually more profitable. [00:15:24] That would have been great for me. Like I had so many small multis that the water was just included. So we had to then try to like raise the rent to compensate for that. It was just messy.  [00:15:37] Jason: So I guess today's topic was humility and you know, hospitality, you know, or just hospitality and kind of revealing yourself or transparency. [00:15:49] So, you know, the last bit I'll touch on is Aaron talked a little bit about humility and I've always believed humility is recognizing. Humility it's not debasing yourself. It's not putting yourself down. And I think a lot of people think that. And I think Aaron, even though he's got wealth and you know, a lot of things and stuff like this. [00:16:06] He's doing very well as well Sharran, they have this they have humility about them And I think what humility really is created by or what true humility is instead of putting yourself down and saying Oh, i'm like not so great. I don't think that's it at all. What I believe humility is recognizing God and others' hand In your results, that's it. [00:16:28] I think it's just not it's not attributing everything beneficial in your life to yourself It's recognizing that other people around you are having a positive impact and That's why you're able to get results. And so I think really humility is born or created out of gratitude and being grateful And so that's what i'll leave the listeners with if you are feeling really prideful and you deep down don't really feel good about yourself or insecure, then just start to recognize where have others or God or the universe or whatever you're into, where have these things impacted your results and helped you get positive results and start to recognize and, you know, gratitude. [00:17:12] And you'll start to recognize that, Hey, it's not all you. And because it's not all you, that doesn't mean you're not great. It just means that part of what makes you great is that you're able to work with others. Other people believe in you. Other people are supporting you. With others and with God you can do amazing and great things. There's no limit and you know being around other people in programs and masterminds and things like this that are playing a high level game that are maybe ahead of you that are doing really well is one of the main reasons to be in these sort of programs and this is the environment that we, you know, aspire to create and facilitate for our clients is to give them something better to look forward to and to look up to and to be a part of and to be around. [00:18:02] And this is why I think a lot of clients are able to get such great results. If you are struggling in your property management business or you're doing well, but you just know it could be better, you know, your day to day in your life could be better. It's not quite where you want to be. Like you, you want more freedom. You want more time with your family. You want more time with your spouse. [00:18:22] You want to take more vacations, more trips. This is what we can help you get towards and what we can help you accomplish and what we can help you focus on so that you can get the business to serve you instead of you feeling like the business is your master and controlling you. And it's a high chair, tyrant, flinging food in your face, controlling you every day. [00:18:43] Telling you what to do. So let's turn that around reach out to us. You can reach us and find us at doorgrow. com and schedule a call right from that website. Check out our funny videos right at the top If you'd like to you know experience a little humor and levity for the property management industry And make sure to join our facebook group at doorgrowclub. com, and join our free community and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:19:09] 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!  [00:19:36] 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.

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