Property Management Growth with DoorGrow

Even though a vacancy can be painful for an investor, leasing doesn’t have to be the biggest hat a property manager has to wear. Join property management growth expert Jason Hull to talk about the topic of the property management Summer busy season with Tim and Larry from Tenant Turner.  You’ll Learn [02:55] When is the right time to automate? [07:52] Why being cheap leads to bad clients [14:34] Staying competitive in the slow season [18:04] The multifamily market oversupply [22:13] Lockboxes and self-showings Tweetables “The most important currency related to growth is not cash, it's focus.” “It's really stupid, in contrast, to hold onto the moldy peanuts in the monkey trap because you don't want to let go and not get your hand out because you just want to be cheap.” “I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses.” “Even if you only have, you know, one door, eight doors, 10 doors, any vacancy is painful.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, "well, I'm being cheap and I'm being frugal, and that's smart." It's not smart when it comes to business, and it's not smart when it comes to growth.  [00:00:17] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate, think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show, and our guests today are Tim Wallace and Larry Hancock of Tenant Turner. Welcome you two.  [00:01:27] Tim: Thanks for having us.  [00:01:28] Larry: Yeah, thanks for having us.  [00:01:29] Jason: So does everybody there have red hair now? Is this the thing? [00:01:32] Tim: We're slowly taking over the world.  [00:01:34] Larry: Like it's just-- gingers unite-- job application requirement. [00:01:37] Jason: That sounds like a really good t-shirt.  [00:01:40] Sarah: I like it. Yeah. "Are you willing to dye your hair?" [00:01:43] Jason: That'd be the strangest thing. Yeah. "It's part of the, it's part of the uniform." All right. Awesome. Well, it's good to have you both and you know, we really appreciate you being a sponsor for our DoorGrow events and doing some cool stuff with us. And Tim, you actually sold Sarah Tenant Turner previously. Oh, Larry did. Larry sold Sarah Tenant Turner. Yeah. You can't have the credit, Tim. Sorry. It's Larry. Larry did this. He closed the deal in Sarah's property management business that she's since sold, but they're still using Tenant Turner.  [00:02:17] Sarah: They do use tenant turner. [00:02:19] Jason: There you go. So awesome. So our topic today is scaling up your leasing process during the busy season, which is right now, right? It's summer, things heat up. And what's interesting, if you do go onto Google Trends, trends.google.com and look at the keyword "property management" and you backdate it for like a decade and you'll see these, it just spikes. It doesn't go up like it's not growing in search volume, but property management spikes every summer and goes down in the winter. And that's probably how leasing works as well in property management. So what, where should we start with scaling up your leasing process during the busy season? [00:02:59] Larry: So what's interesting is it's almost like a catch 22 for our customers. So for folks that aren't using any kind of automation, they're like, "I really need your services, but I'm just too darn busy to even consider it." I'm like, "ah! Why didn't you talk to us just a few months earlier?" And then you got the opposite side where some customers are like, "I'm not busy enough to consider your services." so we're always trying to, you know, have these conversation with these people why automation's beneficial for them. Whether they're in a stage where they're just, you know, drinking from a fire hydrant and they're just trying to just figure things out while they're in the busy leasing season. Or maybe you are using automation and it's just a matter of creating efficiencies. So that way you can continually grow your business. So, typically that's how we'll start our conversation is kind of where are you at right now? Are you kind of just struggling to stay afloat and you need to add some automation into your life, or do you have the automation and it's just creating those efficiencies in your business? [00:03:53] Jason: So how do you help people that say they're not busy enough justify leveraging and getting tenure turner?  [00:04:02] Larry: Yeah. So from there it's really. Trying to get them more in the head space of like, "I understand that for now. But let's figure out how we can create value here." So maybe I'm getting them in a place of, you know, let's build the building blocks. "We're not going to create your account just yet, but in a perfect world, when you are busy and need our services, let's kind of back out what the steps are to get there." Sometimes maybe their portfolio isn't large enough. So then that would be a time when I would recommend to someone like you, Jason, where it's like, "Hey, you need to be a part of a program where you can, you know, grow your portfolio because he's going to help you grow your portfolio and then you're going to need us because you're only one person." so I'll try to get them in that kind of head space. But it's really almost building their tech stack. So while we're an important piece to that whole thing there's other moving parts to the entire system. So that's usually how I start. It's really more playing a consolidative role. [00:04:55] So I'm trying to consult them, figure out where they're at in the process. And if they're not a good fit for us that day, that's okay. Maybe they will be. And then I'm going to set a reminder to reach out before they're busy losing season basically.  [00:05:07] Jason: So where is that kind of cutoff point to where they've achieved, you know, Tenant Turner readiness status? [00:05:17] Larry: So sometimes people will view it from like a portfolio size. I think it's really more about the entrepreneurial mindset. I met some people where they have just one door and they're like, "Hey Larry, I'm going to be a hundred units by the end of the year." I'm like, "that's awesome man. You know, it's great you're kind of trying to build this plane before you're trying to take off," where sometimes I talk to customers, they're like, "Hey, We're flying this plane. The wings are about to fall off. And I just don't know what to do." I'm like, "okay--" [00:05:42] Jason: I'm going to build it in the air. I'm working on it.  [00:05:45] Larry: I know. It's like, "all right, well I appreciate you, you know, diving ahead first, but you're probably really stressed out right now." So, typically in our world, our pricing model, month to month, no contracts. So one to 50 units you're fine. We're going to talk to you. We're not going to be like, "oh you're too small for us, man. Like, I just can't talk to you." We have a great culture in that way. We try to be that partner with them. But typically our general rule of thumb is if you expect to have any vacancy, whether it's one throughout the entire year, you should at least consider us. Even if it's only one month out of the entire year we'll still talk to you.  [00:06:16] Jason: Yeah.  [00:06:17] Sarah: Yeah. And I think something that people don't always realize is even if you're like, I don't need it right now, I'm not ready, I don't have enough. It's going to make it so much easier if you have systems in place already, so that you can scale so that when you scale, you're not now in massive amounts of pain. And even if you only have, you know, one door, eight doors, 10 doors, any vacancy is painful. Yeah, any vacancy is painful and it's going to help you massively, not only just in your time and your effort, but it will make your clients happier. Like when I implemented Tenant Turner, my vacancy rate like took a nosedive. Now, not that I had a high vacancy rate. But like just trying to like market and figure out where to put these things and answering all the messages and doing a gazillion showings for people that might not even qualify. You know, it was taking sometimes like weeks to fill a vacancy. And when I implemented that, it went down dramatically. So clients are much, much happier and you and your staff are going to be much, much happier because now it's a lot less work for you.  [00:07:28] Larry: Yeah and kind of building on that, Sarah, we kind of find our solution is almost like a an aspirin approach. So people are kind of taking that aspirin when they have a headache in the form of vacancy. And there is a time and place to pop the aspirin, but usually what's a lot better is kind of plan ahead of, "oh, I know I could have headaches during this time of the year, so I'm going to be a little bit more you know, I'm going to prepare, I'm going to be more proactive." where I see people have the right mindset in regards to software is usually what they'll do is they'll annualize the cost and then figure out how to generate enough ROI. So if I'm able to save. Five hours per week, you know, and I annual analyze the software in such a way I don't need to worry about it because I've looked at the 12 month period and I know I'm going to get my value that way. It's a little bit harder when you're trying to convince people when they're kind of penny pitching and it's like you're wasting all this time on that part and that time worrying about it, you just wasted where you could be attracting new owners. So the mindset really is kind of analyzing the software, but trying to build the ROI into that. [00:08:31] Sarah: I have to say like I was hesitant for a while because I was like, "well, this is easy and like I have this streamlined process" and really, I said this to you. I was like, "I just don't spend that much time." I had 200 and like some odd units, like 260 I think at my highest. And when I was talking with you, I was like, "you know, I just don't spend that much time doing it. So is there a benefit to it? Yes, but how much time am I really going to save? Because I feel like it's already something that is simple for me." And even though I had this streamlined and I had processes to find and I maybe was spending a couple hours a week doing, you know, messaging and email and confirmations and stuff like that. [00:09:14] I was still spending time doing it. When I implemented Tenant Turner, then I was like, "oh, I don't have anything to do." Like every once in a while I have to just pop in and you have to like manually approve somebody. And then once, like I updated my showing schedule once a week. So once a week I had to go in and update the showing schedule for the upcoming week, which took all of maybe four minutes. And other than that, I was just popping in and kind of like manually approving people. And I was spending, I went from maybe a few hours a week, which I still didn't think was a lot to minutes per week. And I was like, "oh wow. Okay. I see it now. I see it." But sometimes they think you have to experience it to see it. Because I was like, "I just don't know!" And I was really glad that I did it because it really like, it took so much. And sometimes when you make a change like that, then you realize how much work you are actually doing. Because we rationalize, we're like, "it's not that hard. It doesn't take me that long. Like I just send a couple emails," and then when you realize, "oh, I don't have to do any of that anymore." it was like mind blowing to me. I was like, "oh, like this literally takes me like 10 minutes a week and that's it." So all my leasing was done in 10 minutes.  [00:10:33] Jason: I think that's one of my favorite ways to justify an expense is you have to look at the opportunity cost because if you're just looking, you're like, "okay, well it costs me this much money and if I do it myself, then it's free. But your time is the most valuable resource you have in a business-- not free-- and the most important currency related to growth is not cash. It's focus. And if your focus is diluted as a business owner away from what can generate more revenue, then the opportunity cost is huge in two to three hours you could be closing deals that are worth tens of thousands of dollars over that year. So it's really stupid in contrast to like hold onto the moldy peanuts in the monkey trap because you don't want to let go and not get your hand out because you just want to be cheap. [00:11:22] And so I find that cheap business owners attract cheap clients and they don't grow and scale their businesses. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, "well, I'm being cheap and I'm being frugal, and that's smart." It's not smart when it comes to business, and it's not smart when it comes to growth. You need to let go of those moldy peanuts. There's bananas in reach and the farmer's going to come along and chop off your head. And this is why most businesses fail. Most businesses fail in the-- or they get stuck-- first year or the first five years. A lot fail and property management is tough. And I see, I see a lot.  [00:11:55] Sarah: They get, they just get stuck and they're trapped. "I don't have more time. I can't do anything else. Like, I don't know what else I can do in making these little changes." Like I'm going to be honest with you, I like, I bought into the product and I still wasn't like, "ah, I think that's going to be amazing." I was like, "it'll help me." And it helped way more than I thought it was going to help me. I would say this is like 1. Was implementing a property management software and 2. Was implementing tenant Turner. Those are the two things that like made a massive shift in my business for me. [00:12:28] Jason: Nice.  [00:12:29] Sarah: And I almost wish I could have told myself like, "Hey, remember when you had 260 units and you were doing it all yourself? You should have been talking to Tenant Turner.  [00:12:37] Jason: There was some guy that had mentioned these things to you. [00:12:40] Sarah: I know! [00:12:40] Jason: He's pretty smart.  [00:12:41] Tim: I think even if you are in that cheap mindset, like at the end of the day, like vacancy is what's going to cost your owners the most money down the road too. Like one day on the market can cost them anywhere from what, 50 to $200 depending on what they're paying for their mortgage and everything. Like those costs add up and it's as property managers, it's your fiduciary duty to help them recoup that money. And if you're spending too much time on those types of things, even if you're focused on your business and spending time on that, you could still be losing that money by having those extra days on market without this type of system. [00:13:11] Sarah: Absolutely, and I think the conversation that I have with people over and over again is you need to figure out what this particular task is worth in dollars. So if this is like a $10 an hour task, a $20 an hour task, Is it something that you, as a business owner need to be doing? Is your time worth more than 10 or $20 an hour? And if the answer to that question is yes, then you need to not be the one who's doing this.  [00:13:35] Jason: Yeah. If a business owner, and a lot of business owners are the BDM, they are the business development manager. They are the person that's doing sales and generating revenue and growing the business. And if you do not as a business owner, have a full-time BDM. [00:13:49] You have somebody focused on this and it's on your shoulders, then you're a shitty part-time salesperson. You're maybe investing, I find one, maybe two hours a day. That's like 10 hours a week focusing on growing the business. And so everything else other than that should be offloaded that you can everything else. Give up the leasing stuff as much as you can, give up the maintenance stuff as much as you can, like you need to be focused on generating revenue until you can offload that piece and focus. Otherwise, you're not going to grow. And if any business owner is listening to this in property management, if you haven't grown significantly over the last year or two or three, it's because you are doing the wrong things as a business owner in the business. Plain and simple, there's no way around that. So we chatted about justifying it for those that are already, they have lots of doors and they're, you know, how do we deal with making things scalable during the busy season? And then things really for leasing tend to really cool down in the winter months. And so what are you typically seeing with clients that come to you that are maybe at a 200 plus doors or it's obvious that you can serve them. [00:15:02] Tim: I mean, even if you do have 200 doors sure, summertime's going to be the busiest, where generally speaking, you could have anywhere from what, five to 12% vacancy rates and whatnot with turnovers and whatnot. During the wintertime, there still might be one or two that hit every month. And what we're noticing with customers that size is that throughout the year we kind of keep things with that month to month rate really low for everyone. [00:15:24] It's based on portfolio size for us. And so most people are keeping that active because even one listing, like you're saying, if you're working on one listing, spending two or three hours on that one listing, even getting to go back and forth with the messages, the emails and everything like that could still be costing you more than what your monthly rate for subscription might be. So a lot of people do keep us going year round and have the lock boxes and things like that in service for vendors and stuff that might need to come and go for properties as well. So, there's lots of different little solutions that we provide there too that kind of help keep the business flowing smoothly, but generally speaking, we're there when they need us and any spot in the road where if it's crazy or if it's just a little bit, we try to keep the system smooth all year for them.  [00:16:10] Larry: I guess to add to that so typically when things are slow, usually people are saying, "I'm not getting enough leads." really what they mean is they're not getting enough leads from, you know, Zillow, Trulia, the big networks. And when they come to us and say, "Hey, what do I do? What can Tenant Turner provide?" That's usually when I tell them like, "you're really going to hunker down and how are you going to be different than your competition?" and that's also times when like, you know, "let's look at your website. You know, are you being an industry leader in your market?" So maybe they're not going to the Zillows, but when they search, or, you know, what is your web, your presence in your market? Automation's great and you definitely should automate, but then there's also times to be that personalized touch. So when things are slow, what aren't your competitors doing? If they're leaning really heavy where they can't talk to a person at all maybe you should go to what we call the 'take request model,' where we're automating things, we're pre-qualifying, and then we're setting, you know, a couple days and times. But before an appointment's approved, you get to talk to that lead. And really what you're doing, you're leveraging yourself. You introduce yourself, you say why you're great and you're market maybe some key differentiators. And then you schedule an appointment. And you do a couple things. What I like to say is you're doing what's called a vibes test just to make sure both of you are, you know, a good fit, rather to rent the property and that type of stuff. And also you're making sure they have a heartbeat. Making sure, you know, if you're using self-guided tours, it's another security layer to everything. Because at the end of the day, I'm a big fan of it's the, a book called Rework by the guys who created Basecamp. And the whole philosophy is that it's not that in a world where people saying, "I need more of this," whether it's "I need more leads" or "I need more tools," it's more utilizing the tools that you already have more efficiently. So when we look at things like lead flow, maybe it's not necessarily a top of the funnel problem, it's more of a bottom of the funnel conversion problem. And then when you use personalization to a lot of interesting ways, like I mentioned. [00:18:04] Jason: So one of the things that I think is happening a bit throughout the US and I've had some podcast guests touch on this, is that in some markets-- and I've heard some some property managers anecdotally share this with me as well-- they're having a difficulty getting tenants because the inventory as a result of the pandemic just went up, skyrocketed. A lot of people are like, "Hey, let's build, let's create a bunch of investments." Now there's a surplus of inventory and that creates a scarcity of tenants, and so they're having to get a little bit more aggressive. What strategies Have you guys seen, or you know, because you're connected to a lot of people that are doing leasing, how are they becoming more attractive to tenants than their competition? [00:18:48] Tim: You want to start or? So there's a lot of different things out there, like different solutions, whether it's providing something like a benefits package to your residents, things like that really making your listings stand out. If it's better photography, if it's better marketing in general for stuff. But generally speaking, we are kind of seeing that trend as well, where days on market are expanding a little bit. It's kind of a trend that's-- we were kind of in a goldlock zone for the last couple of years with rentals. Like it's been amazing and pre covid it wasn't ever really like that either. Like that we're kind of seeing the ebbs and flows of the market, and that's just natural in real estate. So, we're coming back to the time where people are like, kind of hunkering down and making sure that their properties are as good as they can be to really attract the best tenants for them. So while there might be a few extra days on market, there's a couple things you can do around there. Like Larry's saying, adding those personal touches in there. Setting up notifications so that as soon as someone gets to the property, you can still have that personal touch by making a phone call as soon as you can see they got into the property. Or if maybe some people are doing a few more in-person showings, if that's the case. Generally speaking, that's putting more time on the property as well, which, like we talked about, costs opportunity costs.  [00:20:00] If you got the team to do that, and that's kind of their role as a leasing agent or whatnot, great. They can have that personal touch and then go a little bit further with them. But if you're also focused on self showings having that additional personal touch, some additional marketing on the property or whatnot, I can kind of help draw that process out a little bit sooner. And really with our system, it. We really try to provide as much immediacy as possible. So when someone sees a listing on a site like Zillow, for instance they're clicking request information. We're sending them an email right away that they have the opportunity to come into Tenant Turner and click a link and schedule a tour right away. If they're calling into us, they're not going to a voicemail. They're going to be sitting there waiting three days for someone to respond to. I know that's a trend of the industry. A lot of people have massively filled inbox inboxes that they just can't handle. So tenant leads never hear back from anyone because they kind of pick and choose. We're responding to every single one of those leads as they come in and making sure that immediacy is really driving that engagement.  [00:20:59] So if we keep that engagement up for everyone the goal is that, generally speaking, that alone will really help drive. What's, I think there's a statistic out there? If you respond within five minutes, generally speaking, you're going to get 80% more acceptance in terms of a conversation. Yeah. There's that click or an actual phone call, things like that, like providing that immediacy is a massive, and it goes a long way for impressing tenant leads on the consumer side, but also in, in business. We all know B two B sales and even BDMs like calling their owners. As soon as you see a click on a website, you want to call them. So we want to keep that trend going on our side as well.  [00:21:33] Jason: Yeah, this is the TikTok generation man. They have attention spans of like two minutes, you know, it's like really short. So I love these ideas. So pushing owners to improve the property I think is a great strategy. Increasing your availability and your responsiveness and that immediacy, quick, beat, slow for sure in business. Increasing the ease Tenent Turner helps with. And then making sure that you are able to be super responsive within the first five minutes. So yeah. Love it. All right, cool. What else should we chat about related to scaling up your process during the busy season? Did we miss anything?  [00:22:12] Larry: We got it. I know typically the elephant in the room, so a lot of times, you know, self-guided tours is the golden child of, you know, why you should consider it and how it's helpful, whether it's busy or slow and this, that, and the other. But one of the things that we had is for people that aren't using it and it's like, "I would never consider that or I'm scared to use this or I can never get owner buy-in." And that's kind of always the elephant in the room. I know Tim, you have some very interesting data of, you know, while, you know, like anything in business there are inherent risks, but as business owners every day we are willing to kind of, you know, improve or, you know, try to tackle these risks. And there's usually a pot-- not all the time, but you know, a pot of gold can be waiting for you. So was there any data that you wanted to share, Tim?  [00:22:56] Jason: Before we get into that, let's kill that objection real quick. because I hear this all the time too. So I say, "Hey, maybe you should be using Tenant Turner or something like this," and they say, "well, I don't want to do lock boxes." And my response is, "you don't have to." like, there's a lot of benefits besides that piece. In fact, there's plenty of benefits besides that piece. And so maybe you can address that real quick and then we can talk about is that even really a valid concern or not? And are there markets that are better for lockbox versus others? Some are like, "I can never do that in my market. I'll have squatters all over the place." you know, they're concerned. So let's address that, that elephant in the room.  [00:23:34] Tim: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you guys know your properties best. You're going to know which areas might have a high potential for negativity happening. Whether it's someone coming in and stealing wires, the horror stories of people stealing appliances and stuff like that. At the end of the day, if someone wants to do something bad, A lockbox or a keyless lock isn't necessarily going to stop someone in that scenario, right? We all know areas where people aren't afraid to break a window and get in, steal a refrigerator. Like the fact that a property isn't known to be vacant is a big enough red flag alone that most people that want to do something nefarious will go ahead and do it. But at the same time on our side of things, if we can block as many of those instances as possible with our abilities to kind of keep track of known scammers and squatters and things like that. We've got some stuff built into our system, but really at the end of the day, if someone wants to do something bad, it's going to happen. But generally speaking, most people that are doing showings, that type of scenario, if you're, you know, your area, if you're doing your own kind of awareness inspections periodically and you're on top of the property yourself, we barely hear of any instances of negativity happening with those scenarios. Like self showings, we can come up with the horror stories, but at the end of the day, in our experience, they are really few and far between and we're not having major issues, at least more than what you would on average. See, with any property that's being marketed, it's vacant. Like that's, it's going to happen.  [00:24:56] Jason: And there's some serious advantages because, I would imagine the best defense, period, against all of those type of problems is just getting it leased out as quick as possible. Yep. It's decreasing vacancy, and so if a lockbox can help them get into it right away, get a showing right away, whatever, decreasing the vacancy time is probably your best, you know, defense.  [00:25:18] Sarah: Yeah. The other thing I'll add to this too, is if there are people who are kind of scoping out the property and they notice, hey, like every Tuesday at six o'clock people come and then that's it. They're not going to come at Tuesday at six o'clock. They're going to come at other times. Yeah. So if we do have a lockbox on it, and now we don't really know, like when people are going to come because they're coming whenever is like convenient for them. So it might be earlier in the morning or in the afternoon or late at night. We don't know for sure. There's not so much predictability in the schedule. So I think that's something that would help as well is if there's someone who's " Hey, that house over there is vacant. Let's like check that out." But they consistently see people in and out of it, that is a little bit of a deterrent as well, because you never know, like, "Hey, if I go over there because I want to steal that refrigerator, am I walking into someone who's already there? [00:26:14] Jason: Now you can not have a big old sign on the property out front that says, "Hey, this is vacant right now. Do you want to see this?" You know, but you can still market it online without like giving out the address until they're ready to do a showing probably.  [00:26:29] Larry: Yeah, so there's some kind of tips and tricks that we've found. So one thing is not advertising it as a self-guided tour. If you're going to use verbiage in the marketing description, use contactless showing. Because that could mean virtual tours, it could mean other things. But really for us, I like to describe ourselves as a closed loop system. because usually leads are only interacting with our platform if they find out through your website or through a syndication site. So it makes it much more harder to shop for homes because they really don't know, you know, but if they inquire, then that's when the automation will engage. Some interesting things, you know, kind of like Sarah said, one thing deterrent is they see activity, but you know, we find that a lead isn't going to put a government Id answer some questions and go through this process. Why would they do that when they could just go to the front door? You could go to YouTube and learn how to pick a lock and under five minutes, and then no one's going to know I'm on the radar. It's so much easier to do that. Especially in the age of TikTok. I'm sure there's a TikTok, within two minutes or less you'll learn how to pick a lock or pop open a lockbox or something like that too. [00:27:34] Sarah: Or break a window.  [00:27:35] Larry: Or break a window.  [00:27:37] Jason: Yeah, it's a little bit quicker probably. All right, cool. So, how can people get in touch with Tenant Turner and reach out to you guys?  [00:27:48] Larry: Yeah, so obviously if they want to learn a little bit about our services, tenantturner.com. My name's Larry, larry@tenantturner.com. Feel free to email me directly. I kind of deem myself as a software nerd so you know, any questions about whether you use this or not, that's fine. You know, I'm always happy to share tips and tricks of how to automate your process, so that's kind of how you learn some more.  [00:28:12] Tim: So Larry's on the sales side of things for tenant Turner. I'm on the marketing side too, so if you ever need any additional materials or data and statistics around the self showings, if you want to help market to your owners and whatnot, if you've already signed up with Tenant Turner, happy to kind of jump on that side of things. You can email me at tim@tenantturner.com. [00:28:26] Jason: Awesome. I'm sure that's a big part of it is really if they understand how to sell it to their clients, then that's probably the biggest hurdle. Is just being able to confidently say, here's why this is a good idea and how it's going to benefit you and to sell them on it. So, awesome. Well it's been great having you both here on the show. We appreciate Tenant Turner. We get great feedback on tenant Turner from our clients, so we've always felt very confident pushing our clients towards you as one part of their growth strategy and and I hope you guys have an awesome week.  [00:28:59] Larry: Thanks. You as well. We appreciate you guys and thanks for including us. [00:29:02] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that is wanting to grow your business, reach out to Tenant Turner and make sure you reach out to DoorGrow. We are really good at helping our clients scale if you feel like you need more doors to be able to afford Tenant Turner or to be able to justify tenant Turner. We're really good at helping people do that. Anything else we should add? I don't think so. Let's tell them to join our Facebook group. Join our Facebook group.  [00:29:28] There you go. DoorGrow club.com. Join our Facebook group community. We have some free stuff in there. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.  [00:29:37] Jason Hull: 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!  [00:30:04] 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.

The property management industry has been moving more and more towards automating tasks and processes in the last decade. Property management tools and software have improved drastically and continue to improve every year. In this episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with Mo Hussein from Balanced Asset Solutions to talk about property management tools and systems. You'll Learn... [06:23] Why You DON’T Want Software that Does it All [10:27] Implementing a New Tool or System [20:40] The Cost of Hiring vs Implementing a New Software [28:04] The Most Effective Accountability System for Your Team Tweetables “Try to evaluate software from a very objective type of lens. At the end of the day, it is just a tool.” “You don't see an amazing handyman or you know, vendor or somebody that's going to do some work, show up with a, just a multi-tool. Like where's your toolbox?” “There's no such thing as one product that's going to do everything extremely well.” “The humbling experience every business owner needs to have is when they start to hire people that are better at the things they used to do that they've let go of.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Initially when I was playing around with stuff in my own business, I was like, I need to find that multi-tool, and I think this is a mistake a lot of people make. I need to find this multi-tool that can do everything. That sounds like that would be the best thing, but it does it really badly, right? You don't see an amazing handyman or somebody that's going to do some work, show up with a, just a multi-tool. Like where's your toolbox?  [00:00:23] Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and in life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. 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.  [00:01:24] So my guest today, I'm hanging out with Mo Hussein. Welcome Mo and what's the name of your business?  [00:01:30] Mohammed: Hey Jason. Pleasure to be here. It's called Balanced Asset Solutions.  [00:01:34] Jason: Balanced Asset Solutions. Awesome. So the topic Mo and I are going to be chatting about today is the Power of Innovative Software Solutions. But before we get into that, Mo, why don't you give everybody a little bit of background on yourself and how you've sort of connected yourself to property management?  [00:01:50] Mohammed: Yeah, great, great question. So we are a CPA accounting and technology advisory firm that specifically just focuses on real estate. So we work with property managers, asset managers, fund managers. In implementing software leveraging software to be able to streamline their business and enabling them to be able to scale. Prior to starting this practice about six years ago I've actually worked for AppFolio and well before they were public as well as Yardi Systems. And what I saw in the market was you know, the software is a tool at the end of the day, and there's a lot of complexity that comes with these programs. The accounting nuances, how to properly implement it, get your accounting to work right, your numbers to show up correctly. And a lot of customers would call in asking for accounting and operational kind of advice. And being a software vendor, we're there to make sure that the product is technically working right, versus giving advice in the accounting and operations world. And so we started this practice about six years ago and we offer, you know, CPA and accounting services around the accounting that bookkeeping using these products and also kind of maximizing the ability to kind of streamline your business and wrapping your business processes around these programs. [00:02:59] Jason: Cool. Awesome. So you worked for AppFolio, you worked for Yardi as well, correct? Correct. Okay. And in a tech capacity?  [00:03:09] Mohammed: In a tech capacity, yeah. In sales and account management? Correct.  [00:03:13] Jason: Okay. I come from a tech background as well, so. Great. I worked at HP and I worked at Verizon, and so we're both nerds. Talk nerdy to me, Mo! Let's go. So what are you noticing in the industry when it comes to software? And, you know, this is a challenge a lot of people are trying to figure out which one to pick when they're in the startup stage. And then what I also notice-- Some try to do it without it-- but what I also notice is that nobody ever seems totally happy with their software and they're always looking over the fence at their neighbor to try and figure out, what are you using? Is this better? And I get people switch more often than they probably should. And then they realize they're missing something else. So what do you work on with clients and what are you seeing?  [00:04:00] Mohammed: Yeah. You know, great question and you know about like what, 15, 20 years ago, when we think about property management software and the industry as a whole, there weren't that many players. You had Yardi, this is before AppFolio time, 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. You had some very legacy players that worked with larger commercial operators like an MRI or Skyline. A lot of these on-premise pieces of software have now been kind of gobbled up by larger players or have transformed to be, you know, software as a service or web-based programs. And now, you know, over time now the ability to be able to build new software, the barrier to entry is much lower. You know, modern technology frameworks like using like single page apps and stuff like that are very ubiquitous. And you're seeing a lot of new entrants and players that are coming into the market. You know, players like Red Vine. That you're hearing of now. And then also there's this whole you know, offshoot or like a entire vertical that's been created now called PropTech. And now you have technology that's specific for screening and, you know, maintenance management, facilities management, investment management, and you have all these little products that are coming out. And so, you know, one thing that we always you know, implore on our customers is, you know, try to evaluate software from a very objective type of lens. At the end of the day, it is just a tool. And the effectiveness of that tool is in how you use it. Right? If you're using a hammer, you know, not in a conducive way, then it's not going to be an effective tool, right? And so there's a lot of buzz in the market that you hear now, especially with AI and generative ai. There's a lot of different tools that are in the market, but you know, the fundamentals of what you're looking to make the software do or hopefully achieve with the software, being able to streamline your rent collections and tenant communication, your vendor communication, you know, we always tell our customers, Hey, put together a checklist of what exactly the objectives are that you're looking to accomplish with this piece of software. Try to tie that to some business outcome. And that's kind of the driver of why you're looking at or evaluating the software and then put together a grading rubric and then, you know, find the software that is effective for your business needs. Don't give too much credence and how it looks or the aesthetics or what you're hearing from other folks. Definitely what you're hearing in the market will help kind of guide the software programs they to take a look at, but you know, we tend to see this as well, a lot of clients are kind of jumping around between different products and are not happy with one product or another. And usually it's an issue associated with kind of the implementation and kind of the adoption and enablement that they're giving to their employees with the product. [00:06:22] Jason: So, going back to your tool analogy, I think my philosophy with software. Initially when I was playing around with stuff in my own business, I was like, I need to find that multi-tool, and I think this is a mistake a lot of people make. I need to find this multi-tool that can do everything. It's got the hammer, the screwdriver, the pliers, tweezers, knife, like everything in it. That sounds like that would be the best thing. I'll just find something, does everything, but it does it really badly, right? You don't see an amazing handyman or you know, vendor or somebody that's going to do some work, show up with a, just a multi-tool. Like where's your toolbox? "Oh, I've got this guy. This can do everything." Right? So my philosophy on software over time is definitely shifted to, I want my team members to have the best tools, and if those best tools can do some things really well, then I will find other tools to strap onto that or add into my toolbox. That also do their job really well, and I find I get a better result having the best tools, even if I'm spending more money, than having that multi-tool that can do a whole bunch of things. So what's your take on this? Are we in alignment or...?  [00:07:34] Mohammed: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And I completely agree. There's no such thing as one product that's going to do everything extremely well, right? There's going to be some pitfalls in one area that you have to sacrifice for another area. And so, you know, usually when clients are going through these evaluation kind of cycles of looking at software, what we suggest is, "Hey, you know, use this as an opportunity to also do some introspection. Understand what your standard operating procedures are, how you run your business, what is your accounting cycle look like? Who's involved? How does that process propagate throughout the organization? Same thing with you know, the leasing, the accounting operations when it comes to maintenance and document what that process kind of looks like, and then use that as kind of a guiding post of the functionality you're looking from the program," you know, versus going into the evaluation and looking at a bunch of different pieces of software. And usually when, you know, when clients realize like, "Hey, you know, we didn't realize that this program had a limitation in this aspect," they didn't approach it from a manner of understanding kind of what their processes are and then kind of demoing the software or looking at the programs from that lens, if that makes sense. [00:08:40] Jason: Got it. So what size of companies and what companies typically are coming to you for help, and what do they need help with?  [00:08:49] Mohammed: Great question. So we have a pretty broad range of clients. We have small mom and pop and customers with, you know, 10 or 15 doors on the residential side. And then we have clients, large asset fund managers that are, you know, grappling with 80,000 plus doors across the world. And so, we don't only focus on residential, commercial, office, industrial, manufactured housing, self storage. The only vertical we don't touch is senior housing, mainly because of hipaa, kind of healthcare requirements there. Ok, cool. Some of the problems that they do have, one is change management. [00:09:21] Most of the clients we work with have, you know, CPAs in house, you know, they have staff implementing and properly adopting software is a herculean effort, especially as the organization grows larger and larger. You have your day-to-day responsibilities, challenges, organization, and cleanliness, you know, understanding kind of accounting and software. At the same time, you know, change management and project management and the orchestration of that is probably the biggest challenge that a lot of our clients have. And in general, we're all creatures of habit, right? So there's a significant opportunity that cost that comes with kind of managing and implementing a new solution and ushering a change, versus kind of focusing on growth and your portfolio and servicing your owners and your tenants. [00:10:04] Jason: Now a lot of business owners will get excited about some new tech or some new software, some new thing they're going to throw into the business, and they go and throw this at their team, and then they get friction and resistance and adoption. Anyone that's ever been around tech or software knows that trying to get a team to use tech adoption is the number one challenge. [00:10:25] You've already mentioned it twice, right? Adoption's a big challenge. So, What is the secret to adoption? And I find for me, there's a couple of factors, but I want to hear what you found really helps with the adoption happening and getting team buy-in and getting team members to actually use this stuff. [00:10:46] Mohammed: Yeah. Great question. I did a radio show a couple months ago and kind of the three things that we see that are needed in order to have kind of. Effective adoption and enablement with software and just in general, just changes. One is executive sponsorship and so we see a lot of owners of property management, asset management firms, you know, they understand that there is a need for some of your product or, you know, they're doing a lot of pen and paper using a lot of Excel spreadsheets. They want to use some piece of software. However, they'll relegate or delegate that to the team that would also be using it. And so, And this team not only has to go through and do their kind of day-to-day activities, but now they also have to go through the process of evaluating different pieces of software or different software products. And they're giving kind of an artificial budget and the executive or the sponsor is not as involved. Kind of the evaluation process and not giving much weight to, you know, how significant of a change this will be at the end of the day. You know, implementing a new piece of software is very business disruptive. And so, you know, your employees are the folks that are kind of doing this evaluation, feel like they're on, kind of on their own little island and kind of going through this entire change and evaluation on their own. That's one is the kind of executive sponsorship. And usually when that executive sponsorship exists and the, you know, the owner and the executives in the business are actually involved during the evaluation cycle this also gives confidence to, you know, the the employees and the folks in your organization that you are serious about this. [00:12:14] want to make sure that it is successful. I want to see it through. And it incentivizes, you know, extreme ownership. You know, folks want to do less manual work. We want to do less administrivia work, right? And so, and these software programs have that promise. So executive owner sponsorship extreme ownership. And then lastly, and probably most importantly is change management. And this is something that most organizations just struggle with in general. They're too focused and kind of, siloed into what they're trying to accomplish, that they're not looking at kind of the bigger picture and the impact that this change is impacting across the organization. And so that's why organizations and consultants like us kind of exist. And so executive sponsorship, extreme ownership and change management.  [00:12:58] Jason: Yeah, entrepreneurs like to walk into a room, pull the pin on a grenade that they picked up at a conference. Throw it into the middle of their team and say, "here's our new thing we're doing! or "go do this thing!" and the team are like, what the hell? Like, we've got plenty of work already to be working on. We're not excited about this. This does not look fun to us. This is terrifying. You know, how am I going to manage my current work? And and they don't want to really own it. They, and they don't want to mess up because they know if they go out there, start researching software and they're usually not given the right criteria. Right. Like, they're like, how do we weight the criteria? because they probably are going to be conservative and think just in terms of budget. Whereas the business owner's probably like, I want the best. And, you know, there isn't really a good decision making guide related to this and which weighted factors and how they should consider it. Right. And so, You know, if anyone's ever seen a decision making matrix where you list out all the criteria, right? Like what's the speed of implementation, how disruptive will this be? How intuitive is the UI or the user interface for the software you know, can we pick it up pretty easily? So, How much training is going to be required? What's the cost, right? How long is it going to take to implement, right? And then you can weight all the software and figure out, all right, what's going to look like, what looks like the best one, but which of these criteria is the most important? Which one's the second most important? So there's a cool app I like to, I've used in the past called Best Decision on the iPhone. [00:14:29] Okay. And you can put in all your criteria, you can put in your question, you can put in all your options, and it'll, you can put the weight on these and then it, you can go through and take it like a quiz and put in all your different options and each criteria. And then at the end it'll say, here's your best decision. So it's kind of cool. I don't know if it exists on Android, but I've used that in the past, but a lot of times people just don't have anything like that and nobody wants to manage the process of implementation. Right. Leaving that on the team shoulder generally doesn't work because they're going to just blame everyone else. There isn't extreme ownership. Right. Which is a great book by the way, right? And then the business owner. Is already delegated, so they're not really taking ownership. Yeah. I could see how that would be a huge mess. Yeah.  [00:15:14] Mohammed: Yeah. It's also you know, implementing a software is it has its own nuances and complexities that come with it, right? There's companies that just focus on that. And quite honestly, if you're a business owner, property manager, you know, implementing software is not a distinctive differentiator to you from your competition, and so you should be taking on responsibilities and delegating internally for the things that actually make material impact and differentiate your business versus, you know, the accounting or implementing some piece of software, which is something that you and your competition peers have to do anyway. [00:15:43] Jason: Yeah, I find that we have the best success. So DoorGrow has a suite of software as well in that PropTech category, I guess, and we find that the operator is the person that should be moving this forward and learning it and getting the team doing it. Not the business owner typically. Because the business owner likes the concept. They like the idea of the software, they like the vision of where we could get to and the results, but they don't want to do the work to implement it. They don't want to usually learn it fully. And the operator is usually more the personality type that geeks out on that stuff anyway, and would be happy to dig into it, learn it, get it dialed in. Get all the detail in the minutiae en entered into it. Especially when it comes to like process software. It's like we have this Visio like, or Lucidchart like flowchart software for building out workflows for process that you can build in forms and other stuff. But it's very visual and that makes it really intuitive and easy for teams to map out their processes and to know where they're at currently in a workflow if they're running a process. [00:16:51] We find that's a whole level beyond what we used to experience before we had DoorGrow flow in like Process Street. Or some people use Lead Simple, or they use some of these more checklist based tools. You know, and my operator actually is unique. She's my wife, but she's a little unique that she doesn't like technology, like she thinks it's trying to get her. She's fighting with her computer all the time. She's like, what is this? And she asked me to come in. I'm the nerd in the company. And I'm like, oh, it's like this. She's like, okay. But she's like, "see!" Like technology's out to get me, you know? And so, but she likes using DoorGrow flow. Because it's visual and she can map. I'm like, what are you doing? It was the weekend. This weekend. I'm like, what are you doing? She's like, oh, I'm mapping out a process. I'm like, really?  [00:17:36] Mohammed: Yeah, and this is a great example, Jason, that was already a process. You guys had documents, right? You're using the software to kind of map, you know, digitally the process that you've already kind of built. And so that's, and that's huge crux also with a lot of folks that are implementing these new products is that, you know, they don't have that process. They don't have SOPs, you know, they don't have controls within the organization and checks, especially when it comes to the accounting. And so they jump into this product and you know, They're, you know, they fail to have a process and that also tends to make the product just the enablement around it. Very finicky and, you know, there's a lack of adoption. And then, oh they find another shiny tool and product and that gets 'em excited.  [00:18:15] Jason: Right. I think one thing that also really affects adoption is the timeline in a lot of people's minds is a lot shorter than reality. And I think my general rule for implementing something new in a business, whether it's building out one of DoorGrow's, growth engines, and adding this into your business is it's going to take minimum 90 days. And usually it's the first 30 days to just start to install or build this engine or to like get the software just set up. Maybe it's going to take a second month to now start to do the major changes and tweaks in it, and then the third month, usually it's just the little tweaks that give you 90% of the results. Like it's that last 10% of getting something dialed in that gives you 90% of the results. And sometimes the mistake our clients will make, like if they're just implementing a growth strategy, for example, is they will do some of the work during the first 30 days. Not fully build that engine, and then they try and dump a little fuel into it and they're like, this thing is leaky as hell and it's not getting any results and it's not working, and they didn't do the work to get it dialed in. And this happens in your sales process. This happens in just about anything. It's that last 10% of dialing in the little tweaks and the little changes that finally gets you to getting 90% of the benefit and the results.  [00:19:40] Mohammed: Right. No, of course. And then there's also that notion of implementation fatigue, right? It's like the longer that kind of this implementation cycle kind of drags out kind of diminishing returns.  [00:19:51] Jason: Oh, totally true. They just burnt out on it. And the business owners getting fed up and it's just because they didn't probably have a decent plan, but they're like, they're giving up. And then you hear, like I hear a ton of clients say, Hey, we really like property meld like this cool tool that really has helped us dial in our maintenance and speed things up. And then I hear some say we tried it for like the first month and it was a nightmare and we quit. And I'm like, really? Because I hear amazing feedback most of the time. They're like, oh yeah, it was awful. I'm like, okay, so.  [00:20:25] Mohammed: Fail the plan or plan to fail. Right?  [00:20:27] Jason: Yeah. So interesting. So, well, what else would you like to chat about the power of innovative software solutions that we haven't covered yet?  [00:20:38] Mohammed: Yeah, so, you know, a lot of times when we're talking to clients or prospects that are implementing a new piece. One thing that I did want to kind of double click on is the the point that you mentioned about kind of the timeframe it takes to implement a new piece of software. It's also the toll and the investment, right? The time investment. You know, there's an opportunity cost between hiring experts to do something versus, you know, DIY or doing it yourself. And so I feel like there's also a chasm and kind of a gap between kind of ownership's understanding of just like, Hey, this new product is just data entry. I can use my VA or folks that I have in the Philippines, or you know, some of my other employees that just enter this data and then all of a sudden this product is going to be working well. Yeah. I'm curious when you're talking to clients and they're saying, Hey, you know, this piece of product didn't work well for us, do you usually kind of dig a little bit deeper? I'm usually try to ask a lot of follow up questions, quantify like where exactly things did not go right. [00:21:34] And and I tend to get a lot of answers of, you know what, I don't know. That's a good question. [00:21:37] Jason: So when things don't go well, it's usually excuses. They're like, well, we couldn't get vendors to use it, like if they're talking about Property Meld. But really like, did you tell them if they want to work with you, they have to use it? And did you sell them on the benefits of how it's going to collapse time for them? And they'll be able to just use their phone to do this and it'll make everything easier. Right. So I think one of the challenges is if you go into implementing a software, switching to a software, but you don't yet believe in it, then you're going to sabotage your results with it. And that means they're not fully sold on it. And I think when it comes to technology, First, the person that's the decision maker has to be sold on the technology. They have to believe in it if they're really going to move forward. Otherwise, they should not move forward with it. And then once they believe in it, they have to transfer that belief to their team. They have to convince the team to believe in it, because if they can't sell the team on doing it, but they're going to expect the team to implement it, it's going to be met with disastrous results. And I think that's our role as an entrepreneur. We have to continually be selling our team. On what we're doing, and then we can sell to potential clients on what our business is doing. But we have to always be selling our team. And the way that we do that internally, one of our software or one of our tech tools is a planning software called DoorGrow OS for Operations. One of the flaws or fundamental flaws I see in planning like with EOS or Traction or these sort of things is it's very top down. It's like I'm in charge and it over inflates the importance of the visionary in the accountability org chart. Like the visionary is like this amazing God who the only person who has all the ideas in the business. Which is really flawed thinking. If you have even a decent team, really flawed thinking, that means you're the emperor with no clothes. Everybody's like, yeah, you have the best ideas. Sure boss, you know, and you're missing out on a lot of good stuff. And then they, the below that person, they put the integrator and then below the integrator in the org chart, they put everyone else on the team, right? The rest of the executive team. This is so fundamentally flawed. I think it's ridiculous, but. It really inflates the importance of it inflates the ego of the visionary looking at this, well, yeah, I am pretty important. And then it over inflates the importance of the integrator, which really probably should be called an operator, but the integrator. And that's what the EOS company sells. [00:24:09] They sell integrators. These are their coaches that help with the implementation of this flawed system. And it over inflates the importance of this integrator so they can sell integrators, right? I believe that's a very top-down system, and I think it's super important to have a bottom up planning system with your team to where the team you're getting their ideas first on each of the major areas of dysfunction or constraint in the business, and then the visionary is the last to speak. [00:24:37] An operator is probably second to last to speak so that they don't mess everything up and temper it and become the emperor/empress with no clothes, where everybody's like, yeah what he said, I just want to keep my job and please this person. So what he or she said, right? So, so I think with I think it starts with having how you plan as a business and the planning and cadence is the communication system in the business. For effective communication and rolling out software or implementing new things, there needs to be a really solid plan, but the team need to be coming to these conclusions. The team needs to be saying, Hey, we could use a better software. And you can inject those ideas as a visionary, like, Hey, I did see this. There is a problem here. Let's brainstorm and the team come up with ideas.  [00:25:23] The visionary might say, Hey, you're missing another idea. There's this that could do this. And the team might be like, oh, okay. Right. We should get that Property Meld software or whatever, right? So you got to get the team's buy-in. And I think that happens through really good planning, right? And a lot of teams, that's one of the most fundamental systems I think a business should have, is a really good planning system where they have annual goals broken down into 90 day, you know, quarterly goals, broken down into their 30 day or monthly goals, broken down into weekly commitments. And this is strategic stuff to move the business forward. So they have a strategic plan, not just their daily tactical work. And the challenge, most businesses, everything's tactical, and then the boss comes and throws some strategic grenade into the middle of the room and says, Hey, start doing this thing. And the team didn't plan this together. They didn't buy in into this, they didn't see the problem together, and they didn't brainstorm together. And so there's no buy-in and it's very top-down. I think that's where the mistakes really start to happen, so.  [00:26:22] Mohammed: You hit the nail on the head there, Jason. It's it's funny you know, that even the way that software today is evaluated has changed also. Right? You know, traditionally, you know, a couple decades ago when you had a lot of on-premise type of software like Cap X, software investments versus, you know, SAAS subscriptions where you're actually paying a monthly maintenance fee, right? [00:26:41] Jason: You had to have a server and then you had to have a tech guy maintaining the server and there was some nerd that understood it and they had, like, you were like, you had to pay them whatever you had to pay them because this was, your whole business was running off this.  [00:26:52] Mohammed: Yeah. Right. Now you can just get something off the shelf and get it implemented very quickly. But one key thing that I do want to highlight of what you said is that, you know, you need to elevate the voices of the folks that are closest to the problem. So it has to be kind of that bottom up type of grassroots type of investment and type of focus. Because those are the folks that have the most to gain from being able to solve for those problems. And they'll feel, you know, when there are a lot of initiatives or objectives that kind of come from top down. Similar to what you were saying kind of about the eos, is that folks see it as kind of a task that are being delegated to do this work versus, you know, being incentivized and taking ownership of like, Hey, you know what, this is my domain. This is going to make my life easier in x, y, and Z way. And you know, and then I think the goals are very important.  [00:27:37] I'm sure you've heard of kind of smart goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time based. And putting that into, you know, weekly, 30 days, 90 days, and kind of, and going through that type of approach and kind of any type of endeavor or change or kind of trying to turn things around. Most of the clients that we speak with are just folks that we see that fail with when it comes to implementations. It's usually, you know, a lack of ownership and a lot of kind of top-down initiatives that are kind of broad, the organization and then, you know, kind of a lack of a, you know, sponsorship. [00:28:04] Jason: Also, you know, there's some entrepreneurs listening to this right now. I guarantee it. It might be you, whoever's listening that are thinking, this is total bs this can't work because the, you know, doing something that's bottom up. Because fundamentally, even before having a really good planning system for the team and communication system, if you could do this and have it be bottom up, they're like, it has to be top down because my team are idiots. Like, they don't believe in their team. And that's because there's a lot of bosses that have built the wrong team, and it's because they're showing up as the wrong person already in the business, which means they're wearing hats right now. If you're listening and you're wearing hats right now that you do not enjoy, several hats you don't enjoy, maybe you don't enjoy sales or maybe you don't enjoy accounting or whatever it is, or the team members that do are doing these things, you are all always talking with them about how to do it, which means your org chart really just has you in parentheses, next to every person in the org chart, right? So that means that you are the wrong person. You're showing up doing the wrong things in the business, and you've built a team around the wrong person. It's like having a fake puzzle piece. Instead of the right puzzle piece. It's you, and then you build puzzle pieces all around that. And so now you have the wrong team. And so you have the wrong team if you are constantly frustrated in your mind saying, why won't my team just think for themselves? The problem is you. It's because you as a business owner, Are holding onto too many things and not letting go. [00:29:37] And it's because you have built a team of people that you don't trust or you built a team of people that the business needed, but you didn't build the team that you needed in order to have more peace and more certainty and more freedom and fulfillment in your business. And so you built this monstrous business around the business and it's taken over like this armchair tyrant, this highchair tyrant. This highchair tyrant that's thrown food and saying, I want more. And you just keep giving it to the business and you should be in charge of this business. And that means that you should be setting really good culture. And that means you should be attracting team members and only hiring team members that believe what you believe in, share your views so that you can actually trust them. And so a lot of the reason why top-down systems are so necessary, even though they're bad ideas because they don't have a team they trust. So even going back before, like before technology, before planning, they need a team they actually trust, which means they need to be super clear on what their values are, their culture, and only hire based on that so that they can actually trust their team members. And if you hire good team members that you like culture-wise and they're the right personality fits for those roles when you weren't? They will be better at those things than you.  [00:30:53] That's the humbling thing I want every entrepreneur to eventually experience, because it's pretty powerful because we think we're pretty hot stuff in the beginning. We start to build a team, they come to us with all their questions. We're like, man, I know everything. It's so good to be king. And then the humbling experience every business owner needs to have is when they start to hire people that are better at the things they used to do that they've let go of. And they know like they're exceeding your ability to perform in those areas. Like I used to design logos. My logo designers are better at designing logos than me. Right. As an example, and then you can really start to trust that team and you can trust them. Like my operator's a better operator than me. [00:31:32] I was terrible at running the planning meetings. I just wanted to get them over with, I didn't want to do it right. And now she tells me," you're last to speak. Like don't talk." And I'm like, "okay." because she runs it, she's in charge and she makes it way better. And it's a lot faster than I would and more efficient than how I would do it. [00:31:50] Mohammed: Yeah, think that creating that crux of dependency is definitely going to stifle growth and scalability, right? And so, it's interesting that you mentioned, a lot of listeners or folks that are probably listening to this, and we hear this as well, is that they don't trust their teams. There's some introspection and it needs to be done there. If you've hired the right people for the right roles. You know, there's there's this notion, you know, Google's considered one of the most like, you know, effective organizations in the world and when, and they do a lot of research on on team dynamics and they have this notion of of psychological safety, which is basically how folks under understand like the own you know, ramifications of being able to take risk within an organization. And so you need to enable your folks and have the right folks in the right roles and be okay with people that have failed, but you want them to be bold. This is what helps kind of move the organization forward and helps you evolve as a business and scale and grow and you know, creating that dependency crux or creating yourself and creating that friction where you are a bottleneck and how things move and change within the organization. It creates not only a challenging environment to be able to like actually grow and evolve, but then it also erodes morality within your staff as well. And eventually you'll push out the high performers.  [00:33:01] Jason: Yeah, I think you know, A players love to be recognized and they love to be seen and B players love to hide and to not be noticed. Their secret goal is to make as much money as possible and do as little as possible. And A players, they don't just give you their time, they give you their discretionary time. Like they're thinking about you in the shower, they're thinking about your business and how to improve in their role when they're like on their walk, you know, on the weekend, right? Because they're believers and they want to win. And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs out there listening to this, they might be thinking, I need more KPIs. I need more micromanaging. I need more metrics. I need more profits, so I need to squeeze more blood from these team members. They're not giving enough, and that probably just means you have the wrong team. [00:33:51] It's surprising how little KPIs and metrics and accountability is needed when you have A players on your team and you just build in a simple accountability system like DoorGrow os, or some sort of planning system in which they are working towards objectives instead of just being given transactional leadership where it's a transaction. "Do this task and I'll pay you, right?" Transformational leadership is where you give them an outcome and a timeline, like a deadline and say, by the end of the month we want to achieve this goal towards our quarterly goal, which is in two months, you know, or whatever. You can have these things defined and what happens is these team members start to function like intrapreneurs. [00:34:31] They start to innovate, think, move things forward, and then implementing things like technology and software is just going to help them get towards these goals that they're working towards. It's not something preventing them from their day-to-day work. Instead, because if you don't, if they don't have strategic goals, they're just going to focus on the tactical work they have. And strategic growth in the business should be at priority over the daily tactical tasks. And if team members can see that and they have strategic goals, they're responsible for by the end of the month, they will focus on that and get their tactical work done. And the business then innovates and moves forward. And it's a really amazing, like beautiful thing to see happen. Well, this is a fun conversation. It sounds like there's a lot of people out there, I'm sure you've worked with quite a few that really could use some help understanding how to get their technology stuff dialed in, knowing what tools exist out there that can solve this you know, what can you help them with and how do people get in touch with you? [00:35:35] Mohammed: Yeah, good question. So we offer a pretty wide range of services, whether it's, you know, tax help, bookkeeping, accounting, implementing software, custom reporting, creating SOPs, and even just auditing business processes. And then if you ever do get audited by the boogeyman, they call Department of Real Estate. We also do Dre representations as well. You can reach us at www.balancedassetsolutions.com. You're welcome to also email me directly at mo@balancedassetsolutions.com. [00:36:05] Jason: Balanced asset solutions-- plural-- solutions.com. Yes. Okay, got it. All right. Cool. Mo, thanks for coming on the show. [00:36:14] Appreciate you being with us.  [00:36:15] Mohammed: Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much, Jason. Take care.  [00:36:18] Jason: All right, so check out Mo and his business if you need some support. Coming to this conversation, I didn't even know what he did, so this was really interesting for me. My team sets up these interviews and sounds like a really cool thing to get that support and technology implementation. If any of you've gone through it, you know, this is a painful process, so make sure you get some help. So, for those of you watching the show, if any of these things resonated that you're struggling with your team, you're struggling with getting, you know, more profitability in your business, make sure to reach out to DoorGrow. We can help you do those things in addition to helping you add doors, but more importantly we can help you make your business scalable. A lot of you aren't adding doors right now because you know how, but because. You know, if you add more doors, your life personally will get worse as a business owner. [00:37:10] And if that's the case, you do not yet have a scalable business. So you need a really good process system. You need a really good people system, and you need a really good planning system. And if you have those three things, you can, you're infinitely scalable. You can scale quickly, you can add any number of doors, and that freedom and that safety and that ability to just add doors and know that your business can handle the growth means you can now go even eat other companies, start to acquire businesses in the property management space, you can start buying up your neighbors. We want to help you do all of this stuff and scale. There's no reason why you can't be probably in the next two to five years, a thousand door business, crushing it and we can help you get there. We've got the roadmap, we've got the tools, we have some tech. [00:38:00] We can help you move forward on this. So reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com. And if you're wanting to get into an awesome free community, you waste a little bit of time on Facebook, you might as well be wasting that time in a way that's not wasting time. Like go to DoorGrowClub.com and you can get access to our free Facebook group. It's for property management, business owners, entrepreneurs. Get access to our free Facebook group by going to DoorGrowClub.com. We have some cool tools and free gifts that you get. As you join the group, make sure to answer the questions and if you plug in your email address in your phone, we will reach out to you and give you some free stuff that's going to help you grow and improve your business. And you will have a resource in which you can ask questions to other property management entrepreneurs get some really good ideas and it's an awesome community. And it's growing rapidly, right? It's growing rapidly. So make sure you get into the DoorGrow Club. Go to DoorGrowClub.com and that's it for today. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.  [00:39:01] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:39:28] 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.

DoorGrow recently partnered with Rocket Station VAs, a company that goes above and beyond finding the right virtual assistant for your property management business. Property management growth expert Jason Hull brings back Greg Brooks to talk about the new relationship between DoorGrow and Rocket Station and what’s next for hiring in the property management industry. You'll Learn... [01:45] Why an Operator is the Most Important Hire [05:02] Rocket Station’s Unique Process Mapping and Training [12:56] Why You Should Hire Virtual Assistants [15:11] Vetting and Filtering Hiring Candidates [21:25] The Kinds of Team Members PMs Need Tweetables “One of the big challenges that our clients have is they need operators. Like, this is the most important hire I think that any business will ever make.” “Most businesses don't even have a decent operator.” “A lot of the property managers out there, like if you wanted to map out your processes and systems and you were real operations-driven, you would've done it.” “If you're listening to this and you are still doing a bunch of stuff and wearing a bunch of hats and you already have a team, you have probably built the wrong team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: The challenge with operators is in the us, they're expensive. These operators are usually probably minimum, like maybe 80 grand, and sometimes they want equity, you know, like they're not affordable to a lot of these property managers that hit that wall at maybe about 150, maybe 200 doors. And so we were like, how can we solve this challenge? And then it was like, well, maybe one of these companies could take VAs and we could find the cream of the crop and find those that could be operators. [00:00:29] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:06] 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.  [00:01:28] So returning to the show, I'm hanging out here with Greg Brooks of Rocket Station. Welcome back Greg.  [00:01:35] Greg: Yeah. Thanks so much for having us. I'll just look and say the last invite to this was almost two months ago to the day, so we're becoming like a monthly regular. I like it. [00:01:43] Jason: Cool. We'll just keep it going. So, we've been chatting and one of the big challenges that our clients have is they need operators. Like, this is the most important hire I think that any business will ever make in their business is to get some sort of person that can help them really get the operations going because a visionary CEO does not like dealing with operations. They're bad at it, and they try to do it, and they're always telling themselves, I need more processes and I need to do more stuff, and, and they're just not doing it. And so what we wanted to do is we had this crazy idea, maybe there'd be a company that could do operators, but do it in an affordable way. And the challenge with operators is in the us, they're expensive. These are people that are beyond the level of what you would normally pay for just a va or even an executive assistant, even if you hired them in the US. These operators are usually probably minimum, like maybe 80 grand, and sometimes they want equity, you know, like they're not affordable to a lot of these property managers that hit that wall at maybe about 150, maybe 200 doors. Maybe they're in 300 to 400 doors, somewhere in there. But they need this operator and they don't have it, and they are in the least profitable stage of their business they will probably ever be in some instances. Because they've maxed out on staff, they've got all these team members, they built the team incorrectly, and so they have a lot of people that are costing a bunch of money. And so we were like, how can we solve this challenge? And then it was like, well, maybe one of these companies could take VAs and we could find the cream of the crop and find those that could be operators. So that's, that's kind of the conversation I think we started to have. Does that sound right? [00:03:31] Yeah, sounds, sounds accurate.  [00:03:33] So what, what did we come up with? I don't want to do all the talking so.  [00:03:37] Greg: You're good. No. So I think the part where we kind of bonded, if you will, between our companies is that that whole process implementation. A. Having someone that can kind of run point on that for you and streamline those processes systems, like that's a huge gap as you're trying to hire that operator, right? You got to find someone, find someone who's affordable and they got to come in and help with the process and systems. So it kind of blended perfectly with how we deliver our services. Because we have a whole team of professionals from the operational standpoint who, you know, help our clients, help our our property management clients go through that thought process and create those documents and create those processes and point out, Hey, why do you do it like this? Did you know your software can automate that? So it blended nicely in terms of that level of expertise. And then when you talk about the cream of the crop, I mean, Obviously, I'm very biased here, but I feel like our, our virtual assistants are the best in the business from the training and the experience and, yeah, really the comprehensive onboarding that we put them through to where DoorGrow members can help leverage our eight years of experience in this space to help with the systems, the processes, the refinement, and then we can put a rockstar VA in there who can jump right into the seat and really be that operator that they need at a much more affordable rate. So it just seemed like how you guys delivered and what you were teaching and the hires and kind of the steps that you, you know, teach to your students, regardless of what level they're at, really aligned with kind of our philosophy in terms of how to hire VAs and find great talent. And so I think we're going to knock it out of the park.  [00:05:02] Jason: Yeah, there's a lot of synergy there. And you kind of breezed over it, but I want listeners, I want people listening to really recognize this, what's really unique that I found about Rocket Station-- and we actually just gave you a client as a Guinea pig. And he just commented in my group coaching call today, he was like, " they've been awesome already so far." Like he's really appreciating the process. I think what's really innovative or unique about what you do is your team will come in and actually start to map out processes in a flowchart, like you'll start to help them map out their processes. This is something that's so painful for them to do on their own. I hear it all the time. Like, "oh, well, I need to work on my processes." Cool, but why are you doing it? And they really, if they were the guy or gal to do it, they would've done it by now. Yeah, there's a reason why they have not done that. And so when you come in and start to do this with them, that's a game changer for them. And so I love that you do that. Not only that, but we have DoorGrow flow that we launched recently, which is a visual flow chart based software, so similar to like Lucidchart or Vizio or some of these tools. And so, on our last call that you did with our team where we were like sharing with our team what we were going to be doing, we're like, oh yeah, that's some other synergy, right? [00:06:14] So, we are excited to start to get some of your VAs trained in to learn some of our systems, some of our software tools that we have for clients that I think are really new and innovative to the industry. There's, I don't know of any other visual flow chart software for processes in the industry like DoorGrow flow, and then your team members can help them to start to get these processes mapped out, documented, but even more so, we want to get this person supported in our program for those that are in our mastermind, in our super system and train this VA that is going to handle operations and be an operations assistant, help them figure out how to run the planning meetings, how to run the cadence for the team communication that meeting structure we call DoorGrow os how to handle some of the hiring pieces. And this allows a very affordable solution and it can all be done through Zoom calls, you know, as a team, which is how I run my company. [00:07:12] And I think that it'll be a game changer for the industry because, One, there aren't operators out there that are really well trained. There aren't operators out there that already know some of these systems and different property management systems. Most businesses don't even have a decent operator. And so, one, to get these systems installed and two, to have somebody to do it, that it actually, the right personality fit, culture fit, and skill fit for that role, I think will be a game changer. So now you have your own vetting process. I think we talked about that a little bit on the previous call. Maybe you can share just a little bit for those that weren't on that or didn't listen to that podcast interview, like, what's kind of your process? How does that unique, and then I'd love to share how we're going to add to that with DoorGrow, another layer to that.  [00:08:00] Greg: Yeah, definitely. And I know from our side, our team, when we announced this partnership, they were like literally salivating, right? They love the process. They see it as like a triple win. It's like you guys have very structured systems and very, you know, structured teaching, which is great because then when you take that and turn it into processes and act as that resource for the client it makes that synergy where we're, you know, we're speaking DoorGrow, right? And we can really be there you know, in line with their journey, regardless of if they're at, like I said, 20 doors, a hundred doors, 500 doors, wherever they're at. But then also like the software, like you said, our, I know our team has already started to mess around with flow and, and like they love it. So just being able to speak the same language. Every part of the journey is huge. And then, yeah, our vetting process it's basically six weeks of comprehensive screening. I know something that I think we talked about in the last podcast, or maybe it was in the conversation with some of your team members, we're big on, on kind of the three checkpoints, right? [00:08:52] You got to have the experience, you got to be tested and vetted and evaluated based on your knowledge, based on your tactical and practical skills within property management, and then you've also got to be the right culture fit, right? You got to have the right personality to, you know, want to be that operator. Because like you said, a lot of the property managers out there, like if you wanted to map out your processes and systems and you were real operations driven, you would've done it. Like most property managers are visionaries and they've got big plans, and the day-to-day operations just isn't what they enjoy, and it isn't what, you know, gets them up out of bed every morning. So what we've done prior to any operator or really any position, right? We staff kind of across the board-- is it's six weeks of comprehensive screening, evaluation and property management specific training. And part of what our team's really excited about, that we're literally building as we speak is more DoorGrow specialized training so that, you know, we've got eight years of experience in the property management industry working with operators that are 25 doors. [00:09:52] Two of our largest clients are over 40,000 doors. So like all the scale and the bottlenecks and the little learning points, like we've seen it, we've done it, we've staffed to it. But what we're excited about is to now really dive in to the DoorGrow platform, whether it's on the software side, whether it's on the process side, and really customize that training even further. So from day one that that VA gets into the seat, they're right there in the thick of it with the property manager to be able to really help and be that operator that assistant, that the business actually needs so they can start taking advantage and scaling quicker than their competitors. [00:10:25] Jason: So we didn't talk about this on the previous interview, but our team got to see this. One of the things that really resonated positively about Rocket Station is you guys really are contribution focused and you really have a positive impact with the talent that you have in the Philippines and you're impacting, you know, things there in the Philippines. Can you just touch on some of the stuff that you do with schools and some of that kind of stuff just real quick?  [00:10:49] Greg: Oh yeah, definitely. And cut me off. I get too long winded here. Usually we're talking business and talk and shop, and I don't get to brag on our people and what they do in country. It kind of comes down to how we even deliver the service to. There's a reason we go through the process mapping, right? Talent is everywhere. It's global. We now live in a global workforce. Most of the time, property managers aren't able to really leverage VAs the way we feel like they can. Mm-hmm. Simply cause like there's no process, there's no training, there's no onboarding, there's no ramp up, there's no screening process. So that same commitment to set a VA up for success in their business life. We do the same thing with kind of our-- we have a program called Rocket Station Cares, where we're very intentional about monthly doing events in local neighborhoods, in local communities, in the local islands. All of our people are in the Philippines, so a country of 7,000 islands where we give back. [00:11:35] So I know you guys, what we kind of showed you a little video that that we had done where we had gone to a a school of 2200 students and we had donated not only our time, we did a whole day you know, volunteer effort where we played games with the kids and we we sang songs, but we also donated computers, printers. We donated over 500 tables and chairs to their classrooms because this school was a state funded school that was only supposed to ever house 800 kids. But the need there in that specific area, The population was almost 1500 that were at this school. So we're very intentional. We're like you guys. You know, we're a little bit bigger. We're about 2200 people all across the Philippines, but we're fully virtual as well. So like being intentional and realizing like, yeah, all of our people, they want great opportunity. They want a professional atmosphere, they want to work for a great client just like anybody does in their business journey, professional lives, but also being like, Hey, There's a huge sense of community, a huge sense of camaraderie, and we're very intentional with getting out into the community and volunteering our time and giving back to their local neighborhoods, their, you know, their local areas. And like I said, the team does it monthly. We go over there, the US side of the business goes over there about four times a year, and we really try to make it a big spectacle. You know, donating money, donating resources, but more importantly, donating our time and getting out there to really give back. [00:12:56] Jason: So I imagine that's a bit of a challenge is that a lot of people go get VAs thinking, one, they're like, I don't know what the VA could do, but I think we need some help and I want some cheap labor. And then they sometimes treat those people as like second class members of their team and stuff like that. And so I'm sure you run into that, I'm sure. Like you get some clients and you're like, man, I don't know if they're really treating our people right. One of the things I'm really excited about, I hopefully, you know, rocket Station's excited about this too, is we coach and train all of our clients on creating good culture. Like it's wired into what we do because I think it's one of the greatest secrets to us being able to scale businesses. We can get three times the output in a business from staff if there's good culture. And so we get this stuff really well dialed in with them. And so I would imagine, like, I'm biased probably, but I would imagine that doorGrow will provide some of the best opportunities for, you know, for your VAs to work at through our clients because they're going to have good culture, they're going to have strong values and it will allow you to match people that share those similar values. So it'll be great culture fits. Culture is not something you can create in a person. It's hardwired, like it comes from their parents, their religion, their experiences, whatever. And so we need to figure out with our clients, we figure out what are their top three or four company core values? We map out a client-centric mission statement. We map out their personal why. We map out their business, why we want the business owner to have strong clarity so we can start to build the team around the business owner. Because we see a lot of businesses come to us and they've built a team around the business, and the business owner is doing all the wrong stuff, and you can't build the right team around the wrong person. And so these business owners that are holding onto and doing a lot of stuff, That they don't enjoy doing. They are the wrong person. And then they built a team around that wrong person. And so that's why they have the wrong team. If you're listening to this and you are still doing a bunch of stuff and wearing a bunch of hats and you already have a team, you have probably built the wrong team. And so, reach out to DoorGrow, we'll help you clean that up, and then we can get you connected to our collaborative situation here with Rocket Station.  [00:15:11] So you have this six week of you know, taking them through training, making sure you have a process to vet and find the right people. I'm sure figuring out people that their language level of ability in English and all these kind of things, what we want to bring to the table DoorGrow. We have DoorGrow hiring and we have a process for matching people culturally, personality, and skill wise to a particular role. And then we also have this AI assessments platform that we've partnered with so that we can vet candidates to see if they have the cognitive ability or the intelligence and the personality traits through this AI assessment to be a really great operator. And so there's less guessing, and so this will allow us to identify from the candidates that you send over, which ones will be the cream of the crop that will really do a great job as an operator. So we're super excited about this. And you have plenty of people that we could feed through, I would imagine, and find who's going to be this great fit for this particular business. And it'll be far more affordable than 80 grand a year.  [00:16:17] Greg: So yeah, and the DoorGrow students are almost getting double due diligence. Cause like I said, we're big on that three-point system in terms of how we evaluate, because most say most clients outside of DoorGrow, they don't really have, it's like, Hey, let's go grab a coffee and see if you're good and I'll read your resume. Awesome. Hired so they're getting the typical due diligence that we do already from a personality profiling experience from practical assessments. And then we're putting the candidates through the DoorGrow hiring platform as well to really niche it down. So, like I said, we definitely have tons of people ready to get going. But we're, we're excited to really see it. because I think when you compare what the AI does and the data you guys already collect through your vetting, mixing that with what Rocket Station has, it's going to be really special in terms of really getting the right, like I said, get the right butts in the right seats. I think we're really going to be able to do that at super high level. For your team for your, you know members that are really looking for that operator to help springboard the company to the next level.  [00:17:09] Jason: Yeah, and you know, transparently, Rocket Station was not the only VA company we re reached out to. We reached out to several in the industry and we've talked to some about this. And you know, there may be some additional ones that we do in the future, but nobody had something as comprehensive that we've seen so far as to how you onboard clients. And this makes us feel safe giving our clients over to you. And we've actually, like Sarah's, like I want to do a hire through Rocket Station, so she's our operator and so she's been going through it and she thinks it's a really cool process and she likes that you guys are mapping out processes and asking really good questions. And so there's a level of depth there rather than just, Hey, do you like this person? And do you like how they sound on this audio recording and like here, like you can pay right now and get them started to work for you. Yeah. As if they're just some tool that you can throw into your business.  [00:18:01] Greg: Exactly. Unfortunately, a lot of providers in the industry, they're just placements. It's just you need someone? I got someone. Here, figure it out, right? Mm-hmm. And I think that's where we bonded right when we did the podcast and we first kind of connected and started to have kind of exploratory conversations. It was just like, oh, it is more comprehensive from how you guys deliver your services to your clients. It kind of very well meshed with kind of how we just genuinely feel. It's about setting people up for success. Yeah. And there has to be more that goes into it than just here, here's someone, let us know how it goes. Call us if it doesn't work. You know, it's, it's someone's livelihood and we really take that serious and we know the team at DoorGrow does and with your culture so excited to really kind of build that, build that partnership and add to it.  [00:18:41] Jason: Yeah, we're really excited. So, so for those that are listening people can get VAs through this partnership with Rocket Station and DoorGrow, we will have some landing pages set up. We have our DoorGrow hiring process. If you want to hear more about DoorGrow hiring. Which can be used for, you know, VAs or can be used for getting team members locally and getting the right three fits for your business. Check us out. You can reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Those of our clients that are in the Mastermind, or if you're interested in joining our mastermind, if you're in our super system, you get access to this. It's part of just what we do. It's included and you get access to DoorGrow flow, our process software. You get access to DoorGrow crm, our sales CRM software that's next level. You get access to DoorGrow os the planning, cadence and operating system that your operator's going to help you run the business through. And what else? There's some other things, but with this, you're going to have an operator that has the tools and the training because we do a weekly call supporting operators and helping them get these systems installed, helping them get the business moving forward. And so as part of our mastermind, you'll have this ongoing support to move your business forward and get the operations really well dialed in. And if you have a really good people system, a really good process system, which is, you need something more than just process documentation. You need a system that they are able to use and leverage consistently, and that's better than just checklists. And then you have a planning system. These three systems will make your business infinitely scalable. You can add doors as fast as you want to. You can do acquisitions, you can you know, go crazy, you can get BDMs and like stack doors like crazy, and your business will not break and your life will actually get easier and better by adding more doors because you have more resources, more support, and you know how to get good people, and you have good processes, and you have good planning system to keep everybody rowing in the right direction and organized. Without those three systems, adding more doors for a lot of y'all will probably just make your life worse. And so we're really excited to have this partnership with Rocket Station to be able to take our mastermind clients to that next level. So, anything else we should say about this? Greg. [00:21:00] Greg: Oh, I hope everyone's as excited as we are. I know we matched today for the announcement as well, so we're really coordinated. I mean, DoorGrow is on the same page right now, so no, we're, we're excited. Like I said, anyone, I know you'll have landing pages and I'm sure you'll have links to make sure all your people get routed correctly, kind of into, into the pipeline so that we can kind of get them going and get them set up with operators. But no, we're excited and if anybody has any questions, I mean, feel free to reach out to us as well.  [00:21:25] Jason: I think the last thing, just to be clear, This is not just for operators though. So, why don't you just touch on briefly, like what are some of the other roles that some of the property management businesses are getting VAs for? Yeah, definitely. And operators is typically not, historically, I've haven't seen anybody doing that, so this, that might be a little bit innovative and new, but I'm sure there's, you know, getting a personal executive assistant for the ceo. Which I usually recommend is like the first hire most people should be doing, and I've seen people that have no assistant, that have a bunch of team members. So there's that. And what else?  [00:21:58] Greg: I would say depending on your size and your scale, like an assistant property manager, right? Someone who can kind of field the maintenance, coordinate with vendors, coordinate with your own guys, the billing, the paperwork. Yeah. The one that we've seen a lot of our clientele, regardless of size jumping into is the leasing kind of administrative assistant where, I mean, maybe you still are the person that gets out there and is showing the property, but like all the paperwork, the follow up, even just prepping the listing, I mean, those are two really big ones. Yeah. In terms of property management is, has just been incredible the last three years, seeing the evolution kind of through covid and being more virtual. So yeah, if anyone's out there, obviously the operator position is something very specific to the DoorGrow community that we're really excited about and we're going to have a nice, a nice through line to get you the best people quickly. But if you're just needing staff, whether it's say on the maintenance, whether it is an executive assistant to give you some more time back in your day, whether it's on the leasing side, listing management, social media management, reach out because that's the bread and butter of what almost 2200 of our VAs are staffed out to our clients doing each and every day. And even if you don't have the process piece fully knocked out your maintenance process, your billing process, Don't worry, like we are there for you. You're running a business, you're running a successful business. What we find is for most people, the processes get stuck in the six inches between our ears. So our team is incredible at flushing that out. We'll build it all for you and then hire a rockstar to, to jump into the seed and, and take on whatever role, whatever role you need.  [00:23:26] Jason: Cool. Awesome. Well, I'm excited Greg. Thanks for coming on the podcast again, hanging out with me here and for matching my clothing. I appreciate that. Oh, same page. And we'll be talking soon. So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth, go to DoorGrow.com. Check us out and be sure to check out Rocket Station. Bye everyone. [00:23:47] Jason Hull: 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!  [00:24:13] 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.

DoorGrow has changed a lot in the last few years. We’ve added tons of new features and perks for our clients as well as new coaches… including Sarah Hull, COO and property management growth coach. Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull to learn more about Sarah’s role at DoorGrow, operations, and how you can scale your property management company. You'll Learn... [02:47] Sarah’s Property Management Experience [05:19] Improving Operations and Cutting your Staffing Costs in Half [15:38] Why You Need an Operator in Your Business [22:02] Personality Types and Their Roles in a Business [27:24] The Clue that You Need a Better Team Tweetables “You can't build the right team around the wrong person.” “Here's the clue that you don't have the right team: your day-to-day is something you don't enjoy doing every day.” “Is the bruised ego worth a better, more profitable business that takes, a lot more off your plate and is less stressful?” “The most important person you'll ever hire in your business will be the operator.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Here's the clue that you don't have the right team: your day to day is something you don't enjoy doing every day. If you're still wearing hats that you don't enjoy doing and you've built an entire team around you, and you're the wrong person in the roles that you're sitting in, then you've built the wrong team around you. You can't build the right team around the wrong person. [00:00:18] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker.  [00:00:36] DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate gateway to high trust, real estate deals, relationships, and residual income At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their business 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 along with Sarah here, property management growth experts, Jason Hull and Sarah Hull, the founder and CEO and the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:22] All right, so I'm already messing up the intro as I'm reading it because I'm looking and seeing her here in the screen, and I find her highly distracting. So, we were talking before we talked last night, we're like, what are we going to talk about on the podcast? And and then this morning, I said, what are we going to talk about? She says, I don't know, we only talked for like five minutes about last night, and we didn't come to a conclusion. So, I said, let's talk about you. Can I intro you and brag about you first? Sure, go ahead. So I wanted, I thought we would talk about Sarah today because she's probably a lot more interesting certainly to look at than myself and maybe to listen to. So I thought we would talk about her. So, I'll tell you a little bit about Sarah. So what's really amazing about Sarah and what I really like about her is that her wrists are really tiny.  [00:02:10] Sarah: That's really, it is true. It's not not true.  [00:02:14] Jason: My hands are not enormous. Dude hands. I buy child bracelets for her. I'm just kidding. All right, so  [00:02:19] Sarah: I have a five inch wrist. So like I can take, I can actually wrap my my pinky and my thumbs and touch. That's about, and they overlap. So it's about this big.  [00:02:31] Jason: Oh yeah. I can do the pinky as well. That's, yeah. Very small.  [00:02:34] Sarah: I train a lot on the rest. Get them that way.  [00:02:37] Jason: I do actually like that. I think it's a cute trait. All right. But I'm joking. What, what I really want to say is, so what's interesting to the audience is that Sarah has managed her own property management business. She has exited that. She sold it. Great job, by the way. Mm-hmm. And she managed a decent amount. At that size, most property managers have a team, like a full team, like five to 10 people I've seen. And usually at the stage, these companies are very unprofitable. Like this is the worst profit margin stage they've been at in their business. And they get stuck. And I call this area the second sand trap. They can't afford to really like expand or do more marketing or, and they're just not able to take a lot out of the business and, and their profits are all getting eaten up by staffing costs. Now Sarah had one part-time person, boots on the ground part-time and managed her business remotely part-time. Part-time, yeah. She was bored. Very. And people are like, well, these must have been really nice properties. These were C class properties? Duplexes, small plexes. [00:03:52] Sarah: Yes. We had a good mix of single family, duplex, triplex, and then I think we had maybe two that were like 10 units, which was kind of big for my area, but  [00:04:03] Jason: Okay. Yeah. And so, what was your profit margin?  [00:04:08] Sarah: Over 60%. Okay. 60% was a not great amount.  [00:04:12] Jason: Okay, so a lot of you dream of that, right? And you think, how's that even possible? It's possible because one, Sarah is very efficient. She's a very good operator. That's why she is now the COO of DoorGrow. And everything in the business is better as a result of having her in the business. Everything's improved. But I wanted to qualify Sarah as a badass. Like she's really good at what she does, and she wasn't really connected to the property management industry. She just did what made sense to her. And she didn't really want to be talking to tenants and she didn't really want to be dealing with talking to the owners very often, and she just set up her business in a way that was very efficient. And so we'll be talking about that in the priorities training. So, Sarah also has come into DoorGrow and she runs all of our operations. She runs I everything that I've taught her that I like I've developed DoorGrow os and how we plan our cadence. She just knows it to the point where she can teach it. And she learned it all very quickly. And now she's the one that coaches clients how we did our hiring. She like has improved on that and built it out even more and teaches clients how we do hiring and so we help clients get all these systems in place to become more profitable and more efficient. Sarah does all that. So as an example, why don't you share the story of maybe Jade and Andrew. I think that's a great story. Because they were at a similar size of a business as you had had.  [00:05:46] Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Well, they had about 188 units and they had 11 team members total, like 11. So really, really overstaffed. And some of them were in the office and some of them were VAs and we just really had to like dive in because they said, well, like, what are they doing? And they kind of gave me like a surface answer. Like, oh, well this person does this and they do this. And I said, yeah, but like, what are they really doing? Because with 188 leases, like, let's just pretend that. We had all hundred and 88 due in the same month with, which isn't going to be the case. We're going to, spread that over the course of multiple months. But if we had all hundred 88, due even in one month, I still can't figure out what, two or three leasing agents are doing with 40 hours a week every single week. So we are just really going through and trying to figure out like, who's doing what. And sometimes I find that either no one's doing something or two people are doing something. And if two people are doing it, just know that it's not getting done.  [00:06:56] Jason: That's a 17 to one ratio. I just did the math. [00:06:58] So that's, that's for each, for every 17 doors, they have a team member.  [00:07:04] Sarah: It was really bad. So we just kind of went through with them and figured out like, what is everybody actually doing? What should everybody be doing? And then how many people is it really actually going to take? And they they had a lot of meetings and discussions with each other and then like we kind of met a couple times throughout this process and they came to the conclusion that they needed to let go of about half of their team. And they did. And then once they did that, all of a sudden they're like, Hey, we're like profitable and we're making money. But when we first started talking with them, they said like, actually, we're losing money every month. Like we can't pay ourselves. We can't take anything and we're losing money. Like this business is costing me money to run every single month. Yeah, little uncomfortable situation to be in, especially because property management isn't, it's not easy, it's not a cake walk. You're not, like doing nothing all day. So if you're in a business like this, And it is complicated and it is challenging. Then the least you should be able to do is like get yourself a decent profit margin so that you can make sure that you're paying yourself and that your business isn't struggling to keep up with. [00:08:14] Jason: Drive this home. Sarah did one call with them and the result of that one call was, what? What are all the results?  [00:08:21] Sarah: Well, on the one call, they realized, I have no idea what most of the people are actually doing. Like, they gave me the answer and I'm like, yeah, but how do you spend 40 hours a week doing that thing? [00:08:32] Yeah. And from there they realized like, we need to make major, major changes to our team. And most of these people are going to have to go. On the second call, that's when they actually decided to take action. Okay. And they got rid of, so. [00:08:47] Jason: The second call, which is she did this one call after that. [00:08:51] Mm-hmm. They fired half their team, half their team then, and as a result, their profit margin, which was not very good, which was negative, losing money, was then what? What did they get to? I didn't get their profit margin. Okay. It was significantly improved. Oh, no. Significantly improved.  [00:09:09] Sarah: I know they weren't losing money anymore. [00:09:10] Jason: Yeah. Yay. All right. We'll have to get some stats on that cause I want to brag during the priorities training about that. All right. So, Sarah has been able to dramatically improve our clients' businesses and lives. One of the things she's also helped a lot of clients with is completely restructuring their teams. Mm-hmm. They just did two of them last week. Okay. Why don't you explain Yeah. Kind of what you've done.  [00:09:37] Sarah: Mm-hmm. Well, all right, so one of them had about 360 doors and there were 1, 2, 3, 7 people on the team total. Which to some of you might sound like, yeah, that makes sense. And to me it's just, I'm like, there's too many people. And it was kind of like the same thing where everyone is saying like, oh, I'm so busy. I'm so busy, I'm so busy, and I'm looking at things going, I just don't understand what actually is is happening. Like, there's a lot of work that has to be done. It's like busy work. It's, it's like grunt work, but it's not, super helpful. It's just the things that are going to keep you afloat and that's like a bare minimum. So what we ended up doing is this client had one BDM, three property managers and then three assistants that were basically like assistant property managers. And we, he's like, I don't know if a lot of them are like good fits. [00:10:37] And I just, I, I really don't know what they're saying they're doing because they all tell me like, I'm so busy. I'm so busy, but what's actually happening? So when we kind of like dove into things, we realized like, you are overstaffed and very similar situation. He wasn't able to really take a lot out of the business because there was not a lot left. [00:10:57] Jason: Who is this? Kevin. Okay, so Kevin had three property managers. Mm-hmm. Each property manager and they were portfolio style. And each property manager had their own assistant. Yep. Because they were not, for some reason able to get done what they needed done. [00:11:13] And Kevin himself was having to do lots of things, put out lots of fires, and be involved in micromanaging everybody. And when I first shadowed, and--  [00:11:22] Sarah: he wasn't micromanaging anybody, there was nobody leading the team.  [00:11:25] Jason: Okay. Kevin wasn't leading the team then? Nope. So what, Kevin? No one was leading the team. [00:11:30] Sarah: Team was just kind of doing whatever they thought was the right thing to do.  [00:11:33] Jason: All right. Well, Kevin seemed pretty stressed out and what, yeah, and Kevin didn't have any personal support at all. Like nobody was helping Kevin with anything. He didn't even have his own assistant, but he got assistance for three people on the team that weren't very productive or efficient. So, what's the plan with Kevin? [00:11:53] Sarah: Yeah. So, half of those people are going too. So we decided the BDM is excellent, so we're going to keep the, the bdm. He is taking one of the people who was a property manager and she actually tests okay as a property manager on our assessment. But she tests better as an operator. She is like, is a better fit for kind of this operator position. So we're going to shift her into the operator role. We're going to keep one of the property managers to do all of everything. And then one VA who's going to be like an assistant property manager.  [00:12:29] Jason: Where'd the BDM come from? [00:12:30] Sarah: The BDM was already there. Oh, okay. He was one of the seven originals. Got it. So he had three property managers, three assistants, and one bdm. Those were the seven.  [00:12:39] Jason: Got it. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Who's the other one you said there were two? Josh. Josh? Yeah. What's the deal with Josh? [00:12:46] Sarah: Josh had about 300 doors and his whole team was kind of like a hodgepodge of people. Not that he was super overstaffed, but just people weren't in the right seats. And when you have the right people, but you're not putting them to the best like use, then you kind of still run into issues. And Josh, same thing, no operator. There was no operator on the team and largely he was kind of handling operations and he is like, I don't mind doing it. I like doing it, but I don't want to be the only one doing it, and I don't want it to always fall on me. Mm. So what we're doing with him is he had a VA that he had let go, like right in the middle of our talks. And he said, Hey, I'm hiring a new va. I said, great, let's like test the new VA to see if they're going to be a good fit. And then he decided, like we shifted his team around a couple of times and like through the assessments realized and he had talked with you. This was the one that we took who he thought was going to be the property manager and then put her in the BDM role instead. Mm-hmm. Because he is like, well, I don't know how to like, make everything work. So now he's he's going to have like a whole different team structure. Not that he had to let anybody go. He wasn't like crazy overstaffed. It's just he still wasn't super profitable because he didn't have the right people in the right spots. And he didn't have anyone doing the operations. Mm. You can get as big as you'd like, but if you don't have someone handling the operations, and this is that back end piece, this is not front end stuff, like everyone always, this is what we start with, is we start doing front end stuff. Because when you start your business, you are doing the front end stuff, you're doing the leasing, and you're doing the showings, and you're talking to tenants, and you're handling the maintenance.  [00:14:37] This is all the front end stuff. This is the stuff that absolutely must be done just to make sure that the business runs. When your business reaches a certain size, you now need to have someone doing the backend stuff. Mm-hmm. And if you're not having anyone doing like the backend stuff, which is like, hey, making sure that everyone on the team is following the same direction and everybody is contributing to the vision of the CEO and running things like your daily huddles and your strategic planning and doing hiring and firing and getting job descriptions, doing team reviews like. For those of you that are hearing all of this and you're going, blah, that sounds horrible, then it means you're probably not the operator. And at some point, if you're not an operator, it's okay. Jason's not an operator, like he doesn't like that. It's not his brain functions. So you need the counterpart whose brain does function like that, and that would be me. [00:15:29] Jason: I like to build out the systems and I must have been mis mixing up Josh's team. I think you did team with Kevin, so I think you did. Yeah, I remember Josh. So the most important person you'll ever hire in your business will be the operator. That's very true. And because visionary entrepreneurs do not like the details. I like building out the systems. I like creating DoorGrow, hiring and DoorGrow os and these systems. But I don't want to run them in my own business. I want someone else to run them because running those things is not as fun and it actually, the results are not as good because especially with planning, if I run all the planning, it's not as good. Bad, and so bad. [00:16:09] Sarah: There was one week where I couldn't run the planning meeting because I was on a flight and I said, can you just run the planning meeting? And he did it. And I came back and I was like, I don't know what happened in here, but this is bad.  [00:16:20] Jason: It was okay. I did just fine. It was bad. So the issue-- just fine. The issue is it's not fun for me to run the meetings, but also when it comes to like actual strategic planning, we as the visionary or as the main leader of the business, or even as the operator, we have to be the last to speak. Otherwise, we influence things. And if I run the meeting, it's really hard for me not to say certain things and not to steer things a certain way. [00:16:48] And so I don't get as valid of feedback from the team. I don't get as valid of information. So what happens is as visionaries, a lot of times we think we have all the best ideas. And it's not generally true, right? Our team members are closer and more connected to what's actually happening on the ground, and they can see things we can't see, and they have ideas that we don't have, and they can share these things with us, and we can get their buy-in into the plan if they help create it. [00:17:16] But when we are just top down pushing everything, because we think we're the visionary, and this is one reason I really don't like EOS. One of the big fundamental flaws in EOS is they intentionally overinflate the ego of the visionary. The visionary has all the best ideas and they're so important, and that feeds the ego and it helps them to sell integrators, which in their accountability chart, they place the visionary at the top, and then they have a line going down. And this is just a fancy name for a stupid org chart that doesn't make sense, but you have the visionary connected to the operator. Which they call an integrator. And the integrator then is connected to everyone else on the team. This is one of the most flawed structures I've ever seen, and nobody runs their business this way because integrators or operators are not the people that should be over sales and marketing generally. They're not the people that, because they have a very different personality type, they're opposite. And they want to conserve and they want to make sure money is handled well and they don't want to take risks and they don't want to, like, this is more stuff for maybe your head of sales and marketing or maybe your BDM or whoever you want to place in your executive team. They're really usually equals, but they have to report their stats. Everybody reports their stats to the operator. And so the challenge is we have to have a system in which the team can all give feedback and give information first, and it isn't top down. It's really bottom up. And this is how we designed DoorGrow Os and why people that come from the EOS system get a much bigger result and a bigger yield from their team and much more profitability than they were able to get under u s or traction or rocket fuel, right? [00:19:00] These are some of the things that Sarah's able to do with some of our clients. And I have to say, it's amazing to be able to have somebody that I can trust to not just understand all this stuff. Because she, she's super sharp but also to be able to teach it to clients and to be able to help clients work through all of this and trust that it's just going to be handled and that's really what we want in a great member of our team or in a business partner. [00:19:25] Or with anybody that we work with, we want people that we can trust to just handle stuff and to do it well. Sarah does it really well, so, what else should we say about you?  [00:19:36] Sarah: I think that's just how my brain works. Like every job that I've ever worked before I owned my own business, I would be there for a little bit and it was super clear to me like, Hey, if we make these changes or if we do these things differently, or if we just shift this a little bit, it's going to be better and here's how it's going to be better and why. [00:19:55] And it's so frustrating for me when you know, like I was at multiple insurance companies. Before like I kind of got into property management and I on all of them, I was like, oh, we could just do it like this. Well, we don't do it like that. I'm like, I know you don't do it like that, but you should do it like that and here's why. And when it's frustrating for me where I'm like, oh, you could just make these changes and you could do things like this. And this is just how I think my, my brain is just wired to work. because I can like look at the overall picture of things and I'm like, well, why do we do things like this? You could do it like this instead and we should change this and this should be different. And that's really good. This is really great. Keep this, but change this little thing. And then these are the results that you'll have. And at all of the insurance companies I had worked with prior, I had like made some suggestions and they're like, oh no, we're not going to do that. We can't do that, we can't do that. So I think looking back, it's funny for me because I'm like, oh well yeah, I was kind of, almost like destined to like get in and, and run my own business because then if I think, Hey, we should do things like this because of this, then I can just do them. I don't have to go and ask like, oh, hey, can I really think this would help your business? Like, we can do it. And they're like, no.  [00:21:08] So now, like, just looking back, I'm just able to kind of pick it apart and see things that sometimes other people don't see because you're just, you're too close to it. Mm. And, and it's it's personal for people too. They're like, oh, this is my business and I'm really proud of it and this, I worked so hard and I know, like, I know what goes into running a business. Like I know it, blood, sweat, and tears doesn't even begin to cover it. I understand that. And that being said, I think that's one of the reasons why you should be looking to improve it. So if you can make a few small changes, like your, your ego might have a little bit of a bruise, right? But is it worth the trade off? Like, is the bruised ego worth a better, more profitable business that takes, a lot more off your plate and is less stressful? So for sometimes, sometimes people are like, no. I don't want that. I just want to know that I have all the answers and I'm right all the time, and that's okay. [00:22:02] Jason: All right, so what's unique about Sarah, and some of you might identify with her a little bit. So in Myers-Brigg, she's probably an INTJ.  [00:22:13] Sarah: Well, not probably, I'm like the epitome of INTJ. [00:22:16] Jason: So INTJ. Is very intuitive. They are introverted. They're a thinker and they're judging. Now INTJs are because they're super intuitive. They're called the strategist because they're logical and they figure out solutions to things, but what's I think really in interesting, and I think there's women's intuition and she's very intuitive. She just knows things without knowing why it's true. Mm, yeah. Like she's like, there's a problem over here in the, in our business or there's a problem over here and I don't know why, but it, something's not right. So. And what's frustrating is I will say no. I don't see it. Like everything's fine. And she's always right. She loves when I say, you were right. She loves it a little too much by the way. But she's usually right. And so I've learned to trust her intuition tuition and sometimes I think our unconscious. Has a lot of information and can process a lot more than our conscious mind can and picks up on little details and things. Mm-hmm. And has worked some things out and just knows things and it bubbles up to the surface of our conscious mind and we're like, Hey, something's off here. And she gets these flashes of intuition that when there's like some sort of threat and things like this as well. So I've learned to trust your intuition because it's proven accurate multiple times. And I've always considered myself fairly intuitive in the business, but her intuition is kind of next level. And so I think being able to trust your gut and having a partner in the business or some, or an operator that you can trust, their gut can have a significant impact as well. [00:23:52] So I'm a bit opposite of her. I'm an ENTP. So we both are the intuitive, which is the n and we're both thinkers. Thinkers. But. I am a bit more extroverted probably. Even though I really feel like an introvert a lot of times, but I like need to be around some people occasionally. [00:24:12] Sarah: Well, I know, but you usually like will kind of, you'll you'll break in that arena before I do. You're like, we like I just want to get out of the house and be around people and I'm like, oh, I don't.  [00:24:22] Jason: Yeah. And then I'm definitely more, we think very differently. Like very differently. Mm-hmm. I'm perceiving and you're judging and perceiving means my desk is chaos right now. If you could see it. And it means I love pulling in ideas from lots of different places. I have a crazy variety of books on the bookshelf over here. I've like, I pull in things from a lot of places to formulate my thinking. Then I'm able to formulate some new ideas and I'm very creative that way. And that's part of, I think why we have such great IP at DoorGrow. I get a lot of coaching and a lot of input from different sources and we improve those ideas and we have, I think, the best ideas and innovate the quickest in the coaching space in this industry period, maybe out of a lot of coaching businesses. We consult and share ideas with other coaches and coaching businesses as well that we're in Masterminds with. I don't want to do all the implementation. I don't want to make sure everything gets done. And so I'll be like, Hey, here's this great idea, but Sarah also brings really great ideas to the table. She's like, Hey, I had this idea. And then she'll just rapidly implement, like she just gets it done. She's like, Hey, let's do this premium Mastermind event and have people, we'll rent out an Airbnb and we'll get people to go and we'll do this and it'll be awesome. And I'm like okay. And she just makes it happen. Sells all the tickets to it, gets everything organized. I just showed up and got to look cool and she made it all happen. [00:25:50] He's like, what are we doing at this event?  [00:25:52] I showed up, I'm like, so what are we doing?  [00:25:54] He's like, what are we even doing? I'm like, just-- [00:25:56] I'm like, okay, Sarah's leading this. So that was our last DoorGrow Live too. Like Mar-- Yes, that's true-- my assistant who did a lot of planning and Sarah like, handled some of the details and ideas and I was just like, all right, I'm just here. I'm the tech guy. [00:26:11] Sarah: Just when we call your name, get to the stage, just go up there.  [00:26:14] Jason: Yeah. When, when it's your turn, Jason, you go speak and talk about something and I did. So that's kind of how we work together. So, what else should we say about Sarah? She's still working on getting her last name changed because it was Hall and she's switching it to Hull. [00:26:31] Sarah: Well, right now, I really don't know what it is. Yeah. Truly. I don't know because the Social Security office has me as Hull.  [00:26:39] Jason: So you got to change. Yeah. To my last name.  [00:26:41] Sarah: Yeah. But the DMV is like, so super booked out.  [00:26:46] Jason: So not, not in Texas yet. Your license doesn't say it yet.  [00:26:50] Sarah: No, no. Not my license doesn't say it yet, but my social security card does. [00:26:56] Jason: So, and your social media, I think you've changed most of it. I changed it before. Long before this. Yeah. So, but Hall's her ex-husband's last name, so yeah. So I'm trying to like, he's trying to buy a vow. I'm trying to buy that vow. I think I paid for that vow. What's on your neck and on your finger. And I think I've, I think I've accomplished that. I don't know. I don't know. So, cool. And I don't know what else, what else should we say?  [00:27:24] So Sarah's one of the key coaches in our business here at DoorGrow. Our mission is to transform property management, business owners and their businesses, and she does that like, she helps to do that. She runs a lot of the group coaching calls when I'm focused on other things in the business, which is awesome that I have somebody I can trust to do that at a really high level and to do it really well and clients really appreciate her test.  [00:27:49] Sarah: When you're busy, I run the whole scale call. Yes, every single week. [00:27:54] Jason: Well, you do. You go beyond that. You also run some, some of the other calls that I-- Yeah, for sure. I used to run every call. You can run every call. So, yeah, which is awesome. All right, well I think, for those of you that you want to experience some of the magic of Sarah and improve your operations, you're struggling with things, your profit margin is not what you wish it would be, and you think you need more kPIs and micromanaging and to like squeeze more juice out of your team. That's probably, there might be a little bit of truth to that, but generally you'd probably need a better team or you need to optimize your team and that's one of the most profitable changes you should make first before you start messing with micromanagement, KPIs, more pressure, stuff like that. You need to make sure first you have the right team, and here's the clue that you don't have the right team: your day to day is something you don't enjoy doing every day. If you're still wearing hats that you don't enjoy doing and you've built an entire team around you, and you're the wrong person in the roles that you're sitting in, then you've built the wrong team around you. [00:29:05] It's pretty obvious if you look at it from that perspective. You can't build the right team around the wrong person. Can't build the right team around the wrong person. So, we can help you make sure first, who are you, we can help you figure that out, and what do you really enjoy? And we have processes for that. And then we can start to build the right team around you so that you are supported and you get to move closer and closer to having more fulfillment in your day-to-day. More freedom, more contribution, and more support. And then your team members will be able to have those four things and you'll get probably three times the output from those team members. And that's the biggest expense and that will give you the biggest profit in your business if you can get these systems in place that we can help install. With DoorGrow OS and DoorGrow hiring and DoorGrow Flow and DoorGrow, CRM and DoorGrow. What am I missing? Flow hiring, crm, you said all of software. Those are our software. Okay, cool. Which we call our super system. So we're going to be doing this event on the 22nd, talking about priorities and how to increase your profit margin and how to decrease operational costs. We hope to see you there and or watch the replay if you see this later. Make sure to reach out to DoorGrow if you would like to experience some Sarah Magic. And until next time to our mutual growth, everyone.  [00:30:26] Jason Hull: 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!  [00:30:53] 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.

Have you heard about the multifamily market oversupply that’s been increasing since the undersupply during the COVID-19 pandemic? In this episode, Jason chats with John Carlson, President of Mark-Taylor Residential about Insight on the multifamily market oversupply. Mark-Taylor Residential has currently an inventory of 22,000 units and over 34,000 residents, being a multifamily leader in Arizona. You'll Learn... [06:33] What is the Multifamily Market Oversupply? [14:44] The Fundamentals of Real Estate and Property Management [20:05] Why Property Managers Need Their Own Portfolio [25:11] What will Happen to the Market Next? Tweetables “If you're that light, people are going to be reaching out to the light when it gets dark.” “Property managers, they have no concern about being the bad guy. They're totally cool with making sure that things work and running it like a business.” “You have to make sense of the market.” “I think it's a smart move that every property manager should be also building up their own investments.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: Property managers have a duty to be involved a little bit politically to prevent this firestorm from happening. And this is an opportunity to go and be the canary in the coal mine or be the Paul Revere shouting, from the horse, letting everybody know, Hey, there's a problem coming.  [00:00:18] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:55] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:19] My guest today, I'm hanging out here with John Carlson. From Mark Taylor residential, and I mean, it sounds like you guys are doing some big things. They're in Arizona, they have 22,000 units, 34,000 residents. This is not a small operation, so John, welcome to the show. [00:01:37] John: Jason, good morning everybody. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.  [00:01:41] Jason: Cool. So we're going to be chatting a bit about multifamily market over supply, which I'm guessing is pretty much what it sounds like. So, but John, maybe give us a little bit of background on you first and how you got into this and your relationship with Mark Taylor and all of this kind of stuff. Give us some backstory.  [00:02:00] John: Sure, brevity matters. So, grew up in the Midwest Southern Minnesota. Farmer by trait with stepfather from age 10 until 18. Realized that was not for me. I'm not the micro dirty jobs kind of guy. You can see. I like the dressed up look. Yeah. So at age 16, I really thought about what I wanted to do in life, and of course didn't know. I was good at math, so I decided to be an electrical engineer. So I went to school for that. Worked for a great small company called vtech for about five years. Was able to finish school while working there and travel the world and discovered Phoenix and realized Minnesota was not long for me and what I wanted to be and do long term. So, chose Phoenix with my girlfriend Megan at the time. Traveled to Phoenix to look at apartments. I think we toured 15 or so apartments in one day. We had the big apartment guide book, if you remember those. Yeah, listeners. So we were feeding through those and there's a big eight fold and it had Mark Taylor communities. So we toured three or four of those and landed on San Cervantes. I always joke with my team, we actually broke into the amenity space because the office was closed, it was past six o'clock. So I just remember seeing this beautiful, resort style pool, sand, beach area, ramada water features. And I'm like, Megan, we have to live here. So, We flew back that night landed. I called the manager, Michelle Sinclair the next day and secured a two bedroom apartment class, a brand new for $940 and a month free concession.  [00:03:28] So we moved a few weeks later and this was just prior to 9/11. Megan had a job. I was scheduled to fly back to Chicago to a final interview with a fuse company. They were opening a satellite office in Phoenix, and that was scheduled on 9/13 2001. Okay. So clearly there were no flights that day. The world was on edge, including me, and they put a hiring freeze on. So I was off to the races with my fax machine and sending out resumes if everyone knows what a fax machine is, right? So, that lasted a few months and lo and behold, Michelle, the manager, came to me and said, Hey, Would you consider part-time leasing while you wait for a position in engineering? And in my fixed mindset, I said, no. I'm an engineer pounding my chest. And a week later I realized I had to pay bills and electricity and all of those things, car payments, so I signed on and never looked back. I fell in love with the organization, real estate, and truly found my home as we like to say. And that's Mark Taylor.  [00:04:27] Jason: Cool. That's quite a story. So it's pretty interesting. And so now what do you do at Mark Taylor? So everybody's clear.  [00:04:34] John: So today I run Mark Taylor as president. As you mentioned, now 23,000 units Class A both Phoenix and Las Vegas. So in two states so, regional but have a pretty good grasp of the market across the country. So, And I think, a lot of us know us nationally from a brand recognition standpoint. We've been in business almost 40 years. So that's Mark Taylor in a nutshell.  [00:04:56] Jason: So, That's awesome. Yeah, it's quite a story to go from starting to help with leasing to being president of the company. I think you skipped a lot of steps in between, but I enjoyed the beginning. So, what was the time gap there just for the audience to understand? [00:05:13] John: So I started leasing in 2002. My girlfriend Megan, moved back to Minnesota a year later. So I was here by myself. So I had a lot of time to figure out leasing real estate in the business. So I just moved my way through the organization. Like I said, I was good at math. I think I always had an appetite for real estate and I just really sunk my teeth into this business. And, as I always tell my new hires and the younger generation folks like lean in on mentors, find the best leaders. I found some great leadership mentors, people that were patient with me Yeah. And building up my skillset including Scott Taylor and Jeff Mark, our founders. And I just felt like that really helped my growth and my pathway and I worked my ass off. And I think, you can never look back and poo work ethic and sure. My mom and my father helped me with that years ago.  [00:06:02] Jason: Yeah. Growing up on a farm, you're going to learn some work ethic. Yeah. Whenever we were bored, my dad would say, we'd learn never to say we were bored because he would put us to work. We'd be working in the yard.  [00:06:13] John: I think I used that word for about 10 years.  [00:06:15] Jason: So I'm never bored. I am creative and I'm never bored, so it doesn't happen. All right, so cool. Well, John it's awesome to connect. So what year did you become president? How long? 2016. Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, that's a cool story right there. That's a cool story. So let's get into this topic: multifamily market oversupply. I mean, there's a lot of multifamily stuff going up here in Austin. I'm seeing it pop up everywhere. There's building and building. So, what are you seeing there in Arizona? What are you seeing, maybe you think is happening here in the US and the market?  [00:06:51] John: Sure, let me start with, I'll start with, Phoenix Metro and all this broaden out. So, Phoenix, like most of the country was undersupplied from a multifamily perspective since really 2011. And I think if you just look back at the gfc the greater financial crisis in 2008 and nine and 10 that really I'll say put development in a paralysis type state. And Phoenix specifically was almost like the Black Plague. No one wanted to even think about investing here. And as most of the audience knows, I mean, it takes a long time to, to buy a piece of dirt, zone prep, design, get zoning approvals and get it through the city and actually build a unit that's two to three or four years depending on project type. So it took a long time to build up supply. So being undersupplied for a decade really resulted in a lot of things that we hadn't seen historically in Phoenix or across really the national landscape. So fast forward to the pandemic and we're starting to kind of get our, I'll say druthers in terms of supply. We're starting to get a better balance of that. An interesting data point we were delivering 18 to 22,000 units in the mid eighties in Phoenix, and had never delivered. 10,000 units in a year, past 1987 until last year. So if you think about the population adjustment, 19, just say 95 versus today, that's, almost 2 million people different. So, clearly there was an undersupply component. Fast forward to today and we're delivering and will deliver about 16 to 17,000 units in Phoenix Metro. Again, hadn't delivered past 10,000 units until last year when we delivered just over 13,000. So, yeah, I'll just say the equilibrium was in the landlord's favor, and unfortunately for renters that was costing them in terms of, monthly rent and you add to the field, the tailwind of Covid. Lots of folks came to Phoenix and I call it the Boomerang effect. Although the boomerang never came back, meaning. A lot of folks got to experience Phoenix for the first time, and I think this was a condition across the country. They found great spots where maybe there was a little bit less restriction in the Covid era, if you will. [00:09:04] And there were people coming here from California nonstop saying, God, I really enjoy Phoenix. I'm going to rent a place for six months. My employer's allowing me to be flexible at this point, and I'm going to test this out. And I think a lot of people decided to stay. So, as always, jobs create future apartment demand, but in this instant, if you worked in San Francisco, but you were living here in a six or 12 month lease, we weren't absorbing your job, but we were definitely taking your monthly payment. So, it was unique in that aspect and a lot of things changed from Covid. Obviously we can touch on that later, but expand.  [00:09:34] Jason: Yeah. A lot more remote work. Everything flowed in the nation from places with less freedom to places with more freedom. [00:09:42] John: That's just what one would expect. Yeah. And that's what happened. So I think people got a taste for Phoenix. They realized July and August aren't that bad. Yes, it's an oven for a couple of months, but we're okay. HVAC and other things. So, I think that accelerated what I think people were already starting to figure out that Phoenix was great and I think that happened across the country. So, not only Phoenix, but broadened that out. So across the country, I think there was a similar pattern in terms of lack of development, both in single family, which has to be mentioned because that's a component of our housing shortage and multifamily. So fast forward to today. You had a couple things happen, so you had some momentum in real estate. [00:10:22] You had zero interest rates, essentially that environment for 10 to 15 years, and you started to have all of these developers starting to get their, I'll say, momentum and build units. And of course a lot of Class A units were delivered and are being delivered. And so, what's happening now is you're seeing a surge in that. And part of that has been fueled by delays in construction. So if you think about the covid related supply chain issues, some of that's kind of worked through itself over the last 12 to 18 months, which is good. So inventories are better. Pricing maybe has reprieved a bit, but if you say, supply chain issues, labor issues, which is the biggest component of that you have construction deliveries that are delayed, say three to 18 to 24 months. [00:11:08] So a lot of these deals, the 16,000 units specifically in Phoenix are result of that. Otherwise this would've been delivered prior. So I, I think that's a big component of the oversupply. Which at the end of the day if you go into, I can go down to a bunch of soapbox areas, but if you think about the renter, which is most important to me there should be a nice equilibrium in the market that's the best for all of us, right? [00:11:31] You get about a 3% rent growth, which has been the case since 1982, 3.2% rent growth average by year. That kind of fits with historical cpi. So when you're raising rents 20% or 10% that's not sustainable. I'll just say it that way. So this supply cresting is benefiting the renter for sure. Yeah. Q1 Phoenix was down 3% probably the lowest in the country. And, supply cures a lot of things. I'll say it that way.  [00:11:59] Jason: Yeah. So I mean, everything's, the pendulum's swinging, right? And it's going to move back towards middle or back towards equilibrium. But how do we stop the swings? Because probably, you'll have a bunch of developers, they've been building stuff out because everybody's trying to capture all the opportunity that seems to be happening in all these markets like here in Austin. It's crazy. I'm sure it's crazy in Florida, like all the areas, there's lots of people moving from states that were more, more liberal and more control, and they're moving more towards areas where there's a little bit more freedom financially. And it'll be interesting to see if some of these places, the people that are moving, if they bring their policies with them and if those areas start to shift and change. But some of these areas what you see going on in San Francisco, what you can see going on in California, what you see going on in Seattle. I mean, some of these places do not look like great places to live anymore. Like it's getting chaotic. Sure. Because of some of the policies. So we're going to see a lot of money, I think shift, continually shifting towards these areas of freedom, and as that's happening, are these builders overbuilding? do you think that's going to be happening? That there's going to be too much like, it's like a gold rush?  [00:13:14] John: Sure. Well, I think that ship has mostly sailed because of the interest rate environment. So yeah. I think most of us pick any sector have forgotten how to live in an interest rate environment. We were 0% essentially. So, if you look across the spectrum, I think you're going to see zombie companies, fade away. You're going to see the old adage from really 17 to 21. It's weird to say old, but you had startup companies that were negative cashflow that would not, be able to pay for a printer, but they would just get another round of funding, it's almost like a Ponzi scheme. So I think getting back to some fundamentals from a business more of an institutional business, historical methodology makes sense for the entire market. And I think this will force guys or groups or developers to be much more thoughtful as they go to market or try to build deals, right? It just it's not the wild west or, the top of the bubble. I think fundamentals matter. I think how you think about your business, how you look at, your construction, your development, your cost structures, what rent should be, all of those things are probably okay for guys that have done this the right way for a long time. I think it's the fringe guys that are greedy and are taking advantage of certain market conditions. And that's fine. Everyone has their angle. But I think this will shake out in a way where you get back to some real core guys or core groups that know what they're doing and fundamentally will help shape the future of multifamily the right way. [00:14:44] Jason: So you mentioned the fundamentals. So what do you feel like are the fundamentals that business owners in the property management space should be focused on? That's going to prove to be effective in the long term. I mean, obviously the company that you are president of has been focused on the fundamentals and has been doing well consistently. We've got a lot of listeners that are probably much smaller than your business and what do you think they should take away from and maybe could learn from what you guys are doing at Mark Taylor?  [00:15:18] John: Yeah, I think you know Jeff Mark, Scott Taylor, our founders, taught me a lot of great things about real estate. And if you look at their track record they've never lost a deal or a unit or a dollar in real estate in 38 years of business, which is impressive considering all of the cycles and dynamics of what happens economically. So I think it comes down to when I look at Mark Taylor, we started as a developer, became a manager. Now we consult, we asset manage all of those things. And I think their fundamentals have always kept them in check, right? They've never gotten to a point where, oh, let's be greedy or let's stretch. If you have an investment model, here's your box. Never go outside of that, right? And so, I think back to, 2006, we sold everything we owned except for one deal. [00:16:03] In June of 06 at the peak it was a different environment then. And then we went pencils down post 2007. We built our last deal, San Porte and Tempe, and then hit pause on the other five pieces of dirt. We had a lot of guys just kept going nope, this thing's never going to end. And the first out of the ground in 2011 because we are also a data company, we've been collecting enormous amounts of data since 1985. Yeah. And everything said, tailwind, green light. So, we bought as many pieces of dirt as we could and built the most units from 11 through 15. And it really transformed our business and got us really on the front end of the last cycle. So, I think all of those things happened within our box. And today, we're moving through really the last two deals of our construction pipeline, and we'll probably be on pause or pencils down until the market makes sense again. And I think as simple as that sounds, you have to make sense of the market. So when you're seeing real cap rates below 3%, sometimes, below two and a half in 1920 and 21, you kind of got to scratch your head and say, okay, is that long? That in terms of going through a next 2, 3, 4, 5 years or next cycle. Does that make sense? And the problem with that is if you're not putting in fixed debt or fixed rates and you have guys saying, oh, the music's never going to stop, I'll just put floating rates on these or a three-year arm, that's a problem. [00:17:24] So you're seeing guys that made potentially bad decisions or got outside of their box. Seeing what happens when the market shifts and rates move like they did. No one can control the Fed. And seeing the acceleration of those rates has really created a dynamic where things will start to break. And I think we're seeing that now, or at least those things are percolating.  [00:17:45] Jason: So for the listeners, help them understand at Mark Taylor the how the portfolio works. Are you doing third party or are you owner operators? because you're talking about selling off properties and you're doing management. [00:18:01] So, Give the listeners an idea. We talked about kind of the size of it, but what percentage is stuff that you developed that you've owned or that you own currently and then like that you're managing?  [00:18:15] John: Yeah, great question. So we today, we get really all facets of the business. So our development ownership. So today we have about 5,200 units that are owned and self-managed. So we're about 80% third party. And I think the third party management aspect and also managing your own assets gives us a really nice balance. Yeah. So we're able to, in terms of properties that we own, turn my life back on properties that we own. We get to test new things like centralization and new software, new systems, new methodology. And on the third party side, we get to learn from ownership groups all over the world. We have owners from Japan, Tokyo all over the country large institutions, MetLife, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et cetera, to Mom and Pops. And I think the deal flow that was occurring in 17, 18, 19 and certainly at the peak in 2021 showcased us in a, in terms of how we supported. Transaction capital markets. So every deal that comes on the market, we underwrite and it helps us get a true feel for what's happening in the market from an operational perspective. [00:19:20] A competitor's not going to send me their financial statement, but guess what? I get to get one when they go on the market. And then we see and track through great relationships, how those things happen. Meaning how many people are signing cas if there's 500 cas in one deal, there's obviously appetite for Phoenix. So, really understanding the transaction markets, the capital markets understanding, how guys are achieving debt, equity and all of those relationships has really kept us well-rounded. So, that's fed into Mark Taylor Consulting. So today we, we consult with a variety of developers groups with marketing programs and plans asset management nationally. So, it gives us a lens into a lot of different areas that really. Just allows us to take advantage of our expertise knowledge and data.  [00:20:05] Jason: Yeah, and that's interesting. So one of our coaches that we have he said that it's really surprising that a lot of property managers don't have their own portfolio. They don't have their own properties that they have ownership in. There's quite a few. And he says, that's kind of like going to the restaurant, asking the waiter what's good there. And they said they've never had anything. And so I think there's an advantage, like, if you believe in real estate investing, I think it's a smart move that every property manager should be also building up their own investments. That's where some of the funds should be going towards to build up their own portfolio and their own investments, because, That's, that is smart for the future. That being said, building up a business is probably one of the most profitable things if you do it effectively to get an ROI on that exists. So you mentioned you mentioned focusing on the data. And you have all this data that a lot of people just don't have or don't have the opportunity to see at the level that you are doing it at. What is the data telling you right now that you think property management business owners that are doing third party should be focused on right now? [00:21:14] John: I think that, it's always predictable with each cycle, so I think back to. When we were coming out of the Great Recession, and I still have a, somewhere I have a sign. It was the old Clear Channel Billboard sign. It was just a little standup model. And we had three months free San Palacio, and there were other groups doing four months free. And these were prorated concessions. Wow. And when I think. To that timeframe. And most of my current generation of, leasing agents, service technicians, haven't been through a downturn. It's been a pretty good market since 2012. Yeah. And when I'm in company meetings, they'll say, raise your hand if you've worked in the gfc. And everyone's like this except for some execs. So. Trying to help them understand the cycles of this business is important. So, last year we did a lot of coaching and training on, okay, this is what owners are going to start to look for as the market shifts, right? When your rents are going up 10% NOIs here, you're above budget. There's not a lot of detailed conversations from most owners, meaning you're hitting all of those targets, things feel pretty good. But when it's doing this, And the market's softening, and now rents are going back and retracting. Now what do they do? They start to look at marketing costs. [00:22:26] They dig in like, what's going on exactly? Is my phone number on my website go directly to, someone that will answer it? Are my phones being answered? What's this expense over here? They become expense conscious, marketing conscious and personnel conscious. That's predictable. So my marketing team said, wow, you were right. We're getting a lot of calls now from owners. Of course you are. Yeah, the dynamics shifted and it's not even bad. It's just softened. So wait till maybe you're not covering debt, right? So I'd say that most of our groups are well capitalized. That's not an issue, but that's going to be for certain third party management groups. That's going to be an issue, right? Because they're going to pay debt before they pay your payroll depending on your property management agreement. So how does that work out? You're going to have to start to scale back on expenses. They're going to say, Hey, We need to save $20,000 this month, how are you going to do it? [00:23:13] So it just changes the dynamic of how you function as an operator. And I think back to your original point, us as ownership, that really helps us because we know in terms of our focus of maximizing the bottom line or financial potential of each asset. Man, it's a lot harder in this type of environment and it's going to get a bit harder for the next 12 to 24 months. [00:23:34] Jason: Yeah, I'm a little bit of a conspiracy theorist, but I think leading into the next election, every election year, things get really crazy. So, and it seems like nothing makes sense right now, like everything is just getting worse and crazy and, It doesn't seem to make sense, but I think it's it'll be crazy leading into 2024. So it'll be interesting. And I think, yeah, there will likely, it sounds like, be a wave of owners reaching out, owners wanting more support, investors wanting more help with what they're dealing with and trying to figure stuff out. There's probably quite a few that just I think ever since the pandemic, it woke people up because lot of the investors that were DIY and doing it themselves, they realized that they don't like being the bad guy. And if things do get crazy and things financially get tight, maybe for renters or for owners, right? Then property managers, they have no concern about being the bad guy. They're totally cool with making sure that things work and running it like a business because they've heard it all. Sure. They've been they're numb to all the BS and the stories and the, drama. Whereas, a lot of the homeowners and the property owners like, that's hard. It's hard, it's uncomfortable to deal with those situations. But when things are good, They're like I don't know that I need a property manager. But I think the need will increase. So this is interesting. So, well, is there anything else you'd like anyone to know about this idea of multifamily market oversupply or maybe about Mark Taylor or how should we wrap this up? [00:25:11] John: Well, I would start with just, from a. Current to long term perspective. So I think the over supply is happening. You're seeing it in Austin and Phoenix and other markets, and that will eventually fill up, right? So you have no choice but to stabilize. So your rents might not be what you performed, but are underwrote in your performer. But the reality is, at some point those will stabilize. And I think if you look past the next 24 months, 36 months and beyond, and really look at the last part of this decade, which is weird to say, but the late twenties. I think, we have to look at the country or this environment as there is going to be a housing supply shortage and I'm including single family for sale, single family for rent. And if you just go back to something we touched on earlier the attack on our industry and landlords and developers in general. Rent control is just. Commonly brought up by legislatures every year, including Arizona. And, the things that have, I'll say mostly ruined certain markets. I won't name St. Paul Portland and I could keep going. Uh, But those policies and how they've thought about creating housing. For their constituents and their population has clearly give them a great f And I think if you look across the spectrum of groups or cities or states that have done this well we have to fight for those policies. [00:26:36] And if we don't fight the wrong policies will occur and this housing shortage will just get, I think, substantially worse quickly. So, we have to think about policies. We have to think about doing things the right way, making sure that we have an ability to develop and create supply so that we can house folks that want to move to Austin, Phoenix and everywhere else where people believe in liberty, freedom and all the things that we believe are, founded in the constitution and belief in the US makes sense. So here we are today, Phoenix and Austin being two of them.  [00:27:12] Jason: Yeah, it'll be interesting. If there's a shortage supply shortage coming in, housing, and then people think the solution is rent control it. That's like pouring gasoline on the fire. They're like, Hey, let's just make this worse. It's, I mean, it's wrong politicians that are doing the stupidest thing ever. It was the wrong thing and destroying things. And so, yeah. I think that's everybody listening, property managers have a duty to be involved a little bit politically to prevent this firestorm from happening. And this is an opportunity to go and be the canary in the coal mine or be the Paul Revere shouting, from the horse, letting everybody know, Hey, there's a problem coming. People are going to start trying to push this rent control idea and it's a bad idea if for no other reason than helping the industry. Use it as a vehicle or platform for some self-promotion for your business in your market, and get on some news channels. But I think that would be a great idea because then you're going to look like a profit when this stuff starts to come down and they're implementing rent control and there was a problem and you're like, Hey, I was the one that told you so people are going to start to listen to you. [00:28:16] This was like Winston Churchill, right? Yeah. Hitler started taking over and he was like, Hey, I've been telling everybody, and they're like, okay, you help us out. And if you're that light, people are going to be reaching out to the light when it gets dark. And because they know you, you have been talking about this. So maybe it's time for property managers to get a little bit noisy about this rent control stuff that's coming and not just hope and pray that it doesn't happen. You don't have to deal with it so. [00:28:43] John: No question. No question.  [00:28:45] Jason: Cool. Well, John, really great having you on the show. Any call to action you want to leave anybody with or? How can people check out your company or whatever you'd like.  [00:28:54] John: Yeah, check us out mark-taylor.com. That's mark hyphen taylor.com. Like I said, third party manager development consulting. If you're thinking about, developing a project in Arizona or you want to learn more about, data and terms of multifamily market conditions, Arizona, Nevada will soon be launching a subscription model, so you'll get access to a lot of our great reports. [00:29:17] And data, which will be incredibly helpful for those that are just trying to understand the market and what's next. So, reach out to myself directly. You can find me on the website and I appreciate you having me, Jason. It's always good to talk to great guys.  [00:29:31] Jason: Like really great to have you. Thanks for coming on the show.  [00:29:34] John: Thank you. Talk soon. All right.  [00:29:37] Jason: So, really exciting to have John come on the show today. I think this brought up some ideas of what everybody needs to be paying attention to in the future, and property managers, your job for your investors is to see a little bit of the future and protect your investors and your clients, right? And hopefully we had mentioned also becoming an investor yourself if you're not already doing that. So for those of you that are struggling with your property management business right now, you're like, I don't have time right now to even think about getting a little bit politically active about rent control, or, I don't have time right now to even worry about the data or the future. I'm struggling to figure out how to like make money in my business, or I'm struggling with all the questions my team are throwing at me all the time. Why can't they just think for themselves? Reach out to DoorGrow, we can help you make your business scalable. We can help make it easier and we can help remove that secret pain that a lot of you have that are over 200 doors that deep down, if you add more doors, your life's not going to get better, personally, it's going to get harder. And so we psychologically get reversed towards growth and adding more doors. We can help solve that problem. We just need to make your business scalable and get you out of all the things that you really don't enjoy doing. [00:30:54] And we're really good at helping people do that. So if you'd like to start stacking and adding a hundred, 200 plus stores a year in your property management business and grow it and scale it, we have clients that are doing that and we have proven it and our model works and we can help you do that as well. [00:31:11] So reach out to DoorGrow. And if you're one of the startups or smaller companies and you're under a hundred doors, we can help you get very quickly, get those doors stacked up and start and get the growth going. So reach out to DoorGrow. Check us out to DoorGrow.com. Click the big pink button. We have a free training that's 95 minutes long of me just dropping value, and that's going to change your mindset about what it takes to grow your property management business and to make it scalable. [00:31:38] Check that out and it's free. It's right there. There's a YouTube video on that page that we set up. So, and book a call with us. We'd love to talk with you and see if we can help you grow and scale your business. We're always looking for really awesome growth-minded property managers to be part of our Mastermind community. We have some amazing people in there that are getting awesome results. [00:32:00] Jason Hull: 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!  [00:32:26] 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.

Too many property management entrepreneurs tolerate bad clients. They subject their team to crappy owners and are often miserable.  In this episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull explains how property management entrepreneurs can deal with bad owners and prevent bringing them on in the first place. You'll Learn... [04:03] What is a Bad Client? [09:50] Why Bad Clients Lead to Bad Team Members [10:43] You Need to Punch Your Clients! (Figuratively) [15:36] How to Prevent Bad Clients [24:57] Creating Processes to Get Better Clients Tweetables “If you cannot figure out how to make them into a good client, then you need to let them go.” “You get what you tolerate.” “If you just ate ramen, or you just tighten the belt a little bit, you might be able to let go of that bad client or those bad doors right now.” “If you are tolerating a bad client and you have team members, then you're not taking care of your team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] If you are tolerating a bad client and you have team members, then you're not taking care of your team.  [00:00:06] all right. Welcome Doorgrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:47] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management, business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder, and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:12] All right, so we just had here at DoorGrow, right here at DoorGrow Headquarters in the Austin, Texas area at the Kalahari Resort in Round Rock, Texas, we had DoorGrow Live, our DoorGrow Live event. It was super awesome, super cool, amazing to see everybody in person. It was really awesome, great experience. I highly recommend that if you want to get in momentum in your property management business, you want to get inspired, you want to be around people that are at operating at a different level than at typical property management conferences. Our clients are special. Our clients are special because they have upleveled their mindset. Just being around them will shift you as well. So come hang out with us. That's one of the things we do is we install a different mindset into our clients. So they start functioning and thinking at different higher level than what's typical. And then we start to teach them really good strategies and ideas for growth. One of our clients man-- I'm so excited for some of these testimonial videos-- one of our clients I think went from like 120 doors to like 400 and something doors. And like, I don't know, he like doubled his doors in like four months and he was working with our acquisitions coach. Went and got like, went through a whole acquisition. Like he wouldn't even have known how to look for a deal, let alone have handled the whole thing. He literally just did whatever he was told by his coach. Like, "say this. Send this email. Don't do this." He just did it and now he's going to be adding a bunch of doors. Asked him if he thought he could get to a thousand doors and he said, "oh yeah I'll do that in like maybe two or three years, no sweat." we've laid out that roadmap, we have the DoorGrow code of what a company needs to do in order to get to a thousand doors. [00:03:01] And those of you listening that you're already a thousand doors, maybe your business could be optimized. Maybe it could be more fun for you. Maybe we can improve your team. Maybe you're losing more doors than you're getting on right now. Our clients are adding more doors than you're getting on, and you don't have to do it through acquisition necessarily. You can just add doors. And so if you're having any of these issues, reach out. Like we would love to help you.  [00:03:26] So my topic that I wanted to talk about today, we, Sarah, my wife and COO of DoorGrow brought two clients up on stage and said, " Jason doesn't really know exactly totally what we're going to be doing." [00:03:39] And I was like, "okay. I like a little chaos and a little risk," so she brings them up and was like, "Hey, basically we're going to coach them in front of everybody." I was like, "okay, this could go really horribly wrong or really awesome," but I didn't think it'd go wrong. And it was great. So one of our clients got up and he was just talking about the biggest challenge in his business right now is just a really bad owner. And so we had this great discussion and coaching and conversation with the entire room about bad clients. And so the topic for this episode is how to deal with bad clients or firing. How property managers can deal with bad clients or fire bad clients, right? How do we deal with them?  [00:04:25] One thing that's important is that you should fire some. If you cannot figure out how to make them into a good client, then you need to let them go. It's important to let bad clients go and I think that's the hallmark of a seasoned property manager is that you fired some shitty clients that you don't want to have. Let's chat a little bit about this. So bad clients, what they look like. They're clients that do not respect you. They're clients that do not value you. They're clients that treat you poorly. And one of the things I want you to realize is that you get what you tolerate. And so if you have tolerated this kind of behavior, you may have created clients that don't value you or trust you if you aren't as effective in your sales pitch in creating trust, which is really what true sales is, it's getting people to trust you. Not manipulating, not tricking them. You legitimately have a solution to a real problem that you can solve, and they want that, and you're able to charge a fee for that, right? That is a real business. The big challenge though, is this was like 10% of his portfolio. This one owner. This would be painful to let go.  [00:05:49] So the usual way that I coach clients, if they have a, like sometimes when clients first come to us, especially if they're in that first sand trap of maybe 50, 60 units or less than a hundred units, their whole portfolio might be bad. They might have a large percentage of accidental investors, people that waste their time, people that are pushing back that don't respect their boundaries. And so it's important to set a rule. So my usual recommendation is set some sort of rule. We want to get you growing and adding good doors to offset those and then set a rule like a three to one rule or a five to one rule that every time you get three bad doors or five, I mean, yeah, every time you get three new doors, three good ones, or five good doors, you and your team have permission to let go of a bad door. Or maybe you do it by owners. You just set a rule. Maybe you already know, like you knew the client he wanted to get rid of. You just need to figure out how do we let go of that person. Now, that's one idea. That's if you want to replace that income. But if you're dealing with a shitty owner and the difficult situation, I want you to take a step behind that question because this is the question that a lot of people think superficially. They need answers. How do I replace this income? What I think is a better question is to take a look at, instead of trying to replace all that income before you let them go, is to figure out what amount of additional revenue would I have to be generating or additional clients or business would I have to be generating in order to be able to tolerate letting them go, which is different. [00:07:29] So figure out what's the minimum amount that I could scrape by with and survive with to get rid of them as soon as possible. Because as soon as you get rid of them, it's going to free up a lot of attention, a lot of bandwidth. Your revenue will dip, but you just need to offset it. You might find that you could survive. [00:07:49] If you just ate ramen, or you just tighten the belt a little bit, you might be able to let go of that bad client or those bad doors right now. And what that does is it frees up a lot of head space. It frees up a lot of time. It frees up bandwidth so that you can go replace those doors faster. This is similar to the advice that I gave to my clients that were there that now are full-time, like owning and running their business together. These business partners, when they first came to me though, they were starting a property management business and they wanted to quit their day job. They both had jobs and their dream was to start this business together and offset all their income. And I said, don't try to offset all your income. Figure out what's the bare minimum that you can each pay yourselves and survive on. Like tighten the belt, figure out what that is because if you can just get to that level and then quit your jobs and then go all in on this business, and we teach you all the growth strategies and you start to grow rapidly, this is exactly what they did, they then could grow a lot faster. So they let go of their jobs and they started growing a lot faster and they had to get some doors before they could do this, but once they hit that lower level that they decided they could survive on, then they were able to invest, go all into the business and grow a lot faster. [00:09:11] Same thing with firing clients. Like don't wait until you offset all of the income. I once had a client come to once and he wanted to offset all of his income and he was a pharmaceutical rep making like six figures and he was like, "well, I'm going to start adding some doors and build up this new business, but I'm going to do it kind of part-time and I'll wait until I offset all my income." and I was like, that's not going to happen very easily, if at all. And I think he underestimated the amount of work it would take to start a business. He didn't really want to spend time to do it. It was kind of a dream, and he was pretty comfortable in that job, right? Had a lot of freedom and was pretty comfortable and they paid him really well, so it was hard to give it up. So, let's just keep that in mind.  [00:09:59] All right, so the other thing about firing, I think that's really firing clients that I think is important to recognize is you need to protect your team. If you are tolerating a bad client and you have team members, then you're not taking care of your team. You're going to lose A players. B players will tolerate shitty behavior and they will tolerate shitty bosses and they will tolerate a bad environment. A players won't. By keeping on bad clients, you are losing your best people. If you wonder why you have a lot of turnover, it might be because you're not protecting and insulating your team from people mistreating them or treating them poorly. You haven't set healthy boundaries with your clients and started to protect your team, so make sure you're protecting your team. So fire, protect your team.  [00:10:51] Next item, punch them in the face. Okay, this is metaphorically, I am not recommending violence in this situation. What I am saying is that metaphorically or figuratively, you need to punch them in the face, sometimes these bad owners. Sometimes bad owners are high D personality types on the disc profile, which means they are drivers. They're short, maybe quick. They want results. They want like information quickly. They want to see things moved fast. They do not care about stories or excuses. Let's go! And in order for them to respect you, and a lot of investors or wealthy people might be high D. They're driven. Just like a lot of entrepreneurs, and so if that is the case, you may need to punch them in the face. Like sometimes you'll see two guys and they're like, they have a beef with each other and they like, they're arguing or whatever, and they get into a fight and then they're best friends for forever, right? They respect each other after that. Sometimes you need to punch these crappy owners in the face in order for them to respect you. You need to set boundaries right at the beginning. Boom! And say, no, I'm not going to do that, Mr. Owner, and here's why. They're just waiting. A lot of these owners are just waiting for someone to set boundaries with them to show that they know what they're doing. They cannot, high D cannot respect you if you give in to their demands. They cannot respect you if you cave to their bad behavior. Like they will test you.  [00:12:27] A lot of guys that have dated women or been in the dating scene know, have heard about shit tests, right? Like maybe your spouse does this to you, like they will test you to see if you really are who you say you are, or try to showcase that you are on the tint. They will challenge you. Your clients are going to challenge you. They're going to test you to see if you really are going to stick to those fees. If you really are confident in your business, if you really are going to stick to your contractor agreements, right? They want to see if you have integrity. Integrity in a building is strength. How much integrity does the steel have? Do you have the integrity of steel? Are you strong? Can you maintain your boundaries? Do you know your limits? Can you punch them in the face? If you can punch them in the face in the beginning, a lot of times owners will say "finally, I've found a property manager that I can respect that I don't have to tell what to do, that I don't have to micromanage that owns their stuff." they're looking for that extreme ownership, which is a great book by the way. I love listening to the audiobook because these guys sounded like they gargled sand, like in the deserts of Ramadi, right? So they're like, Jocko Willick and Leaf. They're like, "you need to have extreme ownership. This is what we did in Ramadi, right?" [00:13:53] I don't know if that's a pretty good impersonation, but I love listening to the audiobook. So I recommend the audiobook, but these guys know they take extreme ownership. They're accountable for things, but they also probably are willing to punch somebody in the face. It's like being shitty or mistreating or whatever, right? So make sure you punch them in the face and you do that early during the sales process, and you will be probably the most likely to get them as a client because they go to everybody else, they're not going to find what they're looking for, which what they want is peace of mind. They want safety and certainty, and you cannot feel safe with somebody that caves to the whims of everybody. That's not a safe person. You're not a safe property manager to manage their property. If they think you're going to fold on every vendor saying, " I'm going to charge way too much," or you're going to cave on every tenant that's going to say, "well I want to paint the house purple," or whatever they want to do. You're like, "well, okay." They're not going to trust you. They need to know that you have what it takes. You need to show them that. And then they're going to be like, oh my gosh. You're the property manager for me. You just need to say, "no, Mr. Owner, we're not going to do that. And here's why. We know this. We know what to do. This is how we do it. Our way works better than yours. By your own admission, you're coming to us for help because things aren't going well as you have told me, and we don't have that problem. Our clients don't have that problem. We are better at this than you. So either you trust us and respect us to do our job, and we will not be perfect, but we'll get it. We'll fix it, we'll make sure we get it right eventually, but we're going to do this better than you. We're good at this and you can trust us to take care of stuff." And they'll go, "that's all I wanted. That's all I needed. I just wanted that safety and certainty. Just wanted to know you had the strength to do what I would want to be done." [00:15:44] Okay, the next step is you need to figure out after you've dealt with a bad client, maybe you forgot to punch somebody in the face. Maybe you forgot to protect your team. Maybe you didn't fire them soon enough. Now you need to make sure you learn and prevent this situation in the future. So how do we learn? And how do we prevent? Well, when you need to take inventory, what did we do to create this situation? What did we do to allow a client like this into our portfolio? Why did we allow this? What happened? Where was the breakdown? Do we need to or can we improve our agreements? Do we need to improve the conversation or during the sales process when we review the agreement and tell them so they can hear and see what it is we're going to do, so, Instead of just sending the agreement, can we go through the agreement with them to align them towards our way and make them a better client? Can we filter better? Can we qualify during the sales process and prevent bad clients from coming in or set better expectations during the sales process? All of these things, Allow you to qualify and get your clients potential clients to level up. You can turn them into better clients during the sales process. So learn and prevent. Can we create new processes and procedures that insulate and protect us from owner situations like this, right? You need to learn. So we want to make sure that our clients feel safe and they might need to be punched in the face, and they might need better boundaries, and they might need better guidelines, and they might need better training or education during the sales process on how to be a good client. [00:17:30] We have this in our agreement with our clients, how to be a good client. And there's a list, right? And during our sales pitch, one of our slides in our pitch deck is the three commitments we require of people that come into our program of what's required. Like do you measure up? Do you qualify to be with us, right? You need to set boundaries and you need to use that, that sales tactic of qualifying and of prising yourself. You're the prize. You solve their problem, they have problems. They're paying you to solve those problems, which means you're the prize, not them. Mindset. That's a mindset shift.  [00:18:12] Okay, so the next thing, get clear on your boundaries, right? So after you learn and prevent, get clear what are our boundaries? And recognize people will test these boundaries. So how do you pass the test instead of fail the test? So if somebody's setting boundaries, you will either pass or you will fail a test. If somebody's trying to test your boundaries you'll either pass or fail. So make sure you set your boundaries. What are their boundaries, right? So make sure you're passing the tests. It is it's so helpful to recognize that everybody that matters, or your spouse, your kids, your clients, tenants, they're all going to test your boundaries, so you need to get clear on what those boundaries are, and when a boundary is crossed, you'll know it because your nervous system will not be happy. You will not feel good in your body. You'll feel guilt or shame or embarrassment, humiliation, lack of power. Whatever, gross, icky, right? These are when people order situations overstep or go over your boundaries, or you aren't respecting or take taking care of yourself. You need to take care of that little you on the inside. It needs your protection. You need to take care of you. You need to know that you will protect you no matter what. Just like your team needs to feel safe. Your heart needs to feel safe. Your mind needs to feel safe. Your body needs to feel safe. These are like three children that you control. You are not your mind. You are the person that thinks the thoughts. You are not the thoughts. You are not your mind. You are also not your emotions. You are the person that feels the feelings. This is another vehicle. Your mind is a vehicle. Your heart is a vehicle, and you are also not your body. You are the person that moves the body and uses the body and experiences the body. These are like three unruly children on the bus, and you should be driving the bus, and if you let any of these drive the bus, it can be a bit chaotic, right?  [00:20:21] If your brain's driving the bus, everything's scary because the brain's job it's to avoid pain and scare the shit out of you and protect you. So it's going to like look at every logical angle. How can I avoid feeling these uncomfortable feelings? And the heart and the emotions needs to feel everything. It's the only thing you can do with the feeling. You need to feel the uncomfortable feelings. You need to feel the sorrow of the sadness, the crap, the happiness, the joy. You need to feel it all. That's part of being human, that's life, that's feeling alive. The full breadth of human experience. We need to feel it all, but the brain doesn't want us to fill it all because the brain's like, well that didn't, I don't know if I liked that last time. That was uncomfortable. And it judges everything. And then we have our body, and our body wants like sex and it wants to taste stuff and it wants to get rest. And like our body has these needs. So we can't let our body be in control, right? Like our life can be really strong chaos. We're just letting our tongue and our genitals and our physical needs like take complete control of the bus, that would be a really bad life, bad situation, right? If our heart and emotions were in control of everything, we'd be kicking holes in the wall. Like we would just be emotional about things. We would be up and down, right? We would get way too excited about some stuff, right? And logic then steps in and like controls a little bit of that, right? And we have some reason, and some logic we're like, how much would it cost to kick a hole in the wall? How much would it cost to repair that? So we start to make logical choices. What would be the ramifications of this relationship or doing this thing or taking this risk, right? So, Then we have our intuition, right? [00:22:00] Another vehicle that I didn't mention, but we have another vehicle, our intuition, some might call it gut, some might call it God, source, whatever. Our spiritual side that we need to tap into that is a higher faculty than our logical mind that gives us clues and lets us know things that need to be done that sometimes don't make logical sense, but they end up being right and deep down they're right. A lot of really logical people cannot listen to intuition, which is a higher faculty. That's why the intuitive people have a one up on some of the most logical people. They're too logical, they're too logical, and a lot of times they're too logical because they're really just trying to avoid feelings and it cuts off their intuition. [00:22:41] So going back what I was why I'm going over this is we need to set really good boundaries and we need to take care of these four vehicles, our intuition, our mental, our emotional, our physical. We need to take care of these vehicles, these little children that we kind of manage. We need to be listening to all of them, and we need to figure out what our boundaries are. What are we willing to do? What are we not willing to do? And then we need to figure out how to avoid the temptations that cause us to fail at that. And sometimes one of the things that came up is one of our clients was very transparent during one of our awesome speakers and said that sometimes when there's conflict with vendors and some of the vendors are his friends, like doing stuff, he's kind of a pleaser and it's hard to set boundaries with them or to let them know, have uncomfortable conversations that they're not doing things right or something needs to be done faster or stuff like this. And so what within ourselves, the kind of question that she asked was like, what within ourselves thinks that we. Deserve to have those things happen to us, or why within ourselves are we so concerned with being liked, and a lot of times it's from when we were young. People overstepped our boundaries. People treat us poorly and we had to like fawn or please to get people to like us in order to feel safe. And so, there's a great book I read recently I really enjoyed, called The Courage to Be Disliked. All about Adler, Adlerian psychology and which is different than Freud and young. Really interesting. I think he was way ahead of his time. The world wasn't ready for him back then. He was a contemporary of both of those young and Freud. But Adlerian psychology has become very popular in Japan, and I believe the authors of the book are both from Japan, and it was translated to English, I think. [00:24:41] So really awesome book. The Courage to Be Disliked. And the sequel is the Courage to Be Happy or something like that. Great books. We need to have courage, the courage, the willingness to feel those uncomfortable feelings and be disliked in order to respect our boundaries. And so that's something else that we could do a whole episode on this, right?  [00:25:05] So the next piece is to build process, right? So take a look at your process. This might be connected to learning and preventing. This might be connected to getting clear on boundaries and what you want, protecting the team, but coming together as a team. We had Errol Allen at this event. He's a process expert and he talks about getting the entire team together to work on a process. Like who feeds the process, who works on the process, and who is affected later, or what, the output affects of the process affects them, right? So we want to make sure that we get all the stakeholders involved and we develop a really good process. So that we can, as part of that learning and preventing and avoiding the temptation and passing the tests is creating a really good process. And so these are the main things that we discussed in relation to dealing with this challenge of letting go of clients that are not treating you well and setting really good boundaries. Now, If you don't, then you will get caught in the cycle of suck. Everybody's heard me talk about this before, which means you take on crappy owners, you then have crappy properties, you then have crappy residents because they're frustrated about the crappy property and the crappy owner, and then you're going to have crappy reviews. Then you're going to attract more crappy clients, right? And this sums up the property management industry in aggregate. This is the challenge in why most property managers suck. Most of your competitors you probably believe suck. It's because they're taking on any client. You need to set some rules, set some boundaries, and let go of some bad clients and that will get you out of the cycle of suck. Why do you want to be out of that? Some of you think, well, that's just property management. That is not very profitable property management. This is why the average property management business has like 4% or 6% profit margin and makes very little money. [00:27:00] Our clients sometimes have 10 times those amounts, a profit margin. We've got clients doing 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 or 60% profit margin, right? And so to have really good profit margin, you cannot have really bad owners and really bad systems and you can't be caught in the cycle of suck. You've got to let go and clean your portfolio up and you'll be a lot more profitable. because one bad property can take easily 10 times, just maybe even a hundred times the amount of work as a good door, as a good property. Okay. All right, so hopefully this gave you some ideas. You're probably thinking right now about a client. I know you. You're thinking about a client right now. You're like, I'd be so happy if I could just get rid of that. My team would love if we could just get rid of that person, if we could just get rid of that one property, that would be great. This is your business. It can be the business of your dreams, or it could be like your master and you could be a slave to it. Which one do you want? Any business at? Any size could be either one. You get to decide this is your business, so be the entrepreneur, not the property manager. Protect yourself and let go of some of those bad clients. And that's it for today.  [00:28:17] So, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to get your either add doors or you want to finally dial in the operational side, you're curious maybe about how does DoorGrow help with process and their, what's their DoorGrow flow software and how do they help with sales and what's their CRM software, DoorGrow CRM, and how do they help with operations and what is this DoorGrow os and why is it so much better than eos? And how are they helping property managers get their teams in a alignment so that they can go from pretty good growth to having like 300% growth in a year, like some rapid growth where the team are all moving the business forward, like and thinking like an entrepreneur. How do we finally get great team members? Our client that just doubled his doors I was telling you about, since joining DoorGrow, he fired most of his team and replaced most of his team because he realized by getting clarity in working with us and getting the hiring stuff going and vetting his team, he realized he did not have the right team. He didnt have the A players, he didn't have believers. So we need to help you get a really great team and then install DoorGrow os and then make sure you have processes and if you have those three system people, system, process, system. And planning system, you then have a scalable business. So now this client he has a business that can scale, right? We want you to have a scalable business, a business that if you lost team members, you could get back up to speed very quickly, right? Whereas most of you probably just did Russian roulette hiring until you eventually got enough team members and fired enough team members that you had a good team and you finally installed decent culture and then you were finally able to break 600 doors. You can't break 600 doors with a crappy team.  [00:30:04] You'll last see so many people in that two to 400 door range struggling. You get to 500 and it's painful. If you feel like right now, if you're honest with yourself, deep down that if you added more doors right now, if you added another a hundred doors this month, your life would get shittier and worse then your business is not set up to be scalable. The business owner's life should get better the bigger the business gets and the more money you have. And that means your business is not set up to be scalable. Let's get your business to be scalable. Reach out to DoorGrow. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Go to our homepage, the big pink button. "I want to grow." click that and there's a free training. You can book a call with our team and you can watch our testimonials and case studies and we're going to blow your mind. And we're going to help you realize why marketing doesn't work very well generally, advertising generally doesn't work very well for growth, and why you've been struggling to get your team and business in alignment so that you enjoy your day to day. Let's get you there.  [00:31:02] Until next time, to our mutual growth, I'm Jason Hull. Bye everyone.  [00:31:06] Jason Hull: 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!  [00:31:33] 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.

If you are a property management entrepreneur, you have probably experienced isolation. Being an entrepreneur is often a lonely profession, but it doesn’t have to be. In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss why every property manager needs a tribe to keep them accountable and celebrate their wins. You'll Learn... [01:45]  Don’t Surround Yourself with Negative People [06:30]  The Isolation of Entrepreneurs [12:45]  The Benefits of In-Person Events [17:11]  Why DoorGrow Spends 6 Figures Annually on Coaching [20:00]  Don’t Try to do Everything Yourself! Get Support [30:34]  When Someone Else Knows What You Need Better Than You Tweetables “Sometimes what's constraining us in growth is something so simple and obvious that somebody else could see.” “Your growth will be very limited if you are surrounded all the time with toxicity and negativity.” “You need to be around people that don't believe your excuses and that can see your limiting beliefs.” “It's very challenging. It's a tough industry. It is not for the faint of heart. But it can also be very rewarding.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason Hull: You need to be around people that don't believe your excuses and that can see your limiting beliefs. And they're like, "that's gross. Like you don't need that. That's bullshit, right? Like you don't need that belief. Like it's actually like this. This is how I see it." And that changes your beliefs if you hang out with those people. [00:00:16] Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. 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 here with Sarah. Do you want to introduce yourself? [00:01:20] You do it. [00:01:21] Sarah the COO of DoorGrow and my wife. Now let's get into the show. " You do it." All right.  [00:01:31] You're on a roll. I'm on a roll. All right. Welcome everybody. So today I was like, Sarah, what should we talk about? And so the topic we decided to talk about is something that's been really beneficial to us. We want to talk about why as a property manager, you need a tribe. You need people as a property management entrepreneur, business owner, you need a tribe or you need some people to support you in your positive goals and your growth. And one of the things that I've seen in the industry a lot is there's a lot of people in the industry-- property management's tough, right? It can be tough, and it's very easy to create a tribe or have a tribe or be in groups in which everybody's negative about property management, right? Like where they're just sharing wine memes and like, "Hey, it's the end of the day... property management... tenants, argh!" right? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the opposite. A tribe that helps you focus on the positivity and moving your business forward, and that's been super beneficial for us in our business. So maybe Sarah can tell us a little bit about that so. [00:02:40] Sarah Hull: All right. Well, I think in property management there's a lot of different challenges. We can all agree on that. So it is easy to kind of jump on that train of, "hey this is hard" and "my life sucks" and "I don't know why I do this" and "sometimes I don't get paid enough money to deal with this." So it's very challenging. It's a tough industry. It is not for the faint of heart. But it can also be very rewarding, and I think surrounding yourself with positive energy and positive people versus the naysayers and the people who want to, focus on oh, how bad their day was and how hard this is, and how challenging this is, and how tired they are, and that they're just constantly drained. If those are the people that are surrounding you, and that's what you're hearing, you will like, whether you realize it or not, you are programming your brain to think this way. [00:03:46] So if we're surrounded by people that are constantly negative and they live for the weekend and they're like, "oh, I'm going on vacation. I can't wait and don't bother me, leave me alone. Like if you don't just truly enjoy what you do and you are being dragged down constantly. Your brain is absorbing all of this. It's like a sponge. So really what you're doing to yourself is, it's a form of self-sabotage, and it's really important to get yourself around people that are just vibrating at a higher energy. I know that sounds really woo woo, but that's something that over the last few years I've had to work really hard at. I've really become a professional at cutting people off and cutting people out if they're not a champion of me if they're not somehow, helping to promote me or helping me to think, more differently or really proud of what I've done. Because there are always people who are like, "oh yeah, I don't like that guy. I don't like that girl." Like, "oh, she, yeah they're great and all, they've got a bunch of success, but it came because they don't do things the right way, or they, they took an easy way out. So if you're surrounding yourself with people like that, you've got to minimize all of those thoughts and all of the time that you're really spending, so that you put yourself in a better position in order to be positive, in order to grow. Your growth will be very limited if you are surrounded all the time with toxicity and negativity.  [00:05:33] Jason Hull: Yeah. I think it's really important to be around people that don't believe your excuses, right? If you're around people that are like, "yeah, that's how it is. Yeah, it sucks sometimes, and that's just like the way it works" or, "yeah, it's difficult to grow or yeah, that's hard. Or, yeah, I'm dealing with that too." Right? Then you're in a support group for a problem, right? That's a support group for a problem, right? That's not helping you move past it. And so you need to be around people that don't believe your excuses and that can see your limiting beliefs. And they're like, "that's gross. Like you don't need that. That's bullshit, right? Like you don't need that belief. Like it's actually like this. This is how I see it." And that changes your beliefs if you hang out with those people. Because their beliefs is are more true and more accurate, they're not going to change theirs down to your crappy limiting beliefs. You're going to uplevel yours. And we all have those at any level. We all have them. And then we talk to somebody that's at a higher level and they're like, "well, I see it this way," and we're like, "oh my gosh, I couldn't see that before." So you need a tribe. So one of the challenges that is created, I believe naturally for entrepreneurs is entrepreneurial isolation, like we're isolated. Especially in early stages. You probably felt this when you first started your business. It's all me. I'm all alone.  [00:06:49] Sarah Hull: Yeah. Well, I think I've really-- I felt that until I came to Texas.  [00:06:56] So what was different about Texas?  [00:06:58] Well, I think everything was really different about Texas, but I think just the mindset of people here is so different. And it's a lot easier to be around people that just, they think there's more, they think it's easy. I think something that I kind of had a lot of when I grew up was: making money is hard, like, you've got to turn, you've got to work, you might need to work, 2, 3, 4, sometimes jobs. Yeah. In order to make the money that you want. And the mindset that I had for, a long period of my younger life was. Hey, if I want more money, I've got to, work more hours, or I've got to get a raise, or I've got to get an extra job. So, for years of my life, I had just worked multiple jobs, two or three at a time so that I can make the money I wanted, and I just thought like, this is what you do. This is normal. And it's hard, like if you can do great things, but it's hard and you just have to, buckle down and like, dig your heels in and just plow through. And only within, I'd say the last three years that I realize it's not hard. It's hard if you make it hard. It's hard. If you think it's hard and it's hard If you're surrounded by people that tell you it's hard then it's going to be hard. You best bet it will be hard. But it doesn't have to be hard. It really doesn't. And just your own mindset can really prep you for what you're going to receive. So if you think, "oh it's hard and I've just got to grind and there's no other way to do this. That's what you're going to get. [00:08:40] Jason Hull: I think every entrepreneur goes through kind of this journey. From a young age, entrepreneurs are a little bit different. We don't value safety and certainty as the highest priority. We are a little bit more adrenaline junkies. We're a little bit more focused on, taking risks. We're willing to work longer hours and harder to like get something going. In order to have more freedom, we care more about freedom than just staying safe and having a safe, stable job. And we think the world can change. We see that things could be better. We want to improve everything around us. We're like, why are people doing it that way? We're not satisfied with the status quo. So what that creates is, that creates a situation in which we're weird. And we get a lot of friction and everybody around us is like, why are you being weird? Like, why don't you just go along with what everyone else is doing? Just do what everyone else is doing and be safe. Like, why don't you just go get a job? Any entrepreneurs ever heard that before? Right? They don't get us. And so we start to learn. As an entrepreneur, "I probably shouldn't say anything." I should probably like not put out there what I'm doing. I need to isolate more because I'm getting so much friction. [00:09:53] Sarah Hull: People just, they don't understand it. They don't get it. But you have this higher vision that other people just don't, they don't have yet, and they can't see it. It's your job though, to help them see it. So you small yourself and you make yourself smaller and more little, and you just say, "Hey, I'm going to I'm just going to do my own thing. I won't worry about it. Then you are taking that opportunity away from not only yourself, but from other people. To see, hey, there's more. This isn't it. You're not done yet.  [00:10:31] Jason Hull: It's really difficult though, if somebody's wired that they're at their core. They're like, I want safety and certainty more than freedom and more than taking risks you're not really probably going to change them or convince them. And because we're a minority, we're like, we're rare as entrepreneurs. In order to escape that entrepreneurial isolation that we've all created around ourselves where we think we're on an island and it's all up to me and I've got to get my team to do stuff, and we feel weird and we're different... we have to start connecting with other entrepreneurs. Then we start to realize we're not weird. I went through this and when I first got my first coach, And he was like, described what entrepreneurs were like, and he was like this. And I hung out. I went to an in-person event and it was a group of entrepreneurs and they were all making way more money than me. I felt like the ant in the room, but they all were kind to me. They all loved my ideas. My coach at the time was like, you have a multimillion dollar business and you don't even know it. I started crying because he could see that I had the capacity to do something that I couldn't even see it the time. And that's why it's so important to get around people that can believe in you. [00:11:35] And that's the thing, if you're around other entrepreneurs that are high functioning. Where you have good coaches, good mentors, good people that you're connected with, good friends, whatever, they will see you in your greatness. They'll see you in that you're playing small. They'll see that there's something better for you that you can't even maybe see for yourself. And that changed me. It changed me as a person. That event changed me because I was like, whoa, all these people have multimillion dollar companies and they all were listening to my nerdiness and what ideas I had and they thought I was helpful and valuable and if they can do it, I can probably do it too. And that was like, and I just thought it was, maybe that was impossible, like, but if they can do it... these people can do it. Maybe I can do it right.? So, and that's part of the why we invest a lot as a company and why we're in a lot of different masterminds and programs ourselves, and why we offer a mastermind to our clients, which has become the main, our main business. We have our mastermind groups for our clients. So do you want to talk maybe about some of the groups that we've been in or some of the benefits we've seen in being part of some of these groups that we're in?  [00:12:46] Sarah Hull: Yeah. I think even over the last couple months, we've gone and done several, like in-person mastermind styled events. And some of them last minute you were like, "oh, we shouldn't, I don't think we should go. Our business doesn't need anything." Yeah. Like, " we're good right now. We already know what we're doing. We just need to do it." Yeah. And I think sometimes that's exactly when you need to go. Yeah. So even that event that you said, "oh, I don't know if we should go and do it," we had planned to, and then about a week beforehand, Jason's like, "oh, I don't--" [00:13:20] we had so much. [00:13:21] "Like, we're good. Like we have so much on our plate. We already know what to do. We just need to buckle down and do it and get it done." And I said, "I think that's why we need to go." [00:13:31] Jason Hull: And it was really good. Like I had some serious breakthroughs, like I broke down and had a breakthrough. And there was stuff that I just couldn't see and being around, I mean, these are high functioning people that we got to hang out with. You're talking about Puerto Rico, right? Puerto Rico, yeah. Yeah. Our Puerto Rico trip. We did another really cool one in Houston we did with a different group of entrepreneurs. Yeah. A lot of these are coaches, so we're connected heavily to the coaching industry. We went and did the Nashville. We went to another group there two times to Nashville. Yeah. Twice. That was a game changer for us as a company. [00:14:03] Sarah Hull: Both times. And that's the thing is, you sometimes you might go to something and it's really good and then you go wonder the second time, like, "am I going to get as much out of it? Yeah. Is it going to be as good? What are they going to do this time?" And it was absolutely just as good as the first time. And I think the first time you walked away with like 77 little like ideas and I didn't see your list this time, but I, it was huge and big list this time too. It was huge. So there was a big, long list of things that sometimes it just takes a person on the outside looking in-- Yeah-- to say, "oh, well why don't you do it like this?" And you're like, "oh, I can't even believe I missed that."  [00:14:40] Jason Hull: We still need to sit down and go through the last event we just got back from Yeah. In Nashville and go through all that. Haven't even been back a week yet. Yeah. But we've got our conference this week, so we're getting our clients together so they can experience an in-person connection. So that's another piece. A lot of these masterminds, there's a virtual component. We have that as well, but the ones we're talking about where we get the greatest benefit, there's been virtual components to those, but the in-person really is dramatically different for us.  [00:15:08] Sarah Hull: It is different. It's just so different. When you get face-to-face with people, you really get to connect with them. I think sometimes. It's in the unplanned moments too. It's like, "Hey, we're in the taxi going to this place," or we're on the bus, driving around and-- totally-- like, there's no structure to those moments. It's like hey, we're going to go from here to here, and to do that, we're going to get on the bus. But it's the conversations that are happening on the bus. We're all sitting there, and you sit in different spots and you talk to different people and you're like, "Hey, I heard this is what you do and I'd love to pick your brain on this." and there's so many people, especially in that group in Nashville, there's so many people that they've just been there, done that. Like they've tried it, they've won, they've failed, and they're like, I'm completely willing and open to contribute to other people. And I think that's the other component of it is you can't go into a group like this. And say, "I'm going to take. I'm just taking, yeah. I'm not telling anybody what I do. I'm just going to hide. I'm not telling anybody because this is like my secret sauce." Yeah. Get the secret sauce all over everything. Tell everybody you know, "Hey, this is what I do." This is how it works. Because no matter how good you are, even if you're like, "Hey, things are freaking awesome for me," that's great. You can still get in a group like this. And if you come in and say, "Hey, like this is amazing. This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it," you are still going to get some ideas because there's going to be something that someone says and you go, "oh I didn't even think about that." yeah. Didn't even think of it. And a lot of times it's like you're just too close to the fire.  [00:16:45] Jason Hull: Yeah, like one of the in between moments we had in Nashville was with our friend Sharon. And Sharon, he's the CEO of a company that just posted like, I think they publicly posted they had 4 billion in quarter one in  [00:16:59] Sarah Hull: revenue, not just total like 4 billion in. [00:17:02] Jason Hull: So this guy knows a thing or two. And so, and he shared one idea that was so simple it could potentially double our client retention rates. And these are the type of things that we want to bring to the table for our clients. Like we're always innovating, always looking for what's the best, what's working really well, how can we optimize things? And a lot of our best ideas don't come from the property management industry. They come from like us playing our own game of business. In the coaching industry, which is what we are now. We do websites, but we started as a web design agency. But we're no longer really an agency. We're more of a coaching business and running a mastermind but we're always learning better and higher systems and ideas that we can then give to our clients. And our clients are also contributing really cool ideas like our last DoorGrow Live event. This one we have people presenting too, from within the group, like they're sharing. But we had some amazing ideas shared at the last event where everybody was like-- everybody was like, no matter how big, "I'm starting a maintenance company. Yeah. Or I'm going to start doing this." because they got this idea that was unique and different than I'd heard in the industry of how to make this work more effectively. Really cool ideas. We're just stacking cool ideas all the time. I don't think there's any other program out there that is able to stack cool ideas. Even, you know, NARPM's a really great organization. There's some really great organizations out there and people that do coaching. There's some other masterminds, but I don't think anybody moves as quickly or invests as much money as we do into our own coaching and into masterminds and working with high level people and creating connections, relationships, and so, I don't think there's anyone that moves as fast as us too. Like we move really fast as a team because of our amazing systems. It's the same system we teach clients to do for planning DoorGrow os and all this kind of stuff you've probably heard me talk about on the podcast before. [00:18:54] I want to challenge something you said. You said moving to Texas was different and I think. I think what's really different is Austin moving to Austin area. Austin has a very entrepreneurial community. It does. That's kind of unique to the area, and like I lived in LA area and... all right. SoCal, everybody from Pennsylvania think SoCal, like if you've been to Pennsylvania, like up there. Sorry, but I don't think it's that great, but.  [00:19:24] Sarah Hull: I'm also sorry if you live in Pennsylvania,  [00:19:25] Jason Hull: SoCal is pretty great, except the politics is horrible, but, and there's like, yeah. And some of the areas are getting really bad, but that's why I left. Right? But SoCal in LA, you think there'd be a lot of entrepreneurs and whatever, like people are all about themselves. Like, it was really difficult to connect. I couldn't find groups or communities. I would go to some events and it just wasn't the same. And it's very different here. And a lot of people here are from California, which is, it's like all the best people escaped but it's an awesome community here that allows us to connect with entrepreneurs and destroy that entrepreneurial isolation, right? That I had mentioned. Now, a lot of people don't invest in these things because they think they can figure it out themselves. I mean, is every entrepreneur's default thing. I'm smart enough, I can watch some YouTube videos, I can read some books. I can figure it all out myself. I can do it. That's like stage one. You think you're the hero, you're a king. You can do it all on your own. Right?  [00:20:19] Sarah Hull: But you know, and it's not even that you're wrong. Because you can. Yeah, it's true. You can do it by yourself.  [00:20:24] Jason Hull: Just take a decade longer.  [00:20:26] Sarah Hull: It's just going to be infinitely harder. And I think one of the beautiful things about connecting with the people that are in your industry specifically they all have a different formula for what they do. They all have different knowledge, they all have different experiences and expertise. So, I mean, there are people in like in our mastermind group that they're like, "Hey, this is what I am going through right now and it's a mistake that we made, and I want to share it with the rest of the group so that everybody else in the rest of the group gets to learn without having made the mistake themselves. [00:21:05] Jason Hull: I think also what's unique about our, because it's not just property managers getting together, there's lots of other places that could do that besides DoorGrow. I think what's really unique is that because of how much I've invested and how much we invest as a company and how much we've kind of consolidated and that we continue to do that aggressively and very quickly. I mean, we're in I think 2, 3, high level, high ticket masterminds right now. We spend easily six figures a year as a company on that. Like my business allows me to feed my coaching addiction and to get more stuff. Right? That's true. Right? So the business serves me because I love to learn. Right. And I love teaching and sharing. I think what's really different though, is that when people come into our group, Their mindset very quickly gets upgraded. I mean, we have a training called Mindset Secrets. Like we are changing these people the way they think and the way they operate. And now they aren't able to be part of a group of other people with that upgraded mindset and that upgraded level of thinking. And they're not doing stupid stuff. Like, they're not like, "I'm going to go just try and do internet marketing or content marketing" or whatever they're trying to do to grow, they're like, there's better ways. "So I'm going to do this stuff that DoorGrow taught me." So everybody comes in with a bunch of junk and a bunch of garbage and a bunch of false beliefs and a bunch of ideas of what could work. And that's not really working. And they're frustrated or stuck. They're stagnant in their operations, they're doing too much in their business. They're not really enjoying their team. Like we get all of them to see a better way of doing all this and change it. A lot of people think DoorGrow's all about growth. That's like such an easy thing we solve for clients is adding a bunch of doors. What we really do is we really help business owners become entrepreneurs and run really effective teams and get really great people and build really great systems and operations. That's really what DoorGrow does, but everybody thinks DoorGrow must just help people grow. [00:23:00] Really, we love working with the 200 to 400 door plus companies that are struggling with people, systems, team, operations, because these are all the things the business owner thinks they should be doing, that they should not be doing. This is what their operator or these people should be doing on their team. Right? And so because they come in and we upgrade their mindset very quickly. That group as a group, this Hivemind, this Mastermind, are able to contribute so much more value than I was able to see in any other groups in the industry. Does that sound fair?  [00:23:33] Sarah Hull: Yeah. I think that's-- I'm obviously biased, but-- no, I think that's a good point and I think it gives you really a place to be recognized too. Because we don't get that. Yeah. Like there's no one, you know, when you're in school or when you're a kid and like you do something and you get like the gold star or something, you're like, oh yeah, I got a lollipop because I did my chores today. Like yeah. As adults, we don't get that. There's nobody who's like, "I'm so happy about what you did. Like you did such good job. Yay for you." Like, unless you have these connections, like you just, you miss out on that.  [00:24:12] Jason Hull: So you're kind of touching on the gamification or the gamification where we've gamified our mastermind, right? We've got like our belt levels. Like you're moving through martial arts for property managers where you're going from like zero, a fantasy belt to a white belt of getting your first door to being a black belt at a thousand doors. And we have like achievements that you've mapped out, that we have achievements that we've mapped out as a company for people to achieve certain things to showcase their expertise and our clients wear, like this is new, but they're going to be wearing at DoorGrow Live this week. They're going to be wearing lanyards that are their belt color that they've earned in our system. This is not just because they have doors. You don't get to be a black belt because you have a thousand doors. You have to start as a white belt. Get on the mat and like earn each of these belt levels by achieving certain milestones in DoorGrow to prove that you've upleveled your mindset, you've upleveled parts of your business and that you've got things financially in place and that you have a profitable company. Like there's all these requirements that we've installed and that gamification makes it a lot more fun and allows some of that, you know, recognition to be seen by other people. Right? Yeah. So that's been really helpful.  [00:25:27] Sarah Hull: And I think that's a really good point too, is the door count doesn't always matter. That's what we in the industry, that's where we're like, oh, they have, 5,000 doors. Like, oh my god, that's insane. But I've seen companies with like 8,500 doors that make $54 a door or what? I'm sorry. But I have--  [00:25:47] Jason Hull: and that's revenue. Some of them aren't very profitable. [00:25:51] Sarah Hull: Well, right. So I have zero interest in running a company that has 8,500 doors in which I'm making next to nothing or worse, losing money and I'm not getting paid, or I'm not getting paid well because all of the money is going out to expenses. So what we've done is we've kind of engineered things so that, because I mean, given the choice, if you could have a company with 8,500 doors making bare bones minimum, or if you could have a company with a thousand doors, but you're extremely profitable... so that's what we really focus on with especially the belt system that we put in place. But what's really great about it is when you come to, like one of the live events, you can just pick them out of the crowd super easy by the lanyard. Just look at the color and if you know the DoorGrow Code and the belt system, you'll know very easily like, Hey, this is where I'm at and this is what I want. So let me find the people in the room that are ahead of me. That's who I'm going to talk to.  [00:26:55] Jason Hull: Yeah. Super easy. Yeah, so. Love it. Yeah, so that's helpful. Like everybody needs a hero to chase after. They need those mentors. And so we facilitate that in our program as well. So, yeah, so it's been a game changer for us to have tribes that we are part of that can help us level up. Sometimes they're pointing out things that are so obvious and so stupid that we're missing because we're too close to the fire that it's ridiculous. Like one of them was we do website design for a lot of our clients and we've done that for over a decade. But one of the people that ran a multimillion dollar business that we were in a group with said, "Hey, your website says you do this, and this doesn't sound like what you described." We had changed so much in the previous six months. And it was about six months since we had redone our website. It was all outdated. Our homepage was outdated. And so it was such like a blind spot and it was so obvious and it could affect our revenue so much. It was so stupid. Like I was embarrassed because I'm like, I run a web design agency, and we do this and I've done this forever and I'm missing something so simple and obvious that could make things so much easier. So we changed that and now we're getting a lot more leads and a lot more flow, and it was just like something that we were missing and we just needed somebody outside. And there's so many things like that. We just did a premium mastermind event. We went to Pigeon Forge. [00:28:21] Well, Sarah set this all up technically. Yeah, so it was like in the Rocky Mountains area and like by Pigeon Forge. Smoky Mountains. Smoky Mountains. Smoky. Not in the Rocky Mountain. I don't know where it was. Sarah set it all up.  [00:28:31] Sarah Hull: I know you just showed up. He's like, what am I doing? I'm like, just show up. Right? So, yeah. Yeah. So I kind of set everything up, but what we did is we got a hand selected group of people together and we rented out like a luxury vacation rental. I wanted it to be nice, like very nice. Beautiful view of the Smoky Mountains.  [00:28:56] Jason Hull: It was like this beautiful cabin. [00:28:57] Oh, it was awesome. Up on this hill. Yeah. Like a beautiful view.  [00:29:01] Sarah Hull: It wasn't a hill, it was at the top of the mountain.  [00:29:04] Jason Hull: I don't know. I call that a hill, but it yeah, it was beautiful. We had big mountains behind my house when I lived in SoCal. Yeah. So. But it was, yeah, it was really beautiful. We did some fun things with them.  [00:29:14] Sarah Hull: Yeah. Yeah. It was really great because we got everyone together. Yeah. And the first day, it's like everybody's just kind of hanging out at the property. We're having dinner, we're just kind of talking. We're just figuring it out. The next day we did a deep dive on everyone's business, and I think that was incredible because you get to just contribute to the group with what you can, you get to receive from the group with what you need. And then at the end of the day we went and we just had some fun. So we got out of business mode, which sometimes entrepreneurs are not really great at doing. So we got out of business mode. We went to dinner, we went to a museum, and then we got back to the property and some of us were like, okay. We were up until, I don't know, it was like one in the morning. Yeah. Just chatting. Because we all just couldn't stop. We were all like, okay. Some of them were like, I need to go to bed. I need to go to bed. I think there was probably a good like six of us up until like 1:00 AM. And everyone just got so much out of that and like we got so much out of that too. And it's like that style of event that we've been to and we just knew we needed to implement that in our program because if we come across something and we benefit that much from it. Like I said to Jason, I was like, we have to do this. Yeah. Like, we have to make this happen for our clients. I don't care what it takes.  [00:30:34] Jason Hull: Going back my point in bringing this up is that, a lot of these business owners, these property management business owners were at similar stage in their business. And they were able to share ideas. Everybody kind of opened up what their problems were. We looked at their financials. Like we went deep and they were very vulnerable and everybody could see some really obvious things that, that the business owner couldn't see. Like one of them was still getting a lot of phone calls and wasn't able to function in that BDM role that they wanted to as a business owner, while their spouse was functioning more as operator role and they weren't able to do that because they were getting so many calls and property management related stuff to work on. And it was so simple. It was just changing the phone system. That was it. It was just changing and setting up a phone system and changing, setting up some routing. And that's freed up so much more time since he went to that event. He like made those changes really quickly and now he is got way more bandwidth, right?  [00:31:30] Sarah Hull: So, and since then he's added, he's now over 200 doors. Did you know that? Yeah. What was he at before? I think at the event he was 150 something. Yeah. So he's now over 200 and that event was a little over a month ago.  [00:31:42] Jason Hull: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, sometimes what's constraining us in growth is something so simple and obvious that somebody else could see, especially somebody that's worked with people at a much higher level. We can see that path. Right. So, anyway, I think-- anything else we should touch on of why property managers need a tribe? I don't think so. You need a tribe. Don't be isolated. Your business will be the sum of the five property management business owners you pay attention to or listen to or connected with the most. And get into a group where people have upleveled their mindset. Have a conversation with our team. You can just check us out doorgrow.com. Go join our free Facebook group where we've got some really cool people in there. They're all very helpful. You can go to DoorGrowClub.com to get access to that. Or just go to our homepage of DoorGrow, click the big pink button, and I have a free training, like 90 minutes going into how we can help you level up your operations, create more freedom and fulfillment for yourself, and that's really what's holding you back probably in adding doors. It's probably that you know how to add doors, but deep down, you know that if you add another a hundred doors, another 200 doors in the next year, which we can easily help you, you know that means your life's going to get worse. We need to change that so your business is scalable and get the right systems in place so that you know your business can handle that and your life gets better the more money and doors you have. And let's make you profitable. Like really profitable. Yeah. So if your profit margin isn't like, at least what? [00:33:14] Sarah Hull: Minimum 20%. But maybe even 30 minimum, maybe even 40%. Oh, yeah. Like, let's get you. Some of our clients have 40, 50, 60% profit margins. [00:33:25] Jason Hull: Which was not the case when they came to us. No. Right. So if you're not experiencing the margins that you would like to in your business, it's a lot of times you just can't see it. But we can rearrange the team, we can lower your costs, we can get your team to be more productive or effective. And they don't need to be micromanaged more. You just need some specific systems, like a good planning system, good hiring system. So anyway, we'll wrap up. I could talk about this stuff forever, but it's nice doing the episode with you, Sarah. So I'm trying to convince her to do more with me. So if you guys like her being on these episodes, comment in the comments. Oh boy. Here we go. I know she's better looking than me and she's way smarter than me in some things. Some things. And so yeah. [00:34:09] Sarah Hull: You're going to butter me up like that, I might do more episodes.  [00:34:12] Jason Hull: There you go. Butter. Yeah. All right. So anyway, that's it for today. So until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:34:21] 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!  [00:34:47] 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.

Many property management entrepreneurs struggle to document their processes, and this leads to an overall lack of efficiency in their businesses. Documenting processes helps business owners streamline the day-to-day and reduce interruptions from team members. Join Jason as he chats with Greg Brooks from Rocket Station regarding process mapping and how it can be used to benefit your property management company. You'll Learn... [04:10] What Process Mapping is and Why You Need it [10:35] How to Document Your Processes [16:15] Why You Need to Focus on YOU not the Business [22:40] What Rocket Station Does Tweetables “Every entrepreneur can double their capacity by getting a really good assistant.” “It's very common that we focus so much on the business and we don't focus on what we need.” “As the business grows, the biggest constraints in the business are where there should be the most attention.” “The process is always needed where we feel the biggest bottleneck or where we're feeling the most struggle.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason Hull: for most business owners, getting a VA is probably the very first hire they should make. Every entrepreneur can double their capacity by getting a really good assistant.  [00:00:11] Welcome Doorgrow Hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it.  [00:00:37] Jason Hull: 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. [00:01:10] And I'm hanging out today here with Greg Brooks of Rocket Station. So Greg, welcome to the show.  [00:01:18] Greg Brooks: Yeah, Jason, thanks so much for having us on. Excited to kind of dive in today. [00:01:21] Jason Hull: Cool. So to get started, why don't you give us a little bit of background of how you sort of got into entrepreneurism and developed Rocket Station, and then we can transition right into what Rocket Station is.  [00:01:34] Greg Brooks: Yeah no, definitely. I was like your classic statistic coming out of college, I was a division one athlete and I got done playing and worked in the fundraising world for a little bit, got my masters and very quickly kind of had that entrepreneurial itch. You know, growing up I had you know, goalkeeper academies that I would run, I reffed on the side, kind of had a bunch of little businesses that would help give me some money in my pocket for college. And kind of once I got done with my masters, you know, began on kind of my entrepreneurial journey. I was seven jobs or businesses owned in eight years trying to figure it out. Everything from supplement company all the way through to a restaurant. So really-- Wow. Was trying to kind of find, I feel like being that athlete, right? You have that kind of grind mentality and was trying to see how the heck I was got to get that to translate to making some money and not being a broke college kid anymore.  [00:02:22] And then about four years ago now met up with my partners at Rocket Station. I'd say kind of similar to you. Had, you know, had a couple investment properties myself, but was by no means a full blown property manager or a virtual staffing company with almost 2200 employees in the Philippines. I had never even met someone from the Philippines. Probably didn't even know where it was on a map. Yeah. But was fortunate enough .A couple of my partners were both operators as well as you know, kind of the visionary for where we wanted to go within the space and say they were looking for someone with, you know, kind of a pedigree in sales and marketing and I guess I fit the bill. So it's been a wild ride, kind of, you know, learning this industry. I mean, we work with. You know, operators from all sizes, 50 doors to 45,000. So seeing kind of the different struggles or bottlenecks and growth opportunity, especially over the last three years that this industry has kind of been dealing with, has been exciting and say excited to kind of sit here now positioned as kind of one of the top virtual staffing companies to the property management space and helping our clients solve a lot of kind of day-to-day operational issues when it comes to process as well as people. [00:03:29] Jason Hull: Very cool. So where on a map can people find the Philippines?  [00:03:34] Greg Brooks: Yeah, you want to go say, a lot of people go across the Pacific. You can find Japan and then go a little bit further south. That's where you're looking right there, in that southeast Asian corridor. It's about-- now they can all find it. Yeah. 7,000 islands all spread out. If you push them together, it's about half the size of Florida. But I'm actually, I'm not sure when this episode will release, but we're actually headed there next week for our Q1 wrap up, which I'm excited about. Cool. Spend seven days over there.  [00:03:57] Jason Hull: Yeah. Very cool. So, our topic today is process mapping your property management business. And so let's talk a little bit about process mapping and then maybe we can get into how Rocket Station could help with that. So what is process mapping?  [00:04:13] Greg Brooks: Yeah. For us-- and candidly this came from kind of our own business lessons as young entrepreneurs, especially in property management. So often, we've got great teams. We've got people that have been with us for a while that are running our day-to-day operations. But what they're doing right our leasing processes, our maintenance processes, onboarding a new owner, offboarding an owner, a lot of that we rely on people to, you know, "get the job done right." and we have our weekly meetings and our huddles. But in terms of like a conceptualized process flow or kind of orders of responsibility or actual training documentation that could allow us if we took on a hundred new doors next month to hire 3, 4, 5 more property managers. We found that a lot of operators, regardless of size, really lack that in depth, detailed documentation around how their departments, how their businesses, how each of their individual team members operates. So for us, like we feel like that being a virtual staffing company, that's the key, right? Whether you're just trying to maintain and have a better work life balance as the owner, or if you're trying to scale from 500 to a thousand doors. A lot of people try to acquire and then just hire. And we feel like unless you have those processes and systems really mapped out, documented technology plugged in the right place, you're creating a lot of headache and a lot of extra work and just a lot of unenjoyment of the company that you're trying to scale. So we feel like process mapping is really the key and kind of the foundation to any property manager's business in order to get where they want to be. [00:05:41] Jason Hull: So big challenge that I see in the industry is that a lot of these visionary entrepreneurs, they know that they need process. They know they need a process system, but they hate it, like they hate doing it. It's not fun for them. Now, some of them enjoy the act of creating a system or creating a process, but then they hate to make sure it's being used and they hate to run it. And that's where those operators kind of come in. Like it's kind of the yin of the yang. Most visionary entrepreneurs, they really need an operator. I would say that's probably the most important hire they'll ever have in their business, and a lot of them are lacking it, so, now once they have an operator, this would be like something they could easily give to them. They'll be like, "Hey, do this stuff. Like get these processes documented. Let me show you how to do it." And maybe they'll record that and they'll say, now you make a process for this. Because they don't want to do it. And those of you listening know, you know, you're that person because you've had it on your to-do list for at least a month, maybe even many months, maybe even years, to get certain things documented or defined processes, and it's still not done yet, which is a clue you're not the person that should be doing it yet. You're not the person. So Greg does Rocket Station provide people like that, operators, or are they the more going to be the people that can help to get these processes in place? Just curious.  [00:07:08] Greg Brooks: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, so we do a combination of both. And you're exactly right. Like most. I mean, you think of a typical property company owner, right? They're the visionary. They've got big goals, aspirations, like sitting at a desk, creating flow charts and documenting SOPs and creating what are the FAQs that most people ask when they make a leasing inquiry? Like they don't want to do that and shouldn't have to, and candidly, like who has the time, right? A lot of us, were operating businesses. If we're at the point where we know we need processes, it's either because, we've got messes we're trying to clean up in the office, which is taking our real time. Or we're acquiring and growing, which is also taking our real time. So it's like how do you balance that?  [00:07:46] So at Rocket Station, that's really our niche within the virtual staffing space, right? There's lots of providers out there that can staff you with people. We feel like without process and without a resource for the owner to be able to build those processes or to, you know, take a property manager or take your leasing team and have them work with somebody who can conceptualize and document those processes. You're really not doing your business justice. You're not doing your future virtual assistant justice in terms of getting them set up for success. So we do a combination of both. You asked, do we just hand over processes or do we kind of build them from scratch? We do both. So we're very fortunate. Like I said we work with over 550 clients just in the single family property management space itself. We also do commercial, we do short term, but we have developed with our clients. Depending on your scale, you know, the problems at a hundred doors are a little bit different than the problems and processes you need at a thousand doors, but kind of industry best practices based on, you know, the positions and the departments and the structure that companies utilize. We also have great partnerships within the industry with a lot of the softwares that you see out there. Even some names I've seen that have been on the podcast here, whether it's like maintenance coordination software, or leasing software or you know, the Appfolios the Propertywares the Buildiums of the world, where everyone's technology needs to be built into their processes, but not a lot of operators know the ins and outs of all the buttons to click and how to do this, and how to send off this, you know, th this report. So we also work directly with a lot of the software companies, templating out all the functionality that their software enables their clients to utilize, which then we pass along to the client to bake it in. [00:09:22] So we try to template out as much as possible. I mean, it's no secret top operators, I mean, even mid-level operators, 80% of what they're doing, 85% of what they're doing every single day is pretty uniform across the industry. Where we get really dangerous and become a real big asset for our clients in dangerous, in a good way, is part of our onboarding you first spend two weeks minimum with our process development team and our team of process engineers taking our best practices and our guidebooks on software or specific positions and we tweak it and customize it to how your business operates and the structure, the points of contact, the department leaders that you utilize. So it's kind of best of both worlds, keeping it very efficient at the end of the day. Like we said, most operators are not doing process mapping is because they probably don't have time and we totally respect that. But we are really able to create a very robust, very deep, very thorough process through a combination of the customization as well as the templating and best practices that we leverage across our 500 plus customers. [00:10:28] Jason Hull: Cool. So let's talk For those that are listening, they're like, yeah, you know, I know I need to map out some processes. I want to start working on the process mapping myself. What would you recommend as the process to map out a process?  [00:10:42] Greg Brooks: Definitely, I think the process is always needed where we feel the biggest bottleneck or where we're feeling the most struggle, and I kind of joke, the metaphor that we use is within your office, anytime you or your team have, oh, shoot moments. "Oh, shoot, I forgot to do this. Oh shoot, I don't want to do this. Oh shoot, I ran out of time to get to this." That's usually where you need to start developing process immediately. You know, that's typically kind of your foundational billing structure, right? Whether it's you know, whether it's like your leasing process or whether it's how you handle a maintenance call, how you troubleshoot an issue on, on, on site, at a property. I'm trying to think what else. Like your past due, you're invoicing, right? All of those kind of, you know, things that are very repetitive, that are very low level, but have to be done every day. We typically see that's the most impactful place that you can start implementing and documenting your processes. Like I said, we kind of coined the term, the oh shoot moments, you know, the, that's really where the operator, kind of like what you said, same thing for the business owner. Each of your teams, each of your property managers, your leasing agents, there's things that they're either forgetting to do or not doing. It's because it's probably a low priority item that you should be reinforcing process rather than just relying on them to get it done. [00:11:47] And there's many different ways. I know you guys have a great software. I mean, there's tons of different mind mapping softwares out there, but you know, even just a whiteboarding exercise. You know, kind of just doing the, "okay guys, like where are we? Let's go through the simple 12 steps to go from advertising a property to getting a lease signed." Just simplify, and then start to back into the nuance. I think a lot of operators, they think their business, it's very unique. "We do this a certain way, we do that a certain way," and they start thinking too much about the granular and not enough about just the basic step one, step two, step three of the life cycle of a tenant or an owner. So being able to really start there, kind of the good old KISS method, right? 'Keep it simple, silly,' like start very basic and then you can start to build out first. But even just that very basic you know, 10,000 foot overview of how each department operates or how each department interacts with one another is typically where we want to start from a process mapping standpoint.  [00:12:41] Jason Hull: Cool. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I like the idea of looking at the bottlenecks because as the business grows, the biggest constraints in the business are where there should be the most attention. There's a good book by Eliyahu Goldratt. It's called The Goal and it perpetuates the theory of constraints, and it illustrates it nicely. It's kind of a dry read, but, so I recommend you listen to the audiobook because they have actors to play each part. Unless you like dry reading, so. But the ideas in this book, the guy is looking at everything through the lens of trying to fix this factory that he's in charge of, and he's looking at all these different stages in the factory, and they were making things less efficient by improving each step. Because if each step is maximum efficiency, that means they were just building up inventory and it was causing even more constraint and more delay. And so everything has to work as a cohesive whole. And so I like the idea of looking at the larger big picture because you can like optimize one part of your process super strongly and shove a lot of stuff through, and then it can all pile up somewhere else. And that's not the most efficient business model. [00:13:50] It would actually be more efficient to slow things down on that previous step to the level that the next step can handle it fully instead of it building up sort of some sort of constraint or inventory or whatever that you have to like manage and inventory and property management would just be like things backing up, right? So in that situation. So what else can we share with people about process mapping? And then let's get into maybe... I really liked what you had said about how you kind of onboard your clients and bringing them into with your dev team to map out processes. So maybe we can go in a little more detail about that. [00:14:28] Greg Brooks: Yeah, definitely. And then kind of just off of what you just said there, I think the biggest thing is at the end of the day, a lot, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this business they're operators, right? They are stuck. The good old stuck in the business versus working on the business. Yeah. I mean, I would say don't try to do it all yourself, right? Whether it's consultants and consulting services, like what DoorGrow has, or bringing in, hiring kind of your yin to your yang, right? Someone who has an operational mindset, and I think that's a huge part of it as well. Even with how we do it. Typically how an engagement works with one of our clients is like we allow the visionary type business owner to very efficiently get the processes or coordinate their team to get the structure out of them so that you can have that breath of fresh air to like really conceptualize and view your business and even just pinpoint like where those bottlenecks are. So often, I think especially if you're growing your property management company, onboarding new owners, onboarding new doors, it's like you're just waking up and you're a firefighter every day. So just having a resource, whether it's an internal hire, a consultant, a service like ours, to just like get how the system operates now. [00:15:29] Forget even trying to make it more efficient. Forget refining, forget figuring out how many more people we need. Just having a resource where their skillset is being able to conceptualize and document and get that out is hugely valuable. Where what we find is with our clients, like very quickly, you know, their key investors their property managers themselves as the owner, they're very quickly able to say, "Well, why are we doing it like that? What does this look like?" Or our team can say, "well, did you know you can automate this whole business function with the technology that you're already paying a pretty penny for?" So just like getting it out, right? Don't feel like you got to kind of make it more efficient and document the same time. It's like, let's just figure out what we got here. That's just hugely valuable and should be like kind of the first stepping stone for anybody as they go down the, you know, building systems and processes pathway.  [00:16:13] Jason Hull: Yeah. I think one of the interesting things that I see a lot in having, you know, been kind of on the inside of probably thousands of property management businesses that's really interesting, is that it's very common, I think just in general for entrepreneurs is that we focus so much on the business and we don't focus on what we need as an entrepreneur in order to move towards what I've talked about on previous episodes, which I call the four reasons, like more fulfillment in our day-to-day, more freedom, more contribution, more support in our business. Those are the four reasons we start a business, and we all want that fifth reason of safety and certainty like our clients want, and in order to create those five things, a lot of times business owners make the mistake of just continually serving the business. What does the business need? Oh, the business needs an operator. The business needs to hire, the business needs this. Meanwhile, their needs continually get neglected. It's super common that you get to the point where you have two to 400 doors, I call it the second sand trap, and you're miserable. More miserable than you've ever been in your business or maybe in your life, and you now have an entire team around you that are doing stuff in the business, but they're asking you tons of questions.  [00:17:28] You are now the biggest bottleneck in the business. You're frustrated and banging your head against the wall thinking, "why can't they just think for themselves?" And it's because you've built a team around the wrong person. You didn't build the business in a way that you get to do the things you most enjoy. And so the way we combat that, I like the lens of looking at what does the business need? What systems do you have? How can you do this? I want to challenge everybody listening also to pay attention to what you need because this business exists to give you fulfillment, to give you freedom to take care of you, and you've spent so much of this trying to take care of the business and take care of your team. So what we do with clients is we have them do a time study. And we have them categorize based on the energetically, which things give them energy, like gives them fulfillment, freedom. Those are plus signs and which things are minus signs that are taking those things away. And then we take a look at those. And then we also categorize them based on you know, whether it's strategic time, like you're focusing on the business, or whether it's tactical, where you're in the business, you're making phone calls, you're doing sales, you're like doing the work, you're sending emails. And for most visionary entrepreneurs, the tactical stuff are the minus signs. [00:18:39] And then the other hidden thing that we track in time studies are interruptions, because this is the biggest hidden thief in a business, is all the interruptions, your team interrupting you, tenants, owners interrupting you. All the interruptions are a thief, and one interruption according to Gary Keller's book, The One Thing, according to research cited in there, costs 18 minutes of productivity. And normally team members are interrupting each other at least once every 18 minutes, so you're losing over a half hour of labor every time. One team member interrupts another team member. And so that's why some businesses, I've seen some with entire teams and it feels like they're just spinning their wheels. They're not really making, innovating, moving progress forward and they're just barely getting all the to-dos done. And so I would challenge people, especially if they come on board with DoorGrow, we would have them do a time study to get clarity on what they need most to get to that next level. [00:19:33] because there's a lot of people in the 200 to 400 door stage that they don't even really want to add doors. That's the secret. Usually at that stage, they deep down unconsciously, don't really want to add doors. They say they do, but when I talk with them, adding more doors, I can tell, means more pain in their mind. So they're psychologically against themselves. They're reversed. And in order to do that, they need to quit focusing on the business and they need to start focusing on themselves and what they need, and their team will be better off if they have those four reasons, their team members can start to have it because their team members will be doing the right things and they'll have the vision to be able to see that their team members are out of alignment or not on those four things for themselves. And I find we get our clients three times the productivity out of their existing team members if they are in alignment with the four reasons. Three times. So yeah, that's cost savings.  [00:20:29] Greg Brooks: A hundred percent. And it's just that leveling up, right? It's for the business owner then being able to level up into what they want to do, run the business that they want. That cascades down to your management. Obviously we come at it kind of from the bottom up, right? We talk through with a lot of our clients once we go through the process mapping piece is like a virtual assistant hired the right way, onboarded the right way can be so valuable. And it's, you know, for some clients it's a cost cutting measure like, at eight bucks, 10 bucks, 12 bucks an hour, it's typically got to save you a ton of overhead compared to hiring somebody locally. But we go to them and say, "Hey, look, now we have these processes. You've been able to diagnose what your negatives are, right? What's sucking the energy out of you. Well, look, we just took you out of doing c and d level work. You're now doing the a and b in the space that you thrive, which is only got to help the business get where you want it to go. And we have a super affordable resource that has the skillset and character suits to be able to do that work better than you would anyway." So it's that win-win- win all around the board. Yeah. And then it cascade down. Especially for that, we have a lot of clients in that kind of 200 to 500 range. Yes. It's just, you just kind of keep, you keep throwing them muck, right? You're in the minutiae of it, just trying to get through to the next day and the thought of going to 700 doors is just like, "no way I'm got to have a heart attack." But when you can start developing those processes, you know, mirror that up against your team's strengths, who you have, where do you want this property manager or this leasing, you know, agent to be really, and what do you want them doing?  [00:21:54] We like to simplify it down to, I mean, no one should have more than three to five core responsibilities, right? Really. And then property management. That's very hard. But if we can get people doing the three to five things that are in their sweet spot. What needs to fall off of their plate and then how can we offset that with process and incredible VAs to get them so that the whole business can take a level up and I mean, once again, coming back to just the personal thing, people can enjoy going to work again. There's a lot of times, whereas the owner where like, "I just don't want to go in." I'm sick of getting my teeth kicked in. So it's like your team feels that too. Well, how can we be enjoying this more. How can we increase the culture, make it a better experience? Your owners feel that, your tenants feel that, and it all kind of starts at this initial discovery and jumping in with the process piece. [00:22:37] Jason Hull: Yeah, totally. So cool. Well, tell us a little bit more about Rocket Station. I mean, there's a lot of VA companies targeting the property management space. We've had some on the show. We've had like Anaquim, virtually Incredible, Hire Smart, and several others. What do you feel like makes Rocket Station stand out? How are you kind of unique in the space? And why should somebody reach out to you instead of somebody else?  [00:23:02] Greg Brooks: Yeah. No, definitely. So, I mean, big thing kind of comes back to what we just talked about. We feel like there are, there's a lot of, especially, and we've seen them in the last five years, there's a new VA company every single week, that specializes, "in real estate." I think at the end of the day, a part of the puzzle of hiring VAs is finding great VAs. So just from sheer like, kind of recruitment size, all of our team members are based in the Philippines. So like, like I mentioned earlier, we've got 2200 people, 250 internal employees that work in the Philippines, recruiting, training, and onboarding what we feel like is some of the best talent the country has to offer. And all we do is real estate. So we break our business into kind of four key pillars. So it's property management, investor, real estate agent and brokerage, and then we have a home service division as well. So a big part of what we do is providing, we want it to be a win, right? We want a rockstar virtual assistant that has spent five and a half weeks going through our training and evaluation to get placed with the perfect client so they can grow their career and grow professionally and make more money and all the things any employee wants. [00:24:03] We also want a client who has an ease of experience where at the end of it, they get a high output individual with as minimal headaches as possible. Unfortunately we feel like in the VA space, a lot of VA companies out there are more placement agencies. Meaning they'll find you somebody, but then you're kind of on your own to get them trained and hold them accountable. I mean, every VA company out there touts "you'll get management support and all," but once you get into it, that management support really is just, "Hey, if the VA messes up, give us a call. We'll get you a new one," and that's just not like the end goal. We're big on this idea of an being an integrated staffing service, and what that means is our perfect experience is we only staff dedicated virtual assistance to our clients, either part-time or full-time. [00:24:45] So the perfect experience for us is, yes, Rocket Station held your hand and helped you develop processes and job scopes. We do all the recruitment and placement of somebody who we've evaluated over the course of five weeks to be the right fit. But at the end of the day, we want them to look, act, and feel like a member of your team. So we feel like that transactional nature that a lot of VA companies unfortunately go with, just because they're trying to get butts in seats. It doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the property manager. It certainly doesn't help the va. In terms of finding people that really grow and stick well, one of the numbers we're really proud of is our average client retention is 33 months. [00:25:20] So on average, the VA that you hire with us is lasting with you almost three years. Which I mean, in the VA space is about four times industry average, but even for the types of positions that we're filling, maintenance coordinators, leasing administrators, like you're not hiring somebody locally that's got to last more than nine to 15 months. So we're really proud of that and we feel like it creates that experience where we help. I mean, our point of differentiation is we're not just helping a VA get a job, we're helping our property management clients set up their systems and process so they can be successful with hiring virtual assistants. Because I think anyone out there that either currently has VAs or has maybe tried hiring VAs you very quickly realize that the number one, the term VA kind of very much undersells the capacity of what these team members abroad can do. Virtual assistant, you think my calendar or make a follow up call for me. And it's not that right? We're hiring, you know, world class customer service, leasing agents, salespeople, right? People who can really come in and we've got lots of cool studies to show this, but can typically outperform a local hire about three to one compared to what, you know, what you would get outsourcing versus hiring. But we really try to handhold and help our clients create the infrastructure-- a lot of it through process mapping-- to ensure the success of that hire. Sometimes people don't match. Sometimes VAs, you know, they do get replaced in six months, nine months. But the fact that we take that deep investment from literally documenting the processes for our clients, really getting to know them and managing that relationship as if we are a part of their team, really allows it to be a win across the board rather than just the transactional nature that unfortunately so many VA companies kind of run with in, in the property management space specifically. [00:27:03] Jason Hull: So, I mean, that's incredibly low churn. If you're able to, on average do 33 months. So what would you say really-- I mean, because that's unique-- what really is causing that?  [00:27:16] Greg Brooks: I think it's a, I mean, hate throwing around the word culture because everyone throws around culture, right? I got a great culture. We have a different culture, we have a unique culture, but for us, it really is the culture piece in terms of how we structure the experience for the virtual assistant in the Philippines, mixed with how we structure the experience for the client to where we kind of view our business kind of in like two different verticals that combine when the client hires. So through our recruitment process, through the training, through all the support that we give even down to like how we compensate the benefits that they receive. It all lends to being a more structured employment option for the virtual assistant themselves. And we see that in terms of, we're very fortunate. We spend minimal dollars advertising for recruits in the Philippines. And last month we had 5,500 people apply for a job at Rocket Station. And a lot of that we feel like speaks to the culture because we have an incredible internal network over there that champions the culture that we're trying to provide, where we're not just that transactional VA company that's got to get you a client and then you got to kind of figure it out, right? We're helping support their education right from the jump in terms of the industry and the types of clients they're got to land with. Once they do get selected and hired by a client, we have all this process mapping and training and documentation custom-built. That's setting them for up for success. And then we actively are managing it, looking for opportunities to grow the VA's experience and their knowledge once they're working with the client and performing in their role. So just creating those feedback loops that create really strong culture with our teams over there. And then also marrying that with. The preparation that we do with the clients here. [00:28:58] And I know VAs have become a lot more common, especially during Covid, but I mean there's still a lot of operators all sizes of business where it's still-- for a bad metaphor here-- it's still very foreign to them, right? They're like, how the heck am I got to communicate with this person every day? How are they got to be on our meetings? How are they got to be able to be plugged into our technology? So being able to walk them through step by step with that, doing it a lot of that for them, but making sure the infrastructure is set up allows them to look at this VA that they're hiring more as a member of their team rather than just the person who is vetting all of their lease applications because their leasing agent is sick of doing it or not doing it. You know what I mean? It's that different in terms of like, Hey, we have the end goal of them being integrated, being a part of their team. I mean, we have incredible stories of, ever since the world has kind of opened back up, clients literally traveling to the Philippines to visit. Actually within the PMI franchise network, one of our kind of trophy clients they flew. Four of their VAs over for the Property Management Incorporated national Convention last year. So it's just great. It's that different experience where it's like, hey, people are people. As business owners, we need to set people up for success because personally, I've never hired somebody who wants to quit three months later. When the employer meets the employee, there typically is a value trade there where somebody wants to succeed and for anyone that's worked with VAs in the Philippines, when you talk about like work ethic and really just want to it's world class, like they want to come in and be a valuable member of the team. [00:30:26] So the way that we're able to prep the client, the culture that we're able to cultivate within the VA space itself is what really lends itself to that really strong marriage and that super low churn that the client actually feels in their business, whether that's being able to add 200 more doors, whether that's becoming, you know, more profitable or cutting down their overhead, like whatever their end goal is with hiring VAs, they're able to realize that faster and they're able to get just a huge resource, a huge talent in terms of this dedicated virtual assistant.  [00:30:56] Jason Hull: Yeah, for most business owners, getting a VA is probably the very first hire they should make. They're probably not ready yet at a smaller level of maybe like 50 to a hundred doors, you know, they're not ready probably to afford to hire a good operator or somebody come in and do all operations. But getting a really good assistant. Every entrepreneur can double their capacity by getting a really good assistant. I never want to be without my own assistant. I have an amazing assistant. She's in Mexico and we've got at least two team members in the Philippines. We've got multiple team members in Canada. Like the cool thing about being able to do things virtually is that you can get the best, you can get the best wherever they're at. And  [00:31:44] Greg Brooks: at a price you can afford, typically. [00:31:45] Jason Hull: Yeah, at a price you can afford. Now I definitely have a lot of US based team members. And I do believe, like, you know, there's a lot of times there's a difference. There's a lot of times there's been a difference, but for everybody on my team, they're the best I could find in any category. And it didn't matter where they were. So, It just is icing on the cake that, you know, having a logo designer, for example, in the Philippines would charge probably 10 times less than a logo designer in New York City. So there's definitely advantages and those get passed on to your clients in a lot of instances as well. And so it allows the property manager to remain competitive in their pricing and to keep their operations and to have more profit margin. So it really does create a win-win- win all the way around so everybody benefits. Well, cool. I think that's a pretty good place to wrap unless there's anything else you want to say about Rocket Station. You can tell us how we can get in touch with Rocket Station or those listening, how they can. Get a hold of you.  [00:32:43] Greg Brooks: Yeah, definitely. So anybody who wants to nerd out on process mapping or learn more about VAs, say, we'd love to hop on a quick call and talk to you. Our team's got some great resources. We've got some great kind of done for you SOPs where if this idea of process mapping is something you want to get into, but maybe using a service like ours you're not quite ready for. We've got some great how tos. So head over to rocketstation.com. Obviously check out our website. We've got some great lead magnets and resources there for anybody who wants them. Anyone interested in a call, go to discovery.rocketstation.com. For all the DoorGrow listeners, we do have a $500 off promo that we're running. So just make sure in the referral box put "DoorGrow." But like I said, the call itself is completely free. So even if you're trying to learn more about VAs, learn more about processes, our team of specialists, we'd love to kind of walk you through, you know, learn a little bit about your business, see if we can help, and if not, be able to fill you up with a ton of resources and knowledge and a bunch of takeaways to, to hopefully help you run a more efficient business where you leverage virtual assistance in some capacity. [00:33:42] Jason Hull: Awesome. Thanks Greg for being on the DoorGrowShow.  [00:33:45] Greg Brooks: Thanks for having us.  [00:33:46] Jason Hull: Cool. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you want to add doors, you want to grow your business, you're wanting to scale, check us out at DoorGrow.com. We've got an amazing mastermind. And if you're wanting to get to the next level in your business, You're not got to do that by doing it alone. It's time to start getting connected, reaching out, and not being that entrepreneur on an island. There's lots of people playing a similar game as you and you should be connected. So reach out to us at DoorGrow. We would love to help you grow your business. You can check us out at DoorGrow.com. [00:34:18] 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!  [00:34:45] 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.

Do you feel confident about your current maintenance processes? Maintenance is an area where plenty of property managers struggle with client satisfaction. In this interview, Jason speaks with Ray Hespen, CEO and co-founder of Property Meld about how tracking key metrics can be an incredible way to identify areas of improvement within your maintenance process. In turn, this can improve resident satisfaction, increase owner retention, and lower maintenance costs. You'll Learn... [03:40] How Metrics Can Help You Improve Client Experience [09:35] Maintenance Analytics you Need to Pay Attention to [14:50] The Maintenance Hierarchy of Needs [21:47] A New Tool for Tracking Maintenance Stats Tweetables “Oftentimes it's really hard to see what you need to fix next until you progress to that next stage and stuff breaks.” “In most areas of business, there's a lot of myths and ideas around what creates a good experience or what actually creates retention.” “Just because they don't love you doesn't mean they're going to go shout from the rooftops nobody should work with you.” “Anything that can be done too little can also be done in excess. It can be done too much.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Ray Hespen: We've got a really amazing product that's dropping in the middle this year. I think it'll be industry shifting, but it's actually providing the visibility to where you're at on the ladder and what you should be working on. Not just you, not just company X and be like, "how do I think I'm doing in my own little paradigm," but like, where am I at against my competitors? [00:00:19] Jason Hull: Welcome Doorgrow Hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:01:03] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder, and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:21] So my guest today is Ray Hespen, CEO of Property Meld. Ray, welcome back.  [00:01:29] Ray Hespen: Hey, thanks so much Jason. Super excited to come back. This is always a lot of fun, so appreciate the invite.  [00:01:34] Jason Hull: So just before we were in green room and Ray was flirting with me and telling me how good I looked since we last met.  [00:01:41] Ray Hespen: Just a little bit. Don't tell everybody my secrets-- how do I butter up  [00:01:47] Jason Hull: He's trying to feed my ego before the show. [00:01:49] Ray Hespen: Well, I think the thing is I've been in the industry for about seven years now, and so that means you start to, like, you start to realize, you know, it's like I'm growing up here and you get to see your peers that grow up in there. And so, you know, sometimes when you don't see them for a while you'll be like, dang, you haven't aged as much as I have so good on you, you know? So.  [00:02:07] Jason Hull: And I was saying, I was like, yeah, my my beard has gotten a lot whiter since you were less on the show. I'm getting it. So today's topic is going to be the importance of maintenance analytics in your property management business. And we're not going to run super long because, I told Ray, unfortunately, I have to pick up my daughter from school and that was just a timing thing, so we'll make this potent, but I have to say, Ray, I was sitting on a call with a client Jimmy K. I call him, and he was just saying how Property Meld has like, seriously improved his business. This is what he said, and we probably can share the video with you. I'm sure he'd be cool with that, but he was like, "yeah, I had two maintenance guys. We fired one of them and Property Meld and then we realized we didn't need a second person anymore." [00:02:53] Ray Hespen: Oh my goodness. So that's basically the gist of it so. That's super cool. And I think the big thing about that, Jason, you and I are both in the business of trying to help other people deliver a better service. And sometimes, you know, what that translates to a lot of people is like, you made that job that much easier for somebody. It's like that hits, you know? Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah. That's awesome.  [00:03:15] Jason Hull: We hear it. I told you in the green room, we hear it all the time from clients, like they love Property Meld. Like we're like, go try Property Meld. They do it, and then they become these like religious advocates, like missionaries because every one of our coaching calls, somebody brings up maintenance. They're like, Property Meld! It's life!"  [00:03:33] Ray Hespen: Man. Gosh dang. See, like I told you, you looked really good and you aren't aging like you just returning the favor. That's really nice. Yeah. Thank you.  [00:03:43] Jason Hull: So yeah, so let's talk about maintenance analytics. So one of the things I see is a lot of people, especially the 200 to 400 door plus crowd, They start to like freak out because they don't have a lot of profitability a lot of times. They were more profitable, they had more, let's say this, they had a higher percentage of profit margin when they were a solopreneur. Now they've got this team, they've got all these software, they've got all this stuff, and they're trying to figure out how do I become more profit focused? And then instead of solving all of the most significant things that would impact profit, they go and sign up for some sort of profit coaching system, and then they try and squeeze their team with more KPIs and more metrics and force more blood from the stone. When what I see a lot of times is they don't have a good team. They don't have good processes. They don't have good systems. They don't have good documentation. They have no planning system. So their team have no idea how to help and function and think like more like the business owner and like get things done and innovate and create. And so these are all the things that we'll help them install. And early in that stage, before any of that happens, maintenance is usually the thing we need to push them towards because this is like baby steps. Like you need to get maintenance dialed in and you need to get leasing dialed in. Now we can focus on the team because those are things they need to get down in maybe even before they start to build a team, when they're doing it themselves, around 50 to 200 doors, depending on how crazy they get. [00:05:14] Ray Hespen: Yeah. Well, and I think one of the challenging things is oftentimes you know, both of us are business owners and so oftentimes it's really hard to see what you need to fix next until you progress to that next stage and stuff breaks and you go, "oh!" Obviously being able to know some of those challenges ahead is a superpower. But I even think the scaling element depending on your market type of class of property you're doing for you as an entrepreneur, you know, a property manager might be like scaling up and you know, maybe because they're the most amazing salesperson in the world, they're crushing it. Their problem might be sales in the future cause they can't do it right, or that might be solved. They might have somebody else there and they don't have a rockstar coordinator that's doing it. So it's super hard in that. But I completely agree. I think making sure that you've got measurables to at least understand the health. What's red, yellow, and green? Not sitting there forcing and saying "it's red, make it green," but just knowing that it's red. And then what do you as a business owner are going to do people process training to like address [00:06:14] Jason Hull: it. [00:06:14] Yeah. I love that. I call it the stoplight strategy. We just keep it super simple. We'll ask our clients on coaching calls, we'll just say, "who's, you know, red if you're in crisis or having problems. Yellow, if you're a little fuzzy and confused on what your next steps are. And green, if you're in momentum." And people know right away they're like, "oh, I'm this color." And then we're like, "why? Like, tell us why, and then we can't help you out." So, yeah, I like that. All right. So Ray, what sort of maintenance analytics should they be paying attention to, and how are people trying to do this if they're trying to do it without Property Meld? [00:06:46] Ray Hespen: Yeah, so, and I think I'll kind of just kind of talk about the high level just about it. And you talked about Miserables and KPIs. I think a lot of the times, like, you know, especially you talk about growth a lot of the times, understanding how many leads you're going to get, the quality of leads, your conversion rate, the onboarding success rate, like a lot of those times, those are metrics that you sit there and go, how healthy is my process? Whereas a lot of the times I think maintenance, the big challenge about maintenance is like that metric of how we measure ourselves is oftentimes like, how many angry phone calls do I get? How many negative reviews did I get? And those are really hard to manage cause they're so lagging. Yeah. And so one of the things that we're really trying to get the industry really bought in, and we've spent a lot of time trying to understand these, is like get more crystal about what are good lagging. Getting yelled ats, not a good lagging indicator. A business owner may be shielded from getting yelled at, and so how are they supposed to know how maintenance is going? Resident SAT is a big one and that's probably the easiest one. There's some profitability stuff too, depending on, you know, making money on vendors or whatever.  [00:07:51] But resident SAT's a great one. It's just a great one that everybody needs, because if you hang onto a renter, they renew the lease, the investor's happy, they stay with you longer, you keep making money. So it's a good one. But I think one of the things that can be difficult is like, how do I impact that? How do I make resident SAT better? So now if I'm measuring it, and let's say it's a 4.1 and I wanna move it to 4.4, and you say, team, I need you to move it to 4.4, they'd be like, great, are we nicer to them? What do we do? Do we send gift baskets? And so I think that's been the big black box of maintenance is how do you impact certain metrics? So I always give the analogy, you know, like, say one of us is sitting there going, you know, I'm really trying to tighten up my budget. You know, I'm getting my credit card debts too high, like, as a human being, right? Take this out of business. I'm relating it to another example. And we sit there and be like, I need to get my credit card debt down, my spending's out of control against my income. Like we have a lagging indicator, which is our bank account. That tells us that now if I were to sit there and do that, the tools that I'm available to as a consumer to understand what are the things that are breaking and what are the things that I'm spending all my money in and what things do I have to move to ultimately move my outcome, my racking up a credit card debt is actually really easy. You run your bank, you go to Mint. There's like tons of tools that will tell us, here's where you're spending all your money. And you can say, all right, I'm going to go fix that. So now if you take and get that to maintenance, I think that's the big challenge is doing that. So we've started to really put together some of those metrics. [00:09:27] And so one thing that we're super heavy geared up in is leading indicators. And then as business owners, what behaviors are you expecting out of your team to drive those? So I'll give some leading indicators, just some really quick and easy ones that I think are really easy. Speed of repair, probably one of the best ones. Track your speed of repair religiously. Bonus points if you can track it by the stage, how long to a sign, how long to schedule, how long to complete, how long to get the invoice, all those things, right? Track that. Yeah, that's a great leading indicator. And then as you can monitor with the team, that's when you can start to think about as your organization, what sort of behaviors are your team members doing to impact that? We always respond to incoming maintenance requests during the daytime within 15 minutes. We're always assigning. We're always structured, you know what I mean? So it's really about connecting those dots to lagging, and that's where a lot of the data and information has been missing. And most people, one, won't even be able to tell your rent SAT, lag indicator, to much less. What are the contributing elements to that?  [00:10:32] Jason Hull: You know, that's interesting because in most areas of business there's a lot of myths and ideas around what creates a good experience or what actually creates retention or what creates things, and then the data says often it's not even true. So, for example, one of the, you know, when it comes to client retention or client success, or decreasing churn for SAAS or for coaching or for any business, the big mistake most people think is if they're happy, they'll stay a customer. And that's not true. Like we've all had happy customers leave. They're like, "oh yeah, I love it! You guys are the best and you know, and we're going to go do something else." it's not related to whether or not they're happy or sad in relation to you. For example, for client success, it's just related to whether or not they see a future involving you. That's really it. They could be miserable, but still see in the future that they want to be working with you or that they need you, or that they're working with you or whatever, and they will still stay a customer and some people are just always miserable, right? Yeah. So, you know, sometimes things like net NPS are not super valid, right? Net promoter scores, sometimes because you're like, okay, well if they're not a true promoter, they must by default be a true detractor, but that's not always true. Just because they don't love you doesn't mean they're going to go shout from the rooftops nobody should work with you.  [00:11:52] Ray Hespen: That is so true. And you know, one of the things that we've been really disciplined in studying, because we've got around 450,000 units on our platform, we process around 1.7 million service issues and we collect immense amount of data and information that we've been trying to like, study some of these behaviors. So I'll give a couple of them because I think this is really good. And Jason we actually studied on service issues, we started to map all sorts of behaviors because Property Meld's an amazing communication tool as well. How much communication happened, speed of communication, all these sort of things. Like we can't measure like how good your bedside manner is in communication. Not yet. But we would sit there and map that across. We'd map across kind of responsiveness we would map all that sort of stuff. We actually saw no correlation to resident sat and communication as odd as it is. Now, we know that it does, in ways, way more nuanced. It's not just, did you do the thing, it's how you do the thing clearly, because it's not as quantitative. But the thing we definitely did learn is ultimately that speed or repair was the number one largest correlation to resident satisfaction. Number one by far. Even in Property Meld, I think I was, I released some of these stats and data on our LinkedIn and stuff like that around, you got three days for an HVAC, you got four and a half days for plumbing, you got five days for an electrical before people start getting really cheesed off and you lose your chance of getting a five star. [00:13:11] But we've also discovered the same thing in investors you mentioned. Are they happy? Like what's my. CSAT score, it's customer satisfaction score. And what we ended up realizing, because we have around when we did this study, we had around 190,000 investor owners on the platform. Most of our customer service, the, you know, accidental landlord segment, some institutional as well. But the number one correlation we could find there, Jason out of everything. There's some interesting stuff there. We could dive into it more. But the number one is how much in maintenance costs are they spending annually against rent roll? Keep it under 12%. That's the magic. And you know, so that means like you're trying to keep turnovers down. That means you're trying to be competitive with money. And that means if you've got technicians are doing enough jobs per day that you're not getting, you know, roached on it. But the biggest correlation is keeping their cost down. Exponentially increase to the chance of risk if you get above 12%. And these are people that are not crunching a calculator and do an NOI calcs every month. There's a gut feel where once 12% happens and they say, Hey, I like you property management X. You're really great, but this doesn't seem like I'm getting a lot of money back. I'm going to go look for other options, so.  [00:14:25] Jason Hull: Yeah, that's interesting because there's kind of this trend of nickel and dime fee, like fee max, fee maximization, fee, fee, fee. And there's a point in which anything that can be done too little can also be done in excess. It can be done too much. And so it's interesting that, you know, related to data, it suggests that you can go too far and then it's going to start hurting you.  [00:14:50] Ray Hespen: Yeah. And I'll even tell you one of the things and I don't know if your viewers are super interested, we started actually kicking out this thing, like, are you familiar with like Maslow's Ladder of hierarchy? [00:14:59] Jason Hull: Hierarchy of needs? Yeah.  [00:15:00] Ray Hespen: Yeah. So somebody joked one time. And I took it to heart cause I thought it was actually quite brilliant. They said, is there one of those for maintenance? Kind of seems like there is. You know, if you think about Maslow's Ladder, it's right. You got food and water and there's a measurable there if you want to keep that. [00:15:16] Jason Hull: So for yours, it'd be speed first. Like, just get the problem off my freaking plate. Like, get it done.  [00:15:23] Ray Hespen: Well, I'll break through it a little bit. If you want to check it out, you can download the image on our website. We're pretty proud of it. And it's not Property Meld applicable. It's anywhere applicable. Okay? But it's the concept like a Maslow's ladder, right? You got water and food, right? If you don't have water and food, you're going to die and you need to go to the next thing. And then what happens is then once you go to water and food, then you go up the next one, and that's shelter, security, all that. And once you go up that, it's like recognition. Then once you go back, it's purpose. And I'm probably butchering Maslow's Ladder, but the concept is as human beings, we have to get the previous need met before we move to the next need. And so we actually started building this for maintenance. We call it ladder maintenance excellence.  [00:16:02] And really it starts down at communication. Communication's critical. You can't do anything else without getting good communication. But once you get communication mastered, that's when you start to get to scheduling efficiency. And we have metrics and stuff of how to do it. Then once you get to scheduling efficiency, then you can get to staffing efficiency because you know how many vendors you need, how many technicians you need, how many coordinators you need. Then once you do that, you can start doing really cool stuff of really driving preventative repairs and it goes through all the way to the top, which is you know, basically creating predictable NOI for investors. And it connects how all that marries together. But the reason I say that is along the way, it's how do you know you're ready to move to the next? And that's really hard. Where are you at in the ladder? If you're thinking you're up here and you're down here, it's like, go down here and fix this, then build back. Yeah. So anyways.  [00:16:50] Jason Hull: There's a similar pyramid and I'm trying to remember the name of the books. I think. I'm doing a quick Google search here, but I think... so there's this pyramid and it's called the customer satisfaction pyramid. I think it's from a book. Yeah. Called First Break all the Rules from the Gallup organization that does the Gallup polls. And it was a bunch of research they'd done, you know, on businesses and when it comes to the customer satisfaction and the pyramid, they had these four levels and the lowest level was availability. It was like, just answer your freaking phone. Or I usually use the waiter analogy, like, if the waiter's at a restaurant and he is never available, you're going to be pretty upset. The second level is accuracy. Does the waiter bring you the right food? And if the waiter does those two things perfectly, if a business does availability and accuracy perfectly, you don't even notice they exist. Yeah. It's not like you're like, "oh my gosh! The waiter actually brought me my food and actually came right and asked me what I wanted and checked in and refilled my water." You don't notice them. You're enjoying your guests or whoever you're with or whatever, right? Yeah. Now, the next level is where people start to pay attention, and most businesses are failing at availability and accuracy. The availability is low. They don't have Property Meld. They're not answering their freaking phones. Nobody can reach them like you'd be surprised. A lot of property managers-- you wouldn't be surprised. But some might be surprised. A lot of property managers don't even answer their phones. They get a lead and they follow up with it like a day or two later, right? And then so after availability and accuracy, there's partnership. This is like, "Hey, I'm in this with you." Like, we actually have a desire to help and we're going to work with you to make this happen, this partnership and the next level beyond that, in customer satisfaction where you're, it's beyond partnership is a the advice category. Now you're an advisor.  [00:18:43] Now, they trust you as being somebody in a superior position of knowledge or information where they're going to, you know, acquiesce their own will to you in some instances. And so for property managers, partnership's, good. But if they don't perceive you as being an expert or knowing more than them, then they're going to micromanage you at times, they're going to be a difficult client. And so that highest tier is advice where you can now give them advice and you're educating them and they know that you know more than them about some of this stuff. But if you do the first two, a hundred percent, you're a hundred percent available, a hundred percent accurate. Your clients won't even notice that you exist. They'll just not get angry.  [00:19:23] Ray Hespen: Do you know, I think what's so great that you said, and I think it marries up so well, we focus on those next steps without coming down and going, "I got to get some foundational pieces." And it just keeps toppling over and breaking. So that ladder, Molly posted where that ladder is. If you wanna take it, you got to just scroll down on the page a little bit. I see. But like the big thing is there's a lot of people who sit there and go, "we're going to get staffing efficiency, like nailed down. We're going to get it, here's how we're going to get it." but like, What's happening is you have can break down on communication the way that you can tell us. If you look on the left side of that ladder, happy residents tell you if you need to go down the ladder or up, right? They're kind of like your limiting force, right? And there's a point where they quit to matter. It starts to matter to the investor. And so kind of like your analogy is like a lot of people will start up a bit higher, probably the one they should. And it's like you got to go to those first two because if not, If you're not available and you're not accurate, there's no way that you can be a partner. [00:20:19] Jason Hull: Yeah. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I mean, let's imagine the waiter, right? You have this waiter and they come over and they're like super charming and they're charismatic, you feel like there's partnership. They're giving you great advice on what to eat, but they never show up to give you your fucking drink. And you don't have silverware yet, and they bring you the wrong food. This isn't right. It puts you in, you're in so much discomfort in having to relate now to another human being to express that they didn't do it right. You're frustrated. And so, yeah, it's absolutely true. Like most businesses, if they just did what was expected... I think most of the research indicates people don't really want their expectations exceeded. They don't want their mind blown. They just want them actually met. That's it.  [00:21:05] Ray Hespen: Yeah. I completely agree. And I'll even kind of marry back to the analytics and insights part that you were kind of walking through. Like you've got some measurables probably in the customer service thing that you can probably measure today and know. Yeah. And say, Hey, my response time. Like awareness, accuracy. There's ways that somehow that you probably do that partnership. You have a measurement or whatever that you can do there. Is that good? And like how much are you an advisor to people? Like are you consulting on how many houses they should buy or whatever. Like there's ways that you measure it, but I think that's the big gap for a lot of people, particularly in maintenance. If you look at that maintenance ladder, It's like, how do I know where am I even at? Which area should I be starting at and working on? And that's one of the big challenges about insights and we've got a really amazing product that's dropping in the middle this year. That's, I think it'll be industry shifting, but it's actually providing the visibility to where you're at on the ladder and what you should be working on. [00:22:01] Not just you, not just company X and be like, "how do I think I'm doing in my own little paradigm," but like, where am I at against my competitors? Really important to know because at the end of the day, like that investor that's coming in and looking that resident is chances are, has the asset and your only competition is not your own picture of yourself or what do you think it should be, it's about the PM down the road. So it's about the institutional partner. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.  [00:22:30] Jason Hull: So let me make sure I understand this. You have a tool coming out and this is going to help people understand how they compare basically to other companies or maybe best practices in relation to data when it comes to maintenance coordination. You got it. So this is then instant analogy I saw in my head. Do you remember in video games, do you ever play a race car video game as a kid? Yeah. You play this race car video game. You see your score score at the end and then like you do it the next time and you're racing against the ghost car. It's either yourself in a previous race and you're trying to beat that time, or it's that ghost person that was some other player that you need to try and beat. So this, that's the ghost car. Having that data, you can see that other thing and you can, you now have contrast. I'm behind. I'm ahead.  [00:23:18] Ray Hespen: A hundred percent. And I think one of the things that's so difficult, Jason, is like the fact that people don't know if they're working on the right thing or the wrong thing. They make an assumption because one customer gets mad at them and says, you're spending too much on HVAC costs. It's happening. HVAC invoices are up 43% year over year. Yeah. You know, and it's like, hey. And so the reality is everybody's natural instinct is, oh my goodness, that means my costs are high. When in the reality their costs could be actually below market and they're trying to beat the crap out of their vendor to get costs down. And if they don't know if that's actually broken or not, they could be working on the wrong thing. Oh, good. Yeah. And so I think that's one of the biggest challenges a lot of people have. The idea is it's not like, oh, how's it against me and my competitor? It's what parts of my business are we excelling at and what parts are we not? We need to know that so we can actually go point at it.  [00:24:13] Jason Hull: This is brilliant because if the owner is pushing back on something and the property manager doesn't know, they don't have definitive data to know that this could be an issue or is not supposed to be an issue and is not, they then won't have the confidence to go to that owner and say, this is not an issue. It's completely in range. We have access to hundreds of companies data. We know where we're at, and we're actually a little ahead of the curve, so this is good. That gives them the confidence to go back to the owner and instill more confidence so the owner doesn't like quit or feel like they're being taken advantage of and then go down the street to another company where they get like, You know, railroaded. Even worse.  [00:24:48] Ray Hespen: They're worse. Exactly. There's one example, and I'll just give this super quick here, is we had a customer that had an institutional client. They were getting beat up on price, and I asked the question, I said, where do you think they're getting their information from? I have no idea. And they're like, it's like this. And I'm like, we have more data than information about invoice costs of different kinds of things like. And that was actually part of the thing that spawned it was exactly that. Most property managers, some of them don't even own a home. How are they supposed to know how much a hot water heater costs? How are they supposed to know when an investor calls them and screams on what it should be? They don't know. So the only way that you can, just like you said, is enrich them with data to feel confident to go back and say, we're actually doing better. Or if it is bad, it gives an investor or you know, the owner of the business a good idea to say, Hey. We actually do need to work on this. Maybe we need to look at our our pricing structures or our network or whatever.  [00:25:43] Jason Hull: So this is powerful because also for a property manager to go out and just try and get that, anecdotally, that would be viewed as collusion. That would be a dangerous thing. So now they're talking to other property managers like, Hey, what are you charging and what's going on with this? And so, good point. That's dangerous ground. And so the reverse, this is after the fact, and this is data. This is based on reality. And so you're just reporting on here's reality. But you're making it visible. Yeah, exactly. Solution. But it's helpful. Absolutely. It's good stuff, man. Okay, well I got to wrap up, but this is really awesome. [00:26:18] Hey, thanks man. Appreciate you having me on. [00:26:20] But yeah, everybody check out Property Meld. We still have that old link up if you go to DoorGrow.com/maintenance. Do you guys still get these? We send people to that.  [00:26:32] I'll ask marketing. I'm sure we.  [00:26:34] If you go to doorgrow.com/maintenance, fill out that form. And it's like a quiz to see if you could benefit from maintenance automation, which the answer is yes. Spoiler alert. If you fill that out, it will send your information over to them and they'll get connected to you. And I believe it says there's some sort of discount, so.  [00:26:51] Ray Hespen: Awesome. Cool. Well thanks so much Jason, and I really appreciate it. Great way to go check it out. And if you wanna look at that ladder. It's posted in there, so you can see that. It's a lot of cool stuff there, so thanks for having me on. Always enjoy it. Thanks for inviting me, man.  [00:27:05] Jason Hull: All right. Thanks for being here. Cool. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, like we talked about in the podcast intro or the more important problem, you now are adding doors. You've got plenty of doors, maybe you've got 200 to 400 or higher. But you know deep down that adding more doors is just going to create more friction in your life. It's going to create more pain for you as a CEO. You're not going to enjoy your business more, even though you're going to make more money. You know it's going to mean less fulfillment in your day-to-day of enjoyment, less freedom, less of a sense of contribution and making a difference in the world. It's just going to burn you out, and you're going to feel less supported because you're just going to more people needing things from you and wondering, why won't my team think for themselves? Then you need to get into and check out our DoorGrow Super system. This is where we help you get an operations person in place. We help you hire, build out your hiring system. We help you get really good process software in place. We help you get really good planning software in place. This is where you now are able to get more fulfillment, more freedom, more of a sense of contribution, making a difference in the world, and more support in your business. The bigger you get, that's the right way to build your business. It actually should be getting better and better the more doors and more money you add because you have more resources if you're doing it the right way. And we want to help you make sure you're doing it the right way because that's not the default. I've seen inside thousands of property management companies. It's not the norm and it's the norm for our clients and we want to help you get that. So reach out to us. Check us out doorgrow.com and make sure you join our free community. Our Facebook group will give you free stuff. It's really cool. Go to DoorGrowclub.com. Join our Facebook group and you can learn more about us there. [00:28:52] Bye everyone.  [00:28:53] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:29:20] 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.

On this week’s podcast episode, we brought back a guest we’ve had on the #DoorGrowShow before, Joe Edgar from Tenant Cloud. Property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with Joe Edgar to talk about the many new features that have been added to Tenant Cloud to benefit property managers and what is next to come for the software. You'll Learn... [01:35] An Introduction to Tenant Cloud [06:44] The Different Systems PMs Need [14:11] Integrating Different Property Management Tools [17:36] Tenant Management and Roommates  [27:43] Accessing and Transferring your Data [31:55] Are Completely Remote Showings the Future? Tweetables “Listings are important because of course, as soon as you have a rental, what do you need? You need a tenant. Nothing worse than vacant property.” “So there's a relationship in all of those that you really have to harbor and that's where making sure you're connected to your tenants and you're connected to managing service for them is important because then they will reach out to you to buy one where if it's a bad experience, they won't.” “You're busy doing all this work, but then actually going back and making sure you're making money at what you're doing is often the last thing they look at.” “You have two choices in life... You can be reactive or you can be proactive. ” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Joe: Because that's one of the hard parts is you're busy doing all this work, but then actually going back and making sure you're making money at what you're doing is often the last thing they look at. They worry about because they're trying to provide to customers, their owners. Yeah. And the tenants, good quality customer support. And so that's where it's the hard challenge and making sure they're all connected in a nice, easy way.  [00:00:20] Jason: All right, we are live. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. 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.  [00:01:25] All right, so my guest today is Joe Edgar. And Joe, it's been a while since we've had you on the show here, so.  [00:01:33] Joe: Yeah, definitely has. Glad to be here.  [00:01:35] Jason: So Joe started a company called Tenant Cloud. And today you're going to be talking about property management and real estate technology in 2023. So, Bring us up to date, man.  [00:01:47] Joe: Yeah, it has been a while since we first launched, I think back in 2016 was a real focus on the DIY landlord and trying to support that general group. And as it really has grown into-- our biggest following is now really property managers focused in the single family rental space. So, that distinction has come down to really the difference in logistics. And so, as many know in property management, if you're managing multi-family, then you usually have somebody on site, but if you're managing single family rentals, there's just too many properties. And so Yeah. Ends up being a logistical nightmare. And so that's really where we end up fine tuning our solution is all around the logistics, managing those single family rentals and helping you grow your business.  [00:02:30] Jason: Cool. So what have you been up to since then? I'm sure you've made some updates to Tenant Cloud.  [00:02:36] Joe: Yeah, there have been a lot of updates especially since then. I think some of the best things that really help a property management company really get going is the fact that you can sign up for Tenant Cloud and in just a couple of minutes for free. There are some paid solutions, but just on the basis of free, you can set up your own company website. From your company website, you can have its own listing portal. So all of your listings that you're going to manage, it can have applications and so tenants can find you. They can apply for a rental. You can manage that application, you can send it back for more information. You can charge a management fee or not. Lots of customization inside of there. You could have multiple bank accounts. If you have different owners, you can, send an agreement to an owner have them sign it. They have their own portal so they can own their own reports. And then of course, the more traditional stuff on top of that, which is, just managing the property itself. Everything from maintenance to just general communication with your tenants. And so all those things kind of fit in there. I think the most fun thing that we have that really brings a lot of value worth mentioning is if you follow the industry, we're starting to see these silos and vertical step up. I think the biggest mover now is co-star who is looking to buy move.com, which is realtor.com. And so they're really trying to have that niche. And then Zillow of course, exists. And then you have Redfin who's putting together a lot of other sites. And those are all around listings. And so listings are important because of course, as soon as you have a rental, what do you need? You need a tenant. Nothing worse than vacant property. So, we built this thing. We have so many tenants that come to us. Our affiliate sites, College Pads, and Rentler, are all really bringing us lots and lots of leads.  [00:04:25] So having all of these leads, we decided to go the extra mile. We said, what if we offered all of them the ability to basically say what it is they're looking for. And by telling us what they're looking for, we can then match them with all of the inventory of vacancies. And so we take users who are already, they came to us for the purpose of trying to find a home. And we have all these property managers who are trying to find tenants into their rentals. So we built this thing called premium leads, and really you could think of it as like Tinder for tenants. Okay. And so what happens is the tenant will put on what they're looking for. They're like, "I want Southwest Austin. I'm looking for, $2,500 a month, a two bedroom, one bath, a yard, a fence." Say the general things they're looking for. And the second you turn on premium leads as a landlord, it will take all of your properties, even if they're not listed, it'll have them already matched, but they won't see it. The tenant won't see it until you actually make it live by listing it. And immediately all of those show up for the property manager. So the second you turn on premium leads, you have potentially, like, I love turning it on because it's such a nice feeling to like list a property, immediately you have like 15 leads, you're like, "That's great," and you invite them to apply. So you just invite them to apply and that sends real invites to those tenants. So those tenants now got a personal invite from you and you can go through, the tenant goes through it. If they like the property, they can swipe left and ask more questions. They can fill out a rental application, maybe schedule a showing, anything like that. Or if they don't like it, they swipe left and they move on their way.  [00:06:03] Jason: So they'll swipe right if they like it. Yep. And left if they don't, and then it's swipe left if they don't. Got it.  [00:06:08] Joe: Yeah. So it's a very non-abrasive way to approach all of these different tenants looking for leads. And so it now is the largest lead generator inside of our solution. So we integrate with Zillow, we integrate with realtor.com, many of the Redfin solutions, but it now outperforms all of them. It produced about 60% of the leads on Tenant Cloud. Wow. So it's a really nice way to go and find and fill your tenants. So again, everything, it's really about bringing all of those things that you have to property management into one easy solution at a low cost, help you save time, grow your business.    [00:06:44] Jason: So if somebody already is like knee deep in another property management software, can they still use the premium leads? [00:06:50] Joe: Oh yeah, for sure. It's easy. I mean, that's what's nice is it's segmented off. We have a lot of property managers who do multi-family and multi-family is a different beast. We have a lot who hack us and use us for like multi-family, but as I said, the single family rentals has a logistics problem and I can explain why we're so different in that space. Sure. But when you get into multi-family we know where the space and we know the industry. And so if you're in multi-family more traditionally after one of those larger property management solutions, and most of that is in part because multi-family is 95% owned by institutional investors. And institutional investors need data. These large rates. And so we're not designed for that big stuff. We're really out to help smaller property managers kind of, grow their business and not answer to large rates. So the way the data flows separates us pretty substantially. And so that's what would make a unique thing. So on the logistics problem you have, maybe you have one maintenance person, but a lot don't. And so the key feature is if you were a property manager, you already know, it's like how many property managers can manage how many units? You have the math and it's generally around a hundred units per person.  [00:08:04] And you can get some that are starting to get more efficient. They're getting into like duplexes and triplexes where they get down to, maybe the 85 to one. But normally about a hundred. And a hundred's a good number because if you're also a broker, then you also know I'm managing these properties because I know about 5% of them will bring me additional business annually. Either my clients are selling or my clients are buying, or my tenants are looking to buy. Right. So there's a relationship in all of those that you really have to harbor and that's where making sure you're connected to your tenants and you're connected to managing service for them is important because then they will reach out to you to buy one where if it's a bad experience, they won't. [00:08:43] And so having a nice solution on their phone that they can easily sign a lease, they filled out their application, they can pay their rent, they can view everything that's in their power, is great. Then in addition, if anything happens, they can go to their phone. And there's four simple questions that breaks 1500 problems with a home down into four simple questions that are icon based. And so they select them and they can take a picture and a video and it goes direct to the property manager. And the property manager now has the choice because we can't say, not all tenants are accurate. Not all tenants know how to fix anything. And so, whatever they say the problem is, it could be something different. And so I've had this on my own experience where it's like, I find out the roof keeps leaking, but I'm like, you realize it hasn't rained in weeks. And you find out it's the air conditioner. It's like catching condensation. And so you know what they say the problem is and what it actually is is not always the case. And so it's nice. You get the maintenance request, you have a picture, you have a video, you have a small explanation if they wanted to add it to it. And if you have a service professional that you work with, you can send it to them or you can change the category. You can schedule it from there. [00:09:50] And once you assign it to them, they can now communicate directly with the tenant, but you are privy to all the messages. And now they can schedule this outside of it. Or you can plan for them, but they can schedule outside of you having to do it constantly. Now, that's one method. It can also be if you're in a property management office there's one here in Austin I just talked to. They have 50 rentals, so they're growing theirs. They're managing on behalf of about 10 owners. And so that's not big enough on their level to have a maintenance person on staff. And so they contract everything. And so what's nice is inside of theirs, they can actually use it inside the maintenance request. They can get a quote and that quote goes out to all service professionals in the local area that can then send in bids on behalf of that. And you can run it in two different flows. You can say, "okay, well I'll make the decision," depending on what you have with the owner. Or you can send the different quotes to the owner to pick one of them. [00:10:44] And so there's lots of different ways to manage that. But now once you connect them, you can then do the same thing. You're like, okay, I like your bid. You do it, I'll schedule you. You're in. And then you have privy. And then there's a way the tenant can say, well, it's not done exactly. And they say it is done. So you kind of do a lot before you actually have to go on site. I mean, when I was doing property management, the worst thing was most of the site visits are not what they said. And they're things like, "the lights are out," and it's because the light bulb is burned up. It's like, well, that's not, you just wasted a lot of time for me to drive across town. There's two hours of wasted time to do this. And so having those logistics are great. That's the heart of Tenant Cloud. But then on top of that, it's like, okay, well the logistic problem and getting on the phone and scheduling is tough. Then I got to account for all this. [00:11:30] And accounting is the next piece. So when the tenant goes in and enters that, we have those categories of which they're selecting by icon based for maintenance requests. They're matched with both revenue and expenditure and capital expenditure categories inside the accounting automatically. And then in addition, you can keep track of any assets. And by that I mean if you have a refrigerator or an oven, you can store all those in. So if a maintenance request comes, you can actually look up any piece of equipment like a fridge and it can tell you, show you all the maintenance requests it's had. It'll find correlations like things. You're replacing this motor every year so you can make those decisions on like, we probably should just get a new fridge. But then inside of that, all of those are matched with the IRS 1040 Schedule E categories. And so what is great is you as a property manager who is going to be doing your 1099s at the end of the year. Your contractors, if you were to bid it inside the system, you can pay them and they can invoice you. So if it's someone you don't know, then of course they'll create an invoice for you after the work. But it's someone you do know and they just, you're figuring out what the bill is on the side. You can message them on the side or directly in the ticket, and then you can pay them directly. What's nice is when it comes to accounting time, your owners have a very clean, simple 1040 Schedule E already done for them that has all their costs laid out, that you didn't have to go back and do anything extra, has all the receipts matched to it. Each one goes all the way down. And each property manager, as a refer to, are these "additional opportunities." There's lots of ways, depending on how you have a relationship with your owner to set up those additional opportunities. [00:13:06] For example, you could just charge like, I have a 10% fee on top of any cost for maintenance I do. And so that would be added into maintenance requests. So that's already being done. Or you could have it, we have a flat rate that we charge for tenants. I mean there's lots of ways to set it up for your property management company to make sure they're accounting for their revenue as well. Because that's one of the hard parts is you're busy doing all this work, but then actually going back and making sure you're making money at what you're doing is often the last thing they look at. They worry about because they're trying to provide to customers, their owners. Yeah. And the tenants, good quality customer support. And so that's where it's the hard challenge and making sure they're all connected in a nice, easy way. And everything kind of flows in a simple recurring way that is predictable and you know for sure how it's going to work is an important part of growing your business. And so then that passes through to the owners can fully see their reports. You have your reports for your 1099s and all of it happened behind the scenes without you really looking at it. So the heart of it is to be kind of a logistics and accountant, a back office person to help you, a small property management company kind of grow. [00:14:10] Jason: Cool. Cool. So the maintenance coordination piece, solving that logistics challenge, can that be used by companies that are also using another property management software already?  [00:14:20] Joe: Yeah. Sorry, I kind of went on a-- I digress. That was your question before. You can kind of go on and use whatever piece you want. So we have lots of larger ones who are doing multi-family and they have found that they get all our leads at Tenant Cloud. So they still use their traditional property management software to answer to the beast above them for accounting. Yeah. But they get all their leads and manage all their rental applications through Tenant Cloud. And for their business, they get to keep the application fee. And so it's nice because they can set all that up and so they run everything there. So all the applications you can do a background check, you can do a full one, you can do a partial one. So there's lots of different variations you can do in there. And so it's nice for them because they manage everything on there. Once they actually do a lease, then they actually put them in their other property management software and do it on there. And then some are slowly kind of converting into Tenant Cloud as it does more for them. As they see, they're like, well, why don't we just move here? But in a lot of the wreaths they don't. But on slower ones, yeah, you can manage just leads.  [00:15:15] We have a really nice CRM tool built in. And so because we give you a free website and then we distribute your listing to so many different places, we set you up on a unique text number. You don't know what it is, it doesn't matter to you, but what's great is it does matter to someone looking at your rental. And so to find your listing on any site, and then, if I have a rental application, that's an easy one. I'll fill out the application that goes through the system and you get a nice, clean application. You can request more information, whatever you want to do. But when it's just a lead, which is how most of them come in. They'll send you a message and they can do it via text straight from the listing. They hit a number, they send you a text, and you can respond to them via text, right in your Tenant Cloud account. And so that's where you can take all the different messengers, have it in one place, nice and simple track notes, maybe it's, maybe the one they're looking for is not available now and you want to use it for later, so you just tag it. [00:16:08] But yeah, there's different parts of Tenant Cloud that you can use for just different parts of your business, depending on what you're doing.  [00:16:13] Jason: So what you're saying is on the tenant side, there's basically CRM for tenant leads and that you can manage that communication and you can do it through text message because the listings have that number on it. Exactly. And then on the maintenance coordination thing, which also sounded really cool that piece can be used standalone as well, is what you're saying?  [00:16:31] Joe: Yep. Correct. Okay. Each one is really segmented Now if you use them altogether, of course, they just make life easier, but sure. But yeah, you really can use each little function separately. Now, if you wanted to come from another software, you can easily upload your data. So we have tools for that. And if you ever wanted to take Tenant Cloud data, this is one of the things, it has been our company's motto from the beginning, that we are not making business on holding your data randsom. And so you can easily take your data at any time you want and use it and flow it anywhere. And so some of those have been good. We have a QuickBooks integration, so that makes it seamless. But we have others who use some other unique accounting software, and so we've made that so you can just pull your data and put it in anything else that you want as well. So there's lots of reasons to have that, but that's an important thing before you use one, you're like, I want to know that I can get all my data out of it. because you're uploading images. Yeah, you're uploading tenant information. I mean, it ends up becoming your record retention for a lot of stuff that you're doing on a legal basis. And so it's important to have all that, but to also have access to where you can get rid of it on a digital form, but store it somewhere still. [00:17:36] Jason: So if we were to look at the Tenant Cloud ecosystem or, system as a whole, we've got, the tenant lead sort of CRM in communication for taking care of the vacancy situation. We've got the maintenance coordination piece, we've got the accounting piece you've mentioned. What other major?  [00:17:53] Joe: So there's tenant management. Tenant management is just one where you want to have all your information about each tenant. It may flow from the application but then once you have it, you want to message them. And so you could have tenants all on one street and you need to message them and say, "Hey, street clean, street sweeping on this date. So you can message a part of them. Or you may have all your tenants at large, you have a policy change you're going to do, or you may have two cities and you say, okay, in this city this is changing. And so just helping manage all of those tenants and having a place to keep both private and information that you share with the tenant is really important. [00:18:29] So there are things like, for instance, if you enter an accounting or you send us something, it's nice to know that it's live. And it's also nice to know that they have seen it. And so when you have a message, you can see for sure that you see, as we all know a hard part, but a reality of property management is that you will end up in a court, every so often with a tenant. And so making sure you have an easy place to account for all your timing and what you did with a maintenance request. And all of your messages in regards to just your relationship in general in one place is really important. And so to be able to pull it out and show dates and to be able to show what was seen and what wasn't seen is really important. A nice, easy process to kind of print it out and, bring it to court. As you will know, it's a huge part. And unfortunately that's part of the business, but it is one that you really, if you're going to grow your business, it's an important part to have, early. So there's tenant management. [00:19:20] We have a whole calendar scheduling piece, and that's really important because it's the next piece that I'll talk about is as you grow your property management business, in the beginning it's usually just you. And that's fantastic because that is definitely where you're like, I need to grow this. And then you bring out, and sometimes it's a significant other. That's fantastic if you can pull that off. Right. And so there's two of you, right? And often they'll use the same logins, right? Because they're like, there's two of us. So we're talk, we see each other enough that we'll do stuff. But once you have that first real hire, it's a different business. Because now you really don't have the same, it's a professional relationship and you don't have that same thing where you're like, we do need to, like who's doing what. Yeah. And so even though I say it's this calendar function, we have a team feature. You can go in and add team members and you can change all the settings for each team member. [00:20:10] And so it could be like it, you can assign them specific properties and so they're only able to see stuff on properties. You could limit them from accounting, you could limit them from certain settings. And so there's lots of ways, depending on what the team member is. For instance, you could have accountant, you could have a property manager just doing marketing, and you could have someone who, does maintenance. So just depending on what it is. But what's great about your team function is now you have a way to communicate with them. So very easily in a chat you can press a hash sign and find any of your properties in a message, and it will pull that up and then have a link to it. And then at sign you can find any one of your team members. And from a message, you can make that a task. And so all of a sudden tasks are running for everybody. And as the master account, you can see all the tasks going through on the calendar, and then you can message, each other about different tenants or any type of messaging that goes on there. And so you'll find, and then the system itself will self-generate tasks for you. For example, ones you should, they're obvious, that is like, all right, I have a lease. I want to know two months in advance before this lease expires.  [00:21:12] Tell me, cause I need to renew it. It could be, I talked to this tenant and they're going to schedule something, they send a message and from that message, they're going to pay rent two days late. But I get it. And so boom, you have a task, you're going to have those reminders come up. And so that's really that angle from trying to get the system knows a lot of the things that you automatically need to do. So they're already in there. For instance, every six months you need to check smoke detectors you need to do servicing before winter. There's cleanup. So all those things can be automatic inside of that calendar, but then really running inside the team function really brings it to work because now you mix that with your maintenance team or whether they're outside or not, but it's assigning them and it really becomes a magic. So we built this kanban board where you can manage a lot of those tasks, especially when you get more than a hundred properties and you're trying to grow your business. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You're just like, "ah, I forgot." So you have two choices in life. When it gets that big, you can be reactive. Or you can be proactive. So we have tried to build a system to help you be proactive. And that's, it's telling you before you think about it. So then you're like, "oh yeah, I totally forgot about it." I do need to schedule you that. You move it into the next kanban board, you assign it to this person, run it there. And so it's really a great way for a team to come together and trying to do property management. And so that's one of the features. There's quite a few features, but another one I'll mention that's worth noting, that makes us different than other solutions as well is when you go down to single family rentals, a lot don't know-- many in this area will know-- but universities are very unique in that universities have a higher density of smaller property managers managing around the university than non universities. And so if you get out away from the universities, you're into these big apartment developments and so they're slightly different. And you get into universities and there's quite a few property managers that just service around that area.  [00:23:01] And so one of the struggles for the property managers is always how do they deal with roommates? And you have so many different ways to deal with a roommate. You could take one rental and I could rent out every room individually, or I could rent out the whole house and just say, okay, well I'm going to, I'll rent out the house to all of you, but each one of you are going to pay a specific amount. Or I can rent out the whole house, and I'm going to say, all right, I don't know. I don't care. You're all on the lease. However you pay, just get me the money. And so those are all very different structurally in how you set something up and it all the way down from receiving an application, vetting them, moving them in to sign a lease, and moving them out, holding deposits and the ongoing relationship.  [00:23:42] They're all different. And so what's nice is we really have thought through a lot of those, and they're not just on roommates. So we're starting to see this happen now in older care centers. And so, assisted living of sorts, they are now doing a lot of roommate features. And so these are older care centers that are using us for property management software. However, they usually the tenants are self-sustaining, so they don't need a nurse. They're just living inside of a center. And so the same kind of features. And so a lot of this roommate functionality is taken off and then really during 2020, like, when Covid kind of happened, it wasn't as popular. It was a feature that we had built in and we we thought it was really aimed for the college universities as college pads, one of our partners. And so we had built that in, but really starting last year. And my own take is that real estate went so expensive that you're seeing a lot of roommates pop in. And so a lot of people are procrastinating moving into their own place. Rentals are taking off and people are moving in together. So now you see this over pouring. So the last report realtor.com did it. However it follows what Wall Street Journal did. That theirs was, there are 2 million households formed again last year, which means we are missing 6.5 million homes in the marketplace based on them. And if we are missing 6.5 million and things are so expensive, you are saying we have no choice that roommates are just over pouring into everyone's lives. So what they didn't think was is now a single family home, an apartment, everyone is now dealing with roommates and it's created software problems everywhere. [00:25:24] One that we have already solved and thought through. That's a great feature because how you rent them matters. It's, it changes the entire relationship from being a customer support frustration. Like if they're each paying a separate amount and you're doing rooms, but you're treating it as a solution where they're all in the same one, you'll just mess up all, for everyone. And so being able to manage those on so many different levels is really nice because you can have separate leases. One lease that they all sign and they all share their invoice, where as soon as one pays all the rest of them see it and they can figure out how to pay. Or you can just say each one of you're paying and then somebody's else is out and they're done. Or you going to move one in and move mountains, move the deposit. So it becomes such a problem that it's one to be noted. But now in today's industry, were roommate renting is just a commonplace, so that's a feature worth talking about.  [00:26:11] Jason: Very cool. Yeah. Cool. All right, so we've got the maintenance coordination, the accounting, the CRM for tenant leads, tenant management and communication, you've got the calendar scheduling, which sounds like kind of team communication, and then you've got the Roommates functionality, so,  [00:26:29] Joe: so we have a whole document. So anything you can manage all your, so we have both PDF and from scratch. So if you want to build an agreement yourself, you can drop in, easy pop in auto fills on the template, or you can just add a PDF and build the template. We also have them available for every state and county if they're divided. So lots of stuff to do E-signature and create your own lease agreements and manage kind of all that in-house as well. And then notices, So you can build a template notice, send it to a tenant when you know, rent's due or something like that. [00:26:58] Jason: Nice. Very cool. Yeah. Well, sounds like you guys have been busy so.  [00:27:03] Joe: Very busy. Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah.  [00:27:06] Jason: Very cool. Well, yeah, I can see how this would stand out from some of the property management software. Now you had mentioned that people can migrate from their existing software. So how difficult, because this is usually really painful for people, Yeah, to transition. I've seen people go from AppFolio to Buildium or AppFolio to Rent Manager or switching to Propertyware or Propertyware to AppFolio. Like, so how difficult or easy is it to switch from one of these to Tenant cloud and are there some that are easier than others? [00:27:42] Joe: No. So we've tried to make it as easy as possible. So what we do is we give you a template. So if you go into upload, you can find the upload and then you download a template Excel file. And basically you'll take whatever data you can get. That's the hardest part really isn't so much setting it up in Tenant Cloud. It's more other companies aren't so willing to just give you data. And that's the hardest part is that if you can get the data from them, we give you a template that's really easy added in and once it's in, you're done. Your tenants are set up, all their information is set up. The lease is set up. If you have late fees that are in there, they'll be set up. All of it will be done. Your property will be set up and you'll be live and it'll be working. But it's all, it's really more a problem of like, which software relationship are you trying to get out of? That's a hard one because for us, and we have many that call and like, " well I just want all this!!" And we're like, fortunately Buildium won't give us that data. We can't call them on behalf of you. Yeah. So the only thing we can do is like they can give it to us. Yeah, exactly. So that's the hardest part in getting in, helping people migrate. Is just being able to pull all the information. They spent so much time, putting in another software but on our end, it's really easy to kind of set it up. [00:28:52] And that's the heart of it is because everything is connected. It's helping you do each phase of your life. Because if you ask a property manager, like, what's the hardest part of your job? Well it really depends like one on the season, on the time of the month, and what stage of the property is in. Because if it's vacant, of course it's like, I need a rental, I need leads. I got to find this. But if it's, if they're all rented, well now you're like, oh, I got fridges breaking everywhere. So it just depends on the job. So the software's always set up to help you in all of those sanctions of your life. And so uploading it is really easy because it connects to all of them automatically and you're kind of done. But yeah, again, the hardest part is getting the information. So, yeah, I wish I could say that was really easy, but that's a part we don't usually get to touch. So. Cool.    [00:29:35] Jason: Well, Tenant Cloud sounds pretty cool. I have not heard of too many people using it yet, and so I'm really interested in getting some feedback. That'll be really interesting to see. So it sounds like you guys have really been innovating in the space, so.  [00:29:49] Joe: Yeah, we've been trying to keep it as affordable as possible and get it going. We now have over a hundred thousand active property managers and landlords. Using it and over a million tenants. So it's been fun, but you'll look at how big the market is and there's 15 million DIY landlords and something like 18,000 property managers. And, it's a small slice. [00:30:11] There are many out there still using, Excel or, a back of the notebook to keep track of stuff. So it is more about getting the word out there and let them know that there is a nice, easy solution to use.  [00:30:21] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. So, now if they have a website, like say from us third party website or their own site or whatever are they able to get the rental listings?  [00:30:31] Oh, I love that you said that. Yes.  [00:30:32] An embed code to put into their site.  [00:30:34] Joe: Yep. So if they just give us, they can tell us now, I will give you a quick hack so there's a quick hack, but then we can also help them do it. And so the quick hack is we give you a free site and if you have a listing link, so if you just relink that listing of yours and use Tenant Cloud, it'll automatically go there because it's the relink. Right? However we can help you customize it. So the free one we give you is going to be an extension of Tenant Cloud, right? Yeah, it's our free version. But if you want us to host it, we do have to be given the credentials, but we can host it and then you'll have an active live site, and then there are parts of it you can turn off or turn on. So you could use, if you've already built one, you say, I want to host this, but I still want the listings on my native site. We can do that for you. We have quite a few that do that. So, and the listing functions nice. It gives you a map, it'll show all your rentals. So you have a sub thing that you can click and, see a preview and then you go to the full listing. And then on there is really where the CRM powers because it says, 'do you have a question?' Or it'll be like, 'schedule a tour' or 'fill out an application.' And so each one of those, so if they schedule a tour or have a question that goes right to your CRM. And so that's where you can respond to them how whatever format they want to respond. If they give you email, you can do email. If it's text, you can do text. Or if they create an account, they can talk actually through the Tenant Cloud app. But then of course they've got an application, it forces them to put that behind some closed information just so they're not  [00:31:55] Jason: I'm seeing some-- put it out-- Smart property managers switching from doing one-off showings for every vacancy constantly to doing open house dial. And is that possible using Tenant Cloud?  [00:32:08] Joe: You can schedule them as open house, but what we don't have and that what we want to do, and this really came about from Covid, is we've been working with a company, so it's coming out here in the future, but it's not there. And that is to be able to do remote showings. So the remote showings are slightly different than open house. What it is soon you'll be able to have where you set up, it's a door lock, it gives a specific code to a phone, and then there are two cameras set up in it, wifi, and then so you have control of all the doors and you have a camera view. And so someone can go in and quickly get a text number that's going to be live for 10 minutes and you can literally watch them. And give them a short tour before they go out and you can secure the place back up and know whether any new windows were left open or any doors. And so you like, do those. So that's been more of the answer we've done just because it is, if you do the open house it there, there's a lot of things that require onsite. So it's like, how can we help property managers again, with the logistics problem. Yeah. And logistics problem's the hard one because you go, you list the property. And half the problem is like only 50% of the people show up showings and you drove a long way to get there and you're like, Ugh. And so yes, to get as many people at a specific time is great. And so you can kind of set that up with your calendar. That's easy. But the real heart of it is like, how can I show this and actually just be right here on my computer? So I could do five showings at the exact same time from my laptop. And that's really the heart of what we're trying to get to, is that you should be able to do that during business hours, know that it's locked up and know who it is that went into the rental. And so that's part of it. They have to get verified in order to get a code. And so they're using their phone as part of that process. There's a picture and an id check as well. And so they're verifying themselves, which just helps keep honest people honest when they're setting up and doing a rental. So you're kind of doing a bit of vetting as you set some different things up. So, so that's more of where we're trying to go, is trying to get more remote.  [00:34:04] Jason: Cool. Cool stuff. So, well, I think everybody should go check it out. How can people get in touch with you or learn more about Tenant Cloud? [00:34:13] Joe: Yeah, I'm always easiest on Twitter, so, @Joe_Edgar_ , always accessible there. Tenant Cloud's the sites, t e n a n t c l o u d TenantCloud.com. And you can find us on all the social media. But yeah, definitely hope to check it out. It's, like I said, we have a base version that's free and then, other features that come on top of that. You can set up your bank account. Receive applications, list your property, move in a tenant, and collect rent online, and that's all free.  [00:34:42] Jason: So, Cool. Very cool. Yeah, I think that was the first episode we did with you. You, we were talking about how I think software for property managers will be free someday. So.  [00:34:51] Joe: Yes. I honestly think it's going to go that more and more features are coming to where it's like, the more of your business isn't there. Like some of the stuff I hope we get to, and I'll mention this just because more of the viewers are property managers, but if you remember that I talked about the maintenance request function and getting a bid. Well, I'm no stranger to property management. I own a couple of property management companies. And built the software off of that. And I know in our, one of them is fairly large, and so we have a maintenance crew, we have a turning crew, we have a painting crew. We now even have a a cabinet crew. We go through so many cabinets. We're like, we just need to build these ourselves. And so we have all these different crews and they're just doing us. But one of the biggest costs is the downtime. And so for them it's like each one of them is a side business. And so it's like we've been trying to like think of ways there, like how can we grow this? And I know I'm not alone. And so what we're hoping to get to is that all the property managers who use us are. They'll soon have a little flip that comes up that they can turn on to now get leads. And so they will be part of the ones like saying, Hey, we have a service that does carpet cleaning. And so inside of my normal property management, now I can actually go and service people outside of the properties I manage if I want to look to expand some of the businesses that I've now created. [00:36:10] And so, and it's unique because property management is different. Like if I go and if I say to a property manager, Hey I have a property I need to do a turn on. They know exactly what that means. And there's not just one contractor outside of property management that could do that. And so property managers are in a unique space where they're like, well, I know exactly what you need. I need to go do an inspection. I need to check the carpets, I need to check the walls. There's probably going to be some painting. I got to do a little plumbing. I may even have to do some hvac, I'm going to have to do a little landscaping. And all of that's tied into it and owning a property manager has built out some of the functions to be able to service that. It's not all the property management companies, but quite a few of them will do it as they grow, just because they're like, well, we're now in-house. We're doing enough of them. I've got one lawn mowing guy that's running or something. So, so it's a nice feature that we hope to really bring out to embrace our own customers, helping them now find and grow their business in other unique ways they never thought about. So.  [00:37:05] Jason: Awesome. Very cool. Well, Joe, thanks for being on the show. Appreciate you being here.  [00:37:10] Joe: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks.  [00:37:11] Jason: All right, so check out tenantcloud.com. Sounds like it's really cool software. I'm really curious to get your feedback on how it compares to whatever else you've been using or what you're using for those that are doing research lately. So, let us know in our Facebook group. So join our free community that's available to property management entrepreneurs on Facebook. It is DoorGrow Club. The DoorGrow Club. You can get to that by going to DoorGrowclub.com and it will redirect you to our Facebook group. Answer the questions and join the group and we will give you some free gifts as well and that can benefit your property management business. And, check us out at DoorGrow.com. We are the world's leading property management coaching mastermind. We are helping grow and scale property management companies rapidly. We would love to help you grow and scale your business, figure out operations, make your day-to-day easier, and take some vacations, people.  [00:38:05] Jason Hull: 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!  [00:38:32] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. 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