Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

As a property manager, you know how stressful the industry can be. It’s often a difficult and thankless job. On this podcast, we like to share ways for property management entrepreneurs to take care of their physical and mental well-being, but the importance of sleep is often overlooked… In today’s episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with Bijoy John A.K.A. Dr. SleepFix to talk about how to achieve high-quality sleep to reduce stress and improve overall health. You’ll Learn [01:47] Why sleep matters more than you think [06:43] Mythbusting sleep hacks [16:19] How stress and worrying is slowly killing you [20:52] The 7 proven sleep strategies [27:51] Daily planning to reduce stress Tweetables “Sleep is a superpower.” “I've never seen anybody sleep better by having too much information.” “Worrying about anything is probably not an effective way to get to sleep.” “You cannot data mine yourself to sleep.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Bijoy John: People say "I can sleep when I die." But I tell people, "if you're going to go on this path, you're going to die."  [00:00:07] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. [00:00:34] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:11] And I have a special guest today. This is Bijoy John. Welcome to the show, man.  [00:01:17] Bijoy John: Hey Jason, how are you? Thanks, man.  [00:01:18] Jason: I'm great. So we met at a mastermind because we both invest in ourselves and work on growth and he builds himself out as Dr. SleepFix I saw on Instagram. And so we've got Dr. SleepFix in the house with us today. So we're going to chat about sleep and I'm excited to get into this. [00:01:38] Because you know, we geeked out talking during the mastermind about sleep a bit, but this is something I've put some attention on because it has a serious impact on us. And why don't you give us a little about your background? And tell us a little bit about how you got into focusing on sleep. [00:01:55] Bijoy John: Thank you, Jason. Thanks for having me. So sleep is a superpower. We don't take it seriously because it doesn't hurt like a toothache or grow like cancer, so we put it off, but with years, it just catches up with you, right? So my background is in pulmonary critical care. I've been practicing sleep medicine for over 25 years, there are patients who have pulmonary problems and lung problems takes precedence. [00:02:16] To see me was like six months wait to see me in clinic. So finally I decided, as time goes, you change your perspective and, I thought we'll do something preventative for people. So I saw many problems, like blood pressure, diabetes, memory problems, people are in a fog, which can all be prevented by sleeping better. [00:02:37] So I left my the whole shebang of the ICU, the big flying critical care doctor and started my own clinic three years ago called Sleep Wellness Clinics and then I wrote a book and then I started by a company called SleepFix Academy to reach the masses. So sleep is the superpower. We pay a lot of attention on diet and fitness, but sleep is the foundation on which the other two are built. [00:03:01] So I just want everybody to find it within themselves and discover the superpower and be the best version of ourselves. That's my goal.  [00:03:08] Jason: Got it. That must have been frustrating to see all these problems in the medical industry that could have just been prevented by sleeping better. [00:03:17] It seems like such a silly, simple thing that we don't even pay attention to sometimes. Like we just take it for granted. We're like, "yeah, I sleep every day. No big deal." But the difference in quality of sleep can be pretty dramatic.  [00:03:29] Bijoy John: Especially when we talk about mental health, sleep and anxiety and depression have a bidirectional relationship when you don't sleep while you're in a fog, and then you feel anxious, and then you feel depressed. Then when you're more anxious, you don't sleep. And then it's just a vicious cycle. So a lot of people can feel better by just focusing on their sleep. You feel more vitalized and energy. You know how it is when you wake up after a good night's sleep. You're ready to conquer. [00:03:56] I had my own struggles. I was terrible sleeper in medical school. And then as a father raising children and then my career. And then of course when I lost my mom and then when I started my business, but I have found a way. I found the joy in the power of sleep. [00:04:12] So I just want this foundation to be built and I want to share this information to as many people as I can.  [00:04:18] Jason: Got it. So you mentioned mental health. What are some of the problems that people might be having that could be prevented by better sleep? Because a lot of people are thinking, "I sleep all right. And it's probably not that big a deal," but then they're dealing with all these health issues and these challenges. And they're like, "yeah. Sleep probably isn't even related to this.:  [00:04:36] Bijoy John: Like I mentioned, we don't have, like a pain, if you have a pain, we're going to take care of it. So what happens is if you wake up in the morning after like seven or eight hours of sleep, if you feel good that day, then mostly you're doing all right. But if you're still feeling tired. then you have a sleep problem. And of course, if you snore, then for sure you have a sleep problem. So this is my simple question I ask people, "are you tired? Or do you snore?" So once I have that answer, then we can go into the depths of what might be causing the problem.  [00:05:10] Jason: Got it. Okay. So snoring is basically choking, right? While they're trying to sleep.  [00:05:15] Bijoy John: Snoring... it's like water going through a pipe. And if I'm going to narrow the pipe. [00:05:19] The water creates turbulence. Same thing with snoring is air going through an obstructed pathway. So your back of your throat when the tongue falls down is narrowed and then air is not able to get in. And the reverberation and the vibrations that happens around it is the cause for the snoring. Of course, men snore more because the larynx or the voice box it's like a trumpet. So your sound is amplified in women is smaller and it's the, so women don't report that much snoring. So we have to pay particular attention for snoring in people.  [00:05:52] Jason: Got it. Okay. So what are some of the simple hacks that people can do to quickly improve their sleep? And how do they know when it's time to reach out to Dr. SleepFix?  [00:06:07] Bijoy John: So the two complaints that is "I don't sleep enough" or "I sleep too much." So these are the two common complaints in the world of sleep. So if you do not sleep enough, that's the condition called insomnia, right? So that's a time to reach out. People get all the information from the internet most of it is not right and then they try to do half of it and then they get stuck right and then also like I mentioned snoring is a main issue you have a very serious condition called obstructive sleep apnea if you're snoring. [00:06:39] So what are the hacks? You want me to get right into it, Jason?  [00:06:43] Jason: Yeah. How about I share some hacks I've learned and you tell me if they're valid  [00:06:47] Bijoy John: Correct.  [00:06:47] Jason: Yes. Perfect, man.  [00:06:48] Yes. Because I've geeked out on some of this stuff.  [00:06:50] One of the things, I wear orange glasses at night to block blue light. [00:06:55] Bijoy John: You wore it during the meeting.  [00:06:57] Jason: Yeah, my eyes were getting tired, so I put them on during the meeting. Yeah, you remember. I wear them at night or in the evenings after sundown so that I'm not being exposed to artificial light, which has blue light in it. Which I've heard disrupts sleep patterns and causes your circadian rhythm to get off track and causes you to have poor sleep. [00:07:17] So what I find is when I wear the orange glasses, usually within maybe about three or four hours, I start to naturally feel sleepy if I wear them. So if I put them on during the day, I have to be careful because if I forget and I have them on for like three or four hours, I'm like, man, I'm starting to feel tired. [00:07:33] Right, which is, I think melatonin starting to get produced naturally, which is like the brain starting to clean itself naturally, and then body's getting ready for sleep, right? So am I correct on that?  [00:07:46] Bijoy John: Your hack is right. So we are creatures of light. We wake up because of sunlight. [00:07:51] If you look at small children, they wake up at the crack of dawn. And so in the evening, we don't want that much sunlight or especially at night, I should not in the evening sunlight is actually good for sleeping, but the night. So what are we doing? We are having our phones, especially with COVID people are bringing the work into the bedroom and the light from the electronic devices. Maybe it's the tablet, it's a phone, the computer. Especially in the bedroom where there's no ambient light. It's just, it sends a signal through our eyes into our brain saying, "Hey, it's not time to go to sleep." So that's one major thing, especially in the bedroom. So melatonin, melamine is darkness, right? [00:08:30] Melatonin is only secreted in darkness. So we have our own tons of melatonin, which does not secrete because the exposure to light. So you're right. That hack is right.  [00:08:40] Jason: Okay, got it. So that, so the other thing that I do is I have my phone's home screen change to... I can change it to red. I set up a hack and you can set this on your phone where like if I click on it three times, one, two, three, it changes the red. So if I'm in the dark, because sometimes before bed, I'm looking at my phone in the dark or something before I fall asleep, but it's then not affecting my sleep. I also have lights in my room at night, like when I'm going to go to sleep where it's just red. So I can just make it red. So then if I put on the orange glasses or take it off, everything looks exactly the same. So then I don't need to wear the glasses as I'm going to bed. Because it's hard to fall asleep with glasses on your face. I don't want to do that.  [00:09:25] Bijoy John: Yeah. So the bedroom has to be dark. [00:09:27] So that's an, again, an indication for our body. "Hey, the body is taking the cues from the external environment and from within." See that the pressure to sleep is building throughout the body, but it is counteracted by. But the external influences, the sun, the noise so that's what, sometimes around 1:30-2:00, we feel that lull because your inner body is in a natural lull because of the, the sun goes down a little bit and the noise level is not that much and your body's pressure to sleep is building up. [00:09:56] So that's why we are tired sometime in the afternoon. So that's a good hack. You're doing great with that with what you're doing there.  [00:10:02] Jason: So as far as the bedroom some of the things that I've also focused on doing is like you mentioned light. Besides light hitting our eyes, let's say our eyes, like we're wearing a sleep mask, we can't see any light, which I have done, like I'll sometimes travel with a sleep mask so I can block out all the light if I'm in a hotel room that it just doesn't have good blackout curtains or whatever. So with our bedrooms Where we're sleeping regularly. I think it's important to kill all the led lights So there's black stickers that you can put over led lights I've used a paint pen to black out some leds on some of the things that are in my room because a lot of these things Like are just and they're always they always make them blue. [00:10:39] I don't know why but all the leds of all the devices they put in your room. It's like they're trying to give you blue light and hurt your sleep I don't know if there's a conspiracy there. What do you think?  [00:10:49] Bijoy John: No, see Jason, you know why the cops lights are blue There is a reason for it because blue is the first thing that our eyes sees and the lights in the stoplights is red because the red is the farthest you can see. So there is a science behind it. So blue light in the bedroom in the color blue in the bedroom is not good. Yeah. The blue lights is terrible idea to have in your bedroom. So anybody who's listening bedroom blue is not good. [00:11:15] Jason: Yeah. So related to this orange glass in the evening, the other hack I've heard if you want a lot more energy and you want to get your circadian rhythm in sync is to just get sunlight at the beginning of the day. Is to get a decent amount of sunlight like expose your eyes to the bright blue sky and the sunshine and like be outside for the first maybe 20 30 minutes of the day if at all possible  [00:11:37] Bijoy John: That's a great hack because you're telling your body, "hey is ready to go." So you're putting all the sun in the morning So see I said we are all creatures of the sunlight without modern invention we just revolve around the sun, right? So that is a great hack. But you have to be careful here. There are some people whose circadian rhythm is completely malaligned, and they should not be having sun in the morning. [00:12:01] Especially, this is a syndrome I call advanced sleep phase syndrome in people who are 70 or older, who tend to sleep earlier than the, accepted norm. They go to bed around seven, eight, and they wake up at three for those people, you should not expose sunlight in the morning. It's going to have an opposite effect. [00:12:20] So they have to get much more sunlight in the evening. So I see a lot of people walking in the evening. They feel like they're doing really well because they exercise. It's also not only the exercise that makes them sleep better. It's the sunlight. The evening sunlight is really actually really good for people to go to sleep.  [00:12:35] Jason: Interesting. Evening sunlight. Okay. Yes. And then I guess because the evening sunlight triggers a different response in our brain.  [00:12:43] Bijoy John: Yeah, the radiation is a little different. The wavelengths of the light in the evening is is not only the exercise, it's the rays that helps you to fall asleep. Especially people who are in the 60s, retired, they walk more. Our older adults tend to walk in the evening. That's the time they do. That's actually great for them. So yeah, they actually moving the clock forward. So you have to be careful when you get exposure to light.  [00:13:04] Jason: Got it. Okay. Now, question related to that. We're wearing a sleep mask, but we're laying in the sun. Just an extreme example is our body perceiving light in other ways besides just our visual perception that could be affecting our sleep, I'm just curious. [00:13:20] Bijoy John: No the only way the light goes into the brain and tells us is through our eyes. So once you cover the eyes, it's over, there's no, input to the brain for sleeping. The direct contact to the area in the brain called suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is the master gland which is controlled, that's the one that is important for the circadian rhythm it gets the influences through the eyes. [00:13:43] Jason: Okay. Interesting. I vaguely remember hearing this weird, like case study in the, or something in the past where they, it said they were helping the military reset and eliminate jet lag by shining like blue light on the back of their legs, but so I don't know if that there's any, maybe I made that up, but I thought I remember reading that. [00:14:02] I was like, that's super weird. So I didn't know.  [00:14:04] Bijoy John: Legs don't have the lighting on your leg don't have any input to the brain. And of course, we have a new theory saying, we always say, It's the people who work in the farm, they're still working so hard, they tend to sleep better. It's actually the muscles also, now we are knowing, create chemicals and reactions to help us to sleep. [00:14:21] We always thought brain was the only, source of the chemical reaction to put us to sleep. Now we also know all the muscles can also contribute. This is like new data. I think it'll take a few years for it to come to fruition. Get more details of what muscles help us to sleep.  [00:14:35] Jason: Yeah I've heard some people mention on social media that they have recently found out that you know putting the muscles to work and doing things like weight training stuff like that actually releases chemicals that help the brain right stay sharp. [00:14:52] Bijoy John: A lot of it, you know information coming through, we know exercise is good for many reasons, even to prevent cancer, because you are moving the lymphatic system, which helps us to clean our cancer producing cells and keeps it moving. [00:15:03] But the one caution here, when you exercise, you are also secreting endorphins, which are stimulants. So I tell people, make sure you don't exercise at least four hours prior to going to sleep. So the best time is in the morning, but if you can, if you do it in the evening, if your bedtime is 10, make sure you don't exercise past 6 PM. [00:15:22] Jason: So evening. To afternoon, but not, morning to afternoon, but not evening.  [00:15:27] Bijoy John: You don't want to be close to bedtime because you're going to be up.  [00:15:31] Jason: Got it. So flexing our muscles in the evening is like a mild form of caffeine or something.  [00:15:37] Bijoy John: Correct.  [00:15:38] Jason: Got it. Okay. So that's not going to give us great sleep. [00:15:41] I've noticed. So another hack, I've got the Oura ring, which tracks my sleep. And then I also have the eight sleep bed, which does something very similar, but it might be a little bit more accurate on the data, but I really liked the eight sleep bed because it keeps me cool at night. So what about temperature and sleep? [00:15:58] Bijoy John: Perfect question. The, again, the melatonin is secreted in lower temperature. So I tell people to experiment between 65 to 70 degrees at night so that a melatonin can be optimally secreted. [00:16:10] So it's secretes well in darkness and lower temperature. So having thermostat at a lower temperature is the key at night going to sleep. Great question. I bought the Oura ring. I was laughing and the Oura ring is one of the number one causes of referrals to my clinic and any devices. What happens, people are getting all that information from these devices, but they don't know what to do with it. [00:16:32] And they start to worry about it, so that actually affects the sleep. So I tell people to wear it, get the data, do something about it, and then see if it's improved. Don't do it every night and then just get on this rumination process.  [00:16:48] Jason: Worrying about anything is probably not an effective way to get to sleep.  [00:16:52] Bijoy John: Too much data. It's out of our brain, I think. Yeah, you cannot data mine yourself to sleep. You cannot do this. So sleep is one thing you have to do gently, right? It's like our golf swings. I tell you, you can't swing it too hard, you're going to have a mulligan. You might have to do it gently and smoothly. That's one thing, everything in our life in the hustle culture. Is great, but sleep is counter hustle culture it is against the grain of our culture and the hustle culture. [00:17:18] Jason: You can't hiho silver for great sleep. [00:17:21] Bijoy John: You cannot. Everybody is going the other way and getting too much information. I've never seen anybody sleep better by having too much information. You cannot do it. [00:17:29] Jason: Got it. I went to my doctor. He's a functional medicine doctor. And he was like, he was asking me questions. He's like, "how's your sleep?" And I said, "I don't know. I have no idea. I'm asleep." And he says get an Oura ring so you can see. And it has been pretty insightful. Like I noticed patterns. [00:17:43] And so over time you start to notice trends with your sleep, like, "Oh, like if I eat late or if I work out late or, if I do pretty much anything late, like it's messing up my sleep," it's like, Oh, your heart rate was weird, like, stuff like this. And so I don't get as good of sleep.  [00:17:59] Bijoy John: Yeah, eating late, what happens is you have a full stomach. Food stays in the stomach for about two hours. [00:18:03] Just that uncomfortable feeling. And then also you're at risk for acid reflux. There's tons of acids secreted around two in the morning. And so you have heartburn. And and also eating well late, what happens? The end product of any process is the energy. The end product of any energy is heat. [00:18:21] It's not very conducive for sleeping. Like I mentioned, melotonin secretes in the lower temperatures. So many reasons you're right. So you'll get all that information. But what mistake people are doing is they don't put it through. You may be the exception. You're doing something about it. [00:18:37] You know what I'm saying? So with data, you have to act on it. And it looks like you're getting the right information too, Jason.  [00:18:44] Jason: All right, so another hack I've noticed when I sleep really well, so I don't want to work out in the evening, but what I do notice if I do the sauna, which almost is like a workout like for my body, I've noticed, because it shows like a workout sometimes, but if I do the sauna and then I do a cold plunge or a cold shower, afterwards and I get cool myself back down, then I sleep really well. [00:19:09] So what's going on there?  [00:19:11] Bijoy John: When you do the sauna, there is the release of oxytocin, the Greeks and the Romans, they figured it out there, that they're big proponents of the sauna. So you release oxytocin, oxytocin the peak lasts about four hours. And the cold plunge also does the same thing. [00:19:26] You are releasing oxytocin, which is the love hormone, but also puts people to sleep. So that's where you are. So it does the sauna does help you the heat from the sauna and the cold. It creates oxytocin. That's where you're sleeping. That is a true fact.  [00:19:40] Jason: Interesting. Yeah. Oxytocin I've heard called the trust hormone. It just feels safe.  [00:19:46] Bijoy John: It's got many name.  [00:19:47] Jason: You get it when you hug people, and when you pet a dog, so four hours of oxytocin. Okay. That's pretty good. So a lot of people, myself included, have noticed like if I have sex before going to bed, then I sleep pretty well after that as well. [00:20:01] So is that similar? Is this the oxytocin release? Correct. [00:20:04] Bijoy John: Bedroom is for sex and sleeping, but most people are worrying or snoring, right? So after sex, you have the release of oxytocin and that is the cause of for you to sleep better. Of course the act of lovemaking has a lot of other good components to it, but the chemical or the medical explanation is oxytocin release helps you to sleep better. [00:20:25] Jason: Okay. Great. So like we want to maximize oxytocin before bed is, it could be a goal, right? Because that's the perfect way to go because if you're anxious, that would be the opposite, right? If we got it, we might get anxious and be concerned and worrying and yeah. And oxytocin is the chemical that says, "Hey, you're okay right now." [00:20:44] yes. Good. Trust hormone. Love hormone. So some love, peace, and trust. All right, cool. This is good stuff. Is there anything weird or unique that's been shown to affect sleep that people are just not thinking about? That we haven't mentioned,  [00:20:58] Bijoy John: I developed the 7 sleep proven sleep strategies. [00:21:01] I also have an acronym for this. It's called sleep now. So the 1st hack. So S.L.E.E.P.N.O.W. So that's the 7 combine and NO together. So the 1st thing is the mistake, but people don't. The first is, S is a schedule, right? So for every plan to succeed, we all have plans in our lives. So the correct time to sleep is between 10 p. [00:21:23] m. and 6 a. m. That's a rough time. You can go 30, whatever. But this is the mistake. If somebody goes to bed at 10, they can't fall asleep till midnight. Guess what most people do? They go to bed 9. So now they're suffering for three more hours. They're getting frustrated. They take the phone, do whatever. [00:21:43] But I tell people, if you can't sleep, you don't fall asleep till midnight, go to bed at 1130, but make sure you wake up at 6am. So this is called sleep restriction. But you have to wake up at, 6am. So if you do this consistently for a few, at least about one to two weeks, you will start seeing, then you go to bed at 11: 15, 11, you move it the other way, but you have to wake up. [00:22:08] Another thing I see people when I tell folks to do this, they hit the snooze, 6: 15 you have to wake up at six. Then the L is low light. Low noise, low temperature. We touched on it. Melatonin is only secreted in low light, low temperature, and low noise. [00:22:27] We touched on it. Next E is electronics. So I tell people not to have electronics at least 30 minutes prior to going to sleep because of the light and of course the dings and the notification. I have my cell phone away from me. I keep it in the bathroom. I have an alarm for 6 or 6: 30 and I wake up. [00:22:46] I literally wake walk there and I'm done for the night. So what happens is. When you wake up in the middle of the night and you have a tendency to look at your clock and it's three o'clock, you're like wondering, wow, it's three o'clock already? It's only three o'clock or two o'clock. It increases the cognitive. [00:23:00] One thing will improve your sleep by at least ten, twenty percent is removing all clock, any time pieces, And your phone, even if there's a phone, when you go to a hotel, I angle it or try to unplug it. I trust my phone and keep it away from.  [00:23:16] Jason: Especially if the clock is blue light.  [00:23:19] Bijoy John: Exactly. Blue light clock. [00:23:21] How many red LED clocks are there anymore? But yeah, you don't want a blue or a white light led clock. That's going to be the, even the worst, right? So just don't look at the clock. Okay.  [00:23:31] So moving along, the next E is exercise we talked about is exercise at least four hours prior to going to sleep. [00:23:37] Then the P is powering off your mind. So now you're preparing your body, you calmed your body by not exercising you've given your mind a chance to rest, but not having your cell phone. I like, like meditation, some apps and listening to apps on the phone, but what happens, you're taking your phone with you to bed. [00:23:55] I tell people to meditate or do something. away from the bed. Just unplug your phone, get in the meditative mind, and then hit the bed. So the two techniques I always implement, these are my own, is the first technique to calm your mind is vivid imagination. I do this every night. I am the director of my show. [00:24:15] You don't want to take your stress into bed. You don't want reality in your bed. You want the abstract. So I watched a show, you went last night. I thought about it. I said, how's the show? It's going to end tomorrow. I'm going to watch it again. So I'm the director. I go into this trend and then, my imagination, that's the vivid imagination for sleeping. [00:24:32] So I'm the first guy to promote for sleeping. That works really well. And then in the same technique about powering off your mind is something called yoga nidra. Yoga nidra. Nidra means nothingness in Sanskrit. You lay down with your hands up. It's called the shavasana or the corpse pose, where you're laying down like a, corpse and just completely letting go. [00:24:52] You can also start thinking about the different muscles starting from your head to your face. This is the cognitive behavioral therapy. One of the techniques is muscle relaxation. You just go down to your feet. So now you're given a chance. But you have to prepare. Going to bed is is a process. [00:25:07] Everybody wants it to be an on and off switch station. It doesn't happen like that. It has to be a timer. You have to slowly work your way. You can't hustle it. So these are the two techniques I use. So the vivid imagination and yoga nidra. You had a question?  [00:25:21] Jason: This is interesting. I remember I was talking about this when we were hanging out at the mastermind. [00:25:25] And what really stood out to me is this after chatting, that was a new thing for me was the idea that how we get into sleep dictates how good the sleep is. And I thought, man, if I just do this and do that and do the right things and then jump in bed and lay down real quick and close my eyes, then it should be good. [00:25:46] We, you can't. Do it quickly. You can't force it. And so calming the mind and getting to a calmer place. And I like the idea of vivid imagination and getting into the abstract, right? Like getting more into that dream state.  [00:25:57] Bijoy John: I've been doing that for almost 20, 25 years. So continuing on so I combined NO together, no to worries, right? [00:26:03] As humans, we worry. I want everybody to worry, but worry between 6 p. m. and 8 p. m. So let's be done with worrying around that time. So from eight on, if your bedtime is 10, you're preparing also give this example. It's like a seven course meal. You have to have the music. You have to have the wine or cheese and salad. [00:26:23] You just can't go to the meat, right? You have to work your way. So your preparation for bed starts around 8 p. m. I've already started giving up my phone. From 7 p. m. as of as of December. So that was my resolution to be off electronics. I go hard at it from 7 a. m., but I'm at I'm done by 7 p. m. I'm not even have access to my phones. So no to worries. So we have to worry, but write it down after 8pm. Just write things down for the next day, right? So I do that, as a business owner, it was terrible, all these, employees, bills all this stuff. I write it down and done. [00:26:57] So then the last one is, W. This is the easy part. Win by losing. This is one thing you have to lose yourself. And so you lose yourself by keeping your bedtime ritual very simple. You are the master of your sleep. Life happens to all of us. It happened to me. It happens to you. [00:27:16] It happens to everyone. But if you have this foundation, if you have the principle and knowledge, you can do it. Win by losing, taking it easy. That's the SLEEP NOW acronym. The S is for schedule. L is for low light, low temperature. E is no to electronics. The next E is not exercise 4 hours. P is powering off your mind. NO is no to worries. W is win by losing. That's my acronym. That's the seven, strategies I teach people. And of course, there are people who ask me about medications. I do prescribe sleep medication, but that'll be the last resort. I take people off the medications. That's my goal. I do this holistic approach for sleeping.  [00:27:51] Jason: Very cool. Yeah, I love the idea of getting rid of the worries at the end of the day. I usually can shut that down, but I know a lot of my clients, they have a difficult time with that. And so what created this process that I would use in the mornings, but a lot of my clients find it's even more effective to use at night, which is Daily planning exercise. [00:28:10] So for those of you that are listening, you can check that out at doorgrow.com/dailyplanning, one word. And you're welcome to just use that daily planning exercise that I use with clients to just get everything unloaded from your day to be prepared for the next day. And that will just give you a greater sense of calm and allow you to go to sleep without ruminating on a bunch of scary thoughts or worrying about what's going to happen the next day. [00:28:31] You'll feel like you have a plan. And I think that lets your unconscious kind of unravel and relax. So very cool. Yeah, this is super helpful. Really fun to have you here on the show. Dr. SleepFix. You have a book, correct?  [00:28:46] Bijoy John: Oh, I have it right here.  [00:28:47] Jason: Nobody's sleeping seven proven sleep strategies for better health and happiness. All right. Bijoy John. All right. How do people get this book? Everywhere?  [00:28:56] Bijoy John: Yeah, it's available everywhere. It's official launch date is March 12th. So it's ready to pre order and you can pick it up from your favorite bookstore. [00:29:04] So it's coming up. Okay, cool.  [00:29:06] Jason: And how else can people get in touch with you or follow you on social or what do you want people to do?  [00:29:12] Bijoy John: So I'm new into this process, so I don't have many social media followers, but I do post a lot of the important things. My website is sleepfixacademy. Com. You can have all the information. I have a quiz. I have free downloads. I have a sleep assessment if you have a problem. So I also have a sleep now course which is ready. So all and all my social media handles I'm known as Dr. SleepFix. So this mission is to sleep is the super power. [00:29:37] It's a very underrated. People say "I can sleep when I die." But I tell people, "if you're going to go on this path, you're going to die" because you have a uncontrolled blood pressure, heart rate and, of course we didn't go into the sleep apnea part. You're snoring and if you're sleep apnea, make sure you take care of it. [00:29:52] That can add 10 years to your life. So I'm on this mission to teach the world. If many people can just understand and just keep a pause, you are a better version. You feel better, you're more energetic, and you can discover the joy and have this fruitful full version of yourself.  [00:30:07] Jason: Yeah. I remember when I really used to get really terrible sleep and you know I wasn't sleeping enough because I thought I would just be more productive if I just worked more I thought it was just work. And what I found was my body started breaking down, my joints were not recovering from stress or from workouts. [00:30:24] I started having a lot of back pain and back problems because the body was getting experienced stress every day and it was compounding, it wasn't recovering. And so recovery is a super important thing related to sleep. And then also cognitive function. I had my clients do time studies and one of my clients did a time study And we started chatting about sleep afterwards, but he said, "I'm noticing that after three o'clock, it's taking me an hour to do things that take me 10 minutes in the morning." [00:30:51] And he's like, "why is that?" I'm like, "your brain's running out of chemicals. Let's talk about your sleep." sleep is when we produce the chemical cocktail that we're going to use the next day. And when our brain cleans itself so that we can be productive and effective. And a lot of people tap out by lunchtime. [00:31:06] Bijoy John: There's lymphatic system that I talked about in the body, but the brain has something called a glymphatic system. So that is the system that is activated in the deeper sleep. That's the one that clears all the muck. The muck is the one that's causes dementia, so that's when it, it moves it. [00:31:22] Like exercise, how exercise moves the lymphatic system in the body. The deep sleep moves the Glymphatic system to move all the muck. So that's why you're more rejuvenated and we heal in our sleep. We grow in our sleep. The human growth hormone that is needed of course, for children and babies, but for adults, for muscle building. [00:31:43] That is secreted maximally in deep sleep. The thyroid functions alterations. There is increased catecholamines when you're not sleeping well, like norepinephrine, that causes you high blood pressure and diabetes. So if people have uncontrolled diabetes, if you have uncontrolled blood pressure, if you're in a mental fog, you're anxious, you're tired, you're depressed, and if your sexual function is low because sleep also affects one of the common, see, I see most of the time the low libido is associated with untreated sleep apnea. [00:32:10] So all this function, it affects you from head to toe, your heart, your brain your digestive system. So it is if you sleep well, you can optimize all this bodily functions.  [00:32:21] Jason: Okay. So you mentioned a couple things and I know a lot of people are concerned nowadays because a lot of people are fat and not healthy. Weight gain, water retention, cortisol spiking? Yes. Like stress, like all these things are related to poor sleep. And what did you say? What causes low libido?  [00:32:40] Bijoy John: Have a sleep apnea there's less oxygen to the genital organs. Like the test is don't get enough oxygen. [00:32:46] So that they don't produce much testosterone. So that's one of the treatable conditions or sexual dysfunction and you and also the weight. What happens, the weight is controlled by two hormones called leptin and ghrelin. Leptin lowers the appetite, ghrelin increases the appetite. [00:33:03] What happens when you don't sleep, this ratio is altered. You have less of a leptin and more of ghrelin and you gain weight. And also by just by the mere fact that you are being awake, you have more chance to eat. So you're snacking, guess what you're snacking? You're snacking high glycemic foods like potato chips, sugary drinks, chocolate. [00:33:25] Guess what? If even if you consume that four hours prior to going to sleep, your quality of sleep is affected that night. So that's why shift workers have a tendency to gain more weight because they are more awake compared to the people who don't work shifts, especially the night shift workers. We have not even gone into the accidents, the errors, sports, academics. [00:33:44] We have the whole slew of things we can talk about, Jason.  [00:33:47] Jason: Yeah. When you get into that, like not getting enough sleep, you are functioning almost like a drunk person. They found like driving tests and stuff. We could talk about this stuff forever. I love the biohacking stuff. I love health. I feel like it's a superpower to be able to focus on this stuff. [00:34:02] Yeah. Again, really appreciate you coming on the show. This was really fun, super interesting. I hope this was really helpful for all of you property management business owners that are out there listening, that are stressing out and not getting enough sleep. Sleep might just very much like change your life and help you cope with more, help you function more, help you get more things done. [00:34:21] It's a secret hack that I coach clients on in helping them add more doors and grow their business. And if you want to help growing your business, reach out to us at DoorGrow and Bijoy. Thanks for coming on the show.  [00:34:32] Bijoy John: All right. Thanks, Jason. Sleep well. Be well, my friends. So let's go sleeping.  [00:34:36] Jason: All right. Bye, everyone. [00:34:37] 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!  [00:35:04] 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.

Experts discuss how property managers can benefit from a real estate market downturn, highlighting the opportunity for growth and success. They emphasize the importance of being prepared, staying connected with investors, and seizing opportunities during challenging times.

Experts in property management growth discuss a new coaching strategy for business owners, the benefits of Planning and Discovery, and the importance of mindset for faster growth. They share insights on creating a personalized roadmap for business success and offer a low-risk investment option for listeners to get started on their growth journey.

Learn how property management entrepreneurs can escape the overwhelm of wearing too many hats by delegating tasks, building a strong team, and embracing the myth of cloning oneself. Discover the importance of hiring specialists, creating a positive work culture, and delegating tasks based on individual strengths. Explore strategies for efficiency, growth, and seeking help through mentorship and coaching in the competitive property management industry.

Learn how property management entrepreneurs can overcome the time excuse, buy more time, and focus on energy management over time management. Discover the benefits of conducting a time study, aligning tasks with energy levels, and delegating to save time and grow your business.

At this point in the year, it’s still early enough to make some plans to level up your property management business. One of the best ways to learn new strategies is by masterminding with other professionals. In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull talk about the importance of strategic time as a business owner as well as some upcoming events for property management entrepreneurs. You’ll Learn [02:06] The concept of your default future [06:43] The four reasons for having a business [10:26] 2024 events for property managers [16:51] Why masterminding matters [19:44] The ultimate event for property management entrepreneurs Tweetables “If you're working with any business, they should be helping you change your future outcomes.” “Worse is still different, but not probably the change we were hoping for.” “I never want to be the smartest person in the room. If I am, that means I'm in the wrong room.” “They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to and to be connected in our mastermind to other mastermind members  [00:00:13] Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many 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 Hull and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. All right. [00:01:11] So before this show, we were talking about what we should be talking about in today's episode. So what are we going to talk about today?  [00:01:18] Sarah: We will talk about getting ready for your 2024 and prepping, getting your schedule ready for some events that we've got coming up. [00:01:27] Jason: Okay. It is January 26. January 2nd. Sorry. I don't know why I said that January 2nd. What's wrong with you? I don't know. I don't know. I think I saw the clock. All right, so it's January 2nd The new year has just started. This episode will probably come out on the main podcast a little bit later, but we wanted to kick things off for the new year. [00:01:49] Make sure that everybody gets in momentum. I think 2024 is going to be a wild year. Every election year is. It's going to be interesting. So let's talk about your property management business, how you can get more of what you want and grow. So let's talk about some of the stuff coming up. All right. Where should we start? [00:02:06] Sarah: Let's first start about talking about what did your 2023 look like? Was it what you wanted it to look like? Was it maybe a little different where there's some curve balls that came at you in the middle of the year and threw the whole plan that you had off balance and if so, what are you going to do differently in 2024? [00:02:26] So if you change nothing, if you do nothing different, your 2024 will look probably pretty similar to your 2023 if not worse because the market is totally different, at least part of 2023. The market was good. The real estate market was pretty decent. It's not so decent right now. It's a little bit cooler. [00:02:45] In fact, we're really close to it flipping over to a buyer's market.  [00:02:49] Jason: Okay. And for those of you listening, I think you'll really enjoy this concept. This is one of my favorite closes when it comes to converting people into clients or customers. And we call it the default future versus created future close. So it's important to take a look at your default future is. What you're going to get in the next year, and you can easily base it on what you did the last year and the year before that, and the year before that, you should have a pretty good idea of what your default future looks like. And if you're working with any business, they should be helping you change your future outcomes, right? They should be helping you improve your future. So for you selling to your clients, they should have a default future if they continue to DIY, do it themselves, manage their own property, work with the crappy property manager they've got now, whatever their current future is. [00:03:36] They should have a different created future if they're working with you and you need to help them see a different alternate future reality that includes you. So we run into people all the time that have had a very uncomfortable default future in property management. They have not grown for the last sometimes 10 years. [00:03:55] They've struggled. We have a client we just got on. He's been around 50 units for a decade. So that means it's a grind. That means there's a lot of churn, losing a lot of customers while you're adding customers and you're just not growing, right? Some of y'all are down in doors because I've heard the excuse of the pandemic or people, a bunch of my clients sold or whatever. [00:04:15] So a lot of you might be down in doors. And so your current future, default future looks even worse than last year or the year before, right? So we want to shift you towards a created future. Yeah, so how do we do that. Okay you do that with DoorGrow, right? So we are really good at helping create a different alternate reality for you a different future That includes us. [00:04:39] And because we've been able to coach and support so many, like hundreds of property management, business owners, we have tactics strategies that we've developed over time that we're always. Honing, improving, figuring out that have allowed us to increase our client's door count, make their operations smoother, improve their team, lower the entrepreneur's pressure and noise, decrease their stress, make the business more fun so they feel like they're more of a business owner. [00:05:07] And so these are the things that we do. At door girl. All right. And we've got a bunch of events that we do throughout the year that help to facilitate our vision in helping transform property management business owners and their businesses.  [00:05:20] Sarah: Now is a really good time to plan out "what do I want my year to look like this year? Do I want it to look like more of the same? Or do I want it to look different, but positively different" because it can still look different, just maybe worse. Worse is still different, but not probably the change we were hoping for. Yeah. So if you want your business and your life and your income and your team and your day to improve, then you may need to just be open to doing things a little bit differently than you have before. [00:05:52] And I think being that we're at the beginning of the year, this is a really good time to set some time aside for you. Set some time aside to make sure that you're prioritizing the things that you really want to get out of the business or out of your life. And how do we do that? There's a few events that we have coming up throughout the year. [00:06:12] You can find all of our events, all of the details on doorgrow.com/events. And that will show you our event calendar. What event, who it's for, what the cost is, where it's located, the dates, all of that kind of information is on there. And if you go all the way to the bottom, there's a quick little video I recorded with even more details. [00:06:34] So you can watch the whole thing. It's only a couple minutes long, or you can skip to the part that talks about the event you're interested in.  [00:06:41] Jason: Okay, cool. So for this new year, I would like to recap the four reasons, because I think. It's important to take a step back and assess your business through the lens of these four things. [00:06:55] We have a fifth reason, so maybe the five, but we want to take a look at your business through this lens and make sure you're actually headed in the right direction. Because it's very possible to be making more and more money in your business and become more and more miserable. And that's not the goal. [00:07:09] We didn't start businesses to become more miserable. We thought we started them to make more money, but what we really want is what more money can give us, right? We're hoping more money can give us more, number one, fulfillment. We get to spend more of our time doing the things we enjoy doing. More and more freedom. [00:07:24] We feel free. We don't feel trapped. We don't feel stuck. We don't feel like we're controlled. We don't feel like our business runs us. We don't feel like a slave or servant to our business. We feel free, right? Freedom. The third reason is Contribution. So if we have freedom and fulfillment, usually then we want to make a difference to others, right? [00:07:44] We want to benefit other people too. It's just innate I think in entrepreneurs, we want to change the world. We want to make it a better place. We want to improve things. We see problems and we're like, "I can make money solving that problem, right? That's contribution. That means making a difference to your family, to your team, to your clients, to everybody that you can have impact with and so contribution, I think, is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. It feels really good to benefit others. And then the fourth reason is support. It's really difficult to have fulfillment, freedom, contribution if we don't have a team because then we end up doing and wearing all the hats that we don't want to wear and we should only be wearing the hats. Eventually, if we had the ultimate business, it gives us the ultimate level of fulfillment and freedom. Then we are only spending our time wearing the hats that we most enjoy wearing, which would mean we have a really good team that supports us and they enjoy wearing the hats that they're wearing and they take those off of our plates. [00:08:41] So we don't have to wear those hats. And so those are the four reasons. Now there is a fifth reason, and this is important to recognize. This is what your team members want more than the four reasons, typically. This is what your clients want often more than the four reasons... they want safety and certainty. [00:08:58] They want peace of mind. And so this is why a lot of people are willing to give up fulfillment, freedom, even contribution. They're willing to give those up and trade them in order to have safety and certainty. This is why they will go get a job. This is why they want to do what they're told to by maybe the media at times, right? [00:09:17] They want to be safe and entrepreneurs were a little bit, we're wired a little bit differently. We care more about having our freedom than safety and certainty, but we also want that too. And so having our business built out in a way that gives us all five of those things gives us the ultimate business and it allows us then to make a real impact and to have a really good team and to have less stress. [00:09:39] And so this is our primary goal with DoorGrow is to move you towards that. So take inventory. How do you feel you rate on each of these five areas right now? Do you feel you have safety and certainty? Do you feel like you have support and a really great team? You really feel supported in your business? [00:09:54] Do you feel like you've got freedom and fulfillment? You get to do the things that you really want to do. You're really enjoying your day today. You feel like you're making a difference out there and contributing in the best way. If you don't have those things, even though you have a bunch of money coming in or a lot of doors, you built the wrong business. [00:10:11] And it doesn't mean you need to change businesses or industries. It just means you need to change what your role is in that business. So 2024, let's move you towards more towards the four reasons. All right. So should we talk about some of the events we have coming up? Yeah, let's do it.  [00:10:26] Sarah: Let's talk about the events scheduled for 2024. [00:10:29] By the time this airs, it'll still be early in the year. So you should be able to mark your calendars for the things that sound interesting to you and make sure that you prioritize your business so that you are set up for success so that you are able to grow so that you are able to get more of the day to day stuff that you just don't enjoy the stuff that bogs you down off of your plate because this is not the life that you need to live, but it's really common for property managers, so make sure that you prioritize this stuff. [00:10:59] So let's talk about some of the events that we've got coming up this year. What's first? Okay. The first thing we have, this is for our clients only. It's in January this month now. And that is open to all of our current mastermind clients. We're going to San Diego, California. So these type of events if you join the DoorGrow Mastermind, you'll have access to them. [00:11:20] So what our tribe events are. They're usually smaller events. They're not huge with, like 100 people or more. They're smaller, more intimate events. So if you're a little bit more on the introverted side, then this event might be really good for you because you get to create close connections with people. [00:11:39] So Jason and I attend these events as well as some of our clients. So you'll get to network and spend some time with other property management business owners. And what we'll be doing, this event, we do a little bit of business and a little bit of fun. So we have some activities planned out there for the day and either before lunch or at lunch or probably both because that's what happened last time is we're going to be, talking shop, talking business, what's working, what's not working, what's your plan? [00:12:07] What are you working on? How can we help support you in that? So that's our first one.  [00:12:11] Jason: Okay, cool. Now we have some other things happening in January. [00:12:13] I'll just throw out there. If you're hearing this later and you miss this stuff, we might have recordings that you might be able to get access to if it's one of our public things. But make sure that you stay connected to us, follow us and are connected to us on social media or you're inside our Facebook group at doorgrowclub. com where we broadcast this and stream it live so that you don't miss out each week. January 11th in a week, we are going to do with our clients a jumpstart 2024 call on zoom where you can 10x your year. And we're going to talk about 10xing your growth in your property management business. [00:12:47] What's next? [00:12:48] Sarah: Okay. So the next event that's coming up will be open to everyone So if you're currently in our mastermind or not yet in our mastermind, or you were formerly in the mastermind, this will be open to everyone. We have our boardroom event that's coming up March 13th and 14th. It will be in Round Rock, Texas, which is just north of Austin. [00:13:10] And that event, we actually launched a lot of these events for the first time last year in 2023. We've had some success with them. Clients really enjoy these style of events, so we carried them on into this year. So the boardroom event, it is a smaller event. We will probably limit it to about six clients, like six businesses total. [00:13:35] For that reason, because we really want to be able to go deep. If the event gets too big, then we have to stay granular and more topical and this event, we call it boardroom because we sit on each other's boards, it's a two day event. And what we'll do is we'll really get in and we'll like tinker with your business and see, where are you spending your time? [00:13:55] What does your team look like, what does your profit margin look like? What does your revenue look like? Where are you struggling? Where are you succeeding? So we really get in and we go deep with clients on the smaller style events. So spots will be limited. If you're interested in attending any of our events or getting more information, just go to doorgrow.com/events. [00:14:15] All of the information is there.  [00:14:17] Jason: Yeah. The last boardroom room event that we did was pretty awesome. So everybody walked away with a really solid set of clarity and to do items to take their business to the next level. And what was interesting is, a lot of them were really stuck and couldn't see where they needed to go next. [00:14:34] And so this allows us the opportunity to really go deep with the business owners. And so they get a lot of value from this.  [00:14:40] Sarah: So that one is coming up March 13th and 14th. It will be in round rock, which is like North Austin here in Texas. That one is very focused on business. So we do break for lunch. [00:14:52] We do go for dinner. But it's boardroom style events. So we're in session almost all day. It goes from about nine to five  [00:14:59] Jason: is serious stuff. All right  [00:15:01] Sarah: Yes, cool. All right, then this one personally is my favorite is our premium mastermind events we also launched that last year for the first time and This one for me, it's just so fun because it mixes the two things that I love, which is business and travel. [00:15:16] I'm like all about both of these things. So if you're looking for an event that allows you to travel, do something fun, explore the area and really dive into your business in that same depth that we offer in the boardroom, then this event will be for you. So this we do reserve for our current and former mastermind clients only. [00:15:38] It's not open to everyone. But what we do is we get a luxury Airbnb or rental of some sort and we will rotate where they're held. This one that's coming up, it's April 9th and 10th. It will be in Bentonville, Arkansas. Very random spot, but the home is beautiful and it's huge. So we'll do some fun stuff in the area. [00:16:01] What we do, it's about a day and a half event. So we come in, we'll do a mastermind during the day, and then at night we spend some time just, hanging out at the property and getting to know each other and really connecting. It was really interesting because we did this last year in April, and then in May, we had our DoorGrowLive and the clients that attended our premium mastermind, oddly enough, they all also attended our DoorGrowLive, they were like their own little group of people because you just know each other so well, like you've spent time with each other. You really get to know each other's businesses and like business model and what are they doing and what are they all about? [00:16:39] So it was like so worth it for me. And it was amazing to see that at our DoorGrowLive. So if you are a current or former mastermind client, then. This might be a really great event for you.  [00:16:51] Jason: Yeah. These are super fun. It's more of a more personal, more of an intimate setting. [00:16:56] We're hanging out together in the same house. And so the conversations are just, they're just really great. And this allows you to create some relationships and friendships. They say you're the sum of the five people that you are around the most or something like that, but I think your business will be the sum of the five property managers are the most connected to and to be connected in our mastermind to other mastermind members and our mastermind members are different. They're just different than the typical NARPM crowd or the typical crowd of people that are involved in property management. They like love what they get to do and they've shifted more towards the four reasons. They have a much healthier mindset because we've installed a lot of mindset things. This is why we want to bring mastermind clients to these, they're just a different crowd and being able to hang out with other people that are playing a similar game that have a similar mindset is just like next level. [00:17:45] And so the relationships that are created, I think will last a lifetime, which is really awesome.  [00:17:50] Sarah: And I think that's a really good point is there's a lot to be said about who's in your circle and, who you're spending time with. So if your circle is doing things that are either similar or if they're even a step ahead of you, that's fantastic. [00:18:06] You're in the right circle. So I never want to be the smartest person in the room. If I am that means I'm in the wrong room.  [00:18:12] Jason: I like being the smartest person in the room sometimes, but not all the time  [00:18:15] Sarah: No, it's like when we run the events, yeah. I'm talking about when we attend.  [00:18:19] Jason: Yeah, we invest a lot. [00:18:20] We invest a lot And we're a part of groups and have mentors that are like beyond where we're at here at DoorGrow. And being able to create that for clients and facilitate that, is really awesome. We love being able to experience that as well. So great leaders, I think are also great followers. [00:18:36] And I think that's why we're able to deliver so much to our clients is because we go join programs and events and do things like this, where we're the student, where we're learning, where we're connecting with people, where we're masterminding, we want to bring the same value to those that we serve. [00:18:49] So we've gotten really great benefits. We've done some really cool trips, different places, hang out with other entrepreneurs, and we always get a lot out of it. Even when I don't think I'm going to, I'm like "it might be fun." But then it like, sometimes it's changed my life. It's been really impactful. [00:19:04] All right.  [00:19:05] Sarah: Next, we've got our DoorGrow Live. Okay. And as an added kicker this year, if you are a current mastermind client in our super system tier you get your own special event. Yay, so we're tacking it on right before DoorGrowLive, that way it's not additional travel, it's not really like hard to do, it's just gonna mash in with DoorGrowLive, so it will be the day before DoorGrowLive, which is, I believe it's a Thursday, it's May 16th, this is for our current SuperSystem clients only, we will be diving into all things SuperSystem, all things operations at this event. [00:19:41] Jason: Okay. So now DoorGrowLive. The DoorGrowLive is our ultimate event. This is where we get everybody to go, clients, non clients. It's our biggest event of the year. This is fun, interesting. We've got speakers, there's lots of interaction. We've got a lot of fun stuff going on. So this is going to be at the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock, Texas, which is the North Austin area. And it's a super cool resort has a huge indoor water park. It has a bunch of restaurants.  [00:20:11] Sarah: It is Friday and Saturday. It's May 17th and 18th. This is open to everyone. So whether you are a current, former, it doesn't matter. You are never in our mastermind, never a client at all. [00:20:21] Does not matter. It's open to everyone. This is our big event of the year. So we bring in a bunch of different property managers. We bring in some vendors, we bring in some speakers, like it's a two day event. And we're holding it in again, North Austin. So Round Rock, Texas. And the resort is really, it's really great. [00:20:43] It's very nice. The rooms are nice. They have plenty of restaurants to choose from. We did our DoorGrowLive last year there, and we liked it so much. We decided to go back.  [00:20:54] Jason: Yeah. Some venues treat you really well and some treat you really not well. And this one was really good. We really liked it. [00:21:00] Yeah, so make sure you get tickets to DoorGrow live. If you're wanting to just initially put your foot in the toe in the water to see what is it like around the DoorGrow culture? What is it like around DoorGrowers? What is it like around people that are involved in their ecosystem? This would be a great way to decide whether or not you should be spending a whole bunch of money with DoorGrow, right? [00:21:22] Is come hang out at DoorGrow live and see the magic that's going on and learn about the DoorGrow code, learn about people that are scaling up, talk to people that have their different lanyard colors with their different belt levels. Like we've got a whole program of ascension and, just like in martial arts, and so come check it out. [00:21:40] It really is a different thing. This is not your usual conference. Let's say it like that. This is like the ultimate conference We've decided like we want to make these the best that we can make them. So sometimes NARPM events are okay and sometimes NARPM events... maybe they're not. Some of them though, we like we've even had clients say well on some of them our event and NARPM event were right at the same time and they said "there's no way I would skip DoorGrowLive to go to a NARPM But what we've done is we've done everything that we could to make these conferences, the best conferences ever for property managers. [00:22:16] Sarah: There's a lot that goes into it like every little detail that we put into it, we really try to make sure that this is so beneficial and it's the big event of the year. It's open to everyone. So if you're thinking, "Hey I don't know what event I should go to," this would be a really good one to go to because it's so big and there's just so much that goes into it. [00:22:36] You'll get a lot out of it and it's not the boring conference that you're going to go and sit and fall asleep. And go, "Oh God, is it lunch yet. Can I go home now?" It's not like that at all. It's very exciting. There's a lot going on and we always provide really good opportunities to meet and talk with other people too. [00:22:55] So it's not just like you're in session all day long. There's a lot of opportunities to network with other property management business owners.  [00:23:02] Jason: Yeah we actively try to facilitate that because we know that that's one of the biggest benefits we've gotten from going to events. It's just the connections that we actively facilitate that. [00:23:11] I think what makes, the DoorGrowLive events stand out is that it's a bit more holistic. We're not just focused only on property management. We're focused on improving you and your life and focusing on entrepreneurship, focusing on taking things to the next level. So people get a lot out of it and it really can be life changing instead of just business changing.  [00:23:30] Sarah: So that's our big one. Now, if you like vacation style events, this one is a newer one. So we're testing this out this year. This is going to be our first one ever it's DoorGrow retreat. Yeah, so this will mix a little bit of business and lots of vacation style. [00:23:47] So this is open to your family to your kids to your spouse, whomever wants to join you and let it be like a business trip on a tax write off for sure So we will still do some business stuff and it's vacation style event, and that is going to be July 17th through 21st. And it will be in Punta de Mita in Mexico. [00:24:10] Yay. Super excited. So you will need a passport.  [00:24:12] Jason: Get those passports ready. Get them now. We're going to mexico. So yeah, and this is gonna be a nice resort.  [00:24:19] Sarah: Oh, it's yeah, it's very nice.  [00:24:21] Jason: We go to nice places. All right. Yeah. Cool. A little picky. All right. All right.  [00:24:25] Sarah: Then, second half of the year, we just mirror what we do the first half of the year. So for a lot of things, not for everything, but for a lot of them, we like to have a spring session and a fall session. [00:24:35] So our tribe meetup, we do two per year, one in January and then one in September. And again, this is for our current mastermind clients only. It will be September 11th will be our next in person tribe meetup location to be announced. Why? Because if you're a mastermind member, you guys get to submit your ideas and vote on it. [00:24:52] Then we have another premium mastermind event. So again, spring session, fall session, our fall session will be October 22nd and 23rd. This is open for our current and former mastermind clients. Only this one will be in Water Sound, Florida. We've got a really nice place there lined up. And then boardroom. So again, spring session, fall session. Our fall session will be November 20th and 21st, and we'll hold that here in round rock, Texas. Those are our events that we've got coming up. I'm super excited for all of them.  [00:25:21] Jason: Yeah. I don't know that we've ever talked about all the different events and there's a lot of virtual events and online things we do for our mastermind members as well, besides all of this. [00:25:29] And we've never really talked about this. I don't think as much on the podcast. So I'm sure there's people listening. They're like, "Oh, I didn't realize DoorGrow did all this stuff or had all this stuff going on." We've got a lot going on. Yeah. In fact, one of the consistent pieces of feedback we get from Mastermind members is, "wow, there's a lot." [00:25:44] There is a lot. It can be a little overwhelming in the beginning. So we really hold people's hand to make sure they can navigate everything in DoorGrow Academy, all of our events, all the online classes, everything that we've got going on to make sure that it is geared towards what they need most and they don't get distracted by all the shiny objects everywhere. [00:26:02] So it's important. But if you're interested in any of this. You're interested in coming and jumping into the DoorGrow ecosystem. We have plenty of free trainings we would love to throw at you based on what your current challenges are, so you can get an idea of how we can support you, how we can help you. We've got a lot of case studies and testimonials. [00:26:18] I think over a hundred now on our playlist on YouTube of our case studies you can check out. See if you can trust these DoorGrow people. And once you're beyond the paywall and you're in with our clients, you'll get it. It's pretty awesome. But between now and then, feel free to join our Facebook group, which I mentioned earlier, go to DoorGrowClub.com and you get access to our podcast live. You get access to our masterclasses that we promote. That are free, you get access to a lot of really cool stuff and we've got a bunch of stuff, cool stuff in the file section there as well. It's available.  [00:26:51] It's a great online community. And if you join it and you have to put in your email address, answer the questions and if we give you access, it's for property management business owners. We reject 70 percent of applicants. So it's a little bit exclusive, which makes it really cool. But if we give you access, you'll also get five emails that are sent to you. Like a fee Bible we're gonna send you gifts, we're gonna send you some free stuff.  [00:27:15] I think we've covered all the events. Sarah's always coming up with more ideas, so there might be more stuff that we're going to be doing. [00:27:21] But yes, this is a pretty good overview.  [00:27:22] Sarah: If you can give me the opportunity to travel, I'm probably going to take it.  [00:27:25] Jason: She'll add it to the program for sure. All right. All right. So we appreciate everybody hanging out with us. We hope that this has opened your eyes a little bit to some of the cool stuff that's going on in DoorGrow, inspiring you to get plugged into our ecosystem. [00:27:37] And we are all about helping property management business owners take their business to the next level and grow. And until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:27:46] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:28:12] 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.

Tax season is upon us. Every property management business owner knows the struggle of trying to navigate IRS regulations each year and find the best outcome. In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Mo Hussein with Balanced Asset Solutions. You’ll Learn [02:05] Talking tax code and regulations [10:02] Why you need an accounting tool/software [18:38] Reducing your tax liability [23:21] Writing off education costs [26:24] A few more tips for the road Tweetables “The experts are worth a lot more to me than software.” “You're going to pay for everything in business, whether it's going to be in time or in cash.” “If a handyman shows up with only a multi tool instead of a toolbox to do a job, the property manager is probably not going to call that guy back.” “There's certainly a wrong way to do taxes, but there isn't a right way or one way to submit your taxes.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Mo: I think what's most important is having a single source of accounting truth I think that's probably what one of the biggest things that a lot of businesses struggle with, especially when it comes to tax season.  [00:00:10] Jason: Welcome doorGrowers 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 a business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners, and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts property management, growth experts, Jason Hall and Sarah Hall, the owners of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. All right.  [00:01:08] And today we have Mo Hussain back on the show. What's up Mo? [00:01:12] Mo: Hey, doing well. Pleasure to be here.  [00:01:15] Jason: So we're going to be chatting a bit about tax strategies today. Yes. All right, cool. So let's dig into this. This is something that is near and dear to Sarah's heart, which is super weird.  [00:01:25] Sarah: I hate paying taxes. Fun fact, I don't want to give more of my money away if I don't have to. [00:01:31] Jason: I know if I see something on Instagram about a tax strategy, I should just send it to her and she'll find it interesting. Like she just gets into this stuff. So Mo, what do you got for us today?  [00:01:42] Mo: Yeah. Sarah, you are definitely probably the first person I've come across that has actually made a comment that you actually love going through this entire process. [00:01:50] Taxes is one of those things that, there's a saying, there's two things guaranteed in life, death and taxes.  [00:01:55] Jason: And I'm trying to avoid both. So how do we avoid some of the tax?  [00:01:59] Mo: I don't know if we can help with the death part. Maybe over time.  [00:02:01] Jason: We'll probably all be somewhat avoid some of the death maybe. [00:02:05] Mo: Unfortunately, the tax code is very thick. It's honestly created an entire industry of professionals like myself and other CPA firms that are specifically just dedicated to decoding it and maximizing savings with our clients and with taxpayers in general, there's, there's a litany of information that's on the IRS website. [00:02:22] It's very difficult to parse through and and there's also consistent changes that are happening each year. I think probably the biggest changes that are happening this year that a lot of property managers are being impacted by is the new 1099 filings and the IRS portal. Prior to 2023, you'd be able to file your 1099s via paper as of 2023 now, for any filers that are filing more than 10 returns, those have to be filed electronically on the IRS has created the iris. The IRS has created this new portal called the IRIS and allows for you to be able to submit your 1099s electronically. And there's some changes that have happened between the fire system that a lot of folks were using before and the new IRIS system, of course, making things more and more, more, more complex as usual. [00:03:07] Jason: Got it. Why would they make anything easy? Yeah, it's definitely not the goal to be audited next year. Now, it seems when it comes to tax strategies, you've got every everything ranging from across the spectrum from risky, maybe not even actually viable strategies all the way to really safe and conservative. [00:03:31] And some will save you a lot more on taxes on the risky side, going towards more conservative. How do you balance this?  [00:03:39] Mo: Good question. Medium. Good question. The interesting thing is although our CPA firm will file taxes on behalf of our clients. And there'll be another CPA firm maybe the client was working with before that filed taxes the year before. And maybe even though the deductions or maybe other things haven't changed significantly the return and the actual filing and the composition of it is different. And but it doesn't necessarily mean 1 way to do it is wrong than another way. There's a lot of different strategies, especially when it comes to things like depreciating assets and taking advantage, for example, of a bonus depreciation. [00:04:12] And just give you some context, bonus depreciation was a tax incentive that was enacted by Congress and in 2002 and it basically allows for accelerated business tax deduction on a large asset over an accelerated period of time versus over the duration or the lifetime of the actual asset. [00:04:30] Real estate is a great example of that. In 2023, you have bonus depreciation of up to 80 percent that can be taken advantage of, and then it drops to 60 percent in 2024, 40.25%, 26%, and 0% thereafter. However, a lot of these deductions, you may not want to take advantage of depending on where your revenues are at, so you can actually minimize your tax liability. [00:04:53] And so there's a lot of strategy around in different ways that a tax account or CPA will file your tax. And so that's where we see the variation what you mentioned about risky. There's certainly a wrong way to do taxes, but there isn't a right way or 1 way to submit your taxes. [00:05:09] And that's why you see a lot of different tax accounts and CPAs have different ways and strategies of submitting their clients' taxes.  [00:05:15] Jason: Okay. All right. What are some things that property managers should be paying attention to this time of year here at year end? Yeah. Max this out. [00:05:24] Mo: Yeah. All right. One thing that we always urge our clients is the tax season shouldn't be an annual kind of activity or flurry at the end of the year, but a lot of folks wind up doing is nobody really thinks about taxes until after the new year and it's February and you're looking at March and April when the tax deadline is due for both your business and your personal taxes. [00:05:44] And honestly, that isn't the best time that you should be thinking about it. You should be thinking about it throughout the duration of the year. You should have some accounting system that's keeping track of all your expenses with the path act that got enacted in 2015, real estate agents and brokers have some additional relief when it comes to business related purchases that got that made changes to the IRS section I believe 179 deduction. And for example. In the tax year 2023, you can expense or write off up to $28,900 of the price of a new car for the tax year in which you bought it another certain limits of the type of vehicle that qualifies for this tax break. However, these limits are part of allowable deductions. [00:06:21] And if you're thinking about your taxes throughout the year, certain decisions that you'll make about acquisitions or things that you may be purchasing for the business may make a material impact at the end of the year on kind of your tax implications. And it's important to keep a log of all your receipts, expenses and everything throughout the year. [00:06:37] A lot of times when clients wait until February to start putting together all the prep work and the receipts and everything for their expenses, a lot of times you'll miss things and we always suggest you should take your time and file an accurate return. Versus just trying to be beat the deadline and not get hit with a potential fine you have in April when the taxes are due, but you can always file for an extension. And if there is a tax liability that's assessed, there will be interest that will be accrued during that period of time. But again, it's better to be accurate and maximize your deductions versus being in a hurry. [00:07:08] Sarah: Got it. Are there any deductions or obvious tech strategies that you would recommend for property managers or real estate agents in general?  [00:07:18] Mo: Yeah great question. Some of the most common types of deductions for agents and brokers and property managers are marketing expenses, such as sales, open house signs, flyers, web development, business cards, mailers. [00:07:31] If you're leveraging a service, like DoorGrow, just consider real estate coaching and training. Those are considered education cost. Licensing and renewal fees. Things like association dues for MLSes, brokerage desk fees, any type of transportation kind of expenses, whether it be automobile maintenance or repairs, gas, mileage, travel, home office expenses, and even gifts, although there is a limit on gifts of a 25 dollar deduction for per client per year, and so there's a lot of different things that you can deduct. And a lot of times what happens is, you may be a broker or a property manager that's going to show a property and you need to go buy some flyers or handful flyers or something like there's some type of piece of marketing collateral. [00:08:13] And so you may go to FedEx and just use your credit card. And although at the time, it's registering in your head, that may be something that you forget to enter into the accounting system later. And so you're not leveraging that and as an actual viable business deduction. [00:08:26] And so this is why it's important that you're logging kind of your accounting activity and have a easy system to use something to use that's on the go as well. So you can easily kind of catalog and log these expenses. All these minor costs add up over time. And, you need to make accounts so you can maximize your deductions here. [00:08:43] Okay.  [00:08:43] Jason: What do you think is the easiest system to use?  [00:08:46] Mo: To stay away from words of easiest system or things like that, because it's very subjective, right? It's, we're all creatures of kind of habit. And some folks are tethered to their phones and are okay with using a litany of different applications. [00:08:57] A lot of our clients will use kind of QuickBooks for their management system, and for their to manage the kind of their corporate books, there is a mobile app can easily log things as you're going. You can connect that directly to your bank account and your credit card. And so as transactions occur, you can make sure that those are logged correctly. [00:09:13] I would say that, having a system that has an integration to whatever banking and credit cards that you're using and reconciling that account on a monthly basis to ensure that you're logging all the transaction. And then also keep in mind in scenarios where you're paying out of pocket for something or loaning something to the business, even though you may be the sole owner and want to take advantage of those. [00:09:33] There's a lot of different pieces of software that are out there that can help with that. We usually suggest for clients is, if you're already using some type of a property management and accounting system to manage your business, let's say Appfolio, there is a way to also manage your corporate books. [00:09:45] A lot of these property based accounting systems also have the ability to manage your corporate books. And it's not only specifically for real estate. They're an accounting system at the end of the day. And you can just create kind of things like a fictitious property labeled your corporate business and run all your financials and keep track of your finances that way. [00:10:02] Sarah: Now would be a really good time to send a reminder to property managers that your property management software is probably not the best software to do your internal accounting. So a lot of times clients are like, "Oh yeah, I have software for that. I use Rent Manager or Appfolio or Buildium. And that's fantastic to manage your client's accounts, but it's not the best system to like internally manage your accounting, it's not going to have the same functionality as something like QuickBooks would.  [00:10:36] Jason: But you're saying some that's what they do. [00:10:39] They use a lot. That's what they do.  [00:10:41] Mo: What I'm saying is that so these accounting systems. So the main difference. So if you think about something like a QuickBooks, it's a general accounting system. So it's meant for any business. The chart of accounts is very malleable, if you will, something like property based accounting system there is no such thing as like a business. There's a property, there's tenants, there's owners, there's vendors. Now, you can finagle or manipulate and come up with work around so that you can manage your books there. However, you'll have kind of an entire different chart of accounts for your corporate business, which would be different than, what shows up on the financial owners. [00:11:13] And so there's a trade off. You can use another system that's maybe tailored specifically to your business, like a QuickBooks and you have the flexibility of things like integrating credit cards and stuff, which is a nuance when you come to property based accounting systems. But then you have to manage 2 different platforms, or you can figure out some work arounds and try to manage and keep track of your financials in 1 of these property based accounting systems. [00:11:35] But then have to keep in mind about some of these work arounds, like reconciling, like a credit card, which isn't the same thing as reconciling like a bank account. But. So there are trade offs. But I think what's most important is, what we say having a single source of accounting truth I think that's probably what one of the biggest things that a lot of businesses struggle with, especially when it comes to tax season. Is that. " Oh, I have a bunch of receipts and stuff that are in my inbox. I have some screenshots on my iPhone. I have, this random Google Drive folder with other information. I need to call Sally, who's my, maintenance supervisor or whatever about some other transactions and stuff," and there isn't a single place of accounting truth. And having that will definitely save a lot of time, especially when it comes to prep.  [00:12:15] Jason: I would think that grown up property managers are probably at least using something like QuickBooks because at some point they really should be on the NARPM standard accounting, standard of accounting chart of accounts. There's just some advantages. [00:12:29] Especially if they're wanting to exit that business someday, having clean books that are not commingled with your client's stuff inside Appfolio, for example, would make your business a lot more appealing and you'd probably fetch a prettier penny.  [00:12:44] Sarah: And I think a lot of times people think, "Oh this is an accounting software because it does all of the accounting for my clients." [00:12:50] And there are differences for sure between how your PM software and how something like QuickBooks doesn't have to be QuickBooks, but we use QuickBooks. I like it and I can use it and I don't like technology. So something like QuickBooks functions, there are differences. And the other thing to keep in mind is if you have a team and your team has access to your property management software and you're putting all of your bookkeeping and accounting and financial data in there, your team has access to it and you may or may not want that. Some people might be very open and they have an open books policy and they don't care at all. [00:13:30] Some people, they hear that idea and they go, "there is no way I would do that." So if you're one of these people who's using your property management software as your own internal accounting system, you might want to think about doing that maybe a little differently.  [00:13:44] Jason: I think this is where there's a challenge in business and in this industry that a lot of business owners don't recognize the differentiator between all these systems that you need in order to run a business. [00:13:55] You definitely need something like Property Ware, Appfolio, Buildium and Rent Manager, Rent Vine, whatever as a back office. And as a billing system as the main system for getting paid basically, and then you need an accounting and financial system. And those are different, the accounting and financial system, you need a system for how to manage money, how to do finances. So for example, Profit First is a nice baby step for a lot of businesses that are just getting started and have Frankenstein accounting as Mike Michalowicz calls it, and then you need a sales CRM system, which is usually very different than the CRM, which they're calling their back office where it's focused on bringing clients into the business. They're like "I have a CRM. It's Appfolio." And it's not the same thing. And and then there's several other systems that you need in a business process system, planning systems, et cetera. [00:14:47] When people start to think that they have a one system, they're like "I've got Appfolio, so I've got every system I need." This is where they struggle then to be able to scale their business because they don't have the knowledge, the insights and the transparency that they would need in order to get to the next level. [00:15:03] And they don't have the right tool to do all these other jobs. It's not the Swiss army knife. And what's funny is I sometimes equate this to the little multi tool that a handyman might have on his belt. If a handyman shows up with only a multi tool instead of a toolbox to do a job, the property manager is probably not going to call that guy back. [00:15:23] "Oh yeah, I've got a hammer. It's right here." It's not the same. It's not the same. So same thing in business. You can't just run it off of one system. There's no magic one system. Everybody has to build a stack of tools. I'm sure in your business, you have a stack of tools that use as well. [00:15:37] You don't have just one system, right?  [00:15:39] Mo: That's right. It's all about using the best tool using the best tool to get the job done. That's an example that you mentioned about the handyman. At least when it comes to business, it's a huge cost when it comes with time and you're going to pay for everything in business, whether it's going to be in time or in cash. And where you take shortcuts on investing in certain systems, you're going to pay for it in the amount of additional time it's going to take for work arounds and manual things and processes, which is also brings up another point that we always stress to our clients is always consistently read like evaluating the business and your processes and the tooling that's being used so that you can constantly as we say, evolve forward. [00:16:15] Jason: Yeah, it's interesting. I had a mentor and he taught me this concept he called the five currencies. And basically there's five currencies you have to invest in life and in business. And it's time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. And what's funny is there's you get early on stage entrepreneurs that I think are trying to just avoid cash. [00:16:35] They're like, "I want to be cheap. I want to not spend money." And these are the ones that struggle to grow the most because they don't understand that their money is something that you can renew and earn. But time, as far as our life goes, is the scarcest resource. And what's really crazy to me is that our team members, we're buying their life. We're buying chunks of their time. They're trading time of their life for money. And they're trading probably the cheapest commodity for the best, or the trade and the best commodity for the easiest to get it seems like, but that's where they're at. And so as entrepreneurs, our goal is to move beyond just giving up our time and to get money. [00:17:16] And, we can invest more effort. We can invest more focus. We can limit the stuff we're focused on to grow faster, but in business, same thing with these tools, if we think we are saving money by only using one tool, we've got our crappy multi tool instead of building the ultimate stack, [00:17:36] then usually they just end up spending more on payroll. There's having to buy more time to do less stuff. And get less stuff done. So technology is a lot cheaper than people. That's I'm sure everyone listening realizes that, but.  [00:17:49] Mo: Yeah, there's a difference in business when you're looking at things from the lens of a perspective of an expense, versus looking at the total cost of ownership for a particular solution or process or something like that. [00:18:02] And and and in that regard, you can actually, assess the amount of time that's wasted and there's always going to be some opportunity cost. You are a business owner, nobody gets into real estate because they want to do accounting or because they want to work on taxes and whatnot. [00:18:16] And so there are professionals out there who's, sole service and focus and business models is focused on that. And and that's not something that's going to differentiate you from your competition. So those things that are not going to differentiate you, those are the things you should be outsourcing and the things that you should be seeking help to take off your plate. [00:18:31] So you can focus on the things that actually drive your business forward. And allow for you to be able to grow your portfolio.  [00:18:37] Sarah: Yeah, for sure. All right. Now I know this won't be the same for everyone because taxes is this crazy like mishmash of information and what works for you might not work for me and vice versa. Knowing that there's no one size fits all here. We're not shopping like off the rack. This is all tailored. What are some strategies that property managers should at least look into? Now, it might not make sense for everybody, but what are some things that they should at least look into and see "hey, does this make sense for me to implement this? I love learning right? So I love learning especially like how I can save money on taxes. So what are some ways that they can look into and see if it's right for them?  [00:19:18] Mo: Reducing their tax liability Yeah, no, great question. . Of the biggest nuances are just things in accounting is that, there's no such thing as being a creative accountant, right? There's always a right way to do things. [00:19:27] But there isn't just one right way to structure your business. And so one thing that we see a lot of clients struggle with is, they'll create a business initially, most folks don't start off in property management or they're either doing, they either own a brokerage firm or they're an agent and whatnot and they're doing actual real estate sales. [00:19:45] And then they'll try to, get into property management and maybe they have also they're doing in house maintenance and whatnot and maybe like a leasing only service and and maybe they also have assets on the side that they own themselves. And one common-  [00:19:56] Sarah: yeah. They're like, "I do all of these things." [00:19:59] Mo: I do all of these things, but they're doing it all under one entity. And so it's " hey, you should have a separate entity and LLC. There are liability reasons or mitigation for liability that you want to do this. And also, there are some potential tax benefits you can have an actual main corporation and you can have a sub entity or an LLC." That's your brokerage business. A separate LLC, that's the property management business. A separate LLC, that's the leasing only business. Separate LLC, that's the maintenance only business. And that, for example, that corporation can tax each of those sub LLCs, like a licensing cost, just to be able to actually use the name. [00:20:32] Of course, it may be the same ownership structure, but that's a potential way of of having a tax savings. A great example is you have the largest Companies like Apple and Nike and stuff like that, they have separate entities that are outside the US that tax licensing fees, just to use like the check mark with the entity that exists, that's actually transacting with the customers. [00:20:49] And then the other benefit of having all these entities that are separated out is that if you ever want to have a portion of the business that you wanna sell, you can demonstrate what the profitability, the profit and loss looks for that business. And you can have a separate valuation metric for that particular business and spin it off, especially if you have assets of your own, you want to have that in a separate entity, because you'll be able to take advantage of bonus depreciation. And that bonus depreciation essentially allows for you to be able to, take a rental property and take an immediate 1st year kind of deduction. If it's in 2023, you can start at 80 percent and whatever the bottom net losses on that particular asset, or that particular business that owns that asset that can now be offset the excess income. That's liable to taxes to offset against another entity. And so there's some strategies around that. There's also ways to be able to loan a particular asset or for example, if you have a car, you can rent it out to 1 of the entities, even though it may be the same individual that's using it. [00:21:49] There's a way to structure your taxes so that. Even if you own the property, you can technically lease it to 1 of the other entities and that can be a business expense and write off against another against 1 of your other entities. And so there's a lot of kind of small things like that that can make a material difference when collectively put together. But what it will ultimately we suggested something that we don't see too much. And usually we see a lot of clients struggling with is rather than having all your different enterprises and your sales activities, just revenue generating activities wrapped up into 1 entity to separate them out based on business lines. [00:22:22] And this also gives you as an owner perspective on what is working, what is not what needs help and attention and things that sort of be a little bit more prescriptive and data driven and how you make those decisions.  [00:22:32] Sarah: Like that. For sure. Yeah. And then it's. Different P and L's to see, "Hey, what part is actually profitable here and what part, if any, is taking a loss. Where does my attention actually need to be? Because what makes me the most money?" Instead of going "I think this looks pretty good."  [00:22:47] Jason: Things get mixed up. People make bad decisions. It's funny. Just for example, we'll get somebody that says, "oh yeah, I'm getting plenty of leads" and they're spending thousands of dollars on internet marketing. [00:22:57] And I'm like, cool. And they justify it. But I say, "where are you getting the leads from?" The majority were word of mouth. And so you're spending a bunch of money and I'm like, "cool, let's separate this out. What's your acquisition costs on ones you can attribute to the internet marketing stuff you're doing? [00:23:11] And sometimes they're like, "Oh yeah, it's 3- 400 a unit to like, to get on a client." And I'm like, that's ridiculous. And then they're like, "cool. I'll sign up for DoorGrow." I'm curious about the education costs and here at the end of the year, how do we help people justify signing up with DoorGrow leveraging education costs and getting that tax deduction? [00:23:33] Sarah: Such a good question because that's R and D! Research and development.  [00:23:36] Mo: Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. Real estate coaching training and education costs is considered an expense. It can be considered a deductible expense at the end of the day, especially a lot of the insight and kind of value that you guys add to the community is something that I think is priceless. [00:23:52] And if it's going to make a material impact to clients, bottom line, the thing is that none of us can be experts in everything. And so kinda the reality in business is you can learn in two ways. You can either learn from somebody else's mistakes or learnings, or you can learn the hard way yourself. [00:24:05] The latter is going to take more time, which you're not going to get back. And so the folks that are able to accelerate and grow their business, take advantage of like coaching and training and educational type of costs, I would say, "how do you justify that expense?" At the end of the year, if you're going to have an excess of income, that's going to be tax liable. And in these educational costs, and so you might as well invest instead of giving that money to Uncle Sam, give it to Uncle Jason and find a way to maximize and grow that kind of that ROI. I would say that's probably something that a lot of novice kind of entrepreneurs don't probably put too much emphasis on when they're 1st, embarking on their entrepreneurial journey it's just the importance and significance of education and insight, especially from those that have blazed the path before you, or have exposure to a lot of other folks that are in your same shoes.  [00:24:49] Jason: It really is probably one of my greatest secrets in how we've scaled and built DoorGrow and the success we've had is once I finally stopped being the idiot that thought they could do everything and watch all the videos on YouTube and read books and figure it out myself. [00:25:05] I started to collapse time significantly when I got coaches and mentors and we shell out a lot of money to coaches and mentors and I've got some amazing ones right now, like really amazing coaches and mentors. And what it does is, yes, I'm spending more money, but I'm decreasing time. So it's collapsing time for me significantly. [00:25:24] I'm making a lot less mistakes. I'm not having to figure it out because every stage of business, you're stepping into the dark. And it's nice if somebody has already been there before you 'cause they're not in the dark about it. So they're like, "Oh yeah, just do this and do this. I've already tried that and that, and it doesn't work." And I was like, that's what I was going to do. And the same thing, the majority of the people that come to me are like, "I'm having trouble growing my business." And I'm like, "cool. What do you, what have you been trying? Or what are you planning to do at the startup stage?" [00:25:50] They're like, "I'm going to do internet marketing and SEO, pay per click," they're going to do everything. All the biggest companies that they're competing with are already spending way more money than them doing it. And they're just going to do it worse. And that's their strategy. "I'm going to do what the big companies are doing, but worse. And I'm going to try and charge less money. I'll be cheaper. And I will somehow provide better service." And I'm like, "good luck with that." And so we don't know what we don't know. And we make mistakes at each stage. And the secret to collapsing time is to spend money and invest in yourself. You get that back. [00:26:21] There's a big ROI. All right. Thanks for helping us sell door. I appreciate it.  [00:26:24] Sarah: All right. So if you're looking for tax write offs at the end of the year, sign up with DoorGrow, we can help. Yeah. Don't give your money to the government.  [00:26:31] Jason: And then we'll help you make more money. Nobody stays with us unless we're helping them make more money. [00:26:36] Sarah: Yeah, they haven't helped me yet.  [00:26:38] Jason: Taxes are not giving you an ROI.  [00:26:39] Sarah: Next year when we audited them, they're like..  [00:26:42] Mo: Another thing that I wanted to comment on, actually, a lot of people may not be aware of is between the COVID period of time, there's a Biden had released this this new initiative to be able to give back payable taxes. [00:26:53] And so if you had full time employees, between 2020 and 2021, I think it's up to $25,000 for each employee for each year, and that you can potentially be entitled to up to that amount. And so if you had full time employees, and that's free money, that's not free money. Technically, those are Payroll taxes that your organization already paid, but the government is literally just give it back to you as part of this initiative. [00:27:16] I'll take my payroll taxes back. That sounds great. The only requirement is that you had, you kept people on full time payroll during the 2020, 2021 year. And that those folks were with you for at least a year. And that those were actual W2 employees, not 1099.  [00:27:31] Jason: Okay. That's worth talking about it. [00:27:34] Oh, she's up on all this.  [00:27:37] Sarah: I don't know. Did you think I would have missed that? Okay. I'm telling you, I'm like-  [00:27:43] Jason: She has some strange hobbies. Alright. I do, I know. Mo this has been really interesting. I appreciate you coming and hanging out on the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your company and how you can help people with some of this stuff if they're listening to all this going, "man, this is a bunch of gobbledygook I really could use help making this all make sense, and I thought Appfolio was an accounting system for my business" and they're just trying to figure it all out. How can they get ahold of you?  [00:28:07] Mo: Great question. Before I comment on that, one, one thing that I do want to the misconception of Hey, just because you bought accounting software doesn't mean you bought accounting experts. [00:28:14] Sarah: Okay. Oh, that's so good. I love, I'm going to use that.  [00:28:18] Jason: The experts are worth a lot more to me than software.  [00:28:22] Mo: And usually there'll be priced a lot higher too, because the software, the proper application of it, it's like buying, It's like buying a seesaw or hammer or some tool, it's much cheaper to actually buy the tool versus buying or having the expert that's actually going to be utilizing the tool to build whatever. The peace of mind to me is priceless. So it is. I lead a group, a consulting group balance asset solutions been over for a little bit over 7 years. We are a CPA and technology advisory firm assisting clients with accounting, CFO services, like taxes, acquisition, disposition strategy, software implementations we're partners with a lot of the accounting systems like Yardi, and Appfolio, and Propertyware, and Buildium. We also help with Department of Real Estate audits and forensic accounting customer reporting, fund management. We're here to help maximize the value out of your subscription, streamline your business with technology and software, and give you time back to spend on the things that matter to your business, which is growing kind of your top line and working with your tenants and owners. We have clients in over 35 states and we have deep expertise when it comes to the trust accounting gap, the department of real estate compliance representation. So consultations are free and you can find us online at www. balancedassetsolutions. com.  [00:29:33] Jason: Man, that's an awesome combo, nerdy accountants. [00:29:36] That's like the best combo ever, right? All right. Super cool. All right. So hopefully some people are reaching out to you right now when they're watching this and we appreciate you coming on the show.  [00:29:46] Mo: Of course. Thank you so much, Jason. Take care.  [00:29:48] Jason: All right. Take care. If you are a property management entrepreneur, you're wanting to grow your business, reach out to us at DoorGrow. [00:29:54] We would love to help you out. You can check us out at doorgrow.Com and join our free Facebook group at doorgrowclub.Com. Bye everyone. [00:30:00] 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!  [00:30:26] 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 from property management growth experts as they chat with Nick Friedman, founder of College Hunks Hauling Junk and Trash Butler. Topics include entrepreneurship, daily trash removal, vetting team members, and junk removal services for property managers. Discover how culture, behavior, and execution play key roles in business success.

If you’re a property manager, you know that property management is a tough and demanding industry at times. Property managers often feel pressure to make owners and tenants happy.  In today’s episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Logan from Virtually Incredible to talk about how property management entrepreneurs can improve their company’s customer service. You’ll Learn [03:41] Making big impressions as a small business [10:39] Does every other property manager suck?  [18:52] Things you can do to improve your customer service [25:59] The importance of process documentation [32:46] Importance of culture when hiring remotely Tweetables “If you are letting yourself get bogged down on the stuff that you can delegate and the stuff that doesn't need your immediate attention, you're going to be limited on the big impact stuff that really deserves your attention.” “If you avoid investing cash, then you're going to have to invest more time and effort.” “Phone calls are probably the biggest source of interruptions and the biggest source of staffing expense in a property management company.” “Automation shakes hands with customer service.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Phone calls are probably the biggest source of interruptions and the biggest source of staffing expense in a property management company. And we've been able to cut some of our clients staffing costs in half just by convincing them to not do phone calls  [00:00:17] All right. Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrower, DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. [00:00:42] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income at DoorGrow. We are on a mission to transform property management, business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. [00:01:19] And I'm hanging out today with Logan Breen of Virtually Incredible. What's up, Logan?  [00:01:25] Logan: What's going on, man. Thanks for having me. It's good to have you.  [00:01:28] Jason: So in our topic today, we're going to be chatting about small business, big impressions: mastering customer service for a professional edge. So before we get into that, Logan, why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself? How did you get into property management? And give us some backstory.  [00:01:51] Logan: Okay. I'm third generation in property management myself. A lot of people might know my dad, Todd Breen. He is a pioneer in outsourcing and the property management industry. And I'm sitting today. I usually work from my home office, but I wanted to make sure I had a nice, bright background for our podcast today. So I'm sitting in our property management office here in South Florida. And I grew up with my dad being a one man show and running a small business without a lot of the automation and tools and outsourcing that has come with technology. And I can recall as a kid cleaning this same office with my sister. If we wanted to use the family company vehicle, part of our chores was to make sure all the office was clean and we would see stress pills and we would see a heart monitor what is it? Heart pressure monitors and stress tea remedies all over the place and we made a blood oath that we would never get into property management because it was way too stressful. And now fast forward to today, she's the broker at our management office and I'm helping hundreds of property managers across the U S implement the same best practice strategies, outsourcing strategies to make life a little bit easier. [00:03:10] Jason: All right. So what was the consequence of this blood oath?  [00:03:13] Logan: There's a little bit of an exaggeration, but we promised that we would not be in the family business, but you know what? It's a complex business and we learned it just through working with dad growing up, we worked in a variety of ways in the management company. [00:03:30] And with the tools of outsourcing and having a good team, it's not as stressful as it once was.  [00:03:35] Jason: Yeah. And now you're helping alleviate everybody else's stress, so they don't need stress pills and yeah. So let's talk about this topic, small business big impressions. And I think when entrepreneurs are starting a business, they all want to appear big. They all want to because their insecurity is they're small. Yeah. It feels small. And they're like, "people are going to know that I'm small. And if they know that I'm small, they're not going to want to work with me and trust me because I'm small." I remember feeling that way when I started my web design business decades and decades ago. And so I was like, "I got to make this sound really big and really official." like, you know, as openers, they're like adding the word group to the end of their business name. There's no group.  [00:04:17] Logan: That's great. Yeah. Yeah.  [00:04:19] Jason: So one of the things we would help with is we help them have branding website, like stuff to look like they are a larger, more established or more reputable company. And it does, it helps trust, but let's talk about customer service. How does this really play into people's perception and trust? And as everybody's heard me say on this podcast, a million times, sales and deals in this industry and every other happen at the speed of trust.  [00:04:47] Logan: I think you're right when you say that it's a mental thing as well, because there's benefits of being a small business and a level of personal touch that a small growing business can give somebody who's trusting you with their biggest asset. [00:05:02] Depends on who you're working with, right? If you're talking about a big investor that has multiple pile of bricks that makes them a few bucks. If you're talking about somebody who, is an accidental landlord, that's just trying to be financially responsible with this asset they're trying to hold on to, having somebody they can get ahold of having somebody they can talk to, those are all strengths if you want to do a concierge side of thing, but regardless of how big you want to get and what your goals are, it comes down to time management. And if you're tripping over, what's that saying, tripping over dollars to pick up dimes if you are letting yourself get bogged down on the stuff that you can delegate and the stuff that doesn't need your immediate attention, you're going to be limited on the big impact stuff that really deserves your attention. And it's really going to help you meet your goals.  [00:05:53] Jason: Yeah, there's really this interesting dichotomy between the cheapos, as I call them, that are being cheap while trying to start a business in order to save money versus being smart and spending effectively so they can have even more money. [00:06:10] Logan: Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely something to be said about, being smart with your money. It's something to look at. You need to monitor where your labor costs are going. For instance one of the biggest things we did at our management company. Is we started looking into the labor costs in our leasing on a micro level to where we're looking at each property, how much it's costing to rent it and the labor costs going towards it. [00:06:38] And if you're not taking reports of your call volume per property, your super competitive properties are very likely exceeding your leasing fee, the labor costs to be able to rent them. So there's tools out there. And in fact, that's one thing we do at Virtually Incredible is when somebody is using phone tenders, or 24/7 call center, we give them a breakdown of their call volume per property. [00:07:01] So that way you can look at, "okay, This really competitive three bedroom is getting 40 percent of our calls. We need to yank the phone number right off of that sucker because we're not going to make money losing money by exceeding our leasing fees on that specific one." And on the opposite side of the fact, if we're getting a really low call volume on a specific property, that's a perfect opportunity to tell your landlord, "Hey. You're losing more money than this place is sitting vacant." but if you don't take the time to invest in these tools and these procedures, and you're just spending money blindly or saving money blindly by doing it yourself, you're going to be time poor. Time poor is something you can't invest. You know what I mean? It's something you can't regain or build. [00:07:41] Jason: Yeah. I talk about five currencies. I learned this concept from Alex Charfen and five currencies are time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. We have to invest some of these in order to grow and scale a business. And if you avoid investing cash, then you're going to have to invest more time and effort. But I think one of the biggest secrets that we have at DoorGrow is instead of time management, we get our clients focusing on energy management. We get them on which things give them life and energy and which things drain them. And the things that are usually the lowest level tactical type of work. [00:08:19] It's not this strategic stuff of planning and being a visionary and dreaming about the business and learning new stuff. It's the stuff that's like detail oriented, nitty gritty stuff that should be offloaded and it's usually low dollar work, right? I think the very first person, any entrepreneur should hire, and usually they will get something the business needs. [00:08:42] Not what they need. They'll get like a maintenance coordinator or they'll get something. But I think the very first thing that every entrepreneur should get is an assistant for themselves. They should take care of themselves and get rid of the stuff that's draining them because then they have so much more energy. [00:08:59] And I think the biggest challenge I see in this industry and in any industry is that usually entrepreneurs in the early stages try to build the business around what the business needs. They started to build the team around what the business needs instead of building it around what they need. And so then eventually they end up with a business that maxes out their level of miserableness and they have an entire team. [00:09:24] Yeah, so by default that means they have the wrong team because they should be getting more freedom and more fulfillment If they were doing it correctly. Even though they have more money, they have less of those things and so what we have people do to figure out what sort of assistant and what they could do is we just have them do a Time study and put plus or minus signs next to everything like does this give me life or take it away? [00:09:46] Logan: I love that and you know. When people decide that they want to be an entrepreneurs versus have a J O B and, clock in, it tends to be because they want the freedom and they want the energy and then they end up giving themselves a job. And if you've given yourself a job, I wouldn't call that prime entrepreneurial. [00:10:03] You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Delegation buys you freedom and it's a skillset. If your slogan is, if it's to be, it's up to me, you're giving yourself a glass ceiling. And so yeah, we're on the same page. I agree with you.  [00:10:20] Jason: Yeah. So why don't you let everybody know, how do we master customer service for professional edge? How do we solve this problem? Because customer service in this industry is generally considered to be pretty shitty. Yeah, property management has a bad rap. Yeah, most property managers I talk to, especially the startups and they always tell me, " I started this business because I had some rental properties and all the other companies sucked in my market." But it's never them. [00:10:52] Nobody ever thinks they suck. Everybody else sucks. Yeah. So what do you think needs to happen there? Like, why is that?  [00:11:00] Logan: It depends on your goals. Okay. I talked to hundreds of management companies, maybe dozens every month, we'll say on what their goals are with their portfolio. [00:11:09] If their goal is to have a not real demanding, residual income to just supplement a retirement or something like that. I would say, keep your current clients, the owners happy. And and, try to reduce turnover. So nobody's losing money. If their goal is growth and building, then it's going to come down to meeting the needs of your market. Now, what we're seeing in most markets right now is that our leasing market is getting back to normal. Okay. And what I mean by that pre pandemic, we had these seasonal fluctuations where summer was red hot. [00:11:49] And fourth quarter and into the first quarter was a little bit cooler, and everybody tried to make their leases end in summer for quick turnover. And then 2020 was dead, but then 21 and 22 was a red hot leasing season. And people took leasing for granted. If you ask me. And what I mean by that is it was going to move, right? [00:12:13] In most markets you were going to get that, and there's different theories as to why that is. I think part of it is people were a little weary to move if it was already in their agenda anyways in 2020. 'cause they didn't know what was going on. But then we had this super surge of a lot of different areas and people started working remotely. So they weren't really considering in 21 and 22 necessarily geography distance between them and their careers because a lot of people remote work when went way up. So I think that kind of played into it as well. [00:12:46] But this is the first year that i'm seeing that we're back into this seasonal dip where people are having long times on market. And fourth quarter which to me is signifying business as usual again but you know a lot of people in my opinion treat leasing as their red headed stepchild because, you know when it's a healthy season, it's something easy to overlook as long as you know screen the applicants appropriately everything goes well. But when a leasing season gets tight that, separates the men from the boys if you will on how you're going to do it because when somebody's showing up and they need a property manager, it's generally not because they have a awesome tenant that's paying rent on time in place and they just are looking for somebody to split the money with. They're looking for somebody who's going to give them a good long term return on their investment. And when they're deciding who they're going to park their best investment with, they need somebody who's going to answer the phone and really juice every bit of leads when these tight leasing markets are happening. [00:13:47] So that's one aspect. And then the other aspect, Jason, and I know this, in fact, we've talked about this before, but somebody who dumps a bunch of money and to getting management leads, but then lets those leads go to voicemail. Yeah. It's like cranking your AC all the way down and leaving the windows open. [00:14:05] Yeah, that's a good analogy. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. We do a secret shopping campaign where we call management companies across the U S and we document how many of them answer the phones. And we call as both an owner. And as a prospective tenant and even for owner calls, which I would argue if scaling or even maintaining a door count matters to you, the management leads matter to you. And less than 50%. In fact, I think it was even less than a third. It's been a minute since I've looked at the numbers, but less than a third of people are answering that line live. So it's not really hard to stick out and do well. But if you're bogged down saying, "I don't want to spend any money," and "if it's to be, it's up to me," and "I'm the only person that's going to run the show," then you're limited and you end up letting what you consider low importance tasks fall off. [00:14:59] And then, the cycle of suck that you just mentioned that nobody can answer the phone, give me good customer service. I'm going to start my own management company. You'll end up doing that to yourself.  [00:15:08] Jason: Yeah. It's a cyclical thing because if they're spending money on marketing and they're not answering their phones, and a lead's only good for maybe five, 10 minutes max, and then it drops I don't know, 80 percent in conversion rates, right? So then you're right. It's like leaving the window open with AC on. And then because they're spending all this money on marketing and they're allowing these leads to fall flat and they're not getting a good ROI, they're spending a bunch of money. [00:15:34] Some companies spend 20, 30 percent of their revenue. And a lot, there's a lot of property management companies that don't even have that percentage of profitability in their business. And so they're wasting money on marketing. They're not answering their phones. And then that's going to lead to a lack of cashflow and a lack of cashflow means they can't hire good or enough people. [00:15:56] And then there's bad customer service. And then it makes the problem worse. And for some reason they just bounce around like this rock in a tumbler rolling at the bottom when they could be flying, like it could be a lot better. And so that's interesting. So I'm curious what else you're, people that you're talking to are seeing right now. [00:16:16] Are you seeing people in some markets, I've heard some complaints that it's becoming more and more difficult to get renters. Others, I think are like have a scarcity of property. And I think maybe it could be due to like migration. There's been a lot of migration, migrating happening due to, from COVID people gravitating towards States with more freedom. [00:16:38] Logan: As far as the limitation of properties, that's going to vary a lot more market to market and I think that the higher interest rates on sales and deflating what sale prices are, is going to lead to more people holding on to their investments to regain their equity again, which I think that'll bring that back around if somebody's having a hard time finding accidental landlords who, for, I'd say the majority of our clients. [00:17:07] I have people that work with hedge funds and people that work with big time investors, but would say the majority of our clients, our own management company is designed on the one off two off handful, maybe 34 units that somebody is a small time investor. And I think that for us has always been a good long term strategy of somebody just keep it being happy at splitting their money with and getting rid of the headache with a property manager So on that side of things, I think the interest rates are going to bring that back now when it comes to the leasing leads yeah, I do think politically and stuff like that, that can that likely has a lot to do with some of the inflows and stuff like that. [00:17:45] But I think that we're getting back to the norm of people don't want to move during the holidays, especially you get up north of interstate 40. That'd be brutal to move in the winter up North during the holidays and in that time. And I think we're getting more into the steady flow. I'll tell you with leasing, I think that's a more quickly moving market, which is why those call stats that I mentioned before are so important. [00:18:13] Like down here in Florida, we've had huge influxes and huge rate increases on both rent and own, and purchase prices. Yeah. Yeah. And being able to see the call volume in real time per property. Allows us to really make micro changes and what the market's doing on a seasonal basis and all that. [00:18:37] Jason: Yeah. And that's from calls coming in on these vacant properties or up for rent properties that that your team are fielding. So this is an advantage using Virtually Incredible that you get data and metrics and insights that you just probably wouldn't be able to gather otherwise.  [00:18:52] Logan: Yes, it's a perk that we use. [00:18:54] I'd imagine that somebody could make a system to do it. That is a big perk that our clients enjoy. Yes. Is that they get a call breakdown for their leasing calls per property and for mainline calls per caller type, for instance, at our own management company when we first started looking at our mainline calls, we noticed that current tenant calls made up almost 50% of our call volume. Meanwhile, we're using cutting edge management softwares with tenant interfaces, and yet people would still rather pick up the phone. So we took that insight and we created a newsletter that said " hey, it's in your best interest to be communicating with us in writing." In reality it's in our best interest too because we're saving on the labor costs and the time management and all that comes with it. But we were able to reduce that down to 12 to 15%. And if you're not looking at those stats, you're not looking at the opportunity to save on the labor cost. [00:19:49] Jason: Yeah, it's interesting because phone calls are probably the biggest source of interruptions and the biggest source of staffing expense in a property management company. And we've been able to cut some of our clients staffing costs in half just by convincing them to not do phone calls and to figure out ways to do things through text and email so there's a record kept in a lot of instances. Now, and I've read some books on customer service recently, and nowadays people do prefer to be able to self serve like that would be better, but they always look for whatever's easiest. And if they can't figure out how to self serve easily, or they don't know, they're just going to pick up the phone because making a phone call seems like the easiest option. But a lot of people, especially the younger crowd today, they don't like talking on the phone to human  [00:20:38] Logan: beings.  [00:20:39] Automation shakes hands with customer service, right? So the more that you're able to supplement a "do it yourself," frequently asked questions, texting, whether it be, any interface like that with portals is absolutely great. [00:20:57] And it allows you to have the budget for the customer service where it matters. For instance, you mentioned earlier, a management lead goes goes down in value you say in five minutes, I say in the moment that the voicemail is hit. The moment, because if it is a referral that you're getting, maybe that person wants to work with you more than anybody else. [00:21:23] But if this was just a, if you're just a company they found online due to whatever marketing advertising, you have good reviews. That'll be a plus, obviously. But if they hit a voicemail, the immediate thoughts that they're thinking, "Is this company still taking on more management accounts?" Yeah. "Is my property even going to be a fit to their portfolio?" [00:21:45] " If it's hard to get ahold of them right now, is it going to be hard to get ahold of them about my investment later?" And they're thinking all of that while they're scrolling down to the next lead and calling them. So yes, I think that having the do it yourself is key to be able to have the budget to put the customer service where it really matters. [00:22:04] Jason: So what are some things that property managers can do based on what you've seen to improve their customer service directly? And then what are some ways in which virtually incredible could help do that?  [00:22:17] Logan: So it's going to depend on the goals and it's also going to depend on their size. Okay. Usually one of the first questions when I'm sitting down with a potential new client and I'm doing a outsourcing consultation. [00:22:30] On what would be best for them is I get an idea of their team size, their door count, and their goals. So the two options that we then discuss from there is either phone tenders, which is our 24/7 property management call center that's divided up into three departments where we have a leasing call center where we pre qualify, answer questions, and schedule showings. We have a main line where we answer any call with custom scripting and escalation that would come into a management office. So we have custom scripts for current owners, current tenants, applicants, vendors, whoever would come in and however we can best assist them, answer their frequently asked questions, and escalate them to the right person if that's what they end up needing. And then we have the emergency repair where we're available for after hours maintenance emergencies to qualify the emergency and troubleshoot it with them over the phone, seeing if we can delay it and that sort of thing. [00:23:32] And the cool part about that particular service is it, the minimum subscription cost is 97 bucks a month and you have 24/7 coverage on all of these departments. And then based on your usage, it can go up from there on a per minute basis. So somebody who is really wanting to grow, doesn't have the need for a full time person yet, and really wants to grab time management and and grab control of their life and their, their work life balance, that's a great first place to start. [00:24:03] Then from there, if you have an idea that, "okay, I've got all my systems in my head. I really need somebody who isn't just fielding these calls for me and helping me with time management, I need somebody who's going to help me and executing processes and taking the process from what's between my ears and making a policy, procedure, and systems," because I'll tell you right now, most people that start their management company from the ground up, it all starts right here. It's all going to be between their ears and if it's to be, it's up to me because it's going to take longer for me to train somebody how to do it than it is for me to just do it myself. [00:24:43] That's all the limiting beliefs that I find a lot of people who have not mastered the power of delegating, that's what's blocking them. That's what's limiting their imagination here. And so what we do is we train each one of our virtual assistants, how to take a screen recording, and we give all of our clients a subscription to Screencast O Matic or Loom or some other screen recording tool where they just demonstrate a process over the computer and it hooks up to their microphones. They dictate anything they're keeping in mind while demonstrating that process. And then our virtual assistant will review that video, create a step by step outline and then file it in their network next to the video to create a handbook process and procedure on everything they're doing. And it serves as a point of reference for our virtual assistant to be able to refer to later or it as this person scales, whether it be in their own. [00:25:40] Whether it be locally they scale or remotely with remote team members and virtual assistants, this serves as a starting training manual. On everything that they do. So we're helping them bring everything from here and lay it out to really get over that hurdle of scaling. [00:25:59] Jason: Yeah. I think it's important to get that first level of process documentation done, and a lot of entrepreneurs mistakenly think they need to do it when they're usually the worst person to do it. So it just show somebody how to do it and record it then they can give that to them and then give them the challenge of creating that process documentation. [00:26:20] The second level after process documentation level two is like process checklist. This is where you're using maybe a tool like Lead Simple or Process Street or something where now people have to run through some steps and check things off to complete a process. And the third level is something like DoorGrow Flow. Which is a visual workflow and it has the ability to have checklist, but it's something that everyone understands and it's a lot more intuitive visually and workflows are how humans think about process or flow charts and so you're building a flow chart to build your processes. Anyone can check this out at doorgrowflow.com this is new but if you're following the process visually and you map it out that way, it's super intuitive. Everybody on the team understands it. And it doesn't have to just follow a linear path because a lot of processes in property management are not just linear. There's things happening concurrently. So there might be decisions to be made and building that stuff out in checklist based software is really complicated. You have to be like systems nerd. And then once you build that, no one understands it, but you. But if it's visual, it could be like, "do they have pets" go down this path. No? This way... back together." and so you can do more complicated stuff and everybody can look at it and go, "Oh, this makes sense." [00:27:43] Logan: Yeah, absolutely. Getting that systems out in a way that's navigable, but navigable by everybody else. I'd say that's the biggest hurdle to scaling.  [00:27:51] Jason: Yeah, in order to scale rapidly, you need a really good process system. You need a really good people system for hiring. And if you're not, you don't have that developed yet and you're playing Russian roulette, it's good to start with some agencies to get help, right? [00:28:06] Yeah. Your first initial hires, you're going to learn a lot just by working with agencies like virtually incredible because they're going to walk you through the process. They're going to ask you a lot of questions, things you haven't thought about yet. They're going to help you avoid some of the common pitfalls and mistakes. [00:28:22] Like I call it the clone myth where everybody, when they're starting out, thinks they need to go find themselves. Yeah. You go find a clone. And later they learn that in order to actually duplicate yourself as an entrepreneur who wears every hat in the business, you need 10 people to actually clone yourself and not do anything. [00:28:39] And so that's the clone myth. But then yeah, so I think getting all these things mapped out and then being able to get the help that you need early on. Then you can graduate to having your own hiring system if you want to but you're going to need really great people to help you run that as well. [00:28:55] Logan: So when you're doing it yourself when it comes to hiring somebody remote, there's a couple big pitfalls that I make sure to talk with clients about because we have recruit direct options. So there's traditional virtual assistant placement is basically a version of a no compete contract, right? [00:29:17] It's a staffing company that says, "I want to be the middleman forever and ever, amen. You'll never work with this person except through me." And then over the last few years, we've seen an evolution to like recruitment to where somebody helps you pick the right person and helps you with all the different processes, maybe some of the training and they do an initial upfront fee, and then you pay that person the hourly rate that they take home. And the pitfalls with that is there's only so much that's in their control after they hand you the wheel. So they give you like a 90 day warranty on turnover. And if hit bumps in the road and lose the person after that, start from scratch, you've got some of the training materials. [00:29:57] "Here was a list of best practices. Good luck." And so that inspired our hybrid model, which is that people are welcome to work with our staff member as long as they like through us on a month to month basis. And if they ever decide that they like their person, but for whatever reason, they'd like to take advantage of the savings and work with the person directly or they don't see the value in the different tools and free replacements that we offer and they're welcome to take that same person they're experienced in working with and not only will we allow them to hire that person direct, but we will coordinate it with them and we will have an orientation and we will walk them through the process of offboarding from Virtually Incredible and onboarding directly with them. Some best practices and we do it at a discounted rate for the longer that the person has worked. With that person through us.  [00:30:52] Jason: Got it. So the longer they're using you as an agency to have this team member, the less it costs to buy out their contract or to have them just move over to paying you directly.  [00:31:03] Logan: Even less they have to pay if they use the promo code DoorGrow, where they get 5 percent off on the hourly rate and the per minute rate. [00:31:11] Jason: Yeah, there you go. Say that discount again. A discount promo code is DoorGrow D O O R G R O W. And if you have any technical difficulties, just talk to Logan and he'll make sure it's it's applied for you when you're doing it, but it's pretty simple. There should just be a spot for it.  [00:31:28] Cool. So get your discount. [00:31:30] So yeah, if you're in the early stages, you haven't had a lot of success in hiring, or you've been around for a while and I've seen larger companies, they're still playing Russian roulette when it comes to getting team members. And if you have not successfully had several experiences yet in the outsourcing, getting people from Philippines or Mexico or anything else, I highly recommend to anyone listening, you leverage an agency. [00:31:55] They're going to help you manage that relationship. They're going to help you manage cultural differences. They're going to help you make sure there's a stronger level of accountability and they back it up that if they, you need to replace the person, they can help you do that quickly because there's a lot of potential pitfalls, a lot.  [00:32:10] Logan: There is. And one of the biggest ones that I see people that they just haven't even thought of is with the growing industry of freelance work and Fiverr and all these other things. You don't want what I would call a mini entrepreneur or a freelancer. [00:32:28] Somebody who's building their skillset and then is going to just keep their resume out for a couple of bucks an hour more than what you're paying them. Because I don't care whether you're talking about hiring somebody local or you're talking about hiring somebody remote. Turnover is the most expensive part of staffing. [00:32:46] Jason: Yeah, I want to own the team members attention if they're on my team. And so one of the biggest challenges I'll see when people are hiring freelancers, and I've hired lots of different types of people right in the past from lots of different areas. And I've learned the costly mistake of hiring people that are not focused on your business. [00:33:06] If somebody is a freelancer, And they're working maybe part time for you and part time for somebody else. They have their primary focus is getting jobs. Their primary focus is their own life and business. Whereas if they are full time with you or dedicated just to you, even if they're part time, cause that's all the bandwidth they wanted to like to focus on you have their full attention. Their focus becomes your business, which is what we want. We want them to be focused on our business to help us improve our business, not constantly working on their own agenda and their business. And that's the big differentiator that I've seen. And I want team members that are thinking about DoorGrow in the shower. [00:33:50] I want team members that are giving me their discretionary time, believe in what we're doing. And they're excited about it and they're doing something that they enjoy doing, right? I want them to be a culture fit for DoorGrow, personality fit for the role, and a skill fit, meaning they've learned what they need to do in order to be successful. And then we're winning and I think that's the greatest secret in business is that it doesn't matter how many processes you have, it doesn't matter how many KPIs you have, it doesn't matter how many metrics you throw at your team... if you want a team to perform well, it doesn't even matter how much money you throw at your team members. [00:34:26] A lot of entrepreneurs mistakenly think team members behavior will improve if they throw more money at them or bonuses. And that actually tends to go get worse for most team members. That may be entrepreneurs and salespeople. Most people don't actually deep down like money. I know that sounds crazy. And so we need to make sure that we are building an effective team. [00:34:47] An effective team is the secret sauce to having great customer service. That's the secret sauce, is to have a great team that like, buy into you, believe in you, and are not just what I call a hider employee, where their secret goal is to do as little as possible if they could get away with it, get paid as much as possible if they could get away with it, and complain about you and live for the weekend. [00:35:10] Logan: Yeah. Yeah. One of the first things I ask in an interview regardless of the position is what motivates you? And it's super important to be able to speak somebody's motivation language. You throw money at somebody who cares more about work life balance or who cares about accommodations. [00:35:27] A lot of people on my team we make sure that everybody's very well taken care of and money's not overlooked by any means, but reassurance and it's no secret that we do the majority of our hiring out of the Philippines and one thing that is a beautiful thing about their culture in the Philippines is how naturally it meshes with customer service and the wanting to please. Okay. And in fact, one of the training modules. that we have is that your job is not necessarily your identity, which means that when you have a tenant that is so frustrated because when they moved in and just spent all this money and it wasn't exactly how they wanted it, or, something happened and they need to they feel that they, that breaking their lease is the way they need to do it. [00:36:23] And they want everything the way they want it when they want it, we found that a lot of our really rockstar virtual assistants that were just great were getting high burnout because their level of empathy with these people and having to enforce was just hurting, crying. And so we have a, "Hey, you're not your role." [00:36:42] And when you're at home and when you're with your family and your friends. We love your culture and what you're driven to just always be such a helpful, great person and do that when you can, but it's okay to say no, and it's okay to enforce policies and to not take that personally. [00:36:58] And until you understand the nuances of the culture that you're working with, if you're not working with a professional who has a leadership team that shares that same culture and values, you're going to have burnout that you don't even know why you're burning out. Because you'll hear. "Oh, I have a sick relative. [00:37:19] Oh, I have to go move and I have to go take care of this and I can't work with you anymore because I don't want conflict and I don't want you to feel bad about yourself, so I'm going to tell you that I have to leave because of something that's out of your control and in my life." And so people are sitting there beating their head against the wall, not knowing why. [00:37:37] Jason: Like, "why do I keep losing all these Filipino team members? Yeah. And they're all having all these problems?" No, the problems you and you need to be a better boss probably. Yeah. Yeah. Culture in a team and in a business is everything. You cannot have a great team without great culture like that. And culture, it means you shared values. You have to find people to share your values. Otherwise you have hiders and hiders are trying to get money from you and do as little as possible and, or they're going to quit and leave because they don't believe in you. They don't believe in the company. [00:38:09] They don't believe in what they're doing. You need believers. Yeah Logan, this has been fun. And you've told us a little bit about phone tenders. You told us about your mainline service, the emergency repairs service. Line, it sounds like it's pretty affordable for people to get started. [00:38:25] How can people reach out to Virtually Incredible and find you guys?  [00:38:30] Logan: So info at virtuallyincredible. com, Logan@virtuallyincredible. Com. My direct line is (561)-323-7039. I should be a better person to know our mainline office number, but I'll re I'll answer that one too. But it's on the website virtuallyincredible. com and if you are interested in the idea of outsourcing and you're not really ready to talk with somebody about it, but you're just curious. If you go on our virtual assistant page, we have something that's pretty interesting. We have a list of people. These are not examples. I'm not just shining up our brightest and best and and have a sample of resumes and voice recordings. [00:39:14] We have a live list that's updated automatically every 10 minutes with candidates that are ready to get started and have already started training. And there's voice samples where you can hear what they sound like. And there are their resumes where you can see the difference experience and stuff that they have. [00:39:33] And then there's a little note that mentions based on our experience, what their ideal role would be. It's like a catalog of humans. You can just go on there and listen to them. And  [00:39:43] yeah, that's pretty cool. It's just a job. Yeah. It's something that these people have already been vetted. [00:39:48] We've already done all the background checks. We've already validated their resume, contacted their previous employers. And so if anybody on that list looks interesting then reach out to me, we'll chat about it and we'll start talking about scheduling interviews.  [00:40:04] Jason: So go to virtuallyincredible. com and start window shopping some virtual team members. All right. All right. Thanks, Logan. Appreciate you being here on the show.  [00:40:14] Logan: Thanks, Jason. Appreciate you having me.  [00:40:15] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to grow your business, you want to add doors, you want to figure out when is the right time to hire, how do I scale my team? [00:40:25] How do I start adding and scaling doors without wasting any money at all on advertising? How can I do this? We have clients that are scaling rapidly. We just need really good property managers. So if you feel like you're a good property manager and you just need the right system. We've got the system and we call it the DoorGrow code and the DoorGrow code is our roadmap and our system for scaling businesses. [00:40:49] It's like a martial arts style belt system going all the way from white belt, stepping onto the mat with your first door to yellow belt with your first 50 doors on and on until black belt, a thousand doors. And we confidently know that we can get you to a thousand doors in the next three to five years, even starting from zero, if you will follow the code and do what we say, you can do this. There's really only two ways to 10x the growth in your property management business. That's through acquisition or that's through doing our strategy of organic rapid growth. It's not going to be through advertising. [00:41:25] It's not going to be through cold lead marketing. It's not going to be through SEO or pay per click or content marketing. So if you want a 10 X to grow through your business and be like one of our recent podcast guests, Kent Hardman, who added went from zero to a hundred doors in six months, investing only 10 to 15 hours a week, two to three hours a day towards making some phone calls, using our strategies. [00:41:47] We want to help you grow, reach out to us. We can help you scale your business. And if adding more doors right now sounds uncomfortable or not fun for you. It means if you add another a hundred or 200 doors, it would increase your stress level. And you have a business that's not scalable. So reach out to DoorGrow. [00:42:04] We can help you turn this around, turn around your team and turn this into a scalable business. You probably believe what we call the process myth, but it's not true. You don't just need more processes. You need a better team and we have a whole training on this. We're happy to give to you for free. Just comment on any of our social media, the word myth, or say you would like our process myth training. [00:42:27] And we're happy to send you that for free. It might blow your mind and change your thinking forever. So reach out to us. We would love to help you figure out how to get more leads and how to solve the process problem in your business. And you will become infinitely scalable and you can grow rapidly. And just like our clients are doing. So we'd love to support you and help you out. Reach out to us at DoorGrow. com. Bye everyone. [00:42:50] 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!  [00:43:17] 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 how strategic planning and utilizing the quieter winter months can lead to growth in the property management industry. Discover the importance of planning and overcoming challenges, as well as building the right team for success. Explore how Satorgra can help property management entrepreneurs achieve significant growth through coaching and mentoring.