Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

Why should you start a company or have a business? Making money should not be an entrepreneur’s primary goal or only reason. Property management growth expert and founder/CEO of DoorGrow, Jason Hull, talks about four reasons for starting a company or having a business. Many entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit and retire early. However, if you follow my four reasons, you won't want to leave because you’ll be giving up something that's really important to you. You’ll Learn... [02:20] Money: Doesn’t always make a successful business owner happy but miserable. [03:09] Four things are probably more important than money for having a business. [03:19] Side Effects: Being a big bottleneck or cutting operational costs. [04:36] Jason’s four reasons for starting a company. [04:47] Reason #1: Fulfillment: It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life. [05:30] Reason #2: Freedom: It’s what you achieve, why you want to be entrepreneurs. [08:04] Reason #3: Contribution: Businesses should solve real marketplace problems. [10:31] Reason #4: Support: It's a vehicle to create contributions and change the world. [10:55] Business Model: Resources, money, staff create contributions, make difference. [12:17] Why not start a business? For most people, it’s safety and certainty. Tweetables “There's something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money.” “If you have these four things and you're in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love.” “The reality is there's nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There's nothing. You can offload any pieces of the business that you don't enjoy.” “Entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute. We want to feel like we're adding value.” 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, 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 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. I'm going to do something a little bit different. Usually, I interview people, first of all, because that makes me feel a bit more secure. It's just a comfort thing. It feels a little bit weird to just sit here and talk all by myself, but my team has been pushing me to do this for years. You need to create your own episodes just you talking, sharing some of your ideas. That's really what people want to hear, and so here it goes. This episode may be one of the most important pieces of content or information that I've put out into the marketplace. We're going to be talking today about what I call the four reasons. These are Jason Hull's four reasons for starting a company or for having a business. This is something that is just formulated in my mind over the last decade of running a company and coaching business owners, just realizing and seeing that there's something more that entrepreneurs need to be focused on than just making money. There's something more that's important because I've had so many. I've talked to thousands of property managers, I have hundreds of clients, I've spoken to a lot of business owners, I've been in a lot of different masterminds and programs. One of the things that I've realized is that there's something a bit deeper that a business owner needs in order to have a successful business than just making money. At some point, money is no longer really an issue, but they could still be miserable. One of the things that I've noticed is that instead of money being the primary goal, there are four things that are probably more important than money. These are the four reasons for having a business. What I've noticed is if you have these four things and you're in alignment with these four things, you then have a business that you love. If you're out of alignment with these four things, then you have a job that makes you somewhat miserable or maybe very miserable. You then are basically the biggest bottleneck in your business, you are the most critical employee in your business, you will be more and more frustrated, and you'll want to escape. A lot of entrepreneurs mistakenly think the goal is to exit, the goal is retirement. Here's the thing, if you have these four reasons, you don't really want to retire because then you give up something that's really important to you. The other side effect of having these four reasons is that your operational costs when it comes to staffing is usually cut into a fraction. Usually cut maybe down to a third of what most property management companies or most businesses spend on staffing costs, which means you'll be able to get about three times the output from team members because you'll be in alignment with these four reasons. That means that they can be in alignment with these four reasons. Let's get into the four reasons for starting a company. Reason number one, the primary reason, the most important reason to start a business has to be fulfillment. Fulfillment is the primary goal or reason for a business to exist. It should be a vehicle to give you fulfillment in life. You're going to be giving up the majority of your life on this thing. Probably the largest portion of your day goes to your business or towards your work. Probably the largest portion of your week goes towards your business or towards work. You should be getting something in return, besides just trading your life and giving your life away in exchange for dollars. You should be getting life, you should be enjoying your life, and you should be getting fulfillment. That's primary goal number one. Primary goal number two, the second reason for having a business needs to be freedom. This is why we become entrepreneurs. We want to achieve and get more freedom. You can make more and more money as your business grows. Most businesses do, but most business owners have less freedom and less fulfillment in their day-to-day. They become more and more a slave to their own business, and the business is then their master. As entrepreneurs, we want more freedom. That's usually why we want more money. We think, man, if I had more money, I would have more options in life and that should be true. If you have more money, it should give you more options in life, and you should then have more freedom. Most business owners usually within the first year of their business, a very short period of time, they have very little freedom and very little fulfillment. The thing is with fulfillment, reason number one, if you're doing everything in the business wearing every hat in the business, you can't really be in a state of fulfillment. You also can't really feel like you're free because you're doing things that you really don't enjoy doing. I find a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners mistakenly think that there are certain things they have to do because they're business owners. What's really odd is this is different for each person, but it's some sort of conditioning. Maybe it's things they learned growing up, learned their jobs, or they've just decided they can never hand off certain pieces. A lot of business owners hold on to things that they don't have to do. For example, if you hate accounting, but you feel like I have to do all the accounting in my business. Maybe you hate sales but you're like, I have to do all the sales in my business, or I hate talking to people and connecting with people, but you are talking and connecting with people constantly. Really, the reality is there's nothing in your business in the long run that you have to do. There's nothing. You can offload any pieces of the business that you don't enjoy. The problem is a lot of times, entrepreneurs will offload the things they do enjoy, which give them fulfillment and a sense of freedom. Then they hold on to the things that take that away, that are really minus signs in their day instead of plus signs energetically. The third reason for having a business is contribution. The goal of a business should be that it solves a real problem in the marketplace. That's a contribution. If a business doesn't solve a real problem in the marketplace, then it's basically bullshit. It's snake oil, it's stealing people's money. I find entrepreneurs—we really want to make a difference in the world. We want to contribute, we want to feel like we're adding value. One of the reasons I'm inspired to work with property management entrepreneurs is you have a real impact. Most property management businesses suck. I'm sure you're like, yeah, that's true. If you look at your market, you know it. You know that this is true. Most property management businesses suck. It's not because these business owners woke up in the morning and said, man, I want to have a shitty company today. I want to start a business and have it suck. We'll get back to why so many suck at least one part. Good property management business owners, their business solves three of the biggest challenges in real estate. What are three of the most complained about things in real estate probably? Probably number one, landlords. You just hear lots of people complaining about landlords. They get a bad rep. Number two, a lot of people complain about tenants. All these renters, they're the worst and you hear people complain about them. You also hear people complain about rental properties. Good property managers are the superheroes of the entire real estate investing industry and they make all three of those things better. Nobody else does that. DoorGrow hacker, property management entrepreneur, you deserve to get paid well if you're one of the good ones. That's a real contribution. That's why businesses exist to solve a real problem in the marketplace, and you deserve to be compensated well for that. That's reason number three. Entrepreneurs, we want to contribute and make a difference. We feel like we're doing something good in the world, and that feels like fulfillment to us to be contributing and benefiting other people. The business is a vehicle for fulfillment, it's a vehicle for freedom, and it's a vehicle for contribution for the entrepreneur. The fourth reason is so important that if you don't have it, you can't really have the first three, at least not fully. The fourth reason for having a business is support. Having a business, it's a vehicle to create contributions and change the world. There's probably no better vehicle that could exist. Charities aren't even as effective or as efficient. Entrepreneurs have figured out a model, which is a business, which allows them the resources, money, the staff in which they can create contributions and make a difference. In order to do this and have more freedom and have more fulfillment, you can't be wearing every hat as I talked about earlier. You need support. Having support in the business means that you have an awesome team. It means that you are able to offload all the things and the hats that you don't want to wear. You find people that enjoy doing those things, that will be better at it than you, that you can trust, that share your values. When you're supported, then you're going to feel like Iron Man in your super suit. You're a normal person, but you have this magical increased super capability because you have a team, which gives you more time, gives you more ability. You need support. Here's the cool thing. If you have these four reasons—you have fulfillment, you have freedom, you have a contribution, you have support—then that means that you can have team members that also have those four reasons. Looking at these four things, what's interesting to note is that most people on the planet do not care about these four things more than they care about a higher priority. A higher priority than these four things for most people is safety and certainty. This is important to recognize, especially as a property manager. Safety and certainty are the highest priority for most people on the planet. They want to feel safe and certain. This is why they don't go start businesses. This is why they're willing to give up and not have fulfillment, freedom, a sense of contribution, or even a lack of support in their day job. This is why the standard American employee often just complains about their boss, lives for the weekend, and wants to go out and drink. They're just trying to escape their life. If you are in alignment with these four reasons then you can build the right team around you. When I see those, a lot of entrepreneurs are not in alignment with these four things. As they expand and break past the first sand trap of maybe about 50, 60 doors, and then they get into the next sand trap of maybe 200–400 doors, where they have a team, usually they have the wrong team. Why? Because they are not in alignment with these four reasons. They're doing the wrong things. They're showing up as the wrong person that's less happy, has less fulfillment, less freedom, less contribution. They are not going to feel supported because they're doing the wrong things. They're going to build a team of people around them that supplement their miserableness, and so these people around them are also not going to have a sense of freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support. The operational cost on those types of team members is usually going to be three times higher. What I mean is if you have a team member that has a sense of fulfillment in the business, they feel fulfilled in their day-to-day, they feel like they have autonomy and freedom, they feel like they're making a difference in benefiting people, they feel supported by you, and they feel like they get to support you as the entrepreneur, they are going to give you three times the output I find. A-player team members, really great team members, will give you three times the output of a typical employee, which means that's going to significantly decrease your operational costs. This is the most expensive thing in business is staffing. That resource is the most expensive. If you want to be a profitable company, you want to be one of the good property management businesses, and not be one of the sucky ones, a lot of times the reason they're sucky is because their operational costs are too high. They don't have a really good team because they aren't really showing up as a really great boss. They are miserable and their team is not very happy. Their customer service levels drop because they can't really support people as well because their operational costs are too expensive so they're not able to get as much done. One of the most common questions I get is, how many staff members should I have per the number of doors? Is there a ratio that's right? There are so many variables that come into this that it's an impossible thing to answer. You need a lot less staff per door if you are in alignment with these four reasons and your team members are in alignment with these four reasons. Hopefully, this concept of the four reasons is helpful. This is the foundation of my philosophy as a property management business coach. With my clients, this is my primary goal. I reiterate this on our coaching calls that we have each week. I reiterate this in my one-on-one with clients. My goal is to get you more and more in alignment with these four reasons. I have processes and ways of helping people do that, that maybe we'll get into on a future call. Basically, we want to see what are the plus signs in your day-to-day, what are the minus signs? How can we become really conscious of that? I usually use time studies to do that. I have a specific process for taking clients through to identify that, how to figure out how to feel safe to offload. In order to do that, you're going to have to create the right culture so that you have people that share the values that you can trust with people, trust with your clientele, and not just people that know how to do the job. Cultural fit is more important. We can get into that more, maybe in another conversation. Anyway, if you want to get in alignment with these four reasons, you feel like you're out of alignment with them right now, reach out to me and reach out to my team at doorgrow.com. Check us out, join our Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com. You can go to doorgrowclub.com. Apply and join our Facebook group if you are a property management entrepreneur. Let's see if we can get you more in alignment with those four reasons. Life's too short. You should be enjoying your day-to-day life. I want you to have a job and a business that you don't want to escape and retire from. Because if you did, you would be giving up one of your main vehicles for fulfillment, freedom, contribution, and support in life. You want to keep that. You then can choose how much you want to do in that business. I want you to always be able to hold on to the things that give you freedom, fulfillment, contribution, and support. Anyway, with that, I'm out. Until next time. To our mutual growth everybody. I'm Jason Hull, and I hope that you found this beneficial. If so, leave comments, give us a review, and some feedback. I would appreciate it. Thanks. You've just listened to the DoorGrowShow. 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/subsribe. Until next time. Take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Looking for a system that will help you automate the entire residential leasing process? Today’s guest is Abi Wasserman from ShowMojo, a complete leasing automation platform that handles scheduling coordination and showings. Abi explains ShowMojo as automating everything that happens in the pre-leasing experience, from the moment a property is available and hits the market to the moment a prospective renter is moving forward with an application. You’ll Learn... [02:24] ShowMojo: What it is, what it does, and how it's different from other options. [04:14] Touch Points: Automated communication confirms, follows up leasing process.  [05:22] Property managers fit business needs and leasing processes into one platform.  [05:50] Other Options: Some companies do showings or open houses differently. [06:29] Independent Experience: Know calendar availability for each team member.  [07:58] COVID Pandemic Hold: Starting to get back to first normal, busy leasing season.  [08:48] Walk the Talk: What to do when renting property to somebody site unseen.  [10:21] With so many property management tools, why choose ShowMojo? [13:30] FAQ: Focus on syndication, customers, security, and platform comparisons. [17:00] Determining Factor: ShowMojo’s success is because of relationships.  [18:40] Pros and cons of occupant, self, and accompanied showings. [23:54] Common Problems: Time wasting calls? Use the automated ShowMojo phone. Tweetables “Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time, and take that into account in between showings.” “That's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property.” “The first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience.” “That prospective renter experience is important for them, but it's also important for you.” Resources ShowMojo Abi Wasserman’s Email Abi Wasserman on LinkedIn Rently Tenant Turner TurboTenant Apartments.com Zillow Rentals.com Zumper DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive 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'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. My guest today is Abi Wasserman. Welcome, Abi. Abi: Hey Jason. How are you? Jason: I'm fantastic. I'm doing really well. How are you? Abi: I am good. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Jason: I've been wanting to get ShowMojo on the show forever. They've been on my hit list for a long time and I finally just gave up. Then suddenly, you showed up on my calendar, which is awesome. I’m glad you came. Abi: I have a magic touch. It's like we have mojo or something, I don't know. It might be in our name. Jason: Yeah, maybe. Some ShowMojo. Abi, maybe give us a little bit of background on ShowMojo, if you could. Then maybe we can chat about what it is, what it does, and how it's different from the other options on the market. Abi: ShowMojo is the leasing automation platform. We have been around for over 10 years. My understanding of how DoorGrow got started originated out of this need for the property management industry, started from an entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial mindset. Our founder and his wife who owned property management units saw this need for automation to exist in their life. To stop them from taking away from their day-to-day life and what time was getting spent with the kids or at family dinners, those tasks, those phone calls, those emails, that coordination that typically comes with the leasing process, that pre-leasing process. What was bothering them and not conducive to that family time, it ended up turning into ShowMojo and this scheduling coordination. Eventually, self show as well but the entire leasing automation platform that is ShowMojo. Jason: Got it. I think ShowMojo really pioneered on the market the scheduling sort of aspect. Then it looks like Rently copied that. They had the lock boxes and now ShowMojo’s got the lock boxes, too. Then you've got Tenant Turner and they seem to have a similar product. Why don't you explain for people that have no idea what ShowMojo is? They aren't aware of these. What it is and then maybe we can get into the differences. Abi: I like to explain ShowMojo as thinking about automating everything that happens in that pre-leasing experience, from the moment that a property is available and hits the market, to the moment that that prospective renter is moving forward with an application. What our platform and what ShowMojo does is it empowers that prospective renter to really self-drive their way through a prospect-driven leasing process. It allows them to really empower that process from start to finish, giving them that immediate touch, that immediate response that they crave when they're trying to schedule a showing. Giving them that automated communication throughout the process. Making sure that they have confirmed the showings or giving them the ability to automatically reschedule a showing. Giving them automated communication on the back end of that. Following-up after a showing. Following-up with the application process after the showing. Really making sure that there are just all of those touch points, and giving property managers that customizable platform in it where they can fit it their business needs, their processes, how they do leasing and not making a property management company have to fix their processes to a platform mix, if that makes sense. Jason: Yes. Could you give us some examples of how companies might do it a bit differently maybe? Abi: Some property management companies, for instance, will do great showings especially as we move more out of this pandemic, there are property management companies that will do great showings or open houses. Maybe they'll do clustered individual showings where you only want to go out to a property maybe once a day and you want to cluster your showings together where you've got five back-to-back showings. Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time and take that into account in between showings. Know what calendar availability is there for each one of your team members, crosscheck maybe a third-party calendar like Google or Outlook, be able to send those invites back and forth between those calendars easily, and make sure that each one of your team members can also have that independent experience. If you and I were working together and you were showing a few of the properties and I was showing a few of the properties, we have independent schedules. Maybe we even both show one property and our times overlap, but the platform can still take that into account. Jason: I love the idea of group showings because it really would collapse time for the property manager. It could put so much work on their plate, but the tenants are often willing to move around your schedule and to do things that you want them to do because they're really trying to get into a place. If you can get 10 or 20 people to show up to a particular unit, even if you're just having them—if they're pandemic-scared—go through one at a time and they're waiting outside, that allows you to increase the perception of demand, it allows you to just get a bunch of applicants right away, and then you can go through screen and figure out who we should put into this place. I know property managers that they do one open house, one showing. They get plenty of applicants and then they get the thing rented out. Abi: And that is the case. I think one of the things that I've seen most recently as we've come out of this pandemic hold, which I think we've been in for a good 16 months of this, I don't know what's going to happen with my vacancy because of the pandemic. Now, we're coming out of that holding pattern where moratoriums are lifting and things are starting to get back to our first normal leasing season, busy leasing season. Now, what property managers are seen all over the country (I think) is that they're putting a property on the market and they are getting immediate applications, site unseen, where they will put a property on the market and they’ll get 10 applications for it. I also have those conversations with property managers who want somebody to walk that property. You don't often want to rent to somebody that hasn't looked at that property because that's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property. I didn't know that this was here. I didn't know you expected me to change my filter. I don't know where to change my filter. I never saw that. There's so many things that come up. Even with the market being the way that it is where you've got 10 applications coming through, then how do you set up the showings so that at least you're getting your top five applicants through that property and down the line through your application process? Jason: Right. It's Russian roulette, you're playing a dangerous game if you don't have people view the property. How does the ShowMojo compare, because I know there's a lot of tools out there. I see this question pop up in the DoorGrowClub, our Facebook group constantly. People are asking it on our mastermind all the time. Which tool are you using and why? Everybody has different opinions. How can you help people make the decision to choose ShowMojo over something like TurboTenant, Tenant Turner, Rently, all these different tools that exist out there? Abi: You know me and you know I've been around a really long time. I've got friends that work at other companies. Whenever I'm asked these questions, whenever I’ve been asked at a different company and against a competitive company there, my goal is never to sling mud. My goal is always to just talk about the differences or where I feel we have an advantage or how we do it and I like the way you do it. I will say that the first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience. With ShowMojo, when a prospective renter goes to schedule a showing, the experience for them whether it's on a desktop, whether it's on their mobile phone, it is all happening on one screen. They don't have to sign up for an account with ShowMojo. They don't have to pay a fee. Even if they're validating their identity with a credit or debit card, we're not charging them a fee for an account with us. They don't have to remember a username or password. I don't say this because I think that it's a bad user experience to do that. There are a lot of sites that I will sign up for recurring business. But when I'm renting, I don't really want to do that until I’m filling out an application and logging into a portal. I don't want to give anybody but that property manager my contact, like login details. I'll give you my contact details, but I don't want to do that. That's my preference as a renter because I have been one for too long because I can't do the math right now. As I get closer to my 35th birthday, I can't do math on the spot. I know you and I both have one coming up, if I remember that correctly about us both, we have one in I think the same week. But that prospective renter experience is important. Making it as easy for them to actually schedule that showing is critical. You also, for the property manager, if I'm a property manager, I want to own that rental lead. I don't want them signing up for an account with the service that I'm working with and then owning that data. I want to own that rental lead. I want them to be my rental lead. I don't want them seeing properties for somebody else's company. I want them being cross marketed properties that I have on the market. If something changes within my portfolio, I want them to be notified of it. I don't want them being dripped with other properties from other property management companies. I worked very hard to get those people over to my website or to get them to my listing. I want to own that data. That prospective renter experience is important for them but it's also important for you. Jason: I'm curious about what are some of the questions that prospective users of ShowMojo tend to have when they're coming to you during the sales conversation? Abi: A lot of the questions will circle around the syndication network that we have, whether if they are new customers, will it compare to what I'm doing with my software provider? If they are switching over from a different platform, does it compare or does it exceed what I already have? Oftentimes, it exceeds what they already have or it is an even match for. Jason: Let’s explain syndication for those that don't know what it means. Abi: When we have listings through ShowMojo, what we do is we will push them out to internet listing sites. Things like apartments.com, Zillow if a customer is paying for it, rentals.com same thing as Zillow, realtor.com, Zumper, those kinds of ILS or the listing sites to get additional visibility and rental leads back in for our customers. With ShowMojo, we automatically respond to those leads pushing them over to get them to schedule a showing, but it's typically the same as or greater visibility than wherever they may have been coming from before. Jason: Got it. One of the strengths of ShowMojo is really good syndication. Abi: Yes and the email response and the communication afterwards. Jason: What are some of the other questions that people have when they're curious and vetting ShowMojo as a provider for them? Abi: I would say it probably will come in where the lock boxes and self-show is concerned and how do we handle security, how do we handle preparing for fraud because it doesn't happen frequently. It's going to happen in the property management industry. It's a factor of doing self-show and doing lock box showings. It's more of those questions of how do we prepare for it, so outside of the normal tech things that our team does by searching and preparing and preventing known scammers from being able to schedule, we don't advertise any of our listings as self-show or lock box showings. We don't distribute codes until the showing has been confirmed with that prospect or we have the additional step where they have to actually confirm their location is at the property. They have to use location enablement on their cell phones. We also follow up after every showing to make sure that that prospective renter has locked up and left the keys at the property. If they don't then we notify our customer of that. We have multiple different checkpoints in place for our customers on that side. Jason: Got it. Now, is that different from other providers when it comes to lock boxes? Abi: There are some providers that are very forthright about how much self-show they do, even advertising through video the entire self-show process on their customers’ websites. I'm not sure where that checkpoints are in terms of checking back up with a prospective renter, so I'm not sure where the follow up process is necessarily with other companies. Jason: What do you think is the determining factor for people to go with ShowMojo then? How are you closing these deals, Abi? Abi: I would say number one, because of relationships, like I always do. At the end of the day, it is a more customizable platform to fit property managers’ needs. It is cost effective, and we have a lot more bells and whistles to really be able to, so it ties back in with that customization but we have more bells and whistles to really fit it to the existing process. Customizing it from that first moment that they interact with the listing to the moment before moving forward with an application. Without going through a full demo, it's everything from cost to benefit and that value and between. Jason: Cool. ShowMojo sounds like a really awesome tool for property managers. Some are a little bit nervous about the lock boxes and self-showings, so what's your perception on who decides to do that and who decides not to? Because it seems like there's two solid camps there. I could never do that. It's too risky, and I love it and it's amazing. It seems very polarizing, I notice, whether or not to do lock boxes. Abi: I would say we are definitely fans of in-person showings because there are questions that you're not going to be able to… Number one, the first thing is that you're not going to be able to show occupied units. You're never going to be able to show occupied units on a lock box showing. The obvious benefit to doing a company showing says that you can stay pre-leased, and show occupied units, get them leased before they even go vacant. You can also answer questions that you're not going to be able to answer during a self-show. You can get a feel for those prospective renters. There are a lot of benefits to an accompanied showing. Jason: I'm curious about the pre-lease situation, how to ShowMojo handle the existing residents of the property and make sure that's communicated, because that's usually seems to be one of the most difficult sticking points with trying to do showing. Sometimes they're really resistant to having people come into their place. The communication back and forth. Then you're trying to negotiate times with them and with prospective renters. That communication gets a little cumbersome. Does ShowMojo try to facilitate that? Abi: A couple of things. One and I've had this conversation recently, so that's why I say a couple of things. I would have ordinarily just started with showing acceptance, which is where you can put in the residence information and they have to accept the show times or reject them. But the reason I say a couple is because I've had this conversation twice in the last couple of weeks. The response from the property manager was the same. That won't work. They will reject it every time. I said okay. Then in my brain, the way that I creatively think about this, is it goes back to the way that calendars are set up and ShowMojo. There is a way to set up a specific time window for each property. That is the only time that that property can be shown. I said, okay, well then, great. If they will reject every time, then you don't necessarily need to do showing acceptance with them. What you need to do is you need to say I will be showing your property, because you've given notice. Tell me what day of the week and what time frame will work for you for the next 60 days or 30 days or whatever notice they’ve had to give. Block it out for that recurring week notice. Maybe it's Friday from 2:00–5:00 are their window that you are allowed to show their unit. Then that way that is the only time that the showings will get booked for that property. Either way there is an option in ShowMojo. Chances are there's a way to accommodate it. There's the showing acceptance where you can put in the residence information or the owners, if its owner occupied. You can put in the owner acceptance too. You can put in there showing acceptance or you can block out the certain time windows for the property, so either way. Jason: Sometimes it's easier to tell people that it’s going to happen, instead of asking for permission. Abi: Exactly. Jason: I like that. But the showing acceptance thing, that's pretty cool. This software has been around for a while. It really was I believe the first on the market that really did the scheduled showings model. It sounds like they've been optimizing and innovating since then and adding features. I think that is the niche that it's quite customizable which I think is appealing to property managers. It sounds like you have really good syndication. You also have the lock boxes thing. Anything else anybody should know about ShowMojo? Abi: If you've got questions, if you're thinking that it could do something, I wonder if it does this, odds are it does. We've worked with real estate listings. There's ways to do maintenance checkups. We use ShowMojo for our own demo scheduling platform. When somebody comes on our website to schedule a demo, we use ShowMojo for that. The way that it can be customized to fit whatever needs you have, it is endless. We just rolled out occupant-led showings. If you're actually having a tenant do a showing for you, a renter, with some of the people that may have been under more lock down restrictions. I know that sometimes you move towards the things that you have to do. I can sit here and rant and rave about ShowMojo for a while. Jason: That occupant-led showing is an interesting idea. I talked to the property manager and he had (I think) 1000 tours or more at a conference. He said that his company never did showings. He said, we just pay the occupants to show the property and we give them some sort of kickback if it gets rented. They’re incentivized to sell the place. Abi: That's a great idea. Jason: The biggest complaint or challenge that you hear in leasing is just the time wasting phone calls. This is just such a time suck for property managers. You have people calling up and saying what's the square footage on this listing that I'm looking at right now, that has the square footage on it. Stuff like that. Does ShowMojo facilitate phone calls or work well with the solution that does? Abi: We do. We have our ShowMojo phone which is automated, that's included with all of the way that we do things which allows prospective renters to always get schedule a showing link or view all of the available listings and a gallery. It also will determine if somebody's running late for a showing and cancel it if they're running too late and follow up to reschedule. But we also have live answers available to our customers that are additional, but very affordable, very cost-effective. They can turn it on or off at any time but it's with our call team and they will answer basic questions just like you mentioned if it’s something that they missed in the listing detail, they can schedule showings. If somebody calls to follow up on an application, they can answer that question. If it’s a potential owner, they can answer those questions. They can take messages and forward them over to the team. It’s something that they can turn on outside of office hours if they want to have their team handle it during office hours and have somebody else answer outside of office hours. We do have the ability to help with that. Jason: Where's the call center team based out of? Abi: We have virtual call centers, but they're both US and out of the US space. Odds are, if you call during daylight/evening hours, you're going to get somebody in the US and then outside of that, 2:00 AM, you may not get somebody in California. Jason: It’s a 24-hour thing. Abi: Yeah. Jason: All right, any questions I missed? Abi: I don't think so. I don't like to control the flow. I feel like we had a good chat. I feel like it was good. Jason: Cool. How can people find out more about ShowMojo? Abi: You can always come to showmojo.com and connect with us there. If you want to send me an email, you can also always reach me at abbey.wasserman@showmojo.com. You can reach us on our website. Find us on LinkedIn and all that fun stuff. Jason: Cool. Well Abi, I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrowShow. We finally got ShowMojo in the books. Abi: Thanks for having us. Jason: Now I can point people to a podcast episode when they ask me about ShowMojo. Abi; There we go. Jason: All right. I appreciate you being on and I'll let you go. Abi: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Jason: All right. Property managers, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to add doors, you're wanting to grow your business, reach out to DoorGrow. We've got this new mastermind that we started towards the end of last year, which has been really awesome. That's probably why you're wondering why I haven’t been doing very many podcast episodes. I've been really enjoying coaching clients and helping them grow. It's what I'm passionate about. We've got about 54 businesses in our mastermind as of today. Our goal was to hit 50 by the end of June, so we hit our target and we've got some really awesome clients, really awesome businesses in the program. One of our clients, a really hard worker, put in 3–5 hours a day using one of the strategies that I gave them. It cost them zero dollars, it’s just time, and he's added 125 doors in six months. He was stuck at about 80 units before coming to us. He tried SEO and some other things. We've got clients that are showing up. One of our clients in the last weekly checking call said that they're adding 100 doors from one owner. The week before that, 21 doors. We’ve got another client that's been with us in the mastermind for coming up on maybe about a year, but at a previous call checked in adding a 25-unit complex, a 35-unit complex and these are by doing zero dollars in advertising. One thing I want to point out is if you want to grow your business fast, right now, the largest companies in property management are losing more doors than they're getting on. They're spending thousands of dollars a month on internet marketing. If you want to shift away from internet marketing, which isn't even working for the biggest companies, and getting cold leads that are time-wasters, tire-kickers, and have a low close rate, let me share with you and teach you how to grow your business rapidly by going after the blue ocean using that strategy. The 70% that are self-managing, creating warmer lead opportunities. Warm leads have a 90% close rate or higher typically for most property managers. I'm going to teach you how to facilitate that, how to make that work really well in your favor. You have other people feeding you more business, you're getting more from online reviews, and you're able to target groups, things that are high leverage that will feed you warm leads. Check us out at DoorGrow, schedule a call with us, and chat with us about the new DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Our guarantee in the mastermind is that within the first 30 days, the very latest by the end of the first 60, we will have double offset the monthly cost of the masterminds. You're making twice as much money in residual income. Otherwise, I'll continue to coach you for free. We've not yet had to have anybody use that guarantee. That's if you're willing to keep our three commitments, which means one hour strategic time in the morning, being a business owner instead of saying I’ll work on my business tonight or on the weekend like a lot of business owners tend to do which doesn't generally happen. That's the garbage scraps of your time. Second commitment that's required is two hours a day, a tactical time to work on growing the business and implementing the strategies that I give you. That's less time than it would take to deal with cold leads. You're going to get a much bigger return and result. Then the third commitment is to show up to one of our two weekly group coaching calls that we have on Zoom. Those are on Wednesdays at 11:00 Central Time, noon Eastern. 9:00 Pacific, 10:00 Mountain. Those are on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays, we focus on adding doors, growth, sales, referrals, reputation, prospecting methods. We talk about websites, et cetera. On Fridays, we get into operations DoorGrow OS, which is better than EOS retraction. We've had several come from that sort of camp. It's the ultimate operating system for property management business. We get into DoorGrow ATS—applicant tracking system and hiring system. My goal is to build rapidly companies that can handle rapid growth, quickly hiring, off-loading in making sure that the business gets more and more in alignment for you, giving you the business owner more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support so that it becomes more fun the bigger your business get. I'm really good at helping business ownership towards that. If you're frustrated, stuck in the operation side or in the growth side, talk to my team and let's get you maybe on board with the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. I appreciate everybody that's tuned into this or that's been paying attention to us on iTunes or on YouTube. Be sure to like, subscribe, give us positive reviews. We love all that kind of stuff if you got value from this. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.

Are short-term rental businesses coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and being resurrected? Do owners love the return on investment (ROI) and income, but tired of the turnover, logistics, and moving parts? If you’re doing it all on your own, hand it over. Today’s guest is Andrew LeBaron with BuyMoreTime, a flat-rate property management solution for short-term rentals. Andrew began his real estate journey by being the marketing director and a guest on Joe Fairless’s Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show. Then, Andrew started buying, selling, wholesaling, fixing, and flipping properties and got licensed to go even further. You’ll Learn... [02:13] How Andrew went from greeting big-name podcast guests to becoming one. [05:15] Hoteling 101: Managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. [05:54] Team Effort: If you don’t have a team, you will not thrive (or sleep). [09:23] COVID: Great for short-term rentals, not for property managers or owners. [12:40] Questions: How much could my property rent for? What needs to be inside it? [16:23] Mistakes: Give gifts and leave notes for guests to make a big difference.  Tweetables “Shorter rental management is big bucks.” Hoteling 101: Owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. “There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then, there’s guest responses. It's literally 24/7.” “When you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling an experience.” Resources The Best Short-Term Rental Management Andrew LeBaron on Facebook Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show with Joe Fairless BiggerPockets Grant Cardone Gary Keller Barbara Corcoran Airbnb VRBO The Giftology Stay Here on Netflix JF1896: How To Grow Your Property Management Company with Jason Hull DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive 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'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. Today's guest, I'm hanging out here with Andrew LeBaron. Andrew, welcome to the show. Andrew: Thank you. Jason: Andrew, you're with an organization company called BuyMoreTime. Andrew: That’s it. We are a short-term rental property management solution. Jason: Cool. Andrew, we don't have a lot of vendors and people on the show typically related to the short-term rental industry. This will be interesting because I have been getting a lot more calls related to that lately. Maybe a lot of people are starting to resurrect these short-term rental businesses coming out of the pandemic, where there's a black swan event that squashed the industry temporarily. Let's first get into a little bit of background about you and how you got into this industry. Andrew: Yeah, sure. It's funny. We're on a podcast right now. I actually started a long time ago as a marketing director for a podcast. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Show with Joe Fairless. He buys multi-family apartments. That's his main gig. Jason: I think I was on that show. I've been on a lot of podcasts back in the day. Andrew: I wouldn’t be surprised. Heck, maybe, I reached out to you some years ago, who knows? It's the world's longest daily real estate podcast. I mean his work ethic is insane. Years ago, I got into real estate. I jumped into (of course) Bigger Pockets. I jumped into Joe Fairless’s podcast. On one of the podcast episodes he said, I am looking for a marketing director. Someone that can help connect me with more guests. If that's you, send me an email. I'm like, I want to try that. I sent him an email. I'm like, I don't care if he pays me. If he pays me, great. If he doesn't, so what? I was his marketing director and I got to meet some of the coolest people—Grant Cardone, Gary Keller, some really big names. I didn't get to speak to Barbara Corcoran, but I got to send an email. There were some pretty big names on that podcast and I was actually able to be a guest. I was starting my real estate journey and from there I started buying and selling properties, wholesaling, buying, fixing, and flipping. I started buying small apartments, 6 units, 10 units and so on and so forth. Then I got licensed because I wanted to take it a little bit further. I thought, okay, if I'm not going to buy these, I'm going to either manage them, and so on and so forth. Then I realized about 3½–4 years ago from an accident, actually, that shorter rental management is big bucks. In fact, we bought a house that we couldn’t sell. We tried everything we could to move, the property just wouldn't move for some reason; it was just a weird property. I told my partner, whatever. Let's furnish it. We went to goodwill. We got these truckloads of just random furniture and we loaded up into this house—we’re such rookies—and we put it up or lease or we set it up for Airbnb. I kid you not, this lady wanted to rent it for a week for $250 a night. I was like, it’s got to be a joke. There's no way. She's like, no, I’d love to stay here, me and my family. From there, I thought, the short-term rental space is where it's at. We started buying more, furnishing more. Then all of our friends said, can you help us manage ours? We're like, okay, we can help you. It's hoteling 101, but that's how we became BuyMoreTime. We noticed that owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. Jason: Right. I don't think there's any industry that takes more time and more customer interaction than the hospitality industry. I think that's rated at the top. Property management is second to that, they say, so it's right there. Andrew: It's pretty insane. There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then there’s guest responses. It's literally 24/7. There is no sleep. If you don’t have a team, you will not thrive. Jason: Right. Tell us a little bit about BuyMoreTime. What is it exactly that you do? Andrew: BuyMoreTime is a flat rate management service for short-term rentals. We are a service-first company. If you have a property on a short-term rental platform, say, Airbnb, VRBO, if you have a motel, small apartment building, you want to do a couple of apartments and you want to maximize your ROI by leveraging the short-term rental platforms and its traffic, then you can hire us. We will manage that for you. We’ll set it up. Most of the time we're looking for clients that already had it built, but we can set it up. We will set your teams—you're cleaning team, your maintenance team. We’ll handle messaging 24/7. We will take over your hotel. That's what we do. Jason: Okay, the hotel. Awesome. Cool and I checked my inbox. I was on the Joe Fairless podcast back in May of 2019. It's been some years, but I was there at one point. Andrew: That’s so cool. Jason: But I didn't even know it was that big of a deal. I guess that was pretty cool for me in hindsight. Andrew: That is really cool. Jason: Awesome. What would you say to people that might be tuning into this on the short-term rental side that are doing this themselves currently? Why would they want to get in partnership with you? Andrew: Well, just like our name prescribes, if you are tired of wasting or you're trading your time for money and you love the ROI, you love the income, 2–3 times than average rents across the nation is what you can expect from a short-term rental. If you're getting $700 rent in the south, you could get double that. You can get triple that. Depending on where you are. There are many variables. But if you're tired of handling that yourself, you can literally hand it over to our company. Our sales team will answer all your questions. We’ll link you up into our software. We will hit the green button and you sit back and simply watch the interaction between your guest and our team and obviously your bank account. There is no touching it. I mean we literally set it up in the beginning so you don't have to manage it all. We have your team. We have your inventory. We would restock your toilet paper, paper towels. Sheets. There's just so much to say. It'll hurt your head if you think about it. Inventory management and supply chain, that's what we do. We handle all that. That's what your listeners can glean from our company. That's what we can do for them. Jason: Now, you had mentioned a little bit of info about how appealing it might be to get into the short-term rental game, 2–3 times the amount of income coming in. But what about those that have been burned by Covid? They said this was too painful. We weren't prepared for this. Money just stopped. Vacation rental market was just decimated. They're just afraid to get back into the game. Andrew: You know what's funny? Covid actually was great. I think that's the only thing I'll say about Covid as far as short-term rentals go. For a property manager or for an apartment owner, for property owners, Covid was not great because you have the moratorium. There's a lot of struggles there. For us, for the short-term rental gamers, it was wonderful. People couldn't leave. No one could go anywhere. We saw a decline in March of 2020. We saw a slight decline in occupancy. Our typical occupancy is hovering around 92%. Occupancy inside the short-term rental game is very different. You got 30 nights out of a month, depending how many nights you booked, that's your occupancy rate. It dipped I think just 70% flat, 70% or 73% flat. After March, we started exploding. It was quite the opposite. People couldn’t go to Europe. People couldn’t go to other countries, so they had staycations. In the beginning, this whole journey there's kind of like this Airbnb belief that when you have a guest that wants to go from one side of the city to stay in your place, that’s a big red flag because it’s probably going to be a party, probably going to be a kid. But at this moment, with Covid, it was like, look, I'm a tired mother. My husband and I would just want to get away. We got a babysitter. Covid shut us down, can we come stay? We haven’t changed our [...], yeah sure. We don't discriminate, but at the same time, we would stop asking all the prying questions. Are you in college or not? College parties are the worst. But we would allow them to. We actually exploded really well during Covid. Jason: Interesting. I would have thought it would have been the opposite. Now, is BuyMoreTime location-specific? Is this all over the US? Is it beyond? Where do you guys do this at? Andrew: We’re in five states right now and two countries. We’re in Canada, in here, and five states. We can do this anywhere. We could pick up anywhere. Obviously, you need to qualify. We have a qualifying call. It's called a discovery call where we discuss what your property is like, its condition, your needs, and so on and so forth. See if we’re a good fit. Not everybody's a good fit, obviously. Not every property is a good fit. Not every area is a good fit. We just want to make sure that it's going to be a win-win situation for everybody. Jason: Are you wanting listeners that are listening to the DoorGrowShow, to this episode, regardless of where they're at to just reach out, or are you looking for specific areas? Andrew: Regardless of where they're at to reach out, absolutely. Jason: Cool. What are some of the biggest questions that potential clients want to know when talking with you? Andrew: Number one question, how much could my property go for? How much could my property rent for if I was to work with BuyMoreTime? My answer is, when you come to BuyMoreTime, you should already be established. We're not a coaching company. We're not a let's boost your traffic. You should already be established, description, photos, 5-star reviews and you say, look, I got this in the bag. I just need to hand over the reins. That's all I want to do. For the costs, less than paying a VA every month, you're going to hire our team and we’re going to run all of your operations. Jason: So this is for those that are just tired of the turnover, tired of the logistics, tired of making sure all the moving parts are happening. You'll handle all of that. Andrew: Correct. Jason: It sounds like you do it quite affordably. Andrew: Yup. $349 a month is our price and it doesn't fluctuate. The good news is we built this to service our property, to scratch our own itch. We're investors first. We have short-term rentals. We buy property. I'm sitting in one right now, up north. I've only been here for a couple months, brought my family into it. This will eventually be a short-term rental up in the pines. We wanted something where I didn't have to pay 20%, 25%, 15% of my profits. There's a lot of other companies out there like us where they have this really cool software and service—services, in my opinion, are subpar—but you pay out 20% of your profits on your highest month. It's like you're being penalized for using their service. To me, I would want some sort of program that I know what I'm paying for every single month. Every single month is the same rate, no matter what. In that way, I can easily predict my income for my highest months. Everybody’s got the highest months. Austin's got a high season. Arizona, all over the place, they have a high season and low season. Florida, they have a high season. For us in AZ for example, it's going to be March and April. From other places, it is that same month or those months. These companies rob you 20% of your total proceeds. I thought that's not cool. Let's give the profits back to the owners and we’ll just take a small fee for managing their property. Jason: All right, so the first the main question everyone wants to know is how much could they get and probably what is the cost. What else are they curious about, usually? Andrew: They usually want what I need in my property? What should be inside it? Especially, if you haven't done this before. Let's say you manage apartments, or you own a building, or whatever it may be, and you're talking to some partners or your client about setting up an Airbnb. That's probably one of the biggest questions is what goes inside of it? The one thing I need to tell people is when you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling experience. I don’t know, Jason, if you've ever stayed in a property on Airbnb before, but I just… Jason: I have. Andrew: You have? Just scrolling, you're looking for beautiful photos. You're looking for awesome amenities. You're looking for 5-star reviews. You're not looking 4-star, you're not looking for 3-stars, you want the best. You're looking for a very awesome experience. I think the biggest mistake that a lot of short-term rental managers go through is they're just trying to just fill it with stuff. That's not the case. If you have the ability to stock the fridge, stock the fridge. If you can leave a note for your guest, leave a note. If you could set up a system to leave nice things for your guests or send an extra message saying, we're so glad you're here, do it because that's what it's about. Jason: Yeah. There’s a really great book called The Giftology, and in this book he talks about how just little gifts and little things actually make a big difference. And that makes a big difference giving something because that just makes it novel. It makes it stand out. It makes it different. I really enjoyed the show on Netflix called Stay Here. I don't know if you've seen that. Andrew: Yes. Jason: They're making these properties ready to be really amazing experiences, and that was a big part of the show is all about this experience. People are coming to Austin and have a certain type of experience. There needs to be a barbecue and some of these things. People are going to different areas in order to have the experience of that area and kind of tying that in. They made it really hyper relevant. Any other questions people tend to ask? Andrew: I think one other question they ask is how do I stand out? How do I be different? Everybody has got a condo on Airbnb. If you go to airbnb.com right now, looking at Austin, look in your zip code, you'll see thousands. How do I stand out? I think the biggest tip I have for those people that want to know how to stand out is, what is something that is going to make your place so memorable that people will be talking about it and they’ll come back? There's a really easy way to do this by asking yourself what do people not offer that I can offer? What do they not have that I have? Some people have this huge TV, surround sound, just crazy entertainment, amazing sofa. That's good, but what is extra? I've seen some people add movie tickets or tickets to some amusement parks. I don't know how cost-effective that is, obviously, but depending on your budget versus how you can stand out, that's going to predict how you stand out. Jason: Interesting, cool. Well, how can people get a hold of you that might be interested? Andrew: This question always comes up in podcasts. I sometimes tell my cell phone number, but there's a link that actually you have, Jason, where you can get a hold of us. I'll just let you add that to the show notes. I'm going to just defer that back to you. Other than that, you could reach out to me on Facebook. Jason: Awesome. Yeah. He gave me an affiliate link, everybody, which is cool. I appreciate that. We'll put that link in the show notes. We’ll link that on the podcast episode, online on our blog as well. It's been great getting familiar with you here a little bit. I really enjoyed the different perspective on Covid about the short-term rental industry. I know that I had lots of clients in the long-term game that were able to convert several into long-term during that time period in areas that they had challenges, but that was interesting. I didn't consider the staycation part, but I think a lot of people got really anxious, cooped up inside, and were looking for just a change of scenery, even if it was nearby. That makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you coming on the show, and until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and tune into the DoorGrowShow on YouTube as well. And if you are interested in growing your property management business, we're having some really great success with our new DoorGrow and scale mastermind. We have one of our clients John [...] join in November, in the middle of the winter months, during the pandemic, in Boston. He added 125 doors in the last six months just using one of my strategies, and it cost him $0. He didn't spend any money on advertising. Anyway, reach out if you're interested. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye everyone. Andrew: See you.

Do you want to become a better investor? Appreciate and understand property managers—the unsung heroes that make better tenants and owners. Good property managers can change the world. Today’s guest is Bobby Sharma from BetterCapital, a portfolio measurement and management tool for real estate investors. Bobby started his real estate career in Riverside, California, and his first foray into real estate was through house hacking.  You’ll Learn... [02:14] House Hacking: Buy a house, but get roommates to pay most of your mortgage. [03:58] Bobby’s Background: Software developer that wanted to be in Silicon Valley. [04:47] 2010 Market Collapse: Bobby bought some homes that needed some work. [05:03] Meetup Group: Bobby started a real estate meetup group in the East Bay Area. [05:40] Becoming a landlord, buying out of state, and working with property managers. [06:18] BetterCapital: Management/measurement portfolio tool for real estate investors. [07:47] Measurement: Tracks deposits, loan balances, ROI, and equity growth. [09:00] Management: Stores documents, adds reminders, and runs math formulas.  [09:53] Real Estate Results: One of the best ways to invest, grow wealth, plan for future.  [10:35] Preferential Partners: Property managers/realtors project property performance.  [15:00] API/bank integration? Scrape data into systems or pool data w/API connection. [19:41] Three Ts: Tracking, training, and transaction.  [24:13] Education: Property managers should explain challenges to investors. [25:48] Property Managers: Unsung heroes that make better tenants and owners. Tweetables “I love my property managers. Without them, I wouldn't be successful. I totally get the importance of property management.” “We want people to see how much wealth they have created, or how much equity they've created because we want to encourage them to purchase real estate assets.” “If you look at it across a long period of time, it turns out that it's one of the best ways to invest, to grow your wealth, and to plan for your future.” “We want to provide education to make them a better investor. They will appreciate the role of the property manager a little bit more.” Resources Bobby Sharma’s Email BetterCapital AppFolio Cozy TenantCloud Rent Manager Buildium Propertyware Schwab Etrade Robinhood Redfin Yardi 1031 Exchange DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing 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 business owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. My guest today is Bobby Sharma. Welcome, Bobby Sharma. Bobby: Thank you, Jason. Jason: Bobby is with a company called BetterCapital. Bobby, you have quite an extensive real estate experience. I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, Alta Loma, California. We were touching bases for the show. You got your start in real estate somewhere in the Inland Empire. Bobby: In the Inland Empire, yeah. Riverside, California. I did what's called house hacking. Back then, there was no such term. I was 24 years old, worked in Corona, California, and lived in Riverside, California. That's how I got my start in the real estate world. Jason: Define house hacking for those that are not house hackers. Bobby: I was single. I ended up buying a house—three bedrooms, two baths—with the intention of maybe I'll get a couple of roommates, and they'll help me with the mortgage. I put an ad in the Riverside Enterprise, I don't know if you recall that newspaper. This is the late 1980s, early ‘90s. I got two roommates, great guys. They were my roommates for a long time, also single. One was a plumber, one was an X-ray tech. Long story short, they helped me pay for most of my mortgage. Not quite 100%, but most of my mortgage. Jason: Nice. All right. And that was your first foray into real estate investing. This sparks something for you. You thought of it, but your roommates, apparently, didn't. They're willing to pay rent. I lovingly refer to the Inland Empire as the armpit of California. Bobby: Absolutely. Jason: I had a good childhood growing up there. Now, I'm in Austin, Texas which I'm really enjoying. I got out just before the craziness of the pandemic, and California's gone insane. It's gone insane with all the stuff that's going on right now. Bobby, give us a little bit of history since that first experiment and give us a little background—qualify yourself. Help the audience understand your experience in real estate or surrounding the property management rental industry. Bobby: Absolutely. Thank you, Jason. Since then, I was 24 back then. Then, I had to take a break. I got married. I didn't do much in real estate. But about 10 years ago, when I saw the market really collapse—that was in 2010—I moved up to Silicon Valley. I was a software developer back in Southern California. But I always wanted to be in Silicon Valley, work for one of these technology companies that Silicon Valley is famous for. Sure enough, I worked for one of them. In 2010, I just saw the market collapse here in the Bay Area as well. I said you know what? I have some savings, so I started going out and picking up some homes that needed a little bit of work. Long story short, I also started a real estate meetup group in the Bay Area, in the East Bay. We call it the East Bay Meetup near Oakland. There weren't a lot of meetups going on, but most of them were in San Jose or San Francisco, and the people were fighting the commute. Long story short, I ended up starting a meetup in the Oakland area. Fortunately, that meetup has now become the largest real estate meetup in the Bay Area. I've got about 5000 members. We used to meet up every month. Out of that, I ended up becoming a landlord, buying out of state, and working with property managers. I love my property managers. Without them, I wouldn't be successful. I totally get the importance of property management. We own a bunch of rental properties—a lot of single-family, a lot of multifamily, but a lot of it is out of state for cash flow reasons as in cash flow in California. We ended up with several hundred doors out in the Midwest, mainly. Jason: How did BetterCapital come about, and what is it? Bobby: Just like a lot of people in my meetup group, we're active real estate investors. I have rental properties. I'm a private money lender. I have syndications. In a couple of properties out in Ohio, I do what's called seller financing. We own a bunch of rental properties, a bunch of real estate assets. I was tracking everything through Excel, but that was just not cutting it for me. You can't store documents inside of Excel. Things were scattered all over my computer, in my Gmail, and in my Dropbox—leases, insurance, tax bills, reminders, and everything. What I did was I worked with a technology partner of mine, and we put all the essential tools to track your portfolio. We're not AppFolio. We're not Cozy. We're not TenantCloud. We're not a property management software, but we talk to a bunch of property management systems. We are like a portfolio measurement and portfolio management tool for real estate investors. Jason: Explain the measurement part. Bobby: Yeah. What we do there, Jason, is if you bought a property five years ago, you're getting your checks every now and then. Your property manager is depositing the checks in your bank account. Sometimes it's not what you expected because there was a repair, or you don't know what your loan balance is on the property. What we do is we track the actual deposits in your account. We track your loan balances. We track the equity in your properties across the board, and then we give you a return on investment. What did you invest in that property, and what's your annual return on investment? What's your equity growth? The analogy I like to draw is if you log in to your Schwab, E-Trade, or Robinhood account, you can see the equity of your stocks. How much did you gain in your stock if you bought Apple five years ago? Or you bought Amazon 10 years ago, how much have you gained? We didn't have something like that for real estate investors. What we built was a tool. It has the ability to store documents. It has the ability to put reminders to track your equity growth, to see in a graphical manner how this property performed over the past year, this year, over the past five years, and then since you bought it. We have a lot of mathematical formulas that run in the background and then you can track. We want people to see how much wealth they have created, or how much equity they've created because we want to encourage them to purchase real estate assets. Jason: I would be curious if they can measure this better, and they can see the performance, do they tend to invest more? Bobby: Exactly. That's the whole idea, right? Real estate over time has so many benefits. Sometimes, especially property managers, they are so busy with day to day operations that they forget to remind the investors, the landlords, about the benefits of owning real estate. Yes, there are bumps in the road. There's going to be a turnover here and there. There's going to be an eviction here and there. But if you look at it across a long period of time, it turns out that it's one of the best ways to invest, to grow your wealth, and to plan for your future. What we want to do is we want to help property managers and realtors—those are our partners. Property management, which is your audience, as well. If we could help your current set of landlords grow their doors, maybe you bring a portfolio of new assets that they can purchase. But you can demonstrate that, look, if you bought this property with us in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in Dallas, Texas, or El Paso, Texas. If you've owned this property, here's how much equity you've gained. Here's how much your cash flow was last year. Here's how the property performed. Then, you can then have a really strong case to go back to them and say, listen, here's another similar property that is available on the market. Would you like to maybe consider adding a door or a couple of doors to your portfolio? Jason: It sounds like this is a largely effective tool for the investor. You have a way that investors can see and manage their entire portfolio. They have, say, 100 properties, or maybe they have like 20, 30 doors or something. They can see this portfolio. Then there's a way they can invite their property manager in to also see this portfolio, keep this updated, or to connect to it? Bobby: Absolutely. The property managers and realtors play a very important role. The owner can always invite their property manager to see the property in the system or communicate with that property manager. The other is that the property manager can invite the landlords to the system as well. When they upload a list of their landlords, we create what's called a preferential relationship and the exclusive preferential relationship between the property manager that loaded up the landlords in the system. That way, if you have a new portfolio that you want to maybe broadcast to your existing landlords, you can broadcast it to our platform. You can also let them know that, hey, listen. Here's a similar property that gives you the same kind of returns. It's in the same area. You may want to consider looking at purchasing this one. We want to help the property managers and the realtors have that exclusive kind of relationship with the landlords. Jason: There's this performance side of it. Maybe if an investor is looking at getting into a property, is there any forecasting that's similar? Is there a forecast inside? Like, here's a possible future roadmap of what this investment could do. Bobby: Very good question, Jason. That's on our roadmap. One of the things we want to do is forecasting or projecting the performance of a property that may be on the MLS or it may be in the portfolio of the property manager. Maybe somebody's looking to sell that portfolio. In the future, we will have what's called a forecasting calculator. You can submit that property. You can punch in all the numbers, and then the system will forecast. Within our platform, they'll be able to see the projections. We also have a way for the user to say, okay, if the application is forecasted at 3%, they can adjust that. They can say, what if it only appreciated 2%? Or if the rent appreciation was 5%, what if it was only 3%? And so on. We will give them that tool, but yes, that is on the road map. Jason: Very cool. Now, does this have an API integration? Because a lot of property managers, they are not going to want to go in and up the second system. They've got their property management back office. They're using Rent Manager, AppFolio, Buildium, or Propertyware typically. Is there a way of either scraping that data into those systems or maybe through an API connection pooling all that data in? Bobby: Very much so. We talk to the most popular property management applications out there. Most of them have APIs. If they don't have APIs, we allow the user to import an Excel file. Very easy to do. It takes about less than two minutes to set up a property in the system. Once they get really good at importing data, it takes about five minutes to import the data if they're new. But once the property is set up in the system, then it literally takes 30 seconds to update a property every month. Once a month, what are the main items that you're looking at? It's once a month, typically. Maybe sometimes twice a month. You're looking at, did your rent come in? Did you pay your mortgage? Did you pay your insurance and taxes? Did you pay your property management fees? But it's really very simple to bring that data in. We have bank integration. You can also pull the data from a bank. By the way, the property manager doesn't have to do this. The landlord can do this. The only thing the property manager has to do is load up the client list the first time and then reestablish that. The first property manager to load that landlord into the system gets the exclusive relationship. That's the first-come, first-served relationship that they have. But after that, the landlord should be able to go in and update the system. And it's very easy to do that. It's in their best interest to see the performance of their assets, right? So they do a bulk of the data entry. Jason: That exclusivity sounds really exciting (I'm sure) to the property management business owners that are listening. Because this could be something that they could upsell as a feature for their more invested investors, those that have lots of doors. It can be an upsell or a premium price point on their premium plan that they offer for the more savvy investor clients. Now, related to that—and I don't know if this is a possible future feature request or idea—but a lot of property managers love owning their brand. Would it be possible to white label this service that it's their thing if they have that? Bobby: A very good question. Our service is free to the landlords. As long as they're not over 15 or so doors, it's free. But to answer your question, we do plan for the larger property managers to have their own white-label co-branded service. Not a problem. It's available. Jason: Okay, very cool. What else can this do? Bobby: We built this platform for investors like myself. Look, I'm a big champion of real estate agents and property managers. Their jobs are often thankless. We forget how much work they do behind the scenes. Managing properties, not an easy task by any means. We are big cheerleaders and supporters of property managers, of real estate agents. At the same time, the landlords need to be able to track their system a little bit better. Our goal is, we call it the three T's. Tracking. To my meet up for the past 10 years, I've been providing education. I've been an evangelist for better real estate investing. We bring in experts on whether it's fix-and-flip, buying remote properties remotely, syndications, private money lending, asset protection for real estate investors—just about any topic that has to do with real estate. We've been teaching that in our meetup. We're going to embed that into the system. If the landlords, the property managers, and real estate agents want to become better at something, we're going to have an expert present once a month. Tracking, training, that's our second key. The third T is the transaction. If the property managers, realtors, have a deal that is what I call investor-grade that they want to send out to their members, then we want to enable transactions. We're not Redfin. We're not one of those sites. But we allow them to communicate about it. It could be a pocket listing. It could be a property manager where the landlord is retiring or doing a 1031, but he wants to sell off his portfolio without putting it on the MLS, for example. Let's figure out how to communicate within the system to the potential buyers because the people that are in the system who are happy with their performance and their relationship with their property manager, they will want to acquire more doors. Those are our three Ts—tracking, training, and transactions. Jason: It's almost like a trading platform. Is this essentially like the E-Trade for real estate investments instead of the stock portfolio? Bobby: It is. That's very much our vision. The training is there. The transaction piece is not there. But that's what we're building right now. Jason, in a nutshell, it is E-Trade for real estate because we don't compete with the AppFolios, the YardEase, the Buildiums of the world, but we partner with them. We don't want the property managers to change what they're doing. Whatever they're doing is fine. We will learn to live alongside the systems they have in place. Jason: This seems to be just such a missing piece to give investors a real tool. Most property managers are just so caught up on just at least, at the very bare minimum of giving their investors a statement or a report at the end of the month. But there's a big difference between managing as a real estate investment and just looking at the expenses for the month, the rent, and whatnot, and seeing a report. Seeing it as an actual investment, and maybe even seeing a chart to see what's actually going on. You get a sense of whether you're losing or gaining. It seems like such a simple, brilliant, missing puzzle piece in the ecosystem. Kudos to you for coming up with this. Now, are there other things like this out on the market? Bobby: I think people are finally realizing that a similar tool is needed. There are a couple of players out there. What we have done is we have taken a comprehensive approach to real estate investing. What are people interested in? They're interested, obviously, in tracking, like the performance of their assets. That's done in Excel, and it's done on a very ad hoc basis. It's not real-time, and it's a lot of keystrokes. What we want to do is we want to automate a lot of that so that once you put the property into the system, then a lot of the updates are done automatically. The other piece is nobody's providing education. I truly believe that as property managers, it's equally important to educate the investors about the challenges, right? If there are evictions, if there are turnovers, let there be some transparency. What we want to do is we want to prepare our users to become better investors. Part of that is understanding the challenges or the opportunities that property management companies and realtors face. A property manager's job is not easy at all. You have to be really thick-skinned to be a property manager. Well, let's appreciate that so that when your rent is a little bit lower than expected, or you have a turnover that's taking a little bit longer. If the investor, the landlord is better educated, maybe they won't get upset as much. They will understand, okay, you know what? This is winter in Michigan, and it's going to take a little bit longer to put a tenant into the house or the property. We want to provide education to make them a better investor. They will appreciate the role of the property manager a little bit more. Jason: That's the role of the property manager. I mean, property managers are the unsung heroes of the real estate investing category or industry. They make tenants better. They make the owners better. They hold everyone to a higher standard, and they make properties better all around. Good property managers really do change the world. I love what you're talking about how the education piece is going to improve the quality of clients. It's going to take their client from where they are now, give them a greater understanding, which most likely increases their logical need to use a property manager. They understand, oh, this is a bit more complicated than these home TV shows and reality shows made it out to be flipping a house or renting it out. This is worth touching on because I think there are some small-minded, scarcity-minded property managers. Maybe they're newer to the industry, but they're thinking, oh, no. The only reason people will need me is if they're not educated. But I think the reverse is true. The more educated a client becomes, the more they can see clearly the liabilities involved, the dangers, the potential pitfalls, the time, and they don't want to touch it. They want to let go of that piece. They want to be an investor. They don't want to be a shitty part-time property manager. Bobby: Exactly. Jason: They do that full time. Bobby: You nailed it, Jason. Your perception is right on. The better-educated, the better-informed, the landlord, the investor is, the easier it'll be to work with them versus a total newbie who thinks it's just very simple to hire a property manager. That every month, magic, a check will show up. It just doesn't work that way, especially now in the pandemic era that we're living in, it's even more challenging. This is the time when property managers need to communicate more, not less, about what's going on in the court systems, the eviction process, and so on and so forth. You're right. The members in my real estate meetup group, the ones that are well-educated about investing are the ones that are buying more rental properties. The ones that are not educated, they just bought their primary home, and they never buy a rental property. The extent of their real estate investment is their primary home. Sometimes, they outgrow that primary home. Then, they buy another home, and they keep the old one as a rental. They're not proactive in going out there and learning about rental properties and the benefits of rental properties with the tax advantages and so on. That's where our partners, real estate property managers, realtors, and educators can really come in and help out. Jason: I think the tempting mistake that a lot of software people coming into this industry is that they try to cut out the property manager. I've seen this over and over and over again. They think, well, we could replace this critical relationship and negotiation piece with software. That can't be done in the hospitality industry, it certainly can't be done in the property management industry, and it also can't really be done in the real estate industry significantly because these are relationship things. There are negotiations, there are people involved, there are feelings, there are humans, and there's a lot that software can do. But software really should be enabling and facilitating those things. Not trying to replace those things. I love that you're incorporating property managers. I think this a wise move as you're moving forward. It allows you to connect with a lot of people that have investment portfolios. And it doesn't try to cut the property manager out of that in which we end up with a whole bunch of [...] then we end up with a bunch of crappy property managers, which are just people DIY-ing their management, and not really doing a great job. Then they have software tools that are supposed to say that it makes it easy, but things have fallen through the cracks. Laws are getting broken, tenants aren't protected, owners aren't protected, and silly stuff is being done. Very cool stuff. Is there anything else you'd like the audience to know about BetterCapital before they go? If so or if not, how can they get ahold of you? And how can they try this thing out? Bobby: Thank you, Jason. First of all, it's a pleasure to be on your show. I really enjoyed it. I've watched your videos, so thank you for doing what you're doing for your community, which is your audience of property managers. You're doing a fabulous job. Thank you for that. Look, our goal is very simple. We want to serve the real estate community in general. From newbies to seasoned investors, we want to give them tools. I'll be the first one at any of my meetups. If they're buying a property remotely, they need to engage with a good property manager because it's literally a marriage between you and the property manager for the next 10, 20 years. However long you hold that asset, that's how long that relationship needs to last. It's very easy to get a hold of me. It's bobby@bettercapital.us. We couldn't get the dot-com, so we got the dot-us. It's bettercapital.us. Look, we're in what's called a beta version right now. We're coming out of the beta version. We'll go live very soon. But we'd love to get your feedback. We'd love to incorporate your feedback into our product. We'd love to make you a partner. We'd love to see the property management companies that choose to work with us, we want to see them succeed. We'll highlight them, we'll showcase them, and we'll work with them. Jason: Awesome. Property managers, if you're listening, this is your chance to help shape this tool to be something you really want. You can be the ultimate beta tester, and then you'll have the ultimate product that would really serve your needs. Take him up on that offer. Well, Bobby, I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you for your gracious words. I hope you have some success with this. Bobby: Thank you, Jason, and likewise. Hopefully, we'll stay connected. I'll keep you posted on our progress. Jason: Awesome. All right, check them out at bettercapital.us. For those that are somehow new to this show because you just stumbled upon it. I was going to say, it was interesting hearing, thank you for doing the podcast. I was thinking, sometimes it's a thankless job. But I'm like, wait a second, he's thanking me. But sometimes, it is a thankless job. I'm putting out free content. We pay a good chunk of change to have this podcast produced and to put out there. My team does social media marketing to get it out there as well. We do make money, don't get me wrong. We get paid really well to help property management businesses get paid really well. But if you want to do something to reciprocate—besides becoming one of our clients—make sure to like our stuff. Follow us. You can subscribe on YouTube and follow. Leave us a review on iTunes. We'd really appreciate it. If you're looking to grow your property management business, you are struggling or trapped in one of these growth sand traps, maybe around 50 or 60 doors. The solar [...] sand trap. You can't figure out how to get ahead. You don't have the revenue to hire your next person. You can't seem to get more doors than you're losing and you just stay stuck there. Or maybe you're in the second sand trap, 200-400 doors, and you just can't figure out how to get the right people to do what you want them to do. You're getting overwhelmed because your team is always asking you all the time, all the questions. You're feeling overwhelmed, and you realize you are the biggest bottleneck in your business. There is a roadmap out of that. Very easy to get out of. You can listen to some of the previous episodes. But reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to have a conversation and see if you'd be a fit, see if we could help you grow your business and be the property managers making a difference out there in the world. Until next time, everyone. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody.

As a property manager, have you considered investing in mobile home parks? Not interested? Not your thing? Some people won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. Today’s guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew’s here to convince you otherwise. He talks all about mobile home park investing as an attractive and appealing asset class. You’ll Learn... [02:00] Sticker Shock Stigma: Why investing in mobile home parks is a good idea. [02:48] Longing to be a Landlord: Leverage other people’s money to buy properties. [03:30] Yellow Letter: Knew nothing about mobile homes, but knew it was a great deal. [04:00] Shoutout to Lonnie Scruggs: Learned how to make money with mobile homes. [05:10] Temp to Forever Cashflow: Use capital to buy and manage mobile home parks. [07:07] Three reasons why to invest in mobile home parks: Highest returns out of any form of real estate. Demand for affordable housing is off the charts. Supply is limited. [12:40] Bottleneck in Business: Finding good quality deals big enough to move on. [14:54] Boots on the Ground: Third-party property management for mobile home parks. [18:58] Utility Infrastructure: Most important aspect and most expensive to replace. [20:12] Tax Shelter: Mobile home park business of depreciation and improvements. [20:57] Models: Community owners own homes vs. every home is park-owned rental.  Tweetables “Some people won't even touch it with a 10-foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class.” Andrew Keel “I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money.” Andrew Keel “The demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts.” Andrew Keel “The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country.” Andrew Keel “We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent.” Andrew Keel Resources Keel Team Deals on Wheels: How to buy, sell, and finance used mobile homes for big profits and cash flow by Lonnie Scruggs Mobile Home University (MHU) Boot Camp HUD NARPM DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing 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 the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today's show is going to be all about Mobile Home Park Investing. My expert guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew, welcome. Andrew: Thank you. Jason: Andrew, before we get into this idea of Mobile Home Park Investing which, I'm guessing a lot of property managers right now are like not my thing, I'm not even going to listen to this one. I'm going to skip this episode. Before you do that, Andrew's going to convince you that it might be a good idea. Andrew: I'll give them my best shot. I think one of the reasons why I like the asset class so much is because of that stigma that a lot of people see. That initial sticker shock of the asset class. That's a huge part of why the industry is so attractive, some people won't even touch it with a 10 foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class. Jason: Right. Just a little protection built in, okay. Some of them were thinking that's kind of like having a trash heap around the property. Nobody wants to come in. Maybe it doesn't look very appealing. Before we get into that, Andrew, tell everyone about you. You've got a lot of things going on. Give us a little background of how you got into real estate investing, property management, how did all this start for you? Andrew: Yeah, sure. I started flipping houses around Central Florida and wholesaling residential contracts. I did that for about two years. I was trying to become a landlord but I started with nothing. My parents went bankrupt when I was in college, lost the house I grew up in. I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money. I initially thought, hey, I need to have a lot of money to be a landlord because I can't afford to buy these properties. That was before I learned how to use other people's money and leverage other tools. I started flipping houses and I got a deal through a yellow letter that I mailed out on two mobile homes in Ocala, Florida. That's just a couple of hours north of where I live in Orlando. These were nice, vinyl-sided, single roof homes that were manufactured in the mid-1990s. I could buy both of these for $2200 cash. I was like I don't know anything about mobile homes but this is a great deal. I just knew it. I had two titles, I left that day. I gave them the cash. I came home and got on YouTube. I typed in how to make money with mobile homes? I was like I don't know, there's got to be a way to make some cash off these things. I came across a guy named Lonnie Scruggs. He used to teach this class, and he has a book called Deals on Wheels. It talked about buying mobile homes, fixing them up, and selling them on contract to an end buyer. That's exactly what I did with those two mobile homes. I was able to fix them up, just clean them up basically. Some new paint and some new flooring. I sold them for $3000 down and $250 a month for five years. I did that on both of them and I only paid $2200 cash for both. I was like wow! This is a great model. It's not forever cash—that was my end goal—but this is great, temporary cash. I ended up doing that 19 more times and bought individual mobile homes through various parks throughout Central Florida. I sold them on contract. After doing that, I met some mobile home park owners. Again, I had this idea in my head that you need to be extremely wealthy to buy mobile home parks—the whole community. Through talking with them, they gave me that epiphany of using other people's money. I could be the sweat equity that would manage the properties. That was a huge Aha! moment for me. I immediately became glued to the asset class, read every book, went to every seminar, went to the MHU Bootcamp a few times, and just became a sponge for the asset class. That was a defining moment for me—getting into that industry. After I went to one of the bootcamps, I met a passive investor there that was just looking to invest and didn't want anything to do with the operations. He happened to be in the finance industry and worked really long hours but had a ton of cash that he wanted to deploy into this asset class. He partnered with me, and we bought the first mobile home park. It ended up being a really huge success. After that, we ended up buying four more communities since that one went so well. Since then, I have brought on more investors from friends and family to others outside of that. We do syndications now. We aggregate money from a pool of investors and then purchase these assets into a single purpose LLC. It's been a very awesome ride. It's been exciting. It's been blood, sweat, and tears into this at this point. Now, we're at 23 communities which is amazing and a blessing. We have a ton of people that work for us now and are awesome members of our team. That's a little about how I got into where I am today. Jason: You never just woke up when you were a kid and said I want to grow up to do mobile home park investing. Andrew: No, that's not how it went at all. I just kind of fell into this but I believe mobile home parks are a mode of investment for a few reasons. One of those that's really important is it has the highest returns out of any form of real estate. Right away, I was attracted to it. Number two, that makes it that much better, the demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts. I think you can talk to any real estate expert and they would tell you that. Number three which is the main reason, number one, put it on the top of your list of why mobile home parks are a great asset class to invest in is because the supply is limited. Any other asset class whether it's self storage, multifamily, whatever, it's easier to develop those and get those approved. Where mobile home parks have this stigma, there's this not in my backyard initiative where people don't want a mobile home park built right next to their subdivision. It's very hard to get zoning approved for a new mobile home park development. Number two, from an economic standpoint, mobile home parks are loss leaders for municipalities. On average, they cost around $11,000 a year to put a child through public schooling with the cost of the school, the teachers, et cetera. In mobile homes, the owners of the mobile homes, they only pay maybe $50-$100 a year in their personal property taxes on their mobile home that they pay at the DMV just like you would pay taxes on your vehicle, or both, or so forth. The taxes are very low, but say a family of four that has two kids in elementary school, that would be a huge loss to the local municipality every year for having that family in their municipality. That's a big reason, the supply is shrinking. On average, there's 10 mobile home parks across the country that are torn down every year. It's continuing, it's getting more than that. More and more, they're torn down and put into better land uses for multifamily and whatnot. It's very rare, if any at all, are being developed from the ground up. It's very interesting from a supply standpoint. Jason: Are you involved in getting them developed? Andrew: I'm not. There's lower hanging fruit in communities that are already established, to be honest. It's less expensive to go in and fix the existing infrastructure. The majority of mobile home parks, I think 80% of them, are owned by my mom and pop owners. It's not an institutionalized asset class like multifamily and self storage. With that, you're able to come in and increase value very quickly through increasing that operating income, whether that's through modest rent increases, billing back utilities, increasing the occupancy. A lot of these communities have been owned by a mom and pop for 30-40 years. They have a lot of equity. A lot of these are paid off pretty clear. With that, we've been able to acquire five communities with stellar financing because they're able to be more flexible since they don't have some of the restrictions that a bank would have on a mortgage. It's a very exciting asset class. It's new to a lot of people but it's definitely a mode of investment. It's not something that you want to go to the country club and brag to your friends about. It is also very unique in that aspect because that stigma does keep some investors out of it and keeps cap rates significantly higher. Jason: Okay, okay. The first thing you mentioned is it has the highest returns. Qualify that a little bit, compare it maybe just a little bit, let's back this up. Some people listening, maybe their ears perked up when they heard that. Andrew: Yeah. If you're familiar with commercial real estate, properties are valued off of their income, there's the income model. Cap rates for mobile home communities are typically between 8% or 12%. If you compare that to multifamily, you're not able to get as big of a spread between the interest rate you're paying on your loan and the cap rate that you're purchasing the property for. The cap rate is the net operating income divided by the purchase price, for those of you who aren't familiar with that. Basically, we aim to get at least a 3.0 spread between our interest rate that our loan we have in the community, and the cap rate that we're paying. If we're able to create that Delta, we can offer our investors 20% cash on cash return annually. Jason: All right, okay. I’m taking notes. If you can offer investors that, it's not too difficult to get investors you're funding? Andrew: Yeah. We've been very fortunate to have a lot of people reaching out to invest with us. At this point, I would say the bottleneck in our business is finding good quality deals that are big enough to move the needle. There's a lot of communities that are between 50 and 100 lots that are a good place to play in. The communities that are bigger than that offer even more economies of scale in terms of expenses versus income. Those are the ones that are getting eaten up by institutional buyers at this point. Some of the REITs, some of the large private equity firms, are now playing in this space because they've seen high returns. They know supply is limited and demand is off the charts. They're going after those larger properties. Those are harder for us to compete with because those cap rates are getting compressed. Jason: This is just in your local market that you're willing to work and target? Is that correct? Andrew: We have communities all the way from Georgia to North Dakota, all the way down to Tennessee, and all the way across Pennsylvania. We're right in the center for the most part—the center of the United States. We did that for a couple of reasons, it was mainly strategy. Hurricanes primarily don't go across the midwest. However, there was a polar vortex last year, that was absolutely crazy. Hurricanes, it's protected against those. The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country. For the most part, we aim to purchase communities in the middle of the United States. Jason: Got it. How difficult is it for somebody that's currently focused on single family residential, or maybe they're doing commercial, or maybe they're doing multifamily, to add this in as another business—basically another arm of their business and to work on this? Andrew: That's a great question. First off, I think we should say that third party property management for mobile homes communities, that's like across the nation, it's basically unheard of. There's like two or three companies that do it and they're not doing it at a high level. It's very tough because it is management intensive. Even though a lot of these communities don't own the mobile homes themselves, they just own the dirt underneath them, your maintenance costs less. There's just other reasons why it's a little bit difficult to manage these communities on a large scale because of the turnover and things like that that do happen. Jason: You're managing just the parks, you're not managing individual rental properties. Andrew: Correct. We get a lot of rent off the ground. Now, as a necessary evil of the business, when a home goes up for sale or say we come to own one of these homes, we have to then sell it to the tenant for them to become a tenant-owned resident and rent out the land to them. There's probably about 20% of our total units that are homes that we've sold to the tenant on contract. They're still responsible for maintenance but it's sold to them like a rent credit program, is what we call it, where they're making payments monthly to then pay off the home. Then, eventually, they will just pay lot rent. Jason: We didn't say this at the beginning, we probably should qualify you a little bit more by saying how many units are you over right now? How many are under management? Andrew: We are at 1497 units right now. That's across 23 parks. Jason: All right. How critical it is to have boots on the ground in all of these 23 locations? Andrew: It's paramount, in my opinion. We have an onsite manager at every single location. That's typically a resident that had the nicest home, we converted them into an onsite manager. All they are is just basically an eyes and ears person that communicates with our corporate office. It keeps us abreast of what's going on in the community. That has been really important for us to just be able to understand what's going on. Typically, we go after someone that has a fixed income like Social Security and they have one of the nicest homes in the communities. They're retired and they're home. They're like the community watchdog. They keep us up to date on what's going on. Then, our corporate office which we have 14 corporate offices, offsite management employees, handles everything from the financials, to the project management, to collections, to bookkeeping, et cetera. Jason: Got it. These are all parks that you have some sort of an ownership in, correct? Andrew: Correct. We only manage parks that we have ownership in right now. Jason: Got it, okay. For those listening, if somebody has a property management business, maybe they're a real estate investor and they're wanting to get into this, what advice would you give as the first initial step? They're looking around. They notice there's a mobile home park or two that probably could use a little love. Maybe the mom and pop owners would be willing to have a conversation. What's the first step that you think they need to be aware of? What knowledge do they need to gain first? Andrew: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say you need to go and get educated. You need to go to the MHU Bootcamp that's offered by Frank and Dave. That's like the industry leading educational platform that teaches everything from how to find deals, how to value them, and how to manage them. Within that class, you'll learn about the utility infrastructure. The utility infrastructure is by far the most important aspect of these communities because that's the most expensive to replace. For example, a community that's on the city water or the city sewer is more attractive because there's less risk on that half. Versus a community that's on a well and septic. A well and septic, there's a lot more testing involved. Now, you're servicing a community that is using that water supply. You have to make sure that there's certain chlorine, certain tests done on a consistent basis, to manage that water system. The same thing if you're on a septic or waste water treatment plant. Wastewater treatment plant can cause $500,000 to replace. You have to make sure that they're maintained on a high level. If they're not, you could be front of the bill for a very expensive project. Jason: A lot of what makes a mobile home park work is underground is what you're saying? Andrew: Correct. Jason: Okay. It's not just land, there's infrastructure that's really critical underneath. Andrew: Very, very, critical. Those are all items you're able to depreciate and we love that part of the business because mobile home parks are also a known tax shelter because of those improvements. Jason: Interesting. You said that Frank and Dave over MHU? Andrew: M as in Mary, H as in Harry. Mobile Home University. Jason: Got it, all right. I thought I would make sure. Cool. What else should they know about mobile home park investing that we haven't covered so far? Andrew: I'll just give a vague overview of it. There's a model where the community owners will own all of the homes and basically operate it as a flat apartment community where every home is a park-owned rental. That is not the model that we follow. We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent. There's a couple of reasons. Obviously, repairs and maintenance would be a lot less. Your expenses will be a lot less. Also, your turnover on a tenant-owned home unit is approximately 4%-5% annually where the turnover on a park owned home unit is closer to 50% annually. From a management side of things, if you have a tenant-owned home community, you're going to spend less time dealing with turnover compared to a park owned home community. There's communities out there that have done both ways but we prefer the tenant-owned home model. In regards to mobile home park investing, it is affordable housing. If you're familiar with affordable housing in multifamily, HUD housing, or things like that, you can deal with a lot of the same residence but there's also different classes just like in any asset class where there's very high end mobile home communities that have swimming pools, community centers, three golf courses. Then, there's communities on the lower end that are just not taken care of very well. The homes are really close together, there's a lot of older homes. We try to aim right at the middle. We're looking at the C class parks that maybe we can bump up into a B. That's typically where we play. Jason: Got it. All right. For those that heard all of this and still thought there's no way I'm going to touch this. There's no way I'm going to go to MHU. I don't want to do any of this stuff, but those returns sound pretty sweet. Maybe I should talk to Andrew. Maybe there's a mom and pop that's listening, they're like you know what? I'm tired of this garbage. I'm tired of dealing with this place. I want out. It's time we retire from running this mobile home park. They're like maybe we can have a conversation with Andrew. Who are the people that you're wanting to get in touch with you? Whether it's investors, whether it's potential people that can create a deal with you? What are you interested in? Andrew: All of the above. If there's a wholesaler that comes across a mobile home park and they want to assign it, or it's a property manager, or maybe it's someone that wants to partner on their first deal because they want to learn the operations before just jumping in with two feet. All of them should reach out to me. My website is keelteam.com. I'd be happy to chat with you. I love talking about mobile home parks, you won't have to pull my leg too hard to go on the phone with me. Jason: I could tell. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on and sharing a little bit about mobile home park investing, helping open my audience’s eyes to that just a little bit. Maybe you'll get a few phone calls, maybe some people will get into this. Who knows? Maybe there'll be some sort of a hybrid where deals even workout. Are you looking at expanding outside the midwest at all? Andrew: Yeah, we've looked at some deals in many different areas. Not in California but outside of that state we've looked at several deals. You have to hit a certain number of units for it to make sense for it to go to a new market. You don't just want to go after a 40 lot mobile home park in Idaho when the rest of your communities are all in Ohio or Pennsylvania. We definitely looked at other places. I've JV'ed with people that brought me a deal that they didn't have any money but they just found this great deal. I found things like that and I'm totally open to sharing what I know on the operation side to others that bring a deal to the table. Jason: Awesome. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on the show. I wish you continued success. Andrew: Jason. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you having me on the DoorGrow Show. Jason: All right, cool. Make sure you reach out to Andrew if any of this sounds interesting, you are curious about this in working with him, or getting into it yourself. That was keelteam.com. If you're looking at figuring out how to grow your property management business, I had so many calls this week from new clients that have come onboard with us. There's this common challenge that property managers tend to deal with at various stages. I've noticed that you've got that first sandtrap at about 50, 60 doors in the single family residential space where you're dealing with how do I start to get ahead? How do I create some leverage in this business so I'm not just trapped as a solopreneur here forever? How do I start getting more doors than I'm losing so I'm not just breaking even every year in terms of growth? If you're dealing with any of those kinds of challenges, we're really going to help you break through that initial barrier. Then, there's that second sandtrap which is usually if you can break in a healthy way past 100 doors, if you haven't done that yet, talk to us. If you break past 100 doors in a healthy fashion, which means you're not just a real estate broker. That's really healthy and you've got this unhealthy property management business on the side, we can help you with that too. You do it in a healthy fashion. Then, you'll end up usually in the 200-400 door category and then you get stuck. This is where I see a lot of property managers stuck in NARPM. A lot of property managers are struggling. There are specific things that you need to break free from that sandtrap. Usually, the challenge is they're not getting the right thing members. They're not able to retain team members for a long time. They're trying to build and systemize the business, build a team. They just don't have a business that's scalable. Even if it were fed a lot of potential business, or a lot of deals, or a lot of leads, once they approach that 400 or maybe up to 500 units space, the business owners feel really stressed out. They built a team usually the way a solopreneur thinks. They built a business based on what the business needs, not on what the business owner needs to lower their pressure noises through the roof. Every person that they have on their team is coming to them for everything and asking questions. First, it feels really exciting when you're small. As you scale and as you build, it feels really suffocating. You become the biggest bottleneck in the business. If you're experiencing that, then reach out. We would love to have a conversation so that we can help you break past that second sandtrap as well. Anyway, I'm Jason Hull over at DoorGrow. Make sure you also check us out. We've been really pumping up Instagram and getting going. Follow us on Instagram, it's just @doorgrow. Make sure you get into our community at the DoorGrow Club Facebook group. You can go to the DoorGrow Club. Just go to doorgrowclub.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

The next time you play golf on company time make sure insights into how you spend your time on the job out in the field is not being tracked. Today’s guest is Barima Kwarteng from Timeero, a GPS app that reduces overhead costs and streamlines time tracking. Basically, Timeero started to prevent golf (at least on company time) because it’s expensive!  You’ll Learn... [01:52] Barima’s Background: Originally from Ghana in West Africa, but attended BYU. [02:35] Timeero: Some employees work in the field. How do they spend their time? [03:01] Drunk Coworker Confesses: On company time, they play golf on Fridays. [03:35] Software not from Scratch: Acquired cold base from Texas cop and rebuilt it. [05:00] Theft Prevention: Timeero tracks time, location, mileage, and much more. [06:10] Screenshot Safety: Pressure to prove work is being done to get paid. [06:58] Big Brother? Find out if employees are being accountable or taking advantage. [07:22] Bottom Line: Companies save 5-15% payroll costs by tracking employees’ time. [08:16] COVID Cash Crunch: Tighten belt to offload employees not pulling their weight. [10:00] Technology and Time Management: Paper timecards/sheets take too much time. [12:07] Timeero: How the Web application works after downloading app on smartphone. [15:06] Geofence: Reminder to clock in and clock out as soon as you arrive/leave work. [16:36] Better Culture within Business: Nobody likes to be micromanaged. Trust me. [20:49] More Money? Most are more motivated by recognition than monetary benefits. [22:05] Simplicity vs. Tech-Savvy: Get people to use new things or do things differently. [24:10] Why is Timeero different from other apps? Gives outside team more insights. [30:42] ROI: Timeero is $5 per user per month, plus $10 base fee for business account. Tweetables “If golf is helping the bottom line and helping you get revenue, great, but otherwise…” Jason Hull “People right off the bat think, ‘Oh, it has a little big brother feel to it. What we're seeing is, it's actually helping the bottom line in terms of payroll.” Barima Kwarteng “Technology saves you a lot of time. As a business owner, you can dedicate those hours or time to something more beneficial.” Barima Kwarteng “The app only tracks time and movement while you're clocked in. The moment you clock out, it stops tracking you because we really value privacy.” Barima Kwarteng “It helps people track time more efficiently and more accurately.” Barima Kwarteng Resources Timeero Brigham Young University (BYU) DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing 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 the owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. My guest today, I'm hanging out with Barima Kwarteng. Did I say it right? Barima: I think you got that right more than most people. Jason: Okay, awesome. Barima has a company called Timeero. Before we get into that, I'm excited to hear a little bit about this. I was checking out your landing page for your software. It looks like it's kind of unique with the GPS stuff and some of those kinds of things. Before we get into that, why don't you introduce yourself to those listening or watching this later? Just help them understand what brought you to Timeero, and share a little bit about your entrepreneurial background here. Barima: Yeah, absolutely. I'm originally from Ghana, a country in West Africa. I'm not sure if many of you listeners know where that is. I originally came to school out here in the US at BYU. At BYU, I was able to learn a little bit more about entrepreneurship and starting businesses. It's something I've always wanted to be able to do. That opportunity presented itself with Timeero. The whole idea behind Timeero was that many businesses out there have employees out in the field. They have teams out in the field. They want to have a little bit more insight into how their employees or team members spend their time. Timeero provides you that opportunity to be able to have more insights into how your outsight spends their time. One of the events that really triggered this was I have a friend who owns a construction company. His employees, every Friday, they would bring their golf clubs and check it in their truck. On company time, they will play golf on Friday. The company didn't know about this. They only found out during a company party that they were playing golf on company time. One of the employees was drunk and finally spilled out the secret about what they were doing. He needed a solution to be able to track again and have insights into where his employees were spending their time. Working with him, that was how the whole idea was born. I initially did not build it from scratch. There was a company out in Texas that the owner of the company wanted to sell his software. I remember thinking to myself, you know what, this is what Brad wants. This is the kind of solution he needs. I actually ended up acquiring the initial cold base from this guy out in Texas. He was a cop. He just wanted to get rid of it and focus on something else. What we ended up doing was rebuilding the whole system again and making them much better. That's a little bit about how we got started on Timeero. Jason: Timeero started to prevent golf, basically. Barima: I have a problem with people playing golf. When you're doing it on company time or when you're playing when you're not supposed to be playing, it gets pretty expensive. We’re on company time. Jason: Yeah. If golf is helping the bottom line and helping you get revenue, great, but otherwise... Barima: If it's helping the bottom line, yeah. Exactly. Jason: Okay. Barima: Sometimes, it feels like it has a big brother feel to it, but you'll be surprised in many ways that people use it. It tracks time, location, mileage, and a whole lot of things. Jason: My company's virtual. One of the challenges I’ve noticed over the last decade or so that I've been running a virtual team is you sometimes get people that are not full of integrity. They come into the business, you think they're going to do a good job. If there isn't a level of accountability that needs to be in the business, people sometimes will take advantage of that. The challenge is that I've had people stealing time from me in the past. Eventually, you find out. Eventually, you figure out they're not getting stuff done and you're paying for that time. That's a challenge people deal with. It's theft in the business. It sounds like we're talking about preventing theft. One of the side effects I've noticed in having time tracking and time software for some of the team members, contractors, or people that I hire, some of these do screenshots, some of these do things like that. It's created safety for my team members or as contractors as well. One of the challenges a lot of contractors deal with is they have to prove that they're doing something and they feel that pressure. It could very easily be somebody that hired them to say I don't think you did anything, or I don't think you did enough. I don't want to pay you. There's also the issue of if there are interactions or dealings with customers, so having accurate records protects the customer, it protects the employer, the team member, and it protects entrepreneurs, the CEO, or the boss of the company. I think people forget that and they sometimes like to focus on it feels so big brother. I generally found that I only get that feedback from people that want to not have accountability. Barima: I think you hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what we're seeing as well. There are a whole lot of uses for it. Generally, people right off the bat think, oh, it has a little big brother feel to it. What we're seeing is it's actually helping the bottom line in terms of payroll as well. One of the things I haven't really mentioned is just with time theft, it's natural for us to have our times. I may come up to you and say I work from 8:00 AM-5:00 PM. The reality is I probably worked 8:13 AM until 4:42 PM. Five minutes, 10 minutes here and there start to add up all the time. It starts to affect the bottom line. We're seeing companies saving anywhere from 5%-15% payroll cost by just having a system in place to help them accurately track more time and also have more insights as to where the employees are spending their time. That's one of the few statements that we're giving businesses that you’d also have to [...]. Jason: I think one positive advantage that has come from the whole coronavirus, COVID-19 epidemic is in March, everybody sort of experienced the significant cash crunch—most businesses did—and they had to tighten their belt. What we saw is a lot of businesses laying people off, a lot of property managers were tightening the belt because they worried rent wasn't going to come in. That created this massive mass cleanse of wait, bloat, and fluff inside of companies. There was just this offloading of that. That makes people really conscious. I think people, more so now than ever, are really conscious of the fact that a 5%-15% reduction in payroll cost is significant because that's typically the largest expense in a business. That could be a significant reduction in expenses, which means you have a lot more cash flow health. If cash flow goes into the business, the business is dead. The second cash flow is gone, the business is done, unless you get loans or something to squeeze out and get a little free cash available. Cash flow is king in a business, and payroll is going to directly impact that. Barima: Right. I think you're spot-on on about that. What the coronavirus and everything going on, as a business owner, your natural instinct is to try to cut down costs. Like you mentioned, most people may be looking to lay off people. A lot of times, as business owners, we’re so focused on bringing in more business. How do I increase my revenue? It also makes sense to look at your bottom line and figure out, how do I cut down costs using technology? I think it's easily forgotten by a lot of team leaders or business owners. In figuring out how to cut down on costs using technology, you can dramatically cut down on costs and help improve your bottom line. In terms of time management, let's just focus on time management. There are a lot of companies out there who still use paper timesheets, they're having their employees to text in their time, or using some form of [...] system. What we're not even talking about is the amount of time that's involved in processing your payroll. First of all, your employees may not be turning in their timecards on time. Depending on how often you’re running payroll, you may be finding out two weeks later how many hours they may have spent on a job. They may not have the greatest handwriting and you're spending a lot of time trying to figure that out. Or you may have to open a call and try to get everyone to turn in their time card in a timely fashion. Today is Friday. The last thing you wanted to do is to spend your Friday afternoon or evening trying to chase people for their timecards. If you're using a system like Timeero, you don't have to sit around and wait for any of that. We're talking about cutting the amount of hours anywhere from 30 minutes to even 5 hours for some companies or more to minutes or even seconds. You can just pull up a report of how many hours have been worked, how much mileage, and have insights to where they've been. Technology saves you a lot of time. As a business owner, you can dedicate those hours or time to something more beneficial. It might be spending more time with your family or other areas of your business. It definitely does help save you a lot of time and money as well. Jason: Okay. We talked about some of the benefits of saving time. Let's talk a little bit about how it works. Say, a property management business owner has some boots on the ground, has an agent or a person at the field, a property manager, and they're doing showings. They're going to open up a property for somebody in getting a lease handle. They're moving around and doing stuff. But they're not sure if this person is going and just picking up the gates in school, hanging out and watching Netflix for an hour here. They want to verify this, how does this software work? Barima: The way it works is that you have your web application, which you can run on an iPad or a normal desktop machine. Your employees are going to have their smartphone. We have mobile apps that they can download on their smartphones. Once they have the app on their smartphone, they can log in using the credentials that they’ve been assigned. Whenever you're ready to start with it, let's say we'll start at 8:00 AM for me. I come in, I punch in, and it starts tracking my time, my location, and my mileage. Whenever I travel around it logs my positions. Let's say I clock in and decide to drive off to go play golf. Now Jason is going to come in and see that I'm at a golf course. That's probably where I'm not supposed to be—at a golf course. You're going to see a trail path of where every single employee has been while they're on the clock. Managers can review that and ask questions. Why were you at the golf course? Or were you supposed to be there in the first place? Jason: For the manager that's looking in the app—managing their staff that is tracking their time—they will see a map for this? Barima: They will see a map, exactly. There's a Google map. For every time entry, there's a Google map that shows your trail path of where you’ve been while you were on the clock. Again, the app only tracks time and movement while you're clocked in. The moment you clock out, it stops tracking you because we really value privacy. We're not interested in knowing what you were doing off the clock. It's only while you're in the clock that it tracks your trail path, where you've been, and any information that’s needed Jason: Great. If they have a maintenance person going around doing maintenance in some properties, they can say, hey, this tenant called me. They said you haven't shown up yet. Where are you at? Oh, yeah, I'm on my way. You check and they're at the golf course. I know that's not the case. It creates some accountability, which I think lessens the temptation for people to lie, steal, and do things. It also creates more accuracy because they know that their location is being entered in. Now, say somebody forgets to clock out. They go do an errand at the grocery store. They're like, oh, I forgot to do that. Are they able to edit their time entry to remove that portion and eliminate that pin from the map? Barima: Absolutely. You're able to go edit your time entries and change all of that. One of the things we're doing or some of the few things we've got is to make sure we can remind people to clock out as well. Not just clock in, but also to clock out. You can set a reminder. For instance, we use a technology called geofence. We can set a geofence around your work area. The moment you leave your work area, it notifies you to clock out because you probably may have forgotten to clock out, you're leaving off for lunch, or leaving off. The other thing we're coming out with is an automatic clock in and clock out. Whenever you arrive at the job site, it automatically clocks you in. When you leave, it also automatically clocks you out. These are optional settings you can turn on and off. Again, it helps people track time more efficiently and more accurately. Now, you don't have to worry about forgetting to clock in and out. It just handles that for you if you turn on those options. Jason: Yes. I'm a big fan of creating or implementing systems that can do the job of managing certain pieces rather than micromanaging your team. I love when information's pushed to me instead of me having to go and ask them, and get it, or find out, or that sort of thing is. You may want to know, as a boss, what were you [...]. What were you doing this time? If you go and ask them all the time, if they are doing the right thing, they're going to feel invaded. They're going to feel like you're not trusting them. Having a system like this, I can see the advantage in being able to check and say okay. It can alleviate those fears you have in the back of your mind. Oh, they were on the job site. They were doing this job at this property. They were in the office this time while I was on vacation when I checked. It just allows you to lower that pressure, those noises, those fears, and those doubts. And it allows you to facilitate greater trust in your team. Barima: Absolutely. Speaking of micromanaging, I'm not a micromanager at all. I don't like environments where people feel micromanaged. Sometimes using the software may come off as micromanaging. One of the things we do is we like to train our users to have a better culture within your businesses, within your companies. Foster an environment where people feel trusted. And also, using tools like this to foster more accountability. You can have a great accountability system without micromanaging people. Sometimes, people don't think those two things go together. You can have good technology in place, make sure people are held accountable, but then also avoid micromanaging people. Jason: Yeah. This is an ironic thing in business or some people think these things don't go together. But really, when you create really good accountability systems inside your business, first of all, it's going to prevent the hiders or the people that aren't real believers in you or in your business from being able to get away with theft, stealing time, or being lazy. These are the team members we sometimes have in business that just want to leave for the weekend, complain about their boss, and they hate their job. None of us want those people on our team. Ultimately, we want people that are believers, people that buy into our vision, that want to enact the change that our business' mission is focused on. Those are the people that we want working for us—people that are inspired rather than controlled. What I found is that those types of people love accountability systems because they get recognized. They want recognition. But when you're hiding, when you're trying to steal, when you're trying to do as little work as possible, and just get a paycheck, you don't want accountability or recognition. You just want to fly below the radar. For my team members, we have a weekly commitment meeting. We show up and everybody says what they got done that week based on what they committed to doing in the previous week and what they didn't. My team members love being able to say, I got these things done. Everybody can see it. Great job you got these things done. Nobody wants to be the person that has a bunch of things that are in the red that they didn't accomplish, that are nos on the to-do list and want to feel like the weakest link. It creates a performance culture in which there's positive peer pressure. I could see how some people would resent this system and some people would respond well to it. Ultimately, as entrepreneurs, we want those that respond well to accountability and they love the recognition. The big mistake we make a lot as entrepreneurs is we think that they just want more money. We think they want bonuses. That's going to incentivize their behavior. Most people, besides entrepreneurs and salespeople, are more motivated by recognition than they are by increasing monetary benefits. Barima: I totally agree with that. It's very easy to think money motivates. Not everyone is solely motivated by money. Money helps but there are so many other ways to motivate people. It comes down to figuring out what each person on your team values. Recognition is one of them. It really, really, helps to help people feel recognized. It helps them feel that a good job is very important. There are many ways to motivate people outside of money. I've seen it go both ways where money motivates people. Actually, I've also seen it not motivate people. You just never know. It's up to you, as the leader, to figure out what motivates each and every single person. Also, like you've mentioned, there are some people who just are not ready to work. They will be the ones complaining about accountability systems, and they will be trying to figure out ways to beat the system. With those people who fall in that bucket, you have to forego different ways to work with them. Jason: Now, when it comes to technology, the biggest challenge with the team is adoption, which means getting them to use it. This is usually the biggest challenge with software is getting people to use a new thing or do things in a new way. What's your experience with people being onboarded into Timeero and getting their team members to use this? Barima: It's been on a wide spectrum. Overall, one of the big reasons why people go with us is because of simplicity. We put a lot of effort into making sure that our software is very easy and very simple to use. We know that not everyone is very tech-savvy. We really invest a lot into the design. Simplicity is always at the very top of what really shapes the design. When it comes to onboarding, it's very simple. We try to make the process extremely simple so that with a few clicks or a few taps you’re in the system and you're starting to log hours without very much help. We also invest in a lot of our customer support. You can get on the phone with us and talk with us. You can get on live chat. We’re happy to do a video call and help anyone get onboarded. There are few players out in the space. In software in general, it's a well-known fact that it's not that easy to get support when you need it. Sometimes, people will put you through an email system and you may hear back from them several days after. With us, we really invested a lot in our customer support, so you can get on the phone with us in the live chat. I can tell you, Jason, once you put out your request, you can expect to hear from us within 10 minutes. That's it if you're within our core hours of the business. We really take that. It's a high priority for us in giving people the support they need. Jason: You mentioned that there's a lot of other apps in the time tracking space. Customer service and being intuitive are two areas in which you stand out. What are some other features or benefits we haven't touched on yet? Or is there anything else that leans people to using your software to do this rather than whatever they're comfortable already or that they're using currently? Barima: When it comes to time tracking, time tracking has been around for a long time. You have companies that have been doing this for over 30 years or probably even longer. It's a very saturated space. There are so many time tracking apps out there. Some of them are free and some of them are paid as well. Where we separate ourselves from the gazillion apps out there we are mostly focused on helping you give your outside team more insights, having more insights into how your outside team is spending their time. We have a lot of property management companies that use us. Also, we help you track mileage. There are few apps out there. I can only probably count two apps I know that probably do that—track your mileage and track your time. Many companies will want to track your mileage. Perhaps you reimburse employees for mileage driven as well. They may probably be paying also for a separate time tracking app with GPS tracking capabilities. What we've done is we’ve matched those two. You don't even have to pay for two separate apps. You get time tracking, your mileage tracking. You're also getting scheduling and your host of other things we want to come up with like expense tracking as well. We've been able to mash all of these different technologies. It's very appealing to a lot of property management companies, businesses, and even property managers with one or two employees will use us. It just saves them a ton of time. As a business owner, you're focused on trying to grow your business. The last thing you want to be doing is trying to chase paper timecards, figuring out mileage, and whatnot. With technology, you're able to do all of these very, very quickly, and much more easily. Your time can be focused on what's supposed to be important. There are several things we do: time tracking, mileage, GPS tracking, scheduling, and a few other things. Again, with our software, you have a lot more insight into how your outside team is spending their time. Jason: Awesome, that's great. There's a lot of property management business owners that have property managers that are spending some time in the office, some time out in the field. They'll be able to assess whether they're out, in, or not. They'll be able to see how much time they’re spending at the office. They'll be able to see that they are going to the properties at the times they're supposed to. I'm sure every property management business owner has heard, I showed up for the showing and nobody was there. Usually, the assumption is this tenant is totally out there. But it may be the case that you have team members that are not really measuring up, being fully honest, or doing the things that you need them to do. That level of accountability is going to keep them at that high level. Barima: Right, exactly. You probably end up getting a bad review from a customer that says, They never showed up. As a business owner, you can go to their system and say, Where was John at 3:00 PM on this day? It will pull up that system and tell you. Jason: Yeah. If they were there, then that could be your comment on that review online. We use GPS technology to track. That's a selling point. That's a feature. We use GPS technology to track each of our team members that are out in the field, and this team member showed up at 2:58 PM—two minutes before and was there. We have this verified. You have facts and data. This will protect you legally in certain legal disputes. You'll be able to verify the things where people were in certain places when they were supposed to be. If you were supposed to be there to deal with a constable, an eviction, or a policeman. Any of these things, there'll be a record that somebody was there at that time stated and you'll have history. If you end up in a courtroom, some sort of a challenge, or a discrepancy with an owner or a tenant, you've got verification. You've got validation from a third party showing that there is a GPS time tracking being done. Barima: Absolutely. Jason, it's very interesting with my experience just talking with different business owners. What I'm seeing is the businesses that are investing in technology are the ones starting to get ahead. Over time, they'll start to get ahead because it just gives you such a huge advantage. It's tremendous the amount of advantage that technology just gives you. Sometimes, you have some business owners that just want to stick with the old way of doing things because that's what they're used to and it works. Yes, it might work, but your competition is just getting ahead, miles ahead of you just because you're investing in the right technology. The ROI that you're getting from using technology is so much bigger than what you're paying for. Jason: Yeah. You're saying that this can save people on average between 5%-15% in payroll? Barima: Exactly. 5%-15% of payroll. That's just the payroll side of it. Now, there's the human. We're not even talking about your time spent trying to do payroll and capture people's times. We haven't also talked about the errors that happen from getting the payroll log. The last thing you want to do is overcompensating people or under-compensating them. Again, you use technology that takes care of that. You don't have to spend your time worrying about, did I end up overpaying this person or did I underpay them? We're talking about tremendous time-saving costs as well. Jason: Okay. I'm looking at your website. The pricing looks really affordable. Let's just do some quick math for property managers here. Say, you've got one team member. They’re maybe between $15-$20 an hour. They're full time. You've got one team member full time. That could be anywhere from $3000-$4000 a month that they're spending on this person. 5% of $3000 is $150. Your software is not going to cost them $150 a month. Not even close. Even if it just helps them a little bit, it sounds like it can easily pay for itself right out the gate just by reducing a little bit of extra fat that people are padding accidentally on to their timesheets. Barima: Absolutely. It pays for itself right out of the gate. Again, looking at the ROI, you were paying this amount of money and you're saving this amount of money by using our system. It pays itself off right away. In a lot of ways, you can say it's a no-brainer to use that. Jason: All right. Is there anything else we're missing? Barima: Our pricing is very simple. It's $5 per user per month. It doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. In the future, we'll eventually introduce extra pricing tiers as we add more technology as well. We do have a $10 base fee for your accounts. The $10 base fee just covers your whole company account. Let's say you have 10 employees in your company. You're going to pay 10 times your $5, so that puts you up at $50. Then, there's the $10 account base fee that you pay every month. In total, you're paying $60 a month to manage your 10 employees—whereabouts, the time entries, the mileage, the scheduling, and a whole bunch of things—only for $60 a month. Like you mentioned, you can look at how much you're saving in payroll costs by using that. Purely just for payroll cost, you can— Jason: If it only helps them save 1%, even just a single percentage in staffing cost, it would be a no-brainer. Barima: Yes. It is a no-brainer, but you'll also be surprised not everyone finds it to be a no-brainer. You get it, but not everyone might get it that way. Yeah, it's very interesting. Jason: Very cool. Barima, it's been great having you on the show. We haven't had anybody on the show yet talk about anything like reducing or tracking time with GPS out in the field. I think this is a common issue that property managers run into, or it's a blind spot they just have they've just not been paying attention to. Something like this would probably create a little bit more safety and certainty for them. It sounds like it would also lower some of the effort, pressure, noise, work involved with timesheets, payroll, and dealing with people that are out in the field or in-house vendors. People that they have maintenance, people inhouse, property managers that they have out in the field, people doing showings. I think there are a lot of benefits here for property managers. I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing this with us. How can people find out more about Timeero? Get in touch with you? Plug your stuff. Barima: Yeah. You can visit our website at timeero.com. Visit our website. Use our live chat. You can also call into our office. If we’re in, we will answer it. If we're not, we'll respond back to you. Please do visit our website and use our live chat. Get on with one of our support agents or a customer sales agent who will get in touch with you and help you solve problems. We're here to solve problems. Get on and talk to us. We'll figure out if we'll be a good fit for you or not. If we're not, we’re happy to recommend any other solutions that might be a better fit for you as well. We look forward to hearing from you. Jason: Awesome, Barima. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow Show. Barima: Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Jason. Jason: All right. We'll wrap this up. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, you want to make a difference, all the things we talked about in the beginning, in the intro, be sure to reach out to DoorGrow. We've been having great success helping clients, coaching clients, helping them clean up their business, clean up their branding, clean up everything that's preventing them from getting the deals, and the leads that they really believe they should or could be getting. The reality is that SEO won't save you. Can SEO help your business? Absolutely, but there is not a lot of search volume for property management for this industry. The best deals and leads are snatched up before they start searching on Google. You need a game plan, you need a system in place that you can grow your business, and not be waiting and relying on having the top spot on Google in order to grow. We want to help you get there. We want to help the best property manager succeed. Reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com. And be sure to check out Timeero. You can check it out at timeero.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

It’s that time of year as college students start or return to school. They may think they know it all, but really know nothing. How many students does it take to change a lightbulb or turn the heat on? It’s time to grow up in the real world! Today’s guest is Peter Tverdov of Tverdov Housing. Although student rentals are management intensive, Peter actually enjoys dealing with students. It’s prepared him to take on other types of tenants to diversify and grow his business.  You’ll Learn... [02:18] Rutgers University: Becoming a landlord in New Brunswick and loving it. [02:53] Student Housing Side Hustle: Accumulate more and manage them for others. [03:24] Hindsight is 20/20 in 2020: Bad timing to start business and quit day job to grow. [04:41] Decision to deal with students and student housing led to diverse tenant groups. [06:15] Peter’s Portfolio: 65-70% student rentals, 15-20% low-income families, 5-10% middle-class/workforce housing. [08:10] Onboarding Students: Educate and set expectations to limit excuses later on. [11:00] Happy Tenant, Happy Owner: Second largest lead generator is tenant referrals. [12:57] Broken Windows Theory: Dumpy/dilapidated areas attract crime and trouble. [13:45] Tverdov Renovation Consultants: Improve properties to attract better tenants. [14:47] Avoid or Acquired Taste? Riches are in the niches as a student rentals landlord. [16:33] Other Options? Rules/laws for room rentals, individual leases, boarding houses. [20:55] Responsibility: How to be landlords and hold each other accountable. [23:35] What’s next for Tverdov Housing? Track KPIs, achieve goals, and grow doors. Tweetables Landlord Business: Slowly and discreetly acquire more properties, get your hands dirty, and deal with people. “In business, it’s good to diversify.” “Managing student rentals, it really gets you battle-tested for managing other tenants.” “We’re not for everybody. We’re fair, but firm.” Resources Tverdov Housing Tverdov Housing on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing 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 the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. All right, today's guests, I'm hanging out with Pete. I’m going to see if I can say your last name right, Tverdov. And I'm going to unmute you so you can actually respond to that. Did I say it right? Pete: That was awesome. Pete Tverdov of Tverdov Housing. Pete, before we get into the topic, I want to introduce you, have you introduce yourself a little bit, but we’re going to be talking about student rental properties and the title is The Cash flow and Chaos of managing student rental properties. That sounds kind of fun. Let's get into the cash flow and chaos after we hear a little bit about your background, how did you get into this, and tell everybody who's listening about Pete. Pete: Sure. Happy to be on the show, thanks for having me. I got into it, my wife and I moved back to the Central Jersey area about six years ago and in the process of moving back we were looking to buy a multi-family, live in one unit, and it brought us to New Brunswick, where Rutgers University is. We both went to school there, we both played sports there, became a landlord, and really enjoyed the process of becoming a landlord. As I wanted to try to accumulate more rentals, I had the idea to begin managing for the people as it's something I really enjoyed doing. I enjoyed just getting your hands dirty and dealing with people. I started to do that on the side a little bit in that neighborhood, very slowly, very discreetly, and then little by little, I was just nibbling and getting more people under management because I was doing a pretty good job. About a year ago, it grew into a large enough business where I was at a crossroads with my regular job. I said you know what? I feel pretty good about this. I'm just going to dive in and really try to grow my business. That has been a bit rocky because I did that officially in January. I say rocky because of Coronavirus. The business has been good. It's been fun. I enjoy being an entrepreneur. I enjoy trying to grow the business each day and I'm happy to be here. Jason: Yes. Looking back, hindsight being 20/20, pun intended, so here in 2020, would you have chosen, if knowing that this would all happen to start your business, would you still have done it? Pete: It's such a hard question to answer because I had grown a business enough to that point where there was really no turning back. I just had a breaking point because I was working 24 hours a day. I was working in New York City. So it's just really challenging to try and juggle both really and I couldn't at that point. So was the timing the best? Definitely not. Jason: Okay, so you started getting into doing this yourself. Then you started doing it for others. At what point did you start deciding it would be a good idea to deal with students? I mean, this is your college hometown, right? It's a college town, your wife's college town, there is a college there, and it seems probably pretty obvious that you should be dealing with student housing. Were you already dealing with students with your own rentals? Pete: Yeah, that's exactly right. Every rental we owned was student housing and something I had a lot of familiarity with. For a while, I didn't want to do anything else but student rentals. About a year ago, I started to diversify that and try to pick up other tenant groups to manage, which we have, thank God, because in business it's good to diversify. But for me, anything with investing or my advice to anybody with investing is to go with what you know or the areas you know and then you branch out from there, which is what we did with the business. Again, student rentals are something we're super familiar with, super comfortable with and now we're at the point where we're happy with how much we have in the business and we're actively looking. We don't really even market too heavily to student rental landlords just because we have a sizable amount and because we know what chaos comes with managing them and how management-intensive they could be. As I said, we're trying to diversify the business. In addition to being well-known for student rentals, we want to [...] things as well. Jason: Give listeners a little bit of idea of what your portfolio looks like right now. Pete: Of our business, 65%–70% is student rentals. Another 15%–20% is lower-income families, and then the remainder is middle-class housing, workforce housing, yuppies. What's funny is managing student rentals really gets you battle-tested for managing other tenants because the other tenant groups really are a breeze. Student rentals are very management-intensive because they're 18- to 21-year-olds, so young adults. Most of them know nothing and what's worse is they think they know something which compounds the problem sometimes. I was the same way and maybe you were as well. You don't really know much when you're that age. They don't understand that they're responsible for changing light bulbs or if the heat's not working in the house, maybe it's because no one checked to see if the thermostat was even on. Stuff like that is really low hanging fruit. Jason: Yeah. Like you're saying, before anybody has kids or business or any of that, we're all experts on parenting, business, and how the world should work. I love it when my teenagers tell me how to be a better parent. I love that. That's always a really fun conversation. Everyone's an expert until they do it and then they realize they're like everybody else winging it and trying to figure out what's next. You started with the most difficult type of housing. It sounds like it was more difficult renters and tenants than anything else. It felt like it was just downhill. From there it was easier. Pete: That's right. As I said, it's just a very management-intensive group. What do I mean by that? They never signed a lease before. Some of them have never paid rent before. They've never written a check before or they don't know how to pay rent online. They don't really know what a security deposit is. They don't really know the process of getting it back. I think our business grew because we really tried to help the tenants understand the process and how it works. With students, for example—I would recommend this to anyone managing students—we usually sit down with them for 20–30 minutes and go over the lease with them, go over all the points in the lease, and set expectations upfront. We try to really limit the excuses for a tenant, like I didn't know that. What do you mean? We sat with you in person and went over that. That's one of the things. Some of the management items that I was talking about beat the properties up a little bit more so the repairs are higher and things always just mysteriously break. It was never their fault like something happens and nobody wants to admit it. I got a taste for managing other tenant groups. I realize how intense the students are and it's not a bad business to be in because, for people who own the rentals, the cash flows are higher, but with higher cash flows comes a set of their own problems. Jason: Aren't these things just common in property management in general? Like the advantage of you having a business like this is that you're almost educating these people through the process. That would work well for any new client because even if they've rented multiple places before, you have your way of doing things, they still may not want to follow things, have misinterpreted things, or they may claim they read the lease and understand it. All of these things sound like a really good baseline for how to onboard all of your renters. Pete: What I realized early on with the way I conduct business is we're not for everybody and that's because we believe in holding people accountable. One of the gentlemen who help me out hits me on the head. We're fair but firm. We're very fair. We don't try to nickel and dime people, but we're firm. The lease is the lease or the code is the code and this is what we have to do in order to ensure that the property is running smoothly, to ensure you're happy as a tenant, and to ensure the owner’s happy as a client. As a property manager, you're getting hit from both sides a lot of the time, but that's what I try to do to tenants. Honestly, we try to give as good of an effort as we can to make sure that they have a good experience because what's pretty cool about our business is the second-largest lead generator for us is tenant referrals which is awesome. That's free. That costs nothing. For that to be number two, it tells me we're doing something right, even though it feels like we're not sometimes and I want to continue that. Jason: So tenant referrals, meaning the tenants are referring the owners to your company? Pete: They're referring other tenants to our company. It makes the amount of advertising we have to spend on finding tenants less. Jason: Right. Do you feel like that's a challenge and student housing is finding people to rent the place? Pete: I must say it depends on the demographic. What's unique about Rutgers is it's split between two towns in New Jersey, New Brunswick, which has a population of 55,000 and Piscataway, which (I couldn't tell you) maybe it's 30,000 or 50,000. It's not a small town either, but it’s very old homes, especially in New Brunswick. What a lot of landlords in that area are realizing is people don't want to live in a dump anymore. They're willing to pay a little bit more. The house needs to be nicer. That's what we've done with stuff that we own. Most of the clients we have take a little bit of convincing, but after a while, they trust us to spend some money on their property because it makes it easier to rent. I went out to Rutgers, I majored in Criminal Justice. There's this thing called Broken Windows Theory and for people who don't know that it is, it's what it sounds like. When you have a dilapidated area with a bunch of broken windows, it attracts crime and attracts people looking to get into trouble. When you have that same place and it's all cleaned up, all the windows are fixed, the outsides painted, and the sidewalks are redone, the crime statistically usually has gone away. We took that same theory with housing. So if you have a dump, you're likely going to attract tenants who don't care about the place. They're just going to beat it up even more. If you have a nice place, you usually attract nice tenants, and even with the students being as management-intensive as they are, we've found that to be true. What's interesting is within the property management business—I did this right in the middle of the pandemic—I said screw it. I’m going to start another business. So we created what's called Tverdov Renovation Consultants. We basically do project management for our clients. We tell them, listen, we could help you rehab, bathrooms, kitchens, additions, roof siding, blah-blah-blah. We have a whole portfolio of the work we've done on Instagram. That's been good for the owners because it makes their property easier to rent. They get more rent and make our property worth more. We're happy because we've found a better tenant. The town's happy because we've improved the property and it's really a win and win across the board. It's just a matter of convincing other owners who are stuck in having lipstick on a pig or they don't want to spend a lot of money on properties and now we're at the point where I don't really want clients like that. I want clients who want to have a well-run property. Jason: Got it. Do you feel like tenants are an acquired taste in property management? My perception as other property managers avoid dealing with student housing, with those types of tenants. They feel like they're more difficult to manage unless they feel like in their market they need to. Do you feel like you would maybe in general convince these property managers in some way that there is a benefit or an upside to focusing on a tenant or better student housing? Pete: I think if you know it and you know the area, you could do very well and we have done very well. If you don't know it, it's pretty obvious to people who don't know it. You get beat up because you don't know what you're doing. The challenging part is every school is different across the country. When tenants begin to look when the lease is run and there are a plethora of questions to answer. If I was going to invest in another state, it's a whole different set of rules if you're going to try to be a student rental landlord in that state. For me, the riches are in the niches. Again, that's what I knew and I grew it. Now we're looking at expanding into more residential options. Still single family, two to four families, small apartment buildings. That's our bread and butter. That's all we want to do. We don't do commercial. We don't do HOAs or anything like that. That's what we focus on and that's what we're trying to grow. Jason: Now, the financial upside that I've heard from some people that get into this is some have convinced owners to take a property and to rent it out the room instead of renting out the entire property to a family. They're renting it out by the room in these sorts of situations and they're able to get a lot more rent at the property by doing such. That seems to be that there would be a potential financial upside, especially if your fee structure is based on percentages or each renter rather than being just connected to a flat fee per unit, for example. Pete: Maybe it's a little off-topic. We charge a percentage base and we'll always do that. I really don't know how property managers make money doing a flat fee. I think it's tough so we'll always be a percentage-based company. Renting by the room is, you're correct, that is the way to make more money. Again, I keep saying this phrase, but management-intensive, renting by the room is even tougher for students where we put groups together. We put a bunch together last year. We had a kid from Singapore, a kid from India, a kid from New Jersey, a kid from Pennsylvania and they don't know each other. When you're renting by the room, it's even worse because now you almost have four tenants, not one tenant, or six tenants, or however many people you're putting in a house. That creates its own set of problems. Again, this is based on jurisdiction. You cannot do individual leases because that would be considered a boarding house unless it's a licensed boarding house, you really shouldn't be doing that. We don't do that, so we had to rent by the room. We put them all on one lease. We say, listen, you're all legally responsible for damage in the common areas, and so on and so forth. It's challenging. What's funny, though, is I actually want to try to add a boarding house to manage because we get a lot of people just looking for a room. Just looking for a place to live, not just an apartment or a studio. We get a lot of inquiries like, hey, do you have a room? Jason: Is this boarding house law something that is common in just your state? I haven't heard from this, but it makes sense. Is this in other states as well? Pete: I'm just speaking about New Jersey. Jason: Interesting. It's something to those listening if they haven't dabbled in student housing or they're thinking of renting by the room or something like that, they probably should check with their local laws to make sure whether or not there's any sort of rules against doing such. In New Jersey, what does it take to become a boarding house then or to set one of those up? Is it on an individual property basis or is it a licensing sort of deal as a property manager? Pete: You need to have (they call it) a rooming house or a boarding house, but you need to have a license displayed in the property. I've been in enough of them. It's pretty obvious if it's a boarding house or rooming house because there'll be a kitchen with a bunch of labels on each cabinet. Like, this is John's cabinet, this is Max's cabinet, this is Pete's cabinet, and there's a common bathroom or two. Then all the other doors are just shut with locks on it. If you can imagine, that's what they look like and then they'll have a big license in the hallway or stairwell that'll say this is a New Jersey-licensed rooming house or boarding house. That's how they work. But again, those are challenging. Jason: Do you find in those situations you end up sort of having to play parent between roommates? Pete: Yes and no. We had to do it last year with a group of girls we put together. It was a little aggravating and a lot of girl drama. I stepped in and I spoke with them and tried to give them some words of wisdom. Most of the time, what we do with student rentals, I don't care how many kids are living in the house. It's one tenant and I explain to them you're all jointly responsible for rent and all the lease obligations. So it doesn't matter how many people are in the house. At the end of the day, you guys are all responsible. The other thing is we manage nearly 400 students. Some of these are very nice people, but we can't talk to 400 people. It's just not possible. What we do is we make a house manager or captain, or house mom, dad, whatever you want to call it and that's the person we speak with now regarding any tenant issues. We usually recommend somebody else in the house be responsible for submitting rent. So rent is submitted in one payment. Someone else is responsible for utilities. What it teaches these guys is responsibility, how to be accountable, and hold their roommates accountable. In theory, what's cool is we are actually teaching them how to be landlords because they have to make sure rent is collected. Something's broken, they have to find out who did this. Now, I have to tell Pete or for repairs to be made, coordinate with them to schedule it. That's why I said earlier, we're not for everybody because somebody who needs their hands held or mommy and daddy to wipe their mouth, we're not for you and that's okay. Our system usually winds up attracting tenants who are a bit more mature, a bit more independent and if they're not, they get there by the time that they're done with us. Jason: Right, I like it. You’re part of their educational process of the real world. That might be a good selling point for getting tenants. We'll make your kid actually grow up. I hope you're excited about that. I'm serious. I'd be like, I'm going to send my kids into one of those properties, right? Pete: I might try that. Jason: It's worth a shot. Pete, I think this is really interesting. I'd be interested in those that are doing student housing when you see this posted or see this inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group at doorgrowclub.com. I'd be interested to see other people's comments on what you're doing, what's working, and what's not working in student housing. This started as a side hustle. It's evolved into a business doing it for other people. It's now growing. What do you feel like is next for you and your business moving forward? Pete: What I start to do from watching podcasts like this is to track our KPIs, which is really cool. I love that side of the business. It's like a quarterly visit if people think of it. It helps me to understand where we should be spending money, what's working, what's not, and tweaking things. Because we're in the growth stage right now, 100 doors is cool, but there are people who are 500, 800. Those are huge, huge companies. We won't get there overnight, I understand that. The goal of my business is we want to cover three counties in New Jersey. So we're based in Central New Jersey. If anybody from New Jersey is listening to this, Central New Jersey really doesn't exist. That's the inside joke. But the three counties we cover probably have about 2.6–3 million people in them. Those are within a 30-minute radius of our office, so we're very comfortable being within a 30-minute radius of home base. The goal is just to continue to add doors under management. Single-family, 2–4 families, small apartment buildings in those areas. There are certain towns that are rental towns and certain towns that are not. What we've been doing on the marketing side, we've been working on SEO, we have our own website, we blog, we're very active on Instagram, then we do mailers, which maybe not a lot of people do. We do some cold calling, too, and just constantly trying to tweak and figure out what's working, what's not, and how we could generate more leads. On top of the property management, because in New Jersey you have to have your real estate license. So right now, me and a few people, my team are realtors. Eventually, I would like to have my own brokerage. Really rural housing is three companies, so it's realty services—we can help you buy and sell investment properties; that's all we do—we could help you manage the property, or we could help you rehab the property. We have some clients where we help them buy the property, we help them rehab the property, and then we manage the property. Then, one day when they want to sell it, we'll sell the property. That's about creating multiple income streams for our business within the same business, which I think is pretty cool. Jason: Makes sense. Cool. Pete, it's been great having you on the show. I wish you success at Tverdov Housing and for those that are listening, if you have questions about student housing or getting this, or if people listening are interested in getting a place from you or whatever your goal is, how can they get a hold of you? Pete: My website is tvdhousing.com and also my Instagram, Tverdov Housing. You could look at the last name on the DoorGrow Show. It's Tverdov Housing. We're constantly posting what we're doing on Instagram, so it's usually properties we're rehabbing, or some crazy management story, about just some crazy stuff that's happened and probably will happen in the future, stuff that we're selling, so we're very active on there. Jason: Cool. All right. Pete, thanks for coming on the show. Pete: Pleasure being on. Jason: All right. Those of you that are interested in getting into student housing or that have been dealing with student housing, I'd be really curious, like I mentioned, to see your feedback inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group so inside the DoorGrow Club. Let us know what you find is working or not working. It sounds like a challenging thing. I think any of us that have gone to college and remember some of the crazy stuff that either we did or that we saw other people doing, recognize that could be a really challenging thing, but it's necessary. Like their student housing is a need. It'll be interesting to see how things go moving forward with COVID-19 and Coronavirus, and things shifting to online. It will be interesting. Check out the Facebook group, doorgrowclub.com. If you are interested in growing your business and your property management company, making some changes there, if you are feeling stuck, struggling, whatever, reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com We'd love to help you out. Until next time. To our mutual growth, Bye everyone. 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’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

As some freedom returns to society following COVID-19, don’t miss out on potential opportunities to implement property management growth strategies. Today’s guests are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs). Mark and Anne are broker-owners that manage almost 200 doors in Atlanta. You’ll Learn... [03:47] Trends: Property management pivots and changes during economic downturns. [07:10] Hire Virtually: Save money, get better employees, and increase productivity. [08:22] Wake Up: Don’t resist remote work; realize office space may be unnecessary. [11:14] DIY vs. Professionally Managed: Ramp up sales/funnels to serve customers. [15:26] Problems are always opportunities to grow business by offering solutions. [21:11] Customer Service: Don’t disconnect. Focus/follow up for retention/satisfaction. [27:02] Professionalism: Set expectations. Don’t badmouth landlords via vendors. [28:29] BDM: Do you need a business development manager? [31:33] Time, Energy, and Effort: Resources required to rent properties to tenants. {32:28] Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represents customer care problem. [35:29] Gamechanger: Save time and money to get things done or do more yourself?. [38:30] Wrong Person, Role, Tool, Time, and Money: Hire based on owner’s needs. [40:57] Off-the-Shelf vs. Customization: How to hire and build teams takes time. [46:50] Remote Challenges: Communication, operations, and management problems. [48:22] Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Get work done based on expectations. [50:15] Think, Invest, HireSmart: Know avatar to grow property management business. Tweetables Opportunities are available to make sales and buy, manage, and invest in more properties. You don’t have to have your employees in an office. You don’t even have to have an office anymore. Property managers are immune to guilt and the heroes of the rental industry. Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represent customer care problems. Resources HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs) DGS 69: HireSmart Virtual Assistants with Anne Lackey NARPM Lehman Brothers Airbnb DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing 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 the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. My guests today are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart. Welcome you two. Anne: Hey, good to see you. It's been a while. Mark: Hey, it's good to see you. Jason: It's good to have you back. I noticed you're displaying that beautiful logo in the background. Mark: Isn't that wonderful? Anne: Yes, that is of course a DoorGrow special. They helped us with that on our website. Mark: The logo, the renaming, all of that was a DoorGrow impression that was right for us and is great for our clients. Jason: Yeah, I like it. Cool. We're going to be talking about property management growth strategies after COVID-19. This Coronavirus is just starting to clean itself up. I just rode a road trip from Pennsylvania to Austin over the course of multiple days. People were not wearing masks anymore. We were eating at restaurants. It was awesome. It was like we are back to having freedom again. Most places are open here in Austin. I went to the hardware store yesterday, though. Everyone was wearing masks and I felt like I was in trouble. I thought we were over this already, but apparently not at Home Depot. Anne: Some places are, some places aren’t. Jason: I think the national chains and the national stores have to accommodate the lowest common denominator nationally. They got rules in place for everything. What are we chatting about today? Anne: First of all, I want to make sure everybody understands we are broker-owners ourselves. We manage doors in Atlanta. Mike: Nearly 200 doors in Atlanta since 2005 for other people and for ourselves, since 2001. Anne: We've been talking a lot to our friends who are in the property management business. We are, of course, NARPM members, affiliates, and affinity partners with them. We hear a lot around the nation of different things. Just like your trip from Pennsylvania. You saw different parts of the country where things were more open than others, so we want to talk about a couple of different things as we see them. For property managers that are thinking what's the next thing. I want to back up just a little bit and talk a little bit about historical trends and changes. Mark, why don't you get us started on that? Mark: This will show my age. That's one thing if I've mentioned this. In the 70s, we had lines to get gas. Not everybody out there remembers that, but there was an oil shortage. There was a gas shortage and at that point, everybody said we're going to run out of oil in a couple of years. It was a crisis, so out of that came what? We got into solar energy, more on to hydroelectric. Things pivoted, things changed. In the 80s, the savings and loans went down. Things pivoted on how we got mortgages. The dot-com buzz, the 90s, the tech blow up. All those things and what most everybody remembers is the meltdown that we had in the economy and mortgage market that occurred just 10–12 years ago. At that point, it required pivoting and Anne and I are really good at our business about looking to see what the trends are going to be. What's going to change and how to pivot. That's what we want to talk about today. It's not the end of the world like everybody said, March 15th or whatever date it was when everybody went to hibernation. It's like, it's the end of the world. Anne: Nobody's going to pay their rent. Mark: We thought that 12 years ago when Lehman Brothers shut their doors. It all seems like it's the end of the world, but it's not. It's an opportunity. It's learning to pivot. Look at where the puck is going. Anne: We wanted to talk about some of the trends that we see and the opportunities that property managers should be looking at in their business. You obviously don't hop on every trend and everything that comes along, but it is always good to put it in perspective. Mark, let's talk about some of the trends that we've seen in real estate in general. We're going to talk about how you can take advantage of that. Mark: In the last few months, we had property managers and friends that were investors that had Airbnb. They were making 5–10 times the amount of rent I was off of a property. Suddenly, they made nothing because all the bookings shut down. They’re looking. A lot of them said hey, let's sell. Let's go long term. A lot of things changed there. Through them and through those changes of people not having as much disposable income at this point because there's a slow down in jobs, second homes aren’t popular right now. Two, with all the laws that are coming about with the changes to protect the renters that are coming out of state legislators and the national, there's a lot of change and as property managers, we keep apprise to that. But these DIY (do-it-yourself) landlords don't. So, we're going to talk about some opportunities to make sales, to get some additional properties, to manage some opportunities for investing, too, if you're into that area. Jason: When COVID hit and it was March, March was brutal for us at DoorGrow. Sales stopped. Every property manager just tightens their purse strings, freaking out, there's this cash crunch. We experienced a serious cash crunch so we had to get lean. I think a lot of businesses had to get lean and in the long run, that is a really healthy thing for business. Everyone was trimming the fat and [...] was effective. Anne: We saw that in HireSmart because now everybody is a virtual employee. This is a perfect time to write stuff. People that have been hesitant to hire virtually have been in our doors now because they are like, wow, we can save some money. We can have better employees. We can have different strategies and approaches. Now, it was no longer important because it wasn't allowed to have people come into the office. Actually for us on HireSmart, it actually expanded our business. Mark: There was resistance before from property managers that wanted to walk down the hall and lean over Joe or Joan's shoulder and see what they’re doing, see what they're working on—literally, not figuratively—to be there, to have that conversation face-to-face. They were very hesitant about working and they didn't have the resources to figure out how to work remotely. With what’s come out of COVID-19 has become the realization that you don't have to have your employees at an office. You don't even have an office anymore. Jason: I've known this for well over a decade. Interesting to see that mass transition of people realizing they can use tools like Zoom and move away from having somebody right there in their office. I did some polls online asking people during this. I asked how many people would renew their business lease at the end of the term and a lot of them said they're going to, at the very least, downsize, maybe to a smaller office base, or they may even not renew. I also did some polling on what people have noticed as a result of people working from home. Some of my clients were saying that they've noticed that they were surprised that their team members became more productive. They're getting more done. I guess because there are fewer interruptions they were saying. There are fewer distractions. Maybe they're more comfortable. But some of my team members are doing better. I have heard some people say I hate it. My kids are there all the time. I'm going crazy. But in general, I think the world has to wake up and realize when you have to get work done, you can try this. Then they tried this and they're like, hey, this works. Why are we spending so much money on this brick and mortar location that is outrageously expensive to have all these people in it when we can eliminate that crazy expense and it's unnecessary. Mike: Yeah. It was shocking, like you, we immediately drew into our shell in March, and let's save. We don't know what's going to happen. People are going to let people go. But in April and May, we had the most requests for information about our services. The most orders we've had in five years. Jason: I'll bet. Anne: Without any [...]. That's the funny part for us [...] Mike: We’re not traveling. Anne: It's been interesting and we do a lot of community teaching and speaking even online. We always have to help people understand what opportunities are there. A lot of things that we're promoting or that we're seeing right now, specifically in property management, is now’s a great time to ramp up your sales and funnels. Again, because the DIY's are so lost. We already know that there are so many DIY landlords compared to professionally managed. Mike: Eighty percent of the US are do-it-yourself landlords. That's a lot of opportunity. Anne: That's a lot of opportunity. I know you talk a lot about that, but how do you reach them? How do you engage with them? How do you attract them? Of course, they outgrow a platform, obviously, as a key component to that, which is wonderful, but you have to have the human-to-human or human automation to back it up. I think where we're coming to as a society is if you don't have a physical office where people can walk in anymore because you're closing your doors. We've had a closed-door policy for 19 years. I think people are very surprised that we've never let anybody in our office ever. Mike: We have a small office of three. Anne: We've never let anybody in our office even when we had seven people in our office, we didn't have people in our office because it's a distraction, that interruption. What happens is you need to serve your customers. You need to be talking to them. You need to be serving them. Now, the residents and owners don't just want to be served 9–5. We're seeing that they want answers seven o'clock at night, eight o'clock at night when they're online. When they have questions they would like to have some interactions with someone from your office. How do you do that cost-effectively? Of course, we have the solution. A full-time dedicated virtual employee that works as the second shift or the split shift is there to take care of chat. They're there to answer the questions and help people guide them on applications. Mike: Then guide the people that are coming in to bring you properties to manage. Anne: Right, and to talk to owners about how I work with you. Because here's what's going on in the marketplace. Again, in a lot of places, you do have people that aren't able to pay their rent right now because they have lost their jobs. Do you have owners that are concerned about what I do? How do I do this? We've had an increase in our inquiries for property management recently as well because they just don't know the rules. They don't know the laws. Mike: It's not the time to withdraw. We're all sheltered in our business in place, too, and when we withdrew that opportunity to find new business went away. The companies, the far-sighted future thunking property managers, business owners, and the brokers that are now looking at making some investments. Not just sitting on their dollars, but actually making some investments in the right people, the right tools, business development people to help grow the business, doing outreaches. One thing we were talking about just the other day was—we haven't done this yet—we should have a seminar that we invite all the DIY landlords to share with them all the fears of all the new laws that have come out. [...]. We have that seminar and some of them are going to come out and say, okay, now I can do things differently because I have information on what I can and can't do. A lot of them are going to come out and say I just can't do this anymore. I'm tired of doing it. I'm going to hire—in case—us because we've been in that seminar. Making those types of investments, and granted that those seminars aren't always live, they're maybe at this point virtual but reaching out to those. Those are the ways now to grow your business for tomorrow because over the next six months until we get to the end of this year, there's opportunity abound for forward-thinking. Jason: That's what problems do. Problems are always opportunities. Let's talk about the problem. Here are some of the things I noticed. I won't say who it is, but I got a call from one of my business coaches and he has rental properties. He was like, what do you see in the market place right now because I got a small portfolio of properties and only 50% of them are paying rent. I said at least 98% of most of the rent is being collected by my clients. That's what I'm hearing. Also, what I noticed happening is my clients are saying that their owners were calling them and saying if tenants don't want to pay rent this month, we'll let them not pay rent. They're like no, they're going to pay rent. The thing is people felt guilty. They're almost ashamed but feel guilty, but property managers, you guys are over that [...]. You guys are completely over. You've heard all the excuses. You've heard all the stories. Some residents right now, due to the unemployment benefits and stuff that are going around, are making more money, especially the low rent markets. They're making more money than when they were working. But some of them are still trying to use the excuse that they need to not pay rent or whatever. The news kind of made it look like that. It made it look like people trying to collect rent are evil, bad, sick, or wrong. A lot of homeowners are just feeling guilty. Property managers are immune to guilt. Anne: That's because we've heard it all. Jason: We've heard it all. We heard all the stories, the excuses. You know how to help people. You know what programs are available because you guys are on top of this stuff. You guys aren't having trouble collecting the rent. In general, I haven't heard anyone in the single-family residential space or even multi-family having real trouble collecting rent. Rents have gone down just a little bit. You got people that most would have heard it's the same people that we're always troubled paying rent. We just couldn't evict them, but that's coming. Mike: Your coach needs to reach out to a professional manager. You see that, but he doesn't. Seminars, webinars, something. Jason: They don’t see the problem. That's the challenge I've always experienced in DoorGrow. I'm selling a solution to a problem that most people can't see. They can't see the leaks on their website. They can't see the challenges that their branding is hurting word of mouth. I have to educate people to see the problem. The same thing is what you're talking about. If you can create the gap and show the contrast between what challenges and problems they're dealing with and what they could be experiencing, what successes your clients are having, they're going to see this gap and that gap is what creates pain. People want to solve pain. People want a pain killer, not a vitamin. People will pay even more money to get out of pain. They want a solution, but they don't know a lot of them that there's a solution out there. I do think there is a massive opportunity. There's no scarcity in property management. There's no shortage of people that are in pain or have problems or challenges they are dealing with. Not only that, but I think property managers can hold their heads up high because good property managers, I really do believe as I said before, can change the world. There are millions of renters. Even here on my own property, I'm renting (I just moved to Austin), my kids were without a water heater for two weeks. The landlord sent out two different plumbers because he didn't like the feedback that the 13-year-old water heater should be replaced even though the pilot kept going out. I didn't even know my kids were taking cold showers because they got it before me and they can't get on Xbox until they take their showers, so they 're just doing it. All they're thinking about is can I get on the Xbox now? I'm like, yes, go ahead. But then my daughter's like, I haven't taken a shower in four days because the shower's freezing. I didn't know this and the younger ones, I went to them. That doesn't make sense because they've been taking their baths and their showers. I went to my son, Hudson, and I'm like, how's the shower been lately? He's like, cold. I'm like, what? Why didn't you tell me? Mike: It’s virtually a summer, right? Jason: Then I said to my daughter, she likes taking baths, you've been taking baths? She's like, Yeah. How are your baths been? She's like, they're really cold. I'm like, what? But you guys protect families. You guys also protect owners. You guys are like the middle person that makes everything okay and you take care of people. It lowers the pressure and noise. Property managers even do things like increasing the number of pets that families are able to have because you guys recognize that usually, it’s the kids that are causing more damage than the animals. [...] to get more rent because of pets. There are so many benefits to property management that positively impact families, homes, and lives. You guys are really the heroes of the rental industry. Property managers are the heroes of the rental industry. Mike: And unlike your property manager there that evidently has trouble with customer service. Jason: He's not the property manager, technically. He's just a landlord who doesn't want to do anything. Anne: You got a DIYer. Mike: Yeah, a DIYer. Anne: Sounds like a great lead. Mike: But that gets into the consideration of customer service. As property managers, we worried over the years about customer service to our owners but we haven't worried as much about customer service to our tenants. For retention and to continue to have tenants that want to refer people in, raising your level of customer service at this time specifically because I know I ordered something that didn't come and it was then delivered to Valentine, Nebraska instead of here where I am in Georgia, so I sent a response online and I got an auto-reply that says call this number. I call the number and it says we're too busy. We're not answering phones now. Just send an email. Customer service has failed specifically right now. Anne: I'll actually tell you something that we did on our property manager which I think has really impacted our renewals and we are getting increases in rent even now. Mike: On everyone. Anne: Let's just talk about it. Again, people pay for when they feel taken care of. One of the biggest gaps that we saw, this is probably two years ago, in our business was exactly what you're talking about. Tenant isn't taken care of, it's taking too long, the contractor is giving all kinds of excuses as to why they can't get there, tenant's going here, contractors going here. There's this big disconnect. Our virtual employee, Bonnie, is charged literally with every day every work order that comes in, she's calling the vendor and saying vendor, did you get it? Because we want to make sure it didn't get— Mike: Lost. You know how emails are. Anne: That's the first thing. Then the next day, she's calling the resident and saying resident, we assigned your work order to contractor B. Have you heard from him? Well, no. What happened? Jason: That's better than being ghosted and then eventually not having your calls answered, then eventually maybe getting a text or response half a week later. Anne: She says okay, you haven't heard from contractor B. Here's contractor B's information. We have already approved them to go out. Then she calls contractor B and she says contractor B, I heard that you haven't connected. Why haven't you connected? Oh, they haven't returned my call. Okay, I just got off the phone with them. They are available. Call them and they are expecting your call. She closes that loop, that hand-off because we assume contractor B is doing his job and we assume tenants are never wrong, they never change their phone numbers or anything else. Mike: Then the contractor goes out like he did to you and assesses the work. Many times there's not a follow-up, so what does Bonnie do then? Anne: Bonnie, as soon as she gets the date it was supposed to be scheduled from either the tenant or the contractor B, she follows up the next day and says my understanding is that contractor B was supposed to be there yesterday. Did they show up? Mike: Jason, did they take care of the water heater for you. Anne: Are you satisfied with the repair. Mike: And Jason says no. Anne: No, I still have… Now, we have another feedback loop. This is a maintenance process that we never could have done without having a virtual employee do this. It's too time-intensive and we have other work to be done. Mike: Then the flag goes up to tell the owner, owner, you got to provide hot water. You want an ACH or do you want us to loan you the money at an 18% rate? Anne: Yeah, put it on a credit card, however you want to do it. The reality for us is our tenant satisfaction has gone through the roof because we showed that we care, we're not letting it go, and literally, I as the broker get the list of not only what the outstanding work orders but where they are in the process and what she's done to move it forward. If we have a resident that we haven't been able to get in touch with, the contractor hasn't been able to, we have an escalation process. I don't manage, Bonnie manages. Again, total game-changer. Mike: The benefit out of all of that, we don't get pushed back when we're raising the rent. We started with our process in the middle of March. We do it in the middle of every month with notification of our rent increases and property. Most property managers that we know said you're crazy. We're either going to hold it. We'll tell them they don't have to pay an increase. We went out there and we got resistance from one tenant over the last, March, April, May, June. We got four months into our belt of increases and we have one pushback. Anne: Of course when you have rent increases, that increases our profitability, too. The owner makes a little bit more money, we make a little bit more money. It's still very reasonable. One of the things I'll say about rental rates is we don't do it arbitrarily. We do a full competitive market analysis. We make sure it's on the market. We don't raise all the way up to market if it's a significant jump, we'll do it at the average appreciation rate. Mike: We want to stay just below the top of the market. Anne: Correct because we don't want to give them a reason to leave. Mike: But we got happy tenants that don't want to leave. They go oh, I can't rent down the street for what I'm paying here because we always stay right below that. Jason: There's another hidden killer, too, I noticed in the scenario because when these vendors came to my property here and talked to me, they were basically bad-mouthing the landlord. They were like this guy is cheap. I've told them he needs to do this. In your scenario, the vendor is going to feel like they are getting taken care of. They are going to feel like they are on your team and on your side, and they are working with you, whereas these vendors feel more loyalty to me because they know the landlord isn't' doing the right thing. Anne: That goes back to having a contract with our contractor of standards of professionalism. Our vendors actually sign a document that says these are our expectations to be a vendor for us, and one of them is to not bad mouth as part of that. Mike: All these things combined, give us opportunities to shine. We get referrals every week. People come to us and say we hear great things about you as a property manager, and we're forward-thinking. We have opportunities there where we reach out to try to bring in business. Like what we're talking about earlier, a lot of the property managers are just sitting back. They are scared. They are afraid to do anything. That's the wrong thing to do. Anne: A lot of them are looking to bring on a BDM. Remember last year was the year of the BDM. Do you need a business development manager? Okay, maybe you do, maybe you don't. We tend to be our own. Mike: We are our BDMs. Anne: But again, we are high salary people like if you are paying somebody. Our time is very valuable, but we are seeing the smart property managers are supporting that sales effort through follow-up with the virtual employee, a virtual assistant that is literally a full-time doing this grinder follow-ups because we all know in sales—I don't care what industry you're in—you have to reach out seven, eight, ten times. Sometimes, property management specifically, it's pain point-related and some of the pain points only come up once a month. Some of the pain points come up once a year. Some of the pain points only come up periodically, so if you don't have a system to reach out to them, again it can't just be an email anymore. I think people are tired of tech, tech, tech. You need to have tech. You need to have a chatbox on your thing that's manned by a live person, in my opinion, but you also need that human-to-human automation. You need somebody that actually shows that they care a little bit about not only your company but the people involved. Having that sales support, a virtual employee to do that, really allows your BDM to be their most successful self and to do the things that they like to do. People don't realize that. BDMs don't want to do a whole lot of phone calling. They want to be in relationship management. If you can get them in front of the customer more times, if you can keep prospects warm and in the hopper so that when the prospect is ripe and ready, and your BDM can come and close, you are maximizing your ROI for that person. Mark: Yeah. They actually go to our website and ask for some of our tools or some of our information. It auto delivers but then they get a phone call, I want to make sure you got 21 questions or our technical information, and when they get that phone call, they're shocked. Anne: I'll tell you one other thing where people are going to have some issues. We all know about the Zillow. Zillow and they're charging for leads. That’s always been a hot topic. Zillow is rerouting leads. They're rerouting them to their call center in some areas, not to all areas, but into some. You don't have somebody actually calling those leads proactively when you get the email because even if you syndicate them, specifically if you syndicate them, you still get the email that says so and so is interested and they give you the phone number. But if the person proactively calls, Zillow is going to try to give them to people that are paying them, not necessarily to those of us who are syndications. If we're not actually outbound calling those leads as they come in, we are missing opportunities for tenants. This has been a big change probably in the last three weeks. This is fresh information that again if you don't have somebody in your office that has the time, energy, and effort to be calling in addition to responding back via email, you are missing an opportunity to get your properties rented. Again, we have literally five properties come on the market on June 5th, all but one are occupied now. That's how quick we are to get these things done because we have a dedicated resource and our virtual assistant. Literally, that is her only job to focus on. Jason: I want to touch on a couple of things you mentioned that you threw out that I think are important. One, you were talking about referrals. This is one of the number one ways to grow any business generally. I talked to a client I think yesterday, I was coaching a client and they were like our business is so great. We’re great. We got all this process dialed in and they said, but we're not getting any referrals. If a business is not getting any referrals, it's probably not as great as you think it is. Property managers have blind spots. We all do. For those listening, if you're not getting referrals, you got some customer care problems that are likely going on. You should be getting referrals. You should be getting referrals from your vendors. You should be getting referrals from your real estate friends. You should be getting referrals from your property management clients. You should be getting, maybe referrals from some of the vendors, but people should be talking about you. If they're not, there's some sort of blind spot that needs to be shored up. The other thing you mentioned (I think) is really smart. A lot of people, yes, they're like, I need a BDM. I need somebody to do sales, but they can't afford it. A lot of people can't just go out and afford to get some high-grade wonderful salesperson. But most business owners are not willing to also acknowledge that they are a part-time shitty salesperson. The time they're willing to dedicate or have sometimes is maybe an hour or two a day. That’s part-time. it's 10, maybe 15 hours a week, maybe they can dedicate up to 20 hours, but if you really want to grow and scale your business, there probably needs to be a little bit more time or you need just business being referred to you all the time, so it's super easy. One of the easiest hacks I implemented when I was a solopreneur and was doing all the sales, the web design, branding stuff, and everything myself, I got an assistant. I had that person operate as a sales assistant and an appointment setter. It immediately multiplied, not just doubled probably, but it multiplied my capacity to close deals. All I did was show up for appointments. I just met with people and sold. I wasn't doing any of the follow-ups. I was a solopreneur and my assistant was calling—she had a British accent—and saying hello, this is Helen, the assistant to the CEO Jason Hull of DoorGrow. He was wanting to get back together with you. It also set me in the mind of the prospect as something higher than maybe I actually looked like at the time being a solopreneur, sitting at home, trying to work in my living room. There's power in having a team. A lot of people say I can't afford to hire anybody. Maybe you just need somebody to start, just somebody that you can start with and they could be full-time or part-time, but they can start doing a piece of that thing that you need help with. They don't have to be able to do everything. Maybe it's the piece that you least enjoy. Maybe doing the follow-up, the cold calls, and whatnot. Anne: That's the great thing about virtual assistants and personal employees. You're looking at less than $20,000 a year for full-time dedicated help. That's a game-changer. You can't afford not to do that. I think that that's where people get sideways. Where we really help our clients in helping them define their staffing needs, and what's the best ROI for them to bring on board first. We’re talking about trends and the things that we see, but that's one of the services that we provide, helping them figure that out because sometimes it's like you said, sometimes this is a generalist. Somebody that can do a little bit of everything. Sometimes it's a sales support person. I know I need leads. Sometimes it’s accounting, sometimes it's leasing line, sometimes it's in marketing. A virtual assistant through HireSmart, because we're full-time, dedicated, and we specifically recruit for our clients. We don't have a room full of VAs that we go, here you go. I actually go and curate the contacts for you, and then I personally work with them for 40 hours afterward like that one-week job interview to make sure that they're amazing. Anybody that has hired and day two you're like, ugh, they just aren’t amazing. I take care of that for the clients. Mark: It frees up so much time. If it frees up 10 hours a week, how many deals can you close, how many new properties can you bring on in 10 hours? You invest maybe two hours where somebody else is making all the calls, set the appointments, you got that two hours invested. Your return on that is tremendous because you're going to make an offer that’s equivalent to $100, $200, $300 an hour for your investment of time. It goes back to, you've got to make those investments. You can't not hire now, you can't put your head in the sand or pull back in your shell and say, I'm going to do it myself. Especially if you're not happy doing it because if you're not happy, you're not going to get it done. Jason: Therefore, a lot of people that have been shifting to doing more themselves. I have to lay off team members now, I'm doing everything myself. Now I'm doing stuff that I don't even want to do. Let's touch on one thing that you just mentioned. I think this is really important for everybody listening to understand. I've seen this in hundreds of property management businesses and businesses in general, but one of the most painful or dangerous things I think a business owner can do is hiring the wrong person, the wrong role, spending the wrong money at the wrong time. A lot of people hire based on what they think the business needs instead of what they need in order to create more space and eliminate the number one bottleneck in the company, which is you the business owner, it's the entrepreneur. You taking the time to figure out what they actually need to get the best ROI is huge for them because they've seen lots of people, they hire the wrong person they didn't need. Now they're spending this money, or they just hired a bad person in general which not just cost them the money they spent on that person and the time they spent to get that person, but they're now losing money in secret places. I've had team members that stole from me. I've had team members that stole time. I've had team members delete and stuff after I fired them. These are problems that entrepreneurs learn painfully over time trying to build a team. A lot of property managers are in that first trap. They're the 50–60 door mark, they don't know how they can afford to hire that first person, and this is a solution for that. This is a very obvious solution for that. You can help them figure out who they really need right now and to take the next step forward, because if they spend the money on the right person, they make more money. It makes it easier. They then can reinvest. If they spend it on the wrong person, or the wrong tool, at the wrong time, it could be the right tool but it's at the right time, or they're getting software prematurely that they didn't really have to have at that point, or whatever it might be. If you spend money at the wrong time even though it might be the right tool for the future, you're hurting your ability to get to that future. Anne: I totally agree with that. Jason: Cash flow. If you run out of cash flow, the business dies. It’s like the Indiana Jones boulder rolling after you is the cash monster trying to get to you. If the boulder catches you, the business is game over. You’ve run out of money, run out of cash, you're dead. People started to feel that in March. You have to always be outpacing that boulder. If you spend, the boulder gets bigger and faster, but you can get faster if you spend it on the right people. Anne: One of the things I tell a lot of prospects that I'm talking to is most property managers (specifically) were never trained on how to hire or how to build teams. That’s not something we learn at school, it's only by trial and fire. A lot of property managers have fallen into it. Mark: There's not a hiring 301 class in college. Anne: One of the things that I tell them is, just like you're the expert in finding the right tenant for an owner because you've seen enough applications, you've gone through the process, you've done all that, you are the expert there, we’re the experts in hiring. I know I have a profile for hiring, I know what's successful, I know what's not successful. I save my clients from hundreds of hiring mistakes because it's not that they can't do it, a DIY landlord can do it, but they can't do it as well as a property manager. I say the same thing. You can hire. It’s going to take you more time, you don't have a process, you don't do it enough, I have done thousands. Just in the last six months alone, I have evaluated over 9000 applications. You say that gave me some data points. Jason: You know the BS, you know how to spot the scammers, you know which people are gaming the system, you know which people are feeding you a story, you know what questions need to be asked. In the Philippines, you got to ask about their internet connection. You got to, you can't just trust that they have one. You got to ask about where they're working. Where are you working at? Where are you working from? That was part of the thing that I really enjoyed working with you guys. I always look at everything through a certain filter, and I'm skeptical, and I want to see how I can help people. As I went through your process, I'm like, they do this. They already do this. This is stuff I've learned over a decade in my own painful experiences hiring in India, Bangladesh, Russia, the Philippines, Bolivia, and of course the US, which ultimately most of my team are in the US now. But I have Filipino team members. I can personally vouch for your hiring process making a lot of sense. It’s solid and it works really because it's very similar to my own. There are so many similarities. Okay, they've got this down, but you have some advantages. We talked about this in the previous episode. You guys should go listen to that where we talked about their processes and some stuff they do, but you have vetting, background checks, and stuff that people don't just have access to if they're just trying to DIY this. Mark: It’s like the difference, if you're getting married, you got the bride and the groom, and the bride wants a custom-made dress, not one off the rack. The groom really wants a tux that fits them. We are the custom dress, we are the custom tux for that couple versus walking into Neiman and pulling one off the shelves, this looks good, or getting a dress off the hanger and putting it on like, this almost fits, let's go get married. Jason: It looks like your dad handed you down a suit or something. Mark: Right. That’s the difference in what we do. We are custom for our client. We are not off the rack. Anne: Right, and outside of that is it takes time. It takes us 3–4 weeks to literally curate the right people. I always say if you need to hire somebody just the first person off the street, good luck. Jason: You guys are bespoke. It’s bespoke hiring. Anne: We have a guarantee and all of those things, and we can back up what we're saying. But again, if you're trying to grow your property management business right now, you need to look at your staff. Here’s the other thing. Not all staff members are coming back. You may think they're coming back. They're not coming back. You’ve got to look at who are your top liners? Who are the ones that you’ve got to keep? You need to be investing in a relationship with those people first of all. If you're not talking to them on a regular basis, if you're not feeding them, if you're not taking care of them, you need to take care of them now. Who’s part of your med tier? The kind of people that are like, if they come back, great. If they don’t, what's the impact that’s going to happen? What are the people that you really know you just need to not have come back, and you need to deal with that pretty quickly. Mark: For our best person, we got a VA to assist that person so that they can do even better at the best that they were. That’s the important thing that people need to take away from changes that are coming out of COVID. It’s supporting your staff and letting them work at the highest and best use. Maybe that's taking away some of those phone calls and emails by hiring an assistant for them and to give you the opportunity to grow. It’s an assistant to you for the business development to make those calls and to set up those appointments, so that you can just close. Doing those things is the job that Anne enjoys so much is finding the individual to match. What does Jason need exactly? Even though Jason doesn't know exactly, she'll draw that out of you, and I'm just picking on you on that. Anne: That’s a puzzle for me. There's nothing better than when I see my clients six months in, years in, we have our clients for five years now and seeing them and they’d say, Mitch has been the best thing ever in my company. She's really allowed me to be amazing and do what I want to do. Literally, these are comments that we get when we survey our clients. It has been a game-changer. If you're open and able to change. I don't know how much time we have, but there are a couple of things that you need to look at, regardless of whether you use virtual assistants, employees, or whether you are looking at that which are some of the challenges that come from working with a remote team, because remember, even if you're planning to go back to an office, your staff is going to want to have more flexibility. Let’s just call it what it is. Not everybody wants to commute anymore. There are some that miss being in that environment, there's a lot of guys that are like… Mark: We’re happier. Jason: Yeah, why should I spend time commuting? Why should I spend time driving to this? I think there are a lot fewer people doing face-to-face appointments, and they'll just do it through Zoom or they'll do it through Google Hangouts, Meet, or whatever. Anne: Whatever works. What we're finding is it is truly illuminating management problems. It’s illuminating communication problems. If you had a communication problem in the office, now you have a tremendous communication breakdown outside of the office. Mark: If you have an operations failure in the office, boy, the failures are even bigger. Anne: As managers, we need to look at what tools do we have on our tool belt. We help our clients with some of that because we understand years ago that we needed to equip our people to be good at this so that they would keep our people. Mark: It is in software, it’s tools, it’s technology. There's a lot of different pieces that go into that. Anne: Looking at your management style and we like to manage personally using key performance indicators (KPIs) because that takes [...] work out of it. I don’t have to worry if they're working eight hours as long as the KPIs are done and they can get their job done in six, I'm happy to pay them for eight and let them do what they want to do, as long as my stuff’s getting done to a level that I expected. That's the easy button for management, if you don't know about key performance indicators, I certainly encourage you to learn what that is, and how to do that, but it’s one of the things that we teach our clients to do very easily. There are some easy methodologies to do that, but we are seeing some communication breakdowns from people that don't use us. We’re seeing some issues with management. The manager that was the nice guy, that was able to get people rah-rah-rah in the office because she was able to see them, that’s now changed. Now, work is starting to do great. Mark: They can't hide behind the curtain. Anne: They can't hide behind that personality anymore because work’s not getting done. That’s one cautionary tale that I will throw out to your listeners. Jason: Results don’t lie. Anne: They don’t, but it’s difficult to have conversations if you don't have data, and a lot of times, people don't want to track data because they think it's too difficult. We teach our clients how to do it very simply, very easily, and very quickly. That's the other thing. You’ve got to be able to get feedback daily to keep on top of it. If you wait for weeks or months, you are now in this huge hole of garbage that is very difficult to get out of. Make sense? Jason: Makes sense. It's been awesome having you here on the show. Maybe we can take just a few minutes, let's talk about some opportunities right now and ways you think property managers have an opportunity to grow after COVID. We’ve touched on maybe doing webinars, I think you threw out there, the Airbnb. I think I have one client that added 24 doors in a month just from former Airbnbs by cold calling them and reaching out. Obviously, you got to convince them probably to get the furniture out of the place, and make sure that these are good opportunities to manage, and that it’s going to rent effectively compared to what they're paying because some of them were making a lot of money. Mark: They were. You can offer a turnkey for that. I know you've got furniture and all, I'll take care of making the donation, or I'll get the local company that buys furniture and resells it. I don't know if there's a market for that right now, but I'll get it picked up by Salvation Army or the kidney people, and you'll get the receipt. I'll take care of all of that and make it easy for you to let me manage your property long-term. The property managers that think that way are the ones that will be successful. We’ve been seeing that happen in Airbnb and a lot of them are coming back out of service. Anne: One of the things we always recommend when we're consulting with clients just in general is know your avatar. If you're a short-term rental person and that’s your avatar, then you need to create a different marketing strategy around that, like how are you going to deal with that. If your avatar is long-term rentals and you want to gain business by going after short-term to convert them to long-term like Mark said, have a package, have a system, get your relationships put together. Right now interestingly enough, we have investors that are scared to death and are selling, and we have investors that are super excited and are buying. Mark: [...] sales transaction. Though the property manager doesn't have a sales component in their business, they need to have an alignment with the referral program to somebody that does sales. I mean I'm selling two houses a month this year. Anne: Without trying, without marketing. Mark: Yeah, these are my investors. They just say I want to sell, and I’ll say I want to make the commission. No problem. Anne: It's about having a strategy, being able to implement that strategy. and figuring out what are the resources that you need to create that strategy. We think using virtual employees and virtual assistants is a great way to maximize all of that because right now, it is kind of intense. If you're going to do research for short-term rentals, there's not a database you can necessarily easily pull from. You’ve got to go search for them, talk to them. Having that marketing strategy based on what it is that you want to do, having a value proposition that speaks to the pain that the person is dealing with, all are very important. Having a website that actually can capture those leads and make you look professional which is what you guys do is also part of that. You have this well-rounded marketing plan. Mark: We have our VA do all the research. Maybe it’s calling everybody that's on Craigslist or ads out there and saying, you may be tired of being a manager, you should go to this webinar we have coming up. It’s how to be a better manager and how to deal with the current [...]. We can do all those invitations to get people into our webinars that are going to show them they don't need to be doing this anymore. There's a lot of different ways that property managers can grow their business right now, but they need to think smart and make those investments. Anne: And HireSmart. Jason: And they need to HireSmart. Awesome. It's great to see you guys again. I'm glad you guys are doing well there over near Atlanta. Keep me apprised as to your next idea. Anne: We always have them. Jason: You always have them. That’s as crazy entrepreneurs. We always are coming up with new stuff. I'll let you guys go and I appreciate you guys coming on. Your website is? Anne: www.hiresmartvas.com Jason: All right. Thanks, Mark, thanks, Anne. Mark: Thank you very much. Anne: Welcome. Thank you, Jason. We appreciate you. Jason: Awesome to have them on. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, and you're wanting to build a business that you actually enjoy, that you love, that is built around you, this is what we do at DoorGrow. Reach out, I guarantee that we’re going to make your business better in some way, shape, or form, and you're going to love it. Even if you feel like you hate it now, maybe you're thinking you want out of it, you're feeling like it’s uncomfortable, you're probably just doing the wrong things in that business, and you may need some VAs that might be a solution for sure. We can help clean up the frontend of your business and help you get the business in alignment with you. Reach out, check us out at doorgrow.com, and make sure you join our Facebook group. We've got an awesome community there, and people that are helpers, that are givers, and you can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com. Mark and Anne are in that group. We've got lots of other really cool property management entrepreneurs that are willing to contribute and help you out. Until next time everyone. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody. 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’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life. April Fools Day is coming. Prank your friends opening a never ending fake update screen on their computer. Sit back and watch their reaction.

What can you do to be more productive, efficient, effective, and get stuff done while working from home during the COVID-19 crisis? No matter how much work you do or get done, there’s always more to do. Today’s guest is Thanh Pham from Asian Efficiency, which has helped more than 15,000 clients worldwide. Also, Thanh hosts a growing and flourishing podcast called, The Productivity Show. You’ll Learn... [01:53] Asian Efficiency: Positive stereotype and memorable name for company. [02:55] Thanh turns hobby of documenting productivity processes into a business. [03:47] Groundhog Day: Businesses operating from home lose time and progress. [05:06] Work/Life Balance: Nothing going on, no way to work, long days, and no variety. [06:33] Planning: Take it to the next level via different dimensions, contingency options. [07:23] Productive vs. Interruptive: Seek clarity to set one goal a day to accomplish. [09:10] Sense of Momentum: What you want and why it matters should drive your life. [12:15] Structure/Strategy: Create own schedule, design ideal day, and set cutoff time. [14:57] Five Whys: Identify root cause and motivation. Money, freedom, flexibility? [17:55] Energy vs. Time: Don’t do everything, do what you like and others do the rest. [25:44] Ideal Day: Map it out the night before to start the next day right away. [27:08] Do’s and Don’ts: Don't eat at your desk; do step away from your office or home. [32:05] What keeps you up at night? Entrepreneurs are known for worrying too much. [34:40] Chinese Proverb: The palest ink is better than the best memory. [35:41] Analog vs. Digital: What’s the difference? Depends on personal preference. Tweetables Restore order in your life to gain a sense of relief and energy to help you recover. “Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process.” “Set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day.” “If we don't have energy, if we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive.” Resources Asian Efficiency The Productivity Show The ONE Thing by Gary Keller Oura Ring Evernote OmniFocus Jira Mont Blanc Pens DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing 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. I have a special guest with me today. Just down the street in Austin hanging out. This is Thanh Pham. What's up, Thanh? Thanh: Hey, Jason. Good to be here. Thanks for having me and I'm super excited to chat with you here today about productivity and anything that we can do to be more productive. Jason: All right. Did I say your name right? Thanh: Yeah, you did. First time, first attempt, 100% correct. Jason: I thought I did, but I thought I would make sure. I'm really excited to have you. You have a great sense of humor. We're chatting it up before the show and your company is called Asian Efficiency, right? Is this correct? Asian Efficiency? Thanh: That is correct. That is a positive stereotype that we have going on here in most of America and the Western world so I thought, “You know what? That's such a funny name. Such a name that sticks out and is memorable.” So we started off as a joke in a way because I just want to document my journey of being more productive. I remember one time I was staying at a house in Miami with some friends, all fellow entrepreneurs. We went out for one night, then we had a few drinks. We had a great time, then the next morning I was being productive in getting stuff done; waking up really early. By the time it was noon, I was done with my day and everyone else was waking up really late. I said, “Oh my gosh, Thanh. You're so productive. That's some Asian efficiency right there,” and that's when the name was born. Jason: So this almost became a theme around you or a nickname attached to you before it was a business. Thanh: Yeah. Honestly, it just started as a hobby. I just wanted to document how I did things as I was learning about productivity and how to be efficient, be effective, managing my time better, and I just started to blog about this back in the day in 2011. After a while, it just started to grow and took a life of its own after about six months. Then people kept asking me, “Thanh, this is so helpful. I'm learning so much. I would love to hire you. Do you have any courses or products?” And I said, “Actually I don't. But that's a great idea.” I accidentally turned this into a business, and now, almost nine years later, we helped over 15,000 clients all over the world. We have a podcast that's growing and flourishing, and just continuously impacting people, people that are listening here today as well. Jason: Awesome. Our topic today is productivity while working from home, which a lot of people are doing right now. Due to the Coronavirus, COVID-19, a lot of people are on lockdown. A lot of people have been stuck at home. Businesses are operating, some are still operating, but they're doing it from home, and a lot of people are joking right now. The big joke is it's all one big day that's been running forever. Everybody feels like there's no difference between one week to the next. The month has gone on for three months now. We're kind of losing a sense of time, it seems to be the theme, and things just keep repeating so we lose a sense of because everything seems so similar each day and we're lacking variety in our day to day, it feels like we're not making any progress I think, maybe subconsciously as well. What are you doing to stay out of that Groundhog’s Day sort of movie type of scenario in your own mind, cognitively? Thanh: I think one of the interesting things that are happening now is some of those are working more than others and some of those are going the complete opposite route. We don't have a job. There's nothing going on and there's no way for us to work. In either spectrum, it feels like days are so long as a result because as you said there's no variety. It's nice to be able to go to work and then come home relax and do nothing. When we miss one or the other, it feels like we're completely out of balance or some of us are just working all the time. If you've been working from home for a while, then you're just working more now because there's nothing else to do. You can't leave your home. You can't go anywhere so you just work more. For those who don't have a job right now, or not working as much, or can't work, you are stuck as well. You can't do anything else but stay at home and relax and do relaxing activities. Jason: And binge Netflix. Thanh: And binge Netflix, yeah. I've watched so many shows. Money Heist was one of my favorite ones that I just finished. A great show, watch that one. Jason: I just went through that too. My girlfriend and I were watching that one and it was good. Thanh: Oh my gosh. Season Four, that really got me. But that's a whole completely different podcast. Jason: I wasn’t mad at the cliff hanger left at the ending though. My girlfriend was upset and I was like, “No, that makes me excited about the next season.” Thanh: [...], you just have to watch it whenever you have time. Jason: I'm sure the character, the professor, you'll get excited about. He's got everything planned out. He's incredibly efficient and he always finds a way to make things work. It seems like when nothing else seems like it'll be possible, he finds some [...] Thanh: I thought I was a planner until I saw this character. Then this guy takes planning to a whole nother level because I thought planning a vacation was great, fun, and easy, then this guy takes planning of the robbery to five different dimensions, so you go whoa, this is crazy. Jason: Right. He's got all the contingency plans. He's got names for all of them and something happens, he's like, “No problem. We're just going to bust out plan C,” and they just pop it out and everybody knows what to do. Thanh: That's a beautiful thing and when we're working from home we can take the same approach. Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process. If you're listening to this and you feel like most of your days are unstructured or you go about your day and you feel like, “Man, I wish I was more productive,” or, “I wish I had that one particular thing done.” I know many of you who are listening probably find it very challenging to schedule stuff. You want to say, “You know what? I want to work on this particular task, or call this particular tenant or client at 11,” and then something comes up. A fire, someone calls you, you got an important email, you're on call the whole time, you have an email client open, interruptions coming all the time, you feel like you're on edge, and it makes it very difficult to focus. It makes it very difficult to concentrate and have focus blocks where you're actually working and doing stuff. When you're in that kind of situation, one thing I've found is when you're trying to work with people who have that interrupt-driven day, one of the best ways you can approach that is to set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day because the rest of your day is typically driven by interruptions and things you have to deal with anyway. But if you can make progress on one goal, or one big outcome, or one big task, that's a really productive day, so let's aim for that. Jason: That reminds me of Gary Keller's The ONE Thing. He's got his one thing question which is, “What's the one thing that, by doing it, everything else will become irrelevant or easier?” That one thing question, so maybe that's something the listeners can ask themselves. What's that one thing that if I do this, it's going to get me a sense of momentum today? It's going to make me feel like I've done something. I've accomplished something. I moved the needle just slightly on my goals. Thanh: I think a great reframe to add on top of that to help people because one of the things I see people struggle with is, “Jason, I have five million things I have to do and they all have to be done. How do I pick one thing to work on?” Oftentimes, we ask ourselves that question. It's a sign that you don't have any clarity about your goal or the destination you want to go towards. So, when you don't have that, everything feels equally important and whenever you get that sense when everything is equally important, that's a sure sign that you don't have clarity about what your goal is or what your destination is. I want to challenge you as a listener to say, “Hey, what is the goal that I'm trying to accomplish?” Because once you know what that is, prioritizing or finding the one thing or the few things you have to do becomes so much easier. As an example, if you're publishing a book, that is your big goal for the year, then if you have a to-do list that says I need to redo my finances, organize my closet and write chapter two. One of those three sounds more appealing because it's aligned to a goal which is just writing chapter two. That doesn't mean redoing your finances and organizing the closet is not important, they are important, but they're not, in relationship to the goal, important enough for you to prioritize over something else. Once you have absolute clarity about the goal, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, you start to notice that certain tasks on your to-do list stand out because they will help you get you closer to your goal. That makes prioritizing them really easy and that makes it easy for you to say, “Okay, this is the one thing or maybe the two things I have to do today, and if I do that then I had a really productive day.” Jason: I love that. I think some of the coaches I've worked with in the past, one of their big questions would always be to ask what do you want? What do you want? That first gut reaction deep down that we're going to respond to that. What do you want in your business? What do you want I think is really important because it's very easy I think for us to just end up becoming a slave to our business or doing things for other people. I think a simple question of what do you want, then the follow-up question was always why does that matter? Because if it doesn't matter, we're not really going to do it. There has to be a why behind it especially if that’s work, if it's painful, if it's difficult. So what do you want and why does it matter. Really, that ultimately should be driving our business. It should be driving our life. All these things are vehicles to serve as. They're all vehicles to make us happier, or more fulfilled, or give us a sense of momentum. Let's get into some specifics. People are listening and are like, “Thanh, I've got my one goal but how do I create this structure for my day that you've talked about? How do I do this?” Thanh: If you're working from home, one of the best things you can do is to create a schedule for yourself because after working from home since 2009, I've consulted so many clients over the years. There's a lot of different strategies out there when it comes to being productive and trying to be efficient working from home, but the one strategy that I see that is most effective for most people is creating your own schedule. You want to design your ideal day and one of the biggest things that you want to pay attention to is that again, one, you want to have one big goal for today especially for people who are listening to this who are interrupt-driven schedule, you want to create that. Then the second thing is you want to make sure that you have the cutoff time for when you stop working as well. I know that's going to sound crazy for a lot of property managers and you go, “Thanh, I can't do that. I'm on call 24/7 and I need to be reachable whenever people contact me.” I totally get that, but if you want to have some sense of balance in your life or if you feel like you're always on call, you're tired of being that way, you want to then start creating some systematic solution around that so that if people do call you after a certain time, it's still being handled. When I'm working with a lot of owners and operators, their main fear is, “Man, if I stop working after six. I'm going to lose a lot of business. I'm going to get a lot of complaints.” Those are rightfully so in the beginning, I would say, but what if you could hire someone to be able to work even part-time to deal with stuff outside of your normal office hours? To be able to handle that request and things that people need so that you don't have to do that. You can pay someone else to be able to do the things that need to be done while you have time for yourself. As you're growing your business and have specific boundaries for yourself, it makes it easier for you to have that work-life balance because most of us who are entrepreneurs and are working all the time, after a while we get so tired. One of the main reasons businesses stop existing or quit is because the owner is tired. They're just like, I'm so done with— Jason: They’re burned out. Thanh: Yeah, they have this burnout. So we want to create boundaries. We want to create systems in place so that we don't have to work all the time. When we do work, we can work on the things we have passion about or we're really good about, that are in alignment with what you were talking about earlier which I love is the whole why thing. If you've never done that exercise, it's called the five whys. Basically you ask yourself why five times, you start to come down to the root cause, the root motivation for you why you started this business. Oftentimes it's not because you wanted to make more money even though that was I'm sure a strong motivator for a lot of people. Oftentimes, it comes down to having your own freedom in your life. Having a flexible schedule. Having quality time with your family and friends. Once you really connect with that, you start to realize I don't have to work 18 hours a day. I can accomplish everything I need in six, or seven, or eight, and the rest of the time I can spend it with my family because that's why I started my business. To be able to spend time with them, not necessarily work more until midnight fixing stuff or trying to attend to tenants, even though that is important. Someone else can do that as well and get paid for it. You employ someone and that's a beautiful thing too. Jason: I think ultimately when we boil anything down, it comes down to usually a feeling that we want to have. Somebody just says I really want a Tesla, or I want to drive. I want this car. When you really boil it down, people always want what we think we will feel when we have that. How would it feel to have a business that runs itself or I had the freedom, the time? Ultimately, it boils down to some sort of feeling that we want to have. Then if you work it backward, once you figure it out, once you get to that bedrock why, then the question is can I have this why without that? Or is there a faster vehicle or a way to get to that in that? If I just want to feel powerful, are there other things I can do to feel powerful besides what I was thinking about how to look this one certain way? One coaching or program that I went through, this phrase they always drove into us was, “It doesn't have to look a certain way.” They recognize it. Everybody always gets so attached to things looking a certain way. We want a specific outcome and we want to get there in a specific way. It has to look this way. No, no, no. It has to be like this. Sometimes we end up becoming control freaks and I'm sure sometimes productivity can become a control freakish mode for people to get into. They're micromanaging every second. They're doing too much. Planning everything out in so much detail that they kill all the life and spirit of their life, fun. Ultimately, that could lead the burnout, unless people really just thrive on that situation. I'm a big fan of energy management over time management. Spending your time doing the things you really enjoy like you're talking about and that's going to help you avoid getting burnout because if I'm doing the things that I love, I can work crazy amounts of hours in a week because I love it. I'm not getting burned out on it. I'm far less likely to get tired. People aren't going to annoy me or frustrate me in those situations because I feel alive. I feel like I'm doing something that brings me joy, life, and momentum. I think ultimately everybody needs to find that in their business because I think the great secret that nobody talks about is that as a business owner, you don't have to do all the stuff people say a business owner has to do. You can do whatever you want. If you want to be the receptionist in your company, you can be the receptionist. It's your choice. It's your company. If you want to do accounting and you love that, you can do the accounting. If you want to do customer service, you can do that being the business owner. Let's go to the cutoff time. I really like this idea. I like this idea because there are so many beliefs that prevent us from stopping and cutting it off. I had a job working for an internet service provider and I started managing their support department after being there for a short period of time, then I was moving up and then I was just underneath the two owners. I was working really crazy long hours. I had to commute sometimes during that job, like two hours because I was driving into LA (Los Angeles), and traffic was crazy. And then driving out. S.o I would just stay even later and I was working, working, working. The thing I realized is that no matter how much work I did there was always more. There's never an end to finishing all work that could or possibly will be done. There's no exact stopping point that you'll eventually find that all the work you need to do as a business owner or even just as an employee is done. But creating a healthy stopping point when it hits this time, I'm going to stop my day and pick it up again tomorrow. It's always going to be there waiting for you. It's still there and what I find is, is it the Pareto principle? It is the idea that if you constraint your time to a certain limit, “I'm going to be done by five o'clock. Five o'clock I'm cutting it off.” What happens is you start to become more productive because you start to innovate. You start to be creative. You're forced to constraint and because of that constraint, you have now to innovate. Without a constraint, it could be endless. You give somebody in your team an endless amount of time to do something, they can take weeks. You're like, “No, I need this done by Friday.” Then they start to innovate. “It's not possible the way I currently do it to get done by Friday. Okay, what can we do to change that?” Every week you can have this done. Then, you start to get innovative. I think there are secret benefits to doing that cutoff time that psychologically feel backward but we're going to become more productive as a result of creating that cutoff time. Do you agree? Thanh: I one hundred percent agree because there are actually multiple benefits to setting that cutoff time. You mentioned one [...] of them right there which is like setting a deadline first. We know that there's nothing better than having a really good deadline that forces you to get a lot of things done in a shorter period of time. Having that cutoff time every single day is like having a deadline every day for yourself to say, “Okay, I need to get all of these work done before a specific time,” and if we don't have that, then we take up the whole day and even more than that to get the things done that we need to get done. That goes back to what you're saying early like Parkinson's Law. Something takes up as much time as we give it to. If we say, “I want to have this done in two weeks,” it can be done and if you tell yourself it can be done in one year, it will be done in one year. It's just a matter of how much time we give ourselves to get something done. By having a daily cutoff time, by forcing ourselves to do the things that need to be done, especially if you focus on one or two major things like the one thing or the two smaller things and say, “Okay, I need to have this done before five,” then you will find ways like you said to get it done. The other big benefit of that is that when you have that balance to say, “Okay, after five I'm going to stop working,” you can then go to bed earlier. You can enjoy time with your family. You can spend time with your kids or you can do some personal hobbies. You can run some errands. You can do all these different things that restore order in your life. They give you a sense of relief. They give you a sense of energy to help you recover. Guess what? You're going to show up as a better owner, as a better property manager the next day because if you're sleeping well, you're eating right, you have the time to do all the things you need to do, you're going to show up the next day feeling refreshed and having more energy. Like we talked about and like you mentioned earlier, energy is such an important factor. It's such an important currency for productivity and when we have the energy to focus and do the things we need to do, we are so much more productive than without it. It's like if you have really nice sports cars sitting in your garage, you're the perfect driver. You know exactly how to drive it. You know every single feature, but the car has no gas. Guess what? You're not going to go anywhere even if you have the right tools, you know exactly what you need to do, you have no gas? Guess what? You're not going to drive that thing anywhere. It's the same thing for us. If we don't have energy. If we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive. Then we have to caffeinate. We have to drink more coffee or tea getting ourselves ready. That's not a success [...] for us to be able to focus and be productive for the rest of our lives. We want to be able to start our day, get things done that need to be done, and have the energy to focus and do the best work that we're paid to do, essentially. By introducing that cutoff time, it has so many benefits that come with that. Just think about all the benefits that come with having more energy. Sleeping better, running the errands you need to get done. Having that sense of order in place because you can do all these different things. It makes it so much easier and makes you so much happier as well. That's going to be reflected in your work you do the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Jason: I think ultimately what all of these creates is presence. It allows us to be more present or more there when we need to be there. If a property manager is communicating with a tenant, they need to be on when things get difficult or sticky. They need to be on with an owner and they need to cognitively have the ability to make decisions, and move quickly, and think. All of this gives us power. It gives us power when we're able to be more present because if you're tired, you're not present, not nearly. If you're cognitively burned out, then you're almost in a situation that is painful that you're forcing yourself to do something. Forcing your body to do something that is uncomfortable. You're done and you keep going. Let's go back to the idea of this ideal day. How do we create a map for our ideal day? When do you do this? Thanh: Ideally, you want to plan your ideal day the night before. That's something that is such a simple habit that I teach and very few people actually do. But once they do it and follow through with it, they start to know this huge productivity jumps because it allows you to start your day right away, as soon as you're done with your morning routine or you're sitting down on your desk instead of just starting your day where you're scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. Also, the other benefit that comes with planning your day the night before is that you can go to bed knowing that everything is being addressed and is going to be addressed the next day as well. You can feel relaxed and not stressed out as much because you know anything that needs to be addressed needs to be done the next day, so you can sleep a lot better. It has so many energy benefits as we talked about earlier. Planning your day the night before is one of the first things I would recommend people do. The second thing is to have one big goal. One big win for the day, then the third thing is the cutoff time. You have those three pieces in place, plan it the night before, one big goal, and having a cutoff time. You will have an ideal day figured out for yourself. If you're working from home, one of the things I would also recommend that you don't eat at your desk. Actually leave your office or your home. This applies also if you're working on an office because most of us are just sitting at our office or desk the whole day and we get so burned out by just looking at a screen, being on Zoom meetings, or being on the phone the whole time that it's actually nice to be able to step away. Go for lunch for an hour and go for a walk. By the time you come back, get outside. Get some sunlight, some vitamin D and you feel so much better. Your mood is elevated. You have a new sense of urgency, a new sense of energy. Stepping away from your desk to have lunch, as simple as that sounds, will make a big difference. I was working with this coaching client. He had all these big goals and we were committed for a three-month engagement. The only thing we did is I told him to go for an hour-and-a-half every single day because he was working at a big bank. He was super busy. He felt like he just had to work 80 hours a week. The only difference that we truly implemented was just going out for lunch because it's like a mid-day reset for him. I gave him a new sense of energy, a resurgence of focus. He was able to work from going to 80 hours to 55 hours, which was a huge improvement for him. The only change was because he had a longer lunch and is going outside. Going out for lunch away from his office. As a result, he was just more focused, had more energy, and knew exactly what he needed to do. He had more time to think about stuff. So, instead of just sitting there all day at his desk feeling lethargic and just sitting there for the sake of sitting there, he wasn't actually truly productive. Again, plan your day the night before, have one big win, set a cutoff time, then definitely go out for lunch outside of your home and office. Jason: I love it. It's like breaking up your day into two chunks to tackle. It's a lot easier than doing an eight-hour chunk. The night before, why not do planning in the morning? Maybe you can touch on that. Some people do this. They get up in the morning. They sit down. They're like, “I'm going to plan out my day,” and they do it in the morning. Advantages? Disadvantages? What are your thoughts? I'm sure you've had clients doing that. Thanh: Yeah, I've done both for many years. Planned the night before and I also planned the morning of. One thing I found is if you're somebody who is a morning person, you have the energy you have in the morning, then planning the night before gives you the most benefit because you can just start your day right away and just use your energy and focus on the important task that needs to be done. You just get started right away. You're not wasting time or energy planning something. You already did that the night before. If you're a morning person, then I would say that's the way to go. I would say for a majority of people that applies too, even if you're not a morning person. Even if you're somebody who starts a little bit later, let's say 10, 11, or 12. It's still beneficial to plan the night before because you can go to bed knowing that, "Okay, I have an idea what to do." Also, there's the sense that once we know what we need to do the next day when we go to bed we can just feel assured that we're going to do this, but also, our brain will start thinking about how do we solve this particular task or problem or knowing exactly what we need to do the next day. That's very powerful as well whereas if you plan the day off or the morning of, often it's easy to get distracted, or to have an excuse for something, or just continue to lay on the bed a little bit longer because we wanted to. Because there's no sense of urgency or clarity about, "Okay. I need to do this today," because that planning process still hasn't come up. I think for many reasons and for many people planning the night before is more of a preference, ideal, something that you will make a habit of because I do think it has much more impact. But if you're somebody who doesn't' really get started until two or three o'clock in the afternoon, then I'd say it's okay to do it in the morning because you're not going to be as focused anyway. Those are some of the pros and cons, but if I were to work with a client, I would always recommend doing it the night before. Jason: I like the idea you touched on there that if you do your planning the night before, you're then allowing your subconscious to work out a lot of the details. A lot of entrepreneurs operate based on their gut, their intuition. It's things that they're subconscious, or deep down are coming up for them, or they’re figuring out. I think that gives them more of an opportunity to use that supercomputer that our subconscious mind is. That makes a lot of sense. I'm going to play around on that. That sounds cool. You always hear the phrase, “What keeps you up at night?” Entrepreneurs are notoriously known for being kept up at night because they're worried about something or working on something. Maybe just the act of offloading everything at the end of the day and saying this is going to be a plan for tomorrow, instead of leaving it there feeling like you need to work on it, that's going to allow your subconscious to work on it, but also create the space so that you can get good rest and you aren't kept up worrying about things. It'll allow you to lower that anxiety or that pressure, noise, or that stress that every entrepreneur tends to carry. Thanh: Yeah, that's why I always recommend that people journal at night as well because when we have so many thoughts before we go to bed, it's just so hard to fall asleep. I've been really geeking out on this even further because I have an Oura ring, one of those fitness trackers, and one thing I've [...] is that when I journal and I put all my thoughts away, my REM sleep goes up significantly. REM sleep is when [...] frustration for our brain, for our mental health, and when I don’t journal, the number of minutes of REM sleep goes down quite a bit. I think it's really because when our brain is occupied with all these different things, it cannot actually relax as much because there's just so much going on. But when we journal and put it on paper, put it away from our head and actually put it on paper, our brain can relax knowing that we don't' have to use this as memory or store anything. It's on paper. It's there. If we need it, we can access it. We don't have to worry or stress about it. You can actually focus on recovery while we're sleeping. It also helps you to sleep better. You feel less stressed when you do that. It's a nice winding down routine for you as well to decompress and just destress. I like to journal in the morning as well just to reflect and think. Also at night before I go to bed just to honestly put my stray thoughts away. If I wanted to do something, or I had a particular task, or I had an idea that I don't want to lose, just write it down real quick. It's out of your head and as you know, our memories are terrible. I've had so many ideas and then go, “Oh, what was the thing I was thinking about? That was such a brilliant idea.” Or I had a catchphrase and I was like, “Oh, I should use that on my podcast or marketing copy. Oh my gosh. I forgot what that was. I wish I had written that down.” Our memory is as not strong so it's always a good idea to write stuff down as quickly as possible especially before you— Jason: [...] about the palest ink? Thanh: That I don't know. Jason: It's the palest ink. I'm being Asian Efficiency now. It's my turn. There's this Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory, or something like that. Thanh: Oh, I've never heard of that. I might have to borrow that from you. Jason: You could look it up. I don't know who said it, maybe it was Confucious, he says everything. But anyway the faintest ink is better than even the best memory because it's there, it’s tangible, it can't be forgotten, We know our brains are not really great at accuracy or remember things, so I love that idea. Related to that, Mr. Asian Efficiency, how do you feel about typing versus writing? Because what you're saying is writing in my journal, writing in my journal. Are you actually writing or it sounds like it can be more digital, nerdy, tech, whatever way of typing everything. A lot of people are, “Type it all. Type this note. I'll type it on my phone. Type, type, type.” Do you find there is any difference? Are the things you feel like writing is better suited for? Do you write anything? How does this work for you? Thanh: I think this whole analog versus digital is an interesting conversation for many people. What I have seen in my own personal life and amongst thousands of our clients is that there's no one best way to do something. It's really a personal preference. You can have a paper to-do list, or a physical planner where you write your to-do list, or you can have a digital one. I tend to prefer to use a digital planner myself, but when I'm writing notes down or journal, I usually like to do it on paper. There are scientific studies that show if you write something down, you tend to remember better. Your retention is a little bit better. There's some value in that as well. You also need to look at the functionality, utility value that comes with that because you leave a piece of paper at home, you can't really access it anywhere whereas if it's something in the Cloud or Evernote. If I write it down on my computer or write it down on my phone, I always have it with me whenever I need to. I like to have a combination of both so for example my to-do list is digital, I use OmniFocus as an app for that. Then in my company we use something like Jira, a project management tool. For notes and just storing ideas and just random stuff I use Evernote. That's on my phone and also on my computer and available on the web. That's an easy way to access stuff very quickly too. But when it comes to journaling, I like to have a physical planner. I use something like a five-minute planner or just a self journal which is a physical planner. I use it every single night and every morning to either plan my day, to think about stuff, or to just write down and just put some thoughts down or ideas that I have. Whenever I am traveling, I'm also carrying one with me. If I don't have it with me, then I'll store it in Evernote real quick. Most of the time, I like to use something physical because it allows me to disconnect from my computer. I'm sitting behind my computer most of the days and when I'm sitting there, I'm just not as creative because I'm associating computers and screens with work. Sometimes, if I want to be creative, I have to actually step away from that to be able to go to my whiteboard. That's another tool that I use which is physical or pen and paper-ish. Just go to my whiteboard and start mind mapping, brainstorming ideas, or creating a quick list of things I need to do or want to remember because I can be so much more creative when I'm away from my computer. The same thing with pen and paper. Sometimes, if I'm doing thinking questions for myself then I say, “Thanh, what will it take to double my business over the next six months?” That’s a simple question that I ask myself. If I do that behind my computer, I get easily distracted. There's notification popping up. “Oh, let me just quickly check this email. Someone's messaging me on Slack or Microsoft Teams. Oh my gosh, I'm getting so distracted,” whereas if I'm away and I have my favorite beverage. I'm sitting at a nice coffee shop or something, I see beautiful people walking around, there's a nice atmosphere, and I'm just sitting there and thinking, there's a different level of engagement, commitment, and clarity that I get from doing that. I like to use a combination of both. Again, there's no perfect solution for everyone. There's no one-size-fits-all, and a lot of times people have to figure out on their own what they prefer and also depending on their lifestyle, but I think everyone can benefit from digital and paper. Jason: Yeah. Like every podcast episode, I'm writing down notes. This is just this episode, that's page one. I'm already on page two. Thoughts as they come to me, things I need to do, like I just wrote down I need a cool box for my mic like you have because I don't have that. That's kind of cool. I'm always thinking and the brain is always going, so writing things down (for me) is a big deal. I use all kinds of digital stuff to keep track of things. Keep track of tasks, keep track of what my team is doing, tons of software and my business so I get it. Then even on my iPad, I have an iPad with an Apple pencil so I can write on that and it's digital. There are a whole plethora of different ways. I guess ultimately it's what works for you. What's going to actually help you feel creative, feel the momentum, and get your thoughts out. I do think there's magic in writing. As nerdy, as digital, and tech-savvy as I am, I think there's magic in writing. They found that even when you write stuff out, if you lose your main writing limb and you start writing with your other hand, your handwriting will eventually be exactly the same once you get used to it again. Handwriting analysis, if you geek out on some of those stuff, is actually like brainwriting. It's like a brain to paper. I think there's some magic in writing that I think there's also something therapeutic about writing for me that I just don't get by typing something. Thanh: Absolutely. I have a beautiful pen that was gifted to me. Someone gifted me a Mont Blanc pen and the really funny story about that is like four or five years ago when I got this gift. Someone gave me this pen and when I got this pen, back in the day I didn't know anything about pens so I'm like, “Wow. Okay, this is a nice gesture.” So I put that pen away. I didn't really think much of it and a few months later, one of my employees comes here and says, “Thanh, is that a Mont Blanc pen?” and I go, “I have no idea. What does that even mean?” He says, “Oh my gosh, this pen is like $700, Thanh. Did you not realize that?” I was like, “No, but let me use it because it's so expensive.” That's when I started using my pen and that's when I realized wow this is really actually a beautiful pen. The weight of the pen, the way you hold it, then I actually started writing down stuff a lot more as a result of that. As you said, it's kind of a therapeutic thing. It's a beautiful tool that I have that I like to use. It's really smooth and sits nicely in my hand. Because I'm away from my computer, there's no crazy stuff going on. There's a lot to that. If you make it really enjoyable for yourself where it's a therapeutic fun thing for you, you have tools that you use that you enjoy, then it makes it really easy and fun. Something that I always talk about in my podcast is called minimalist luxury. How can you have very few things, but the thing you do own or the best quality that you can afford is absolutely the best thing that you want to own and have? For example, having one really nice pen allows you to do so many cool things with that. Writing a contract, or agreement, or journaling every single day. It's a fun process for you because you love to use that pen or maybe it's a really nice jacket that you love to wear and anytime you wear it, you feel so much more confident. Going back to that feeling that you want, that you're looking for, it's like if you want to feel powerful you wear that particular jacket. There's one jacket that I have, anytime I wear it I feel so powerful. It's my favorite jacket and every time I go to speak, that's the one I always like to wear because I associate it with being powerful. Jason: I think I saw the post on your Instagram or your Facebook. Your power jacket, does it have a little shield on it? Thanh: Exactly, yeah. All these different things that we can buy and there's not many things that we need, but the few things that we need or want to make sure it's the best one that you can afford because oftentimes it will last longer. It's better quality. You'll enjoy using it more. That's something I learned from using that pen because I don't want to use any other pen, that's the one pen I want to use and every time I want to use it I feel so happy using it. Jason: Yeah. Thanh, we can probably talk about this stuff for hours. We can go on and on and I'm sure there's lots of stuff that you can share and teach people. Maybe we should wrap this up. How can people learn more and what things do you teach or share at your company? Thanh: Absolutely. Thank you first and foremost for serving your listeners and audience. If people want to find out more about me and what we do at Asian Efficiency, we have a podcast called The Productivity Show; it’s the number one podcast on iTunes. Also, you can go to asianefficiency.com. You can find anything there about productivity, being efficient, automation, what kind of tools to use. There's so much free content there that I would love to share with people, so just go to asianefficiency.com and we'll take care of you there. Jason: Awesome, alright. Thanh, it's been great having you here on the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you being here. Thanh: Thank you. Jason: All right. We will let Thanh go. Check his stuff out. Really cool guy. Anybody that is focused on something as much as he has, has some really cool ideas to share and it's fun to have people like that on. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, you are wanting a better website, a better presence, you are wanting branding that makes you feel confident to look good when you go showcase your business to other people, helps you improve your sales, whatever you're looking to do for your property management business so that you can improve your growth, we can help over DoorGrow. Check us out. Go to doorgrow.com and we look forward to having you as a client and supporting you in your growth. We love our clients. We have some amazing, awesome clients. Check us out at doorgrow.com and be sure to join our community at doorgrowclub.com and that's it for today. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. 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 in 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.

What’s an easier way for realtors to get referrals to property managers? A free mobile tool, rather than just another app on your smartphone. Today’s guest is Vitaliy Merkulov from Renter Inc., a company that builds software for realtors and property management businesses to be relevant, knowledgeable, and engaging. You’ll Learn... [03:05] What’s next? Building mobile app to generate leads. [03:50] #1 Source: Property management businesses grow via referrals. [04:57] Purpose and Point of Development: Mobile app gives you more realtor referrals. [05:47] Features and Benefits: Realtors request free rent analysis, receive push notifications, provide referrals, and view referral status. [08:10] Rent Analysis: Property manager is first to know who’s leased property, what property should lease for, and what the market suggests for time it takes to lease it. [11:40] Relationships: Get customers when they’re hot. Provide a tool that gets them there, gets them faster for more chances to turn them into leads. [14:09] Resource: App also offers latest trends, news, and events in specific areas. [15:18] Fear and Future Opportunities: Evictions and moratoriums will be lifted, and the real estate/property management industry tends to do well in these situations. [17:37] Open Rates: App is opened more than email; provides easy access to people. [19:44] Installation and Onboarding: Enable permission to receive push notifications. [21:30] Transactional and Global: Two types of notifications. [22:45] Status of App: In development phase, planning to be released mid-June 2020, and four beta testers in place. Tweetables #1 Source: Property management businesses grow via referrals. People shift from buying to renting. People transition to being accidental investors. The property management industry may have a season of significant growth. To get people to give you referrals, you have to show them value. All the features have been defined, they're ready, and they’re in the development phase. Resources Renter Inc. Info@renterinc.com DGS 71: Automate Giving Landlord References with Vitaliy Merkulov of Renter, Inc. Propertyware AppFolio Drip RentWerx Mynd Property Management RentPros Real Property Management Preferred DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing 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 is Vitaliy. Vitaliy, welcome to the show. Vitaliy: Thank you. Jason: You’ve been on the show before. Your company is Renter, Inc. For those that aren’t familiar with you, why don’t you give us a quick background of you are, and then maybe give us an update on Renter, Inc., and then let’s get into this new thing that you’re here to talk about today, which is how realtors can start getting referrals to property managers in a more easy way. Vitaliy: All right. Thank you for having me here again. Last time I was here I believe it was about a year ago. Renter, Inc. is a software company that builds multiple software. One of the ones that I was here for last time is called Rental Verification software. What that does is it automates the process of giving rental verifications to your tenants that are leaving your property. You have tenants that are there, they’re getting ready to leave. That new prospective landlord contacts you, asks you for references. Usually, it takes 10-15 minutes to do that, and then you have to chase—make sure that they give you consent forms and all that stuff. With our software, Rental Verifications, you’re able to integrate with Propertyware and AppFolio, and it automatically generates their rental verifications for them so you don’t have to spend your time on that. The last time I was here, I was saying hey, we need some beta testers for AppFolio, and we were able to get them because of this show. Right now, it’s up and running. Everything is good. What I want to talk about today is this mobile app that we’re building. This came from talking to property managers, asking them what their real problems are. Some of them came back and said our biggest problem is not really automation right now. Our biggest problem is getting more leads. That’s where this app idea was born. I’d love to talk to you guys about that. Jason: Let’s get into it. The number one source for most property management businesses in growing businesses, if they have a healthy property management business, is always word of mouth—it’s referrals. If you build up a business that has lots of doors, it’s a machine that builds itself. It just naturally starts to grow as you have more tenants and more owners, and you’re doing a good job, and providing good service, more and more people are referring. It kind of takes on a life of its own. For a lot of property managers, this is a real problem. It’s a struggle to get this machine going, to get that engine going. Then even for the larger ones, they’re always like how can I pour more gasoline in this fire that is our biggest fire? How do we make this work? You and I have been talking about this software quite a bit, right? We’ve gone back and forth, and I guess you could say I have consulted and given you a bunch of ideas on this as well. Where are you at with this, and what have you come up with? Let’s tell people about it. Vitaliy: Let’s try to get into what is the point of this app first, and then I’ll tell you where we are in the development of this app. The main point of this app is it will give you more referral apps—realtor referrals. The way it works is instead of you going to realtor events, meeting realtors, and giving them your business card and beg for referrals, you would simply give them your own app with your own logo, which will have very good tools in it that you would provide to these realtors. That they would simply go to either App Store or Android store and download your own app. This app will have capabilities such as realtors will be able to request free rent analysis directly from you, and you would be able to respond back inside your own app with your own rent analysis. They will receive push notifications, you will receive push notifications, and everything is done through the app. The other feature is going to be referrals. Realtors will be able to give you a referral from the app. You will see and get a push notification saying that there is a referral coming in. The big part here, the realtor will be able to see the status of the referral. For example, is the referral converted, has it been dropped? All of that will be able to be seen in the app. The other benefit that this app has is it’s not only an app that is useful for you, the property manager, it’s also a tool for a realtor to be basically an expert in investors’ type of world. You will be able to push important information to them. For example, local laws and regulations that these realtors need to know when they’re working with an investor in the area. It makes you relevant, it makes you more advanced in knowledge, and it gives them this free tool rather than just another app on their phone. It also gives you push notifications, which is a much, much more chance of them interacting with you. The other biggest thing out of them all is the fact that it’s a mobile app, it’s on their phone and you can send them push notifications. They will be on top of your mind compared to all of those property managers who gave them their business cards and begged them to follow up with them. Jason: Let’s touch on some of this real quick because I’m sure we’re going to lose people if we’re just throwing out all the features and benefits. When you first came to me with this app, I was really negative about it. I mean, let’s be honest. I was like nobody wants another app on their phone. Realtors aren’t going to want to just download some app and give referrals. The missing piece, which you just threw out there like it was not that big of a deal, but I want to point out it’s a big deal—that rent analysis. Realtors really do want to be able to say to their investor clients here is an expert analysis, but they have no idea. They have no idea they could go to Zillow, they could go to these places, but they’re inaccurate, and they have problems. Nobody knows better than a property manager who’s leased out two or three properties in that neighborhood what that property should realistically lease for, or what they could get, or what the market is suggesting based on the time it takes to lease a property. All this kind of stuff. They have all these anecdotal data in their head that you’re just not going to be able to pull in sometimes because they’re the boots on the ground. They see this. This gives agents a resource that they can come to you, provide, basically, a lead to you like here’s this property. Here’s the owner’s detail. Here’s the stuff. You’ll be able to provide that service. They’re going to feel safe that you’re going to give this person back to them when it comes time to sell because you’re going to be, as a property manager, the first to know when this person wants to sell. Why? Because they’re going to reach out, and they’re going to want to know what the property may be could sell for. They’re going to have this need, so you can then refer them back to the agent. The idea, once we figured that out, there’s an incentive, there’s some benefit for the agent to look like an expert, to keep the client, to receive that, and then I was like all right. Now, this is starting to make sense, Vitaliy. This is something I could sell people on. I could say hey, you should do this. This will be a good idea. The idea that agents can see the transparency, they can see where a lead is at, almost like a CRM. They can see where it’s at in the step in the process. Because this is one of the concerns, if I send somebody a referral, I want to know if they’re being taken care of, I want to know how it’s going. I want a little bit of feedback. Did you get them on as a client? Are you going to pay me a kickback for this? Is there like this? That’s what the property manager and the real estate agent, they want to see all of this stuff. This app facilitates all of that. The agent’s going to want to keep this app on their phone because they’re going to have this easy resource they can go to. It’s a tangible anchor. Psychologically, anytime they’re stuck on anything, they’re like oh, well, this person is a real estate investor and they want to turn this into an investment property. The next step is we need to figure out what could this property rent for if they buy this property? You can start building that, connect that relationship. It allows the agent to look even better, to look like they have a team of resources, to look like they’ve got things at their disposal, and you get to be that resource as a property manager. Did I sum that up, somewhat? Is that okay? Vitaliy: Yeah, of course. Let’s imagine this. The realtor is out there showing the property to investors. They look at this property, 123 Main Street, and the investor says how much can I get rent for? Instead of you waiting, going to your office, and then reaching out to your favorite property manager, the realtor can take out their phone, and go to your own property management app, and request a rent analysis right there and then, and forget about it. It depends on how fast you are, you’ll get a notification or a push notification into your own app, and you’ll be able to provide a rent analysis within seconds or minutes. Jason: This rent analysis is going to have the property owner’s info on it, right? You request that from the agent. If the agent wants to request this info, they’re submitting their client’s info like here’s the client’s name, here are their details, so that you get a lead as a property manager. Then you can communicate with the agent and with the owner. Vitaliy: Yeah. Much faster and you always got to get your customers right when they’re hot, and this is when they’re hot. They’re looking at this property, they want to know what is it going to rent for, and if you can provide them with the tool that is able to get them there, get them faster, there are more chances it’s going to turn into your own lead. Jason: You start building that relationship, and at that point, you’re just being helpful. Ultimately, you don’t have to be salesy, you’re just providing value, you’re being helpful. Here’s the rent analysis. Here’s what you might want to do. Then if you’d like us to come out and check out this property and give you an idea of what changes need to be made, we’d be happy to do that in order to get it ready. You can start to build this and start this relationship without having to start selling. The agent is saying this is a trusted resource, I’m going to connect you with this company. They’ll give you a rent analysis, they’re going to do all of this, and they come with that authority already established. Vitaliy: Most property managers do offer this free tool on their website, but once the realtor is on the field, they're not going to pull up their phone, and try to go on your website, and request rent analysis there. It might be harder to do. If it's on their phone, there are more chances they're going to do it through your app rather than finding and looking for a website of another property management company. Hoping that that website is accessible through their phone. Knowing that it is a resource because this app will not just have rent analysis and referrals, it will have latest trends, latest news, and events that are happening in specifically your area, there are more chances that they're going to already know about your app because you've been pushing push notifications to them about the latest events. They will have you on top of mind, and they will know to go to you rather than to another property management company. Jason: Right now, with coronavirus COVID-19, all the drama that's going on, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's going to be a lot of shifts—evictions, moratoriums are happening. Once these things start to lift, there's still going to be a lot of questions. People are looking for answers, and there's a massive opportunity here coming in the future. If the real estate market doesn't recover quickly from all this complete pause that's happened, then maybe a real estate industry may suffer and struggle, and then the property management industry, usually by default, tends to do well in those situations. People shift from buying to renting, that people transition to being accidental investors. They can't get places sold as the market tanks. The property management industry may have a season of significant growth coming here in the next several months or next several years. This would be a tool that would allow you to get that info out like here's the update. Here's what's going on. We even see the president of the United States. He has an opportunity right now to do daily briefings, and his ratings are higher than anything else going on right now, from what I understand. Everybody wants to know what's coming from the top. You're the expert in your market, you're the expert when it comes to rentals, and so the agents—maybe even landlords might start tuning into this if they’re another audience added into this app. Am I jumping the gun there? Vitaliy: No. That’s perfect. The main point here is in order to get people to give you referrals, you have to show them value. If you're just going out there and giving everyone business cards and begging for referrals, you're not going to get them. You have to give them something back first. With this app, you are giving them a resource that is specific to that specific market. Once you show them that you've given them resources, and you've given them information that has been valuable, for example, the latest news, and trends, and eviction laws specifically for your area, they will most likely go to you because they've heard from you, they've seen you. This app will be opened up much more than an email would. That seems to be the trend, and that is one of the biggest reasons why mobile apps are being developed by larger corporations—is to have that easy access to people. Once a push notification goes out, the open rate is 95%. People will open up that little ding on their iPhone or their Android phone, and they'll see that red one next to the app, and they will want to open it and make sure that they see what's going on. The technology has been proven that the fact that the mobile apps do get opened up much better, and they do bring a top of mind much better than anything else out there. Jason: Let's compare it to other things. Email open rates are pretty low. We use a software called Drip currently for our newsletter, for example. We have, actually, what's considered a really high open rate on our emails, but even still, a really good open rate on email maybe is 30% on a bulk email. Maybe, right? If you get 20%, some people still consider that pretty decent. That means the vast majority, if you're looking at the 80-20 rule, are not looking at the emails. The way inboxes are now set up, they go into weird folders, or categorizations, or spam. Email deliverability is just not a great way to maintain communication or a relationship. Text messages have really high open rates, push notifications really high open rates. That's what you're talking about. There's a big difference if you can do push notifications versus that. Is there a challenge with getting people to opt into the push notifications, or is this just something they'll need to educate each realtor they're bringing into this like make sure you say yes to the push notifications as you enable this app. Vitaliy: That's a good point. When the realtor does install this app, it goes through what we call an onboarding. A few pages where we explain to them the point of push notifications first before we give them a pop-up and say hey, allow push notifications, so they will know to enable it rather than just pushing it to them, and most people just say no, I don't want push notifications. We do think that there is going to be more people enabling those notifications. I haven't thought about this, but in the future, what we could do is if there is a notification that comes in, we will display some message saying hey, be sure to enable your push notifications. But if they do open the app, they'll still see that notification, it just won't be a push notification. It's still a much better open rate in that. Does that make any sense? Jason: Yeah, it does. You're going to constantly solicit or get them to open permission to do the push notifications if they haven't done it yet. That makes sense. It will be one of those annoying little red icons probably on the phone app set with a number like oh, man. I got to look at this. What's going on here? Vitaliy: I wanted to say that there are two types of notifications there. One is when it's transactional, so for example, there's a new rent analysis available. You have given them a new rent analysis, and then they get a push notification saying hey, 123 Main Street has responded with their rent analysis. That's one type of push notification. The second type is what we call a global notification, and that is what a property manager of this app is able to send out to everyone. It could be something like hey, if you give us a referral this month, we'll give you double the price, or something like that. It's more like a promotional push notification just to get into on top of mind of people. That is where you have the potential to send it to everyone who has their push notifications enabled, and it will also show up in their notifications screen on the app even if they don't have the push notifications enabled. They'll still see it next time they open the app. People are able to use that as a promotional also. There are those two types. Jason: Perfect. Okay. Where are you at with this app? How far along is development? Do you have people using it? Beta testing? Where is it at? Those that are listening, what would be the next step? If they're interested, which I'm expecting people to be pretty interested in this, why don't you give people a state of the union on this app. Vitaliy: Currently, the app is in the development phase. It's planned to be released mid-June 2020. Right now, all the features have been defined, they're ready, and they’re in the development phase. We have currently a few beta testers. RentWerx, which Brad Larsen as one of the beta testers. We have Mynd Property Management as one of the testers. We have another property manager called RentPros. They manage about 1000 doors, they’re a beta tester. Then we have one of the Real Property Management Preferred, beta testers. Currently, we have four beta testers, and the majority of them are in over 1000 doors. Currently, they're working on expanding in their referral program, and that's why we were excited about this. Those who are interested in becoming beta testers, we are only going to offer the beta to 10 beta testers. After that, the beta program will close until it's available for everyone else. The beta users will get 20% off and then will not get that if you sign up after the beta is over. The benefit of being a beta user is that you obviously get the discount, and also, you're the one who will determine which features will be developed in the next phase. That's a really good benefit there. It will be out mid-June, and then we'll probably test it for about a month or so, and then July or so, it's going to be available for everyone. Jason: I don't think you'll have any trouble getting some beta testers with all the people that listen to the show. You'll get 10, so that's not going to be an issue. Vitaliy: Whoever gets in there first is going to get it. We're not going to allow more than 10 beta testers because we want [...]. Jason: Then make sure they're good ones. Find some really tech-savvy guys because they'll give you some good feature requests, or gals. Guys or gals, right? All right. Awesome. Vitaliy, this sounds really great. I know I've got several clients that would be interested in this. Hopefully, they're listening to this. On some of my calls that I do with my clients, some of the gals and guys there were keenly interested in something like this. We're going to throw this out. By the time this makes it to the podcast, they'll already be filled, I'm sure. How do they get in touch with you to get on the beta program? For those that aren't going to make it into that, how can people find out more about this, and where you're at with this, and maybe even sign up? How do people communicate with you? Vitaliy: The best thing to do is go to our website renterinc.com, and then there's a tab on top that says Other Products. Once you go to that, there's a Realtor Referral App. It'll take you to a specific page where it doesn't talk a lot about the app but allows you to schedule a call with us. That will tell us that you're interested in specifically the Realtor Referral App. We'll get on the call to see if you're a good candidate for a beta tester. If you are, you'll join, we’ll get your logo and your company information, and you'll have your own app mid-June. If you don't make it to the beta test, we will still be able to get you on the call, get you set up, and then once the beta program is over, we'll get you set up with your own app, hopefully somewhere middle of July. You can either go to renterin.com, or you could just email info@renterinc.com, and then just tell us you're interested in the Realtor Referral Program. I'd encourage everyone else to also take a look at our other software that we have. We also have an integration with AppFolio that allows you to request rental verifications and get them back in 24 hours or so. We do that through our Chrome extension that we’ve just built. Take a look at that. We’re excited about the referral app, but our other tools are pretty good too. Jason: You’re a humble promoter of your products and services. I appreciate that. Vitaliy, thanks for coming on the show. Keep us updated on how this goes. Vitaliy: All right. Thank you so much. Talk to you later. Jason: Awesome. We’ve had lots of conversations about this. He’s been picking my brain. Anyway, check that out. If you are a property management business owner, and you are struggling, you’re having difficulty, you want to feel like you have somebody in your corner, we’ve got some great coaching programs available. We also are launching websites. Every week, we’re launching a new website for clients, so check us out. At DoorGrow, I believe we build the best websites in the property management industry, hands down. If you are feeling even a little bit confident or insecure about your website, go to doorgrow.com/quiz and test it. Grade your website, and see where it’s at. If you get an A, then I guess you need to have a conversation with me or my team. But if you don’t, if you get a B, or what’s common—a C, or even more common—a D, or you fail outright on this quiz, then you owe it to yourself and your business to make sure you’re not missing out on website leads and deals every single month. One deal is probably worth $6000 lifetime value. That’s maybe $2000 a year on the door. Maybe you’re making $2000 a year, and you can keep going for maybe three years, maybe $6000 lifetime value. If you’re missing out on just two or three of those every month, that could be $18,000 in future ROI that you’re missing out on every single month. That can be a very expensive thing if you multiply that by 12 months over the course of a year. Websites are not that expensive. They’re just not. One door would cover it, so reach out to us. Anyway, I’m Jason Hull with the DoorGrow Show. Thanks for hanging out with me. Until next time. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. 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