At DoorGrow, we teach property management business owners to build referral engines to feed them new owners and doors. In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert sits down with Brandon Barnum, CEO of hoa.com to talk about how property managers can bring on new clients through Raving Referrals. You’ll Learn [03:21] The 3 Steps to Getting Referrals [09:52] Automate the Ask [13:43] Hyper-Local Social Farming [22:24] Become the Expert [30:41] Incentivizing Referrals Tweetables “Most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals.” “The more you ask, the more you get, that's just how it works.” “By having that team of people that you're recommending, they'll recommend you back as well.” “Coaching is the breakfast of champions.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Brandon: Most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals.  [00:00:04] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:26] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:48] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show. [00:01:13] What's up DoorGrow property managers. A quick disclaimer for this podcast episode. Unfortunately, the first few minutes were cut off by our streaming software. That means we will be jumping right into the meat of the episode, but quick intro for our guest today. Chatting with me in this episode is Brandon Barnum, CEO of HOA.com, the king of referrals, and he is here to talk with me about getting new clients through raving referrals. Enjoy the show. [00:01:42] I was young, I was in my twenties, and I had two daughters and I was like, "how am I going to take care of them or have time with them if I'm working a standard nine to five job?" Like there's no space for that. And so I was like, "I need something with more flexibility and freedom." And it's funny, you know, they say that this need or maybe pain is the mother of all invention. [00:02:03] I don't know. But yeah, so I had to figure something out. I can definitely resonate with that. And with daughters, it can be a little tough because I'm like trying to go through airports or take them places and I can't take them into the normal like my bathroom, but I don't want to go in to use the bathroom like without taking them, so I'm like, "do I take them in the men's bathroom with me so I can use the bathroom?" [00:02:23] Like things have gotten a little bit more easier nowadays, but it was difficult back then. So, Awesome.  [00:02:28] So you exited refer.com and would you still recommend that tool? Are you allowed to say? [00:02:35] Brandon: You know, it honestly, it has pivoted and the people, the company that bought us out completely shifted. [00:02:41] So we were a B2B platform to help people build their referral business. And the private equity firm that bought us really bought us for the database. So they've shifted. So it's no longer referral based. In fact, you can't even find refer.com anymore.  [00:02:55] Jason: That's wild. Okay.  [00:02:56] Brandon: Well, they bought it for the community. They bought it for 5 million members and 46 million people in the database. And so they chose a completely different path. They're about, I believe, to exit in their new venture. So. Wow. I wish I could say the tool exists, but it gave us the opportunity to build something similar here at HOA.com.  [00:03:17] Jason: Yeah. Well, okay. [00:03:19] So we're going to learn the magic trick to get current clients and vendors to refer like clockwork, right? That's the claim. So let's get into this. How does this work?  [00:03:30] Brandon: Well, there's a number of different ways that you can boost your business by referral. And one of the things that we teach is called the art of the ask, right? [00:03:38] Because one of the things that we know is most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals, so they don't get many referrals. But there's an easy way, and it's three steps to ask for more referrals and get more referrals. And it's step one is setting the stage. Step two is listening for the referral triggers, and then step three is to A-S-K to G-E-T. [00:04:00] Okay, so let's unpack that a little bit, Jason. So, when you first have a new client that signs up for your service, what you want to do is at the end of that conversation, before you let them off the phone, off of Zoom, or in person, what you want to do is just say, "Hey, before I let you go. Can I ask you for a favor?" [00:04:18] Everyone's either going to say "yes," or "maybe tell me more." And then what you want to do is just say, "Hey, we're so committed to giving you a five star experience. And once we do, and you experience our service and we take care of everything for you, and it just runs like clockwork, would it be okay to ask you for referrals?" [00:04:38] Everybody's going to say yes, because you're not putting them on the spot right now. You're basically saying, "I'll do a great job for you and give you amazing service." Right? So that's step one is setting the stage. Now you're going to get some referrals right then because they're going to be like, "well, now that you mentioned it, I'm in this real estate investor group and I've got three other guys. We were just having this conversation about needing a new property management firm. So let me introduce you to Tom, Bobby and Susie." Right?" [00:05:04] Jason: Okay. So you ask the step one, you ask for a favor, you express that you're committed to five stars. So that's a nice pre frame, you know, experience, and then you're getting permission to hit them up for that later, basically.  [00:05:19] Brandon: At a later date, right? [00:05:20] And that's the key because you're not putting them on the spot now, everybody's totally comfortable. You're basically just saying, "I'm going to do a great job."  [00:05:27] Jason: Sure. Yeah, of course. "If you do a good job yeah. I'd be happy to do that for you."  [00:05:32] Brandon: So it's the easy "yes," and you'll pretty much get 100 percent buy in on that, right? [00:05:36] So that's setting the stage. Now you go into step two, you start serving them and you're listening for the referral triggers. And that's something like, "Oh, thank you so much. You guys did such a great job, right? I just, I love working with you guys." You're listening. For those expressions of appreciation, right? [00:05:55] And when you hear that, that means that somebody is in a peak referral state because they just recognize that you're doing a great job and they've expressed their appreciation for you. And that's when it's time to ask for referrals. And the way you do that is say, "I'm so glad to hear that. We love helping investors like you manage their properties and we're looking to take on a few more clients. So remember at the beginning we started working together, I told you we were going to deliver five star service. Well now that you know what our service is like, I'd love to see if there's any other investors you know that we can help."  [00:06:31] Jason: Yeah, this is really funny. It's like eerily odd to me because we use a very similar framework at DoorGrow for getting reviews from clients. And I like the idea though of the pre frame and setting the stage early on. So our formula for getting reviews is we like, identify peak happiness, which usually in property management is like when the tenant is placed. And then we reach out at peak happiness and then we first showcase the invisible. [00:07:00] So we highlight everything we've done for them. So, "Oh, we've got your tenant placed. We got the rent check collected. It should be hitting your bank account right about now." Like all this kind of stuff. Then asking, "how do you feel we've done?" Which is a loaded question because you've just pointed out all the good that they couldn't see. [00:07:15] And so, and then they're like, "Oh, you're great." So we're kind of intentionally making them say that, right? And so they're like, "Oh yeah, you guys have been amazing." "Oh, we love hearing that. Would you be willing to share that feedback online?" So brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. So very similar. I've never even thought about just applying it to referrals, so this is great. I love this.  [00:07:34] Brandon: And Jason also you can ask the question too, "how would you rate us on a scale of one to 10?" Oh yeah. "How good are we doing for you right now?" Yeah, right. And the net promoter score says if you get an eight, nine or 10, then it's time to ask, we always recommend if it's less than a 10, you want to ask, "well, what would make it a 10?" [00:07:52] Right? If it's a nine or an eight, "how can we get to a 10 for you? We're so committed to delivering exceptional service and excellence to you. What would get us there?" And if they say an eight or a nine, "I'm so glad to hear that. We love helping people like you manage your doors." Yeah. So there you go. [00:08:08] Jason: Very clever. I like that. Okay. So what was your step three? It was some sort of acronym?  [00:08:14] Brandon: Step three is A-S-K to G-E-T. Now that's how it was taught to me. It's ask to get, it's a little different way of remembering it. And like my kids know. A-S-K to G-E-T. I pounded it in their heads and they're not afraid to ask for what they want. [00:08:30] But it was taught to me by my mentor, Mark Victor Hansen. He wrote those chicken soup for the soul books, and that's the way he taught me the art of the ask years ago, 20 years ago.  [00:08:39] Yeah.  [00:08:40] Jason: Okay. Got it. Okay. So it's not an acronym. It's just spelling it out. So you can remember it. Cool. I'm like, "this is going to be something really clever!" [00:08:49] It's just like ask to get, yeah, it's so simple. We don't ask often enough. Right. Okay.  [00:08:54] Brandon: So the more you ask, the more you get, that's just how it works.  [00:08:57] Jason: Now, this is kind of a system that you can build into the business, right? Like that's what we teach referrals, like build this mechanism. And so we create this open loop, like "would you be willing to give us feedback online?" [00:09:09] "Yes. Oh, I'd be happy to do that. Awesome. We would really appreciate that. Let me send you a link to make this easier for you. And I know you're really busy, but would it be cool if I followed up in a week if I don't see something come through? Would that be okay?" And they're like, "yeah." So then they're in this endless loop where you continually follow up. [00:09:26] "Hey, you know, you had mentioned that you'd maybe take some time to do this and notice, hadn't seen anything come through. I know you're really busy. Would you be willing to give us feedback online?" And we just keep this and we work at like a sales process. Like it's a pipeline until we get them to either do it or give them an out and say, "you know what, if you don't want to do it, it's totally cool. We appreciate your business." "No, I'll do it." Takeaway. So anyway, there's got to be more to it than this. Is that, or is it just simple?  [00:09:51] Brandon: That's one of the strategies. So the next thing we want to do is we want to automate the ask, right? So first we talk about how to get more referrals just in your regular conversations, and we give people a framework to make it easy for them and comfortable for the clients. [00:10:06] Now let's take that same strategy and let's automate the ask. How do we do that? We integrate similar types of questions into our invoices, our email signature. If you're doing a newsletter, you can incorporate a section around that. I recommend that one of the things you consider doing is to incentivize people. [00:10:27] The best way to motivate is to compensate. Well, you don't necessarily have to pay out cash like in an affiliate program or what we call referral rewards, but you may choose to. At the very least, what you want to do is have some sort of way to incentivize and reward those that send you business. So maybe it is for every new client you refer us, we're going to give you one free months of service or three months of service, whatever's right for your business model. You got to understand your lifetime client value. You need to understand your customer acquisition costs. And Jason, I'm sure these are things that you're teaching your guys. So I don't think we have to dig deep into those, but it's really about creating the mechanism so that your system is doing the asking for you, right? [00:11:15] All of your automations have integrated referrals. If you're doing mailers and statements, you can simply put those requests as a footer, if you will, in your statements, and that way your system is constantly doing the asking and reminding people that you appreciate their referrals.  [00:11:33] Jason: So, what would be an example of what might be at the bottom of an invoice or at the bottom of an email? [00:11:38] Like, like something like, "we don't hate referrals, do you know anyone?" I'm joking, but what would you typically put?  [00:11:45] Brandon: Yeah. I mean, you can do something as simple as "we love referrals," right? "The greatest gift you can give us is to refer someone who cares." It's really about your personality and your brand, right? [00:11:56] So there's some standard language that you can use. "We love referrals. If you know anyone who is a fit for us, an investor looking for us to take over and provide five star service, we're here for them." And then again, if you're rewarding them, then you integrate your incentive into the ask.  [00:12:15] Jason: Okay. I love this. [00:12:17] Again with our reputation secrets for reviews we also teach like identify all the touch points that you have with your customer And figure out where you can add in some sort of link or direction to get reviews. So I'm starting to think maybe I should take a look at everything that I teach for reviews and figure out how do I turn this into referrals?  [00:12:37] Brandon: It sounds like it's the same, Jason. I mean, everything that you're teaching is right on point. Now, just add that referral request into what you're doing. Now you've got the ratings, reviews and the referrals. You've got two different ways to ask for similar things that are both going to add to more business. [00:12:53] Jason: Wow. Yeah, definitely. But the referral thing is a lot more direct, right? Let's get an actual lead. Let's get connected. And instead of, you know, looking good online and waiting for traffic flow in. It's definitely more direct. So I'm liking this. So, okay. Automate the ask. [00:13:08] I'm guessing you have more points.  [00:13:10] Brandon: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So many different things that you can do. One of the things that we teach is to become the expert, right? Become recognized as an expert. Now, many of your guys are probably already going to real estate investor groups. What are they teaching and training at real estate investor groups, right? [00:13:27] Yeah, part of the reason that you are where you are is because you are establishing your expert authority by having this call this group, right? You have elevated your status in the industry and that's what everybody that's listening should be doing too. We teach a concept called hyper local social farming, right? [00:13:47] If you think about the best realtors out there, they farm local communities. That's what they call it. They call it farming. And what that means is they're sending postcards to every homeowner in a specific neighborhood or HOA, and they do it regularly consistently because that consistency creates comfort and trust, right? So they become known as that top agent in that area. Well, we do that at HOA.com. It's part of our marketing platform that we've built, but we teach the strategy and I think it applies even to property managers, right? Number one, you can farm lists and I'm sure your guys are getting lists of non owner occupied properties and then doing direct mail and outreach. [00:14:34] to the investors, especially if you see that they have multiple properties that they own. Right? We have all that homeowner data at hoa.com. And so that's one of the things that we do too. But if you farm the communities and work specific areas, then what happens is you start to get the referrals from all the people that know each other in that area. [00:14:55] Or in that, that market, right? Because sometimes you're doing it down to the local area and other times you're working spheres of influence, if you will. Right. And so one of the other things that we teach is to teach others. When you establish that expert authority by teaching real estate investor groups, right? [00:15:15] Go partner with not only the real estate investor groups, but also the realtors in the area offer a course for investors into the specific real estate branch. We've just done this actually with raving referrals. So we created a raving referrals CE course, continuing education course for realtors. And now what we're doing is we're having different mortgage lenders, business coaches, and other professionals are becoming the certified trainer. And the beauty is, like I was just talking to the partner manager for REMAX yesterday. She manages all of North America. They've got about 80, 000 agents. Well, I thought we were primarily having an HOA conversation, which we were. [00:15:58] But when she found out that we had this CE course, her eyes and ears just lit up because their agents always need great content to grow their business. So somebody that is standing on stage and we help fill the audience, but somebody that's standing on stage delivering that content elevates their expert authority. [00:16:18] And now everybody wants to do business with them because they're seen as the expert they are.  [00:16:23] Jason: This is funny. So one of the strategies we give our clients, we have a course called the 411 on leasing that one of my clients I coached in the past kind of shared with us and we've kind of cleaned it up and we have our clients go and get this approved as a CE credit and here's this course on leasing that scares the shit out of real estate agents in handling leases because the number one source of complaints at any real estate office or any board of realtors, I mean, is usually property management related, not real estate related. And so they teach this class that basically scares the shit out of them and handling their own leases. And so then they just start referring the business to the teacher of class. So I love this idea. So they're teaching the CE course for realtors related to referrals.  [00:17:07] Brandon: Yeah. And what we teach is for the trainer, whoever it is, typically we focus on mortgage lenders and business coaches because they want to be in front of rooms full of realtors, but it works for a property manager too, right? You can become a trainer, go give a course. What we do is we partner with the title companies because as you know, the title companies exist to help realtors win more business, and they do that by providing training and tools, right? Technology to help them win. So we provide the title company with great content that is drawing their agents in and helping their realtors expand their business. [00:17:47] Because what we're doing is we're teaching the realtors how to formalize and activate their referral network. What we know about Realtors is they give a ton of referrals out and they don't get many back. And so if you want to win more business from Realtors, give more business to realtors, promote them, right? [00:18:06] And then the property management company, that's easy to do. It doesn't take much. You could have your list of five or 10 agents. They can specialize in different aspects of the industry. Maybe some are first time homers, some are luxury, some are Airbnb short term rentals, but by having that team of people that you're recommending, they'll recommend you back as well. [00:18:29] Jason: Yeah, that's great. I love it. All right, Brandon. I just want to milk all these ideas out of you. Like keep sharing because this is cool.  [00:18:37] Brandon: So next phase then is we've talked about activating the Realtors net network, right? How do we do that? We actually sit down with them. We teach something we call the referral partner blueprint. [00:18:49] And if you go to HOA. com slash blueprint, you can download this. It's a PDF document. But it basically walked you through all the different ways to create your referral team. You're what we call your trusted team. Now property managers have vendors that you use all of the time. And my question to you is you're referring business to those vendors. [00:19:11] Are those vendors referring you back?  [00:19:14] Jason: Yeah, it's a great strategy. We definitely have our clients focus on like vendors are great source of referrals. They know the bad landlords out there that they're doing jobs for. They know what it's like to deal with them and to not get paid. They would much rather have a property manager that they're dealing with. [00:19:29] That's good. Yeah, for sure.  [00:19:31] Brandon: Yeah. And they're in a perfect position. If they get hired by an investor to go work on a non owner occupied property, they're in a conversation, a dialogue anyway. And they can say, "by the way, have you ever considered hiring a professional property management company? So you don't have to come out here at 2 a. m. and, you know, address an emergency with one of your renters?" So being in partnership with them is key. We help the realtors formalize and activate their referral partnerships. Again, they give a ton out. They don't get many back at HOA. com. We've actually built a co marketing engine and it's all automated. [00:20:08] And so what happens is a realtor, after they come on board, they'll create their profile, and then they invite their trusted team. And on their profile, they get to feature the people that they know I can trust and recommend. So their mortgage lender, insurance agent, their painter, their plumber, their home inspector, property manager, their trusted team. [00:20:29] And what we do once those people join their network is the realtor also uploads their homeowner database. And then what we do is every month we send. An automated home safe report to the homeowners in their database from the agent or the pro to those homeowners and what it does is it gives the homeowner a monthly valuation report. [00:20:52] "Hey, your property has gone up by $4000. It's now worth $512, 000, right? Might be a good time to sell," and we include the estimated rental value of that property as well. The reason we're doing that is we want to help people find the resources that they need and they may see that, "wow, I could rent this house for $4, 000." [00:21:16] It might be time to make a move, right? So we want to stimulate that activity, but the home safe report, it goes out from the realtor featuring all of the vendors that they know, like, and trust and recommend, and the beauty is we do the same thing for everyone else. So the insurance agent is promoting the realtor to all of their clients. [00:21:38] The mortgage lender is promoting the realtor or the property manager. We help everybody work together as a team and automate the co marketing so that they're expanding the number of people that they get their message to. And everybody's recommending everyone else because a client for one can be a client for everyone. [00:21:58] Yeah. Nice.  [00:22:00] Jason: That is very strategic. I love it. So yeah, very clever. Cool. And I just got your guide. Like I put it in it's up on my screen. Super fast. And I'm looking at it here. Yeah, this follows a lot of the strategies that we leverage in getting our clients to get clients. [00:22:16] So this is really interesting, but I like the idea of the cross promotional campaigns and stuff like that. So. Very cool.  [00:22:23] Brandon: Yeah, you know, we started this company as the Homeowner Alliance and our original vision was to create like the BNI power team of professionals who serve homeowners, because there's nobody that's done that, right? [00:22:34] There is no referral network exclusively for pros who serve homeowners. So five years ago, we set out to create that. We actually started as the homeowneralliance. com. That was our URL and we were able to acquire hoa. com. Right. Home owner Alliance. We need to do shorter brand. But what we know is that people that are in this space do a ton of business together, but most of them don't have any systems about how to cross refer and cross marketing like BNI is great. [00:23:07] But once you leave the BNI meeting, then what?  [00:23:09] Jason: Yeah, I would say BNI is not that great. That's the feedback I've heard from so many people. Sorry, BNI. But the challenge is our property management clients will go there hoping to get a bunch of referrals. And what ends up happening is they have maybe one person there that could potentially be a client. [00:23:27] Maybe and they have maybe one person there that actually could connect them to something that's relevant or they might not and so they just they spend a lot of time investing in this with getting very little yield. There's better groups that you could either curate or be a part of or join, I think, that would yield a much bigger result, but that's my opinion. [00:23:45] Brandon: Yeah, and I agree, and I think it's industry specific, right? There are some industries that really thrive in BNI, and there's others that don't. Yeah. But the concept Is sound, right? The concept is let's build a trusted team of the people that we're cross referring my challenge with...  [00:24:02] Jason: your team, like the team that all like property managers are already connected to like property managers have accountants. [00:24:09] They're connected to lenders. They're connected to title companies. They're connected. They're connected to all sorts of vendors, like every housing related vendor there is, right? And they, and that's part of Building a property management business. You have to build a network and a team. [00:24:21] And so you might as well create that alliance strategically to facilitate that. So HOA. com on the surface, if people are assuming it's just related to association management would be probably a misnomer. That's probably not accurate, right? It sounds like you can help with facilitating some of this stuff happening that we're talking about. [00:24:43] Brandon: Yeah. We've really built a referral partner platform. That's what is at the core and what drives HOA. com. Again, we set out to create a platform to connect homeowners to professionals they can trust. Now we acquired the hoa. com domain after the fact, but that's our mission is to really connect homeowners in local communities with professionals they can trust. [00:25:06] And part of the way that we do that from an automation and a marketing perspective is we help people create their trusted teams, cross refer Cross market together. We automate that process. So it's easy, but we're creating community pages for every neighborhood in America, whether it's an HOA or not. [00:25:26] Jason: Yeah. And then we select top trusted pros that become the recommended property manager of that community the recommended realtor mortgage lender painter plumber And so we choose kind of like the bni concept. We're a community maker, but thank you.  [00:25:40] You're picking the kings of the champions for each, role in this community. [00:25:45] So okay, I love it. So, what's the process for a property manager to be one of those kings or queens of their local market in HOA. com. And how do you select them or how do they seduce you and get your attention?  [00:26:00] Brandon: They go to HOA. com up at the top, right? You're going to see a button that says, "become a pro." They're going to fill out that application. [00:26:07] We do background checks on people. We want to much like you said, before we jumped on the show, right? You don't allow everybody in, you only allow about 30 percent of people. If I heard you correctly. That want to be part of your Facebook group. Yeah, we take a similar approach, right? We're interested in quality over quantity and our reputation is at stake. [00:26:28] So we do background checks. We're going to check you out on social media. We're going to see what you're saying, who you are, make sure that our values are aligned. We don't just choose to do business with anyone and then we're going to make sure that you've got plenty of ratings and reviews that you got the experience and the expertise to take care of people. [00:26:46] So once that is complete and then you're approved, then you're on the platform and you basically create a profile. You invite your trusted team. You have the opportunity of claiming communities where you become the exclusive property manager for that HOA or master plan development. And that way you get remarketed to all those folks. [00:27:07] And then you have the opportunity to upload your homeowner database. So that every month they're getting a message and email from you with the value of their home. And then that home safe report has everything about their property in one location. Our goal is to be like Carfax for your home, but they're going to see all the square footage and you know, legal description, their mortgage information. [00:27:31] They're going to see a complete list of the sales transactions on that property. And then they're going to see a section, which is the trusted team, the recommended. providers, professionals that serve that community. And then they're also going to see local events. What's happening in your area. And ultimately, our goal is to create unity through community. [00:27:55] We want to connect people in the local neighborhoods so that they really get to know their neighbors and feel connected.  [00:28:02] Jason: I think that's super important nowadays because, you know, we've traded largely social networks for social media. And so we've lost the network. We've lost the connection in a lot of instances. [00:28:17] And. You know, it's been proven that the more time people spend on social media, the more disconnected, the more depressed they feel. And these really are psychological engines for stealing attention from us by leveraging dopamine and And it's extracting money from our wallets. And so either you use social media or it uses you. [00:28:38] And my daughter makes all of our social media posts, all my posts. Like I don't know where you really post anything, but she knows my voice. She knows how to write things the way that I would. And it's on my podcast. So she knows that. And so that allows me to use social media without using me as much, but I think everybody gets a little bit sucked in if they even have it on their phone. [00:28:58] Right. So, I love the idea of creating more connection and more community. So, for the random person listening to this that's not a property manager for some reason. Right. But they're just like, "man, I really am craving community." What could they do to be more connected to leveraging HOA. com?  [00:29:18] Brandon: Yeah. Well, so if they're a professional, they can sign up as a pro. [00:29:20] And one of the things that we do is we have a number of community impact events. Because part of the way that we bring people together is we give them a blueprint of how to host an event. You know, we do things like ice cream socials for the whole community, right? Or a watermelon eating contest. We do things like that, right? [00:29:39] Just fun stuff that bring people together and create a reason for families to come out and really build community within their HOA or neighborhood. So we provide all these guides to our pros, because again, some of the realtors, some of the property managers, they like to host events. And what's interesting is more often than not, when one of our pros approaches an HOA about doing a community impact event, the HOA gets behind it and they even promote it to all of the neighbors in their. [00:30:11] HOA because they don't typically have those types of events going on. Some do, but many don't. And so when, you know, a neighbor or a pro offers to do something for the neighborhood, they want to spread the word and get it out there. So what you're going to find is most HOAs will get behind it, especially if it's good for the community. [00:30:31] Jason: Sounds great. So yeah, maybe I should somehow get my HOA that I'm living in to do some of these things. All right. So Brandon, is there anything we missed in how to really get referrals going for maybe property managers or those listening.  [00:30:50] Brandon: Yeah, I think you've got to be intentional. You've got to have a plan what we recommend is that people start by doing a self assessment. [00:30:58] We have a referral score quiz. There are 10 Best practices when it comes to getting more referrals. And what we find is most often people have a couple of blind spots. There's a couple of things that they've never thought of before. And I'll give you one example. I had a mortgage company back in the early 2000s. [00:31:17] And I had this client come to me one day and he had referred me a client. And he calls me about two months later and he says, "Hey, I just want to know what happened with Mike Johnson." And I'm like, "Oh, great to hear from you. Amazing. We just helped Mike do his refinance two weeks ago and he closed on his transaction." [00:31:34] And then there was this awkward pause and he comes back and he says, "do you mind if I give you a little coaching?" And I said, "absolutely." You know, coaching is the breakfast of champions. And he says, "number one, it's a really good idea to thank people when they give you a referral," and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, how did I not? [00:31:54] How did I miss it? This guy was a VP for Intel. He had given me a number of referrals and I just hadn't even been aware to think about thanking the guy who was giving me this. Oh, I felt like just a capital L on my forehead. Right? The second thing he says is "it's also a really good idea to update people when they do give you a referral" and I'm like "doing! I'm an idiot!" Right? [00:32:21] And so what I did at that point, I had a mortgage company. I had 30 loan officers that were working for me. I printed up referral thank you cards. And they literally said, "thank you for referring." And there was a blank line and my people could write in the name of the client, quickly stick that in an envelope and send it out to the client to thank them for giving referrals, but if you're not thinking about it, then you're missing out. And that's one of the ways that you really build those relationships where people refer you on a regular basis because the trust goes up, especially if you update them on what happens, right? "Hey, thanks so much for referring Susie Smith." [00:32:59] She ended up becoming a client. We're now helping her with her properties and so grateful. And then you can either give them a gift. Starbucks card, movie card, whatever the case may be to reward them and give them that dopamine hit. So they want to do it again, right?  [00:33:16] Jason: Right, yeah, it's all about motivating them to do it again. [00:33:19] There's the idea you had mentioned before to incentivize, which is to throw money at them, right? But sometimes what really means even more to people is recognition. Like on disc assessments, for example, they have an economic score and most people's economic score is low. [00:33:33] Now this is B2B business owners. Economic score is generally high for most entrepreneurs and business owners and for salespeople. So realtors for sure. Generally everyone besides entrepreneurs and salespeople have a low economic score and which means they are recognition motivated. And so it's the gesture of doing something to show recognition. [00:33:54] Everybody likes recognition. Some people like money more, but if you do both, yes, then you're going to create a really solid incentive for these people.  [00:34:03] Brandon: How do you recommend that people recognize those that give them a referral? Do you have a system for that?  [00:34:08] Jason: I mean, I think the things that you mentioned are pretty solid, like a thank you card or something, but I think more. Depth is where magic happens. And so the deeper right so sending a card, that's nice, right? And that's a little deeper than an email, right? But the greatest depth would be "hey, let me take you out to lunch I really want you to know that I appreciate it," and looking them in the eye and expressing it would be the greatest step because there's more human connection and people like we mentioned before crave this nowadays and they will remember that forever. You know, I got chills just saying all that. [00:34:42] Brandon: Oh, I like it. Yeah. You know, one of the things we recommend too, is you give them a shout out on social media, right? I mean, you were just talking about the power of social media and here's why I love this strategy. When you recognize a referrer on social media, "Hey, I just wanted to give a shout out to Bob Williams, right? Bob recently referred over this client and we were able to help them with 10 of their clients. Properties. And we're so excited to be working with them. They're awesome people. So thanks again." Right. What are you doing there? Number one, you're feeding that, that dopamine hit right, of giving them that recognition. [00:35:18] You're doing it publicly by praising them. They're also going to tap into their relationships because birds of a feather flock together and that investor often will know others or that person will often know others who are investors as well. And you've also created social proof at the same time, right? [00:35:39] Somebody is trusting you enough to give you referrals. That social proof is good for you and for them. So if you can praise them on social media, if you do a newsletter, you can incorporate that. I started doing that back in 1997, right? [00:35:55] Where I did a week newsletter update on interest rates. I was in the mortgage business, but every week. I would include the people and thank the people that had referred me business. And what that did is it started to communicate and it was typically realtors, right? And what happened is other realtors would see that if they would be on my newsletter list and they're like, "Oh, Norma Reardon is sending business to Brandon. I've done business with her. She's high quality. If she trusts Brandon, I can too."  [00:36:25] Jason: Ooh, that is a clever, backwards evidence of social proof right there. That I love, that's clever. Yeah. Smart. Yeah. I like it. You've got a lot of ideas.  [00:36:36] Brandon: There's a few of them. You can pick up the book, Raving Referrals. Most of them are in this book. We haven't done one specifically for property managers. We need to think about that, Jason. We've got raving referrals for dentists, raving referrals for mortgage pros, and we're working on raving referrals for real estate agents right now.  [00:36:54] Jason: Hey, you want to coauthor a book? Let's get together and have that conversation... magic happen. So, yeah, and I think there's some cool stuff we could do together to do some referral magic. So, very cool. Well, before we wrap up anything else that you want to add, share, how can people get in touch with you? You know, anything you want to say about HOA. [00:37:14] com. This is your guy.  [00:37:16] Brandon: So best way to get in touch with me is at BrandonBarnum.Com. I'm sure you'll put that in the show notes on BrandonBarnum.Com. You can get the referral partner blueprint. So there's a link to download that. You can take the referral score quiz. That'll take you one to two minutes. [00:37:33] You'll rate yourself on the scale of one to 10 on the 10 best practices. And I guarantee. There's a couple of blind spots that are going to help you. The other thing you just mentioned, disc, this is a magic trick. This is called bank code, and this is a personality system that we teach. It helps you close more sales in less time and we did a research study to find out the impact of customizing your conversations and presentations for realtors on their listing conversions. And on average they increased their listing conversions by 123%. So more than doubled their closing ratio on listing conversions by understanding the personality style of the people that you're serving and selling and by customizing your conversation to the style that their brain makes buying decisions will help you close more sales in less time. [00:38:31] And you can take that bank code assessment. It's free. It'll take you 60 seconds and you can do that on brandonbarnum. com as well.  [00:38:39] Jason: Cool. All right. I will definitely check it out. All right, Brandon. Grateful to have you on the show. This was a pleasure. Appreciate it. And I think we'll definitely be connecting after the show. [00:38:50] So, all right. I love it. Thanks for having me, Jason. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here. So property managers, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're struggling to add doors, you're adding plenty of doors, but you're struggling to figure out operations and you want to get your business to be what I call infinitely scalable, where you can continually add doors and stop stopping your momentum and break that hundred or thousand door barrier and hit your goals and achieve your dreams then reach out to us at DoorGrow We are helping people do this every day. This is what we do and we're confident that we can help you do it If you are positive and if you're active and willing to take action, we can help you get there. [00:39:27] So reach out to us at doorgrow. com and until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:39:32] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:39:59] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Learn about the 6 major leaks in property management sales pipelines including positioning, perception, presence, pricing, purpose, and pitch. Discover the importance of brand identity, online reviews, pricing strategies, company culture, and trust in sales pitches for successful business growth.

Discover the true essence of your property management business by focusing on core functions. Learn how to overcome challenges and achieve success by understanding the business you are really in. Uncover the broad scope of property management entrepreneurship and the mission of top entrepreneurs in transforming the industry.

In May, we had our annual DoorGrow Live event! What makes DoorGrow Live different from other property management conferences? In today’s episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about our most recent DoorGrow Live conference and some of the topics discussed. You’ll Learn [01:12] What was different about this year’s DoorGrow Live? [04:48] Tactics vs. Mindset [06:41] Changing the order of your priorities [10:17] Hard choices, easy life Tweetables “Tactics and the how can always be figured out.” “It's not really the tactics that are the problem. It's almost always the mindset.” “The hard choice is to not go for what you immediately want, but to reorder and prioritize some things that are more relevant to the long term.” “If you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: If you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order.  [00:00:08] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:53] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hall, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. Okay.  [00:01:12] And so what we're going to be talking about today is we just had DoorGrow Live and DoorGrow Live was a success. It was a lot of fun and it was a little bit different this year. So how would you say it was different this year, Sarah?  [00:01:27] Sarah: So I think a lot of people were saying, "Hey, it feels like there was really just a lot of heart that went into this event." [00:01:35] So usually when I think you and I run events, we're very tactical. How do you do this? How do you do that? And let's share this strategy and let's talk about this thing. And this year we changed things up a little bit and you were maybe a little hesitant to follow the formula that I put together, might I add. [00:01:53] And so maybe on the podcast you can tell people that It worked?  [00:01:57] Jason: It worked.  [00:01:58] Sarah: And? Do you have anything else to say about that?  [00:02:00] Jason: Anyone that knows Sarah knows what she wants to hear right now. You were right. There it is! There it is. There it is. That's what she wanted. There it is.  [00:02:10] Sarah: So this year when I was putting together the schedule and the agenda, there was this whole plan that I had. [00:02:17] And I was like, "Oh no, we need to order things like this and do things like this. And this is what I wanted." And he's like, " I don't know if that's going to work. And why are we doing this whole thing? And we're like putting this whole thing together. And like, you don't even know if it's going to work the way you want." [00:02:30] Jason: Is this how I sound?  [00:02:31] Sarah: Yes.  [00:02:32] Jason: "I don't know if it's gonna work."  [00:02:34] Sarah: "I don't know if it's gonna work."  [00:02:36] Jason: That's totally what I sound like.  [00:02:38] Sarah: It was perfect.  [00:02:39] Jason: I'm shaking my head no, by the way, for the listeners.  [00:02:41] Sarah: See you probably, they probably didn't even know that was me talking. They just thought it was you.  [00:02:45] Jason: Oh, yeah. [00:02:46] You do such a good impersonation of me. I know. It's really quite impressive. I'll go back to my normal voice so that you realize it's Sarah talking. Yeah, for the listeners, we need to make sure there's two distinct voices or they're going to be really confused why I'm talking to myself because you sound so much like me. [00:03:03] Sarah: I know. I'm so sorry if I confused anyone.  [00:03:06] Jason: Nobody was confused. Okay. So...  [00:03:08] Sarah: so he was giving me a little bit of a hard time about it because I, like, made him sit down and map this out and I was like, "no, there's a formula that we're supposed to follow and this is what I want it to look like." And I think it worked out really well. [00:03:21] Jason: Yeah, the event went really well.  [00:03:23] Sarah: Yeah.  [00:03:24] Jason: Things ran pretty much like clockwork. That's hard. It's hard to do that in events. Like speakers go over, people don't stop. Like, we had this big, huge red LED clock right in front of the speaker. So it was like super obvious, like, and we, I think we had conversations with all the speakers, like everything worked pretty smoothly. [00:03:43] The general feedback I got from a lot of clients one of our clients, Ed Golding, came up to me and he was just smiling. He'd been to some previous ones and he said, "this was different, you know, what was different about this?" I said, "what, Ed? " He said, "heart, this one had heart." [00:03:56] And it was an emotional event. There was lot more emotion at this event. Did we talk about tactics? Yes. I explained how I've been able to leverage social media and different tools and, I've made millions of dollars off social media. And I shared some really cool tools and very tactical stuff. [00:04:12] That's how I opened up the event. But we got into a lot of mindset and what we've realized over time, that we talked about at the event that most of our clients are not winning or losing because they don't, or do have tactics. Tactics and the how can always be figured out. And I liked Jeff Garner's tattoo he talked about but....  [00:04:33] Sarah: he's funny.  [00:04:33] Jason: He's like, " can I say it? There's children present." I had my kids at the event.  [00:04:36] Sarah: They're my kids. Like they hear it all the time.  [00:04:40] Jason: Yeah, so he's got a tattoo that's FTH Which stands for "fuck the how" so and so a lot of times people are so worried about "how do I do this? How do I do this?" And we do share tactics. We do a lot of that at DoorGrow. However, It's not really the tactics that are the problem. It's almost always the mindset. And so whenever I teach tactics. I always am going into the why behind it and the mindset stuff. And when they start to understand this stuff, then they will actually do it usually. [00:05:13] So there was a lot of mindset at the event. And then also, there's vulnerability. Like I openly shared how I've been reevaluating my priorities and what those look like and how how that looks. You were sharing about your upbringing and how like the difficult things in life are also the things that make us who we are and help us to enable us to help others and how to view it through a different lens, which I thought was really awesome. [00:05:39] And everybody's crying. Sarah's making everybody cry. Like I was crying, like...  [00:05:44] Sarah: I made people cry in a very different way this time though. I'm usually making people cry because I'm yelling at them.  [00:05:50] Jason: That's not true.  [00:05:51] Sarah: It's a little true. It's a little true.  [00:05:54] Jason: Not our clients, just me.  [00:05:56] Sarah: No, I don't do, but I do give our clients tough love when they need it. [00:05:59] And Kelly came to the event and she's like, "this is exactly what I needed." I'm like, "I know that's why I was on you for like three months." [00:06:07] Jason: Yeah. I think some people had some breakthroughs, which that's the goal. Like we want to change lives. And so there's something just really beautiful about this DoorGrow Live. [00:06:16] There was a lot of more depth to it and I just feel grateful to be able to be part of it and to see, our clients that believe in us and that, that came in just seeing their progress and, there are people there that have been in our program for years, which is just. [00:06:29] It's really awesome to see. So, so I thought I would share just a little bit today about what I had shared and this will be a quick episode cause Sarah doesn't want me to go long. So this'll be a quick one.  [00:06:41] Sarah: Back to back today.  [00:06:42] Jason: You got a busy day. So what I shared is I talked a little bit about prioritization and I've talked about this previously, but what what was interesting, one of my breakthroughs recently was recognizing I was basically merging in my mind, the five basic needs. [00:06:57] Which I don't know who put that out. We learned it from our friend Roya.  [00:07:01] Sarah: But maybe it was... [00:07:02] Jason: maybe it's Tony Robbins. I don't know. So there's five basic needs and the five basic needs are love and belonging, power and achievement fun and adventure, fun and pleasure, safety and security. [00:07:15] Sarah: And I'll see when you put them in a weird order, then I don't remember them. Freedom and flexibility.  [00:07:20] Jason: Freedom and flexibility. Freedom. There we go. Yeah. Okay. These are five basic needs and we all have one that's primary. For Sarah, it's power and achievement. Nobody's surprised, right? For me, it's actually love and belonging. [00:07:33] And a lot of my achievement and a lot of the things that I do. Are to, that's what motivates that we're helping clients working with clients love and belonging and having that connection. That's why I like working with entrepreneurs because I don't feel like such a weirdo when I'm around other people that are that weird, that are also entrepreneurial. [00:07:51] But what I've come to realize that if I make that my highest priority, I tend to get less of it. And I think this is true for anyone with their basic need. If you really think about it, if Sarah just went after power and achievement. And didn't prioritize like relationships and other things, it could be pretty destructive and it would likely have the opposite desired effect in trying to achieve power and whatnot, right? [00:08:13] Because we need others. And then for me, if I'm just going after love and belonging, I would be less likely to get it. If I didn't have my own oxygen mass first, if I didn't have financial wealth and health, if I didn't have physical health then it wouldn't be nearly as effective. I wouldn't be nearly as present. [00:08:31] I wouldn't be able to enjoy much love and connection or belonging, in relationships. I wouldn't be able to feed into relationships as much if I weren't taking care of myself. And so based on that I, I had everybody map out or stack or list their priorities in their life, and then I showed how my priorities were listed and then Like what my natural inclination is placing like love and belonging at the top. [00:08:59] And then I showcased how I've intentionally consciously listed them and rearranged the priority and how that affects my decision making in my day to day so that I spend more of my time in my day to day moving towards the top priorities, which are not on my new adjusted priority list are not the love and connection related things related to family, sex, relationship, stuff like that. So above that, I've placed God at the top which is, for some of you that might be your highest ideal, whatever that is. And so I want to always be pointed towards my highest ideal. Second, I put power, achievement, impact, and that's related money status, all that. [00:09:41] And that allows me to have impact. Which leads to me getting what I want. It's a leading sort of thing. And then the next is health. I need to be prioritizing health. And then it gets into more of the relationship stuff in the priorities. Whereas before I was putting family, friends, fun was probably higher on the list, but I felt like I wasn't ever able to do as much of that as I wanted. [00:10:04] Because I was so focused on the other stuff. And so by reordering the priorities, it takes work. Like it takes effort to go towards what's easy and what's natural usually leads to a harder life. And so there's this stoic phrase that I like that is "hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life." [00:10:26] And the hard choice is to not go for what you immediately want, but to reorder and prioritize some things that are more relevant to the long term, playing the long game, doing what maybe I feel deep down inside I should do connected when I'm connected to God or focusing on my health, doing the playing the long game instead of doing the short term, right? [00:10:49] The short term is like eat, Häagen Dazs vanilla ice cream, vanilla bean ice cream. It's like my favorite right now. I love that. Or whatever, right? When we're just trying to please our tongue and our genitals, we tend to have a much harder life, right? And this is the short term. We're just going for the short term gain. [00:11:05] And so we want to make sure we prioritize the long game, the long term. and give up where that means sacrifice in the short term. That means work. That means effort. And a lot of people just aren't putting in enough work or enough effort in the lazy people in society are the people that are always trying to please their tongue and their genitals. [00:11:24] Maybe it's crass, my crass way of saying it. Okay. It's a little gross. Okay. So that's what I shared at DoorGrow Live. And so I encourage all of you listening, like make a list. What are your priorities? And what I shared is your results reveal your priorities. So if you don't like the results in your life, write them down. [00:11:43] Like, what are your relationships like? What's your business like? What are you doing in the business? What aren't you doing in the business? Or what are you enjoying? What are you not enjoying? And if you don't like the results, then it's probably because your priorities are not in the right order. It doesn't mean you give up or change your priorities, right? All of the things that were my priorities before are still priorities for me. I've just rearranged the order and by just rearranging the order, it changes everything. It changes the results that you get and you'll get more of the results that you really desire if you rearrange those priorities in a way that probably will take you more effort and more work, but will allow you to get everything that you want in the long run. [00:12:28] So that was my message. That's the simple message. Rearrange your priorities figure out your basic need, put that lower on the list, and figure out what needs to come before in order for you to have as much of that as possible because I want you to enjoy your life, but you need to do make hard choices. [00:12:41] And you need to do hard things.  [00:12:43] But it was an awesome event and make sure you are keeping an eye on doorgrowlive.com for the future and make sure to attend in the future. [00:12:52] Everybody says our conferences are different than any other property management conference out there. And That's a good thing. Like we do it in a good way. So, I recommend you attend. So you can check out more details about future events at doorgrowlive.Com. And if you are wanting to grow your property management business and have success like our clients were showcasing at DoorGrow Live and grow your business, scale your operations, have a better lifestyle, enjoy your team more, enjoy your business, be less frustrated, have more peace, reach out to us at DoorGrow. You can check us out at DoorGrow.com. We would love to see if we can help you scale your business. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:13:36] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:14:02] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Matt from Nexa Mortgage joins Jason and Sarah to discuss non-QM loan strategies for real estate investors. Topics include QM vs. non-QM loans, why to choose non-QM, benefits for property managers, and unlocking portfolio potential with non-QM loans.

In this podcast, property management growth experts discuss the importance of setting the right priorities in your business. They explore the benefits of coaching, delegation, seeking help, and prioritizing growth over comfort. Learn how aligning priorities can lead to successful outcomes and achieve business goals.

David from Vendoroo, an expert in AI maintenance coordination, discusses revolutionizing property management with AI. Topics include automating maintenance workflow, in-house AI maintenance coordinator, handling work orders efficiently, importance of in-house maintenance, blending human touch with AI, and handling worst-case scenarios.

Guest Galo Naranjo discusses using DoorGrow's ROI Calculator to connect with agents and investors, highlighting the power of trust in sales, advising investors on property numbers, and utilizing lead magnets for accurate information collection.

Experts discuss the importance of relaxation for property managers, highlighting the negative effects of stress and burnout. Emphasizing the need for breaks and vacations, they provide insights on productivity, balance, and managing stress levels as an entrepreneur. Learn how taking time off can lead to increased efficiency and overall well-being.

Learn why property management entrepreneurs need to hire an assistant for themselves, the benefits of having an assistant, and when to get one. Discover the crucial role assistants play in supporting entrepreneurs, how to find the ideal assistant, and the importance of delegation for business growth.