Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about three dominos that you need to knock over to close more property management deals. Jason discovered the three dominos concept in sales from Russell Brunson, a New York Times bestselling author that popularized sales funnels and co-founded ClickFunnels to help entrepreneurs get their message out to the marketplace quickly. You’ll Learn... [01:25] Three Dominos Concept: How to pitch property management services. [02:19] The three dominos are the vehicle, internal beliefs, and external beliefs. [02:39] Domino #1: The vehicle is your service to get to what people want. [03:29] Competition: What are all the alternative vehicles for property management? [04:55] Lead Gen: Cold leads are costly and warm leads cost time but less money. [06:33] DIY Option: Takes much longer to do everything and get the same results. [07:12] Domino #2: Tackle all of the customer’s internal beliefs by offering support. [09:58] Domino #3: Deal with all external and false beliefs that concern customers. [11:05] Logical Conclusion: Only thing left is to sign up with you and your service. [13:45] What is sales? Helps people get what they want, and what you desire, as well. Tweetables “There’s three dominoes that you need to knock over in order to get somebody to buy your services and to sign up with you as a client.” “If you knock over all three dominos, the magic that happens is the only logical conclusion they have left and decision they have left is to work with you.” “Safety and certainty is really what these people want.” “I’m building trust, creating relationships, and I’m helping them see reality, and really, I think that’s what sales is all about.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Russell Brunson Trello Transcript 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, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. So today's topic, I was hanging out with my coaching clients today. We had a great call, lots of people, and we had a brand new client. He was asking about, how do I pitch? Basically, the question was, how to pitch property management services? One concept or principle that I related that I would like to relate to everybody listening today is the concept of the three dominoes. I don't think I've chatted about this before. If I have, then you can hear it again. Anyway, the three dominoes concept in sales, I got that idea from Russell Brunson. I've heard him talk about it. I just grabbed one of his books off the shelf here. In this book, he mentions it. He probably mentions it in his others, but there are three dominoes that you need to knock over in order to get somebody to buy your services and to sign up with you as a client. These three dominoes are the vehicle, internal beliefs, and external beliefs. If you can knock over all three dominoes, the magic that happens is the only logical conclusion they have left and the decision they have left is to work with you. Let me explain these. So the vehicle is the first domino. This is important. The vehicle is your service. Your service is the vehicle for them to get to what they want. If you're selling property management, the vehicle that you're selling or offering is your business doing their management. For me, the vehicle is our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, that's the vehicle that we offer. Now when looking at vehicles, if you want to knock this domino over and accomplish the goal of them recognizing it, your vehicle is the best vehicle for them to get into. You have to throw stones at all the other vehicles. You have to destroy all the other vehicles in their mind so that the only logical vehicle left standing is your vehicle. So if you want them to use your business for property management, you have to look at what are all the alternative vehicles? Write these down, figure out what are all the alternatives. They can self-manage. They could go to a real estate agent and ask them to do it. They could go to the big box company and franchise company down the street. They could go to the small mom and pop company that competes with you that's down the street. There are lots of different vehicles. After you've looked at what are all the possible vehicles that exist for management and you make a list of these, you have to figure out, how can I throw stones at these? Why is my vehicle better than them self-managing, than them using the big box company down the street, the small mom and pop shop down the street that I compete with, or whatever? If you don't have a good answer to that question, then you don't have maybe the best vehicle. How can you make your vehicle better? Sometimes you just need to work on your product and improve it. So you need to have the best vehicle. With my vehicle, the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind and the coaching program that we offer, the alternative vehicles people have for growing their management companies could be hiring some other coach, it could be doing SEO, it could be doing pay-per-click, it could be doing content marketing, it could be doing social media marketing, or it could be pay-per-lead services. In my training that convinces people to sign up with us and work with us, I go through and explain why all of these vehicles generally are all cold lead advertising, and why cold leads are not as effective as warm leads. Why the close rate is typically 10%, or worse for most property managers with cold leads. Why cold leads are really expensive. You have to pay for these marketing services. You have to pay agencies, then you have to pay for ad spend, and it's really costly. I contrast that to our opportunity, our vehicle, which is based on warm lead generation, which is based on things that don't really cost you money. It does cost time, but it actually takes less time than dealing with cold [...] leads and prospects that are just time wasters and tire kickers, that are at the end of the sales cycle, that are searching on Google, that are super price-sensitive, and are the worst. They're the scraps that fall off the warm lead or word-of-mouth table that my clients get to eat at. This is how I attack the vehicle. For me, that's easy because it's true and it's obvious, I feel like. So I explain it, and then when people get it, they go, wow, that vehicle does sound better than these other vehicles and you might have written in some of these other vehicles. You might have tried them and you know from experience, they're not working really well. In fact, most of the companies that are trying to do those other vehicles to grow their business are losing more doors than they're getting on right now due to the sell-off that's happening in the marketplace. A lot of the larger companies are down at least 200 doors over the last couple of years. That might be you. So the vehicle, so you have to know how to attack all the other vehicles. I also have the alternate vehicle that is challenging or that I deal with, that clients will focus on which is DIY, just like you as property managers. We have people that are like, I can just read business books or I can just watch a bunch of videos on YouTube, I'll do it all myself. Awesome, I used to be that guy too. You could do that. And it will take you 10 years longer to get the same result. I've seen it and I've been that guy. I've been that guy that thought I knew everything and could do it all on my own. Until I started getting coaches and mentors that collapsed time. So I'm attacking that vehicle. You have to figure out how do I destroy and attack all the other vehicles. Once your vehicle is the only vehicle left standing, the next domino that needs to be knocked over in order for them to work with you is the internal beliefs. These are beliefs about their own internal self, beliefs about their own abilities to execute on this opportunity, beliefs about their concerns internally. You need to figure out what are all the internal beliefs and concerns that might prevent them from becoming a customer and from working with you, becoming a client, and signing the contract. Any internal beliefs like, well, I don't know, maybe they have a need for price anchoring. They don't know what the price should be for property management, you've told them your pricing, and they don't feel safe. So you need to solve that challenge. Maybe they don't know what your values are or things like this, and they're nervous that they might be blind to something or missing something. You have to figure out, what are all the internal beliefs that come up for your prospects? Make a list of these and you have to figure out, how can I throw stones and knock all of these internal beliefs down during my pitch? You've already knocked down all the external, third-party, and alternate vehicles. Now you need to deal with all those internal beliefs. A lot of times, internal beliefs have to do with levels of support. In our program, we deal with the internal belief, concern, or challenge like maybe I can't do it. Maybe this works for others, but maybe I'm not good enough, maybe I'm not charismatic enough, maybe I'm not cool enough, maybe I'm not smart enough, or maybe I'm lazy. We have to figure out how can we attack those internal beliefs. One of the ways is we focus on support. You get direct access to Jason. You can schedule a one on one with Jason as part of the mastermind. You're going to get telegram access to Jason so you can send him messages through Telegram—video, voice, and text throughout the week. If you get stuck or have questions, we also have Adam, Maddie, and others on my team that are supporting you as you move through certain processes like branding, web design, or some of the things that we help clean up in a business. They're there to support you as well. What other internal beliefs? Maybe I need to learn more. Awesome, we have DoorGrow Academy. We have a repository of training material we built up over the last decade of stuff that you can learn if you need to learn more in order to get the results. Cool, what about action? We have accountability and we have weekly check-ins that you're filling out each week to figure out whether you're doing it. We've taken a look at all the internal beliefs that we could think of that clients had challenges with or that were preventing clients from getting results, and we figure out, how do we tackle that and how do we deal with that? We're always looking to improve in that area. Once internal beliefs are handled, there are no internal beliefs left, then people tend to go external. So now the last domino that we need to knock over are all of their external beliefs. These are all the false beliefs they have about outside forces that could keep them from having success, things beyond their control. This could have to do with time, which keeps rolling on. It could have to do with the economy, which could be shifting. It could have to do with the real estate market at large. It could have to do with local laws and municipalities. It could have to do with the federal government. All of these are external beliefs, COVID hitting. What if this happens? What if that? All these external things that they might have concerns about, how will this be dealt with? What will happen here? If you can tackle all the external beliefs that this investor might have and knock all of those down, you make a list, like I said, of the previous two dominoes. Make a list, figure out what all of them are, and figure out how am I going to deal with these so that I can make them feel safe. Once you've eliminated all the external beliefs, you've thrown stones at all of those, the only logical conclusion left. They know that there's only one vehicle that makes the most sense. You've dealt with all their internal beliefs and concerns. You've dealt with all the external beliefs that they might have. The only logical conclusion left once those three dominoes are knocked over is to sign up with you, is to use you. There's nothing else that would make as much sense. So if you build trust through this process, safety and certainty are really what these people want. This is a big secret for sales and property management. Nobody gives a shit about property management. This is not what they want. They do not want to buy property management. They don't wake up in the morning and say property management is sexy and awesome. They don't read blogs about it and follow social media accounts about it. Unless they're property managers, they want safety and certainty. They want peace of mind. That's important for them. So having the best vehicle, having dealt with all their internal beliefs, and dealing with all their external beliefs, they're going to have a high level of trust, safety, and certainty in you and in their ability to work with you. They know that you're going to be able to deal with all the external factors that they were concerned about. So there's nothing left to really prevent them from signing up. Then you just say, if I can deal with all your concerns—internal beliefs and external beliefs—and I can explain why our vehicle is the best, would it be fair to say that you'd be wanting to sign up today? Is that fair? They'd say, yeah, probably. If I can help you see how we're the best company in the market for you, how we can make sure that you feel safe and taken care of, that we can make sure that all of your external concerns are dealt with, and we have answers to those, would you be willing to sign up today? Is that fair? Then you say, yeah, that makes sense. That's basically it. So put together your pitch. Go to the drawing board, you could write out each belief on a post-it note and get a whole list of all the internal, whole list of all the external, and figure out where all these vehicles—internal, external. Get clear on this. You could build it out on a Trello board on trello.com and have each of these. This is how I put together my framework and my training for DoorGrow Secrets or the Seven Frameworks training that we give to potential clients for free that sells them on signing up. Some watch that training and then they just sign up. It's like two hours long and I'm teaching a bunch of concepts, frameworks, and ideas for free, and adding value. I'm building trust, creating a relationship, and I'm helping them see reality. Really, I think that's what sales is really about. Sales isn't about manipulation. It isn't about control. It's about helping people see the real issue, the real problem, and helping them see the real path and how you can help them get what they want. Sales really isn't about you getting what you want. It's about them being able to get what they want and you get what you want. This is that mutual thing. Your business is this magic bridge between your desires being fulfilled and their desires being fulfilled. Hopefully this is helpful if you want to compound this. Once you have your pitch put together, add some images to it to drag this home. Don't fill it up with a lot of text, but some people have a hard time digesting all of this. So you'll notice in my training, I have slides and I have images to help people see and get these concepts quickly. So making a visual can help them understand these things quickly. Have an image for each vehicle, have an image for each internal belief, each external belief, and you can crank right through these, explain them, and they'll get it. By the end, they'll feel like they have a lot more clarity than if you had no visual imagery. So you can put together a little slide deck or pitch based on these three dominoes. Then, of course, you can end it with a close or a call to action to solicit that. Hopefully, this has been helpful for those listening. If you're wanting to take things to the next level, you want to become a badass at sales, you want to feel like you could close anybody that you talk to if you want them, and you want to shift from being the person that's trying to get everybody on to being the sexy guy or girl at the bar that does not feel the need to get with everybody, but you're a high value and people want to be with you. If you want to shift that, then reach out to us at DoorGrow, and let's get you that Seven Frameworks training and our DoorGrow Secrets training and get you moving into our program hopefully. You'll be learning how to be really effective at closing more deals more quickly and doing things that are far more efficient than all those other vehicles. I'm Jason Hull. I hope this was really helpful for those of you that are struggling during your pitch, losing deals. If you're dealing with anybody that is not a hot, warm lead, and your close rate is lower than you want it to be, then try applying this three dominoes principle to point them towards your ultimate opportunity or vehicle to help solve their problem. That's why businesses exist, to solve a real problem in the marketplace. What if they don't have a problem? Then they don't need you. So you don't even need to pitch to them or sell to them. So identify the problem and then go into this pitch with your three dominoes. Knock them over and get some doors. I'm Jason Hull and I'm out. Bye, everybody. Until next time to our mutual growth. You just listened to the DoorGrow show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. 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. 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 at doorgrow.com. 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.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull explains the cycle of suck in property management. It’s incredibly costly, stressful, and competitive. The “cycle of suck” is a phrase and concept inspired by one of Jason’s clients that noticed as he got rid of bad doors and bad properties, he actually became more profitable. The cycle of suck concept is true, powerful, and effective. What are the four steps of the cycle of suck in property management, and how can you avoid, escape, and reverse it? You’ll Learn... [02:32] Step 1: You take on any client/owner or you take on a crappy client/owner. [03:05] Step 2: You take on crappy properties, which means you have difficult tenants. [03:37] Step 3: You have crappy tenants to manage if you have pushy property owners. [04:44] Step 4: You have crappy reviews and a bad reputation in the marketplace. [06:26] Don't get with everybody. Attract people you want because you are the prize. [07:25] Protect Yourself/Team: Set standards, boundaries, limits when selecting clients. [08:24] Sense of Scarcity: When competing based on price, it creates artificial industry. [09:21] Reverse Cycle of Suck: Qualify clients, properties, tenants/owners, and reviews.  Tweetables “The reality is, you don't want every client or you shouldn't want every client.” “The owner is causing you to have more problems, more drama, more stress, and more challenges that are unnecessary simply because they're making things difficult.” “You're going to have crappy tenants that are difficult, frustrated, and unhappy.” “The best way to ensure that you're going to have really great tenants is to take on really great properties and really great owners.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz Transcript All right, we are live. 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, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and business owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right. It was tough for me to read that intro this time for some silly reasons. I have a bunch of things going on in the background on my computer and it distracted me. All right, so let's get into this. I was trying to think about what to talk about today. I want to go back to a concept that I've talked about for a long time now. I've mentioned it in several episodes, but I don't have an episode dedicated to it that I can push people towards, and that is the cycle of suck. This is a phrase and the concept that I put together after talking to some clients. It was inspired by one of my clients who had mentioned that he noticed that as he got rid of bad doors and bad properties that he actually became more profitable. I had clients tell me about when I started to relate this idea of the cycle of suck. People would tell me about this book called The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz, which is a good book, and an author that's been on the podcast before. This concept is true. It's powerful. It's really effective. Let me explain to everyone the cycle of suck in property management. If you google cycle of suck, it tends to be that my old DoorGrow article about it comes up. Let's talk about this. The cycle of suck is pretty simple. It's four steps. The first step is you take on any client or you take on a crappy client. That's one of the big challenges. If you take on any client, the challenge then is that you're going to end up with a door. You're going to end up with bad clients. The reality is you don't want every client or you shouldn't want every client. If you're taking on every client, your operational costs are going to be a lot higher. So the very first step in the cycle of suck is crappy owners. You take on crappy owners. The second step is that you take on crappy properties. If you take on crappy properties, you're going to have a much more difficult time. That means you're going to have much more difficult tenants. You're going to have a difficult situation. If the owner’s pushing back on things, even if the property is a nice looking property or a nice property, that property becomes a crappy property in your portfolio. If you have crappy owners and crappy properties, which is the second step, third step in the cycle of suck is you're going to have crappy tenants. It doesn't matter how much tenant screening you do if the tenants have A-grade credit. If those owners that you are representing are pushing back on things, delaying things, and making things difficult for maintenance, coordination, and getting things taken care of in the property, these tenants are going to become bad tenants for you to be managing. These residents will be super frustrated at you. You then end up becoming basically a [...] show for a slumlord, which means now you are in between the tenant and the owner. But the owner is causing you to have more problems, more drama, more stress, and more challenges that are unnecessary simply because they're making things difficult. At this stage, you're in the cycle of suck. You're going to have upset and frustrated owners and difficult and challenging owners. You're going to have difficult properties, challenging properties, and sometimes just actually crappy looking and crappy maintained properties. You're going to have crappy tenants that are difficult, frustrated, and unhappy. The fourth step is you're going to have crappy reviews. You're going to have a bad reputation in the marketplace. This kind of sums up the entire property management industry in aggregate, as a whole. There's a lot of property managers that are just taking on any client. They're trying to get on any property they can. Most people know that most property managers suck. Most come to me and they say, I'm going to start a property management business and all the other management companies in my market suck, which is why I'm going to start a property management business. The challenge is this is the default for the industry. A lot of people fall prey or fall into this cycle of suck. The temptation is, they feel a sense of scarcity, and they feel like they need to take on every client. How do you escape this? How do you escape the cycle of suck? To consider, the cycle suck is incredibly costly. Your operational costs on a bad property and a bad owner could take how much more time? Ten times the amount of time. Can one of your bad owners and one of your bad properties easily take 10? Maybe even it's 100 times more stressful, or 100 times more effort. I don't know if it gets that extreme, but it can be significant. It adds up if you have multiple doors, multiple properties, and multiple owners that are part of the cycle of suck, that are not really what you deserve, what you should be managing, and what you should be dealing with. If you had the business that you wanted and the business of your dreams and types of clients you really wanted to be with and work with. You have to recognize that you are the prize. I want all of my clients to recognize that they are the sexy girl at the bar or the sexy guy at the bar, meaning they don't get with everybody. Here's the reality. Let's compare this to dating. If you get with everybody, you're low value. You're not going to attract the type of people that you want or the type of clients that you want in business. So don't get with everybody. Don't be that type of person. You know what they call somebody that gets with everybody, right? You don't want to be that. That's not interesting to the really great people that you want to be working with. The cycle of suck is stressful. It's really stressful. It means you are forcing and subjecting your team—if you have a team—to really difficult people and really difficult situations. It’s a display or it's you showcasing to your team that you don't care about your team. If you really cared about your team and you protected your team, you would have standards. You would have boundaries. You would have limits. You would not take on every client. If your team members aren't protected, if your team members don't feel supported, they're not going to stay. You will keep some team members, but they will not be the kind of team members that really can help you grow and scale your business. The type of team members that you really want to be around, these are going to be people that are willing to be walked all over or willing to take garbage and deal with difficult situations constantly. I get that property management can be difficult, and I get that there are going to be difficult situations. But if you are artificially inflating that by taking on situations that you know deep down you shouldn't be, you're not going to be able to keep and retain team members as well. The next thing I want to point out is how the cycle of suck is competitive. If you have a reputation online, then you compete with all the other such property management companies rather than being the standout. Because the good ones are all taking all the best clients and you're stuck getting everything at the bottom of the barrel. Then at that stage, you compete based on price. If you're competing based on price, that's not really a great place to be. This is what drives the entire industry to feel artificial like there's a sense of scarcity. You don't want to be in a situation in which it feels like there is scarcity. Scarcity is what causes the entire industry to have pretty not great pricing, and property managers are not getting compensated well enough. It causes the entire industry to have a bad reputation. Most of the property management businesses in your market, it's why they suck. How do you escape? If we reverse the cycle of suck, if we take this in reverse, and add each of the four stages, that means that you're going to qualify your clients. In the sales process, you're going to determine what are you willing to take on and what you’re not willing to take on. What do you really want? How do I build the business that I want to have instead of the business that I can build? Those are two very different businesses. The second thing, the next step is you need to qualify the properties. What type of properties am I willing to take on? What situations are we willing to take on? What do I want our portfolio to look like? You need to be the sexy guy or girl at the bar that does not get with every property. The next is qualifying tenants, so step three. Everybody tends to screen tenants. You know that even if you do all the tenant screening in the world, you're going to run into some issues, but you need to qualify tenants. The best way to ensure that you're going to have really great tenants is to take on really great properties and really great owners. Even if the property is amazing, if you put a tenant into it that has A-grade credit, you've done all the screening in the world, and they are not able to get taken care of the way that they want. The owner’s pushing back on things. They’re dragging their heels, things are difficult, it takes two weeks to get a water heater replaced. It takes over a week for the heater in the winter to get fixed. They're going to be upset and you're going to deal with a lot more stress and a lot more phone calls. Your team is going to be battered by this. It's going to be frustrating. Then the fourth thing is you need to figure out how to play the game of reputation or reviews. You need a strategy in place for filtering. Each of these is filtering—filtering clients, filtering properties, and filtering tenants. You need a strategy for filtering out the negative reviews and getting more good reviews, which means capturing feedback proactively and preemptively before they get to the heightened state where they go nuclear and want to destroy your business online. Also, by taking on really good clients, really good properties, and really good tenants, you're going to end up with a lot better reviews, by having a process in place to consistently get good positive reviews, which we talked about in our reputation secrets training that we have in DoorGrow Academy for our clients. We talk about how to implement a strategy of warm outreach to facilitate that and make sure that you're getting good reviews. Good reviews can be more effective than having the top spot on Google because it's going to feed you warm leads that have a really high close rate. Then guess what happens. If you're getting really great reviews, and you have a good reputation in the marketplace because clients are happy with you and telling people about you, tenants are happy and telling people about you, and you have great properties, then you have a good reputation. You're going to attract more quality clients. You're going to attract more quality tenants. You're going to attract more quality properties to deal with in your portfolio. I remember when I was living in Santa Clarita, there were two major property management companies that seemed to have all the doors there. It was very clear in talking with people in the community, they knew one company. They were talking about being really bad, and another company they were talking about being really great. They had very different experiences. I talked to people that had dealt with one company for maintenance versus the other when they moved into a new property and how dramatically different it was for them as a resident. These kinds of things get around to owners and show up on their reputation as well. Moving forward, if you want to get free from the cycle of suck, which means you need to come into your business and your sales process with a lot more confidence with recognizing that you have value, with recognizing that you are the prize that solves their problem, and you want to be more effective at sales, reach out to us at DoorGrow. This is one of the foundational mindset things that I like to push into clients' heads to get them to recognize that you can have the business that you want. But you have to become the person with the right mindset, with the right thoughts, and with the right sales process that can have the business of your dreams. If you don't yet have the business of your dreams, as one of my mentors would say, then you're not the person that can run it yet. My goal as a coach in this industry, in property management, is to help you become the entrepreneur that can have the business of your dreams. If we can support you in any way, if you would like some help with your business, reach out. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye, everyone. Until next time, to our mutual growth.

Generating revenue must outpace expenses and the gap between the two is cash flow. Where are you at and what function do you need to focus on most to grow and scale your business, right now? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about the six core functions of a business. It’s a concept he has expanded based upon what he learned from his mentors, Alex Charfen and Tim Francis. You’ll Learn... [01:22] Core Functions: Jason took what he learned, applied it to property management. [02:14] Rate and Rank 1-5: Assess your business through the lens of core functions. [03:16] Function #1: Lead Generation - get contact info from potential prospects. [03:39] Function #2: Nurture - take and follow-up on lead opportunities to build trust. [04:30] Function #3: Conversion/Sales - deal w/ objections, convince others, close deal. [06:36] Function #4: Delivery/Fulfillment - do property management work promised. [10:03] Function #5: Customer Lifetime Value - increase long-term retention. [11:08] Function #6: Finances - internal cash flow, revenue, expenses, and profits. Tweetables “Finances was the additional function.” “You cannot have all of these areas be great at the same time.” “Your ability to convert and convince people during the sales process is a skill that develops over time and gets better and better and better the more you do it.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Alex Charfen Tim Francis LeadSimple Profit First by Mike Michalowicz Transcript 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, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business and their business owners. 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. Today, I wanted to talk about what I would call the core functions. This is a concept that I built upon that I learned from one of my mentors, Alex Scharffen, and he had what he would call the five core functions of the business. To me, it felt a little bit incomplete for myself and so eventually in working with Tim Francis, another mentor and coach and friend of mine here in Austin, I realized there was something else missing because I was focusing on those five core functions, but still, financially, I had some challenges. That's why I was working with Tim. He's a really good financial coach. He's one of the financial mentors that I've worked with. Finance was the additional function. I'm going to take you through these core functions and this is a way you can assess your business. As you're listening along, feel free to assess your business through the lens of the core functions, take notes, and identify each of these core functions of the business, and rate them on a scale of one to five. One being the worst, five being it's amazing. The most important thing I think to know about the core functions of the business and recognize is that it's impossible for all six of these core functions and the six core functions to be a level five at the same time. It's impossible. You cannot have all of these areas be great at the same time. As you grow and level up the business, you're going to notice deficiencies or you're going to want to level these areas up. There are levels to each of these six areas in which you can get better and better and better over time. That being said, when something is doing really well, other things are going to feel constrained and be a challenge. The first function that we'll chat about is lead generation. I call it lead gen for short. With lead gen, this is getting contact info and there are lots of different ways you can get contact info of potential people that might be interested in property management or potential prospects. In general, that's lead generation, so go ahead and rate that. The next function that you want to focus on is nurture. This is where you take these leads, these opportunities, and you nurture them, which means you warm them up or inject more trust. You create more of a relationship to warm up these leads to move them towards the next function, so go ahead and rate your nurture. Nurture relates to follow up, it relates to your ability to warm up these leads to build trust, to build relationships, and it could relate in your business the systems and processes related to this like whether you have a sales CRM like LeadSimple or something. Whether you've got the processes built out, you've got a good sales pipeline, you've got workflow you've got follow up, maybe having a follow up assistant, or needing one relates to the nurture category. The next category is where nurture leads them to, which is conversion or sales. This is where you're closing the deal. Number three, conversion or sales. Go ahead and rate your ability in conversion or sales. This is to deal with objections, close the deal, convince them to work with you instead of the other company they're maybe talking to or the other companies they're vetting. Your ability to convert and convince people during the sales process is a skill that develops over time and gets better and better and better the more you do it. Go ahead and rate yourself there. These first three relate basically to the front end of the business or sales. What I will hear a lot is people say, oh, my close rate, I'm like 90%. I'm a badass at sales, but then you ask them, where are you getting your leads? And they're like, they're mostly referrals, they’re referrals. Cool. If you have a close rate less than 90% probably and they’re warm hot referrals, you probably have a problem. That's the cool thing. If you get the right type of lead generation, nurture almost becomes unnecessary. You don't really have to warm them up. Then conversion also is largely dealt with because you're going to get the deal, you just don't screw it up. Now, when you start dealing with colder leads and colder prospects, my goal with clients is to make sure that you are a badass at conversion or sales and that you notice if that function feels weak right now because you've started maybe focusing on colder leads, or you're just not closing as many of the conversations that you've been prospecting or working with as you want. Maybe that function is weak. We can improve that significantly. One of the easiest ways to collapse time on these first three functions is to just focus on warmer lead opportunities instead of advertising or cold lead opportunities. Cold leads would be like SEO, PayPerClick, content marketing, social media marketing, pay per lead services like [...] et cetera. Those take a lot more time and I've talked about that in other trainings and other podcasts, I'm sure many times. Number four, this is more shifting into the back end of the business or behind the paywall. Once they've converted into a customer, they've signed the contract, they're now a client. The next step, item four, would be delivery or fulfillment. Delivery, fulfillment largely is connected to operations. This is everything that you said you were going to do during the sales process. This is screening tenants, working to find tenants and tenant placement. This is maintenance, coordination, everything. All the work of doing property management. That is what is included in delivery fulfillment—dealing with tenants, all that kind of stuff. Generate reports, owner payouts, all of this that's all under delivery fulfillment operations. What I'll notice a lot in the industry—for those that are struggling to grow—is they won't have operations delivery fulfillment. They'll have number four out of five or a really high level and yet then lead gen is like a one. If lead gen is one and delivery and fulfillment is like a five, you're making a big mistake in the business because what that tells me is you consistently keep focusing on the wrong things in your business. You're doing the wrong things. Any function that you're focused on of these six functions, which we'll finish and go through in a second, any function you’re focused on primarily and trying to maintain it to five, that is not your weakest function. That's where your time, energy, focus, attention, cash, effort, et cetera are going, you are making a mistake. That means you are distracted. Those are distractions because what the business needs most right now is whichever of these functions is weakest, that's where your five currencies I talked about time, energy, focus, cash, and effort should be focused on. This is where all that should be going so that you can get a return and you can level that up. The goal is to level up the weakest function, and then if that's now a strength, now your other functions will appear to be weaker in relation. Now those you’re going to rate at a lower level and you're going to want to level those up. This is the juggle of running a company and running a business is figuring out what do I need to focus on most right now. If you are at the helm, you are the entrepreneur, you are the leader, you are the business owner, you need to provide this leadership to the business to your team. You need to help them figure out what is our weakest function to focus on. Too often, the business owners continue to focus on the function that they're already good at, that the business already has at a five, and they try to keep it as a five. You have to be willing to let a five slip in order to get something from a one or a two, and that's okay. Get those up to a three, a four, or maybe even a five. If delivery or fulfillment, for example, operation slips to maybe a three in relation because now you're getting so much business, it's uncomfortable, you can't onboard everybody, and things are starting to slip, cool. Now it's time to shift your attention and focus to that function. If you assess this regularly on a quarterly basis and brainstorm with your team through these functions, you will be able to make really good decision-making. The next function after delivery fulfillment or operations, number five, is the customer’s lifetime value. The customer lifetime value or CLV includes retention, it includes resell, it includes upsell, and it includes your pricing. You want to make sure that your fee structure is good. That you've got really good fees in place so you're getting paid really well for what you do. That you're maximizing the lifetime value of these clients in that way. Also, you're able to focus on the right types of clients in your lead generation and in closing that are going to have a lengthy retention rate. You're able to retain clients long term, or you're able to convert short term property management clients, not sure short term rentals, but accidental investors, for example, into long term buy and hold investors. You have some process maybe for that. You want to increase the customer lifetime value. If you're losing a lot of customers due to sales right now, then that's the area to focus on right now. There's a weakness maybe on your CLV, for example, or maybe you just need to increase lead generation in order to counteract that. Number six is finances. The financial area of the business means the internal finances for you as the business owner and for the business. This means cash flow, revenue, expenses, profit, reporting, financial decision making. If you do not feel like this is your strength or this is a weakness in the business, this is something that you will need to work on. One of the initial baby steps I like to recommend is usually implementing profit first. You can check out my previous episode with the author of the book Profit First, Mike Michalowicz. You can just search for Profit First DoorGrowShow on YouTube if you want to pull that up or on iTunes, podcast app, or whatever. I'm a big fan of Profit First. We operate with the Profit First system. We've taken things financially beyond that to another level in working with some of the financial coaches and financial books that I've gone through. I think that's a really fantastic starting place. It gets you out of the feast and famine of cash flow cycles getting scarce, then trying to make money, and the hunt and the chase constantly of trying to escape. The way I like to compare finances is, the analogy I like to use is Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones running from the boulder. Everybody remembers this iconic scene in Indiana Jones and I believe the Temple of Doom and he's running from the boulder. He's just taken the statue, it set some sort of booby trap off, and now this boulder is chasing after him. He's running for his life. Indiana Jones running is generating revenue, that's revenue. Revenue has to outpace that big boulder, which is expenses. The gap in between Indiana Jones running and the boulder coming after him, that gap, is cash flow. Some of that cash is already spent so there's really just free cash is the real gap. Some of that cash is already going to be spent, you know expenses are coming due, you have to have it set aside. Profit first is going to help you kind of get this in alignment a little bit more. It's going to help you get better cash flow and it's basic. Some of you are basically borderline accountants, so this isn't maybe as big of an issue. Maybe the finances are tight. A lot of entrepreneurs are more visionary-oriented, they're dreamers. Sometimes they're hiring staff too quickly. They're starting to focus on some of the other functions, building up operations maybe, and they're spending more money. All of these things go hand in hand. Finances also relate to the type of lead generation that you can do, all of these things interplay with each other. My goal for those listening to this episode is to take a look through these six lenses of your business to figure out what does the business need most right now? What does the business need most? For those that are like why does he add the six functions of finances? One of the things that's absolutely possible in some businesses is to generate enough deals, enough sales, and enough business to where you can't deliver quick enough on it to get the return or get paid on it and you can actually run out of money by doing too much sales. Just focusing on revenue all the time in a top-down just revenue focus goal is not always the most effective financial goal in a business. It's the most typical, but that's not always the most effective. You can actually go too fast and grow too quickly if you're not taking into account the financial aspect in relation to the other core functions. Take a look at your business, chat with your team, go through and assess your core functions. We have a more formal brainstorming methodology that will take clients through these functions to really assess their business. At a quick easy glance at your business, you can look through and just ask yourself, where are we at in relation to these functions. You can ask your team as well to get a perspective, and you will then have some pretty good eye feedback and a pretty good idea of which function you need to focus on most in your business. If you find that operations are a big constraint for you right now, what you'll find then is lead gen and conversion will be heavily impacted because you won't really have confidence in your product, in your service, in your offering because you lack integrity. If you are delivering fulfillment of three or less, and you're trying to go out and create new business, you probably feel like you're lying to people by saying, hey, we're really awesome. We're the best property managers. We do a great job. When deep down you're like a two in doing a great job on a scale of one to five. All of these impact each other. Let's figure out what's your weakest function that you need to focus on right now and where does your attention needs to go. If you could use some coaching or some help, we'd love to get you into our DoorGrow & Scale Mastermind. Reach out to us, you can check us out at doorgrow.com. You can also join our free Facebook group by going to doorgrowclub.com. Facebook's getting a little weird lately with censorship and craziness, so we're seriously considering exploring, shifting out of the DoorGrow Club to maybe Telegram or something else. Let me know your feedback on that if that sounds interesting because I think there's going to be more outages with Facebook, more censorship, and more challenges. I'm less and less of a fan of Facebook every day. Let us know, but currently, our internal groups are in Telegram so we're solid there because it seems to be really reliable. Anyway, reach out to us. We're happy to help you figure out how to grow your business and scale your business. We can help you with getting things in alignment on the operation side. DoorGrow OS, building these systems, building a planning cadence, helping to get operators in the business, helping to get people to take stuff off your plate and to offload. There are solutions for each of these functions that we can point you towards as we coach you and as we help you scale and level up your business, so please reach out. That's it for today. As always, my goal is for everybody to grow. To our mutual growth, everybody. Until next time, bye.

Do you enjoy sales? If you feel like you don’t, then you’re not good at doing business development. Why not just hire someone to do it for you? You have to get good at sales to be a business owner. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about and answers: When are you ready to get a property management business development manager (BDM)? You’ll Learn... [01:19] When are you ready to hire a BDM? Wait until you are ready. [01:58] How to know when you are ready to have a BDM to gain freedom and success. [03:08] Business Owner: Learn how to sell, close to train your BDM to be successful. [04:04] Partnership: If you’re not willing to do it, bring in experienced and proven BDM. [05:33] Exception: Clients with BDM invested in and values business to get results. [07:24] Sales can be fun, once you learn how to do specific actions and get good at it. [08:47] Level Suck: You have to do the work. You have to suck. That’s where you start. [10:34] 4 Reasons: Live your purpose to get fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. [11:16] Right Type of Person: Give them your knowledge, experience to surpass you. [12:18] Jason’s Recommendation: Do the work because there are no shortcuts. [14:45] Sales Challenge: Figure out how to make it easy and not painful, uncomfortable. Tweetables “Sales is the lifeblood of the business. This is where money and revenue flow into the business.” “Usually, we don’t want to do it because we aren’t good at it. When we’re not good at something, it’s not very fun.” “You have to do the work, and you have to suck, and that’s where we all start.” “I know what good looks like, and I know what great looks like, and great is better than me.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript 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, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and business owners. 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. One of the things I wanted to talk about is a common question I get asked and a common situation is when are you ready to hire a BDM? This question came up this week. One of my clients thinks they want to get a BDM. I've heard lots of people hire BDMs and fail. This is more common than hiring BDMs and having success. This is the default. Anytime I hear somebody excited, they hire a BDM. BDM either quits, it doesn't work out. You may have tried to do this yourself. The challenge with this is that a lot of people tried to do this, but they weren't ready. Let's chat a little bit about how to be ready to have a BDM and how you know when you're ready to have a BDM. If you feel like you don't enjoy sales, you're not good at doing business development. BDM stands for business development manager. It's basically a salesperson in a property management business. If you feel like you don't like doing sales, you want to bring somebody in to do this, and you're thinking, well, I suck at this. I don't want to do this. This is uncomfortable so I should just hire somebody. The challenge is sales is the lifeblood of the business. This is where money and revenue flow into the business. If you are making that mistake, you need to realize you are not ready to get a BDM because you cannot train them. You cannot onboard them. You don't have the scripts. You don't have the ability to bring them into the business in a way that they will be successful. I probably touched on this before, even recently, but I want to reiterate that if you feel like you're not good at sales and you don't know how to do it, then your only option is to bring somebody in that is already really good and proven at this or you have to learn to do this. For most of you, that means you need to learn how to sell. You need to learn how to close. I know a lot of times there's resistance. Maybe it's that you feel like it's uncomfortable for some reason. That discomfort is something as a business owner and entrepreneur, really, almost everything is sales in some way, shape, or form, which is just convincing people to do what's in their best interest, which is helping people and benefiting people, getting your kids to eat their food, getting your kids to do their homework. That's all sales. You have to get good at sales to be a business owner. It doesn't mean you have to be the salesperson. But if you're not willing to do it, then you need to bring in another business owner. You're going to need to share some sort of relationship or create some sort of partnership with somebody who is a proven BDM that's added hundreds of doors to a property management business. They will come in, but this is not going to be a cheap person that's a brand new first-time BDM who's never done this, that you can just go find somebody that knows how to do sales, bring them into the business, and they'll have success. That's not reality. You need to create a partnership. If you're really not the person to do this, you need to go find somebody that's at your level. They may want half your business if you're just starting out. If you are experienced and you have a good sizable portfolio, maybe you can bring them in some sort of percentage of the revenue or percentage of the business. It would need to be a pretty tempting situation for them to come in. There needs to be an incentive. These are people that could probably build their own business up. I know BDMs that have added 700 doors to a business and then gone on to another business and did something similar again. These are rare unicorn people that have had the experience that has done this. If you don't know how to do this, you're not going to be able to bring somebody in that's starting from scratch and really be able to support them and convince them and tell them what to do. Now, the only exceptions that I've seen to this, I have seen some clients come to me with a BDM. This BDM showed up and was invested in the business value, the success of the business, showed up to all coaching calls with me, got involved in the content in DoorGrow Academy, and they learned as if they were the business owner. They wanted to become good at selling, good at promoting the business, good at prospecting, good at driving revenue, and good at their job. They were invested in it so they put in the work and the time to do it. They followed my advice and they were able to get great results. One client had, in just a short period of time, three maybe four months or less, had 300 doors, largely through creating a really good partnership with one owner that had a lot of doors, which is a dangerous situation normally. Normally, I probably wouldn't recommend doing that. They were aggressive and they were able to start adding doors. Then they landed a partner that is going to bring to the table hundreds of doors in the long run. That's a really high level of investor. Like I said, that can be dangerous, right? I'm sure many of you can guess why. You're putting too many eggs in one basket. That owner has a little bit too much power over you. Then later, they had to have a conversation about setting some boundaries and some clear expectations to really determine this relationship and to be willing to walk away from that relationship. They're in a position of power to be able to be a business owner instead of this person, this investor’s employee. It's possible and I've seen BDMs come in and do really great work, but it's rare. It's rare to find somebody that's willing to do and that wants to do that. If you are wanting to go the more typical route, which means you need to learn how to sell. Usually, we don't want to do it because we aren't good at it. When we're not good at something, it's not very fun. It sucks to go play a sport like basketball if you suck at basketball. Once you get good at basketball, basketball is a lot of fun for people that play basketball. Golf, maybe you sucked at golf, initially. If you're a golfer, once you got somewhat good at it, it'd be a lot more fun. Maybe you found a way to make it fun even though you just still suck. Here's the thing, you need to get to the place where you have put in the reps, you've done the work initially, to get good at sales, to figure out what works, what scripts to say, you have to get past that pain and that discomfort. Otherwise, you're always going to project that onto your team members. You're never going to be able to guide them in the right way. You're never going to be able to know if they're doing a good job or not because you don't even know what a good job looks like because you haven't been able to do it. If you're expecting to push just results on them like get these results and I'll give you a commission. You're setting them up for failure because they need specific actions. They need the scripts. They need the language. They need to understand the target audience. They need to know the objections and how to deal with those. These are the things you learn by sucking and doing the work. You have to do the work and you have to suck. That's where we all start. We all start at level suck. If you are willing to suck, you don't suck for very long because something's uncomfortable. There's pain and you change. You change quickly. You learn and adapt. That's why you're an entrepreneur. You are an entrepreneur because you are highly adaptable. You can change quickly. You can pivot. You can learn. You may have been rejected at some point in the past. Maybe when you were young, you got your feelings hurt, somebody rejected you or made you feel small or whatever. Now, approaching people, starting things, or initiating seems threatening and dangerous to your brain. But your brain is a liar. Your brain is lying because it's trying to protect you. But if you actually do the work, and if you do the prospecting tactics and methods that I share in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind and you do the work, then you're going to get results. It's inevitable. I’ve seen clients come in over and over and over again that were terrible at sales. They’re not good at it and didn't think they liked it. They learned. They learned how to be good at it. The common phrasing I hear is, it's become like a game to me. It's become fun. It's fun when you have the skill and the knowledge to be able to be good at it and then it becomes fun. It's like playing. You realize it's not about being pushy or whatever beliefs you have about sales. It's not about manipulating people. It's not about bothering people, prospecting, it's not. You are offering them some benefit. You're solving people's problems. You are making a difference in the world. That's really what sales look like. Sales become fun because it allows you to live your purpose and to make a difference and get those four reasons I've talked about before. You're getting more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and you're making a difference and more support. Then eventually, if you have other things that are more fun for you—they give you more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, more support in the business. What you really love and want to be doing, maybe it's on the operation side, maybe it's on the accounting side, or maybe it's just not sales. Once you are marginally good at it, a little bit good at it, you can bring in somebody else, get them probably to your point. If they're the right personality type, the right type of person that can be good at this, you can give them your knowledge, help share with them what's working, give them your experience, and they will then surpass you. They will supersede you. I have team members on my team and I've done every role that exists in my business. But I have team members now that are all better at what they do than me. I've done it so I know. I know what good looks like and I know what great looks like, and great is better than me. I bring in people that are better than me at doing these things. I'm actually in this situation now that I have somebody over sales and marketing on my team. Now he is offloading and bringing on and we're training two new salespeople. I'm rebuilding my sales team, so to speak, and I'm no longer doing the sales. I've been doing the sales for the last little while as we launched a new product and service, this mastermind that we've had for the last year. My recommendation is to put in your reps, do the work, there are really no shortcuts to this. If you're willing to experience that pain, challenge, or whatever your brain is telling you a story, I think you'll realize it's never as bad as your brain makes it out to be. I've seen entrepreneurs in property management with hundreds of doors that are down about 200 doors due to sales over previous years, which is very typical of the larger companies right now. They’re feeling pain and worried that they're not going to be able to pay team members. They’re going to have to lay some people off and try to hire a BDM through a BDM placement company. Then that person spends time and money trying to get them into the situation, expecting another company to be able to train them, bring them in and it didn't work. I've seen small companies hire BDMs and bring them in, and it didn't work. You have to do this. My recommendation is to tell your brain to shut up. It's trying to lie to you and protect you. Sometimes you have to do the thing that's uncomfortable, even though it feels like you don't want to. You need to be willing to say, [...] to your feelings and do it deep down, you know you should do. If this is resonating with you, you deep down know that you need to figure this out. You have to eventually figure this out. You don't have to do it forever. You don't have to be the best at it. If you're going to run a business, you have to be able to sell your business or services. You have to be able to figure out how to do that. A lot of you are the salesperson, you are the BDM for your business. If you're doing great, awesome. If I can help pour a little gasoline on that fire, that'd be even better. I love being able to do that. I love being able to double a client's close rate, increase the amount of deals they’re closing, help them figure out how to get more deals at a higher price point to eliminate the scarcity that exists in the industry, and eliminate the race to the bottom in terms of price. I can help you do that. If you are not that personality type and you are avoiding sales, you find it uncomfortable. You don't want to do it. My challenge to you is let's figure out how to make it easy, and it doesn't have to be uncomfortable. I'm really good at helping people figure out how can we make this easy, not painful, and help destroy those lies that your brain’s telling you that people are going to be mean to you, people are going to feel uncomfortable, people are going to reject you, or whatever it is your brains trying to scare you and tell you that's true. Those are stories. You can either keep those stories, or you can get results, but you can't have both. You can't keep these stories that are holding you back from doing sales or being successful at sales. Then also try and offload the sales. Train somebody else that doesn't know how to do it when you aren't in a state of integrity or know how to do it yourself. Let's get you great at it. It's not that hard to do. I really believe sales is all about creating trust. It's being real with people. It's caring about other people that have been so caught up in your own head, worried about what you think, what you sound like and look like, how they're perceiving you, and/ all that uncomfortable stuff. You really just need to start getting out of yourself, focusing on other people, and caring about other people. I can help you make that shift. Hopefully this is helpful for those of you that are considering getting a BDM, thinking it's some gateway to freedom and success. You aren't ready for that gateway of freedom or success until you have all the ducks in a row to be able to really support this person so that if they are good, they're actually going to stay. Because if they're good and you don't give them the support they need, they're going to be out of there. I hear a lot of people complain about BDMs and fire BDMs. When I really dig deeper and ask questions, it wasn't probably the BDM’s fault. They sounded like a typical effective, probably good salesperson who just wasn't given the proper support, wasn't given the leads, wasn't given the attention, wasn't given the scripts, and wasn't given the knowledge of how to go out and create a business. They were expected to just magically figure it all out without any real guidance. Property management is a different industry than a lot of industries. Just because somebody was successful in sales in another industry doesn't mean they'll necessarily be successful in this. It means they have the capacity, but they also need guidance. If you don't have the guidance to give, reach out, and let's get this figured out for you. Anyway, I hope this is helpful for those that have BDMs that aren't really performing up to speed or you haven't really gotten up to speed in your own role as a BDM. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

When you're competing for a sale or deal to close, to get a property management contract, or to get a referral partner, whatever it is you're trying to do, you need to take things to a deeper level than your competition. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about three magic questions to ask during a sales conversation. When you ask these questions, potential clients will know that you care and want to help them, and you're going to close more deals far more easily. You’ll Learn... [01:50] Pendulum Principle: There are two extremes when it comes to salespeople. [02:21] Middle Ground: Find the middle to be much more effective and productive. [04:16] Question #1: Why now, what's changed? Client identifies, explains pain point. [06:54] Question #2: What’s the biggest challenge with your rental property right now? [08:42] Question #3: What result would you hope to see to know this was a success? [11:02] Default vs. Creative Future Close: Depends on what challenges clients want. [15:39] Primary Goal: Most people seek safety and certainty as their higher priority. Tweetables “You have to figure out where the middle is. The middle is the greatest place of power. It's where you should be. It's the point of truth.” “Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust.” “A business exists to solve a problem. If they don't have a problem for you to solve, they don't need you. There's no point.” “You are selling safety and certainty, not property management.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript All right, we are live. 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, you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business and their owners. 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. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about three magic questions. I was doing my coaching call today, and yes it's a Tuesday. It's a day early because I'm going on vacation tomorrow. We did our group call a day early and one of my clients, he was talking about sales, and had some questions related to sales, and was having some challenges going into the conversation and being confident. I talked about a principle called the Pendulum Principle which basically—a quick version of it, we could do a future episode on this maybe—if you recognize that there are two extremes. On one extreme you could be hyper-confident, maybe pushy as a salesperson, and a little bit too much. Then on the other side you could be a little bit not aggressive enough, too docile, not ask for the sale, and not try to close them that sort of thing. You have to figure out where the middle is. The middle is the greatest place of power. It's where you should be. It's the point of truth. You need to figure out where you are and he was on the side of being a little bit too maybe nice, friendly, but not aggressive enough. He recognized it so I said, take the step into what feels like the complete opposite, being a little bit too aggressive, because if you aim for that, you'll actually hit middle and you'll be much more effective and productive. We talked about how it doesn't have to be mean, or you don't have to be pushy or aggressive to go for the close. One of the things that he then got into were these three magic questions. I'm going to share these and we can talk about some other cool stuff related to sales maybe in a future episode. These are three magic questions that I find to be very powerful that I use during a sales conversation to take things a bit deeper. If you want to beat out your competition, when you're competing for a sale or a deal to close a client, to get a property management contract, to get a referral partner, whatever it is you're trying to do, you need to be able to take things to a deeper level than your competition. Things need to get a little bit more intimate, a little bit more relationship-oriented. There needs to be a little bit more connection because that's where trust exists. Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust, I often say. Here are three questions that I use in order to deepen the conversation and take things to a more real or more raw level. Question number one that you should ask that I brought up is, why now? If somebody comes to you and they're like, hey, I've been looking to getting a property manager. I've had this property for many years, or hey, I got one of your mailers and it's from a year or two ago. A really great question to ask in the sales process. For example, if you've been listening to my podcast for many years now, and then you get on a sales conversation, you're like, hey, now I'm interested. A great question to ask is, why now? Why now? What's changed is kind of the additional part of that. Why now, what's changed? You've been looking at doing this for a while, or you've obviously had this property for a lengthy amount of time. What's changed recently that's caused you to be interested in property management? Or why now are you looking at getting a property manager? What's changed? Help me understand that. That's where really deep stuff tends to come out. I've heard crazy why now responses from potential clients. I've heard things. I had one potential client say, I'm dying, I have this health issue, and I need to get this business healthy and ready quickly for other people to take ownership of it. I've had people say that they just recently got divorced, so now they're looking to make a move, change things, and improve the business. You never know what's going to come out, but when you give them the opportunity to tell you, well, hey, something must have happened recently because things have changed. Why now? Even just saying, why is now the time for you to do this? They shift into trying to explain, well, this is why it's important to do this now. Just understanding that is going to reveal some pain. In sales, to close deals, you need to know what pain or discomfort they want to move away from and what pleasure they want to move towards? Where's paradise for them? If you know those two things, that's really the crux of all you need to know in order to close the deal. Can I then help move them away from that pain? Can I help them move them towards that paradise that they want, that pleasure that they want? If I can do those two things, then all I have to do is future pace them and paint this roadmap for the future in which they can do that. The next question I love to ask that is relevant to uncovering the pain is the biggest challenge. What is your biggest challenge in dealing with this rental property that you're experiencing right now? I would usually ask, what is the biggest challenge you're experiencing in your property management business right now? Cool, I can help you with that. I've heard it before. I've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of property management businesses, gotten to see on the inside. It's rare that I ever hear a problem that's new. You probably have heard of all the same things in property management, all the similar problems. You're probably not going to hear anything too new from an investor, so can you solve that problem? Yeah, you probably can. That's why a business exists to solve a problem. If they don't have a problem for you to solve, they don't need you. There's no point. If I have somebody come to me and I say, well, what's the biggest challenge in your business? And they say, well, honestly, our business is really great right now and I don't have any problems. I say, cool. I'm totally open to that. I don't know how I can help you then. Then I might ask a follow-up question, well, why are we talking? How do you think I might be able to help you? Well, I was thinking maybe you could do this and help me do this. Okay, cool. Maybe I can, depending on what they say. You need to figure out what the challenge is, the pain, or the problem. What's the biggest challenge you're dealing with right now with this rental property with your tenant, or with your investment portfolio? That's a really powerful question to ask. The third question that can be incredibly powerful is what I call the crystal ball question. This is a question that is helpful for creating a potential future and future pacing a client that includes you. The crystal ball question usually looks something like this, usually, you're going to use the one-year timeframe. Maybe you even use three or five years, depending. The crystal ball question would look like this, hey, Mr. Owner, let me ask you a question. Just thinking about the future, if we were to work together a year from now, looking back on this moment, if you signed up with us a year from now looking back, what would have had to have happened for you to realize this was a great decision? Or what result would you be hoping to see to know that this was a success? Then they start to use their imagination, which is powerful. They start to imagine a future. They're imagining they signed up with you because you brought that into the conversation, and they're imagining this potential future timeline a year from now that exists with some great result. There's enough time to get to a result. They're imagining that you were a contributor to that, and so they're creating all of this in their head. The brain's super powerful. It's an amazing supercomputer at doing this kind of thing, so they're going to imagine this and then they're going to tell you what this is, what this looks like. Which is basically saying—you're just asking—how do we know that we can help you? What does winning look like if we were to work together? What does that look like? They might say, we're getting all of our rent collected, finally. We've got great tenants in place. The properties are all updated. Everything's going great, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can then say, that sounds awesome. I'm confident we can help you do that. Let me share some stories or examples that are similar to that we've already done so you can see this can be a reality for you. We've created this reality for other clients. I usually call that close the default future close versus the creative future close. The default future, this is what you're going to continue to get more of—more challenging tenants, more situations like you've dealt with. You mentioned these things that are challenging. If you do not work with us, this is probably what will happen or maybe they've had bad experiences with another property manager because there's a lot of sucky property managers out there. If they mentioned a bad experience when you're asking these questions like, why now, and what's your biggest challenge. You say, hey, well, you can continue to go down that path and choose another bad property manager and another bad one, or you could work with us, and here's how this would work out differently. First of all, we're not going to do custom reports for you and we're not going to let you micromanage us, so we're not going to do things the way these other companies worked with you because you're trying to run them from the back seat. We are going to be in control and in the driver's seat in helping take care of this property, and that will allow you to trust us more. We're going to take ownership of this and we're going to be really good at this. This is what we do for clients that are in your situation. They're going to go, cool, and they'll say, but I want this. You'll say, we are not going to do that custom report for you and here's why. We're not going to do that for you and here's why. Or there's a fee for this, or there's a fee for that. Once you explain why they're going to go, oh, this person is on top of stuff. They know what they're doing. I can finally relinquish control and give up all that safety and certainty I'm trying to force to create in them. They're going to just provide it for me. I can trust them, and I can lean into their frame that they're going to do a great job and provide good service. If you know why now, their biggest challenge, and the crystal ball, you've asked those questions, you've got those answers, if you know that, you should have a pretty deep conversation with them and really understand how you can best help them. If you connect that to other tactics I have like the golden bridge formula and other things to create trust beforehand, you ask really great qualifying questions, this should be very easy for you to create a relationship with these people, if you want it. Anyway, that's my tip for today is to ask those three big questions. Start asking, well, why now? Very easy to ask. Why are you doing this now? Why didn't you do this a year ago? You’ve had this property for a while, why are you doing it now instead of later this year? Why is now the time to do this? Why now? You'll get really interesting answers. Ask what's the biggest challenge that you're dealing with right now because that's going to help you understand their current immediate pain. Maybe there isn't anything really major or really immediate, but help them that you could go deeper and say, well, what challenges have you dealt with that you don't want to deal with in the future? Then the future pacing question is a crystal ball question. Looking forward, if I had a crystal ball or you had it and you could see a year from now and you would sign up with us. We're working together and we've done a really great job, what would that look like to you? Where would you be a year from now? What would your life look like? How would that be different with us having been a part of it? Hopefully that's helpful to all of you listening. I hope that you find those questions as useful as I've found them to be in the sales process. These were born just out of a real desire to care and take care of my clients, to really understand what they were going through, and figure out how can I help them, what do they need, and can I help them. When you start to ask really good questions like that, they will know that you care, especially if you're coming from a space of wanting to help them and you're going to close more deals far more easily. Because a lot of companies are spending way too much time trying to sell property management and they don't give a [...] about property management. They don't care about you or your business, they care about what they need, they care about their pain, their challenges, what they want, and outcomes they want. If you can help them see that you can help them get out of the pain and get the things that they want, they're going to want to work with you, they're going to want to sign up with you, they're going to feel safe with you, and trust you. Remember, their primary goal usually is safety and certainty. That's more important than the four reasons, which I talked about in a previous episode of fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. They want safety and certainty. After that, then they would like those things. But for most people, safety and certainty is a higher priority. That's why they want and get a property manager. You are selling safety and certainty, not property management. Just make sure you get that. That's it. Hopefully this has been helpful, and until next time, to our mutual growth. I'm Jason Hull of DoorGrow. Reach out if you would like some help growing and scaling your property management business. Quickly, just got off the phone with a past client, he was like, are people losing properties like doors due to sales right now? I said yes, everywhere, but not the clients that are in my mastermind, which you should join. The clients that are in my mastermind, one of our clients has added over 200 doors since joining in November. That would be impossible by spending money, doing advertising, doing SEO, doing pay per click, doing content marketing, doing social media marketing. We would get you doing things that actually work that are far more effective and it costs him nothing. It actually took him less time to get those doors on than it would take if you spent a whole bunch of money on cold lead marketing because then those cold leads take more time than warm leads and you get less results. If you would like some great results and you would like to start adding doors, scaling your business, getting out of the day-to-day operations, having more fulfillment, more freedom, more fun in your business, reach out. I love helping clients get that. That's what I live for. That's what I get to do every day. I love doing it, and we would love to help you grow your property management business. All right. Bye, everyone.

Does it feel like your property management business is crazy, overwhelming, or maybe too much? It doesn't matter how big or small the property management business, it can be crazy or calm. It’s your choice to make. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull talks about his goal to eliminate the crazy. Business owners need to be calm for their team to feel that sense of calm in the workplace. You’ll Learn... [02:41] Basecamp: CEO runs calm workplace by eliminating and reducing interruptions. [04:03] Entrepreneurial Myth: Crazy work is a badge of honor, not a badge of failures. [04:31] Adrenaline Addiction: Workplace doesn’t have to be crazy or stressful. [05:20] Planning: Communication in business focused on high-paced growth is critical. [06:15] Tactical vs. Strategic Leadership Role: Who has enough vision, clarity on goals? [08:14] Don’t be involved in everything. Stay in your area of genius and offload the rest. [10:08] Key Ingredient: Create synchronous communication system to write, think, post. [11:24] Four Reasons: Build great team to get fulfillment, freedom, contribution, support. Tweetables “All this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures.” “Good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity.” “The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary.” “Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Basecamp Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried Transcript 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 your business and your 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 gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. 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. In today's episode, we're going to be chatting a little bit about fun. I asked in my mastermind group today—we had a pretty good group turnout today—and I asked by show of hands, how many of you feel your business is crazy right now? You would categorize it as crazy, overwhelming, maybe too much, whatever. At least half the hands went up, which I can't say I'm surprised, but my goal is to get people out of crazy. One of the things I wanted to talk about today—what I chatted about with them—is eliminating crazy in the business. One of the things to realize is that it doesn't matter how big the business is, it doesn't matter how small the business is. Your business can be crazy or it can be calm, and this really is just a choice. Is it possible to have a calm business even if it's really large? For your experience as a business owner to be calm in the business and for your team to feel that sense of calm from you and it to be a calm workplace, yes it is. I had a business once upon a time. Same business but it used to feel a bit crazy. I hung out with the CEO of Basecamp, Jason Fried. I won't go into how we got on a call, but basically we were in some sort of chat. I was watching some live stream and I made some comments. He said he wanted to do a call with me, so we did a call together and I hung out with him. This guy is what I perceived as a high-functioning CEO of a multimillion dollar company. He's written books on remote teams. He's got a book called Remote Work, virtual teams, software, and running companies. He hung out with me for probably about 90 minutes. He just showed me how he ran his business, how he basically ran a calm workplace, and how it was quiet. It shifted my perspective so dramatically. The biggest perspective shift I had was eliminating and reducing interruptions. Years later, he came out with a book kind of recent. His book is called, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. For those watching the video you can see this here, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It's got this on the cover. It's got crossed out 80-hour work weeks, packed schedule, super busy, endless meetings, overflowing inbox, unrealistic deadlines, can't sleep, Sunday afternoon emails, no time to think, stuck in the office, all-nighters, and chat blowing up. There's this entrepreneurial sort of myth that it's the hustle, the grind, hard work, tenaciousness, tenacity, and all this painful stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs is some sort of badge of honor. Really, it's actually a badge of failures. It’s really what that is. It's showing that you are creating a stressful environment for your team, and you're running a stressful workplace. You probably—if you're honest—are addicted like a lot of entrepreneurs to the adrenaline and the stress. Our body gets accustomed to things we crave and want more of whatever emotion we tend to feel a lot. We get better and better at craving it and feeling it. Our brain actually wires differently over time to experience more of that chemical reaction of whatever emotion that we're experiencing, whether it's anger, fear, stress, or whatever. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. This is a really great book. He came out later talking about some of the stuff that he taught me on that call. Now, I don't agree with everything in this book. The one thing I really don't agree with is eliminating meetings and what he talks about not having planning or something like that. I believe that having really good planning in business actually decreases communication that's necessary. It increases the calm. It increases clarity. Planning, I believe, is critical in a business, especially one that's focused on high-paced growth, has a lot of moving parts, and communication is really important. It actually significantly decreases your communication. If you have an annual planning meeting, quarterly planning meeting, a monthly planning meeting where you're breaking down these things into smaller and smaller bite-sized chunks, weekly planning meeting, or maybe a 15-minute daily huddle, these are the things we talked about in DoorGrow OS. If these things, the ultimate operating system for a business, especially for a property management business, if you have these meetings, you can run your entire company in a small number of hours a year. That's all you have to do. Anything outside of that, you are really stepping into more of a tactical role overall or you're being more like an employee in the business and doing work. But in a strategic position of leadership, if you have a really good executive team, that's all the time you would really need to be involved in. You may not even have to do that if you have really good executive team members to run things for you, and they have enough vision and clarity on the goals. They can move this business forward. A lot of times, we have a lot of ego as entrepreneurs. We think it's all up to me. Everybody else isn't as smart as me and my team members need me to tell them what to do and to guide them. I'm so brilliant. We don't really know because we don't really involve them in the planning and communication process. I want to point out that business should be fun, and it should be calm. One of my mentors that I'm working with currently that's a coach of mine, he talks about work being boring. He talks about how, when you have a multimillion dollar business and your business is scaling, you then eventually get to a state where you no longer have any major trauma or major glaring problems. You're insulated from these things if you built your team and systems the right way. Now you're just doing the boring work and you need to be willing to do the boring work. His wife who really runs their company and his brilliant and brilliant operator also talks about how if you're doing the boring work and the business gets boring, that's a good sign that you're doing things right. Then it's time to just maybe get a hobby. What most business owners do is they make the mistake and go start something new, or create more drama, either in their personal life. Sometimes they're cheating on a spouse or they're starting a company, or they're burning their existing company to the ground. They create some more drama. One of the things that we have to do is wean ourselves off the addictiveness of having to be so involved in everything, having to have so much connection to everything, thinking that we're so important in the business, and to be willing to allow calm to happen. It doesn't matter if you're just a small company with a small number of doors and you have one assistant. Your business could be calm. Or you could have a really large team and tons and tons of doors, and your business still could be calm. If you have the support at the level that you need, you have the systems that you need, and you allow yourself to be protected from the things that create crazy, you really are able to stay in your lane and in your area of genius and offload the rest. I do recommend this book. It's a really good book. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work. It just is kind of a manifesto for the future of business. Businesses are often connected to analogies of war in competition and fighting, and these massively stressful situations, but calm companies are very efficient companies. They're companies in which people are able to get in the flow work state. They're able to be calm, things get really quiet. My business is very calm now. It's very calm, especially for me. It's very calm. It's very quiet. We don't have a lot of communication that has to happen among our team. Most of our team members are in the flow of doing what they love to do each day. There are little things that pop up here and there but we tackle them maybe in our 15-minute morning huddle. Usually I just ask where they are stuck. Those things all get dealt with then and there might be a little bit of communication in our messaging app that we use each day. We don't have situations, in general, that are immediate or that are urgent. One of the key ingredients is to create a synchronous communication system in the business, which means people can write stuff out, think about it, and post it for the rest of the team to look at later. We can send a voice message to a team member or multiple team members for them to listen to later. Unless something's immediate and urgent, we don't call the team member. We don't walk into their office. We're virtual, so we can't do that. The idea is you want to create systems in place that protect you and insulate you from immediate urgency that is unnecessary. As a business owner, you really want to get to the place where you don't have immediacy and urgency ever bombarding you, attacking you, or disrupting your day. You should be insulated from emergency maintenance requests at three in the morning. You should be insulated and protected from an angry or upset owner as the first round. Maybe you deal with those things after somebody else but your goal eventually is to be the owner of the business, not the property manager. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. Create calm workplaces. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It can be calm. The business really should be fun. Like I talked about in one of my previous episodes, four reasons. You want to get more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution, and more support in your business. You need to build a really good team. It's a lot easier to get to the place of having a calm workplace in a property management business once you're in that category where you can afford to have a team, and that's usually in the 200–400 door range. Usually at that stage, you'll see business owners by then they have a team. If you do this correctly, this can be one of the calmest stages ever in your entire business. Most do not do this correctly. I call this the second sand trap because they built their business the opposite way. They built the business around the wrong person because they are the wrong person, which means they're showing up doing the wrong things in the business. They are spending their time doing things that really are not their greatest strength or their greatest area of genius, or give them the greatest peace and calm, or the most fulfillment, freedom, joy, contribution, and support in their day to day. So they're building the wrong team around the wrong role, the wrong person, building a support system and mechanism around the wrong center, sort of the nucleus of this business, which is yourself. They have a false perception of you that is overwhelmed, overworked, stressed, and doing the wrong things, then you're building a team to work with that person. You then have the wrong team which adds more stress, anxiety, and challenge to you. You have the wrong business that's built around them. It all starts with you getting really strong clarity in yourself, which I'm really good at helping clients get clarity on, focus on themselves, and figure out what really brings them the most joy or stresses them out, which things are they doing that are tactical versus strategic, or which things are energetic plus signs versus minus signs. If that is a challenge for you, and you feel like your business is crazy. Maybe you're getting enough doors, maybe you're not. We can help you but maybe you're getting enough doors. Maybe your business feels crazy, and your team feels stressed and crazy. You feel stressed and crazy, and you're not having fun. You're not enjoying your day to day. That's a strong clue that you're out of alignment with those four reasons. You're doing the wrong things. You probably could use an objective perspective and get some support. If that is the case, we will be glad to help you over at DoorGrow. Reach out to us. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. If you feel like it's crazy at work, maybe you need to be honest and recognize there's a part of you that enjoys that. There's a part of us that tends to like the drama and the challenges that we deal with. If the majority of you don't, you don't have to live with it. I've seen businesses dramatically change in a very short period of time. Even in a single quarter, we can have you in a very different role, very different position, way less stress. The right team members, we can reassess your team or redeploy your team in different positions. We can get you your first assistant or whatever. We can help you get into that state to where you are in a place of calm. Just remember, it doesn't have to be crazy to work. Hopefully that's beneficial to everybody. I'm Jason Hull, and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Do you wish that you could travel more often, but it’s just too expensive to find a place to stay? Investors and property managers are eager to get into the short-term and long-term rental market in popular vacation destinations. How can they grow their rental businesses and lower the cost of vacations? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks to Rick Bennett about BookingWithEase and TripAngle, which puts control back into the hands of property owners. You’ll Learn... [02:14] Business Plan: Why Rick wanted to make vacations more affordable for all. [02:56] Thought Process: Lower the cost of vacations by eliminating overhead costs. [03:08] TripAngle: Tools for owners to efficiently, easily rent properties, lower overhead. [03:44] Systems and Services: Grow organically, save money, gain exposure for rentals. [05:04] Differentiator: Only site that guarantees no double bookings; easy to use. [07:10] Property Management: Fully automated, 100% customizable with parameters. [09:42] Plug-n-Play Integrations: Change anything, anywhere with the TripAngle system. [14:13] Why Rick prefers property management companies more than property owners. [17:08] Software Learning Curve/Support: People know how to list their properties. [19:22] DoorGrowShow Listeners: Try TripAngle by using representative ID code - 2167. Tweetables “How do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly.” “We built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently.” “We’re the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It’s just much easier to use.” “We’re just growing everybody’s company. That’s all we care about is growing the owners’ rentals.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive BookingWithEase TripAngle Breckenridge Lodging Mountain Ski Trips Mailchimp Airbnb VRBO Home Away Authorize.net RemoteLock BookingPal Transcript Jason: 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. 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. My guest today, I am hanging out with Rick Bennett. Rick, welcome. Rick: How are you today? Jason: I'm doing fantastic so I'm really excited to have you here. We haven't had a lot of guests talking about the short-term rental space and the vacation rental space. A lot of property managers are getting into this. It's becoming really hot. We've got shows on Netflix about it now. Everybody is abuzz with this market. Lots of investors want to get into this space. Property managers, even in the long-term space—if they are in coastal areas or have really popular destinations—have vacation rentals they are also managing and dealing with. You've been an expert in that industry for a while. Why don't you give us a little bit of background on you, how you got started with this, and then we can hear more about Booking With Ease, TripAngle, and all these cool things that you've got going on. Rick: The reason we started this whole business plan is because my mom passed away when I was younger. One of the last things she told me was that she wishes she could have traveled more often, but it was so expensive. The reason she mentioned that is she had a really good job, and they flew her everywhere. But to include me, her son, who she wanted to bring me to several places—she took me to Philadelphia, Boston, you name it—it would cost her the full price to bring me. Her company paid for her. I remember pretty much every time she would tell me man, I would love to take you to Charleston. I just can't. She was very apologetic. That's one of the last things she tells me. She wishes she could have travelled more often. Our thought process was how do we lower the cost of vacations? What we came up with is eliminating the overhead to the owners completely and lowering the cost of their travelers significantly. We came up with TripAngle. TripAngle actually merged with a company called Keys to the House that's been around for over 25 years. We've been in the industry forever. We built it from the ground up. We have our own MailChimp, and we built tools for the owners to be able to rent their properties easier, more efficiently, and once again, lower their overhead big time. When you rent through some of the big boys online with the vacation rental listing sites, it can be quite costly. The reason being is they keep outbidding each other to buy the top spots. What we do is we grow organically. We spread by word of mouth because everybody loves to tell everybody the money that they're saving. We work in conjunction with everybody else. It's a way to just gain more exposure for their short-term rentals. Some of our customers use our features, some don't. We offer free accounting and scheduling for cleanings. We even have where instead of putting our business on all the receipts, you can upload your logo, and all emails sent to your customers have your logo on them. It looks more professional. It's to grow your rental business. We just grow by word of mouth, and we love saving all of our owners' and customers' money Jason: People can white-label this. People can use your tools and services. They're going to save a lot of money versus using these systems that have been a monopoly (it seems like) to some degree. You've got Vrbo. You've got the HomeAway things. You've got Airbnb, of course. How do you stand out in this market of all these big guns? Why would property managers be inclined to leverage and use your system instead of these big networks? Rick: They can use them in conjunction with it. It works well. It keeps the calendars in tune. We're the only site that can guarantee no double bookings because of the way we built our system. It's just much easier to use. What happens is people will sign up with us. They'll use other people mainly. They'll use us a small percentage, but they'll use us. Once they start seeing how much money their customers have saved and how easy it does everything for them, they start transferring everything over to us. We just had a lady sign up with us. Vrbo upped her booking fee to $470. Using our system, on average, her booking fees are about $100. What's neat about that is she makes $20 extra, meaning it's 100% customizable per property. She added the dollar amount. Some people add a percentage amount. Jason: So you can add your own markup. Rick: To the processing fee, right. Her customers went from Vrbo paying $470, and now, they're paying $100–$120 and she makes $20 every booking on top of that in addition to saving the customers $300 a pop. Not to mention that Vrbo also charges her to rent it out. They charge a percentage and things of that nature. Most of our owners collect their own income, their own credit cards. If they collect, our services are 100% free. Jason: Okay. For those listening that are property managers, they can do this and act as the owner for and on behalf of their owner-clients and do the same thing. Rick: Absolutely. Property managers, condo complexes. We've helped a lot of people basically get out of the restraints of property management. I spoke to a town in Texas just recently. They just signed up with us, but the woman told me that they only have the same three property management companies. They've gone through that list about five times because they'll pop somebody, get tired of it, fire them, and go to the next guy, but that's all they have access to. Now, with our system, it does everything for them. It's fully automated. Once you set up your parameters, it's 100% customizable, meaning some of our owners collect $1 amount at the time of reservation. You can set it up per listing. Others collect a percentage of the rental. Some of them charge the remaining balance—which it does automatically through our system once you set that parameter—two days prior to a guest's arrival. Others have it 60 days prior to the guests' arrival. Just whatever it is, it'll run automatically. Somebody lists with us. They say, put $20 down, they'll make $20 extra every reservation, and their customers are saving quite a bit of money. Another thing that they save money on is through Vrbo and Airbnb, they charge $60–$65 for $1500 worth of damage protection on their property. We sell $39 for $3000 worth of coverage. We make sure that all of our owners are covered. We built this to grow the owners' companies. They can add as many fields as they wish. The way it works is let's say they put it in there and say, run the remaining amount 10 days prior to the arrival. Let's say they put 50% down at the time of reservation. When somebody books that, that amount will charge for 50% down. It will shoot them a receipt with their logo on the top and check-in instructions with their logo on the top. Nothing to do with us. Ten days prior to the arrival—if that's the parameter they set—it'll run it in full, it'll schedule it to be cleaned, and it'll alert the cleaners. The cleaners even have it color-coded, knowing if there's an out and in that day. They can make notes. All those notes are sent back to the owners once they're cleaned. Whenever it runs it in full, it'll send them all that info. Two days prior to their arrival, it will send them again that receipt showing paid and check-in instructions because some people make a booking a year ahead of time. Then, a couple of days before, they'll get reminded, this is how you check-in. Our customers can do anything they need. Sometimes, somebody will say, hey, can you send me that receipt again? All they have to do is log in to our website and send it back to them. Another great feature is if they collect their own credit cards, more than likely, they use a company called Authorize.Net. All Authorized.Net is just an online credit card machine. That's it. Whenever people go to log in Authorize.Net, they make you change your login all the time. It can be somewhat frustrating. Through our system, they never have to log in to Authorize.Net. They can refund, they can charge extra, they can do everything through our system. We're integrated with RemoteLock. We're integrated with Authorized.Net. We just helped integrate BookingPal, Vacasa. We've got some big tentacles out there, and we're just growing everybody's company. That's all we care about is growing the owners' rentals. Jason: Awesome. For those listening, a lot of property managers who hear this will go, wow, that sounds really great. Maybe it'll replace me. Maybe you could touch on that. Is this something that the property managers listening to this could use for and on behalf of their owners to be really effective, have better tools, better pricing, and maybe be a better profit center for them? Rick: We have a ton of property managers that use us. What it's done is it helped them eliminate more than half of their staff. It really helps do that. We do hate that a lot of people are getting let go, but it helps make the owners more money. That's what it's all about. Jason: Business owners, I don't think, would be sad to hear that they can't. They don't need as much staff. Staffing is always the most expensive resource in a business generally, so every business owner would be happy to hear that they can operate with less staff. That doesn't mean they're just going to fire everybody, but maybe it means they now can afford to spend more on acquiring more properties to manage, doing more marketing, and shifting their team members' efforts towards building the business up instead of just trying to deal with what's coming in. Rick: We just talked to an owner in Texas that signed up with us not that long ago. This was about a year ago. I remember her specifically saying—and it blew me away—how her property management company at the time used software, meaning that if anybody made a change to a reservation or anything, she would have to go to the office to make everything. From our system, you can change it from your cell phone, tablet, or computer—you can change it from anywhere. We've taken as much out of the owner's hands as possible. Let's say they have it where it charges 10 days prior to their arrival. It'll schedule it to be cleaned. It'll do all that stuff. Let's say somebody calls and says, hey, I want to change my dates or change my condo or home. You can change it in our system with just one click of a mouse. It'll change the cleaning for them. It'll change the calendars on both their properties. It does absolutely everything for them. It's really a simple tool to use. Another great feature is we have search by availability for owners' websites where it will only go through their rentals. We offer rate tables, calendars, custom-built widgets for owners' websites to more efficiently run their rentals, and tape charts. Jason: Rick, let me clarify some of this for those listening. Most of my property management clients and property management business owners refer to their clients as owners. I just want to make sure for those listening, it sounds like what you're saying is when you're saying owners, you're talking about the business owners really. It could be the property manager or the direct owner of the property, but you're talking about the business owner. These business owners have these tools available for them to integrate your system with their website for bookings, to manage their business, to send out white-label emails with their own branding on it—all this stuff. Rick: Yeah. Mailchimp can send specials to everybody they've been with, but as far as the clients go, property management companies love using us. They've been able to grow their businesses and like I said, cut their costs. It's a very simple tool to just plug and play. We've helped a lot of property management companies really get over the hill, so to speak. Jason: You showed me around a bit and had me take a look at stuff. My feedback was initially, it's not the sexiest, prettiest thing, but it sounds like it does everything. It has lots of bells and whistles. You guys have put a lot more attention on the backend, on integrations, on features, and really, it's very client-centric. It sounds like your business is really taking care of your customers and making sure you're building the best product that can do a lot of cool stuff. My feedback to those who are listening to this is give it a check out, take a look at it, and don't judge the book by its cover. Really get into the features and the benefits that could be really beneficial for your business. Rick, what are some of the biggest questions that a property manager who has never used your system? You're selling to them, what are some of the biggest questions that they’re concerned about or they want to know? Rick: We prefer property management companies as opposed to individual owners. We serve everybody. We have tons of different clients. But if an individual owner comes to us, they have one property, two properties, we answer those questions. Once they've asked those questions, they know how to use the system so we don't ever have to hear from them again. We prefer a property management company with 500 properties asking those 1 or 2 questions and then learning the whole system. They're off and running 500 properties as opposed to 1 or 2. It's fully accountable. It's 100% customizable per property. If you put 10 properties on our website and you wanted all 10 properties' money to go to a different account for each rental, we have that option available to you. You can set it up per rental. We have it to where some you charge tax, some you don't. We even have features in Florida, if they stay 180 days or longer, it's considered a homestead. If you book a rental for four months, you have to pay taxes on those four months. Those taxes are usually about 17%, 18%, 19%. In Texas, it's 30 days. If they stay 30 days or longer, it's a homestead, so there are no taxes. Whenever they set it up with us, they could say, I want to set up city tax at 7%, hotel tax at 6%, convention center at 2%, and only charge if they stay 29 days or less. If they stay 30 days or more, don't charge taxes. It automatically does the calculation for them. It does it all right there. They book it, they get sent their receipts, and it really helps our owners out because they see where the taxes need to go. It's all itemized right there. They can edit their spreadsheets on our system. Some pay for extra cable, and some like to add in their homeowners' dues. It's just got every feature you could think about. Another great tool for our property management companies—I'd say 70% use the tool this way, whereas 30% use it this way. Some of them, the 30%, make it to where their owners can change things. I have an owner in Virginia that has a property in Florida. They may want to change some pictures on their listing or they may want to change the cost of the property. They can log in themselves through TripAngle, edit that one property, and it will change it on the property management company. That's about 30% of our property managers. The 70% don't like them being able to touch anything, and that's understandable. They could show everything through there. But once again, we made our entire system 100% customizable for whatever their requests are. Jason: Usually, with software that has so many options, features, levers, and buttons, it gets a little bit confusing. How steep is the learning curve? What's the support process like in terms of getting onboarded? Rick: The support is we will hold your hand and walk you through everything. People know how to list their properties. They've done it on Vrbo and on Airbnb so they know how to do all these things. We get very few questions. We should probably get more questions, but people seem to figure it out pretty easily. But people will cancel their reservation. They will change. Our system would be 100% automated if it wasn't for this, but since people do change and they'll call, we'll show them how to click a button or two on our website, and they've got it. You've got a section for all active listings. We even have a feature if you want to set it up to approve the booking. Some people have their property listed on so many different websites. They don't even really know how much they have it listed on so they don't like to take the instant booking, which I understand because it could have already been booked and you just didn't think to put it on there. Our calendars will stay booked. If you have it synced with Airbnb or Vrbo, it will stay in tune. But a lot of people don't like to use calendars on any of them, and they like to approve a booking. A booking will come in, and they have 24 hours to approve it. I'd say 90% of the bookings that come in are approved by our owners. Once again, they can just make it as customizable as they want, but it's really easy to use. It's really simple. It's all about keeping it simple, stupid. We learned that a long time ago and man did we not make it easy getting to that point through professionalism and luck. We have some partners that can do anything. Our team has really been on top of the ball in just putting everything together. If there are ever any questions or any problems, we fix it within hours. We don't have any. Jason: This sounds really great. How can people get started with this? How can they find out more? What would be the next step for those that are curious of taking this for a test drive or maybe taking a look at it? Rick: What they can do is they can go to either one of our websites, bookingwithease.com. You can look at our features. It just answers some of your questions, the general information of every company. It gives you links to be able to click on where it'll divert you over to TripAngle and you could sign up. It's free to sign up. Once you sign up, we recommend putting a RepID number. You had a RepID number for us because I wanted to have a RepID number in there to make sure that the people from DoorGrow get taken care of. What was that RepID number again? Jason: Rick, had me set up an affiliate code or a RepID number. My representative number is 2167. I guess if they go in once they're going through the registration on tripangle.com, towards the bottom, there'll be a representative number. If you put in 2167, Rick's going to do some special for you, some discount or something like that. Rick: Absolutely, yeah. We take care of all of our customers. We'd be happy to reach out to them once they put in that representative ID number. That's how we've grown our business is word of mouth. Most people like to tell others of the great deal that they found. Once they realize what they make on it, they love it. We pay 10% of what we earn. We're doing strength by numbers. The reason our numbers are so low compared to everybody else is because they're trying to compete with each other. We're doing it organically through each other's websites and spreading by word of mouth. As people sign up with us—let's say somebody enters in the 2167 under you, what that will do is on your dashboard, you'll be able to see who's signing up, what bookings are coming through, and all that good stuff. When you have a customer sign up through DoorGrow, they go in there, they sign up, they can agree to our affiliate program—just like you did—they'll be assigned a number, they can tell their neighbor to go sign up, and they'll get 10% of every bit of our earnings per property. Jason: Very cool. They can go to bookingwithease.com which also links to tripangle.com where they would register. They can also just go to tripangle.com to check that out. Cool. Rick, before we wrap this up, is there anything else you feel like a property manager should know regarding TripAngle? Rick: They're in the process of uploading all of them, but we just signed about 3000 properties in Colorado where I know for a fact that they're offering it through an affiliate either breckenridgelodging.com or mountainskitrips.com. If you go to those websites, it'll have our link to be able to book their rentals. You can pick out their rentals, but they're offering 15% off right now for the first month. They just signed up with us. Any properties you find in Colorado on our website should be through those companies—Breckenridge Lodging or Mountain Ski Trips. They're offering 15% off right now on top of their already lower rate. Just to give a quick example, I spoke with a lady the other day from Airbnb. She was a traveling nurse. She asked if she could book one of our rentals. She said she could only afford $1400. If she would have booked directly through TripAngle, it was $1275. She would have booked for less. But through Airbnb, you can't really discuss information until after the reservation's made. I went in there and I adjusted it to where she should have been at the $1400 range. I told her. I said we did the $1400. I don't know what they charge. She looked at it and she said, I'll never use them again. She wanted to book it for four months. They were charging her $2350 a month, meaning they were making $950 a month to use our system when I'm the owner and I'm only making $1400. That doesn't seem like it's the right thing there. If they would have charged (say) $950 upfront, maybe a one-time fee, even that is too high if you ask me. But that's the point. The cost of vacations has definitely skyrocketed since Airbnb has been introduced. We're here to get owners more exposure. They use us in conjunction with Airbnb. The one woman I just told you about from Vrbo for $470, she stopped using them quite some time ago. Airbnb can be fun. Let me tell you that. That can be exhausting at times. I feel that Airbnb has taken a lot of control out of the owners' hands—a lot of it. Our system gives owners 100% control over their listings. If they want to go in and do anything through our system, they can do it. I had a woman who, through Airbnb, booked for September 20th because I had somebody checking out on September 20th. She let me know just now that she actually has to be here on October 18th. She thought she booked it on the 18th, so I went to the Airbnb to switch it out. It wouldn't let me change anything. It was the most difficult process to get her. What I finally did was she agreed to pay me cash when she shows up. There shouldn't be anything like that on Airbnb. With our system, you can adjust the rate. You can adjust everything. You can offer percentages for discounts. One thing that a customer of ours just brought to our attention that they absolutely loved is they have over 2000 rentals. They use another website, but they have to go through on all 2000 rentals to add a discount for that rental. We offer—where you can do that—a master discount so it goes immediately on all 2000 of their rentals. That's so much easier. Jason: Yeah. Rick, I'm sure you could probably tell us features. You just spout these off the top of your head, but you could probably go on for an hour just telling us all the features and benefits of this. It sounds really awesome. Again, I recommend everybody to check it out. Go to tripangle.com or bookingwithease.com, and take a look at that. Rick, I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us. I think it's cool. I'm excited to expose my audience to this. They're always looking for some cool hack or something that might keep more money in their pocket. I hope your continued success against these companies. Rick: One quick thing I do want to say—and this is all thanks to you—is I do love how you're a straight shooter. Love it. You told us that our logo on TripAngle was awful. I don't know if you know this, but I worked with your team, and they developed it. My business partners and I were cramming, collaborating, and all over the place. What logo that we came up with doesn't even hold a candle to what you all came up with. I even gave your team specific instructions envisioning in a certain way. What they did was 100 times better. I'm so glad they really didn't listen to me because I was wrong. If you go to TripAngle right now, you can see that new logo. There's one at the top and at the bottom. Jason: I like it. Rick: That came from you guys. Jason: Yeah. My team does good work. That's really cool. Rick: They do great work. Jason: I appreciate you being open to feedback. I'm a little rough but hey, if I see a business owner that has something cool but there's something on the surface that would be super easy to fix that would make business easier, I'm going to call it out. That's what I do. Kudos for taking some advice from me. Sometimes it's not comfortable to be told your kid's ugly, so to speak. They need plastic surgery. Rick: Right. That's why they have braces. Jason: Awesome. Cool. I appreciate the little plug for my brand-new team. Rick, I'll let you go. I appreciate you coming on the show. I'm excited to see what you do. Rick: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I look forward to growing with you guys. Jason: Awesome. If you have a crappy logo, you're not really proud of your brand or how things look, you are being perceived falsely as mainly a real estate company, but you do property management, or there's something off with your branding, let us teach you how to clean that up. Let us help you clean that up. We've rebranded hundreds of companies. We are the world's leading property management, branding, and web design agency in existence. Nobody else has probably rebranded more companies in the property management space than us. Nobody else has designed more property management logos than we have. We've done hundreds and hundreds. Reach out to us. We'd love to help you out. We're always excited to help clean up businesses. The level of growth they see before and after we rebrand, clean up their website, and get their pricing and everything in alignment are always far more profitable and the business comes far more easily. You don't realize what leaks you have until they're no longer there sometimes. Reach out. Check us out at doorgrow.com. As always, if you want to join our community, it's free online. Go to doorgrowclub.com and join our Facebook community. We'd love to have you there. If you're interested in growing your business, reach out. We have an awesome mastermind program. We've got over 70 businesses in it, and they are having phenomenal results. We're really enjoying coaching and mentoring these clients, and helping them move their business forward. We have three paths we focus on: we focus on growth and adding doors, we focus on scaling it and figuring out operations, processes, hiring, systems, all that, and then we also have our seed program which is all about the ultimate foundation, branding, website—everything on the frontend sales pipeline of the business. Once you have all three of these things dialed in, you'll have a very profitable company. You'll be outpacing your competition, you will look like the best in your market, and you'll probably be the best. Anyway, that's it. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

What is a BDM? How do I pay a BDM? Why call them a BDM and not a salesperson in a property management business? Why do I need to make sure a BDM has the right personality type and how do I onboard them correctly? Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks all about BDMs. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge is supporting and training them to be successful. You’ll Learn... [01:42] What is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager. [01:46] Why a BDM and not a salesperson? Sales gets convoluted or confused. [02:00] Why? Most of you do real estate and have a brokerage side to the business. [02:50] Mistakes: Feedback from companies that help you find/place a BDM isn’t good. [03:24] A business owner not good at sales or onboarding doesn’t give the right support. [05:24] How can you properly support a BDM or salesperson? Know what works. [06:02] How to pay BDMs: If you pay on commission, offer an initial bonus structure. [08:17] How to onboard BDMs: Start them as a sales assistant to double capacity. [10:00] Motivate BDMs: Driven salespeople like money, give them part of commission. [13:32] What sales is/isn’t: Once you start winning deals, sales becomes fun, not pushy. Tweetables “BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales.” “If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business.” “I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much anybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales.” “It doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DiSC Profile Myers and Briggs Calendly Transcript 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business and their owners. 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. What are we chatting about today? In continuing my series of doing this every Wednesday, we're going to be chatting today about BDMs. What is a BDM and how to pay them? This is a really common question I get, how do I pay a BDM? How should I pay them? So that I don't have to answer this question anymore, I'm going to make a podcast episode about it. Here we go. First, what is a BDM? It's a Business Development Manager. Why do we use that term instead of a sales person in a property management business? Because a salesperson, or sales, or anything connected to that usually gets convoluted, or confused, or mixed up with brokerage because a lot of you also do real estate and have the brokerage side of your business. I think what's happened over time is the industry has sort of adapted that a property management sales person is called a BDM. And we get that from the Australians. They seem to call them BDMs or Business Development Managers, and I think it's just so we don't get them mixed up with the real estate sales people or people that just do sales. On the real estate side, anything related to sales tends to be considered real estate. In the real estate industry, even if it's property management, it gets mixed up. BDM is really just a fancy word for somebody that's supposed to help you grow your business, supposed to come in, supposed to do sales. There are a lot of mistakes I see people make. I have not heard good feedback on companies that help you find a BDM and place a BDM. I don't think it's those companies' fault, I don't think that it's their fault. They probably do find people with the right personality type, maybe they're on a DiSC profile, they're high D, high I, maybe they have an economic score on a value index on a DiSC, maybe they love doing sales, maybe they're good at sales. I think what really ends up happening a lot of times is that a business owner is not good at sales which is why they're hiring them, or the business owner is not good at onboarding a sales person, which if you're not good at sales you're not going to be good on onboarding a sales person and giving them the right support that they need anyway. Let's touch on that first. If you are not good at sales, my recommendation is you have to figure this out. This is one of the biggest key areas of the business. If you cannot generate revenue on demand, you cannot figure out how to bring in business, you need to figure that out. You don't have to do it forever, otherwise you need to bring in a partner into the business that is already an expert. Not just hiring some salesperson you're going to try to convert into a BDM. You're going to have to find somebody that successfully added hundreds of doors as a BDM into the business and partner with them or bring them in into your business. Otherwise, just getting a sales person, trying to turn them into a property management BDM is not going to be effective unless you know how to do it yourself. My recommendation is put in the reps, take the time, become an expert at this and figure it out. If you struggle with that, I'm really good at helping people improve that area, get really good with that, and we do that in our program. It's awesome to see the transition of people going from, well, I'm not really super great at sales or my close rate isn't really high, to them saying what I typically hear is, I feel like I can get anybody on that I want so now I'm picky and I don't want everybody. That's a huge shift. I love seeing that shift in clients where they have the confidence that they know they can get pretty much everybody on if they want them because they're that good at sales. I won't go into sales in detail on this podcast. We're not going to go into this episode into sales, but you need to make sure that you can properly support a BDM or sales person coming in. What does that mean? That means you know what works. You have successfully proven that you can bring on business, you have scripts, you have language, you have recordings of calls, you have examples to give them. They can shadow you. You know how to deal with all the different objections and challenges that tend to come up. If you have that, then maybe it's time to bring somebody else in. There's another challenge. The other challenge is a lot of BDMs are expected to just get paid on commission. A lot of people say, how do you pay them? If you're expecting them to just get paid on commission, the challenge with that is you're basically expecting them to starve for the first onboarding period of the first 30, 60, 90 days if they're just purely commissioned. You can have some sort of initial bonus structure that you're going to give them that they have to pay back maybe, but that puts them in the hole from the get-go and that can help them get over that hump initially. What I find is it doesn't make sense to pay people based on commission unless the commission payout is big. In real estate, it's pretty big for the amount of work that you do. That becomes really big. You have a big payout so it's worth it to do all that work and stuff like that. In property management, commission is going to be smaller and if you're expecting the BDM to not just close, but you're expecting them to do the follow-up, the prospecting, the nurturing, and all this work, it doesn't get them paid on the front end. They only get paid when they close the deal. Then you're expecting them to just do all of this work that they don't get paid for when they really want to spend their time doing what they really get paid for. You need to have a couple of options. If you're going to do commission only, my recommendation is they're just closers. That means you have lead generation, follow up, all that handled by somebody else. Or you bring them in and pay them a base that's based on them doing all of that follow-up, prospecting, and everything else based on that. Then there's a bonus or commissions structure, maybe a little less than if they are commission-only that's attached to the winning of a contract or getting on a client. That is probably more ideal in most situations because then they're getting paid to do all of this work, to build up the sales pipeline, and then they do have that reward that they can get once they start getting business on and they're closing deals. That's going to be, generally in my opinion, a far more effective structure, is to have base plus salary. Now how do you onboard them, how do you start them out, my recommendation is you take this BDM and you start them initially as a sales assistant. Just getting a sales assistant if you're currently the business owner and you're closing the deals, could double your close rate. It could double the amount of capacity that you have. They're going to operate more like an appointment setter, then you're going to be the closer. Setter and closer allows you also to use an effective strategy that one of my mentors calls the double barrel close—which can be really effective—in which they comprise the closer, make them more important in the mind of the prospect, and help you increase the close rate. You're really going to love what Jason has to say once you get on a call with him. He'll be able to answer all the other questions, but first I need to make sure that you qualify to talk to Jason. That's what a setter can do for you and it significantly increases your close rate, it increases your value in the mind of the prospect if they do that effectively and they can preframe some of these sales tactics; future pays, preframing, stuff like that. Now, you start them as an appointment setter and that means they're just learning the CRM, they're doing all the follow up, they're helping you to schedule appointments, they're booking things on your Calendly, or whatever scheduling thing you do, then you can show up and close, close, close. It's going to increase your close rate. This helps them learn how the sales process works and they can eventually start shadowing you and listening in on those sales calls that they booked, being part of those, they can learn how you're doing it and they can get to the point where they then want to take those calls directly. How do you motivate that? If they're a driven sales person and they like money, then the way that you do that is you're going to take your commission. My recommendation is you figure out a flat fee commission structure. Flat fee is generally better than a percentage for sales people, in my opinion, because it gives them something concrete. They know each door I get, I'm going to get X number of dollars. Then you're going to take that commission structure and you're going to cut it in half maybe or even a third depending on how big that fee is going to be that you're going to pay them that commission. If you're going to pay them a half commission, for example, let's say you do 50%, they get 50% if they set and they get the other 50% if they close it. If they're just setting, they will start out just getting a half commission. If they set them up really nicely and you're able to close the deal, then they get it. This gets them the incentive. Once they start to taste that and they get these commissions, if they are the right personality type to drip in, they like money, they're motivated by this, very quickly they will be pushing to get that second half of the commission. What do I need to do to get that? What else do I have to learn? They're going to start asking questions. They're going to be very curious. You want them to be pulling to get more money from you and wanting to step into that. That shows that they're driven and they're the right personality type. If you find that you're trying to push them into it and trying to move them along, hey, when are you going to be ready? It's been a few months now. You're ready to do the calls on your own? They're probably not the right personality type so maybe you didn't vet them correctly during the hiring process and looking at the DiSC profile, Myers Briggs, some of the things you might use to figure out if they're going to be the good fit naturally for this. That's some of the stuff we chat on today's call with clients that are in my program. If you have questions about BDMs or things like that, join our program, happy to chat with you more or feel free to ask questions inside the DoorGrow Club. I'm sure a lot of people have experience in there at doorgrowclub.com about BDMs. In general, make sure they have the right personality type, make sure you are onboarding them correctly. Now to point out, I had a client which I met today who fired a couple of his BDMs, but these were probably the first two he had hired. Usually, if a BDM isn't working out, most of the time it is because they weren't supported right. If you do all the vetting right, then the real challenge usually is because they weren't supported right. They didn't have scripts. They didn't have proven things that work. You weren't able to showcase that you knew how to do it and teach them how to close deals, be successful, deal with objections, and everything else. They didn't really have a chance. They didn't have the right support plus the pay structure may not have been the way I described and may have not incentivized them correctly so they weren't really on boarded or supported correctly. That's what I've seen a lot of times with companies that go and hire a company to get them a BDM as the challenge. Figure out how to do it, don't avoid it. It's something that once you get comfortable with that feels great, it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore because once you start winning deals and getting on business, sales becomes fun. Then you realize sales is not anything pushy. It's not anything unethical, whatever sort of mindsets you have around sales. Sales really is just about helping people see their problems accurately and then helping them see how you can help them. That's it. It's not about getting people to buy something they don't need or want. It's about getting them to buy the exact thing that they really need to help them solve their problem, and that's you. You're the solution to that. Hopefully that's helpful. This will be a short episod today. Check out doorgrowclub.com if you want to join our Facebook free community and there are a lot of great property managers in there. They're willing to help out and answer questions. If you want to take your business to the next level, start growing, start adding a lot of doors, having success, and you're ready to be challenged and take things to the next level, then reach out to us and we will give you access to a free training, my seven frameworks on how you can grow your property management business, and the things that are holding you back, why most companies suck in the industry, so that you are not the next sucky company, and you can be great too. Hopefully this is helpful, and until next time to our mutual growth, everyone. Bye, everybody.

The most important part of hiring is to filter out and bring in the people that you truly want to attract to your business. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about how to attract motivated and inspired team members in your property management business. You’ll Learn... [01:33] How do you motivate people to get them to do what you want? [02:04] Finding Good People: It takes more than a job posting and interviews. [02:55] Time Study: Start by figuring out where your time goes. [03:06] Job Description: What you want somebody to take on that drains your energy. [03:52] R Document: Responsibilities, resonate, and results. [04:31] Cultural Fit: Bad hires don't share your values, ethics, morals, or how you care. [05:44] Purpose Secrets: What’s your personal and business ‘why’ that motivates? [09:34] Myers & Briggs, DiSC: Know different attributes of profiles and personality types. [12:00] Micromanagers: Whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. [15:17] Pleasure vs. Pain: Most people are motivated by money or recognition. Tweetables “A big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they assume that if they just put up a job posting with the job requirements and they do a bunch of interviews, they're going to find good people.” “You need a much better filter because what that formula means is you're going to end up with a lot of turnovers, a lot of team members, and have to kiss a lot of frogs.” “You can teach people skills. You can teach people processes. You can teach people tactical things. But you cannot generally teach your team members values.” “The result is what gets you paid. The result is what grows the business. The result is what makes it worth it for you to shell out money to have this team member. Results are the most important thing.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Myers & Briggs DiSC Transcript 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right. We're continuing my weekly series of just saying whatever I want to talk about today. So today, I got a question about motivating people. We had somebody in our group that was really struggling to hire and find good people in their market. Also, we had another team member that was asking how do you motivate people to get them to do what you want. So we're going to chat about teams a little bit today and about motivating people. What I told the lovely lady that asked the question on our group call today about finding really good people is, a big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they assume that if they just put up a job posting with the job requirements and they do a bunch of interviews, they're going to find good people. I have found from my own experience and being connected to a lot of entrepreneurs that that is not the case. You need a much better filter because what that formula means is you're going to end up with a lot of turnovers, a lot of team members, and have to kiss a lot of frogs by bringing them into your business, training them, wasting time, and they're going to be terrible, not really show up to work all the time. They're not going to do a great job. You're going to have to start over again. Let's talk about the hiring process just a little bit so that you can have great people, and then we'll get into maybe some stuff related to that. If you want to bring really great people onto your team, we usually start in the DoorGrow & Scale mastermind. I usually start by having clients do a time study to really figure out where the time is going. Based on that, we build a job description for somebody to take the minus signs, the things that are energetically draining them. They don't enjoy the things that are tactical, which are maybe more like lower-level work, or things that are just not strategic in general where you're not functioning as a business owner. You're functioning and doing the employee-level type of tasks—emailing, calling work, et cetera. We want to shift and take the tactical minus signs off your plate, so we build a job description. What would be the ultimate next hire for you? So you can free up your time, energy, attention, focus, et cetera so you make more cash. What would it take to do that? You build out the ultimate job description. I call that an R document. I got the original idea from one of my coaches and mentors, Alex Scharffen. He had what was called a four R’s document. For me, I found that there were some R’s missing. I'm not going to go into total detail explaining an R document, but I will say three of the R’s. Most job descriptions have one of the R's in a document, which is they have the responsibilities. This is a typical job description. They'll just have the responsibilities listed and they think, well, people will look at this and go, I could do that job. What's the pay? Okay, I could get paid to do that job. That does not mean they're going to be a cultural fit. Usually, if you have bad hires, it's not because they can't do the job. It's usually because they don't share your values, your ethics, your morals, what you really care about, and how you care about your customer. If you bring on the wrong people, they're not going to share your values. Even if they can do the job, you're never going to trust them. They’re not going to show up, be, and act the way that you want so that you feel safe with them and safe giving up these things off of your plate and giving them to somebody else on your team. You need them to share your values. This is more important than them having the skill to do the job. You can teach people skills. You can teach people processes. You can teach people tactical things. But you cannot generally teach your team members’ values. Those come hard-wired in. They got those from their parents. They got those from society, from their upbringing, from their religion, and from the culture they've been a part of, but they have those values. So you need to find people that are a value match for you and your business. Your business needs to have the right cultural foundation. In our program, we have a training called Purpose Secrets. In that, we get into figuring out your personal why—what really drives and motivates you, your business why—what really motivates the business? What is your client-centric mission? This mission that you have for the business really gets you inspired and excited, and can inspire and excite your team and your potential customers. We get into company core values. Making sure those are clear and defined, and some other stuff. This allows you to create culture. You cannot have a healthy culture in a business, bring people in, and expect them to fit your culture if you don't make that really transparent from the beginning, from the get-go. We have—on our job application at DoorGrow—our cultural values, client-central mission statement, and these sorts of things so that people can go through this if they care, and we can attract the right fit. Otherwise, you're really playing Russian roulette, you're just gambling. Then you have to have a really good R document. You have to have a really good job description. This goes far beyond just the responsibilities. Here's the most important part of a job description. It’s the portion in an R document, the first portion I call resonate. This is the portion where it's copywriting or sales-related language to convince people and to discuss the position in a way that they will read it and self-identify. Does it resonate as being them? As an example, if I were hiring an executive assistant, I know the personality type that I would generally want for that. They're going to be very detail-oriented, et cetera. It could say, are you our next executive assistant with COO potential? Do you color-coordinate your closet? Are you the type of person that makes sure everything is tidy on your desk and in your house? Are you the person that really is critical of others when they get things wrong, but you really are also really critical of yourself if you make a mistake? Then you might be our next executive assistant. You're going to describe the personality in a way that they're going to read then go, oh my gosh, that's totally me. That is me, me, me, me, me. Not oh, I could probably do that, and you could pay me to do that. You want people that read this and they go, oh my gosh, this is me. I would love to be part of that. The second part of a job description—that's the most important part, I believe when hiring because it helps filter out people and it helps you bring the people that you really want to attract that are going to be excited about the job. They are the ones that are willing to jump through all the hoops you might put in their application or interview process that will filter out the majority of people. So you don't get a bunch of garbage applicants that are like oh, I’m applying to 10 different jobs. You want somebody that reads this and goes, that's the job I want. I want to be part of that kind of team. They're going to read that on your application, your values and your culture. Then you'd be like, I want to be part of something like this, something bigger. You want to attract believers, not hiders. The standard American employee that you hear about that complains about their boss, and they think it's funny and culture. These people live for the weekend. They just want to make fun of their boss and their job and be miserable. Those are hiders. Those are not believers. They do not believe in that boss. They do not believe in that company's mission. They haven't been given, sometimes often, anything to believe in. You want to make sure that you attract believers, not hiders. It needs to be the role that they know, this is me. So you have to understand the personality type. You need to know the Myers-Briggs type. You need to know the DiSC Profile type. You need to know different attributes about what this person is really like that would be naturally inclined to do this job and that would be really good at it. Now, here's the R in the R docs. It's the most important once you hire somebody. Once somebody is hired, the most important part is the results portion. The results portion is the portion where it talks about what they are responsible to accomplish? What are they expected to accomplish and get done? Because if they're not getting the results, it doesn't matter if they're fulfilling all of the responsibilities that you might have, which are also important to have in there. But if they're not getting the end result, it doesn't matter if they're doing all the other responsibilities if the result isn't achieved. The result is what gets you paid. The result is what grows the business. The result is what makes it worth it for you to shell out money to have this team member. Results are the most important thing. I don't care what else is in there unless they're getting the results done. That's the most important thing in the job description once somebody is a team member. They need to make sure they're achieving those results. Otherwise, they're not going to stay on the team. That way they know, these are the results I'm expected to accomplish on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and on a yearly basis. These are the results. Results don't lie, right? Results reveal the truth. Results are reality and reality is god. Reality, always is what is. It's the truth. That's kind of the beginning. If you do that, just those things alone, you will be far less likely to have difficult, crappy, and bad team members. They're going to share your values. They're going to enjoy being part of your culture. They're going to believe in you as a boss. They're going to want to please you. They're going to know how to please you because they know the results that you're looking to get. It'll be very obvious having this yardstick by which to measure their performance on a regular basis as you meet with them, and say, hey, how are the results going? A lot of times, a business tries to micromanage and control their team members through KPIs. I'm not as big of a fan of that. I don't see that as necessary. When people really are the right role for the job, you don't have to force them. You don't have to coerce them. You don't have to micromanage them. They want to do a good job. They want to do those things if they're the right personality for that position. If they're an A-player that believes in your values, they believe in your company, they believe in you, and they're inspired to work with you, you don't have to control them. One of my favorite adages is basically whenever we fail to inspire, we always control. If you are focused on lots of metrics, KPIs, and these sorts of things, you’ll feel that you always have to follow up with team members to find out and get information. You've built a system in your business in which you are micromanaging. You are a micromanager. That is what a micromanager is. Most people say, well, I'm not a micromanager. I don't want to micromanage my team. I hate micromanaging and I hate micromanagers. Most people are micromanagers that say that. If you have a performance-based culture—a culture in which people are doing what they really enjoy doing—they are inspired, they want to get great results, they are going to just do it. You don't have to push them or motivate them because they're going to want to do it. That's fun for them and it feels good. They get a sense of respect and value out of doing this and a sense of status maybe. They feel recognized for doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. They love their job. They love their life. They love your business. They get better and better at it. If the focus is on results, it doesn't matter how they go about doing to get those results as long as they do it within your values, your ethics, your morals. If they follow your values and they believe in your values, then you can trust them to get to the result in the right way. It doesn't matter if it's different from how you would do it. It doesn't matter if it's unique. You're going to find that if they know to focus on the result, they're going to get innovative, creative, and they're going to figure out clever ways to do it in less time to get it done faster. But they're going to do it as long as they're doing it with your values at heart and they're getting those results, you're going to be very happy. This relieves you from having that burden to think for them and make decisions for them, where you get tons of questions from them constantly. Like how do you do it? Should I do this with this person or that? Follow the values and you'll start to trust them more and more. They'll start to learn to trust themselves and their own decision-making. Then you're going to have leaders, not just followers and sheep in your business. The other question that popped up today was, how do I motivate people? The gentleman in the group was like, how do I motivate people on the team? One of the things that I really like is DiSC assessments. I like the values index that are in some of the more detailed DiSC assessments. The values index has different values like political score, economic score, aesthetic score, charitable score, and stuff like that. The one you want to look at when it comes to motivating people is the economic score. Now, that sounds a little weird. But all of these will help you understand somewhat what their values are and what they value. The goal to motivate somebody is you either need to know what they want to move away from or what they want to move towards, which is, what pain do they want to avoid and what pleasure do they want to experience? Most entrepreneurs mistakenly assume most people are motivated by money. Here's why—entrepreneurs tend to have a high economic score, which means they value money. Most people on the planet though, most of our team members, do not have a high economic score. It's going to be a low economic score. That means they value recognition. Recognition is more important than just getting bonuses. Entrepreneurs and typically salespeople tend to have a high economic score. If you see somebody having a low economic score and they have a high charitable score, actually paying them more money, excessive amounts of money, too much money, or even sometimes more money than they would normally be paid because they did better performance, a lot of times, those people will feel guilty. Some of these people feel guilty about getting more money. They have a high charitable score. They want to help people and they care about the poor. They want to volunteer and do this sort of thing. You just throwing money at them makes them feel like you just care about money. That actually hurts performance. One way to not motivate people is to pay them more money, give them bonuses, or incentivize things financially when their economic score is low. You need to be careful of that. If they’re motivated by money, then this is why those types of team members (salespeople) generally have part of their pay connected to performance, bonuses, commission structures, and stuff like that. If the economic score is low, they are recognition-motivated. Just having a really good culture of accountability and a really good strategic planning system in the business. We have what we call DoorGrow OS, which I believe is better than EOS, which has some fundamental flaws I've talked about before. A lot of entrepreneurs are into us, traction, and this sort of thing. In DoorGrow OS, it’s really an entrepreneur-centric system where it's built around you instead of built around the idea of an integrator, et cetera. I could go on talking about the flaws of EOS. But generally, our clients that come from the EOS system and implement DoorGrow OS have seen much better results. They feel a lot more calm and quiet in their business. Things get a lot less noisy. They have team members that are far more accountable. The team is part of the communication and culture and the planning process, and buy-in instead of it being very top-down. They're a lot more motivated especially because B-players—instead of A-players—that are hiders, they do not want to be in a situation or a system in which they are accountable and everybody gets to see them. But A-players—people that are not hiders, the believers—love to be recognized and they love to be seen. They want recognition. That's more important than them getting more money. They want to be recognized. This allows them to be seen, allows them to experience status, allows them to feel recognized, and does a good job. That kind of culture is a performance culture and it will filter out the riff-raff. It will prevent you from having bad team members. The other thing you want to recognize when trying to figure out how to motivate people is you need to understand your team. This is why before we even interview somebody, we have them—in our application process—jump through a bunch of hoops to get them to do a bunch of different assessments. I won't go into all of the different assessments that I often do, but I usually have people do at least three assessments just to go through our application process. If you have a really good R doc that really resonates with them, gets them really excited about the job, and really they get excited about the culture and your company, they'll be willing to do all of the work in your application, and jump through all those hoops. Most people won’t. If they're just tire kickers, time wasters, people applying to lots and lots of different jobs, and they don't look at your job and go, I want that job. That's the job I want. I want to work for them. Then they won't go through and fill out everything on the application. I like the DiSC. I like Myers-Briggs. I understand those systems. I've taken time to learn those. I know what sort of roles will do well, which sort of personality types will do well based on those in certain positions. I would recommend those. Then there are others that I'm into or that I like to use. Having them do assessments, you're going to know beforehand, just by looking at all applicants, that person would likely be good at this. That person may not. You may still want to interview some people based on their past experiences. Maybe there were mistypes. Maybe they filled it out wrong or tried to answer it the way they thought you wanted them to be or to look. But that'll be really helpful for you to have assessments to be able to know these team members and to talk with these potential team members about themselves to figure out, does this resonate with you? Is this accurate about you what it says on your DiSC, what it says on your Myers-Briggs, and what it says on these other assessments? They can then chime in. A lot of times, you'll find they're like, wow, yeah, it's really spot on. Or they might say that part, no, I'm a little different than that. This helps you to understand whether or not that personality and that person would be a good fit and really enjoy that role. That's going to prevent you from wasting a lot of time, a lot of money training, onboarding, and bringing in somebody that's a bad fit. You won't have to motivate that person because they will naturally be inclined to do that and do a good job. That's a little bit of what we chatted about on today's call. If you're interested in joining about 70 entrepreneurs that we have in this mastermind, then reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com. If you are enjoying this podcast and you want to be part of our free community that we have online, feel free to join the Facebook group, which is doorgrowclub.com. You can join our social media group there where you can ask questions of other property managers. There are lots of really helpful people. That's all I have to share with all of you today. Until next time, to our mutual growth, and I hope you have a lot of success. Bye, everyone.

Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about being the best prize to your potential clients. A lot of times clients have this perception that you need or want to get them on as a client. Needy is creepy. Don’t fail to see and show them that you are the prize. You’ll Learn... [03:00] Who is the prize? You or your prospective client? You are! [03:06] Why? If you have a legitimate business, you solve their problems. [03:52] Three biggest complaints? Tenants, landlords, and rental properties. [04:18] Why most property managers and property management businesses suck. [04:48] If you do a good job, you make better tenants, landlords, and rental properties. [05:10] Real Estate Investing: It's easy until your first challenge with a tenant. [07:17] Cycle of Suck: Crappy clients lead to crappy properties, tenants, and reputation. [08:01] Mike’s Pumpkin Plan: Allegory of what it takes to have prize-winning pumpkins. [08:43] Be Picky: Get clients you want to be with, enjoy working with, and value you. [10:10] What’s for sale? People want to buy safety, certainty, and peace of mind. [11:45] Ideal Clients: Qualify them by figuring out - what do you really want? [12:37] Rules of Engagement: Value self, maintain confidence, realize you’re the prize. Tweetables “You need to realize this—you are the prize. That means they are not the prize.” “If you aren't able to maintain a frame of confidence, you then hurt the number one thing that people want to buy from you, which is safety and certainty.” “The best clients are not the ones that are the cheapos.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Mike Michalowicz Transcript 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 your 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. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. All right, this continues these episodes where it's just me talking. I'm certainly going to be doing some interviews in the future. But this episode today, I'm going to start blocking out time each Wednesday so that I can consistently get these episodes out. I have a consistent call with clients each Wednesday and Friday currently that I enjoy doing. I'm just going to block out time every Wednesday to do a live call and talk about whatever my heart desires that day. Something that came up on today's call with my coaching clients is just a little passing phrase that somebody had mentioned, but they had said they were talking about the week and the wins. Everybody was sharing their wins and one client mentioned they were going to be meeting with some people that are prospective clients. They said they're going to see if we will be a good fit. I wanted to touch on this because I think there's this mindset challenge that I noticed a lot of times with clients and I say this multiple times. I've said it multiple times on my calls with clients. But a lot of times clients have this perception that they are needing or wanting to get the client on and they fail to see that you are the prize. That is what I'm titling today's episode, You are the prize. I would normally swear when I say this, but I want to make sure I get the widest reach possible, but you are the blankety blank prize. You're the prize. You're the freaking prize. You need to realize this—you are the prize. That means they are not the prize. Your prospective client is not the prize, you're the prize. Why is that? Because if you have a legitimate business, you are the one that solves their problem. You're not trying to get them on to solve your problem of making money or because you need more clients. Needy is creepy. You have to have the mindset and recognize that you are the prize, that you solve their problem, that they're the one with the challenges. Look at this, you solve three of the biggest problems in real estate as a property manager. You are absolute super superheroes. Nobody seems to realize this, but nobody else does this. What am I talking about? Let's talk about what are the three most complained about things in real estate? Most likely, possibly these three things—tenants, landlords, and rental properties. Three of the most complained about things in real estate and you solve all three of those challenges as a good property manager. I know you and I both know that most property managers suck. Most property management businesses suck. You know this. I hear this from everybody. Everybody comes to me and they're like, well, we're starting a property management business. Why? Because everybody else in my market sucks. I hear this all the time. I'm sure you're listening right now and you're thinking, yeah, my competitors do all suck, but I'm great. Let's just agree that most property management businesses suck and we should change that because it hurts the entire industry as a whole. But if you're doing a good job, you make tenants better, you make landlords better, you make the rental properties better. You are improving the world. You really are the superheroes of the real estate investing industry. A lot of real estate investors get into real estate investing. They hear everybody's talking about this buzz of real estate investing. It's a great place to put your money. It's so turnkey and so easy. Until they have their first challenge with a tenant, until they realize how much time it takes to place a tenant, until they realize maintenance coordination is a part-time job, even for a small portfolio. You take all of this off their plate. On average, you get them more rent. Even if you just get them a certain percentage more rent and you're collecting rent a certain percentage more often, your fees are well covered. During the pandemic, the feedback I was getting from a lot of people that were self-managing is that their rent collection was down like 50%. I heard from some investors, only half of my tenants are paying rent. Property management clients though, I was asking them, they were maybe down like 2%, 3%, maybe 5% of the rent. They really didn't see much change. The ones that were really smart about how they dealt with it really didn't see much change at all. It was the same people that weren't paying rent before that weren't paying rent, so they didn't really see a shift. The smart ones were the ones that didn't proactively assume that people are going to have a hard time paying rent and put out a message to that effect. They just assumed people would keep paying rent and they didn't put out some preemptive strike to say, hey, I know you probably have problems, here are some resources. Usually, those property managers had a harder time because then those tenants thought, well, yeah, maybe it's tough and maybe I don't need to pay rent because of the pandemic. Anyway, you solve these three big challenges. You are the prize, you're the prize. When you recognize this, you can shift your mindset in sales, in closing a property management contractor deal, and you're going to look at them, do I want this client? Do I want this property? You're going to be picky. Many of you have heard me talk about the cycle of suck. If you want to know what that is, you can just google cycle of suck, and maybe even at DoorGrow, it should usually come up right at the top. The cycle of suck basically means you're taking on crappy clients. So you have crappy properties, then you have crappy tenants, and then you're going to have a crappy reputation. This sums up the entire industry in aggregate. If property managers recognize that they are the prize and were pickier about the clients they take on, they would have a better business. They would have much more profit in their business. They'd be far more profitable. Their operational costs would be a lot lower. They'd be able to do a better job servicing clients. I had Mike Michalowicz come speak at a conference that we threw and he talked about The Pumpkin Plan. He's an entrepreneur. He's been on the podcast multiple times. If you check out his book, The Pumpkin Plan, he talks about this allegory of prizewinning pumpkins and what it takes. You have to lay the right foundation. You have to have the right seed for this business. But you also have to get rid of all the rotting pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. Otherwise, the whole patch will go bad. That means you also need to not let certain things grow, fester, or come into the pumpkin patch that are going to cause problems. That's these crappy clients. When you recognize you're the prize, another analogy I like to use with clients to really drive this home is the idea of the sexy girl at the bar or the sexy guy at the bar. Whatever you're into or whatever you want to be, either one. If you're the sexy girl at the bar, you have options, you have choices. Guys are hitting on you, people are coming and approaching you, but you get to be picky. You don't get with every guy. You don't get with everybody. Nobody wants that person. We'll reverse this in case anybody thinks that's sexist. I want to be the sexy guy at the bar. Let's say you're the sexy guy at the bar, you're not going to get with every girl. If women know that you're getting with every girl, you're not the sexy guy at the bar. You're the garbage. Don't be the garbage that gets with every client. You want to make sure that you're getting with just the clients that you really want to be with, that you really enjoy working with, that you really feel like they value you. When you do that, it puts out a different message in the marketplace and puts out a different perception about you and your business. Not just that, even if they don't know anybody else, your air, your demeanor, how people perceive you, and how you come across during the sales process is going to be like the sexy guy or the sexy girl at the bar. You're going to be able to maintain a frame of confidence. If you aren't able to maintain a frame of confidence, you then hurt the number one thing that people want to buy from you, which is safety and certainty. This is really what's for sale. Nobody wants to buy property management. That's not sexy. That's not interesting. They don't care about property management. Your clients don't give a [...] about property management. They're not interested in property management. What they really want is safety and certainty. They want peace of mind. For most people on the planet, safety and certainty are one of their highest priorities. For most entrepreneurs, I've talked about the four reasons in a previous episode, but they want fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support. But for most of your clients, most people, and your team members, they're going to want safety and certainty. That's more important. If you recognize that, then that’s what you're selling is safety and certainty. Guess one of the easiest ways to destroy safety and certainty during your sales process. That's to fold on your pricing, to cave in, to not maintain a masculine or dominant frame in which you are the trusted authority (whether or not you're male or female). They're coming to you looking for guidance, they're looking for authority, and they're looking for leadership. You have to maintain that frame that you are the sexy guy or girl at the bar. You are the prize. That means you are going to have a conversation with them to see if they will be a good fit for your business. I want to see if your property and you would be a good fit for our portfolio, Mr. Owner or Mrs. Owner. That's the idea. You have to shift the conversation that you're qualifying. This is one of the biggest things in sales, the biggest mistakes in sales, but also the biggest factors you'll hear sales trainers or salespeople talk about. You have to qualify the prospect, which means you don't want every prospect. You don't want every client. If you start actually qualifying them, sit down and figure out, what do I really want? What is my ideal client? Look at them through that filter. Ask them some questions. Make them qualify. Have some requirements that are essential in order for them to be allowed into your portfolio. Hey, Mr. Owner, let's have a conversation to see if you and your property would be a good fit for us to manage. When you shift that and you turn the tables that way, it changes their perspective too. You're setting the rules of the engagement or the game to be, I'm going to see if you're a good fit. You're welcome to see if you like me as well. But I get to be picky because I recognize that I'm one of the most attractive people at the bar. I'm one of the most attractive businesses that do property management. They're going to perceive you as such because you value yourself as such. The second you fold on your frame, which means you cave on your pricing, you come down, you use language that's not confident, or you make concessions, you shift immediately out of being the authority and the expert in their mind, which is who they want to feel safe and certain into being basically in their mind, somebody they're going to have to micromanage. You become an employee or a child to them in their mind. They're like, oh, I'm going to have to tell this property manager how to do their job. Then they're going to want custom reports, they're going to want custom concessions, and they want you to fold in your pricing and change things. They're going to want you to customize your contract. When you maintain a frame that says, this is what we expect and you can take it or leave it. You can do things our way or you can go find another company. We're good because there's plenty of business for us out there, then you are the sexy guy or girl at the bar. You recognize you are the prize. Help your potential clients make that decision. Make the right decision by having that safety and certainty by being certain in what you are, and that you are the best. If you lack that confidence deep down because deep down you aren't really sure if you're good, you aren't really sure if you're really providing value, then you have to start taking care of that. That's stuff that we get into in our mastermind a bit as well is talking about how to actually be the company and know that you're the company that does a really great job. That you get to be the sexy guy or girl at the bar. That's going to give you a lot more confidence. If you are having trouble or challenges with any of this, you know you're showing up with a lack of confidence. You don't have confidence or certainty in your language. You are not able to maintain a frame that you're the expert, that you're getting a lot of really price-sensitive people or cheapos in the marketplace, you're doing something wrong. My clients are not doing these things wrong after they've been working with me for a while. If you're struggling with these things, you may be interested in joining some of the most badass entrepreneurs in property management on the planet, which are in our mastermind. We have about 70 businesses in this mastermind. It's relatively new. We have 70 businesses in this mastermind, which is awesome. It's amazing to hear their wins and the results each week. In fact, the ones that are having the most wins, they're not even able to show up to the calls because they're so busy, which is just awesome. There is no scarcity in the industry right now. There's plenty of business available. There's plenty of opportunities. The best clients are not the ones that are the cheapos, that are at the end of the sales cycle, that are searching on Google trying to price shop you. Those are the worst. We don't want to build portfolios based on the worst and set your pricing in the industry. Throughout the industry, it's usually based on the worst, the cheapos of the industry, the cheapo investors. We want you to capture people earlier in the sales cycle that are better, that you really enjoy working with where you can be a lot pickier. Cool. All right, if you're interested in that, check us out at doorgrow.com, reach out, and let's get you on a call with my team and see if we can help you grow your business. That's all I have to share today. A short little episode to share with you that you are the prize. Take some action and pay attention in your interactions throughout today and throughout the week recognizing that you are the prize. Establish yourself as the prize and maintain the frame that you are the prize and you will find that people will treat you very differently. Just like that dating analogy, if we apply this to a real-life situation, it starts to become really obvious. Nobody wants to go get with the person that gets with everybody. Don't be that person. That's all I'm going to say for today. I am out. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.