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Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

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Jul 12, 2022 • 9min

DGS 178: The Slowest & Hardest Path To Growth In Your Property Management Business: Do It Yourself

Frustrated at the pace of your growth? Do you feel like you should be farther along, by now, than you are? Here's what is holding you back... your Ego. In this episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull explains how trying to do everything yourself can actually hinder and slow your growth.  You’ll Learn… [01:08] Why You Feel Stuck and Growth Feels Slow… [03:12] One of the BIGGEST Mistakes You Can Make [04:25] The Fastest Path to Growth [05:38] Why You Might Not Feel Like You are Winning Tweetables “You are smart enough. You will eventually learn how to do everything, but it'll take you probably a decade longer than some of my clients to get similar results. So let's collapse time.” “The fastest path to growth where I've had the largest growth in my own business has been to get coaches, mentors, and to really educate myself and to invest in myself and in the business.” “It's kinda like Indiana Jones running from the boulder. Indiana Jones running is generating cash and revenue. Right, then the boulder is expenses and it's chasing after him every single day.” “One of the biggest mistakes we can make in our business is to not get the right support that we need in the right way as early as possible, or we get the wrong support.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] One of the biggest mistakes we can make in our business is to not get the right support that we need in the right way as early as possible, or we get the wrong support.    [00:00:09] All right, welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life. And you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income.   [00:00:45] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.    [00:01:08] All right, what's up everybody. So I wanted to have a quick conversation about the slowest and hardest path to growth in your property management business or in any business. So the slowest and hardest path to growth in any business is to do it all yourself. That's the hardest and slowest path. So are you somebody that feels like maybe you should by now be farther along in your business? You're frustrated with the level of growth and money and time and freedom that you have currently?   [00:01:42] Do you feel out of alignment with the four reasons for having a business, which is to have more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, like making a difference and more support in the business, right? Do you feel like you're lacking these things? You haven't maxed these things out? Then, it might be because you have some ego, and we all do, right? This is one of the biggest hurdles I see entrepreneurs go through is in the early stages, they think they're really smart and they think they know it all and they think, 'nobody else could do these things as well as I could,' and they think, 'I could just figure it all out. I could do it all on my own,' and they don't get support.   [00:02:24] Support is the magic secret ingredient. And this is why. I eventually had to humble myself to a degree and go get coaches and mentors. And that's not an easy thing. It was born outta pain and frustration, like being really stuck, hitting my head against the wall, not being able to like make cash flow sometimes or be profitable or all these things early entrepreneurs deal with in their business and their entrepreneurial journey. It was really painful, you know, trying to like focus on sales and getting business on and then trying to deliver and fulfill on that and then realizing I haven't been focused as much on sales and so now you're in a sales slump, so now I need to go back to sales and focus on that. And then the cash flow comes in and then it wanes and then it comes in and it wanes and like this roller coaster that business owners go through.   [00:03:12] One of the biggest mistakes we can make in our business is to not get the right support that we need in the right way as early as possible, or we get the wrong support. Maybe we get the right support, but at the wrong time. Maybe they're the right people, but it's at the wrong time. It's not what the business needs most right now. It's not what the business owner needs most right now, and that's a tactical mistake. It's kinda like Indiana Jones running from the boulder. Indiana Jones running is generating cash and revenue. Right, then the boulder is expenses and it's chasing after him every single day, and the gap in between is cash flow in a business. And if expenses outpace revenue, Indiana Jones dies. Right? He then makes really bad, even worse decisions to try and extend the cashflow like bad business loans with, you know, high percentage APRs and like really bad things a lot of business owners fall prey to.   [00:04:04] So we wanna make sure that you have a business that is scalable and that can grow, and you continue to extend the gap between Indiana Jones and the boulder and you've got good cash flow, and the slowest path to growth is to do it all yourself. That's it like that's the slowest path to growth is to do it all yourself. The fastest path to growth where I've had the largest growth in my own business has been to get coaches, mentors, and to really educate myself and to invest in myself and in the business. I've never had a good coach that hasn't easily paid for their own services plus some. I get a return on that investment quickly, and that's what we do for our clients.    [00:04:48] So I got a message from our client today and he has increased his revenue. His costs have only gone up 22%, but he's increased his revenue, like, well, over a hundred percent in his business, and so we are making businesses a lot more profitable. I love seeing this. So my recommendation to you is that. You should find coaches, mentors, people that have helped people do what you're trying to do already. They have proven track record. They have case studies, they have success stories. We have a bunch of those.   [00:05:22] You can look on YouTube. Go to youtube.com/doorgrow. Watch our case studies. We're releasing new ones all the time. My daughter, Madi puts these out and creates these video clips, and these are just captured during our coaching calls. We have clients that are winning. If you don't feel like you're consistently winning, it might be because you don't have anybody in your corner.   [00:05:44] A lot of entrepreneurs don't even have their own spouse in their corner, or they don't have their own business partner in their corner. Those people are like, “why don't you just get a job?” Or “why are you working so hard?” Or “why are you doing this,” right? We want to be in your corner. We want to help you and your spouse and business partners get in alignment, see the potential, see the growth that you know, deep down that you should be having and doing and make a business that you can not be involved in, you know, that you can exit, and if you have the option to exit, you will probably want to keep that business because it's just making you money, and that just makes sense. You wouldn't need to exit it, right? But having that option is ultimate freedom, right? We want you to max out those four reasons of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support.   [00:06:29] So let us help you do that. Reach out. We would love to train you and help you learn how to be effective in your business, optimize your pricing, optimize your website, optimize your sales pipeline and process, optimize all of these different things so that you can move your business forward a lot faster. So with that being said, I'm Jason Hull over at door grow, we would love to help you out. Reach out to doorgrow.com, and stop trying to do everything yourself. This is the sand trap. We all fall into early in the entrepreneurial journey and get good support. Get good team members, and you're gonna go a lot faster. So stop trying to learn how to do everything and find the 'who.' 'Who' not 'how.' Find the 'who' that can help you just do that thing and know how to do that thing quickly instead of going around, trying to learn how to do it all on your own.    [00:07:23] You can. You are smart enough. You will eventually learn how to do everything, but it'll take you probably a decade longer than some of my clients to get similar results. So let's collapse time, and that's what coaches have done for me. That's it. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.   [00:07:38] 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!    [00:08:05] 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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Jun 29, 2022 • 20min

DGS 177: What To Do When You Don't Love Your Clients

Do you love your clients? I love my clients. Property management growth expert Jason Hull has worked with hundreds of PM entrepreneurs over the years, and has found that many property managers complain about tenants, owners, and clients.  If you don’t love your clients, it could be time to take a step back. Join Jason as he gives you 6 changes you can make to love your clients in property management. You’ll Learn… [01:48] Finding Clarity for What Clients You Want [05:17] How to Fix Your Product [07:27] Why You Should Probably Be Charging More [08:52] How to Qualify Your Leads to Get Better Clients [12:43] Changing Your Targeting [15:16] Why You Should Set Better Boundaries Tweetables “The very first thing you need to figure out is who do you want to serve? Who do you wanna have an impact with?” “If you don't have clients that you are in love with that you love working with and love serving, you probably have a bad product.” “So if you don't like the clients that you're getting, you might be dealing with a lot of price sensitive, cheap people. If that's the case, you probably are charging too little.” “Usually the worst prospects are at the end of the sales cycle.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] This is the crux of the beginning of any sales process. This is the most critical piece at the beginning of any sales process in your pipeline is to qualify prospects. All right. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker.   [00:00:29] DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.   [00:00:47] 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 the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show.    [00:01:07] All right. What we're gonna be chatting about today is if you do not love your clients. How do you deal with this? If you don't love your clients? So this is a common thing. I hear a lot of people in the property management industry, I hear a lot of people in general complain about their customers. They complain about tenants. They complain about owners. They are experiencing a lot of frustration, and so in general, any entrepreneur, if you do not love your clients-- I love my clients by the way-- if you do not love your clients, you do not feel like they're great people, you enjoy working with them, then maybe you need to take a step back.    [00:01:48] And so, one of the things that I challenge my clients to do is create what's called a client-centric mission statement, an idea that I got from one of my mentors, Alex Charfen. And so the idea with the client-centric mission statement is the very first thing you need to figure out is who do you want to serve? If you're gonna start a business and you're figuring out the mission of this business, who do you wanna serve? Who do you wanna have an impact with? For us, it's largely single family, residential, contribution focused entrepreneurs, you know, property management businesses, like, there's a lot of adjectives there.   [00:02:19] I wanna bring up that maybe you're just focused on the wrong people-- might be the first thing. So I would take a look at that. If you don't like your clients, then figure out who do you really want to serve? Who would you like to have? Because if you don't have an intention and you don't have clarity on the type of client or person that you would like to work with, then you may be experiencing basically the evil genie effect.   [00:02:46] Have any of you ever seen a movie with a genie and there's always some evil twist, right? The genie's kind of a jerk, and the genie gives them what they ask for but with sort of a sneaky sideways grin chuckling to himself like: "I'll give you exactly what you asked for," but they always give them the crappiest or shittiest version of that. So they're like, "Hey, I wanna be, I wanna be rich or I wanna be powerful or whatever." They're like, "cool. You're a drug lord," you know, and people are trying to kill you, right? The evil genie gives you the worst version of this.    [00:03:18] So what I want you to do is write down right now, who do you wanna serve? And when you're figuring that out, just pretend that you're asking for this from an evil genie and the way you deal with the evil genie is you have to have enough adjectives that the evil genie's hands are tied, and it has to give you what you actually really deep down want. So like with our avatar, we want contribution focused entrepreneurs. We don't want jerks. Single family, residential, fee based, property management companies. That's pretty specific, and so it kind of dials it in. There's some other things that we look for that we've put into our client-centric mission statement, but figure out who do you wanna serve? And get that really clearly dialed in with enough adjectives so that if you said, for example: "I want investors in Phoenix, Arizona, you know, that have rental properties." You're like, "cool, I'm gonna give you the worst investors ever, super cheap, hate doing things. They're not even current on all their house payments. They're like the biggest punks ever, right? 'Cause that's what the evil genie's gonna give you.   [00:04:21] So add in enough adjectives that the evil genie hands are tied, and you're protected and you're safe because if you can combat the evil genie, that means you have enough detail there. It's specific enough that you, your unconscious, the universe, God, whatever you believe in or are into can actually give you something really specifically that you want, something very specific. So I want you to be very clear, because if you don't have that intention, you're likely to not get what you want, and I want you to be very intentional about what you do want and have that clarity, because the more clarity you have on what you want, the more likely you are to get it, and the more your unconscious mind or your subconscious can work on all the nitty gritty stuff to help make sure that happens and the more you're gonna be aligned and other people on your team can align and know what you're looking for and everything can go towards that, move towards that.   [00:05:17] Okay. Now, if you don't have clients you really love another issue may be your product. So in a property management business, your product is doing property management and servicing these investors. And so if you don't have clients that you are in love with that you love working with and love serving, you probably have a bad product. So after you have that avatar defined, that personality or that person defined that we just chatted about, and you're clear as to who you would really love to work with, then we need to make sure we have a product that really solves their problem. So I would make a list of all the problems that they have. What are all the problems that they have? What are all the challenges that they deal with with their rental property?   [00:06:00] And then after you make that list of problems-- If you're actually gonna do what I'm telling you to do-- next, turn all of those into solutions. What are all of the things that you do to solve these or could do to solve these? And then take a look at your product? Does it have all of this? Do you currently have all these elements? Because this will give you a bunch of great ideas for how you can improve your business, improve your operations, improve your product and your offering so that it is more attractive, more sexy to your ideal prospect. And so that's the next thing is improve your product because the better the product, the better the client you're going to have. Sometimes clients are just bad clients because the product isn't good enough.   [00:06:40] I've been there. We had a product that was pretty good. It was pretty good, but we had some clients would go through it and not do certain things, and then they would just say, "I just got a website and I didn't get all this other cool stuff," and so that could be a challenge. You want to make sure that you figure out what are all the challenges that some of our clients have or difficulties they have in implementation or in working with us, or rather than the easiest, best ones that just do what we tell them to do, what are some of the other ways we can deal with some of those others so we can turn more of our clients into clients that we love that get a good result?    [00:07:13] And that's something we continually focus on at DoorGrow. We're always optimizing our process. We are looking at even revamping our current program right now and revamping our offer. We're always improving that.    [00:07:25] So, improve your product. The next item is raise your pricing. So if you don't like the clients that you're getting, you might be dealing with a lot of price sensitive, cheap people. If that's the case, you probably are charging too little. It's also really difficult to enjoy your clients or like your clients, if they don't value you enough, and if they don't value you enough, then you need to increase your pricing and charge more money. Most property managers are priced based on the cheapos or the cheapest people in the marketplace. So one of the first things or leaks we want to dial in with our clients is revamping their pricing and making sure it's psychologically effective and helping them figure out: how can they get more money, more easily for more clients, like making sure their pricing is optimized so that they can close more deals at a higher price point more easily.   [00:08:14] So raise your pricing, and that's a lot easier to do if you have good lead flow, which we also help our clients focus on, but once you have enough business and leads coming in, you can get pickier and I want you to be pickier. One easy way to filter out the worst clients, the ones that don't value you, the ones that don't feel like you're worth the time or money to be paying is to raise your rates, raise your pricing. And if your clients have been happy over the last year, haven't had any major disruption to their safety and certainty, which is the thing they want most from a property manager, you can go ahead and disrupt that a little bit by raising your rates and raise your pricing.    [00:08:52] All right. The next item I wanted to talk about: if you do not love your clients, you can increase the qualifications and qualify your prospects better. So if you don't like your clients, you don't like all the people that are coming into your business, coming in through your sales pipeline, then filter. You need better filters, right? And I've talked about the "cycle of suck" and these other challenges where you take on bad clients and it leads to bad properties, and it leads to bad tenants, which leads to bad reviews, which leads to you attracting more bad clients, right? That's the cycle of suck. To escape that, you have to filter your clients.    [00:09:28] This is the crux of the beginning of any sales process. This is the most critical piece at the beginning of any sales process in your pipeline is to qualify prospects. In order to qualify prospects, you need to be clear on what you want. If you're not clear on what you want, which we talked about at the outset of this podcast episode, then you're not gonna be able to qualify people to see if they are what you want. So first, get very crystal clear on what you want. Then, get very crystal clear on what you do not want so that you can qualify these prospects and you can figure out: do they fit what we're looking for or do they not fit what we're looking for? Do they have red flags? Do they have things that we don't want?   [00:10:05] We don't want people that aren't current on their house payments. We don't want people that aren't willing to invest in a new water heater in the middle of winter or people that aren't willing to fix the HVAC challenge, you know, or whatever, right, people that are always broke or don't have the funds and we're always floating them, these kind of things. So make sure you qualify your prospects, ask good questions, interview them. The pickier you are with clients... in sales, this tactic is called prizing, and prizing in sales means you recognize you are the prize and you qualify the prospect and you filter them and you don't take on every client, and that actually makes you more attractive to potential prospects and more attractive to the clients you really would like to have.    [00:10:49] It increases their desire level. It makes you the "sexy guy or girl at the bar." They don't get with everybody. Right. That's why they're attractive. That's why people see they have value. They don't get with everybody. Nobody wants to get with that guy or girl at the bar, right? So I want you to be the sexy guy or girl at the bar, or at least your business to be so that it's picky. It doesn't get with everybody. It's very exclusive in determining who they wanna work with.   [00:11:15] A great book on that subject is _The Pumpkin Plan_ by Mike Michalowicz, who is somebody I've had on my podcast a couple of times. Great book, _Pumpkin Plan_. He talks about how it's important to weed out the bad pumpkins out of the pumpkin patch, so to speak, metaphorically, and to make sure that you're planting the right seed, which this is why we have a program called the seed program to grow your business, which is planting the right seed means your business has a chance of growing into the thing that you want. You cannot plant a crappy pumpkin seed and get a prize winning pumpkin. You have to plant a prize winning pumpkin seed breed of a plant in order for you to have a chance of getting a prize winning pumpkin, right? You cannot plant a pumpkin seed, for example, and get a giant Oak tree if that's your goal. You have to plant something that makes an oak tree. Is it an acorn? An acorn.    [00:12:05] So what I want you to do is start qualifying, get very clear. It needs to be written down, your qualifications for what are red flags and what are green flags for clients? So that when you are selling, you can objectively look at this piece of paper and make a decision. Do they have red flags? Do they have green flags? Do they look like a good candidate? Because it's really easy for us to lie to ourselves and justify to ourselves that this person might be a good fit or maybe we can make it work or it doesn't sound too bad. A lot of times, we sell ourselves on the client, and you want them to be selling themselves on you, like, "here's why I'd be a great client."   [00:12:43] Number five, the fifth thing: change your targeting. This goes back to the very beginning, but make sure that you're targeting to reach these customers, these avatars, these potential prospects is correct. So if you were focused on internet marketing, like SEO, pay per click, content marketing, social media marketing, stuff like that, you are going to attract a lot more of the cheapos that are more price sensitive, because these are the people that are searching online. They're at the end of the sales cycle, they're a little bit more price aware. They're out shopping around. That means word of mouth has not captured them. The best stuff is captured earlier in the sales cycle through word of mouth or other challenges, and if they don't know anybody, they don't have anyone to reach out to, there's nothing obvious, they're gonna now start doing research and they become more price sensitive.   [00:13:26] So usually the worst prospects are at the end of the sales cycle. So if you're targeting the wrong type of people, like we talked about the beginning or your targeting methods are off and your marketing methods or your acquisition methods are off, you're going to attract bad people or the wrong people. And so that is something else to take a look at, and we have really effective strategies that cost $0 in advertising costs. You don't have to do any advertising in order to grow your business more effectively by capturing people earlier in the sales cycle, in the blue ocean, rather than the red bloody water where all the sharks are fighting over the top spot on Google or for attention online, there's very little search volume for property management.   [00:14:07] It really hasn't grown much since 2004, which you can verify for yourself by going to look at trends.google.com. Put in 'property management.' Change the date range from 2004 to the present, and you will see property management search volume has not really increased much at all. If any, since 2004, yet competition there has increased dramatically. This is the red bloody water, all the sharks, biggest sharks, the biggest whales, biggest companies are all fighting for the best fish.    [00:14:35] It's super competitive, but there's this huge blue ocean, 70% that are self-managing. They're not even looking online yet. They don't even know they need property management yet, and there's ways to reach them and ways to get them on as clients. And you can charge more money. They're less price sensitive. You can close deals more easily at a higher price point. It's a lot better. And then you're creating market share for the industry instead of trying to steal it from another company or trying to get somebody that's self-managing that needs a property manager and fighting over all the other companies in that red water. So last, change your targeting.    [00:15:09] Those are some really quick, easy tips for if you don't like your clients, how to change them. You know, I'll add one bonus. One bonus one here is set better boundaries. This might be the most important one of all, if you are not happy with your clients, sometimes you created this monster. You made them into a bad client by not setting and establishing really good boundaries from the get go. You need to establish really good boundaries with your prospects and with your clients from the beginning, that "this is how things work. This is what we will stand for. No, Mr. Owner, we're not going to do that. And here's why," or "yes, we'd be happy to do that for you. Here's what that would cost," right?    [00:15:48] You need to set really good boundaries with your clients. And a lot of that is just really setting good boundaries around communication, how they can communicate with you, how they shouldn't really, most of the time need to communicate with you. They should trust you to take care of things. Setting good boundaries will change your life, so set good boundaries in your property management business. The difference in operational costs between poor boundary setters or really good boundary setters in terms of operational costs is night and day.   [00:16:16] We're talking like sometimes 10 times difference operational costs or really dramatic difference in profitability. The people that have bad boundaries, they're on the phones all day long. They have a team that are on the phones all day long, really bad boundaries, and it's really ineffective. They're talking to prospective tenants, they're talking to existing tenants, they're talking to prospective clients, they're talking to existing clients all day long. It's tons of communication. They're talking to vendors all day long. It's a nightmare. Really effectively set boundaries.    [00:16:43] I know property managers that are managing hundreds of doors with only one part-time person boots on the ground and one virtual assistant, and that's it. I know people that are doing that because they're not talking on the phone and they're only texting, and the only people they really talk to are prospective clients that they want to close deals with. They've got all these boundaries and systems and mechanisms in place and they're protected and insulated, and their business is quiet and it's very easy, right. It's a lot easier. In fact, One of them is the operator of my company. She has her own property management business, has around 200 doors and very easily is able to manage those while working the majority of the time in my business and helping support our team. Brilliant operator.   [00:17:30] So hopefully this helps you figure out how you can start to love your clients. Life's too short. You really should have clients that you enjoy working with. That is part of why you should have a business, is you get more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution. Like you're making a difference in the world. You wanna be doing those things with people that you enjoy being around, that you like, so work backwards, figure out who you would like to be working with, and then get more support from your team, and your team are gonna be far more motivated to support you effectively and help you get all four of these four reasons for having a business.   [00:18:05] And you're gonna get that fifth reason of safety certainty more for yourself if you have clients that you love and you build your business around that. And I know it sounds so simple, and it really can be. Figure out who you love and figure out how to get them and figure out how to please them and figure out how to get more of them and we can help you do that at DoorGrow. That's stuff we focus on every week with our clients. So reach out to us at doorgrow.com, and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.   [00:18:34] 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!    [00:19:00] 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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Jun 28, 2022 • 9min

DGS 176: 9 Reasons You Might Not Need a Property Manager

Around 70% of single-family properties in the United States are self-managing. They don’t think they need a property manager. At DoorGrow, we wanted to create an enticing lead magnet for our clients by highlighting some of the things that property managers do (that most people do NOT want to do). In today’s episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, provides 9 reasons why someone might not need a property manager and instead want to do everything themselves… You’ll Learn… [01:21] Why we Created this Idea for Leadgen [02:26] The Reasons Why Someone Might Not Need a Property Manager [05:04] Why Someone Would Want a Property Manager to Avoid Dangerous Situations [06:14] How this Concept can Help You in Sales Tweetables “A lot of people that are coming to a property management website might be thinking, ‘do I need a property manager?’ If they're self-managing.” “You might not need a property manager if you would love a part-time job, managing rental properties. Your full-time job just isn't enough. You just don't have enough to do on a weekly basis.” “You might not need a property manager. If you love getting maintenance calls during your work week, during weekends, and during holidays, especially at night.” “You can very easily during your sales process when you're talking with an investor, just say, ‘Hey, do you love doing these things?’ and just list out all the things that you do as a property manager.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] you might not need a property manager if you want to be on call anytime to deal with lockouts, move-ins, move-outs, deposit handling, et cetera. You like things that are suddenly urgent and immediate, interrupting your day. You can handle that. That's totally fun for you. [00:00:20] All right. Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:58] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show.  [00:01:21] So today I wanna share with you an idea called "Reasons You Might Not Need a Property Manager." Okay, so give you a little backstory, add a client in Florida, and we wanted to make kind of a sexy lead magnet for his homepage to capture some leads. And so a lot of people that are coming to a property management website might be thinking, "do I need a property manager?" If they're self-managing, which is usually the biggest target audience, right? They're self-managers. So we wanted to directly attack or attach to that pain or that fear or that uncertainty that they have that, "maybe I don't need a property manager. I'm doing this myself," and they're unsure.  [00:02:03] So you could title this: Nine Reasons You Might Not Need a Property Manager. So let's go through these. You might find this a little fun. It's a little tongue in cheek. But you could do something like this as a lead magnet or in talking to your clients during your sales pitch or process, like let's figure out if you even need a property manager. You might not need one if these things are true.  [00:02:26] So #1: you might not need a property manager if you would love a part-time job, managing rental properties. Your full-time job just isn't enough. You just don't have enough to do on a weekly basis. You might not need a property manager, right? They would take that away from you.  [00:02:46] #2: you might not need a property manager. If you love getting maintenance calls during your work week, during weekends, and during holidays, especially at night.  [00:02:58] #3: you love finding vendors and coordinating times between them and the tenants. You enjoy the challenges of how difficult both parties can be to reach and creatively getting all three parties, you, the vendor, and the tenant in sync, right? That's fun. You might not need a property manager if you like negotiating all of that.  [00:03:17] #4: you might not need a property manager if you are totally comfortable with all the legal liabilities and risks of staying current on, navigating safely, and following all federal fair housing requirements, as well as local and state-level landlord and tenant laws. If that's the case, then you might not need a property manager. [00:03:42] #5: you love showing property and are fantastic at screening tenants beyond just simple credit scores, and you know how to avoid common scams and can easily identify common, often overlooked red flags that will show in prospective tenants. So you might not need a property manager. They're really good at that, but if you're good at that, you don't need them. [00:04:08] All right. #6: you might not need a property manager if you want to be on call anytime to deal with lockouts, move-ins, move-outs, deposit handling, et cetera. You like things that are suddenly urgent and immediate, interrupting your day. You can handle that. That's totally fun for you. You might not need a property manager. [00:04:33] #7: you are comfortable visiting the property to do inspections, to ensure the property is being cared for, and you are comfortable dealing with the tenants complaining or potentially your safety being at risk because they're upset at you. You might not need a property manager, because you're just so awesome like you're just going to deal with these really difficult situations, tenants, and sometimes dangerous situations. You like little danger in your life. I just read a news article-- this is not funny-- an older article where a landlord was killed because they were doing things they probably shouldn't have been doing or dealing with a tenant in a way they probably shouldn't, and the tenant took matters into their own hands, right. So don't try to force yourself into a property if tenants could be armed. Right?  [00:05:24] So you might want a property manager in those situations, but you might not need a property manager if #8: You find it easy to be the bad guy. You love being the bad guy and performing rent collection when tenants aren't paying rent, and you are comfortable being the bad guy when people are making really sob story, heartfelt excuses. You like to be that bad guy. "You lost your job due to COVID? Cool. Well, I'm gonna be the bad guy and get you to pay rent." So if you love being the bad guy, then you might not need a property manager. [00:06:01] #9: you might not need a property manager if you have no problem raising rent on your existing tenants each year to coincide with inflation to market growth... and we could go on and on and on. So this is a fun little idea for you property managers out there. You can very easily during your sales process when you're talking with an investor, just say, "Hey, do you love doing these things?" and just list out all the things that you do as a property manager. "Do you enjoy doing these pieces? Because if not, my guess is you really enjoy being an investor. You like having real estate investments, but you don't really enjoy being the property manager. So let us take that off your plate." [00:06:43] And usually, if you ask these questions, they're gonna laugh. "Like do you love dealing with maintenance? Do you love dealing with tenants? Is that fun for you?" They're gonna say no. "No, that's not fun for me." [00:06:53] "Cool. Let us take that off your plate." [00:06:55] So I hope this sparked some ideas for you. I hope this is helpful. What ideas do you think I missed? Like, let me know. You can let us know in some of the comments or on our various channels where we post this video. Let us know: what else should we add to this list to expand this? Reasons somebody might not need a property manager, and that's it for today. So if you feel like you'd like to convince more people and get more clients that they do need a property manager, reach out to DoorGrow. We're really good at helping you do that. We'd love to help you grow and scale your business. And until next time, to our mutual growth, everybody. Bye. [00:07:35] 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!  [00:08:02] 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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Jun 21, 2022 • 29min

DGS 175: How Property Managers Can Lower Stress & Increase Productivity Through Biohacking

Owning a business can be really stressful, but there are ways to lower your stress levels as and increase productivity in your business. How? By developing your physical and mental health as the entrepreneur. In this episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull shares his biohacking techniques and secrets that have allowed him be happy, healthy, and enjoy his day-to-day in his business. You’ll Learn… [02:45] Getting Good Water [05:56] How to Transform your Workouts [09:22] Making Sure Your Body Recovers [11:08] The Benefits of Walking… Just Walking [13:33] 4 Ways to Improve your Lymphatic System [17:26] The Benefits of Cold Showers and Red Light [20:17] Making Time to Calm Yourself [21:25] My Experience with Functional Medicine Doctors [23:25] Leveling Up your Diet Tweetables “A lot of times we might not be focused on our health. We might not be thinking that that's a priority, but if you wanna make more money, in my opinion, it is essential.” “Being a business owner is stressful in general, and there's a baseline level of pressure and noise that we experience running a business.” “You need to build the business towards what you want and having the day to day that you want and having the life that you want. That's why we have businesses.” “Walking doesn't increase stress response in the body. It tells your nervous system that you're calm and that things are okay. It shifts you out of that fight or flight stress response that we tend to shift into as entrepreneurs.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] So I've cut out greens and started on a carnivore diet and I started getting more into meat, getting liver in my diet, getting heart in my diet, and I've found that my inflammation has gone down, because plants, have a lot of oxalates and other things that plants use to protect themselves from getting eaten, and now I jokingly say to people "Plants are trying to kill you," [00:00:23] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:01] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We wanna transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:24] So today's topic is how property managers can lower their stress, increase productivity by focusing on health. And so a lot of times we might not be focused on our health. We might not be thinking that that's a priority, but if you wanna make more money, in my opinion, it is essential, and it's important in order to get to that next level. And you might be thinking, "I'm doing alright financially. I'm doing okay." But I guarantee you'll be doing a lot better if you focus on your health. So let's talk about this, and, you know, as property managers, what I hear-- feedback from my clients-- is that they deal with a lot of stress. They deal with a lot of challenges. Being a business owner is stressful in general, and there's a baseline level of pressure and noise that we experience running a business. And that baseline is higher and higher, usually as you grow your business, unless you get the right support and set up a business in a way that is gonna protect you.  [00:02:17] You can listen to one of my previous episodes where I talk about the four reasons for running a business and that secret fifth reason, but those four reasons for running a business really is fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support, and that means you need to be taken care of. That's support, right? And you need to build the business towards what you want and having the day to day that you want and having the life that you want. That's why we have businesses. Otherwise, you might as well just go get a job. So here's some of the tools that I use: [00:02:45] So one of the most simple, basic things is water, like making sure that you're getting hydrated. And so, my secret for having really good water, cause I'm a little bit of a water snob, is that I distill all of my water. Now, a lot of people are like, "Well, why would you do that? Why don't you just filter and reverse osmosis and all this stuff?" well, the reason I like to distill water is distilling water removes everything from the water, everything. It removes fluoride, which can screw up, like some of your hormone generating things like your pineal gland and calcifies that and other areas of your body. Right?  [00:03:22] So it removes heavy metals. It removes all sorts of chemicals. By distilling water, it turns it into steam. That steam is then cooled, and then it drips and comes out as pure water with nothing in it. Now, distilled water doesn't taste very good, right? So then I add back into that water, what I want to be in it. So real simple, you just go and get a bottle from Amazon of trace minerals. I have this water distilling machine. It takes, maybe about four hours. It does about a liter an hour. So it'll do about, I think, four liters of water or something like that. It's almost a gallon. And then, once it distills it into a pitcher, I dump that pitcher into a glass, water container. In general, you want your water stored in either glass or metal, stainless steel or something like that. You don't want it sitting in plastic. I avoid plastics as much as possible because they have hormone disruptors, and they can screw with your hormones and mess with your testosterone levels if you're a dude, mess with your estrogen levels if you're female.  [00:04:24] So I distill the water and then I add trace minerals back in, so the water tastes really good. Like I really like how it tastes. And you'll have to play around with how much to do because too much minerals doesn't taste great, and too little: it's gonna taste a little flat or weird, but that's how I get really good water, and then I know it doesn't have a lot of the garbage in it that is gonna come through the tap. So what's really interesting is you take that tap water, put in your distiller. Well, what you see left after using your distiller for weeks, you'll just see this cake of stuff of like calcification, chemicals, and gross stuff. And it's like kind of brown and white, and like, this is stuff that you don't want in your body and it smells. It doesn't smell good. This is what's in your water.  [00:05:07] So you can see people go and do some sort of electrolysis on water on some YouTube videos, and you'll see they'll hook metal up to water and they'll do electrolysis to it and all the stuff that's in the water, it will turn brown and like green and stuff like this, and it gets really gross, and that doesn't happen on distilled water. There's nothing for it to do that with. It really makes you think, "Well, maybe I should not be drinking all that garbage. Right. And it came in handy, like here in Austin, we had some issues with water during the freeze and some stuff that happened and we were getting notices like: "the water's not safe to drink. Make sure you boil your water. I'm like, well distilled water is boiled water, so there isn't an issue. It kills bacteria, it kills viruses, it kills germs, turning it into steam. So maybe you trust the municipal water, but. I don't., So that's that's first thing is basic water.  [00:05:56] The other thing is workouts. So let's talk about that. So I don't wanna spend a lot of time working out. Some people wanna spend an hour or two hours. Cool, but a lot of people use the excuse: "I don't have time to work out." Well, there's a really cool system. There's a book written by Dr. Jaquish, I think is how you say his name, but the book title is called Why Weightlifting is a Waste of Time: and so is Cardio, or something like that. That's not the exact title, but the idea he puts out is that you don't have to spend a ton of time. The ultimate goal is to achieve muscle failure. So what's the fastest way to achieve that, to force your muscles in your body in the state of growth?  [00:06:31] Well, he developed a system called the X3 bar, so you can just go to X, the letter X, the digit three, and then bar.com. And you can go get his system. It's like 500 bucks, I think, 600 bucks. I don't know. And it's everything that you need to develop your musculature and your body. And the workouts only take 10 to 15 minutes. So I'll work maybe about 10, 15 minutes. I can do it every day. If I want to, if I'm getting enough rest, I have enough recovery time. I can do a push workout one day, and I can do a pull workout the next day, and I can alternate. And then sometimes I take a day off just to recover or if I didn't get enough sleep, I'll take a day off. So that's the workout thing. So it's just bands. And the cool thing about the bands with the bar is you can lift a lot more weight than you can with free weights or doing weight lifting. [00:07:22] You can lift a lot more weight because the bands are easier at the lowest points of movement where you are most likely to get injured. So I don't have injuries anymore, working out. It's better than when I used to work out with a trainer three times a week. And I'd be incredibly sore. You don't develop soreness, which is weird. I'm a little sore sometimes if I work out aggressively with it, but it's hard because in order for you to get sore, your body has to build up lactic acid. And that usually takes 30 minutes to an hour to really build up lactic acid. So there isn't enough time for you to develop lactic acid to get sore, which means you might think you're not getting enough or need to work out twice a day or like multiple times, or do extra reps or extra sets. You don't. Like it's intense enough, and I'm getting musculature gains. I'm growing and it's only 10, 15 minutes a day. I know it's crazy. Right. So X3 bar. [00:08:14] It's got a hard metal bar. You can connect that then to a band. It has a plate that you stand on. I went the extra step and got the accelerator, which is kind of this vibration plate. They partnered with a company to do a vibration plate, which increases growth hormone. So I'm standing on this vibrating plate when I'm doing the workouts and you can do squats. You can do deadlifts, you can do bench press. All this with bands and at the lowest points of movement where you're most likely to get injured with free weights or doing weight lifting, it's the easiest with the band, but then you can exceed the weight that you would be able to do and go beyond that weight because the band gets harder the further that you push it or the more that you stretch it. And then, you can also just do partial movements. You do a full movement, then you do partial movements until you barely can move it and you hit complete failure. So you can do one set of each movement and get to complete failure really quickly and move on to the next movement. And it only takes a small handful of moments a day, and it is only 10, 15 minutes. So I love the X3 bar.  [00:09:22] Now, the other thing related to that is recovery. So how do I know if my body's recovered enough, if I'm not paying attention to soreness like I used to? So I use the Oura ring, which is spelled O-U-R-A, I believe, the Oura ring. So a lot of celebrities are using this. This is a device that, it's actually a little computer ring. And it's got little diodes and things that measure, and at night I'll see it in the dark. I'll see it glowing green around my finger. It's measuring my heart rate. It's measuring like what's going on with my heart, and it tracks this throughout the day. It tracks my sleep patterns and it gives me a score the next day of a readiness score. It gives me a sleep score. It measures activity, so it helps me know, based on my heart rate while I'm sleeping and my resting heart rate, whether or not I'm recovered enough to do my next workout. [00:10:16] And if I'm getting good enough sleep and good enough nutrition, it's never an issue. Like I'm pretty much ready to workout every day. And so, I like the Oura ring. It helps me know whether or not I should take it easy. I had a late night the other night, having to drive out to pick my fiance up from the airport and it was late. I got back late, and I didn't get enough sleep, so I didn't work out the next day because my readiness score and sleep score was obviously bad and I needed more time to recover. So you can pay attention to those kind of things. If you're sick, things like that, it'll, show up that you're not really ready or you didn't recover. Your heart rate was elevated while you were sleeping. So that was recommended to me by my functional medicine doctor, and it's been a game changer for me in helping me to get good sleep. So sleep is the next big hack is making sure that you get really good sleep so that you have really good recovery. [00:11:08] Now, the other thing that I try to do is get about 10,000 steps a day of walking, just walking, not running, walking. Walking, doesn't increase stress response in the body. It tells your nervous system that you're calm and that things are okay. It shifts you out of that fight or flight stress response that we tend to shift into as entrepreneurs. And so walking really can have a calming effect. It also is a form of bilateral stimulation, which is used in EMDR therapy, which helps you deal with emotional stress response and emotional issues. So I like to get a walk in., Usually I try to go for a walk in the morning, and then I might try to go for a walk in the evening. And I also have a walking treadmill from a company called lifespan. So underneath me right now, I'm standing on it. There is a treadmill underneath my standing desk. So I highly recommend standing desks so that you're standing. But if you want to even step it up even more, literally, get a walking treadmill so that you can walk throughout the day. [00:12:08] You can control it from a little panel on your desk and you can get some steps in and movement while you're walking and maybe kind of multitask just a little bit. Right. You're walking, getting some stuff done. I noticed it's a little distracting for clients on calls, so I've been trying not to do that during calls, and do it in between or on calls that maybe are with my team or don't matter maybe as much, because it's kind of distracting to see somebody walking and everybody comments on it every time, so I'm just, I'm tired of having people just comment like, "Hey, what are you doing?" "Walking on a treadmill." And then it turns into a conversation about how cool my treadmill is, and then they want to know about it, and I want to get into whatever we're talking about. Right.  [00:12:44] So, but getting some walks in the morning resets your spine. It gets your digestive tract going. It helps you have healthy bowel movements, like all of these mechanisms, our bodies were made to move and walk, so I recommend you go for a walk in the morning. You get that sunlight. Sunlight is another health hack. It gives you vitamin D. It helps body processes. Your eyes are attuned to sunlight. So also getting sunlight in the morning when you go for a walk and on your skin, both. Have been proven to help your body set its circadian rhythm and to get better energy and better sleep and biological processes happen. So going out into the sunlight, getting some sunlight on your eyeballs and on your skin and going for a walk is healthy. I like to do it without a shirt on, so I get even more vitamin D, but that may not be you.  [00:13:33] Walking also helps your lymphatic system. So the other things I do for health, let's talk about the lymphatic system. Lymphatic system is often neglected, but it's the drainage system in your body. It's the sewage system, and if the sewage system in your house is backed up and not healthy, everyone's gonna be sick in that house, right? It's gonna be gross. Well, that's most people's bodies. They don't have a healthy lymphatic system. So in my office, I have a rebounder. It's a little trampoline that can help flush the lymphatic system because the lymphatic system doesn't move on its own. You need to be walking or moving or jumping can help flush the lymphatic system. Even jumping for like two to five minutes can really help flush the lymphatic system and make it healthier.  [00:14:13] The other thing that I'll do in the morning is I will do dry brushing. So it's a natural brush. It's a brush that's made for skin brushing or dry brushing. This has been used by Chinese cultures for like thousands of years, I guess, but you basically brush your entire skin surface of your entire body. So I'll brush, you know, my face, my neck, like everything. And what I find is it gets the lymph moving. It gets my body feeling a lot healthier. And so I do that before I even go for a walk in the morning, I will do dry brushing, and brush my entire body so that it makes the skin really soft. It removes dead skin cells. It helps your skin have better oxygenation and breathe, keeps you younger. The lymphatic system is what keeps you looking and feeling young a lot of times and gives you more energy if it's healthy and clean, because it's able to remove waste and toxins and congestion and build up in the body. So getting that, using rebounder, going for walks, dry brushing are ways to improve that, and the other thing that I'll use to help my lymphatic system is a sauna.  [00:15:21] So I have a infrared sauna. I got one of those 360, lay down, portable saunas. It looks kind of like a rounded tube or coffin I can lay in and I pull the top part over me. What's really nice about that versus these big room saunas that are really expensive is those big room infrared saunas? The problem is there's no lights or heat generated directly onto the areas where you're sitting on the backs of your legs, on your buttocks, on your hamstring area, on your calves, like there's no light there. Sometimes it's just hitting you from the side, maybe from the front, but I don't feel like it's full. So this is 360. It has a mat with heat and lights. Mine has like rocks of like tourmaline and something else. I don't know, but it's supposed to help with some infrared things and have some benefits. I got mine from-- like a luxury version-- from 1Love Health. So you can check that out at digit one. It's the digit number one and then love health.com. So I got one of their luxury models. It's like black. It's supposed to be low EMF. It's supposed to be low toxicity, like it doesn't have a lot of toxic materials, because when you heat up materials, that can be bad.  [00:16:35] So it's supposed to be really good. I did a lot of research. That's the one that I use and I just have it up on like on a bed in my guest bedroom, in the house. I use that at night. So one of my favorite things to do to end my day is I do my sauna. I do it for like 30 minutes, pretty much at the highest heat setting. You lay down towels on it. So it takes up all the sweat, and I sit in that for about 30 minutes, then I'm really hot and sweaty. The nice thing about that as well is your head can be out. That's too much heat for like your head to be in. Right. So I keep my head out and I can tolerate that a lot longer. I still sweat. My head's sweating. Everything's sweating. Right. I sweat a ton. And then I get out, I drink a whole bunch of water to replace everything that I just lost. And then I take a cold shower.  [00:17:26] So cold showers are one of my other secret hacks. So if you shift your body temperature quickly like that, and you do cold, I find I sleep amazingly well, so I do a cold shower, which feels great after doing all that heat and is also really good for you. Cold also helps attack with like brown fat, which eats up all the fat that you want to go away. And so increasing brown fat helps to increase your body's ability to burn fat and increases your metabolism. So doing a cold shower after a hot sauna feels really great, and then I sleep like a baby and you sleep really well. It's increased my sleep score that shows up on my Oura ring. I have deeper sleep. My recovery is amazing since I've started doing the sauna. My lymphatic system is way healthier since doing the sauna. Highly recommend it. Sweating is super good for you. It releases a lot of gross stuff, a lot of toxins, and then doing those cold showers really helps me cool down, which is important. I'm not gonna go to bed all super sweaty, right? It helps me cool down. And a lot of other health benefits related to that: reduces pain, reduces inflammation, increases recovery. [00:18:32] So that's my secret hack for super sleep and super recovery is hot sauna, 30 minutes, cold shower maybe 10, 15 minutes until I feel like I'm just used to the water I'm comfortable and I'm no longer feeling hot and sweaty. And then I go to bed. The other thing that's really been helpful that I do in the morning while I'm dry brushing is I have a red light panel, and I got two of the biggest ones available from the best company, which is Platinum LED, platinumled.com I believe is their website, and I got two of their largest panels. I have them connected together. It only really hits the middle of my body. So I will do 20 minutes front, and then I'll turn around and do 20 minutes on my back. I just stand there naked and do my red light. I do this in the morning before I go on my walk. I'll do my dry brushing sometimes while I'm doing that, or right after I do my dry brushing, I'll do the red light. The red light helps boost your metabolism. It helps your mitochondria. It helps improve your health functions. It increases collagen production, so you have healthier prettier skin if you want that. It's been proven to have like some help with hair loss and some of these kind of things. But there's a lot of benefits to the red light. Some are anecdotal, some are proven by science, but red light seems to be really great. It also helps burn fat and other things. [00:19:55] So I'll do 20 minutes of red light front, 20 minutes of red light back. Sometimes, maybe every other day or once or twice a week, instead of doing front and back, I do side and side. So I'll hit the side of my body and then hit the other side of my body and do the red light so that I'm hitting in other, other areas that aren't normally getting hit. [00:20:17] So those are several things that I'm doing for health. Now let's talk about also just calming yourself down. One of the things that I do is I have a membership with a float spa, so I go and do float sessions. So if you've never been in a deprivation tank or float spa, what they do is you basically lay in really warm water. It's like over body temperature just slightly, and so it's really comfortable to be in and the air is warm, and it closes on you and it's a pod. And usually it's lit up at first. You lay in it, but it's full of a lot of magnesium. There's a lot of magnesium epsom salts, basically in the water-- high grade magnesium, which is super good for your body. It's absorbed through the skin. It's calming, really calming and there's a lot of health benefits. Most people are magnesium deficient, just look up magnesium deficiency symptoms, and look at the list of symptoms. It's pretty bad, and there's a lot of people that are very deficient in magnesium, and they're focused on trying to solve those problems with weird, like, you know, drugs and things, and they're going to doctors and like have all these problems. And a lot of these things probably could be solved by magnesium deficiency.  [00:21:25] So I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice, but I do recommend that you go get a doctor and I recommend you get a functional medicine doctor, which is a standard medical doctor with better skills at identifying how your body will function and how things affect you, and they don't just focus on drugs and surgery. They focus on getting you tested to figure out what supplements, what nutrition, what gaps, what do you need, what might be going on in your body? For example, I had some heart issues going on and I went to a functional medicine doctor-- tested me, found out I was magnesium deficient, and that was causing my heart to have palpitations, and if I had gone to a standard doctor, they probably would've put me on all sorts of drugs and statins and other things. And I had a client who that's what happened, and he said, "I felt worse." So I was having some arrhythmia symptoms. So my Apple watch was saying you're having heart arrhythmia stuff going on. My heartbeat was getting really elevated. I didn't know why.  [00:22:21] Part of it was because I had started-- I saw some sort of body building thing, fitness thing that said, "Hey, you should take dextrose or maltodextrin after a workout to spike insulin, like to get more muscles, and I was like, "that's a great idea." So I was taking sugar basically, which I didn't realize at the time, but I had candida overgrowth, or yeast overgrowth in my body. I probably had it for a long time and that just fed it. And then, the candida ate the magnesium that my body needed. And so my heart didn't have what it needed to function healthily and properly, and then I was getting like these issues. this is all hindsight, 2020, after going to a functional medicine doctor, getting tested, finding out I had candida overgrowth. I was magnesium deficient. Heart issues went away almost immediately by taking really high grade magnesium supplements. And then I started taking some herbs and cutting out sugar to eliminate the candida overgrowth. Eventually tested that that was dealt with and no longer an issue.  [00:23:20] Candida was also producing a lot of toxins in the body that were giving me migraines and headaches, so I also took Calcium glucarate or some sort of supplement like this that my functional medicine doctor recommended. That also helped to detoxify because it can pass the blood brain barrier and it helped to detox the head and my brain, so I wasn't getting those headaches anymore. And after a while, I didn't have those issues. If I'd gone to a standard doctor, who knows, I might be dead. So I'm really grateful for my functional medicine doctor, shout out to Dr. Roy.  [00:23:52] The other thing that I would recommend is I've shifted-- so I used to do green smoothies. I was a big pro bono to green smoothies because I thought greens were the healthiest, most nutritious thing. So I was doing tons of green, lots of spinach, lots of kale in my smoothies, which is really hard for humans to digest. It's really hard on our gut. We are not chimps or apes or whatever that eat tons and tons of plants. Well, apes like gorillas eat tons and tons of plants have a big belly that just ferments and they eat, like tons and tons of this stuff a day, right? To get the protein that they need in order to have the musculature that they have. We're not wired that way. And so I've cut out greens, cut out green smoothies and started on a carnivore diet based on stuff that I'd seen from people like the Liver King on Instagram and YouTube Carnivore MD, which I've seen on Instagram and YouTube. And I started like getting more into meat, getting liver in my diet, getting heart in my diet, getting these things.  [00:24:53] And I've found that my inflammation has gone down, because plants, have a lot of oxalates and other things that plants use to protect themselves from getting eaten, and now I jokingly say to people around me, "Plants are trying to kill you, because plants really are trying to protect and defend themselves except the fruit part of the plant. Seeds though, a lot of times have a lot of toxic stuff and are not really great for you. Usually plant's goal is to get you to eat the fruit or animals, eat the fruit, and then poop those seeds and spread those seeds around or spit those seeds out or spread those seeds around so they can procreate and grow or whatever they do. Right. So I've found that by cutting out greens and cutting out the toxins and focusing on more of a carnivore diet along with some fruit and you know, more natural based things like that. I have a lot less stress, a lot less inflammation, lot less headaches, a lot less joint issues. I'm a lot healthier, and I'm 44. I'm turning 45 this year people. And I get asked all the time. People are always surprised when I tell 'em how old my oldest kid is that they're 20. And they're like, "you have a 20 year old. How old are you?" Right. So... "what are you doing? What's your secret?" I don't know, maybe it's some of these things, right?  [00:26:07] So as far as food, I eat a lot of meat. I try to get liver and heart in my meat. There's blends like different blends of hamburger or Buffalo meat that has heart and liver in it. Those are my favorite and I try to cook it as little as possible. I've even eaten it totally raw before. I know that sounds crazy, but there's proponents of eating raw meat. To me, I like it cooked a little bit and I keep the middle really as raw as possible, and I like to add-- what I like to do is add a little sauerkraut on it and then add maple syrup, like really dark like real maple syrup and I had a little bit of that and it's so good. So that's what I eat.  [00:26:49] I've mentioned float sessions. I've mentioned food. I've mentioned functional medicine doctor. I think I've covered all the major things that I use. So, I'd love to hear from you. What hacks do you use? What do you use? Comment it below on any of these videos, if you see this on YouTube comment below. If you see this on Facebook or Instagram, comment below, but I'd love to hear what do you do to improve your health and lower your pressure noise? And if you're a property manager that's stressed out, if you take care of these things and you feel healthier, you have more attention, you'll be able to deal with more problems without them derailing you. You'll be able to deal with more stress, and you'll have a much healthier and happier life, and you'll be able to grow your business and enjoy your day to day. [00:27:32] So that is my tips for today. I hope this has been helpful for everybody to get an update on the stuff that I'm using and doing to hack health and my biohacking tendencies... the other thing is I, I block a lot of blue light during the day, unless I'm outside in sunlight. So I'll wear yellow glasses during day. I'll also wear orange glasses or red glasses at night to block out blue light. So I get good sleep, and I think that's about it. So we'll go ahead and end this there, and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:28:03] 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!  [00:28:30] 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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Jun 14, 2022 • 22min

DGS 174: Property Management Software - The Ultimate Stack

Property management growth expert, Jason Hull, has coached and helped hundreds of property management entrepreneurs change their businesses and lives. After all this time observing the industry, he offers an outside perspective on the kinds of software every PM entrepreneur needs.  In this episode, Jason Hull describes the ultimate stack of software for property management entrepreneurs, from the back office and maintenance to process documentation and hiring. You’ll Learn… [03:00] The Best Back Office PM Software [05:26] Managing Maintenence Requests  [08:11] Doing Showings with Tenant Turner, ShowMojo, and Rently [10:00] Inspection Software and Sales CRMs [12:08] What you Need for Processes, Task Management, and Hiring [18:26] Why to Use the Profit First System Tweetables “I don't use property management software because I don't actually manage rental properties, right? But I have talked to thousands of property managers, and so I am kind of like the magic fly on the wall.” “Leads are really only good for about the first five minutes.” “I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people.” “Shift away from one-off showings to open houses. This is going to be significant in collapsing time there. It creates a sense of false scarcity.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people, so even some of the most expensive software might only cost you maybe a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, right, if it were really expensive. People usually cost you more than a thousand or 2000 bucks a month. [00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. [00:00:51] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show.  [00:01:14] So we're going to talk about the ultimate property management software stack. I get this question all the time, property management software, "what's the ultimate stack?" Or "what software should I use?" Or "I've heard about this," or "we're using this, is this the best?" And I don't use property management software, right? I don't use property management software because I don't actually manage rental properties, right? But I have talked to thousands of property managers, and so I am kind of like the magic fly on the wall that's gotten more info and I don't think there's any other coach, anybody else out there that has the insight or the views or knowledge that I have. And so let me share with you just based on the feedback that I've gotten from property management business owners, my nerdiness related to software (I'm kind of nerdy.) This is what if I were starting property management company, this is the stack that I would use. And I don't think I have relationships with any of these, so they're not paying me to say this. One of the vendors might give me some sort of incentive or something if I send them business, but I don't even know if they're sending me stuff. I don't pay attention to it.  [00:02:25] So, here's kind of the ultimate stack based on what I know right now. And somebody may be watching this and they might think, "there's something better, Jason." If you know that there's something better, comment what you love and what you use and what you think is the ultimate stack. If you're a software geek, if you're a research geek, if you put in a lot of time and energy into this, I'd love to hear from you because I'm always looking for what's best for my clients and for everybody in the industry at large. So for single family, residential property management companies, which is largely the target audience that I focus on, this is the ultimate stack. [00:03:00] So first, basic, you need some sort of back office property management software. This is going to help you with the accounting piece and keeping track of all your rental properties. This is going to be the main sort of foundational piece in your business software- wise. , Usually I would recommend rentmanager.com. So Rent Manager... I just, I hear the most positive feedback on Rent Manager. And so I recommend that you take a look at that software. Now, I know it's really hard to switch software, so if you are using AppFolio or Buildium or Rentec Direct or Propertyware, or-- gosh, what else is out there? I don't know-- any of these tools, I'm not telling you, you should go switch software. Yeah. You know, it's hard. It's really hard to switch software, and usually people spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy to switch software only to notice the other software is missing some things that they liked in the previous one or has some other problems. [00:04:03] And so that's not generally super effective to do that. So the reason I like Rent Manager, let me explain this and maybe a little bit about why I don't like some of the others, right. Some of the challenges. One of the most common is AppFolio. So one of the reasons I wouldn't choose AppFolio is because AppFolio does not have an open API. Now granted, they have a lot of tools, right? So maybe you don't need it is the justification, but I like to pick the best tools. I don't want one Jack of all trades master of none, maybe master of some, maybe master of a few. I want to build the ultimate stack, and if I'm going to build the ultimate stack, that means I need to be able to pick and choose and create my ultimate Swiss army knife, my ultimate multi-tool, the ultimate thing that I want. And so I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people, so if I can pick a software, even if it's more expensive or it's additional, instead of translating or transferring that cost onto the shoulders of humans and staffing costs, and I can just mitigate a little bit of staffing costs, it's totally worth it to me. So even though some of the most expensive software might only cost you maybe a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, right, if it were really expensive, people usually cost you more than a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, unless you're getting part-time people or people in the Philippines or something.  [00:05:26] Then usually you need something on the maintenance side, and this is usually maybe once you're at maybe 50 to maybe 150 doors, somewhere in that range. But at some point, you want some leverage when it comes to maintenance coordination. I hear great feedback from Property Meld. Now, these guys, when I did a podcast episode with them, we set up some sort of thing. I think it's still active. It'll send them a lead. They might give me a kickback on it. I can't remember. Property Meld, if you're listening, you should be giving me kickback for this still, but I don't even pay attention to it. But if you go to doorgrow.com/maintenance, long time ago, I set up a quiz. So if you go to this website, I set up a little quiz that you can take, and it will give you, I believe a 10% discount if you fill that out with Property Meld. But Property Meld, what's really cool about Property Meld is basically it's a three-way text message system between you, the tenant, and the vendor.  [00:06:26] And so this allows all three of you to be communicating, and it allows you to see the communication between the tenant and the vendor, which them communicating directly speeds things up like dramatically. There's that transparency that you can see how they're doing and see how it's going. So that's on the maintenance side. Now with Property Meld, they have a relationship, I believe still that if you get their full service, then also that's pairing it with EZ-- spelled E and then Z, which is sort of a cute, clever name that they probably should rebrand, but EZ Repair Hotline. I don't know if it's ezrepair.com or easyrepairhotline.com. Hopefully my team could figure that out when they do the show notes, (it's https://www.ezrepairhotlinellc.com) but EZ Repair and if you talk to Property Meld and get their full service, I guess that's who they use and that's what's included--  [00:07:18] EZ Repair is a call center service. It was founded by Andy Shin. He's been on the podcast before. He used to manage the call center for AAA, so he knows what he's doing. His team's based out of Vegas. And my understanding is they've really improved since he started the business, and they were a lot more affordable than Night Tenders, which became Super Tenders, which I think became Abodea or something like that. So my understanding is that they're are a lot more affordable, and they're comparable. They're pretty decent and pretty good at what they do, and that they made a lot of strides to get even better over time. So I would check out EZ Repair along with that, and what they do is they handle the calls. So they handle your maintenance calls. So then you'll have that for your maintenance calls, and that's going to take a load off of your plate as well. So, that's on the maintenance side. [00:08:11] The other tool in my ultimate stack if I were making a property management business is: I would get Tenant Turner, and that is just at tenantturner.com. You've got some competitors in this space. You've got Rently, you've got ShowMojo. I've heard good feedback recently on ShowMojo from some people. It seems like they do a pretty decent job. They've also got a call center where they'll field, I think the phone calls, I don't know, related to the rental properties, but Tenant Turner is probably the tool that I would go with as of right now. I've met some of the principals at that business. I like them. I feel like they're stand up guys and ethical. I believe I've had them on my podcast, but I like Tenant Turner, and that's probably what I would go with. So, that would be on the leasing side, and the smart thing to do on the leasing side, quick bone I'll throw out to everybody there is to shift away from one-off showings to open houses. [00:09:05] This is going to be significant in collapsing time there. It creates a sense of false scarcity, I guess, you know, lots of tenants coming at the same time. Do a 30 minute window. Just do it one weekday in the evening and one weekend day, and do it for a 30 minute window for each and everybody that wants to see that property goes to that, and Tenant Turner can help make sure people are reminded, they show, it can pre-screen, um, allows people to book that time and that sort of stuff, so I would go with Tenant Turner.  [00:09:38] Let me think if there's anything else I would use. I mean, this is kind of the core stack. You've got the main leasing side thing, which would be Tenant Turner and then you've got the maintenance, which are the two big sort of wings of the property management business or challenges. And then you've got your PM back office, which would be Rent Manager. So that would be kind of the core what I would do. Then you need some sort of inspection software. I don't get a lot of feedback on that, but I know there's zInspector I've heard good things about. There's Happy Inspector. There's Inspect & Cloud, and I'm sure all of those integrate with Rent Manager and probably all the other software out there, so I would pick one of those. I would take a look at those, and I would probably have some sort of inspection software as well. And that's going to be a pretty good stack for your business.  [00:10:27] Oh, there's one other software here I would probably recommend as of right now, that would be a sales CRM. As of right now, that would be LeadSimple. So LeadSimple is, as far as I know, the only property management sales CRM. There might be some others that can pull in leads and are okay, but LeadSimple's claim to fame is that if a lead comes in through your web form or your website, you can set up to parse the email, pull the phone number, out and initiate a phone call right away, because leads are really only good for about the first five minutes really, maybe the first 10, but you need to follow up within the first five minutes and then people are impressed. The lead's still hot, it's fresh, and it's not gone stale, to give you some other analogies here, but you want to follow up right away because otherwise, they're going to move on to the next company, and the first property manager that they talk to or that talks to them is more likely to get the deal.  [00:11:19] So, And if you're spending money on lead generation, which I don't recommend, but if you're spending money on like advertising, which I don't recommend there's better ways to grow your business, but if you're spending a bunch of money on advertising, you are wasting a massive amount of money into a leaky sales funnel if you don't have something like LeadSimple, or you aren't following up on leads within the first five to 10 minutes. So that can be effective as well. I send them so much business, they should be sending me some sort of kickback. So LeadSimple, if you hear this, you should be sending me some money, people, 'cause I send you a lot of business. All right. But yeah, I would check out LeadSimple. They have also a workflow built into their platform. That's kind of a, I guess, a competitor to Process Street. Personally, I don't know, Lead Simple's tools, so I can't recommend it, but internally we use Process Street. [00:12:08] I really like Process Street for processes. This is their website: it's process.st. I've had them on the podcast as well, but I really like Process Street. We use it internally. It's great for creating process documentation, but also for using as a checklist to run through that process, and it records an instance for each checklist every time somebody runs through that and uses that process. And so it's like having a clipboard with check boxes they have to go through each time they do that particular task. Except it's not a clipboard, it's digital. So I like Process Street a lot. You can get really complex with it or you can get really simple. And so we use Process Street internally. I highly recommend it. I like it. Now, I'm hearing some really good feedback lately.  [00:12:55] You also need some sort of task management system just for one off tasks. So there's a lot of people that will use something like Asana. Now, some people are, instead of using Process Street, which is really robust. They'll use something that's maybe not as robust, but has similar functionality to that and Asana, and that's Monday. So I'm hearing some really great things about monday.com for basically largely task management and maybe repetitive processes. Okay, so you may want to check out monday.com for your internal processes. Asana does have repeating tasks and has templates, so you can have sort of formulas of things, but I don't think it has the functionality of people following through a process and being able to show like screen recordings and screen captures and screenshots and steps and Process Street, you can build all that stuff in.  [00:13:49] I don't know if Monday can do that also, but Monday does allow you to kind of see where things are in a stage in a workflow and have stages and stuff. So for you know, really large pools of processes that are being worked on, like maybe you have like 20 properties you're onboarding, you can have an instance of Monday of each, similar in Process Street. In Asana, you would just build out like clone templates, probably. So these are these are some of the tools that I would be taking a look at seriously. If I were to start a property management biz.  [00:14:23] And now the other thing that I would recommend that a property management business is eventually once you have a team, you're going to need some sort of planning system, and we've built what I believe is the ultimate software planning system. We call that DoorGrow OS. OS stands for 'operating systems.' So there's a lot of talk about like EOS which is from like Traction or Rocket Fuel, these books. And, these are good books. It's a good system. These are good ideas. I really feel though that the flaw in this is It's built too much around the entrepreneur is what they claim, but it's not actually built around the entrepreneur. EOS is really built around the idea of the integrator, and the integrator is like the most critical piece in this system. And an integrator really is a glorified operations person that they're also putting over and it should be running your cadence and running your planning, but they're putting over sales and marketing and usually operators should not be over sales and marketing. It's a big tactical mistake in business. And it also is a very top-down system instead of the team kind of, it's, it it plays into the ego of most entrepreneurs thinking they're the visionary and everybody has to do things that they want. And it's very top down.  [00:15:45] DoorGrow OS is more bottom up. It allows you to have your entire team focused on the goals of the business based on what the biggest needs of the business are and the biggest needs of the entrepreneur are. And so, DoorGrow OS is really entrepreneur centric, visionary centric, which it's your business, and then we build the ultimate team and planning and cadence around you so you're going to have a business that actually gives you more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support the bigger it gets instead of the reverse. There's some other flaws with EOS, like I don't like their accountability chart where they've got visionary and then integrator, and then the entire team answers to the integrator. I think that's the most dangerous business model ever. You're putting somebody in a position of power in which the entire team are loyal and connected to them. And they're probably not good at being over all of these different department. They basically, if they were or could be, they don't need you. 'Cause they could just chop off that top layer off the accountability chart, which is just a fancy word for an org chart in EOS and eliminate you and they can start their own business, right, if they really are that good.  [00:16:50] So you need a really good planning system. I recommend DoorGrow OS it's really cool system. And then the other thing is you need eventually if you're really wanting to scale and grow your business and you're growing quickly, like a lot of our clients do, you will need an ATS or an applicant tracking system. And so we have our system, which is DoorGrow ATS. And so, this is the ultimate hiring system for a business. We have some really cool stuff coming related to this, but this allows you to basically get really great people and get what I call the three fits, which is having the ultimate hire where they match all three fits, where they're a culture fit, skill fit, and personality fit for your team, and usually the most important of those three is cultural fit. Most people hire just based on what the business needs and based on skill that is needed, so they get a skill fit. But they're not the right personality sometimes for the position, so they're not going to actually be great at it.  [00:17:51] They're maybe not a good culture fit, which means they don't share your values and won't do things in a way that you would feel safe with. And so you'll never fully trust them. And so right now, if you have a team member that's just not great, I guarantee, they're probably not a culture fit or they're probably not a personality fit. Skill fit or intelligence, they just, maybe they're too dumb to do it. Most likely not. They might just not be the right personality and might not be the right cultural fit. So DoorGrow ATS is another system that would need to be built out in the business. And there's several other systems I've talked about on previous episodes that a business might need in the business.  [00:18:26] And I'll throw out one other system that we use in our business that I'm a big fan of, and that is Profit First. We have some other tools like my CEO metrics and some other stuff that my team report in, but I really like, you know, as a basic level, really healthy accounting system, I like the Profit First system. I've had mike Michalowicz the author of the book Profit First on a previous podcast episode. I recommend you check that out if you're running into cashflow issues, if you're having trouble paying your team, if you've run into any of these problems that are very typical in early stage businesses or with entrepreneurs. I've been there. You've probably been there. I highly recommend implementing the Profit First system in your business. It's really simple to implement. It's just getting some additional bank accounts set up and then as money comes in, divvying it up into these different bank accounts based on percentages and making sure that you're taking out a percentage for profits so that you are profitable first and then what's left over one of those will be expenses. And so I recommend taking a look at that. So these are some of the systems that I think would help too.  [00:19:31] If I were building the ultimate stack for the ultimate problem management business, these are the things that I would take a look at. And then really, it's about getting really great people and building a really great team so that you have awesome team members. Yeah. So that's going to create the ultimate business and that we want to build the ultimate business around you. So if you're struggling or trying to figure out how to grow your business, you are running into the bottleneck where you feel like you are the biggest bottleneck in the business, you feel like you're always having to micromanage your team, you're trying to get them motivated, trying to get them to do the right things. I really think you could use our scale program in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, and we would love to talk with you. We easily will help pay for the program just by helping you to cut costs, increase the efficiency of your team. Usually, I can get people three times the output from their team or cut their staffing costs in half or by a third, depending on what your goal is, we can increase that. And then we also want to increase your level of what I call the four reasons. You're getting more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support. [00:20:36] So we will realign the business around you and realign the team. So anyway, reach out to us at DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com and until next time everybody to our mutual growth. I hope you crush it. Take care, everyone. [00:20:49] 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!  [00:21:16] 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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Jun 7, 2022 • 11min

DGS 173: Learning at 800-1200 Doors: The Savvy Property Management Entrepreneur

If you have made it to the 800-1200 door range as a property management entrepreneur, you have likely found strategies, essential connections, and executive team members that have helped your business grow and scale.  However, even at this stage, savvy entrepreneurs tend to find themselves dealing with problems. Join property management growth expert, Jason Hull, in the final addition to the DoorGrow Avatars Series as he details the common issues PM entrepreneurs face at 800-1200 doors. You’ll Learn… [01:19] Defining the Savvy Property Management Entrepreneur [03:46] How to Deal with Burnout and Building an Executive Team [05:00] Learning from Smaller Property Managers [07:49] Implementing the Ultimate Planning System [09:06] Transitioning to the Business of Your Dreams Tweetables “At the 800 to 1200 door range, these are savvy property management entrepreneurs. They are savvy at running a team. They're savvy in their business.” “As you come up through this DoorGrow scale that I've been talking about of these different stages in the life cycle, you gradually are being more connected to other savvy people and mentors.” “It's helpful for you to be around these smaller and more nimble property management businesses, because these businesses, they can implement stuff quickly.” “One of the best tips I can have is you need to get a really efficient operating system in place.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] This is better. This is going to allow your team to be involved in decision-making instead of you being so top down, trying to tell everybody what the goals are and what they should be doing right? Because that means you're dragging them up the mountain. They're like all sitting in a wagon and you're clearing the path ahead and trying to drag them up to the goal.  [00:00:17] We want to get the team pulling you in the wagon.  Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:55] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:19] So today we're going to be continuing on that series of these different stages in the life cycle of being a property management entrepreneur. So this might be way beyond where you can even maybe imagine your business at right now, but we've gotten to the point where we're at now that 800 to 1200 door range. So at the 800 to 1200 door range, these are savvy property management entrepreneurs. They are savvy at running a team. They're savvy in their business, so they have probably by now had mentors, coaches... they've invested in themselves, and this is something that's very unique between them and maybe a solopreneur is they've really been investing in themselves in order to get to this level. It's not really possible to get to this level without some self investment and without having really good culture defined in their business. So they have a business that has culture. They have a cohesive team. They've been in the business for a while, like a long time, maybe more than a decade, maybe more than two decades. [00:02:24] At this stage, this might be a multi-generational family business, or maybe it was part of somebody else's business and it was purchased, right. But there's some depth in this business at this stage. They're rare at this stage. There's not a lot of businesses, especially in the single family, residential or small multi space that are at 800 to 1200 doors.  [00:02:45] Likely at this stage, if you're the entrepreneur or the business owner, you likely have little to no connection to the business in some ways. Like you just might not be super focused on it. If you are, I want to talk to you because I love those business owners. They're still engaged. They're still passionate about the business and they usually love the stuff that I teach even more than people at earlier stages because they are ready for it and they can value it. You know, a lot of the things that I learn and absorb and take in by investing in my own self in high level masterminds and coaches and books and everything that I do to learn, they love this stuff because they're ready for it.  [00:03:24] They know how useful it is, and I get the best feedback from the most high functioning people, and those are my favorite people to work with. But there's a lot at this stage, they've really checked out. Some have been completely burnt out on the business. They've put somebody else in to run it. Their whole goal has been, "how do I escape from this business, this vehicle that's uncomfortable?" So they put somebody else in place.  [00:03:46] So they have an executive team, they have hiring systems, they have a defined sales process, they have a BDM most likely. Somebody else is doing sales for them a lot of the time. Their website is usually I find outdated. They're only updating it maybe once every 10 years, maybe sometimes only once every five years, so their website's probably overdue for an upgrade. I've noticed they often have acquired multiple property management companies, at least maybe two usually, at least one or two including a significant competitor. So they've eaten somebody up, and they're possibly looking for the nearest exit to see if anybody else would be willing to do the same for them because they might be burnt out. [00:04:27] So, they have built this really great executive team in which each member of this team takes complete ownership over a piece of the business, so they have somebody in place that's handling all of the maintenance stuff. They have somebody in place that's handling the management stuff. They have somebody in place that's handling the internal operations for the business. They have somebody in place that's handling the financials and the accounting and the bookkeeping and the reporting and all that. So they have key people. That's an executive team, so that they don't have to wear every hat or do all of these things in the business.  [00:05:00] What else about them? Something that's really important at this stage: they're now paying attention to the smaller businesses that are in the industry. They go to NARPM events and different things like this because they want to see what the little guys are doing and what innovations other people have, because they want to maybe apply this, but they don't want to be the guinea pig. They want to see what all the little guinea pigs are doing and experimenting with and whether or not it was hurtful or helpful for their business. And so they benefit by being around other property management entrepreneurs that are not at their level. Now, they do probably have connections, network, mastermind people that they hang out with that are at their level. You know, they've got some connections there 'cause you don't get to this stage without some connections and some relationships. Solopreneurs are heavily isolated, and as you come up through this DoorGrow scale that I've been talking about of these different stages in the life cycle, you gradually are being more connected to other savvy people and mentors, peers, heroes that you want to be connected to, or that you look up to so that you can get good ideas, good feedback, and that are not the emperor with no clothes sitting on top of your little micro kingdom.  [00:06:18] You recognize there's people out there that are doing better than you are that can give you good feedback. So it's helpful for you to be around these smaller and more nimble property management businesses, because these businesses, they can implement stuff quickly. They can adopt new technology rapidly, way faster than you can, right? Because for you, you have a really large ship. It's difficult to maneuver this thing and to turn it and to make changes because you have a lot of doors, you have a lot of team members, and there's a bit of friction there generally. But the advantage you have is that even small optimizations, small tweaks, small improvements at various stages of your pipeline, to your pricing, to your website, to all the things that we could facilitate or help with at DoorGrow...  [00:07:03] Small tweaks and improvements, for you, give you a big result. It makes a big difference. It can have a significant financial impact. It's very easy for us to save you a little bit of money on staffing costs or increase efficiency a little bit or to make small movements that will easily pay for any of our services or program and help you justify it. So and paying for something like DoorGrow and services is really a drop in the bucket. You waste way more money, probably on bad team members or team members that aren't as efficient as they could be. Staffing costs are really high for you at this stage. And so we want to find some efficiencies and some ways to improve some stuff. That is those at the 800 to 1200 doors.  [00:07:49] So one of the best tips I can have is you need to get a really efficient operating system in place. We call that DoorGrow OS. It's the most effective strategic planning system that I believe exists. A lot of people are getting caught up on Traction and EOS, and this. This is better. This is going to allow your team to be involved in decision-making and your team bottom up to be creating the goals and the growth of the business instead of you being so top down, trying to tell everybody what the goals are and what they should be doing and being a dictator, right? Because that means you're dragging them up the mountain. They're like all sitting in a wagon and you're clearing the path ahead and trying to drag them up to the goal.  [00:08:30] We want to get the team pulling you in the wagon. You just are sitting in it with your map and your strategy and your pen, and you're figuring out where we need to go, and they're clearing the jungle path. They're laying out the road. They're making it easy and they're pulling you along. And when you have that really good executive team and you have a really good strategic vision and plan in place that your team runs and that your operator really leads and is in control of, you will see your business grow rapidly significantly because you'll be able to focus on what the business needs most right now, instead of everybody just doing their day-to-day work.  [00:09:06] So that's something that we can help you with DoorGrow, so, that's basically, I think, about it at that stage that I want to touch on today. These are really, usually, cool business owners. They're either really cool or they're really burnt out. So hopefully you're not the burnt out one. If you are, let's transition you into the business of your dreams, and if you feel like you're close to having the business of your dreams, you just need some tweaks, talk to us at DoorGrow. We'll help you out. So that's it for today until next time, to our mutual growth, make sure to go to doorgrow.com. Schedule a call with our team, and join our free Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com. Bye, everyone. [00:09:43] 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!  [00:10:10] 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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May 31, 2022 • 10min

DGS 172: Creating Leverage at 600-800 Doors in Your Property Management Business

Once an entrepreneur reaches a certain level of doors in their property management business, they often seek to quit wearing so many hats and offload as much as they can. Unfortunately, even with 600-800 doors, PM entrepreneurs struggle to build an executive team, enjoy their day-to-day, and reach their business’s full potential. In this episode, Jason shares his insight on the unique challenges that property management business owners face in the 600-800 door range.  You’ll Learn… [01:16] The Next Property Management Entrepreneur Avatar [02:00] What Entrepreneurs Have in The 600-800 Door Range [03:20] A Common Mistake Entrepreneurs Make with Ads [05:59] Expanding and Starting New Businesses [07:00] Why PM Entrepreneurs Get Stuck at 600-800 Doors [08:55] How to Get Support and Get Unstuck Tweetables “It's really difficult to outpace the market attrition with marketing.” “If the main goal is the four reasons…If you do it the right way, this could be really a fun time in the business.” “Have an executive team, trust them to implement things, paint the picture of the vision, and focus on building the right culture and investing in coaching and mentoring and supporting your team members.” “We need a framework, a planning system, so that this is done effectively, that's led by the team, that's not top down and pushed and forced by you. This is where you really start to trust your team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] We get into this temptation where we're like, "I can just throw money at things to solve a problem." Unfortunately, this usually becomes painful as the market shifts. And at this stage, you probably are losing more doors due to the owners selling than advertising can replace. [00:00:15] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing your business and in life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:55] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow now let's get into the show.  [00:01:16] All right. So today we're going to continue on this series of going through these different stages of the property management entrepreneur life cycle. So really brief recap: we've touched on some of these different stages, like being a pure startup in the startup stage, solopreneurs, creating a little bit of leverage. Today we're going to talk about the 600 to 800 door category. So last time, we talked about the 400 to 600 door category. And so, there's kind of a category of property management business owners in the 600 to 800 doors. And at this stage, they are actively seeking to escape the day-to-day and to get others into key positions.  [00:02:00] So usually, universally, you have a BDM by about the stage. You're probably no longer doing all the sales yourself. You might, if you really love that and you're really good at that, you may hold onto that. But a lot of times they're getting a BDM. They're no longer focused on doing the sales. Either that, or you've made it probably your full-time focus like that's probably your full-time focus and you now have somebody else handling all the operations. So you've picked one of those sides: you've either shifted to doing all the operations and kind of running the business, and you have a BDM that's doing the sales, or you've shifted into being the salesperson, and you have an operator in your company. [00:02:39] But either way, you're likely totally out of the actual day-to-day, boots-on-the-ground-level work of operations or fulfillment in the property management business. So at this stage, you probably now believe in pulling in outside experts. You probably believe in using coaches and mentors. You probably believe in investing in yourself and in the business to move the business forward. I don't think you generally get to this stage unless you've kind of moved past that idea that "I'm going to do it all on my own, and I'm going to do it all myself" and "I have all the answers." Right? You've evolved beyond that. Because that would have held you back or held you small, you know, prior to this. [00:03:20] So, sometimes at this stage, what I see is that they're too focused, too heavily focused or in an unhealthy way, leveraged towards doing advertising. So they're spending a lot of money on ads in order to try and get leads, to grow their business, and they lose sight of opportunities related to maybe warm leads or referrals or prospecting or networking methods that could be effective because they've gravitated towards something they feel like they can just throw money at. Cause we get into this temptation where we're like, "I can just throw money at things to solve a problem." So you might be trying to solve the problem of the lead generation by paying for ads or advertising.  [00:04:04] Unfortunately, this usually becomes painful as the market shifts. And at this stage, you probably are losing more doors due to the owners selling than advertising can replace. This happens depending on how the market is going. You'll see property managers that are highly leveraged towards advertising and are spending a lot of their money and capital towards advertising in a bad market-- or I guess I should say a hot real estate market where investors are selling. They usually find that they're losing more doors than they can replace through advertising, because it's really difficult to outpace the market attrition with marketing. Right. And so, a lot of times at this stage, I notice property managers still have branding issues, but usually at this stage, they're a little less likely to make the changes they need to. So it's really difficult. They feel pretty cemented in their name, even if it's costing them money. So sometimes, I can get them to change or fix those things and it's always worth it if there's a leak there. But they're a little bit more rigid. [00:05:07] At this stage, they've broken through some major pain and major stress points in a business to get to this level that cause most property managers to just say, "I don't want to get too big." Most property managers feel pain in the 200 to 400 door stage, and it gets really painful as they're kind of getting just beyond that, unless they finally break down and undo and redo how they do just about everything and finally let go of control and let go of doing some things and build an effective team or an executive level team. And so at this stage, you're probably building an executive level team or have team members that you trust to kind of start to own pieces of the business a little bit. So you broken through those major things, but you've likely moved on to other opportunities and are distracted by other businesses. So this is really tempting. I see this a lot.  [00:05:59] Once you get this business somewhat healthy and you get it to this stage, a lot of these business owners decide "I'm going to go start another property management business in another city," or "I'm going to go start another business like locally," or "I'm going to do some other things." So the entrepreneurial bug of startup stage that's tempting: business gets a little bit boring for them. So then they go and kind of start to screw up their focus and their attention by focusing on other things. And so they go and start to start other businesses, do other things, and then the main business doesn't really probably reach its full potential. It struggles a little bit. They might have some key people in place and they might get a little bit disconnected from reality or from what the business needs. [00:06:43] So at this stage, this leveraged property management entrepreneur-- we'll call them leveraged because they have some leverage-- they have some key people. They're not having to wear every hat and do everything. They've probably got a pretty decent team by now. And very few entrepreneurs get to this level. Usually I see it, the 600 to 800 door level, the business owner starts to check out. Usually if they can get to this and they do it in a healthy way-- it's rare, but if I see them get to this stage and they do it in a healthy way, they will continue to grow and get to higher levels. But there's a lot of property managers that get stuck or stop at the 600 to 800 door level, because they're really burnt out on the business. They didn't really build it the right way. They didn't build the team the right way. And they are now trying to figure out: "how can I put somebody in place so I can get out of this business?" and so I see a lot of business owners during this stage kind of check out.  [00:07:38] By this point, they've been through so much pain and trial and tribulation and suffering and struggle that they're burnt out and they're done. So they get people in place. They get somebody to manage and run the business. They get an operator, they get a BDM, and then they're like, "The only thing I'm going to do is maybe show up the broker on our conferences and talk about how many doors I have." And you'll see some people that do that even at higher level door amounts. But if the main goal is the four reasons as I've talked about on previous episodes-- of having a business. This is the primary goal is to have more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, more support. If you do it the right way, this could be really a fun time in the business... if you do it the right way, but for a lot, at this point, they have the option or the opportunity to step out and get somebody else running the majority of everything for them, and just be an actual business owner, which might be tempting. [00:08:34] So they might then put this business up and exit it fully, put it up for sale and find a company that is willing to acquire them. But this is a difficult stage. It can be, but I think the hardest stage is probably that 200 to 400 doors. That's really tough. That's one of the most painful stages I see companies at. So that's about all I think I have to say about that. So if you are in this stage, you probably would like some support on the operational side of things. You might want to give your team members better coaching and better support, so we would bring you into our mastermind and we would support your operator and we would support your BDMs so that they can both become really exceptional in those roles, which helps the business grow a lot more quickly, and it would help you to be able to just focus on the visionary side of things in dreaming and coming up with new ideas. And it would help put your ideas into a framework that the team can help you to build. Because now you have the team that can help you build things. We need a framework, a planning system, so that this is done effectively, that's led by the team, that's not top down and pushed and forced by you.  [00:09:47] This is where you really start to trust your team. Have an executive team, trust them to implement things, paint the picture of the vision, and focus on building the right culture and investing in coaching and mentoring and supporting your team members. We can help you do that in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. So if that sounds interesting, reach out to us. You can go to doorgrow.com, or you can join our free Facebook group, which you can get to by going to doorgrowclub.com. So that's it for today. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.
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May 24, 2022 • 30min

DGS 171: Client Interview With Brannon Potts

At DoorGrow, we have some of the savviest property entrepreneurs on the planet in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Brannon Potts is a property management business owner in North Texas, who joined DoorGrow with only 71 doors. In only 3 months, Brannon was able to grow his business to over 100 doors with 70 more on the way! Join property management growth expert, Jason Hull, as he interviews Brannon Potts, a DoorGrow client. Brannon shares his experience with DoorGrow and how he has seen it make a beneficial impact on his business. You’ll Learn… [01:12] Meet DoorGrow client Brannon Potts [04:42] Investing in Yourself and Your Business with Coaching [07:27] What Makes Jason and DoorGrow Different? [13:09] DoorGrow’s Two Key Ideas… [20:07] Finding Fulfillment by Growing and Scaling the Business [22:49] How Brannon used DoorGrow’s Script to Add Doors [27:08] How You can Grow and Scale Your Business  Tweetables “We have these moments as coaches where we feel like-- it's similar to as being a dad and seeing your kid get an award or do something.” “As you've been building your business, it could get uglier and more painful, but we always try to make sure that the client understands that's the wrong way to do it.” “Good, coaching or good marketing or good anything that you're going to pay for should give you an ROI, right? That means it's a good investment.” “A lot of people are thinking ‘I'd rather just spend money. I'd rather just spend money because it would save me time,’ That's a cost. That's not an investment.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: For those that are on the fence, thinking about DoorGrow maybe they've heard about DoorGrow, what would you say?  [00:00:05] Brannon: You might not like this, but I think it's so good, sometimes I wouldn't want to tell anybody cause it's so good for people.  [00:00:12] Jason: All right. Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, And you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:49] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:12] And my guest today is one of my clients, Brannon Potts. Brannon, welcome to the show.  [00:01:19] Brannon: Thank you. Thank  [00:01:20] Jason: you.  [00:01:21] So it's good to have you. So Brannon, you're a client that I really enjoy working with. 1. Because you just do what I tell you to do, and it works and you're doing the right things. So I appreciate you as a client because that's always fun for me is to have clients that like, believe in what we're doing, and get it. And do it. You know, starting out, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about how you got into property management in the first place?  [00:01:47] Brannon: Sure. I think it was back-- late 2016. We were actually doing well in our sales business but had a friend give us some advice about getting into property management and you say it, even in the intro: at first, I didn't have just a great perception of property management, but I said, okay, I'm going to get into this business, learn it. I didn't know it very much. I didn't know it really much at all. And we began to grow. And over these years, we just, we grew a little bit and happened to see one of your ads and started investigating and just said, you know what? I want to join this coaching. And I did. I just said, "I really don't know very much about the property management business, and you have a background in coaching this. I'm just going to follow what he says, not question it, and just do it."  [00:02:46] And then I was going to hold your feet to the fire because you promised it and committed that if I did, you would refund my money, and I began to do that and I still have so much more to go because in your coaching, the depth of that coaching that you give, I think I'm only maybe touching on 10% of it right now. And I'm looking forward to actually many years to come of getting deeper and deeper in implementing all the things that you provide in coaching because I've been coached before. I've been actually a coach myself for the sales side. And what we've always been taught is when you teach people, typically only 10% implement what you're teaching. And I said, man, "I don't want to be that 90% that doesn't. I want to be the 10% that does. And let the chips fall where they may and begin doing exactly what you said, trying to follow it as closely as I could." [00:03:44] And what do you know? It happens. We grow, we have probably at this point, we're either from the initial investment of the coaching-- I bet you we're-- I'm trying to think-- three, four times, maybe five times now the dollars that we're generating from the coaching. So it was a great investment. [00:04:04] Jason: You mean on a monthly basis?  [00:04:06] On a monthly basis. [00:04:07] Yeah. So you've got way more residual income than what the program costs. So it's a no-brainer. And that's one of our initial goals with clients. Like we want to get them paid and make sure the program's double paid for within hopefully the first 30 to 60 days is the goal so that they can justify the expense and keep going. And then I guess you could say it's paying you now, to be part of the program.  [00:04:27] Brannon: It's-- I've made money off of this coaching and that's what everybody wants.  [00:04:32] Jason: That's what good, coaching or good marketing or good anything that you're going to pay for should give you an ROI, right? That means it's a good investment. So I'm glad that you're getting a good return on your investment. That's our goal. So you brought up something that I think it's interesting that you've worked with a lot of coaches. I've worked with a lot of coaches too. You know, I think one thing that's a little bit different from me than maybe other coaches in the industry, but there's a lot of coaches out there that don't have coaches. And they don't get coached themselves. And I think that's one of my competitive advantages, which is really simple is that I pay for really expensive coaching and masterminds and high ticket things to be involved in so that I can turn around and have value to give to my clients.  [00:05:16] Like I just came back from a mastermind, I pay a lot of money to be in it, and I shared an idea today with the group that you thought was pretty cool. We were talking about not focusing on referrals instead of referring to them, as in asking for– what did I say? I'll let you say it... [00:05:32] Brannon: an introduction. And that is an extra benefit is not just taking the wisdom you already have. You're still pouring into yourself so that you have something to pour out. [00:05:45] Cause I think a lot of people stop getting things poured into them and the great people, great leaders, and great entrepreneurs need something poured into them so that they can pour out to others. We need that relationship to continue. And that's what I appreciate of your coaching. It's your coaching, but you're still getting coached and I'm getting the benefit of your expense of coaching and you're handing extra value to us. [00:06:14] Jason: Yeah. I'm not even going to say how much I spend on coaching a year right now, but it's a lot, it's a lot. I'm in two really high-ticket masterminds, but for me, I love it because I get to hang out with the best. Like I'm talking business owners that are doing millions and millions of dollars. I was hanging out with people that are doing millions a month in business. Some are hitting a million a month or more. And these are the kind of people I get to hang out with. And I love to be able to learn. It's fun for me. And having a program in which I get to share that stuff. That's just even more fun for me. Cause I love to share what I'm learning. That's just fun for me. So...  [00:06:51] Brannon: As soon as you brought that up, I went out and shared that with my team, the ones that were here at the moment, and then I'm going to share that again on another meeting of not asking for the referral, but asking for the introduction. There's just many layers to that, of how good it is.  [00:07:09] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. And we chatted about that on our group coaching call today. And for those that are not in our group, you're missing out. So Brannon what have you noticed since joining the program? I mean, You talked about some of the concerns you had coming in and some of the challenges you were dealing with, and you mentioned that you've made your money back, you've gotten some results. How does this compare or differ or relate to all the other coaching stuff that you've been involved in the past? [00:07:34] Brannon: Jason, I don't want you to get a big head, but it has been the best coaching I've had. And I talk about it all the time. I've been through several different coaches, both in the real estate side, and just some life coaches, and the value you bring is multiple layers and genuinely appreciate that, because that's what you teach us is bringing value to people and you do. And I would share this with anyone. This is not a sales pitch. This is true value. You bring on so many different layers and that's why I've shared in the past, and I've shared it even with my wife. I said, "I see myself. I've only scratched the surface of the value you've already brought. And I see this for many years to come that I plan to be a part of this. Cause it's not a cost, it's been an investment," and yes, we're talking about growing doors, but there's many other layers to the coaching of growing the business and how you do that from operations to people who you hire, what their duties are. This was exactly what I was looking for 'cause I did not have that knowledge. Though I've succeeded it at higher levels in a lot of ways in the real estate industry, these were the parts I didn't know. And I feel like I've still got so much more to learn. [00:09:01] Jason: I really appreciate that. That's-- that means a lot to me. I appreciate it. So for me, it's interesting to me because I've been in this business-- I founded it, and we had some tough times starting this business out and like me building a team I've gone through the entrepreneurial life cycle and journey that I coach clients on. And DoorGrow, our company has made so many changes, even in the last quarter. Like the slew of things that we get done that are on our list for quarterly planning is just amazing to me that we're able to accomplish. DoorGrow's not even the same company it was a year ago. Not even close. And some clients maybe worked with us in the past or knew about us in the past, or maybe we just did a website a long time ago. And DoorGrow is not even close to the same company. Some people are probably hearing you going "operations?" And like "this?" And like "coaching." And they're like, what? And it's funny because people, I think judge me and DoorGrow sometimes by who I was maybe five years ago or two years ago, or even a year ago. [00:10:06] And my personal development aggression, I guess you could say, or my drive and the level of the team members that I have and the drive of the team and how quickly we're able to make changes and implement is I mean, I'm obviously biased, but I think it's pretty amazing. So yeah. And I think people could give us a chance that haven't been with us for a while. Our new mastermind is just really awesome and I think people are really crushing it, which is really fun to see.  [00:10:32] Brannon: And the connections you make in that coaching group. There's several people that I've made connections with that will be valuable for the future and just collaborating or, "Hey, I'm having this struggle. How have you handled it?" There's just, there's so much value and I agree it's even in-- what is it? Five months now I've been in the program it's changed and added more layers to it. But that's because of your growth. You didn't stay stagnant. You're still growing yourself and have something to pour out. [00:11:07] Jason: I'd feel guilty if I took even the majority of the credit, like my operator, Sarah, also my fiance, she's moved the needle significantly in this business, Adam, over fulfillment, Ashlee who's over a client success-- like we've got some amazing people on my team and they're moving most of the objectives forward that we have each quarter, and it's been just awesome to see. And that's part of the DoorGrow OS planning system that we've got and that sort of thing. We've got 90 members in the mastermind, so I appreciate that you brought up community cause that's a big focus of ours moving forward this quarter is we're really trying to focus on improving the community aspect. A lot of people joined for the content in DoorGrow Academy and the material that we have and the ideas, and then the people win because of the coaching. But people generally in a program will stay because of the community and the connection and the benefits of having that comradery, 'cause you know, being an entrepreneur can be a lonely journey without being connected to others, so we're really focused on that, improving that, in fact, we've got about 90 members in the mastermind, 90 businesses. We probably have on average about two people per business. So we've got probably about somewhere close to 200 people in the program I think that are actively involved. [00:12:17] We haven't really grown honestly for the last, maybe two, three months, which is weird, but we've been filtering a lot of people out. We've been really trying to make sure people are active and engaged and shaking the tree, so to speak and some of the people that weren't really engaged or active in our outreach and stuff have dropped off while we've been adding people, but we've cleaned that up. So like the program's really clean. And so I'm really excited about the community aspect because most of the people now are all pretty much engaged. And in at least on one of the calls and doing their check-ins and moving forward. So I think even though the group is still about the same size it's been for a little while, it's a lot mightier, so we're really excited about that. And now that it's cleaned out, now we're going to be adding, I think a lot of people that are going to be staying in the program a lot longer and it'll be, even we're going to be growing for sure. Yeah. So Brannon, what do you feel like are some of the most significant things that you've got out of it so far? Because a lot of people, they hear you probably saying, "Hey, DoorGrow's great. Coaching's great." And you mentioned you're making more money. What are some of the key things that really have stood out to you that you're like, "Hey, like this is different or this is interesting," or that you've really valued? [00:13:29] Brannon: I think a couple of things. There are multiple layers, so I can talk about this for a while, but the key things initially were: how to lead generate that didn't cost money. And sometimes you hear that and you think, "oh, this is just a sales pitch." It was very genuine, and it was very good. And I implemented that. So the only cost was my time and following through with what the coaching did and that added the doors very quickly. The second was helping design a pricing plan and how to put that together. I implemented one of the plans, the hybrid plan that you discuss and implemented that and began to sell that. And through selling it, I've shared this in our mastermind, how I sell that. And I'm seeing how it resonates with owners and just those two things alone, those two changes that we made alone made money. Those are just the two things initially. And then you offer other things that we're beginning to tap into and  [00:14:40] there's so much there, the content, I can only absorb so much at the moment and I'm trying to fully implement those well, but that also gives me a path for several years to come things that I'll be able to dive deeper into different sections of what all you offer and implement those. So I see a path, but those two things alone were the big key movers, which you steer people to. Doing that lead generation first and then begin some pricing and other things. So those two are the big steps that made it an investment and made us money.  [00:15:17] Jason: Yeah, if any of my competitors are listening and they want to figure out how to steal some of the magic from DoorGrow, we focus on two main things with clients and you can probably feel this. I don't think you've heard me mention this Brannon, but one of our big goals within the first 30 to 60 days is we want to make sure clients have really strong clarity on what the future holds for them, like what direction to go in. So we have our clarity assessments we take you through, so you know clearly which path. We have three different paths we take people down depending on which thing is the biggest problem in the business right now. And we focus on pain first. So we get them clarity on what they want and where the pain is and then results. So we want to get them as quickly and as effortlessly as possible to the results. So we're giving you the scripts, the language, the outreach, like all the different things to do. And you mentioned lead gen without spending money, and I know a lot of people are thinking "I'd rather just spend money. I'd rather just spend money because it would save me time," is what they think. What would you say to that?  [00:16:18] Brannon: Yeah, boy, that's a cost. That's not an investment. This is a deeper level of long-term residual lead generation so that what you teach in the coaching pays dividends, not just now, but in the future, it continues to pay residual dividends and you haven't spent any money on it because the big thing in starting a property management company or starting any company is to generate revenue before expenses and it fit with the principles of that is, is generating that revenue before you have any hard costs, which help you get profitable better and faster, then you can have money to do other things to grow it even faster.  [00:17:04] Jason: Yeah there's several things we focus on with clients. We want to decrease the expenses in the business. So we talk about how a lot of property managers, we mentioned this on today's call, right? Like a lot of property managers... it's not about what they need to do more of, or add more of in the business. It's about some of the things they need to eliminate that they are doing. And then we get into, the lead gen piece. A lot of people mistakenly think that they can generate more leads by doing advertising or paid advertising, but that actually are colder leads that take more time. So we've actually decreased your time investment into lead generation and we've zeroed out the costs. [00:17:43] Brannon: And usually it's a better quality person--  [00:17:45] Jason: --and it's an absolutely better quality lead, right? The conversion rate's way higher because we're focusing on warmer lead generation. And the other thing that I think is a secret is that you're creating market share while other property managers are fighting over the small amount of existing market share that exists. They're all in the red water. It's ugly and bloody, and there's a lot of scarcity. And I'm guessing you don't really feel much scarcity in growing your property management business?  [00:18:11] Brannon: Not at all. It's doing so well, there's moments we have to just pause for a few minutes to absorb all the new clients coming on board so that we handle them, you know? It's not from lack of business coming in now from this lead gen source, it's making sure that we handle them effectively. And we talk about this in the coaching too, of how to handle the operations when all this business comes and how to handle it effectively and efficiently. [00:18:38] Jason: That's one of my favorite problems to do is make the growth become so uncomfortable and painful. And then we shift to solving that problem. Everybody wants that problem, but we want to create that problem for our clients that they're having so much growth that it's gotten uncomfortable and they have to start hiring and scaling their systems, so. And then yeah, pricing strategy. We talk about-- like you mentioned the hybrid pricing. Initially, I got the idea from Scott Brady. He's really sharp entrepreneur. And then we've put our own nuance and spin to it to make sure that people do it effectively. So it's psychologically really effective and that's been really really great for our clients that are starting to implement that. [00:19:16] So, yeah, you're right. There's a lot more in the program. I'm excited for you to get into some of the other stuff and get through it. Because I love seeing clients get all these different pieces dialed in because the speed at which the company moves forward is rapid. Now, a lot of people, a lot of property managers are already burnt out. They're already burnt out in their business. They're not enjoying it, which I would normally say, they're just doing it wrong, but that's, I think also one of the key things that we focus on at DoorGrow is not just building a business that just gets more crazy and more hectic and moves fast, that you enjoy less and less, which is typical. Most get to 200 to 400 doors and they're burnt out. They're micromanaging their team. They hate their day-to-day.  [00:19:56] Brannon: You talk about both growing with quantity, but also growing with quality and creating a quality of life too.  [00:20:05] Jason: Yeah, it's a big deal. So our primary focus is on, I call it the four reasons. I've done a previous podcast episode on that. For those listening, you can go back and listen to that. That's our primary goal is to move people towards the four reasons of more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support. And as you've been building your business, it could get uglier and more painful, but we always try to make sure that the client understands that's the wrong way to do it. Like we can get you more support and make it more fun and you do less and less in the business.  [00:20:36] Brannon: I like to learn and listen as it scales, how to scale it, and you share this in the coaching, how to scale it properly so that you don't get burnout. So I'm aware of that and want to make sure that happens not just for me, but y'all also share how to do that for your team too. The positions and the different times to hire and how to do that effectively. So it's not just for the owner, but it's how to create quality for everyone.  [00:21:06] Jason: So you've seen some results in the program. What do you feel like your team's perspective of all this movement and change has been, and maybe even your spouse, like how is this kind of rippling out around you? Is this creating some pain and problems for people around you? Or how did they feel about all this?  [00:21:24] Brannon: Jason, you'll appreciate that I use a lot of your quotes at home. But, when you're hearing good things, you want to share it. So I would say we're growing and I think the team, I know the team is all on board and they're excited about the growth, but as any good growth, there is stretching and you have to go through that stretching process that makes you better, but you've provided several good things that help the team that I'm using to help them get through the stretching with the growth that we're having. And we'll take this problem of growth, as we all remember the great recession and we were begging to be busy. I keep mindful of that, of being grateful that we are and would not take the other side of that of not being busy. I keep that in mind and I encourage the team, and they're encouraged by the growth too. They're very excited. Even our sales team notices it and they're like, "man, maybe I should be on that side of the business." They get really excited about it.  [00:22:25] Jason: What's one thing you feel like you could share maybe with the audience, people that aren't in the program that might benefit them, that is maybe something you learned in the program or, maybe just a mindset shift or a takeaway or something that might be helpful to those that are listening? [00:22:41] Brannon: Boy. That's there's so many... [00:22:43] Jason: There are those that are struggling. What feedback or idea would you want to share with them?  [00:22:49] Brannon: I think, you know, looking for referrals from agents that are working in the multi-family or property industry that are selling investments that has helped us quite a bit, but what's been beneficial in the coaching is you've given a great template of a script of how to do it that is genuine, that really flows well and is right in line with building high trust with clients and with agents. That's been the number one benefit of the coaching is not just that idea, but then even giving a practical script that really works. We've been in coaching. We've all been in different programs where we'll see a script that is just not realistic because that person doesn't do it. Your script is genuinely realistic, and it works. I tested it. It worked. I went line by line, even had the script in front of me as I'm going through it, and it really flowed genuine and real and generated referrals that day. [00:23:58] Jason: That was actually one of those moments. We have these moments as coaches where we feel like-- it's similar to as being a dad and seeing your kid get an award or do something, but one of those moments for me was when you sent me your call recording, and you just followed the script. Because I get a lot of call recordings from clients and they don't follow the script. They either don't feel confident doing it that way, or they say it different or they think they're trying to be cute or clever. And then I'm coaching them like, "stop saying 'um' and stop saying 'kinda' and 'maybe' like show confidence." you just followed the script, and it went so beautifully, and that was just really rewarding to me to be able to hear that and go " yes! It worked." And hear that result like real-time is really cool.  [00:24:43] Brannon: I think I came into the coaching with the mindset and I thought of that 90-10 principle, and I said, "I'm going to be the 10%. Sink or swim, I'm going to be the 10% and I'm just going to follow it" and let it go where it went. But the beauty of it is, it went well. And it would for anyone that followed because we all know as we coach or teach, the ones that just say, "Hey, I'm going to be humble and I'm just going to do what you say, and let's see what happens." it generally works.  [00:25:16] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to tell clients like, "Hey, it's proven. If Brannon can do it, anybody else can do it too. Brannon's not any smarter or cooler than anybody else in our program, other than the fact that he does the work and he does what we tell them to do. And that makes you, I think, pretty smart and pretty cool. So I appreciate you, Brannon. So, um, Cool. I, appreciate you coming and taking some time out of your day to be here on the #DoorGrowShow and on the podcast. For those that are. On the fence, thinking about DoorGrow maybe they've heard about DoorGrow, a year ago or five years ago or in the past. What would you say to them now? You're on the other side of the paywall. You see what's going on in the community. What would you say?  [00:25:57] Brannon: Well, You might not like this, but I think it's so good, sometimes I wouldn't want to tell anybody 'cause it's so good for people.  [00:26:06] Jason: I've heard that. I've heard that quite a bit, which is really funny. Like "I want everyone to do it except my competition." [00:26:12] Brannon: That's it. [00:26:13] Jason: So which market are you in?  [00:26:16] Brannon: We're in north Texas.  [00:26:17] Jason: All right. So if you're in north Texas, Brannon says, do not do the DoorGrow thing. It's not going to work out for you probably, but everybody else should totally join this program. Does that sound accurate?  [00:26:30] Brannon: North Texas property managers and there's plenty of business for all of us. [00:26:35] Jason: There is. That's something, I think that we're really big on the program. You're not in the red water feeling scarcity fighting with other property managers. There's 70% are self-managing, there's tons of available potential business out there, and you've been able to tap into that tap and you're getting plenty from it and yeah, there's plenty of business out there. Very cool. Brannon appreciate you being a client. Appreciate you taking time out. And anything you wanna say before we wrap this up?  [00:27:03] Brannon: No, I think I've covered quite a bit myself.  [00:27:05] Jason: All right. Awesome. Thanks, Brannon. All right. So for those that have been listening to this and you're curious or interested in DoorGrow, you can reach out to us. And if you want to test the waters a little bit and get familiar with this, because this may be the first time you've heard about us for some reason, join our Facebook group, go to doorgrowclub.com. Videos like this get pushed into the group. I do live streams multiple times a week now. I'm sharing concepts and ideas. My goal and job is to prove to you that we have some value to offer to you. Once you get beyond the paywall, there's even more. And so join the DoorGrowClub. You can go to doorgrowclub.com to get to our Facebook group. The other thing that I would recommend is just go to doorgrow.com. [00:27:52] If you're curious and you want to set up a call and talk to my sales team, they will listen to you. I have great people on the team. They really care about our vision of helping property managers. And so if you're struggling with some issues, some challenges, bring it up to them and talk with them and they will help you see if there's a path in which we can help you deal with those challenges, whether it's you're just not enjoying your day to day, you're struggling with your team and with operations, you're struggling to figure out how to add doors and grow your business, you hate your website, you don't like your brand. Like we can help solve these problems for you and they'll help you see how we can do that. And they'll also give you access to our seven frameworks training so you can see seven different growth frameworks and really shift your mindset out of the idea that you need cold leads and you need to do advertising and you need to spend a bunch of money on marketing. [00:28:41] We'll shift you out of that and help you see why that mindset actually has been hurting your growth and will benefit you and get you moving forward. And that's it for today. So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth. Reach out to DoorGrow, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye, everyone. [00:28:55] 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!  [00:29:22] 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. [00:29:43] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life. 
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May 17, 2022 • 14min

DGS 170: What Property Managers At 400-600 Doors Need To Know

If you are a property management entrepreneur in the 400-600 door range, you likely experience the same issues as others in this category: company culture, strategic planning, and more. In this episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull continues the stages of the Property Management Entrepreneurial Journey series with the 400-600 door category.  You’ll Learn… [01:10] Recap of the Other Property Management Entrepreneur Types [03:29] Defining the 400-600 Door Range [04:52] Making Sure You Have Help in the Business [06:42] How to Build Your Team and Processes [08:23] Optimizing Your Business: Strategic Planning [10:09] Transitioning from Transactional to Transformational Leadership [11:20] Recap of the Other Property Management Entrepreneur Types Tweetables “So by the time you get to this 400 to 600 door stage, you are either in a massive amount of pain, it's really painful, or you finally solve some of those issues.” “So I'm hoping if you're at this stage, business is not crazy. It's not crazy at work, and things are good. And a good book recommendation is It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried.” “I believe most meetings are wasted time, but strategic planning, strategic meetings is one of the ways we really help scale and grow property management companies.” “If you don't have really clear strong culture, you probably don't have a really clear, good team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] So by the time you get to this 400 to 600 door stage, you are either in a massive amount of pain, it's really painful, or you finally solve some of those issues. [00:00:10] All right. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, 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 Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income.  [00:00:46] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and the business owner. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:10] All right. So on previous episodes, we were doing this series of talking about all these different stages of property management entrepreneurs, and just to catch people up that have missed those, go back and watch those-- or listen. But what we talked about is we talked about pure startups, and then we talked about those that are kind of seekers and getting past that fantasy stage, and now they have a real business and seekers where they're kind of trying to figure stuff out, and these are all different door levels.  [00:01:36] And then we talked about the solo preneur property managers, and then we talked about those stuck property managers on one of the recordings. And then we talked about the transitioning property management entrepreneur, has broken the 100 door barrier, and they're leading into that next sand trap, which by default, they'll get to within a year or two, usually in the 200 to 400 door category. And we talked about that. I call it the standard property management entrepreneurs. So we talked about that group and category. And then during that last recording, I talked about the side biz, property management entrepreneur, cause some artificially break, the 100 door barrier and they really just have a side business. Real estate is maybe their main thing. And they artificially are stealing resources from that business. [00:02:19] All right. That brings you to the present and you're missing a lot of good info so that you can understand where you're at in this journey and which things you should have tackled at these various stages. We're going to talk a little bit today about. That next level. This is those that break past that 200 to 400 door sand trap. Sometimes I call it the second sand trap, maybe the third sand trap. First one is usually where just getting started. That's like the hardest hurdle for a lot. And so that could be the first, the real first sand trap once you've launched your business though is about 50, 60 doors, I see a lot. I call it the solopreneur sand trap.  [00:02:53] A lot of people get stuck there. They paint themselves into a corner. They end up trapped and that's really uncomfortable for them. So it's not like working. So the next sand trap is that 200 to 400 door stage. If you break the 100 door barrier in a healthy way within a year or two, you'll be there. And that 200 to 400 door stage I've talked about on the previous recording for the podcast. If you can break through that sand trap, and this is the team sand trap, and trying to figure out how to deal with the team, you're now going to be at this next level in the 400 to 600 door category. [00:03:29] Now, if you have achieved this level, you're at 400 to 600 doors, you may have done this through acquisition. Maybe you acquired another property management company. Maybe you got here just through grit and sheer will, and doing a lot of the sales yourself. At this stage, you probably have a pretty solid team because that 200 to 400 door stage is really painful trying to figure out your team. So now, you've got a good team. You probably like most of the people on it, and you probably aren't dealing with a ton of churn with the team. And probably at this stage, you've offloaded some of the growth oriented tasks. You may have a BDM at this stage most likely. If not, this is probably the next level for you. [00:04:15] So you might be a closer, and you want to focus on your area of genius and you have offloaded everything else. So you're still just the closer and you're closing a lot of deals, which is cool if you're good at that and you love that. If not, at this stage, I'm guessing by now you've already got some people helping you with the sales side, because you just probably wouldn't have gotten here, but if not, you need to get a BDM or at the very least a sales assistant. That you can maybe groom to be a BDM. But a sales assistant that you can offload at least the follow-up the appointment setting, stuff like that. So you need a setter basically while you act as closer.  [00:04:52] So you've probably gotten out of the day-to-day operations at 400 to 600 doors. If you're still heavily involved in day-to-day operations, I'd be surprised, at this level. I don't see that very often. However, even at this level, you still are likely your own best employee, right? You still have your hands in quite a few things. You probably have many of your processes to find 'cause usually at that 200 to 400 door stage, that's like becomes a heavy focus because it becomes so painful. You need to get these processes defined and you realize there's a lack of consistency and you realize the team aren't doing things the way that you would want, and it becomes painful. So by the time you get to this 400 to 600 door stage, you are either in a massive amount of pain, it's really painful, or you finally solve some of those issues. [00:05:40] So I'm hoping if you're at this stage, business is not crazy. It's not crazy at work, and things are good. And a good book recommendation is It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried. He's one of the founders, creators of Basecamp, CEO of Basecamp. Really, really great book. I got to hang out with Jason Fried years before he wrote that book. And he basically, during a 90 minute called taught me some of those principles and it was a game changer for my business in making the business more calm and more quiet and focusing on asynchronous communication, some other really cool ideas. So I highly recommend you check that out. One thing I'll disagree with Jason-- if you ever hear this is the idea of not having planning and not having meetings. I believe most meetings are wasted time, but strategic planning, strategic meetings is one of the ways we really help scale and grow property management companies. Game changer. And and that's using our system, DoorGrow OS, and I believe that that's more effective than EOS for those that are into rocket fuel and traction and all that kind of jazz.  [00:06:42] All right. Let's talk about this 400 to 600 door company and your team. So you probably have a good team. You like them. And if not, you might have one or two people you don't like, but you probably like most of your team. You probably, at this point have an operator in the business. You have somebody that's dealing with the operational side of things, because most of you are visionaries and visionary entrepreneurs probably need that in order to make it to this level. You probably have some systems and mechanisms in place. It's most likely that you do, you have probably some sort of maintenance process and system in place. You have a system for communication with clients that's working out really well. You have a task management system internally for the business, maybe Asana or Monday or some sort of tool that hands out tasks. We use Basecamp at DoorGrow for the little one-off tasks. And then we use Process Street for processes.  [00:07:38] So you may have something like AppFolio plus, which I heard good things about or Process Street or LeadSimple has a tool in their sales CRM for processes, checklists, that sort of thing. So you're going to have something for repeating processes that's connected to checking things off. Like it's a checklist, not just like an owner's manual that sits in the glove box of a car and no one looks at like standard operating procedures on a Google drive that nobody ever looks at. It's not going to be like that. Right. So you have some sort of process documentation checklist system as well. So that means you have a tactical task management system, you have a process system for repeatable processes, and you have some sort of communication system going with clients as well as probably several other systems. [00:08:23] So you've focused on building some systems out. Now at this stage, there's a lot of optimization. You need to optimize and figure out how to do that. And so you need to figure out what you need to do next. So you need to figure out what you need to do right now in order to control the future. You need to figure out: "how can I plan and create the future with my team?" So this is where you take your team and you need to shift them into strategic planning and build a strategic system and that would be DoorGrow OS is what I would recommend, of course. So, but you need to build a strategic system where you can get the entire team moving the business forward with you.  [00:09:05] So the 200 to 400 door primary focus is really creating culture. If you don't have really clear strong culture, you probably don't have a really clear, good team and you're not going to get to the 400 to 600 door level. So you probably have a healthier level of culture. If not, this is going to be a focus. You need to develop cohesive culture. It needs to be documented. You need to develop cohesive, strategic planning for the business, and you need to develop an internal communication system for the team that doesn't involve one to everyone communication constantly like Slack or some of these tools where you're communicating one to an entire group, and everyone thinks you need to read everything. It's about building asynchronous communication, so really you need an effective culture, effective hiring system, effective planning system for strategic planning, strategic stuff, not the tactical day-to-day stuff like I just talked about, and you need an internal communication system, which goes along with that planning and a correct cadence of meetings can reduce a lot of communication and interruptions in business. So, this is how to get to the next level.  [00:10:09] So, they have many of the processes defined and operations are running fairly smoothly in the business. Now you need to get all the team members helping you innovate in the business, not just getting stuff done that you tell them, which is transactional. Now you need to transfer and move towards transformational leadership. Transactional is I give you a task. You come back and say, you did it. I pay you a dollar, give you a task and you come back and do it, and that's the transaction. Transformational is I give you an outcome and a deadline, and then I support you in moving it forward, but you get to come up with how to get this done. And this is where you now start to have team members that think for themselves and innovate and move things forward. Instead of you having to micromanage everybody on your team, through processes and checklists. So if you're spending all your time trying to create tasks and trying to tell the team what to do and answer every question, you have a broken business that needs a strategic planning system, and that's going to free you up.  [00:11:11] But in order to do that, you need really good culture, really good team members, and now you can implement a really good planning system and you need a really good operations person or an operator if that stuff isn't fun for you. If you don't love spreadsheets and checklists and process documentation and calendars and all that kind of stuff, you're probably more of a visionary entrepreneur. You're more on the sales and marketing side of the spectrum. And you're going to enjoy that a lot more. So hopefully this is helpful for those of you. If you would like some help, if you're at this level-- I love working property managers at this level. A lot property managers at this level, some of them start to get really painful. And they, if they make it to the next level, they've checked out. I want to make this easy for you, help you implement a strategic planning system in your business. We focus on this in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. It's the "Scale" portion. Really awesome. I'd love to get you on a call with our team so we can figure out if we can help you grow your business and scale faster and get your team in better alignment. [00:12:05] And this alone can cut your staffing costs easily in half, sometimes by a third down to a third, by getting all these things really in healthy alignment and getting you in healthy alignment with your team. You're going to get way more output and that's the greatest expense in a business. So, if that's interesting to you check us out, join our Facebook group. If you're not yet ready to talk to us: doorgrowclub.com. You can go to doorgrowclub.com, join that, and we will love on you and hopefully eventually convince you to get on a call with us. Otherwise, reach out check us out at doorgrow.com and book a call. There's a little link at the top, and we'd love to talk with you and see if we can help you grow and scale your business until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth by everyone. [00:12:47] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay per lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:13:14] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. [00:13:35] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
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May 10, 2022 • 19min

DGS 169: The Most Common Problems For Property Management Businesses at 200-400 Doors

A lot of property management entrepreneurs get stuck in this area between 200 and 400 doors. They’ve built the wrong team, and everything in the business feels like it’s out of alignment. These are the standard property management entrepreneurs. Property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder/CEO of DoorGrow, shares the next avatar in this series of episodes about the different types of property management entrepreneurs.  You’ll Learn… [01:15] The Next Avatar: The Standard Property Management Entrepreneur  [02:07] Have You Built the Wrong Team? How to Build the Right One [05:10] Defining Your Role in the Business [06:12] The Issues in the 200-400 Door Range [09:50] Defining Your Company’s Culture and Hiring [12:57] Inspiring vs. Controlling Your Team [14:29] The Side Business Property Management Entrepreneur Tweetables “You can't have a team that's your dream team, that's awesome, that makes you feel really well-supported if you are showing up incorrectly.” “There is nothing in the business that you have to be doing in the long run. There's nothing. You can offload any piece of the business.” “The only reason every team member should exist is because they are taking something off your plate.” “Tactical work just keeps businesses alive. Strategic is what really grows businesses.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] So they, at this stage, you probably also have all the same leaks in your business that the smaller companies do. You have leaks in your website, you have leaks in your branding, you have leaks in your reputation, you have leaks in your pricing, you have leaks and all these different areas of your business [00:00:13] All right. Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and in life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals relationships, and residual income. [00:00:52] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:15] So we are going to continue our series this week, talking about the different avatars that we target here at DoorGrow. And so we're going to talk about a group that maybe listening to my intro were thinking, "you know, I don't know about that. manifesto, Jason. I don't know about having more freedom and that property management makes me feel good." You might be feeling really stressed out and you might have a big team helping you do this. And by big, I mean maybe you have like five to 10 people even. So we're going to talk about what I call the standard property management entrepreneur. And this is the property management entrepreneur that has built a team, but it's the wrong team. And so this is usually in the 200 to 400 door category. This is where I see-- I sometimes call this the second sand trap or the third sand trap-- this is where a lot of property management business owners get stuck. And the reason they're stuck is because they've built the wrong role for themselves, and they built the wrong team around the wrong role. So they're showing up as the wrong person. And then they built a business and a team around that wrong person to support the business. And so everybody's out of alignment.  [00:02:25] You can't have a team that's your dream team, that's awesome, that makes you feel really well-supported if you are showing up incorrectly. And so usually, that's the problem is that the entrepreneur has these myths or these misconceptions or these beliefs that they're the business owner, so they should be doing X, Y, and Z. "I'm the business owner, so I have to be the one doing the sales and selling to people. "I'm the business owner, so I have to be the one doing accounting" or "I'm the business owner. I have to be running the meetings and handling the operations." Right. I just want to let you know, I'm letting you off the hook. I'm giving you permission, not that you need it from me, but you can give yourself permission. There is nothing in the business that you have to be doing in the long run. There's nothing. You can offload any piece of the business, and the ultimate goal of the business is to get those four reasons of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. This is why we build a team. But you're probably, if you're at this stage, you're massively out of alignment with this. We talked about transitioning PM's and if you can break that a hundred door barrier, usually you're at this level within a year or two, you're in this 200 to 400 door area, and then you get stuck and it gets uncomfortable. [00:03:31] This is where a lot of people will fall prey to thinking they need to expand into a new market. Like we built it this big, maybe if we just pick another city nearby, we can start doing it there too. And that I call that premature expansion. It's a bad idea. Usually what ends up happening is they go into this new market and then their current market is starting to suffer and struggle. And then both are not doing well because you know, it starting two businesses are running two businesses and starting one while you're running another, usually means there's less focus. And focus is the most important currency related to growth. It's the most important. And so now, you're diluting your focus even more as an entrepreneur. [00:04:12] So, what we need to do is narrow your focus, even in your own business. The only reason every team member should exist is because they are taking something off your plate. But most business owners get to this point by building the team based on what the business needs. They're like "the business, we need more maintenance stuff, or we need more of this." instead of figuring out what does the business owner need? What do you need in order to move closer to the four reasons? Well, maybe you need an assistant, and you need to get rid of some of these things off your plate. Maybe you need a bookkeeping and accounting company because you don't really love doing the accounting and bookkeeping and you want it done well, and you need to offload that, right? So maybe you hate doing sales or that's uncomfortable, and lead-generation/ sales is really bad then probably in your business. And maybe you need to get a BDM or bring somebody in that's really good at that. Right? And so, If you focus on what does the business need most? And what does the entrepreneurial most? Then, you're going to bring in the right people. [00:05:10] Now, in order to do that, though, you have to be in proper alignment. You have to be doing the right things in the business. You have to know what your 'why' is, what your purpose is, what you really want out of the business. Of those four reasons, what does fulfillment and freedom and contribution and support look like for me? If I had the ultimate dream team, the ultimate business, how would I be spending my day so that you can move closer and closer to that. And then each team member you add should be helping you get closer to that. So you take everything that you do. You start shaving off and slicing off pieces to give to other people, and it should be the pieces you don't like doing. Not the pieces you don't have time to do. It should be the pieces you don't like to do and the pieces that are more tactical so that you can focus more on strategic leadership. Tactical work just keeps businesses alive. Strategic is what really grows businesses. There needs to be a general in the tent, leading the army. There needs to be a king, and the king needs to eat first, or their needs to be a queen and the queen needs to eat first. Otherwise, they'll have a starving kingdom. So let's talk about this standard property management entrepreneur at 200 to 400 doors. So this is the stage where they finally have a legit business they can live off of. It has the ability to spend money on marketing, so a lot of times they make the mistake of doing that. So they start trying out marketing channels and advertising channels and wasting a lot of money there. They're also wasting, probably too much money on their team because they don't really have team members that are giving three times the output that I'll see in healthy businesses and healthy teams that are in healthy alignment around a healthy business owner usually they'll have a third, right? They'll have a fraction of the output. The team members are frustrated. And so they're a business owner, they're likely doing still most of the sales at this stage. They have a team, but they struggle to build the team they truly want. They have consistent staffing challenges and turnover because team members really that are B players are the only ones they can attract because nobody wants to follow a starving king or starving queen. [00:07:10] They don't want to follow-- they're not inspired to have any other motivation other than to get money to follow a leader if that leader isn't really happy or enjoying their life, they're not going to be able to either. Because they're out of alignment with the four reasons. So they still feel like they're driving all the outcomes in the business as a visionary or as an entrepreneur at this stage, and they wish they could just get ahead and they're frustrated with their team. They have to answer every question, every approval. They don't have team members that can think and make decisions for themselves because this is how they've set up their business and set up the team. In the beginning, it's super tempting, right? You start bringing on people and they're asking you questions and you're like, "man, I'm so smart. It feels so good, but it wears thin pretty quick. And soon, you realize you have to drive every outcome. You have to hand out every task. You have to push everybody to do everything. And so it's not as effective.  [00:08:00] So at this stage, you probably also have all the same leaks in your business that the smaller companies do. You have leaks in your website, you have leaks in your branding, you have leaks in your reputation, you have leaks in your pricing, you have leaks and all these different areas of your business, but you're great at selling. You've probably gotten to the point where you can close deals. You're getting business on. You're getting out there, making it happen, or you found some sort of unique prospecting method that's working for you. And so you've achieved a certain level of success but, the delivery side feels frustrating because it's heavily connected to you. They often have outdated and ineffective websites. They've wasted a bunch of money on various lead sources and advertising methods. And they're usually ready to find something new that actually works, but they're gun shy and they don't believe it. Like they're scared to sign up with DoorGrow 'cause they're like, "I haven't had good experiences with this marketing firm or with this firm or with this lead gen idea or whatever." So they're cautious and they're tired of wasting money and they're wasting way too much money on their team and on resources because they just don't have the alignment they should. [00:09:12] They don't have team members that really have complete ownership of pieces of the business and are moving it forward and innovating in it. They're the only person that innovates as a visionary, and they go to conferences, come back, and have a ton of ideas they throw at their team, and it's like pulling the pin on a grenade and lobbing it into the middle of the room. And then they're freaking out. They're like, "I've already got all my day-to-day work. How are we gonna implement this cool thing you heard about at NARPM?" You know? How does that benefit me? "I'm already stressed out." Right? So you don't really have buy-in from your team. Your team are not sold on you. They don't believe in you. They're not sold on the vision of the company because you've never really made a clear and usually the big glaring problem they can't see, the blind spot at this level is you don't have culture defined. There's no culture. Really, they don't really know or care what your company core values are. They don't know or care what your why is. And your purpose is and how this business fulfills you and gives you freedom and fulfillment. They don't know or care what the customers really want. They just don't want to deal with any more garbage or complaints. Right. And so, you have some systems in place, probably at this level, this is where you start thinking, "I need to document more processes and I need more systems and I need to micromanage my team more because I need to systematize this, so what you really need at this stage is you just need to be able to get clarity on yourself. Then build the right team around you so that you have the right culture. [00:10:39] And in hiring, I talk about the three fits: you need a really good cultural fit. You need really personality fit for each role, make sure you have a good fit there. And then you need skill fit. You need to make sure that they can do the work and they have the right skill. So, usually at this stage, they have so many leaks in the business they can't see. You built a whole business around a whole bunch of blind spots. You can't see the problem with your branding or your website, your reputation, or your team members, or your own role in the business. And so I love working with these businesses because there's so much we can do, and they have the team and the capacity to move the needle very quickly. We can move things quickly and make a lot of changes and get them a lot of results really fast, and they have the money to spend to do this stuff and to invest in the business. Usually at this stage, they tend to be a bit more experimental. They're willing to try new ideas because they've dealt with a lot of frustrations and they already know what things are not working. [00:11:35] So they're open-minded to the message that I share at DoorGrow that: Hey, you could grow your business without all this other stuff. You don't need SEO or pay-per-click or content marketing or social media marketing or pay-per-lead services. Like you can grow and scale your business really rapidly adding a hundred, 200, maybe even 300 doors in a year like one of our clients did in last year without spending a dime on advertising. And I know that sounds crazy to people listening, but reach out to us and we'll share with you our seven frameworks training on how you can do that. So, anyway, this is a lot of businesses I see at NARPM in the NARPM organization. When I go to speak at local chapters, I see a lot of businesses in this 200 to 400 door range. They're stuck. They have a team that's sort of engaged that they kind of like, and they like some of their team members and some not so much and they're lacking culture. And so if this is the stage you're at, you may want to join our mastermind program and get into our scale program, which we were focused on first, so that we can figure out, assess you, assess your team, start to offload the right pieces and get the right support in place. [00:12:40] And make sure we get clarity on the company core values and client-centric mission statement and your personal 'why,' and so that we can start to build the business around you and create the right culture. Once you have the culture clear, you'll be able to see clearly whether or not your team members are buying into it or not. They're either going to have to be controlled by you, or they're going to be inspired by you. Inspired makes you a lot more money, and it's a lot more profitable, right? So the phrase that I like to repeat and say that I heard a long time ago is whenever we fail to inspire, we always by default control. Whenever we fail to inspire we always control. [00:13:18] And so make sure your team members are inspired. And if the only thing they're really inspired by is getting paid and making money off you, then they are probably people that you have to control. And they probably are what I call hiders. You either have believers. They're inspired. They believe in you, they believe in the business. [00:13:36] They believe in the vision and treating clients the way that you want to treat them. And they're excited, and they're engaged and they give you their discretionary time. They're thinking about how to be a better team member when they're in the shower and when they're at home, or you have hiders. Hiders complain about you. They live for the weekend. They really honestly would rather do as little as possible, hide, and get paid as much as possible. And that's kind of the standard American employee or standard employee maybe anywhere. So I want to shift you away from having just hiders in your business to having believers. And you'll get three times the output from believers than you will from hiders three times. Imagine how that would impact your profitability if you got three times the work ethic and output from really good team members. Right. It would be awesome. How would that affect your profitability? How would that lower your operational costs and increase your ability to have output? [00:14:29] All right. So that's all we'll chat about today about that. There's another category that tends to kind of be connected to this. It might be related to others. I'll touch on that really brief... and that's the side business property manager, and maybe that'll be a future call, but these are the ones that are often brokers of a successful real estate office. Property management's a side note. They're almost like accidental property managers. Just like in this industry, a lot of you talk about accidental investors; they're accidental property managers. They often have artificially broken past that hundred door barrier, not by fixing common problems they would have had to, but by leveraging their existing real estate revenue, and team to move past it without solving the problem. And so they're leaving a lot of money on the table. They have a lot of inefficiencies everywhere. They likely secretly hate and avoid the ugly, neglected property management arm of their business. But eventually, they start to wake up and go, Hey, this could be profitable somehow. And maybe sometimes when the real estate market shifts, they're like, "well, real estate is not doing so great. I want to hedge against this. I want my property management business finally healthy. So eventually, they wake up to the fact that it can be more profitable and they also usually need help to rebrand at least the property management side of that business, so it doesn't harm the real estate side and they can be segregated and stand healthy on their own two feet. [00:15:47] Often, these property management businesses just happen, like from natural growth from the real estate business. Like they just have investor clients. They're like, "could you manage our property?" And they're like, "okay, sure. And so they're not really even charging what they should be. It's really kind of just a service they're adding, trying to add value to keep their existing investor clients happy. But unfortunately, this growth and all the doors that they have is not effective. I had one client come to me that had 500 or 600 doors and they were making $0. They had zero profit. And this is very common with these side business property management companies, the side biz PM's. So they don't know what they don't know. They're not really focused on that business. It's kind of grown as this ugly weed and it's kind of taking over and eating resources and it's not really profitable. So it really is like a cancerous tumor on the side of a healthy real estate company. And they either should just cut that tumor off and kill it, or they need to get that thing separated, segregated, and healthy so it can stand on its own two feet, and not just be a leech of resources on your real estate company.  [00:16:54] So in order to do this, you have to shift property management, at least for a while to being the primary focus if you are the visionary. And a lot of times they want to just hand it off to somebody or give it to some operator person or some property manager or some director of property management, and they're not as big of a visionary, they're not as, you know, adaptable as the entrepreneur. And they would be able to move the needle so much faster if they just, at least for a quarter, maybe two quarters, maybe a year focused on that business and getting it really healthy. It could feed them for life. So that's all I'll say about that. So we covered standard property management entrepreneurs and the side business property manager entrepreneur, which sometimes can get up to that 200 to 400 door range as well. But they did it through kind of a back door or through a side door that wasn't as effective or efficient. And so they need to make all the changes that the early stages should have done or that others have done at earlier stages. So with that, we'll go ahead and end today. [00:17:54] Until next time to our mutual growth everybody. Check us out at doorgrow.com and I hope you have an awesome week. Bye, everyone. [00:18:02] 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!  [00:18:29] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. [00:18:50] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

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